Who Left That Body in the Rain?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “He’d have to be some rigger to fix a car so it would drive itself over to the church.”

  “Maybe somebody found the car here, running, and took it back.”

  “Without calling for help?”

  “Maybe they were scared—a poacher or somebody who had no business being here.”

  “What poacher would risk being caught driving MacDonald’s car? Everybody knows it.”

  I scuffed my shoes on wet grass, trying to get rid of some of the mud and adjust to what he was saying. “You all are calling it murder?”

  “About have to, don’t we?”

  “But you have no idea who could have done it?”

  Isaac hesitated so long, I knew he had some internal struggle going on. “Chief Muggins is set on Skell,” he admitted at last. “We have several witnesses, including me, who say Skell was pretty upset with his daddy for selling Maynard that car. I ticketed him for speeding last night. He told me all about the car, and said he was so mad at Maynard, he hadn’t noticed how fast he was going.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around ten. Not far from here, either. And he was shaking pretty bad. As you might imagine, the chief isn’t too pleased with me for letting him drive away with just a ticket.”

  “How were you to know at the time it could be important? Besides, can you come up with one reason why Skell would kill his daddy? Surely you don’t think he’d run him down over the sale of a car?”

  “I don’t,” Ike agreed, “but Chief Muggins is working on it.”

  “That skunk,” I muttered to myself. “You won’t let him get away with it, will you?”

  He sighed. “I’m doing what I can, Judge, but you know how things stand. Once he’s made up his mind about something, it takes an act of God to change it.”

  I turned back to my car. “Then it looks like God, you, and me had better get to work.”

  The courthouse clock chimed eleven as I drove past. I tensed up, waiting for the cheerful carillon, but all I heard was silence. Somebody had had the good sense to turn it off at night.

  I stumped into the house and propped both hands on my hips as I stood in the den doorway. “You didn’t have to call Isaac.”

  “So you went on over there.” Joe Riddley nodded in satisfaction without even looking up from the television. “Figured you would. You want to go on up to bed, or you want to stay down here and catch the weather?”

  I figured I might as well stay up to watch Marilee take a guess.

  “She looks a little peaky.” Joe Riddley leaned forward to get a better view. He was right. Her red dress and bright lipstick made a valiant attempt to hide it, but Marilee’s curls had less bounce, her eyes less sparkle, her nose a suspicious pinkness.

  Joe Riddley stumped up to bed, complaining, “She didn’t even tell us good night.”

  “Come here, you old bear,” I told him. “I’ll do better than that.”

  12

  Sunday after dinner, little Tad took us to the garage to admire the ferret. Cindy had created a ferret Hilton by filling a large dog cage with boxes to climb on and hide under, bowls for food and water, and a soft blanket to lie on.

  After that, Cindy suggested that Jessica show me her room. “The decorator just finished. It’s a teenager’s room now,” she added proudly.

  I managed to resist pointing out that the child was scarcely eleven, but when I got there, it took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to exclaim, “Who spilled the Pepto Bismol?”

  In addition to new furniture, Jessica had soft pink carpet, pink striped wallpaper, and a comforter and pillow shams that looked like a heap of roses on the bed. A battered brown leather pencil holder beside the computer on her desk looked like a crumb of rye bread on a wedding cake. “Do you like pink?” I asked Jessica, not yet able to meet her eye.

  She shrugged. “It’s all right.” The child’s mother had dressed her in pastels and ruffles all her life, but her square chin and a certain firmness around her eyes made me wonder whether she liked them or merely endured them.

  “What happened to your dollhouse and your other stuff?” Joe Riddley and I had built that dollhouse for her fourth Christmas, and added to it each year. We’d envisioned it getting handed down to Jessica’s own children.

  She tiptoed to her walk-in closet and opened the door like she was giving me a peek at a forbidden magazine. The dollhouse, her favorite dolls, and all her stuffed animals were arranged along the baseboard in a small world of their own. I suspected Jessica would enjoy playing in there with the door closed, anyway. She was a very private little girl.

