Who Invited the Dead Man?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “Rutherford,” he supplied helpfully. “New editor for the Hopemore Statesman.”

  Gusta rested on her cane and peered closely, searching his long frame for flaws. She apparently found none, because she extended her hand. “How do you do? Where did you come from?”

  “Asheville. I was with—”

  “Ah, one of the North Carolina Rutherfords?” He barely nodded, but she went right on, satisfied that she’d placed him. “We may be distantly related—through my mother’s side. Come by one afternoon. I’m just up Oglethorpe Street. Anyone can direct you.” She swept past us and into the bank, leaving Vern still wringing his hands and looking for a police car. Alice waited by the curb, avoiding Vern’s eye. I and everybody else in town pretended we didn’t notice the car. We all knew Gusta didn’t need to do any more walking than she had to.

  Slade watched Gusta’s progression through the bank with an amused smile. “I take it that Mrs. Wainwright is important in town?”

  “Assumed the throne at birth and hasn’t shown any sign of stepping down.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He touched his left hand to his forehead in a mock salute and followed her toward the counter.

  Any woman with eyes in her head could see that Slade’s wedding ring finger was bare. It didn’t take long for him to be approached by every unattached women in town between twenty-five and forty except Meriwether Wainwright. And by their respective mamas. Especially after Gusta discreetly spread the word that Slade was “one of the North Carolina Rutherfords—you know, like Rutherfordton?” She pronounced it Rolfton, like I’d heard native Carolinians do.

  Suddenly we had a spate of little Welcome Autumn cocktail parties, football get-togethers with cute food instead of the usual nacho cheese and chips, a group jaunt down to Dublin to watch car races, a Harvest Barbeque, even a Scarecrow Dance at the country club. We also had a round of what our women like to call “just a casual dinner, nothing formal, mostly family” that involves two days of silver polishing, tablecloth ironing, and cookbook consulting to pick something not too ostentatious but certainly not what the family sits down to as a rule.

  Slade Rutherford, of course, was the guest of honor at all those events, tall, slim and handsome. With Slade invited, the parties did double duty. Not only did they parade eligible women in their native habitat, they also gave hostesses a chance for a small paragraph in the paper. A few even got pictures. But while the Hopemore Statesman duly reported our social whirl, Slade seemed immune to all Hopemore’s blushing belles. The only woman he seemed the least bit interested in was Gusta. I heard he stopped by her place several times a week with flowers and candy.

  Gusta called one Tuesday to invite Joe Riddley and me to a musicale the next Sunday afternoon. “Only a few people,” she assured me. “I’ve got a chamber orchestra from Augusta and am tuning the Steinway.” She made it sound like she turned those little screws herself.

  “You know Joe Riddley doesn’t go out right now,” I reminded her.

  “It would do him good to get out. He can sit in a corner and listen to the music, and you can go home whenever you feel like it. Don’t let me down. I’m counting on your being here.”

  Thinking it might do Joe Riddley good, I wrestled him into a suit that hung on him, thin as he’d gotten. I gussied myself up in my favorite long green dress that everybody says flatters me. I put blusher on my cheeks and mascara on my lashes, for I like to look nice. I struggled to get both Joe Riddley and that dratted wheelchair into the car. And then, when we got there, I discovered it wasn’t Mac and Joe Riddley she’d wanted, it was Judge and Judge Yarbrough. She also had the chief surgeon from our local hospital and his wife, the president of our community college with her husband, and Maynard Spence, my nearest neighbor and the new curator of the Hope County Historical Museum. He brought Selena Jones, whom he’d been squiring for over a month. Maynard had lived in New York for ten years before coming home to Hopemore, and outshone our dark-suited men in a natural linen suit and a dark green shirt. Selena beside him was a whirl of orange, green, and yellow silk that set off her deep red hair.

  After Gusta presented Slade to all the other guests, she added as if it were an afterthought, “And I don’t think you’ve met my granddaughter, Meriwether.”

  Meriwether was wearing a soft green-and-blue dress that made her eyes look like emeralds. With her hair fluffed around her face and her mother’s large pearls in her ears, she could have flown in from Paris, but her grandmother gave her a prod like she was a backwards sixteen-year-old. “Meriwether, why don’t you get Mr. Rutherford a drink?”

  While the instruments tuned up, I wheeled Joe Riddley to a corner, got him a drink and a plate of finger food, and sat fanning myself. Joe Riddley took one sip of his drink and took one look at his plate and said loudly, “Gusta’s watering her sherry again, and this sandwich isn’t big enough for a flea.”

  I motioned for him to be quiet, which irritated him more. “Don’t shush me, Little Bit. I know what I am saying. As much money as that woman’s got, she could afford to feed us.”

  I pointed to Kelly Keane, moving purposefully from group to group with her notebook and ballpoint pen. “There’s that reporter who interviewed me. You don’t want her quoting you in the paper, do you?”

  As Kelly moved to talk to somebody hidden from me by a potted palm, Joe Riddley exclaimed, “There’s Darren!” He waved a cracker spread with cheese and one slice of olive. “Hey, Darren! Come eat a flea sandwich.”

