Elvis and the Blue Christmas Corpse (23 page)

“Don’t forget the mayor,” Fayrene says. “Besides, if Junie Mae’s not invited she’ll go into a swoon on that fancy sexual sofa she’s so proud of.”

Junie Mae would faint at that moniker for her sectional sofa. Still, with Tupelo’s mayor and his wife in attendance, the Christmas open house at Gas, Grits, and Guts is shaping up to be Mooreville’s social event of the year.

In a town with a population of just over six hundred and fifty, the premier social gathering of the year is usually Ruby Nell’s annual hog roast.

They finally move on from the guest list and start talking decorations when Lovie’s cell phone rings. With my radar ears, I hear none other than Rocky Malone on the other end of the line. He’s in a nostalgic mood, and he wants to fly to Tupelo to see Lovie for Christmas.

“You’ve seen all of me you’ll ever get to. I don’t hand out second chances.”

Rocky changes the subject to ask about Lovie’s folks. He’s not a man to sit up and beg. I like that about him. If he were a dog, he’d be a noble basset hound.

Instead of hanging up, which she usually does, Lovie talks to her ex-boyfriend a while longer. I don’t know if time and distance have softened her or if she’s had too much Prohibition Punch.

When she finally tells Rocky goodbye, everybody starts dishing out advice. Most of it bad.

“If you want to get him back,” Fayrene says, “I can suggest a Mayan ceremony. Or we can have Bobby consult the spirits.”

“Flitter. I know what men want. A lap dance will do the trick.”

“Holy cow, Mama, since when do you know what men want?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Callie jerks her car keys out of her purse. “I’m taking you home before you can come up with something else outrageous.”

“I can drive.”

“Not today, Mama.”

Callie herds Ruby Nell and Fayrene to her Dodge Ram and sets off to deliver them safely home while I wait at Hair.Net with Lovie.

“Why does love have to be so complicated, Elvis?”

She rubs my head, and I howl a sweet rendition of “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You.”

“You’re a good boy, Elvis. Come on. I could use a little snack, couldn’t you?”

With me cutting a handsome swath behind her, she proceeds to the break room, where she makes me a big fat sandwich with extra pimento and cheese. That song gets her every time.

You might call my tactics sneaky, but I call it taking care of business.

Chapter 18

Christmas Ornaments, Hair Mistake, and Salem Witches

W
hen I get back to Hair.Net, Lovie’s in no shape to drive home, emotionally or physically. And I’m more than happy to take her to my house. Jack’s still staying in my guest bedroom, but I’m not making any rash promises to myself about how long that will last. My unfortunate attraction has been making itself known with depressing regularity. I blame it on the Christmas season.

Take tonight, for instance. When I go inside, he’s got a box of ornaments on the floor, two mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table, and the lamps turned down low. To top it off, he’s playing Elvis’ love ballads. If there’s anything sexier than the King’s voice crooning about love, I don’t know what it is.

Jack helps Lovie and me out of our coats, then hangs them in the hall closet.

“I thought we’d trim the tree tonight, Cal.”

The last thing I want tonight is to be reminded of all the years Jack and I spent trimming the Christmas tree—those great years when hopes were high and dreams were bright.

Lovie is no help at all. She just shrugs her shoulders and heads for the stairs.

“Wait, Lovie. We haven’t had dinner.”

“I made myself a sandwich while you took Aunt Ruby Nell and Fayrene home. I just want to crawl in a tub of hot water and have a long soak.”

“ ’Night, Lovie.” Jack’s just full of good cheer. I wonder how fast he’d wipe that smile off his face if he knew I’d been up to my neck today in the murder investigation.

“I’m tired, too, Jack. I don’t think this is a good time to trim the tree.”

“You need a little dose of Christmas, Cal.” He starts to massage my shoulders. It feels so good, I ought to hire him as a masseuse for Hair.Net. It would be one way to keep him from getting shot at.

Or maybe not.

“Besides,” he adds, “I can put the star on top.”

He could always put the star on top, and I’m not just talking about trees. I can feel myself caving in when my cell phone rings.

It’s Champ, reassuringly down-to-earth and full of stories about Mantachie’s mayor who brought her cats, twin Siamese named Puss and Boots, to his clinic today.

