Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery (9 page)

Again I suspected he’d also be reluctant to trade his elegant house on the golf course for Edie’s in the pecan grove. Besides, that gravel drive would be real hard on Genna’s Mercedes.

“What does she need all that space for?” Genna looked around at each of us, daring us to come up with a good answer and conveniently forgetting she and Adney had nearly twice as many square feet. “A town house would be easier to keep, and she’d be so much safer.” Genna sounded like security was a major worry in Hope County.

“It’s real peaceful out in the country,” Joe Riddley opined. He forked in his last bite of shrimp scampi and shoved back his chair. “Be right back.” He loped toward the buffet and came back with a plate loaded with catfish, always his last course.

We’d talked of other things while he was gone, and I’d thought we were finally finished discussing Edie until Genna turned to Cindy. “Edie’s getting real forgetful, too. I’m worried about her. Last week she left her door unlocked all night. Burglars could have walked right in!”

Walker, who is an insurance agent, reassured her. “The actual chances of anybody showing up at that particular back door on that given night were slight. However”—he gave me a stern look—“I do recommend locking doors.” I have been known to be a bit lax in that department. Then he leaned over and said to Genna in a whisper anybody could hear, “Everybody gets a little forgetful when they get old. Take Mama here—”

I opened my mouth to slap him upside the head with a few well-chosen words, but Adney looked around to make sure we weren’t being overheard, lowered his voice, and said, “You all want in on a good deal? This isn’t public knowledge yet, but next month a decision’s gonna be made to finally four-lane Whelan Grove Road as far as I-20. A buddy of mine has a friend in the Georgia Department of Transportation, and he’s already looking to buy land around the corner from the superstore. He says that whole area will eventually go subdivisions and commercial, because a fast road to I-20 will make this a practical drive for folks working in Augusta. My buddy says to buy quick, though, before the county commission messes things up with zoning regulations like the city council did inside the city limits several years ago.”

Since Joe Riddley had worked like the dickens to get the city council to zone Hopemore, I expected him to say something. Instead, he sat there chewing catfish with a thoughtful expression. I hoped he wasn’t planning to invest our life savings in real estate.

Adney was off and running now. “Edie can make a killing if she holds on to the land right at the road and sells the rest for housing. Think about it. Lots with huge pecan trees in the yards? People would kill to get one. They could build gorgeous places out there.”

“You interested in developing it?” Joe Riddley asked mildly.

Adney held up both hands. “Not me. I’m a traveling salesman, not a land developer.”

Joe Riddley chewed some more. Was he planning to become a real estate developer, without knowing the first thing about it?

Genna pouted. “If you owned your own business, you could stay home more.” Then she sighed. “But Edie isn’t going to sell the grove. She’ll live in that old house until it falls down around her ears, and you’ll be on the road forever.”

Adney laughed. “Poor Genna, she keeps dreaming of the perfect marriage with a husband who comes home every night. Unfortunately, sweetie, you married a man with restless feet. You know I’d get bored if I wasn’t on the road. Besides”—he leaned over and nuzzled her neck until she smiled and blushed—“it keeps the spice in our marriage.” He shoved back his chair. “Who wants dessert?”

Walker shoved back, too. “We’d better hurry before Mama Locust descends on the table.”

 

I drove home behind Joe Riddley, thinking I’d gotten off pretty light and glad we’d had people to distract him. While I fed Lulu, he went out to fetch Bo, his scarlet macaw, who lives on a small back porch behind the kitchen. If it was up to me, I’d leave that bird outside all the time. We had paid a fortune to enclose, heat, and air-condition his porch. However, Joe Riddley and Bo like to watch television together, Joe Riddley in his recliner and Bo on his shoulder.

I headed to the bedroom to exchange shoes for slippers, then took my favorite corner of the couch with Lulu beside me, her warm doggy head on my lap.

Joe Riddley pushed the “mute” button on the remote. “Okay, tell me what you were really up to down at Edie’s, and this time skip the fairy wands and teddy bears.”

