Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery (6 page)

“It keeps an even temperature. I’m done now, for an hour or so.” He pulled off a thick glove and wiped his forehead again. “What you want now?”

I gave him a long, level look. “Not the warmest welcome I ever got from somebody I gave lime suckers to most of his growing-up years.”

He shrugged. “I’m busy here.”

“We sell machetes pretty cheap these days.”

“I prefer to make my own.” He reached up to pull a cord that turned on a bulb above his head. It made a pool of light that didn’t reach the corners.

I looked around and saw a couple of other handmade machetes hanging on the back wall.

“You prune with those?”

“Some, and the Mexican workers like them.”

“What’s that you used to harden the blade?” I went to peer into the trough. “My granddaddy used water.”

“I prefer oil. It does make a stink, though.” He propped his backside against a worktable, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited for me to explain why I was there.

I cleared the rest of the smoke from my lungs. “Alex asked me to thank you for getting her car started. She’s not always—” I backed up and started over. “She tends to be very careful where Natasha is concerned.”

He gave a disbelieving snort. “So careful she lets the kid wander off, open shut doors, and go into buildings all on her own? Where was her mother when she was roaming around?” He was very large and very angry.

Bothering him in the shed now seemed like an idea I should have thought about twice, but I resisted an urge to step back. “Trying to start her car. She thought Natasha and Poe Boy were going to stay nearby, and she didn’t know anybody was around.”

“In harvest season? There’s folks all over this place—working on equipment, running the cleaning shed—” He stopped and exhaled a deep, disgusted breath. “Okay, you know all that, but maybe she didn’t. Still, she oughta take better care of that kid.”

“Well, she was sorry she jumped all over you, and she wanted me to tell you.” That wasn’t precisely what Alex said, but it was near enough.

He gave a sarcastic grunt. “I get to keep my library card?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s good. Never can tell when I might need it.”

He pulled on his glove again, pulled down his goggles, and picked up a thin rod of metal with a pair of tongs. He thrust it into the flames and, when it was red-hot, carried it to the anvil and began to hammer it. Clearly he thought the interview was over. I ought to have left, but instead I stood watching while he reheated and folded the rod until a star with blunt points began to take shape. When the star was done, he took a second rod, eyed it, and sawed off a piece about twelve inches long. Then he heated both pieces and reached for his hammer. I stepped out of the way of sparks while he attached the star to one end of the rod. Finally, with a hiss of steam, he plunged the finished work into the oil. Again we were separated by a stinking cloud.

All that time he’d kept his back to me. He must have presumed I’d left, for he flinched when I coughed again. He recovered quickly, though, and held up the finished product with one hand while he turned off the blower with the other. “That look like a wand to you?”

I tried to match his careless tone. “Close enough for government work.”

“Good. I didn’t get her head measurement, so I can’t do a tiara.”

“I’ll get it for you,” I offered. “That’s marvelous, Henry. And very kind.”

I was the one being kind. His face was stony, and he seemed to have left all his manners and most of his conversation in South Carolina.

A dim memory stirred somewhere in the back of my mind. “You have a little girl, too, don’t you?”

“I thought I did.” He flipped a switch, and a belt moved rapidly, filling the small space with a shrill, angry whine. Henry’s mouth looked like he’d been sucking on bitterness, and his gray eyes smoldered in the dimness like the dying coals behind him.

He strode toward me and raised one arm. I stepped back, breath caught in my throat.

He reached over my shoulder and seized one of the machetes from the wall.

Generations of fear rose inside me, branded into the fiber of my being by tales told woman to woman while snapping beans under the chinaberry trees of my childhood home. Would I follow my great-grandmother’s bloody example? She was hacked to death by a field hand for the locket she wore.

I could not have moved if my life depended on it. For a second, I thought it did. Then Henry turned, carried the machete back to the sharpener, and lowered the blade to the belt. The room filled with metallic screams and a shower of sparks.

Hot with shame and pretending—as much to myself as to him—that I hadn’t really been scared, I moved closer to watch, but out of range of the sparks. I didn’t want holes in my pantsuit.

