Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man? (17 page)

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Authors: Patricia Sprinkle

BOOK: Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man?
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Then I remembered that his owner was already killed, and I felt so bad I gave him another bun. I left him perched on a ladder-back chair, muttering parrot obscenities to himself.
13
I stared in dismay at my kitchen. Morning sunlight streamed through the window over the sink, which was full of broken flowerpots, loose dirt, and fresh herbs that used to decorate the sill. Plastic containers and lids Clarinda had left in the drainer littered the floor. A red potholder dangled from the top of the refrigerator. Dish towels were strewn here and there. Clarinda’s blue kitchen sweater was nothing more than a shredded mass of yarn covering the stove. Up near the twelve-foot ceiling, Joe perched on the curtain rod over the sink, a splash of scarlet against the creamy wall, and preened himself like he’d been grooming all night long.
Lulu stood below the sink and barked a warning that as soon as she learned to fly, Joe was dead meat.
“You filthy animal!” I raged. “As if I have nothing better to do than clean up after you.”
“What’sa matter, Little Bit?” Joe Riddley spoke behind me.
I turned in astonishment. “You walked to the kitchen by yourself?”
“Me and my helper here.” He steered the walker through the door.
I’d been too upset the night before to realize he’d made it all the way to the backyard alone. Now I found myself with the same jumbled emotions a mama feels when her infant first toddles across a room. Of course I was delighted Joe Riddley could walk by himself. But what if he wandered off, or went somewhere and couldn’t make it back?
Sometimes life got too much for my legs. I sank into the nearest chair. Lulu pranced nervously at my feet, waiting for orders. With me out of the way, Joe Riddley finally saw the kitchen—and Joe. He laughed so hard he had to push himself over and take the chair beside mine. “Hello, Joe! No point pleadin’ innocent. You left an evidence trail.” He pointed to the overturned sugar bowl and large prints in the mess.
Joe flew straight to his shoulder. Joe Riddley gently stroked his bright red chest. “Always wanted a bird. Mama kept sayin’ no.”
“Your wife says no, too.” I picked up dish towels, then reached for a sponge to clear the table. Joe squawked his displeasure.
“She’s destroying your masterpiece, isn’t she, feller?” Joe Riddley continued to stroke his bright chest with a large forefinger. Joe picked at something under one wing.
Lulu yipped her displeasure at not getting Joe Riddley’s attention. I bent to pet her, then wiped sugar into my cupped palm. “Have you ever known a dog to make this big a mess in one night?”
Joe lifted his head and gave me a cold stare. “Not to worry. Not to worry.”
Joe Riddley gave me a smug grin. “Ever know a dog who could talk?”
“This bird belongs to the Blaines. It’s going home as soon as I can get Hector over here to pick it up.” I couldn’t rinse the sponge until I cleaned dirt and herbs out of the sink, which involved getting a bucket from the utility room. I went to fetch it, calling over my shoulder, “Heaven only knows what germs that animal has left in this kitchen.”
“Not an animal. Birds are not animals. I don’t think.” Joe Riddley held up his arm and peered closely at the parrot. “Hello, Joe. Why are your cheeks so pink? Are you blushing?”
He was right. Joe’s cheeks were normally white. Today they were bright as a flamingo.
“Blushing with shame for making such a mess.” I finished picking plants and dirt from the sink and rinsed it. Then I rinsed the sugar-coated sponge. As I wrung the sponge, I half wished it was that bird’s neck.
Joe fixed me with one big white eye with a bottomless black pupil. “Hello! Got a burger?”
Joe Riddley laughed. “Get him a cracker, Little Bit. Bird’s hungry.” He drew his log toward him and reached for the pencil. “Feed bird,” he said as he slowly wrote the two words. His sprawling letters were much larger than his handwriting used to be.
“I’m hungry, too,” I said crossly. “Up half the night with you, and now feeding a bird. I don’t even know what they eat.”
“Call Cindy.” I was astonished he could remember that. Our second daughter-in-law looked like a fashion plate, but she grew up with animals.
Fortunately, her family menagerie had included parakeets and cockatoos. “Feed him anything fresh and crunchy,” she told me. “Apples, carrots. Also oatmeal and sunflower seeds.”
