Dixie Diva Blues (4 page)

The inmate looked at us a little suspiciously, and it seemed to me that he made a concerted effort to avoid our area. No doubt, he thought us deranged and dangerous. He would not be the first man to think that.

After a couple more minutes of drooling and twitching, Bitty righted herself and wiped her chin. “Enough of that,” she said calmly. “I’m sure fits don’t last a long time. Do they?”

“You’re asking
me
? How would I know?”

“Don’t you remember how you used to have fits?” Bitty’s wide blue eyes looked guileless, but I knew better.

“They were not
fits
. Low blood sugar. Not at all the same thing.”

“Still, you used to drool and twitch.”

Rather coldly I said, “I did
not
drool.”

Bitty patted my knee. “Never mind, honey. Your secret is safe with me. I’ll never let on to Kit Coltrane about your condition.”

Before I could remind her that it had been years since I had succumbed to any low sugar moments, and that I had no
condition
to tell Kit about, she said, “Not that he would care. That man looks at you like he could just eat you up with a spoon.”

Bitty certainly knows how to shut me up, just when I’m ready to tell her a thing or two. Instead of saying something tacky to her, I thought about Kit Coltrane and smiled. My relationship with the vet who tends my parents’ neurotic dog and feral cats is one of the best things that has happened to me since my return to Holly Springs. Not only is he quite handsome and an excellent vet, he makes my toes tingle. It had been years and years since my toes had tingled, and I can tell you, it’s a wonderful sensation.

“Yes. He does, doesn’t he?” I ended up saying.

Bitty looked at me. “From that smile on your face, am I to think that you and Kit have been playing doctor?”

“You are to think whatever you like,” I said demurely. “I’ll never tell.”

“Hah. You’ll tell. Whether you want to or not, I can get you to confess all.”

“Doesn’t your pugly need to go out to the bathroom?” I asked instead of giving her encouragement. “She’s making strange noises.”

Bitty checked the dog, pulling her up to feel under her just like a mother would check her baby’s diaper. I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

“Honestly, Bitty, you spoil that dog entirely too much. She would have been just fine out in the car.”

She gave me a horrified look. “I wasn’t
about
to leave Chen Ling out there in a car after dark. As I already said, there’s no telling who might come along and steal her.”

“Yes, the area does seem to be rife with masochists. Who else would kidnap a dog that pees indiscriminately, leaves a Tootsie Roll trail through the house, and drinks only bottled water?”

“She does
not
poop in the house,” Bitty replied in an indignant tone. “Not often, anyway. Only when someone forgets to let her out.”

“You live alone, so that someone would be you.”

“When the boys were home during summer break they usually forgot. And if you recall, it was rather a hectic summer.”

“Oh, I remember. I just wish I hadn’t been so quick to congratulate us on not having any problems in the past nine weeks. I think I must have conjured up this trouble.”

“I doubt that, Trinket. Rob’s work is consorting with criminals, so it’s surprising he hasn’t had this kind of problem before now.”

Sometimes Bitty can make good sense. It’s always an occasion for celebration. Or extreme caution.

“True,” I said slowly. “Not surprising that he hasn’t been arrested for murder before, but that he hasn’t had any more problems than he has since he deals so closely with the criminal element.”

Bitty rearranged Chen Ling in the bejeweled baby sling across her chest. Colored light sparkled under the harsh overhead lighting fixtures glaring down on us. The pug gave me a sour look meant to convey her disdain with my presence. I returned it in kind.

I don’t actually have anything against the dog. I just like to tease Bitty about her. It’s not Chen Ling’s fault she fell into the easily manipulated hands of a woman prone to spoiling her. They are both quite happy with the situation just as it is, and I wouldn’t want to change it for either of them.

After what seemed like a tremendously long time, Rayna and Gaynelle came back into the waiting area. Rayna looked frazzled. I imagine that bailing your husband out of jail on a murder charge can be rather wearing on the nerves.

