That was when we reached the place where the magnolias met the manure. Willena waved one hand to dismiss Cindy’s objection. “Of course not, honey, but Gusta, Wilma, and I don’t any of us work for those companies. Neither did Pooh.”
It was the first time I ever heard work sound like a four-letter word.
“If we had invested four thousand dollars in Walker’s company last month, as we voted, we’d be a good bit richer now,” Gusta snapped. That was a typical Gusta exaggeration. Four thousand dollars invested in that particular stock a month ago would be worth forty-two hundred and ninety by now. Even if Gusta held twenty-five percent of the total investment (the most permitted by the bylaws), she would have made around seventy dollars. Still, to Gusta, any money she could have earned and didn’t was a fortune lost.
Willena shrugged. “I know we lost a little money, Miss Gusta, but that’s how the market is. We win some and we lose some. I feel we need to have a discussion on this matter after Wilma takes the helm, when I can speak freely.”
Cindy didn’t say a word, but she breathed heavily beside me and her eyes glistened with tears. If looks could kill, Willena would have lain dead on the floor.
Now she rejoined Chief Muggins and me, pale but composed. With the chief’s permission we headed to her silver Lexus SUV. The only other car in the parking lot, except for police vehicles, was Willena’s white Jaguar convertible. I wondered who would come to take it home.
When we got out on the front porch, I steered Cindy over to the far side, where it was dark. “Do you see any cigarette butts?” She peered at the porch floor, which was littered with a few dead leaves.
“Not a one. I never saw Sadie Lowe, either, or smelled smoke when I came in. But why should she lie?”
“Maybe she dropped them off the edge.” I drew her in that direction by the elbow. We peered down into streaming darkness but didn’t see a single butt. I gave the door a worried look. “I hope the chief will think to check for them.” Charlie wasn’t known for his thoroughness in investigating statements.
“Leave it alone, Mac,” Cindy advised. “You know Pop doesn’t like you getting involved in things like this. Chief Muggins can find out what happened to Willena.” She gave a short little laugh. “And if he doesn’t, do we really care?”
She had a point. I was tired, I had enough on my plate already, and I didn’t know Willena Kenan well enough to have any of the insider knowledge that in the past had helped me find a solution to a case. Furthermore, while I firmly believe in justice for all persons, I hadn’t liked Willena enough to expend much energy in doing Charlie’s job for him.
With relief, I realized that this time there wasn’t a single reason for me to do what my boys call “meddling in murder.”
“It’s all Charlie’s,” I said cheerfully, following Cindy out into the rain.
We shared her umbrella as we wended our way through the parking lot. It wasn’t a great distance to her SUV, but since she is five-eight to my five-two, I got pretty damp. Especially since, on the way, she fumbled and fumbled in her purse, turning the umbrella this way and that until it occasionally dumped rain down my neck or on my shoulder. Although the air was warm, the rain had fallen from a great height and was chilly. I shivered and looked forward to getting into the car.
“I can’t find my keys,” she confessed when we stood dripping beside the big vehicle. She peered down at our feet. “You don’t see them, do you?”
Siamese twins joined at the umbrella handle, we circled her car. No keys gleamed on the wet gravel. She gave a huff of disgust. “I must have dropped them somewhere inside. Here, you keep the umbrella, and I’ll dash—”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I took a firm hold of her arm. “You’ll get soaked and probably die of pneumonia. Then I’ll have to raise your kids. I’d rather come with you.”
By the time we got to the door, I was soggy from shoes to knees and my hair was plastered to my forehead. “The investment club may have had richer new members,” I quipped as she held the heavy front door for me, “but it has never had a wetter one.”
We were laughing together—and I was thinking how good it felt to finally be getting to know this daughter-in-law well enough to laugh with her — when we entered the hall and saw Chief Muggins standing there, glaring at us.
We stopped laughing at once, embarrassed to be caught carrying on while Willena lay dead down the hall. On the other hand, anybody who has been through a trauma knows that without laughter, you lose your mind.
Cindy stammered, “I-I’m sorry I . . . I-I’ve left my keys somewhere.”
The chief’s eyes narrowed. He went to the door of the ladies’ room and called, “Hey, Hank, you still got those keys you found?”
“Right here.” A deputy handed them out, encased in a plastic bag.
“Are these them?” The chief knew no more about grammar than he did about criminal investigation.
I caught Cindy’s elbow, willing her not to say a word, but she’d already exclaimed, “Yes!” and reached for them. When he pulled them back so she couldn’t touch them, with a gleam in his eye, her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Where did you find them?”
“Right where you left them,” Chief Muggins said with satisfaction. “Under Miss Kenan’s body.”
7
Cindy’s eyes widened and her face turned white as chalk. I felt the world start a slow spin, and wasn’t sure I could keep my balance.
