Return of the Dixie Deb (3 page)

Great
. After spending most of the day in a non-air-conditioned car, were they going to be facing a similar night? Despite the heavy-handed way the government had pushed participation in this investigation, they didn’t seem to mind cutting corners. She didn’t think Whittaker and Derossiers would be spending the night in economy accommodations. Or stuck in the same room.

Her pop was lukewarm. She looked around. There was a foam ice bucket on the shelf below the television. Picking it up, she grabbed a room key and let the door click behind her.

The outside temperature didn’t seem any worse than inside the room. She drew a breath and wrinkled her nose. Somewhere close by was a vehicle with a serious oil leak.

“…thought you had given those up, man.” She could hear Derossiers’ voice from the parking lot.

Mac and his friend were standing with their backs to her beside the car. From the scent of cigarette smoke, she could guess what Derossiers was talking about. She made a face. Turning the corner into an alcove, she found an ice machine humming as if it were about to conk out and shoved her bucket into the opening.

“…again when I was in Italy and things went sour.” Mac’s voice drifted in.

“Yeah, it had to be a hard time for the two of you.”

She pushed the button. There was the rumble of ice, but the cascade of falling cubes sent her bucket rolling on the concrete floor.

She muttered something and bent to retrieve her bucket.

“I’ll give them up again, once I get through this crap. What’s Whittaker calling it? Operation Double D? Sounds like we’re after a bunch of lap dancers.”

“I know it’s a lousy break. Another one. I feel sorry for the girl. She seems like a nice gal, way out of her element.”

“Yeah, we both got caught up in Whittaker’s obsession about closing his one cold case.”

She put the bucket back under the slot and steadied it with her hand. She paused, her hand on the button. Okay, she was eavesdropping, but what the heck? Add it to her other crimes and misdemeanors.

“It’s the last unresolved case from his career. You know he’s put in for retirement at the end of the year. I was with him when he drew up this proposal and pushed to get it approved. I think he blames the mess the Bureau made of the case originally for not advancing his career, keeping him down here in the sticks instead of moving up to Washington. You know he was lead investigator on it. Seems like there were a lot of leads at the time, but they all petered out. I mean how many six-foot tall, drop-dead gorgeous gals can there be down here robbing banks?”

“So Jan and I have to pay the price for the Bureau’s screw up twenty-five years ago?”

“I know it’s not something either of you would choose, but look at the upside. She’s getting the chance to skate on those tax charges along with keeping her accounting license and you’re getting the opportunity to restart your career after dropping everything and going to Europe with Emelle.” Derossiers sounded sympathetic. “I know how you felt about her. Maybe I’d have done the same, but you did leave in the middle of an operation, one for which you were chief investigator. You can’t afford to blow this. This Dixie Deb thing can be your ticket back, buddy.”

She hit the button and watched the ice fill her bucket.
Enough
. She’d heard enough.

Chapter Three

She watched from the car as he paid for the boiled peanuts. Returning his change and laughing at something he must have said, it looked like even the older woman in her print housedress and graying hair wasn’t immune to Mac. Homemade signs had advertised the local treat as they drove away from Madisonville toward the Georgia-Alabama border. The small town had been the picture of a drowsy Southern backwater, but only a few miles off I-75, its bank offered the disturbing possibility an enterprising state trooper might show up before they accomplished their getaway.

Jan propped her arm on the open window and looked at the map. Moving southwest, the towns of Beaumont, Corren, and Cedar City slid like threaded beads along a northern branch of the Little Yazoo River. Whittaker had circled them in dark ink.

Mac opened his side door and deposited the paper bag on the console.

“Help yourself,” he said sliding in.

“Thanks.” She took one, shelled it out, and put the nuts in her mouth. “I never developed much a taste for these things. They were around everywhere when I was growing up.”

“Are you from Georgia originally?” He checked for traffic, pulled away from the roadside stand, and reached in the bag to grab a handful.

“No, Florida. My parents moved there from the Midwest. After Dad got out of the service, he decided he didn’t want any more cold weather so they settled in the panhandle area of Florida.”

