He nodded. I headed toward a brass gong next to the dining room door, feeling a hundred and five. I hit the gong with all the anger inside me. But when people looked in astonishment, I smiled brightly. I didn’t feel any livelier than Hiram; I was just in better shape to pretend.
“Would everybody please come help plant Joe Riddley’s birthday tree?”
When I heard the sheriff lock the door behind us, I shivered in spite of the sunshine.
10
I couldn’t help looking suspiciously at our guests as I worked my way toward Joe Riddley. None of them looked like a murderer, but the last murderer I’d met was charming.
Before Joe Riddley saw me, I headed for Martha. Every family needs at least one calm, practical member, and Martha is also wise, funny, short, and comfortably round, with dark brown hair and eyes like a cocker spaniel’s. There’s not a mean or pretentious bone in her body, and when she walked into our house the first time, I felt like she’d been part of our family forever.
That afternoon I spoke to her low and fast. “Hiram Blaine’s lying dead behind my dining room screen. Buster says we don’t have to send people home until we’ve planted the tree and eaten cake and ice cream, but we need to move all the tables off the porches down to the grass and serve the cake outside. Will you tell Clarinda? She knows about Hiram—she’ll understand.”
Martha blinked a couple of times, but she’s an emergency-room supervisor. She knows how to act now and ask questions later. Being a nurse, though, she had to ask one question. “You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Positive.”
She hurried toward the kitchen.
I planted a kiss on Joe Riddley’s head, glad somebody had managed to get him to leave off his cap. Probably Martha—she’d helped him get ready for the party. Joe Riddley has nice hair—thick and straight, another legacy from his Cherokee grandmother—and people were taking pictures.
He reached up to touch my cheek with one finger. “Hey, Little Bit,” he said in his new deliberate way. “Doin’ all right? Look a little peaky.”
I was touched that he could still notice, but I would not worry him. “I’m fine, honey. Just a bit winded with all this.”
“It’s a fine party. I went over to the field and ran a race with the kids. Beat ’em, too. Not bad for an old man, eh?”
People with severe head injuries make up stories like preschoolers, based on whatever they happen to have seen recently. But I wouldn’t nag him with reality on his special day. “I’m proud to know you, honey.” I rumpled his hair fondly. Then I hailed Ridd and waved him over. “Ready to plant a tree, son?”
Joe Riddley frowned anxiously at me. “Is ‘plant a tree’ in my log?”
“I wrote it, remember? ‘Have party, plant a tree, be nice.’ ”
“I been nice,” he said proudly.
“You’ve been a sweetheart this whole blessed day.” I bent to give his neck a hug.
Ridd came from behind a big oak-leaf hydrangea, carrying a shovel. “I’m ready, Mama. Round up Walker and the kids, and I’ll fetch the tree in my truck.” Ridd’s a math teacher by profession but a farmer at heart. Joe Riddley always claims Ridd’s yard and fields are our nursery’s best advertisement.
Walker isn’t a farmer, but he’s a great public speaker with a loud voice. His brief speech about his daddy made his mama’s eyes smart, and eased all thoughts of Hiram from my mind for a little while. After Ridd hefted the sturdy little oak from his truck and set it next to a hole he’d dug earlier that morning, Walker’s Tad and Jessica poured in peat moss, Ridd’s three-year-old, Cricket, poured in bone meal, and his big sister, Bethany, turned on the hose to fill the hole with water. Ridd stood the oak in the hole, then all the guests emptied small white paper bags of potting soil around it until the hole was full. Finally I unveiled a brass plaque mounted on a granite stone I’d had made for the occasion: THIS TREE PLANTED IN HONOR OF JOE RIDDLEY YARBROUGH’S SIXTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY BY HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS, followed by the date.
Joe Riddley glared at it. “Is that my tombstone?”
“No, honey, it’s a sign saying this is your tree.”
“They’re all my trees.”
