“Then I’d better save Skell’s message. Obviously he doesn’t even know Daddy’s dead.”
“Any good prosecutor would point out that if Skell killed his daddy, he’s clever enough to make that call to try and muddy the waters.”
She frowned. “What should I do?”
“Why don’t you let Skell handle his own mess for a change? He’s twenty-three years old. You come back in the dining room and let your mother properly admire your hair.”
I felt so sick, though, that I could hardly walk behind her to the dining room. Gwen Ellen and even Laura wanted Skell home, but my stomach felt like it does whenever Joe Riddley watches High Noon and Gary Cooper starts walking down that seemingly deserted street.
It took all the meager acting skills I possess to tell Gwen Ellen, “Skell ran down to Orlando on business, and because he worked this weekend, he figured he deserved a day at Disney World. Since he’s coming home tomorrow anyway, I don’t think you need to bother tracking him down. Meanwhile, don’t you love Laura’s hair?”
Gwen Ellen wasn’t finished talking about Skell. “You’re sure we don’t need to call him? Does he even know about his daddy?”
“No, but what difference does one more day make? The funeral isn’t until the end of the week, is it?”
“Saturday.” She gave me a wan smile. “He might as well have one more happy day.”
Finally she could turn her attention back to where it was badly needed. She considered Laura critically, then nodded. “Your hair is lovely. I really like it.”
Laura reached both hands up and clutched her neck just below her ears. “I feel naked.”
“You don’t look naked; you look beautiful,” I told her. “Enjoy it.”
Nicole couldn’t stand still. “Wait until folks at work see you.” She giggled again.
A soft pink rose from Laura’s throat to cover her cheeks. “I doubt folks at work will even notice.” Her voice was gruff, but I could tell she was pleased.
She turned back to the kitchen. “Can we get ourselves something to eat?”
“Whatever you can find,” her mother told her.
We heard them rattling plates and silverware. Nicole was prattling on about clothes now. “You need some bright things. You never wear anything but gray and navy, but you’d be really stunning in red, or kelly green, or peacock blue. I’ll bet turquoise would bring out the color of your eyes. Yellow, too—but not pale yellow. The color of egg yolks, daisy centers, and sunshine.”
Gwen Ellen gave me a wan smile. “I have said the very same thing to Laura a hundred times, and it hasn’t made one speck of difference. She’d just go shopping and come back with another blue blazer or another gray skirt. Maybe this child is going to be good for her.”
“I just hope Laura gets full value for her money,” I joked. “I’ve got hems in some of my dresses deeper than Nicole’s skirts.”
Gwen Ellen looked thoughtful; then she surprised me. “Laura could wear miniskirts. You might not remember—she never shows them—but Laura’s legs are as good as Nicole’s.”
I was still trying to picture Laura in a wisp of a skirt when she came in with Nicole to raid the biscuit basket. They were both laughing, and Laura looked as carefree as she used to when her house was full of teammates. Had she been lonely since she’d come back home? When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember seeing her with any women friends—or with much of anybody except her family—in years. Now, she and Nicole stood tall and golden, with so much energy and youth between them, they made me tired.
Or maybe that was worry about Skell.
The phone rang. Tansy, coming in the back door, bustled to answer it. “Laura? It’s for you.”
We heard Laura say, “Laura MacDonald . . . Yeah? . . . Sure, she’s right here. You want to talk with her? . . . What? Oh, no, she didn’t. We know . . . No, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.
She came into the dining room and slid into one of the extra chairs. Motioning Nicole to sit, too, she leaned her chair back on two legs and said, “Chief Muggins can be so dumb.”
“Now, Laura . . . ,” her mother started. “And don’t break that chair.”
“He wouldn’t listen,” Laura told her, righting the chair with a thump. “Yesterday I found money missing from our safe while I was down at the dealership, and I called the police. Now he’s found a suspect. But we know who took it.” Seeing the question in her mother’s eyes, she added, “Skell.”
“No!” Gwen Ellen protested.
