It was her fault I had the misfortune, around three-thirty, to carry a big platter of fresh-boiled, well-buttered corn into my dining room and catch Police Chief Muggins peering behind my Oriental screen.
“Don’t look behind that screen,” I said crossly. “You know good and well I put it there to hide things I don’t want seen.” I had enough to do without worrying about Charlie poking his polecat nose in corners where it didn’t belong. I had set that particular screen, the biggest I had, between the oak sideboard and a corner to hide a mountain of magazines, catalogues, and junk mail I hadn’t had time to sort through in the past two months.
Chief Muggins flung out one hand and grabbed my wrist in a way that suggested handcuffs would follow. “I can see why you wouldn’t want this seen,
Judge Yarbrough,
but it’s hard to keep it from being
smelled.
”
I wasn’t bothered that he sounded like he’d finally caught me committing a crime. Charlie had suspected me of one thing or another since he came to town three years earlier. What annoyed me was his prying around my house when he was a guest. Mama always said you can take a boy out of the trash, but it’s a whole lot harder to take the trash out of the boy.
And what did he mean “smelled”? Had Lulu taken advantage of an unsupervised moment that morning to drag in a dead squirrel? Worse, had she mistaken the magazines for newspaper and made an in-house deposit?
“What are you talking about?” I snapped with little grace.
With his free hand, Charlie moved the screen a little. “Your silent guest.”
That’s when I saw Hiram Blaine, sprawled across my unread mail with a small black hole in his head.
Have you ever noticed how the death of somebody you know stops your own breath for an instant? When I could finally breathe, I filled my lungs with air so ripe it made me cough. If Hiram hadn’t been in the far corner of a huge room with a tableful of pungent food, all the windows wide open, and a ceiling fan on high, people would have smelled him long before. To his usual aroma was added the smell of bodily functions that give way after death.
Poor Hiram. He was never a lovely sight or a pleasant person, but he should have lived longer. He sprawled like a child who’s found a quiet corner after a day of hard, dirty play, and spread out for a desperately needed nap. The red Yarbrough’s cap was the cleanest thing on him.
As my eyes wandered back to the hole in his head, a crazy thing happened. My eyes blurred and I saw Joe Riddley’s face right after
he
got shot. My dining room floor tilted, the walls whirled, my arms went limp. Clarinda’s corn slid off its platter and bounced around my feet. Only Charlie’s grip on my arm kept me from sliding to the floor after it.
“MacLaren, are you ill?” Gusta’s sharp gray eyes saw me drop that corn, all the way from the throne she’d had somebody install in our big front hall so she could hold court without standing. Trust Gusta not only to
see
me drop that corn, but also to call public attention to the fact. I was the flower girl in her wedding and tripped, sprawling down the aisle in a fine display of ruffled drawers. She’d never forgotten, and always called attention when I was clumsy. Joe Riddley says Gusta has the memory of an elephant and the compassion of a peanut.
Next to Gusta, Pooh fluttered in her wheelchair. “Oh Mac, your lovely Persian rug! There’s butter all over it!”
When Gusta and Pooh spoke, every blessed soul in my dining room and front hall hushed and looked at me. I flapped my arm—the one Charlie wasn’t gripping. “I’m fine—just stumbled.” Smiling was hard. Every muscle in my face voted against it.
“Let me help you.” Meriwether started my way. Thank goodness Gusta grabbed her with one talon and pulled her back. Meriwether looked particularly long, lean, and lovely that afternoon in a silk pantsuit that exactly matched her eyes, and I didn’t want her to see Hiram. He used to do odd jobs for her daddy when she was little, and made up knock-knock jokes that doubled her over in giggles.
Gusta peered around. “Alice? Where’s Alice? Go pick up that corn.” She gave an imperious wave. A ray of sun came in the open door, passed through Gusta’s diamonds, and turned into little splashes of light on the far hall wall. Isn’t it amazing the things you notice when you are trying not to notice a dead body behind your dining room screen?
Alice hurried our way. Even to the party she had worn a beige skirt and a baggy white top, but at least she’d put on a bright scarf that matched the green scrunchy holding back her hair. Maybe if she lived with Gusta long enough she’d develop a sense of style.
