Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery (30 page)

Sheriff Gibbons gave me a swift look. “While driving like a maniac? Next time concentrate on the road.”

I ignored him. “Adney looked absolutely exhausted when he got here the day Edie died.”

The sheriff thought that over. “His odometer checked out. He didn’t drive that far.”

“He could have rented a car.”

“We could ask the Birmingham police to show his picture around some car rental agencies,” he murmured to himself. “Somebody might remember him.”

“They will if they’re female. He’s a handsome cuss. Aren’t you, Adney?”

“Handsome or not, they already ran a check on my credit card. I did not rent a car in Birmingham. Why are you doing this, Mac? I always thought you and I were friends.”

I bit my tongue and refused to be baited. Instead, I watched the silver landscape flash by in the moonlight. Finally I spoke to the sheriff. “He could have a credit card in the name of a business he was pestering Walker to give him insurance quotes on over Thanksgiving. Some kind of sports complex. He said he was asking for a friend, but I didn’t believe that—especially after Edie told me Genna had been asking for her ‘inheritance’ to help Adney start a business.”

That got a little rise from the backseat. “What Genna asked Edie was between them. I didn’t ask Genna or Edie either one for money.”

“But you beat Genna when she told you Edie didn’t leave any. If Edie had told Genna she didn’t have money left after she paid Wick’s debts, would she be alive today?”

“Don’t soil a beautiful lady’s memory,” he replied. “I did not love Edie for her money.”

The sheriff told me, “We checked out those keys you found on the nail with the plastic bags. They must be Josiah’s keys to all the outbuildings. One of them fits Henry’s shed. I guess that’s how he got Henry’s machete and coveralls. But how do you reckon he knew about those keys?”

“Beats me. I guess you’ll have to leave something for the prosecutor to figure out. The coveralls were decoys, anyway. Adney wouldn’t need to wear them. He sells supplies to surgeons who mess around in blood all day long, then go home clean as a whistle. In a pair of scrubs, booties, a cap and mask—how many traces would he leave? I’ll bet he dumped those things at the hospital he visited the next morning, but you might find traces of blood in the rental car, when you find it. Can you imagine anything more low-down than smearing Henry’s coveralls in the blood afterwards to implicate him? Unless it’s calling Edie to make sure she was home so he could come in and kill her. That was downright—” I stopped. I didn’t want to say the kind of words I was thinking right then.

“You listening, Adney?” the sheriff called to the backseat. “She’s building up a pretty good case against you, don’t you think?”

“I think she’s got a vivid imagination.” Adney leaned back and started to whistle.

“I
imagine
you’ll look at Adney’s cell phone records again,” I replied. “I imagine that they, plus a conversation with the motel desk clerk in Birmingham, might elicit the information that Adney’s request for a wake-up call came not from his room phone but from his cell phone. While he was driving to Hopemore, in fact. His cell phone records might also show that he talked to Olive after she was at Edie’s Wednesday night. Olive could have told him Genna had left Whelan Grove.”

“She could have,” Adney agreed blandly, “but she didn’t.”

The sheriff looked over at me as we reached the city limits. “You want me to drop you off at your house?”

Not yet. I’d begun to realize there were holes in the story. I thought I knew how to patch them. “Can Adney call Genna, to see if she got home safely?”

The sheriff gave permission, and Adney punched the number. “No answer. Let me try her cell.” He punched another number and we heard his side of the conversation. He started out nice as pie. “Hello, honey. You doin’ all right? . . . I’m so sorry about that. I’ll make it up to you. Listen, I went out after Olive left, and I ran into a little trouble, so I may not get home tonight. You’re where? What are you doing there? What happened to her? She
what?
”

I wished I could hear Genna’s side of the conversation. Was she telling him Olive was sitting beside a deputy, waiting to get a broken wrist set so she could meet him down at the jail? Or was she soft-pedaling the news, as he had soft-pedaled his own?

“Well, you all take care. Maybe she ought to go home with you tonight.”

He wished. If I had anything to do with it, he and Olive would be sleeping under the same roof. Nobody attempted to kill me in my own county and went home to sleep.

