Guess Who's Coming to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  I gave her what my boys call Mama’s Killer Look. “Because she didn’t die in peace. She died with chills, nausea, sweats, and tremors — symptoms of a plant poison that stops the heart. I was puzzled because the autopsy showed no intestinal symptoms, but this afternoon Hetty said that if Willena had died in the Amazon, we’d suspect a poison dart.”

  “Ooh! Exciting!” Sadie Lowe squealed.

  “It’s ridiculous,” Gusta said haughtily.

  “Of course,” I agreed. “But a hypodermic isn’t. Administered by injection, a cardiac toxin is more deadly and leaves no intestinal traces.”

  “Where would somebody get a poison like that?” the sheriff inquired.

  “Ask Little Miss New York,” Wilma said spitefully. “Her dad was a pharmacist.”

  “He managed a drugstore,” Rachel protested. She was less groggy now, but her eyes were still large and dilated, and her hand still rested in Slade’s. “Daddy didn’t know the first thing about chemistry. Neither do I.”

  “So, Judge?” the sheriff prompted.

  “Mistletoe,” I told him. “Some folks use it medicinally, but brewed correctly it is deadly.” I looked across at Wilma. “Lincoln was cutting mistletoe last week for you.”

  “Of course. The trees are full of it. But I didn’t use it to kill Willena. Why should I? I saw her every day. Why kill her with all of you around?”

  “More suspects,” I said bluntly.

  Wilma appealed to higher powers. “Miss Gusta, Sheriff Gibbons, you all know good and well I wouldn’t kill Willena. I loved her like a sister.” She turned to the other women in the club. “Besides, how could I when I had my hands full fixing refreshments? I can’t be two places at once. You all saw me the whole time.”

  MayBelle gave her a considered look. “Except when you were mixing punch. Could she do it in less than five minutes, Mac?”

  “The poison would take a while to work, so she probably jabbed her with a needle while they were in the kitchen before the meeting. Willena kept complaining about feeling cold. But it wouldn’t take but a second or two to drive the corkscrew into Willena’s throat.” I turned to Wilma. “It sure took you longer to mix the second batch of punch than the first. I had time to eat brownies, chat with Gusta, and talk with Grover before you came back.”

  Red spots had appeared on Wilma’s sallow cheeks, a sure sign she was angry. “I had to combine a lot of ingredients.”

  “No, you didn’t. They were already mixed. When I was at your place Thursday, Linette told the other maid to pour it down the sink because it had been mixed and wouldn’t keep.”

  “Linette doesn’t know a dadgum thing about that recipe.” Wilma dabbed her eyes with a tissue MayBelle had given her, since the sheriff still had her purse. “Poor Willena died of a heart attack, just like her daddy. I told her and told her to get it checked, but she wouldn’t.”

  “You knew she wouldn’t, if you insisted. In fact, you ensured that she wouldn’t get it checked so there would be no medical records of the recent condition of her heart. One more thing. Where did you get Willena’s gun?”

  Before she could answer, I turned to MayBelle. “When you left the bathroom, Willena was still fixing her face, right?” MayBelle nodded. “Using cosmetics from her purse?”

  “Sure.”

  “So when did you get Willena’s gun, Wilma? She kept it in her purse, which was in the bathroom while she fixed her face. The police took the purse away after she was killed. So when did you get the gun, if not right after you stuck the corkscrew in her throat?”

  “Before the meeting. She didn’t like for me to be alone back in that kitchen.”

  For the first time I found myself felling sorry for Wilma. She had laid such careful plans and come up with answers to everything. I almost hated to demolish her construction. “No,” I said softly, “she had the gun right before the meeting.

  I saw it when she opened her pocketbook to give me a petition. I even asked if she had a permit to carry it, and she said she did.”

  Wilma leaped to her feet and fixed me with a furious glare. “You are an interfering busybody! I do not have to stand for this in my own house. Willena always said we should not let you Yarbroughs into the club. She was right.”

  Next thing we knew she had dashed out the double doors and down the stairs.

  30

  Several of us started after her, but the sheriff called, “Let her go. I have deputies at all the exits. She won’t get far.”

  We milled around for a few seconds, then Sadie Lowe sidled up to me and purred, loud enough for the whole group to hear, “That was so exciting. Just like something on TV. When did you first know it was her?”

  I shook my head. “Not until this evening, when I had a lot of time to think. That’s one of the few advantages of incarceration.” They laughed a little, as I’d hoped they would. We needed to lighten things up and get home.

  “But how did you know?” MayBelle demanded. “What clues did the rest of us miss?”

  “Could we all sit down?” Cindy asked. “Mac looks like she’s about to collapse.”

  If truth be told, I felt like a balloon whose air had just gone out in one big whoosh. I hated what Wilma had done, but I also hated what society would now do to Wilma. I wished I hadn’t been the one to turn her over to the law.

  Several folks carried out chairs, and we sat in a circle with Queen Gusta at the head. One by one I enumerated the indicators that pointed to Wilma and mistletoe poisoning.