“He borrowed it for his trip—” Laura caught my eye and pressed her lips together. “No, he stole it, Mama, and he’s gonna have to deal with me on that. But at least we can call off the police—which I would have told Chief Muggins, if he had let me get a word in edgewise. Instead, he’s gonna make a trip over here for nothing.”
Nicole stood up and edged toward the door. “I’ll be getting home, then. You won’t want me here.”
“Don’t go.” Laura reached up and touched her neck. “I may want you to glue my hair back on if I can’t get used to this.”
“No, I truly do have to go. I forgot, I have an appointment.” With a flick of skirt, Nicole slid out of that room faster than a coon caught in the barn.
Chief Muggins strolled in ten minutes later, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. His face was red and his feet were wet. He came in through the kitchen like he considered himself family by now and—being on an important, official errand—he didn’t bother to wipe his feet. Tansy frowned at the trail of gritty prints he left on her clean kitchen floor.
Laura brought him to the dining room. He refused a chair, nodded to me, greeted Gwen Ellen, then looked around. “Where’s Nicole Shandy?” He rested his hands on a chair back like it was a podium and he a particularly odious preacher. “I told you to keep her here.”
“She went home,” Laura told him, “but she didn’t take the money.”
“Her prints are all over that safe, Miss MacDonald, and over most of the contents, too.”
“She was my father’s secretary, sir. We didn’t generally keep money in that safe, so he often worked with it open and asked her to put documents in it. Besides, we know who took the money. My brother borrowed it to make a business trip to Florida. He called this morning to explain.”
“Called? You know how to reach him?”
“No, but he’ll be home sometime tomorrow.” And if you need to reach me them, I’ll be at the delership.” Seeing her mother’s startled expression, she said firmly, “I’m reopening tomorrow.”
I could hardly sit still. Laura thought she was solving a robbery. She probably even thought she was exonerating Skell of any blame for killing their daddy, for she emphasized that he was scared to death of what his daddy was going to do when he got home.
I was almost scared to death myself. From where I was sitting, I had a clear view of the triumphant gleam in Chief Muggins’s eyes.
18
I phoned Gwen Ellen again later that afternoon. She said several people had come over after I’d left and worn her out. “I’m just about to go upstairs and take a nap. Sleeping, I forget all this has happened. Sometimes I just want to sleep forever.”
“Don’t take too many pills,” I warned. In addition to a nervous stomach, Gwen Ellen had bad headaches and bouts of sleeplessness. It worried me to hear her talking like that, with the number of sleeping pills and tranquilizers she had around the house. “Where’s Laura?”
“She and Nicole have gone shopping. They seem to enjoy each other.” With a little laugh, she added something any mother would understand: “Laura listens to Nicole, even if she says the same things I’ve said for years.”
“I’m pleased she’s got a new friend. But, honey, you heard me say not to take too many of those sleeping pills, didn’t you?”
“Of course, MacLaren. Tansy is here. She’s taking good care of me. Call me tomorrow, you hear me?”
“I hear you, sweetie. Have a good nap.”
My own
sleep that night was again punctuated by rain on the roof, and when I woke up Tuesday, rain was still streaming down.
“Honey?” I poked Joe Riddley in the shoulder until he opened one eye. “Have you gotten any instructions from the Lord about building an ark?”
He pulled the cover over his ears. “Nary a mutter.”
I got up, padded over to the window, raised it, and pressed my ear to the screen. From his warm nest he growled, “What the dickens are you doing?”
I shivered in the chilly breeze. “Listening to see if I hear anybody else hammering.”
He heaved himself groggily out of bed. In spite of practicing every day, he’s never gotten real good at getting up in the morning.
“What did Marilee say about the weather today?” I lowered the window and padded toward my closet.
He grunted. “Clearing by afternoon, sunny tomorrow.”
I scanned the sky. Thick gray clouds as far as I could see in all directions. “She needs to polish her crystal ball. But at least those two corkscrew willows I planted in the side yard ought to be getting enough moisture to suit them.”
