Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man? (6 page)

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Authors: Patricia Sprinkle

BOOK: Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man?
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As I walked back to my office, I winged a short prayer that Alice Fulton would find peace and comfort in Hopemore. Whichever angel was supposed to carry that prayer must have been on its cell phone, though, because in another few weeks Hiram Blaine would come home and Hopemore’s peace would be shattered.
5
Slade Rutherford came to town first, and caused his own kind of ripples.
I heard he’d come, but before I could get down to the
Statesman
to introduce myself and ask tactfully whether he planned to keep my garden column, I bumped into him as I was coming out of the bank. Literally. I was saying “good morning” over my shoulder to Vern, the security guard, and wasn’t looking where I was going. I didn’t know a soul was there until my nose hit a dark green tie with gold fleurs-de-lis. Mortified, I turned my head and got my new perm tangled on his tie tack. We stood on most intimate terms until he could disentangle me. After that it seemed odd to introduce ourselves.
My son Walker could have told within a few dollars how much he’d paid for that light camel jacket, matching slacks, soft creamy shirt, and tasseled loafers, but all I knew was they’d cost a lot. He looked to be around Walker’s age, too—thirty-five or so—and had a high forehead, dark, fuzzy black eyebrows, and eyes so brown they looked black. They burrowed into my own without giving away any secrets.
I could see myself reflected in his pupils—a short plumpish woman wearing a cotton knit sweater with a coordinated print skirt. Joe Riddley used to say, “Honey, you aren’t plump, you’re just voluptuous.” How I missed having somebody who thought I was the most special person in the world. The man I’d run into seemed to be deciding whether I was worth another second of his time.
“I beg your pardon.” I knew I was pinker than a sunburned flamingo. “I don’t generally make a habit of running into people. I am MacLaren Yarbrough.”
“You all own the big nursery business?” As soon as I nodded, his eyes crinkled in delight. “I’m Slade Rutherford, new editor of the
Hopemore Statesman,
and you’re one of our best advertisers.”
“I’m also very embarrassed. I should have been looking where I was going.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I stumble over my own feet so often, I make a habit of forgiving folks who stumble over them, too.” After that, I couldn’t help looking down at his shoes. He must have worn fourteens.
I was wondering whether it was the time to tell him I wrote the paper’s monthly gardening column, and delicately inquire whether he would continue to run it, when Vern hobbled out the door shouting, “You can’t park there! You know you can’t park there!”
Slade raised eyebrows like dark brown caterpillars. “Come see the fun,” I suggested.
Immaculate in a blue linen suit, Gusta climbed from her elderly black Cadillac and brandished her silver-headed cane at poor Vern. Vern had a bum leg, but he could still hop in rage. “You can’t park there! You know that!” He waved fists in the air. Gusta brandished her cane again.
Sensing that Slade might be about to go to somebody’s aid, I held him back. “Don’t worry, this goes on all the time. It’s a perennial battle over whether Mrs. Augusta Wainwright can park in the handicapped zone in front of the bank without a sticker.”
“Marvelous car.” His eyes roved admiringly over the polished black paint and shiny chrome.
On the sidewalk, Vern was wringing his hands. “You know that place is for people who’s got a sticker, Mrs. Wainwright. All you gotta do is get a sticker from your doctor. Or park ’round the corner and come in the side door. Or park just down the block.”
“I am not handicapped, merely old,” Gusta informed him, stomping across the sidewalk with the help of her cane, “and I have no intention of walking extra steps or skulking into the bank by a side door. You never had a handicapped zone there when my husband was alive. He’d never have permitted it. Wait in the car,” she called over her shoulder, “and by no means move that car. I will be out soon.” That’s when I noticed Alice at the wheel in Meriwether’s place.
Gusta paused in the doorway. “Good afternoon, Judge Yarbrough.” She gave my companion a significant look, waiting to be introduced.
His own eyebrows rose. “You should have told me I was in the presence of the law.”
“I’m one of three magistrates in the county. Let me present you to Mrs. Augusta Wainwright. Augusta, this is Slade—uh—” I bogged down in the morass of bad memory.
