Dixie Diva Blues (20 page)

Of course, he did not call me any names from ancient mythology. I only use that as a reference point so my appearance can be more easily described. For those unfamiliar with Greek mythology, Medusa was a woman with live snakes instead of hair on her head, and to look at her would turn a person to stone.

That pretty accurately describes my reaction upon seeing my photo in the paper. I stood there by the kitchen table for several moments, paralyzed by horror.

It was not at all flattering.

While the photograph did not depict me with my skirt up—it
is
a family paper—it did reflect the pandemonium of my arrival. I’m reared back on one foot, Chen Ling held in my hands over my head, my mouth open, my electrified hair sticking straight out in all directions, and Bitty with her hands up behind me like a wide receiver about to catch the game-winning football.

The caption below it said I was a “person of interest” in Lee Hazen’s death.

That was it. I reread it again, then the information penetrated that the man whose body I had found was named Lee Hazen. For a moment I didn’t connect the dots. Then it hit me about the same time as the phone rang. I wasn’t a bit surprised when my father leaned into the kitchen with the phone and said, “It’s Bitty. Are you available?”

Some people might have debated the wisdom of talking to the person ultimately responsible for such an embarrassment, but I’m made of sterner stuff. Besides, I had a few choice words for my dear cousin. I held out my hand for the phone. Daddy hesitated, then relinquished it, shaking his head.

“Hello,” I said in as cold a tone as I could muster.

“Did you read the paper this morning, Trinket? If you didn’t, you need to. It’s on the front page of the second section, big as life. Can you believe it? That’s the guy Rob has been looking for! Lee Hazen! Is this not absolutely the weirdest coincidence
ever?
Here we’ve been looking for this guy and you find him, right at your feet. It’s amazing. Of course, they got your age wrong—like everybody doesn’t already know you’re much older than it said—so the paper could be wrong about his name, too, but I don’t think so. Trinket? Are you there? Did we get disconnected?”

“No, I’m here,” I said in the same frosty voice. “And they were only one year off on my age.”

She didn’t even notice.

“Well, for heaven’s sake, speak up. You sound like you’re in a well. I hope you’re not coming down with something. That would certainly mess up our plans.”

I couldn’t help myself. I had to know. “Plans? What plans?”

“Ooh, this is so good I almost hate to tell it. When I read in this morning’s paper about Lee Hazen, I called Rayna first. I figured she might already know about it, but of course, she didn’t. Honestly, how these newspaper people find out things before anyone else is really annoying, but since she didn’t know I told her. So she talked to Rob, and he said that since there really
is
a Lee Hazen, we should be able to find the connection he had with Larry Whittier. See?”

“See what?”

“All we have to do is go over to the storage facility on Highway Seven and get the attendant to let us in. Then we can find whatever it was Larry was looking for but didn’t get, and that should tell us who he was mixed up with. Then Rob can tell the police in Clarksdale, and they can arrest the real murderer.”

“I see a few flaws in your plan,” I said.

“Flaws? You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not kidding, Bitty. And I don’t believe for a second that Rob Rainey is going to let you and Rayna go through someone else’s property.”

“Well, of course not. Rob isn’t going to know. That’s what’s so perfect. Since you’re about the same height and build as Lee Hazen, you—”

“Good lord. Why on earth would you think that?”

“Well, my eyesight is still twenty-twenty for one thing, and he was stretched out there on the floor for everyone to see plain enough.”

I’d forgotten that Bitty had come into the offices with Jackson Lee. “I still don’t know why you think I’m the same height and build, for heaven’s sake.” I couldn’t help a shudder at the thought.

“Because you are. Anyway, you can wear some men’s clothes and pretend to be him. I doubt the storage attendant will ever notice the difference.”

I got a bit testy. “I would think he’d be able to tell the difference between a live woman and a dead man.”

“You’re so nit-picky, Trinket. Do you really think some storage facility guy reads the paper? They look at dirty magazines all day long.”

“How would you know that? You’ve never been to a storage facility in your life, Bitty Hollandale!”

“Yes, I have. Once when I was having the house painted I had to store all my antiques so some clumsy painter couldn’t drop paint all over them. The guy at the storage place didn’t do anything but stare at pictures of naked women all day. He barely even looked at me when I had to get him to give me an extra key so I could get to my antique sideboard. You know, the one I have in my dining room?”

“You’re giving me a headache,” I said.

“I’ll bring you something for it. We have to move quickly on this or we’ll be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“For heaven’s sake, Trinket, haven’t you been listening?”

My head began to throb right behind my eyes. Then my left eye began to twitch. If my hands started to shake again I was going straight to a doctor. I was probably just about at stroke level.

“Yes. I’ve been listening. All I’ve heard is insanity,” I said after a moment.

“Well, when
I
said it was insane to go out and spend the night in a sharecropper’s shack, you didn’t agree. So I ended up going anyway, didn’t I? Well, didn’t I?”

My brain scrambled for a coherent response but all I came up with was, “Yes, but this is different.”

“How? I didn’t want to go and you made me go anyway. Now that the shoe is on the other hand, you claim it’s different? That’s not fair.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a thing to refute her logic, despite the malapropism. I knew it was a crazy idea, and I figured it wouldn’t work, but for some reason it made a bizarre sort of sense when she used the “You made me go anyway” defense on me. I
had
insisted that she go with us to the Shack Up Inn.

When we hung up I lay my head down on the kitchen table. I tried to come to terms with my weakness where Bitty was concerned. I knew there had to be at least a dozen good reasons not to dress in men’s clothes and go out to the storage facility, but nothing came to mind.

