The Persian Pickle Club (20 page)

“No,” Ella whimpered, but Rita didn’t pay any attention to her. She watched Mrs. Judd instead.

“You know all about it, do you?” Mrs. Judd asked. “You think you know what happened?”

Rita gripped the edge of the quilt and leaned forward. “I know Prosper was making payments on Ella’s mortgage. I know Ella deeded you a field by the river just before Mr. Crook disappeared. I found that out in the records.”

I didn’t know that. I glanced at Ada June, but her face showed she was as surprised as I was.

“So?” Mrs. Judd said. “So, you think paying a mortgage makes Prosper a mankiller?”

Rita leaned even farther across the quilt toward Mrs. Judd. “Prosper was“—she paused to find the right words—“romantically involved, I guess you’d say, with Ella. That’s why he was paying off her mortgage. You found out about it, and Ella gave you that piece of land to keep you quiet. I think Mr. Crook caught the two of them together or something. So Prosper killed him. I’m not saying it was murder. It could have been an accident. I don’t know how it happened, but Ella does. That’s why you’re keeping her here in your house, so she won’t tell. I think the rest of you“—she stopped long enough to look around the circle at each of us again—“I think you all know about it, and you formed a conspiracy to keep it a secret.”

So that was what a conspiracy was!

“Prosper didn’t. No, Prosper never …” Ella mumbled, shaking her head back and forth. Mrs. Judd reached over and put her hand on the back of Ella’s head to keep it from wobbling, and Ella was still.

So were the rest of us, sitting there as dumb as cows, unable to speak. I wished that fly would come back to relieve the tension in the room. Ceres moved her lips, but no words came out. Even Mrs. Judd seemed talked out. My mouth was as dry as Kansas dust. Why hadn’t I found out what Rita was up to and kept her from saying these terrible things? It was my fault this was happening.

Rita took our silence to mean she was onto something, and she became bolder. “It’s what newspapers call a ‘crime of passion.’ Prosper paid Doc Sipes to say Ben might have fallen out of a tree and been buried by somebody who didn’t have the money for a coffin. That’s what the doctor put in the coroner’s report, and the sheriff would have gone along with it if I hadn’t written up the murder for the
Enterprise.
I couldn’t figure out why, unless Prosper bribed him. Then today I discovered he and Ella are family. He probably doesn’t want the scandal.” Rita turned to me with a pleading look, and I cringed. My loyalty was to the Pickles, not to Rita. I hoped the club members knew I hadn’t encouraged Rita. “Prosper hired that man to stop Queenie and me on the road, and I think he was that Skillet person, even though Queenie says he wasn’t. Why, he probably helped Prosper bury Mr. Crook’s body.”

If the Judds were paying off half the people in Wabaunsee County, then no wonder Mrs. Judd was piecing on sugar sacks, but that wasn’t what I was thinking just then.

I put my hands over my ears to shut out Rita’s accusations, but I still heard them, although by now, Rita had stopped talking. I shook my head back and forth, hoping the rattling of my brain would drown out the sound. Instead, the terrible words exploded inside my head like Fourth of July firecrackers. I prayed one of the other Pickles would speak, but it was as quiet as death in Mrs. Judd’s parlor, and I thought my skull would burst if I didn’t say something to end the silence. “Stop it! That’s not true, Rita!” I blurted out so loudly, the sound echoed around the room. “Prosper and Skillet didn’t bury Ben Crook. We did!”

No one else spoke. The only sound in the parlor was Opalina drawing in her breath. Rita turned to me in shock, but even she couldn’t say anything. I looked around at the other members of the Persian Pickle Club, then burst into tears. “Oh, I’m sorry. I broke our promise.” I put my head in my hands and sobbed. Rita would put our secret in the newspaper, and we would go to jail, and Grover and I would never have a baby.

They watched me cry, too dumbfounded to say even a word of comfort. Then Mrs. Judd reached across the quilt with her hand, which was wrinkled and covered with liver spots as brown as the furnishings of her house. “It’s all right, Queenie. One of us would have said it if you hadn’t.”

I glanced up, but she was staring at Rita. So were the rest of the Pickles. They weren’t angry at me, but their faces were set against her, and when Rita saw that, she shrank away from them. I almost felt sorry for her, because Rita hadn’t been out to hurt us. At that moment, I came to understand Rita.

She wasn’t lazy like Agnes T. Ritter claimed she was. Rita had worked as hard at solving Ben’s murder as I’d ever worked at farming, and it sure wasn’t easy with everyone trying to stop her. She had courage, because even though I knew that man on the road hadn’t been sent by Ben’s killer, Rita didn’t. She believed he’d come back for her if she kept on with her reporting. Rita stayed with it so that she and Tom would have their chance, just like everyone else in Harveyville wanted a chance at something. For Rita and Tom, it meant getting away from farming. No matter how much I wanted Rita to live in the country and be a Pickle, she didn’t want that and never would.