“Used to have a fellow in our New York office from around here.” Mac shelled a nut with one hand, popped the peanuts in his mouth, and tossed the shell out his window. “He’d bring back bags of these after vacations down here. First time I’ve been this far south myself. Your folks still live in Florida?”

She shifted in her seat. Small talk time? What difference did it make? Well, at least it was a distraction from what was really going on.

“Yeah, I graduated from the University of Florida. Mom and Dad live outside Tallahassee.” Hopefully, it was far enough away not to connect their only daughter with the string of robberies that would hit the news soon. “I moved to Georgia when we, I…”
Damn
. “Ah, started the accounting practice.” She picked up the map as he shelled another nut with a twist of his hand. She didn’t want to get into a protracted discussion of her past.

“So we’re on our way to Beaumont?” she asked.

“Yeah, it ought to be just over the line. It’s a few miles off the state highway. More isolated than that last place was.”

“How is Whittaker picking these places? Are they all banks the Dixie Deb robbed when she was doing her thing?”

“Not necessarily. That might be a little too obvious. They’re looking for places that fit her pattern though—small, rural, low security.”

She watched as up ahead the “Thanks for visiting Georgia, America’s Peach State” sign was replaced by “Alabama welcomes you to the Heart of Dixie.”

Crossing state lines to commit a felony—wasn’t there something about that in the criminal code?

She felt his eyes on her as she sighed.

“Tired?”

“Umm…” She rubbed the back of her neck. Sleep had been fitful at best. Even after he’d demonstrated his masculinity by getting the air conditioning working, the unit had continued to whine. It hadn’t seemed to bother him, though. Every time she had looked over at the other bed, the outline of his solid form seemed undisturbed, his breathing regular. If the F.B.I. was offering reinstatement to the Bureau as the reward for participating in this lunacy, evidently it wasn’t costing him shut-eye.

“I’m okay. What makes the government think this charade of ours is going to make the Deb resurface? If she and her partner have stayed out of sight for all these years, why risk the exposure now?”

Mac flipped another shell out the window. “That’s a question I asked in New York when they called me back in to talk about the operation.”

Back
? Was that after his European escapade?

“I read through the old case files and the information the F.B.I. profilers worked up. It’s a story that developed mythical proportions down here. A Southern saga—the Dixie Deb romanticized into a combination of Scarlett O’Hara and Bonnie Parker.”

“Great. Sounds like me.”

He glanced at her and lifted one eyebrow. “Don’t know who I’d be cast as. More Clyde than Rhett, I guess. Her silent sidekick never got much attention. Because it was never solved, there’s still interest in it. Anyway, over the years, speculation has grown. Did she run off to parts unknown and start a new life? Was there a lovers’ quarrel that ended violently? Did her accomplice take off with the loot?

“The marked bills some of the later banks added to the get-away bags never surfaced. The stuff the profiler came up with was interesting. The Deb had quite an ego. After the press gave her the nickname, she stated vamping it up—dressing to the nines, referring to herself as the Dixie Deb, her voice dripping with honey. The profiler thought there was a good chance her vanity might pull her out of hiding if she thought someone else was trying to steal her thunder.”

“That doesn’t seem like much of a reason to risk going to prison.” Not like being threatened with jail time if you didn’t cooperate with the F.B.I.

“I don’t know.” Mac drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Yeah, I was skeptical, too, but then I looked at what the Bureau had in the archives. Not many of the small banks back then had photo surveillance. Of the few that did, the footage isn’t much, pretty grainy, but you can make out the Deb. In the beginning, her get-up consisted mainly of a big hat, sunglasses, and gloves. Later on…” He gave a whistle. “It’s the whole nine yards. She’s really playing it up. In one of the last bits, there’s a few seconds of her gliding into the bank—tight black suit, seamed stockings, heels.”

There was no hiding his enthusiasm.
Typical
male
.

