He handed me the receiver and sat on his side of the bed like he’d been turned to Stone Mountain granite.
I rolled over and touched his arm. “What’s the matter, honey?”
He didn’t speak at first. When he did, his voice seemed to come from his heels. “Charlie Muggins is on his way to MacDonalds’ house, and Ike thinks we ought to get over there and be with Baby Sister and the kids when Charlie gets there. Skye’s been killed.”
7
“Killed?” The breath left my body with that one word, and I had to fling off my covers and sit up to draw another.
Joe Riddley slumped on his side of the bed, studying his feet. He just nodded.
“He said Skye, not Skell?” He nodded again. “How?” I clutched my head, trying to will it to be less groggy, shocked, and bewildered.
“Hit by a car.” He heaved an enormous sigh and stood. “Come on, Little Bit. Baby Sister’s gonna need us.” He was already by the bedpost, reaching for his pants.
I was trembling so hard, I had to hold on to the door of the closet as I dragged down a khaki skirt. It was half on before I drew a full breath. “Where?” I pulled a green turtleneck over my head and reached for a green-and-blue plaid jacket.
“Out on one of those farm roads just inside the city limits.” Joe Riddley’s voice was a bit choked, because he was tying his tie. That answered my next question: why it was a matter for the city police. Our county sheriff, Bailey “Buster” Gibbons, is an excellent lawman and a personal friend, while Police Chief Charlie Muggins is one of those people the world could whirl merrily on without. Poor Gwen Ellen, she’d get about as much sympathy from him as a tree gets from a dog.
Joe Riddley spoke from the door as I was freshening my lipstick. “I’m going, with or without you.” I didn’t take his tone of voice personally. He was mad at whoever killed Skye, not at me.
I fluffed my sleep-flattened hair and hurried after him. “You are sure Ike said Skye, not Skell?” I grabbed my pocketbook. “Skell was driving pretty wild.”
Joe Riddley settled his red cap on his head. “Ike said Skye.” He lumbered out to his car.
The MacDonalds lived on the other side of town, just inside the city limits, in a big brick Tudor built by some big-wig in cotton back in the 1920s. The house was trimmed in cream stucco and dark brown half-timbering, and all the windows on the front were little diamond casements, like a fairy castle. A belt of virgin forest encircled the property, and thanks to Gwen Ellen, the house now sat on two lovely landscaped acres of trees, shrubs, flowers and Bermuda grass that stayed soft all year.
“You don’t have to drive as furiously as Jehu in the Bible”—I clutched my armrest as we sped through town—“and you’d better hope all the police are busy.”
“I want to beat the rain.” We both knew the rain wasn’t on his mind.
Beating the rain would have been a forlorn hope, anyway. No sooner had we turned into the MacDonalds’ long drive than we were hit by a frog strangler. Our windshield was so blurred, it was a good thing Joe Riddley knew every curve in the drive. Thick trunks of poplar, sweet gum, oak, and hickory were veiled as we passed through the woods.
Soon the house loomed ahead, surrounded by camellias that glowed like rubies and garnets among shiny emerald leaves.
“Bad word,” I exclaimed when we got close to the four-car garage. “Charlie beat us here.” His blue and yellow cruiser squatted so close to the door that concealed Gwen Ellen’s powder-blue Thunderbird, it looked like he was keeping her from making a quick getaway.
Everybody in the family except Skell drove a Ford. Even Tansy Billings, Gwen Ellen’s maid, drove a green Escort. I was relieved to see it on its pad by the drive. Most folks in town didn’t have help on Saturdays, but for nearly twenty years Tansy had taken Tuesdays off while Gwen Ellen volunteered at the hospital. That sure was a blessing now.
I was also glad to see Laura’s white Taurus through an open garage door. Since no light showed in the windows above the garage, she must be with her mother. I didn’t know if Skell had arrived. The door to his parking space was shut. Skye was always strict about everybody keeping their garage doors closed. Laura had showed how upset she was by leaving hers open.
Joe Riddley pulled in behind the space where Skye always parked his black Crown Victoria. “You’ll block him,” I fussed without thinking.
“He’s not gonna be driving in.” Joe Riddley’s voice was grim.
That’s one trouble with death. It keeps sandbagging you again and again. My eyes filled with scalding tears as Joe Riddley added, “Since Laura’s door is up, let’s use the kitchen door. No need to bother with the umbrella.” Which is why I arrived soaking wet.
