“That maple is particularly lovely this year,” I greeted them, gesturing to the view.
Pooh opened her blue eyes wide and beamed. “I was just saying the very same thing!”
Gusta smoothed her skirt. “Yes, some things in life are reliable.” She touched her hair, as if to reassure herself that every lacquered curl was in place. Whatever Gusta’s hairdresser did, her hairdos always lasted longer than anybody else’s.
“Meriwether asked me to come,” I told her. “She’s worried about you.”
Her old gray eyes were not angry, but bleak. “I cannot understand how she can throw herself away on Jed. It’s nothing more than a childhood infatuation. That’s all it ever was.”
I looked questioningly at Pooh.
“I’ve told her all about it. After all, Pooh is my oldest friend.”
Pooh pooched out her lips like she was thinking. “I don’t think you are right to call it an infatuation, dear. They’ve had a long time to think it over, and Jed has become a fine young man. If they still want one another—”
I jumped in to second that motion. “If Jed was a stranger who’d moved to town and showed up at church, you’d have been mighty proud for Meriwether to be seen with him.”
“I cannot forget he is a Blaine.” Seeing me make a sharp impatient move, Gusta held up one hand. “I am not quite the snob you think me. I had two cousins, sisters. One married a boy from a fine family who beat her until she died much too young. The other married a boy from very modest beginnings, but he was a good husband and she has been very happy. I would not mind if Meriwether merely wanted to marry out of her class.”
Pooh chortled. “You make us sound like an English country village.”
“In many ways, we are. We all know there are different circles in which people move. Sometimes people rise above their beginnings—I’ll grant you that.”
“Slade Rutherford has apparently managed,” I contributed.
Pooh leaned forward in distress. “I thought he was one of the North Carolina Rutherfords.” I doubted if Pooh had known there were North Carolina Rutherfords until Slade came to town, and I still wasn’t certain they existed except as a figment of Gusta’s imagination. But clearly, debunking him would crush Pooh almost as much as telling her the Queen of England was really only Elizabeth Smith.
Gusta must have thought the same thing, because she first asked, “Do you know that for a fact?” and then, before I could answer, she’d flapped her hand. “We’ll talk about that another time. You are perfectly right that if Jed Blaine had come here from another place and I had not known his family, I might have been proud for him to date Meriwether. But if I had afterward learned that his family for generations had been liars, thieves, and degenerates—”
Pooh pressed one plump hand to her chest. “Surely not degenerates, Gusta!”
Gusta pinched her lips together and drew herself up. “I have never told a soul, but my husband whipped Hector for trying to rape Helena when she was barely thirteen.”
“Oh, no!” Pooh was providing all the chorus Gusta needed. I sat back and listened.
“Oh, yes. Lamar found them in the cotton gin after closing one evening. He grabbed the boy by his collar, threw him to the ground, seized a piece of rope hanging on a post, and beat the tar out of him. The poor girl was so grateful she followed Lamar home. I gave her a bath in my own tub and found her some clean clothes, but I had to send her home. She had nowhere else to go. If we’d had a shelter then like we do now—” Now I realized why Gusta had worked so hard to build a shelter for abused women and children. I wanted to kick her, though, when she added, “For all we know, Jed is the product of Helena and one of her dreadful brothers.”
“No!” Finally I joined Pooh in the chorus.
“I know what I am talking about, Mac. I know what is boiling in that boy’s genes. It is deadly. I cannot bear for him to touch Meriwether.” For the first time in my life, I saw Augusta Wainwright burst into tears.
What I could not bear was to see my old friend in such distress with Pooh fluttering helplessly beside her.
“Whatever is boiling in Jed’s genes, as you put it, he’s worked as hard as Jacob in the Bible proving that he can and will take care of Meriwether. Trust her wisdom, Gusta. You raised her. Start thinking about their wedding.”