As she got near, she glanced toward the crack Charlie had left between the screen and the wall. I thrust my empty platter at her. “Here, honey, take this back to Clarinda in the kitchen and ask her to fill it with more corn, then take it out to the table on the porch.” We didn’t need Alice screaming the place down.
Worried about disobeying Gusta, she looked anxiously toward the corn on the rug. “What about—”
“Don’t bother about that old corn.” I tried to sound like having buttery corn smeared on a Persian rug was normal around our house. “Just ask Clarinda to send somebody to clean it up.” She obeyed without another word, but her hands trembled and I saw her give her employer one more anxious look. Working for Gusta can do that to people.
My head still spun and sweat trickled down my backbone. Breathing wasn’t easy yet, either. I put one hand to my mouth and forced myself to inhale. My knees felt pretty rubbery. Gusta called in her gravelly old voice, “MacLaren, are you having a stroke?” Once again everybody in the room turned to stare.
I was particularly aware of Slade’s dark eyes at Meriwether’s shoulder. Any second he’d be sidling over, snooping for a story.
“No, Gusta, I’m fine. Can I get you anything to eat?”
“No, thank you.” Disappointed I wasn’t having a medical emergency, she turned to greet Sheriff Bailey Gibbons, who was coming in the door.
I took a step toward Buster myself. I was mighty glad to see him at that moment. But Charlie tightened his grip like he thought I was planning to escape and jerked his head toward the screen. “Did you kill him?”
I have told you that Charlie looks like a cross between a polecat and a chimpanzee, with the least attractive features of each, but I failed to say he is also pigheaded, prejudiced, and apt to make up his mind without reference to facts. Having him smirk at me right then was not improving my nerves, nor did I deserve to be accused of murder in my own dining room.
I spoke indignantly but softly, so nobody could hear me above the din. “Of course I didn’t kill him. Poor Hiram.”
“He the brother of the kook who claims the Confederate treasury is buried on his property?”
“He might not be kooky.” With Charlie, I was willing to defend even Hector. “There’s been a rumor since the War that the treasury is buried around here somewhere.”
“Well, this feller certainly ended your party with a bang.” Charlie chuckled at his own bad joke, but didn’t sound the least bit sorry about the party. “You need to send these people home.”
It shows how overwrought I was—and how new to law enforcement—that I begged, “Can’t you wait a little while? I know you want to get on with your investigation, but Hiram isn’t going anywhere for the next hour or two, and you know how uncertain Joe Riddley’s mind is right now. If he even suspects there’s somebody dead in here—”
Suddenly I had a hopeful thought. Maybe Hiram wasn’t really dead. His idea of a great practical joke would be to lie there for hours with dried ketchup on his head, on the off chance he could scare the pants off one nosy guest. Looking around quickly to be sure nobody was watching, I put my mouth close to the edge of the screen and called softly, “Hiram?” I waited for him to open one eye, give me a wink, and let out a guffaw they could hear in Macon. Seeing Charlie’s expression, I explained, “Just checking.”
“You’re crazy. Any fool can see he’s dead.”
He was right. Death has a smooth, finished-with-life look nobody can fake.
Nobody could fake the signals my stomach was giving, either. I needed fresh air badly.
Clarinda bustled out of the kitchen already talking. “That child tells me—” What she read in my expression alarmed her. “You havin’ a spell?” she asked softly.
I shook my head and gestured toward the corn on the floor, but she’d already noticed the shifted screen. “Who’s been moving that? Folks know better’n to look back there.” She turned a formidable frown on Charlie. Working for a magistrate all these years, Clarinda has lost any fear of officers of the law.
As she reached over to straighten the screen, he hissed, “Don’t touch that!”
But she’d already seen Hiram through the crack and transferred her anger to him. “What you doin’ back there, playin’ the fool?” I tried to shush her, but she wasn’t paying me one speck of attention. Clarinda tends to get a mite testy when she’s got two hundred people to feed.
I grabbed her plump arm. “He’s been shot,” I whispered.
“Shot?” She whispered, too, but loudly, shocked wide eyes roving back to the crack. “You mean, he’s
dead
?”