“Rutherford,” he supplied helpfully. “New editor for the
Hopemore Statesman.
”
Gusta rested on her cane and peered closely, searching his long frame for flaws. She apparently found none, because she extended her hand. “How do you do? Where did you come from?”
“Asheville. I was with—”
“Ah, one of the North Carolina Rutherfords?” He barely nodded, but she went right on, satisfied that she’d placed him. “We may be distantly related—through my mother’s side. Come by one afternoon. I’m just up Oglethorpe Street. Anyone can direct you.” She swept past us and into the bank, leaving Vern still wringing his hands and looking for a police car. Alice waited by the curb, avoiding Vern’s eye. I and everybody else in town pretended we didn’t notice the car. We all knew Gusta didn’t need to do any more walking than she had to.
Slade watched Gusta’s progression through the bank with an amused smile. “I take it that Mrs. Wainwright is important in town?”
“Assumed the throne at birth and hasn’t shown any sign of stepping down.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He touched his left hand to his forehead in a mock salute and followed her toward the counter.
 
Any woman with eyes in her head could see that Slade’s wedding ring finger was bare. It didn’t take long for him to be approached by every unattached women in town between twenty-five and forty except Meriwether Wainwright. And by their respective mamas. Especially after Gusta discreetly spread the word that Slade was “one of the North Carolina Rutherfords—you know, like Rutherfordton?” She pronounced it
Rolfton,
like I’d heard native Carolinians do.
Suddenly we had a spate of little Welcome Autumn cocktail parties, football get-togethers with cute food instead of the usual nacho cheese and chips, a group jaunt down to Dublin to watch car races, a Harvest Barbeque, even a Scarecrow Dance at the country club. We also had a round of what our women like to call “just a casual dinner, nothing formal, mostly family” that involves two days of silver polishing, tablecloth ironing, and cookbook consulting to pick something not too ostentatious but certainly not what the family sits down to as a rule.
Slade Rutherford, of course, was the guest of honor at all those events, tall, slim and handsome. With Slade invited, the parties did double duty. Not only did they parade eligible women in their native habitat, they also gave hostesses a chance for a small paragraph in the paper. A few even got pictures. But while the
Hopemore Statesman
duly reported our social whirl, Slade seemed immune to all Hopemore’s blushing belles. The only woman he seemed the least bit interested in was Gusta. I heard he stopped by her place several times a week with flowers and candy.
Gusta called one Tuesday to invite Joe Riddley and me to a musicale the next Sunday afternoon. “Only a few people,” she assured me. “I’ve got a chamber orchestra from Augusta and am tuning the Steinway.” She made it sound like she turned those little screws herself.
“You know Joe Riddley doesn’t go out right now,” I reminded her.
“It would do him good to get out. He can sit in a corner and listen to the music, and you can go home whenever you feel like it. Don’t let me down. I’m counting on your being here.”
Thinking it might do Joe Riddley good, I wrestled him into a suit that hung on him, thin as he’d gotten. I gussied myself up in my favorite long green dress that everybody says flatters me. I put blusher on my cheeks and mascara on my lashes, for I like to look nice. I struggled to get both Joe Riddley and that dratted wheelchair into the car. And then, when we got there, I discovered it wasn’t Mac and Joe Riddley she’d wanted, it was Judge and Judge Yarbrough. She also had the chief surgeon from our local hospital and his wife, the president of our community college with her husband, and Maynard Spence, my nearest neighbor and the new curator of the Hope County Historical Museum. He brought Selena Jones, whom he’d been squiring for over a month. Maynard had lived in New York for ten years before coming home to Hopemore, and outshone our dark-suited men in a natural linen suit and a dark green shirt. Selena beside him was a whirl of orange, green, and yellow silk that set off her deep red hair.
After Gusta presented Slade to all the other guests, she added as if it were an afterthought, “And I don’t think you’ve met my granddaughter, Meriwether.”