“You should have planted cypresses. I checked on them yesterday, and they’re knee-deep in water.” He gave himself a thorough morning scratch and plodded off to his own closet.
We’d barely gotten to work when Joe Riddley got a call. I heard him say, “Yeah, eleven’s good.” He hung up and reached for his cap. “I’m goin’ down to the nursery to check on the shrubs. With all this rain, some of them may be getting pretty waterlogged. And Shyster just called. Wants me to drop in around eleven.” Peter Schuster was a member of our church, and he and Joe Riddley served on the missions committee together. Pete was also a lawyer, which made the nickname inevitable.
Joe flew down from the curtain rod and perched on Joe Riddley’s shoulder, but Joe Riddley pushed him off. “Stay, Joe.” He added to me, “I’m leaving him here. I don’t like taking him out in this rain twice in one morning.” Not to mention how that parrot had disgraced himself the last time he visited Pete’s elegant office.
Joe was not pleased, however, to be left. For two hours the wretch sat on our curtain rod pecking at his feathers and muttering, just too soft for me to catch the words. Given the baleful glances he shot my way and his former owner’s vocabulary, I was probably glad I couldn’t hear.
I didn’t want to hear what Isaac James had to say, either, when he dropped by around ten. First he handed me a warrant to sign so he could arrest a man who had molested his girlfriend’s six-year-old daughter.
I read it with my stomach churning, and signed it gladly. “This makes me glad I’m a judge. Yesterday I was ready to take down the sign on my door. You and I both know Mr. Garcia didn’t kill Skye MacDonald, but there wasn’t a thing I could do.”
“Don’t get in a stew about that,” he told me soberly. “You and I also know I ought not tell you this, but Chief Muggins as much as admitted this morning that he’s only holding Mr. Garcia because he hopes that will decoy Skellton MacDonald into thinking it’s safe to come home. He’s convinced Skell killed his Daddy, and I have to admit all the evidence points that way. Especially—” He stopped. “No, I’ve already told you more than I ought to.”
“More than I wanted to hear,” I snapped. “You’ve ruined a perfectly lousy day.”
After he left, I tried to work, but the rain on the parking lot outside my window sounded like a young drummer who couldn’t keep his fingers still. The view was so dreary it made me want to cry, and Joe muttered away over my head until I was ready to do that parrot bodily harm. I couldn’t help worrying about Skell—where was he? Should we try to warn him not to come home until his daddy’s murder was solved? But what if he had done it?
I couldn’t stand that last thought, so I turned on the radio—just in time to hear our Yarbrough’s ad. Maybe it was the mood I was in, but it sounded tired and stale. Remembering what Laura said about reaching younger customers, I called the station and told them I wanted something more modern, with pep. They said they’d have something for my approval in a day or two, but it would take two weeks to get it on the air.
“Murder can be accomplished in a minute,” I told Joe sourly, “but advertising takes two weeks.”
“Not to worry,” he replied irritably.
“That’s easy for you to say,” I snapped. “You have an assured food supply.”
I couldn’t stand my office any longer. I grabbed my pocketbook and umbrella and headed out. As I passed the cash register, I told the clerk on duty, “If Joe Riddley gets back before I do, tell him I’ve gone to Sky’s the Limit to look at a used car for Bethany.”
I had learned the hard way not to go places without letting him know where I’d be. Twice already, it had endangered my life. However, there was nothing frightening about Sky’s the Limit on a rainy morning. Full of forlorn, abandoned automobiles, it looked about as exciting as a cemetery. Overhead lights reflected beads of water on dripping hoods and bathed the whole lot in a sickly glow. A splash of yellow light inside the little white building that served as a sales office showed where everybody must be.
I pulled as close as I could get to the entrance, wrestled my umbrella up, and splashed to the large glass door. Sky’s the Limit wasn’t as elegant as MacDonald Motors. The sales office was one medium-size room with three gray metal desks and two gray filing cabinets sitting on a gray vinyl floor. Remnants of pink and blue artificial sweetener packets littered a table containing the coffeepot and the nearby wastebasket overflowed with white Styrofoam cups. The cleaners must have taken Laura literally when she shut down business for a few days. She’d have a fit if she saw the state the place was in.