“Six weeks.” Gusta flapped her hands in despair and dabbed her eyes with a white linen handkerchief. “How can she expect me to do a wedding in six weeks?”
“You can do it,” Pooh said encouragingly.
Gusta sniffed and became her usual autocratic self. “As crazy as she’s been lately, she may try something like going to the preacher’s office on a Wednesday afternoon.”
Feet clattered down the stairs and Alice’s and Darren’s voices mingled in the front hall. “It’s time he was leaving.” Gusta pulled a silver ball on a chain from her dress to consult the small clock it held. “He told me he was merely coming by to pick up something. He’s been here twenty-four minutes.”
“I need to go home, too.” Pooh looked up at me. “If Gusta will ask Florine to call Otis to come get me, would you push me down the ramp and to the bottom of her drive? I’m always afraid the chair will fly away from him going down.”
“I’ll come on my walker. I need the exercise.” As Gusta reached for the blue walker near her chair, I hoped Pooh’s chair wouldn’t fly away from me down the drive with Gusta and her walker running behind.
I pushed Pooh through the kitchen and down Lamar Wainwright’s ramp to the back of the drive. In the open garage, Gusta’s Cadillac and Alice’s white Acura sat side by side. Darren’s Volkswagen still squatted in the drive, rear end facing us, and he and Alice were loading things into the back. Gusta’s drive was lined with nandina bushes and the fall berries were the same deep orange as Darren’s hair today.
“Orange hair!” Gusta muttered. “I do not know what Alice sees in him.”
“I understand his ancestors may have been nobles in Spain,” I murmured, steering Pooh around a bump. They might have been cockroaches, too. You really can’t tell about ancestors.
As we reached the Volkswagen, Darren hefted a large bag into his car. It landed with a thump. Alice—with her back to us—worried aloud, “I’m not sure I’m ready to start again.”
“It’s like getting back on a horse when you fall off,” he urged.
“I guess so.” She still didn’t sound convinced.
“Is she moving out?” Pooh inquired. Alice turned, obviously startled.
“No, that’s my diving stuff,” Darren explained.
“I didn’t know you dived—dove—whatever,” I told him.
“What do you have in that bag?” Pooh asked, inquisitive as a child. “Rocks?”
He unzipped it and lifted out a mesh belt with pockets sewn along it. “Weights, to hold me down. Each pocket has a bag of buckshot. Here, Mac, feel.” He handed them to me.
“Whoa!” The belt was so heavy I nearly dropped it.
“You don’t notice the weight in the water.” He tucked it back in his bag, pointing out the rest of what he had. “Mask, fins, a wet suit, and my vest.”
It still had a price tag on it, which Pooh could read from her chair. “That is a very expensive garment!”
“It’s a buoyancy control device—a BCD,” Alice explained. “It controls your buoyancy underwater.”
“Alice persuaded me to buy one.” Darren zipped back up his bag and slammed his trunk. “We’re making a lake dive Saturday with a group from Gwinnett County. That’s why I came over—she was checking my BCD and I had to get her P.A.D.I. card for the dive master.”
Surely that made sense to somebody in the world.
“Miss Gusta gave me the day off,” Alice added with a shy quick look at her employer.
Gusta give a genteel snort. “Didn’t expect you to spend it at the bottom of a lake.”
Alice responded to her voice like a dog who graduated at the head of obedience class. “I was just going b
ack to work.” She took a couple of steps, then told Darren over one shoulder, “I’ll be ready Saturday morning at six.” She started for the front porch steps.
As I maneuvered Pooh’s chair past the car to wait for Otis down on the sidewalk, I called to Alice up on the steps, “I remember you telling me how much you looked forward to your first dive with your sister. But don’t go down again until you truly feel ready.”
Alice froze. I was dreadfully sorry I’d brought up her sister. Darren, short on tact, made it worse. “First dive?” he said scornfully. “She’s a lot more experienced than me. It was her sister who was the novice. That’s why she panicked and drowned.”
