The Persian Pickle Club (11 page)

I scratched at a place on the linoleum tablecloth where Sonny had spilled syrup, then put my finger into my mouth. “You won’t make Ella talk to you if she doesn’t want to, will you?” I asked without looking up.

“Well, of course not, silly. How could I make a person do that?”

Grover came into the kitchen just then, washed his hands, and dried them on the roller towel while I poured him the rest of the coffee from the percolator. There was just a drop, and he drank it standing up, before he said, “Morning, Rita. Sounds like you’re going to make Harveyville famous.” He must have been standing on the porch, listening. “Even if you could make Ella talk, you’d have to go through both of the Judds to get to her, and that’d be harder than skinning a live mule.”

“You see?” Rita said to me. “Ella’s safe.” She put on her little white gloves and stood up.

“I’ll just get my keys,” I said.

Grover had gone into the bedroom ahead of me to change his shirt because he’d gotten oil from the tractor all over himself. I closed the door, and even though I knew Rita couldn’t hear me, I whispered. “Grover, do you know anything about Tom fooling around with Velma Burgett?”

“You mean now?” Grover asked. I caught the dirty shirt before it landed on the floor, and I touched the stain with my finger. I’d never get it out.

“No, of course not, you dope. Tom’s married. I’m talking about last summer.”

Grover went into the closet.

“You already got out your clean shirt. Look at me,” I said.

Grover wasn’t any good at hiding a thing from me. “There was nothing serious between them, Queenie. They were just out for a good time, is all. Velma’s not the kind of girl you marry.”

“I guess I don’t know what you mean,” I said, hoping Grover would catch the edge in my voice. I knew what Grover meant, of course, but nobody, not even my husband, could criticize a member of the Persian Pickle Club that way.

“Hell, Queenie, you know what kind of girl I mean. She’s a hussy.”

I couldn’t let Grover get away with that. “She’s a Pickle!”

“What does that have to do with it? How’d you like Tom bringing Velma over for a wiener roast on Saturday night instead of Rita?” Grover buttoned up his shirt and slipped the straps of his overalls over his shoulders. “I don’t think Tom sees her anymore.” He sat down on the bed and looked up at me. “I didn’t really mean that about Velma being a hussy. She used to be a real nice girl. She just went to town, is all. I expect she’ll straighten out one of these days.”

Grover reached out his hand, but I didn’t have time for that foolishness. Besides, Rita was in the next room. I decided to forgive him, however. So after I fished the car keys out of the Whitman’s box on the dresser, I kissed Grover on the back of his sunburned neck and went out to Rita.

We stopped at Ella’s farm first because I was not in any hurry to take on Mrs. Judd, who would blame me for not having the good sense to keep Rita away from Ella. She’d be right, too, but I couldn’t think of a way to head off Rita.

The minute I stopped the car next to Ella’s side porch and killed the engine, Hiawatha stepped out from behind the barn and stood quietly, watching us. Rita waved and said in a friendly way, “Hi there, Hiawatha. You’re just the man I want to see.”

Hiawatha didn’t move, just stood there with a pitchfork in his hands, so Rita had to get out of the car and go over to him. I was right behind her.

“I’m writing a story for the
Topeka Enterprise,
and I want to see where Ben Crook was buried.” Hiawatha didn’t say a word. Instead, he looked at me, and I nodded to let him know it was all right to talk to Rita.

“Out there,” he said, pointing north with the pitchfork.

“Well, let’s go ‘out there,’“ Rita said.

“The dirt’ll spoil them shoes you got on. You drive out on the highway. Go north half a mile and turn off on the creek road. I’ll go ‘cross the field and meet you.”

Hiawatha started off, but he stopped when I called to him. “Don’t you want to come with us, Hiawatha? There’s no need for you to walk on a hot day when you can ride.”

He waited to see if Rita would object to him getting into the car with us, but she smiled at him and called, “Hop in.” So Hiawatha stuck the pitchfork in the dirt, brushed off his clothes, and climbed into the backseat, his hat in his hand.

