What Are You Wearing to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “Which means every law enforcement officer in the county will know about this by nightfall. I will never live it down.” I was beginning to get cross.

  He headed toward the door. “Desperate times require desperate measures. I’ll see you in a while. I need to get back to the nursery.”

  “You can’t leave me like this!” I went from not quite cross to furious in one second flat. In that second, I might’ve had the strength to hoist the desk high enough to slide off the cuff, but the anger surged past and left me with panic. “Don’t, Joe Riddley. Anything could happen.” I pictured a tornado raging down Oglethorpe Street with me helpless before it.

  He lifted the red Yarbrough cap he always wears, smoothed his hair, and settled the cap back on his head. “I’ve got emergencies covered. Besides, it’s only for an hour or so. Then I’ll come on back and we can go swim.”

  “At least tell me who died.” I was stalling for time. How could I convince him this joke had gone far enough?

  “I have no idea. A truck went over the embankment and was found sitting tail-up in the kudzu.”

  That didn’t help. Practically every family in the county owned a truck.

  “Buster got the call while I was driving him back from Rotary Club,” he added.

  “So that’s where you got the cuffs.”

  Bailey “Buster” Gibbons was not only the sheriff of Hope County but had been Joe Riddley’s best friend since kindergarten. When I started school two years later, the two of them were alternately my champions and my tormentors. They would beat up anybody who tried to bother me, then devil me with practical jokes of their own—a tendency they had never outgrown.

  “Please, honey?” I was reduced to begging as he put his hand on the doorknob.

  “Little Bit, time and time again I have asked you not to meddle with murder. You have nearly scared me to death with how close you have come to getting yourself killed. I still don’t know how you got sliced up so bad in Scotland.”2

  Unconsciously I flexed my left hand, which the doctor said would always be stiff from that encounter. He noticed. “See? Next time it could be your neck. I married you so we could grow old together. That means you need to be around. Sit tight until Buster gets this body dealt with and I get an order of sod sent out. Then I’ll come back and we’ll swim.”

  “I love you. I surely do,” Bo added.

  They paused at the door. I had a second’s hope that the old coot was going to unlock me. “You reckon the rage for hawthorn will continue this next year? We might need some more,” he said.

  “You and the sheriff are both going to need new heads once I get out of here.” I tugged hard at the cuffs, in case he hadn’t really locked them. They held firm. “This isn’t funny. I’ll put you in jail.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  With that, he left.

  I glared at his back while it receded into shadows as he made his way through the store. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do to get you for this,” I vowed aloud, “but it is going to be terrible.”

  I am short, so I keep a stool for my feet under the desk. No matter how I tried, though, I couldn’t back far enough away from the desk to get the stool positioned right to keep that cuff from chafing my ankle raw. Lulu was no help, licking my other ankle as I tried to shove the stool into place.

  I pulled the phone toward me and called the cell phone of Isaac James, assistant police chief and my good friend. His office was behind the courthouse, less than a block away.

  As soon as I heard his bass rumble over the line, I announced, “This is Judge Yarbrough, and I’ve got a problem here. I’ve inadvertently been cuffed to my desk.”

  Isaac’s chuckle filled my ear. “He went through with it, huh? I heard he was threatening to do that.”

  “How fast can you get over here to let me out? Then you can go to the nursery and arrest the old codger for false imprisonment.”

  “Sorry, Judge, I’m out on the bypass right now, tied up with a wreck. If you really want to press official charges, though, I’m sure Chief Muggins…”

  Even Ike was playing dirty. Police chief Charlie Muggins had been trying to pin something on me ever since I got appointed magistrate. I could picture Charlie’s smirk as he came through my door—and as he left without helping me at all.

  “I thought Sheriff Gibbons went out on that bypass call.”

  “He’s got his wreck and I’ve got mine. A couple of folks were so busy rubbernecking to see what the sheriff’s men were up to, they collided right inside the city limits. It was pretty bad, so I’ll be here a while. If you don’t want me to tell the chief, I can send one of the deputies….”

