Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? by Patricia Sprinkle Page A

were too big.
    Missy had another concern. “Don’t tell Trevor. I don’t want him to pay for them, or nothing.”
    “I won’t tell Trevor, but you do need to tell the sheriff.”
    I had spoken in the process of leaving, so my words were louder than usual. A voice called from the barn, “You haff trouble, Missy?” The accent was heavily German.
    I looked up and saw the double of the man around front—except this man’s hair was silver. He stood in the shadows that filled the doorway, carrying a pitchfork in one beefy hand. He stepped into the light like Goliath, broad of back and thick of thigh. David’s taunt echoed in my brain:
    You come to me with a shield and a sword

But I come to you in the name of the Lord.

    I didn’t feel real confident at the moment that I did come in the name of the Lord. Maybe I came in the name of my own curiosity. Maybe this giant German had been sent by God to drive me away. Maybe Sheriff Gibbons had everything under control. Maybe I ought to get on my horse and ride into the sunset.
    I couldn’t leave without a low warning. “Tell the sheriff what you know. It’s the only protection you’ve got.”
    Her glasses reflected the light of the sun so I couldn’t see her eyes. “I don’t know nothing! You got that? I don’t know a dad-blamed thing.” She grabbed the reins of the old horse and led it away.

8
    The rest of the weekend I wondered if Missy had called the sheriff, or if my visit had accomplished nothing except ruining my whitewalls.
    Sunday afternoon I said to Joe Riddley, “How about we invite Buster to join us at Dad’s Bar-be-que tonight?”
    “You planning to interrogate him about Starr’s murder investigation?”
    “Don’t be silly. We haven’t had a chance to enjoy a good meal together for weeks, and it’s finally cool enough to eat outdoors again.”
    A stiff breeze had even driven off the gnats and mosquitoes, so when we got our plates, I suggested we eat at a distant table under the trees. I congratulated myself on finagling it so we were out of earshot of other diners without arousing Joe Riddley’s suspicions—until he set his tray on the table. “Okay, Buster, fill us in. Little Bit’s ears are flapping.”
    Buster’s bloodhound face looked as mournful as I’d ever seen it. He swung his long legs across the bench and settled himself on one side of the picnic table. He poked at the coleslaw on his plate with a white plastic fork, looking for all the world like he was hunting clues in its mayonnaise. He took a bite and chewed it slowly. He snailed a handout for his sliced-beef sandwich and unwrapped it as carefully as if it were fine crystal. I expected us all to die of old age before he said a word.
    I attacked my pulled-pork sandwich to keep from smacking him.
    He swallowed, took a swig of Coke, and said, “Forensics folks think Starr was killed on Monday or Tuesday, although with the car windows rolled up in that heat, it was hard to tell. Nobody has come forward to admit they were walking out on the bypass last week before the cleanup crew found her on Thursday, and the vehicle wasn’t visible to drivers. It could have been there all that time. My hunch is that she met up with somebody who provided her with drugs, that she reneged on paying him, he followed her home, managed to get her to stop, and killed her.”
    I gave him a minute to take another bite before I asked, “Have you talked to Missy Sanders?”
    Joe Riddley stopped chewing and fixed me with a stare that used to make defendants before his bench quiver in their boots. “What does Missy Sanders have to do with anything?”
    Fortunately, I’ve known him too long to quiver, and I was wearing sandals. “I ran into her yesterday, and she said Starr had borrowed her clothes just before she was killed, and that Starr was going to talk with some Drug Enforcement Agency people.” That got their attention. I filled them in on what Missy had said. “I told her to go talk to you,