He hung up. “You’ve been so busy making up stories, Judge, you somehow forgot to tell me my sister ran her car into a tree and broke her wrist. Genna said they have sat in the emergency room for nearly three hours, and Olive just went in to get it set. Oh, God, why am I here when I need to be there?”

I doubted very much that was a prayer.

“Cindy’s probably with them,” I said brightly. “Take me by there, too, Sheriff. Cindy can run me home.”

As I got out of the car at the emergency room door, I turned and said to Adney, “By the way, did you play golf today?”

“No,” he said curtly. “I was down in Savannah until nearly suppertime.”

“Then you missed the excitement. Shep Faxon told the fellows that Josiah signed a new will last Tuesday, leaving everything he has to Henry Joyner. Henry’s daddy, Pete, was Josiah’s nephew. Walker said it made a real sensation at the club.”

Nothing that day had been as sweet as seeing Adney’s face.

The waiting room was almost empty. Walker, Cindy, and Genna were sitting in the far corner when I arrived, but Walker was halfway across the waiting room the second he saw me come through the door, and towering over me two seconds after that.

“What did you mean, shoving a gun into Cindy’s hand and haring off like that? She’s sitting over there”—he lowered his voice and got so close I could smell coffee on his breath as he hissed—“she’s sitting over there with an illegal handgun in her purse!”

“Don’t tell me about it, son. I’m an officer of the law.”

“You’re the one who gave it to her!”

“She was supposed to turn it over to the deputy as soon as he arrived and tell him we’d taken it from Olive. I guess I forgot to give her that part of the instructions.”

“Mama! My wife doesn’t know a thing about handguns. It’s a miracle she didn’t kill somebody.”

I could see she hadn’t shot herself or Genna. At the moment, feeling like a weary dog dragging its tail in the dust, I didn’t much care if she’d shot Olive. Still, I figured I ought to ask.

Walker huffed out a stream of exasperated air. “Of course she didn’t shoot Olive. But this is the limit, Mama. I’ve put up with you all my life, but you can’t go on doing things like this.”

“I never did anything like that before, and I wouldn’t have then if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary. Can we sit down before we continue this conversation? If I don’t sit, I’m likely to fall. I am dead on my feet.”

I tottered over and plopped down beside Cindy. She and Genna had obviously spent time in the ladies’ room with those pounds of cosmetics they both carried around. Cindy looked as fresh and pretty as if she’d just come from a salon. Genna had managed to cover her purple eye and fluff up her hair. She’d even gotten a fresh shirt and shoes from somewhere.

I felt like something the cat had played with half an hour before dragging it in. “How’s Olive?” I asked.

Genna leaned across Cindy to answer. “After making us wait three hours, they just took her back a few minutes ago.” Her jaw moved funny.

“Did you ask them to look at that jaw?” She dropped her eyes, and I decided not to pursue it just then. “Did the deputy go in with Olive?”

That wouldn’t have been strictly necessary, but I was impressed with his or her dedication to duty—until Cindy said carelessly, “Oh, we didn’t wait for anybody to come. After you all left, I went ahead and drove Olive here while Genna stopped by her house, then came on over.”

“But the deputy was supposed to arrest Olive.”

She and Genna both stared.

“She threatened me with a gun,” I pointed out grimly.

“You had the gun,” Genna corrected me. “Olive was chasing you, then she wrecked her car, and when she got out, that guy started beating up on her and broke her arm, and you had a gun on her.” She looked at me, obviously bewildered.

“Why did you think I wanted her tied up?” I demanded.

Genna shook her head. “I had no idea. We untied her as soon as you left.”

I counted to ten. Maybe at that distance Genna hadn’t seen exactly what was going on. Or maybe she didn’t want to remember. I was so tired, it was all getting blurry for me, too.

Walker took the seat on the other side of me in the manner of a psychiatric worker sticking close to a patient. I remembered something I had forgotten to ask Joe Riddley. “Who’s keeping your children?”

“Bethany and Hollis came over to stay when Daddy sent me off to talk to Adney. Adney wasn’t there, and about then Cindy called to say she and Genna were heading to the emergency room with Olive, so I called and told the girls to bed down in our guest room for the night and came over here. Are you planning to tell us what this is all about? Or is it just the standard Yarbrough parental circus?”