“But this one is very special. It’s your birthday present.”
“Oh.” He subsided as Ridd tamped down the dirt. I stood holding Joe Riddley’s hand and tried not to think about the party we could have had if he hadn’t gotten shot. He was right. It was a fine party, anyway.
Or it was until a sheriff’s cruiser barreled up our road and coasted to a stop beside me. “Afternoon, Judge Yarbrough.” The driver lifted his hat and settled it again. “Understand you’ve got yourself a murder.”
The crowd hushed like they’d all seen their fourth-grade teachers walk in. Joe Riddley held his hand to one ear like he couldn’t hear. “Whad’y say, son? Murder? We got no murder here. We’re havin’ a party!” He was getting excited, which was very bad for him.
I motioned to Ridd, but Ridd stood like a rock with a question in his eyes and one word on his lips. “Mama?”
Lightning might strike me dead, but I flapped one hand at him and said, “Don’t be silly,” then I leaned toward the car window and said as loud as that officer had, “That was Buster’s little joke, to get you all here. He said you’d never leave your posts for a party. Go on to the dining room through the kitchen. You’ll find him there.”
The four men in the car looked at me like I was crazier than the Blaines. A forensics car pulled up behind them and the driver rolled down his window. “Where’s the body, Judge?”
I forced myself to chuckle. “It’s a large body of food. You all go into the dining room and get yourselves something to eat.” Then I leaned close to hiss in the driver’s ear, “Don’t you dare spoil this party! Buster’s in the dining room.” I stood and waved. “Eat hearty, boys.”
As both cars hightailed it toward the house, Walker’s son, Tad, started giggling as only a nine-year-old boy can. “Eat Hardy boys? Eat Hardy boys? Eat Harry Potter, too!” He got so convulsed with giggles that everybody around him started to laugh.
Gusta was unimpressed. “Very poor humor, if you ask me.”
Up by the house our kitchen workers were practically air-lifting tables and chairs off the porch while Martha and Alice helped Clarinda carry cakes. “Are we done here?” I asked Ridd.
“Just one more thing.” He dropped a hand to his father’s shoulder. “We need you to put the last shovelful of dirt on the tree, Daddy, so we can stake it. Are you up to that?”
“ ’Course I am. I’m up to anything, aren’t I, Little Bit?”
“Sure you are, honey. Show us.”
Sitting in a wheelchair, my once indomitable husband waved the shovel ineffectually over the dirt until Bethany knelt and lifted a handful onto the shovel in her cupped palms. Someone caught that picture, and I’ll treasure it always. When Joe Riddley dribbled the dirt onto the base of the tree, everybody cheered.
Ridd tamped down the dirt and started staking the tree. I climbed on a chair so everybody could see me and shouted so they could hear, “Let’s sing to our birthday boy, then there’s a dozen kinds of cake and ice cream out yonder under the trees. It’s nicer out here than indoors.”
Mama used to say you can convince people of anything if you believe it strong enough yourself. That particular minute I sure believed it was nicer outdoors than in.
While they were getting dessert, I took a chair up on the porch by the front door to steer folks to the kitchen if they needed a bathroom. As I looked over the happy crowd, I felt a measure of contentment overlaying my worry. Except for Buster and his crew, our guests were still having fun. Joe Riddley was taking a few careful steps along the front walk on his walker to show off to Pooh, who clapped from her wheelchair.
As he lurched over a crack, somebody said proudly, “J. R.’s doin’ real good.” Darren lowered himself gracefully to the bottom step holding an enormous piece of Clarinda’s red devil cake. Today his hair was bright yello
w—a daisy center to his white pants and shirt. The silver hoop in his ear caught the sun as he jerked his head toward Joe Riddley and added, “Old J. R.’ll be walkin’ on his own in no time.”
“It’s nice to hear him laugh at his mistakes,” I said with an emphasis only he could appreciate. We’d put up with Joe Riddley learning those skills. It had not been easy listening.
