What Are You Wearing to Die?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  She brushed one cheek and I realized she’d been crying. “I just heard about Starr Knight She wasn’t even twenty. Her whole life was in front of her.”

  I knew Evelyn was connecting Starr’s death to her husband’s. Fifteen years before, when Evelyn and Jack Finch were both thirty, he had met a timber truck head-on. We had hired her afterwards in order to help her keep her home until she decided what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. To everybody’s surprise, including hers, she had taken to our business like a wasp to molasses. She had a good head for selling and was blessed with a soft heart and a caring nature that brought in a lot of repeat customers. In fact, Evelyn was the main reason Joe Riddley didn’t want to close the store. He wanted to hold on until she had enough in her pension fund to give her a decent retirement.

  “The accident was awful,” I agreed. “I heard who it was from Officer James.” To other people Joe Riddley and I called law enforcement officers by their titles, to show respect.

  Evelyn blinked back tears. “Was that why you wanted me? To tell me about Starr?”

  “Not really.” I hated to admit my real reason, but I was in pain. I pointed to my ankle. “Joe Riddley is playing a joke on me. I want you to fetch a crowbar and see if together we can lift this dratted desk high enough to slide the cuff out from under. Ask Gladys to help, too.”

  Gladys was a part-time employee we’d hired after Bethany went to college. She was roughly the same age as Methuselah and her arms resembled cooked noodles, but I was beyond being choosy.

  “I’m sorry, Mac, but the boss said I wasn’t to mess with those cuffs unless there was an emergency. I promised I wouldn’t.”

  Fifteen years she’d worked for us and Joe Riddley was still “the boss”?

  We’d deal with that later. I had figured out what Joe Riddley had meant when he said he had emergencies covered.

  “Dang it, woman, you work for me as much as you do him. I even sign your paycheck. Go get that key he left and let me out of here!”

  I spoke loud enough to wake Lulu. She looked up from her snooze, flapped her tail against the floor in protest at being interrupted, then resumed her nap.

  I was still waiting for Evelyn to head for the key. Instead, she shook her head. “Can’t. You aren’t big enough to beat me up. He is. I can stay back here and keep you company, if you like. There’s no action up front, and Gladys will be here another hour.”

  I wanted to yell loud enough to blast the carroty hair off her head, but I spoke as mildly as I could. “Then reach in that top drawer and hand me the lotion. Martha said it might keep the dratted thing from chafing.”

  Evelyn not only fetched the lotion, but she knelt and rubbed it into my ankle. “I’m ruining your stockings.”

  “They’re ruined already.”

  She maneuvered the cuff on the leg of the desk up a bit and fixed the stool so it was under both my feet. I sighed. “That feels so much better. Thanks. Do sit down and stay a while. I don’t feel like working anyway, and nobody is going to complain if they get their invoice late.”

  Evelyn started for the small wing chair we keep under the window for guests, thought better of it, and backed up to Joe Riddley’s leather desk chair. “Can you see me over here without breaking your neck?” I appreciated her thoughtfulness, considering that her feet didn’t reach the floor in that big old chair and would soon be needles and pins. Short people are going to need a lot of compensation in heaven to make up for the discrimination we go through down here. On the other hand, while I appreciated her concern for my neck, it was my leg I was currently concerned about.

  “Ignore that old bat’s instructions and get me out of here.” I tugged at the cuffs again. All I accomplished was widening the hole in my panty hose.

  “I can’t. I gave him my word, and I have my reputation to think of.”

  “What about my reputation?”

  She snickered—which I thought was pretty sassy, considering that she depended on my goodwill for her daily bread.

  I picked up my Hershey bar and held out what was left. “You want some candy?” I wasn’t offering her a bribe. I was obeying Mama’s injunction not to eat without offering some to anybody who might be around. As long as I had to endure the cuffs, I might as well finish up the treacherous offerings that had come with them.

  “No thanks, he already—” Evelyn’s face turned so pink that her freckles blended together.

