To Live and Die In Dixie (19 page)

T
HURSDAY MORNING, RUBY'S blood pressure was up and Neva Jean claimed she was down in her back.

“It's Patti Michaels. What should I tell her?” Edna asked, her hand over the telephone's mouthpiece.

I bit off a hunk of chocolate chip granola bar, chewed it, and leaned over to lace up my white, orthopedic-cleaning-lady shoes. The client on the phone was new, a real estate broker Edna had met at the beauty salon.

“Tell her I'm on the way,” I said. “Tell her to leave the key on the ledge above the door.”

“I thought you had to put together a report today for Elliot Littlefield,” she said.

“I do. But I've been neglecting the House Mouse to run around all week looking for Littlefield's allegedly missing diary. Besides, I don't like being lied to, and I don't like being made a fool of. He'll get his report when I'm damn good and ready.”

“You think he killed Bridget,” she said. Her voice was muffled because she'd gone into the supply closet.

Edna came out and handed me a freshly laundered pink House Mouse smock. The starch fell off in white
sheets when I tried to push my arms into the sleeves.

“He was guilty of that 1969 murder,” I said. “I'm beginning to think he killed Bridget too and staged the burglary as a coverup. The damned diary was probably bogus anyway. I can't prove it yet, though. Jocelyn is still adamant that Kyle Jordan killed her sister, and with the other stuff going on, I'm beginning to think maybe we'll never find out who murdered the poor kid.”

I filled her in then on what I'd learned about Gordo Madison, and the feud between Littlefield and Dahlberg, and how Dahlberg had lied to me about his father.

“Oh yeah,” Edna said. “That reminds me. What did Kappler's office want yesterday? Did you ever call him back?”

I was taking a mental inventory of the cart's contents: rubber gloves, plastic bags, broom, mop, disinfectant, scrub brushes, scouring powder, glass cleaner, antihistamines, and my spray bottle of Fantastik. I love that stuff. The girls have threatened to have a monogrammed holster made for me, just for my spray bottle of Fantastik.

“What?” I said, shaking the scouring powder can to make sure it was full.

“Kappler,” she said, exasperated. “What did he want?”

I really did not have the time to go into it. I dug the newspaper story about tamoxifen out of my purse and showed it to her. “There's a new, experimental breast cancer drug that sounds like it was invented specifically for me,” I told her. “They're enlisting sixteen thousand women from all over the country for a trial of it. I called Kappler to tell him to get me in the study. That's all.”

“Placebo,” she said, reading aloud from the clipping. “Some women in this study won't be given the drug at
all. And they won't even know it until this five-year study is completed. What happens if you get in the study and they give you a placebo? You could get another lump. The cancer could come back.”

Gently, I took the clipping away from her and tucked it back in my purse.

“The cancer could come back anyway. I'm not losing anything by trying tamoxifen. But I could be losing the only chance I have to ensure that I'll eventually be cancer-free.”

“I don't like it,” she said, pooching out her lower lip, a sure sign that we were about to have a fight. “What does Dr. Kappler say?”

“He doesn't like it either,” I admitted. “I talked to him first thing this morning. He doesn't want to enroll me in the study, but I told him if he doesn't do it, I'll just find another doctor who will.”

She went to the back door and held it open for me. “You were even stubborn as a baby, you know that?”

“I'm not stubborn,” I said. “Just high-spirited.”

Edna gave me a swift but halfhearted boot to the butt as I passed her going out the door.

I was back again, moments later, holding my hands tight across my mouth, trying to suppress a gag.

“What?” she said, alarmed.

I ran to the kitchen sink and retched. Ran some cold water over the sink and my face, then retched again.

Edna was at my side in a second, holding my head for me, giving me a towel.

“What is it, Jules?” she asked, brushing the hair out of my eyes. “What's wrong?”

I buried my face in the towel and tried to suppress the memory of what I'd seen.

When I'd gotten out to the van I'd noticed Ping-Pong draped across the hood again. Damn cat, I
thought. I'd gone up to brush her off, but stopped short.

