Divas and Dead Rebels (8 page)

“No dessert?” I asked when it seemed as if she might pass up some calories. I like to share my excess with others.

“I’m thinking about having buttermilk pie.”

I smiled. “Let’s order extra plates.”

“Don’t we always?” Bitty chirped.

We do. When it comes to dessert, just one isn’t usually enough. We each order a different delicacy, then half it on an extra plate so we can indulge ourselves with both and yet not require either an insulin shot or a pacemaker to get out of the café. Gluttony can be bad for your health, I’ve heard.

Besides, I’d lost five pounds and didn’t really want to add it back on at one meal. With only fifteen more pounds to go, I had hope of fitting back into clothes I’d saved from the eighties. Why not? Padded shoulders and caftan sleeves will be popular again one day, I’m sure. These styles seem to recycle every few decades. Of course, if the mini-skirt and no bra fashions come back, I’ll have to opt out. Unless I wear the mini-skirt over my chest, innocent spectators could have their eyesight irreparably damaged.

Budgie had just delivered our desserts when Rayna Blue came rushing into the café. She paused, then she saw us and made a beeline for our table. I don’t know how I knew it, but all of a sudden I was certain catastrophe came with her.

Sometimes I really am psychic.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she started out, and I put up my hand palm out to stop her.

“No. Please. I just started my dessert and coffee, and I don’t want to hear anything I won’t believe right now. Can’t it wait until I’ve finished?”

Rayna looked nonplussed for a second, then nodded. “I suppose. But hurry up. I have to get back to the office pretty quick.”

Recently, Rayna had been drafted to help her husband, Robert Rainey, with his business. Rob is an insurance investigator and bail bondsman. It was his job at the last that got him in a predicament a couple months back, but everything worked out and he’s back on the job tracking down people who skipped out on their bond, and investigating insurance claims to keep people honest. Or catch them being dishonest. I admit to being amazed by how many people try to defraud insurance companies, and at their sheer stupidity in concocting wild schemes. It’s the last that intrigues me, since Divas are prone to creating our own wild schemes. Not that we need any new ideas.

Bitty, however, couldn’t wait to hear what Rayna had to say. She continued with her work of cutting our desserts in half to share as she asked, “What on earth is it, Rayna? You look right frazzled.”

Rayna is medium height, slender, and has dark hair she either wears brushing her shoulders or in a ponytail. Today she had it loose around her pretty face. Her denim jeans and long-sleeved cotton blouse had paint smears on them as usual, since Rayna is an artist of some note in our area. She’s also right around our age and one of the founding members of the Dixie Divas group.

“Well, I am frazzled,” said Rayna, and she pulled out a chair from the table to sit down with us. Bitty automatically cut some of the desserts to include her in our feast.

“So tell us what’s happened, for heaven’s sake,” Bitty said, and pushed some pie, butter roll, and a clean fork toward Rayna. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

When Rayna glanced at me I shrugged. “I don’t care, just as long as it doesn’t interfere with my buttermilk pie and butter roll.”

“
Well
,” began Rayna as she scooted the dessert plate closer, “you know how Rob has had me helping him these last few weeks, tracking down people who skipped out on their bond for whatever reason, while he does his insurance investigations.”

She took a bite of butter roll, briefly closed her eyes in what I could only assume was ecstasy, and then opened them again with a smile to continue. “So when I turned on the police scanner, I heard there’s a guy down in Oxford that’s gone missing. His wife claims he should have been home on Friday night, but he hasn’t shown up. Well, the Oxford police were reluctant to call it a Missing Persons case since he’s only been gone thirty-six hours, but they put out a BOLO for him anyway.”

“What on earth is a BOLO, and why should I care about some husband who’s probably still drunk under a table somewhere?” Bitty wanted to know.