  I was surprised and delighted when Darren Hernandez, Joe Riddley’s therapist, stepped out from the palm and headed our way. He must have taken seriously my suggestion that he look up Kelly. Well-dressed women and men in starched shirts and suits looked askance at his black jeans and T-shirt—or was it his bright green hair and silver earring? His handsome swarthy face lit with a smile. “Hey, J. R. You need more to eat? I’ll get it for you.”

  “We need to go,” Kelly said softly at his shoulder. She gave us an apologetic smile. “I have another event to cover this afternoon, too. Slade’s going to write up the music part here.”

  I was sorry they had left when I saw Alice Fulton come from the back part of the house and stand looking around uncertainly. They’d been the only people her age in the room. I smiled, and when she smiled back and headed our way, I remembered with surprise how pretty she could be. Since she’d started work, I’d only seen her in flat shoes, neat dark skirts, and cotton sweaters. Today she wore a simple sleeveless black dress that showed off a lovely figure and brought out her dark hair and eyes. Gold hoops in her ears and a gold chain around her neck glittered in the light. High heels called attention to her tiny feet. But she still had her hair dragged back instead of letting it spring loose around her face.

  With his current lack of tact, Joe Riddley put my next thought into words. “Let your hair down and put on a little makeup, you could be downright beautiful.” He waved a scrap of pimento cheese sandwich at her. “Won’t get fat eating at Gusta’s. That’s for sure.”

  Alice gave him an anxious smile. “Can I get you something else?”

  “Get me about fifty of these. Takes that many to make a good meal.” As she scurried off, he looked around the room and called to nobody in particular, “Did Gusta sell her furniture?”

  Gusta herself heard him. “I put it in the back room to make space for the concert.” The way she said it, you’d have thought she’d personally moved the couch, chairs, and tables.

  “Don’t need to clean up for a party if you do what Little Bit does. Puts everything in corners and hides it with screens. Isn’t that right, honey?”

  “That’s right,” I agreed ruefully.

  I have seven tall screens scattered around our house. Joe Riddley made them years ago, papering them to match various rooms, so whenever we have a party I can shove things behind them and have the house looking halfway decent. It is an old joke in Hopemore that “the size of a Yarbrough party depends on how much space MacLaren has left after
she sets up her screens.” As I later told Police Chief Muggins, though, when I say I “shove things behind them,” I mean paperwork I’ve brought home, or projects for church, the A.A.U.W., and the Garden Club. I don’t mean dead people.

  Alice hurried back from the dining room with a plate piled high with food.

  “Heavens!” Gusta exclaimed. “How many are you planning to feed?”

  “It’ll do me for starters.” For an instant the old Joe Riddley twinkled up at us. Alice was so startled she nearly dropped the plate. I knew what she was feeling. It was something like having somebody peer at you from what you’d thought was an empty house.

  “You’ll never be able to eat all those. Take what you need, and I’ll pass the rest.” Gusta passed the plate to him long enough for him to take three sandwiches, then snatched it away.

  “Old skinflint,” Joe Riddley growled as she moved to other guests.

  “Honey, try to be nice,” I begged.

  “Spent my life being nice, and where did it ever get me? Time I spoke my mind.” Joe Riddley waved a piece of stuffed celery like a baton. I bent to wipe pimento cheese from Gusta’s thick Chinese rug and hoped she hadn’t seen him spill it.

  I could tell it wasn’t any use sticking around for the music. If he didn’t take a mind to sing along, he’d talk and spoil the afternoon for everybody. As soon as he’d eaten his “flea sandwiches,” as he kept calling them, I went looking for Gusta to lie about how much we’d enjoyed being there and say he was getting tired and had to go.

  I didn’t see Gusta, so settled for Meriwether, who was with Slade Rutherford in the dining room. They seemed to be enjoying one another’s company a good deal. I heard her laugh aloud as I approached them—a sound as seldom heard in Hopemore as a discouraging word back home on the range.

  “I need to take Joe Riddley home.” I gestured toward his chair. “He’s having a bad day, and he’s going to bother everybody. Will you tell Gusta for me?”

  “Let me help you get him to the car,” Slade offered at once. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he promised Meriwether. “Don’t go away.”

  He pushed Joe Riddley out to the back porch and down the ramp installed after Lamar Wainwright had his first heart attack. Slade helped Joe Riddley into the car as gently as if he were his own daddy, and stowed the chair in the trunk for me. “Can you get that out when you get home, Judge? Want me to follow you home and help?”

  “I’ll be all right,” I assured him. “You go back in and enjoy the music.”

  White teeth flashed in his dark face. “I was sure enjoying the company, as I’m certain you noticed. May I ask you a question?” He leaned close to me and spoke softly. “Is Meriwether seeing somebody?”

  I patted his arm. “Only Gusta. You’d be a vast improvement.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, then shut my car door after me.

  As I backed down the drive, Joe Riddley growled, “Man brays like a donkey.”