As we dashed in and skirted Laura’s Taurus, I noticed that Skell’s Porsche was not there.
Tansy flung open the door before we knocked. “Oh, Miss MacLaren, we’ve got trouble here today, for sure.”
The maid was the color of coffee, as short as I, and far rounder. Her face was flat with high cheekbones that made me suspect that she, like Joe Riddley, had an Indian ancestor. As always, her grizzled hair was neatly netted and her starched pink uniform rustled as she moved, but tears rolled down her cheeks. As she swabbed them with a paper towel, Chief Muggins stepped from behind her. “Hello, Judge and Judge.”
I do not dislike Chief Muggins because he looks like a cross between a polecat and a chimpanzee, with the least attractive features of each. Many people are ugly and still likeable. I do not dislike Chief Muggins just for the gloating look in his mean little blue-green eyes whenever I get myself in a mess, or the fact that he’s a pigheaded bigot whose wife left town after one too many visits to the emergency room. I dislike him primarily because he makes up his mind about a case within five minutes of arriving at a crime scene, then spends the rest of his time shaping facts to fit his conclusions.
For once, he surprised me.
“We got ourselves a real mystery here,” he announced. “Skye MacDonald was found around two this afternoon out on a farm road just inside the city limits. He was hit by a car hard enough to kill him, but we don’t know which car, or what the dickens he was doin’ out there.”
Tansy moaned and reached out her hand to clutch mine.
“How long do you think he’d been dead when he was found?” Joe Riddley asked.
“Initial estimates are that he was killed sometime between nine and twelve last night.”
“Last night?” I couldn’t help remembering that last night Skell drove off saying he was going to talk to his daddy. I couldn’t imagine, though, why he and Skye should have gone out there to talk, or why Skye would have gotten out of the car in all that rain.
Unless it became necessary, I flat-out refused to imagine Skell running his daddy down.
“Killed last night, not found until this afternoon,” Chief Muggins continued. “Two Mexican kids found the body. They ran back home, but they don’t have a phone, so their uncle jumped in his truck and came to town. We got the word around two-thirty.”
“Gwen Ellen must have been frantic when he didn’t come home.” I pushed past Chief Muggins and hurried to the living room.
I always found Gwen Ellen’s living room real restful, but Joe Riddley claimed it was like being in the middle of a camellia bush. She’d decorated around a rug she bought in China, painting the walls the soft green of the rug’s border and the woodwork to echo its creamy background. She’d covered her chairs and sofa and made her drapes to match the rose, light pink and deep green of the rug’s center medallion. The only other color in all that pink and green was a bowl of yellow roses on the coffee table. Gwen Ellen placed yellow roses there every Friday so Skye could enjoy them all weekend. Skye loved yellow roses.
Today the room was not so much restful as frozen. Gwen Ellen huddled on one end of the dark green silk sofa, hugging a rose throw pillow to her chest. Laura stood by one long window with her back to us, clutching a drape. Neither was crying. Laura was staring out into the rain and Gwen Ellen was staring at the end of her world. When I sat beside her, she turned and spoke in a voice so calm it shivered my gizzard. “Skye’s dead, MacLaren. He just told me that Skye is dead.” Her eyes were bleak and the scent of her perfume seemed out of place, too dressy for the occasion.
“I know, honey. That’s why we came.” I sat beside her and reached for her hands. They were icy. “Turn up the heat,” I ordered Joe Riddley. He loped out to the hall.
Gwen Ellen was beautiful even in grief, her gold twinset a perfect match for her plaid wool skirt. Laura looked blurred around the edges—larger and vaguer than ever in a rump-sprung gray tweed skirt, gray boiled-wool jacket, and a white turtleneck. When she turned to greet us, I saw that her eyes and the end of her nose were pink and the hand that clutched the drape trembled. When Joe Riddley came back from the hall, he went to stand behind her. He didn’t touch her, but she stepped a fraction closer to him.
Gwen Ellen shuddered. “Skye’s
dead
.” This time she emphasized the last word, as if trying to make herself believe it.
“I know, honey. What happened?”
She took a deep, ragged breath and clutched my hands harder. Poor darling, she couldn’t think fast at the best of times. Today she was like an actress who couldn’t remember her lines. “He . . . I . . . Everything’s a muddle. We went to the new Mexican place for dinner—you saw us.” I nodded. “But I had a dreadful headache.”
