Dixie Divas (18 page)

“Mr. Brunetti,” I began, and he stopped me.

“Jackson Lee. Nobody ever calls me Mr. Brunetti unless they’re strangers or want some money.”

“I’m a stranger.”

“No, you’re not. I’m a few years behind you, but I remember your brothers. They were my heroes back in school. When Jack and Luke got killed, they became even bigger heroes.”

A lump formed in my throat and tears stung my eyes. It must have been my weakened stamina. Just the mention of my brothers right now crumbled my reserves.

Finally I got the lump worked down and could talk, so said, “All right. Jackson Lee. I’ll be responsible for your bill. I wasn’t coerced into anything, but acted of my own free will and sound—if temporarily non-working—mind. Besides, I’m more worried about Bitty than I am myself right now.”

He smiled as he hit the blinker to turn onto Walthal Street. “That’s what she said about you.”

For some reason, that made me tear up again. I sniffled, and Jackson Lee reached over to open a compartment and pull out a box of tissues. I used three of them.

It wasn’t until he’d pulled up in front of Bitty’s house where the police still worked and had yellow crime scene tape strung all around that I remembered him from grade school. I turned to look at him.

“You were in the sixth grade play that ended up in a brawl. You had the part of Stonewall Jackson, and Dougie McAllen played General Bernard Bee, only you had rock salt loaded in what was supposed to be an empty shotgun.”

Jackson Lee grinned. “That was the second time General Bee got whupped by Stonewall Jackson.”

I started laughing. “And Dougie got mad because he hadn’t wanted to play a Yankee, even a general, and the Civil War was re-fought in the elementary auditorium. Even a few parents got in on it.”

“My daddy didn’t. When I got home, he took me out to the barn and gave me a real good reminder that the Civil War had ended.” He chuckled and I laughed with him. No wonder Bitty gave the Brunettis all her business. Any lawyer this charming would probably have a jury eating out of his hand.

I was still smiling when I opened the truck door to get out. Jackson Lee appeared on the curb before I could manage the descent with my caftan and blanket all wadded up around me and impeding my progress, and scolded me for not waiting.

“A lady always waits to have her door opened, Miz Truevine.”

“Jackson Lee, I’ll remember I’m a lady if you’ll remember to call me Trinket.”

“Done.”

Jackson Lee smoothed my way into the house, getting me past policemen, ensuring that I wouldn’t be retained for any reason, and assuring that I wouldn’t interfere with their investigation but only wanted to retrieve my clothes. The cleaners had delivered my cleaned clothes, and since the plastic bag was gone, I assumed they’d already been checked for evidence. There was a brief moment of tension when an officer insisted on keeping them, but Jackson Lee quoted some point of law that the search warrant didn’t extend to items not at the house when the warrant was first served, or items not belonging to Mrs. Hollandale.

I got dressed the quickest I think I’ve ever done. My purse had been dumped on the bed and contents catalogued, apparently, but Jackson Lee got those released as well. By the time I got out the door, he’d also had my car released and handed me the keys.

“Go on home, Trinket, but expect a search warrant to be served on you for your clothes and maybe your car. Call me when it is. You and Bitty come in to my office tomorrow afternoon, okay?”

“Won’t Bitty still be in jail?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t spend eight years in law school to let my best client sit in jail a minute longer than she needs to. By the time I get back over to the jail, she’ll be waiting on me to bring her back home. It’ll probably be best if you’re gone. It’s going to be hard enough to keep Bitty from tearing these officers a new one without worrying about one of them getting you off in a corner to answer their questions.”

I could see the sense in that. Once Bitty saw the mess in her house, she’d go ballistic. It’d be all Jackson Lee could do to keep her from finding the key to her gun safe. I didn’t envy him the task.

When I got in my Taurus, I pulled out onto the street by Jackson Lee’s truck and rolled down my window. He leaned over with an arm propped on the car roof and I said, “You know Bitty hides an extra key to the gun safe.”

He looked at me with a smile. “I know how to handle Bitty.”

I smiled back at him. I had every confidence he did.

* * * *

“Oh my,” Mama said faintly when I’d related the entire story of Philip Hollandale and Sherman Sanders, from when we’d first gone out there with a pot of chicken and dumplings to when Jackson Lee came to spring me from prison. “All you had on was a caftan and socks? I’d have just
died
being in public with no underwear.”

