Guess Who's Coming to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  I could have smacked her.

  We were too late. Wilma called up the stairwell. “MayBelle? Are you up there? I told you, the top floor is off-limits until we get rid of vermin. It’s a real mess.”

  “It sure is,” MayBelle called back. She chuckled. “But by vermin, are you referring to Mac, here?”

  Wilma stood in the doorway, huffing and puffing like the little bad wolf. Between huffs, she explained, “I caught them trespassing, so I locked them up here for a little while to teach them they can’t go into other people’s houses whenever they want to.”

  She turned to me. “If you’ve learned your lesson, you can—”

  She stopped and her jaw dropped. She had seen the front of the ballroom. She stood like a frozen child in a game of statues and said in a strangled voice, “You broke my windows? And Uncle Frank’s chair?”

  We also drank up your booze, flitted through my head, but I didn’t say it. I didn’t want anybody thinking we’d enjoyed ourselves. When Saint Peter comes to take me home, I still plan to inform him that Wilma Kenan stole four hours of my life that I want credit for.

  She hurried across the room and picked up the red-and-gilt corpse of the chair. “Why on earth did you break this? And where is the leg?”

  “The chair broke when we were trying to open the double doors. . . .”

  Wilma dashed to the doors and ran her fingers over the bruised and dented panels like they were a beloved face. “How could you? How could you?”

  I finished, “And Rachel used the leg to smash a downstairs window to get back in the house.”

  Wilma ran to a broken window and peered down at the rope that still dangled there, and then she whirled, her face red with fury. “You had no call to destroy this house. You knew I wouldn’t leave you up here forever. I will kill you for this! I will sue you for everything you’ve got. This is . . . is . . . unconscionable!”

  MayBelle asked in an amused voice, “Did you expect Mac to just sit and wait until you showed up?”

  Before Wilma could answer, the double doors opened a crack and a familiar deep drawl spoke through them. “Miss Wilma? I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Wilma uttered a little shriek and opened her purse.

  I didn’t know I could fly, but I seemed to cover the space between us in one leap and shoved her to the floor as Sheriff Gibbons came through the doors.

  “She’s got a gun in that purse,” I gasped, sprawled awkwardly on top of Wilma.

  In one motion he bent, retrieved the purse, and opened it. “Do you have a permit for this, ma’am?”

  “It’s Willena’s. I was . . . bringing it . . . back to . . . the house.” Her words came in gasps. She writhed beneath me like a bucking bronco, stronger than I would have suspected. “Get off me. Get off!” With one big shake she flung me off.

  I grabbed the doorknob to keep from falling. The door swung wildly, and I thought for a second I’d take off again into outer space. When it finally came to a stop, I stumbled to my feet and found myself trembling in Walker’s arms. He held me tight. “It’s okay, Mama. You’re gonna be okay.”

  Sheriff Gibbons held the purse out of Wilma’s reach and extended his other hand to help her to her feet. “A few questions,” he repeated.

  Wilma staggered back to one of the chairs at the table by the window. “You nearly scared me to death!” She began to cry.

  MayBelle hurried over and sat beside her. “Calm down,” she advised. “The sheriff wants to ask you some questions.”

  I looked up at Walker and whispered, “I told you not to call him. He’ll be sure to tell your daddy.”

  “I didn’t call him,” he whispered back. “He was here when I got here, already inside. He says he found the back door open.”

  “I found her!” somebody shouted downstairs. The voice dropped a notch. “Can you walk? What happened? Wait . . .” It got louder again and seemed to be coming our way. “Stay still. I’ve got you.” It was Slade. He raised his voice to call, “We’re coming up.”

  “I don’t want to go back up there,” Rachel protested. “Put me down! Let me go!”

  We heard a scuffle, then silence. A moment later, we heard somebody heavily climbing the stairs. Finally Slade came through the double doors carrying Rachel in his arms. She had one hand pressed to the back of her head. Her face was pale and wore a strange expression. Her hair straggled out of the strip of crimson drape. “I don’t know what happened,” she said groggily. “I must have fallen. Everything went dark.”

  “Somebody hit her and put her in a closet under a pile of sheets,” Slade told us angrily.

  “I don’t remember.” Rachel looked around the room like she was having trouble focusing her eyes. She looked at me standing close to Walker, at the sheriff over by a broken window, at Wilma and MayBelle seated at the table. “Why is everybody here?”

  “Wilma was showing me the house,” MayBelle explained.

  Wilma recovered her aplomb. She drew herself erect in her chair, nostrils flared. She reached up to straighten her hair, which had gotten a little mussed, then glared at Rachel. “Did you call the sheriff?”

  Rachel wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I’m glad he’s here.” She turned to him. “I want you to arrest these two women for trespassing. They illegally entered my cousin’s house.”

  Rachel shook her head, then groaned. It must ache.

  I pointed to Wilma. “First, arrest her for abduction and imprisonment at gunpoint.”

  I could see the word What? on the tip of MayBelle’s tongue.