  “Like I said, Willena was cold, nauseated, and sweating during the meeting. Those are all signs of ingested or injected plant toxins. Wilma also brought a big carryall that night to hold a small pair of galoshes, and it was still bulky when she left. I noticed that at the time, but it didn’t register. I think it held the boots she wears to work in the yard — the boots she wore to kill Willena so she wouldn’t get blood on her yellow shoes. Thursday morning I found her working in red mud in those same boots, and she washed them in my presence. Some of the drippings looked like blood, and I think they were. I believe, Sheriff, that if you have somebody examine those boots, you will still find traces of Willena’s blood. And I suspect that an examination of MayBelle’s bloodstained raincoat will show that Wilma wore it.”

  “Damn,” MayBelle exclaimed. “Do you know how long it took me to find one that color?”

  “But why would she do it?” Nancy wondered aloud. “They were like sisters.”

  “Like sisters, but not sisters,” I reminded her. “Two families, two fortunes. Gusta, when I first was considering whether to join the club, you mentioned that not all of you are as rich as you used to be. Were you referring to Wilma?”

  “Primarily,” Gusta acknowledged. “She was a greedy child and a greedy adult, so she invested almost everything she owned in tech stocks not long before the crash. We all tried to warn her, but nobody ever could tell Wilma anything.”

  MayBelle drummed her fingers on the table. “I tried to get her to give Grover her portfolio years ago, soon after Willena turned hers over to him and persuaded me to move mine, too. Grover’s good. He’s increased our net worth considerably. So there was Willena, getting richer and richer while lying on her couch, mean as a snake and never doing a lick of work. And poor Wilma was watching the markets every day, calling her broker several times a week with advice, and still losing a bundle.”

  “She also put a lot of money into bonds right after the crash because they looked real good,” Nancy added, “but they went down to practically nothing afterwards.”

  Sadie Lowe spoke with uncharacteristic sympathy. “Poor old Wilma, anything she touched turned to dust.”

  “To dirt,” Meriwether said softly. “I remember something Willena once said to me that makes sense now. She said, ‘Wilma isn’t smart. Plants die. Antiques appreciate.’ I’ll bet she told Wilma that, too. Poor Wilma.”

  “And her house would be in constant need of repairs,” I added. “Right now it needs paint, wallpaper, upholstery—t
here’s no end to keeping up a place like that.”

  “I know she asked Willena to help her with it.” Rachel was finally ready to join the conversation. “Willena told me so. I mentioned to her that I was thinking of buying a house, and she said to buy a brick house like she had, because they required little maintenance. Then she said Wilma was hounding her for money to help keep up the old Kenan home.”

  Cindy spoke in a thoughtful tone. “I wonder if Willena’s dating Grover had anything to do with the murder. When we were at the club for the seafood buffet last Friday night, Willena was telling us she was finally fixing to make a will. She winked at Grover when she said it. Wouldn’t it be dreadful, after all this, if she has made a will leaving all her money and the house to Grover?”

  “Wilma can’t profit from a crime,” I reminded her. I wasn’t at liberty to inform them that Willena never made a will.

  “But how did she do it?” Walker asked, shifting his bulk on the little chair and resting one calf on the other thigh in an attempt to get comfortable. “I mean, you were all there; she was in full view most of the time—”

  “Planning,” I told him. “Wilma has always been a good planner. She knew the best time would be the election of officers meeting, when all the members would be there, because the more people, the more motives. She listed for me this week why any of several of you might have killed Willena.” I ignored their gasps. “But she also unlocked the front door to allow for the possibility that somebody had come in from outside. Before she left home she mixed the punch so she wouldn’t need to do that, and I would guess she filled one of her daddy’s old diabetes needles with poison she had distilled from mistletoe leaves. Sometime during the evening she probably told Dexter his television was too loud and shut his door, so he wouldn’t notice her in the hall, because he mentioned to me that she had complained about the noise. But you said something important, Nancy, on Thursday. You told me that when you were searching for Horace that you looked in each room and the kitchen, and saw nobody . Wilma was supposed to be in the kitchen at that point, mixing punch.”

  “She wasn’t there,” Nancy agreed with a surprised expression. “I never thought of that.”

  “What about my keys?” Cindy locked her fingers, turned her palms outward, and extended her arms to stretch. “How did they get under Willena?”

  I shrugged. “Accident or deliberate attempt to incriminate you—one of those senseless things we’ll probably never understand.”

  “Nothing is ever senseless,” Gusta rebuked me in the tone I remembered from my kindergarten Sunday school days. “God used the keys to get you involved, MacLaren.”

  There was that. Sometimes the interconnectedness of the tiniest details gives me the shivers. Or was that a sudden breeze flitting through the ballroom’s broken windows?

  Meriwether leaned forward, holding Zach’s little back. “What I don’t understand is why Wilma would bother to give Willena that expensive bar set right before she killed her.”

  Sadie Lowe knew that. “To make her cry. You want to get a woman into a bathroom by herself, make her cry and run her mascara. That’ll do the trick every time.”