The Truevine women have firm priorities, because truth be told, that was the part that bothered me the most, too.

“I know,” I said. “It was awful.”

Daddy, who has never appreciated some of the subtleties of the female psyche, looked at us as if we’d just said we were voting Republican. The Truevines have always been Democrats and Methodists, if I haven’t mentioned that before. Right or wrong, we hold to our traditions.

“You mean to tell me,” he said slowly, “that you carted the dead body of a United States senator around town in a rug?”

“We didn’t know what else to put him in,” I apologized. “A thick carpet seemed less likely to leak if he started to thaw out.”

“Dear me,” Mama breathed, eyes getting huge. “That’s not a vision I want to linger in my mind for very long.”

I nodded. “He never was a particularly handsome man alive. Death has done nothing to improve on that.”

Daddy made a deep sound in the back of his throat, put both hands palms down on the kitchen table, and got up. Without saying another word, he took his thick sweater off the coat hook by the back door and went outside. Mama and I just looked at each other.

“Your father never has much stamina when it comes to this sort of thing,” she said, and I nodded again. Women in our family tend to be the ones to handle funeral details, and of course, the cooking and baking when close friends or loved ones die. The amount of food on the table of the bereaved indicates just how well-liked they are in the community. Baptists and Methodists vie for the honor of receiving the most casseroles and cakes at a single funeral. It’s been an unacknowledged contest going on for decades. There’s a certain protocol for this kind of thing that women instinctively know and men are unaware exists. Recently, a lady from the South has published a book on how to give a proper funeral. Since the large influx of residents from other parts of the country, it’s way overdue, in my opinion.

At any rate, Mama and I discussed the ramifications of the senator’s unexpected demise, and drank tall glasses of sweet tea with lemon wedges and fresh mint from her small greenhouse. It summons the taste of summer, the lemon and mint a reminder of idle evenings in lawn chairs with cricket serenades and lightning bug starlight.

“I’m sure Bitty didn’t do it,” Mama said. “She’d never be so crass as to mess up someone else’s house like that.”

“I agree. If Bitty was going to kill Philip, she’d either do it at his house or outside where the mess could be easily cleaned. Unless, of course, he made her so mad she just couldn’t stand one more minute of putting up with his foolishness.”

We looked at each other over the rims of our glasses, sipping tea while both our minds had to be focused on the obvious question: Who
had
killed Philip Hollandale? While his list of enemies had to be endless, as he’d never bothered about stepping on the toes of people he’d considered useless to him, which of them had taken it so far as to go out to The Cedars and bash him in the head with a heavy bronze statue?

The only name that came immediately to my mind was Sherman Sanders. Bitty would certainly tell the entire truth to Jackson Lee, who would then decide how much of it she should convey to the police and at what stages of the investigative process. It’s a shame it has to be that way, that people can’t just say what really happened without fear of it being used against them, but since there are so many people prone to stretching the truth or outright lying, it’s necessary to let a good lawyer take charge of such situations. Really good lawyers do the lying for their clients, but outstanding lawyers tell the truth and get them off anyway. Or just enough of the truth to sell the rest to a jury. There are subtleties in the legal system I freely admit I don’t understand at all.

“How well do you know Sherman Sanders?” I asked Mama.

“Not very well. He’s more your father’s age, and since they both grew up here, they’d know each other, I’m sure.”

Mama was born in Hardeman County, Tennessee, not that far away out Highway 72, then Highway 45. She’s a Crews, related to a branch of Crews in Marshall County, which is how she met Daddy a long time ago. They courted right before World War II, married right after, and for a while, times were pretty tough. Farming no longer made more than a bare living unless backed by a big corporation. Daddy has a natural distrust of conglomerates, a view he’d inherited from his own father. So he went to work at an insurance company in Holly Springs, Mama took care of the house and my brothers, then about the time Emerald and I came along, Daddy went to work for the post office. After my brothers died, Daddy sold off some of our land he’d always thought they might want one day. Later, he sold most of it when he realized neither Emerald nor myself would be back to build houses and rear our children. Since a developer bought a large chunk of it several years back, he and Mama are pretty well off for the first time in their lives.