“How’s your love life?” I teased. I kept telling Darren he could earn a fortune selling his ongoing story to country music writers. One minute he had found the love of his life. The next minute he was down in the dumps because she’d done him wrong. “Have you been seeing more of that reporter I told you about?”
I’d seen Kelly wandering around the party, but hadn’t seen Darren with her.
He wrinkled his nose. “We went out a couple of times, and she’s a lot of fun, but she’s short, redheaded, and doesn’t need me. I like tall, dark, beautiful women who need me.”
“Women who only need you don’t make good partners. Look for a nice normal girl with pleasing looks and some intelligence.”
He gave a Latin shrug. “What can I say? They bore me. But speaking of women who need me, do you think I could help that woman J. R.’s showing off for? The one in the wheelchair?”
“I doubt it. She’s got bad arthritis, and she’s been in that chair twenty years.”
“Maybe I could loosen her up a little.” Darren came from the brash school of youth that is sure all of us could be up and at ’em if we tried.
Just then Pooh clapped her gnarled hands like a child. “Very good, Bud! Very good!”
I sighed. “She gets more and more confused every day. Bud was Joe Riddley’s daddy, and he’s been dead twenty years.”
“Don’t you hate to see her gettin’ like that?” Maynard paused at the foot of the steps, looking like young George Washington in a navy linen suit with his long blond hair caught by a navy ribbon at his neck. Beside him, Selena glowed like a soft yellow taper in a linen sheath with her mop of red curls blazing above. I checked out her engagement ring finger, but it was still bare. I could have shook Maynard. I didn’t want to waste a perfectly lovely tea set.
Still I had to agree with what he’d just said. “Seems like ever since Fayette died and left her with nobody to tell her what to do every minute, Pooh’s been lost.”
Darren picked up a few stray crumbs with the tip of one finger. “What about the rest of her family?”
“She doesn’t have any family,” I told him. “Her only son was killed in Vietnam.”
“Couldn’t she go into a retirement home, or an assisted living facility?”
I shook my head. “The only ALF we have in the county is for indigent people. Pooh would need to move pretty far away to get into a nice place, and she wouldn’t know a soul.”
“That’s so sad.” Like Martha, even while eating peanut butter pound cake at a birthday party, Selena was still a nurse. “As confused as Pooh is here, she’d be worse somewhere else. She’d never understand where she was, or why. But she won’t be able to live alone much longer.”
“Pooh’s not exactly alone. She’s got Otis and Lottie.” Maynard licked a last drop of ice cream off his spoon. “I just wish Miss Gusta would move and sell me her house.”
“You want to add it to your old museum?” I teased. Maynard was not only the curator, he was also the secret benefactor of the Hope County Historical Museum. “Or buy it and live in it?”
When Maynard smiled, he was more handsome than I’d have ever believed back when he was a scrawny little boy. “I’ve bought Marybelle Taylor’s old house, like I always wanted.”
Marybelle Taylor had been one of my best friends when I was a little girl, and even though she’d been dead two years, I still missed her. “She’s beaming at you from heaven,” I assured him. But it wasn’t Marybelle’s spirit I felt. It was the Spirit of Charlie Muggins, telling me I needed to shoo people home.
Maynard finished up his own pound cake and answered my previous question. “What I’d do with Miss Gusta’s house is open an antique store. A really good one. It would be a wonderful house for displaying antiques. I could rent out various rooms to dealers from all over the Southeast. She just rattles around in it, and it makes a lot of work for Florine. She’s no spring chicken.” Gusta’s housekeeper and I were exactly the same age, but I didn’t see fit to mention it. “Of course,” he went on, “Miss Gusta will never move until Pooh does, and Pooh worries me more than Miss Gusta anyway. I don’t know how much longer Otis can keep on driving, and what will they do then?”
