Dixie Diva Blues (7 page)

“Oh, honey,” said Bitty as she reached out to put her hand on Rayna’s arm, “you know I just carry on about stuff sometimes. I’m not really mad at him. Irritated, maybe, but not angry. It seems to me that everyone forgets all about our efforts to find criminals, that’s all.”

“No one has forgotten our part in things, Bitty,” I said dryly. “Trust me.”

“Well, they sure act like they do,” she replied, as my meaning sailed way over her head. “Just the other day I was talking to Rose Allgood at the lingerie shop, and the only thing she really remembers about us tracking down the killers is that time when poor Chen Ling ran out the door with that vibrating toy. Can you believe that? And after all we did, too, risking our very lives to help the Holly Springs police find the people who killed Naomi—bless her heart—and Race. We’re just unappreciated, that’s all, and I’m not at all sure I should ever go out of my way to help law enforcement again.”

After that long speech, silence fell on us where we sat in the peaceful garden full to overflowing with autumn flowers, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Not to mention the dogs and cats lazing around in the warm sunshine that filtered through magnolia branches as big around as fifty-gallon drums. Hosta lilies grew under the tree, variegated leaves and solid greens, and red-and-orange flowers lit up sunny beds running parallel along the garden paths. It occurred to me that some of the perennial flowers had been in place a lot longer than I’ve been alive. It’s a rather comforting thought, the continuance of life in some form that can outlast destructive human beings and even Mother Nature.

Rayna put her head in her hands and looked down at the glass top of the wrought-iron table. “I just wish none of this had happened,” she moaned. “Why didn’t Rob just let Larry show up on his own?”

“Because Larry wouldn’t have shown up,” I said. “Rob was doing his job. He did everything he was supposed to do, but you can’t always control the unknown factor. Life is unpredictable. Who would have thought that a timid guy would hide out in some share-cropper’s shack and try to ambush Rob?”

“It’s not really a sharecropper’s home,” said Rayna, lifting her head to look at us. “I mean, it
is
, but it’s not. It’s out at the old Hopson Plantation about a mile or two out of Clarksdale. They’re renovated sharecropper shacks for the most part, furnished with all kinds of antiques that would have been used in the early twentieth century, you know, old cooking stoves, wagon wheels, mule harnesses turned into mirrors, that kind of thing.”

“Hm, I think I remember something about that being done,” said Bitty, “but of course, I have no intention of paying good money to stay in an outhouse. If I wanted to do that, I could just drive out in the country around Ashland.”

Rayna smiled. “Really, you ought to go see them sometime. They’re very nicely done, and people from as far as the UK and Norway make reservations to come stay in them. They’ve turned the cotton gin on the property into a really nice bar and dance club, with live bands coming in to play everything from the blues to honky-tonk. There’s even a room there above the bar that has a balcony so guests can listen to the music and go no farther than a few feet to go to bed, use the bathroom, or watch TV.”

Bitty looked unconvinced, but I was intrigued. “Really? I had no idea. I wonder if they would rent out the cabin where Larry was staying.”

Rayna looked over at me, and I could see she was thinking along the same line. “I don’t know. They might. Should I see if the police have finished with it?”

“It may be helpful to see the actual murder scene.”

“Count me out,” Bitty said. “I have no desire to stay in a shack with no running water and straw mattresses.”

“I’m sure they have put nice bathrooms in them, or they couldn’t rent them out like they do,” said Rayna.

“A shack is a shack.” Bitty adjusted Chen Ling, who had begun to wriggle now that the cookies were gone. “It probably has holes in the walls and fleas in the linens. If it really is authentic, they probably pee through a hole in the floor.”

“That’s only in an outhouse,” I corrected her.

“I don’t care. I refuse to go. You two can go on without me.”

“Well,” said Rayna, “I can’t go anyway. Rob has made it clear that he doesn’t want me to get mixed up in any kind of investigation. Even something as safe as this would put me squarely in the over-the-hill
Charlie’s Angels
category, I’m sure.”

