When Will the Dead Lady Sing? (32 page)

Since we weren’t the Bullocks, Chief Muggins let Isaac James and a deputy take the call. As Clarinda let them in, I permitted myself the luxury of one long, shaky breath. “You took long enough.”

He glared. “I told you to keep that door locked.”

He turned. “Georgia Tate, I am arresting you for the attempted murder of Clarinda Williams. Anything you say may be used against you . . .” The preacher at my own wedding never sounded as sweet as Isaac rolling out that Mi randa warning.

27

The Bullocks flowed out of town like melted butter, sending back some of Burlin’s high-powered lawyer friends to defend Georgia and another to settle with the owner of the Toyota the buffalo restructured.

I couldn’t accept the reward Burlin had offered, of course, but was delighted when it went to Clarinda—except for a hundred dollars, which was peeled off for Hector and promptly got poured down his cast-iron throat. Clarinda used part of the money to buy a new black suit in which to testify in court.

I suppose Lance returned to his drawing board and Renée to her clients. I never read any more about him except for one brief article entitled BULLOCK PULLS OUT OF RACE AFTER TRAGIC FAMILY WEEK.

In the perverse nature of our current society, Burlin became more of a celebrity than he had been before. We couldn’t turn on the television or pick up a magazine for weeks without seeing his solemn handsome face. He’d become an advocate for the plight of the homeless and the country’s crying need for long-term shelters and better mental-health care.

I was glad he’d found something to occupy his time and considerable energy, and I didn’t doubt his genuine concern for mental-health care. Georgia had pleaded insanity for killing both Sperra and “the dearest baby sister a woman ever had,” and would spend the rest of her natural life in an institution for the criminally insane.

I wasn’t quite sure whether Burlin cared about the homeless or merely cared to make people think he cared about the homeless. I still blame politicians for a lot of homelessness in the first place, since if they hadn’t refused to raise the minimum wage for over a decade after 1980, a lot of people wouldn’t have been forced to choose between buying food and paying rent. Knowing how comfortably Burlin lived in three houses, I wondered if he really cared that some people don’t have one.

Then, one day in December just before Christmas, I got a letter.

I’d never seen such a big check before. I sure didn’t want it lying around on my desk all day. Our church treasurer was the manager of the bank across the street, so I headed over so she could deposit it immediately.

As I waited for our one red light to turn green, I remembered to be grateful that I walk without crutches. I never appreciated my own two legs until I lost the use of them.

On the sidewalk outside the bank, I saw Gusta climbing out of Pooh’s old navy Cadillac and heading toward the bank with the aid of her silver-topped cane.

I couldn’t resist showing her the check and telling her what it was for. She paused at the door and gripped my elbow. “Tell me, MacLaren, exactly when were you and Burlin Bullock sweethearts?” Her steely eyes bored into me like they would pierce my very soul.

I had been waiting for that moment, lying in bed rehearsing what I’d say. I let my eyes widen like Georgia’s. “Why, Gusta! You know I’ve loved Joe Riddley practically since I was born. And we both know what deceivers those Bullocks were. Who’d ever believe a word they said? Some people will do anything to get their picture in the paper.”

I gave her a smile I hoped was as enigmatic as Renée’s and walked slowly toward the bank manager’s office, letting my hips sway.

Not one conversation slowed down as I passed. But I had, for once, cut off Gusta’s water.

I expected that the deposit of Burlin’s check would end my connection with the Bullocks. Who would have imagined that Burlin was a prophet, that in a very few months I’d be off on a second honeymoon and up to my neck in trouble?

But that is another story.

Read on for an excerpt from
Patricia Sprinkle’s next
Thoroughly Southern mystery
Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?
Coming from Signet in early 2005

Before I climbed the last disheartening steps, I smelled the blood.

I’d smelled blood all my life, of course, growing up on a farm. On frosty autumn mornings Daddy used to butcher hogs down behind our house. Their blood on the breeze made my brother hop around in excitement, anticipating fresh livermush and bacon. This frosty December morning, though, I was headed toward a friend’s closet to pick out a dress and shoes to bury her in.

Anger at her murder had driven me this far, but the scent of her blood buckled my knees. I had to lean against the narrow stairwell wall for an instant to regain enough strength to keep climbing.

Even Assistant Police Chief Isaac James had been shaken by the room as he first saw it. “I’d never seen so much blood in one place, Judge,” he’d told me, his ebony face grave. “It had splattered the walls and ceiling and soaked into the comforter and all her pillows.” He’d hurried to add, “But it’s gone now. The bedding and rug were bagged and taken away for evidence, and the caretaker’s wife, Daisy, has scrubbed everything, even the ceiling. You won’t see anything except an empty room.”

He’d forgotten how the smell of blood lingers, clinging to the very air, as if loath to let go of its hold on life.

I covered my mouth and nose with one hand and hoped the scent of almond lotion would see me through the ordeal. I’d never have been there if her daughter hadn’t begged, “Please, Mac, pick out something for her to wear. I can’t stand to go up there yet. I can’t!”

I wasn’t sure I could, either. I paused and thought about calling to my husband, Joe Riddley, waiting in the kitchen below. But what would I say? That I was too sick to my stomach to enter a perfectly empty room to perform one last service for our friend? I certainly couldn’t ask him to pick out her burial clothes. We’d be holding a funeral where the guest of honor’s dress didn’t match her shoes-if the shoes matched each other. No, I owed it to her to see her decently buried. “I think I can, I think I can,” I chanted from one of my five-year-old grandson’s favorite story-books as I forced myself up the final five steps, wondering why any woman past fifty chose to sleep on the third floor.

Then I reached the threshold, stopped, and gasped.

What I saw was not a room of death, but an incredible view. Old Josiah Whelan had loved his only child enough to literally raise the roof for her in her teens-cutting off the peak above the second story, putting in glass walls four feet high, then setting the rooftop back down on the glass walls like a party hat on the lovely old house his granddaddy had built. The house sat in the middle of Whelan’s pecan grove, and this room rode the treetops like a ship on a green sea. On a clear day, you could probably see Augusta.

No wonder Josiah’s daughter had come back to this room when her husband died. It should have been her sanctuary, not her murder scene.

Then my eyes refocused on a few dark spots on the windows that Daisy had missed, and my breakfast gave fair warning it was coming back. I barely had time to dash into the dainty bathroom Josiah had installed in half of the back wall, next to the big walk-in closet.

Afterwards, I soaked a washrag and wiped my mouth. “You weren’t supposed to
die,
” I muttered angrily
.
“That wasn’t what we were worried about at all.”