“I don’t understand,” Rita whispered, looking at us like a cornered animal. “How could ... I don’t—”

“Prosper never did Ella anything but kindness,” Mrs. Judd broke in. “Prosper paid the mortgage Ben took out with a Topeka bank on the farm, the old Eagles place, because Ben spent the money, and the bank said it was going to foreclose. If it hadn’t been for Prosper, Ella would have been turned off her own land. Ella deeded me the only field she still owned free and clear, since Ben had it in mind to sell it out from under her. It didn’t matter to him that the land was left to Ella by her people. Ben would have found a way. Many’s the time Prosper risked his life going against Ben Crook for Ella’s sake, did it to protect Ella, at the risk of his own precious life. Why, Ella wouldn’t be alive today except for Prosper. You’ve no right to accuse him of being immoral with her. No right at all.” Mrs. Judd’s eyes flashed, and color came into her face, and she didn’t look so tired, after all.

“That was an awful, awful thing to say,” Ada June scolded.

“Nasty,” Nettie added, rubbing one index finger down the other in a sign of shame.

Rita looked at each of us, but not a one of us showed her a friendly face—except Mrs. Ritter, of course. “It’s not Rita’s fault. Maybe we should have told her in the beginning,” Mrs. Ritter said. “I think we’ll have to tell her now.” She looked around the circle for approval. “Do we have your permission, Ella?” she asked after the rest of us nodded.

Ella’s eyes were wild, and she clutched and unclutched her hands. I wondered if she understood Mrs. Ritter.

“Ella, is it all right for Rita to know our secret about Ben?” Mrs. Judd asked her, saying each word slowly while the rest of us waited.

Ella shrugged her shoulders up and down, but at last, she muttered, “Yes. Okay.”

Mrs. Judd nodded at Mrs. Ritter. “You tell her, Sabra.”

“Ben Crook was as mean a man as ever lived. He was born mean, and no one knew that better than Ella,” Mrs. Ritter began.

“Smacked her all the time. Crazy mad. Maybe Ella sat on a table when she was young. That’s a sure sign you’ll marry a crazy man,” Nettie said. Agnes T. Ritter gave her a scornful look, and Nettie muttered, “Well, she could have. You don’t know any different.”

“Awfulest man,” Opalina added.

“Evil. I believe to my soul, he was truly evil, even though I hate to say that about a body,” Ceres said. “I know he’s in hell, and I’m glad for it.” I glanced at Ella, who nodded her head up and down but wasn’t aware of it, because she continued nodding after Ceres finished speaking.

“We saw him close the car door on Ella’s hand once,” Forest Ann said.

“On purpose. You can see yourself how it’s bent because Ben wouldn’t let Doc Sipes administer to Ella,” Nettie added. I looked at Ella’s little twisted hands and felt that pain myself. “Ben took to sneaking around Forest Ann’s place evenings after her husband got killed. She was afraid of Ben, so she asked Doc to start stopping by—” Forest Ann shook her head at Nettie, who didn’t finish.

“I saw him—” Agnes T. Ritter said, but Mrs. Judd broke in.

“He was always after Ella. Just opening her mouth was an excuse for Ben to hit her. He used his fist or a poker, anything he could put his hands on. Who knows how she lived through it, or how she turned out to be the sweet thing she is. I think Ella goes someplace back in her head to hide, and that’s what saved her.”

I glanced at Ella, who seemed to hiding there now.

“Sometimes she’d run away and hide with us,” Mrs. Judd continued. “Prosper would stand up to Ben when he came looking for her, and there were times I thought Ben would kill him for it. Ben was a big man, and Prosper … isn’t so big. But he’s man enough. Don’t you doubt it.” Mrs. Judd paused to make sure we all knew how proud she was of her husband.

“There were other ways Ben was mean. He trampled Ella’s flowers because she loved them so, and he’d hide her shoes so she couldn’t come to Pickle. Once, when Ella had club meeting at her house, she baked a cake, got it all iced, too, and Ben threw it to the pigs. That was the day he died, and I’ve never been sorry for it. I don’t suppose anybody else in this room is, either.” As we nodded in agreement, Mrs. Judd took a deep breath and sat back in her chair, talked out.

“Septima knew everything, but the rest of us, we only saw a little of it. We never knew how terrible Ben was. Until that day,” Opalina said. She reached over and put her hand on top of Mrs. Judd’s.

