Speaking of divorce, the third member of that group was Sadie Lowe Harnett, a brunette with the kind of curves that spell trouble. When she had divorced a New York magnate several years before, newspapers had claimed she’d won a seven-figure settlement, but I had still been surprised to hear that she had been invited to join the investment club. She grew up in Hopemore and was in school with our son Walker. In their high school days, Sadie Lowe had been infamous for doing most of her socializing in backseats down near the water tank. I wondered who had suggested her for membership and how she had gotten voted in.
It was a safe bet she had not been proposed by Wilma Kenan, who hovered around the refreshment table like a nervous bee. While I watched, she moved one tray an inch to the left and another an inch to the right, being the fussiest woman God ever made about things that don’t matter. She called it being a perfectionist. I called it wanting things done her way. Because her family had been making money from cotton, both in the United States and abroad, for generations, she generally got her way.
Joe Riddley opined that Wilma’s attitude toward life had been shaped by the obstetrician who delivered her, who (so Joe Riddley claimed) must have taken her face between his two hands and pressed hard. That might explain why her eyes were too close together, her nose long and sharp, her lips little more than a bow, her chin long and pointed, and her mind so narrow, you could measure it in millimeters. Nobody ever set a table, conducted a meeting, ran a government, preached a sermon, fixed a car, or styled her hair to quite suit Wilma.
Tonight she was in charge of refreshments, and had brought the ingredients for the punch in gallon jugs, claiming it was a secret family recipe. A few minutes ago she had gone back to the kitchen to mix up another batch. Now she poured it into the punch bowl and stirred it a couple of times with the silver ladle she had also brought from home. When she noticed I was talking to Grover, though, she dropped that ladle and shot across the room to intervene.
Ignoring me, she peered up at my companion with an expression in her brown eyes that reminded me of a cairn terrier’s when it’s on the eager lookout for a rat. “Do you have everything you need, Grover?” She had one of those voices that are nasal and sharp even when the person is intending to be charming. She put a hand on his arm as if it had a right to be there and gave him what looked like a smile she practiced in front of mirrors. Wilma had never found the perfect man, but she had never stopped looking. “Keeping myself ready for Prince Charming,” she often said, pursing her bright lips and touching her stiff blond curls with polished nails that were never chipped or broken.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, turning his pleasant smile in her direction.
Wilma squeezed his arm. “You’re damp! Don’t you have a raincoat?”
“I brought an umbrella, but I forgot to take it when I ran out to my car for something.” He spoke absently, looking again toward Sadie Lowe. She stood with one hip stuck out like she knew he was looking.
Wilma gave Grover’s elbow a gentle tug to bring his attention back to her. “I’ll give you a call about next month’s program. I have a few ideas. As Granddaddy Will used to say—”
That’s when I stopped listening. When Wilma got to talking about her great-granddaddy, she could go on forever.
I pitied Grover. Earlier that evening, the club had elected Wilma senior partner (which is what they called the president) for the coming year, succeeding her cousin, Willena. Poor Grover would be in for a rocky year. On the other hand, I had gotten the impression he was Wilma’s broker, too, so maybe he was adept at handling her.
Speaking of Willena, I didn’t see her with either the moneyed crowd or the big-hair contingent. She must still be in the ladies’ room washing mascara off her cheeks. After Willena had passed the torch of the presidency to Wilma, Wilma had presented Willena with a sterling-silver bar set, complete with a stainless-steel corkscrew with a sterling-silver handle and a monogrammed silver shot glass. Willena was known to be fond of mimosas or chilled white wine at almost any time of day, and always cried at the drop of a hair bow. She had been so overcome by the gift that her mascara had run down her cheeks like clown lines.
“Go clean up your face,” Wilma had commanded. “You look like a raccoon before breakfast.”
Nobody seeing them together would have ever guessed the two women were related. Whereas Wilma was thin and short, Willena was large and tall, with soft, floury skin, fluffy brown hair, and eyes the exact same shade of brown. Wilma favored tailored dresses and pantsuits with dainty, prim jewelry. Willena wore dangling earrings, ruffled blouses, long strands of showy pearls, and full skirts in bright colors. The only thing their closets had in common was that each outfit they wore probably cost more than my annual clothing budget.
Two more things the cousins shared were an absolute conviction that old William Robison Kenan—for whom both were named — had been God’s perfect gentleman, and a firm determination to each find a husband just like him.
They also shared tight fists. As soon as Willena was out of earshot, Wilma had confided to the rest of us, “That bar set cost seven hundred dollars. I paid for it, but I move that I be reimbursed from the treasury.”
If she was hoping for a second to her motion, she was disappointed. “We never gave a present before and didn’t authorize one this year,” Gusta informed her tartly, and that was that.
With Wilma claiming all of Grover’s attention, I decided to make a run to the bathroom before the meeting resumed. After refreshments, we still had to reconvene to decide how to invest our money that month. I had no clue what the investment procedure would be, but given the way some of those women liked to discuss every penny they spent, it could take a while.