Flies buzzed around as I approached, and a sickening smell wafted toward me. The cat was dead, its underside split open stem to stern, its Siamese fur blackened with blood, the legs sticking stiffly to the side. Someone had cut her open, then put her back on the van, as some kind of sick joke.

“It's Ping-Pong,” I gasped. “Dead. On the van.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, annoyed.

I sighed. I'd forgotten to tell Edna about Bridget's cat.

When I did her face went white. “Jesus,” she whispered. “Who'd do something like that? The kids around here wouldn't hurt an animal, I don't think.”

“It's kids all right,” I said grimly. “But I don't think it's anybody from around our neighborhood. The tires are slashed too.

“I think Lissa Jordan and maybe some of her friends realized that we've been watching her house. I doubt they know Ping-Pong was Bridget's. They probably saw the cat on my car and thought it was ours. This same group of kids burned a cross on a black kid's lawn earlier this year.”

“Goddamned juvenile delinquents,” Edna said.

 

Edna glanced at her watch. We'd spent the morning dealing with this little crisis. “Wait here,” she said. “I'll get my keys and take you myself.”

Luckily, the trunk of Edna's land yacht is cavernous. We had enough room for the cleaning cart plus the entire staff of the House Mouse.

“Call Hunsecker,” she said, right before she let me out of the car at Patti Michaels's house. “I don't care if
they are kids. Anyone who'd do that to an animal is sick and dangerous.” I nodded and got out.

When you get into the rhythm of it, cleaning a house isn't so bad, really. The best thing is that you're all by yourself, with nobody looking over your shoulder. I've got my own little method, my own little routines. And I'd had so much on my mind lately that I was happy to throw myself wholeheartedly into the job, and to resist thinking of poor dead Ping-Pong.

When I looked up, it was close to four o'clock. I took my Walkman off and went on a quick inspection tour. I hoped Patti was planning to entertain soon, because her home was so clean I felt like pasting a paper sani-strip from the top floor to the front door.

I was locking the door when Edna pulled into the driveway. Jocelyn got out and got in the backseat. “She was pulling up just as I was leaving to come get you,” Edna explained as we loaded the gear into the car.

“Did you tell her about the cat?” I whispered. Edna shook her head no. I'd managed to distance myself from this maddening case for six hours, but now it was pushing its way back into my life.

“I'm scared, Callahan,” Jocelyn announced. She'd huddled herself into a corner of the backseat, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her hair was uncombed and it looked like she'd slept in her clothes. “Somebody has been calling the house where I'm staying. They said if I don't mind my own business they'll bury me in the family plot with Bridget and the cat. What cat?”

Those little hairs at the base of my neck started to prickle. “What time did the calls come in?” I asked. “Was the voice a man's or a woman's? Did you recognize it? Who knows the phone number where you're staying?”

“What cat?” she repeated, sharply.

“Shit,” I sighed. I tried to choose my words carefully. “Bridget had a cat, a beat-up old Siamese. Littlefield made me take it home yesterday. He was threatening to have it put to sleep. I meant to tell you about it, but I got tied up with other things. This morning, when I went outside, somebody had killed her. On purpose.”

“Oh my God,” Jocelyn whispered. “Oh my God.”

“Just tell me what happened last night, about the phone calls,” I said. I didn't want her dwelling on the fate of her sister's pet.

“I was asleep when the first call came. It must have been around two
A.M.
Then they called back every hour on the hour until I took the phone off the hook at six. It's a whisper, really, I can't tell if it's a man or a woman, and I don't know who it is,” she said. “I left a message on my mother's answering machine, telling people that if they were looking for me, I could be reached at the other number until September.”

Edna gave me that look again.

“You're right,” I admitted. “I'll have to call Hunsecker. The Jordans must have realized you were watching them, Jocelyn. It's probably one of those kids that hang around at the house. When you left your summer phone number on your mother's machine, did you mention the address, too?” I asked, turning around to face Jocelyn.

“No,” she said slowly, as it dawned on her what she had done. “But I said I was staying at Bonnie O'Bryant's house.”

“Not anymore you're not,” I said. “I think the calls are probably just kids trying to spook you, and the cat thing was an incredibly sick prank, but it's not safe for you to stay alone anymore. You better move back to your folks' house this afternoon.”

