Divas and Dead Rebels (19 page)

It’s not that I’m not an animal person. I’ve had pets of my own in the past, and if not already surrounded by furry creatures I’d probably have one of my own now. But there can be too much of a good thing, I keep telling my parents. They just smile and nod, and pay me no mind whatsoever. That’s okay. I don’t really pay them any mind when they warn me about Bitty and her latest scheme. It evens out.

Mama looked at me over the back of the couch when I paused in the living room doorway to look in on them.

“Hey, sugar,” she greeted me. “Busy day?”

“Always, when I’m with Bitty,” I replied. I heard Daddy chuckle, but Mama just nodded at me. “We went down to Oxford for a visitation with the widow,” I continued. “It rained on us all the way back.”

“A visitation?” Mama seemed surprised. “I didn’t think he’d be back from down in Jackson so soon.”

She referred, of course, to Professor Sturgis’s body being released by the state coroner’s office in Mississippi’s state capital.

“It wasn’t that kind of visitation,” I said. “We just went to comfort his widow. I think he’ll end up being buried in New Jersey anyway, since that’s where he’s from.”

“His family must be pretty upset by this. A terrible thing to happen. I don’t know what the world’s coming to lately, all these murders and crazy goings-on,” Mama said with a sorrowful shake of her head.

I murmured agreement and escaped as quickly as I could before Mama got around to asking me more detailed questions. The less my parents know about things like this, the better it is for all of us. Not that the Holly Springs grapevine isn’t efficient, but if I could manage to keep them ignorant of my involvement in the professor’s corpse getting moved, the better it would be all the way around. Right now, only the Divas and Sharita knew about it. Oh, and Lieutenant Marcus Stone. Surely, none of
them
would spread the gossip.

Oh, how foolish I can be at times . . .

Chapter 9

I left early the next morning to go to my part-time job at Silk Promises, the shop belonging to Carolann Barnett and Rose Allgood. I usually work in just Carolann’s part of the shop; she sells beautiful lingerie by name brand designers, soaps, candles, pretty blouses, consignment jewelry and other nice things for a woman’s personal use. Since Jennie’s Florist and Gift Shop across the town square sells exquisite items like baby bedding, fine china, silver and crystal, and gifts suitable for wedding showers, Silk Promises focuses mainly on nightwear and underwear.

Not to mention Rose’s side of the shop, the Blue Velvet Room. I usually just call it the Blue Room. As mentioned before, Rose sells
very
personal items. She usually rings them up herself, but on occasion I’ve taken care of her customer’s purchase and bagged the item. You’d be absolutely amazed at what kind of “marital aids” there are on today’s market. I know I certainly was.

At any rate, I hadn’t been at work an hour before my cell phone rang, and my mother wanted to know why I hadn’t mentioned that I’d carted the professor’s body out to The Grove for the tailgate party. For a moment I was stunned into silence. Even if she’d gotten the information correct, how did she get it so quick?

“Well?” Mama prompted me. “Didn’t you think I’d want to hear something like that from you instead of—from where I did hear it?”

“Estelle Weaver,” I said. “You had to hear it from her. She’s the only one I know who’d dare call you with gossip like that.” Estelle and my mother have been friends since the fifties. They tell each other everything.

“It doesn’t matter where I heard it. Why didn’t you tell me yourself?”

“In the first place, we did not cart the professor’s body out to The Grove for the tailgate festivities. That’s ridiculous. It would have been in the paper and on
CNN Headline News
if we’d done that kind of thing. Secondly, I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Oh,
lord!
So just where did you take the body? And why?”

There was a plaintive note in her last question, and I sighed. “The professor was already dead in Clayton’s dorm room closet, so we just moved him. Bitty didn’t want any suspicion to fall on Clayton, of course.”

“Oh, Trinket.”

The way Mama said that made me feel like I was fifteen years old again and in trouble for skipping class.