  Next she hurried across the room and laid one hand proudly on her desk. “Don’t you love this? Mother wanted a vanity to go with the chest, but Daddy said I could have the desk instead. It’s got three drawers for all my stuff. And I have my own phone.” It was, of course, an extension of the main line. Not even Walker and Cindy were silly enough to give a child her own phone line, particularly in Hopemore. It was also pink, but I was impressed that Jessica had arranged the room to put the phone on her desk instead of beside her bed. It’s exactly what I would have done at her age, if I’d had a phone.

  I went over closer to admire it. “It’s a lovely desk. I like your pencil holder, too.”

  “Thanks.” Her mouth curved up in happiness. “It was Daddy’s. He gave it to me.” She adjusted it a fraction of an inch. “You can sit down, if you want,” she added casually. She sat on the desk chair and twined one thin leg around its dainty curved one. Of course I sat. I couldn’t remember sitting down for a solo chat with this granddaughter since she was seven. But just as I settled into the pink-and-white checked armchair near the window, the telephone rang.

  She reached over and picked it up with such a professional air, I suspected she’d been practicing. However, she didn’t speak, just listened. Walker and Cindy had better be careful what they said on the phone from now on. I couldn’t see her face, but Jessica’s back stiffened and she listened intently; then she thrust the receiver toward me like it had grown hot. “You take it.”

  At first I couldn’t understand who it was. The words were fast and garbled, hysterical, even. “Slow down,” Walker said from downstairs. “I can’t understand you.”

  “They’ve arrested ’em.” Clarinda’s voice was an octave higher than usual. “We gotta do somethin’. Maynard and Selena are both in jail down in Orlando.”

  “How do you know?” I blurted without bothering to announce I was on the line.

  “I’m down at your house bringing back the tablecloths and dishes I borried for Friday night’s party, and I answered the phone. Maynard only got one call, and you weren’t here.”

  How was I to know I should hurry home from church so friends could call to tell me they’d been put in jail?

  “Tell Mama what you just told me.” Walker didn’t even complain that I’d butted in.

  “Police came to their hotel room this morning around eight, poundin’ on the door. They weren’t even up yet—it was their wedding night, remember? Said they’d gotten a tip about drugs being smuggled, and they’d found ’em up under the fenders of their car.”

  I untangled pronouns as she went. “Drugs?” I more breathed than said the word. In my five months as a magistrate I’d had to learn to spell the names of drugs I never knew or wanted to know existed. What used to be a trickle was now spreading up from Florida faster than Noah’s flood. However—

  “Maynard doesn’t use drugs,” I snapped, then added, “I don’t think.” Who knew for sure, in these strange days? I had gone cold all over.

  “ ’Co’rse he doesn’t. How can you even think such a thing? And Selena a nurse. Somebody planted ’em. I wouldn’t have said they had an enemy in the world, but you never can tell where the forces of darkness will strike next. What we gonna do?” Like a diver on a board, her voice rose on the last word, then plunged.

  “Do they have a lawyer?” Walker asked.

  “Not yet. I told you, Maynard on
ly got one call, and he didn’t know who to call except you folks. And then your mama wasn’t even here.” She paused for the reproach to sink in. “They haven’t had a bite to eat, and they won’t let him talk to Selena—he’s fit to be tied.”

  Maynard wasn’t the only one.

  “Let me talk to Walker a minute, then call you right back. Stay there.”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

  I hurried downstairs, where Walker was explaining to Joe Riddley and Cindy what was going on. I collapsed onto the sofa beside my husband and took his hand. “We can’t tell Hubert,” was the first thing he said. “His heart still isn’t strong.”

  “At least now we know why Skell was so upset when Skye sold that car,” I muttered. “He’d hidden drugs in it.”

  “I don’t believe Skell is selling drugs,” Joe Riddley insisted.

  “You think Maynard is?”

  He kept shaking his head. “I don’t know what to think. Or even how to think.” I knew what he meant. I felt so sick right that minute that somebody ought have called me an ambulance—except nobody else in the room looked well enough to make the call.

