Who Killed the Queen of Clubs? Read online

  Sunflower curtains dangled dangerously near the blaze, so I hurried over to turn on the water. Pain seared my right wrist as I reached for the tap and got too close to the flames. A hiss of steam filled the room. I choked as smoke filled my eyes and lungs.

  My poor jacket was singed and my wrist burned like—well, fire. I was on my way to the fridge for ice when the gruff voice announced, “I beat out the fire, but the furniture’s charred and some of the dishes got broke. Valerie?” he raised his voice. “You get in here, you hear me?”

  The only answer was a whimper from the living room.

  He called, unmoved. “Don’t you cower in there like this ain’t your fault. We all know it good and well is. You come on in here, now.”

  He stomped over to the sink and peered down at the bear. “Rest in peace, Mama.”

  While he examined the bear, I examined him. He was tall and stocky with a wiry red-gold beard and frizzy gold hair holding a glint of red. It was pulled back in a wet braid about a foot long, tied with a leather thong that matched those on his wrists. The rest of his hair was dry except for a few springy tendrils that were oddly soft against his heavy face. He was dressed all in black. Black jeans, slung low and drooping, soaked by the rain. Wide black belt dotted with huge silver studs. Black short-sleeved shirt to show off a tattoo of a golden sword with red flames all around it. Appropriate.

  I didn’t see Valerie until she gasped, “Oh! My apron got burnt up!” Forlorn, she peered down at the mess in the sink. “It’s absolutely ruined.” She lifted one charred orange scrap and held it to her cheek. Tears rolled past it and through it.

  “The whole house nearly got burnt up.” The man reached around Valerie and poked the bear with a wooden spoon from the dish drainer. “Poor Mama Bear is done for. What were you doing, Valerie?” His voice was both disgusted and puzzled.

  “Lighting the fire.”

  He started toward the living room. “Omigod, the whole place’ll be burning down.”

  She caught his arm. “It’s okay. There’s a screen in front of it.”

  He shook his head in dismay. “I’ve told you not to play with matches.”

  “I know, but I wanted her to get warm.” She pointed my way. “She was shivering.”

  Her past tense was correct. There’s nothing like a good fire to warm a body up.

  The man turned to look at me good for the first time. With two blue-eyed golden giants standing before me and the sink sending up intermittent wisps of steam, I felt like I’d wandered into Valhalla. He’d have looked at home in a horned helmet, she in flowing robes holding a giant chalice of mead.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. Or maybe, given his size, that was his normal way of asking for things. I suspected he usually got what he asked for.

  “Judge Yarbrough.” I emphasized the first word, although I seldom introduce myself that way. He was the person most likely to have given Valerie that bruised cheek, and I wanted him to know who and what he was dealing with. “I came to see Henry, and Valerie invited me in for—a glass of tea.” No point in reminding Valerie she had offered hot coffee. The way her mind worked, she’d probably insist on making it right then. “When she tried to light the fire, a stray match must have landed in Mama Bear’s lap.”

  He grabbed Valerie’s arm and gave her a shake that would have felled a lesser woman. “She’s sweet, but not wholly reliable around dangerous objects. Not real punctual, either. We need to get going, hon.”

  “Oh!” She clapped a hand to her mouth in dismay. “I need to change. I only got home a few minutes ago. And I’ll need to cover—you know.” Her hand reached toward her eye and poked her cheek. She winced.

  “Go, then.” He ignored the wince and pushed her toward the door.

  As she ran up the stairs, I said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Maybe because we’ve been too busy for me to give it. Frank. Frank Sparks.” He gave a rumble of a laugh. “You’ve had enough sparks for one day, ain’t you?”

  I thought of Henry’s fire in the shed and Valerie’s in the house. “Just about.”

  I was feeling sick about Edie’s house. The air was smoky, her carpet was pocked with burns, her little tableau was ruined, and I had no idea how much she valued the table, chair, dishes, or Mama Bear. If they were childhood heirlooms—

  When I thought about her coming home from a long, wet drive and finding the place like that, I teared up.

