When Will the Dead Lady Sing? by Patricia Sprinkle

Author:Patricia Sprinkle [Sprinkle, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101161609
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Wheeler Publishing
Published: 2003-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

13

After Charlie left, I tried to concentrate on the numbers on my computer screen. Instead, I kept seeing a person face-down under the water tank. My mind’s eye roved over the long gray ponytail, the stocky body in the old gray suit. A woman? No wonder she had such small feet. What brought her to our town to die?

When the phone rang, I hoped it would be Charlie saying he’d found another suspect. Instead, it was Martha. “Have you heard from Tad?” I asked at once.

“Not a word. Ridd’s coming home at lunchtime and we’re going to call Walker and Cindy. But what’s that I hear about you spraining an ankle? That’s a pretty drastic way to get out of walking.”

“I was desperate. How on earth did you hear that all the way down there?”

“Ridd sent me to the nursery this morning for chrysanthemums, and I saw Pop. He told me about it and said you are ensconced in your office like a queen, eating bonbons.”

“Stuck here helpless as a baby is more like it, without a single bonbon in sight. I can’t even get to the bathroom, and that’s gonna be a problem in a little while.”

“Didn’t they give you crutches?”

“I can’t get the hang of them. Besides, my left leg isn’t used to carrying all my weight, and I’m not real good at hopping.”

“You’ll get used to them.” That was the nurse speaking, not my sweet daughter-in-law. “Don’t you put weight on that ankle, now.”

“I won’t, but I just thought of something. Back in the storeroom behind the utility room, there’s a wheelchair J.R. used until he got his prosthesis.” An accident crushed Joe Riddley’s father’s right leg below the knee a few years after we got married. He’d had a wheelchair especially fitted up to support his stump while he waited for it to heal, and one of the advantages of living in the same house generation after generation is that you tend to hang on to things because somebody is likely to need them again. Joe Riddley’s parents hadn’t bothered to clean out the attic or store room when they left the house, and neither had we.

“Will you find it for me?” I asked Martha. “Then, can you come take me somewhere?”

“You don’t need a wheelchair. You can get used to the crutches.”

“I could probably get used to Chinese water torture, but what’s the point? It’s just a week, and hopping is a skill I don’t plan to need again. Will you look for that chair and come get me?”

I have often said Martha was God’s best gift to this family. She proved it half an hour later when she showed up with a newly dusted wheelchair and asked, “Where to, madame?”

When she heard where I wanted to go, and why, her eyes widened. “Chief Muggins is gonna nail both our hides to his office wall.”

“Maybe so,” I admitted, “but I’m not going to touch anything, just look. Come on.”

We headed back to Hubert’s place. I pointed to a tractor track leading to the back of his barn.

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