Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery (21 page)

I felt bleak, too, and Meriwether was blowing her nose. Edie should have lived to see those bears dressed in Valerie’s valiant efforts.

I turned to Sheriff Gibbons. “Do you have any more questions?”

He nodded. “Were you ever in Edith Burkett’s room at the top of the house?” I suspected he’d found a fingerprint or two, and held my breath as Valerie started to shake her head.

She stopped, and nodded. “I took laundry up for her sometimes, and left it on her bed.” She made a fist and bit her thumb, then admitted, “And two or three times I took a bath in her bathtub, if she was away for the night. She has a big old tub up there, and the tub on the second floor is short, so I’d go up and take a long bubble bath. I cleaned up real good, though.” She needn’t sound so ashamed. We weren’t going to be telling Edie anytime soon.

“Did Frank ever spend the night?” I asked. We might as well deal with that while we were at it.

She hesitated again, looking at her lap. “Once.” Her voice was low. Then she looked up quickly, defiant and indignant. “It’s not what it sounds like, though. Not what Genna and Olive said. We’d ridden his motorcycle to practice, and on the way home it started to pour down rain.” She lifted her chin. “We both got soaked, and I didn’t want him to drive home in all that. Edie had already gone to bed, so I told him he could sleep in her daddy’s bed if he’d leave first thing in the morning. He was gone before I got up, and I skipped classes that morning and washed the sheets while Edie was at work. But I never told her.” Her voice was ashamed and forlorn.

“Did either of you ever drive Edie’s car?” I persisted.

She nodded again, like a compliant child. “I did. She had parked in the middle of the carport, and Frank needed to get his bike out of the rain, so I backed her car out and pulled over to one side. The next morning I moved it back to where she’d left it. But I had to move her seat. I couldn’t get in with it where she’d left it. I was in such a hurry, I forgot to move the seat back or lock the back door when I came in after moving the car.”

“When she asked about it, you lied to her,” I pointed out.

She looked at her lap again. “I know. I didn’t think she’d like it that I’d let Frank sleep in her daddy’s bed. But I couldn’t send him back out in the rain, and I couldn’t tell her about the car without saying why I’d moved it.”

Somebody sharper could have come up with all sorts of stories about why she’d driven the car, but I was coming to appreciate the limitations of Valerie’s intellect.

She reached out and clutched my arm. “Did she die because I lied to her? Was that to punish me?”

“Heavens, no! God doesn’t kill somebody to punish somebody else.”

She didn’t look real convinced. She might prefer a judge to a lawyer when she was in trouble, but when it came to interpreting God, I suspected she’d prefer a preacher.

I still had one question. “Does Frank have a key to Edie’s house?”

She nodded without hesitation. “He was working on some things for her, so she gave him one so he could get in when she wasn’t there.”

“Did he give it back to her when you moved out?”

She looked baffled. “Edie didn’t ask . . .” Her voice dwindled off. Even Valerie was smart enough to figure out the position that put them both in.

The sheriff had a question. “Did you go upstairs at any time yesterday when you were in the house?”

“Oh, no! I tiptoed into the downstairs bedroom and closed the door. When it was time to leave, I listened to make sure she wasn’t up—”

That was as far as she got before she broke down again. I couldn’t blame her. I’d seen a lot more death in my lifetime than she had, but I couldn’t imagine knowing I’d spent two hours in the house with Edie lying dead upstairs. The very thought made tears sting my eyes again.

Sheriff Gibbons has a tender heart, and I think he was having some of the same thoughts. He picked up his hat and stood. “I guess that covers it for now. Please don’t leave town in the next few days, Miss Allen.”

She looked up at him, startled. “But we have wedding gigs this weekend in Dublin and Augusta. They’re counting on us.”

Meriwether spoke quickly. “Why don’t you let Valerie make you a list of places they’re booked to sing these next two weeks? They just go out to perform and come right back each evening, right?” The last was for Valerie.

“Oh, yeah.” Valerie’s hair swung as she nodded. “We don’t stay overnight or anything. Frank’s mama would have a fit.”

I told myself again that she was one woman I’d like to meet.

Meriwether handed Valerie a pen and a sheet of paper, and she started to write. After four lines, she shook her head. “That’s as far as I can remember. Frank will know the rest.”

