Charlaine Harris: Poppy Done to Death

“I just got hired,” she explained. She seemed startled into answering the question.

I recalled Sally Allison’s story in the paper about the county having to increase its law-enforcement budget because of increased population, which had led directly to increased crime. Okay, Detective Cathy Trumble was the result. “Where do you live?” I asked, trying to be sociable. With a mother who made a living in real estate, it was a question that was second nature.

“And you had planned this lunch date with your sisters for how long?” she asked pointedly.

Okay, we weren’t going to be best friends.

“They’re my sisters-in-law, sort of once removed,” I said for what felt like the millionth time. “We’ve been planning to go to the Uppity Women together for a month. Melinda just joined three months ago, and I’ve been a member for a about half a year.”

“And Poppy?”

“Oh, she’d gone as our guest twice. But today she was going to be inducted. Somebody had died to let her in,” I explained.

The clear eyes fixed me in their stare. I felt like I’d been caught in the headlights. “Somebody had died?” she said.

For the first time, I regretted not being questioned by Arthur. “Well, to get in Uppity Women-it’s really the Uppity Women’s Reading and Lunch Club, but everyone calls it Uppity Women-you have to fill a vacancy, because the bylaws limit membership to thirty,” I told Cathy Trumble. “You have to be nominated, and if they vote yes, you get on the list. The list is limited to five. Then when a member dies, the top person on the list replaces that member. Etheline Plummer died for me.”

“I understand,” Detective Trumble said unwillingly. She looked a little dazed.

“So when Linda Burdine Buckle died two weeks ago,” I said, “it was Poppy’s turn.” I patted at my cheeks with a soggy Kleenex.

“What do Uppity Women do?” Detective Trumble asked, though she sounded as though she didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Well, we talk about local politics and then we decide how we’re going to handle local issues. We have representatives at every city council meeting and school board meeting, and they give reports to the club. We decide whom we’re going to back in the primaries, and how we’re going to do it. And then we have a book we’ve all read that we discuss, and then we eat lunch.”

This didn’t seem extraordinary to me, but Trumble gave a kind of sigh and looked down at her desk. “So, you have a political agenda, and a literary agenda, and a social…”

I nodded.

“You all read, what? Like from the Oprah Book Club? Like The Lovely Bones ?”

“Um, no.”

“Well, what was this month’s book?”

“ The Sublime and the Ridiculous: Economic Currents in the Southeast . By a professor at the University of Georgia? She was supposed to come down to speak to us about it, but she got the flu.” I had read every word, but it hadn’t been easy.

The look Trumble gave me would have frozen a pond. “Could you just tell me what you’ve been doing, say last evening and this morning?” Detective Trumble asked, her voice hard despite the thinnest overlay of courtesy.

“Last night won’t do you any good,” I said, surprised she’d even tack that on. “She wasn’t killed till this morning.”

“How do you know that?” Trumble leaned forward, her eyes sharp and intent.

“About twenty different ways. First off, I talked to her this morning. Then, her clothes. She was wearing the right clothes.”

“ ‘The right clothes’?”

“For the meeting. Poppy usually dressed a little extreme for Lawrenceton, and Melinda and I warned her that she had to look like Missy Matron for this crowd, at least till they got to know her. So I wanted to check on what she was planning on wearing. And she told me. And it was the outfit I found her in.”

Trumble nodded. Good. This was the kind of fact she liked.

“So, this morning , I got up at six-thirty, showered, had coffee, read the paper, got a phone call from Melinda.” I inclined my head toward the cubicle where Arthur was “interviewing” Melinda. “We talked for maybe five minutes. I got dressed. Then I called the vet to make an appointment for my cat, and I called Sears because the ice maker on my refrigerator is acting up, and I called work to find out when I could pick up my schedule for this month, and I called my friend Sally to ask her out for her birthday.”

Detective Trumble was gaping at me. “You made all those calls this morning?”

“Well, yes. It’s my phone-call morning.”

“Your ‘phone-call morning.’ ”

Gosh, she seemed big on repetition. “Yes, my phone-call morning. I don’t go to work till the afternoon on most Mondays, so I make all my phone calls early. I have a list.”

She shook her head slightly, as if she were shaking off raindrops. “Okay,” she said. “So, when would you estimate these phone calls were finished?”

“Let’s see. The vet opens at eight-thirty, so I probably began around then.” Though I found it hard to believe, I again wished I were being questioned by Arthur. He knew Lawrenceton, and he knew me, and he would not make such heavy weather out of this. “You know, they don’t want to see Madeleine, so making the appointment takes awhile. The new receptionist is better about it than the old one, though.”

“Madeleine.”

I am not a ditz-at least I don’t think I am; I just daydream a lot-so I was getting a wee bit tired of feeling like an airhead. “My cat. Madeleine. Had to go to the vet.”

“Your cat’s a real handful?” Comprehension was dawning. Perhaps she was a cat owner. I thought of Moosie, and wondered who was watching him. He wasn’t supposed to go out of the house. I was willing to bet the police had let him out. I was mad at myself for not telling them Moosie had been declawed before Poppy adopted her, so she wasn’t an outdoors kind of cat. I explained to the detective. To my surprise, she called the house right away.

When she hung up, she looked concerned. “Our team searching the house says none of them has seen a cat.”

“Oh no. That’s awful. That cat is declawed; he can’t make it outside that fence.”

“I’ll have the patrol cars look out for him, and I’ll alert the pound in case anyone brings him in. Give me a description before you leave. Now, let’s get back to this morning. You said your sister-in-law called you later, after you’d finished making all your phone calls?”

“Yes. The phone rang while I was getting ready to go. Poppy said Melinda and I should go on ahead, that she’d meet us there.”

“And she gave no reason for this?”

“No.” I hesitated. “She said there was something she had to take care of, and she sounded as though it was something unexpected, but other than that, no.” There’d been the moments of my inattention, but that was for my conscience alone, not for Detective Trumble’s consumption. Nothing could be done about it now. “She just said there was something she had to take care of,” I repeated.

Arthur came out of his cubicle and beckoned to Detective Trumble, who pushed up from her desk and met him on middle ground. Possibly she thought I couldn’t hear her because I was rooting around in my purse.

“Is this a fair example of a southern belle?” she murmured to my former boyfriend. I glanced up, to see her tilting her head toward me.

“Aurora?” Surprise made him a little louder than he’d intended.

“She’s a moron. Her brains are scattered over several miles of bad road.”

“Then she’s hiding something,” he said flatly.

Darn that Arthur.

I saw Melinda leaning out of Arthur’s cubicle, making little gestures at me behind his back. So far, the new detective hadn’t caught sight of Melinda, but she would soon. I shook my head violently then pasted a sweet smile on my face as Arthur leaned to one side to fix me with a glare. The minute my lips moved, I realized a sweet smile was wildly inappropriate, and I wiped my face clean, trying to come up with an expression that wouldn’t be worse.