Now Alice was trembling like a nervous bird dog.
Gusta got her moving, calling crossly, “You said you were going back to work. You know you have the month’s rent checks to enter today.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Alice hurried across the porch and scurried inside.
I pushed Pooh down to the bottom of the drive and installed her on the sidewalk. She and Gusta got into a discussion about whose chrysanthemums were lasting longer, and I didn’t want to get dragged in, since I sold them all. “I need to be going,” I told them.
I was about to back out when Slade’s green Lexus pulled in behind me. The green Lexus, blue Nissan, and little yellow Beetle filled the drive like a colorful food chain.
As he climbed out, Slade’s eyes met mine in my side mirror. His were full of uncertainty. But he reached in and pulled out flowers, then strode down the drive and gave Gusta a courtly bow. “I owe you an apology, Miss Augusta, and an explanation. When you first mentioned the North Carolina Rutherfords in the bank, I was reluctant to say we are only distant relations, particularly since you obviously admired them so much. Next thing I knew, the whole town thought that’s who I was. And I confess, since you are also related to those distant cousins of mine, I couldn’t resist a chance to be related to you.” He held out the flowers. “Forgive me?”
Pooh clapped her hands. “Very prettily said!”
I would never have fallen for a line like that, but then, I don’t look in the mirror every day and see an aristocrat. Gusta lapped it up like rich cream. It had been a master stroke to point out, truthfully enough, that it was she who had spread the rumor in the first place. And if he was not going to marry Meriwether, she could afford to be gracious.
“Come in and we’ll talk about it,” she said brusquely, “as soon as Otis comes for Pooh.”
“Let us out first,” I called. “Unless Gusta wants us driving across her lawn.”
Slade hurried to his car a much sprightlier man than the one who had climbed out, but his eyes were cold as he sketched me a little salute. “At your service, Judge. I want to talk with you later.” He backed down the drive so quickly he nearly ran smack into Otis, who was slowing to two miles an hour before turning into the drive.
Slade laid on the horn and shouted. “He can’t hear a thing,” Pooh called to him. “Otis never wears his hearing aids when he drives. He says all those blowing horns distract him.”
Finally Otis backed, Slade backed, MacLaren backed, and Darren backed. Historic Oglethorpe Street, as exciting as a first-grade reader.
28
A dirty gray drizzle started to fall around two, with neither the comfort of a gentle patter nor the excitement of a downpour. I sat in my office staring out the window and thinking how ugly our parking lot was, how pitiful Joe Riddley was, how discontent I was. I wanted to be sailing in the Greek Islands or flying over an Alaskan glacier. Anything except paying bills in Hopemore. The phone was a welcome distraction.
“Judge Yarbrough?” Alice Fulton sounded harassed—as well she might, with Gusta’s monthly checks to enter. “Meriwether asked me to call and see if you can meet her down at her warehouse at three. She says it’s real important.”
I’d been wanting to see that warehouse, and a rainy day is a great time to look at a big dry building. “Sure. Tell her I’ll be there.”
At ten minutes to three I grabbed a big green-and-white umbrella a tourist forgot in the store on his way home from the last Master’s Tournament. I didn’t bother with a coat because I was just going half a mile. And I didn’t bother to tell anybody where I was going because we weren’t busy, with the rain, and the clerks had gone to the back for a group break.
Meriwether’s parking lot was still full of potholes and clumps of grass, so I parked at the curb in front near the door. The workmen, I remembered, were taking a week off to finish another job. But the door was standing open, so Jed must have already brought Meriwether.
I dashed across the sidewalk and was fully in the store before I lowered the umbrella and blinked to adjust to the dimness. “Meriwether?” The warehouse smelled both the same and different; musty memories of cotton overlaid with fresh sawdust. It was chilly, though, with the concrete floor, and except for the light from the door, the place was dark. Old Mr. Wainwright hadn’t wasted money on windows. “Makes thieves’ business easier,” I’d heard him say more than once. Puzzled, I turned to go back out and wait in my car.