  My jaw dropped. “He brought you candy, too? So much for your blameless reputation. Now that we both know you’re amenable to corruption, woman, how about if I let you go home early? You don’t even have to come in tomorrow.”

  I could tell she was tempted. I should be free in two minutes flat.

  3

  Unfortunately, Evelyn was made of sterner stuff than I needed at the moment.

  “I told you—I promised.” She pulled her feet up under her and sat on them. I gave her a stony look for a very long moment.

  Eventually I decided we might as well talk. “Did you hear the rest, about the truck Starr was driving?”

  “I heard it was Robin Parker’s.” From the way Evelyn said the woman’s name, I could tell she wasn’t buying stock in Robin anytime soon.

  “You’re not a member of the Robin Parker Fan Club?” I took a swig of my Coke, which was getting warm and losing its zing.

  Evelyn reversed her legs and wiggled to get more comfortable. “I hardly know her, but she’s too goody-goody for me. She never smiles, and she watches over those two girls like we had predators behind every bush. She hardly lets anybody talk to them.”

  “You can’t fault a single mother because she’s careful with her daughters. I wish Starr had been more careful with her son. But I wonder why she took Robin’s truck.”

  “Maybe she was jealous of the way Trevor keeps bragging on Robin. Wylie Quarles has worked for Trevor a lot longer, but Trevor never says much about his work.”

  “Maybe that’s because Robin is a better taxidermist. Some women can’t help being great.”

  Evelyn snorted. “Like the person cuffed to her desk at the moment?”

  “Don’t get personal.” I finished the Coke and tossed the bottle toward a recycling bin I kept by my desk. Consistent with the rest of my day, it clattered to the floor and rolled out of reach.

  Evelyn sighed as she retrieved it. “Starr had such a tough life.”

  I’ve never been one to color a person with sentimentality just because she died, and I was not feeling charitable at the moment. “Starr made a lot of bad choices in her life, and her daddy spoiled her rotten. She might not have turned out the way she did if her parents had reined her in a little.”

  Evelyn’s eyes flashed with indignation. “Her mother reined her in fine, until she got so sick. It was Trevor who spoiled her, and he couldn’t help it. Starr wrapped him around her finger the minute she was born.”

  That’s when I remembered that not only did Evelyn and Trevor go to the same church, but they had been dating earlier that summer. For all I knew, they might have started discussing marriage in the near future. Evelyn and I didn’t often sit down and discuss our personal lives.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know them well enough to make judgments. Did I hear you are dating him?”

  “Not anymore. That didn’t work out.”

  In spite of what Joe Riddley might tell you, I have enough tact to curb my curiosity at times. I was doing a pretty good job of it, considering that a widowed man who owned a business ought to look pretty good to Evelyn. Single men in her age bracket were a rarity in Hopemore. Still, I didn’t say a word—just sat there trying to get as comfortable as I could with one leg cramping up.

  To my relief, she told me before I broke down and asked.

  “The main thing Trevor and I had in common was that we’d each lost a spouse and had a big hole in our lives. We knew how that felt. He had known Jack a little, too, and I knew Cathy real well, so we could talk about them without it being awkward. I figured, thoug
h, that after a while we’d build something of our own over the holes. Sort of a floor over a basement, you know?”

  “Bless your heart, you’re a poet. I never knew that.”

  She gave me a rueful grin. “Trevor and I never made any poetry together. He hasn’t gotten over Cathy, and I don’t think he ever will. Our relationship—or what I thought could be our relationship—never went beyond talking about Cathy and Jack. There was one more thing, too. You know my dogs?”

  “Of course.” Two of the ugliest mutts I’d ever seen. They were so ugly they were downright cute, and Evelyn adored them.

  “I started noticing how Trevor acted around them. He never played with them, but he’d sit on the couch and stare at them. I got it in my head that he was trying to figure out what pose they would look most natural in if they were stuffed. I might have been wrong, but it still gave me the willies.”