Behind her, I heard Walker demanding, “What’s Mama up to now?” so I said a hasty good-bye.
While I was retrieving carrot sticks and broccoli spears left over from the party, Joe spread his wings, flapped them a couple of times, and swooped back up to the curtain rod. In a second, a stream of bird doo streamed down to the sink.
“Get him out of here!” I was shaking with disgust.
“Hey!” Joe Riddley stuck out his arm. “Come down here.” Joe obligingly flew down to the top of his head, then hopped down to his shoulder and walked down his arm. “Wanna be my bird?” It had not occurred to Joe Riddley to ask where Hiram was.
“You are not keeping that bird,” I informed him shortly, cleaning up the latest mess.
“Sic ’em, boy,” Joe urged him.
Joe Riddley put up one fist. “Wanna fight, Little Bit?” He gave me Joe Riddley’s old, normal grin. I turned away. I would
not
soften on this. I didn’t need a bird to clean up after, with all the rest I had to do.
“Here. Eat this.” I held out a carrot stick. Joe arched his neck, then turned away.
“You have to cut it up,” said Joe Riddley, Mr. Ornithologist U.S.A.
When I thumped smaller pieces down on the bare table, Joe Riddley picked up a few and held them on his palm. Joe ate like he hadn’t eaten for a week.
I went to a phone out of earshot to call Hector. After I’d told him how sorry I was about Hiram, I said, “We’ve got Joe. You need to come get him.”
“Wring his neck,” Hector said brutally, making me ashamed I’d thought the same thing a little while ago. “I hate that animal. Messes up the house and uses the whole place like one big toilet. You keep him.” He hung up before I could protest.
I came back to find Sheriff Gibbons and a couple of his men talking to Joe Riddley in the kitchen. Joe Riddley explained, “Sheriff and his men came to help you clean up from the party. Right neighborly, I call it.”
I threw Buster a grateful look over Joe Riddley’s head. He clapped his old friend on the shoulder a couple of seconds before he led his men toward the dining room. I needed to get Joe Riddley and myself fed and ready for church.
Joe Riddley didn’t object when I said Joe had to go to the barn while we were gone. “Birds can’t go to church,” he explained to Joe. “You’ll like the barn. Room to fly. Go to Little Bit.” The bird hopped willingly from his arm to mine, surprising me again how light he was.
The dogs set up a racket as soon as I carried the parrot out on my arm. I half hoped Joe would fly away in terror, but he clung to my arm and taunted the dogs with squawks. When we got to the barn he hopped onto the handlebar of the lawnmower like it was a new kind of perch. I left him looking around to see what kind of mess he could make.
We had a crisis after Joe Riddley got dressed. I couldn’t find his cap. He usually hung it by the kitchen door, but before the party, I’d hung it on the ladder-back chair by his bed. Now, it wasn’t there.
“I can’t go without my cap,” he insisted.
“You don’t need it for church.”
“I need it to”—he searched for the word—“blind my eyes. From the sun.” He sat stubbornly on his chair, waiting for me to find it.
“Shade your eyes,” I corrected him. “And this isn’t Miami in July.” I’d already looked everywhere I could think of, and we were running late.
Suddenly he flapped one hand. “Not to worry.” He sounded like the parrot. “It’s mislaid.”
“Mislaid?” This was the second time in two days he’d used that word, which I couldn’t ever remember him using before.
He explained as if I was the one with an injured brain. “Mislaid means you put it somewhere else and forgot. But now I remember. I gave it to Hiram.”
“Hiram?” I was so startled, I blurted the word loudly. I hoped Buster hadn’t heard me.
I also remembered what was different about Hiram. His cap had been clean.
“Hiram Blaine. You remember him?” Joe Riddley still sounded like I was the one with memory problems. “It was his birthday. He had a dirty cap, so I gave him mine. A present.”
“Hiram climbed the water tank on his birthday, honey, and that was in April.” This could be another of Joe Riddley’s con fabulations, but if so, where did Hiram get that clean hat? “Where were you when you gave Hiram the hat?”
“We were on his birthday.”