“I can't,” she said grimly. “Even if I wanted to, which
I don't. My parents left last night to stay for a week at some friends' house in the mountains in North Carolina. My mother said she needs to grieve. Hah.”

“Call them and tell them what happened,” I insisted. “I don't care how bad you hate your mother, your parents need to be home, and they need to know what you've gotten involved in.”

It was my fault she'd gotten involved, of course, and I could have kicked myself, but the issue at hand was Jocelyn's safety, and not who to blame for a lack of it.

“They don't have a phone,” Jocelyn said. “It's a mountain retreat. No phone, no television. Just piles of moldy old paperbacks and jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces.”

“She'll have to come stay with us, Callahan,” Edna said. “You got her into this, remember?”

Edna, of course, is never too busy to place blame.

“You're right,” I admitted. “After we get home, you and I will go to pick up your stuff. Just exactly where is this house, anyway?”

“It's in Ryverclyffe, way up on the side of this big hill,” Jocelyn said. “The Chattahoochee River runs right through the backyard. It's an awesome house.”

“Maybe I'll leave my House Mouse business card.”

“Oh man,” Jocelyn said. “I almost forgot to tell you. After I finally got some sleep this morning, and I called and you weren't around, I decided to go stake out the Jordans' house again.”

“That's it,” I said. “You're grounded, young lady.”

“No, listen,” she said. “This is good stuff. Of course, at first it was totally boring. I listened to the radio and did my nails. After I read every piece of paper in the car, I ended up conjugating Spanish verbs.”

“Wow,” I said admiringly. Catholic schools.

“Yeah. And then, at about three o'clock, somebody in
a white Honda drops off Zak Crawford. And Mrs. Jordan comes out of the house, with all three kids, and they all get in her car and drive off. So I decided to tail 'em. God, it was so easy. First they stopped at this daycare place and dropped the kids off.”

“Dropped 'em off, huh?” I mused. “Some meddling neighbor must have reported her for leaving the kids with an underage sitter.”

“Anyway,” Jocelyn continued, “then they went to the Kroger, and Mrs. Jordan went in and Zak waited in the car. I followed her inside. She bought some wine coolers, and some Buffalo wings from the deli and then, oh, this is gross. I can't say it in front of your mother.”

Edna didn't even turn around. “I've raised four kids, helped deliver puppies and kittens and I used to help my own mother kill chickens, Jocelyn. Trust me, there is nothing you can say that would gross me out.”

“Rubbers,” Jocelyn said, her cheeks staining bright pink.

“Ribbed or fluorescent?” Edna asked.

“Gross,” Jocelyn said, giggling. “Callahan, your mother is so funny. I wish my mother had a sense of humor.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “She's the Shecky Green of the AARP, Edna is.”

“So after the shopping spree where'd they go?” Edna wanted to know.

“There's this little park in Dunwoody, where they have a playground and a soccer field. It's right on the river,” Jocelyn said. “Mrs. Jordan pulled the car in there, at this little place that's surrounded by trees and sort of hidden. They spread a blanket under the trees, and they were drinking wine and laughing, and pretty soon they were making out, I mean, they were really into it, rolling all over the place…”

“Just a minute, please,” I interrupted. “Where were you while all this was going on? I can't believe they were doing the nasty right there in front of little kids on the teeter-totter.”

“Don't worry, they didn't see me,” she said. “I parked on the other side of the park, then I jogged past. I was wearing this headband and sunglasses for a disguise, and when I was past, I stopped and drank from the water fountain, and they were not paying any attention to me, I guarantee. So then I jogged back to the car and watched them through my binoculars.”

“Remind me to confiscate those things,” I said. “And what did you see then, or can it be told in front of my aged and decrepit mother?”

“When things got really hot, they went and got in the backseat of Mrs. Jordan's car,” Jocelyn said, breaking into another fit of giggles. “First they had to take the baby seat out and put it in the trunk, but the trunk wouldn't close, so finally, Zak just threw it on the ground and jumped in the back of the car.”