  “You had no right to force us up here and lock us in,” I informed Wilma. “Much less to go off and leave us.”

  “Are we missing the party?” called a deep, sultry voice downstairs. A stampede of feet came up the stairs.

  29

  Sadie Lowe was at the head of the group that came in, lovely as always in a flowing red skirt with a white button-front shirt that covered up her assets but let you know they were there. Cindy was right behind her in jeans and a pink T-shirt. The anxious look in her eyes when they met mine told me she had called all these people and wasn’t apologizing, but she hoped I wouldn’t be mad. Nancy was behind Cindy, wearing a navy shirtdress that was too tight and the wrong shade of blue for her coloring. She kept her distance from Sadie Lowe, I noticed.

  “Meriwether and Gusta will be up in a minute,” Cindy announced. “Mac said she has figured out who killed Willena, so I thought we ought to all come find out who it was.”

  “There are chairs in that closet,” I told Walker, jerking my head toward the door. “Would you get some for Gusta and Rachel?”

  He set one over by the side window where there was a little breeze, and Slade lowered Rachel onto it, then stood over her massaging one shoulder with his fingers. I remembered Joe Riddley doing that to me, but it seemed like a couple of lifetimes ago. Rachel put one hand up and covered his, then looked up at him with an uncertain smile.

  If he hadn’t kissed her right before he brought her upstairs, my days as a sibyl were over.

  Most of the women had never been upstairs. Some didn’t even know the ballroom was there. They milled around exclaiming at the chandelier and polished floor and gaping at the havoc Rachel and I had wreaked. Watching them, I got nervous. I moseyed over and whispered to the sheriff, “I know MayBelle has a gun, but I don’t know who else might. Could you collect and hold weapons while we’re all up here?” Only one of those people was a killer but after the afternoon I’d just had, any concealed weapons made me nervous.

  He cleared his throat. “I understand that some of you carry weapons. While I am sure you have permits for them, I would appreciate it if you’d give them to Walker while we’re all together up here. Walker, would you take them up and put them on the bar at the back?”

  MayBelle promptly pulled hers out. “I wouldn’t really shoot you, Mac,” she joked.

  “I might.” Sadie Lowe took a deadly-looking little black
number from her shoulder bag. “But not tonight.”

  Nancy glowered at me and reached with reluctance into her purse. “I know,” she told the sheriff, “I’m not supposed to be carrying this after . . . you know. But I don’t like to come out alone at night without it.”

  The sheriff looked around the circle. “Anybody else?” He stopped at Rachel.

  She shook her head. “I have one, but my purse is still down in the den.”

  When Walker reached into his pants pocket, I looked at him in astonishment. All their lives our boys had heard their daddy preach, “Don’t carry a loaded gun, and keep any guns you have locked up. It is families who don’t think their kids will use guns who lose them to guns. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, knows what a child may do when pushed to a certain limit.” And now the father of two of my precious grandchildren was carrying a gun?

  He brought out a Hershey bar and handed it to me with a grin that said he knew exactly what I’d been thinking and he had set me up again. “Here. Your Coke is in my car.”

  I followed him to the bar, turned my back to the rest of the room, and tore open that candy like I’d been on a desert island for a week. You can say what you want about elegant chocolate. Right that minute, Hershey’s was the elixir of the gods. Then I looked over my shoulder at Rachel and made the most generous offer of my life. “I’ll save half for her.”

  Walker pulled out a second candy bar. “I brought her one.”

  “You are a prince among men.” I popped another rectangle into my mouth.

  When we returned to the front of the room, everybody was standing around looking at me expectantly. “Well, Mac?” Cindy asked brightly in the same voice she used to open the Junior League meetings. “Who did it?”

  Sadie Lowe’s sultry laugh seemed appropriate in that warm, thick air. “It wasn’t me. I can tell you that much.”

  “No, but you played a part.” I looked over at Nancy. “I don’t want to embarrass you or Sadie Lowe, but I suspect that everybody here knows what happened Thursday. Nancy, you told me you thought Horace was having an affair with Willena. Why was that?”

  Nancy was miserable, but she was no wimp. She lifted her chin. “Because she drove a white Jaguar convertible and I’d seen Horace’s car parked near one like it at restaurants and motels. Then at the country club dance — I believe you were away for that — but she and Horace danced together and carried on like teenagers.”

  Sadie Lowe laughed again, a derisive sound this time. “That was camouflage. Horace was playing up to Willena to throw you off the track. He has never loved anybody but me.” She switched her hips a little, and her skirt swished around her calves.

  Wilma sat up straighter, and her nose went up in the air. “I’ll have you know that Horace wanted to marry Willena in college. She turned him down, of course, That’s why he married Nancy.” Wilma crossed her legs in a genteel manner.

  The expletive Sadie Lowe used was in no way genteel. “He married Nancy because he had to marry somebody to breed another Jensen. That’s the same reason he looked twice at Willena in college. But Horace hasn’t been able to keep his hands off me since we were in seventh grade, and he never will.” She gave Nancy a pitying smile. “You might have wed him, honey, but you’ll never bed him like I do. Horace has me under his skin and I’m a permanent disease.”

