“Did you remember to give his key back to Tansy?”
He felt for his shirt pocket. “No, I plumb forgot. I’ll take it by tomorrow.”
I hesitated. Joe Riddley has never been what you might call enthusiastic about my poking around mysterious circumstances. But this might be the only chance we got. “Why don’t we go look at Skell’s place and see if we can get any hint of where he might have gone?”
“I was already in there,” he reminded me.
“Did you see any signs he planned to leave?”
“The place was such a mess, I don’t know how you’d tell.”
“Did you look in the closets?”
“He’s not hiding in the closet, Little Bit.”
“We might be able to see if his suitcase and clothes are missing.” When he didn’t reply, I added, “Joe Riddley, what worries me about Skell is that whoever killed his daddy might have killed him, too. If I knew a suitcase was gone, I could stop worrying.”
“Charlie Muggins is gonna have our hide for this.” Nevertheless, he turned back toward Skell’s and pulled into a parking place just down from his town house door. I didn’t complain that he parked so I had to wade through an inch of water.
He snorted when I covered my hand with the hem of my skirt to turn the doorknob, but I’d been thinking about what he said. “If Charlie Muggins and his deputies ever do get to the point of fingerprinting the place, I don’t want them finding mine. You can explain that Gwen Ellen sent you over, but . . .” I didn’t finish that sentence. I didn’t need to. Charlie had been waiting to arrest me for something ever since we first met.
I left the door cracked behind us for a quick getaway, and stood uneasily in the dark smelling old garbage and dirty clothes. “Turn on a lamp, hon,” I instructed. “I’ll wait right here. If there’s a second ferret in here, and it runs over my feet, I’ll join Skye in the bosom of the Lord.”
Skell’s place looked like he hadn’t hung up a single shirt, shelved a single book, or put one piece of junk mail in a wastebasket in the year he’d lived there. Silver CDs lay beside crumpled underwear on the thick black rug. Wadded T-shirts covered an expensive stereo system. A lone sock hung from the lamp shade. Joe Riddley flung that to the floor in disgust. “I’m surprised he hasn’t burned the place down. And look at that garbage can spilling all over the floor, when there’s a Dumpster just down the way.”
“Kids who grow up with a Tansy in the kitchen aren’t apt to carry out garbage as often as they should.”
Stomping my feet on the carpet to alert loose ferrets, I moved toward the bedroom. It stunk of unwashed sheets. I flipped the light switch with the side of my finger and saw waves of dirty clothes all over the floor. Just as I shuddered at the thought of germs breeding around me, Joe Riddley spoke over my shoulder. “I’ve seen cleaner slums.”
“The funny thing is, Skell always looks so bandbox neat.” I went to the closet and again used my hem to cover my hand as I opened the closet door. Skell had enough slacks with razor-sharp creases and well-starched dress shirts to start his own store. I couldn’t tell if any were missing.
I jumped when Joe Riddley breathed on the back of my neck. “Find anything?”
We both jumped when we heard a man’s voice at the front door. “Skell? Where the dickens have you been? Your sister’s worried sick.”
Somebody came into the living room and slammed the door.
I voted for hiding and hoping whoever it was would go away. Fear of Chief Muggins makes me a tad unreasonable at times.
Joe Riddley, fortunately, recognized the voice. “Ben? It’s us. The Yarbroughs.” He turned and loped toward the door. I paddled through the sea of dirty clothes in his wake.
The manager of MacDonald’s service department was a long drink of water, six-feet-six and built like spaghetti. In the low light of the living room his brown eyes were dark as pools of cypress water, and I was surprised how handsome he was. I’d never seen him except in a loose mechanic’s jumpsuit and a cap. The green polo shirt he wore with jeans showed muscles I hadn’t suspected he had, and without his cap, his dark hair was an unruly mass of curls.
“Folks pay good money to get curls like that,” I teased to ease the air.
He ducked his head and scowled. “I’d gladly give ’em away, if I could.”
Joe Riddley swore by Ben when it came to cars, but I found him a mite morose. I’d never seen him smile, nor heard him utter more sentences than were absolutely necessary.
