What Are You Wearing to Die? Page 7

  Hubert sat down on the front edge of the chair, a man with something important to say. If he’d smiled any wider he’d have split his jaw.

  “You want a Coke?” Joe Riddley offered.

  “No, thanks, I’m fine.” He rubbed his palms together. “You all likin’ your new house and all? Don’t miss the old place?”

  He was talking about the small brick house we’d bought in town when we’d deeded the old place to Ridd. Moving after all those years takes a while to get used to, so Joe Riddley ignored the questions. “Why don’t you let us in on the secret of what brings you to our office on this fine day?”

  Hubert crossed one stubby calf over the other thigh and beamed from one of us to the other. “I have made a momentous decision, and I wanted you folks to be the first to know.”

  Joe Riddley and I both swiveled our chairs around so we could see him more easily.

  “You gonna marry Gusta?” Joe Riddley hazarded.

  Since Gusta was nearly twenty years older than Hubert, I figured that wasn’t likely. “You gonna sell your store and retire?” I guessed.

  Spence’s Appliances had been hit even harder than we had by the opening of the big-box superstore on the edge of town. Folks in small towns don’t need a lot of major appliances, so most of Hubert’s business had come from selling radios, televisions, razors, blenders, and the like. He didn’t have the volume to be able to compete with big-box prices.

  “Nope and nope.” He wore the smug smile of somebody who knows the right answer. His voice dropped a notch, into the realm of his normal grumble. “I’d rather marry a mosquito than Gusta. They have a lot in common, now that I think about it. Both drive you crazy and go straight for the jugular. And who’d want to buy my store? So I’m not getting married and I’m not retiring—not exactly. I’ve decided to go into another line of business.” He looked from one of us to the other, priming our pumps for the revelation. “I am going to run for mayor. And since you now live inside the city limits, you can vote for me.”

  He sat back in the wing chair and waited for applause—or maybe a campaign contribution.

  It took all the self-discipline I possessed not to shriek, “You are what? Of all the tomfool notions I ever heard, that’s the dumbest.”

  I don’t want to distress those who might belong to Hubert’s party, but Hubert’s politics were 90 percent rant and 10 percent rave. No government ever did anything right as far as he was concerned, and his solutions were generally predicated not on what was best for the majority of citizens but entirely on what was best for Hubert.

  “What led you to this momentous decision?” Joe Riddley spoke in a milder voice than I could have managed.

  Hubert scrunched up his eyes, a sign he was about to get serious and hateful—which, with Hubert, was often the same thing. “That damfool woman talking about running. She wasn’t raised in Hopemore. What does she know about being mayor of the place?”

  “Which woman is that?” Joe Riddley’s voice was still mild as sweet milk.

  “Nancy Jensen. She ain’t never been anything but a housewife, and she was born and raised in Waycross. She ain’t been in town more than ten years.” Hubert thought it cute to talk like a hick at times, even though he had an engineering degree and had made straight As in English all through school.

  “She was a chemistry teacher for years before she married Horace,” I pointed out, “and she’s been here at least fifteen years. Their son, Race, is fourteen.”

  “Okay, fifteen. That doesn’t make her an expert on the place. What does she know about running a town?”

  I knew I ought to show the same restraint Joe Riddley had, but I figured Nancy knew at least as much about running Hopemore as Hubert did. She had chaired every club in town, was an elder in the First Presbyterian Church, and had put on the golf club dance the previous summer. I had served with her on several committees, and felt she had perfectly good administrative skills.

  However, while I would certainly vote for Nancy over Hubert, I had better manners than to tell him so—until he added, “She couldn’t even keep her husband at home, and now she’s trying to take everything he’s worked all his life to build.” His voice was full of spite.

