Dixie Divas (31 page)

Folding his arms over his chest, Maxwell sent two deputies down into the cellar, sans boots, which none of them had with them. I empathized with their obvious reluctance. While we waited, the sergeant asked me questions about my reason for being there, and every detail I could remember. I left out nothing. Bitty would just have to cope.

“We already sent out a car earlier to check for Sanders,” the sergeant said. “No sign of him here.”

“Bitty’s reasoning is that he’d hide from the police, but not from her.”

Maxwell just looked at me, then up at the house. He wore one of those small shoulder radios that crackled incomprehensibly while he listened intently. Then he replied in a few of those numbers police like to use, and said, “Secure the area. I’ll make the call.”

He went around to the driver’s side, got into his car and spoke into his radio, while Dr. Coltrane and I stood in the weeds and gravel and wondered what was going on. Or at least, I was wondering what was going on. Maybe Coltrane spoke police codes.

After a moment, the sergeant got out of the car and came around to talk to me again. He had that stone-faced look that police seem to wear when they’re trying to be subtle. My stomach flipped.

“Is Bitty all right?” I asked anxiously.

“Mrs. Hollandale is safe. I’d like to ask you if you saw anything unusual in the cellar, Miz Truevine.”

“As I told you, I couldn’t see anything at all. It was pitch-black.”

“Any unusual sounds, maybe?”

“Just rats.”

“Before you were struck, did you see or hear anything unusual?”

Getting a little worried, I said, “No. What’s going on?”

Instead of answering my question, he said, “How long were you separated from your cousin before you allege that someone struck you on the head?”

“I don’t know, maybe ten minutes, and I wasn’t
allegedly
anything. I have a hole in my scalp to prove it.”

Dr. Coltrane put a hand on my arm, a solid, comforting pressure. “Sergeant, Miz Truevine sustained a head injury that I treated after my arrival. She’ll need further medical care, however, so these questions should wait. Then she and her attorney will no doubt be glad to answer any questions you may have.”

Maxwell didn’t look happy, but that was probably in my favor. Something hard and cold sat in the pit of my stomach when I looked back at the house and saw increased activity. I just knew they’d cornered Sanders, or maybe found someone else. Did they think I was a part of it? And Bitty?

Apparently, Dr. Coltrane thought along the same lines. He looked at the sergeant and said, “If you prefer, I can have her call her attorney now and he’ll come out and tell you the same thing I just suggested, or she can meet you later at the station after she’s had medical care.”

The upshot was that since I was a person with lifetime ties to the community and likely to hang around, the sergeant said my later presence at the police station would be sufficient. To me it sounded more like an arraignment, but then, maybe I watch too much
Law & Order
.

Dr. Coltrane escorted me to the passenger side of his truck even though I offered to ride in the back or wear a plastic bag. “I can’t smell too pleasant,” I added.

 
“That’s all right. I’ve smelled worse.” When I arched my brow, he smiled. “I hope you didn’t expect me to say rotten potatoes smell just fine.”

“No, that would be asking too much, wouldn’t it,” I agreed.

I don’t know why, but somehow he made it all bearable, being locked up in a cellar filled with rotting potatoes and now being questioned—again—by the police. Like
I
was the one who had done something wrong, when I’d been hit in the head and left for dead. But I was alive. Bitty was safe. Could I ask for anything more? Oh yes. I’d almost forgotten.

“I hope they treat Sanders as least as badly as they just treated me,” I said once I’d gotten into Dr. Coltrane’s truck, sitting atop a big plastic garbage bag I’d insisted he place on the seat. “After all, he’s the one guilty of bashing people in the head, not me.”

Standing just outside the open truck door with his hand on it to close it, he looked at me. “I’d say Sanders is getting his just rewards if he’s guilty.”

It was the way he said it. I suddenly knew, even before he added, “They just found his body in the root cellar.”

* * * *

Jackson Lee accompanied me to the police station after I’d been to the emergency room where they used a different color antiseptic on my head and told me not to wash my hair. The last upset me more than the injury or the way I smelled. When I’d asked Jackson Lee if I shouldn’t go home and bathe and get clean clothes first, he shook his head.

