Guess Who's Coming to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Finally she stopped in the front hall and asked, in a tone that was more duty than desire, “Would you like some coffee? I’ve got a pot made.”

  Inwardly, I groaned. Much more coffee this morning and I’d get a quivering chin and shaky hands. But then I remembered I needed to talk to Rachel. I checked my watch. Ten thirty. I could stay another half hour. “That would be nice.”

  “Do you want some, too, Slade?” she asked.

  “No, thanks. While you’re on break, I’ll work in the bathroom taking down the lights over the lavatory and the towel bars. Then we’ll be ready to put up paper.”

  “Fine.” She displayed no personal interest in him whatsoever. Maybe she knew Slade was looking for a rich and beautiful woman, or maybe she genuinely wasn’t attracted to him. I got the feeling, though, that she had something else on her mind, something so immense that it left no room for anything else. Could it be a certain corkscrew?

  Slade moseyed back toward the bathroom, pulling a screwdriver from his overalls. I followed Rachel to the kitchen. While she poured coffee and found milk, I called the office to check that the store hadn’t burned down before I got there. “I’ll be in soon,” I promised Evelyn.

  As I hung up, the sun glinted off something on the windowsill. I laid my cell phone on the counter and leaned across the sink to look closer. An emerald ring glowed in the morning sun, a large solitaire with two small diamonds on each side. “That’s gorgeous!” I exclaimed. “Weren’t you wearing this at the meeting the other night, with matching studs?”

  Rachel picked it up, slipped it on her right hand, and held it to the sunlight. Her hands were large and well-shaped, with oval, unpolished nails. “I wear them a lot. They were my grandmother’s, all I have of hers.”

  “Were you close?”

  “No. She died when my mother was seven.”

  “Was that the Jewish side of your family?”

  She was setting out a plate of cookies, so she spoke without turning. “Not then. My grandfather was only nominally Jewish when he married my grandmother. She was Presbyterian, and they were both very young. After she died, though, he married a Jewish woman, and the family became observant. My uncle and his son both had bar mitzvahs and proper Jewish weddings, and my mother was raised as a Jew.”

  “But she married an Italian Catholic? I guess that makes you . . . ?”

  When she grinned, she was almost pretty. “An Episcopalian.” She handed me a mug of steaming coffee and her smile disappeared. She held out the plate of cookies. “Will you carry these? I’ll get the cream and spoons.” Once more she was the hostess taking time from a busy day to entertain an uninvited guest. “The best place to sit is on the porch. Slade?” She raised her voice. “I’ll be on the porch if you need me.”

  As she led me to a couple of green plastic lawn chairs with a plastic table between, I said, “I’m glad to see you all have made up your differences. How did that happen?”

  She shrugged. “Last night we ran into each other at the BI-LO frozen food section. We were both buying TV dinners, and I felt bad about yelling at him. I actually was going a little too fast in your parking lot, so I apologized and invited him to come over here to heat up his dinner. He’s not bad when he’s not yelling at you, and he said he likes working on houses, so he came over today to help with parts of mine I can’t do alone.”

  “Papering a bathroom?” If I sounded skeptical, it was because I’ve papered a few bathrooms in my time and never found it a two-person job.

  “I’ll need him for the border. It’s almost impossible to do alone.” She seemed uninterested in him except for his help.

  I wondered what Slade’s motive was. Since chances were good it wasn’t romance, he must think there was a story somewhere in Rachel Ford. Unless she was really an heiress.

  “Was your father a lawyer?” Maybe Slade had discovered she had inherited money from her parents and merely chose to live simply. Meriwether and Jed did, after all.

  “No, he managed a drugstore.” She reached up to drag the elastic from her hair so it fell around her face like a wavy curtain. A bid for privacy? Nevertheless, she continued her life’s story without prompting. “He died when I was fifteen. I had a brother, too, but he was killed in Iraq. And Mama died a year or so before.” She looked across her patchy lawn, but her blue-gray eyes were focused on the past. “Now I have nobody left. Nobody at all.”

  I scrabbled around in my brain for some happier topic of conversation. “Do you enjoy the investment club?” That was the only thing I could think of that we had in common.

  She shrugged and gave me a wan smile. “I don’t have much to invest, but Grover has been helpful in making suggestions.”

  Her voice warmed when she spoke his name, and the angular lines of her face softened. “Did Meriwether tell me you’ve known him a long time?”

  “He went to college with my brother, Gary.” She sounded casual enough, but once she started speaking about him, she couldn’t seem to stop. “Since Grover was from down here, he couldn’t get home for Thanksgiving, so he came to our place with Gary their first year. After that he’d visit for a few days once in a while. Grover and Gary stayed good friends all these years, and when Gary was on overseas assignments, Grover kept in touch with Mother and me. You know, he’d pop in from time to time.” Maybe she aimed for casual, but she couldn’t conceal how important those visits had been. “After Mother and Gary died, he was the one who heard about this job and recommended me for it,” she added.

