Free Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery by Patricia Sprinkle

set, although I knew no tea set ever replaces the one you played with as a girl. By the time I finished, I’d written half a novel.
    Frank had wandered to the foot of the stairs and was yelling for Valerie again, so I let myself out without saying another good-bye. Not until I reached the city limits did hazy unease congeal into thought.
    I had locked that back door. So how did Frank get in?

7
    I stopped by the house to change my clothes and barely made it to the country club before they stopped serving at eight. I was hurrying so fast that I barreled smack into Shep Faxon on the front steps. I personally find Shep’s hearty depiction of a good ole Southern boy overdrawn and often offensive, so we use another lawyer, but he does the legal work for a lot of families in town. “You bettah hurry,” he boomed in a thick country accent I know for a fact he did not grow up with. “They just set out the best desserts in Gawjah, and I know how fond you ah of good desserts.” Chuckling at his own wit, he headed toward his white Cadillac. Shep drove only American.
    Joe Riddley sat at a round table for six in the far corner of the dining room with our younger son, Walker, and his wife, Cindy. Seeing my husband across a room still gives my heart a lift. He’s tall and lanky, like his Scottish grandfather, with high cheekbones, straight dark hair, and dark skin he inherited from his Cherokee grandmother. The tad of gray that’s beginning to streak his hair makes him look more distinguished, and I cherish the lines in his face. I was there when every one of them was chiseled. He says I caused most of them, but just ignore him.
    As I got closer, I gave a little huff of disgust. He had put on the brown slacks and brown-and-tan sweater I’d laid out, but substituted his favorite blue shirt for the tan one. Walker and Cindy, of course, looked like contestants in a Best Dressed in Hopemore pageant. Cindy’s long brown vest and pants were particularly elegant, and exactly matched her hair.
    Sitting with them, as if I hadn’t already had enough of that family for one day, were Genna and Adney Harrison.
    Adney saw me first, and lit my way across the room with a hundred-watt smile that said, “You are the very person we’ve been waiting for.” No wonder the man was a good salesman. That combination of rugged face, smiling eyes, perfect white teeth, and well-shaped hands that moved expressively when he talked made it hard to resist anything he wanted you to buy, including Adney. As I neared the table—holding my right arm down at my side so nobody would notice the burn on my wrist—he half rose from his chair. “Here comes the Judge,” he intoned.
    Joe Riddley, who had his back to me, turned and gave me a considering look. “So you’re still alive, are you? Since these folks saw me all by myself looking pitiful, and insisted I join ’em, I figured I’d go ahead and eat before I went down to the morgue to identify your body.”
    Genna gasped. She must not have been familiar with how Joe Riddley talks when he’s been worried about me.
    I clapped him lightly on one shoulder. “You can postpone that trip a while. You reckon these nice people will expect us to find another table now that I’ve arrived?”
    “Don’t be silly,” Cindy said. She shifted her purse from the vacant chair between her and Joe Riddley. I carry a pocketbook, Cindy carries purses. That tells you something about the difference between us.
    Walker gave me a considering look. “We might let you stay if you mind your manners. But remember, Mama, no talking with your mouth full and no elbows on the table.” He got up to hold my chair, and bent down to kiss me.
    When I put up my face, it was like looking in a mirror—same brown eyes, same honey-brown hair—until he wrinkled his nose. “Phew! You smell like a bonfire. You been burning evidence?”
    Joe Riddley’s head came up, sniffing, too.
    I hurried into my seat and said, to distract everybody,