Darren snapped his fingers. “Are they the folks who drive that navy-blue Cadillac up and down the streets at five miles an hour?” When Maynard and I both nodded, he groaned. “Boy, they sure know how to clear the streets. I figure the driver gave up turn signals for his seventy-fifth birthday, and stoplights for his eightieth. He oughtn’t to be permitted to drive. He even leaves his keys in the car.”
Darren still had some acclimating to do to small-town living. Everybody in Hopemore knew Otis left the keys in the car. Half the folks in town had taken them to him at least once. But how else would Pooh get around?
Darren stood. “Are we allowed seconds?”
“Eat all you want.” I spoke before I remembered: Buster wanted these people gone.
As Darren sauntered off toward the cakes, Meriwether and Slade came along the walk. He had one hand protectively at the small of her back, and she didn’t seem to mind. “Joe Riddley’s looking real good,” she told me with her charming smile. I tried not to remember back when Meriwether’s smile had been not merely charming, but radiant—back before what Joe Riddley called “Meriwether’s Ice Age.”
“The doctor says eventually he’ll be up and attem like he used to. You’re looking mighty good yourself. That’s a gorgeous suit. Is it silk?”
“Yes. I got it in Hong Kong.”
“Lucky you,” Selena said enviously.
Meriwether and Slade made a good-looking couple, both tall and he as dark as she was fair. He was particularly handsome when he smiled, showing even, white teeth in a face that looked perpetually tanned. “You’ve had a lovely day for the party,” he told me. He waved toward a poplar tree. “You even got a bit of color, just in time.”
“We don’t get much down here, but we do our best,” I told him.
“The mountains must be blazing now. I miss the annual week our family used to spend at our place up near Boone. But Hopemore’s real pretty, too.”
He was nice as could be, but I couldn’t warm up to the man. It wasn’t just because of Walker, either, although I’d noticed that a couple of times when Walker could have spoken to Slade that day he had gotten distracted in another direction. The real reason I didn’t like Slade was that I loved Jed Blaine. I plumb hated seeing Meriwether with anybody else.
Besides, Slade made me nervous, the way his eyes kept flickering toward our closed dining room blinds. I was glad when Alice Fulton distracted us.
Alice scuttled down the walk, head down and eyes fixed on the ground. She carried a piece of cake and a cup of drink, and the ice cream on her cake was melting. She looked up at Meriwether and said softly, “Your grandmother says she’s ready to go.”
“Fine. You all go on. Slade is taking me home.” Meriwether took an inch-step closer to the protection of his arm.
Alice backed up one reluctant step. “But she said . . .”
Meriwether rested one fist on her hip. “For heaven’s sake, Alice. You are competent. You proved that again and again on the trip. You drive as well as I do, and you were hired to replace me, remember? Tell her Slade’s taking me home.” She grabbed his elbow and practically dragged him away.
Alice looked after her, color high.
“You look lost. Can I help?”
That was Darren, carrying another wide slice of red devil cake with cream cheese frosting. As I looked at Alice through his eyes, I saw somebody tall, slender, brunette, and real pretty. And she certainly needed hel
p right that minute.
She threw me an anxious look. “Mrs. Wainwright is going to be really mad.”
I stood up. “I’ll tell you what. You all sit on the steps and tell everybody not to use the front door, and I’ll go tell Gusta that Meriwether has already gone.”
“Why can’t they use the front door?” she asked. Every pair of eyes in earshot roved curiously in that direction.
“Clarinda was trying to clean up the carpet and spilled a whole bottle of soap on the floor. Now they’re trying to get that up.” I was becoming quite the liar. If I didn’t watch out, it would get to be a habit. “Tell folks to go through the kitchen if they need a bathroom. If you’ll do that, I’ll go tell Gusta what Meriwether said, and I’ll gussy it up a little.” A smile twitched her lips. That encouraged me to suggest, “Darren, will you keep her company?”
Who Invited the Dead Man? Page 10