  I sipped my coffee and wondered exactly what she felt for Grover. Maybe I could test that with her reaction to one piece of news. “He seems to handle the portfolios of most of our members. MayBelle and Wilma both said he handles their accounts, and I saw him having coffee with Sadie Lowe yesterday morning. Of course, maybe they weren’t discussing business.” I let my voice broaden to imply more than I said.

  She didn’t reply, but I saw her hand tremble as she lifted the cup to her lips.

  “You don’t have any theories about who might have stuck the corkscrew into Willena’s throat the other night, do you?” There was no way I could make that sound like a casual question.

  Finally Rachel grew animated. Her eyes flashed and her straight dark brows drew together in a frown. “Not at all. It was a vile thing to do.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  After that, I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I set down my mug and stood. “I know you’re busy, so I won’t keep you. I wanted to welcome you to town, a bit late.”

  “Better late than never.” She held out her hand, gave mine a businesslike shake, and bent to retrieve the mugs and plate of cookies to take them inside. No drawn-out Southern departures for this young woman.

  I reached my car before I remembered that I’d left my cell phone on her kitchen counter. I didn’t bother to knock, just entered the open door and started down the hall. As I got to the kitchen, I heard her demand in a fierce, low tone, “What’s this I hear about you having coffee with Sadie Lowe?”

  I heard Slade working in the bathroom, so she must be on the kitchen phone. I backed out and went on to the office. I’d call later and ask Slade to drop off my own phone at the office when he left.

  24

  I picked up hamburgers for Joe Riddley and me to eat at the office. We don’t usually go home at noon on Saturday, and it seemed like I hadn’t seen much of him this past week. Maybe we could go out tonight, I mused as I paid and drove toward the office. When we lived in the big house, we used to have Ridd and Martha’s family down on Saturday evenings. After we all moved, they started having us down there instead. This week, though, Ridd had called and said they had plans for Saturday night. He hadn’t said what they were, but they must involve the children, because he had turned down my offer to babysit Cricket. Maybe I could persuade Joe Riddley to take me out for barbecue.

  As soon as I got inside the store I heard shouting. As I approached our office, I realized it came from there. I hurried in.


  Chief Muggins stood in the middle of the office, his face red and his fists clenched. Joe Riddley sat in his big leather desk chair looking mulish, like he does when somebody is trying to make him do something he has no intention of doing. Bo was up on top of the curtain rod, squawking in distress.

  When I came in the door, I spoke first to the bird. “You mess those curtains, boy, and you are dead meat.”

  “Back off!” he squawked. “Give me space.” He gave a couple of wordless squawks, then said plain as anything, “Sic ’em, Little Bit. Sic ’em!”

  Joe Riddley and I both laughed in astonishment. “Well, dadgum, bird!” Joe Riddley praised him, then added to the police chief, “That’s the first time he’s ever put ‘sic ’em’ and ‘Little Bit’ together.”

  “Sic ’em, Little Bit! Sic ’em!” Bo squawked again, a glutton for praise.

  “The threat still stands,” I warned him. “Don’t you mess those curtains.”

  He flapped his wings and flew to the top of the filing cabinet. “See?” Joe Riddley told me proudly. “I told you he understands every word you say.” He reached in his bottom drawer and handed Chief Muggins a cube of apple. “Would you pass that to Bo, please?”

  Chief Muggins glared, but he held out the square of fruit. Bo took it from him, muttering obscenities under his breath.

  “You teach him those fancy words, Judge?” the chief needled me.

  “Bo used to belong to Jed DuBose’s uncle Hiram,” I reminded him. But I had more important things to think about than a scarlet macaw and the old reprobate who used to own him. “What’s going on?”

  Chief Muggins narrowed his beady eyes. “Where are Walker and Cindy?”

  “I have no idea.” I hung my pocketbook on a hook by my desk.

  “I know good and well you both know where they are,” he raged. “I’ll have you up for obstructing justice.”

  I glared at him. “The only obstructing going on right now is that you are obstructing the way to my chair.” He moved over far enough for me to get by and sit down. I settled myself in comfortably, then added, “I already told you, I haven’t seen or heard from Walker and Cindy since Monday night. We have enough to do without keeping up with our grown children.”

  He leaned down and pounded his fist on my desk. “They’ve left town!”

  “Leave my wife alone,” Joe Riddley snapped. “She doesn’t know a thing and neither do I. I told you, I had one voice mail message from Walker on Wednesday, saying they wouldn’t be available for a few days. That is all I know. And the judge doesn’t know that much. I listened to the message and deleted it.”

  “Deleted it!” exclaimed the chief, gloating from one to the other of us like he’d caught us committing murder. “Deliberately erasing evidence in a criminal investigation.”

  “I’m clumsy,” Joe Riddley corrected him mildly. “My finger must have slipped.” Now that I was there he had lost his mulish look and was enjoying matching wits with Chief Muggins. Neither of us liked the man, but Joe Riddley seldom let the chief get under his skin like I did. Besides, have you ever noticed that whatever age married people were when they first met, they tend to relate to each other that way for the rest of their lives? Joe Riddley and I not only squabble sometimes like we’re in elementary school, but he still enjoys showing off for me like he did back then. He can no longer walk on top of fences, but he can bait the chief.