“How did your conversation go with Bitty?” my mother asked from the kitchen doorway, and I lifted my head to look at her.

“About as usual.”

“Oh no.”

“Yes.” I stood up. “She’ll be here in an hour. I’ll sign a blank check and give it to you before I go.”

“A blank check?”

“For bail money.”

“Oh, honey.”

“It’s all right. I’ve met some really nice policemen lately. One of them lives right down the road from us. His wife is a school teacher, and he offered to see if she could get me a job as a teacher’s assistant.”

Mama stared at me. “This is not really a good way to meet people, Trinket.”

“I know. But you said I always look for a silver lining in the clouds. I guess that’s what I’m doing now.”

“Stop looking at clouds,” Mama retorted. “The ladies in my Sunday school class are starting to talk.”

“If they’re just now starting to talk, they haven’t been paying close attention the past few months. It’ll take them a while to catch up.”

“You’re too old to do well in prison,” my mother called after me as I went up the stairs.

I didn’t have anything to say to that. She’s right.

“This is really insane,”
I said to Bitty for probably the fifth or sixth time in as many minutes, but she didn’t bother to acknowledge my comment. She was busily pinning up the hem to a pair of Philip’s suit pants. I was wearing them, so I wasn’t very comfortable with her being so close to me with sharp objects. Besides, it felt a bit creepy to be wearing a dead man’s clothes.

“Really,” I said again. “This is nuts.”

“No, what’s nuts is paying good money to sleep all night in a sharecropper’s shack where a man was murdered. That’s what I consider really crazy.”

Bitty jammed a straight pin at the pants cuff and right into the top of my foot. I shrieked, she mumbled an apology, and I hopped on one leg for a minute. I don’t know why people always do that. It never helps much.

When I finished hopping she came at me again with the pincushion and straight pins. I put up my hand. “Safety pins only.”

Bitty sat back on her heels and looked up at me. If she could knit her brows in a frown, she would have. “But I didn’t borrow safety pins. I borrowed straight pins.”

“You have enough money to buy a safety pin
factory
, Bitty. Humor me. Or I won’t go.”

“I’m beginning to get the feeling that you don’t want to do this.” She got up off her bedroom floor and put both hands on her hips to stare at me. “If you really don’t want to do this, just say so.”

“I really don’t want to do this.”

“No, be serious.”

“I am serious. I don’t want to do this.”

“Well, it’s too late to back out now. You should have said something before.”

“What do you think I’ve been saying all day?” I waved my arms in the air like a helicopter. “Anything I say to you just goes off into the ozone. You never pay attention to what I have to say.”

“Yes, I do. It’s just that sometimes I have better ideas than you do. Now stop all that crazy flailing around and be still so I can finish pinning up these cuffs.”

It was inevitable so I surrendered for the moment and put my arms down at my sides. Then I had a thought: “Why did you keep some of Philip’s clothes? I thought you hated him.”

“That’s why I kept some of his clothes. I always intended to make a life-size voodoo doll of him and do terrible things to it.”

I looked down at the top of her head as she knelt by my feet again. “I’m intrigued. What kind of terrible things?”

“Oh, the usual. Stick a fork in him, things like that.”

“Regular fork or a two-prong?”

“What’s a prong? It sounds slightly obscene.”

“It’s the sharp tine that you use to hold a piece of meat. A cooking utensil. You know.”

“Now how on earth would I know that?”

“Oh,” I said, “that’s right. You don’t cook. It’s a meat fork.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those. Not lately, anyway.”

“You’re still thinking it’s something obscene, aren’t you.”

Bitty looked up and smiled at my accusation. “Maybe.”

“Sometimes I can’t help but wonder about your relationship with Philip.”

“It had its moments. Now. Hold still while I put in these last couple of pins, will you?”

I held still. No point in inviting another stick with a straight pin, after all.

When Bitty finished, she sat back on her heels and looked at her handiwork. “It’s not the best job in the world, but I think it’ll hold long enough for us to do what we need to do.”

“You may not have noticed, but Philip was much larger in the waist than me. If I take one step in these things, they’ll be around my ankles.” I held out the waistband so she could see how loose the pants were on me.

“Well, I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but you’re right.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Say again?”

“I know Philip had gained a lot of weight before he died, but I hadn’t realized he’d gotten bigger than you. Oh my. We definitely need to do something to keep up your pants, don’t we?”

“Bitty, I’m getting tired of you saying that I’m fat. Stop it.”

“Fat? Whoever said you’re fat?”

She sounded honestly astonished. That didn’t save her. “
You
do, every time you open your mouth. I may be a little overweight, but I’m still a size fourteen. That’s not so bad for my height.”

“Trinket, you always look nice in your clothes. Well, you would if you wore nice clothes, but you know what I mean. You’re just so tall that I forget sometimes you’re not as big around as most tall people. Does that make sense?”

“No, but I’m hardly surprised.”

“See, you make fun of my intelligence all the time, and I don’t get mad.”

I thought about it a moment. She had a point. “Okay. Truce. We’ll both stop the jokes.”

“Not a chance in hell, honey.”

I laughed. “You’re right. So, Miss Fix-It, how are you going to keep my pants from falling down?”

“Since I didn’t save one of Philip’s belts, I’ll have to see what I’ve got. I think I have an old pair of suspenders that might work.”

Suspenders? Dear lord, I was going to look like a Halloween scarecrow. All I’d need was to add a little straw to the jacket cuffs and shirt front, and I’d be ready for a party. Or a trip to Oz.