  Hubert’s take on the facts was close enough to make trouble for Nancy in an election.5Her husband had run off with another woman back in July—although it was a woman he’d been involved with, off and on, since he was fifteen—and in the divorce Nancy was being represented by an excellent lawyer who argued that a corporate executive’s wife who gave up her career in order to help advance his deserved more than half of their joint assets. The lawyer argued that Nancy had sacrificed her own earning potential to increase Horace’s, so his ability to earn more was an intangible family asset that needed to be factored into the final financial settlement. I agreed with the reasoning, although in this particular case, Horace’s ability to earn money came from the fact that his granddaddy founded Middle Georgia Kaolin, which Horace now ran.

  In any case, I was not willing to hear Hubert bad-mouth a woman because her husband had abandoned her. “The divorce needn’t keep her from being a good mayor,” I said. “In fact, it could make her a better one, since she will have plenty of time to devote to the job.”

  “She got arrested a while back, too, didn’t she?” he demanded. “Shootin’ up a motel? We don’t need criminals running this town.”

  “Those charges were dropped. Don’t you go bringing them up in your campaign.”

  Hubert was turning pinker by the second.

  “Which makes you madder?” Joe Riddley asked him, still keeping calm. “That she wasn’t born here or that she’s a woman?”

  “Both. No offense, Mac, but you get a woman in power? Next thing you know, everything’s gone all touchy-feely. As you both know, I ain’t one for touchy-feely, so I’ve decided if you want something done right, maybe you’d better do it yourself.”

  The scary thing was, Hubert might have a chance. Our incumbent had said he wouldn’t run again, and we had never elected a woman mayor. Also against Nancy was that she was a middle-aged woman who thought things through before she spoke. Hubert had that shallow friendliness that has been the hallmark of too many Southern politicians who get elected decade after decade not on the strength of their intelligence but on connections, a handshake, and a smile. He would have another advantage, too. While it shames me to admit it, we still have a lot of voters in Hope County who can’t read. When they got to the polls and saw “Spence” on the ballot, they might simply vote for a combination of letters they recognized from the sign on his store.

  For the moment, I had said my say. Joe Riddley could have the last word. “It’s a mighty big decision,” he said. “You sure you want to do this? You know how the newspapers are. They’ll dig up every bit of dirt they can find.”

  Hubert waved that away with one pudgy hand. “I ain’t worried about the paper. Slade Rutherford can dig all he likes. He won’t find anything in my past worse than a little watermelon stealing when we were boys.”

  I abandoned my vow of silence. “And water tower painting in high school.”

  “Well, yeah, boys will be boys.”

  I was fixing to point out that that particular boy had painted Joe Riddley’s name and mine inside a four-foot heart for the whole town to read, but Joe Riddley beat me off the mark. “Are you sure you want the responsibility for running this town? There’s not much money in it. What’s the salary, six or seven thousand dollars?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you’d have to give up the store and spend a lot of time listening to people’s gripes.”

  “The store is gonna die on its feet anyway, and I figure it’s better to listen to other people’s gripes and do things right for a change, than spend my time griping that other folks are doing them wrong.” Hubert had given the decision at least half an hour’s thought.

  When Joe Riddley nodded, I knew he wasn’t endorsing Hubert, merely agreeing with his senti
ment. “Have you talked to Maynard about it?” he asked.

  I suspected Maynard would not be pleased if his daddy jeopardized his hard-won health by getting het up about a political campaign—especially since Hubert and Maynard perched on opposite sides of the political fence.

  “I haven’t mentioned it to him quite yet. I wanted to test the idea out on you folks first.”

  If he hoped we’d reconcile Maynard to the idea, he had another think coming. However, Joe Riddley said in a voice as quiet as the day outside, “I wish you luck. You got yourself a manager and the campaign all mapped out?”

  “It’s early days. I’ll bet that Jensen woman won’t start campaigning till mid-October.”

  Why should she? A candidate could easily reach our entire electorate in three weeks.

  Hubert slicked back his hair. “I don’t think I’ll need a manager. I’m a pretty good manager myself. I do need a catchy slogan, though. If you think of something, let me know.”

