When Will the Dead Lady Sing? (13 page)

Joe Riddley grunted as he sank into his leather desk chair. “Hubert, is it? Not Mr. Spence? I was Judge Yarbrough.”

“Hubert’s practically family,” I consoled him. “He took her younger sister to Myrtle’s yesterday and was wondering Saturday night whether to ask her to take a drive after dinner with Gusta and Pooh.”

He reached for his mail. “After dinner at Gusta’s he ought to have taken her to a restaurant.”

He settled back with a catalogue and I returned to our taxes, but I knew he wouldn’t stay long. In a few minutes he got up. “Might run down to the south of the county. There’s a fishing pond down there I’d forgotten about.” We both knew he was itching to be out looking for Tad.

“Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll hold the fort.”

For another few minutes the office was quiet and I got a little work done. Then I heard a tentative knock on my door and Abigail Bullock poked her nose in my door. “May I come in?”

I considered asking if the Bullocks were planning to set up headquarters at Yarbrough’s, but Mama didn’t raise me to be rude. “Sure. Glad to have you.”

She gestured toward the dark green wing chair by our window. “May I? For just a second?” When I nodded, she sat and adjusted her khaki skirt over her knees. Her shoes were sturdy loafers, and I recognized her brown blazer as one I had almost ordered from L.L. Bean. She clasped her hands in her lap and gave me a hesitant smile. “I doubt that you really remember me—”

“Of course I do, except I keep thinking of you as Binky. We went for a walk and you said you were going to have a ranch and never get involved in politics or even vote. What happened?”

Her gravelly voice was wistful. “Life happened, I guess. I got married right after college, but that didn’t work out. Then I was a secretary for a while in Atlanta, but I hated it, so when Burlin’s wife had a bad accident—” She paused, in case I wanted to say something. When I didn’t, she seemed grateful. “She had to be hospitalized for a while and Lance was only five, so Burlin needed somebody to take care of him. Since I hated my job—” She raised one hand and twisted her wrist to show how obvious the answer was. “I started as Lance’s nanny, but when he began school, Burlin kept giving me more things to do. Like he said, he isn’t the organized one in our family, and I’m a good secretary, I just disliked my first boss. I’ve been working for Burlin ever since.”

“I guess politics is in all your blood,” I teased.

She shook her head. “I don’t really care for politics, any more than I used to, but I believe in Burlin and Lance. They are fine men, Mackie.”

I made some agreeing noises and changed the subject. We talked about this and that for a bit, the way people do when they don’t know each other well and don’t expect to see much of each other in the future. I did notice that she worked Hubert Spence’s name into the conversation several times. The only real surprise in our conversation was when I asked if she was comfortable down at the Annie Dale Inn.

“Oh, sure. I’ve known Annie Dale for years. We met on a bicycle trip from Savannah to Atlanta”—That’s the kind of thing serious bikers toss out. I’ve never known whether it is supposed to overwhelm the rest of us with our lack of physical stamina, or merely normal, for them—“and we’ve been on several tours together since. We did a couple of weeks at bed-and-breakfasts up in Delaware several years ago. I think that’s when she decided to go into the business. Since then, we’ve done the wine country of France together and two weeks in Spain. Do you bike?”

“Not often,” I said, meaning, “Not in the past forty years.”

A silence fell between us. Binky looked down at her lap, then directly back at me. “I have a favor to ask. Of course, you may not be real fond of any of us after that article.”

“Was it your fault?” She shook her head. “Then what can I do for you?” I expected a pitch for Lance’s campaign.

She surprised me. “I overheard part of your conversation with Hubert on the front porch Saturday. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was standing right by the window, and it was open because the room was a little close—”

She paused and gave me an encouraging look, as if to say, “Your turn.”

“That’s all right. We weren’t saying anything private.”

“No, but I heard Hubert mention something about you having detecting skills. I asked him about that yesterday, and he told me all about you. So I ran your name through the Internet—”

Again she gave me a chance to speak, but nobody had given me my script for this play. Besides, I was mulling over the fact that my name was on the Internet. I’d looked up all sorts of things, but never thought to look up myself. I could hardly wait for her to leave.

