Divas and Dead Rebels

Trinket and her pals are, once again, caught in the middle of a murder scene…

“Professor Sturgis is dead.”

“Hah!” replied my cousin/best friend/partner in mayhem. “I’m not that lucky.”

“It’s true,” I said as I pointed to her son’s dorm room closet. “Look for yourself. But I warn you—it’s not a pretty sight.”

My warning did not deter Bitty Hollandale from peering into the closet where the dead professor was propped against a shoe rack. She immediately recoiled. “Good lord! I thought you were joking . . . it . . . how horrible!”

I didn’t say “I told you so” although I could have. I was still too rattled myself to take a verbal swing at Bitty. What I’d thought was an untidy pile of clothing tumbling out of the closet turned out to be a professor with whom Bitty had just quarreled that very morning. This was not a good thing.

Bitty peered at him again, and asked after a moment’s silence, “But what is he doing
here—
in Clayton’s closet?”

“You’re asking me? How would I know?”

“Well, you’re the one who found him.”

I gave myself a mental slap to the forehead. “That doesn’t mean I know how he got here.”

“Fine. So now what do we do?”

Since my previous experience at finding dead men in closets was limited to one, I wasn’t really up on all the protocol involved. So I decided to try what
hadn’t
happened the last time I’d been presented with a similar scenario: “Leave him right here and call the police.”

Bitty was horrified. “We can’t do
that!
He has to be found somewhere else
.
”

I rolled my eyes. Apparently, this time was not going to be much different than the last time. I wasn’t that surprised.

Virginia Brown’s Novels from Bell Bridge Books

The Dixie Divas Mysteries

Dixie Divas

Drop Dead Divas

Dixie Diva Blues

Divas and Dead Rebels

The Blue Suede Memphis Mysteries

Hound Dog Blues

Harley Rushes In

Suspicious Mimes

Return to Fender (2013)

General Mystery/Fiction

Dark River Road

Historical Romance

Comanche Moon

Capture the Wind

Divas and Dead Rebels

Book 4 of the
Dixie Diva
Mysteries

by

Virginia Brown

Bell Bridge Books

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Bell Bridge Books
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-196-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-205-7

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 by Virginia Brown
Hound Dog Blues
(excerpt) Copyright © 2004 by Virginia Brown

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.
Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Photo credits:
Shoe - © Jaguarwoman Designs

:Edrd:01:

Chapter 1

“Professor Sturgis is dead.”

“Hah!” replied my cousin/best friend/partner in mayhem. “I’m not that lucky.”

“It’s true,” I said as I pointed to her son’s dorm room closet. “Look for yourself. But I warn you—it’s not a pretty sight.”

My warning did not deter Bitty Hollandale from peering into the closet where the dead professor was propped against a shoe rack. She immediately recoiled. “Good lord! I thought you were joking . . . it . . . how horrible!”

I didn’t say “I told you so” although I could have. I was still too rattled myself to take a verbal swing at Bitty. What I’d thought was an untidy pile of clothing tumbling out of the closet turned out to be a professor with whom Bitty had just quarreled that very morning. This was not a good thing.

Bitty peered at him again, and asked after a moment’s silence, “But what is he doing
here—
in Clayton’s closet?”

“You’re asking me? How would I know?”

“Well, you’re the one who found him.”

I gave myself a mental slap to the forehead. “That doesn’t mean I know how he got here.”

“Fine. So now what do we do?”

Since my previous experience at finding dead men in closets was limited to one, I wasn’t really up on all the protocol involved. So I decided to try what
hadn’t
happened the last time I’d been presented with a similar scenario: “Leave him right here and call the police.”

Bitty was horrified. “We can’t do
that!
He has to be found somewhere else
.
”

I rolled my eyes. Apparently, this time was not going to be much different than the last time. I wasn’t that surprised.

My name is Trinket Truevine, and my cousin Bitty Hollandale and I have lately made it a habit to become entangled in murder cases. Bitty, who is five-two without her stilettos, likes to claim that if not for her and me and our group of friends known as the Dixie Divas, no murder committed in our hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi would ever get solved. You can imagine how well that goes over with the Holly Springs Police Department.

I had no reason to believe it would be any different with the campus police at Ole Miss in Oxford.

It’s mind-boggling how Bitty and I seem to end up in the company of so many dead people lately. Who would have thought that our visit down to the University of Mississippi would create another scene from
Sixth Sense
? A phrase from that movie, “I see dead people,” was taking on a whole new meaning.

And now Bitty intended a replay of a past transgression that hadn’t gone well at all. I shook my head rather vigorously.

“No. I’m not doing anything you suggest. I remember how it turned out the last time I found a dead-man-in-a-closet and listened to you. I don’t want to go through the same thing again.”

“For heaven’s sake, Trinket! I was never married to
this
man. It’s not at all the same thing.”

“Bitty, it’s much too close for comfort.”

She looked bewildered. “Why? This isn’t even in my house. It’s a dorm room.”

“It’s a dorm room that belongs to your sons. People saw or heard you and the professor arguing this morning. Several hours later he’s dead. You know they’ll make that short leap to the next logical conclusion.”

Bitty blinked her baby blue eyes at me. I could tell she hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. Sometimes she does that just to annoy me, but maybe finding her son’s professor—who had just flunked him—dead in Clayton’s closet robbed her of enough common sense to follow the dots.

I sighed. “We really have to call the police, Bitty.”

“Oh no, we don’t,” she said emphatically. “The police might think Clayton had something to do with killing him. You don’t suppose Sturgis died a natural death, do you?”

I made myself look at the body again. It was an ugly sight, and I winced. Professor Sturgis had a wire coat hanger tied so tightly around his neck that it could barely be seen beneath folds of skin. The loop jutted incongruously along his collarbone. His face had turned deep purple, his eyes bulged and his tongue stuck out one side of his mouth. Since his hands were tied with duct tape, I rather doubted it was a natural death.

“No,” I said bluntly. “Not unless he had a heart attack while someone was killing him.”

“Oh.” Bitty looked back at the closet and put her hands on her hips. “Well, can you believe the nerve of that man? Coming here to my son’s room to be murdered!”

“I’ll call the police while you mourn the professor’s loss, dear,” I said dryly. “I hope you can manage to contain your grief long enough to explain to law enforcement that you really didn’t mean any of those things you said to Professor Sturgis outside his office today. Where everyone at Ole Miss could—and probably did—hear you.”