“I remember when they were married. We didn’t think Ben was much of a catch, except he was handsome, and oh, those hips! Hips’ll do it. Ella was so happy,” Ceres said. “Who would have guessed?” Ceres looked at Opalina and Mrs. Judd, who had known Ella in her youth, and both shook their heads.

Now, Rita spoke for the first time since I’d told our secret. “Well, why didn’t Ella leave him? She could have gone to the sheriff. I suppose Sheriff Eagles is her brother, isn’t he?” She’d stopped trembling, but her face was still pale.

“Yes, he’s that. Ella was too ashamed to tell him—” Mrs. Judd stopped talking because Ella had put up her hand, and I knew she understood what was going on. “What is it, sugar pie? Did you want to say something?” Mrs. Judd asked her.

Ella gave a wistful little smile as she traced the circle of the Dresden plate in front of her with her forefinger. “I loved Ben,” she said without looking up. “He promised, promised he wouldn’t hit me again.”

“Ha!” Mrs. Judd said.

“So Prosper killed him because he was mean to Ella?” Rita asked. “Then, after he did it, all of you buried the body?”

“I told you, Prosper didn’t kill anybody,” Mrs. Judd yelled, as though the loudness would get the words through Rita’s head. I glanced out the window, glad no one was outside to hear. “Prosper didn’t even know Ben was dead until Hiawatha found the body.”

“Then who killed him?” Rita asked.

The question hung in the air as we all grew quiet again. We’d told Rita almost everything, but not that, not the final part of the secret. We looked around the circle at one another, avoiding Rita’s eyes; then each of us turned to Mrs. Judd, just as we always did when there was a difficult decision to make.

Mrs. Judd sat with her elbow on her knee, her mouth in the palm of her hand, knowing without looking up that we expected her to speak. She blew out her breath, but before she could, Ella opened and shut her mouth like a little bird, then whispered, “I did.”

Rita looked at that tiny woman with astonishment. The rest of us did, too. “I did it,” Ella repeated, then shrank back against her chair. She would have toppled over if Ada June hadn’t grabbed her.

“You?” Rita asked. “How?” Obviously, she didn’t believe Ella.

Mrs. Judd snorted at the idea of Ella killing Ben Crook, but Ella replied quickly, “Snuck up behind him. I hit him with the fry pan. I said, ‘Don’t throw out the cake.’ He hurt me bad.” Tears rolled down Ella’s cheeks, and she rubbed her eyes with her little fists. She was used to crying without making a sound, however, and the only noise in the room was the ticking of Rita’s wristwatch, which seemed as loud as our alarm clock.

“That’s a lie.”

I didn’t know who’d spoken. I looked at Ada June and Nettie and Forest Ann. Then, with astonishment, I turned to Agnes T. Ritter, who spoke louder this time. “That’s a lie, and you know it is, Ella,” she said. “I killed Ben Crook.” Agnes T. Ritter stared at Rita with her lips pressed together so hard, they’d gone inside her mouth.

She had to breathe, however, so her lips came back out, and she opened her mouth a crack. Agnes T. Ritter’s eyes gleamed, almost as if she was having a good time, because, at last, her mother wasn’t telling her to be still. “I was the first one to arrive for Persian Pickle that day because Mom had the car in town, and I walked. It didn’t take as long as I’d thought. So I got there early and heard Ben screaming at Ella. He hit her with his fist, and when she fell down, Ben kicked her. I saw it through the window, and by the time I got to the door, Ben had a butcher knife in his hand. Ella was curled up in a little ball, and I knew if she wasn’t dead already, she would be in a minute if I didn’t stop him. I picked up the skillet from the stove next to the door and bashed Ben over the head with it. I didn’t mean to kill him, but I’m not sorry I did.” Agnes T. Ritter sat back in her chair, defiant.

Mrs. Ritter leaned over and put her arms around Agnes T. Ritter. “No, dear. You don’t have to protect me,” Mrs. Ritter said, then turned to Rita. “The stove isn’t next to the door. You’re smart enough to find that out, Rita. I got to Ella’s in the car before Agnes arrived, and I killed Ben. I didn’t use any skillet, either. It was the side of the ax that Ella kept outside for chopping wood. I never saw a mad dog go after a person the way Ben went for Ella. He was an insane man. I didn’t have a choice—”

“You didn’t either do it, Sabra,” Nettie interrupted. “I did.”

“We did,” Forest Ann corrected her. “Nettie and I killed him dead. Nettie called out to him to stop, and I ran around behind him and bashed him on the noggin with a flatiron. I’m not one bit sorry. I sleep good at night knowing nobody has to worry about Ben Crook again.”