As we pulled up into the Ruckers’ driveway, Merijoy emerged from the house followed by a gaggle of small children, all of them dressed in snowy white shirts and shorts and clutching the smallest tennis rackets I’d ever seen.
“Hey there, Jonathan. And Weezie!” she said, not bothering to hide her surprise at seeing us together. She opened the doors to her Suburban and started hoisting the children inside.
“Y’all, I would love to sit and visit, but you’ve caught me at the worst possible time. The children have tennis lessons at the golf club, and we’re ten minutes late as it is.”
She lowered her voice. “Ross had an upset tummy this morning, and I’ve changed his little outfit three times. I swear, if he makes poopie one more time, I’m going to put a cork up his little behind.”
“We really need to talk to you, Merijoy,” Jonathan said. “When could we get together?”
“Oh, Jonny, today is not a good day,” she said. “I’ve got to drop the children at the club for their lessons, then I have to race over to the cleaners before they close at noon. And I’ve got to look at some wallpaper samples for the downstairs powder room, and then I’ve got to pick up a wedding gift for Randy’s niece—the wedding’s tonight at St. John’s and I’ve got a nail appointment—”
“It’s about Beaulieu,” I said, being deliberately rude. “How about if we just ride along with you on your errands? It’s really important, Merijoy. You could help us stop Gerry Blankenship and the Mayhews from tearing down Beaulieu.”
Her eyes widened. “But I thought it was all settled. The environmental impact statement hasn’t been approved. They can’t dredge the rice canals without that.”
“They’ve got a demolition permit to raze the house,” Jonathan said bluntly. “The bulldozers are already on the premises.”
“Good Lord,” she said. She poked her head inside the car. “Rodney and Renee, be Mommy’s little angels and climb in the way back, will you? Miss Weezie and Mr. Jonathan are going to go for a ride with us. Isn’t that exciting?”
Jonathan got to ride shotgun. I got wedged in the backseat between the twins, Rachel and Ross. Ross eyed me suspiciously from behind pale wheat-colored bangs that fell over his eyes.
“Hello,” I said, trying to be friendly.
“Go away,” he whined, turning his head away from me.
Once we’d unloaded the kids and picked up Randy Rucker’s tuxedo at the dry cleaners, we went to the Krispy Chik for a friendly little lunch chat.
“You know, Jonny,” Merijoy said, dipping a french fry in some ketchup, “I’d do anything to save Beaulieu. I’m dead serious about that. I know people think that Merijoy Rucker is just a flake, a rich do-gooder with too much time on her hands; but Beaulieu means something to me. It’s the last great intact antebellum rice plantation in the low country. I’ve done my research. There’s not another place like it; not in Georgia or Florida or South Carolina. There are a couple in Louisiana, but that’s it. What can I do to help, Jonny?”
“Do what you do best,” Jonathan said. “Run your mouth.”
“Now you sound like Randy Rucker,” she said crossly.
“I’m serious,” Jonathan said. “You’ve got the best contacts in town. And I’ve got some ammunition for you.”
“Like what?”
“Remember the day we met at Beaulieu, during Anna Ruby’s memorial service?” I said, butting in. “I saw you snooping around that day, taking pictures and samples of wallpaper. Do you still have any of that?”
“Of course,” she said. “At the time I was still under the impression that the preservation league might be able to acquire Beaulieu as a living-history museum. I wanted to start documenting things. For the fund-raising campaign.”
“Those photos could prove that the house was deliberately stripped,” Jonathan said. “And if we could prove that, maybe the preservation league could do something to get the county to withdraw the demolition permit.”
“Lord knows, I’ve tried everything else to stop Phipps Mayhew. Including some things I’m not too proud of,” she said, making a wry face.
“Like what?” I asked.
She turned around in her seat so she could face me. “I wasn’t ever going to tell anybody about this. Ever. Especially not you, Weezie. After you were arrested, and it looked like they might actually charge you with killing Caroline DeSantos, I nearly died of shame. And guilt.
“You know that day we ran into each other in Kroger?” she asked. “That was no coincidence. I deliberately followed you into the store so that I could act like I’d bumped into you and invite you to dinner. I had the whole thing planned out. I had to do something nice to make it up to you for spending the night in jail.”
