Guess Who's Coming to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Relief made my voice sharp. “I was afraid you had taken her out of state somewhere.”

  “When she’s a suspect in a murder case? Come on, Mama. You didn’t really think I was that dumb, did you? After growing up with a judge?”

  “I couldn’t think where you might be.” Time to change the subject. “Did you hear what I said on the machine?”

  “Yeah. You said there’s no way Charlie can think Cindy did it.”

  “That’s right, so be back in your house by Monday morning.”

  “We were going on back tonight, anyway. The kids both have tennis matches tomorrow, and all of us are ready to get home. Ridd and Martha were great, though, and it felt good to stay at the old place again for a few days.”

  He grew up in that house. I detected a wistfulness in his voice that I could identify with. “I know, son. It’s a great house. I miss it too, sometimes.”

  “We’ll both be singing another tune the next time Ridd has to paint. Then we’ll be glad it’s him and not us.” We both knew he was lying, but we laughed together and hung up.

  I sat still for a long while, taking deep breaths and exhaling like somebody was about to ration air. Walker and Cindy were safe. They hadn’t left the county. And Walker was standing by Cindy all through this. When would I ever begin to trust that my sons were not only grown men but also responsible adults? And when would I ever begin to trust the thoughts that came after I’d been praying? If I had called Martha the first night I suspected Walker had left, she would have managed to reassure me without my having to ask a thing. Martha can be clever that way.

  Now that I was no longer paralyzed by fear for my children, I could think more rationally about Willena’s murder and what I had learned. I forced myself to remember the meeting of the investment club. Willena wearing her coat during the meeting. Willena lying facedown on the bathroom floor with the corkscrew in her neck. She had managed to get as far as the door to the hall before collapsing, but she had not bled to death. Had her heart seized up from terror when somebody stabbed her with the corkscrew? Or had something else stopped her heart?

  I mentally went back through what each person had said when Charlie first interviewed us. Willena was throwing up in the bathroom because something at dinner had disagreed with her. Her hands were shaking so hard, she couldn’t put on her mascara straight.

  That still sounded like poison to me. I went to my bookshelf and took down a well-thumbed book on the plants of Georgia. I looked up something and read it twice.

  I was certain Willena had been poisoned. I thought I even knew what had been used. I just didn’t know who had given it to her, or why. And I needed the answer to two questions before I shared my suspicions with the chief of police. I reached for the phone, then changed my mind. What I wanted to know ought to be asked privately and in person.

  I started to leave Joe Riddley a note, but checked my watch and decided not to bother. It was two thirty. He wouldn’t come back until five. I could be there and back in half an hour and he’d never know I’d been gone.

  It didn’t occur to me that I’d said that very same thing before and almost didn’t live to regret it.

  25

  As I pulled into Willena’s drive, I had a sense of “been there, done that.” Rachel’s old BMW sat under the porte cochere.

  I parked near the front door and tried to frame my questions as I climbed the shallow brick steps, crossed the concrete porch, and rang the bell.

  Hetty answered, wearing a pink uniform and a white apron. “Why, hello, Judge. How you doin’?”

  Hetty was some sort of cousin to Clarinda, and anybody could tell they shared genes. Both were short and plump, with wide, prominent cheekbones that hinted at an Indian ancestor somewhere back there. Both were excellent cooks and housekeepers. And each knew her own mind and was not afraid to speak it.

  “I’m doing fine, but I wanted to talk to you a minute. Is this a good time?”

  “Sure. Come on in.” Hetty stepped aside to let me enter, gave me a cynical grimace, and added, chin in air, “I guess I can still invite people in this door until Miss High and Mighty gets court authority to say otherwise.”

  “Is Rachel Ford here?” I asked, stepping into the hall.

  Hetty hesitated, then jerked her head toward the back. “She’s in the den looking at old albums again. I know Miss Wilma threw her out t’other day, but I can’t see no harm in her lookin’, can you?”

  “Not a bit,” I agreed.

  “But I put her in the back room this time, so if Miss Wilma comes, she can sneak out through the kitchen without gettin’ hassled again. Were you wantin’ to talk to her?”

  “No, actually I wanted to talk to you. I have a couple of questions.”

  “Would you mind comin’ back to the kitchen, then? I was cleanin’ out cabinets and drawers. I figure if we’re gonna have to vacate, I want the place to be as tidy as I can make it.”

  I followed her down the hall and into the kitchen, which looked immaculate to me, although several drawers stood open, and pots, utensils, and the odds and ends that every kitchen accumulates were piled on the granite-topped island in the middle of the room.

  It was a pleasant, happy room. The windows, of which there were three, were wide open to the breezes and bird-song. Sunlight glinted off the brass handles on high walnut cabinets and streamed through a garden window over the sink, where a Christmas cactus, a petticoat fern, and a couple of jade plants flourished. I moseyed over to inspect them. “Willena’s plants look healthy.”

