Who Invited the Dead Man? A Thoroughly Southern Mystery

[1]SEPTEMBER Knowing where to begin this story is like finding the end of a ball of yarn after it spends an hour with my beagle Lulu. Maybe the best place to begin is with the first death, which was as unexpected as the second, but not half as mystifying. Garlon Wainwright dropped dead on the seventeenth hole at the Hopemore Country Club during the Labor Day Tournament. Poor Garlon was in the lead for the first time in his life, and some said his heart just couldn't stand the excitement. According to his obituary in the Hopemore Statesman, Garlon was "fifty-five, only child of Augusta and the late Lamar Wainwright of Wainwright Mills, survived by his mother, one daughter, Meriwether, and his second wife, Candi (35)." I suspected Gusta had a hand in writing it. Nobody was surprised after the funeral to see Gusta and Meriwether riding to the cemetery in the first Cadillac and Candi, alone, in the second. I kept meaning to get over to see Gusta after the funeral, but couldn't find a minute. That was the autumn after my husband, Joe Riddley Yarbrough, got shot in the head. He'd survived, but recovery from a head wound is slow, uphill work. I was busier than a bird dog in hunting season between driving him to various kinds of therapies and running Yarbrough's Feed, Seed and Nursery without him. As if that weren't enough, I'd agreed to serve as a Georgia magistrate in his place, and while I was used to watching Joe Riddley fit that in around work at the store, I hadn't realized quite how much time it took. On Wednesday morning a whole week after Garlon's funeral, I was pushing Joe Riddley's wheelchair up the back porch ramp after physical therapy when I heard the phone. "You gotta answer," our cook, Clarinda, called through the open screened door. "I'm makin' rolls and my hands're covered with grease and flour." Clarinda came to help me when our older son, Ridd, was born forty years ago, and has worked for-and bossed-me ever since. The voice on the other end was chillier than a healthy dog's nose on a frosty morning. "MacLaren? I need you here right away." I knew it was Gusta. Anybody else in town would have told me who they were. Even my sons announce "Mama, this is Ridd" or "Hey, it's Walker." Gusta belonged to that highly self-confident elite who believe the rest of us have so few friends we will always recognize their voices. Augusta Wainwright was the closest thing we had to royalty in Hopemore, Georgia. Her granddaddy was governor back when she was young, and her brother was a U.S. senator for three terms. She never bragged, but their names cropped up in a lot of conversations. She also never bragged that after Lamar's death she sold his daddy's cotton mills for more millions than I have fingers and toes, but she expected us to let newcomers know, so she got due respect. Gusta ascended to the throne of Hopemore within a few days of her birth, and never relinquished it. "I can't come right now," I informed her. "I've got to get Joe Riddley settled. Then I have a reporter coming by to interview me for the paper." I tried to say that casually, but to tell the truth, I was a bit nervous and even a little excited. In the past it was Joe Riddley who got stories in the paper, for winning almost every award in the county. All I'd done was help him run Yarbrough's Feed, Seed and Nursery, raise two boys, and serve as treasurer to a lot of clubs. Treasurers don't get stories in the paper, unless they abscond with funds. Of course, I wrote a monthly gardening column, and my name was sometimes in the paper for helping our ungrateful police chief, Charlie Muggins, solve a murder. But those weren't stories about me. Gusta didn't say a word about my interview. A bit miffed, I warned, "It will be close to dinnertime before I get there." For Gusta, as for us, dinner was still eaten at noon. She sighed. "Well get here as soon as you can. I need you to comSprinkle, Patricia is the author of 'Who Invited the Dead Man? A Thoroughly Southern Mystery', published 2002 under ISBN 9780451206596 and ISBN 0451206592.