Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery (3 page)

Phyllis frowned over the head of a permanent she was rolling. “They don’t use the same color at all. And I give people what they ask for. You know that.” Her critic was a woman well past fifty who kept her own hair an improbable shade of yellow, too long for her age, and teased to look like Texas. “Olive favors a French waif look, and she brings her color with her.”

As soon as Phyllis stepped into the dryer room to check on another customer, the last woman snorted. “French waif, my foot. That chopped-off crop makes Olive look like she’s trying out for the fire scene in
Joan of Arc.
”

“With her head already ablaze,” said the first. They all laughed. They didn’t so much dislike Olive as resent that she wouldn’t let them get to know her.

All that went through my head in Alex’s office, until I suddenly realized Olive was staring at me. Had I quoted some of that out loud? Probably not. She looked more like we were teammates on
Jeopardy!
and she was willing me to ask the winning question. I gave it a try. “Could Valerie have let anybody else drive your car?”

Edie gave an impatient huff and stomped to the door. “She wouldn’t. And I can’t see that this is anybody’s business but mine. Is that all?” she asked Alex. “I need to get back to the desk.”

I was sorry we’d upset her. Edie had been deluged with despair that year, between Wick’s death and Josiah’s stroke. “None of this sounds like much to worry about,” I said. “Stress makes all of us forgetful, and you have every reason to be worn out, with all you’ve been through. Are you still driving back and forth every evening to see your daddy?”

“Yes.” One short, abrupt syllable.

I was ready to end the conversation and head back to the store, but Alex must have wanted me to have the full picture. “You’re still president of the literacy council, right?”

“Just until June.”

“And tutoring every week?”

“Just one student right now.”

“And playing bridge?”

Olive put in her oar. “She doesn’t have to run the tournament. I told her I’d be glad to—”

“You don’t know all that’s involved,” Edie said impatiently. “It would take longer to explain it than to do it myself.”

How many times have I heard that from women who claim they are doing too much, but never let go of anything because they don’t really believe anybody else can do it as well as they can? It’s such a small step from knowing you are competent to believing you are indispensable.

Olive’s eyes narrowed into dime-sized slits. “But with that new committee you agreed to serve on at your church—”

Edie’s color flared high. “That’s just for a year, while we raise money for repairs.”

“Honey!” I exclaimed in dismay. “Between ‘just this’ and ‘just that,’ it’s a wonder you aren’t plumb nuts. You can’t do all you used to do and work. And you don’t need to see Josiah every day. That’s two hours round-trip, plus time to visit. Your daddy doesn’t want you killing yourself coming to see him.”

Edie sighed. “I keep hoping one day he’ll talk a little, or move his hand. I don’t want to miss being there that day.” Her voice trembled, and she took deep breaths to steady herself.

Olive made a movement with one hand like she wished she could help but didn’t know how. “I’d better get back to the desk. I came in to see if I could take an early lunch.” Nobody believed that, but when Alex approved the request, she backed out of the room.

I couldn’t offer Edie much hope that her daddy would get better. Instead, I asked, “Speaking of nuts, are you going to be able to get in this year’s crop without Pete?”

Josiah Whelan owned a thousand acres of pecan trees that had to be harvested between October and February if he was to have any income for the year. Harvest required at least thirty workers to bring in the crop, run the cleaning and sorting operation, and keep the machinery going, and Pete Joyner, Josiah’s harvest foreman, had suffered a fatal heart attack the same morning Josiah had his stroke. Nobody knew exactly what had gone on out at the grove that day, but something terrible had blown up between them after a lifetime of working together.

In addition to my concern for Edie, I had a personal interest in her answer. Yarbrough’s might weather the superstore, but if Whelan Grove went under, we’d have a hole in our bottom line. A thousand acres of pecans need a lot of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer in a year, and Josiah purchased them all from us.

“This year’s crop will be okay if the rain lets up. Henry came home for his daddy’s funeral, and he said he’ll stay to get the harvest in.”