He addressed Joe Riddley, his voice urgent. “Listen, have you seen Skell? Laura asked me to see if he was here, and when I saw the light—”
“Unfortunately, it’s just us, on the same errand. Unfortunately, because he’s not here.” Joe Riddley turned off the lamp, leaving us in darkness except for the streetlight in the parking lot.
“Where the dickens could that kid have gone?” I demanded of the world in general.
Ben had been raised right—he held the door for us older folks like it came natural—but under his breath, he muttered, “I hope he’s sober, driving that silver bullet.” The anger in his voice surprised me, as did the force with which he pulled the door shut behind him. Was he jealous? Did Ben yearn to trade in his truck for a Porsche?
The rain still came down like curtains. Joe Riddley put on his cap, and held our umbrella over me. We huddled under the roof of Skell’s small porch, and I looked around the parked cars, willing Skell’s to appear. “Seems like he’d have told
somebody
he was leaving,” I muttered. At the moment, I couldn’t think who Skell’s friends were.
“Laura’s fit to be tied.” Ben slapped his cap against his leg again and again. “He shouldn’t have gone off and left her with all this to deal with on her own.”
“He didn’t expect his daddy to get killed,” I pointed out.
“No, but she had to close for him last night and today both, and if he doesn’t get back by the time we reopen, I guess she’ll go ahead and run the lot for him, too.” He sounded as outraged as if he’d have to do it himself.
“Why don’t you come down to Myrtle’s and join us for pie?” Joe Riddley suggested.
“I was heading over there for supper,” Ben admitted.
“We’ll buy you supper while we have pie. Little Bit’s feeling real generous tonight.”
We ran for our car, and Ben splashed toward his truck. As we drove past Casa Mas Esperanza, I saw that their lot was full again.
Myrtle’s, on the other hand, was not. In a town our size, every blip in the economy is felt somewhere. Hopefully it would even out eventually.
As always, Joe Riddley glared at the floodlit sign in Myrtle’s parking lot:
Cooking as Good as Mama Used to Do
“She ought to take that down, the way she’s cooking these days.”
“The food’s not as good without a little bacon grease and sugar,” Ben agreed, coming up with us at the door, “but I guess your husband needing a heart bypass might tend to make you change your cooking habits.”
“My mama cooked with fatback and sugar all her life, and she died at eighty-one,” Joe Riddley muttered. “It’s genes, not cooking.” Mr. Medical Encyclopedia stomped ahead to pick a table.
He had plenty to choose from. The place was nearly empty, and Myrtle’s face lower than an earthworm’s belly. When she saw Ben with us, though, she lit up in a smile. “It’s good to see you eating with company instead of a book for a change.”
“Books are good company,” Ben informed her, heading to a table. As soon as we’d settled, Joe Riddley asked Ben where he came from. Up north, folks care about ethnic background. Down here, we want to know where people are
from.
Then we run through a mental list of our own relatives to try to figure out if we are related, and how. If we aren’t kin, then we try to figure out who we know in common. That provides security in an uncertain world.
Ben flexed his long fingers and cracked his knuckles. “I grew up over near Sandersville.” That was about an hour away. “You all grow up around here?”
“All our lives. What family do you have?”
“Three sisters and a brother. I’m second in line. My older sister is a nurse, the one after me is a high-school gym teacher—she reminds me a bit of Laura, the way they’re both crazy about sports—and the third one is in law school. My little sister the lawyer.” He gave a little grunt that was either a laugh or a sign of his pride in her. “The baby, my brother, is still in college and can’t make up his mind what to do. They’ve spoiled him rotten, but I guess you always do with the last one.” He gave me a quick look, but asked Joe Riddley, “You got just the two boys?”
“Just the two,” he agreed. “Your parents still livin’?”
“Yessir. Daddy teaches history in high school, and Mama teaches second grade.”
“You always want to be a mechanic?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much fell into it. Comin’ up, I liked workin’ on cars. I was pretty rebellious back then, too, so I goofed off in school and didn’t make the kind of grades that earn scholarships. The year I graduated, my brother had to have a big operation, and it took every cent my folks had. I went to Vo-Tech and got certified as a mechanic, figurin’ I’d earn some money, then go to college when I figured out what I wanted.” A little grin flickered across his face. “Turns out this was what I wanted. God’s funny, sometimes—uses what we thought were detours as shortcuts.”
