Dixie Diva Blues (23 page)

Truthfully, this wasn’t my first arrest. Oh, never for anything as bad as murder or burglary, but I had met my ex-husband many years ago at a rally for Greenpeace. We met again at another rally, and discovered we both shared an aptitude for civil disobedience. It was Kismet. Our stars were aligned, our planets compatible, our horoscopes in tune, and the first time I saw him without his shirt, I was in love. My parents were appalled. Not so much by my choice of mate, but by our mutual affinity for sit-ins.

It seems that Truevines have avoided public scandals for quite a few decades, and my father’s reaction to his daughter being arrested for chaining herself to a landmark about to be demolished did nothing to enhance the family reputation. In my defense, I’ll say only that I was nineteen and in college, and it was the seventies. Since then, I have done my best to stay un-arrested and out of jail.

Not only that, but I have a horror of public scenes that involve family members. If and when Bitty involves me in one of her favorite attention-drawing dramas, I do my best to fade unnoticed into the wallpaper or brick or whatever is closest. This, of course, is a complete contradiction to my early years. I cannot explain it. I’d like to think as I’ve grown older I have also grown wiser, but seeing as how I still find myself in foolish predicaments, I’m afraid not even my father could believe that explanation.

Once the arresting officer had finished reading off my Miranda rights, he started walking me toward a patrol car. That was when I discovered one source of their earlier amusement. One of my suspenders had been torn loose. Not only that, the pants legs that Bitty had so carefully pinned were unraveling. With each step I took, another pin fell out. I stumbled over the longer length, and the officer held tightly to my arm.

“Just keep ’em up until I get you in a car,” he said, as if I had any control over the unraveling material.

“I can’t,” I started to say, but as I was pushed forward another step I stomped on a flapping cuff and felt Philip’s pants jerk downward. My remaining suspender lost its grip; the length of red elastic snapped up with a vengeance just as the officer leaned forward to catch me. The metal clip caught him on the end of his nose.

He immediately released my arm and grabbed his nose. “I’ve been shot!”

When he’d released my arm I lost my sole source of support. I hit the gravel and weeds on my knees. Believe me when I say that’s not an enjoyable experience. Since I was at a distinct disadvantage, I wasn’t as charitable as I might have been about the officer’s injury.

“You haven’t been shot,” I said sharply, “my suspender broke. Now help me up from here before half of Marshall County sees my underwear.”

It took him a moment to be convinced he hadn’t been shot in the nose, but finally he leaned down to lift me to my feet. Fortunately, he grabbed me by the baggy trousers, too, so that I was saved the humiliation of showing off my hot pink Hanes.

I usually wear white Hanes. I recently decided to stretch my boundaries.

When he put me in the backseat of a patrol car, I noticed that quite a little crowd had begun to gather around the storage facility. From my front-row seat, so to speak, I saw my dear cousin talking to police officers. Two wore uniforms, but one wore jeans and a sports jacket and I assumed he must be a detective since he kept taking notes. I wanted to think Bitty was explaining everything and that I’d soon be released once the police learned I wasn’t guilty of anything more than extremely bad judgment.

That’s what I
wanted
to think.

Experience, however, had taught me that Bitty’s acquaintance with the truth is often subjective. So I waited and watched, and in a few minutes the plain clothes officer approached the patrol car where I was sitting. He looked vaguely familiar to me, but for a moment I couldn’t place him.

It wasn’t until he knelt beside the car that I recognized him: my cousin Jake Hankins. Jake is really my second cousin, not my first, but since it gets tedious trying to go back through generations, marriages, births, divorces, and so on, any relative or near-relative is just called cousin. Honorary titles of aunt and uncle are also bestowed on those kind of kin-people, whether or not we’re actually blood-relatives. This seems to be more of a southern custom than in other parts of the country where I’ve lived. I’m not sure why. Once in a while a rude person will occasionally hazard the guess that it’s because we
are
all related in the South, but those individuals are ignored and not invited back.