  Joe Riddley’s eyes asked a silent question. I nodded and said, “You need to go to Orlando, Walker. We’ll pay for your plane ticket and their bail. This is just damnable. And don’t everybody look so shocked,” I added. “It’s exactly the right word for this situation.”

  “Sure it is,” Cindy hurried to agree.

  The way Walker’s lips were twitching, he wanted to say something else—probably related to times when he’d used similar words and had his mouth washed out with soap. “How soon can you leave?” I asked, to forestall him.

  “As soon as I can pack a few things. But I’ll drive. I’ll get there sooner than if I have to drive all the way to Atlanta, park, get through security, and catch a flight. And I’ve got a college buddy who’s a lawyer in Jacksonville. I’ll give him a call on the way down and see if he knows lawyers in Orlando.”

  “Pull off to call,” I reminded him. I hate it when people drive and talk. “Anything we can do for you while you’re gone?”

  Walker skewed his eyes toward his wife. “Do you and the kids want to come?”

  She opened her mouth, but Joe Riddley spoke first. “This won’t be a vacation, son.”

  “I agree.” Cindy went over and put a hand on Walker’s arm. “You go down and do what has to be done. We’ll be fine here. Mac and Pop will take care of us.” She gave us a brave smile. I had never been prouder or happier to have her for my daughter-in-law.

  “Where are you going, Daddy?” Jessica stood in the doorway. None of us knew how long she’d been there.

  “I have to go down to Orlando for a day or two.”

  “Without us? You’re going to Disney World without us?” Her voice rose in disbelief.

  “I’m not going to Disney World, honey. I have to go on business.”

  “Maynard’s in jail down there,” I explained. She’d already heard enough to need to know the rest. “Your daddy has to go help him get out.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Nothing. The police just think he did.”

  Her eyes narrowed. With both hands on her hips, she turned back to him. “Don’t you dare go to Disney World without us. You hear me?”

  Walker guffawed. Cindy covered her mouth with one hand and emitted what sounded to me like a snort. Joe Riddley’s shoulders shook, he laughed so hard. “Honey,” he asked her, “did anybody ever tell you you’re the spittin’ image of your Me-mama when you’re mad?”

  Her face grew pink with indignation. “Don’t be silly, Pop. Me-mama’s old.” She turned back to Walker, hands on her hips. “What are you going to do to help Maynard?” She made it more of a demand than a question.

  The rest of them were still grinning like dogs who’ve spotted dinner.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “Your daddy will get down there and straighten everything out.”

  Jessica believed me. I wished I did.

  Walker and Cindy went up to pack, and Joe Riddley challenged Jessica to a game of checkers. I slipped into the kitchen where I’d left my pocketbook and called Isaac James on my cell phone. I called his cell phone, too, because if I remembered correctly, Chief Muggins was at the station this afternoon and Ike was home.

  When we’d exchanged the prerequisite greetings a Southern phone call requires, I told him the bad news. “That car Maynard bought Friday was picked up in Orlando this morning with drugs under the fenders.”

  He groaned. “You tryin’ to make me feel worse than I do, Judge?”

  “Why? I thought you’d like to know.”

  “What I know is, I gave Skell MacDonald a speeding ticket on Friday night and let him drive off into the night, with his daddy dead. The chief already wants my hide for that. Now you tell me the car Skell was so worked up over was stuffed with drugs, and you wonder why you’ve ruined my day? Because this is the one thing we’ve been missing in this case: a good reason for Skell MacDonald to kill his daddy.”

  “It wasn’t Skell,” I protested. “He wouldn’t—”

  Isaac’s words sent a chill to the pit of my stomach. “Don’t let your feelings override your good sense, Judge. Chances are about a thousand to one that he did.”

  13

  By the time Joe Riddley and I headed home, thick gray clouds had moved in again and trees were being whipped to a frenzy by a wind with icy edges. I was so busy hugging my coat around me in the car and waiting for the heater to kick in, I didn’t notice at first that Joe Riddley was heading in the wrong direction. “Honey,” I asked tactfully when I realized where we were, “where the dickens are you going?”

  “Swinging by MacDonald Motors to be sure everything’s okay.”

