Guess Who's Coming to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  The air inside the vehicle was hot and muggy and the windows were steamed, but it was raining too hard to open a window. I started the engine and figured out the windshield defroster, then called home. “I’ve got to go over to Walker and Cindy’s, honey. Willena Kenan got herself killed tonight. Somebody screwed a corkscrew into her throat. And Charlie is honing in on Cindy as a suspect.”

  “Cindy?” His astonishment mirrored what I was feeling. The idea of our chic daughter-in-law committing murder was about as credible as Laura Bush participating in mud wrestling.

  “Yeah. You know Charlie — six cents short of a dime. I’m going over to Cindy’s while he questions her some more. Could you call their lawyer, then come over to the community center and stick with her until her lawyer arrives? I don’t want Charlie leaning on her too hard. And call Walker. He’s on that Corvette cruise in North Carolina somewhere, but his cell phone is on.”

  “I’m on my way. You get over to the kids.” Joe Riddley hung up without asking a thing about Willena.

  I sat and counted to thirty.

  My phone rang. “How are you mixed up with Willena’s death?” he demanded without preamble.

  “I’m not,” I assured him. “I didn’t know her well enough to kill her.”

  “You didn’t stumble over her body, or see anything suspicious?”

  Oh, that man knows me as well as I know him.

  “I happened to find Willena when I went to the bathroom —”

  He made a sound somewhere between a growl and a bark.

  “You got me into this,” I reminded him. “And you can’t fault a body for needing what Cindy currently calls ‘a lipstick break.’ Which I never did get, by the way, so I need to get off the phone and over to Cindy’s as fast as possible. I can’t leave the kids until she comes back, so do your best to get her home soon. Bye.”

  I hung up and checked out where to find essentials like wipers and lights and moved the seat up until my knees hit the dashboard and I could reach the pedals. I told myself that driving an SUV couldn’t be any harder than driving one of our company trucks.

  It wasn’t driving that was hard, it was behaving myself. I have always called SUVs “bully cars,” because their drivers so often bully everybody else on the road. Once I had backed out of my parking space, I realized why. Away up there in the air, I felt like I had joined the elite who rule the world. “Look out, lesser mortals!” I muttered. “I can mow you down and never feel it.” As I headed through the parking lot, all those TV commercials about SUVs climbing rugged mountains and taking on marshy swamps made me want to do something daring. I pictured myself running up over Charlie Muggins’s new cruiser, leaving a stripe of tire tracks up his trunk, across the top, and down his hood.

  I resisted that temptation, but the size and power at my command fueled my fury at Charlie and released all my basest instincts. I have always contended that our true selves come out when we are behind the wheel. The self I became while driving Cindy’s SUV was not a nice person at all. At the street, a car was heading my way. I pulled right out in front of it. “If you hit me, bub, you’ll get the worst of it,” I warned.

  Traffic is light in Hopemore at that hour of the evening—mostly teenagers or people going home from meetings. Comfortable in the knowledge that between the tinted windows and the rain, nobody could see who was driving, I roared down Oglethorpe Street with the sensation that I had the only real vehicle, and was surrounded by little bumper cars.

  Only when I turned onto Walker’s street did common sense finally return. I rolled down that tree-lined avenue like the grandmother I am, thinking maybe I’d better not buy a Corvette. I wondered why all those people who buy SUVs to protect their children don’t think about other people they endanger in the process, or worry about the trashed atmosphere their SUV fuel emissions will bequeath their grandchildren. I read somewhere that one American Indian tribe never makes a decision without asking the grandmothers, “How will this affect the seventh generation?” As I pulled into Walker and Cindy’s drive, I wished somebody would ask that question in Detroit and Japan. Historians will probably cite SUVs as the quintessential symbol of the Me-First generation.

  Tad and Jessica were amicably watching television when I got there, snuggled up with the dog, two cats, and Tad’s new rabbit. Tad, like his mother, thinks a house isn’t complete unless it resembles a zoo.

  The kids fetched me a thick towel to dry off and asked where Cindy was, but accepted my explanation that she’d gotten tied up after the meeting and had sent me to put them to bed. They are good kids. They went without grumbling. Only when I was tucking Jessica in did she ask, her hair dark on her pillow and her eyes heavy with sleep, “But why did Mama let you drive her car? How is she going to get home?”

  “Pop is bringing her,” I replied. “He’s with her.” I bent to kiss her cheek.

  “Is it something for Tad’s birthday?” Her voice was drowsy.

  “It’s a surprise.” That was as close as I could get to the truth and still answer.

  She smiled. “That’s nice.” She was already drifting into sleep. I stood by her bed for a minute asking God to bless this serious, quiet child and her family. Her parents weren’t praying people at the time, but I had a suspicion they were about to be.

  An hour later, Joe Riddley took the steaming cup of coffee I handed him and sat down at our dining room table. “Charlie was within his rights to question her,” he repeated, then heaved a sigh that let me know how worried he was. “Her keys were found under the body when she’d told him she hadn’t been in the bathroom.”

