Dixie Diva Blues (34 page)

I hadn’t put all the pieces together yet, but it seemed to me that Garcia and Walsh had been behind everything. Maybe even poor Larry’s efforts to break into the storage unit. I wondered, though, if Larry had known the flash drive was hidden in his saxophone when he tried to break in. Was he just trying to get to his instrument, or was he a part of some nefarious scheme? The flash drive was the key to everything. I hoped Jake got it back in good condition.

Most of all, I hoped he got Bitty back in good condition. Walsh seemed the more vicious of the two men. I shuddered at the thought of what he might have done to Bitty if the police didn’t catch him quickly enough.

Time dragged past, from a half hour to an hour, then to two hours. We still hadn’t heard about anything that happened in Tunica. Why not? The police officers didn’t seem to care about the time passing. I suppose to them it was pretty normal to sit and pass the time talking about old cases while waiting. It wasn’t that normal to me, though, and after two hours and ten minutes had passed I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Can’t you call someone and ask what’s going on?” I said. “This is driving me crazy!”

The three men looked up at me with polite attention. Finally Officer Hearst said, “It might help if you watched TV while we wait. In the other room, maybe?”

“Agh!” I said, and stormed into the living room. It was nearly dark. If the police hadn’t been sitting in the kitchen, I would have gotten into my car and driven back to the casinos to find Bitty myself. This was maddening.

Finally I grabbed the remote and flopped down on the couch. It occurred to me that I hadn’t heard from my parents all day. That was a good thing. They were probably in Cripple Creek spending my inheritance in slot machines. Not that I minded. It was their money and I hoped they had a ball spending it. God knows, they’d never had much money to spend on themselves when we kids were growing up.

I powered on Daddy’s flat-screen TV. A crime show was on. Police were all over the place in what looked like Las Vegas.
CSI?
I wondered. It must be. Casinos were in the background as an actor stood at a microphone to make a statement. I squinted at the set. My eyes were really getting bad. I probably needed to get glasses. That had to be it, because I could have sworn that the actor on
CSI
was my second cousin Jake. I turned up the volume.

The Jake look-alike cleared his throat, positioned the microphone up for his six-four frame, and looked out at the cameras. “In a joint effort today with the Tunica County Sheriff’s department and Tunica police force, officers attempted to capture two men wanted for questioning in connection to a Marshall County murder.”

I sat up straighter. Marshall County? As in—
my
Marshall County?

“After a thorough search, however, and evacuation of the casino, it was learned that the men have already left the area. Raymond Walsh and Pedro Garcia are armed and considered to be extremely dangerous. If you see these men, do not approach them. Call the numbers you see listed on your television screen.”

Right next to mug shots of Walsh and Garcia were toll-free numbers. I blinked.

My head got light. I couldn’t believe my ears. I heard an officer behind me say, “Oh, holy hell . . .”

Then Jake continued grimly, “These men are also wanted for the abduction and possible murder of a Marshall County woman from the casino today. Her name is being withheld until family can be notified, but authorities have recovered a body from the river that they have reason to believe may be the missing woman.”

I didn’t hear a thing after that. Everything went black as I keeled over.

When I came to,
Jackson Lee was bending over me. An EMT held my hand and was taking my blood pressure. I was in the middle of a sentence, so apparently my mouth had recovered before my brain kicked into gear again. Not unusual for me. It happens all the time.

“ . . . and so that’s what happened,” I said as the EMT nodded impersonally, and kept monitoring my blood pressure. I looked up at Jackson Lee. “What happened? Oh—
Bitty!
”

“They haven’t found her yet, Trinket,” he said quickly as my blood pressure began to rise and the EMT got alarmed.

“But Jake said—on TV. I saw the news report.”

“The body they found was an older woman. They think she’s the one who’s been missing for a while. It’s not Bitty. Do you understand? It’s
not Bitty
.”

“They’re sure?”