“Frank will know the rest of what?”

We all turned, startled. Frank Sparks stood in the door, feet apart as if braced for a fight. Once again he was dressed all in black, from his boots and gloves to his leather jacket. A silver helmet dangled from one hand. “I heard you were over here, Sheriff, and thought I’d better mosey down. I don’t know what you’ve told him, Valerie, but—”

Valerie started explaining. Frank listened in exasperation for only a couple of seconds, then commanded, “Hush! Don’t you say another word without a lawyer.”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” Valerie protested. “The judge is right here, and I haven’t done anything except go down to Edie’s the morning she was killed, to—”

He caught her and clapped one hand over her mouth. “Hush!”

The sheriff turned to him. “Where were you the night Ms. Burkett was killed?”

“Ask my lawyer.” He tugged Valerie’s hand. “Come on. We’re out of here.”

On their way to the door, Valerie’s foot caught on the leg of a chair and she went sprawling. He helped her up and led her out. In a minute or two his Harley roared away.

Meriwether chuckled. “That child can’t walk across a room without running into something or tripping over something else. She stays black and blue.”

“You don’t think he hits her?” I asked.

“Heavens, no. He adores her. She adores him, too. She just hasn’t figured that out yet. She thinks she ought to be loyal to some sailor who got a crush on her right before he shipped out, and then proposed by mail. I’m working on helping her see she isn’t bound by that. And while most women’s bruises may be caused by beatings, Valerie’s are all her own.”

Mama always said nobody really knows what goes on inside a love affair except the two people involved, and most of the time even they aren’t real sure.

We all jumped when Meriwether’s security alarm started to clang. Buster rose to his feet, but she waved him back. “It does this all the time. There’s a short or something.” She hurried out.

“Don’t turn it off permanently,” I called after her. “It could be somebody wanting you to do exactly that.” I didn’t know if she’d heard me or not.

The sheriff walked me to my car. He was holding the door when his cell phone rang. “Yeah?” He listened only a second, then held the phone away from his ear.

In spite of the clanging alarm, I could hear a tinny voice coming through the phone. Somebody had sure lit Shep Faxon’s cauldron.

“Sheriff, I got Genna Harrison in my office pitchin’ a fit, and I can’t do a thing with her. The way she’s carrying on, I’m scared she’s gonna hurt somebody. Get over here and calm her down, you hear me? She came over here wantin’ to know why Edie hadn’t left her all that money they got from selling her daddy’s pharmacy and their big house, and she won’t believe me that Edie didn’t say a thing about any money or investments. Genna claims I’ve stolen her inheritance, and she’s scaring the living daylights out of us. My secretary is in with her now, while I stepped into the bathroom to call you on my cell phone. Come quick.”

Sheriff Gibbons laughed. “Surely you can handle a little lady, Shep. An old hand like you?”

“It’s not the little lady I’m scared of, Sheriff. It’s that gun she’s waving all over the place.”

I arrived back at the office in time to take a call from Clarinda. “Where you been? I been callin’ and callin’ you.”

“I had to go out a minute. What did you want?”

“I wanted you. Daisy’s down here pitching a fit. It wasn’t bad enough they asked her to clean up Miss Edie’s room this morning, with all that blood in it. Then the sheriff’s men came back down here nosing around, acting like it’s only a matter of time until Henry’s in jail. And now Henry’s run off like a wild man. Daisy’ plumb frantic with worry.”

“Where’d Henry go?”

“How do I know? Daisy showed him some paper from his grandmama’s Bible, and next thing we know, he’s grabbed it and hightailed it out of here. That’s when Daisy went crazy. She says that paper kills people. Can you come down here? I don’t know how to handle her.”

Handling frantic mothers is not on my résumé, but keeping Clarinda happy means I frequently develop new skills. “I’m coming,” I said, trying not to think about all the work piling up on my desk. “If Henry comes home—”

“We’ll sit on him ’til you get here if we have to,” she promised.

When I drove out Oglethorpe Street toward Whelan Grove Road, the new superstore had so many cars in its parking lot, I wondered who was back running the town.

The Joyners lived in a brick ranch house beyond the grove, across the road and down a bit from Josiah’s, built on a two-acre lot Josiah’s daddy had given Pete’s mother, Mary. The little white house he’d built for her was now a toolshed and garage to one side.