Since he didn’t seem to mind talking once he got started (so long as he didn’t have to look at me), I asked something I wanted to know. “How do you keep your hands so clean?”
He ducked his head with another flicker of a smile. “Rubber gloves. Sounds sissy, doesn’t it?” He spread his big hands out and looked at them. “But Laura says if doctors and dentists can wear them, so can we. It took some getting used to, but it makes us more presentable.” He flexed his hands and cracked his knuckles again.
Myrtle came by just then to set pint jars of sweet iced tea before us and take our order. After she’d swished her skirts back through the swinging kitchen door, Joe Riddley asked, “What brought you to Hopemore?”
Ben was quiet so long, I figured he hadn’t heard the question. With one long forefinger he traced and retraced a circle on the green Formica tabletop. (Myrtle doesn’t run to tablecloths and white linen napkins. She just has the best pie in Middle Georgia.) Finally he lifted his head as if it were an act of courage, and his words were so low they sounded like groans. “I was married. We were just coming up on our second anniversary, expecting our first baby, when they both got killed by a drunk driver who ran a stop sign. After that, I needed to go somewhere—it didn’t much matter where. I got to talking to Skye down at the car races one day, and he said he could use a good mechanic, so here I am.”
“And here’s your supper.” Myrtle slid that into his sentence as neatly as she slid a plate of meatloaf, green beans, and macaroni and cheese in front of him. Anybody who ordered the special could have dinner on the table in about two minutes flat. But anybody who didn’t want Myrtle joining in on their conversation had better find another place to eat. “Chocolate pie coming right up,” she promised with a flap of one hand.
“How long you been here?” I asked, to pass the time.
Ben cut a big wedge of meatloaf and chewed while he considered. “I guess it’s fixing to be seven years. I’ve been manager just over four.”
“Been here long enough to start looking for a wife,” Myrtle informed him, setting pie before Joe Riddley and me.
A flow of dark pink started in Ben’s neck and worked its way up to his ears. The way he hunched over his plate, I couldn’t see his face, so I didn’t know if he was mad or embarrassed. Or maybe he still wasn’t over that first wife. Wounds like that can take a while to heal.
Joe Riddley prodded the meringue on his pie, which stood three inches thick with little sugar beads on top. “Someday you gotta tell Little Bit how you do this, Myrtle.”
“I’ll tell her the day she asks.” Myrtle gave me a wink and swept on to the next table. Joe Riddley and I sank our teeth into a little bit of heaven.
I knew to let Ben get something under his belt before I asked any more questions. Only women can eat and talk at the same time. In the distance we heard an ambulance wailing its way to the hospital. The sound gave me shivers.
“I sure wonder where Skell is,” I said when we’d all had time for a few bites. “Have you seen him at all this afternoon, Ben?”
“No, but I’ve been shut in the service department ’til half an hour ago.”
Joe Riddley stopped midchew. “I thought Laura closed the place down.”
Ben gave a short nod and hunched over his plate. “She did. But we had a shop full of cars, so I told the fellows to pretend to leave, then to come back and finish up what we’d promised. Folks who hadn’t heard about Skye were going to expect their cars to be ready. As they came by, we told them what had happened.”
Joe Riddley chewed another bite of pie while he absorbed that. “Laura must be grateful.”
Ben wolfed down green beans like we were fixing to have a bean shortage and he’d better stock up. He didn’t look up as he admitted, “I didn’t tell her. She’s got enough to worry about right now. When I called to be sure she was okay, after I’d locked up, I didn’t say I was going home. I said was going out to run errands and wondered if there was anything I could do for her. That’s when she asked if I’d run by Skell’s place to see if he’d come back.”
Joe Riddley laid down his fork and propped his chin in the palm of one hand. “I got a passel of people working for me, but not one of ’em would keep working if I died. Some would stop out of respect and some, maybe, because they’d be delighted to get a few days off.” He waited for Ben’s explanation.
“A garage isn’t like a nursery.” He broke his cornbread and buttered it. “Folks need their wheels. Somebody had to get those cars back on the road.”
Joe Riddley bent to his pie, but a muscle twitched in his cheek.
“Were you working on Perez’s brakes last night?” I asked. “Is that why you were so late leaving?”