  “That’s not what he asked or she answered,” I reminded him. “He asked her, ‘Did you go to the bathroom?’ and—” I stopped. We’d been over that already and had agreed that Charlie would never admit he had asked a sloppy question and gotten an exact answer.

  I collapsed into the chair across the table and sipped my own coffee, but continued to shiver. I’d been shaking off and on since Charlie pulled that gun. Joe Riddley fetched Mama’s old afghan, which we keep folded over the sofa, and draped it over my shoulders. Then he stood behind me and massaged my shoulders with his long fingers. I put up a hand and covered his.

  “It’s gonna be all right, Little Bit,” he promised. “Stop shaking. At least Charlie didn’t try to hold her.” I hadn’t told him about Charlie’s gun. I didn’t want him going to jail for policide.

  “None of the other women saw her in the bathroom, so she must have been outside by the time they saw Willena alive and well, and she didn’t come in until right after I found Willena. Can’t they check her cell phone records to see how long she was talking?”

  “Maybe so.” His fingers worked deep into my muscles. I hadn’t realized how tight they were. I squirmed with pain, but it felt good. “They found a footprint in the blood, too. It doesn’t match Willena’s shoes and it doesn’t match Cindy’s.”

  I drew the afghan tighter around me and heaved a sigh of relief. “You know what I think? I think Charlie is hassling Cindy to needle me.”

  “Could be,” Joe Riddley agreed. “I’ve been thinkin,’ Little Bit. You know in the Bible where it says we are to do all in our power to live at peace with other people? I think you need to take that to heart where Charlie is concerned. Be nicer to him. Cut him a little slack.”

  “I’m gonna cut something,” I warned, “if he goes after Cindy. What about Walker? Did you call him?”

  His fingers continued to knead my shoulders, bringing me back to life. “He was on his way back home already when I got him. He said Cindy called him earlier to complain about Willena’s high-handed decision not to invest in his company. She said Willena made her feel like dirt, and they talked nearly twenty minutes while he tried to calm her down. After they hung up, he decided to come on home and not finish the cruise.”

  Walker’s concern for his wife was heartening. I took another sip of coffee and finally began to feel warm. “Good. She couldn’t have been talking on the phone and kil
ling Willena at the same time. Right?”

  “I doubt it. All we’ve got to do now is convince Charlie.”

  8

  Early Tuesday morning, I discovered we had to convince other folks, as well.

  Around nine thirty, Slade Rutherford ambled in. Tall, dark, and far too handsome for his own good, Slade edits the Hopemore Statesman, our weekly paper. Real smart except in the matter of romance, he had three criteria for the only woman he could love: She needed to be rich, almost as smart as he was, and beautiful.

  I had tried to steer him toward a couple of teachers I knew who were cute and at least as smart and well-off as he, but each time he had shrugged and said, “Sorry, not my type.” Since then I had concentrated on writing my monthly garden column and had let Slade find his own romance. Gradually we had become friends. Cindy had also tried to fix him up with a few of her friends who met some of his three criteria, but she and her circle had finally dubbed him “Mr. Impervious” because, they said, “Romance can’t penetrate his hide.”

  When Sadie Lowe had first moved back to town, Slade went after her in a big way. They had a lot in common—both had come up poor and liked money, and both had figured out that their best bet was to marry it. However, now that Sadie Lowe had her bundle, she had no interest in men who wanted to share it. After they’d been seen together around town for a few weeks, making a striking couple, Slade confided to me, “She says I might as well buzz off, because we have no future together.” He didn’t seem heart-broken, I had been glad to see.

  That morning he sank into our wing chair and slid down so his long legs stretched almost to my desk. “What’s this I hear about you finding the body last night? Care to give me a story?”

  “There’s no story. I went to the ladies’ room and found Willena lying on the floor. I backed out and called the police. End of my involvement. You probably know a lot more than I do if you went over there. Did you?” Slade had a police-band radio in his car and often made it to a crime scene within minutes of the police.

  “Yeah. I arrived about the time you were leaving, if you were driving that big silver SUV that nearly ran me down. It came barreling out of the community center driveway like the proverbial bat out of hell, and Cindy said it was probably you.”

  “Don’t blame me, blame that monster car. It inspires otherwise nice people to do rude things. Did you see Willena?”

  He nodded and reached up to touch the knot of his tie. When he realized what he was doing, he grimaced. “I’ve been doing that ever since I saw her.”

  “Me too.” My fingers found the soft spot at the base of my throat.

  “But the corkscrew wasn’t what killed her. Did you know that?”

  I stared at him in astonishment. “Are they sure?” When he nodded, I demanded, “Did they look for poison? She was mighty sick just before she died.”

  “I don’t know. The only word I got is, she would have taken a while to bleed to death from that wound, and she was seen by several folks not too long before you found her. That means the corkscrew hadn’t been in long — probably about as long as it took her to get to the bathroom door and collapse. You reckon she was chasing her killer?”

