Did You Declare the Corpse?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “What about you folks?” Dorothy asked Kenny and Sherry.

  “We’re going back to Savannah,” Kenny replied as Sherry said, “Oh, we’re about to start a new business.” They sat there glaring at each another.

  Laura got to her feet. “Well, I’d better get Mac here to bed. We’ve got an early start in the morning. I just hope I can keep better track of her between now and the time I’m supposed to deliver her back to her husband.”

  I knew I ought to be delighted to be heading home, but I felt downright miserable as Laura and I dragged ourselves up the stairs. It wasn’t just the idea of leaving the folks down in the lounge, either.

  “If Joyce had only talked to somebody,” I mourned as Laura helped me get ready for bed. “She must have felt so incredibly alone.” I took the glass she handed me, and downed my pill.

  “It’s about choices,” Laura reminded me. “Isn’t that what you always say? We are—or we become—the sum of the choices we make?”

  “But some of us get more help than others in making better ones.” I collapsed on the side of my bed, feeling a hundred and ten.

  I knew that I’d be mourning Joyce, and Jim, and even Norwood and Ian, for a while yet.

  She sidled over to the dresser and turned her back. Then she stood there and raised her hand, and I saw a flash of light. “What’s that?” I demanded.

  She came over and held out her left hand. On the third finger sat the prettiest solitaire I’d ever seen. She lifted it up to catch the lamp light and wiggled her finger to make it sparkle. “I’ve made a choice.”

  “What is it?” I thought for one wild second that the craziness of the past three days had caught up with levelheaded Laura, and she’d stolen one of Brandi’s gems.

  She chuckled. “Och, chust a wee bittie ring I thought I’d wear home.” She added in her own lazy drawl, “I’m choosing to make you happy, Mac. I’m gonna marry Ben. Not because I have to, mind, but because I want to.” Her voice grew husky. “I want to real bad.”

  “You bought your own ring?” Laura has always been independent, but this seemed to be carrying things too far.

  “Oh, no.” Her smile was smug. “He gave it to me before we left. But I told him I wouldn’t wear it until I was sure it was right.”

  “So what persuaded you—my undying devotion to Joe Riddley?”

  She grinned. “Nope. It was riding with Roddy this afternoon. I kept wishing it was Ben whose back I was hugging, and Ben I was coming home with. I headed out a woman looking for freedom, and came back a woman looking for a home. Finding you bleeding all over the parking lot distracted me a tad, or I’d have told you right then.”

  “Have you told Ben?”

  She shook her head and sank onto her own bed with a frown. “No, I’ve tried to reach him ever since we got back from the village, but I still can’t. You don’t reckon he’s off gallivanting with some hussy, do you?”

  “Could be,” I told her airily. Then I reached for my cell phone. “But if you’re real good, maybe I can help you track him down.”

  Once I got Joe Riddley on the phone and determined that he and Ben were still at the fish camp, I handed my phone to Laura and he went to fetch Ben—who might consider getting a cell phone of his own after that.

  I put on my robe and went to take a long bath while they talked. As I soaked, I made a vow to myself and whoever might be listening: “Insofar as is humanly possible, I am never going to meddle in murder again. I do not ever want to endanger my life, feel so miserable about unmasking a killer, or risk feeling so in sympathy with somebody who has taken another person’s life. Amen.”

  By then, tears were sliding down my cheeks, salting my bath water, and I was getting drowsy from my pill. I climbed out and toweled dry, taking care not to bump my sore hand. Then I headed back to our room feeling clean and virtuous. From now on, I would lead a calm and danger-free life.

  Of course, at the time, I had no idea what was going on back home in Hopemore, or that it would land me up to my neck, literally, in another murder.

  But that, as little Cricket would say, is a whole ’nother story . . .

  Read on for an excerpt from the next

  Thoroughly Southern Mystery

  by Patricia Sprinkle

  coming in early 2007

  I stood, alone and awkward, in the meeting room of the Hopemore Community Center after handing over my membership dues and first month’s investment check to the Camellia Ladies’ Investment Club. The room was full of big hair and big money, and I had neither.

  What I did have was a cup of punch in one hand, a plate of brownies in the other, and no place to set either down. Given how often people attend stand-up social functions where food is involved, wouldn’t you think evolution or the good Lord would have provided a third hand somewhere along the line? I hovered between two groups of women, trying to figure out how to eat my refreshments and which group to join.

  A voice murmured at my shoulder, “I haven’t met you yet, Judge Yarbrough.”

  Grover Henderson, the Augusta stockbroker who had given a very interesting talk on current trends in international markets, looked down at me with twinkling blue eyes and a smile that was just tentative enough to be charming. I found myself responding with twinkles of my own. Grover, like Joe Riddley, was one of those men who get better looking as they get older and who attract women of any age. He had a nice strong chin, broad shoulders, and graying hair that was receding except for a cute little tuft in front that he combed over to one side. His tan looked as though he’d gotten it on a golf course or tennis court rather than under a sun lamp, and he wore his navy blazer and loafers with a casual ease that implied he’d be equally at home in a tux or jeans.