“Listen,” I said as several customers came in at the same time and hovered near a rack of lacy thongs by Vera Wang, “I have to go right now. We’re getting busy. We can talk about this later when I get back home.”

“We certainly can,” Mama said rather tartly, and I sighed again as I clicked off my cell phone and dropped it back into my pocket.

“May I help you?” I approached the ladies and asked in my most helpful tone. “I see you’re looking at
Simply Vera
, our lovely line by Vera Wang. She’s designed some very beautiful lingerie, hasn’t she?”

One of the women I judged to be in her late thirties or early forties nodded as she chose a black and red lacy thong. She held it up. “Tell me, does this little string just go up between your butt cheeks? I mean, is that comfortable?”

I hesitated. Dare I confess that I’d never in my life worn a pair of thongs, nor did I intend to? It might be the truth, but it definitely wasn’t a sales point. So I smiled.

“My customers tell me they’re very comfortable. We sell quite a lot of them.”

One of the other women dug an elbow into the customer’s ribs. “Ask her.”

I kept the smile on my face, anticipating a query about the quality, sizes, or if they had matching bras. Instead, the woman holding up the thongs looked at me and asked, “Are you the woman who keeps moving dead bodies around?”

For a moment her question took me off-guard. I mean, as questions go, it wasn’t one I’d been asked before. I wasn’t sure how to respond. So I just said, “Do you want me to ring those up for you, or do you want to look around some more?”

The woman who’d used her elbow apparently grew bolder. “Well, are you? We heard that you and your cousin stuck the body of a teacher into a wheelbarrow and rolled it around the Ole Miss football field.”

“Did you?” I managed to respond. “How odd. We did nothing of the sort. I can’t imagine why anyone would say we did.”

The three women looked definitely disappointed. I grabbed a bra off a rack and put it with the thongs. “These are a good match. Why don’t you look around some more, and if you have any questions about the merchandise, I’ll be glad to answer them.”

I walked off, not looking back, hoping I got away before I exploded. Whoever was spreading rumors needed to be stopped at once. This was definitely getting out of hand.

When I called Bitty to warn her about what was being said, I got her answering machine. I called her cell phone, and it went straight to voicemail. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she wasn’t getting the same kind of questions I had just gotten.

Carolann came out front from the back of the shop, smiling until she saw my face. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice lowered. “You look . . . strange.”

“This is my mad expression. As in angry, not insane. Not yet, anyway. Do you mind if I take my lunch break early? I need to talk to Bitty. I’ll tell you all about it in a little while.”

“Of course, honey, you go take care of things. It’s a slow day anyway. Are those ladies buyers or shoppers?” she asked, indicating the three women looking at thongs.

“Interrogators,” I replied. “Don’t be shocked by anything they ask you, and don’t answer any of their questions that don’t pertain to underwear.”

Although she looked puzzled, Carolann nodded, and I headed for the back door. I was steaming. Someone was deliberately causing trouble by running their mouth. This would only end up making Bitty and I look foolish, and once again tarnish the Dixie Divas’ reputation. Of course, the thought ran through my mind that Miranda Watson had somehow learned about our statement to the Holly Springs police. But as far as I knew, she had no close connection to the police department, only
The South Reporter
, our local paper. As a weekly gossip columnist, Miranda could be counted on to report innuendos as well as relate Who went Where with Whom in Marshall County.

It took less than five minutes to reach Bitty’s house. Her red Miata was parked in the driveway instead of the garage, so I knew she’d already been up and about. And it wasn’t even noon yet. I parked in front of the house at the curb and left my windows down. After all the rain the day before, it had turned out sunny and mild. A red maple had turned scarlet in the next door yard, and there was a crispness in the air that promised autumn had arrived.

Bitty’s front door was open, so I just walked in. I could hear her chattering away to someone for a few seconds before the pug alarm went off. Maybe Bitty was right. Why bother with a security system when she was armed with a very loud pug?

