What Are You Wearing to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  On the sidewalk ahead, Robin and Natalie were heading toward their car, down the block. As usual, Natalie was prancing around, talking a mile a minute, while Anna Emily lagged behind. Robin was so busy listening to Natalie, she didn’t notice that Anna Emily had paused at the doorway to an empty storefront that used to house a children’s boutique.7

  I saw the child look up at somebody in the doorway and speak, and I knew exactly what she was asking: “Can I go home with you?”

  Not until Robin reached her car did she miss the child. “Anna Emily, get over here!” The child reluctantly followed the others to the car.

  Robin smacked her sharply on the bottom before fastening her into her car seat, but I suspected it was going to take more than smacks on the bottom to cure Anna Emily of that habit.

  By the time Robin drove away, I was abreast of the doorway. The man standing there looked familiar, but I couldn’t identify him until I saw the photograph he was holding. He was staring after Robin’s car with a bewildered look on his face.

  “She asks everybody that,” I said, greeting him. “The little girl. She has this habit of asking to go home with anybody she meets.”

  It took him a moment to register that I was speaking to him. “That was really weird.”

  He was thinner than he had been, and slightly unkempt. His face was so gaunt, and his skull showed clearly beneath the skin. His hair was growing out into a crop of curls. His clothes were crumpled, like he’d left them in the dryer too long. I wondered how much eating or sleeping he had been doing since I ran into him at the corner back in September, and whether he was running out of money to support his search.

  The look in his eyes disturbed me enough that I looked around to make sure there were other folks on the sidewalk before I continued the conversation. Even knowing that the killers of Starr were behind bars didn’t break a weeks-long habit of distrusting strange young men.

  “Did you ever find your wife?” I gestured toward the photograph.

  He looked down at it like he had forgotten he held it. His hand was shaking.

  Impulsively, I caught his wrist. “You look like you need something to eat. Down that next side street is a great local restaurant, with the best chocolate pie in the world. Go get yourself something to fill your stomach, and tell Myrtle that Judge Yarbrough sent you. She’ll put it on my tab.”

  “I’m not—” He started to protest, then nodded. “That would be great. Thanks.”

  He set off down the sidewalk at a rangy lope.

  15

  The whole town was edgy, knowing that the alleged murderers of Starr Knight were in the detention center. That was especially true after Slick went berserk and raised such a ruckus that he injured two guards. By nightfall, everyone knew he had been put into solitary confinement, but I’m sure a lot of folks slept uneasily, knowing he was breathing the same air they were.

  The sheriff came by the next morning to tell me about it. “He jumped his attorney and would have throttled him if the guards hadn’t intervened. As it was, he left one guard with a broken arm and one with a broken nose. It took five men to wrestle him down and get him into solitary. He fought them tooth and nail, and his vocabulary gave us all an education.”

  “What on earth set him off?”

  “The bat. He didn’t know we had it. Therefore, he thought the prosecutor didn’t have any concrete evidence against him except somebody who might have seen him with Starr. From what he said—or shouted—Roddy was supposed to have gotten rid of it, and Roddy thought kudzu would do the trick. Could have, too, if Joe Riddley hadn’t reminded me that the stuff is deciduous. Slick started yelling that he’d kill Roddy for that. He is now utterly out of control. We slammed him into solitary, but that hasn’t settled it, not by a long shot. He yelled and screamed half the night. Our deputies are wary of him, the guards are scared to take him his food, and all the inmates are restless. Roddy was shaking so bad, the doctor gave him something to calm him down.”

  “Have you tried working on Roddy? Maybe he’ll do a plea bargain and testify against Slick.” As soon as I said that, I could hear Joe Riddley inside my head: Don’t tell the sheriff how to do his job, Little Bit.

  Fortunately, Buster is sometimes more lenient with me than my husband.