I trotted down the hall, admiring the sheen our new custodian was getting on the beige tile floors of the community center and thinking about the shipment of summer bedding plants that we’d received that day at the store. I hoped we hadn’t ordered too many and that ours would be bigger and more unusual than those at the superstore. Maybe we ought to concentrate on selling in quantity to landscapers and not try to compete when the superstore could set prices below what we could afford to match.
That was as far as I had gotten when I pushed to open the ladies’ room door. It wouldn’t budge.
I shoved again and felt it give a little.
Puzzled, I knocked, but got no answer. I put my shoulder against the door and put all my weight behind it. Something slid on the other side and the door opened far enough for me to stick my head in.
Forever after, I would wish I hadn’t.
Willena lay crumpled facedown on the floor. One hand clutched her throat. The other was out, as if she had been opening the door when she collapsed. Her ruffled white blouse and the taupe tiles around her were drenched in blood.
3
I bent nearer and saw a glint between her fingers, like something was stuck in her throat.
My first impulse was to try to jerk it out, but I had enough wits left to grab her wrist first. I found no pulse and could smell the odors a body releases after death. I know not to bother a murder scene, and that was what this had to be. Now that I was down at her level, I saw what the weapon was. Nobody commits suicide by sticking a corkscrew in her own throat.
Wilma’s crab cheese puffs, brownies, and punch roiled inside me, preparing to return. I backed out of the bathroom and into the hall, taking deep breaths and hoping I wouldn’t throw up on the custodian’s shiny floor.
Part of me wanted to run down the wide hall to the safety of our meeting room, screaming for help. Part of me wanted to run out the doors and keep on running. Let somebody else discover this body. I’d had more than my share of that kind of experience lately. But most of me felt real sad for Willena. Forty is young to die. Especially when you have only begun to live. Like Wilma, Willena had come back to Hopemore after college to wait for Prince Charming. Until he arrived, she had occupied herself with clubs and committees, but again like Wilma, she had seemed perpe
tually on tiptoe, waiting for a future that never arrived. I scarcely knew her, since she was between my two boys in school and belonged to clubs like the Daughters of the American Revolution instead of the Rotary and other business clubs. Neither she nor Wilma had ever worked. Wilma had used her botany degree to create a beautiful garden, while Willena used her art history degree to furnish her house with art and antiques.
Where Wilma was fussy and precise, Willena was so laid-back, she practically lived lying down. Lines of discontent had begun to radiate from her eyes and bracket her mouth in recent years, though, and she had become increasingly hard on those who disagreed with her. Cindy had asked not long before, “How will anybody know when Willena goes through menopause? Her whole personality is menopausal.”
I wondered what she and Wilma might have been like had they found careers they enjoyed, or married and raised families. However, the Kenan girls were each waiting for a wealthy Southern gentleman who lived up to all the mythic stories about their namesake ancestor and who either had roots in Hopemore or was willing to live there. Those are hard to come by.
Had Grover lived up to Willena’s expectations? Had they begun to move toward making a match? She had looked happier that evening, and she and Grover had shared a private laugh before the meeting.
Happy or not, nobody ought to die at the hands of somebody else.
Why was I doing all that thinking about Willena? So I didn’t have to move. I ought to get the wheels of investigation turning, but my feet were glued to the floor. The building was dim and vast around me, with unlit rooms stretching off into the distance. Our own meeting room was off the back hall, around a distant corner. The air throbbed with hush and menace. I cringed against the wall and tried not to panic, but a murderer had struck in the past half hour and could still be around. Given how far this hall was from the custodian’s office and our meeting room, if he or she had sights on me, would anybody hear me if I yelled?
I like to think I would have overcome my heebie-jeebies in another second, but my daughter-in-law speeded the process. She came through the front door shaking her umbrella, and even in dim light and far away, I recognized her tall, lean grace. Cindy is as elongated and elegant as a Thoroughbred horse, with large brown eyes and cheekbones that will make her beautiful even when she’s ninety.
She looked down the hall and saw me. “Mac?” she called uncertainly.
“Yeah. It’s me.” I was glad to find that my voice didn’t tremble. “Is it still raining outside?”
“A real frog-strangler. Are they ready to meet again? I went to call the kids, since Walker’s out of town. Didn’t want them killing each other while I was gone.” She sounded blessedly normal.
I hurried in her direction. I certainly didn’t want her heading in mine.
She propped her umbrella against a pillar, where it began to create its own small puddle. “I wish somebody would figure out why we can’t get a cell phone signal in this building, and fix the problem.” When she fluffed her thick brown hair, I noticed enviously that it fell right into place. She gave me a bright smile. “Are you taking a lipstick break?” That was her circle’s latest euphemism for exercising natural bodily functions. “Maybe I ought to do that, too. Sometimes this group can go on awhile, trying to decide how to invest our millions.”
Actually, while most of the members might have millions to invest, the club permitted an investment of only one hundred to three hundred dollars a month per member. This was a learning experience, like schoolchildren pretending to invest and reading the papers for a month to keep track of certain stocks.