  Joe Riddley nodded again. “We sure will.” An awkward silence fell. No way we were going to promise Hubert we’d vote for him or write him a check.

  He bounced to his feet. “Well, I wanted you all to know. I’ll be getting back to you when I’ve got signs printed and all. Remember, with Hubert at the helm, this town will return to decency and old-time values.” He shook our hands like we were perfect strangers, then bounced out in search of new victims.

  “Sic ’em!” Bo called after him.

  I waited until Hubert was out of earshot before I asked, “Can you think of anything worse for this town than Hubert at the helm? It would be like turning the clock back fifty years.”

  “A hundred, more like. Let’s hope somebody runs against him who actually has a chance of winning.”

  “You don’t think Nancy has a chance?”

  “Afraid not. Hubert has her image pegged nicely. In spite of the fact that Horace has been playing around and the shooting charges against her were dropped, during an election all folks will remember is that she got arrested and couldn’t hold on to her husband. Besides, who would want to get on the bad side of Horace? He can be a tad abrasive.”

  That was as critical as Joe Riddley would get, but the fact was, Horace had about as much charm as a wild boar. He also had more money than three-fourths of the town put together, and he knew how to use it to control people.

  “It’s not fair,” I complained.

  “When has politics ever been fair?”

  “It would be if you decided to run.” I couldn’t think of a better mayor for the town.

  He reached for his cap. “Only running I’m gonna do is down to the nursery, to check on that new shipment of sod. Last batch we got was full of weeds.”

  Before he reached the door, Evelyn came through it, pink-faced and breathless. “Isn’t it exciting? Mr. Spence says he’s gonna run for mayor!”

  “So he says,” Joe Riddley agreed.

  “Isn’t that amazing?” Her freckled face was lit up like somebody had turned on a bulb.

  “Amazing.” I looked at my computer screen so I didn’t have to meet her eye. In all the years she had worked for us, Evelyn and I had never discussed politics. For all I knew, our old neighbor represented exactly what Evelyn wanted in a mayor. I wasn’t about to risk losing a good store manager over Hubert Spence.

  7

  Joe Riddley must have felt the same way, for Evelyn’s arrival accomplished what all my wishing had not. He got up, put on his cap, and said, “I’ll be back by dinnertime. You want to go to Myrtle’s?” I nodded. We always did on Saturdays.

  As soon as he and Bo left, I motioned Evelyn to the wing chair. “I’ve been wondering about something. Do you know who Starr Knight’s friends were?”

  Evelyn wrinkled her forehead. “You aren’t going to start poking around in that, are you? Because if you do, and if I help you, the boss—”

  “I am the boss,” I interrupted. “At least, one of them. And no, I’m not going to start ‘poking around in that.’ I’ve merely been wondering why Starr was wearing those clothes, and whether somebody might know.”

  That got Evelyn’s attention. “I’ve wondered that, too. I mean, they weren’t like anything she ever wore before. More like Missy than Starr.”

  “Who’s Missy?” The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Missy Sanders, the youngest of the family that lives next to Trevor. She and Starr were best friends through middle school. I don’t know if they’ve been friendly lately, though.”

  Now I remembered. Missy was the girl who had brought bubbles to the children the night before. “Does she live in the Volkswagen memorial trailer park?”

  Evelyn laughed. “Don’t let her granddaddy hear you criticizing those cars. He came from Germany and he loves every one of them.”

  “He must. Is he a mechanic?” You might think I ought to know everybody in Hope County, but thirteen thousand people is too many to know personally.

  “No, they farm and board horses.”

  “And buy cotton seed and animal feed from us.” The name was beginning to register, although I’d only seen it on invoices. I could probably have identified members of the family by sight, but their orders always came by phone and requested delivery.

  “They have a couple of horses of their own, too,” Evelyn informed me. “Missy gives riding lessons to kids evenings and weekends. During the day, she works as an assistant to the vet where I take my dogs, and at work Missy always wears a white shirt and black pants.”

  “Do you reckon she might know why Starr was dressed like that when she died?”