  Frank noticed, but he read me wrong. “We better let some of this smoke out.” He reached across the sink and shoved up both windows at once. The wet air was clean, but frigid.

  “Valerie don’t mean any harm,” he assured me, fanning with both thick hands. “She’s a bit what you might call absentminded.”

  I’d be more likely to agree with Meriwether and call it flaky, but I’ve always found it wise to humor folks the size of small mountains.

  I reached for my pocketbook, which was still on the table. “I guess I ought to be going.”

  “Us, too,” he said amiably. “Valerie and me play in a band, and we’re due to play for a wedding reception tonight, down near Sandersville.”

  “Shall I put out the fire in the living room before I go?”

  “I’ll do it.” He tromped through the door, then called back over one huge shoulder, “I can’t understand why she wanted a fire on a day like this, anyway. It’s plenty warm.”

  Not with the rain-filled air pouring through two open windows, reminding me again that this was November and I was soaked. I wanted to get in my nice dry car, turn the heater on high, and find me some supper.

  First, though, I gathered all my courage into one deep breath and said as he returned, “Don’t hit her again. The courts don’t look kindly—” His frown stopped me.

  He looked as fierce as Hagar the Horrible, his bushy reddish eyebrows almost meeting over his nose. “Did she tell you I hit her? I never. She run into a door.”

  “That’s what they all say,” I said grimly.

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t hit her. Even if I had a mind to, my mama would kill me if I ever hit a woman.”

  I tried to picture a mother who could threaten this man and get away with it, but my imagination boggled. Neither could I picture Valerie simply walking into a door. “Well, just remember what I said. Good night.”

  As I went out, I saw a black leather jacket and a shiny silver helmet slung across one of Edie’s rockers like they were at home. A black-and-silver Harley was pulled to the far side of the carport, out of the wet. On the grass beyond the back steps, the small table and chair sat in the downpour with little dishes scattered about them.

  I called from the porch, “Come help me clean up this mess before we leave.”

  Frank clumped out, carrying a tray. Together we sought dishes in the high grass under a glaring light that was as much hindrance as help. I was soaked and shaking so much my teeth sounded like castanets. He seemed oblivious to the wet and cold. His huge hands were awkward in picking up tiny dishes, but he combed the slick grass with his fingers to find every shard. He didn’t say a word until we were finished, then he held up a handful of pieces.

  “Some of it can’t be fixed, but I think this here’s all the pieces of the teapot and one of the bowls. I can glue them good as new.”

  If they were antiques, Edie would want them glued by an expert. “Let’s leave them on the table. I’ll write her a note,” I suggested. “If she wants you to glue them, you can do it later.”

  When we’d set all the dishes on the kitchen table beside Alex’s files, he muttered, “I’m real sorry I broke some of it. I was thinking more about the fire than the dishes.”

  “You saved her house,” I reminded him. “I’ll call her later to explain what happened.”

  “That’s good. Like I said, we gotta play at a wedding reception near Sandersville, and we probably won’t be back until Edie’s asleep.” Reminded, he turned his head and yelled, “Valerie? Get your tail down here. We gotta go, girl!”
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  I found a small pad near the telephone and left a note for Edie explaining the fire, taking equal blame and saying I’d be glad to ask Maynard Spence at Wainwright Antiques to arrange for repair or to look for another tea set, although I knew no tea set ever replaces the one you played with as a girl. By the time I finished, I’d written half a novel.

  Frank had wandered to the foot of the stairs and was yelling for Valerie again, so I let myself out without saying another good-bye. Not until I reached the city limits did hazy unease congeal into thought.

  I had locked that back door. So how did Frank get in?