Bitty’s head jerked up and her eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you’re going to let him browbeat you into submission! Rob may act like a troglodyte, but that doesn’t mean you have to listen.”

“Spoken like a true suffragette,” I murmured, and Rayna grinned.

“You’re right, Bitty,” said Rayna. “I don’t have to listen to Rob, but I do want to keep the peace between us. I guess I’ll just have to sit back and let things happen without my interference. Maybe he’s right, after all. We can’t really go around acting like women in their twenties.”

“Very true,” I said with a long sigh. “I guess we really are over-the-hill women unqualified to even ask questions without getting into trouble.”

Silence fell after my comments. I could almost hear the wheels turning in Bitty’s head, and thought I caught a faint whiff of smoke.

“Well,” said Bitty when the silence stretched for several moments, “I can see what you two are trying to do but it won’t work. I am not going to stay in, or even look at, sharecropper shacks, no matter what you say. No, I won’t do it.
No!
”

CHAPTER 4

“I don’t know why you insisted on us coming here,” Bitty grumbled for the fourth or fifth time as we took Highway 49 out of Clarksdale. We were in her Mercedes, and I had drawn the short straw and the front passenger seat next to her. That meant that since I was closest to her, I had to listen as she continued grumbling. “It would have been just as easy to drive over for an hour instead of stay all night in some godforsaken shack that’s probably filled with fleas and spiders. Now it’s raining. And dark. I can barely see two feet in front of us.”

“And whose fault is that?” I asked. “We would have gotten here in plenty of daylight if you hadn’t stayed so long at Luann Carey’s house, saying goodbye to your dog.”

“Chen Ling is sensitive,” Bitty replied. “She knew I was going away and leaving her for an entire night, and I couldn’t just drop her off like she’s some stray dog I found wandering the highway.”

“Good lord, Bitty. You took less time saying goodbye to your boys when they went off to Europe for the summer.”

“That’s different. My boys can use a phone. Poor little Chen Ling just has to sit there and wonder if I’m ever coming back. Poor little thing . . .”

For a moment I thought maybe she was getting emotional, so I peered at her in the reflection of the dashboard lights. Not a trace of a tear.

“So buy her a cell phone,” I sat back and said. “You might as well. You’ve already bought her tons of unnecessary stuff anyway.”

Bitty ignored my comments and peered over the steering wheel at the road unfurling in front of us. We were on 49 Highway and had just passed under an overpass of old 161 and not even out of sight of the Clarksdale outskirts when she slowed down. Rain made it a bit harder to see out the windows, but somehow Bitty had spotted the graveled road that led from asphalt back to a shack sitting alone in the middle of a field. She flipped on her turn signal and made a slow turn; car tires squelched in mud. Headlights dipped downward and then up again, briefly illuminating the shack. It looked abandoned.

“This isn’t it,” I said. “It looks deserted.”

“I read the map,” Bitty insisted. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Unh hunh. Well, Hawkeye, this ain’t the place,” I muttered.

“Of course it is. Look at it! It’s a dump. It’s just like Rayna to exaggerate so I’d be tricked into going along with this insanity. Staying in a cabin out of a horror movie.”

“Bitty, really, this
cannot
be it,” I said. Rain-streaked windows had gotten a bit fogged, and I wiped a spot clear with one hand to peer out the window. “I see only one shack. Aren’t there supposed to be several? And a cotton gin? Where’s the gin?’

“I could do with some gin right now,” said Gaynelle from the back seat. She’d volunteered to come along, and had a list of suggestions Rayna had written out for us. Our mission was to be conducted in secrecy. If Rob found out, he would not be a happy man. Rayna, of course, didn’t confide in him that she had gotten us a reservation number and printed out directions. In the confusion of leaving Chen Ling, however, those nicely printed directions had been left behind in the dog’s overnight bag. Yes, she has her own Louis Vuitton overnight bag, complete with clean bibs and special treats.

“You can’t miss it,” Rayna had said when we called for directions. “There’s a gravel drive off the highway a little ways after you go under the overpass. Take it and you should see the shacks and the old cotton gin on your right.”

