Charlaine Harris - Poppy Done to Death

A black pit opened abruptly, right in front of me, and I took a deep breath, gathered my composure, and stepped right over it. “I’m a widow,” I said, maintaining my smile.

“Oh, too bad! You got any babies?”

“No, I’m all on my lonesome,” I said.

Emma obviously regarded this as the worst of all possible situations and cast around in her brain desperately for something upbeat to say to me. “Well, you look great,” she told me. “You don’t look a day older than you did when you graduated. Those kids’ll put the years on you, for sure.”

Bryan opened his mouth, but I got in there first. I knew what I was doing now. “You remember my mom?” I asked. Emma nodded. No one forgot my mother. “She married John Queensland, John David’s dad? I know you remember John David.” He would be a little younger than Emma, but he’d had a lot of success on the football field, and that would have made his name more familiar.

“Oh, sure,” Emma said, relieved to be on a different topic. “That John David, he speaks every time he comes in here.”

“Oh, he gets his gas here?” I leaned on the counter, as if I had all the time in the world.

“Sometimes,” she said. “He was in here the other morning, the morning you were asking about, unless I’m real confused. But I think it was early, not at the time on this receipt. This says ten-twenty-two, and he always comes in before eight, on his way to Atlanta.”

“You remember Bubba?”

“Which one?” she said with a big laugh, and I had to laugh right along with her. “You mean the big black Bubba who played center on the football team, or the Chinese Bubba who was so smart, or that Bubba who’s a lawyer in town?”

“Lawyer Bubba.”

“He comes in here, too, but not so often,” she said, thinking back. “He’s always in a hurry, don’t talk to me.”

“You remember Poppy?”

“Yeah, I hear she’s dead.”

“Yeah. She married John David.”

“Yeah, after they fought all through high school. Were you in the cafeteria that day she slapped him upside the head?”

“I had already graduated, but I heard about it.”

“She didn’t hold back none, either. She let him have it. Maybe that’s why somebody killed her, she mighta whomped on them like that.”

“Her mom and dad are here,” I said.

“Yeah, her dad is that preacher,” Emma said. “My mama used to clean house for them. I was over to see Mama the other day when the radio said that about Poppy. My mama said, ‘Like father, like daughter, I guess.’ ”

“Oh my gosh,” I said, “did he make pass at your mother?” I am sure I looked as disgusted as I felt. Somehow, you’re always a child when you hear about the peccadilloes of those who represented authority to you when you were young.

Emma looked sardonic. “He don’t like my skin tone,” she said, as if adding another mark against Marvin Wynn’s tally of bad taste. “But all those woman who came to him for counseling, you can bet a bunch of them got more than prayers. Especially the really young ones.”

“Ew,” I said, and Emma laughed.

“I like a man with more meat to him than that,” she said. “His wife is like that, too, all thin and bony. Now she was in here Monday around the right time, and I was surprised, because I hadn’t seen that woman in a coon’s age. Did they move back into town?”

I leaned more heavily against the counter, suddenly weak.

Bingo. What the hell had Sandy Wynn been doing anywhere in the vicinity? I stuffed that thought away for later examination. I hoped that no one else would come in, since we were on such a roll. “Well, I won’t take up too much more of your time. I know you’re at work. I don’t know if you remember this, but I have a brother.”

She looked puzzled.

“He’s a half brother. You may not recall that my mom was divorced when I was pretty young?”

“I knew something happened, since he wasn’t around anymore.”

“Yeah, well, my dad remarried, so I have this brother, Phillip, who lives in California. He just hitchhiked over here to see me, and he met these girls along the way.”

“I can’t believe he got here alive,” Emma said frankly.

“Me either. It was dumb, but he’s a kid.” I shrugged. “Anyway, he may have been here that morning, Monday morning. The car he was in stopped here for gas. It would have been my brother-he’s about as tall as this lawyer here-and two girls, both older than he is.” I dredged my memory. “He says they were in a green Impala.” Though Phillip had told me he’d caught a bus into Lawrenceton, I thought it would be unfair of me not to check on him, too.

“Can’t remember,” Emma said after she’d turned it over in her head. “So many kids, and if they’re that young and white, I don’t know ‘em, so I just don’t recall.”

“Thanks for taking the time to help,” I said. “I enjoyed talking to you. You tell Jane I said hello, okay? And Dante.”

“Sure will,” Emma said. She smiled, but she also looked at me as though she was sorry for me.

Well, I just had to swallow that. I kept my smile steady, and Bryan and I left the store after he’d asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee, then bought me one and paid for it.

He handed me into the car as ceremoniously as he’d gotten me out of it, and I found that was a tiny bit tiresome. But I was glad to sink back into the leather seat and feel the heat blowing around me as we started back to town.

“That was a stroke of luck.” I was thinking of Emma’s face as it was now, trying to picture the way it had been in our high school days. I was thanking my lucky stars I’d remembered the woman, since she was a few years younger. In high school, that makes a big difference.

“That was very smooth,” Bryan said, interrupting what I suddenly realized had been a long silence.

“Smooth? What?”

“Your questioning. Are you sure you don’t want to be a lawyer? Or maybe join the police force?”

“I’m sure,” I said, smiling. He’d sounded almost miffed, but I was going to ignore that. I had a feeling Bryan was unhappy because his own questioning had proved unproductive. “If you know someone, it’s just easier to ask the right questions.”

“So. Mrs. Wynn was there, Bubba may have been, although probably not, John David was there earlier, and she couldn’t remember your brother,” Bryan summarized.

“That’s about it.”

“Sandy Wynn.” He shook his head, looking as stunned as I felt.

“Yes. She’s so-well, she seemed so devastated when they came to my house Monday night. I could have sworn all that grief was genuine.”

“But it’s hard to understand how she could have just skipped telling the police she’d been in the area that morning.”

“Yes, of course. Well, maybe Emma made a mistake.” I’d heard older women complain before that young people seemed to regard them as interchangeable. Maybe Emma had seen another thin, fit older woman and identified her mentally as Poppy’s mom, after she’d heard Poppy had been killed. That would be natural. But Emma had sounded so certain, and she had struck me as a good observer. And after all, someone had dropped that receipt on my floor.

“What are you going to do about Mrs. Wynn?” I asked. “Will you talk to her yourself, or will you sic Arthur on her?”

Bryan looked gloomy. “I should tell the police,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “I wonder if she was the visitor Poppy was expecting, the reason she didn’t ride to Uppity Women with you.”

“Mrs. Wynn’s phone records would show if she’d phoned Poppy,” I said hesitantly. “Would Poppy’s phone record show incoming calls as well as outgoing? Can you look at those?”