Meriwether was wearing a soft green-and-blue dress that made her eyes look like emeralds. With her hair fluffed around her face and her mother’s large pearls in her ears, she could have flown in from Paris, but her grandmother gave her a prod like she was a backwards sixteen-year-old. “Meriwether, why don’t you get Mr. Rutherford a drink?”
While the instruments tuned up, I wheeled Joe Riddley to a corner, got him a drink and a plate of finger food, and sat fanning myself. Joe Riddley took one sip of his drink and took one look at his plate and said loudly, “Gusta’s watering her sherry again, and this sandwich isn’t big enough for a flea.”
I motioned for him to be quiet, which irritated him more. “Don’t shush me, Little Bit. I know what I am saying. As much money as that woman’s got, she could afford to feed us.”
I pointed to Kelly Keane, moving purposefully from group to group with her notebook and ballpoint pen. “There’s that reporter who interviewed me. You don’t want her quoting you in the paper, do you?”
As Kelly moved to talk to somebody hidden from me by a potted palm, Joe Riddley exclaimed, “There’s Darren!” He waved a cracker spread with cheese and one slice of olive. “Hey, Darren! Come eat a flea sandwich.”
I was surprised and delighted when Darren Hernandez, Joe Riddley’s therapist, stepped out from the palm and headed our way. He must have taken seriously my suggestion that he look up Kelly. Well-dressed women and men in starched shirts and suits looked askance at his black jeans and T-shirt—or was it his bright green hair and silver earring? His handsome swarthy face lit with a smile. “Hey, J. R. You need more to eat? I’ll get it for you.”
“We need to go,” Kelly said softly at his shoulder. She gave us an apologetic smile. “I have another event to cover this afternoon, too. Slade’s going to write up the music part here.”
I was sorry they had left when I saw Alice Fulton come from the back part of the house and stand looking around uncertainly. They’d been the only people her age in the room. I smiled, and when she smiled back and headed our way, I remembered with surprise how pretty she could be. Since she’d started work, I’d only seen her in flat shoes, neat dark skirts, and cotton sweaters. Today she wore a simple sleeveless black dress that showed off a lovely figure and brought out her dark hair and eyes. Gold hoops in her ears and a gold chain around her neck glittered in the light. High heels called attention to her tiny feet. But she still had her hair dragged back instead of letting it spring loose around her face.
With his current lack of tact, Joe Riddley put my next thought into words. “Let your hair down and put on a little makeup, you could be downright beautiful.” He waved a scrap of pimento cheese sandwich at her. “Won’t get fat eating at Gusta’s. That’s for sure.”
Alice gave him an anxious smile. “Can I get you something else?”
“Get me about fifty of these. Takes that many to make a good meal.” As she scurried off, he looked around the room and called to nobody in particular, “Did Gusta sell her furniture?”
Gusta herself heard him. “I put it in the back room to make space for the concert.” The way she said it, you’d have thought she’d personally moved the couch, chairs, and tables.
“Don’t need to clean up for a party if you do what Little Bit does. Puts everything in corners and hides it with screens. Isn’t that right, honey?”
“That’s right,” I agreed ruefully.
I have seven tall screens scattered around our house. Joe Riddley made them years ago, papering them to match various rooms, so whenever we have a party I can shove things behind them and have the house looking halfway decent. It is an old joke in Hopemore that “the size of a Yarbrough party depends on how much space MacLaren has left after she sets up her screens.” As I later told Police Chief Muggins, though, when I say I “shove things behind them,” I mean paperwork I’ve brought home, or projects for church, the A.A.U.W., and the Garden Club. I don’t mean dead people.
Alice hurried back from the dining room with a plate piled high with food.
“Heavens!” Gusta exclaimed. “How many are you planning to feed?”
“It’ll do me for starters.” For an instant the old Joe Riddley twinkled up at us. Alice was so startled she nearly dropped the plate. I knew what she was feeling. It was something like having somebody peer at you from what you’d thought was an empty house.
“You’ll never be able to eat all those. Take what you need, and I’ll pass the rest.” Gusta passed the plate to him long enough for him to take three sandwiches, then snatched it away.

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