“One of those little hats tilted down with the veil. She blows a kiss at the camera before her wheelman spray paints it and everything goes black. Witnesses in the banks were all taken with her. She sweet-talked them as she lifted the loot. The make-up, her manners, her perfume—she was working it.”

Just the image she’d striven hard to cultivate as a career public accountant. She folded the map as he slowed down and turned off the state road.

“Was it a dozen robberies? Over how long? I know they probably told us all this back in Atlanta, but I was pretty much in a state of shock.”

“Thirteen. Baker’s dozen. She and her guy were adept at staying one step ahead of the authorities. Maybe there were a couple trial ones earlier that could have been laid at the Deb’s doorstep, too. Working out their routine, you know. The ones we’re sure of started that spring and continued on into the summer. Their last job was in early August and, after that, nothing. It was like they dropped off the face of the earth.”

“So does that mean we need to stage that many?” She dropped her head back and massaged her temples.

“Probably not. We should start getting publicity pretty soon. After that, the Deb either comes out of retirement, someone phones in a tip, or we shut it down.”

But still her grant of immunity on the tax cases should hold as long as she made a good-faith effort to co-operate.

“Beaumont, population 670.” She read the sign half-hidden in a clump of pink rhododendrons.

“Okay, let’s give it a look-see. It’s a pretty straight shot off the state route. Not necessarily the best for us. If this is a no-go, we can grab some lunch before we check out the other two, call Jake, and fill him in.”

Oh, joy
.

****

He stopped pacing around the perimeter of the graveled parking lot to watch as Derossiers pulled into the last parking space.

“Been waiting long?” Jake asked as he let himself out of the car, stretched, and looked up to read the sign—Sonny’s R and R, Northern Alabama’s Pit Barbeque Paradise.

Mac shook his head. “We just got here. Jan went on in. I thought this place looked crowded enough we wouldn’t have to worry about being overheard.”

“So how’s it going? You sounded pretty confident about the prospects you two looked at this afternoon when you called.” Jake caught the door and held it as a mixed group of teenagers made their exit.

“Okay. It’s hard on Jan, obviously. You can’t uproot someone from their normal routine, plunge them into life on the shady side, and expect them to adjust without some…”

He stopped mid-sentence. Ahead Jan was standing just inside the entrance. Her posture looked unnatural, like she was frozen in place. She was staring at a small TV set mounted in back of the counter. Her mouth parted, she scarcely seemed to be breathing as the black and white footage of their last bank job rolled on the screen.

“Mac?” Jake sounded a warning.

Yeah, they didn’t need to make anyone curious about her interest at this point. From the bar area, he could hear the sound of a honky-tonk tune coming out of a jukebox. Cigarette smoke drifted out of booths lining a small dance floor.

Leaving Jake, he moved up beside her.

“Come on, girl.” With one hand, he encircled Jan’s waist as he swung her into his arms. “They’re playing our song.”

He couldn’t have identified the country ballad for love nor money, but the husky-voiced female singer seemed to be regretting something to a slow dance beat. He folded her head into his neck and circled her hand up against the small of her back. Her fingers felt like ice.

The other couples clinging together on the dance floor seemed lost in their own worlds.

“Jan?” Her tousled hair teased his nose with the fragrance of her shampoo. Wild strawberries? Something floral.

She lifted her head. He felt the warmth of her breath as she looked at him. In the colored lights from the bar, she looked pale, her hazel eyes huge.

“How are you doing? Are you all right?”

She swallowed, a pulse throbbing in her throat. “I’m okay. Sorry, I just froze back there.”

He stroked the back of her neck with his thumb, her body curving into his as she relaxed.

That was great. She was relaxing just as his heart rate accelerated. He suppressed a groan as her legs molded themselves against him. All those nice curves her business suit back in Atlanta had failed to conceal were way too close for comfort now.

“I was just walking in, looking up unaware…seeing what was on television,” she whispered. Her lips nuzzled his chest.

Damn
.

“It caught me off guard seeing myself in that get-up. I about lost it.”

He nodded. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to stop thinking and just lose himself in the feeling for the moment as they swayed.