Dixie Diva Blues (19 page)

When I was able to speak without stammering, I said, “Maybe I wouldn’t have been the one to find the body, but I suppose that poor guy would still have been killed.”

“Have they identified him yet?”

I shook my head, and that drew Kit’s attention up to my hair again. His pupils dilated and I worried that he might be struck blind or turned to stone by my Medusa hair, so I redirected his attention.

“You’ll probably think I’m being paranoid, but I feel like it was a twist of fate for me to find that body.”

That promptly redirected his attention from my hair. He frowned. “Sugar, I’m not so sure about that.”

“I know. It sounds strange to me, too. Still, when I lay awake last night instead of sleeping, I had the thought that the dead guy looked a bit familiar. There was something about him, and—well, I
was
the one to find him, you know? It just . . . well, it just feels as if I was meant to be the one to find him.”

“Do you mean that someone arranged for you to discover the body?”

“Oh no, nothing like that, I’m sure. It was just . . . weird, that’s all. It was like the guy waited on me to get there before he could be murdered.”

“Trinket. Hon.”

Kit was giving me a really worried look.

“I know it sounds crazy. But right before I was knocked to the ground I felt as if someone was watching me.”

“Only a few hundred people were there,” Kit said dryly, and I nodded.

“Yeah. You’re right. Listen, I’d love to sit here and talk some more, but not only do we have an audience, I really, really have to find a bathroom.
Really
.”

Kit laughed and looked around. Two cars had stopped, probably because I took up half the street, but one of the drivers waggled her fingers at Kit and tilted her head in that way females have when they see an attractive man. Kit waggled his fingers back at her. I lifted my brows.

“A basset bitch,” he said when he caught my eye. “Tina. Trouble with her thyroid.”

“Well, Tina certainly looks healthy enough now,” I replied in my best Bitty purr, and Kit looked startled, then he grinned.

“Tina is the patient. Gail is the client.”

“As long as you can keep the bitches straight, I’m good with that.”

As I pressed the gas pedal I waggled my fingers at Kit and made a kissy face at him. I could hear him laughing as I hung a left from College Street in search of the nearest toilet.

Urgent business concluded at the Piggly Wiggly, I returned to my car in a much better frame of mind. Other than a few shocked stares, no one had attempted to berate me as a murderer or a crazy person. I figured my hair scared them senseless and gave me enough time to escape before anyone could actually speak to me.

It was Saturday afternoon, and traffic had slowed somewhat on the court square. Because of the hummingbird festival there was a lot more traffic than usual, but it still wasn’t anything like some of the places I’ve lived in or visited. As usual, the angled parking spots in front of Booker’s Hardware were filled, mostly with pick-ups, and the parking places in front of the Chamber of Commerce and Jennie’s Gifts and Flowers were taken up by nice cars and the occasional mini-van. Over by 78 Highway, I’m sure the fast food places were busy, and the liquor stores probably doing a nice business.

I took 311 Highway toward Cherryhill. Since it was also the route to Strawberry Plains, I wasn’t at all surprised to find myself in a caravan of cars, tour buses, and vans. It took longer to get halfway home than it usually took to drive to Memphis. 311 is a two-lane highway, and a lot of cars were obvious first-timers that weren’t sure where to turn. Signs pointing the way helped, but some drivers tend to trust their own sense of direction rather than believe signs, for some reason. I’ve never figured that out.

By the time I turned onto Truevine Road and passed up a couple subdivisions, I was feeling the effects of no sleep and lots of stress. My head was almost nodding when I pulled into our half-circle driveway and up to the garage. It used to be a barn, but has been remodeled for convenience’s sake.

“Can you believe it’s still so hot in September?” Daddy asked when I got out of my car and up to the porch. He wiped at the back of his neck with a red bandana. A shrill bark alerted me to the fact that Brownie was at his feet, and when I looked down I saw the dog also wore a bandana. Without children at home, my parents have apparently gone insane over the animal world. If my twin sister Emerald did anything but sleep when she came for a visit, I would have long since given her a call and told her to bring one or two of her half-dozen kids home for a visit.

Self-preservation keeps me from making that phone call. I know who would be watching her kids while she slept, even though my parents would rally for a little while. How my sister—who may be my twin but shares only a portion of genes from the family pool—deals with those children when she’s at home is a mystery to me. Maybe she has a full-time nanny. I think her husband makes enough money to employ one, and if I know my sister, that would be something she’d do. Emerald isn’t crazy about doing things that might break a nail or muss her hair. I still haven’t figured out why she didn’t get someone else to go through her pregnancies for her. I’m sure she thought about it.

At any rate, my parents are nurturers. Since nurturing me would require more stamina than they possess, they have turned to feral cats and a neurotic dog to fulfill their urges. It works.

So while Brownie barked and nipped at my feet, I made my way inside and to the kitchen. It’s always the first place I go, no matter which door I use. It’s habit. Even when I lived elsewhere and just came home for brief visits, the first place I headed was to the kitchen. The first thing I did in the kitchen was open the refrigerator door. It never made any difference if I was hungry or not, it was just ingrained habit.

Now that I live there, it’s still one of the first things I do when I come home from somewhere. While Mama may not cook as much as she used to, there’s always something tasty on one of the shelves. This time I saw a peach cobbler.

I pulled it out and turned toward the counter. A sudden gasp and soft scream split the air behind me. It scared me so badly I screamed, too. Brownie barked shrilly at my feet, I screamed again, and whirled around to see my mother standing just inside the kitchen door. We stared at each other. Then my mother removed the hand she’d put over her mouth and sagged against the door frame.

“Good lord, Trinket, is that you?”

