Dixie Divas (20 page)

“Since you don’t have a sex life, there can’t be any discussion,” Bitty said. “We’d have to sit here without saying a word.”

“An idea I find remarkably attractive right now.” Something in my tone must have gotten through to Bitty, because she changed the subject.

“Anyway, Dr. Coltrane—his first name is Christopher, by the way—said that he did the autopsy on Sanders’ dog, and that it’d died of old age. Something about the liver and a cyst or tumor that was malignant. Said Sanders knew about the tumor, so there wouldn’t be a reason for him to run over the dog since it didn’t have long to live anyway. But maybe that was just to make sure it was really dead.”

“Wait. Was the dog run over
afte
r it died?”

“Post-mortem, he said, which is another way of saying Sanders ran over his dog after it’d already died. I just think that’s the strangest thing I ever heard of in my life. Don’t you?”

I certainly did.

The Brunetti law office, or one of them, is located on Center Street not far from the court house. It’s one of those old buildings painted white with black wrought-iron balconies and stairs, and flower boxes that hold bright red geraniums in the summer time. Law offices are mainly on the ground floor, with conference rooms and storage areas upstairs. Parking spaces slant close to the front door. Jackson Lee’s office is painted in dark green and burgundy, his furniture big and masculine. Shelves line one wall all the way to the ceiling, holding law books, and behind his desk is another set of shelves with some glassed-in cabinets in the top middle. We sat in two of the plush chairs arranged in a half-circle in front of his desk.

After we’d discussed with Jackson Lee all the possibilities that might arise from our lunacy, and been given the bad news that participating Divas would have to come forward and answer police questions, I told him what Bitty had learned from the vet.

Jackson Lee sat back in his office chair and linked his hands together behind his head. He had his right ankle balanced on his left knee, but since he was dressed in nice pants and a button-down shirt, there was no danger of muddy boots. His cowboy boots were quite clean.

“Damn strange,” he said after a moment. “Of course, that may well have nothing at all to do with Philip Hollandale. Once Sanders is found, a lot of this can be cleared up.”

“What if he’s never found?” I asked.

In the silence that followed my question, any hope I had that Sanders’ disappearance may positively affect Bitty’s situation faded. Finally, Jackson Lee leaned forward and smiled.

“Whether we ever see or hear from Sherman Sanders again, Bitty didn’t murder Philip Hollandale and won’t be convicted. Especially not in Marshall County.”

That made sense. Bitty grew up here and remained here. She’s deeply entrenched in the community. Even citizens who don’t know her personally have heard of her, and while Bitty may be known as a little flaky at times, there’s not a malicious bone in her body. Everybody knows that. So what Jackson Lee said made me feel a lot better.

Then Bitty ruined it.

“Well, everyone knows if anyone had a reason to kill him, I did, so I hope they don’t hold that against me,” she said, not looking up from wiping drool from Chen Ling’s snout, or mouth, or whatever it’s called. Cradled like a baby in her arms, having been removed from the sling, the dog lay back with half-closed eyes, paws dangling, underbite oozing saliva onto a tiny pink bib with BABY spelled out in embroidered blocks.

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Bitty had looked up at Jackson Lee, her wide china blue eyes innocent of deception. Jackson Lee sighed. Then he smiled.

“That’s not something you need to mention to anyone else, Bitty,” he said. “Let me do all the talking right now. If anyone asks you questions or mentions anything about the case, tell them that your attorney won’t allow you to discuss even the smallest detail. Think you can do that for me, sugar?”

Bitty smiled back. “Anything you say, Jackson Lee.”

If I hadn’t already been sitting down, I’d have had to look for a chair. Since she’d reached thirteen years old and found out she has a certain power over most males in her general vicinity, Bitty has never had the least inclination to give ground on anything. In fact, if a man so much as says red, then she’ll say green just to tease him. What’s always been the biggest mystery to me is that men can’t get enough of it. It’s my opinion that if Bitty had set her sights on Rhett Butler, she’d have given Scarlett O’Hara a run for her money. That would have been a dust-up I’d pay good money to see.

Jackson Lee walked us out to my car. He towered over Bitty, and I noticed the protective way he hovered around her. Bitty noticed that Chen Ling didn’t like the baby sling.