Pete loved plants and specialized in daylilies, so his yard was a thing of beauty in summer. Today it all looked cold and dead, just like Pete. I decided to offer Daisy a magnolia and a holly to plant in the yard, if she’d have them. They’d make the place more colorful in winter. I mentally added a few camellias to the truck. Camellias are evergreen, they bloom all winter, and their blossoms are prettier to me than rubies, garnets, and amethysts.

Clarinda met me. “He’s still not home.” The front door opened directly into the living room, which was paneled in dark walnut and decorated in green and cream with touches of red. I wished it didn’t remind me so much of a funeral parlor.

Daisy sat uneasily in a green brocade armchair, twisting a tissue in her hands until it was worn to shreds. Nothing about her was still. Her gaze darted from me to her lap, roamed around the room, then made another round-trip. Her knees quivered in their brown corduroy pants. Her feet tapped the creamy carpet. Her lips trembled.

“Have you talked to the sheriff? Did he tell you why his men are so dadgum sure they can arrest Henry?” Clarinda demanded, lowering herself with an “oof!” onto one end of the couch as I sat down on the other, nearest Daisy.

I hesitated, but it wouldn’t be a secret as soon as the crime lab sent back a report, and those deputies had no business scaring Daisy with tones of voice and facial expressions. I’d watched them do it to other suspects’ families, and it made me mad.

“They found a pair of his coveralls down behind some bushes near the equipment barn. They’ve sent them off to be tested to see if somebody else could have worn them.”

“O’ course somebody else wore ’em if they were worn to kill Miss Edie in!” Clarinda’s loyalty to her family runs strong and deep. “Henry never killed anybody, and if he did, he’s too smart to leave his own coveralls under a bush for any half-wit deputy to find.”

“He went missing a pair not long ago,” Daisy offered eagerly. “I don’t mind what day it was, but he’d put them on fresh the day before, and he usually wears them two days if he don’t get them real dirty, to save me having so much wash. But he showed up here the next morning saying he thought he’d left them on a hook in his shed, but he must not have, because they wasn’t there. I told him, ‘I can’t have you losing clothes like you used to in grade school.’ That boy was so careless with clothes back then, the principal said he was gonna change the sign on the LOST AND FOUND box and just call it HENRY’S BOX. And in fourth grade—” She seemed eager to escape into Henry’s childhood, but it was Henry’s present I was worried about.

“You need to think back to what day that was,” I told her. “Remember anything you did that day to fix it in your mind, and write it down so you’ll remember.”

“In case you have to testify in court.” Clarinda has worked for judges too long.

Daisy gasped and covered her face with her hands. “I can’t. I just can’t!”

“It hasn’t come to that yet,” I reminded her. “Tell me what happened today.”

While we waited for her to collect her thoughts, I wondered if she’d tell me much. It wasn’t as if we were friends. Pete used to come in and out of the store a lot, but his wife seldom left home. I’d heard she had whatever that disease is that makes people afraid to go into crowds. The three of us weren’t much of a crowd, but as she looked quickly at me, Clarinda, and back at her lap, I felt sure she thought her house had one too many people in it.

“Clarinda said Henry stormed out of here this afternoon.” I prompted her when the silence grew long.

She nodded. “It’s that paper. That wicked paper.” Her frightened whisper was worthy of a horror film. I shivered, although the house was too warm and stuffy.

For a minute or two, the only sound in the room was the soft hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Daisy didn’t seem to hear it. I don’t know when I’d seen a woman look so wrung out. “Tell me about Henry,” I prodded.

Before Daisy could answer, Clarinda jumped in. “He came home midafternoon for a little break. Daisy and I were sitting here having a glass of tea, so I fixed him some. He asked what we’d been doing all day, and Daisy told him two of the sheriff’s men had asked her to clean up Miss Edie’s room. That made him mad to start with.”

“It was awful,” Daisy put in. “Plumb awful.” She shuddered at the memory.

“Then Daisy said the same men had come down here asking again about the night Miss Edie died, and she mentioned to Henry that she’d had to tell them about taking her medicine for a migraine and going to bed early, so she couldn’t exactly swear he was here that night.”