If not for the gray and black skies, and the hint of really bad weather coming in from across the Mississippi River, it would have been a lot easier to see where we were going. When we’d left Holly Springs the skies had been blue with fat clouds piling up overhead. Now it was just after dark and the weather had turned ugly.

Carolann Barnett, sitting in the back seat next to Gaynelle, said, “I just can’t wait to see this place! I’ve heard nice things about the Shack Up Inn, but haven’t been able to get away from the shop long enough to go anywhere. Now that Rose has come in as my partner, I finally have some free time. Isn’t this fun?”

Since Carolann is a recent member of the Divas, she hasn’t been subjected to some of the other ideas of “fun” we’ve put our membership through. With any luck, Carolann will never come face to face with a dead man while reaching for a coat hanger.

“Carolann,” said Bitty, “your hair takes up my entire rearview mirror. All I can see is red frizz.”

“Oh, sorry. Rain really does do awful things to my hair. I’ll put a scarf over it.”

Gaynelle leaned forward to put a hand on the back of the front seat. “Bitty, Trinket is right. I’m certain you’ve taken the wrong road. This doesn’t look at all like a place of business. It looks deserted.”

Bitty waved a dismissive hand. “Well, of course it does. A man was just murdered in there. No one in their right mind would want to stay in the place.”

“So what does that say about us?” I wondered out loud, but no one answered. It was a rhetorical question anyway. We already knew what was said about us.

“Besides,” Bitty continued, “this
has
to be it. It’s right past the overpass. It’s a shack.” She squinted through the windshield wipers. “And I think I see the cotton gin behind it a bit. Isn’t that a big building?”

“All I can see is rain,” I muttered, although I thought I saw a huge shape behind the shack. It wasn’t until a sharp bolt of lightning lit up the night sky that I realized the shape was an ominous bank of thunderheads. I scooted down in the front seat until my eyes were level with the car’s door knob. Another crack of lightning turned the air smoky white and left a definite trace of sulphur behind. I could smell it in the car’s intake vents. “That isn’t a cotton gin, Bitty. I think it’s the portal to Hell.”

“You watch too many movies,” was all she replied, though I noticed that she’d shrunk down behind the steering wheel. “It has to be the cotton gin.”

“We’re about to be hit by a tornado. We’re going to end up in Oz or Kansas,” I said. “Stop the car. I’m looking for a ditch to wait it out.”

About the time Bitty opened her mouth to argue, the right front tire sunk bumper-deep into a hole, jarring me all the way down my spine. The car tilted awkwardly, tires spun with a loud, slurpy whine, and all of us squealed at the same time. Then Bitty let off the gas pedal and it got totally quiet, just the purr of the German-made engine idling nicely along.

Gaynelle broke the stuffy silence. “Well, thank heavens I brought along some emergency beverage.”

I knew what that meant. Gaynelle always brings along an emergency beverage in a nice silver flask. She passed it around, and after a moment or two, Bitty put the car in Park and cut the engine.

“Does anyone have the phone number for the owners of this place?” she asked.

No one did. That hadn’t seemed too important when we had a map; Rayna had already confirmed our reservations. Since the police had finished with it, she was able to get us the same shack where Larry Whittier had been murdered. Well-cleaned, I hoped.

Now, while I was pretty sure this wasn’t the right cabin, if we couldn’t get the car out of the mud we might well end up spending the night in it anyway. That was even less appealing than sleeping in a murder scene.

From the backseat, Carolann asked in a rather subdued tone, “Do you think this shack has been renovated?” She’s usually quite exuberant, but her spirits were obviously dampened by more than rain.

“Not in the last fifty years,” said Gaynelle.

I chanced sitting up again since it had been at least two minutes since the last lightning strike. The rain had slackened, and now just hissed against the Mercedes hood. Bitty’s headlights were still focused on the shack at an odd angle. A loose board hung down and flapped in wind gusts. “Okay, Bitty,” I said, “since you’re certain this is the right place, go see if the door is unlocked. We’ll wait here.”