  The next Wednesday evening about eleven, a deputy called to say he needed me down at the detention center for a hearing, and he was coming to get me. Joe Riddley used to drive, of course, but they were still treating me like Hopemore was a hotbed of crime and I wouldn’t be safe driving myself the two miles each way. On our way back we came down Liberty Street and I saw a big green Lexus in front of Meriwether’s house. “Looks like that newspaper fellow is making time with Meriwether,” the deputy said with a grin.

  The next Saturday at the beauty parlor I heard that Slade had been over at Meriwether’s house several times that week “bugging Buck to death with suggestions for how things could be done better. He’s more finicky than Meriwether, even.”

  That same evening Walker and his wife, Cindy, saw them at By Candlelight, our most exclusive restaurant, for dinner.

  Sunday evening, Ridd and his wife, Martha, reported they were out at Dad’s Outdoor BarBeQue, a large barn with long tables and benches and the best barbeque in our part of Georgia.

  “She was laughing,” Martha reported. “I can’t remember the last man I saw Meriwether laugh with.”

  I could. Jed Blaine. But she hadn’t done much laughing with anybody since she’d moved back in with Gusta. She smiled, but happiness never reached her eyes.

  “Were her eyes laughing?” I asked.

  Ridd looked at me like I was crazy, but Martha looked thoughtful. “No, they weren’t.”

  I sighed. “Oh, well. Give him time.”

  But time was something they were not destined to have—not right away. When I saw Gusta at the Garden Club luncheon the following Tuesday, she announced, “We won’t be here for the A.A.U.W. meeting. I’ve decided to go to China. I haven’t been there for several years, and there’s a wonderful tour some Agnes Scott alumnae have put together. Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and several other places.”

  “You won’t miss Joe Riddley’s party, will you?” If she did, I’d never forgive her.

  “Of course not. We’ll be back more than a week before that.”

  “We? Who’s going with you?”

  “Meriwether will accompany me, as usual.”

  “Not this time,” Meriwether corrected her, joining us. “I’ve got my house to work on. They’re about to finish the kitchen. Besides, Slade and I have been invited—”

  Gusta lifted her chin. “There will be other invitations, my dear. Besides, you know what they say: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

  Meriwether lifted her own chin while I looked down at my piled-up plate and tried not to feel guilty. Mine was full of fats and starches, Meriwether’s full of lettuce, carrots, and other bunny food. “I am not going,” she declared, “and that is final. Take Alice.”

  “I have every intention of taking Alice. But I want you, too. She’s not used to my ways.”

  “What’s there to get used to?” Meriwether demanded. “All she has to do is obey you.”

  Gusta ignored her supremely.

  “You could do me a favor,” I told Gusta. “While you’re there, get a pretty tea set for me to give Maynard and Selena for their wedding, if he ever gets around to asking her. I’ve been wanting something real special for them, and they both like tea. You can either bring it back or send it back.” Maynard Spence had lived next door to us since he was born, and he and I had gotten real close that past summer. I’d even introduced him to Selena.

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Gusta agreed. I wrote her a check on the spot, and our conversation turned to other things.

  As it turned out, circumstances worked in Gusta’s favor. The hot water heater in Meriwether’s new house fell through a soft spot in the floor. As somebody said down at Phyllis’s Beauty Salon, “Faced with cold-water baths, Meriwether decided to go to China.”

  “Wish somebody would give me that choice,” said somebody else. Trapped by running water, I couldn’t see who was talking.

  “Okay, Mac, let’s get you rolled.” Phyllis turned off the water.

  As she wrapped my head in a towel and I moved to her work station, I joked, “I’ll bet Buck loosened that water heater on purpose, to get her to go away and leave him in peace.”

  She leaned real close and muttered, “He didn’t, but he said he might of if he’d thought of it. If she’ll go, Buck says he can be done by the time she gets back, but she wouldn’t even think of it until this happened—and until that new newspaper editor said he’d stop by every afternoon to check things out.”

  “Does Meriwether like that? She’s pretty independent as a rule.”

  “Buck says Slade always checks with her before he makes a suggestion. He’s sweet as pie to her, but gives orders to the men like it was his house.”

  “Maybe it will be one day. I hear they’re seein’ a lot of each other.”

  “What about that girl who’s come to help Miss Gusta?” somebody called from the other side of the long mirror. “Looks like she’d be scared to stay in that big house by herself.”

  Finally I had a bit of news to contribute.
“She’s going, too. They leave Wednesday.” Nobody asked how I knew. Information like that floats on the air in a small town, as untraceable as perfume in a crowded room. I probably heard it at the store, or maybe Martha told me.

  “Lah-di-dah,” the woman next to me jeered. “That girl sure fell into a good position.”

  “Honey”—Phyllis leaned over to look her straight in the mirror—“would you work for Miss Gusta, even for a trip to the Orient?”

  “Not for a trip around the world five times.”

  “She’s got a sick aunt to look after, too,” Phyllis continued. “Came in here to get her hair trimmed yesterday and said she had to run down to Jacksonville today to see her sick aunt before they leave.”

  “How long’re they gonna be gone?” somebody called from the shampoo sink.

  “Two weeks, I understand.” That was from behind the mirror again.