When I hadn’t spoken for a several seconds, she said, “Since you have experience in finding things out—”

“Just local things,” I interrupted. I didn’t mention that it was because of Police Chief Charlie Muggins’s incompetence. I might not like Charlie, but I didn’t want Hopemore’s dirty laundry strewn from Hopemore to Atlanta.

“This
is
local.” She shifted so she was leaning toward me, resting one elbow on her knee and her chin on that hand. “There’s a homeless man who seems to be following us. A short plump man in a gray suit.”

“He’s the one who caused all the commotion Saturday afternoon,” I reminded her. “Lance joked that he must be registered to vote in every county, and shows up where there’s free food.”

“Lance isn’t worried, but Georgia and I wonder if we should be. He’s been in Augusta, Savannah, Athens, and Valdosta. I haven’t actually seen him—I’m generally handing out name tags or buttons at the door, and he comes in the back. But Georgia’s seen him several times. She says he stays at the fringes of crowds, gets something to eat afterwards, then fills his pockets. I’ve asked around, but nobody seems to know who he is. And we don’t know if he’s following Lance or Burlin.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Georgia said maybe he’s even stalking her. Men tend to do that.” Before I could decide if she sounded bitter, she’d hurried on. “But he may just be hungry. I don’t want to bother Burlin if he’s harmless.”

“You don’t think he’s a terrorist, do you?” The man we saw in the alley didn’t look anything like my notion of a terrorist, and I couldn’t think of a single reason why terrorists would be interested in a governor’s race, particularly before the primary, but the same kind of people who started witch hunts in the sixteenth century and communist hunts in the twentieth have begun seeing terrorists behind every bush in the twenty-first. Walker got so disgusted after Cindy was frisked three times in the airport security line on their way to New York that he suggested we change our national anthem to “Land of the no longer free and the used to be brave.”

Binky laughed. “Heavens, no. And neither Burlin nor Lance have made enemies who would send a hit man after them, either. Besides, if he’d wanted to hurt them, he’s had several chances. He’s more of an annoyance than anything else. But I want to add my vote to Hubert’s that you find out who he is and send him on his way.” She stood and stuck out a thin tanned hand. “It is good to see you again.” At the door she turned, and I braced myself. Joe Riddley claims that most people say what they came to say when they’re about to leave. She gave me a fleeting smile. “Would you call me Binky? I’ve always liked it better than Abigail.”

Through the glass pane in our office door, I watched her head for the front door and wondered what it had been like for her, growing up thin and plain with two gorgeous older siblings, and wondered when she’d developed her interest in the subject that consumed them all.

“We’ve had the Bullock campaign. Now we can get to work,” I told my computer. But before I did, I went online and ran my name through a search engine. To my astonishment, there were scads of listings. The first ten I pulled up, however, were all that same dreadful picture. It made me sick to think people in China could put my name in their computers and that’s what they’d find. I was wondering if it were possible to delete things from search engines when there was another knock at my door. I looked over my shoulder and saw Lance Bullock peering in my door. “Do you have a minute?”

I turned bright pink and punched off my monitor. “Sure. Come in. You and Renée are the only members of your family I haven’t seen today.” I hoped he hadn’t seen what I’d been looking at and thought I was admiring myself.

He looked appreciatively around the office. “Are those the original beaded board walls?”

“Sure are. And the original unfinished floorboards, too. Have a seat,”—I indicated the wing chair under the window—“although that chair has been there only thirty years. Are you taking a historical tour of Hopemore? We also have our original tin ceiling and oak counter out front.”

He grinned and adjusted his red-and-blue striped tie. He had on a navy suit that matched Georgia’s, but his was endearingly rumpled. “I’d rather see the historic sites of Hopemore than go make another speech, but that’s what I’ve got to do. Right now, I’m looking for Renée. She went for a walk early this morning and hasn’t come back, and our crew is getting antsy. Georgia suggested you might suggest some walks around town.” He shoved back his cuff and looked at an expensive gold watch. “We have to leave in less than an hour to get to Dublin.”

“Georgia told me. We don’t have any special walks around here, but maybe Renée wandered around and got lost. We aren’t a big town, but it’s possible.”