  “Wilma told me herself that it always took Willena half an hour to fix her face,” I added. “Since Wilma was in charge of refreshments, she could decide how long the break would be.”

  “And she knew we all always go to the bathroom as soon as the break starts, so we’d be back by the time she went to stick the corkscrew in Willena.” Sadie Lowe was on a roll. I looked at her in admiration. I would never have suspected her of a having a wide practical streak.

  “But why would she use the corkscrew if she’d already killed her with poison?” Slade was jotting notes on a pad he always carried in his inside coat pocket.

  Sadie Lowe gave a bawdy laugh. “Maybe it was Wilma’s ladylike way of saying, ‘Screw you!’ ” Every single person in that room put a hand to the hollow of their throat and shuddered.

  “And her motive?” Slade persisted. “In one word?”

  “Covetousness,” Gusta snapped. “Pure, unadulterated greed.”

  I leaned over and looked right into his eyes. “Let that be a lesson to you.”

  He gave me a saucy grin. “I’m a reformed man, Judge. You won’t believe the new me.” He draped one arm over the back of Rachel’s chair like it had a right to be there. I noticed she didn’t squirm or move away.

  Sheriff Gibbons rose. “I think we have hashed this thing over long enough. The judge and Miss Rachel have been through an ordeal and need to get home. And I need to get over to the police station.” Before he left, he looked across at me. “You’ll come give a statement, too? And you, Miss Ford?”

  “Tomorrow,” I promised. “I’m exhausted tonight.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Plus you still have some issues at home to resolve.”

  I tottered down the stairs holding Walker’s arm, feeling a hundred and two.

  Nancy touched my elbow and murmured, “I’m glad you’re okay, Mac.”

  “Will you be all right?” I asked in concern.

  She gave me a sad smile. “God only knows. Literally. But I’ll do the best I can.” She walked heavily out to her Cadillac SUV, climbed into the seat, and roared down the drive.

  “Poor thing.” Sadie Lowe spoke at my shoulder. “Horace has done her dirt, hasn’t he?”

  “You might take note of that,” I suggested. “A man who does one woman dirt is likely to do the same again. And you can’t live a lifetime on chemistry, you know.”

  Her lipstick was a curved slash of red under the porch light, and I could tell she didn’t think I knew a thing about the kind of chemistry she and Horace had. I saw no need to enlighten her. But as she walked to her car, I felt pity for a child who had never known real love.

  Cindy retrieved my pocketbook from the kitchen while Walker offered, “I’ll get your Coke, Mama, but it will be warm by now.”

  “I couldn’t care less,” I assured him. “Wet and tingly will be fine.”

  Slade and Rachel stood at the bottom of the porch steps with me. “Give me your keys and I’ll bring your car,” Slade offered. “I came with the sheriff, so I need a ride home anyway.”

  When Rachel’s gaze followed him, I asked softly, “You like him better now?”

  She gave a little sigh. “Yeah. He’s sweet.”

  “I can’t understand how he got here, though.”

  “I called him. I wanted him to take pictures to support our case. I was telling him what had happened when suddenly everything went black. I guess Wilma hit me.” She touched her bump gingerly. “She must have hung up, too, because he called back and got no answer, so he called the sheriff and asked for a deputy to come with him. When the sheriff heard you were here, too, he decided to come himself and bring several deputies. When they got here, they saw two cars parked out back and found the kitchen door unlocked, so Slade started looking for me while the sheriff went up the front steps for you.”

  I gave her a sideways look. “That silence just before you came upstairs sounded a lot like a long kiss. Did you and Slade decide that money isn’t everything?”

  “Yeah.” One syllable, a volume of feeling.

  “Well, I hope you all will be very happy. You won’t starve. Will you mind staying in Hopemore?”

  She gave me a funny look. “Can you keep a secret, Mac?”

  “Sure, if I need to.”

  She held up her hand so her emerald winked in the porch light. “Remember I told you this was my grandmother’s? Actually, her grandmother gave her a pin when she got married. My mother had the stones made into the earrings and the ring. Grandmother’s maiden name was Willena Kenan, and she grew up in this house. I found lots of pictures of her in the albums. So I have roots in Hopemore.”

  I stared. “When did you find that out?”

  “Three years ago. Mother used to talk about coming down south with her mother one summer when she was real little, to visit her grandparents. She could remember
a big brick house, a cousin John, who was ten, and eating watermelon each afternoon out in the yard. They’d have contests to see who could spit seeds the farthest. That’s all she remembered, except she thought somebody who was her ‘other granddaddy’ lived in a big white house with two porches.”

  “But she didn’t know who they were?”

  “No, she had no idea where or who those people were. Her mother died when Mother was seven, remember, and her daddy soon married again. When she asked about her mother, he said they’d talk about it when she was older. Unfortunately, he died before he felt she was old enough.”

  “And her mother’s family never got in touch with them after her mother died?”

  “Apparently not. Mother thought maybe they cast her mother off for marrying a Jew.”