Who Invited the Dead Man?

by Sprinkle, Patricia

  So long as whoever it was wasn’t somewhere inside, too, waiting for me to wake up.

  My heart sank when I finally found the door. It wasn’t an outside door, but a metal inside door, and it was locked. I must be in one of Meriwether’s new secure storerooms.

  Using my dim watch light, I felt my way around the room, stumbling over blocks of wood and, once, a hammer. The space was about twelve by fifteen, and had that one solid door. I felt no light switches at all. Trapped, I slid to the floor with my back against the door and had a pity party for one. How could I have been that dumb? If I’m reading a book and a heroine climbs a dark tower alone at midnight, I get furious with the author. If she goes to an isolated spot far from town to meet somebody in a shady glade, I lose all respect for her intelligence. So how did I get myself in this fix? Because Meriwether’s warehouse was half a mile from my office, smack in the middle of town. Because I presumed Meriwether was inside and didn’t verify that. Because—finally I had to face it—because I’d been proud that Meriwether called me with her problem instead of Gusta. Pride not only goeth before a fall. Sometimes it goeth before a heck of a mess.

  Mama used to say there’s no use crying over spilt milk, but go ahead if it makes you feel better. Shaking with cold, I sniffled like a brokenhearted three-year-old. I cried because I’d been dumb enough to come to that deserted warehouse by myself. I cried because I realized somebody could be coming back any minute to finish me off. And I cried because my head hurt so bad, if I didn’t get an aspirin pretty soon I was going to scream and nobody would hear.

  I massaged the back of my neck and tried to figure out why anybody had lured me to the warehouse in the first place. Did somebody think I knew something I didn’t? What? Or did somebody need time to do some dastardly deed—snatch Meriwether and ride off to marry her, rob my house, even commit another murder?

  I had a lot of time to answer those questions. Alternating between sitting against the wall and walking when my bottom got numb, I thought about everything that had been happening in Hopemore that fall. I began to get an idea that was so outrageous, it almost had to be true.

  When I got that far, I realized I had to go to the bathroom so bad I was about to pop. “I am fixing to get out of this warehouse or die in the attempt,” I said aloud to God. “It’s just you and me, and I need some help here.”

  To my dying day, I’ll believe that remembering the hammer was an answer to prayer. If I could only find it, in the darkness, a hammer and new walls were a winning combination. I groped around until my hands finally touched it, and held it claw out. I’d gladly buy Meriwether a new wall. I just hoped I didn’t hit a power wire and electrocute myself.

  I felt my way to the door, then moved over three feet and attacked the wall. Again and again I savaged it with the hammer claw. Bits of Sheetrock hit my face and lodged in my hair. Sometimes my headache was so bad I had to stop and breathe deeply to keep from throwing up. That was one mess I would rather not leave on Meriwether’s floor.

  Eventually I hacked and pulled open a hole with my bare hands. The studs were so close it was a tight fit, but I wriggled through, ignoring ripping sounds in my jersey shirt and pants. I slowly climbed to my feet and hoped I was in the warehouse, not in another locked room. I wasn’t sure how many walls my strength was equal to.

  Trying to be silent, I felt my way along the wall to a corner and, to my relief, felt a brick outer wall. I inched along the bricks to a door already fitted with fire bars. Thank God for safety codes.

  One minute I was in darkness, the next I stumbled into the prettiest rainwashed sunset I ever saw. I knew exactly how Lazarus felt coming out of the tomb. Oh, the world was beautiful!

  I squinted against the light. My forest-green pantsuit was covered with sawdust and white Sheetrock dust, a big blister was rising at the base of my right thumb, and my head still swam. As I had expected, my car was gone, and I didn’t have my pocketbook with my keys, anyway. But in the light of the open door, I saw a fire alarm box on the inside wall of the warehouse.

  I had always wanted to pull one of those little levers.

  It helps to have lived in a small town all your life and handed out suckers over the counter to every child in town. When the fire truck came screaming down the street and screeched to a stop by the warehouse door, I limped from where I’d been propping up the wall and remembered the driver as a girl who liked grape suckers. “It’s not a fire, it’s an emergency. I got kidnapped, and I need to get to Sheriff Gibbons’s office on the double.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Judge.” She turned on her siren as her partner pulled me up to the high front seat. We were moving before I got settled good.

  “Want a comb?” the partner asked, offering one from his pocket.

  “Thanks.” Not that a comb could do much to restore my former glory.

  When we arrived at the station, I staggered into the ladies’ room with what dignity I could muster and tried to wash some of the filth off my face and hands. Then I collapsed into Sheriff Gibbons’s visitor’s chair and told him everything that had happened to me, what I had figured out, and a couple of things we might try to prove it. “You’d better hurry, though,” I warned him. “The perpetrator has a two-hour head start, and we don’t have a clue in which direction.”

  At last I got to take something for my headache, drink a Sprite for my nausea, and sit back in that uncomfortable vinyl chair with closed eyes. He got on the phone and alerted south-eastern law officers who to look for and why.