He shook his head. “Renée never gets lost. She’s a legend. Travels all over the world and finds her way around places she’s never been in before.” His pride was evident. “She works for her daddy, you know. He has an international PR firm in Houston, and she’s one of their best account executives.” He must have remembered I was part of the electorate, because he added, “Of course, when I’m governor—”

Hillary Clinton, Princess Di, and Fergie sprang to mind. I wondered why nobody taught budding politicians, “Marry an adoring, mindless woman who will devote her life to being your wife. If she is intelligent, strong, and/or competent, you will both get crucified.”

“. . . completely supports my campaign,” Lance was assuring me when I tuned back in. “We are a team in everything we do. But campaigning—well, it wears her out. And she just got back from a meeting in Paris and hasn’t adjusted to the time change yet.”

“She looks like she’s used to doing important things, not watching other people do them,” I said bluntly. “No wonder she takes long walks. It’s better than climbing walls.”

He gave me a rueful grin, but all he said was, “Well, I’d better get back to where we’re staying. We have to go, whether Renée shows up or not.” He added, under his breath as he left, “But if she doesn’t, Edward will kill her.”

Somebody would get killed very soon, but it would not be Renée.

9

I tried to bow out of our seven o’clock dinner meeting at the community center, sponsored by one of the business groups in town. “If I eat two big meals a day, Martha will make me walk more,” I told Joe Riddley. “She already walked my legs off this afternoon. And I want to be home in case Tad calls.”

“Tad would call Ridd, not us. And you gotta come. Hubert said Saturday that he’s got our state representative coming to talk about how upcoming legislation is going to benefit small towns. As much as you dislike the man, you’re bound to have questions you’ll want to ask.”

We arrived early enough to claim seats at a round table right up next to the head table and speaker’s platform. I did dislike the speaker, but I was real put out when somebody across the table informed us that Hubert had put him off a month “to take advantage of having Burlin Bullock here in town.”

I was also disgusted to see I was getting some mighty sly looks.

The Bullock men arrived in twin navy suits, but Burlin’s looked newly pressed and Lance’s looked even more rumpled. Both joked and glad-handed folks all the way to the head table, up on a low stage. Georgia had changed her outfit though. The
Statesman
would later describe her as “radiant in a red pantsuit with a jaunty patriotic scarf and silver pumps.” Like her brother, she smiled and charmed folks like there was nowhere she’d rather be.

Hubert walked beside her, staying so close to her golden head that Joe Riddley leaned over and asked, “You reckon Hubert’s gotten bitten by a love bug?”

“Not with that sister—she’s married,” I told him. “He was with the younger one Sunday at Myrtle’s.”

“The sad sack?”

I was annoyed at the description, but poor Binky did look sad, trudging along behind Georgia and Hubert. She was wearing her navy and pearls again, and the comfortable flats. She’d tied a red, white, and blue scarf around her hair like an Alice-in-Wonderland band, but the effect was childish rather than dashing.

Renée slouched beside her in a drab khaki suit that was downright ugly, but looked like it could be the latest thing in New York City. She smiled most of the time, but I caught her watching Burlin, Lance, and Georgia’s royal processional with a curled lip, and figured she was put out about something.

Edward brought up the rear, again in black. He looked like he was making an effort not to wring somebody’s neck. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists, moving his jaw from side to side, and taking deep breaths. Finally, when they all got past the crowd and up at the stage, he grabbed Burlin’s elbow and spoke with urgent gestures. Lance shook his head with a frown. Burlin also shook his head, but bent to listen to something Georgia was saying. Burlin nodded, Lance finally nodded, and Edward relaxed. From across the room, it was like watching a silent movie.

For some unfathomable reason, Gusta was sitting at the head table, splendid in a gray voile dress with a white collar. She had never worked a day in her life, so in spite of the fact that she ran almost every other organization in town, business groups had been blessedly free of her meddling until now.

Gusta waved Burlin to one seat beside her and patted the chair on her other side for Georgia. Hubert took the remaining seat on that side, so Edward, Lance, Renée, and Binky went to the other end of the head table. As other folks were finding their seats, Burlin caught my eye and gave a little wave. Folks at our table smiled and gave me peculiar looks, but I turned to Joe Riddley and asked, “You want the beets off my salad?” like I didn’t have a clue what they were smiling about. Still, Burlin was in my direct line of vision, so each time I looked up, he was there—generally smiling right at me. They don’t make medicine for that kind of indigestion.