“You can go on home now, Judge,” the chief said to me, jerking his head toward the door. “Mrs. Yarbrough and I need to chat a little longer.”
“I’m not leaving until her lawyer gets here.” I planted my unsteady feet as firmly as I could on the community center floor.
“So how’d your keys get under Miss Kenan?” the chief asked in a jocular voice, as if he were asking how she’d done in a tennis match.
Cindy shook her head. “I have no idea. I thought they were in my purse.” She held it up helplessly. “I did run into the bathroom to blow my nose before I went out to call our kids — I didn’t have any tissues—”
“You told me you didn’t go into the bathroom,” the chief reminded her.
“I did not!” she replied hotly. “You asked whether I went to the bathroom. I didn’t go. All I did was blow my nose and come straight back out.”
Ah, the English language can be so confusing sometimes.
Remembering the urgency with which she had left the meeting, I suspected Cindy had also needed a moment to cry out her fury at Willena before talking with the children.
“So how did your keys get under Miss Kenan?” The chief repeated his question in a voice like warm oil.
“Don’t answer,” I warned. “Don’t say a word until you’ve called your lawyer.”
Cindy was too upset to pay me any attention. “I told you, I don’t know. Willena wasn’t even in there. But wait! I got the keys out of my purse because I thought I might get in the car to make my call. While I was blowing my nose, I put them down on the counter. But Willena wasn’t there. Nobody was. They were still in the meeting.”
“Willena left several minutes after Cindy,” I contributed.
The chief ignored me. “May I see your cell phone?” he asked her, holding out one hand.
“Wait!” I cautioned. “Call your lawyer.”
But with what some call the frankness and others the naïveté of the innocent, Cindy had already fumbled in her purse and held it out. He snatched it, turned it on, and pushed the redial button. In a second I heard my son’s voice. “Hey, hon. You feelin’ better, or is that Kenan bitch still gettin’ you down?”
Chief Muggins closed the phone and palmed it. “I’ll need to keep this for evidence. I’m taking you down to the station, Mrs. Yarbrough. You can call your lawyer from there. You go on home, Judge. If I need a magistrate, I’ll have to call another one.”
Cindy’s phone began to ring — no doubt Walker wanting to know why they had been cut off. The chief ignored it.
/> Cindy reached back into her purse.
Faster than I knew he could move, he pulled his gun and aimed it straight at her. “Freeze!”
My heart thudded in double time. Cindy dropped her purse, shaking all over, and lifted her hands. “I was getting my keys for Mac.” Then she remembered that her keys were still in the chief’s hand. Her eyes locked on them as she added in a an unsteady voice, “She came with me.”
I gave the chief the look my sons call Mama’s Freezing Look. “You can put that gun away now.”
He lowered it and returned it to his holster, but I could tell he’d enjoyed that little display of strength and power. I’ve always thought that the biggest problem with guns is that so many of the people who carry them are the kind to act first and think later. “You’ll have to come with me,” he told Cindy.
“But Mac . . .” She turned to me, her eyes huge and full of all sorts of messages: I’m sorry I can’t take you home. I’m scared to death. What about my children? Do something, please!
“I’ll call Joe Riddley to come get me,” I told Cindy, willing my voice to sound steady and calm. “He owes me a ride or two. And I’ll go stay with the kids until you get home.”
“Don’t tell them about this, please?” Her face was so white I was afraid she was about to faint.
“I won’t. I’ll send them to bed, shall I?” I tried to sound like this was a normal delay in her schedule.
“Please.”
“Then I’ll send Joe Riddley back over here.”
At that point the chief decided to be magnanimous. He held up the bag of keys. There were several on the ring, plus a silver disk engraved with Cindy’s name and her cell phone number. “Do you agree that you left these keys in the ladies’ room?”
Cindy nodded. “Yes.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Judge, if necessary, are you ready to testify to what she said?”
“If I have to.” I felt like I was cutting my daughter-in-law’s throat, but I have sworn to uphold the courts.
“What keys are on the ring besides your car keys?”
“Our house keys, my parents’ house key, and a key to Walker’s office.”
He called to one of the deputies. “You still got on gloves? Come here a minute.” He instructed the deputy to open the bag and remove the car key and the gizmo that unlocks the doors from the ring. “You can have these, Judge. The rest ought to be sufficient to establish they are Mrs. Yarbrough’s keys. We’ll bring her home after I’ve talked to her some more.”
“I’m gonna call Walker to come home,” I promised Cindy before I headed out.
Walker was somewhere in the wilds of North Carolina at the moment, on something called a Corvette cruise. I knew that because the previous Friday I had come back from making our deposit at the bank across the street to find Walker’s whole family inside my office. Tad and Jessica were still in their private school uniforms, but Walker and Cindy wore matching yellow polo shirts and khaki slacks. Matching outfits is one of those things Cindy likes that used to drive me crazy.
