DEAD GIVEAWAY by Charlaine Harris

  alkerW

  Artwork by Mark Evan

  I was changing the sheets in the fourth bedroom when I heard the screams from next door. My first reaction was irritation; not noble, I know, but the Winthrop house is large and Beanie Winthrop is demanding, and I’d been there al morning trying to make the house look clean and polished. Final y I’d made headway in fourteen-year-old Amber Jean’s room. I knew when I heard the screams that I’d have to stop what I was doing (tucking in the corners of the flat sheet) and run outside to see if I could help the screamer.

  Patsy Caplock, whose brand-new brick home was only slightly smal er than the Winthrops’ huge spread, was outside her garage shrieking her aristocratic head off. I hardly knew the woman, since she wasn’t the kind of democratic gal who hangs around with domestic help—but I did know the women who worked for the cleaning service Patsy employed. I’d talked to the Shining Brite team leader, Nita Fisher, before. According to Nita, Patsy was Beanie Winthrop multiplied, and Patsy’s only child, Jenna-Beale, made as much mess as all three of the Winthrop children. In fact, the Shining Brite station wagon was parked in the Caplock’s driveway right now. I gripped Patsy’s thin arm. “Hush, and tel me what’s wrong!” I said, though I didn’t intend my voice to be as brusque as it emerged. But at least Patsy stopped screaming and looked at me, and I saw she wasn’t crying.

  Patsy Caplock was around my own age, somewhere in her early thirties, and she was a Caucasian, but I figured that was where the similarities ended. Patsy was bony thin, as tan as toast, and wore her brown hair in a smooth shoulder-length style. She had the long painted fingernails and expensive, delicate clothes of someone who does not expect to do a lick of work. She was an inch tal er than my five foot six, and she was wearing high-heeled sandals with her dress. A paisleypatterned bib apron was tied over al this magnificence, an apron with deep quilted pockets and a fringed sash, which I figured had cost more than my total work ensemble. I was wearing my usual baggy jeans and a gray T-shirt, and my Nikes, though new, were strictly practical. I lift weights, and I clean houses for a living, so I have practical clipped fingernails and practical short curly hair. I do wear makeup, but my simple application was no match for Patsy’s ful Merle Norman workup.

  “She’s dead!” Patsy wailed in her high Southern voice, her accent trailing out the syl ables to 1

  “de-e-aid.” “You’ve got to do something, Lily!” She pushed back her long hair and I saw a smal and undoubtedly expensive green earring.

  “Why?”

  Patsy stared at me as though I’d suggested she divorce her lawyer husband and marry a garbage col ector.

  “Why what?” she asked, in a calmer tone.

  “Why do I have to do anything? Haven’t you cal ed the ambulance? The police?”

  “Wel , no, I . . . just ran out of the house.”

  “What about the other two women?” Shining Brite sent a team of three.

  “They’re in the house.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “I guess so.” She sounded uncertain.

  I steered Patsy to the wrought-iron loveseat by the rose bushes. “Stay,” I said, only afterwards realizing it sounded as though I were ordering a dog.

  But Patsy stayed, and I reluctantly entered the house through the door into the garage, which she’d left standing open. After I’d passed through a little mudroom that held pegs for hats and coats and a rack for dirty boots, I entered the Caplock kitchen. There was a doorway opposite the one I’d entered that led to the living room. On my left was an informal dining table and the doors to a bathroom and a pantry, both open. To my right was the food preparation and storage area. Large, almost square, with pale rose-colored Formica counters running al the way around, a huge refrigerator, two ovens, and a central island with a vegetable sink just for good measure, it was a dream kitchen.

  The room was spotless and the counters bare except for a line of items set out by a recipe card: some packages of frozen chopped spinach, some cubed cheese on a cutting board, a colander, some spices, some bowls, a large spoon, and a can of condensed milk by a can opener. So Patsy had put on her apron and lined up her ingredients and utensils to start cooking. Two women, both wearing dark green coveral s with the Shining Brite logo on the chest, were staring down at something lying on the gleaming linoleum just beyond the island with its vegetable sink. I recognized the women, Gwen Linder and Frankie Whitney. Red-haired and thickset, Gwen was slow mental y and physical y, but a reliable worker, I’d heard; and Frankie Whitney, who had her arm around the weeping Gwen, was also a hard worker if you were wil ing to put up with her mouth, Nita Fisher had told me on the one occasion we’d talked to each other for any length of time.