“She didn’t have them crated, and they both got loose. Boots climbed the Christmas tree, and Puss grabbed the garland. Before I could corner them, my patients got hog-tied with forty feet of garland, and the tree had crashed down onto Mr. Simpkins’ Great Dane, who took off after the cats.”

I plop onto the sofa, lean my head back, and laugh till tears roll down my face. It feels so good, I keep on chuckling, even after Champ has ended his story and is asking me out to dinner tomorrow night.

Somewhere in back of the sofa, I hear Jack moving around. Is he putting ornaments on the tree? I close my eyes and rub my temples and simply lose myself in the soft cadence of Champ’s ordinary conversation.

A click from front door catapults me from the sofa, and I race to the window in time to see the taillights of Jack’s Jag disappearing down my street.

Should he be driving so soon? Where is going? And is he coming back?

“I’d like to see you tomorrow night, Champ.”

“Great. I have a surprise for you.”

My appetite gone, I head up the stairs to see Lovie. She’s out of the tub and going through the stack of books on my bedside table. One I’ve already read, two I’m trying to read but can’t get interested in, and one I’m saving for a weekend when nobody is being shot at or poisoned or electrocuted and I have the luxury of sitting in my rocking chair with a cup of hot chocolate and a little blaze in my Victorian-style gas heater.

“Trying to take your mind off things, Lovie?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think it will work tonight.”

“Me, neither.”

We look at each and simultaneously say, “Popcorn,” then head to the kitchen to make a popper full, cooked the old-fashioned way, served up in a big blue bowl, and dripping with butter.

“Where’s Jack?”

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“No, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Good.” I head up the stairs with Lovie right behind me. We sit in the center of my bed with the bowl between us. Elvis plops on his pillow beside the bed, Hoyt yawns and stretches from his pillow in the corner (I don’t even want to know how it got there), and I breathe, simply breathe.

Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to keep quiet and just sleep on it.

I wake up to the smell of coffee and the sound of laughter. The bedside clock hands point to eight, and my first appointment is at nine. I can’t believe I overslept.

Grabbing my robe, I race down the stairs, pass by my poor naked Christmas tree, and hurry into the kitchen. Lovie and Jack are making waffles and bacon.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Jack smiles at me as if nothing happened last night. Come to think of it, nothing did, really. I was on the phone and he left to get supper. Or take a drive. Or shop. Or help catch a killer. It could be any one of those.

“Guess who sent a Christmas card?” Lovie nods toward the table, where the morning mail is in a stack beside the newspaper. “Jill Mabry.”

I grab the envelope with a Tennessee postmark and open it to find a note from the cute little kitten-like former Miss Paris (Tennessee, not France) that Lovie and I took under our wing in what we now call the Memphis mambo murders.

My divorce from Victor is final,
she writes.
Yay! And I’m back in school working on a degree in medicine. It’s harder than I’d thought. I’ll probably be in Depends before I finish. (Grin) I just wanted to thank you and Lovie for being so nice to me in Memphis. Without you, I’d never have had the courage to change my life. I’d like to come down and thank you in person. Maybe sometime during the holidays?

“This is wonderful, Lovie.”

“I know. Makes me feel all Oprahish.”

“I don’t think that’s a word.”

“It ought to be.”

Jack’s filling a plate with buttery waffles with syrup and a side of bacon. He sets it on the table in front of me.

“I don’t have time to eat, Jack. I’ve got to dress and run.”

“Eat. I’ll go open the shop and put the coffee on.” I open my mouth to protest, but he says, “It’s not negotiable,” then he grabs my spare shop key off the key rack on the kitchen wall and walks out whistling.

What can I say? I’m starving, so I dig into breakfast.

Lovie studies me over the rim of her coffee cup. “He’d be a hard man to let go.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” I put down my fork. “Lovie, Champ’s getting ready to propose.”

“Nothing wrong with that man, either. But I’d take a test run before I bought the car.”

“I’ll leave the test runs to you.”

“Way to go. If you keep on, you’re liable to grow up and be a smart mouth just like me.”

“I don’t want to grow up.”

“Nobody does.”

“I just want to make up my mind.”