“Be On the Look-Out for,” answered Rayna. She scooped up a bite of pie, and said, “He’s not just
some
husband, Bitty. He’s very well known in Oxford, and no one has seen him. I wouldn’t think it was so strange, except that he disappeared in the middle of the day. I did a little digging of my own, and he didn’t make any of his afternoon classes Friday, and despite being expected at a function Friday night, he was a no-show. His wife is convinced something has happened to him.”

While Rayna paused to take another bite of dessert, I had a sinking feeling I knew where this was going. Not even a huge bite of buttermilk pie got rid of the rock sitting in the pit of my stomach.

“So what actions are the police taking now?” I asked.

Rayna looked up from her dessert plate. “Here’s where it gets even more strange. The wife was staying at a friend’s house for the night to help with festivities for the next day, but when she couldn’t reach her husband she called the police. When they got to their house in the wee hours of Saturday morning, everything in the place was torn upside down and sideways, with no sign of the professor.”

Bitty stopped shoveling butter roll in her mouth for a second to echo, “Professor?”

Rayna waved an impatient hand. “Yes, one of the professors at the university, but here’s the best part—there are rumors he’s been kidnapped. Can you believe it? A professor at Ole Miss has probably been abducted, and you two were right there when it happened! I’m surprised y’all didn’t hear anything about it, but they did keep it quiet in case he turned up or kidnappers called with a ransom demand. Of course, his wife is afraid he’s been killed, but the police are still going with a Missing Person at this point. Well, I tell you, the newswires got a hold of it, and now it’s all over the state about this guy.”

Bitty looked slightly relieved and started eating butter roll again. “It’s probably one of those money things, you know. I never knew professors made a lot of money, but I guess you never really know about those kinds of things, do you?”

“By any chance,” I asked without really wanting to know the answer, “is this professor’s name Sturgis?”

My question caught Rayna with a mouthful of buttermilk pie, and she just nodded.

Bitty’s fork clattered to her dessert plate as she dropped it and put a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp of surprise. I just looked at her. I tried to signal with my eyebrows that she should keep any unwise responses to herself so as not to compromise Rayna, but apparently she thought I meant for her to blurt out everything she knew.

“Professor Sturgis wasn’t kidnapped,” she said in a voice much louder than a whisper. “He’s dead!”

I sighed, and Rayna looked momentarily startled before she said, “But there was no evidence to support that theory, Bitty. No blood or anything at the scene, I mean.”

“That’s because he was strangled with a wire coat hanger,” my clueless cousin replied with a nod of her head. At least this time she lowered her voice.

Rayna glanced at me as if for explanation or confirmation. I briefly considered my inclination to disavow any knowledge of the professor’s fate, then realized that it would only be postponing the inevitable. So I nodded.

“It’s true. We saw him.”

“You . . .
saw
him?” Rayna looked horrified.

“Somebody hid him in Clayton’s dorm room closet,” rattled Bitty, “so of course, we moved him elsewhere. They’ll find him eventually, I’m sure.”

Nonplussed, Rayna put down her dessert fork and looked from me to Bitty and back. “This is really true, Trinket?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Oh my.”

I managed a smile and pointed to her dessert plate with my fork. “Don’t waste the pie or butter roll. You’ll be sorry later.”

Rayna picked up her fork, but I could tell she’d lost interest in food. “Didn’t you think about telling the police?” she asked in Bitty’s direction, but her eyes were on me. I nodded.

“I did, I did, but I was out-maneuvered by . . . my traveling companion.”

Naturally, Rayna looked right at Bitty, who was scooping up her last bite of pie. After she finished her last bite of butter roll, she looked up, saw us staring at her and said, “What? Have I got food on my face?”

She put up one hand to brush away imaginary crumbs, and while I shook my head, Rayna said, “Bitty, you . . . you
moved
him?”

“Didn’t you hear me say he was in Clayton’s closet? Of course we moved him. I wasn’t taking any chances someone would think he’d been killed there by my son.”

