Outside the window, something crashed.
“That sounded like a car.” I meant to jump to my feet, but I’d been kneeling, and at my age you don’t jump the way you used to. My knees were stiff, my legs tottery.
“Marilee must have hit a tree.” Gwen Ellen said it with no emotion whatsoever. I looked down at her, and she was smiling. “I laced her coffee with half a bottle of sleeping pills. I got a new prescription filled this morning.”
The tea in my stomach rose up in protest. “Oh, honey.” I pressed one hand to my lips, feeling very sick indeed. “You’ll never get away with that. You know I’ll have to tell somebody.”
She reached up and stroked my cheek with tender love. “I knew that, MacLaren. That’s why I put the rest in our tea.”
27
I staggered across the room and bent to grab my pocketbook for the cell phone, but my battery was dead. I’d forgotten and left it on the whole time I was sick in bed. I turned toward the kitchen and hoped I could make it that far.
“Don’t leave me,” Gwen Ellen said sweetly, laying her head against the back of her chair. “Sit down and wait. We won’t feel any pain. We’ll just drift off and sleep forever.”
Gwen Ellen had no notion how nasty a person is who has drifted off to that kind of sleep. She would never expect to be found with her bowels and bladder emptied into her chair. She probably expected Skye to meet her on the other side and wake her with a kiss.
I didn’t believe in Prince Charming; I believed in God. “Help me. Help me,” I muttered as I lurched toward the kitchen.
“Don’t go, MacLaren,” she whimpered. “Don’t leave me alone. It’s getting dark.”
My own eyes were blurring, and I wasn’t sure I could speak. It took three tries for me to punch in 911, and I could barely whisper, “Help, help, help,” when somebody answered.
I leaned over the sink and thrust my finger as far down my throat as I could get it. I gagged, but nothing came out. I’ve never been one to throw up when I’m sick.
What was it Mama used when I ate those pokeberries?
Mustard. I saw the picture in my mind’s eye. Dry mustard. In water.
My legs were spaghetti, so I propped myself against the counter and used my elbow as a crutch, opening upper cabinets as I went. My ears were rushing, and the world was growing dim.
I found the dry mustard and emptied it into a glass by the sink. I didn’t worry if the glass was clean; I had to summon all my energy to turn on the tap. I stirred with a knife from the drainer and downed the entire glass in one long swallow, then stood by the sink and waited for half an eternity.
I felt myself slipping to the floor when my stomach began to heave. With my last reserves of energy, I hauled myself against the sink and flopped over into it. That’s the only time in my life I ever thanked God for the ability to vomit.
I felt only a little better. How much of the drug had entered my system?
I heard a siren wail down the street, turn into the drive, and stop.
“Oh, God,” I groaned. They had stopped for Marilee. They didn’t know we were there.
Again I dragged myself to the telephone. This time I had to sit before I could punch in 911. Three numbers were far too many. Two rings far too long. When the voice came, I croaked hoarsely, “Please, another ambulance. Inside the house. Two of us—”
That’s when everything went black.
“Come on, Little Bit. Come on. You can do it.” Joe Riddley sounded like he thought I ought to be up and doing something, but I was far too weary.
“I can’t.” I turned my head away.
“That’s my girl! Come on. Wake up!” He shook me.
Joe Riddley weighs twice what I weigh. He probably thought he was shaking gently, but my whole head rattled. I could feel my brains jiggling around in there. “Stop,” I grumbled. “That hurts.”
“Open your eyes. You can do it.”
“Don’t wanna.” He didn’t realize my eyelids had been attached to my eyes with glue. If I tried to open them, I’d pull out my eyeballs.
He bent down so close I could feel his whiskers on my cheek. First he gently kissed each eye. Then he took his finger and raised one lid. It went up slick as spit. “Hey. You in there?”
“Yeah. I’m in here.” I just didn’t know where here was. I didn’t have a clue where I was until I recognized the color of the walls. I’d seen enough of that particular shade of pink when Joe Riddley was in the hospital. Everything came back like an enormous wave, knocking the breath out of me.
“Gwen Ellen? Marilee?”
He shook his head. “They didn’t make it. When you feel better, you can tell us what went on. Marilee crashed into a tree and died instantly. Gwen Ellen was found on her sunroom with an empty pot of tea.”
Empty? She must have drunk another cup after I left.
Hot tears squeezed through my closed lids and ran down the sides of my face. Joe Riddley gently swabbed them with his finger. “Don’t cry, Little Bit. Don’t cry.” I could tell he was getting distressed, but I couldn’t stop crying. I cried for Gwen Ellen. I cried for Skye. I even cried for Marilee. Underneath the barracuda suit was a plain little girl who wanted more cards than life had dealt her, and looked for them in the wrong deck.