  “Or looking for help. There are two doors to that ladies’ room, you know. One goes into the hall and another into the ballroom on the other side. Somebody could have gotten out that way.”

  “You could be right about the poison,” he said thoughtfully. “She wasn’t shot, strangled, or stabbed. The chief said he’s waiting for the autopsy to figure out the cause of death. You don’t have any theories about the corkscrew and its significance, do you?”

  I shuddered. “No, but it was one of the most gruesome things I ever hope to see.”

  “What can you tell me about Cindy and why the police chief thinks she might be involved?”

  I would like to have said, Because the police chief has spaghetti for brains, but a judge can’t go around talking like that. “He found her keys under the body. That’s all.” That would soon be common knowledge anyway. “Cindy went in to blow her nose and left her keys there — but that was before Willena arrived. We don’t know how the keys wound up on the floor under the body.”

  I plumb hated calling somebody I had known and talked with less than twenty-four hours before “the body.”

  Slade must have felt the same way, because he was silent a moment before he asked, “Was anybody else in the ladies’ room when Cindy was there? Besides Willena, I mean?” He had pulled out a notebook and was taking notes.

  I wanted to make sure he got as clear a story from me as I could give. “I told you, Willena wasn’t there when Cindy was. She was still in the meeting, turning the club over to Wilma. The position of senior partner rotates alphabetically, so Wilma inherited it from Willena.”

  “Along with all her money, I’d guess.” He sounded gloomy. I wondered if he had ever dated Willena. She was a few years older than he, but what would that matter to Slade? He wouldn’t be marrying her for love. On the other hand, I couldn’t see him marrying Wilma for all the money in Georgia. Rich isn’t everything.

  “I guess,” I agreed. “They’re only third cousins once removed and have been known to battle it out from time to time, but I would guess they’ve made their wills in each other’s favor. Can’t have those Kenan dollars going anywhere else. On the other hand, given that neither of them has ever been down to her last ten million, I doubt that money would be sufficient cause for either to murder the other.”

  Slade wrinkled his brow in a puzzled frown. “I thought they were first cousins. I’ve heard them both refer to Granddaddy Will.”

  “Yeah, but that was old William Robison Kenan, who made the family fortune. He was Wilma’s great-granddaddy and Willena’s great-great-granddaddy.”

  “Is there anything in the family story to make a good human-interest piece to go with the murder? The big boys will descend from Atlanta, New York, and who knows where to cover the murder, but I might get a wire story with a human-interest angle. This thing is going to be big for several days, given who Willena was.”

  Did he hope this would be his chance to move on to a bigger paper? He had seemed happy in Hopemore, but maybe he yearned for city life. I would hate to see him leave, but I liked him enough to help him if I could. “You can read all about the Kenans in a book Wilma wrote and printed up a few years back for friends, relations, and the public library, but here’s the gist.

  “The first Kenan came to Hopemore around 1820 with three sons and built a cotton gin. They drove around in mule-drawn wagons, buying cotton from farmers; then they ginned out the seeds and sold the cotton to textile mills. Within thirty years they had expanded the business and built gins all over Georgia. I think they had some in Alabama and South Carolina, too. When the war came, Will was still a little boy, but he’s reputed to have said, ‘Oh, boy! All those soldiers are gonna need clothes and bandages. We can sell lots of cotton!’ The family claims that was his first flash of brilliance. So while all the other families sent their men to fight, the Kenans sent their men around buying cotton from anybody who could still grow an acre or two. Will apparently rode with his granddaddy, daddy, and uncles on the wagons, and the family swears he drove wagons himself through enemy lines, telling each army that the cotton was going to make their uniforms. It is historical fact that the Kenans sold cotton to factories on both sides of the conflict—which didn’t make them real popular around here for a while. Especially since they did real well while other people were losing everything.”

  I lowered my voice to a whisper. “You won’t read that in Wilma’s book.” I resumed in a normal tone. “After the war, though, most farmers swallowed their anger and their pride when the Kenans offered to sell cotton seed cheap and buy the crop at a fair price. Folks were too poor and hungry to quibble. Still, you’ll sometimes hear somebody mutter even now”—I cupped my hands and spoke softly—“ ‘You know their money came from selling our cotton to the Yankees.’ ”

  Slade laug
hed. He grew up in the South, too. He knew as well as I did that old perceived wrongs still rankle.

  “I’d never have guessed that Granddaddy Will lived so long ago. The way Wilma and Willena talk about him, I thought they’d known him.”

  “No, but he died only a few years before Wilma was born. He lived to be ninety-seven. And for the Kenans, he was right up there next to God. He was the one who transformed the family from prosperous to filthy rich. When he grew up, he bought out his brothers, uncles, and cousins and consolidated the business into his own hands. He seems to have had a magic touch, too. In the Reconstruction South, he made enormous amounts of money. By the time he was thirty, he had enough to build the old home place where Wilma now lives. Around 1900 he bought a small shipping line. Up until then, Kenans had bought only U.S. cotton and sold only in the United States and England. With that shipping line, Will started buying wherever cotton is grown in the world and shipping—”