Who Left That Body in the Rain?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Ben was also watching the family, but since I couldn’t see his face, I had no clue to what he was thinking. I wished somebody would comfort Laura. Her shoulders shook, and she kept lifting a wad of tissues to dab her eyes and nose. Several times I saw her hand creep to the side of her neck, and knew she was reaching for a strand of hair that was no longer there. Gwen Ellen didn’t seem to notice, but her grandfather put his arm around her and held her close.

  At five minutes past ten, after the ushers had already closed the swinging narthex doors and just as the funeral director was moving in from the side to close the casket, Nicole opened the sanctuary door.

  She was dressed in a short black dress and black stockings, but she paused at the door like a bride. A woman in a black skirt and sweater stood behind her, half a head shorter than Nicole and twenty years older, with her slight plumpness distributed in all the right places. Her strawberry-blond hair was as curly as Nicole’s. I’d have been willing to bet neither had ever needed a perm in their lives. Nicole’s lashes were thick with mascara that had run from crying, but the older woman wore nothing but powder over a sprinkling of freckles that gave her the look of an impish child. She had a friendly mouth, a pert little nose, and grave blue eyes, more worried than sad.

  Nicole seemed unconscious that hundreds of people were watching as she took the woman’s arm and led her down the aisle straight toward the casket. The funeral director hovered, uncertain whether to shoo them back or let them come. Neither woman noticed him. Nicole’s attention was all on Skye, the woman’s on her. The director dithered and darted a couple of steps forward, a couple back. Miserable, he looked toward the family pew, but only Skye’s father noticed his dilemma. Mr. MacDonald turned to see what he was looking at, then waved for him to let the women alone.

  They walked to the front of the church and stood looking down at Skye, as so many had before them. Then, instead of turning to walk away, Nicole burst into tears. She didn’t weep quietly, she boohooed. Loud heartbroken wails rose over the soft organ music. Her shoulders shook. At last she clutched her stomach, bent over, and sobbed like Gwen Ellen had been afraid she would do.

  The older woman tugged her arm to draw her away. Nicole jerked free angrily. The woman spoke and pulled again. Nicole stood like she was a permanent part of the church decor, bawling.

  Laura would have gotten up, but her grandfather restrained her. Gwen Ellen’s face was desperate and pale as she looked toward the funeral director, begging him to do something. He looked toward the preacher, begging him to do something. The preacher looked down at Joe Riddley on the pallbearers’ pew up front. Joe Riddley got up, took Nicole by the shoulders, and turned her around. From his expression, everybody knew he’d rather be anywhere than escorting a weeping woman up that long aisle. But between his arm around Nicole’s shoulders and the woman’s firm hand on her arm on the other side, they began to make headway.

  Nicole continued to wail. Her blue eyes were wild, her mouth twisted in grief. She boohooed so loudly that the organist started playing “Amazing Grace” at the rousing volume and with the fervor usually reserved for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Pretty soon we’d be keeping up with the Episcopalians.

  Joe Riddley marched up that aisle with sturdy determination, but when they reached my pew, he grabbed my arm so hard it hurt. Short of making a scene, I had no choice but to go with them.

  As our awkward little recessional reached the narthex doors, Nicole turned and gave the casket a pitiful look. Then she uttered a piercing wail. “Oh, Daddy. Daddy!”

  23

  I shoved Nicole through the swinging doors. As the others followed, I turned to make sure the doors closed. That’s why I bumped smack into Chief Muggins, coming out with us.

  The older woman gathered Nicole in her arms. “Hush,” she said in shocked tones. “Calm down, honey. This won’t do. It won’t do at all.”

  When Nicole continued to sob, the woman shook her, hard. Nicole sniffed, hiccuped, and blinked several times. “I’m sorry, Mama. I just can’t stand to go off and leave him in there.” She opened her mouth to wail again.

  Her mother covered her mouth with a freckled hand with short slim fingers. “Hush.” She apologized to Joe Riddley, Chief Muggins, and me over her shoulder. “I knew we shouldn’t have come, but Nicole insisted.”