  I shuddered and glanced over at Lulu. As if sensing my attention, she opened one eye and wagged her tail. I reached in my bottom drawer and tossed her a treat. Joe Riddley claims I love that dog more than I love him. On that particular day, it was a close call. When she died, I wanted her decently buried. The idea of Trevor stuffing her in a “natural pose” didn’t bear thinking about.

  Since Evelyn wasn’t engaged to Trevor, I didn’t have to give him a halo for good parenting, either. “I don’t know how he treats dogs, but he seems to have made a mess of Starr after her mother died. Just because he looks like a big soft teddy bear doesn’t mean he has to act like one. He was a first sergeant in Vietnam, for heaven’s sake, and commanded over a hundred men. Why couldn’t he rein in one young girl?”

  Evelyn scratched her scalp, which cheap dye was drying out terribly. I kept suggesting she go see Phyllis, my hairdresser, and get a really good color job, but so far I hadn’t persuaded her. “I think it was because he and Cathy married late and he never got over being astonished that they could produce such a gorgeous child. Remember Starr as a little girl? Blond curls and big blue eyes, with the longest lashes you ever saw? She looked like a princess.”

  Evelyn sounded so wistful that I wondered if that’s how she had wanted to look when she was a child. Maybe it was still how she wanted to look. Mama used to say, “You can be anybody you like, so long as you don’t look in the mirror.”

  I returned to the subject at hand. “You reckon that’s why they saddled her with the name Starr?”

  “It was worse than that. Her legal name was Starry Knight. The night she was born, Trevor stepped outside and looked up at the heavens to thank God for his miracle. The sky looked so pretty, he got inspired to name the baby after it.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Nope. That’s a quote. Starr shortened her name in elementary school, because the other kids started taunting her with ‘Sorry, Starry.’ She told them they’d be the ones to be sorry, because she was going to be rich and famous someday.”

  Poor Starr was never going to be anything. That silenced us for a minute.

  “But she didn’t get wild until after her mother died?” I needed to keep talking to take my mind off my left leg. In spite of the lotion and the stool, it was getting raw.

  “Oh, she was always high-spirited, but Cathy kept Starr on a tight leash until she got so sick. Both parents let Cathy be the disciplinarian and Trevor be the sugar daddy. That backfired after Cathy died.”

  “But Starr seemed to be doing real good for a while there.”

  “Yeah. When she got pregnant, Trevor sat her down and told her that if she drank while she was pregnant, she would do damage to her baby that nobody could ever fix. He gave her articles on fetal alcohol syndrome and crack babies, and begged her to give up drinking and drugs until the baby was born. And he promised to take care of them both as long as she needed him to. That seemed to work. She finished high school and got a job down at the Bi-Lo, and she and Bradley lived with Trevor. She took good care of her baby, too. At church, we figured that she was like her daddy—had simply needed to sow a few wild oats.”

  Evelyn stopped and heaved a sigh that seemed bigger than she was. “We were all thrilled when she started showing some interest in Wylie Quarles. He has a good job, sings in our choir, and is a fine young man. They could have made a decent couple.” She was silent a moment, regretting what would never be.

  “So what happened?” I prodded.

  “I don’t know. Back last spring, Starr and Trevor had a big blowup and she moved out. Took Bradley with her, and as far as I know, she hadn’t been back since.”

  “She’d started using something again, too.”

  Evelyn echoed my own fears. “I wondered if she was taking that methylethelene or whatever it’s called. She was looking terrible lately. And you know how she’d been neglecting Bradley.”

  Before we could say anything else, the door was flung open. The office seemed filled with electricity, and I got a whiff of the pungent odor of nervous sweat. Lulu leaped to her feet, barking as only a beagle can.

  Trevor stood in the door, his brown fluffy hair standing out in all directions. His stomach strained his red T-shirt and bulged over the waistband of his jeans, racing his beard to see which would be first to get inside the office. Sweat stood in beads on his forehead and had made circles under his arms. I’m not one to see auras around people, but if I could, I’m sure the air around his head would have crackled.

