His eyes widened and his mouth fell open, a perfect picture of shock. Either he truly hadn’t heard or he was a great actor and had prepared for this.
“Oh, hon, you mean you really hadn’t heard?” Sadie Lowe’s voice oozed sympathy, and she put out a hand to cover his.
Just before she touched him, he lifted his coffee cup and raised it to his mouth. He didn’t drink, only held the paper cup against his lower lip.
I didn’t mind sounding skeptical. “How could you not know? It’s been all over the national news.”
He tried twice before he got words out. “I . . . I haven’t seen a paper or TV since Monday. My son had a school thespian society competition this week up in Atlanta, and I went along as a chaperone. We left early Tuesday and came back last night.” When we neither one said anything, he added, sounding defensive, “I was with the kids the whole time.” He pressed his free hand to his mouth and swallowed hard, then set his cup down and rubbed his hands together, as if to warm them. “Willena knew I was going, but I tried to call her around suppertime both nights anyway. When she didn’t answer, I figured she was out.”
Again, neither of us said a word, but he went on explaining, as if we had doubted him. “The group went to plays both nights, then tooled around Atlanta. We got in so late, all I wanted to do was fall into bed. Last night when we got home, I was still so exhausted from living with twelve teenagers for two days that all I wanted to do was sleep, and I got up too late this morning to watch TV or read the paper.”
Sadie Lowe leaned across the table, giving us a view that could have raised Grover’s blood pressure considerably, had he been looking her way. He was studying the tabletop like he found beige Formica fascinating. “Maybe it’s a mercy you didn’t know before you left,” she said. “It would have spoiled your trip. Somebody went to the ladies’ room and stuck Willena’s new silver corkscrew right through her throat.” She made a fist of one hand and struck the base of her own throat.
Grover groaned and grabbed the knot of his necktie.
I sat swamped by memories of that horrible night. I saw Willena lying on the floor, the flash of silver, the backs of her plump white knees. I covered my mouth and nose with one hand and took long, deep breaths.
“The judge, here, found her,” Sadie Lowe added.
Grover slid his water my way. “Here.”
I took an appreciative sip. “Thanks. Looks like you need some, too.” I slid it back and he gulped down the rest.
Sadie Lowe leaned farther over and wiggled a little to settle her breasts more comfortably on the tabletop. “The police came and everything. It was like on TV. But you’d already gone. And Nancy.” She dragged out the last two words suggestively.
Grover wasn’t listening. He was bent over the table with his eyes closed. I didn’t know if he was praying or trying not to cry. To give him time to recover, I turned to Sadie Lowe and said in a low voice, with what I’ll admit was a little spite, “I understand you had some trouble with Nancy yesterday morning.”
Her eyelashes rose to meet her wispy bangs. “Some trouble? She could have killed me! The woman is mad.”
“Or real upset that you were with her husband.”
Sadie Lowe’s right shoulder rose in a shrug that caused the young man at the register to nearly fall over the counter. “Her marriage is over. She needs to accept that and move on.” She reached out for Grover’s hand again. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
Grover recovered the hand and clasped his coffee cup between both palms, moving the cup around the table in little circles. His voice was husky as he said, “I didn’t even say good-bye. She was in the ladies’ room and I wanted to get home. My son is only fifteen and I don’t like to be away late. Besides, we had to pack for the trip.” He turned to me, his eyes pink with unshed tears. “Do they know who did it?”
“Cindy,” Sadie Lowe replied. Then, seeing my look, she added, “At least, that’s what the police think.”
“The police don’t know a thing yet,” I snapped. “Which brings us back to the front door. The custodian swears he locked it before he went back to his room, but it was unlocked during the break. Did you have any trouble getting back in, Grover, after you went out?”
“I didn’t . . .”
I would have sworn he was about to claim he hadn’t gone out. Maybe he had forgotten for the moment, or maybe he was going to deny it but figured out that Rachel might have told the police he had. Or maybe he was remembering, as I was, Wilma exclaiming, “You’re wet!” and his own reply that he’d forgotten his umbrella when he ran out to his car for something.
“I don’t have a key.” He frowned. “I hadn’t given the door any thought until this minute.”
That was probably true. When you go in or out a door, you aren’t usually surprised to find that it opens unless you expected it to be locked.
I was so busy with those thoughts that I nearly missed Grover’s most important sentence.
“Cindy was outside. Maybe she unlocked it when she went out.”
“Did you see her?” I hoped I didn’t sound as eager as I felt.
“Sure. When I went out with Rachel to give her something, Cindy was down the sidewalk under an umbrella, using her phone. Rachel and I went back in and had some refreshments, and when I left later, Cindy was still there. I don’t know why she didn’t step into one of the empty rooms.”
“That building is a dead space. There’s no signal inside, and the reception isn’t much better on the porch.”
“Oh.” He sounded like he didn’t know where to go with the conversation from there.
