Drop Dead Divas (12 page)

“So that is when you all decided to have a secret meeting at the cabin?” the officer prodded tactfully.

“Oh no, not right then. That came later, after the article came out. Bitty was just fit to be tied, you know. I thought for sure she would shoot either Trina or Miranda, but—”

“But Bitty would never do anything like that,” I put in from the doorway, and both of them turned to look at me. The police woman frowned, but Cady Lee looked a bit relieved.

“Trinket, tell this lady just how it came about that we decided to meet secretly. I can’t recall.”

As I got close enough, I smelled the strong odor of Gaynelle's emergency “coffee” on Cady Lee’s breath. Ah. That explained it somewhat. Cady Lee had ridden back down the hill with Gaynelle while Sandra Dobson rode with Bitty, Cindy and me. Since Sandra is a registered nurse and we thought Bitty just might come unglued, it seemed the best thing to do at the time. So much for best-laid plans. At the best of times Cady Lee has a big mouth. With it well-lubricated by Jack Daniel's she had probably told this woman everything and anything she asked. Time for damage control.

“Oh Cady Lee, you know how Bitty loves to keep us all guessing what she’s up to most of the time. Going out to her cabin was just a surprise for all of us.”

And how
! I added silently.

“Are you through interviewing us, officer?” I asked sweetly in the hopes that she would say yes.

Cady Lee turned a rather surprised gaze toward the woman, as if just figuring out she’d been talking to an officer of the law. She must really be bombed. Stress and whiskey don’t always combine well.

Before the officer could respond, a familiar drawling voice behind me ended my suspense.  “Hey there, Lucy, you through talking to my best clients?”

Jackson Lee. Thank god! While I had no idea how he’d gotten here so quickly, I had no doubt that we were now in good hands.

“You representing
all
these ladies, Jackson Lee?” the officer named Lucy asked with a wry smile.

“You know I have lots of clients, especially the pretty ones,” came his easy reply.

Jackson Lee Brunetti is one of the most charming southern lawyers anyone could ever meet. Bitty has always said he can charm the bark off trees when he sets his mind to it, and after having seen him in action a time or two, I became a believer. He’s one of those big men who can look elegant in an Italian suit, and just as good in a flannel shirt, Levi’s, and cowboy boots covered in cow manure. In fact, the latter was just how I’d met him a few months ago. He hadn’t impressed me at first, but that changed quickly.

So I gave a sigh of relief when he slid one arm around my shoulders, helped Cady Lee to her feet with the other, and headed us toward the hallway.

“We’ll be glad to answer any more questions you may have once I’ve conferred with my clients,” he said to Officer Lucy on the way out, and I wasn’t at all surprised when he got all nine of us “sprung” within five minutes.

We gathered in the gravel parking lot outside the white concrete block building for a few minutes while Jackson Lee gave us instructions on what not to say and who not to say it to. Then he looked at Bitty and back at me. I tried to avoid what was probably coming my way by turning to squint across the street. An old dog ambled across the road toward our group or the garbage cans, I wasn’t sure which.

“Trinket, you know how much I trust you,” he began charmingly, and I started to back away as if I hadn’t heard. He forestalled that option by quickly looping his arm through mine and drawing me closer to Bitty. “I think it’s best if you go on home with Miss Bitty to make sure she’s all right.”

I knew exactly what he meant. The last time Bitty had been accused of murder I’d been given the unenviable position as her guard dog. Not to keep her safe from harm by some skulking criminal, but to keep her safe from her own mouth. You may have noted that Bitty has a tendency to say . . . unusual . . . things. It’s even worse when she’s under pressure.

“Jackson Lee,” I said after taking a deep breath, “I am not a miracle worker.”

“Sure you are, honey,” he said, giving me an encouraging squeeze on my arm. “I have faith in you.”

Great. Just great.

As I opened my mouth to tell him that his faith in me was misplaced, church bells began to ring loudly. Apparently Sunday morning services were over, which meant church-goers would be leaving church, getting in their cars, and quite a few of them would pass by the police building on their way home to Sunday dinner. Did I really want to be seen arguing with a lawyer while in the company of possible “felons” like myself?