Three salesmen sat in the sales office drinking coffee and contemplating the dispiriting view: a lot full of unsold cars in a customerless downpour. I suspected they’d also been telling smutty stories, given the shouts of laughter I heard as I pushed open the door and the hush that fell when they saw who was coming in.
I closed my umbrella and shook it out the door, then looked around with my brightest smile. “Hello.” Sugar crunched underfoot as I stepped inside.
While I often think I know everybody in Hopemore, I know a lot of them only by sight. Two of these men fell into that category, and the oldest I didn’t know at all. None of the three went to our church, belonged to our organizations, had gone to school with our sons, shopped regularly in our store, or had appeared before me since I became a judge. The stringy kid of about nineteen, with a few pimples and greasy yellow hair that needed a trim, might have bagged my groceries at the Bi-Lo a few years back, but he didn’t look like he recognized me, so it hadn’t been a memorable relationship for either of us.
The two older men exchanged a look; then the one I didn’t recognize stood up. He was a tall, bulky fellow with a beaky nose and a few long strands of dark hair combed over the top of his naked scalp. “Good morning, ma’am. Are you looking for a car?”
I considered them. Jimmy Bratson wasn’t the pimply youth, so he had to be either this man or the third. I decided to bet on the third. The large man didn’t look like anything ever lit his fuse. I bet on the third man, who was watching me even though he pretended he wasn’t.
He would be hard to describe once I took my eyes off him: medium height, medium weight, brown eyes, brown hair, no distinguishing features. But he carried his head back on his neck in a way that let the world know he thought highly of himself. And I had seen the other two look toward him before they looked at me.
“Are you Jimmy Bratson?” I addressed him.
“Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?” He had the manners to stand, and was both casual and efficient. The kind of man who gets the most done with the least expenditure of effort. The bulky man sank back into his chair, quite willing to let somebody else deal with me. The kid earnestly picked dirt from his fingernails like he was being paid for it by the pound.
“I wanted to ask you about a car.”
“What kind are yo
u looking for?” Mr. Bratson cast a professional look out the window at my Nissan, probably deciding how little to offer me for it.
I felt a spurt of anger. “I’m not looking for one. I want to know about one you sold Friday to a friend of mine. Blue BMW convertible?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t sell that car.” His shoulders were tense; his eyes scarcely moved. “Mr. MacDonald sold it.”
“I know, but I can’t ask him about it, now, can I? And my friends called. They’ve had trouble with it down in Florida. They might want to bring it back.” I figured that was honest: Maynard might want to bring it back, given the trouble it had caused. If he ever got it back.
His eyes narrowed. “Florida? That where they are?”
“Yeah. I wondered if the man it was promised to first might still be interested in it. Do you know who he was and how to get in touch with him?”
The tensing of his shoulders was so tiny, I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it. The big man was buffing his nails on the thigh of his pants, no longer paying us a speck of attention. The pimply youth, though, was sitting with his legs far apart, his hands dangling between them, and his gaze fixed on his hands. I saw him give a slight jerk when Jimmy Bratson asked in a flat, curious voice, “Was it promised to somebody?”
“I understood from Laura MacDonald that there was already a customer lined up for it.” I turned to the others. “Any of you know anything about that?” Both shook their heads, but while the big man’s pleasant smile didn’t alter as he shook his head, the pimply youth pressed back against his chair. Walker always did that when he wanted to avoid telling me something. I looked back at Mr. Bratson. “Skell was pretty upset Saturday that it had been sold. He must be the one who promised it. I’ll have to ask him about that.”
The man didn’t so much tense as grow very still. Not even his eyes blinked. My daddy used to say that when a man stops blinking, it’s because he’s working on a new idea. “You’ve seen Skell? You know where he is? I sure would like to talk to him. He needs to authorize several hours of overtime for me.”
Who Left That Body in the Rain? Page 17