A Rip Roaring Good Time (21 page)

"Excuse me?" I asked. I recalled Lexie's comment that Georgia had flinched at the mention of Trotter's name when she'd mentioned fixing him a drink. According to Lexie, it was as if she'd had issues with Trotter too. I understood the woman's earlier reluctance to speak now. She'd probably been building up the nerve to ask me what was going on with Lexie. Out of pure curiosity? I wondered. I really couldn't tell, but my instincts told me she had a more personal interest in the case.

"I'm just wondering where the case stands at this point," Georgia said. Bingo! She'd wanted to find out if I knew any more about the case than she did, but she was nervous about asking me for some reason.

"I wasn't aware you knew the victim before his death."

Georgia grimaced and replied, "I really didn't know Trotter Hayes personally. I just knew
of
him from my daughters."

Her daughter, Lori, appeared to be in her mid-twenties, four or five years younger than Trotter, Wendy, and most of the other guests at the party, who all looked to be in the thirty- to thirty-five-year-old range. It stood to reason the majority of the party guests were classmates of Wendy and Mattie's. The two gals may not have even been acquainted with Lori if she'd been several classes behind them in school.

"Well, in the first place, Lexie is being released from jail as we speak. In the second place, she shouldn't have been there in the first place because there's absolutely no way my dear friend would have ever perpetrated such a vicious act. I'm sure you know her well enough to realize that yourself, Georgia. In the third and last place, I happen to agree wholeheartedly with your statement that Hayes had it coming. But that doesn't mean I condone someone killing the man in cold blood the way they did. That being said, the killer is still at large, and I can assure you it's not Lexie."

"I know Lexie's not guilty, Ms. Ripple. I didn't mean to insinuate that I thought she was. I merely misspoke. The detectives think she's guilty though. Don't they?" Georgia asked before answering her own question. "I saw Leonard Smith on TV just a couple of minutes ago. The chief was giving a statement on the courthouse steps. He certainly seemed confident they had his son's killer behind bars and was appalled the judge was forcing the police department to release her."

"Yeah, well, too bad for Chief Smith and his piece-of-work stepson!" I said, cutting Georgia off. But as if I hadn't even spoken, she continued.

"Chief Smith still believes her blood on the murder weapon proves she's the guilty party. However, Judge Jueti insisted Lexie's explanation of having sliced her finger while attempting to cut the cake, rather than cutting it as she was wielding the weapon against the chief's stepson, was credible enough to demand her release since there was nothing to prove otherwise. The chief also thought the photo that one lady took just as the lights flashed on should be enough to warrant her arrest. But the judge insisted it was purely circumstantial; possibly a case of the accused being in the wrong place at the wrong time." Georgia recited what she'd seen on TV very matter-of-factly, almost as if she'd taken notes and had been rehearsing her discussion with me.

"Judge Jueti is correct," I replied in Lexie's defense. I wasn't quite sure where Georgia Piney stood on the matter, but it appeared to me she was straddling the fence about Lexie's involvement in the murder. I had not yet heard about the press release, so I was happy that she was sharing the information with me. But I was also pondering about why she'd ask me what was going on with the case when she appeared to know more about it than I did. "Didn't the chief mention in his remarks that Lexie had been released from custody?"

"Um, yes." She answered simply. With that, she effectively ended the conversation by opening the door and telling me to have a nice day, and thanking me once again for returning the platter. She didn't seem to want to get into a debate about why she'd prompted the conversation by asking me what was going on with the case when clearly she already knew the answer.

As I stepped toward the door, a photo prominently displayed on the china hutch caught my attention. It was a photo of two pre-pubescent young girls in matching frilly pink and white costumes, grinning broadly as they showed off a number of colorfully decorated eggs in their woven Easter baskets. I was certain one of the girls was Lori, but I couldn't tell which one, because the other girl had to be Lori's identical twin.

Georgia visibly winced when she caught me studying the photo. I thought back to when I'd come to her home to discuss the party menu. She'd told me she had only one
living
child when I asked her if she had children. The inference that she'd had at least one other child who was no longer alive had not really registered. At the time, I'd been making idle chatter to keep from letting our conversation slide into an uncomfortable silence as conversations often do when the two parties had only just met for the first time and have nothing in common to talk about.

In the discussion we'd just had, she'd mentioned having known of Trotter Hayes through her daughters, as in more than just Lori, the one I was familiar with. I had to assume Lori's twin had died and Georgia might not have wanted to converse with me about it. Due to the fact Lori's twin sister was obviously young at the time of her death, if the twin was truly dead, and not just "dead to Georgia", it was understandable that discussing the loss of her child might be too painful to bear. Identical twins share the exact same DNA, and the extremely close bond between most twins would have no doubt made her sister's death a devastating blow to Lori too.

If Lori's twin really was deceased, what had happened to her?
I wondered.

I asked myself if questioning Georgia about the photo would seem too intrusive of me. Then I answered myself by thinking,
Of course it would, but when has that ever stopped me before?
I was a little too long in the tooth to change my nature now; to become all sensitive and non-interfering with other people's business when there was something important at stake.

"What adorable girls!" I said, pointing to the photo. "That's Lori, and what I'd have to assume is her twin sister, isn't it?"

Georgia nodded as her eyes misted over. I was mentally kicking myself in the rear end for not trying harder to restrain myself from asking her about the framed eight-by-ten print. I was standing there like a fool, trying to figure out what to do or say next, when Georgia surprised me by replying, "Yes. But Tori passed away about ten years ago."