“No, they’re less likely to keep you too long as you are.”

That told me a lot about my current condition. No wonder Dr. Coltrane had taken off so fast when Jackson Lee showed up at the hospital. Of course, since the animal clinic is just across the road from the hospital, maybe he really did have work to do.

As Jackson Lee predicted, my presence in the police station was very brief. I preferred to think it was because of my innocence, but from the way the young officer taking my written statement kept gagging and coughing, my fragrance may have contributed to my swift release.

Jackson Lee took me to Bitty’s, and she wouldn’t even let me in the front door. She held her nose and said through wood and glass, “Oh God, Trinket—I’m sorry. I’ll give you garbage bags to wear home, but if you come in here, I swear I’ll throw up on you.”

“That’s all right. Just give me my purse so I can get my car keys. I’ll talk to you later.”

She stuck purse and garbage bag through the gap in the door and said, “I’m so glad you’re all right. Go home and bathe,” then shut the door on me.

It was that kind of day.

Fortunately, my parents had already heard all about everything by the time I got home, so I didn’t have to go into lengthy explanations before I was allowed to leave my clothes in the laundry room for later burning and given a robe to make my way upstairs to the bathroom. Since I’ve been known to be rather defiant at times, I washed my hair anyway, although I did take care not to get too much water or shampoo into the cut. It was easy to find after emergency room staff had shaved around it despite my protests. Ah well. I’d been thinking of getting a new hairstyle anyway, I just hadn’t considered the G.I. Jane look very attractive. I still don’t.

Later, wrapped up against the evening chill in my thick terrycloth robe, I sat out on the sleeping porch with a cup of my mother’s famous spiced tea. Even people who don’t like to drink hot tea love this recipe. Mama brought me up a pot of it with an English cozy around the Royal Albert teapot to keep it warm. She sat down in the chair next to me, and for a while we just sat in companionable silence watching the shadows outside lengthen into night. It reminded me of my childhood, those precious times when it was just me and Mama together, all too brief in a rowdy household.

“I’ve missed this,” Mama said after a little while. “Life just gets so busy at times.”

“A bit busier than usual lately,” I muttered, having not quite recovered from my day.

Soft light gleamed on the gold trim of the teacup rims, and Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major played on my stereo system—one of those small cheap ones, since I’d given the best things to my daughter or sold them to strangers rather than let Perry have them. There’s a lot of Bitty in me at times. I prefer to think of it as inherited Scotch-Irish thriftiness, but it’s really more the Scotch-Irish long, vengeful memory, I fear. Throw in the Truevine Welsh ancestry, and what you’ve got are mean, stingy people, or happy, generous people. If there’s a medium between the two extremes, I haven’t yet seen it in our family. Somewhere in the attic is a detailed family tree with a rather interesting sketch of our ancestors who were either over-achievers or prison residents.

Mama reached over to pat me on the arm. “It’s all right, sugar. Everything will work out just like it’s supposed to do. This craziness will pass, and a new crisis will come along.”

My eyes crossed. “Oh great. That really gives me something to look forward to. And to think I used to wonder if it was healthy to spend all my time alone. Now I realize how good I had it back then.”

“You don’t regret coming home, do you?”

I looked at Mama. “No, of course not.” As I realized just how much I meant that, I added, “I’d thought about moving close to Michelle, but she has her own life and friends. Then I thought about how I always used to be so busy when you’d call, and how much of my adult life you and I have missed sharing. That’s when I knew I wanted to come home. It was time to catch up.”

“And of course,” Mama added with a mischievous smile, “someone has to be here to take care of us old folks.”

I laughed. “Right. I just hope I can keep up with the two of you.”

Mama patted my arm again. “Take plenty of vitamins, sugar.”

Early the next morning, before I’d had time to do more than get up and make my way blindly downstairs to the coffee pot, officers Stone and Farrell arrived. They’d come for the clothes I’d worn the day before, so Daddy, somewhat indignantly, put them into a plastic bag for them, along with my shoes. Truthfully, I wasn’t sad to see them go. The thrifty side of me urged me to wash and keep them, but my inner coward said to burn them. So I really didn’t mind giving the clothes to the police, though I had no idea what they thought they’d find.