  “Your finger never slipped,” the chief insisted. “You deleted that message on purpose and you know it. Judge, did you see him press that button?”

  “I saw him press some button on the receiver, but I wasn’t close enough to see which one it was.” Which was true. “Why don’t you sit down and fill us in on the case so far?”

  He sank onto our visitor’s chair with poor grace. “There’s no murder case. Did you hear that?”

  I nodded. “Slade told me yesterday that the medical examiner says it was a heart attack. But did they run any toxicology tests?”

  He looked at me like I was a kindergartner in the justice system. “They don’t do that when death turns out to be from natural causes.”

  “Unless they weren’t so natural. What if somebody poisoned her with something that stopped her heart?”

  “Leave it to the experts, Judge,” he snapped. “Nobody but you has suggested she was poisoned, and the way the forensics folks are backed up, they don’t have time to be looking for murder when somebody dies naturally.” He stopped, then threw me a bone. “I do know they examined her intestines, and there wasn’t a thing the matter with them. Poison leaves traces. Her heart stopped, that’s all. But somebody put that corkscrew in her throat—”

  “Before or after she died?”

  “Before. That’s why there was so much blood. She was in the process of bleeding to death when her heart stopped.” We all sat a minute contemplating the horror of that.

  “Fright from the corkscrew maybe caused her heart to stop,” Joe Riddley suggested. From the way he clasped and unclasped his hands, I could see he was distressed. Who wouldn’t be? Both the chief and I had automatically reached up to touch our throats. “In that case,” Joe Riddley pointed out, “it would still be murder while in the process of committing another crime.”

  Chief Muggins rubbed his hands together. “Right. That’s why I want to locate Cindy.”

  I felt a cold lump of fear slide down my windpipe and land in my stomach with a thud. But then I remembered that things weren’t so desperate as they had been. “Cindy had nothing to do with it. Grover saw her in the parking lot, and Gusta remembers that she left the meeting before Wilma even gave Willena the bar set with the corkscrew in it. Cindy didn’t know the corkscrew existed.”

  The chief thought that over for perhaps half a minute, then slapped both hands on his thighs and used them to help him stand. “Well, I’ve got a lot to do. But if you hear from Walker and Cindy, you tell them they’d better get their . . . ah . . . themselves back to town. I’m going to put out an APB if they haven’t shown up by Monday morning.”

  Joe Riddley reached for his cap. “Now that you’re here, Little Bit, I’m going to run down to the nursery for a little while.”

  “But I brought you a hamburger.” I held it up, disappointed. I wanted to add, I haven’t seen you much this week, but I didn’t. He’d just reply, And whose fault is that?

  He took it from me and bent to give me a peck on the cheek. “I’ll eat it down there. Got a lot to do, now that you finally showed up.” He left with Chief Muggins strutting beside him like he’d accomplished something.

  I was almost finished with my hamburger when something Joe Riddley had said to Charlie finally sank in. He’d said, “I had one message from Walker.” Had the chief noticed his emphasis on the pronoun I ?

  Somebody else could well have heard from Walker since Wednesday, and I knew who that was. I reached for my phone.

  I wasn’t surprised to get the answering machine down at Ridd’s. Martha would still be at work. Bethany, their daughter, would be out shopping with her friends or doing all the other things high school senior girls do on Saturdays during their last month of school. Ridd and Cricket would be on the tractor, happily plowing or planting. I spoke sternly into the answering machine:

  “Ridd. This is your mother speaking. Get on the phone to your brother and tell him to bring his family home pronto. Charlie Muggins is on the warpath, and threatens to put out an all-points bulletin on them if they aren’t here Monday morning. But tell Walker, too, that Willena died of heart failure, and Gusta has reminded me that Cindy left the meeting room before Wilma gave Willena the corkscrew, so there’s no way Cindy could have stuck it in Willena’s throat—”

  “Mama? It’s me, Walker.”

  The voice was such a shock that it took me a few seconds to find my own voice again.

  “You’re at Ridd’s?”

  “Yeah. We have been since Wednesday. I didn’t want Charlie bugging Cindy to death, so we decided to lie low down here for a few days.” />
  Why hadn’t I thought of that before and saved myself some sleepless nights? It was a perfect hideout, half a mile down a dead-end road outside the city limits. On one side of the road was a stand of pulpwood pines Joe Riddley had planted as part of our retirement plan. On the other side, the two other houses that shared the road were both vacant. The one up near the highway had been empty since its owner went to jail for murder. Nobody knew what would eventually happen to it. The other was a farmhouse, which was being converted into a shelter for battered or homeless women, but it had not started taking clients. The rest of that side of the road was pasture and a watermelon field. Beyond our house the road dwindled into a tractor track leading into acres of fields that Joe Riddley and I still owned, but which Ridd rented and planted each year. Nobody ever went down there except us. The house had a big yard plus a swimming pool surrounded by an eight-foot privacy fence, and Cindy’s horse was stabled in Ridd’s new barn. She and Tad had probably taken turns exercising him.