I heard a slight movement, then everything went black.
I woke with sand beneath my palms. Why was my bed full of grit? And why was I on my back? I never sleep on my back. I also had a headache that practically sang.
I opened my eyes, but couldn’t see a thing. No night sky beyond the window. No bulky bedroom furniture. My eyes were open and I could not see. That was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I thought I had gone totally blind. I had no idea where I was, or what dangers might surround me. But I was cold.
I reached up to adjust my pillow, and found none. That, finally, woke me up. I wasn’t in bed. I was lying on a hard concrete floor in a room that smelled like sawdust. My head ached fit to burst. I rolled over and climbed to my hands and knees. Nothing felt broken. Had I fallen? I carefully pulled myself to a kneeling position. The world became a carnival teacup ride, spinning around and around. I sat back on my calves, ignoring my complaining muscles, and held my head in both hands until things spun slower and I remembered where I’d been: Meriwether’s warehouse. I had gone there to meet her.
Holding on to a sawhorse I tried to haul myself to my feet, but a wave of nausea drove me back to my knees. It seemed like a good position for a prayer, but “Help!” was all I could muster. I rested my head against the sawhorse while truth floated toward me on a great gray cloud of pain. Somebody persuaded Alice to call and say Meriwether wanted to meet me, so they could hit me. But who? And why?
Alice was most likely, of course, but what motive could she have? And she was busy with Gusta’s checks. I didn’t think for a second that Meriwether had any reason to get me out of the way, but her two suitors—I didn’t really know what Jed had been doing in Atlanta all these years, and a freckled friendly face was no guarantee of honesty. And Slade had been distinctly chilly that morning when he said he’d see me later. Was this what he had in mind? Did he ask Alice to call, telling her the message was from Meriwether? She’d have believed him, if Gusta hadn’t told her about Meriwether and Jed. Knowing Gusta, she wouldn’t tell anybody but Pooh until the announcement was in the paper. She’d be hoping the wedding wouldn’t happen.
One thing was obvious. Nobody was going to come rescue me. Not for a long time, anyway. The folks in my office wouldn’t bother me all afternoon, thinking I was working on the books. Walker would come and presume I’d gone on errands. Ridd would come by like he did every day after school and he’d lock up, shaking his head that his mama was getting so forgetful she didn’t let people know where she was going. Darren and Joe Riddley wouldn’t worry until seven, at least. They would eventually call Ridd, and when he’d checked all the places I might have stopped off and gotten too busy talking to get on home, he’d finally call Sheriff Gibbons.
Because I was a judge and a good friend, Buster would know I hadn’t abandoned my family, so he’d get a search under way immediately. But unless he questioned Alice, who w
ould ever think to look at Meriwether’s warehouse?
I had no doubt that a person smart enough to get me there would be smart enough to take my keys and move my car where it wouldn’t be found. Our county was full of convenient cattle ponds and old logging roads.
I couldn’t remember how long a person could live without food and water, but wished I hadn’t turned down Clarinda’s second biscuit and had thought to bring my coat. My jersey knit pantsuit wasn’t enough. And how long had I been there? I fumbled to find the button on my watch to illuminate the dial, hoping I wasn’t resetting the time by pushing the wrong button. Four-thirty, the same afternoon. I welcomed that glow of green light like a friend. But it made the edges of darkness just that much blacker.
I had no intention of sitting there waiting for somebody to miss me, initiate a search, and eventually try Meriwether’s warehouse. I wanted out, and I wanted out now. Shivering, I slowly forced myself to stand, fighting nausea and dizziness. I could find a door if I felt around all the walls. Granted the warehouse was a big place, but I had time to explore. I shored up my spirits by making a bet with myself: I could find an outside door before anybody found me.
Who Invited the Dead Man? Page 25