Several people looked our way. A couple of curious guests started drifting over. I shooed them away like late-summer flies. “Chief Muggins is making fun of all the junk mail in my corner.”
“You know better than that,” one man warned him with a playful shake of his forefinger. “Mac’ll kill anybody who looks behind those screens.”
At the moment, I could have done without that particular joke.
But the second man came closer, teasing, “What you got back there? Gonna let us peek?”
One of the reasons I value Clarinda is her common sense. “I’m gonna kill the first person to track buttered corn over my carpet.” She glared at my guests, arms akimbo. They gave her apologetic smiles and retreated. She bent and started picking up corn.
“I don’t want Joe Riddley to know,” I pleaded with Charlie.
“Absolutely not,” Clarinda agreed without standing. She reached over and twitched the screen back to its former position before he could stop her. “Just leave him be ’til folks go home. He’s not goin’ nowhere.”
“I can’t—” Charlie began.
“You leave him be ’til folks go home.” She stood with two fistfuls of corn and spoke in a loud, reassuring voice. “I think we can get the grease out of the carpet, Miss MacLaren, but don’t let nobody walk on it ’til I get back. And you go on outside,” she added to Charlie as she headed for the kitchen. If Hollywood ever steals her from me, Clarinda is sure to win an Oscar.
Chief Muggins, however, tightened his grip on my arm and warned, “Don’t you move. I’ll be back in a minute.” Before I could protest, he was worming his way through the crowd toward Sheriff Gibbons.
9
Sheriff Bailey “Buster” Gibbons and Joe Riddley met in kindergarten. Buster’s one of our best friends, but law officers don’t look like friends when you’ve got an unexplained corpse in the corner.
I was actually nervous as Buster sauntered my way. He looked like a bloodhound, but those sad eyes and hanging jowls went with the brain of a fine law officer. He asked as he reached me, Charlie at his elbow, “Something the matter, Judge?” In public and even in our offices, Joe Riddley and I always called Buster “Sheriff” and he always called us “Judge.”
Before I could speak, Chief Muggins jumped in, pitching his voice to a low growl. “She’s concealing a body behind that screen. May have killed him herself. Knows who he is, anyway. Since it’s outside city limits, it’s in your jurisdiction, but I stand ready to render any assistance you may require.” Specifically, he stood between me and the door in case I tried to flee.
Buster peered behind the screen.
Clarinda bustled back with a thick roll of paper towels and elbowed him in the ribs. “You all get outta the way, now. I gotta sponge up all that grease.” She waved the two lawmen away like they were grandchildren. “Miss MacLaren, you look plumb pooped. Why don’t you go over yonder by that window and sit down a while? Rest your bunions.”
I don’t have bunions, but my legs were wobbling. Buster noticed and steered me to a chair by an open window. I more fell than sat in it. Meanwhile Clarinda spread paper towels down on the rug and surrounded them with a wall of dining room chairs that guaranteed nobody else would touch that screen. Charlie watched her with a buzzard’s stare.
Buster dragged over another chair and sat near me. “Rest a spell, Chief. I need to talk to the judge a minute before I call in my team.”
I hoped he’d see reason where Charlie hadn’t. “We’ve got to keep this from Joe Riddley. You know how unpredictable he still is. He rants at the dog, snaps at me and the boys, and sobs like a child if he spills peas off his fork. The doctor says it’s all normal after a head wound, and he should get better, but I work so hard trying not to let anything upset him. And now, Hiram—”
At that moment I was glad buzzard Charlie hovered over me. At least nobody else could see me crying. “When did you last see the deceased?” he barked softly.
I reached in my pocket for the tissue I always carry, and blew my nose. “Day before yesterday. He wanted to know if I needed any odd jobs done around here, and I said I could use him yesterday morning to mow for the party. He never showed up, though. Ridd finally did it yesterday afternoon, with everything else he had to do. I could have throttled Hiram—” I broke off, seeing the gleam in Charlie’s tawny eyes. “But I didn’t. Didn’t shoot him, either. I am not in the practice of shooting people who disappoint me, nor am I dumb enough to kill somebody and hide the body in my own dining room where any fool could find him.”