“Here, precious,” she said, fussing over the dog, “let me take you out of that ole thing.”

When I looked up over her head at Jackson Lee, he was smiling down at Bitty like she’d been talking to him. He had an expression on his face that said she meant a lot more to him than just as a client. Then he glanced up, saw me looking at him, gave a somewhat sheepish grin, and shrugged. I nodded. Sometimes we just can’t help who we find irresistible. There’s not always a lot of rhyme or reason about it.

“So,” Bitty said once we were safely in the car and Jackson Lee had gone back inside, “I think it’s going to be so nice to go in to Memphis with you tomorrow. Do you want me to come to your house in the morning, or do y’all want to pick me up?”

“It’d be just as easy to pick you up since we’ll be coming this way anyway and it’s not so far out of the way. We’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

Bitty sucked in a sharp breath. “Six-thirty! I thought they didn’t have to check in for the cruise until eight-thirty. Memphis is only forty-five minutes from here.”

“Barring rush hour traffic, eighteen-wheelers jack-knifed in the middle of the interstate, and Mama forgetting to pack something so we have to stop at a Walgreen’s drug store. Besides, we have to go to downtown Memphis and find a parking place.”

“It’s probably just as well. An early start means more time in Memphis. Do you know if The Peabody allows any kind of animal other than ducks in the lobby?”

“We’re not taking that dog with us, Bitty Hollandale.”

“They must have some kind of accommodations for guests’ pets.”

“They do. Guests leave them at home or in kennels.”

“Honestly, Trinket, when did you become anti-animals?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not anti-animals. I used to have dogs, remember? I just didn’t wrap them up in baby blankets and bibs and pass them off as ugly infants.”

Bitty brightened. “I hadn’t even thought of that! You’re absolutely brilliant.”

Sometimes I feel like if I could just inhale deeply enough, the stupid things I say will be sucked back into my mouth and swallowed. However, since I haven’t yet mastered that ability, I contented myself with, “If you insist on taking Chitling, we’re giving up The Peabody.”

“
Chen
Ling. And I’ve been to The Peabody before so it doesn’t matter if I go again or not. I just want to get out of Holly Springs for a day. I want to go where no one knows me and won’t be looking at me with one of those fake smiles and slopping sugar while they’re really thinking I had something to do with Philip ending up dead in my cellar.”

Technically, we all shared some blame for that, but since Bitty was already under enough stress, so much that she’d started carting around a dog I was nearly sure I’d seen in some movie about space aliens, I just said, “We’ll be in Mama’s car. It’s bigger than mine.”

“See you at six-thirty.”

After I got home the day didn’t much improve. That morning, I’d spent with Mama as she walked me through the schedule of cat-feeding and Brownie care. The evening I devoted to more of the same, but not quite as complicated. A chalkboard on the barn wall details which cat gets which medicine, and thankfully, said cats were in wire cages covered with plastic to prevent the spread of germs, but none of the patients were particularly appreciative of the medical efforts on their behalf. Daddy had welder’s gloves draped on a shelf, and a six-inch plastic tube called a pill shooter, with which I could shoot a pill down the victim’s—I mean patient’s—throat. The trick is apparently getting the patient’s mouth open. That morning it’d been easy enough, but that was because the cat had sunk its front teeth into my left thumb so I was able to wedge the pill shooter between the cat’s teeth and my thumb, push the plunger, and when the cat choked, I extricated my bleeding digit. Very simple. Mama and Daddy have pill splitters, pill crushers, and pill shooters. Everything handy but a gun.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-cat, either. I always had kittens when I was young, and as an adult, I had a cat that lived to be twenty and a half years old. Since she died, I’ve steadfastly refused to get another pet. It hurts too badly to lose them.

Anyway, we did another run-through before my parents trusted me with their care, and we went inside where Mama gave me another list of
Things To Do for Brownie
. My head started to whirl and a dull thud spread from behind my eyes to my temples. Brownie eats homemade dog food on top of his special dry dog food. Boiled chicken breasts and long-grain rice only. No salt, no preservatives, and only a little of the broth with
all
the fat strained and discarded.