“Hiram wasn’t here on his birthday. Was it on the sidewalk Thursday, when you all were talking? After you went to the bank?” If I sounded desperate, I was. Desperately trying to recall if Joe Riddley had worn a cap since Friday. I couldn’t. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was having sympathetic memory loss, like a husband who gets nauseated when his wife is pregnant.
He gave me a perfectly lucid frown. “My mind’s not what it used to be. You know that. You’ll have to ask Hiram.”
Then his gaze slid toward the space under his bed and he started flapping his hand again. “Don’t worry about it!” he shouted. “Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it!” He pulled himself to his feet and balanced on the walker. “Come on, we’re going to church.” He moved faster than usual toward his door, barking orders over his shoulder. “Get a move on. Come on, now. Come on!”
I’d seen that guilty look often enough to know there was something under the bed he didn’t want me to see. As soon as he was through the door, I knelt, hoping I’d be able to get back up without calling for help. My knees aren’t at their best in the morning. In the dimness near the wall, I saw something red.
One of the handiest things they gave Joe Riddley in rehab was a reacher—a long stick with a handle on one end and a claw on the other. Short women ought to be issued one at birth. Fishing under Joe Riddley’s bed, I pulled out a filthy Yarbrough’s cap streaked with white bird doo.
I knelt in that warm bedroom and shivered. My teeth chattered so hard I had to clench my jaw. My ears roared. With a hand shaking so hard I could hardly make the muscles obey orders, I picked up that unspeakable hat between two pinched fingers and carried it at arm’s length, hoping germs weren’t swarming up my hand. “Where did this come from?” I asked in a shaky voice.
Joe Riddley hadn’t gotten far at the speed he traveled. He stopped, turned, looked at the cap, and glared at me. He spoke each word so carefully you’d have thought he was teaching me English. “That is not my hat.”
“How did it get under your bed?”
He gave a huff of impatience. “I don’t have time for whatchamacallits. We are going to be late.” He moved the walker a baby step ahead. “Are you coming or aren’t you?” As if he could get there without me.
I shook his elbow fiercely. “I’m coming, but first you have to tell me. Was Hiram in your room? Or did you bring this hat back with you?”
His answer, excruciatingly slow, lasted at least one lifetime. “I told you. He came to see me. It was his birthday. His hat was dirty. That’s not good for the store. It doesn’t matter. I can get a new hat.”
“But why was this one under the bed?”
His lips trembled and I knew he was close to tears. “Don’t fuss. I couldn’t get it off the floor. Scared you would fuss, so I kicked it. Now you’re fussing anyway. Don’t fuss. Let’s go to the ballgame.”
I was ashamed of myself. Had I become such a tyrant that he was afraid of me? I reached around him from the back and held him close. “We’re going to church, honey, and I’m not fussing. I’m glad you gave Hiram a present. Let’s go to the car.”
He resumed his turtle crawl toward the back door.
As much as I hated to, though, I had to show that hat to Buster. I tossed it back into the bedroom and followed Joe Riddley out, but as soon as he was in the car, I told him I’d forgotten something and ran back in. I went to the dining room door and said formally, “Sheriff Gibbons? I have something you need to see.”
I do not know how I forced my legs to walk down that hall. They certainly had other ideas. My mouth struggled to form the words, and they came out sounding like Joe Riddley. “That is Hiram’s cap. I found it under Joe Riddley’s bed. Hiram had on Joe Riddley’s when he died. Joe Riddley says this morning that he gave his hat to Hiram, but he can’t remember when—or how this cap came to be here.” I simply could not repeat Joe Riddley’s words about Hiram coming to see him. Not until I’d had time to question Joe Riddley more closely. The way his mind was working, he could be remembering some time four years ago. But if so, where did that hat come from?
Buster took my elbow and escorted me to the back door. “We’ll check the room for prints while you’re at church. Don’t worry, Judge Yarbrough. Don’t worry about a thing.”
That was easy for him to say. I’d seen Charlie Muggins at my dining room door. He’d heard every word I said. From the look on his chimpanzee face, if it was up to him, Joe Riddley and I wouldn’t be heading to church. We’d both be heading to jail.

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