I did. “Did you see Sadie Lowe outside smoking?”
He looked over at her. “No. Where were you?”
“Down at the end of the porch. It was real dark, and I had on black. Oh, Grover, I’m so sorry you had to hear about Willena like this. I didn’t realize you didn’t know.”
She leaned over and grabbed both of his hands before he could draw them away.
That was my cue. I gathered my pocketbook and left them. Grover was staring at the table with no expression whatsoever on his face, and Sadie Lowe was clasping his hands and leaning across the table so far that he could have seen down to her navel if he’d been paying her a speck of attention. I kept waiting for some director to shout, “Cut!”
Only when I got to my car did I remember that Sadie Lowe had been wearing white on Monday night.
19
Wilma insisted on taking me to lunch to thank me for driving her. I was delighted until she directed me to a fast-food seafood place, where we had to eat mass-produced greasy food out of paper baskets. I sat looking at my lukewarm shrimp and silently named several moderately priced places in Augusta where I’d rather be eating.
Wilma fastidiously wiped ketchup from her fingertips. “I love their fried clams, but I almost never get by here.”
She sounded like the place was out near Seattle and opened only once a decade. I refrained from pointing out that she could employ their chef by offering slightly more than minimum wage. Heck, I thought as I ate my soggy fries in silence, she could buy the whole dadgum chain.
When we got back to my car, she said, “I’d like to drop in and see Grover while we’re here, if you don’t mind. I have a few suggestions about my account.”
Poor Grover.
“I saw him this morning, having coffee with Sadie Lowe,” I mentioned as I headed in that direction. “Do all the women in the club have their accounts with him?”
“I have no idea.” She flared her nostrils. “That woman is man-crazy, you know. We should never have let her in the club.” She pulled out a compact, added a little powder to her nose, and inspected her face. “On second thought, I have an appointment for this afternoon. We ought to get on back. I can talk to Grover later.”
The rain stopped on our way home, leaving the world soggy but brilliant, as if the whole shebang had been spray-washed. Normally that lifts my spirits, but today my thoughts were so full of Willena an
d her death, I scarcely noticed the sunshine except to be grateful that driving was easier.
Wilma kept up a steady stream of chatter about all the important people who had been at the meeting that morning, complimentary things they had said about her speech, how sorry they all had been to hear about Willena, how they couldn’t believe she had actually been murdered, and how brave Wilma was to have given the speech in her hour of grief.
She took out a pale green hankie and dabbed at a drop on the end of her nose. “It was hard, but I told them that you can’t give in to your emotions. That’s what Daddy always said.”
Her daddy had been a cold stick who looked like he’d never had an emotion in his life, but I didn’t mention that.
As we got near Hopemore and I turned onto the road that led to her house, she said, “You can drop me off at Willena’s.” She sounded so casual that for one startled minute I thought Willena was still alive and I’d imagined the whole murder.
I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because she added, “Jed DuBose is coming over, and he’ll drive me home afterwards. Willena changed to him when he came home. I’m still with Shep, of course.”
I applauded Willena for giving Jed a chance — and recognizing superior quality.
Of course, Willena had been no fool. She gave the impression that she resided in a land of ease and relaxation, but she wasn’t sloppy in handling her affairs. I’d heard her say more than once, “If you don’t want to be bothered with something, find the best people you can to take care of it for you, then let them do it.”
Willena’s house was half a mile nearer town than the Kenan home place, built on land old Will Kenan had deeded to his younger son, Frank. From what I’d heard, Frank Kenan was a boisterous man who had loved to entertain, so in 1915 he had built a square brick home with two stories of living space and servants’ quarters in the attic. In 1939, when his children were in their late teens, he had built a four-car garage with servants’ quarters over it and turned the attic into a large ballroom with dormer windows. Before we built the community center in town, Willena’s family had often let groups use their ballroom. Mama said they had enormous ceiling fans to cool it before air-conditioning.
My senior class used the school gym for our senior prom, but Joe Riddley was in Willena’s daddy’s class, and they held their prom in John Kenan’s ballroom. I got to go, of course, and it was magical to dance up among the treetops with the full moon making leafy patterns on the dance floor. We were given the run of the downstairs, as well, and I felt like a princess strolling through the high, comfortable rooms in my prom gown. We sat out several dances laughing and joking with our friends on the wide cement front porch lined with wicker chairs and rockers. He and I finally sneaked back to a little gazebo beside the fishpond, and it was there that he first said, “Oh, Little Bit, I do love you.”
Since I didn’t like to tell Wilma that, I said, instead, “My mother once came to a big dance at this house. In honor of your aunt, I believe.”
Wilma pursed her lips and drew in her nostrils like something smelled bad. “Probably her wedding dance. Uncle Frank built the ballroom for the occasion, but she married a most unsuitable man and died not long after.” The way Wilma bridled, I knew not to pursue that any further, especially when she added, “She was only eighteen. She should never have left Hopemore.”