  He knew good and well I would turn down that offer, too. Ike might laugh and let me out, but if he sent a deputy because I’d requested help, I’d have to press some kind of charges. I might be mad enough to want Joe Riddley and Buster both behind bars for a night, but we’d be the laughingstock of Hopemore once the story hit the weekly Hopemore Statesman. There are certain disadvantages to living among people who have known you all your life.

  “Who died?” I could at least satisfy my curiosity on that point.

  “We don’t know yet. They are in the process of winching the vehicle up as we speak. All I know so far is that it’s a black Ford Ranger with a blond person in it wearing a white shirt.”

  I heard somebody speak behind Isaac. His voice went muffled for a sentence or two. Then he said, “It’s Starr Knight, the taxidermist’s daughter.”

  I felt like somebody had stolen all my air.

  “Oh, no! First his wife—how long has it been since she died? Six or seven years?”

  “Something like that. With her death plus all the stuff Trevor has already gone through with Starr, you’d think he’d had his share of troubles.”

  “Not to mention what he went through before he ever got married.”

  Trevor Knight was the best living example I knew of somebody who had been to hell and back. He’d grown up in town and gotten drafted before he finished college. He came home from Vietnam wracked by nightmares and addicted to drugs and alcohol. For ten years he had cut a wild swath through middle Georgia. He had been intimately acquainted with the Hope County jail. But during his last incarceration, thirty years before, Trevor had found faith, which helped him lick his demons. Sober and clean, he had returned to Hopemore and gone to work for our local taxidermist. In the past twenty-five years, he had bought out the business and built it up until he now had two people working for him.

  In the process, he had become known for compassion toward people the rest of us might give up on. That very morning he had chaired the breakfast meeting of a committee that helped turn around local teens headed in the wrong direction.

  Unfortunately, his own daughter had been one teen he’d been unable to help. After her mother died, Starr had spun out of control. She started wearing a lot of makeup, provocative clothes, and flashy hairdos. At fourteen she was drinking. By fifteen she was a drunk. At sixteen she was pregnant. For a while after the baby came, she had cleaned up her act. She got a job at the Bi-Lo grocery store and was working a rehab progam. However, in recent months she had slid downhill again. I’d seen her several times sashaying down Oglethorpe Street wearing a soiled skimpy top, skintight jeans, and too much makeup—which was unsuccessful at covering the deterioration of her pretty face.

  From the speed with which Starr had been losing her looks, I guessed she’d been using methamphetamine. Like many small towns across the United States, we were drowning in meth. Nobody knew where it was coming from or how to stop the deluge.

  Her little boy, Bradley, nearly broke my heart, tagging along behind his mama with dirty hands, torn jeans, matted hair, and a bewildered look on his face. Two weeks ago the authorities had taken the child away and placed him with Ridd and Martha, who had completed training to become foster parents. Trevor had petitioned to get the child, and a court date had been set. Meanwhile, Cricket, who was five, h
ad taken the four-year-old Bradley under his wing.

  How would Martha explain to the two little boys that Bradley’s mother was never coming back? As sorry a mother as Starr had been lately, Bradley still cried for her every night.

  I realized Ike was talking again. “…must have driven somewhere to get drugs and was too high to make the curve on her way back. Kids picking up trash for community service saw the truck bed sticking out of the kudzu and called the sheriff. Hold on a minute.” I heard somebody speaking to him in the background.

  While I waited, I wondered what Starr had been doing out on the bypass. She lived in an apartment in town, and her daddy lived in the other direction. And why would she miss a shallow curve she’d been driving all her life?

  Isaac came back on the line. “The truck is Robin Parker’s and it was reported stolen Monday afternoon. It’s totaled. Robin won’t be driving it again.”

  “That’s awkward. Robin works for Trevor. What a mess.”

  “It’s gonna get messier before it’s over. Ms. Parker claimed her truck was stolen out of Trevor’s yard while they were working. His workroom doesn’t have any windows out back, where it was parked. Well, I’d better get back to work.” Before he hung up, Isaac added, “Oh, Judge? Don’t leave town today, okay?”