  “We tried that, but Roddy isn’t talking. Won’t say a thing, either to us or, apparently, to his attorney. Just shrugs when he’s asked a direct question. But I’ll be glad when this trial is over. The detention center is beginning to feel like one of the lower circles of hell.”

  As soon as he left, I called Judge Stebley, our chief magistrate. We consulted; then he called up to Augusta and requested a speedy trial. When a slot opened up in the Superior Court calendar, the two of us pulled in a couple of favors and got the trial set for the third week of December. We needed to get that case over and those guys shipped out of town.

  Business was slow enough that Evelyn and I left Gladys in charge and attended the proceedings.

  Slick was shackled, cuffed, and heavily guarded, but if looks could have killed, we would all have been lying on the floor and poor Roddy would have been pulverized.

  Roddy reminded me of a child: contrite, bewildered, and resigned to punishment. His main fear seemed to be of Slick.

  Slick was like a cornered tiger, tensed and ready to pounce. It was clear he had never expected a case to be built against him. His primary response to concrete evidence was not remorse but rage.

  Wylie disturbed the court as much as Slick did. He boohooed when the prosecutor introduced the photographs of Starr’s body, and called Slick such filthy names that the judge threw him out.

  Trevor sat like a man of stone. Evelyn whispered to me, “Everybody who knows him begged him not to come, but he shook us off like a horse shakes flies.”

  I had expected Robin to be there to support him, if nothing else. She did not appear. I tried to tell myself that maybe she was squeamish, that maybe somebody had to keep the business open, but a voice inside my head kept saying, She ought to have come for Trevor, after all he’s done for her.

  Then I discovered she was a subpoenaed witness for the defense. She took the stand nervously, spoke inaudibly, and never looked at the defendants, but she testified that the bat could have been in her truck when Starr took it. I reminded myself not to judge people until all the evidence is in, and then only in my courtroom, where rules are predetermined and clear.

  Trevor sat up front, close enough to get a good look at every photograph and every scrap of evidence. Most of the time, he stared at the backs of those boys’ heads so hard it was a wonder he didn’t bore holes in their skulls.

  That week’s Hopemore Statesman reported, “At the end of each day, Trevor Knight rose and walked alone from the courtroom through a crowd that parted like the Red Sea to let him pass.”

  Proceedings were mercifully short. Neither of the defendants testified, and the only pieces of evidence introduced were photographs, the prints from the bat and Starr’s body, and lab results that indicated the blood on the bat was Starr’s, the prints were Slick’s and Roddy’s, and the bat fit Starr’s wounds.

  The verdict was predictable. As my son Walker phrased it, “Guilty as hell.”

  Roddy stiffened for an instant as the verdict was read; then his shoulders slumped.

  Slick turned to his attorney and shouted a stream of profanities, the gist of which was, “What good are you? He said you’d get me off!” He lifted his cuffed arms and would have slammed the man if a guard hadn’t stepped between them and held him.

  The day of the sentencing, it finally rained. The courtroom was full of dripping umbrellas and pungent with the smell of wet coats.

  The judge asked Trevor if he had anything to say before he sentenced them.

  Trevor walked heavily up to the witness chair, but when he got there he simply sat for a long time, looking at each boy. Roddy looked down at his hands and shuffled his feet. Slick lifted his chin and glared.

  Trevor heaved
a sigh. “You don’t deserve to live and you don’t deserve to die before you’ve lived long enough to realize what you’ve done. I hope you both experience some regret, but neither your regret nor anything they do to you will ease my pain.” He turned to the judge. “Whatever you decide is fine with me.”

  He lumbered out of the courtroom, his shoulders hunched, his beard resting on his chest. Not one soul spoke to him. It would have been a gross impertinence to interfere with such cataclysmic grief.

  By then the rain was coming down in slanting silver lines. I heard more than one person claim that the heavens were weeping for Trevor. Knowing what I do of God, I suspected the heavens were also weeping for Starr and those two young men. Every child starts out with the possibility of a brighter future than the ones they had chosen.