“I froze a two-week supply,” Mama said, and when I staggered at the implication, she smiled. “Just in case of the unexpected. He has digestive problems. And he’ll eat around the pills if you don’t watch him, so you can either dip it in plain no-fat yogurt for him or in the chicken broth, and if that doesn’t work, use the pill shooter. He has his own right here in this basket. Oh, and don’t let him eat anything he’s not supposed to eat. It could kill him. He ate so many terrible things when he was young, hairbrushes, razor blades—half of your father’s dental bridge once—I fear it’s done a great deal of damage to his intestines and bowel.”

When I glanced down at Brownie, he looked up at me with anxious eyes and drooping ears, one paw held up, the very picture of a pathetic sufferer. He reminded me of one of those old paintings people went crazy over back in the seventies, of big-eyed, soulful dogs, cats, and kids that made you cry just looking at them. But I know better.

This is the same dog I’ve seen leap four feet into the air to try and snag a bird winging past or a squirrel off a tree limb, and I’m not buying the pathetic pretense.

So I looked at the neat little plastic containers of Brownie’s chicken and rice to go on top of his dry dog food—that can only be purchased at a vet’s for three times as much as you’d pay for dog food in Wal-Mart—read the list of his medications, and was very glad I hadn’t gotten a job yet. This was obviously going to take up all my time.

“And I’m sorry,” Mama was saying, “but I just didn’t have time to put you up some meals while I’m gone. There’s meat and frozen dinners in the freezer, and cans of soup in the cabinet.”

“I’ll manage. If I get too hungry, maybe Brownie will share.”

“Of course, he’ll sleep with you at night. He likes to burrow under the covers. I’ve been told it’s the dachshund in him. Apparently, the breed used to go into rabbit and weasel holes after their prey.”

“Now, we might have a problem there. I don’t want a dog on my sheets.”

“Oh, he’s clean. Besides, I usually just throw an old bedspread on top of our bed and he gets under that. I left a quilt in your room for him to use. Sometimes he likes to bunch it around him. Let’s see, is there anything else I’ve forgotten to tell you?”

I waited patiently. I knew where keys were, had phone numbers, schedules, pharmacy and doctor numbers—“Which of the vets do you prefer?” I asked.

“Any of them at Willow Bend are wonderful, even that new vet. Quite a charming young man. Brownie took right to him.”

I narrowed my eyes. Suspicion is an ugly thing, but it seemed there was some kind of conspiracy going on.

However, Mama didn’t say anything else about the new vet, just gave me phone numbers of church ladies in her Sunday School class if I decided I needed prayers. Those would definitely come in handy.

Finally, there was nothing left to write down, remember, or show, and we all sat down to a light dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. They’d be up at four, probably. I’d sleep until six if I used ear plugs.

A sense of energy bubbled in them, and they laughed about the least little thing, looked at the brochures of the Delta Queen and tried to figure out exactly where their stateroom would be by looking at the outside of the river boat. I sat and watched them for a while.

It’s funny, but I felt like I used to feel on Christmas Eve. Not when I was a kid, but when my daughter was four and five, old enough to know about Santa Claus, and young enough to still believe. Her excitement, the sense of wonderment and magic, had always been in her eyes.

That wonder and magic sparkled in my parents’ eyes right now.

“I won’t be able to sleep a wink tonight,” Mama said, and Daddy leaned close and said something in her ear I was glad I couldn’t hear, and then they both laughed.

“If you two lovebirds are through with dinner,” I said, getting up from the table and taking dishes to put in the dishwasher, “I’ll clean up, then go upstairs. It’s been a long day for me, and I think I’ll read a little before I turn out the light.”

I saw immediately my long explanation was completely unnecessary. They hadn’t heard a word. That made me smile. Crazy kids.

As I’d suspected, I woke up at five-fifteen and turned off my alarm clock. None was needed. Even upstairs, I could hear the excitement below. For one thing, Brownie had obviously seen the suitcases. He’s not a completely stupid dog. In fact, he’s quite the little survivor. From the time he showed up in an ice storm, looking pathetic and shivering, he’d insinuated himself into their lives and hearts quite firmly. And most of the time, I think he’s really a sweet, cute creature. Except when he’s constantly barking, as he does the minute he sees suitcases. He relates suitcases to people going away. For a dog, I think that’s a pretty good connection. I’ve worked with hotel employees who wouldn’t be able to figure that out. Bless their hearts.