I leaned back in my chair and tried to figure out what to say. For the time being, I settled for, “Your daddy and I had to go somewhere real fast.” I lowered my voice so Genna couldn’t hear. “And the reason Olive broke her wrist is that she was chasing me in the grove with her car tonight, until Smitty dropped onto the car to distract her and she ran into a tree.”

Walker shook his head in disgust. “That Smitty. Somebody ought to lock him up.”

“Somebody ought to give him a medal. He saved my life. Listen to what I’m saying, boy. Olive was trying her dead-level best to run over me. She—” I had to stop. Memories of that chase and my fear in those desperate minutes washed over me and left me trembling. “If it hadn’t been for Smitty,” I finally managed, “you’d have been visiting me in the ICU—or the morgue.”

I could tell he didn’t believe me. Heck, a judge wouldn’t be likely to believe me, either, with Smitty as my only witness. But I hadn’t come there to argue that case.

“I need to go find a Coke,” I said. “Anybody want one?”

“I’ll get it,” Walker offered reluctantly, starting to get up. He is, at bottom, a good son. That time, though, I turned him down.

I waved him back. “No, I need to make another stop on the way.”

If they figured I had to go to the ladies’ room, that’s all right. What I needed was a private corner in which to call the sheriff.

He told me the chief magistrate had been at the jail when they arrived, so Judge Stebley had sent Adney to a comfortable bunk in the detention center on a charge of attempted murder, awaiting the leisure of a superior court judge. I told him what I’d found at the emergency room, and we discussed a few other items. As we closed, he asked, “You holdin’ up okay?”

“ ’Bout as well as you can expect for somebody who hasn’t eaten for eight hours or slept since six yesterday morning. I keep telling myself it’s just like prom night, but there seems to be a certain lack of hilarity in the proceedings.”

“We’ll all party later,” he promised.

I went back to my seat, stopping to greet a couple who were the only people left there besides us. He had a horrible cough, and I didn’t know them well, but I felt so punchy that any familiar face looked like a friend.

I’d scarcely sat down good before I remembered something Walker had said. I leaned over and murmured to Cindy, “Meet me over by the front door. We need to talk.”

Walker came with us. “You’re not giving my wife any more fool instructions tonight.”

I glared at him. “Why didn’t I pinch your head off when you were two and I first realized you were going to be obstreperous all your life? Look, son, we’re in the middle of something awful right now, and we don’t need extra trouble. What I wanted to suggest was that Cindy quietly walk out to your car and put that gun in the glove compartment. It still won’t be legal, but at least it will be safe.”

“I’ll take it.”

He was already reaching for her purse when I asked softly, “You think you’ll be less conspicuous carrying a purse across the parking lot? Walk her out, though. I want to talk to Genna.”

The last couple went into the examining room as I sat down beside her. “You must be worn out, honey. If you want to go on home, we’ll wait for Olive.” I wasn’t sure what part Olive might have played in Edie’s death, but she’d certainly played one in tonight’s events. Friends don’t let friends go home with possible murderers.

Genna reached for her purse so eagerly I suspected she’d have left sooner if Cindy and Walker hadn’t stuck around. “Would you really? I’d appreciate it.” She yawned, then winced as it hurt her jaw. “This has been the longest day. First I had to get up early to let you folks in down at Edie’s, then I had aerobics class, then I was dressing for the Junior League Christmas luncheon when I got a call from Adney saying Olive had taken some stuff out of Edie’s room and I needed to call the sheriff and tell him it was all right, because she was bringing it to me. I don’t know what that was all about, but it nearly made me late for the luncheon. After that I had a tennis match, then a bunch of us had a Christmas cookie swap. After supper, I had that stupid fight with Adney, and”—she waved one hand as if too weary to finish—“you know. All this stuff.”

Except she didn’t say “stuff,” and hers was a more accurate way to describe her beating, my near murder, and Olive’s broken wrist.

She covered her mouth to hide another yawn. “I am utterly exhausted, so if you don’t really mind—?” She was already on her feet.

I watched her go, wondering why I was putting myself out to save her petty little life. But that was weariness speaking. Any life is worth saving. Tomorrow might be the day Genna decided to turn around and live up to her potential. Look at Smitty.