Chen Ling barreled toward me from the direction of the kitchen, her shrill barks making my ears ring. I ignored her as I headed for the kitchen where no doubt Bitty still talked on the phone. That was my guess. I couldn’t hear a blessed thing for the dog at my feet. By this time, Chitling had worked herself into a frenzy of barks and yowls. It was as if she were telling me I’d ignored the courtesy of ringing the bell or knocking. Or maybe it was just her way of greeting me. At least she didn’t throw up on my shoes.

When I reached the kitchen, Chen Ling apparently gave up announcing my arrival. She gave a final snort in my direction, then trotted toward her food bowl. Peace fell again upon Six Chimneys. Relative peace, anyway.

Bitty had the refrigerator door open, and leaned into it. I could see her backside sticking out and the refrigerator light illuminated her feet. No stilettos. Just a pair of nice suede loafers that probably cost more than a small car.

“. . . that’s right,” she was saying to whoever was on the other end of the phone, “she thought it best to move the body instead of leave it there to incriminate Clayton. One just never knows what the police will think, you see.”

I figured someone had asked her the same questions I’d gotten this morning, and shook my head. This tidbit of gossip had certainly gotten around quickly. Since I was pretty sure the Holly Springs Police Department hadn’t put out a statement informing the world of all the details of our confessions, I leaned toward the notion that one of the Divas must be the source. Sharita would never be so unwise as to spread gossip, especially what she heard in the company of her brother in his capacity as an officer of the law.

But which Diva? Usually, Cady Lee Forsythe is to blame. Of all the Divas, she’s the one who can least resist telling a good piece of gossip. As soon as Bitty hung up with her call, I’d ask if she’d talked to Cady Lee.

About the time Bitty chose an item from the chilled depths of her state-of-the-art refrigerator and stood up straight, I grasped the door to keep her from closing it. I wanted to see if she had any sweet tea left. She evidently thought I was a murderous intruder.

She screamed. So I screamed. Chitling barked at both of us.

“Dear gawd,” Bitty said when she saw it was me, “why did you sneak up on me?”

“
Sneak?
Are you kidding? With your pug alarm going off?”

Bitty dismissed that with, “Oh, she’s always barking at something. I don’t hardly pay her any attention anymore. No, everything’s okay, dear. Trinket just scared the liver out of me, that’s all.”

I assumed that last was to her caller.

When she hung up I said, “Bad news travels fast.”

Bitty put a plastic container on the counter and popped the lid. “Oh, I think it’s all over town now. It took long enough. Want some Chicken Parmigiana?”

“Yes. What do you mean, it took long enough?”

While Bitty fussed with the plastic container and the microwave, she said over her shoulder, “Well, I’ve been working at it since you left yesterday.”

I began to feel a bit lightheaded. “Excuse me?” I said after a moment of shocked silence. “You’ve been what?”

“Working at it. You know. Making sure everyone hears exactly what happened. I don’t know what setting to use on this blamed thing. It’s confusing. This is a pretty big dish. Do you think the Entrée setting is right?”

My brain began to spin. I actually felt dizzy. I looked down at my cousin—without her stilettos she’s very, very short—and wondered if she had finally gone over to the dark side.

“Are you all right, Bitty?” I asked as gently as possible. I’ve heard it’s never wise to frighten a mentally unstable person. “No headaches, or . . . fits?”

Bitty’s renovation expert had installed an over-the-range microwave when redoing the kitchen a few months before and hadn’t taken into account his client’s short stature. She had to stand on tiptoes to reach the microwave keypad.

“Of course not, Trinket, why ever would you ask me a thing like that?” she replied without looking at me. “I think the Entrée button is that one on the top . . . there. That should do it.”

She turned around. Her light sweater was festooned with glittery swirls; maybe a less well-endowed woman wouldn’t have the same problem, but I swear, the reflection was a bit glaring.