Dixie Diva Blues (17 page)

When I reached the end of the metal table, I saw a spot of bright color sticking out from behind a cabinet.
Tropical flowers, maybe?
I mused as I bent to see around the cabinet. Then I froze. The source of the color was definitely not a flower of any species.

A man lay on his back, eyes open and staring sightlessly at the low ceiling; he wore a bright blue shirt and had an even brighter pool of red blood under his head. Some kind of green-handled trowel stuck out from the top of his head like a bizarre hat. I don’t know how long I hovered there staring at him. It was one of those odd moments when time doesn’t seem to exist, when a hundred thoughts circle wildly and not one of them forms a coherent plan of motion.

What flashed through my mind, however, was the fact that the dead man lying there wore black work boots, and that those boots still had a pink feather stuck in one of the eyelets.

The next thing I knew, the employee who had brought me inside returned from wherever he had been, holding a paper cup of ice water. I knew it was ice water because when he came to an abrupt halt he dropped the cup and it splashed all over me.

“My god,” he said, staring at the corpse, then up at me, “you killed him!”

CHAPTER 9

My hand shook uncontrollably as a policeman pressed my fingertips onto some kind of dark ink pad. Then he moved my hand to a blotter where he rolled each finger over the absorbent surface. He repeated this with my other hand, then gave me a paper towel to wipe off the ink.

We were at the Holly Springs police station. It’s in a new location from where it used to be, a much newer building with all modern equipment and technology.

“Is she being arrested?” inquired Jackson Lee, who stood beside me like a strong rock. Kit had taken Bitty to Waffle House for some coffee after she had threatened to sue all the police officers, the town, the prosecuting attorneys, and the chief of police if they so much as even asked me a single question without my attorney present.

The officer who’d taken my prints shook his head. “Not yet. She’s free to go now that she’s given her statement and we have her prints.”

Rodney Farrell, whom I had first met only a few months before in his capacity as an officer of the law, gave me a kind smile. I suppose he felt sorry for me since I had gone through almost an entire box of tissues during my interrogation. Rodney has red hair that sticks up in a short cut but still manages to look like a rooster’s comb, and his face is liberally sprinkled with freckles. He may look like Opie, but he reminds me of Barney Fife from the old
Andy Griffith
TV show. I could tell he was trying to be kind.

“I won’t leave town,” I said in a weak effort at a joke, and Rodney frowned.

“I wasn’t instructed on that. I’ll have to check with the lieutenant.”

Before I could tell him it was a joke, he left the room. I looked up at Jackson Lee. “It seems I only open my mouth to change feet lately,” I said in another weak attempt at a joke, and Jackson Lee just smiled.

“It’s going to be fine, Trinket. If you didn’t touch anything after you found the body, your fingerprints won’t be on the murder weapon and the police will have to look elsewhere for suspects.”

I shuddered. “I didn’t touch anything, believe me. All I could do was stand there and look at him . . . he had a gardening spade sticking out of the top of his head. And all the blood . . . it was awful!”

Jackson Lee patted me on the back. At least I was still wearing my own clothes and not a striped jumpsuit. It could have been worse. Not that being accused of murder by someone isn’t perfectly dreadful. It is. When Travis—that’s the name of the guy who took me to the offices—accused me of killing his temporary employee, I couldn’t do a thing but stand there and look at him. It got even worse once he called 911, then called one of the other employees to come stand guard over me so I couldn’t escape.

My “guard” looked nervous at being in the company of a vicious killer, but he needn’t have been too worried. I just collapsed on a metal stool and sat there numbly. Not even when I heard Jackson Lee and Bitty demand entrance did I dredge up enough energy to stand up. It wasn’t until I heard Kit’s voice that I managed to come out of my daze long enough to take notice of the fact that police had arrived and I was the chief suspect.