  When he finished, I held up my bare arm. “I wish we could go see if my pocketbook is still in the warehouse. I feel naked without it.”

  I don’t know what Sheriff Gibbons told Meriwether, but she let him borrow her keys. He told me to wait in his car while he went inside. He came back with not only my pocketbook, but also a plastic grocery bag.

  “You sure you came through that little bitty hole?” he greeted me.

  I shuddered. “I’m not going back through to prove it.”

  “Well, you weren’t meant to suffer.” He held up the grocery bag. “This was under the light switch. It’s got a couple of apples, three cartons of yogurt, two chocolate bars, a six-pack of water, even a spoon and a few napkins.”

  I was more interested in what he’d said before. “What light switch? I didn’t find one.”

  “They are set low, to comply with the disabilities act. Old dogs have to learn new tricks, Judge. But you wouldn’t have starved.”

  “If you are suggesting I need to feel grateful, let me tell you something. I have never known such terror in my life as when I woke in this dark place. Any compassion I might have been born with has plumb dried up.”

  “It’ll come back. The person doesn’t live you can’t feel sorry for.”

  I rubbed the back of my head, where a large lump was forming. “Try me tomorrow. Right now I’m fresh out of sympathy.”

  He handed me the pocketbook. A typed note was just inside: “I am very sorry.”

  I was furious to feel tears of sympathy sting my eyes. “Oh, this is such a mess!”

  Sheriff Gibbons offered to take me home, but as we passed Yarbrough’s, I saw my Nissan sitting in its usual place, smug as you please. “I’ve got extra keys in my bottom desk drawer. If you’ll go in and get them, so I don’t have to see anybody, I’ll drive myself home,” I told him. “I feel fine.” We both knew that was a lie, but he let it pass.

  I arrived home to find Darren’s yellow Beetle and Alice’s white Acura beside Joe Riddley’s silver Towncar. Inside, the three of them sat at our kitchen table finishing peanut butter sandwiches, applesauce, and yogurt.

  Alice’s eyes widened.

  “What happened to you?” Darren demanded.

  Joe Riddley gave me a judicious appraisal. “You look awful.”

  “I got stuck in a tight place,” I told them grimly. “I badly need a bath.”

  I needed to make some calls, too, and preferred to use my bedside phone.

  When I c
ame back, clean and with most of the debris brushed from my hair, Joe Riddley said, “Sit down. Shall I get you some tea?”

  It was the first thing he had offered to do for anybody else since he got shot. “That would be great,” I told him, taking a seat like a queen and reaching for the bread and peanut butter.

  He rubbed his knuckles in my hair as he passed. “You got powder in your hair.”

  “I’ll call Phyllis tomorrow and see if she can work me in.” I made my sandwich and started to stretch, then put my arms down. I was very sore. I must have been dragged.

  “Sic ’em,” Joe advised from high on the curtain rod. Lulu whined at my feet.

  Joe Riddley filled my glass with ice, then tried to remember what came next. “Tea,” I reminded him gently. “Pour in some tea.”

  “Oh, yeah.” It took a little more coaching for him to put lemon in the glass and set it before me, but he did it. I gave him a grateful kiss on the cheek.

  “Since you’re home, could we go to an early movie?” Darren asked.

  Alice hadn’t said a word.

  “Could you help Joe Riddley to bed, first?” That took almost as much energy as putting a child to bed, and I didn’t think I could do it.

  “Sure. You ready, J. R.?” The two of them went happily toward the back of the house. I realized after they were gone that Joe Riddley had not been pushing his walker, he had been carrying it in front of him.

  Finally I took a deep breath and turned to the woman beside me. “We’ve got some talking to do, Terri.”

  29

  She swallowed hard and glanced desperately around, but she’d seen me lock the back door and pocket the key as I came in.

  I made my voice calm and reasonable. “I should have guessed before. When I first saw you, you seemed spunkier than you sounded on the phone, but I figured you’d been upset about your boss’s death the day I called. You could have told Gusta the truth. She’d probably have hired you anyway.”

  She nodded, her voice little more than a whisper. “I know that now, but I was afraid she wouldn’t, and I needed a job. I knew I could do it better than Alice could, anyway. Alice—” She swallowed hard. “Alice was a little slow. Miss Bitsy mostly had her answer the phone, stock shelves, and dust. She wouldn’t have been able to do everything I’ve done here.”

  “How did you get away with burying her as you, though? Looks like somebody would have found out.”

  “They worked on her so long, I had a lot of time to think it out. We’d just gotten to Clearwater the night before, so nobody knew us apart. We look—looked a lot alike.” She pulled her wallet from the purse by her chair and handed me a photograph. Alice was stockier, plainer, and had a slightly vacant look in her eyes, but they had the same dark eyes and hair.

  She went on, as she put back the picture, “When they asked who she was, I said she was Terri. I filled out all the forms, and because I was her sister, they never questioned it. I had her cremated and buried down there, so nobody who knew us could come, then I sent a notice to the Atlanta paper.”