“But . . . but . . .” Rayna seemed at a loss for words and looked back at me. Since I couldn’t think of a thing to say that would help her understand, I just shrugged.

She leaned back in her chair again. Finally she said, “Do you remember the last time we disturbed a crime scene?”

“There have been so many times—refresh me on which one you mean,” said Bitty.

“Okay. Let’s talk about the time we moved another body. Do you recall how that worked out?”

Bitty thought for a moment, then a light came on in her upstairs windows—by that I mean her eyes got brighter—and she nodded. “Oh yes. Philip. He ended up moved around a lot more than I intended, I do recall that very well. He should have been that quiet and agreeable when he was still alive.”

“Right. Okay. So then, you do remember that the police were very upset with us for tampering with evidence, disturbing a crime scene and moving a corpse? If not for Jackson Lee, we would all probably still be in jail.”

Nodding, Bitty said, “Jackson Lee is wonderful, isn’t he?”

“Bitty,” I said, “I think the point Rayna is trying to make is that we’ve once more become involved in activities that could put us in jail.”

“Well for heaven’s sake, Trinket, you’ve only said that about a dozen times.”

I looked at Rayna. “Do you see what I was dealing with? She had a convenient bout with memory loss every time I tried to stop her from moving the professor. I will say this, I think Bitty was right when she said the professor was murdered elsewhere. It sounds as if he was killed at his home, from what you just told us.”

“See there?” Bitty beamed at me. “I was right!”

“Don’t strain anything patting yourself on the back,” I said, “because that’s the only time the entire weekend that you were right.”

“Not true. I was right about the Rebels beating the Bulldogs, wasn’t I? Even though the score was really close, Ole Miss won the game. The Colonel was done proud.”

“He’s not the mascot anymore,” said Rayna. “Remember? The Rebels are now represented by a black bear and not the Colonel.”

Bitty waved one hand at her. “I know, I know, but Colonel Reb was at The Grove anyway, so it’s not like he’s gone forever. But it’s best that all the students be okay with things, I suppose, and not feel uncomfortable about their mascot. Ole Miss will always be the Rebels, even if our mascot is in a black bear costume next time.”

“Can we get back to what happened to the professor?” I asked when she paused to take a breath, and Bitty looked a little surprised.

“What else is there to say, Trinket? He’s dead, and now the police will find it out, and then they’ll find the killer, and everything will be okay, just like I told you.”

“Uh, Bitty—aren’t you forgetting a small detail?” I asked, and she blinked at me a couple of times before slowly shaking her head.

“No, I don’t think so, Trinket. That pretty much sums it up.”

I leaned over my dessert plate to whisper loud enough for her and Rayna to hear but not so loud people at the next table heard us: “We found the professor dead in your sons’ dorm room, so the killer probably put him there. Why?”

“Oh, well . . .
oh lord
! Someone’s trying to frame my boys for murder!”

“Keep your voice down, Bitty,” Rayna said. “People are starting to stare.”

Bitty snatched up her black Chanel tote and began digging inside it. “I’m calling Jackson Lee, that’s what I’m going to do. He’ll take care of this.”

“Stop,” I said, “and wait just a minute. Do we really want to involve him in this situation? As an attorney, he’ll be honor bound to report it to the authorities, or insist that you do. I’m not sure that’s the best thing at this point.”

Rayna agreed with me. “Let’s go ask Rob what to do, Bitty. He might have a reasonable solution to suggest.”

Still digging in her tote, Bitty slowed down the frantic search for her cell phone long enough to realize it was safely tucked into the neat little pocket just for cell phones. Chanel does convenient things like that for their customers. Those who can afford to drop a couple thousand on a purse, anyway.

“I don’t know if we should,” she said. “Rob may feel the same way Jackson Lee would feel. Oh my . . . what if the killer thinks my boys know who he is and goes after
them?
” She looked suddenly frantic, and her fingers dug into the soft leather purse like cat claws.