Anyway, Mama added, “I’ve had a few discussions with Sherman Sanders. In fact, not so long ago I ran into him at Carlisle’s.” Carlisle’s is the local Big Star grocery store. “He said he might be coming into a lot of money soon, he just hasn’t decided yet. I thought that a rather odd thing to say, since you either come into money or you earn money. Unless, of course, you just go out and steal money, but then, I doubt very seriously Sherman Sanders would be bragging about that, would he.”

She hadn’t said the last as a question, more of an observation. I agreed. “No, I don’t think he’d do that. So did he say how he expects to come into this money?”

“Not a word. We were at the meat counter, and he was getting a ham shank sliced and I was trying to decide if I wanted the center cut pork chops or a pork roast. Then I saw butterfly pork chops on sale so I bought those. Remember? We had them Wednesday last.”

“I remember. They were excellent. At least an inch thick.”

Mama smiled. She’s always been a good cook, and hasn’t lost her touch. “Anyway, I wouldn’t put most anything past Sherman Sanders. Sometimes he’s today, and then sometimes, he’s yesterday.”

I knew what she meant. There are people, especially older people, who stray back and forth between the yesterdays and todays at the flip of a hat. Or turn of a thought.

“Do you think him capable of murder?” I asked, and Mama didn’t look surprised or even shocked at the suggestion.

“I suppose, under the right circumstances,” she said after a moment of thought, “anyone is
capable
of murder. Most people have something inside them that stops short of violence, but if fear or the urge to protect a loved one is extreme, then yes, I think Sanders is capable of murder.”

It occurred to me later when I thought about what she’d said, that Sanders didn’t seem to love anything but that old hound and The Cedars. If either was threatened, he’d certainly react to protect them. Obviously, Tuck, the hound, had been killed. But Philip Hollandale, as vile as he could be, had never seemed physically vicious. Immoral, snaky in politics, yes, but would he go to an extreme that would anger a constituent and definitely risk unfavorable publicity, at the very least? And if he had killed Sanders’ dog, why? None of this made any sense.

Bitty called before bedtime, sounding very calm and composed.

“Are you all right, Trinket?”

“Yes, I’m doing fine. How are you? Did you just get out of custody?”

“Heavens no. Jackson Lee got me out right after he got you out. We sat here talking while the police conducted their search. Since Philip wasn’t killed here and this isn’t a crime scene, they just have the wine cellar closed off now. Jackson Lee managed to get me out a few bottles before they padlocked the door, though.”

“Jackson Lee certainly is efficient.”

Bitty laughed. “Oh yes. I don’t know what I’d do without him. He may not look like the sharpest tack in the box, but he’s what Daddy used to call a good ole country lawyer. If he wasn’t so young, I’d think of Ben Matlock.”

“I think we both have watched entirely too much TV in our lives. We relate everything to a television show we’ve seen. So were you charged with anything?”

“No. I was just held for questioning. I imagine they’ve gone back out to Sherman Sanders’ house to look for traces of blood and my fingerprints.” She sounded unconcerned.

“You don’t seem very bothered by that,” I said.

“Well, I didn’t kill him, so I seriously doubt I’ll be charged, much less convicted for it. I trust Jackson Lee. He says the fact Philip was found frozen in my wine cellar is circumstantial at best.”

“Are you sure he said that?”

“Pretty sure. Why? You’re not saying—”

“Good Lord, no, Bitty, don’t even think anything like that. It’s just that you assured me the Holly Springs police are very efficient, and even though I was with you all day when he was put into your coat closet, and I saw how upset you were after you found him in Sanders’ foyer, I admit, if you weren’t my first cousin and best friend, I’d have to lean toward you being guilty.”

“Oh, so would I. But the law requires more than just thinking it. It requires proof. And of course, I didn’t kill him so they won’t find any proof at all.”

It did sound likely. Possible. Hopeful.

“Was Jackson Lee your divorce attorney?” I asked, and when Bitty answered in the affirmative, I felt much better. “Well, he certainly did well for you then. And he’s charming enough to sweet-talk the bark off a tree, so if it comes down to it, I’m sure he can prove your innocence to a jury.”