“You looked like death warmed over.” I wished I’d chosen another comparison, but she didn’t notice a thing.
“I took a sleeping pill when I got home, and went straight to bed. As I was drifting off, I think I heard the phone ring—I’m not sure.”
Chief Muggins had come to stand in the doorway, a predator ready to pounce. Always more eager to find a culprit than to console the grieving, he shot his question like a bullet. “Why aren’t you sure? Don’t you have a phone by your bed?”
Gwen Ellen looked at him blankly. “What? Oh, no. I don’t always sleep well, and Skye didn’t want me bothered. But there’s one in Skell’s old room, next door.” She wrinkled her forehead, thinking. “I’m pretty sure I heard it ring. I heard Skye downstairs shouting at somebody, too, but maybe that was the television. He talks to it, you know.”
Chief Muggins might not know, but Joe Riddley and I did. Watching a game with Skye was almost like being there. He jumped to his feet and cheered for good plays, yelled at the umpires and referees, and encouraged his favorite players at the top of his lungs. Joe Riddley swore Skye’s teams played better if he watched the broadcast.
Gwen Ellen went on in that pale, lost voice. “Sometime later I heard a car on the drive, but I’m not sure when. I’d already been sleeping, I think. I figured it was Laura, coming in, but I didn’t look at the clock. . . .” Her voice followed her empty gaze to nowhere. Then her dark eyes flashed at Chief Muggins with indignation. “Why didn’t you find him sooner?”
Chief Muggins didn’t have a drop of compassion in his veins. “Why didn’t you miss him when you woke up this morning?”
“Because I slept so late. My pills always knock me out that way. Tansy was here before I got down.” Her hands started to tremble, then her whole body. I slid over and held her so close that the chattering of her teeth seemed like the chattering of my own.
“What did you do then?” I asked softly. Maybe talking would soothe her.
“I went out and worked in the yard. The rain had stopped in the night, and I needed to spread chicken manure on the garden, so it will be ready to plant. But it was so muddy, my shoes got ruined. I don’t think I’ll ever get them clean.”
Charlie took an impatient step forward, wanting to stop talking about manure and mud and get back to her husband’s death. I waved him aside. Gwen Ellen needed to move at her own pace in assimilating things. Joe Riddley claimed the reason she was such a good gardener was because she lived at the same pace as plants, slow and steady. Skye hated to see her hot and dirty, but she was never happier than when digging in the dirt.
Charlie was impossible to subdue. “I find it hard to believe, ma’am, that you got up and spent a whole morning in the yard without wondering where he was.” From the gloat on his face, Chief Muggins had already decided Gwen Ellen had taken Skye out on that deserted road, persuaded him to stand in front of her car, run over him, then gone home to bed and gotten up to spread chicken manure. In a minute he’d be asking to examine her Thunderbird. I was glad I’d glanced at it when we came in. It was clean and dent free.
I was about to point out that he was talking to a woman who not only loved her husband but was also so tender-hearted, she had Skye take their infants for their shots because she couldn’t stand to see them hurt. Then I caught Joe Riddley’s glare, and shut my mouth.
“Skye likes—liked—” Again Gwen Ellen struggled for control.
Laura spoke over her shoulder, her voice deep and gruff. “Daddy often leaves—left for work before Mama got up. She’d have no reason to miss him.”
“Why didn’t you miss him at the office?” Laura had drawn Chief Muggins’s fire. I could see the cogs that passed for his brains churning out a case against her instead of her mother.
She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and dabbed her nose before she answered. As she spoke, she turned toward him, but only slightly. “I was over at Hopemore Nissan all morning, training a new manager. I worked with him until after noon. When I got back to MacDonald’s and found Daddy wasn’t there, I assumed he’d come home for lunch. He does—did that sometimes, especially on Saturdays. He’d stay here to watch sports on TV; then he’d come back to close up.” She bit her lip and turned back to the window.
Gwen Ellen gripped both my hands, and her eyes were tortured. “He had to lie out there all night in the rain. Can you believe that? Wouldn’t you think somebody would have found him sooner?” Tears finally streamed down her cheeks, and her shoulders shook. A second later she gasped, snatched her hands from mine, grabbed her abdomen, leaped to her feet, and dashed from the room. The slammed powder-room door muffled but did not cover up the sounds of desperate retching.