  “Yes’m, they’s healthy, but they’s actually mine. Miss Willena never cared a thing about plants. I ought to take them up to my own place now or Miss Wilma will be carrying them off like she’s been carrying off everything else.”

  I wrinkled my forehead. “She shouldn’t be removing things from the house until the will is read.”

  “You tell her, then. I plan on going on living a few years longer.”

  Hetty bustled over to pull out a chair at a table set by a double window overlooking the backyard. “Come on over here and sit. We can talk while I work. I’m putting new paper in the drawers and wiping down the cabinets, but I don’t know what to do with all the stuff. I guess I’ll put it back until somebody comes to box it up to sell it off. Seems a shame, don’t it? Somebody picking over Miss Willena’s stuff like that.”

  I suspected that was the closest she would come to grieving for Willena. Clarinda had said for years that Hetty and Baker privately called her Willena the Witch and often debated whether it was worth having to put up with her temper to get good wages. Baker felt they could stick it out a few more years. But, as Clarinda pointed out, he was mostly outside and didn’t have to put up with her all the time.

  “Can I get you some tea? I made a pitcher fresh this morning,” Hetty offered.

  I sat down and set my pocketbook beside my chair. “That would be wonderful.”

  I accepted the glass of chilled tea over a full glass of ice. I squeezed in a fat wedge of lemon and stirred with a sterling spoon while Hetty set a small plate of lemon wafers and a green paper napkin in front of me. Willena might be gone from the house, but gracious living had not. I got the feeling that Hetty was enjoying lording it over this kitchen without Willena in the background. I hated to break the mood with what I needed to know.

  She may have sensed my unease, for Hetty moved over to the island and started sorting through the stuff. “You were wantin’ to talk to me?”

  “Yes, I was. Last Monday night, what did Willena eat for supper?”

  “A big green salad. She was trying to slim down a little, so she could—” She broke off and turned to wipe out a drawer with a sponge. “Anyway, she said they’d be having refreshments at the meeting and Miss Wilma was taking her special crabmeat cheese puffs, so she wanted a salad for her supper. I put an egg and some cheese in it, to give her some pro-teen, but she wouldn’t even take a hot biscuit after I made them up special for her. Baker and I had to eat the lot.
”

  “What did she drink?”

  “Tea, as usual. She hadn’t gotten so desperate yet that she’d given up tea.”

  Hetty made her tea like Clarinda did, sweetening a gallon with two cups of sugar while it was still hot. Strong and sweet with the tang of lemon or lime, it’s one of the last things a true Southerner forgoes in a diet.

  “Why was Willena dieting?” I hoped I sounded casual.

  Hetty hesitated. “I don’t rightly know whether I ought to be telling you this or not, but Miss Willena and Mr. Grover were planning on getting married come August. She’d already got her dress, and she’d bought it a size small, so she’d have to lose weight to get in it.” Her eyes danced at the foolishness of that.

  I mulled it over. “Who knew they were getting married?”

  Hetty shook her head. “Nobody, that I heard of, ’cepting Miss Willena and Mr. Grover. And Baker and me, of course, because she wanted us to know there’d be a few changes around here, with the family increasing and a boy coming and all. I wouldn’t have minded having the boy — Jamison, his name is, a real nice boy — but I don’t think they’d even told him yet. Mr. Grover was worried about how Jamison would take it, moving out to Hopemore and away from the city. But Miss Willena was plannin’ to send him away to boarding school next year. I heard her asking Miss Wilma for the name of the school her daddy, Mr. Billy, went to. I figured Miss Willena wanted to have a school in mind before she talked to Mr. Grover about it. He’s mighty attached to that boy and not likely to take too kindly to sending him away.”

  Two more motives for murder, I thought, sipping my tea. A disgruntled teen and a prospective groom who might have begun to realize he was getting not just a wife, but a steamroller.

  “Did you and Baker have any of the salad?” I asked. “Or drink the tea?”

  Hetty wasn’t dumb. Her eyes narrowed. “You thinkin’ Miss Willena was poisoned? You can think again. Baker and I finished off the salad — I made a big one, on purpose—and drank tea from that same pitcher. We weren’t sick.”

  “I understand she may have had a heart attack.”

  “Pooh!” Hetty let out her breath in a puff of disdain. “Weren’t nothin’ the matter with her heart. Strong as a horse. I know Miss Wilma wanted her to get it checked before her trip to the rain forest, but that was just Miss Wilma’s nonsense.” Hetty picked up a stack of pots and set them into a lower cabinet with a crash like the final cymbal in an orchestral piece.

  “If it was something she ate, it was Miss Wilma’s crab puffs,” Hetty added as an encore. “That woman’s so cheap, she could have used old crab.”

  “Willena didn’t have any refreshments,” I pointed out. “She went to the bathroom to fix her makeup before Wilma set them out.”

  “Well, it wasn’t anything I fixed.” Hetty sounded miffed that I’d even think such a thing. Her voice changed to a welcoming lilt. “Oh, hey, Miss Rachel. Would you like some tea? I made a pitcher fresh this morning.”