Anyway, Jake squatted on the ground to be eye-level with me, and his smile was encouraging. “Hey, cuz. Looks like you’re in a bit of a mess here.”

I nodded. “Looks like. I didn’t know you’re on the Holly Springs police force.”

“Yeah, my daddy didn’t want anybody in the family to know about it for a while.”

I understood. His daddy, my “Uncle” Ralph, used to keep a moonshine still out in the back of his barn. He did a thriving business until ATF officials shut him down.

“I guess he’s still bitter,” I said, and Jake nodded.

“Pretty much. He’ll get over it.”

I doubted it. It’d been over twenty years since the last raid that had gotten his still busted into pieces and Uncle Ralph thirty days picking up trash along 78 Highway with the other prisoners.

Jake scratched his head and said, “Bitty tells me that you’re in disguise for a good reason.”

“Did she actually say it was a good reason?”

“Not exactly. But you know how she is.” Jake’s brown eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned at me. I sighed.

“Yes, I do know how she is. I suppose you know we’re trying to help Rob Rainey prove he didn’t murder Larry Whittier.”

“Yep. I know. I hate to tell you this, but no one on the force thinks that’s a good thing, Trinket. In fact, I’ve heard rumors of pressing charges for police interference. It’s hard enough doing our jobs without amateurs meddling in cases and either getting in big trouble, or causing big trouble.”

All I could do was agree. I knew he was right. He just had to convince Bitty.

“I’m sorry, Jake. Really. I’ll step back and let the police handle things.”

“See, the thing is, we had this storage facility staked out. The attendant was instructed to call her manager should anyone claiming to be Lee Hazen show up asking for a key. The manager then called us. We don’t know how many people are involved in this thing, and we’ve got it under investigation. You and Bitty blew our trap, so now the likelihood of anyone else coming here is next to none.”

Now I felt really bad.

“So,” Jake continued, and stood up beside the cruiser, “we have to go in another direction.”

I looked up at him. Jake is pretty tall, and looked even taller since I was sitting in the back of a police car. There’s something about that I find intimidating.

“I understand, Jake,” I said.

“Good. Now get it through Bitty’s hard head and my life will get a lot easier.” He hesitated, then leaned forward to say in a low voice, “Seeing as how she’s a senator’s ex-wife and still has a lot of political connections, as well as being my cousin, no one wants to see her in jail less than I do. But dammit, Trinket, if she doesn’t stop pulling these hare-brained stunts, that’s where she’s going to end up, and you along with her if you don’t have any better sense than to go along. Every time you two get your names in the paper, we get a call or two from one of her buddies in Congress. It puts everybody in an awkward position. See what I mean?”

“I do.”

“Good. Then I know you’ll take care of it. Come on. I’ll walk you back to your car.”

My head got light. “I’m getting to leave?”

“Yep. But don’t be too conspicuous about it. Some of our officers aren’t too happy about you and Bitty ruining our trap. Oh, and Trinket,” he added as I got out of the car and turned around for him to undo my cuffs, “next time you impersonate a man, try to get the mustache in the right place.”

“Huh?” I rubbed my chafed wrists as I turned to look at him, and Jake pointed at my face.

“Your disguise is off-center.”

I felt my cheek, and sure enough, a bristle of hair stuck fast to my skin. I tugged at it, but it didn’t move. I crossed my eyes and tried to look at it, but that only made my head hurt, so I pulled at it again. It didn’t budge.

“Well,” I said after a second or two of futile tugging, “at least this explains why the officer who arrested me was laughing.”

“Evans laughs at everything anyway. But yeah, I think it’s safe to say they knew right off you weren’t a criminal mastermind.”

“How humiliating.”

“Remember what I said, okay?” Jake reminded after he walked me to my car and I got in and shut my door. “I’m counting on you.”