Joe Riddley got up and left; then I felt a wet washcloth flop onto my face. “Stop crying,” he said urgently. “Stop it.”
I pushed away the washcloth. “I’ve stopped. Get me a towel.”
I dozed on and off for the next twenty-four hours. That afternoon, I knew when Ridd’s wife Martha stopped by just before she went on duty. She squeezed my hand and whispered, “Thanks for sticking around. We all need you, you know.”
I knew when Walker and Cindy came, because I could smell her expensive perfume and his aftershave. Walker leaned over my bed and muttered, “So help me, if she doesn’t stop this detectin’, I’m gonna—”
I opened one eye. “You’re gonna do what?”
He grinned a bit shakily. “I don’t know, but it will be terrible.”
Cindy set a gorgeous white cattleya orchid on my win dowsill and bent to give me a hug. I reached up and stroked her soft cheek. “Hey, honey. Good to see you.” I was moved to see tears in her eyes. But I fell into a doze before they left.
I was surprised the next day after dark, when my room was lit only by lights from the hall, to open my eyes and see Laura standing in my doorway. “Come in.” I held out my hand. She clutched it and slipped into the chair by my bed.
“Are you all right? Really?” Her voice was gruffer than usual, and her eyes swimming.
“A little rocky still, but I’m going to be fine. I’m so sorry about your mother.”
She shook her head and bit her lower lip so hard I feared she would draw blood. In the dimness, I saw tears shimmering in her eyes. “I don’t know what happened, Mac. Nobody does. Will you tell me?”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to figure out how to tell it with the least expenditure of energy. “She killed your daddy. He—” At that minute I made a decision I have never regretted. “He got out to look at the land. She was sliding over the seat to join him and her foot hit the gas. She was so upset, she didn’t know what to do. So she went home and took a sleeping pill, and when she woke up, she had forgotten what she’d done. When she remembered—” I had to stop for more air. “She couldn’t live with that on her conscience.” Finally I could open my eyes. Eyes are the windows of the soul. They proclaim when we are lying. “She loved him very much,” I whispered. That part, at least, was true.
I’d have to figure out later what to tell Isaac and Charlie, because both Gwen Ellen and Marilee had been full of sleeping pills. But I’d think of something. I don’t believe in lying, but I also believe grown-ups have a responsibility to carry the burdens of the young. I’d clean up Skye and Gwen Ellen’s mess and do my best to keep their children from being contaminated by it for the rest of their lives.
“I know she loved him.” Laur
a’s face was grave and her voice thick with tears. “I just wish she’d told us. Daddy wouldn’t have held it against her. You know he wouldn’t.”
I reached out and touched her cheek as her mother had touched mine. “Are you going to be all right?”
She sighed. “Eventually.” A shadow passed over her face, and I wondered if she, like I, was thinking it sure would have been nice for her to have some broad shoulders to share the load. Shoulders like—
“You doin’ all right?” Ben Bradshaw darkened my door and ducked as he came in to keep from hitting his head on the lintel. He had his hands clasped tight in front of him. I suspected visiting the sick wasn’t something he did very often.
“I’m going to be fine,” I assured him weakly. “I figured the best way to see all my friends was to lie around a day or two and let you all come to me.”
A smile flickered on his lips and even touched his eyes.
“Sit down,” I suggested, waving him to my other visitor’s chair. “What’s this I hear about you desertin’ us in our hour of need?”
He frowned. “I’m not . . . I need to . . .”
“Laura sure needs you right now.” I ignored Laura’s gasp and frown. “Skell’s not going to be much help. I wouldn’t be surprised if he left Hopemore before long.”
Laura nodded. “You know what he wants to do?” She talked fast, and with an enthusiasm I knew she didn’t feel. Anything to shut me up. “He wants to go to law school. He said he wants to defend people who are wrongfully imprisoned, and to prosecute drug lords.”
I wasn’t clear how he planned to be both a prosecutor and a defense attorney, but we didn’t need to settle that at the moment. Laura was babbling on. “He says I can run the place and we’ll pay me a salary. And you know, I think he’ll be a good lawyer. He’s certainly a motormouth.”
“He’s not the only one,” I teased her. Then I gave her an appraising look. “Have you ever considered selling your service department? Looks like if somebody else owned that—somebody you trusted to keep up the high standards Skye set and maybe even take them a little farther—”
That’s when I ran out of steam, but it didn’t matter. Laura looked at Ben, and Ben looked at Laura. I saw the first shy shoots of the seed I’d planted spring up between them.