  “Do you already know all these women,” he asked, “or shall I introduce you to them?”

  “I know most of them. I’ve lived in Hopemore all my life. If it wouldn’t give you a fair estimate of my age, I’d tell you I was a flower girl in Augusta Wainwright’s wedding.”

  We laughed and looked over to where Augusta—self-styled queen of Hope County society and possessor of a bank balance most third-world countries would envy—held court. Her aristocratic old head wore an invisible tiara and her long, aristocratic neck was craned toward Rachel Ford, a small dark woman with an intense face, who stood nearby. Gusta sat on a throne set conveniently near the refreshments table, so she wouldn’t have to juggle a plate and cup in her gnarled old hands. That would have been her granddaughter’s doing. Meriwether Wainwright DuBose was both prettier and kinder than her grandmother. She was also possibly richer, now that Pooh DuBose had died, for Meriwether’s husband was Pooh’s heir.

  Currently Meriwether was fetching Gusta a second cup of punch while Gusta told Rachel about Meriwether’s new baby. Gusta invariably referred to the child as “my great-grandson,” as if that defined him. I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t.

  Rachel was nodding in all the right places, but wore that glassy-eyed look single businesswomen tend to get when other people talk about babies.

  “I don’t know much about Rachel,” I told Grover. “She’s not from around here.”

  “No, she grew up in New York—or so I understand. She retired to Hopemore after a career in international law.”

  I lifted my punch cup and took a sip. “She must have been good at it, to retire so young. She can’t be much more than forty.” From the simple but expensive lines of her black dress and the emeralds that sparkled in her ears and on both her hands, I gathered that international law must pay well. Maybe it wore you out early, too, given that she was as skinny as an underfed pullet and had dark circles under her eyes.

  “Forty-seven, actually.” Grover’s attention was across the room, where the Big Hair contingent was having a lively conversation. Nancy Jenkins (blonde), wife of the CEO of Georgia Kaolin, was telling MayBelle Brandison (a lot redder than she used to be) about how stingy her husband was, while MayBelle, the sharpest real estate developer in three counties, was lamenti
ng that she just couldn’t make as much in Middle Georgia as she would if she moved up to Atlanta. I considered joining that conversation long enough to point out that some folks—including MayBelle’s long-suffering ex-husband—kept reminding her there was nothing to keep her in Hope County since her divorce. But why bother? MayBelle was one of those women who would rather suffer and think up new ways of inflicting suffering than get on with life.

  Speaking of divorce, the third member of that group was Sadie Lowe Hawkins—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 CLIC. She grew up in Hopemore and was thirty-seven, the same age as my 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 that 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 U.S. and abroad, for generations, she generally got her way.

  Joe Riddley claimed that Wilma’s attitude toward life had been shaped by the obstetrician who delivered her, who (Joe Riddley claimed) must have taken her little 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 measured it in millimeters. Nobody ever set a table, conducted a meeting, ran a government, preached a sermon, fixed a car, or styled her hair quite to suit Wilma.

  Tonight she was in charge of refreshments and had brought the punch in gallon jugs, claiming it was a secret family recipe. She went back to the kitchen to fetch another jug, poured it into the punch bowl, and stirred it a couple of times with the silver ladle she had also brought from home. But when she noticed I was talking to Grover, 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 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 intends 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 said in an absent tone, still looking toward Sadie Lowe, who stood with one hip stuck out as if 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 used to say—”

  That’s when I stopped listening. When Wilma got to talking about her granddaddy, she could go on forever.

  I pitied Grover. Willma had just been elected president of the club for the coming year, succeeding her first 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, 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 she 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 little 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 present that her mascara had run down her cheeks like clown lines.

  Wilma had commanded, “Go clean up your face. You look like a raccoon before breakfast.”

  Nobody seeing them together would ever have guessed the two women were first cousins, daughters of brothers. 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. What they shared was an absolute conviction that their granddaddy Will—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 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, I guessed 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 just received 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’s as far as I had gotten when I pushed open the ladies’ room door. It wouldn’t budge.

  I shoved again. “Willena?” She didn’t answer.

  I knocked. Still no answer.

  “Willena?” I put my shoulder against the door and put all my weight behind it.

  I felt something slide, then the door opened far enough for me to stick my head in.

  Forever after, I would wish I hadn’t.

  Willena lay crumpled on the floor. One hand clutched her throat. The other was out as if she had been opening the door when she collapsed. And her ruffled white blouse and the taupe tiles around her were drenched in blood.

  1 Who Left That Body in the Rain?

  2 But Why Shoot the Magistrate?

  3 John Prebble, The Highland Clearances (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd, 1978), p. 106.

  4 Who Let That Killer in the House?