  Maybe he was clairvoyant, because just as we got there, we saw Laura’s Taurus in the lot and Laura herself walking toward the front door. She wore a navy pantsuit with a white turtleneck, and carried her briefcase as if this were any old workday.

  Joe Riddley pulled in beside the Taurus and opened his door. “She oughtn’t to be working on Sunday. Her daddy wouldn’t like it.” He started toward the door at a lope. “Laura? Laura.”

  After my recent conversation with Isaac, I wanted to see Laura about as much as I wanted to see my oral surgeon, but what could I do but follow the ornery old coot?

  Laura turned, surprised but with a welcoming smile. “Hey, Mac. Hey, Joe Riddley.” The wind gusted around the corner as she fumbled with her keys. I shivered, and Joe Riddley rubbed his hands to warm them.

  “What’s the matter with you, coming to work on Sunday?” he fussed. “Your daddy would paddle you.”

  Laura gave him a sad smile as she turned the key in the lock. “He sure would, and I won’t make it a habit. But I had to get out of the house for a little while. It’s full of people. Besides, I need to count the money in the safe and get it in the night deposit box, because we’re closing tomorrow, too.” She held the door wide and invited, “Since you’re here, won’t you stay for a cup of coffee? I was going to make me some.” She added to Joe Riddley, “We’ve got a new can of Danish cookies.” Joe Riddley was partial to Danish cookies.

  Before I could protest that we’d just eaten, he’d said, “That would be real nice,” and followed her. They both headed for a little alcove at the back of the showroom where there was a coffeepot and a sink.

  What could I do but follow them?

  While she put the coffee on to brew, I asked, “How’s your mother?”

  She answered while she filled the pot with water. “Better now. Skell finally called around eight last night. Wanted me to go over and feed his ferret.”

  Relief and fear came out of my mouth as anger. “Where in the Sam Hill is he?”

  “I wish I knew. He was on his cell phone, and the call got dropped almost as soon as I answered. I expected him to call back, but he didn’t, then all circuits were busy, and finally his phone rang and rang and he didn’t answer.” Her voi
ce was discouraged.

  “Did you tell him about your daddy?”

  “I didn’t get a chance. When I answered, he said, real fast, ‘Hey, Laura, I’m out of town and I forgot about Marvin. Go feed—’ That’s when we got cut off.”

  “And he didn’t call back? How could he be so thoughtless?”

  Laura shrugged as she measured coffee. “The worst part was, Mama got mad with me for not making him tell me where he was.”

  “I’ll go see her a little later.”

  “Wait until tomorrow.” She pulled out the cookies from an upper cabinet. “Like I said before, the house is full of people today. Gran, Grandy, and Uncle Jack and his family arrived this morning, and everybody who wasn’t there yesterday has dropped by this afternoon. It’s a real zoo.” Laura never had liked crowds of people unless they were in the stands and she on a playing field with a fence in between.

  When the coffee was done, Laura looked around, puzzled. “Where . . . ? Oh, I know. The mugs are in Daddy’s office.” Customers got Styrofoam cups, but friends used “Skye blue” mugs with a little white Model T on them. “I’ll be right back.”

  Generally, Laura had the temperament of a cow I raised as a 4-H project back in fourth grade. My daddy used to say if a tornado picked up that cow, she’d go on chewing her cud, waiting to be set down. Laura had that same gift for taking life pretty much as it came, so we were startled to hear her yell. She ran back with eyes big as salad plates, shaking so she could hardly gasp, “We’ve been robbed.”

  She turned and stumbled back to the office with Joe Riddley right behind her.

  I followed, of course. What else could I do?

  There’s a reason I keep asking “what else could I do?” About the time I reached Skye’s office, it occurred to me I’d better start practicing what I was going to say to Charlie Muggins when he demanded, “And what were you doing on the scene of this crime, Judge Yarbrough?”

  A closet door in one corner of Skye’s office stood open. The door to a safe at the back of the closet also stood open. Laura went to the safe and pulled out a sheaf of papers and a little white box. “There’s not a penny of cash in here.”