It seemed my fellow felons felt the same. A rush toward the cars ensued, and I was right along with them. Since my car was still in front of Bitty’s house, I got into the Franklin Benz with her, Cindy, and Cady Lee. When we passed Jackson Lee, where he still stood in the parking lot, I waved at him.

I was feeling like I’d just escaped a bullet when Bitty said, “Ashland police must be idiots. They actually asked me if I killed Naomi. Not that I wouldn’t if I’d the chance, of course. I just didn’t know where she’d gone after she made bail. Do you think Billy Don paid her bail? I know he’s her brother, but I still think those two were a bit too close, if you know what I mean.”

I knew what she meant. So would anyone else with half a brain cell left.

“Bitty, do you ever stop to think that the things you say might be misunderstood by some people?”

She looked at me, startled. “Did you understand what I just said? I thought so. If you understood me, Trinket, so can anyone else. Why do you think I said it?”

“Because you have a death wish. Stop sign.”

“Really, you say the damnedest things sometimes. Then you go and accuse me of not being—”

“Stop sign!”

“—clear enough when I speak. I’ll have you know that I took elocution classes—”

“Bitty!” I shrieked,
“stop sign!”
A blast of noise from an air horn cut through the air much too close to our car.

“—at Ole Miss—omigod!” Bitty wrenched the wheel of the Benz hard to the left and stomped the brakes, but the heavy car kept hurtling through the stop sign, across the two-lane highway and into the gravel parking lot of an antique and junk store. Dust rose in a cloud, and a passing log truck laid hard on its air horn as it barreled down the highway. A millisecond faster and it would have clipped the rear of our car.

It being a Sunday, no cars were in the parking lot. We’d come to a halt only a couple inches from the edge of a front porch filled with old dressers, bed frames, and cast iron stoves. I sat quietly while Bitty held on to the steering wheel and breathed hard through her nose. In the back seat, someone whimpered, but nothing was said.

I may have mentioned that Bitty has amazing powers of recovery when she chooses. She gave a brief shake of her head, cleared her throat, and said, “I’ll have to remember to start carrying emergency coffee with me when I leave home.”

We wheeled out of the empty parking lot, back up onto Highway 5, and tooled past the abandoned nursing home and the health clinic, on down to the junction of Highway 4.  As we headed west and picked up speed, I knew that whether I’d actually promised Jackson Lee or not,
some
one would have to stay with Bitty to keep her from talking herself right into jail.

Maybe I could talk Mama into it.

CHAPTER 8

Normally, my mother is one of the most cooperative, sweetest individuals you would ever want to meet. Occasionally, however, she reveals that beneath her sugary exterior beats the heart of a mule.

“I said no, and I meant no, Trinket.”

As usual, Mama did not raise her voice. She sounded perfectly reasonable and calm, while I felt the wings of panic beating against my ears.

“But Mama, Bitty always listens to you. She respects you. She regards me as a co-conspirator and thus foists impossible schemes on me.”

Mama bent a stern gaze toward me. “That is because you are usually quite agreeable to her impossible schemes. It has always been this way. I thought by now you would have learned better, but it seems Bitty is still able to coax you into overriding your natural common sense.”

While at the same time I appreciated my mother thinking—or saying—that I have some natural common sense, I cringed at the implied rebuke that I’d still not learned any better than to go along with my dear cousin’s nutty antics. So I resorted to wheedling.

“If you’ll share Bitty-duty with me, I won’t say one word in complaint when you and Daddy take your next trip.”

Wheedling works no better now than it did when I was fifteen.

“Thank you, dear, but your father and I aren’t planning any trips in the near future.”

Foiled again.

I flopped down in a chair at our kitchen table and slumped over my cereal. Snap, Crackle and Pop had gone silent. My coffee was probably cold, too. What had seemed such an excellent argument while lying in bed the night before had fallen flat. I was consigned to fulltime Bitty-duty.

Now, I love my cousin dearly. She is wonderful and witty and fun, and all good things—in small doses. Enforced Bitty-time, however, can be hard on my ears. And my nerves. Not that Six Chimneys isn’t a lovely antebellum home with all the modern amenities, and within walking distance of Rayna's if I feel energetic enough. It is. I always enjoy visiting. Boarding there, however, is less enjoyable.