He nodded. “Yes. It’s apparent this body has been in the water for a while, too. So it’s not our girl.”

Relief made me suddenly weak again. I slid to one side and the EMT grabbed me. “You okay?”

“Not so that you can tell it,” I managed to say, and looked up at Jackson Lee. “I want to go out there.”

“I thought you might. That’s why I came by here first.”

When I tried to stand up the EMT grabbed me again. “Lady, you don’t need to be going anywhere for a little while.”

“Nonsense. I’m fit as a fiddle. Fine as frog hair. Unhook me. I’m leaving.”

I flapped the arm with the blood pressure cuff on it. The EMT conferred with one of his associates, and then he peeled the cuff off my arm, suggested that I watch my sugar intake and stay away from alcoholic beverages, and I got my purse to go with Jackson Lee.

We went outside and got into Jackson Lee’s Jaguar. It’s silver, and very fast. We made it all the way to Tunica in record time. The parking lot outside the casino was crammed with cars, news trucks, reporters, cameramen, and TV anchors.

“My god,” I said. “This reminds me of the sixth level of Hell.”

“Dante’s Inferno,” said Jackson Lee. I nodded.

“Exactly. A few more demons and it’d be a perfect match.”

“I’d think that two television reporters equal at least four demons,” he said as he parked next to a space occupied by a snake’s nest of black cables atop asphalt.

I can’t help but appreciate a man who can top even my weakest analogy. I gave him a thumb’s up. We hadn’t talked much on the way to the casinos, only a few words here and there. I think both our thoughts were on Bitty, and how to find her. Eventually I’d want to know how Jake had screwed up so badly as to let Walsh and Garcia escape his net, but at the moment it didn’t seem as important. Nothing did but finding Bitty.

Apparently someone had recognized me as Bitty’s cousin. Probably because of our recent notoriety. Sometimes it can be a pretty small world, I’ve learned.

We got out of the car and I found myself immediately assaulted by a half-dozen microphones shoved in my face. Strobe lights nearly blinded me, and I put up a hand to fend off the glare as well as the foam-covered mikes. Questions fired at me from all sides, and at first I picked out only a word here or there so that it sounded like babble. Police moved in to push the reporters back behind a line of yellow tape.

Out of the chaos came a few discernible questions:

“Miz Truevine, is it true that your cousin has been abducted?”

“Does Senator Hollandale’s ex-wife have a gambling problem?”

“Are you working on a murder case with the police?”

Sometimes the amazing world of technology can be a bit too good, I decided as Jackson Lee came around the car and put himself between me and the inquisitive crowd. He waved them away, saying “No comment” to every question they shot at him, all while he protected me with his arm around my shoulders.

In just a very few minutes we were inside the casino. It looked a lot different than it had earlier. Now, instead of gamblers at every slot machine and lined up at tables, cops roamed the carpeted spaces that were nearly empty of people.

Jackson Lee found Jake at the entrance to the restrooms where I’d last seen Bitty. Jake was talking to two uniformed officers, and when he looked up and saw us, his mouth went into a tight line of displeasure. That really ticked me off.

“I thought you were being watched by officers,” he said to me when we reached him.

“You mean being held prisoner? Yes. I was. Then my attorney showed up. Now here we are. Where’s Bitty? Why isn’t she safe? Garcia has the flash drive, but we don’t have his hostage.”

“Yeah, well things didn’t go exactly as planned.”

“Really. I’m shocked.” My hands itched to grab him by the shirt front and shake him like a rag doll.
Would that be considered assault of an officer if he’s in plainclothes?
I wondered, then I dismissed the idea. There was always later. I scowled at him.

“So just what went wrong with your excellent plan, may I ask? You said you had it figured out.”

“Look, I got a team here as quick as I could. But apparently Walsh and Garcia met up somewhere else. As far as we can tell, Walsh left with Bitty around the same time you and Garcia left.”