Rita took out a little pad of paper and her fountain pen, although I didn’t know how she could write with the car bumping along. “It must have given you quite a scare, finding that body out there,” she said, smiling at Hiawatha again.

“Old bones don’t scare me none.”

“No, I wouldn’t think anything would scare someone as big as you. What did you think when you saw that big bone sticking out of the ground?”

“I thought, There’s a dead man here.”

“And right you were. Did you know who it was?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you know for sure it was Ben Crook?”

“I don’t reckon I could tell a man just from his one bone.”

“Weren’t you frightened? I mean, weren’t you afraid there might be ghosts and spooks hovering around?”

I turned around in my seat to look at Hiawatha, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He might have been mad or hurt that Rita had asked him something so silly. If he was, he didn’t show it. I thought I caught a little smile sneak across his face, but when I looked sharp, it wasn’t there. “I’m a Catholic, Miz Ritter. I don’t hold with that Baptist booger stuff like you folks.”

Even Rita had to laugh at that. She knew Hiawatha was kidding her, so she screwed the top onto her fountain pen and dropped it into her purse. Then she put her arm over the seat and asked, like she was just making conversation, “Why were you working out there, anyway?”

“Who said I was working there?” Hiawatha asked. Rita didn’t answer. She kept staring at Hiawatha, so, after a minute, he went on. “All I was doing was crossing the field on my way home from the Sutter place. They give me a quarter to chop up two trees that the wind blew over last winter. I saw that bone sticking up in the dirt, so I squatted down and brushed it off. The wind had blowed open the grave, I reckon, and if I hadn’t walked past it just then, the wind would have closed it up again, and I never would have found that bone.”

“Then it was a lucky thing you came by when you did,” Rita said.

Hiawatha didn’t reply. He just quirked his eyebrow like he wasn’t so sure—just like the rest of us weren’t so sure.

We rambled right along until we reached an old section road that was pretty good, considering nobody ever used it. I followed it, driving along the creek, which was dry, and over a rise to a field that had lain fallow since Ben disappeared. Hiawatha pointed toward a dip, and I pulled up. I could have found that place on my own, however, because of the tire tracks people had made through the weeds and thistles to get a look at where Ben had been buried. There were shoe prints all over.

“Kids has been coming here,” Hiawatha said as he pointed out bare footprints. I could see the big hole that was Ben’s grave. It hadn’t been filled in yet.

“What are those?” Rita asked, pointing to two small holes just beyond Ben’s grave.

“It looks like maybe this here’s a graveyard,” Hiawatha said, sending a glance at me out of the corner of his eye. Then he wiped his face with his sleeve to cover up a grin.

“You mean there was more than one body?” Rita took out her fountain pen and flipped open the notebook.

“I just found one, is all.” Hiawatha shifted from one foot to another, then said, “Anything else you ladies want? I got work to do for Miz Ella.”

Rita’s smile turned into a pout. “Well, I have just a few more questions for you. For one thing, do you notice anything different today from when you found the body? I mean, except for the footprints and the tire tracks?”

“There wasn’t two womenfolks standing here. Is that what you mean?”

I giggled, but Rita scowled. “No, that’s not what I mean.”

Hiawatha shook his head. “I got to go now. There ain’t nothing more to say.” He turned and started off across the field, in the direction of Ella’s place.

Rita tried to call him back, but he kept on going. So she walked around the grave, writing down things in her notebook. “Damn it. I’m out of ink. Do you have a pencil?”

I got out a runty stub I kept in the glove compartment. “What are you looking for?” I asked as I handed it to her.

“Clues.”

“Clues? Clues to what?”

“Clues to who killed Ben Crook. I’ll let you in on a secret, Queenie. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was going to solve this murder. The newspaper all but told me I can have a job if I do. Now, what do you think of that?” Rita looked as pleased as our dog, Old Bob, the time he killed a skunk.