Why was I quibbling over semantics when Cindy was heading toward the ladies’ room? I concentrated my entire will on getting her back to the meeting before I made my necessary call.
“I think they’re about ready to start,” I told her, forcing my legs to move down the hall at a halfway normal pace, “and I’m finished. Let’s go on in. You can go to the bathroom later.” I grabbed her elbow, hoping she didn’t realize I was holding her to keep myself from shaking. “How did you get in from outside? Wasn’t the door locked?”
She turned and gave it a puzzled look. “No. Somebody else must have unlocked it. Good thing for me — I didn’t think of that, and I’d have been stuck out there.”
I mulled that over while we headed down the hall. She is six inches taller than me, so I let go of her elbow and permitted her to outstride me; then I stopped and called, “I forgot. I need to phone Joe Riddley. It’s time for Lulu to go out.”
That was not a lie. It was time to let our beagle out, and I did need to phone Joe Riddley—in the worst way. I wanted to beg him to come get me out of this and remind him it was all his fault I was there. Still, Cindy gave me the puzzled look I deserved. She knew full well that Joe Riddley has had dogs all his life.
I gave her what I hoped was a rueful smile. “I guess I just want to hear his voice, after being away from him so long.” Her face softened like she completely understood, and I could have hugged her for loving my younger son so much. Instead, I flapped one hand toward the hall that led to the meeting room. “Go on, honey. I won’t be but a minute.”
She hesitated, then went. I hurried back toward the glass front door.
The community center had a ledge over the doors, but gusts of wind blew rain in to dampen my clothes. I took deep gulps of moist, clean air scented with fresh-mowed hay, newly blooming creamy magnolias, and rain. Only when I was sure my knees weren’t going to buckle and I could speak without my voice wobbling did I punch the autodial for the police station. While I talked, I turned in a slow circle to keep my back from being exposed too long in any one direction.
I was real disappointed when Chief Charlie Muggins picked up the phone.
Chief Muggins is part bantam rooster, part chimpanzee, and part polecat — the least desirable parts of all three. He is also one of the few people on God’s green earth whom I cannot abide. He struts around Hopemore like he personally keeps the peace, when in reality he stirs up more animosity and illwill than most of our criminals combined.
Whatever I feel about Charlie, the feeling is mutual. I didn’t want him selected for police chief and he didn’t want me appointed magistrate. But Joe Riddley would ask you to take all that with a grain of salt. He claims that making us work together is one of the ways God keeps us both humbler than we might be otherwise.
“Chief, it’s Judge Yarbrough.” We always use titles when we speak to or about each other in public. “I’m over at the Hopemore Community Center for a meeting, and Willena Kenan is lying dead in the ladies’ room. Murdered.”
“I can’t hear you. Can you speak louder?”
The reception would be better out in the rain, but I didn’t relish getting soaked. “It’s Judge Yarbrough at the Hopemore Community Center. Willena Kenan has been killed.”
He whistled. “Willena Kenan. Are you sure?” Charlie worships the gods of money, influence, and publicity, so he would put his best efforts into finding her killer. However, for the same reasons, chances were slim that he’d suspect any member of the investment club. Except me, of course. Sure enough, his voice crackled over the wire. “What did you do to her?” Charlie is eternally hopeful that he’ll catch me one day committing a major crime.
I was too numbed by what I’d seen to rise to his bait. “I didn’t do anything to her, but somebody did. It looks like she was stabbed in the throat.”
Bile rose in my own throat. I hurried over to the edge of the cement and horrified my mama up in heaven by spitting off the community center porch. Soaked and miserable, I got my voice back and shouted, “We’re having a meeting right now, and I haven’t told anybody else about finding her yet, so if you’ll get right over here—”
“You found her?”
“Are you coming or not? If you are, I’ll go back in and pretend nothing’s happened until you get here. If not, hang up and let me call the sheriff.”
With that perversity peculiar to cell phones, the line mi
raculously cleared, so I must have nearly deafened him as I bawled that last sentence.
“The center isn’t in the sheriff’s jurisdiction,” he reminded me. The sheriff handled the county, while the police department handled crimes committed within the city limits.
“We both know that, but somebody has to get over here right this minute. If you don’t—”
“I’ll be there in two shakes.”
Before I headed back inside, I waited to hear the siren. Considering that he was less than two miles away, Chief Muggins didn’t need to wake all the babies in town getting there, but he had himself a new cruiser with all sorts of bells and lights he seldom got to use. I knew he’d seize this big chance to show them off.
4
As soon as I heard him coming, I hurried back to the meeting. The group had taken their seats and were looking around, waiting for Willena and me to return so they could start.
“MacLaren,” Gusta called in her imperious old voice, “we are ready to begin our investment procedures.” She sounded exactly like she used to when she taught my kindergarten Sunday-school class and called me back from the refreshments table. She even patted the chair beside her in the same old way. “Did you see Willena?” she added as I took my seat at the end of the third row. “We are all waiting for her.”
Guess Who's Coming to Die? Page 3