  “That wasn’t funny. I’m in pain over here.”

  I was talking to air. Ike had already gone.

  2

  After that conversation, getting out of the cuffs moved down to the second most urgent issue in my life. The most urgent was letting Martha know what had happened.

  Ridd answered the phone. Until I heard his clogged “Heddo?” I’d forgotten he was recovering from a bad cold and had taken the day off from teaching math. He didn’t even try to hide his disappointment at hearing my voice. “I thought you might be Bethany.”

  As hard as it was for me to believe, my older son was now forty-two and was normally a well-balanced adult whom folks looked up to. For the past three weeks, he had been an emotional mess. His little girl had gone to college, two hours away. My maternal take on his head cold was that he had gotten run-down from worry.

  My own worries made me speak more sharply than I normally would. “No, this is your mother, and I have some very bad news. Starr Knight has been found dead in a car that went over the embankment out on the bypass.”

  No point in beating around the bush when you have that kind of information to impart.

  “Oh, God.” From Ridd, that was a prayer. Unlike his younger brother, he didn’t swear. “You’re sure?”

  “What’s the matter, Daddy?” I heard Cricket in the background. I had expected him to be at school and Bradley to be in day care.

  “Are both boys in earshot?” I asked.

  “Yes. Cricket’s got my cold, so everybody stayed home today. We’re playing Go Fish and they are whaling the tar out of me. Let me take the phone to the kitchen.”

  In another second he asked softly, “There’s no chance this is only a rumor?”

  “I had it straight from Isaac James.”

  “Her poor dad!”

  I could appreciate why Ridd would identify with a father who had lost his daughter, but I hauled him back to the other priority on his plate. “I’m wondering what this will mean for Bradley. You all may have the task of telling him. I don’t envy you a bit.”

  There was a long pause. He apparently hadn’t considered that part of it. Then he asked, in a falsely cheerful voice, “You guys looking for a snack?”

  I heard the boys clamoring for juice and Cricket Dog, Lulu’s son, yipping for a treat. I might as well let Ridd discuss his favorite subject until he could get rid of them. “When did you hear from Bethany last?”

  “Yesterday. She loves her classes, loves her roommate, hates the food, and was fixing to give some football players a ride to Wal-Mart. Can you believe that? She knows not to give rides to strangers. And football players? You know what they’re like.”

  “Your brother was a football player.”

  “I wouldn’t have trusted my daughter with Walker at that age, either.”

  I sighed. When you have kids, you think you’ll get them into elementary school and your major work will be done. Then you think if you can get them into high school—or into college, or out of college—surely by then they will be grown-up and your worries will be over. Yet there I was with a son old enough to have a daughter in college, and he still expected me to bear his burdens.

  “She’s a grown-up now,” I reminded him, “and she’s a sensible girl. Stop worrying and let her enjoy her freedom.”

  “Easy for you to say.” He sounded as gloomy as Eeyore. “You never had a girl. They worry you to death.”

  “I didn’t need a girl for that. I’ve got your daddy. You will not believe what he’s done to me this afternoon.”

  For the first time since he came on the line, Ridd laughed. “He carried through? I heard what he was threatening to do.”

  If you live in a city and depend on television, radio, or a newspaper for news, you might wonder how Ridd had heard. If you live in a small town, you take it for granted that news floats on the breeze. All you have to do is cock your ear and listen.

  “How fast can you bring a tool over to cut me free?”

  “Not on your life. I suspect Daddy could still whup me if he tried.”

  “Pop can whup anybody!” Cricket boasted in the background.

  Martha came on the phone. “What’s up, Mac? Why’s Pop going to whip Ridd?”

  I heard Ridd say, “Hey, boys, would you like to take your snack out onto the porch?”

  For a moment I had a wistful longing for that wide screened porch with a table placed to get the best view of the yard. I pushed regret down where it belonged and promised, “I’ll tell you about that in a minute. First, Starr Knight has been found dead in a car out on the bypass.”