  7

  I stopped by the house to change my clothes and barely made it to the country club before they stopped serving at eight. I was hurrying so fast that I barreled smack into Shep Faxon on the front steps. I personally find Shep’s hearty depiction of a good ole Southern boy overdrawn and often offensive, so we use another lawyer, but he does the legal work for a lot of families in town. “You bettah hurry,” he boomed in a thick country accent I know for a fact he did not grow up with. “They just set out the best desserts in Gawjah, and I know how fond you ah of good desserts.” Chuckling at his own wit, he headed toward his white Cadillac. Shep drove only American.

  Joe Riddley sat at a round table for six in the far corner of the dining room with our younger son, Walker, and his wife, Cindy. Seeing my husband across a room still gives my heart a lift. He’s tall and lanky, like his Scottish grandfather, with high cheekbones, straight dark hair, and dark skin he inherited from his Cherokee grandmother. The tad of gray that’s beginning to streak his hair makes him look more distinguished, and I cherish the lines in his face. I was there when every one of them was chiseled. He says I caused most of them, but just ignore him.

  As I got closer, I gave a little huff of disgust. He had put on the brown slacks and brown-and-tan sweater I’d laid out, but substituted his favorite blue shirt for the tan one. Walker and Cindy, of course, looked like contestants in a Best Dressed in Hopemore pageant. Cindy’s long brown vest and pants were particularly elegant, and exactly matched her hair.

  Sitting with them, as if I hadn’t already had enough of that family for one day, were Genna and Adney Harrison.

  Adney saw me first, and lit my way across the room with a hundred-watt smile that said, “You are the very person we’ve been waiting for.” No wonder the man was a good salesman. That combination of rugged face, smiling eyes, perfect white teeth, and well-shaped hands that moved expressively when he talked made it hard to resist anything he wanted you to buy, including Adney. As I neared the table—holding my right arm down at my side so nobody would notice the burn on my wrist—he half rose from his chair. “Here comes the Judge,” he intoned.

  Joe Riddley, who had his back to me, turned and gave me a considering look. “So you’re still alive, are you? Since these folks saw me all by myself looking pitiful, and insisted I join ’em, I figured I’d go ahead and eat before I went down to the morgue to identify your body.”

  Genna gasped. She must not have been familiar with how Joe Riddley talks when he’s been worried about me.

  I clapped him lightly on one shoulder. “You can postpone that trip a while. You reckon these nice people will expect us to find another table now that I’ve arrived?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Cindy said. She shifted her purse from the vacant chair between her and Joe Riddley. I carry a pocketbook, Cindy carries purses. That tells you something about the difference between us.

  Walker gave me a considering look. “We might let you stay if you mind your manners. But remember, Mama, no talking with your mouth full and no elbows on the table.” He got up to hold my chair, and bent down to kiss me.

  When I put up my face, it was like looking in a mirror—same brown eyes, same honey-brown hair—until he wrinkled his nose. “Phew! You smell like a bonfire. You been burning evidence?”

  Joe Riddley’s head came up, sniffing, too.

  I hurried into my seat and said, to distract everybody, “Don’t sass your mama or I’ll paddle you, even if you are on the board here.” He was up for president the following term, which we thought was real good for somebody four years away from forty.

  Of course, Walker and Cindy are country club to the bone. They and their children practically live there. Joe Riddley and I don’t golf, don’t play tennis, and—up until we moved into town—did all our swimming in our own pool. We joined the club when Ridd went to high school, so he could play golf. We’ve kept our membership because we enjoy the folks we run into there and Hopemore doesn’t have a whole lot of places to entertain. Lately we’d started eating there every Friday because the new chef set out a weekly seafood buffet and a table full of desserts.

  Walker motioned the waiter to bring me a glass of tea. “Coffee,” I said firmly. “Hot.”

  As Walker resumed his seat, he asked Adney, “You think I can in good conscience accept the presidency of this club, considering how much money it loses each month on my folks?”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “We never eat as many meals in a given month as we have to pay for, under that new rule you all made.”

  “I don’t know,” Adney said solemnly. “You may not come as often as some folks, but I’ve been watching Joe Riddley here put away seafood, and from what Walker says about the number of desserts you work your way through—”

  “You all be nice,” Genna begged.