“Is everything all right?” I asked immediately, as Gaynelle came to where we were and Rayna paused at the front desk again.

“It will be better shortly. They’re releasing Rob, but Rayna has to put up their home as collateral against his fleeing the jurisdiction.”

“Good lord,” I murmured. Rob and Rayna own the Delta Inn, a lovely 1850s hotel close to the railroad depot. It’s their home, and they’ve been in the midst of renovations ever since purchasing it about six or seven years ago. It’s a beautiful old place, with a big lobby full of marble fixtures that Rayna uses as her artist’s studio, a huge dome on top that acts as a leaded glass skylight, and several upstairs rooms that open onto a balcony that runs the width of the building. It’s also conveniently located next door to Phillip’s, a 19th century building that has once housed a saloon and—according to local legend—a former bordello. Now it serves famous hamburgers and fried pies.

It seemed to take forever, but finally Rob came through one of the doors from the back, and Rayna leaped forward to hug him. While she clung to him tightly, the rest of us politely looked away to give them some privacy. I could only imagine what they were going through. It wasn’t too far of a stretch.

My ex, Perry Berryman, had incited passionate emotion in me the first few years of our marriage, but we had gradually drifted apart with each different move to another job, another state, another city where life would be better and this time he would keep the job longer than six months—he
promised
. Perry’s promises were no doubt well-meant, but not well-kept. The strain on our relationship reached the breaking point after our only daughter was already married and on her own, and it was much easier to say goodbye. I have not regretted the decision, and I have no doubt he hasn’t either.

Rob finally disengaged from Rayna and turned toward us with a grin that didn’t quite erase the haggard lines in his face. “I’m ready to go home,” he said.

The four of us left the Clarksdale police station as quickly as we could. Rob took the wheel and Rayna sat beside him, so it was Gaynelle, me, and Bitty and the pug-alien in the back seat.

It was Bitty who finally asked the question I was dying to ask: “So who did you murder—
ouch!
Gaynelle! Oh. Okay. Are
supposed
to have murdered, Rob?”

Fortunately Rob is quite accustomed to Bitty. He just smiled and said, “A guy named Larry Whittier.”

“Is he someone who deserved killing?”

I rolled my eyes, but Rob just shook his head and replied, “Probably not. He always seemed pretty harmless to me. Still, he ended up dead—and I didn’t do it.”

“So how do we get the Clarksdale police to believe that?”

Rob looked at Bitty in the rearview mirror. “
We
don’t do anything. As in you or any other Diva. This is my mess. I’ll take care of it. You ladies stay on the sidelines this time. Agreed?”

“If that’s what you want,” Bitty said. “But I think you’re forgetting that we’ve gotten pretty good at finding murderers.”

I could hardly believe my ears. I stuck my head around Gaynelle to look at Bitty to see if she really meant that. In the dark car, it was hard to tell. So I asked.

“Bitty, have you been drinking, or do you really mean that?”

“Well good heavens, Trinket, you can’t deny that we’ve almost single-handedly identified the people responsible for several murders lately.”

Astonished, I looked at Gaynelle, who was looking at Bitty as if she’d suddenly grown another head. Then Gaynelle said, “Bitty, I don’t remember things quite that way.”

“Really? Oh. Well, if you’ll think about it for a few minutes, I’m sure it will come back to you.”

I sighed. “Bitty, that’s not exactly what she meant. None of us seem to recall the events the way you do.”

“For heaven’s sake,” said Bitty, sounding exasperated, “did we or did we not find the murderer in each case? And were we not responsible for leading the police directly to them?”

“Perhaps, but not on purpose. The police figured things out more quickly than we did. Sergeant Maxwell told us quite bluntly to stop ‘messing around in my murder cases’ before we got badly hurt or went to jail. He didn’t sound as if those options were remote, either.”

