Read Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man? for Free Online Page B

new editor of the Hopemore Statesman, and you’re one of our best advertisers.”

    “I’m also very embarrassed. I should have been looking where I was going.”

    “Hey, don’t worry about it. I stumble over my own feet so often, I make a habit of forgiving folks who stumble over them, too.” After that, I couldn’t help looking down at his shoes. He must have worn fourteens.

    I was wondering whether it was the time to tell him I wrote the paper’s monthly gardening column, and delicately inquire whether he would continue to run it, when Vern hobbled out the door shouting, “You can’t park there! You know you can’t park there!”

    Slade raised eyebrows like dark brown caterpillars. “Come see the fun,” I suggested.

    Immaculate in a blue linen suit, Gusta climbed from her elderly black Cadillac and brandished her silver-headed cane at poor Vern. Vern had a bum leg, but he could still hop in rage. “You can’t park there! You know that!” He waved fists in the air. Gusta brandished her cane again.

    Sensing that Slade might be about to go to somebody’s aid, I held him back. “Don’t worry, this goes on all the time. It’s a perennial battle over whether Mrs. Augusta Wainwright can park in the handicapped zone in front of the bank without a sticker.”

    “Marvelous car.” His eyes roved admiringly over the polished black paint and shiny chrome.

    On the sidewalk, Vern was wringing his hands. “You know that place is for people who’s got a sticker, Mrs. Wainwright. All you gotta do is get a sticker from your doctor. Or park ’round the corner and come in the side door. Or park just down the block.”

    “I am not handicapped, merely old,” Gusta informed him, stomping across the sidewalk with the help of her cane, “and I have no intention of walking extra steps or skulking into the bank by a side door. You never had a handicapped zone there when my husband was alive. He’d never have permitted it. Wait in the car,” she called over her shoulder, “and by no means move that car. I will be out soon.” That’s when I noticed Alice at the wheel in Meriwether’s place.

    Gusta paused in the doorway. “Good afternoon, Judge Yarbrough.” She gave my companion a significant look, waiting to be introduced.

    His own eyebrows rose. “You should have told me I was in the presence of the law.”

    “I’m one of three magistrates in the county. Let me present you to Mrs. Augusta Wainwright. Augusta, this is Slade—uh—” I bogged down in the morass of bad memory.

    “Rutherford,” he supplied helpfully. “New editor for the Hopemore Statesman. ”

    Gusta rested on her cane and peered closely, searching his long frame for flaws. She apparently found none, because she extended her hand. “How do you do? Where did you come from?”

    “Asheville. I was with—”

    “Ah, one of the North Carolina Rutherfords?” He barely nodded, but she went right on, satisfied that she’d placed him. “We may be distantly related—through my mother’s side. Come by one afternoon. I’m just up Oglethorpe Street. Anyone can direct you.” She swept past us and into the bank, leaving Vern still wringing his hands and looking for a police car. Alice waited by the curb, avoiding Vern’s eye. I and everybody else in town pretended we didn’t notice the car. We all knew Gusta didn’t need to do any more walking than she had to.

    Slade watched Gusta’s progression through the bank with an amused smile. “I take it that Mrs. Wainwright is important in town?”

    “Assumed the throne at birth and hasn’t shown any sign of stepping down.”

    “I’ll keep that in mind.” He touched his left hand to his forehead in a mock salute and followed her toward the counter.

     
    Any woman with eyes in her head could see that Slade’s wedding ring finger was bare. It didn’t take long for him to be approached by every unattached women in town between twenty-five and forty except Meriwether Wainwright.