“I don’t know anything about running the service department,” Laura said thoughtfully. “Daddy did that—and Ben here.”
“I always liked Hopemore,” Ben acknowledged. “It’s a nice little town.”
She stood. “We can talk about that later. Mac looks worn out. Go to sleep,” she said softly, squeezing my hand. “We’ll check on you again tomorrow.”
They walked out the door, a tall brave young woman with a heavy load to carry and a pair of broad, strong shoulders beside her.
The next morning I had three sets of visitors between naps. Selena and Maynard came in, bringing enough sunshine between them to supply our town’s needs for a month. “Not exactly your run-of-the mill honeymoon,” I told them.
Maynard grinned. “But not one we’re likely to forget.”
They didn’t stay long—she was due in the emergency room and he had a shipment of antiques coming in from Charleston.
“I’m glad your night in jail didn’t permanently scar you,” I said weakly as they got ready to leave.
“No, but we’re gonna volunteer in your church’s prison ministry,” Selena told me. “When I think of the sad stories some of those women told me . . .”
I smiled. “I’m so proud to know you, honey.”
My next visitors were the whole Garcia family, bearing an enormous bouquet of red roses. “The judge dismissed all charges,” Mr. Garcia told me happily. “And would you believe our restaurant has not suffered while I was away? My wife and Rosita here have kept it going just fine, and last night I think everybody in town came to eat dinner and tell me how sorry they were about the mistake. I am famous in Hopemore!” He beamed at me.
His wife pushed him aside and smiled shyly down at me. “When you get well, come to eat. Dinner for you and your husband, on the house.”
Rosa gave me one of her brilliant smiles. “And I want you to come address my class on how to be a magistrate. Will you?”
“I’d be happy to,” I informed her. But I could feel myself slipping into a doze again.
When I woke, I saw sunlight streaming through my window, but my spirits were lost somewhere in stormy clouds. Everything that had happened seemed to pour down on me like the rain had poured over Hopemore that dreadful week. Tears started sliding down my cheeks.
“Looks like you need this,” said a deep voice at the door. Isaac James crossed the room and handed me an odd-shaped package wrapped in white tissue paper. “It’s a blue-bird of happiness, so my wife tells me.”
I unwrapped a small bird molded of deep blue glass. The sun poured through him and made a river on my wall. I set it gently beside the bed where it would hold the light.
“I could use some happiness,” I admitted as Ike lowered his bulk into my visitor’s chair.
“You ready to tell me what happened over at MacDonald’s?”
I hesitated. “What do you already know?”
“Sleeping pills in Ms. Muller, Mrs. MacDonald, you, the tea, and the coffee, and an empty bottle on the counter that had been full a couple of hours earlier when it left the pharmacy. What I don’t know is who put them in the tea and coffee. I’m betting on Ms. Muller—she always did have a temper. But I’d better warn you what Chief Muggins says: he’d originally figured Mrs. MacDonald for the killer, but now he thinks it peculiar that you were the only one who survived.”
I sighed. “If you’ll promise not to let it leave this room, I’m going to tell you exactly what happened. You and I will have to live the rest of our lives with the lowering knowledge that for once in his life, Charlie Muggins was right.”
I got home Wednesday in time for dinner. As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, I could see Clarinda was fixing to have a conniption.
“Who put ants between your sheets?” I demanded, collapsing into my chair.
“Not to worry. Not to worry,” Joe assured me from the curtain rod.
I looked up at him in surprise. “Did Joe Riddley leave him in here while he came to get me?” Ever since Joe came to live with us, Clarinda had refused to “parrot-sit.”
She flapped one hand. “He’s no bother. But Miss MacLaren, you won’t believe what those boys are doin’.”
“Which boys are those?” I laid my cheek against the hard cool table. The doctor said it could take me a couple more days to fully wake up. It wasn’t just the sleeping pills. Between the cold and the week I’d just had, I was pure-T exhausted. He recommended a week in the Caribbean. I was planning to work on that.
Meanwhile, Clarinda stood over me like a dark angel of judgment. “First, Maynard’s gone and bought himself another expensive car, just like the first one, except green this time. He don’t need no fancy car. And that Skell—you know what he’s fixin’ to do? He’s gonna leave his sister and go up to Athens to become a lawyer. She needs him. He could live here and commute. . . .”
“He doesn’t want to commute,” I informed her drowsily. “He wants to go somewhere exciting where things happen.”
“Well, he sure won’t find that in Hopemore,” she agreed. “Not much ever happens ’round here. You look bushed. You want me to fix you a nice cup of tea?”
I shuddered. “No, Clarinda. I want a nice cold Co-cola. In an unopened can.”
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Who Left That Body in the Rain? Page 27