  My guess was, those last two lines were from some soap opera she’d played in, but they were certainly effective. Nancy dashed across the room with her hands lifted like an angry cat’s paws, and before the sheriff could stop her, she had raked her nails down Sadie Lowe’s face. Sadie Lowe backed up, clasping her palms to her cheeks, then she seized Nancy’s wrist with one hand, grabbed her shoulder with the other, and shook her so hard I expected to hear a bone crack.

  “Keep away from me, bitch! You hear me? Keep away from me and Horace, or I’ll give you something to remember.” Was that Sadie Lowe or Nancy? I have never been certain.

  The sheriff and Walker pulled them apart. They stood panting and furious, glaring at each other. “She’s a tramp,” Nancy gasped. “Make her leave my husband alone.”

  Sadie Lowe checked her nails and buffed them on her skirt in a show of unconcern. “He’s not going to be your husband long. Get used to it. He’ll be filing for divorce within a week. After what you did Thursday, I told him I’m not playing games anymore. Either he marries me, or I’m leaving to find somebody who will.”

  “Horace needs me,” Nancy said stoutly, her face flushed and her eyes glittering.

  “She killed Willena!” Wilma whimpered. “She killed her, and it made her so sick she had to leave the meeting early!”

  Nancy whirled in her direction. “I did not. I got a migraine.” She looked around at the rest of us. “I wouldn’t have killed Willena, even if she and Horace—”

  “Where were you during our little break?” Gusta stood in the double doors, leaning on her silver-headed cane. I didn’t know how long she had been there. She can climb stairs with the aid of a good arm and her cane, but it takes her a while. Meriwether held her elbow. Little Zach was a plump pill bug in a Snugli on his mother’s chest. He was fast asleep.

  Gusta stomped over to the vacant chair and sat down. Immediately it became a small gilt throne. Walker set one beside her for Meriwether, who sat cradling Zach’s little head with one hand. The group fell silent.

  Through the unglazed windows came the sound of cicadas tuning up for their nightly symphony. Even though the air was still warm and thick, there was nothing menacing about that ballroom when it was full of people. Rachel’s eyes met mine, and I was certain we were the only two who could imagine how terrifying the place could be.

  “Well,” Gusta said, thumping her cane once on the floor, “get on with it, Nancy. My great-grandson needs to be in bed. Where did you go, and why did you leave early?”

  “I thought Willena had gone to meet Horace,” Nancy confessed sullenly.

  Sadie Lowe laughed. “No, that would be me.” She looked around the room and shrugged. “Okay, so I didn’t go out on the front porch to smoke. I went out the back door to smooch. With Horace. In his car. I still wasn’t killing Willena.”

  “Nobody said you did,” I reminded her. “But what did you do all that time, Nancy?”

  She raised both palms and shrugged. “Looked for Willena. She was gone so long—”

  “It always took her a long time to fix her face,” Wilma explained.

  “I didn’t know that,” Nancy snapped. “I thought she and Horace were somewhere in the building. So I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find them. I even went outside—”

  Cindy, standing on the other side of Walker now and leaning against him, spoke up to confirm, “I saw you. You came out, then went right back in. And you came out a little later and drove off.”

  “Did you look in the ladies’ room?” Meriwether stroked her son’s head with one gentle finger, but she looked with pity at Nancy.

  Nancy shook her head. “That was the one place I didn’t look. I knew he wouldn’t be in there. But worrying about him gave me a migraine, so I left. I must have driven all the way to our beach condo, because the next thing I knew, it was morning and I had been sleeping in the parking lot.”

  “That eliminates Nancy,” Gusta announced. “What about the rest of us?”

  I gave her a wry smile. “Us? The police chief already assured us that you are innocent. How little he knows.”

  She huffed in arrogance. “He knows I didn’t kill Willena. So who did? I’m putting my money on you, MayBelle.”

  “Me?” MayBelle’s laugh was unsteady. “Why me?”

  “General principles,” Gusta replied.

  “Without Willena, the zoning board will let you do anything you want with my land,” Wilma pointed out with a sniff.

  “Or maybe you killed her because you want to buy her house,” Sadie Lowe added.

  MayBelle gave a little snort. “I wouldn’t kill somebody for a house. I could just build one exactly like it
.”

  Wilma was shocked. “But you wouldn’t have the history of the house.”

  “Or broken windows and scarred doors,” I added. “But you were, after all, the last known person known to see Willena alive. Do you know what convinced me you didn’t kill her?”

  “That I have absolutely no motive.”

  “No, that you flunked chemistry. I think Willena died from a cardiac toxin.”

  Everybody turned to look at Nancy. “I didn’t kill her,” she protested. “I was a chemistry teacher, but I never poisoned anybody.”

  “Of course not.” Wilma gave me a frosty look. “Willena died of a heart attack. Why can’t you accept that, MacLaren, and let her rest in peace?”