Divas and Dead Rebels (10 page)

I sucked in a deep breath of fresh air before I went back inside the house and tried to keep my left eye from twitching too badly. Then I pasted a big ole smile on my face and went in to put another plastic bag into the garbage can.

My mother insists upon coordinating her winter clothing with my father’s, and also with Brownie. Since Brownie was wearing a blue plaid sweater, and Mama wore a blue plaid cardigan, I assumed my father must also be wearing a blue plaid sweater. I felt out of place in my black jeans and green blouse. While Mama is dainty, with porcelain skin that has probably never seen a blemish of any kind, and her once-blonde-now-silvery hair is usually well-coifed, I am more like my father’s side of the family. Daddy is pretty tall, even though his over-six foot height seems to have slightly shrunk in the past few years, and his once-dark hair is now snow white. We’re both big-boned. Really.

Mama patted me on the arm as she passed me on the way back to the kitchen sink where she washed her hands, then dried them on an old towel. She picked up a flour sifter and began sifting flour into a stoneware bowl. I saw the red food coloring sitting near the bowl and knew that she was making one of her specialties.

“Red Velvet Cake?” I asked, and Mama nodded.

“Is this for Emerald? I mean, Thanksgiving is still three weeks away, isn’t it?”

“This is for our church social,” said Mama over her shoulder. “I’m baking a Lane cake for Emerald.”

“A Lane cake!” I drew in a breath of ecstasy. Maybe my sister coming home for a few days would have unexpected perks. It
had
been a long time since I’d seen her, even if she was going to show up with kids in tow. Most of my family knows I avoid children in any groups larger than one. Emerald’s children were, the last time I spent longer than five minutes with them, beautiful to look at but hard on anyone who still had their hearing. And their sanity.

Emerald seems not to notice when her offspring bounce on couches, walk across coffee tables, or pee in her potted plants. I suspected my sister of being a bit “potted” herself a time or two. She just smiles serenely and goes on with whatever she’s doing at the moment, whether it be peeling a child off the ceiling or escorting a terrified guest to the front door. That last would be me.

“You do realize Emerald’s children are much older than the last time you saw them,” Mama pointed out while I was still reminiscing about the little darlings.

“Oh. Yes, I guess they are. So . . . the oldest ones are somewhere around the ages of Bitty’s boys, I suppose? And that would make the youngest . . . ten? There are a couple more in there somewhere. Good lord. She’s too old to have kids that young. What was she thinking?”

“Change of life babies,” Mama said as she sifted in baking powder and salt. “It’s a miracle they got here in perfect shape. But I suppose medicine has come so far now that the risks aren’t as great for mother and baby.”

“Twins at forty-two,” I thought out loud, and shook my head as I realized just how lucky I’ve been in my life. “I’d have left them at the hospital.”

“Oh, Trinket, the things you say. You know you’d have done no such thing,” Mama said, and I wondered just how it was my mother could be so blind to who I really am, especially lately.

I decided to let her drift pleasantly along in her fantasy world and went upstairs to my bedroom to change clothes and unpack my overnight bag. Daddy must have taken it from the hallway and brought it upstairs for me, since I couldn’t recall having done so myself. I was pretty sure I hadn’t, but then, strange things have been happening to and around me so much lately, I wouldn’t place a bet on even a sure thing. My mind plays terrible tricks on me.

I sat down on the edge of my bed after unpacking my overnight bag and thought about not only my twin sister, but Bitty and her new habit of carting around corpses. That was not a situation that would mesh well with my sister’s visit. Emerald had never been that adventurous, and as a child had been a terrible tattletale. My brothers and I could never resist tormenting her, so of course, we always stayed in trouble.

Not that Emerald was an innocent victim all the time. Oh no. She was just sneaky. She put itching powder in my brothers’ underwear and socks. She substituted liquid food coloring for one of my spray perfumes, so that I looked like a Smurf right before my date came to the door to get me. She used my best fingernail polish on the barn dog’s toenails.

All that aside, if Emerald got even a whiff of what Bitty and I had encountered in Clayton’s dorm room, it would be all over town. She’s worse than Cady Lee Forsythe, who has the biggest mouth of all the Divas. Not the loudest, just the biggest. I’d better let Bitty know she was coming home for a visit.

“You’re not calling to cancel, are you?” asked Bitty when she answered my call. I had finally given in and gotten a cell phone, and now she always knows it’s me. Caller ID is not the best of modern advances, in my opinion.

“No, I just thought I’d let you know that Emerald is coming home for a visit.”