“Why should you feel guilty about me being arrested?” I asked. “I’m the one who climbed in the window and went in the house.”
She lowered her eyes, then cut them over to Jonathan.
“Jonny, if I tell you something, will you keep it just between the three of us? If Randy ever found out what kind of crazy stunt I pulled, I swear he’d have me locked up in the funny farm.”
Jonathan laughed easily. “I won’t say anything to Randy. Unless you’re about to confess you’re the one who killed Caroline.”
She tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. A nervous gesture, because every hair on Merijoy Rucker’s head belonged right where it was.
“I didn’t kill her, but honestly, I was so angry at her, at the way she was, that I wanted to. Of all the scheming, conniving Yankee tramps to hit this town, Caroline DeSantos was the worst. That’s speaking ill of the dead, but it’s true.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“What Jonny said. I used my God-given snooping talents. It wasn’t even hard. She was such a trashy thing, she hardly ever bothered to be discreet.”
“Discreet about what? Sleeping with Tal and wrecking my marriage?”
Merijoy looked a little uneasy. “No, honey, that she was sleeping with Phipps Mayhew.”
“What?” Jonathan and I said it together.
“Oh yes. They were quite the hot item. At one point they even went house hunting together.”
“So that’s who Anna and Emily’s mystery client was,” Jonathan said.
“Why didn’t you say something the night of the supper club?”
“Because I already knew too much,” Merijoy said. “I didn’t want you asking a lot of questions I couldn’t answer.”
“What else do you know about Caroline and Phipps Mayhew?” I asked.
“He was wild about her,” Merijoy said. “I saw a program about it, on Oprah. They were talking about sexual obsession. That’s what I think it must have been like for those two. It was indecent. They had sex everywhere, like a couple of animals in heat. In his office, at her office, at his house at Turner’s Rock, even at your house, Weezie—I mean, Tal’s house. They even did it at Beaulieu, right there in the parlor.” Her face was now pink with indignation.
“How do you know all this?” I asked, getting a queasy feeling.
“I followed her,” Merijoy said. “That little yellow Triumph of hers was like a big old neon arrow. All I had to do was look for that yellow car. God, a couple of times they nearly spotted me, peeking in windows at the two of them just banging away. In broad daylight!”
Jonathan’s lips twitched. “What did you intend to do about them?”
Merijoy nibbled at the cuticle around her thumbnail. “It wasn’t really blackmail,” she said finally. “I wasn’t demanding money or anything. I just wanted to put a stop to that paper plant.”
“Tell me what happened,” Jonathan said, now straight-faced.
“The day before the sale at Beaulieu, I finally got up the nerve to call Caroline,” Merijoy said. “I thought it was my last chance to stop the estate sale. No offense, Weezie, but it killed me to think of all the Mullinax things being carted away from the house. Think of it—all the original furnishings, gone. I called Caroline at her office. And I told her I had a matter we needed to discuss.
“She told me she didn’t have time for any of my hysterical historical nonsense. So I just told her she’d better get down off her high horse and meet me, because I knew all about her affair with Phipps Mayhew. That got her attention.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I told her to meet me out at Beaulieu,” Merijoy said. “At first she flat out refused. Then I told her that if she didn’t meet me, I’d tell Tal and Diane Mayhew about the affair. That’s when Caroline changed her tune.”
“Did you actually see her that night?”
“No,” Merijoy said. “I got to the house at eight o’clock, like we’d arranged. I went inside and waited. But it was pitch black. I waited and waited. Finally, at nine, I didn’t dare stay any later. I went home. And the next morning, I saw on the news that Caroline was dead. And they’d arrested you, Weezie.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell Jonathan right then what you knew?”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “I couldn’t. If Randy knew I’d been sneaking around, spying on people, threatening them, he’d have a fit. An absolute fit. Anyway, I didn’t know who killed Caroline.”
“You knew who had a good motive,” I said coldly.
She sniffed a little, and wiped at her eyes with a balled-up paper napkin.
“Honey, please don’t be mad at me,” she pleaded. “I’ll help you now. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. All right?”