As we pulled into Willena’s long driveway, Wilma looked out the window and commented, “Her yard hasn’t gotten too bad yet.”
You’d have thought the yard had been neglected for weeks instead of serviced the prior Monday. Furthermore, it looked great. Years ago, Willena had hired our lawn service and told us, “I don’t care what you put in, so long as it looks nice.” After that, she never made another suggestion or complained about a single bill. And while it wasn’t full of perennials and theme gardens like Wilma’s, the trees and shrubs were in proportion to the house, and scattered beds of annuals made bright splashes on the lawn.
I was surprised to see an elderly blue BMW parked under the porte cochere between the garage and the side of the house. Wilma didn’t seem to notice it. She was gathering up her pocketbook and a little leather folder with her speech notes from behind my seat.
I pulled on around to the front steps.
“We’re going to walk through and take a quick inventory,” she informed me. “I told Jed that with all the antiques Willena had, we ought to know exactly what’s here.”
How like Wilma to tell somebody else’s lawyer what to do. Still . . .
“I guess it will all be yours now,” I hazarded as we rolled to a stop.
She glanced toward the house, and her mouth drew up in distaste. “Until I dispose of the place. I have always wished Uncle Frank had built something with charm.”
I turned off the engine and waited for her to get out. “You ought to be able to sell it real easy,” I told her. “Folks will appreciate how little maintenance it requires.” I didn’t mention that I found it as charming as her own.
She sniffed. “Maintenance is the price we pay for being stewards of history.”
Wilma had used that phrase the year Joe Riddley and I decided to put permanent siding on the old Yarbrough house while we’d still lived there. She had paid us a personal visit when she’d heard about the siding, to remind us that our house was a historical landmark in Hopemore (it had been built the same year as the Kenan house) and ought to be authentically preserved, even if that meant pouring gallons of paint over it every few years, because “Maintenance is the price we pay for being stewards of history.” Joe Riddley had pointed out to her that we, like four generations of Yarbroughs before us (and Ridd and Martha, who lived there now), were more concerned with comfort than preserving history. Wilma had left with her panties in a wad and hadn’t spoken to either of us for months.
I didn’t see any point in renewing hostilities now, so I changed the subject to one I thought she’d find more congenial. “Willena had some lovely furniture.”
Willena had been collecting antiques for years—or, rather, had been having somebody in New York and London collect antiques and ship them to her. Lately she’d been relying on Maynard Spence over at Wainwright House Antiques. (Gusta had sold him her antebellum home on the condition that he put her name on the sign.)
Wilma shrugged. “I suppose, but not a single piece came from Granddaddy Will. All of that was left in my house.”
You’d have thought her family had cut down trees from their own land, designed and crafted their own furniture, and never bought a piece from anybody else. She certainly implied that any chair that had not been blessed by her great-granddaddy’s skinny rump or any table that had not held his meals was not worth owning.
“Well, if you need help disposing of any of it, call Maynard,” I suggested. “He’s been helping her buy things.”
Wilma tightened her lips. “I’ll have to see what’s here first.”
I should have worded that differently. Nobody told Wilma Kenan what to do. She’d probably pick an antique dealer out of the Yellow Pages to prove she knew better than me.
As she climbed out, though, she surprised me. “I appreciate your taking me this morning, MacLaren. I dreaded making that drive alone.” She sounded sincerely grateful and a little forlorn. I told her it had been no trouble at all.
She looked toward the house and stiffened her back. “I hate going in there alone, too, but it’s got to be done.” She stopped as if it was now my move.
I knew good and well what she wanted, but I needed to get back to the office. On the other hand, I wondered if that old BMW belonged to Rachel Ford and what she was doing there, and figured Wilma might not be too gracious at finding her inside. I might need to referee.
“Do you want me to come in with you and wait until Jed gets here?” I offered.
“Would you?” Wilma sounded relieved.
“Just until Jed arrives.” I grabbed my pocketbook and followed her up the brick steps to the wide front porch. Willena s
till had wicker chairs out there, I was delighted to see. “I suppose you have a key?” I asked.
Wilma reached for the bell, rang, then turned the knob. “Hetty and Baker are here. And Willena never bothered to keep her door locked. I kept telling her it’s not safe in this day and age.”
Instead of which . . . I wondered if Wilma was thinking the same thing I was.
She opened the front door and called, “Yoo-hoo? It’s me, Hetty.”
I’d forgotten about Baker and Hetty, who had worked for Willena for the last fifteen years or so and lived in, like Wilma’s Linette and Lincoln. I was about to say something about how lucky we all were to have faithful people working for us when Wilma added — without lowering her voice, “That’s one reason I want to go through the house. I don’t want them taking anything before we get a list made.”
Guess Who's Coming to Die? Page 17