  I remembered that day and that conversation with remarkable clarity, since I don’t often have long talks with passing acquaintances, or with anyone, for that matter. I don’t have the time or the inclination. But that summer Saturday it was raining heavily, and I’d seen Nita Fisher parked on the shoulder of the highway bypass when I was leaving my gym, Body Time. A woman alone and without transportation is defenseless, as I’d learned from bitter experience, so I’d stopped to offer Nita a ride.

  For Nita, that car breakdown had been the last straw. While I took her to the bakery where her husband worked so she could explain what had happened, Nita had shared her problems, and I had listened. I had learned more about Nita’s family and her coworkers than I’d ever wanted to know. But I’d found myself liking the woman, too.

  Now, I was afraid the feet I could see protruding from behind the counter were Nita’s. Frankie looked at me. The whites of her eyes had turned red from tears, and so had Gwen’s. 2

  Somehow the contrast was not as great against Gwen’s white skin as it was against the chocolate brown of Frankie’s. Frankie’s heavy makeup was melting down her face, and her cerise lipstick was smeared, too.

  “Nita?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Frankie said, and Gwen sobbed even louder. “She’s dead, Lily. There’s something in her mouth.”

  I went to the only visible telephone, which sat on the counter next to the door into the living room. There were three things by the telephone: a message pad, a pencil, and a framed picture of Patsy’s daughter Jenna-Beale in her cheerleader outfit. The local high school colors were purple and gold, and blond Jenna-Beale was posed with matching purple-and-gold pompons. I picked up the phone and punched in 911. I described the situation briefly to the dispatcher who answered the phone. The voice sounded like that of Patrol Officer Joyce Moffitt, who looked more like a bul dog than any human being I’d ever met.

  “We’l be there in a few minutes,” she growled.

  “What?” Surely this merited a little more urgency.

  “There’s been a five-car pileup on Main Street,” she explained defensively. Main Street was Shakespeare’s most heavily traveled traffic artery, natural y enough; here in Shakespeare, Arkansas, we’re not afraid to be obvious. A five-car pileup would take almost al the smal town’s police power to unsnarl.

  “What do we do in the meantime?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just wait. Don’t touch anything. You’re sure the victim is dead?”

  That gave me pause. What exactly had happened to Nita? No one had said. With the phone to my ear, I edged past Gwen and Frankie to look down. I bit my lip to keep from exclaiming when I saw the face of that woman I’d shared a ride with a month ago. Nita, pale and goggle-eyed, had been a tad froglike in life. Now that Nita’s eyes were wide and staring in death and her mouth was jammed open, the resemblance was even more marked. I fought a gag reflex as I tried to make out what had happened to Nita’s mouth. There was a deep worm of dark blood running down her chin to her chest, and a few spatters on the floor around her, spatters I was careful to avoid. Something shiny was protruding from Nita’s throat, something that winked in the fluorescent light. When I was sure I had myself under control, I squatted down to press my fingers lightly to Nita’s neck. No pulse.

  This close, I could see that the protrusion was a handle, and I could glimpse the point at which thin wires came together to be bound into that handle. I made a little sound of disbelief and disgust. Someone had rammed a whisk, the kind I kept in my own kitchen to beat eggs, down Nita’s thick throat. I put a hand up to my own neck, almost feeling myself choke as Nita must have. Only sheer rage could have forced that whisk into the mouth of the cleaning woman. Nita’s right hand was lying on her chest, and between its clenched fingers I caught a tiny glimpse of color. Her left hand was flung out to the side. I remembered al the little worries she’d conveyed to me that day in the car. Mostly, Nita had been worried about her daughter, who seemed to have inherited her mother’s hot temper. And she’d been concerned about the symptoms of kleptomania her cousin Gwen was exhibiting, and her other coworker’s defiant attitude. And al her caring had ended in this horrible death in another woman’s kitchen. It was a little, bitter thought, and it made me curt.