At thirteen, Jessica was already taller than I am. Tad, at eleven, was up to my eyebrows. Both Cindy and Walker are tall, so I figure there will come a day when I’ll have to look up at all of them. The trick will be to make sure none of them ever looks down on me.
“What’s happening?” I had asked. They were all bouncing on the balls of their feet like they would burst from holding something in.
“Come see!” Tad shouted. “Come see what Daddy’s got!”
I followed them out to the parking lot. A bright blue Corvette gleamed in the sunlight. “Electron blue!” My son stroked the top like it was a new wife. “They only made this color a couple of years. I was lucky to find one.”
Two years before, Walker had bought a guitar and gone so far overboard with country music that he neglected his whole family. Cindy finally took their kids and went to her mother’s for several months, which nearly scared me to death. I could not bear to think those children might grow up without their father and away from us, but Joe Riddley had assured me, “Walker’s just having his midlife crisis a tad early. He’ll come around.” Sure enough, Walker had come to his senses, settled down, and been a real good husband and father ever since.
Does a man get to have two midlife crises?
I couldn’t help a shiver of worry as I stood there looking at that car. Then Walker put his arm around his wife and squeezed her good. “Cindy bought it for me. We’re going to join a Corvette club and go on cruises all over the country. If you and Daddy will babysit, that is.”
“We want to go! We want to go!” his children objected in unison.
“You all can go sometimes,” he relented, “but the first few times your mama and I want to be alone.”
“So they can smooch,” Jessica told Tad.
He screwed up his face and made gagging sounds.
I was still trying to get my mind around the idea of a car cruise. “You take the cars on boats?” I could picture one of those huge cruise ships with a hold full of Corvettes, but I couldn’t see the sense of it.
Walker laughed. He must have been seeing the same picture I was. We do that sometimes. “No, Mama, we cruise the highways. We meet up someplace and all drive together for a few days. Doesn’t that sound great? I’m going on one up in North Carolina next week to get the hang of this baby, but I’m going alone. Cindy won’t come.”
“I have to be here for the investment club,” Cindy reminded him.
“I’ll only be gone three days, though,” Walker added, “testing her out.”
Have you ever noticed how men call their favorite cars “her”? And then get upset when their wives and girlfriends claim that the cars have become competition?
“Looks like a ‘him’ to me,” I said. “I’d name him Roger.”
“Roger?” Tad’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Mighty Motor would be more like it.”
“Mighty Motor will do,” I agreed.
Jessica stroked the shiny hood. “Hey, Mighty Motor. I’ll be able to drive you in a couple of years.”
“Dream on,” her father told her. “You’re not driving this baby until you are sixty.”
“So when do I get to drive it?” I teased. “I’m past sixty.”
He gave me a long, level look, then handed me the keys. “Take her for a spin, Mama. Go on. I dare you.”
I have never yet refused a dare from one of my sons. Besides, I was itching to get behind that wheel. I slid across a leather seat soft as butter and started a motor that sounded like we could lift off into the stratosphere. Knowing they were all watching me, I made sure to shift smoothly as I pulled out of the parking lot. Even with my sore hand, that car handled like a dream. I tooled through town and waved to several startled friends, then went down through the sheriff’s detention center parking lot to show off to any deputies who might be around. I saw a couple and gave them a wave, sure they’d report back to their friends. I considered taking off for Dublin or even Macon — spending the whole afternoon cruising up and down country roads. Never before had I coveted anything either of my sons ever had, and I was generally content to live pretty simply, but I could get used to a Corvette.
Reluctantly I headed back to the store. They were all lined up in the parking lot, waiting for me. “Thought you’d gotten lost,” Walker greeted me, opening the door.
“It’s a great drive,” I admitted. “Leave it to me in your will, okay?”
“No, leave it to me!” Tad insisted, grabbing his daddy’s arm. “Me-Mama will be dead before you are. She’s old!”
Cindy frowned at her son. “Old, is she? Too old to buy birthday presents in a couple of weeks for grandsons who insult her?”
“Almost,” I agreed, giving Tad a considering look.
“You’re not old,” he had conceded. “Just too old for a Corvette.”
“So help me,” I muttered as they drove away, “I will join that investment club and we will make lots of money. I will get
so rich I can buy my own Corvette. I’ll get a red one.”
Instead, here I was, dripping wet, climbing up into Cindy’s huge SUV while she was being questioned about her activities during the time a murder was being committed.
“Walker, come home quick,” I begged as I hoisted myself up onto the seat. I had reached for my cell phone to punch autodial when I decided I’d let his daddy explain what was going on. Walker was sure to think it was my fault Cindy was in this predicament, and he tends to pound things when he’s upset. Not people, but walls and doors. I didn’t want him damaging a perfectly good motel. Besides, it was Joe Riddley I wanted to talk to.
Guess Who's Coming to Die? Page 6