  Chief Muggins stepped up and flashed his badge. “I couldn’t help overhearing what the little lady said as she came out just now. Is she claiming that Mr. MacDonald was her father?”

  “He is.” Nicole lifted her chin, and her wet eyes flashed.

  “And I just knew him four months. Four months out of my whole life.”

  “Hush,” said her mother again. She turned a faint pink under her freckles. “You are embarrassin’ me to death.”

  “I need to get back in there,” Joe Riddley told me in a soft, urgent voice.

  “Go on. You aren’t any use here. Can you take Chief Muggins with you?” It sounded more like “Cad ju take Jeef . . .” because my nose was so stuffy, but I’m not going to translate the rest. I hung back, clutching my wad of tissues and keeping my germs to myself—although for one wild minute I thought about grabbing Chief Muggins and breathing all over him.

  Joe Riddley bent and spoke in the police chief’s ear. “Why don’t you wait and talk to her later, when she’s not so upset?”

  Chief Muggins shrugged him away. “I want to make it real clear that we won’t tolerate folks slandering a good man in this town.”

  Joe Riddley looked at me. I nodded toward the sanctuary door. With relief, he made his escape.

  Chief Muggins pulled a notebook out of his pocket. “Your names, please?”

  The woman’s voice was soft, but clear. “I’m Maisie Shandy. This is my daughter, Nicole. I’m sorry we caused a disturbance.” She held her head with dignity I had to respect.

  Chief Muggins ignored her apology. “Residence?”

  She gave an address in Augusta.

  “And what is your relationship to the deceased?”

  Maisie lifted her chin. “None, at the present. He was my daughter’s father.”

  “Do you claim that you and Mr. MacDonald were ever married?”

  Her voice was calm and firm. “No, we weren’t.”

  He swung to Nicole. “How long have you been in Hopemore, and what was your reason for being here?”

  “Four months. I worked for him,” Nicole said. She sniffed, and added proudly, “I was his secretary.”

  “He know who you were?”

  “Of course not,” her mother answered for her. “She told me she wanted to get to know him, so I told her she could take the job but not to tell him who she was.”

  Chief Muggins shut his notebook and put it back in his pocket. “I don’t know who you all are, but I know your type. Find out that a rich man has died, then show up claiming to be his fancy family. You think if you make a lot of trouble, the real family will buy you off.” Ms. Shandy opened her mouth to protest, but Chief Muggins rolled on like a bulldozer. “We won’t stand for that around here. Go back where you came from, and don’t let me see either one of you again or there’ll be trouble. You understand me?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and marched back into the sanctuary, a general who had mopped up one particular battlefield.

  “Don’t mind him. He’s an old windbag,” I told Ms. Shandy.

  I could have used some wind myself. The stuffing had been knocked plumb out of me. Skye? And this woman? But now that I knew to look, I saw that Nicole had Skye’s coloring and the big nose that had been the bane of Laura’s childhood. She could, of course, be just another large-nosed tall blonde, but she also had Laura’s high forehead and “Skye blue” eyes.

  Poor Gwen Ellen. Poor all of us.

  I was feeling a little light-headed about then, and my knees were getting wobbly. Maybe that was my cold, but maybe it was because it had occurred to me that Nicole could easily have killed Skye. She could have called him after Gwen Ellen was in b
ed, arranged to meet him, and ridden with him out to the deserted road—a private place to talk. Whether she could have driven over him in cold blood I did not know. Maybe I could find out.

  I pointed to short pews at the back of the narthex where old folks and small children usually waited for their families to finish talking after church. Nicole’s mama helped her toward one, and she collapsed onto the red cushion, sobbing and gasping for breath. Skye’s younger daughter had certainly inherited his sense of drama.

  I tottered after them and took a pew across the narrow aisle. “I’m MacLaren Yarbrough,” I told the woman. “A friend of the MacDonalds.”

  “I’m Maisie Shandy,” she said again. “Pleased to meet you, but I wish it was under better circumstances.”

  She put out her hand for me to shake, but I shook my head. “I’ve got a terrible cold, so I don’t want to touch you.”

  “You know Nicole?” She patted her daughter on the back. Nicole didn’t lift her head.