  Because no evidence was presented to show premeditation—their attorney had done his best for them, in spite of Slick, and had produced Robin’s testimony to indicate that the bat could have been readily available and used in a fit of anger—the defendants got life in prison. Slick got no possibility of parole. Roddy could get out in fifteen years or so if he behaved.

  Some thought that was better than either of them deserved, but Slick raised his cuffed hands and lunged at Roddy. “I’ll kill you! So help me, if it is the last thing I ever do, I will kill you!”

  It took three guards to wrestle him down. Not a soul doubted he was serious, especially Roddy. The judge recommended that the two of them be sent to different facilities.

  However, as usual, Georgia penitentiaries were crowded. Hope County was informed we’d have to retain the prisoners for a number of weeks.

  Hopemore looked forward to Christmas with mixed feelings—nervousness that the two killers were still in our community, but a sigh of relief that the nightmare was over.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

  16

  In the new year, our recent troubles were temporarily eclipsed by a momentous event: The Georgia Taxidermist Association was fixing to hold its annual winter convention in Hopemore. It wouldn’t be until the end of February, but starting in January, the whole populace was being urged by our chamber of commerce to “Make Hopemore the Best It Can Be!”

  Elementary school children contributed bulletin board art to the Bi-Lo and the library. Middle schoolers formed teams to pick up litter around town each week. Senior high service clubs came around to downtown merchants offering to wash plate-glass windows or do touch-up exterior painting in return for a donation to their latest cause. The garden club pruned and weeded public areas and planted pansies in new urns up and down Oglethorpe Street and around the courthouse square. Joe Riddley and I donated the urns; then the Garden Club bought the pansies from the superstore. The new president had the nerve to call and say, “We knew you wouldn’t mind, since we could get them a few cents cheaper per pot.”

  As far as I could tell, the only people not out making Hopemore better were members of the chamber of commerce and the city council. You couldn’t really blame them. This was the first statewide convention to be held in our new community center, and our city fathers had worked hard to make that happen. First they’d had to convince taxpayers we needed a big community center more than we needed better schools or better housing for our poorer citizens. That took more than two years, and involved a lot of talking, eating, and drinking. Then they’d had to convince the state taxidermist association that Hopemore could provide the same amenities as Macon or Tifton, where they’d held conventions before. That had also involved a lot of talking, eating, and drinking. By now, the officers of the town were exhausted.

  “They lied to the GTA,” I pointed out to Joe Riddley at breakfast one morning. “We aren’t anywhere in the same league as Macon or Tifton. We have one motel, two bed-and-breakfast places, and two motels up at I-20. And we only have three restaurants.”

  “Four, since the Waffle House opened up.”

  “Even so, with that many people looking for beds and meals, the place is going to be a madhouse. We can’t come close to accommodating a crowd.”

  Joe Riddley sipped his coffee and mulled that over. “We’ll learn how the Romans felt when they got overrun by the Goths and Vandals. At least the motel is decent.”

  That was one thing we had to give the city fathers credit for. The Magnolia Inn used to be charming—an old-fashioned place painted white with three stories, deep balconies with rocking chairs in front of all the rooms, and thick white columns holding up the balconies. Live oak trees shaded it, and its dining room was the best place in town for elegant dinners. However, once I-20 opened up and tourists stopped coming through Hopemore, the inn had deteriorated badly. In recent years, it had become little more than a magnet for vagrants and rats. Once the community center was in the works, however, the city powers-that-be used that as leverage to persuade a national chain to buy the motel and upgrade it. The work had been finished in November, and it sat out on the federal highway in newly refurbished splendor.

  Lest you think I am telling you more about a motel than you want to know, bear in mind that it plays an important part in this story.

  With the community center completed, the motel fancied up, a superstore on the outskirts of town, and a new four-lane road up to I-20—providing access to two more motels—our civic leaders were boasting that Hopemore’s tourist tide was about to turn. Their heads were so big at the moment, their necks could hardly bear the weight.