  “I’m not paying them any attention,” I assured her. Joe Riddley swore that God got so busy making Genna beautiful, he forgot to give her a funny bone.

  She was beautiful. So beautiful that folks seldom remembered that her tousled red curls used to be a dishwater-blond ponytail, or that she’d headed to college with thin lips and a flat chest. Somewhere in the past fifteen years she’d learned to play up her big brown eyes and flawless skin and had acquired a set of full red lips and an impressive bosom. At thirty-three or so, she was a stunner. But she had never been an intellectual, and nowadays she seemed to have nothing weightier on her mind than pleasing Adney and finding the best places to eat lunch with friends. I frankly couldn’t see what Adney saw in her.

  On my way to fill my plate, though, I recalled that he was ten years older than she, and what had brought them together was discovering that her daddy’s pharmacy was on his regular call list. Walker had said Adney had been taking care of Olive since they were kids. Maybe he just liked taking care of women.

  I’d barely settled in my chair again before Joe Riddley asked, too low for the others to hear, “So why were you so late?” He was eating the last pile on his plate, something involving crab, cream sauce, and noodles. He is very systematic about the way he approaches those buffets, filling a plate with one category of seafood at a time and eating all of one dish before he tackles the next. That was the end of his crab. With luck, I could stall him until he was ready to go for shrimp.

  “Oh, you know, traffic court goes on and on.” I applied butter to my roll as carefully as if I were going to be graded on the project.

  Joe Riddley was a magistrate for thirty years before he retired and I took his place, so he has presided over his share of traffic courts. He actually enjoyed it, keeping a private tally of the number of trees that jumped in front of people, invisible speed limit signs, and red lights that looked green.

  Right that minute, he was looking at me the same way he used to look at people who insisted the radar had been wrong. “Court didn’t run late.” He swabbed up the last bit of cream sauce with a bite of roll. “I called down there around five, and they said you’d left soon after four.” He pushed back his chair and growled, “I’m going for shrimp. Cindy, you and Genna better help Little Bit here concoct a good story while I’m gone, or I’m gonna start looking for the fellow.”

  Genna looked so worried, I said, “Stop teasing. You’re upsetting people.”

  Joe Riddley peered down at me like a tall dark stork. “I’m not teasing. I’ve read those women’s magazines
you leave lying around. They say when your spouse starts coming home late and lying about where he’s been, there’s bound to be somebody else. That goes two ways, so you better come up with a believable story, Little Bit, or I’m gonna oil my shotgun.”

  The others laughed, but Genna still looked anxiously from one of us to the other. She obviously expected imminent divorce.

  Walker was also looking at me, but he had a speculative spark in his eye. They were going to find out eventually what I’d been up to—secrets don’t last long in a small town—so I decided to make a story out of it. Southerners love stories. We learn as children that if you can make your story funny enough and long enough, annoyed adults may forget the reason they asked you to tell it.

  So, as soon as Joe Riddley set his shrimp-filled plate next to mine, I started telling them about the geese in the sky, Alex’s loose battery connection, Henry making machetes and a fairy wand, being offered hot coffee and given iced tea in a freezing house, and Valerie’s attempt to make a fire without paper or kindling.

  I neglected to mention what Henry had told me about his daughter and the part about Alex yelling at him for what he might have done to hers.

  Folks were having a good old time, laughter flowing as freely as sweet tea, and I was well into describing Mama Bear engulfed in flames when it dawned on me that Genna might not want to hear we’d almost burned down her step-mama’s house, so I skipped to the Black Knight riding in on his Harley to save the day—omitting the fact that he’d materialized through a locked door.

  I’d barely finished when Genna said in a tight voice, “Olive says Edie needs to get rid of that girl. She—But Edie won’t talk about it, and sleeping at the top of the house like she does—Besides, she never did want to be bothered with inconvenient details.” She stopped short, maybe because she’d remembered inconvenient details of her own that Edie hadn’t wanted to be bothered with.