I stroked Lulu as I told him about Alex’s call that morning, how worried Edie was, and what Olive thought was going on, then I recapped my afternoon, with all the pieces this time. After I finished, Joe Riddley scratched his cheek like he was coming up with a brilliant idea. “You know, you don’t really have to save the whole world. Parts of it can get along without your help.”

“I know that,” I said hotly. “I hadn’t planned on going down there. I told you, it was because I wanted to drive by the superstore, but then I heard geese—”

“—and if you hadn’t heard geese, you’d have seen something else that made you need to turn in. We both know you are itching to convince Alex that Edie doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, and you think the best way to do that is to find out who else left the door unlocked and moved her car seat.”

There are definite disadvantages to marrying a man who has known you since he was six and you were four.

He wasn’t finished. “You were most likely correct in what you told Alex. Edie is under a lot of stress right now, and that’s probably why she’s forgetting a few things.” He reached for the remote. “But tell me, would you say you alleviated any stress by burning down her house?”

Bo, who always takes Joe Riddley’s side, fixed me with a cold white eye. “Little Bit? Little Bit!” he scolded in Joe Riddley’s most exasperated tone.

At least Lulu reached up and licked my chin. She always knows when I need a friend.

When Joe Riddley got engrossed in his programs, I went to the phone to make some calls. First I called Alex and had her measure Natasha’s head. Then I called Henry and, since he was out, left the measurement with his mother, Daisy. Finally I called Edie. I felt I owed her a personal explanation in addition to the note, and I wanted to offer to look for a replacement tea set. Of course, if anything else odd had happened and she happened to want to talk about it . . .

She answered on the second ring. “I hope I didn’t wake you,” I apologized. “I know it’s late—”

“I just came in from a card game,” she assured me with a laugh that sounded more like the old Edie.

“Did you win?”

“What do you think? Can I help you?”

“I wanted to tell you why your house smells like smoke.”

Our mamas raised us both right, so when I apologized for the fire Edie chimed right in assuring me no real damage had been done.

I was careful not to lay the blame on Valerie, so I was a bit vague about how the fire got started. Edie was too polite to ask for details.

I lamented profusely that her tea set got broken, and she claimed, “That’s all right. I can glue the teapot together.”

I jumped in with, “No, let me ask Maynard Spence to look for a new set,” and she won that round by saying, “It’s not an heirloom, MacLaren. I got it at a flea market a few years ago.”

I moved on to the next playing field. “Your little table and chairs are ruined.”

“Not at all. I’ll sand them down and paint them, and they’ll be as good as new.”

“Well, poor Mama Bear—”

“Mama Bear was getting pretty scruffy anyway.”

It was my turn to win, and we both knew it. “I insist on replacing her. That would make me feel a little better about all this.”

“Okay, you can buy me a bear, but you aren’t taking the blame. I know it had to be Valerie who let that match loose in the house. That girl is a walking disaster.” She seemed to find that funny.

“I met Frank,” I said, letting my voice trail off.

Edie laughed again. “Doesn’t he look scary? But you wouldn’t believe how handy he can be. He’s fixed a lot of things around here since Valerie started bringing him home—my computer, a stopped-up sink, a running toilet. He even went up on the roof and replaced some shingles.”

“Considering the height of your roof, that was downright considerate. They said they were going to perform at some wedding reception tonight.”

“Yeah, people seem to like their music. They do wedding receptions or play in clubs almost every week. I’ve been meaning to go hear them sometime, but I haven’t. Seems like by the time I get home, I don’t want to go back out.”

“I can understand that.” I could hardly wait for us to be done so I could sit on my couch with my feet up and watch Joe Riddley watching television.

“You think they’re getting serious?” I was moving onto ground I had no claim to, and Edie had a right to get cross, but she laughed again.

“Heavens, no. Valerie’s engaged to a man in the Navy. He’s away on his six-months’ whatever-it-is, but he’ll be back a few weeks after Christmas.”

After that we wound down, with me promising to buy her another bear and bring it by the library, and her telling me not to hurry, with everything else I had to do. “It’s not urgent,” she assured me. “Anytime in the next hundred years.”

“Maybe even in the next fifty,” I offered.

Death stalks us all our lives, and we never know when his breath is on our heels.