  I shushed Lulu sharply, although I don’t think Trevor noticed her. “I need you, Judge.” His cheeks were wet with tears.

  “Oh, Trevor, I am so sorry.” I wished language were more adequate. He looked to me like a man holding on to sanity by one skinny thread. “How can I help you?”

  “I want my grandson! What’s happened to the boy?”

  I chewed my lower lip and considered how to reply. In the normal way of things I wouldn’t have any idea where the child was. I am a magistrate. It’s juvenile judges who handle foster placements, and they generally keep them private, to prevent parents from snatching a child and disappearing. The only reason I knew where to find Bradley was because he was down at Ridd and Martha’s.

  I decided to answer with the truth, but not the whole truth. “Magistrates don’t have anything to do with juvenile court.”

  “The police chief said you ought to know where the boy is. Do you?”

  Faced with a direct question, I wouldn’t lie. “Yes, but I can’t tell you without permission of the juvenile court.”

  “Then get them on the phone, dagnabit! I want that boy! It’s bad enough I lost my daughter!” He slammed one fist against the doorjamb. The entire office shook. Lulu growled.

  “Trevor—,” Evelyn started.

  “Don’t ‘Trevor’ me, woman. I want my grandson. He’s all I got left now. My little girl, my Starr…” Tears gushed from his eyes and down onto his beard. He leaned his head against my wall and wept with gusty sobs. “I gotta have my grandbaby, you understand? I gotta have him!”

  I reached for the telephone. “Let me call the juvenile judge.”

  In a city, Trevor might have had to wait several days for a court hearing. In Hope County, the juvenile judge and I had a quick conversation and I was able to tell him, “You go down to my son Ridd’s place—the big blue house we used to live in, half a mile down Yarbrough Road. You know where that is?”

  He fought for self-control. “Past the Bi-Lo?”

  “That’s right. It’s the last house on the road. Ridd and Martha have been keeping Bradley. The juvenile judge will meet you with papers to sign, and then you can take him home.”

  “Thank you.” He wiped one damp hand on the seat of his pants and held it out to me. “I didn’t mean to talk rough, but I got the news about Starr not half an hour ago”—he took a ragged breath—“and I’m pretty shook up.” He sniffed back tears.

  I handed him a tissue. His courtesy was touching under the circumstances. “I understand, but pull yourself together before you get down there. That child is going to be confused enough w
ithout you scaring him half to death.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I will.” He wiped his nose and eyes and took a tremendous breath, pulling calm from somewhere deep inside him. “He’s very precious to me. I don’t know if you can understand—”

  “I’ve got four grandchildren. I understand. Is there anything you need back at your house—meals or anything?”

  “Our church will take food over,” Evelyn assured me.

  He gave me a considering, bashful look. “You wouldn’t like to come down with me, would you? I don’t know how I’m gonna tell Bradley about this.”

  I opened my mouth to say, “Why, sure,” but realized I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got something keeping me in the office this afternoon. Ridd and Martha are both there, though. They’ll be with you while you tell him. I’ll call and tell them to expect you.”

  When he left, Evelyn and I sat utterly drained. When I summoned the strength, I reached for the phone to call Ridd. “You wouldn’t have wanted to live with that man,” I told her as I punched in the numbers. “He’d have worn you out in a week.”

  She was so pale her freckles stood out. “I’ve never seen him like that. You don’t think he’d been drinking, do you?”

  “No. He’s just learned his child has been killed. That can make anybody crazy.”

  Forty minutes later, Bo greeted me from Joe Riddley’s shoulder. “Hello! Hello!”

  “Ready to go home, Little Bit?” My jailer fished in his top pocket for the key and knelt to unlock the cuffs.

  I was tempted to kick him good, but there are limits to what you do when you plan to stay married another forty years. Still, I warned as I reached for my pocketbook, “You had better return those cuffs pronto, or you may wake up to find yourself attached to the bed in the morning.”