  “Oh, yes. Last time I saw her, she had just cut Laura MacDonald’s hair.”

  “Nicole’s real good with hair,” her mother bragged. “When she finished her trainin’, she had offers from several places in Augusta—but she wanted to come on down here.”

  “I wanted to get to know Daddy.” Nicole lifted her tear-drenched face and looked at me through flower eyes with blue centers and spiky lashes for petals.

  Maisie had the grace to look embarrassed. “I wish I hadn’t ever told her who he was. But she kept beggin’ and beggin’, until she plumb wore me down.” She sighed. “At least you never told him who you were.” She added, anxiously, “Did you, honey?”

  Nicole stood. “I need to go to the bathroom. Do you know where it is, Judge Yarbrough?”

  “Down those stairs, then turn to the right.”

  “Judge?” Her mother had noticed the word, so I explained about being a magistrate while Nicole clomped down the wooden stairs.

  After that, her mother sighed. “I know you’re wonderin’ who the dickens I am, and”—she lifted both slim freckled hands, then let them drop in her lap—“everything.”

  “I don’t need to know a thing. It’s none of my business,” I said—because Mama had raised me to be polite. The truth was, I was dying to know who the dickens she was and “everything.”

  She looked toward the swinging doors. “Nicole has made it the whole town’s business. Somebody ought to know what really happened, in case wild stories start. And we can prove it, if that sheriff tries to make trouble.”

  “He’s not the sheriff, he’s the police chief,” I corrected her, “and making trouble is what he does best. But I’ll do what I can to put a lid on it.”

  Her beginning was unexpected. “Skye and I never meant a thing to each other, and that’s the truth. If his wife needs to hear it, I hope you’ll tell her. I used to work for a car dealer up in Augusta, and I’d see Skye when he came up on business. He was always real friendly and everything, so we’d laugh and talk, but that’s all there was until one night it was closin’ time when he got ready to go. He asked if I’d like to get a bite to eat before he drove home.” She bit her lip and looked at her hands. “I knew he was married, and I was going steady, but my boyfriend was a sailor and he’d been away on sea duty five months. I figured, ‘What the heck? It’s just dinner.’ Skye took me to a real nice place, and while we were eatin’, he talked about his wife—how much he loved her, and how pretty she was. Then he started goin’ on about how she was real sick right then and had to stay in bed all the time. Now you and I both know that was a line, but I was nineteen and hadn’t learned all the lessons life still had to teach me. One thing led to another, and after that he started comin’ up around one night a week. But we were both just lonely. We weren’t in love.”

  She looked at me and waited for me to show I understood—maybe, even, condoned. I didn’t. Nineteen is old enough to have common sense and morals, and loneliness is seldom a fatal condition. I nodded just to move the story along.

  “I wasn’t careful enough, obviously. When I knew Nicole was on the way, I was frantic. Skye was great, though. He said we needed to stop seeing each other, but for me to open a bank account and send him the deposit slips, and he’d put in enough to cover my hospital expenses, then he’d send a check every month until the child was eighteen. He did, too, even after I wrote him I was married and didn’t need his checks anymore.” She hesitated, then added, “I didn’t marry the sailor. I married Jack Shandy when Nicole was eighteen months old. He adopted her, and he’s always been her daddy. He’s never made a speck of difference between her and our other two.”

  “Have you been ill? Nicole told Skye she needed a job because her mother was ill and she had to help support her family.”

  Maisie gave me a rueful smile. “Nicole is always makin’ up stories. The truth is, she was just dyin’ to meet her daddy. I never meant to tell her about him, but when she turned fourteen, she pestered the livin’ daylights out of me to at least know who he was. She said I might die or somethin’ and she’d have no idea how to get her father’s medical history in case she developed a rare disease. Oh, she’s a smart one. So one night when Skye was doin’ a car commercial on television and it was just me and her in the house, I pointed and said, ‘There he is. That’s your daddy.’ I unleashed a monster. Have you ever said anything you’d give your right arm to take back?”