On Thanksgiving, we went to Ridd and Martha’s for dinner, since they now had the big house. We had strong instructions to “come casual,” but I like to fix up a little for special occasions, so I wore a new fall floral skirt with a yellow cotton sweater. I also persuaded Joe Riddley to change out of jeans and a tan work shirt into khaki slacks with a plaid shirt. It goes without saying that right up until we sat down, he wore his red cap with “Yarbrough’s” stitched above the bill. He wears that cap so much, the boys swear they’ll bury it with him.

The old Yarbrough place is half a mile down a gravel road. We were almost there when Joe Riddley looked in his rearview window and asked, “Is that Adney behind us? The way that SUV is mincing along, he must be afraid he’ll get it dirty.”

I turned. “I can’t tell if it’s Adney or Olive. They both drive gray Nissan Xterras, although Adney uses a Maxima for work.” As a Nissan owner myself, I thought they had good taste.

When they climbed out I was glad I’d dressed up. Genna must have missed the “dress casual” bit, because she wore a beige silk slack suit with a creamy silk blouse that shrieked, “Spill cranberry sauce down me!”

Edie climbed out wearing a long khaki skirt with an orange sweater. She even wore pumpkin socks with her clogs, in honor of the holiday. The socks were a lot cheerier than her face, though. She looked like she hadn’t slept all week. I nearly quipped, “Did somebody steal your beds?” until I remembered that this was her first Thanksgiving without Josiah or Wick. I was glad Martha had thought to invite them, and reached out to give her a hug. “Still winning at cards?”

She gave a funny choking sound. “Yes, there is still that.” She grabbed onto me like she’d never let go, then stepped back with an embarrassed laugh. Edie and I weren’t hugging friends.

Olive was in black and gray, of course. I wondered if she’d read some fashion advice that black was appropriate for all occasions.

“Welcome!” Ridd’s daughter, Bethany, and her best friend, Hollis Stanton, called from the porch in unison. Bethany added, “You all come on in. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Hollis and Bethany had been best friends since third grade. Hollis’s family had recently moved away, so she was living with Ridd and Martha for her senior year.
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Bethany was tall and slender like her daddy and granddaddy, with their dark hair and eyes. Hollis was short and stocky, with a face full of freckles, a saucy grin, and a cloud of the liveliest red hair I’d ever seen. In certain lights it held glints of green, purple, and gold. The fact that Hollis had a lovely soprano voice always startled me, for she didn’t look anything like my idea of a soprano.

I kept wishing I was at the children’s table during dinner. The day was warm enough for Martha to serve them out on the screened side porch, and they had a lot more hilarity.

In addition to our four grandchildren and Hollis, Martha had invited two other teens, Smitty Smith and Tyrone Noland, whom she and Ridd had recently taken under their wings. Tyrone had been a favorite of mine since he was in elementaryschool, a pudgy child with soft brown hair and eyes like chips of sky who would stop by the store to ask, “You want I should sweep your store, Miss Mac?” Because I knew his mother struggled to make ends meet working in the produce department at the Bi-Lo, I usually found something for him to do to earn spending money. He’d grown into an enormous young man, and had gone through a phase when he’d dyed his hair black and worn nothing but black clothes. He now looked like a German shepherd, his hair dark brown with black tips. Today he had on a maroon shirt. I considered that progress.

Smitty, on the other hand, I still had trouble tolerating. He was shorter than Tyrone by a good five inches and probably weighed a hundred pounds less, but every ounce of Smitty was tight, angry muscle. Granted, since he’d started hanging around Ridd and Martha’s, he had shaved the long hank of bleached hair that formerly grew out of his shaved scalp. He now shaved his whole head. But he still wore all black, sported cruel dragons tattooed on both arms, and wore more earrings on various parts of his body than I owned. He had the long, wary face of a predator and the cold gray eyes of an eagle, and he regarded the world with an expression that was hooded and watchful, like he was biding his time, waiting to swoop in for a kill.

I went to refill the mashed potato bowl once and peeked out to see what the children were finding so funny. Tyrone and Hollis were cutting up, as usual. Only Smitty wasn’t laughing.