Henry was Pete’s son, and he must be about thirty now. Pete used to bring him to the store when he was a toddler, and I don’t think I ever saw a prettier child, with his daddy’s big gray eyes and long, curling lashes in a face the color of coffee laced with pure cream. As soon as he could push a wheel-barrow, Henry started helping in the grove. Our older son, Ridd, who taught at the high school, had expected him to go to college, study horticulture, and maybe one day buy a grove of his own. Instead, right after graduation, Henry got married and moved over to South Carolina. By Christmas, Pete was flashing pictures of a new granddaughter.

I hadn’t heard anything about Henry since then, but I did remember that he used to be a real tease. When Pete brought him down to the store, we’d find smiley faces drawn in the zeros on sale signs, or signs that belonged to big potted plants stuck in front of seed packets, jacking up their price considerably. “Henry sneaked a plastic ice cube in my cup once, with a fly in it, to be funny. Could he have altered your car seat and let the cat in for a joke?”

Edie shook her head. “Henry doesn’t joke since he came back. Maybe it’s losing his daddy, but it’s all I can do to get him to say good morning.”

Alex set her cup down in the saucer with a click. “Weren’t you saying you all had a fight this morning before you came in?”

“Do you mind keeping my business private?” Edie blazed. “Henry and I had a little disagreement, that’s all.” She gave another irritated huff and a flap of a wave. “Forget this. It’s not worth making a fuss over, and I need to get back to the desk. Donna’s got story hour.”

“If you want an office in the hereafter club, let me know,” I offered. “I’m running for president, but you can be secretary.”

The way she slammed the door behind her, I got the notion she didn’t find that funny.

Alex drummed her nails on a stack of papers on her desk. “So. What do you think?”

What I really thought was that Alex and Olive were antsy because of all the wet, soggy weather we’d been having. When folks can’t get out to exercise their bodies, their imaginations work overtime. What I said, though, was, “I don’t think there’s anything to be worried about, but Edie’s under a lot of pressure with Josiah right now. Maybe she shouldn’t be working.”

Alex stopped drumming and started rubbing a bare spot on her desk with one finger. Afraid I’d offended her, I added quickly, “You were brilliant, though, to get her working so soon after Wick died. Fifty is young to be a widow. She needed a new interest.”

Alex hesitated, then said bluntly, “She needed the
money.
” She held up a hand to forestall my protest. “Everybody thinks Edie sold her nice house and moved out with her daddy so neither would be lonesome. They think she got a fat stock portfolio from the sale of the house and the pharmacy, and works to take her mind off things. I wouldn’t tell you if I weren’t so worried, but Edie’s broke. Wick Burkett was a drug addict who spent every penny they had—and borrowed a good many dollars they didn’t—to feed his habit.”

That sure took the starch out of my britches. “Why would you think that? Wick Burkett was a
fine
man.” There’s no higher accolade in Georgia.

Alex chewed her lower lip. “How much has Isaac told you about me?”

“That you’re his first cousin and were in the army before you came here.”

“That’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. I grew up in a Chicago housing project. Mama, who was Isaac’s daddy’s sister, was a drop-dead drunk, and I was the oldest of five kids she got from five different men who supplied her with liquor. I joined the army as soon as they’d take me and was lucky enough to get a sergeant who kicked some sense into the only part of me that knew how to listen back then. He convinced me I could handle college, and that got me so hooked on learning, I finished my master’s before I got out. But I know drugs. One of my brothers is in jail for dealing. Another died of an overdose when he was twenty. I recognized Wick’s symptoms several months before he died, I just didn’t realize how far he had gone down that road until I went over to Edie’s a week after his funeral, with some library business. Since we worked pretty closely on the library board, I took a risk and mentioned I’d lost a brother to drugs. She started pouring her heart out. Said a doctor prescribed pills several years ago for a ski injury, and Wick got hooked. First he took them to get relief. Eventually he took them because he liked how they made him feel. Then he started mixing his own prescription cocktails. Even getting drugs wholesale, it eventually took every penny he made and then some to support his habit. The last year of his life, Edie was frantic—both because of the money and because she was terrified he’d make a mistake on somebody else’s prescription. After he died, she discovered his debts would take every penny she got for selling the business, her house, and most of her furniture. All she took away from that marriage was some collection or other his mother had. According to his will, she can’t sell them—they’re to go to Genna upon her death.”

