Charlaine Harris: Poppy Done to Death

Arthur made his way through desks and chairs on the way to Trumble’s area, and even I could read the reluctance in his gait. His whole demeanor was that of a man who’d just quit smoking but was obliged to tour the Marlboro factory.

The Marlboro factory would be me.

I should have been pleased, because God knows I’d hoped for years Arthur would get over his confused feelings about me, and he definitely had. I just didn’t know why I had to be categorized as “bad” in the process. Possibly this was a childish thought and I would be ashamed of it later. I hoped so.

“What are you up to?” he asked without preamble.

“My sister-in-law got killed, Arthur. I’m not ‘up to’ anything.”

“Uh-huh. Anytime you pull that fluff-headed southern eccentric routine, you’re putting out a smoke screen. I take this real serious, Roe. There’s no give in this.”

I considered my options. I looked over at Melinda again. I shrugged. She looked relieved. I was taking the burden of concealment away from her.

“We found something in the driveway when we were sitting and waiting,” I said. I looked up. Why on earth couldn’t Arthur sit down in Detective Trumble’s seat, so I wouldn’t have to strain like this? I looked down at my hands clasped on my purse, rotated my head to ease my neck.

“What did you find?”

“Ah, a baby pacifier.”

“Whose was it?” Arthur asked, his voice quite gentle. I could believe he wasn’t mad until I looked back up at him.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“You’re sure.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Your sister-in-law Melinda saw it, too.”

“Yes.”

“And you agreed not to tell us?”

“No,” I protested. “We just don’t know for sure whose it was.”

“I think you have a real good idea.”

This was the part that was impossible to explain. I tried to think of how to get around it. I had a stroke of genius-at least it seemed to be at that moment. “It’s just a Binky,” I said. I pulled it out of my purse and handed it to Arthur.

He turned it over and over in his fingers. It was a blue Binky, and there were millions just like it.

“It could even be her baby’s,” he said. “Maybe it fell out of one of the family cars.”

Melinda had left the cubicle and inched closer to hear all this, and she looked profoundly relieved. Arthur was fairly irritated to see her when he turned around. He sighed. “Do you confirm this, Mrs. Queensland?” he asked. Melinda nodded.

“That’s where we found it. It could have come from anywhere. Roe just picked it up on her way into the house because she assumed it was Chase’s.”

Bless Melinda’s heart. I couldn’t have done better myself.

Then Melinda almost ruined it by shooting me a triumphant glance that practically screamed, But there’s more that we’ve concealed! I felt as if my purse were smoking, the contents were so hot.

“If that’s all, Detectives, we need to go to our family,” I said quickly. “Melinda’s got the baby at her house with her kids, and we have to see to John, and Avery will want to know all about it.”

“Where will you be going? In case we need to talk to you again?” Arthur was nothing if not tenacious.

“We’ll be going to my house first, to check in on the kids and the baby-sitter,” Melinda said briskly. She was glad to be back on familiar ground, where she knew what was what and she could be her normal efficient self. “Then we’ll go over to John and Aida’s house, I’m sure. You have Roe’s cell number and mine, and the house numbers, so we’d like to hear as soon as possible if you find out anything.”

The next thing I knew, we were in the parking lot of the SPACOLEC complex, and Melinda and I were hugging each other and crying. This was unprecedented, and maybe we were both a little relieved when we separated to dig in our purses for tissues.

“They’ll find out,” Melinda said.

“Yes, they will. But at least it won’t have been us who told them.”

“I don’t know why that makes me feel better,” Melinda said, giving a few hiccupping sobs, “but it does. You know if that Arthur Smith finds out we’re lying, he’ll make it hard on us, and Avery will never forgive me.”

I nodded grimly. If Melinda thought Avery was the most frightening thing facing her, she’d never seen my mother angry.

“What should we do with them?”

I pulled the cloth straps out of my purse and glared at them. They were cute as the dickens. They’d been embroidered by Poppy, who was fond of needlework, for the sons of Cartland (“Bubba”) Sewell and my friend Lizanne. The boys, Brandon and Davis, were now-well, Brandon was a toddler, and Davis was sitting up. The straps, which snapped into a circle, were designed to run through the plastic loop on a pacifier, so when the baby dropped the pacifier, it wouldn’t fall to the floor. You could run the strap around the baby’s neck, or around the brace of a car seat, or whatever. Brandon’s had his name and little bunnies embroidered on it, while Davis’s had footballs and his initials. Lizanne had loved them when Poppy had given them to her; I remembered the day she’d opened the little package. And I’d found them on the ground in Poppy’s driveway. Melinda and I exchanged a long glance, and I stuffed them back into my purse.

I drove to Melinda and Avery’s house, trying to be extra careful, because I was all too aware of how dazed I was. I waited out in the driveway while Melinda ran in to check on the kids, tell the baby-sitter what had happened, and change shoes.

Highly polished flats replaced the pumps she’d been wearing. I liked Melinda more and more as I spent time with her, and not the smallest reason was her practical nature.

“Where’s Robin?” she asked as we parked in front of my mother’s house.

“He’s in Austin,” I explained. “He got nominated for some award, so he’s going to the mystery writers’ convention where they give it out. He asked me if I wanted to go, but…” I shrugged. “The convention’s over, but he’s doing some signings on the way back. He should be home on Wednesday, in time to pick up his mother at the airport.”

“You didn’t want to go with him?” she asked shyly. My relationship with Robin Crusoe, fiction and true crime writer, was new enough that the family was delicate about making any assumptions.

“I kind of did,” I said. “But he was going to be with a lot of people he knows really well, and I haven’t been with him very long.”

She nodded. You had to have a pretty firm footing in a relationship to be dragged into a massive “meet the friends” situation. “Still, he asked,” she said.

It was my turn to nod. We both knew what that meant, too.

That was our last pleasant moment for the rest of the day. Our sister-in-law had died a terrible death, a violent death, and John David still hadn’t been located. Poppy’s parents had to be called, which awful job Avery agreed to undertake. All the Queensland men were tall and attractive. Avery was certainly the most handsome CPA in Lawrenceton, but his personality did not live up to his face, which could have been devilish if there’d been any spark in it. Avery was one of those men always described as “steady,” which is what you want in an accountant, of course. He was the older brother, and had been a year ahead of me in high school. Instead of playing football like John David, Avery had played tennis; instead of being elected class president, Avery had been editor of the school paper. He’d added to the local gene pool by marrying Melinda, who’d grown up in Groton, a few miles away.

Poppy had gone to high school in Lawrenceton. She and John David had been five years behind me at the local school, which in those days had meant I was hardly aware of their existence. Her parents, who’d had her late in life, had moved to a retirement community a couple of hours’ drive away after she’d graduated. Poppy’s father, Marvin Wynn, had been the local Lutheran minister, and his wife, Sandy, had worked in the registrar’s office at the local junior college. The whole community had pitied these righteous people when Poppy, their only child, reached her teen years.