Living in a relatively small town has its perks. The police officers knew Kit, and they knew Jackson Lee, too, and I was allowed immediate access to my attorney while I was escorted to a waiting patrol car. I’ll never forget all those people staring at me as I was frog-marched across the grounds. It’s all a blur of curious eyes and whispers that were probably not nearly as loud as they seemed at the time. Now I know how condemned prisoners must have felt being walked to the hangman’s noose. It’s not a nice feeling to have.

Kit had leaned in the patrol car and given me a kiss right in front of everyone, and said loudly enough for those closest to hear, “I know you didn’t do it, Trinket. They’ll release you in an hour or two.”

It made me feel better so that I could almost smile at him. I thought I held up well. At least, until I was escorted to a small room in the police station and seated in a metal and plastic chair to give my version of events. Apparently Travis had already given his view of how things happened, since some of the questions dealt mostly with the Why and not the How of the murder. When the officer asked me why I’d killed him with the spade, I burst into tears and hadn’t stopped crying for the entire interview.

Mama and Daddy came to the police station to pick me up, and were waiting on me when Jackson Lee brought me outside. It was almost dark. I couldn’t believe so much time had passed, when it seemed like only moments before I’d been admiring flowers and enjoying the sunshine. Now I shivered as if an arctic blast had hit me.

“Come on, punkin,” Daddy said, and put his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go home.”

I nodded, and was amazed that more tears streamed down my face. I should have dried up after going through an entire box of Kleenex.

“I’ll call you tomorrow morning and you can give me your story over the phone,” said Jackson Lee, but I shook my head.

“I’ll be fine, thank you. I’ll come into your office at ten.”

Bitty reached out and grabbed my hand. “I’ll come get you, sugar. That way you can come by the house and get your car afterward. Is that okay?”

I nodded at her, and she pulled me close to give me a hug. “Don’t worry, Trinket. Everyone knows you didn’t kill that man. It’s going to be fine, I promise.”

Once I was safely in Mama’s big old Lincoln and we pulled out of the parking lot and down the slope toward Highway 7, Daddy said, “Bitty’s right for once, punkin. Everyone knows you’re not the kind of person to kill someone.”

“Especially with a garden spade,” said Mama. “That takes a lot of upper body strength.”

I sat in the rear seat, and looked at my mother, who had turned around to look at me. “I never thought of that,” I said. “It would, wouldn’t it? I mean—wouldn’t it?”

Daddy looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Of course it would. Unless you were a lot taller, or he was kneeling down or something. Then, maybe.”

“Eddie,” said Mama, and gave him a look. “You know perfectly well that Trinket isn’t capable of that kind of act.”

Daddy seemed a bit shocked by her comment. “Of course I do! I didn’t mean that to sound like a possibility. I was just thinking . . . well, of what the police might think.”

Great. Well, my fingerprints should definitely prove that I hadn’t touched the tool stuck in the top of the victim’s head, so I really didn’t have a lot to worry about.

Later that night, though, as I lay in my bed upstairs and listened to the familiar sounds of the old house, I wondered what would happen if somehow fingerprints weren’t necessary. I wondered if someone might be able to prove a case against me even though I hadn’t done anything. Then I thought about Bitty, and how she’d been accused of killing Philip Hollandale even though most people knew she hadn’t—or they figured that if she hadn’t killed him while they were married, she wouldn’t bother doing it after their divorce. Had Bitty lain awake at night when no one could see her and worried about being convicted of a murder she hadn’t committed? I’d always thought she never did, but maybe I had misjudged her. Maybe she had done the same thing I was doing, lay awake and thought of all kinds of impossibilities turning out to be possible after all. It wasn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy, and I really couldn’t think of anyone I hated anyway. There are a few people I prefer not being around, but most of them are related to me somehow and I never see them except at family weddings or funerals.

I don’t think I slept more than an hour that night. I tossed and turned, and when the sun came up I gave up and went downstairs to make coffee. Mama was already up and had a pot brewing. She smiled at me when I staggered into the kitchen bleary-eyed and disheveled.