“Eighteenth-century American snuffboxes,” I contributed. “But I’m surprised Wick didn’t sell them, too.”

“He would have if Edie hadn’t hidden them, along with some jewelry her mother left her. She said he was furious, but she told him they ought to go to Genna one day, and she was determined to see that they did.” Alex’s face was grave. “Another month or so, and he’d have been bankrupt. I guess he tried to do the honorable thing by killing himself before things went that far.” She bit her lower lip again. “She’s never told another soul, and I wouldn’t have told you, except it may be related to all this. She could be still worried about money.”

I hardly heard her. I was thinking of all the times I’d been with Wick and Edie during his last two years and never guessed a thing was wrong. Do we ever really know what lies behind another human face? “Does Genna know all this?”

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know about the drugs. I don’t know if Edie told her there wasn’t any money or not.”

I doubted it. Edie was a private person. I’d also recalled how angry my daughter-in-law had been on Genna’s behalf after Wick died. “He made a new will just a week before he died,” Cindy had said, “and he didn’t leave her a blessed thing. Can you believe that? His entire estate went to Edie. He even left her Genna’s grandmother’s snuffboxes, after promising them to Genna all her life.”

Drugs change people. Had Wick, in his last desperate week, taken petty revenge on Edie for hiding the boxes, saying, in effect, “Since you hung on to the danged things in my lifetime, you can jolly well keep them until you die—and put up with Genna grousing about it”?

Alex was still talking. “I think Genna’s still under the misapprehension that Edie’s rich, because I overheard Edie on the phone a few weeks back refusing to give her a loan. It wouldn’t occur to Genna to get a job. Can you imagine two women more dissimilar than those two?”

“Not right off.” Genna was a social butterfly who worshiped at the temple of the elegant lifestyle according to the gospel of
Southern Living
. Except for painting birdhouses to sell in benefit craft shows, she seemed to do little that didn’t involve the tennis court, golf course, chic restaurants, women’s clubs, a new women’s gym, or the beauty parlor.

Alex took a sip of tea, found it cold, and leaned over to pour the rest into a potted ficus. “Were Genna and Edie close when Genna was growing up?” she asked over her shoulder.

“No. Genna was eight when her parents divorced and her daddy bought the pharmacy and moved here. He had custody, for some reason, and Genna arrived furious that he’d moved her away from Memphis, where her mother still lived. Possibly she hoped her parents would get back together, I don’t know, but when Wick married Edie the next year, you wouldn’t believe the devious tricks that child tried—first to block the marriage, then to sabotage it. I felt sorry for Edie, and just as sorry for Genna. The only woman she related to was Sally Whelan, Josiah’s mother, who had moved back in with him when his wife died. Old as Sally was, she and Genna got along like two little girls. They both loved ruffled dresses and big hair bows, elaborate tea parties with baby dolls, painting their fingernails and trying out new shades of lipsticks. I sometimes thought Genna was the granddaughter Sally wished Edie had been.”

“Did that bother Edie?” Alex held up her teacup with a silent question and I nodded. While she refilled both cups, I kept talking—as much to myself as to her.

“No, I think both Genna and Edie would have been glad for Genna to stay out at the pecan grove until she went to college, but Josiah had to put Sally in a nursing home when Genna was sixteen. Genna got so upset she asked to live with her mother. Wick took her back to Memphis, and he and Edie breathed a sigh of relief—until she came back six months later.”

“Why?” Alex asked the question without turning around.

“Nobody ever said, and I never heard her mother mentioned again. Genna was nicer to Edie after that, for what it’s worth, but she didn’t come back to Hopemore after college. She worked in Birmingham for years, in a hospital records department.”

Alex handed me my tea. “Makes me nervous to think of somebody that fluffy working on people’s medical records. Was that where she met Adney? He sells hospital supplies, right?”

“Back then it was pharmaceuticals, and Wick’s store was in his territory, too. Wick was delighted when Adney and Genna met and got married five years ago. He was higher than a stockbroker’s promises when they moved to Hopemore three years later and bought one of those big houses by the golf course out on—” I stopped, embarrassed. Joe Riddley had called the street “High Mortgage Lane” for so long, I’d forgotten its real name.