When he lifted the blade to examine it, I asked in the momentary quiet, “What happened to your little girl?”

He gave me a long stare. “You really want to know?”

I nodded. He lowered the blade again, and his voice was brutal, striking me word by word as he punctuated the short sentences with the shrieks of metal against abrasive.

“I had a wife.
And
a little girl. For ten years. Until my wife got hooked on crack. Moved in with her dealer.” He held up the machete and examined the edge, then pressed metal to belt again. Again shrieks filled the air.

When it looked like he was going to leave the story hanging there forever, I went close enough to yell, “Where is the child?”

He lifted the blade and spoke into the lull. “With her mother. When I told Janeen I wanted Latoya, she informed me Latoya isn’t mine.” Was it heat from the fire or his fury that made the air so thick and stifling?

He cut off the wheel, and all sound was sucked into silence.

The rain quickened overhead. He lifted the machete and swung it around his head again and again, filling the air with the
whoosh
of the blade.

“She knew the whole stinkin’ time”—
whoosh
—“who that baby’s daddy was”—
whoosh
—“but he wouldn’t marry her”—
whoosh
—“and support the two of them”—
whoosh.

I stepped away, having no desire to die even an accidental death in that shed.

Then he dropped his arm, and the machete fell with a thud to the table. “It was my own fault. I was too stupid and ashamed to take time for a paternity test before I said ‘I do.’ ” He spoke toward the window and the deepening darkness.

“You were pretty young, too,” I reminded him, wishing I had more in the way of comfort to offer.

He went on like I hadn’t spoken. “Gave up a college scholarship, worked my tail off for ten years fixing cars to put bread on the table, and for what? Can you tell me that? For what?” He turned, picked up his hammer, and hit the anvil a blow that made my ears ring.

Tears stung behind my eyelids. No wonder he had changed. Who was it about whom someone wrote, “The iron entered his soul”? Knowing you have wasted years of your life, thrown away your best chances on somebody else’s lie, can do that to a person.

Henry was talking to the fire now, spitting words into the flames. “I spoke to a lawyer. Thought maybe I could get custody. Janeen was an unfit mother, for sure. But the judge gave custody to Janeen’s mother, on the grounds that Latoya wasn’t mine. Wasn’t
mine?
” He swung around and accidentally jerked the light cord. The shed went dark, except for the hellish fire. All I could see in its dim light were the whites of his eyes and his teeth—a mask of despair hanging in darkness. “Who was it changed her diapers, rocked her to sleep, fed her bottles, read her stories, helped with her homework, and covered for her mother all those nights she was out partying and didn’t come home? If that didn’t make her mine, what would?” He jerked the light cord so hard it broke off in his hand. He flung it into the fire.

I blinked, adjusting to the sudden light. “Where are they now? We might—”

He turned his back, and tears clogged his voice. “I don’t have a clue. They left the place where we’d been staying, and Janeen told me not to try to find her, she wouldn’t have me hanging around Latoya anymore. I did anyway, asked everybody she knew—even asked her bitch of a mother, and I’m not saying that lightly, Miss Mac. That woman raised Janeen, and I heard she gave Latoya back to Janeen as soon as the court stopped watching. But nobody would tell me anything. I’ve spent two years looking for my child. By now she’s twelve. She’s probably forgotten me. And I don’t have any earthly idea where she is.” The last sentence was wrung out from the whole cloth of grief.

He picked up the machete again and sliced the air, but it was a halfhearted effort. When it was over, he hung the blade back on its hook with a precision the act didn’t warrant. The set of his shoulders warded off sympathy.

“So that’s why you came home.” I made my voice as matter-of-fact as I could.

“No. I came home because Daddy called, all upset. He said there was something I needed to know and he wanted to tell me in person. I arranged with my boss to come the next weekend and stay a week, but before I got here Daddy died. Now Mama doesn’t want to be alone, the damn crop needs harvesting, and at the rate it’s raining I’ll be here until kingdom come.”

He picked up his hammer again, struck the anvil so hard that sparks fell in a shower around his feet. Hitting anvils was better than pounding people, I supposed, if you were that full of barbed wire and hate.