Bitty, who sat beside me in the passenger seat, stuck her head forward to ask out my car window, “Are we being deputized?”

Jake opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again and shook his head. “You can tell her,” he said to me, and walked back toward the officers still at the scene.

I looked over at Bitty. She looked back at me and blinked. Then she hit me with a folded sheet of paper, right in the face.

“Hold still,” she said when I jerked back, “you’ve got a bug on your cheek.”

“That’s my mustache,” I said from behind my folded arms. They acted as a barrier to keep her from swatting me again. “You glued it to my cheek, Bitty.”

“I did not.” She sounded indignant. “I glued it right under your nose, where it’s supposed to be. You must have moved it.”

I put my arms down, though I watched her warily in case she came at me with the folded paper again. “Why would I do that? Besides, eyelash glue isn’t that strong. It must have gotten smeared when I was being cuffed and searched—which leads me to question why you were not cuffed and searched, and I was?”

“Because I ran out the door, remember? Jake recognized me right off. He thought at first I was being held hostage by the same guy who killed Larry Whittier, and probably killed Lee Hazen, too, though he didn’t say that. And I was out of eyelash glue, so used a tube of super glue. Are we being deputized, or not?”

“Not. What do you mean you used super glue?”

“Honestly, Trinket, getting a straight answer from you can be so trying. Oh look, that officer is motioning for us to leave. So many police cars here . . . and I suppose those guys who look like Darth Vader are the SWAT team.”

I flipped down my sun visor and opened the mirror. At first I didn’t recognize the face looking back at me. My reflection greatly resembled a Picasso painting. Part of the mustache remained under my nose; a few straggly wisps of brown mink hair from Bitty’s makeup brush clung randomly to my upper lip. On my left cheek, a curved strip of black eyelashes sprouted like a centipede marching across my face. A bright pink rash adorned my face wherever mink hair or fake eyelashes had been glued.

Any effort to remove the centipede from my cheek met with failure and I snapped the mirror shut. I ground my teeth to keep from saying the first thing that came to mind, but words that sounded alien still managed to work free of my mouth.

I have no idea what I said, but whatever it was must have been good because Bitty sucked in a sharp breath and shrank back against the passenger side door.

Instead of strangling my dear cousin, I started my car and drove slowly and carefully through the small battalion of uniforms. This little exercise had probably cost Marshall County a small fortune in manpower. Maybe I should suggest that Bitty pay the tab. It certainly seemed fair.

CHAPTER 12

I was still nursing my left cheek when I happened to run into Carolann at Budgie’s café one morning. It had been three days since my arrest at the storage unit, and my psyche had almost healed. Unfortunately, Bitty’s cosmetic changes were taking much longer. Even though I wore new sandals, a long, cream-colored cotton skirt and blue tunic top belted at the waist, and had taken particular care with my makeup and hair before leaving home, Carolann’s gaze went directly to the pink strip of skin below my left eye. It had barely begun to heal. Despite my disfigurement, she seemed glad to see me.

“Why, Trinket! I’ve been thinking about you.”

When someone says that to me lately, I generally assume there’s been another article in the paper with a photo of me in some hideous pose, so I wasn’t as warm as I might have been.

“Have you? May I ask why?”

She pulled her gaze away from the spot where acetone had removed the super glue but also a fair amount of flesh. My biggest regret is that it didn’t take a single freckle with it. Carolann blinked at me, then obviously remembered what I’d said.

“Because since school started and Heather went back to Ole Miss, I’m in need of an employee again. Are you still interested?”

“Which part of the store would I be working in?”

This was an important question. Carolann’s business partner, Rose Allgood, has added a new line of merchandise in a room divided from the rest of the ladies lingerie by a blue velvet curtain. The Blue Velvet Room, as it’s known, has rather—shall we say delicately,
sensual
—merchandise for sale. It is not a line of lingerie or “toys” that I would be very comfortable trying to sell.