My head throbbed with tension. My throat ached with anguish. For a moment I couldn’t speak, even if I had something worth saying. Jackson Lee took up the thread of questions.

“What you’re telling me,” he said slowly, “is that as lead investigator you bungled the operation, is that correct?”

Jake’s lips tightened. “Something like that.”

“Is there any indication that Miz Hollandale has been injured?”

Jake hesitated. One of the two uniformed officers next to him cleared his throat and looked away. My stomach did a flip.

Jackson Lee demanded in a terse tone, “Do you believe she’s still alive?”

“I have no reason to believe she’s dead,” Jake replied in just as terse a tone.

I looked at the restroom entrance. One of the policemen stood guard. Yellow crime scene tape looped from one side to the other. There was a reason these officers stood here. I just knew whatever was in the restroom where I had last seen Bitty was not meant to be seen.

I was always the kid who had to touch the stove to see if it was really hot. My childhood was full of Band-Aids and ointments. That former trait had a brief resurgence. I headed straight for the restroom, and managed to duck the startled policeman’s grasp as I went into the ladies restroom.

I stopped short just inside. Splattered on tiled floors and walls was blood. A lot of blood. The rusty smell clogged my nose and throat, but it was the sight of a hot pink stiletto covered in blood that made me stagger.

“Bitty,” I croaked, and sudden hot tears burned my eyes. A warm hand grabbed my arm and held tightly. It was Jackson Lee. I looked up at him.

“She was in here,” I got out. “The last time I saw her—she wore both heels.”

“We don’t know for certain if that’s her blood,” said Jake tonelessly, and I looked behind me to see him standing just inside. Taut white lines bracketed his mouth. Tension rode his brow.

“If it’s not, we’d have heard from Bitty by now,” I said in a choked tone. “She wouldn’t let us worry about her like this. Dammit, Jake, you’ve just got to find her!”

“Don’t you think I’ve got every available man on it?” Jake sounded as bad as I felt. “I’ve pulled all the strings I know to pull. Because she’s my cousin, this case has been handed over to someone else for now. I’m allowed to assist, but that’s it.” He sucked in a deep breath. “So, you two need to get out of here and not compromise what could be a major crime scene. It hasn’t been fully cleared yet.”

I turned and Jackson Lee escorted me out into the casino lobby. We looked at each other with dread in our eyes. My heart ached so badly it felt as if my ribs were bruised. I didn’t know what to say, what to do.

“Sudden death isn’t something I can ever get used to,” I said after a strained silence. “Especially when it’s a close family member.”

Jackson Lee nodded with understanding. He knew my two older brothers had been killed when I was still a young girl at home. Both of them had died in Vietnam. Jack, the oldest, and Luke, the younger by a year, were still missed, even after more than forty years.

“Losing Bitty . . . well, that would just about kill me,” said Jackson Lee. “She’s so special. I don’t think I could go through it again.”

Jackson Lee was a widower. He knew about losses, too. We both had tears in our eyes. It was one of the most awful moments of my life, our standing there feeling so helpless. All we could do was wait and hope.

One of the few casino employees left on duty brought us some hot coffee. She had sympathy in her eyes, so I thought perhaps Jake had sent her.

“If y’all need anything just let me know,” she said. “I hope . . . I hope that it all turns out okay. I just can’t believe Mr. Walsh would do such a thing. He always seemed so nice.”

“I guess you never really know what co-workers are like,” I said finally. “I don’t think he’s at all nice.”

“How well did you know Walsh?” asked Jackson Lee.

“Oh, not well at all. We worked different shifts most of the time. But I do know he always went out of his way to be helpful when we were closing out our shift. Do stuff for us, sometimes. And he didn’t have to do that. I mean, it wasn’t his job or anything to help take out the trash.”

“What were his duties?” I wondered aloud. “He mentioned something about his office. I didn’t know pit bosses had their own offices.”