I wanted so desperately to say something that might help. “I’m sure Latoya will never forget you. No good we do to a child is ever forgotten.”

He gave a grunt of pure derision. “You want me to make a magic wand for you? Think that can make fairy tales come true?”

“I don’t believe in magic,” I told him tartly. “Just miracles.”

“Start working one on that librarian, then,” he told me. “It would take a powerful miracle to make something human out of her.” He bent to extinguish the fire.

Dismissed, I turned to go, then remembered two things. “What were you arguing with Edie about this morning?”

He frowned, as if trying to remember. “Oh, she wanted us to see if we could do some work in the grove, and I told her it’s too wet. After tonight it’s gonna be wetter.”

“You haven’t been playing practical jokes on her, have you? Putting her car seat back, or letting her cat out?”

“No.” He tossed the word over his shoulder without looking around.

“Somebody has, and I wondered if it was you, teasing or something.” It sounded pretty lame. I opened the door and let in the dusk, then I turned. “It was good to talk with you, Henry. Don’t be a stranger. Stop by the store one day soon and I’ll give you a green sucker.”

He blew out an exasperated breath. “You’re looking at an orange one.”

High above the drive, Josiah had installed a halogen security light that had come on while I was with Henry. With rain falling around it, it seemed a giant shower spraying my car. I hurried toward it, pocketbook over my head, pants legs soaked, and shoes squishing with every step.

Because I was watching the ground for rocks and puddles, I didn’t notice the approaching car until headlights blinded me. I dashed off the track into slick knee-high grass as a small white two-door swung around my Nissan and parked close to the back steps.

A black umbrella emerged, then a tall, pale somebody unfolded from the driver’s door and bent to retrieve something from behind the seat. Long bright hair gleamed in the light.

“Hey,” I called, still trembling from the scare she’d given me. “You must be Valerie.”

She jerked erect. “Oh! I didn’t know anybody was here.”

I headed for the shelter of the carport. “That’s my car.” I pointed.

“Oh.” She looked at the Nissan doubtfully, as if it had materialized. “I didn’t see it.” I didn’t bother to remind her she had just driven around it.

She was tall, mostly legs encased in tight jeans. She wore a bulky white sweater over them and white running shoes. I couldn’t determine the color of her eyes, but they were large and light, the best feature in a face that was long and strong, with a large nose and wide chin. Odd shadows made one cheek look purple and green. Her hair looked green, too, in the halogen glow, falling from a center part straight to her waist. It was so thick and strong, I had a sudden picture of it swinging in one long braid from a castle window to haul up a prince.

She heaved a loaded book bag over one shoulder as easily as if it were empty. “If you came to see Edie, I think she’s, like, gone.” She peered around the grove, in case Edie should appear from behind a tree.

“I was down visiting with Henry,” I explained.

She gave the shed an incurious look. “Oh. Is he still here?”

“Working on something.”

“Oh.” She stood swinging the book bag, not noticeably skilled in the art of conversation.

“You must be Valerie,” I repeated. “I’m Judge Yarbrough, and I came down to—” At the moment I couldn’t remember. It seemed like I’d been there a week.

She waited, patient as a good child. “—see Henry?” she suggested helpfully.

“Yes,” I agreed, relieved. “And there’s something on the porch for Edie.” I pointed. I didn’t say I had brought it, but then again, I didn’t say I hadn’t.

She glanced toward the screen. “Oh.” She got more mileage out of that word than anybody I’d ever met. “I’ll take it in. Do you want a cup of coffee or something? You look real wet.”

I
felt
wet. And cold. The damp air had a bite now that the sun was down. A hot cup of coffee was the best offer I’d had all day. So what if Joe Riddley went to dinner without me? I would get there in time for dessert.

If she was surprised by my acceptance, she gave no sign, just turned back to the car. “Oh. I nearly forgot my fabric.” She pulled out a white plastic bag. “I went up near Augusta for it, after class. Won’t it be great when that new store opens and we can just run by for stuff?”