  “But when you closed down the apartments, didn’t you have to see the landlords?”

  “I typed a letter to Alice’s landlord, saying I had found a new job where I lived in the house, so would he please give my stuff away. That’s the kind of thing Alice would have done. She was very generous.” Her voice wobbled. I had no doubt that Terri had been very fond of her sister. “Before he got the letter, I went for her clothes. She didn’t have much else.”

  It was a sad, empty epitaph for a young woman’s life.

  “What about your own apartment?”

  “I called the furniture rental place and arranged for them to pick it up, then I went that night to get my stuff. The next day I called the landlord as Alice and told them Terri was dead and that somebody would pick up the furniture.”

  Her room at Gusta’s, I recalled, had a mahogany bed with matching chest and dresser, a small escritoire, and a little chair. Graceful rose valances hung above lace sheers, a soft blue and rose rug covered the floor, lovely landscapes in gilt frames decorated the rose-papered walls. What a haven it must have seemed after rented furniture.

  Terri’s glance flicked toward me, then away, but she didn’t bother to stare at the ground like she had when impersonating Alice. Instead she sat tensely on her chair and watched me warily. In a fluffy white top and dark skirt, she looked frail in the soft glow of the Tiffany light over our table. Her eyes were large disks of chocolate, her hair a living cloud around her face. Anybody who didn’t know better would think she’d never committed any crime worse than taking her sister’s identity.

  We heard a car approach and turn into our gravel drive. “That will be Gusta,” I said. She flinched. I stood to answer the door. In passing her, I gave her open purse a swift kick. It turned over, and among the things that tumbled out was a rubber stamp. Terri grabbed for it, but I kicked it out of her reach and got it first. When I pressed it hard on my white countertop, red words sprang to life: Pay to the account of Augusta Wainwright. The account number’s last three digits were the same as my phone number.

  She jumped from her chair and ran through the house. I heard the front door slam behind her as Gusta tapped on the back door glass. Otis was with her, pushing Meriwether in Pooh’s wheelchair.

  “What’s going on?” Gusta came in shedding a gray all-weather coat and a gray silk scarf misted with rain. “It’s raining again, and Meriwether showed up with Otis a few minutes ago and said you wanted us down here for something. Is that Alice’s car outside?”

  Hearing a motor start, I said, “It was. She just left.”

  “That girl has been jumpy all day. Worried about that dive, I think. She was jittery as a Mexican jumping bean while she was entering my checks in the computer, then she asked if she could go for a drive. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Let’s go in the living room.” I took the wheelchair from Otis and pushed Meriwether ahead of her grandmother. I turned on enough lamps to make it pleasant without being bright. Otis waited in the kitchen.

  “Can I get you some tea?” I asked the women.

  They didn’t want tea, they wanted ice water, but that took as long as I had hoped it would. I was just picking up the tray to carry it in when I heard more tires on gravel. Quickly I printed a piece of paper from my telephone pad with Gusta’s stamp, pocketed the paper, and opened the back door.

  Jed’s BMW pulled in under our light. He climbed out, opened the passenger door, and grasped Terri by one wrist. Maynard climbed out and grabbed the other. “We got her, per instructions,” he called. The woman wriggled like an eel, but together the two men persuaded her up the walk and into the kitchen.

  “We’re in the living room,” I told them. “Otis, you come, too.” I slid both heavy pocket doors closed so Joe Riddley couldn’t hear. Otis took a seat in the dimmest corner. When we were all seated, Terri on the couch between the two men, I turned to Gusta. “I want to talk to you about Teresa Civilis.”

  “Who’s that?” Gusta snapped.

  “This is Teresa Civilis. She’s Alice Fulton’s younger sister, and she’s been working for you. This afternoon she lured me to Meriwether’s warehouse, hit me with a blunt instrument—probably diving weights—and left me there.” I turned and pointed. “See the bump?”

  “That’s awful,” Meriwether exclaimed. “Did you really hit her, Alice?” Her dark brows drew together, puzzled. “And how did you get in my warehouse?”

  “She’s Terri,” I reminded her. “I suspect you sent her over there on an errand sometime, and she got keys made.”

  “I sent her to open up one day when I had a meeting,” Meriwether admitted faintly.

  “She looks like Alice.” Gusta peered at the girl on the couch. “What’s happened to Alice?”

  “Alice drowned,” I told her bluntly. “Before you ever saw her. Teresa, her sister, took her identification and buried Alice as herself. They looked a bit alike.”

  Gusta glowere
d from Terri to me. “What makes you think she isn’t Alice?”

  “For one thing, Alice was looking forward to her first dive. This woman spoke knowledgeably about diving equipment this morning and has some kind of diving card. She knows how to use computers and business procedures, which she learned when she got a business degree. Alice never finished her first year of community college. She likes to party when she gets out of town. Oh, there were a lot of clues, if we’d been looking for them.”