“Looks like you didn’t get much sleep,” she observed, and I nodded while I reached for the back of a kitchen chair and pulled it out.

“Not much. I haven’t seen the sun come up in a while. I’d forgotten how pretty a sunrise is.”

“That’s one of the things I love most about you, Trinket,” Mama said as she took out thick coffee mugs and put them on the counter next to the pot. “No matter how deep the tragedy or how great the hurt, you can always find a bright spot to get us through.”

I looked at her without speaking. Mama didn’t often wax philosophical, and her compliments were rare and precious. Tears came to my eyes as Mama cut us both a huge slice of her homemade coffee cake, poured the coffee, and sat down at the table across from me.

“Don’t get maudlin on me, for heaven’s sake,” she said when she noticed my tears, and I started to laugh.

“You sounded just like Bitty when you said that,” I said as I picked up my slice of coffee cake. “She said the very same thing to me not so long ago.”

“Lord. It’s a dark day when I begin to sound like Bitty.”

We both laughed at that, and by the time we’d finished off two slices of coffee cake and Daddy had joined us, nothing seemed as bad as it had during my long sleepless night.

Bitty arrived promptly at ten, which would make me at least fifteen minutes late for my ten o’clock appointment with Jackson Lee.

“The least you could have done is be on time,” I scolded as I got into her car. The red Miata idled nicely. She shrugged off my reproach.

“I already called Jackson Lee to tell him you’d be late, and he said that was okay. I had some things to do this morning before getting here.”

I looked at her. There was something in her tone that warned me whatever she said next would be either irrational or completely unrelated.

But all she said after I got in was, “Here. Hold Chen Ling, will you? There’s not enough room for her car seat with you in here.”

Miatas are sports cars, and have only two bucket seats and the merest suggestion of a back seat that is actually a tiny, tiny,
tiny
shelf area for important supplies. Like bottles of wine or doggy car seats.

“There would be if you’d brought a car with more than one seat in it,” I said, but took the grumpy pug she held out. Chen Ling gave me a look that said if I made one false move she’d make me sorry, and I handled her quite delicately as I got her situated in my lap. I’ve suffered the Revenge of the Pug before. She piddles.

Fortunately we made it all the way to Jackson Lee’s office without me getting the least bit damp. It was a beautiful day that promised to be hot, and since Bitty had the top down on her Miata, I looked like the Bride of Frankenstein when we parked right in front of his office. I know this because my arrival has been immortalized.

I didn’t even notice the reporters standing there until Bitty pointed them out to me, and just as I opened my mouth to ask who they were waiting on, she said to one of them, “Here she is, and she’ll tell you herself that she’s innocent of any charges. Go ahead, Trinket. Tell them.”

“Huh?” I said, and blinked as I heard the unmistakable sound of a camera click. I looked around, my hand automatically rising to smooth my hair, Chen Ling tucked under one arm and my purse under the other. Somehow I lost my balance. I still stood with the car door open and one foot on the pavement, and I reeled slightly. As I tried to catch my balance Chen Ling apparently sensed imminent danger and began to struggle. This put me even more off-balance, and I pitched backward into the front bucket seat of the Miata like a felled oak. Bitty screamed and lunged for Chen Ling while I showed the world my business. Of all days to wear a skirt….

By the time I could sit up and put my legs and my skirt down, Chen Ling was in Bitty’s arms and my purse had landed on the sidewalk. Only one reporter was left, the others no doubt scurrying off to meet their deadlines. It was a reporter from
The South Reporter
, and he asked if I intended to go into rehab for my drinking problem before I faced criminal charges.

“Wha—?” I asked dazedly, and he repeated his question.

“Do you intend to go into a rehab facility for your drinking problem, or do you intend to deny all charges made against you?”

“She’s not drunk!” Bitty snapped at him, and made a shooing motion with her free hand. “Get on out of here, Wylie. Go on!”