  Martha caught a quick breath, and her immediate reaction was the same as mine. “Poor Bradley! How on earth are we going to tell him? And Cricket? He dotes on that child.”

  We discussed that for a few minutes, and then she asked, “Why was Ridd saying his daddy can still whip him?”

  When I told her, she gave a gurgle like a mountain stream. Given the prickles in my left leg, I would have preferred a mountain stream at the moment—preferably an ice-cold one with my foot dangling in it.

  “Put some lotion on your ankle,” she advised. “That will help it slide up and down easier.” Martha supervises our hospital emergency room, and was at home only because she was working a weekend rotation. “I hate to say it, Mac, but I understand where Pop is coming from. You’ve put yourself in danger too often lately.”

  “I don’t put myself in danger,” I protested. “I do my best to avoid it. It just happens sometimes.”

  “Like every time you get too close to a murderer.”

  That stung. “I don’t cozy up to them, but I can’t sit by when somebody I care about is in danger, or asks me to use what common sense and local knowledge I have. You know good and well I don’t thrust myself into investigations out of curiosity. But like Mama used to say, ‘We don’t have to go looking for trouble. God puts enough trouble in our path to keep life interesting.’”

  “If you think God puts murder in your path to keep your life interesting, you’re skating on real thin theological ice. The closest I’ll come to agreement is that you have been providentially placed sometimes to figure out some stuff the police haven’t.”

  “Why can’t Joe Riddley see that?”

  “Because he loves you more than life itself, and he doesn’t want to lose you.”

  “He doesn’t have to insult me. You should have heard him. ‘There’s been a body found out on the bypass and I don’t want you haring over there to take a look at it.’ I don’t go haring anywhere simply to look at a body. Besides, Starr wasn’t murdered. I’m not going to get involved in investigating her accident.”

  “Of course not, but cut Pop some slack right now. H
e’s worried about the business, which means he needs you worse than ever.”

  “I wish he had cut me some slack. My leg is going to sleep. I may have to have an amputation.”

  She gurgled again. “Like I said, put some lotion on your ankle. He won’t leave you there long. You know that as well as—oops! I’ve got to go. Ridd’s gone down to the barn, and I hear Cricket laying down the law to Bradley about how many cookies he’s allowed. Poor Bradley. He must think he’s got three parents sometimes.”

  “Instead, he’s got none.” That sobered us both. “Are the boys getting along all right otherwise?” I asked.

  “Beautifully, most of the time. Cricket’s done pretty well at sharing his toys, and Cricket Dog, he doesn’t even seem to mind that he’s no longer the littlest, but I have to watch him to make sure he doesn’t boss Bradley around. I really do need to go. Bye.”

  The only lotion I had in the office was in the top drawer of a filing cabinet halfway across the office. When something is out of reach, it doesn’t matter if it is a mere five feet away or two hours, like Bethany. Having had my philosophical moment and shared a smidgeon of sympathy with Ridd, I punched the buzzer on my phone. Evelyn Finch, the store manager, picked up. “You need something, Mac?”

  “Yeah. I need you for a second. Are you busy?”

  “I wish. It’s deader out here than a bar on Sunday morning.” Before I could ask how she knew what a bar was like on Sunday morning, she added, “I’ll be right there,” and hung up.

  Evelyn was nearly as short as me and a little plumper, but she was also twenty years younger and faster. She poked her head through my door in three seconds flat. “What do you need?” Her voice sounded kind of thick, like she was coming down with a cold, too.

  I bit my tongue to keep from saying, “I need for you to pick one hair color and stick with it a few weeks so I can get used to it.” Evelyn frequently experimented with new shades from the drugstore. She had been born with a bushy head of hair in the shade of red that fades to pink and goes gray early. Recently, she’d been trying every red known to CVS, claiming she was trying to match her freckles. This week’s color came close. She looked like she’d shampooed in carrot juice. To avoid mentioning the fact, I said, “Your eyes look pink. Are you sick?”