“How can you solve any murder? For heaven’s sakes, you never even met Ben Crook. How could you know who killed him?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, of course, but I’ve got some keen ideas. Oh, damn it. That pen got ink all over my gloves.” She took off her gloves, wadded them up, and put them into her purse.

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. I knew Ben, and I was living here when he was killed, and I can’t tell you who did it.”

“It’s called a hunch. Reporters get them all the time. I can’t tell you who it is yet.” Rita stooped down by the grave and picked up a handful of dirt and let it drop, just the way Tom had the night he first brought Rita to dinner, only Rita didn’t smell it.

I wondered if the dirt had a dead-man smell, and I leaned over to sniff, but I didn’t know the smell a body gave off after being under the ground for a year, so how could I tell? The earth smelled a little like a dead cow, however.

Rita brushed off her hands. “I’ll tell you what, Queenie. Maybe when I come up with a good theory, I’ll try it out on you to see what you think.” She stood up and walked to the car, wobbling a little as she stepped over the dirt clods in her high-heeled slippers. “Do you think Hiawatha did it?”

“He didn’t move out here until after Ben died.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. Maybe he moved here to keep an eye on things. You know, to keep people from poking around and finding the grave.”

“The reason Hiawatha’s here is that Ella offered him a place to live. Besides, if he wanted to keep Ben’s body hidden, he wouldn’t have told the Judds he’d found it, would he? He’d have buried it again.”

Rita frowned as she thought over what I’d said. “That’s a good point. Still, he might have ‘found’ the body just to put everybody off. Like Nettie said, he’s pretty smart for a colored, and he’s strong. I bet he could kill a man just by swatting him in the head.”

“So could Grover, but he didn’t kill Ben Crook any more than Hiawatha did. Are you finished out here? I’ll get freckles standing in the sun.” I was wearing a sundress and wished I’d brought something with me to put over my shoulders. I was tired of the newspaper business.

Rita took another step toward the car, then stopped and tapped her lip with my pencil. She turned around and went back to the grave and peered down into it. “I know one thing for sure. Whoever killed Ben Crook had an auto.”

Without thinking, I put my hand on the hot metal door handle of the car, then snatched it away and spit on the burn. “How do you know?”

“Because somebody drove down this road and dumped him here. That’s how I know. Because he’s next to the road. Now, think about it, Queenie. If you had to bury somebody as heavy as Ben, would you drag him off into the middle of the field? Of course not. It’s too much trouble. You’d bury him next to the road.”

“What if he was killed right here where he was buried?” I asked.

Rita thought that over. “Maybe, but what would he have been doing out here with a killer? No, I think my first hunch is right.”

“I guess that lets Hiawatha out. He doesn’t have a car, and I doubt that he can even drive one.”

“Maybe he had a partner. Maybe he was a hired killer and murdered Ben for somebody else. Then the two of them buried the body here.”

Rita had gone too far. “Who would that be? Duty?” I asked sarcastically. “You’d better just forget about Hiawatha. I said I’d help you with your story, but I don’t want to meddle in something that isn’t any of my business, or yours, either, because you’re liable to hurt somebody. There’re some people like Tyrone Burgett who are looking for any little excuse they can find to drive Hiawatha and Duty out of Harveyville.”

Rita came back to the car and used her hand to dust off the passenger-side running board, which was in the shade. She spread out a handkerchief and sat down. I had to walk to the front of the car just to see her. “Don’t you want justice done? Don’t you want Ella to know who killed her husband?”

“No, I don’t.”

Rita looked up in surprise and wiggled her finger back and forth at me. “Some detective you’d make.” She sat looking out over the horizon, thinking, then stood up and wiped the dirt off her shoes with the handkerchief.

I went back to the driver’s side, and this time, I used my skirt like a hot pad to cover the car door handle so I could open it. “I don’t want to be some detective,” I told her after I’d climbed in and started the engine. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through all this aggravation just to get my name in the newspaper, either, even though Ruby might see it and write me a letter.