  They managed to overlook all the empty stores along Oglethorpe Street, and produced blank stares when I pointed out that most of the profits from those tourist hoards were unlikely to flow into Hopemore pockets. After all, the superstore, the motel, and two of our four restaurants were not locally owned. The primary source of income for Hopemore was going to be the fee that the conference paid for using the community center, and all that money would have to go toward the center’s enormous mortgage. The rest of our income would come in the form of whatever money visitors spent on meals and tips at Myrtle’s and Casa Mas Esperanza, our Mexican restaurant. Since neither Myrtle nor Humberto Garcia was likely to raise wages for the weekend, I figured the primary benefit Hopemore would reap from the convention was that Myrtle would extend her annual five-day cruise to seven.

  Have you ever wondered how much better off our society would be if decision makers were all required to take one class in basic accounting?

  The main topic of conversation in town was not the convention but two new elevators the motel had installed. Except for the one Hubert had added to Pooh’s house, those were the first elevators Hopemore had ever had—or needed. They had been built into new towers at each end of the front balconies, and a hexagonal cupola decorated each tower. From the way people carried on about those elevators, you could have deduced they were the eighth wonder of the world.

  “No more lugging bags up two flights of stairs,” Hubert boasted, making me wonder when and why he had ever stayed there to suffer that experience.

  As far as I was concerned, the best thing about the upcoming convention was that it had persuaded Myrtle to replace her floor. In fact, perhaps envisioning the world beating a path to her door, she had elected to spruce up her whole establishment. She closed down in January and covered her plate-glass windows with brown paper so nobody could peek. She reopened two weeks later with black vinyl booths, red Formica tabletops, a black-and-white-checked vinyl floor, and red-checked curtains at the windows. When she handed me one of her new red-bound menus, I saw that the price of everything, especially chocolate pie, had gone up. One thing that wasn’t going to be in the red around the place was Myrtle’s bank account.

  Everybody else fixed up a bit, too—even us, although I doubted that many taxidermists were going to stop by Yarbrough’s to buy seeds or fertilizer. Still, we were selling a lot of plants and potted flowers to decorate the center during the event, so washing our windows and setting up pretty displays seemed the least we could do.

  I noticed Evelyn humming while she worked one aftern
oon. “You still seeing Hubert?” I teased.

  She turned as red as the poinsettia she was putting in our half-price sale. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

  “You don’t need my permission, honey. I was his neighbor, not his mother.”

  She huffed. “Not about seeing him. It’s—well, he wants to go down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and wants me to go with him. Could I have time off? I’ve always wanted to see it.”

  I couldn’t say a word to save my soul. The notion of two people as straitlaced as Evelyn and Hubert partying their way through a New Orleans Mardi Gras plumb cooked my bacon.

  She misunderstood my silence. “I know I already used last year’s vacation, and we aren’t far enough along yet in this year for me to have accrued much—”

  “It’s not the time off, hon. You deserve it. You haven’t had a real vacation in all the years you’ve worked for us. Just a night or two at a bed-and-breakfast somewhere and the rest of the time catching up at home.”

  “I love bed-and-breakfast places, but I’d love to go to Mardi Gras, too.”

  Mardi Gras with Hubert wasn’t the way I’d choose to spend my vacation, but I told her, “If it tickles your gizzard, go right ahead. Take all the time you want. How long were you all planning on being gone?”

  “A week, from Thursday until Wednesday.” She was blushing so bright I could have turned off the lights. “The problem is, that’s the same weekend the taxidermists are coming.”

  “We’ll survive without you. You take all the time your heart desires. Just don’t let Hubert break it.”

  “He won’t. If I’ve learned anything in the years since I’ve been alone, it’s how to take care of myself.”

  Still, the woman skipped as she headed to the phone. Then she turned her back and lowered her voice while she talked, so I didn’t hear a word she said.