  “Several times,” I conceded. I couldn’t help liking this woman, and could see why Skye had, too. I squelched that disloyal thought and concentrated on the rest of Maisie’s story.

  “That’s how I felt about tellin’ Nicole about Skye. Especially since she kept pesterin’ me after that to know more and more. At last, I told her almost everythin’. I never dreamed she’d come down here to find him, though, as soon as she finished cosmetology school. She was gone all day, but I figured she was lookin’ for work. When she came home and said she’d come here and gotten herself a job in his dealership, I was sick with worry.”

  “You didn’t need to worry. He liked me. He liked me a lot.”

  We hadn’t heard Nicole coming back. She’d taken off her thick-soled sandals and come up in stocking feet. I hoped she was being considerate of the funeral, and not a sneak. She stood glaring down at us. “You were wrong about what I told him, too. I told him right off who I was, and I said I didn’t want anything from him or his family. I just wanted to get to know him, to see what I’d missed. It was him who thought up that story about me working to support my sick mother and her children. He thought that was funny, and said he’d have to have somethin’ to tell Laura, her bein’ in charge of hirin’ and firin’ people. He also said he’d always wanted three children, but his wife couldn’t have any more. I think after a while he’d have told his family who I was, when the time was right.”

  I couldn’t imagine Skye working up that kind of courage, but Nicole stood with lifted chin, a golden tower of faith in Skye’s integrity and good intentions.

  I felt sicker than I had all week.

  In the sanctuary, the organ started playing “For All the Saints, Who From Their Labors Rest.” “The service is almost over,” I warned.

  “We’re goin’.” Maisie grabbed Nicole’s arm and stood.

  Nicole pulled away. “I want to go to the cemetery.”

  “You are goin’ to your place to pack your bags,” her mother told her, “and you are comin’ home with me. Skye’s family doesn’t need you right now.”

  “Laura likes me,” Nicole insisted.

  “That was before you made that scene in there. Now, come on. We’re goin’ home.”

  It was too late. Skye’s casket was already being wheeled through the door. Nicole sank beside her mother and sobbed. Her mother held her as best she could. I sat miserably on the adjacent pew and watched as the pallbearers and family marched behind it. Neither Laura nor Skye’s family noticed me, but Gwen Ellen threw me such a look of sad reproach, you’d have thought I was personally responsible
for Nicole’s existence.

  24

  Walker and Cindy weren’t going to the cemetery, so they offered to run me home. Since I’d left my pocketbook under the pew, I waited until the crowd all came out, left Walker and Cindy talking to friends, and hurried back into the sanctuary. The music had stopped, and the air was settling back to the thick holiness that fills all empty churches on a weekday. Everybody was gone except Marilee Muller, who was staring at the front as if Skye were still there.

  Embarrassed, I crept into the back pew and bent to retrieve my pocketbook, but somebody had kicked it way under. I had to get on my knees to grab it.

  I jumped when I heard her speak. “I am not sorry.” Her voice was soft but urgent. “I am not sorry for one little thing. I have nothing to be sorry for.”

  I grabbed my pocketbook strap and peered over the pew in front, thinking she was talking to me. She was still looking at the front, talking to air.

  Her voice grew louder. “And I’m not going out there to watch her play Queen Bee. That’s all she’s got left. Let her have it.” She sprang to her feet and whirled into the aisle. When she saw me, her eyes widened and she froze.

  “I had to get my pocketbook.” I dangled it from one hand and felt like an utter fool. “I forgot it.” I climbed to my feet and hoped she didn’t hear my knees pop.

  “Oh, Judge Yarbrough.” She gushed as if I were one of her dearest friends, and sank to the cushion of the pew in front of mine like a graceful panther. “May I speak with you for a minute? I just have to talk to somebody, and you are such a sympathetic person.”

  Where on earth did she get that idea?

  “Besides”—she tucked her long legs underneath her and turned sideways, resting her arm over the back so she could face me—“I need some advice.”

  I am a sucker for people asking my advice. It happens so seldom. So I sat down, wiggled to get comfortable, and prepared to help in any way I could. She had, by far, the more uncomfortable position, but managed to look glamorous even at that angle.