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

told you that Wick—well, he left me in a mess, is what he did. I used to get so mad I wanted to break things, but now I find I enjoy my job.”
    I was struck by how relieved and at ease she seemed now that she had somebody to listen. People were never meant to carry their burdens alone.
    We headed home, talking about upcoming changes at the library and some ideas she had if they could get funding.
    I should have remembered, though, one of Joe Riddley’s wisest observations: People usually wait until the very end of a conversation to bring up what’s closest to their hearts. As we turned into the drive, Edie asked, out of the blue, “Do you think Valerie is getting too involved with Frank? You saw them together a couple of weeks ago.”
    “They seemed close—” I began.
    “Too close?” Edie kicked another piece of gravel up ahead. “Valerie is engaged to somebody in the Navy. Did she mention that?”
    “No, but you told me.”
    “He’s away on six-month deployment, and she talks about him less and less. Meanwhile, Frank practically lives at our place, and Olive and Genna—” She paused to take a deep breath. “They think Valerie is letting him spend the night.”
    Now we’d gotten to where the peanut butter met the bread. Edie had always lived what she believed, and she didn’t tolerate single people sleeping together under her roof. She and Genna had had several run-ins about that while Genna was in college.
    “I don’t believe it,” she added, a shade too fast to be convincing. “I told Valerie how I feel about that before she moved in, and I trust her. I like Frank, too, though some people find him a tad peculiar. But since she started hanging out with him, Valerie has changed.”
    “Changed how?” I was picking my way through that conversation like a cat walking on a sticky floor.
    “A lot of little things.” She trailed her stick along Ridd’s newly cut lawn. “She got her belly button pierced a couple of weeks ago. She says she’s fixing to get a butterfly tattooed on her ankle, and she’s talking about piercing her tongue.”
    I winced. “Yuck! But Walker showed up from college one weekend with his hair in a Mohawk. I guess every generation has to shock its elders before it becomes the elders.”
    Edie wasn’t interested in pop psychology. “But her tongue? The possibilities for infection are enormous!”
    “I know. But you know what bothers me most? That we grown-ups have permitted the world to get so outrageous that kids have to go to dangerous lengths to be shocking. Seems to me we should have stepped in and called a halt somewhere back there, but I’ve never figured out where or when we failed.”
    “I refuse to take the blame for pierced tongues. Besides, how can Valerie sing with something in her mouth that makes her lisp?”
    “I don’t have a clue. The only comfort I can offer is that in fifteen years all these tattooed, pierced kids with pink and blue hair will probably look—well, like Genna, or my kids.”
    “I never looked like that in my life!”
    We jumped. Neither of us had noticed Genna coming toward us. It’s hard to walk on gravel without making a sound, so she must have walked on the grass. Was she deliberately trying to hear our conversation? I gave her the benefit of the doubt and decided she’d been protecting her expensive shoes.
    She frowned at Edie, then turned to me. “Did she tell you Valerie is letting Frank stay overnight?”
    “You don’t know that!” Edie clenched her stick so hard it cracked.
    Genna stood her ground, one hand on her hip. “Adney and I both know somebody is deliberately terrorizing you. Who else could it be?”
    “Terrorizing?” I repeated blankly.
    Edie slung the pieces of her stick across the yard. “I am not terrorized, I am confused.”
    Genna spoke to me, ticking off items on her fingers. “First her car seat is back when she doesn’t remember leaving it that way. Then her door is unlocked and the cat is in when