  “Dead as a doornail,” I said into the phone, and heard Gwen gasp. “Murdered.”

  3

  “Cold?” asked Joyce Moffitt, from her safe chair at the police department.

  “She hasn’t been dead long,” I answered, and looked up at Frankie and Gwen, who nodded in confirmation.

  As I rose awkwardly, with the phone stil clutched in my hand, I was very close to the two other cleaners. I sniffed some smel s that shouldn’t have been there, and inhaled deeply to verify my suspicions.

  “We’l be t here as soon as possible,” Joyce Moffitt said with a remote assumption of efficiency. I heard the hum of a dead line.

  I was glad of this excuse to step away as I replaced the phone in its charger.

  “When are they coming?” Patsy had just come in from outside, looking tense but much more calm. Maybe she’d snapped out of her bout of hysteria just because no one besides me had come in response to her screams; it was a sign of the times that even in this affluent neighborhood, there was no one else home on a weekday morning.

  “Soon. There’s been a bad car accident on Main Street.”

  Gwen said, “I guess the police’ll tel Don. But who’s gonna cal Heather?”

  “That’s Nita’s daughter?” I asked, looking at Frankie. To my surprise, it was Patsy that answered.

  “Yes, Heather’s Nita’s girl. She’s on the cheerleading squad with my Jenna-Beale.”

  Frankie snorted meaningful y.

  Patsy, who had careful y not looked at the dead woman, flushed a nasty shade of red. “JennaBeale wil get that al straightened out at school today,” she said, just as if Frankie had spoken.

  “Miss Jenna-Beale,” Frankie said, aiming her remarks at me, “got her butt kicked off the cheerleading squad.”

  Gwen looked from one angry face to another. “My cousin Nita is lying here dead with something stuck down her throat and you two are arguing about cheerleaders,” Gwen said, her pale lashes blinking up and down rapidly in her agitation.

  “You’re right,” Frankie said, ashamed. She fumbled in a pocket of her Shining Brite coveral and came up with a tissue. She patted her eyes with it. I eyed the other shapes in the deep front pocket of the coveral .

  “Where were you, Frankie?” I asked. “When Nita was kil ed?”

  “I don’t know when that was. First I heard about it was when I heard Ms. Caplock yel ing. I been up in Jenna-Beale’s room, picking up that girl’s dirty laundry,” Frankie said. But she didn’t quite meet my eyes.

  “And you, Gwen?”

  “I was cleaning the big bathroom off the master bedroom,” Gwen said, lifting the cloth in her hand up to her cheeks. She reconsidered at the last minute and pul ed a paper towel from a rol on a holder mounted above the counter. I didn’t blame her. I’d smel ed the rag, too.

  “Patsy, I see you were about to cook.”

  “Yes, I have my bridge club coming to supper tonight,” the tal woman said as if she hardly knew what words were coming out of her mouth.

  “Was the whisk out on the counter?”

  “No, I wouldn’t need it,” Patsy said. “It must have been in the drawer there.”

  I opened the drawer she’d indicated, which was right under the section of the counter where the ingredients were assembled. I glanced at the contents, laid out neatly on clean lining paper. Spatulas, the beaters for a mixer, a smal er whisk, some long knives. I scanned the directions for the Spinach Madeleine, which involved cooking frozen spinach and then blending it with a sauce 4

  made from evaporated milk, liquid drained from the cooked spinach, and cubed jalapeno-spiced cheese.

  I could feel my eyebrows crawl up my forehead. Mighty strange.

  “So where were you when Nita came into the kitchen?” I asked.

  “Me?” Patsy seemed astonished that anyone would want to know. “I’d gone into the downstairs bathroom. When I came out, there she was.” She pointed across the dining area to one of the half-open doors. I could see the white porcelain of a toilet. I stepped over and swung the door al the way open. This little bathroom had obviously already been cleaned; the chrome fixtures of the sink had nary a spot on them, the bowl of the sink was polished, and the toilet smel ed of a strong pine-scented bowl scrubber.

  “Did you hear anything?” I asked Patsy.

  “Hear anything?” Patsy Caplock looked at me as though I were a mouse or some other disagreeable house pest.