  Rachel stood in the doorway. I didn’t know how long she’d been there. She drifted in and leaned against the island. “Is it sweet or unsweet?”

  “Sweet.” Hetty spoke in the tone of one who knew the right answer.

  Rachel disappointed her. “I’d like a glass of water, please. Hello, Judge.” She took the glass Hetty handed her and ambled over to take a chair across from me. She looked around the room as she reached for a cookie. “Do you have any idea what will happen to this house?”

  “My guess is, it will be sold. It will be up to Wilma, I suppose.”

  “It’s a great old place, isn’t it?” Rachel looked around the room like she was thinking of buying the place. She must have a false idea about how cheap things go in Middle Georgia. Chances weren’t good that she could afford even the down payment. But she could dream.

  Hetty added more lemon wafers to the plate. “Eat up, now,” she urged. “You’re too skinny. Need some meat on your bones.”

  She hadn’t said anything like that when she’d handed me the first cookies.

  “Did you find the photos you were looking for?” I asked. I hoped so — it would be nice if somebody was successful that afternoon. I hadn’t learned a thing I could use. I was convinced Willena had been poisoned. She had all the symptoms: nausea, chills, tremors, eventual paralysis of the heart. But if she hadn’t eaten anything for supper that Hetty and Baker hadn’t eaten, and she hadn’t had any refreshments—which the rest of us had eaten without harm—then how could it have happened? And why hadn’t any signs of poison shown up in her body? Of course, the forensics folks may not have looked that far. As the chief pointed out, labs were swamped these days. Somebody probably worked overtime and moved Willena up to the head of a list to get her results as quickly as they had. Once they had a good diagnosis and no reason to look further, why should they? But her intestines should have shown something.

  When Rachel said, “I found several that were real helpful,” I had to think a second to remember what I’d asked.

  “Why would a lawyer write an article about clothes?” I wondered aloud. Especially, I felt like adding, one who dressed with so little flair. This afternoon Rachel had on black slacks, a black shell, black sandals, and a lightweight taupe cotton jacket with lumpy pockets, like she crammed things into them without thinking. She looked stylish, but drab.

  But then she smiled, and I was again surprised at how attractive she was when she bothered to lift her lips. “Writing is a hobby of mine, and vintage clothes are another. I decided to put them together, and a historical magazine agreed to take an article on spec. Did you get what you came for?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. I was thinking that Willena had a lot of the symptoms of cardiac poisoning, but Hetty assures me she didn’t eat anything here that could have poisoned her.”

  “If it had happened in South America, we could blame one of them poisoned darts,” Hetty reflected. “But folks don’t use them much around here.”

  Before I could speak, Wilma asked at the doorway, “Hetty? Who are you talking to?”

  She had come in mighty quietly, for none of us had heard her in the hall. As she took in Rachel and me sitting cozily at the kitchen table, her thin nostrils flared in displeasure. She turned back to Hetty. “I told you this house is not open to the public. You were instructed not to let anybody in. Besides, you and Baker need to be packing. Go on, get your things together. Leave me your house keys now. And I want the two of you off the property before five o’clock.”

  Hetty untied her apron, folded it neatly, and laid it on the counter. She pulled a ring of keys from the pocket of her uniform and laid them on top of the apron. Then she gave Wilma one long look in which there was neither subservience nor respect, and walked out.

  “What are you all doing here?” Wilma demanded. Her face looked more pinched than usual that afternoon, and her cheeks each had a bright red spot of color. Fury, I supposed.

  “I came to look at the pictures again,” Rachel admitted. “I was almost done, and I knew you weren’t likely to let me see them once you got your hands on them.” Her tone was almost insolent.

  “I came to ask Hetty a few questions,” I said quickly. “I had a theory that Willena might have been poisoned.”

  “Willena died of a heart attack,” Wilma snapped. “I kept telling her to get it checked, but she never did a blessed thing I asked her to do. In the end, she paid for that.” Her voice was full of self-righteous satisfaction.

  “Somebody drove the corkscrew into her neck,” I pointed out.

  Wilma put a hand to her cheek. “Don’t! I don’t want to think about that. I won’t think about it, do you hear me? It was terrible. Terrible!” Her face grew pinker and pinker and her voice rose.

  I stood. “I think we ought to go, Rachel.”

  Rachel slid her chair back and stood as well. But before we could take a step away from the table, Wilma said, “You aren’t going anywhere.”

  We were looking down the barrel of a smal
l silver pistol.

  26

  She smiled so pleasantly, you’d have thought she was offering candy, but the way her hand trembled, she could shoot us without meaning to. I calculated the distance from the table to where she stood. She was unlikely to kill us from there, but she could hurt us pretty bad.

  I was trying to figure out how to get out of the situation safely when Rachel asked, in a voice that was amazingly steady, “What’s this about, Wilma?”

  “It’s about nosy, trespassing busybodies.” Wilma spoke in exactly the tone she used when she was exasperated with somebody on a committee. “I told Hetty not to let anyone in.”