“Good luck, kiddo.”

My cousin knows when to offer advice and when to merely lend support. Good friends always do.

She turns on the small kitchen TV, refills her coffee cup, fills her plate, and joins me at the table. On the local morning news, a reporter gives an update on the murders at the mall and announces that no suspects have been arrested.

“Not yet, but wait till Aunt Ruby Nell and Fayrene have their séance. The dead are going to show up at Gas, Grits, and Guts to point out the killer.”

It feels great to start the day with laughter.

“I agree about the futility of a séance, Lovie, but the open house might work.”

“Not unless we can learn more than we already know. I’m about ready to turn in my detective badge.”

“What badge?”

“The one I’m going to have tattooed near the Holy Grail.”

“You’re kidding. Right?”

“Just think of the confessions I’ll get when I flash my badge.”

I toss my napkin at her, and she bursts out laughing.

The TV camera cuts from the mall to a roving reporter standing in a residential neighborhood in Tupelo.

“In separate incidents in Highland Circle,” he says, “two residents were mugged while they were jogging at night. The mugger, believed to be a male of average height, has not been caught.”

“People ought to know better than to jog in the dark.” Lovie gets up to add more waffles to her plate. “They ought to know better than to jog, period. It’s bad for the knees.”

She reaches up to turn off the TV.

“Wait a minute.” I scan the area behind the reporter. “That’s six thirteen, Lovie. Nathan Briggs’ house.”

“That doesn’t mean Nathan was mugged.”

“What if he was? Or even if he wasn’t, why was the mugger in that neighborhood? They have really tight security.”

“You’re saying he was more than a mugger?”

“Maybe this so-called mugger is the killer.” I get up to rinse my plate and put it in the dishwasher. “Think about it. First, a break-in at Nathan Brigg’s house, and now two muggings in his neighborhood.”

“No such thing as coincidence,” we say at the same time, then high-five each other.

“Lovie, I think the killer is after the mall’s original Santa.”

“What about poor Wayne and the attempt on Daddy?”

“They were in the perfect disguise. If you hadn’t known they were going to be in Santa’s Court, would you have recognized the man behind all that fake hair and beard?”

“You’ve got a point, Sherlock.”

“What’s on your schedule today, Watson?”

“Besides baking ten of my famous butterscotch cream pies for the Christmas party at the Wellness Center, I think I’ll be finding out who had a beef against Nathan Briggs.”

“You’re serving cream pies at the Wellness Center?”

“They wanted broccoli bites with low-calorie dressing, but I’m fixing to show them the error of their ways. If those exercise nuts don’t put on a little weight, they’re all going to dry up and blow away.”

“I’ve got to get dressed, Lovie. Call me if you find out anything.”

“My van’s at the beauty shop. Remember?”

Actually, I didn’t. With everything that has been going on, it’s a wonder I remember my name.

Though I love to soak in a leisurely bath and take my time dressing, I’m a woman who can be showered, changed, and fully made up in fifteen minutes flat.

Fortunately, so is Lovie. And Elvis is always ready to go. We hop into my Dodge Ram and head to Hair.Net. Lovie bids us goodbye outside, then drives off toward Tupelo.

I push open the door and walk into my domain, where all the lights are on, the lamps are glowing, the thermostat is set exactly right, and the coffee is already brewed.

I’d like to thank Jack, but his Jag is not in the driveway, so I know he has already left. One of the nicest things about living in small-town Mississippi is that it’s still safe to leave your door unlocked.

I walk straight to the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee. There’s a note by the coffee pot:
Cal, I thought you needed some privacy last night, so I spent the night at my apartment. XOXO Jack

Hugs and kisses. Plus breakfast every morning, hot chocolate nearly every night, and a live Christmas tree I can replant.

Right now, though, I can’t think about the many ways he’s trying to please me—and why?—because the bell over my shop door just tinkled.

“Come on back and grab a cup of coffee, Mabel.”

Mabel Moffett, here for a trim, likes to be the first client of the day. She joins me in the kitchen and helps herself to the coffee.

“I’m so excited about Fayrene and Jarvetis’ open house. I’ve got to go to the mall after I get my hair done. I don’t have a thing to wear.”