My heart was beating so hard I couldn’t answer for a minute. I held one hand to my chest and nodded. When I found my voice, I asked, “Who did you think it was?”

“I didn’t know.” Mama crossed the kitchen to the table and held on to the back of a chair. Her face was pale. While her face is nearly always pale, and has rarely if ever seen a blemish, instead of being a soft ivory her complexion was more like chalk. “I couldn’t see anything but the open refrigerator door and someone who looked like Don King.”

“Don King?” I set the cobbler safely on the counter. “You don’t mean that guy who used to manage Mike Tyson when he was a boxer instead of a felon? The fat man with the fried gray hair?”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, Trinket, all I could see was the hair until you turned around. What on earth happened to you?”

I was pretty incensed on a couple levels. First, I have never before been mistaken for Don King. Second, a mother usually recognizes a daughter she has reared from birth. Third, you’d think my own mother would have more sensitivity considering all I’d been through lately.

But I put all that aside and managed to say quite calmly, “Bitty’s car. Hairspray. Not compatible.”

“Ah. That explains it. Are you out of hair color again?”

I drew in a deep breath and nodded. “I have some. I just haven’t put it on yet. May I have some peach cobbler?”

“Of course. It has fresh peaches. They were so late this year, I didn’t think I’d find any at all. Carpenter’s had some earlier, but then no one had any. It’s this crazy weather. So cold this past winter—although not nearly as cold as I’ve seen here—and now so hot coming up to the middle of September. Did you and Bitty get your business done this morning?”

My mother had switched conversational gears on me so quickly that I answered before I thought it through. “I got the business, all right. Bitty had me ambushed by news reporters before I even got into Jackson Lee’s office.”

Mama turned around to look at me, the spoon she’d been using to dish out cobbler still in her hand. “She did what?”

I hadn’t intended to worry my parents with that. They’ve been through enough lately. Sometimes I think that seeing me and Bitty televised on CNN at her ex-husband’s funeral made them even more determined to travel to far-off places. So I shrugged and tried to downplay the morning’s horror.

“She meant well. Just a few reporters. Of course, my hair looked just as bad then as it does now, but since I didn’t say anything to them I’m sure they’ll have nothing to print in the paper.”

Mama pointed the spoon at me. “Miranda Watson should have had nothing to say in the paper, too, but she managed to print a lot that wasn’t true. Honestly. You’d think Bitty would have better sense.”

I cocked my head toward Mama, and she opened her mouth, shut it again, then said, “Right. We’re talking about Bitty.”

“Right.”

“Well, if I see something in
The South Reporter
about you, I’m going to call up that editor and give him a piece of my mind, that’s all there is to it.”

“Feel free,” I said, and Daddy came into the kitchen just in time to hear our last exchange.

“Feel free to do what?” he asked as he crossed to stand behind Mama. He reached around her to stick his finger into the peach cobbler, and she smacked his hand with the spoon.

“Eddie, you know better!”

“I just washed my hands, Anna. Promise. Is that all for me?”

“You and Trinket can share. And don’t feed the dog. He’s still on a restricted diet.”

I looked down at Brownie. I swear he smirked up at me. He knows his diet is often supplemented with whatever my father manages to sneak to him.

“So,” Daddy said once he had his bowl of peach cobbler in hand, “what is it you feel free to do, punkin?”

“Oh, that’s me, Eddie. Trinket said I should feel free to give the editor of
The South Reporter
a piece of my mind if he prints anything about her that isn’t true.”

“Now, why would he do that?” Daddy asked my mother. “Especially after the last time, when that gossip woman wrote all that crazy stuff.”

I love my father. He just automatically assumes that anything unflattering about me cannot be true. I do not intend to be the one to burst that bubble. Let someone else tell him that some of that gossip was quite true, just tacky to repeat.

“Oh, Bitty meant well,” Mama started off, and Daddy groaned. I sympathized. Any retelling of anything that starts off with those three words
Bitty meant well
, is not going to end well.

Anyway, after hearing the whitewashed version of what really happened, Daddy just shook his head. “There won’t be anything in the paper about Trinket. There’s already been enough said that’s true, and more than enough said that borders on slander.”

He looked over at me and smiled. I smiled back. Really, why disagree? Miracles occasionally happen. Just not usually to me.

So, imagine my surprise when
The South Reporter
did not have a single word to report about me in their next edition.

Now imagine my horror when Memphis’
The Commercial Appeal
had not only some words to say about me, but a photo of me in living color. Right on the front page of the second section in the very next morning’s Sunday paper.

CHAPTER 10

During the War Between the States the Memphis newspaper was called
The Appeal
. When the Union army invaded and occupied the city of Memphis, the printing presses were smuggled out of town. Papers were still regularly printed, with stories about battle atrocities fully listed. Sometimes papers were printed on presses set up on moving railroad cars as the editor and his pressman constantly hid from Union soldiers.

I tell you this to explain the regional determination to get out the news that has been something of a legend in the big city only forty-five minutes up 78 Highway. Most of the residents in Holly Springs read
The Commercial Appeal
. It is delivered daily to their homes, and to coffee shops, gas stations, and wherever the printed word is sold.

Bitty knows one of the paper’s reporters: Michael Donahue. He took a photo of her a few months back when her house was on fire. Bitty forgave him that photo.

I wish she hadn’t.

But since she did, she had called Michael and asked him to be present in front of Jackson Lee’s office on the court square. Now, I don’t know if Mr. Donahue intended to ask me any questions or was just there as a courtesy to Bitty. I can state that his by-line appeared not only on the picture of me in the Sunday morning paper, but also the brief blurb explaining the 51-year-old Medusa-haired woman’s recent discovery at Strawberry Plains.