As if reading my mind, before I could get the next question out of my mouth, she answered it by saying, "She took her own life."

"Oh, my! I'm so sorry, Georgia. I shouldn't have even asked about the photo. I was just curious, but I really shouldn't—"

"That's all right. You had no way of knowing."

I wanted to tell her I actually did have a way of knowing. Now that I could Google practically anything on the Internet, there was very little information I didn't have access to. It occurred to me then that maybe Georgia was unaware of this thing called the
World Wide Web,
as Mattie had called it. So, instead, I simply apologized once more and gave her a quick hug before walking out her front door.

Chapter 13

When I arrived at the inn, I found Lexie sitting in a wicker chair on the back porch, deep in thought, with a cup of coffee in her hand. She looked up when she heard me shut the door behind me.

"Oh, my goodness, it's so good to see you!" I said. "You are surely a sight for sore eyes, my dear."

Lexie stood up and folded her arms around me in a long and warm embrace. "It's great to be home and to be back in the company of those I hold dear. Not to mention, folks who don't reek of cigarettes, booze, vomit, and God knows what else. One of my cellmates had such a nasty stench it made me throw up in the shiny throne, with the stinkpot watching me all the while. Stone told me you and Rip have been busy trying to get to the bottom of this unbelievable ordeal. And Wendy mentioned you returned the Pineys' platter. I appreciate your help more than you know, Rapella."

"It was well worth the trip to the Pineys, I assure you!"

"Why? What happened?" I went on to tell her about my encounter with Georgia. She was even more surprised than I was, having never heard Georgia mention the fact she had a twin daughter who had died.

Lexie said, "And we chat after church every week. But I can see why it'd be a painful subject for her to discuss. Tori's death occurred well before I moved to Rockdale, so it stands to reason I wouldn't have read about it in the paper either."

"But wouldn't you reckon it was covered by the press at the time it occurred, especially when the suicide involved such a young person who left behind an identical twin?"

"Yes, it must have been big news at the time. Things like that don't happen regularly in a town this size. When it was announced the new Panera Bread you three gals had lunch at today was going to be located here, you'd have thought they were moving the White House to Main Street in downtown Rockdale. But that's a good thought, Rapella! It's something we need to look into for sure. Speaking of twins, are you sure you and I weren't twins who were separated at birth?"

I laughed at the ridiculousness of her remark and set my iPad down on the glass tabletop between us. "That's where this handy little critter comes in. Mattie gave me a lesson on its usefulness and I've been fiddling with it ever since. You won't believe what I discovered last night. I poked this doo-dad Mattie called an icon, and suddenly, out of nowhere, there were these images on the screen. Can you believe that I can actually play solitaire without even needing a deck of cards now? I guess Reggie put that game in this thing before she gave it to us last Christmas."

Lexie laughed. "Honey, with that iPad you have access to a zillion different games in what's called the 'app store'. See, it's this icon right here," she explained, pointing at the screen on the device.

I started to say that I knew what an icon was. Lexie had probably forgotten she was talking to someone who was well-versed in technical lingo now. To be polite, though, I merely nodded as she continued. "I could download a few games for you if you'd like. Or, better yet, show you how to do it yourself. Do you like Mahjong?"

"Love it! Used to play it at the senior citizen's center back home."

"Great! Then I'll download it to your tablet. How about Scrabble?"

"Oh, goodness, yes!" I loved beating the socks off Rip with words like qua and zoa. Most evenings Rip enjoyed TV shows where approximately two thousand rounds of ammunition are exchanged in shootouts between cops and criminals and, miraculously, not one character suffers a gunshot wound. He particularly enjoys scenes where healthy young thugs are run down by roly-poly police officers well past their prime. In real life, it'd be doubtful if they could run down a sloth.

Meanwhile, I'm scanning the dictionary for little-known words, seldom-used by mankind but having high-point-value letters, to use in scrabble competitions against my husband. I kind of enjoyed increasing my vocabulary at the same time.

"I'll add Scrabble then. How about a slots game or two?" Lexie asked.

"Nah, not wild about playing slots."

"Really? How come? I thought casinos were like magnets to people on social security."

"A lot of them perhaps. But not me. I suspect the games might be fixed."

"I can guarantee you, Rapella, all slots machines are fixed!"

"So why do people enjoy them so much?" I asked. "I've heard of people who lost every dime they had at casinos because they became addicted to gambling."

"People enjoy the excitement of possibly winning big jackpots," Lexie said.

"Big jackpots? Yeah, right," was my scuffing reply. "We were traveling through Mississippi a few years back and Rip thought it'd be fun to stop at a casino in Biloxi to splurge on their seafood buffet for supper. Afterward, just for kicks we decided to each put a ten dollar bill in one of their many slot machines."

"That sounds like it'd be fun," Lexie said.

"You'd think! But here's what actually happened. With my very first spin the machine made a bunch of dinging, bell-ringing sounds and lights were flashing like crazy. The screen up above read 'Winner.' For a couple of seconds I had visions of a brand new travel trailer in my mind. As much as I'd hate to get rid of the old Chartreuse Caboose, it
is
kind of like my husband, falling apart piece by piece."

"Your trailer's still quite eye-catching though." Lexie's response went without saying.