Then Officer Farrell said, with a red face that should have warned me, “Um, ma’am, I’ve been told we have to, uh, get all your things.”

“Those are all my things,” I said. “I had on Lee jeans, an Ole Miss sweatshirt, and Nikes with sports socks. What more can—no. You can’t possibly want
those
!”

Farrell turned purple. Horrified, I stared at him, while Daddy just looked perplexed. The thought of strangers—male strangers—pawing over my cotton Hanes and new underwire bra with lift was intolerable. It’s not one of life’s indignities that can be overlooked.

I drew myself up, standing at least two inches taller than scrawny Officer Farrell, and said in my iciest tone, “Young man, I will not have my unmentionables dragged into town. If Sergeant Maxwell wants them, he’ll have to get a search warrant.”

Farrell looked at me with pleading eyes that I ignored. Daddy made a low rumbling sound that took the officer three hasty steps backward. Not even Officer Stone, a more formidable man, could persuade me, and once I put in a call to Jackson Lee, he stopped trying. I have my limits.

Holly Springs police may not have all the new technical equipment of big cities, but they do have access to enough to conduct thorough investigations. What they need can be borrowed, and murder victims are sent nearly two hundred miles to Jackson for autopsies. Investigations may move at a slower pace, but that certainly doesn’t mean they’re not efficient. Trust me, they are quite efficient.

The upside to the police being so efficient is that while Holly Springs has its share of drug dealers and users, the police know them by first name, know their addresses, and who to look for and when. Burglaries are at a minimum, murders rare, and most crimes committed by one family member or friend against another. There are enough of the latter to keep the police busy, and give Holly Springs more than its share of lawyers. It’s been said you can’t throw a rock without hitting a lawyer, and that’s probably true. Their offices run to one every four buildings around the court square. That may be a slight exaggeration, but Mississippi law is the state’s premier industry.

While that has its advantages, the disadvantages are that the police also frequently know the family history of the citizens, and that includes when there’s bad blood between husbands and wives, or ex-husbands and wives. They know why, and who got the best of whom, and if the feud is over or still on-going.

That’s how they knew that Philip Hollandale had blocked Bitty’s attempt to get the Inn on the historic register so far, and figured out that he’d tried to do the same to The Cedars. Since Sherman Sanders was no longer the prime suspect in the senator’s death, having been killed at just about the same time, according to the local coroner, that left Bitty as the only logical suspect. When Sanders’ autopsy report came back from Jackson along with his body for burial, it was expected that she’d be formally charged with his murder, too.

Bitty had already been charged with Philip Hollandale’s murder. Jackson Lee argued there was only circumstantial evidence, but apparently traces of his blood on the parlor floor, her prints on the pot of chicken and dumplings, and the rancor she felt for the senator gave her motive and opportunity. Also, a search of her house had turned up shoes with traces of Philip’s blood. The Sanders case wasn’t quite as clear-cut, but police were still trying to connect it to Bitty.

And me? My choices were between being a prosecutorial witness, or accomplice. Neither of which I found especially appealing.

“Having been hit in the head and locked up in the cellar puts you in the position of being a victim as well,” Jackson Lee explained to me when Bitty and I both sat on the edges of our chairs in his office and gripped each others’ arms like life preservers. “That’s good for you, but can be difficult for Bitty. Now, don’t go looking at me like that, it’s all going to be fine. There’s a state full of people who wanted to hit Philip Hollandale in the head. He’s done more than his share of questionable deals that made quite a few enemies. You’re just the easiest suspect, Bitty. I wish you’d have listened to me and stayed away from Sanders’. You’re the hard-headest female I’ve ever met in my life.”

I bit my lip to keep from agreeing. Now wasn’t the time. Bitty already felt lower than a snake’s belly. She didn’t need both of us reminding her that tenacity could be a liability.

“Now, you ladies try not to worry so much,” Jackson Lee said as he walked us out of his office, “that’s my job. I’ve got some people digging up facts, and as long as you told me every bit of the truth, we’ll get through this. Just remember, when anyone asks you,
No comment
is what you should say. All right?”