Besides, Mama is right. I always end up joining in whatever idiotic thing Bitty does, whether I’m right under her nose or in my own bedroom at Cherryhill. There must be a twelve-step program for people like me. Holly Springs probably has its own chapter; Bitty Hollandale Anonymous. Most likely, however, the Ashland police officer had it right: Ditsy Divas.

About the time Daddy came in the back door from feeding cats, saw me gazing glumly at my cereal and asked if I was getting a summer cold, too, the kitchen phone rang. Mama answered it, and Brownie took the opportunity to nudge my knee in hopes of getting a piece of toast or the rest of my cereal. I gave him half a slice of buttered toast. I had lost my appetite anyway.

“No, I’m not getting sick,” I answered my father. “Nothing that minor.”

His brow rose as he crossed to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. “All that mess from yesterday is on your mind, I guess.”

“Oh yes. Is it just me, or has Bitty become a magnet for murder?”

Daddy grinned. He shook his hands free of water and reached for the towel that hung on a small hook over the sink. “Bitty has always been a magnet for trouble. Maybe she’s branched out since you came home.”

“Lucky me. It does not bode well for the rest of my life if in the first six months I’m home, four people we know end up dead.”

“Well,” Daddy said thoughtfully, “it’s not as if
you
knew any of them well. Or at all.”

“But I seem to get mixed up in it anyway. Imagine, I’ve gone all my life without people dropping dead around me, and I come back here and they hit the dirt like flies.”

“Look at it this way, punkin. Holly Springs is not a huge town. Not like Memphis or New Orleans. People you know are bound to die eventually.”

“Yes, but not by gunshot or strangulation. You must admit the murder rate has probably tripled in the last six months.”

“Probably. But this last one won’t be counted in Marshall County. It happened in Benton County.”

“Well, there’s a ray of sunshine,” I said gloomily. “The Marshall County police must be ecstatic.”

Daddy just laughed and hugged me around the shoulders, then wandered into the living room to watch TV. Morning news, no doubt. Hopefully none of this had made the national media like last time. Bitty and I had been beamed all across America and eight foreign countries when we’d attended Philip Hollandale’s funeral. The fact he had been a United States senator was reason enough, but the scuffle in the church between Bitty and the late senator’s sister had been prime-time newsworthy. Afterward, Bitty had received several marriage proposals in the mail, most of them from men incarcerated in American prisons, but a few from overseas. Apparently, being a rich widow and still lively enough to trade licks with another woman entices a certain male element.

Mama hung up the phone and returned to the kitchen with it. Even though it’s a cordless phone and quite capable of service if not returned to the cradle after every call, my parents treat it as if it is one of those old black box phones with a rotary dial and a long cord.

“That was Bitty,” Mama said. Then she stopped in the middle of the kitchen and looked down at her dog. He looked back at her.  His tail thumped happily against old pine floorboards, and a piece of crust hung crookedly from his jaws. “Did you feed him people food, Eureka May Truevine?”

Without waiting for my denial, she scolded, “You know he’s on a restricted diet and should eat only proper dog food.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Anytime my mother uses my full name I know I’m on her bad side. I looked down at Brownie. He has a dachshund head and coloring, but the body type of a beagle. And the loud bay of a bloodhound in full hunting mode when he spots a squirrel or bird trespassing in our yard. He is also a treacherous little beast when the occasion calls for it. As it did now, apparently.

He dropped the toast crust, his ears lowered, and looked up at my mother with a mournful gaze.  Then he lay down on the floor and put his head between his paws. He really knows how to get to her. I would have tried it myself if I thought it’d work for me. However, I have my own methods.

“What did Bitty want?” I asked. “I take it she’s home from staying the night with Rayna and is expecting me, right?”

“She said not to come.”

Hope danced before my eyes. “Not come? Okay. Did she say why?”

“Yes. Brandon and Clayton are home from Florida.”

“Why doesn’t that comfort me?” I wondered aloud, and Mama patted the side of her leg to tell Brownie that all was forgiven. He immediately jumped up, barked, and did a circle dance as if reprieved from a long prison sentence. Maybe I should try that next time I get reprieved from babysitting Bitty. It expresses so much without words.