  “The sheriff could ask her, I suppose.” Evelyn’s emphasis on the second word could not be missed. “But like I said, I don’t know how friendly she and Starr have been lately. They were inseparable before they went to high school. Starr used to help Missy groom and exercise the horses when owners couldn’t get out, and Missy used to come with Starr to church.”

  “Maybe I’ll suggest that the sheriff talk with her, then.”

  “Good idea. You wouldn’t want to go out there yourself. The family is funny about strangers. Only folks they allow on the property are those going up to the barn to take riding lessons or exercise their own horses, and riders have to stay in the big pasture or the adjoining wood. The rest of the farm is verboten.”

  “You speak German?”

  “Just that one word. I was following Trevor’s pup over there one afternoon and the old man yelled it at me. Trevor told me what it meant. He said the Sanders are real clannish and keep to themselves. Old man Sanders lives in the double-wide with the big porch, and his two sons and his daughter all live next to him, like bees in a hive.”

  “None of them ever married?”

  “All of them married, but I guess a condition of marrying into the family is that you have to live on the property—I don’t know. I do know that they don’t take kindly to people trespassing on their land. Another time when Trevor’s pup got loose and wandered over there, they took a shot at it. Said they thought it was a rabbit, when it was a half-grown Lab.”

  “I’ll tell the sheriff to take his gun.”

  When I passed through the store with my pocketbook half an hour later and said I was going to make a trip to the drugstore, I don’t think Evelyn believed me. I cannot imagine why. “They are having a two-for-one sale,” I told her, “and Bethany needs a few things.”

  I bought toothpaste and shampoo to send with Ridd and Martha the next time they went to visit, because college girls don’t need to be wasting their money on toothpaste and they can never have too much shampoo. I also bought her a couple of perky lipsticks, to spruce up the mundane gifts, and four candy bars. At the last minute, I added Hershey bars for myself to the pile.

  After that, since it was a nice day and our store was in good hands, I took a short ride to enjoy the weather while I munched my chocolate. I did not deliberately set out to visit Missy until I looked up and found myself near Trevor’s place. That�
�s what I told Joe Riddley, and I’m sticking to it.

  A well-graded driveway led past the trailer enclave toward the barn at the back, while a rutted, uninviting driveway, best suited to trucks, led toward the trailers themselves. The only person I saw, however, was a man working on a VW Beetle that had started out life green, so I turned my wheels into the ruts and jounced up the track with some trepidation. The trepidation deepened as the man stood up, looked my way, and started wiping his hands on a dirty orange rag. He was as wide as a bull on hind legs, his arms as thick as my thighs. I got a good look at them, because he wore his stained overalls without a shirt. Sweat shone on his face and dampened his grizzled mane.

  I seldom feel nervous anywhere in the county. Not only am I a magistrate, but Joe Riddley was a judge for thirty years before I became one, so most folks in town recognize us even if we don’t know them. And since I was six years old, folks have known that if they harmed a hair on my head, they’d have Joe Riddley and Buster to deal with. You can get accustomed to taking that kind of protection for granted.

  That morning, I remembered there were a few pockets of folks in the county who had managed to never deal with the law, seldom came to town, and who neither knew who I was nor cared. From the look on that hefty red face, I realized I had slid into one of those pockets.

  Unblinking blue eyes stared at me as I climbed from my poor jolted car. “I’m MacLaren Yarbrough, from Yarbrough Feed, Seed, and Nursery.” It did not seem the place or time to mention that I was a judge. “I’m looking for Missy Sanders.”

  “Whut fer?” This was obviously not the old man. His drawl was pure Georgia cracker. He continued to wipe his hands on the dirty rag as if cleaning them for his own brand of surgery.

  “I need to talk to her. My older grandson likes to ride.” If he chose to connect those two truths, that was his business. I saw no reason to add that Tad’s mother, Cindy, owned one of the finest horses in the county and let him ride whenever he wanted to.