  “Like someone arguing with Nita?”

  “No. I’d heard someone arguing with her earlier.” And Patsy’s eyes significantly skewed around to Frankie.

  “Did you hear anything, Gwen?” Gwen, who’d been pressing her red hair absently, as though hair was arranged by smoothing, shook her head. Her pale lashes contrasted unpleasantly with her vivid hair, giving her face a scrubbed, incomplete air.

  “Like I said, I was up in the master bath off the master bedroom,” Gwen said dul y. “I had the water running, and I wouldn’t have heard nothing.”

  “You been getting along with Nita lately?”

  “Al that stuff is done and over,” she said immediately. “I wouldn’t touch nothing now.”

  Frankie looked at me as though I’d just kicked a smal dog, while Patsy merely looked contemptuous.

  “Why do you just have on one earring, Patsy?” I asked. Patsy’s long nails touched first one ear, then another. Her face was white as a sheet.

  “Oh, I remember now,” she said. “I wanted to wear these earrings today, but after I’d put in one, I couldn’t find its mate. How embarrassing, running around with one earring.”

  “Is it jade?”

  “Ah, yes, I believe it is,” Patsy said casual y. “Jason gave them to me last Christmas.”

  “No matter what Nita told you, I didn’t take nothing!” Gwen said angrily. She had turned as red as her hair.

  “Hush, Gwen, this woman ain’t the police!” Frankie told her, her voice sharp. I thought of the Winthrop house, of that last remaining bed with its sheets half on, or, as Beanie Winthrop would undoubtedly see it, half off. I thought of remaining with these three uncongenial women for another half-hour or so, until the police could get there. I eyed the door longingly. I would so much rather be at the gym, or at my karate class, or in my own little home by myself.

  “What do you think happened here, Patsy?” I swung around to look at the maids’ employer. Patsy Caplock had been staring into the distance, her face al creases and angles with the stress of her thoughts.

  “I guess some . . .” and her eyes darted to Frankie and back again. “I guess some man was wandering from house to house looking for yard work and he knocked on the door when I was in the bathroom.” Patsy gave a little shrug of her slim shoulders, as if to say, Who could know what such a man would do?

  5

  Frankie bridled at the unspoken implication that the hypothetical unemployed yard man was black.

  “Oh, you’d just love that, wouldn’t you?” Frankie asked, her voice clotted with fury. “So this man—and I’m sure you’re picturing a man with skin as white as snow—just comes into the kitchen, grabs your egg whisk, and rams it down Nita’s throat for no reason whatsoever?”

  “They do on TV,” Gwen said shyly.

  “That’s right,” I agreed, my voice dry as the Sahara. “But I think in this case, life didn’t imitate art.” Gwen stared at me blankly. I sighed. “Gwen,” I said, trying to sound gentle (which I’m not),

  “are you sure you didn’t do something to upset Nita today?”

  “No,” Gwen insisted, her pale eyes seeming to protrude even more with the vehemence of her sincerity. “I have been so good,” Gwen went on. “I haven’t lifted a thing.”

  “But Patsy’s jade earring is missing.”

  Patsy’s careful y made-up eyes fixed on Gwen in amazement and outrage. “Gwen, you took my earring?” Once again, Patsy’s fingers went up to her earlobes. “Where is it?”

  Gwen just shook her head, over and over, the picture of guilty denial.

  “And I don’t think you were in the bathroom,” I went on, plowing Gwen into the ground. “Your rag has furniture polish on it, not glass cleaner.”

  Gwen’s face flushed deep red. “I made a mistake,” she admitted. “Now, that I did do. I promised Nita I wouldn’t make that mistake no more, and she said I better not. Them counters in the bathroom and that mirror wil be al smeary. I’d better go over ’em again.” Gwen seemed sure that using wood polish on Formica was her biggest problem.

  “And you, Frankie?”

  “Me, what?” Frankie put her hands on her hips and eyed me chal engingly.

  “What were you doing when Nita was kil ed?”

  “I done told you, I was changing the girl’s sheets.”

  “Why’d you have words with Nita? Why do you smel like cigarette smoke?” The shape of the package and the lighter were plain to see in that overall pocket.

 

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