“Well, since he got a promotion out of it he could have shown a bit more gratitude for our efforts,” Bitty responded tartly. “I mean, you almost got killed trying to help.”

Gaynelle opened her mouth to say something, but I grabbed her arm and shook my head. “Life in Bitty-world is always one-sided,” I said. “The rides are never worth the price of admission. Trust me. Stay out here with the rest of us.”

While Bitty sulked, Rob stepped into our conversation again. “Seriously,” he said, “I intend to investigate on my own even though I have to do it from home. I’ll figure this out. Jackson Lee agreed to take my case, so I know I’ve got one of the best lawyers in the state of Mississippi.”

Bitty brightened. “Oh, that’s good! Jackson Lee really is the best.”

Rayna asked the question that was burning on the tip of my tongue: “So what happened, Rob? How did you come to be accused of this murder?”

“Damned if I know,” he said, and shrugged. “I mean, I know why I’ve been accused, but I have no idea how or what happened.

“See, I tracked Larry to Ground Zero, the blues club in Clarksdale owned by actor Morgan Freeman. I knew the guy loves the blues, that he likes to sit in on some sets on occasion and play. He does—did—a pretty mean saxophone. So I got a tip he was in the Clarksdale area and managed to find him staying in a rental cabin.”

“Morgan Freeman rents out cabins?” Bitty asked.

“No. He doesn’t have anything to do with it as far as I know. This place is a mile or two outside town. These are old sharecropper cabins done up pretty comfortably for tourists to rent. Old-time style, you know, calico curtains, cast iron skillets, wood stoves, stuff like that. Anyway, I knew Larry had rented one of them and I followed him so we could talk privately. I’ve been looking for him a couple weeks now. All I had to do was take him in, get his bond settled, make sure he showed up at court, and I was done with my part.”

He slowed the car at an intersection and then turned onto Highway 161. Our lights scrubbed the dark from the blacktop for a brief moment before we picked up speed again.

“Anyway,” Rob continued as we sped eastward through the darkened delta, “I knocked twice on the door, identified myself, and when he hollered at me to go away, I went on in. The door wasn’t locked, I remember. Larry was standing in the middle of the room just looking at me. He had a gun in one hand, but held it at his side. He had this . . . trapped . . . look on his face, like he’d just been caught, so I knew he might make a run for it. I eased my pistol out of the harness . . . told Larry we could do this the easy way if he’d drop the gun and put up his hands. Then everything seemed to happen at once.

“I took a step forward, heard a noise behind me, half-turned, and Larry made a run for the open door. Then something hit the back of my head and I went down and out.”

Rob sucked in a deep breath and focused on the road for a moment, but I had the feeling he was seeing that cabin instead of blacktop unfurling in front of the SUV.

“When I woke up . . . Larry was on the floor not far from me. My Glock was close by my hand and I grabbed it in case he got up. But then when I looked closer at him—I was still so woozy from being hit on the head—I saw his pistol was missing. It took me a little bit to figure out he wasn’t going to ever get up again. That’s when the cops showed up. They took me into custody, of course. At first I wasn’t worried about it. I mean, I knew that
I
hadn’t shot him, but then ballistics preliminary said Larry was shot with a bullet like mine. And my pistol had been recently used. That’s when I called Jackson Lee.

“I told him not to worry you, honey,” he said, glancing over at Rayna, “until I found out just what was going on. There was still a chance they might let me go on my own recognizance. I guess a murder charge is too big to expect me to stick around. At least they didn’t put a cuff on my ankle.”

“Are you referring to one of those electronic cuffs that monitor your whereabouts, by chance?” asked Gaynelle.

Rob glanced in the rearview mirror and nodded. “Yeah. I thought for a minute or two that they would only release me with an electronic bracelet since I live out of their jurisdiction. But maybe they don’t use them, or even have them. That’s mostly big city stuff.”

“But Jackson Lee got you bailed out, anyway,” Rayna said softly. “I’m grateful for that.”