Silence on the other end.

“Bitty?”

“I’m here. I’m just torn between being glad to see her again, and fear that she’ll get involved in our current . . . project.”

Trust Bitty to whitewash murder with an innocuous name like “project.”

“She’ll be here in three weeks. With her husband and kids.”

“Gawd. How many kids does she have now?”

“Six. But the oldest ones are Brandon and Clayton’s age, and the youngest ones are ten. So we don’t have to worry about diapers or tantrums.”

“Not that I would anyway. So now we just have to worry about smoking and cussing.”

I thought about it a moment. “Probably. You’re referring to the ten-year-olds, right?”

“Of course. Kids today are much more precocious. I think it has something to do with all the stuff the government puts in our food to make it grow. It makes our kids grow up too fast.”

“Bitty, have you been on the Internet again?”

“Not this weekend. We’ve been a bit busy, if you’ll recall.”

“Right. Okay. I have chocolate, and I’ll be there at five.”

“Bring hard liquor.”

She hung up before I could remind her that drinking and driving was a lot worse than doing a rolling stop at a stop sign. Officer Rodney Farrell should be glad I’m such a conscientious person about some things.

Of course, no liquor store is open on Sundays in Holly Springs, nor are grocery stores allowed to sell anything stronger than beer. Wine is sold in grocery stores only if it’s 6% alcohol or less, and even then, the Blue Law that prohibits the sale of spirits is being stretched. Just a few years back—okay, over forty—the entire state of Mississippi prohibited the sale of any kind of liquor at all. A few of the counties are now half-dry, half-wet. There are still dry counties in our state that forbid alcohol to be sold in any form. Naturally, the citizens there go to the neighboring counties to leave their money. A blind eye is turned toward responsible drinkers in those counties, but woe be unto you if you mess up and get caught drinking and driving. Or creating a disturbance fueled by any kind of alcohol. Only politicians or judges can get by with that.

So I wisely refrained from adding to any cache of bourbon that Bitty already had tucked away in her basement—she has a wine cellar complete with temperature controls and an index—and kept to my chocolate rule for the evening. It would probably be more than I could handle with or without the added alcohol anyway.

Divas usually meet by the dozen. There are few rules to being a Diva, but one very important rule is that no men are allowed unless they serve a purpose such as to wait tables or as entertainment. Normally, there are twelve Divas. Due to a few changes in the past year, the number now stands at eleven. Carolann and Rose are the newest, and before them, I was the last to be inducted into the Diva membership. It’s not that we’re a fancy, exclusive club or anything, because really, the essential requirement of being a Diva is an excellent sense of humor. And a high tolerance for chocolate and spirits.

Lately, I have also suggested keeping bail money at hand. While we have collectively developed a knack for getting involved in crimes, getting arrested is more of an individual talent.

I blame that on the ringleaders: Bitty Hollandale, Rayna Blue, Gaynelle Bishop, and Trinket Truevine.

Yes, I have included myself among the guilty for the simple reason that I have been guilty of leading forays into danger and disaster. It’s a latent talent that has bloomed under the tutelage of my companions. We bring out the best—some have suggested the worst—in one another.

So it wasn’t at all surprising that once we had all the greetings out of the way and had settled into comfy chairs with our choice of beverage and form of chocolate, that my dear cousin Bitty brought the group to order. She set Chen Ling on the settee next to her and stood up to get everyone’s attention. Still holding her champagne glass in one hand, she made a gesture with the other as if striking a gavel, and everyone laughed.

“Divas, we have a problem,” she said with her most charming smile. “As some of you may know, Trinket and I went down to Oxford this weekend to the football game—Ole Miss won, of course—and while we were there, something awful happened.” Bitty looked at me and held out her free hand. “Trinket will tell you all about it.”

I had just begun to suck down some sweet tea when she made that announcement and nearly choked before I could get it all the way down. I gave Bitty an evil look, but she had already sat back on her uncomfortable settee next to her dog. Chen Ling, a cross-eyed, bow-legged, pigeon-toed pug, returned my evil look since Bitty declined to even glance in my direction. Chen Ling—occasionally I refer to her as Chitling—has cleverly developed a keen sense for trouble of any kind. She has been known to bite the offender. This is not usually a problem since she has only three of her front fangs, but it does sting.

With everyone now looking at me, I wiped tea off my chin and managed a smile. “I’ll try to make this brief,” I said, “so forgive me if I leave out a few details. First, as you all know, what’s said with the Divas, stays with the Divas, right?”

Of course everyone agreed, some just with nods, others with “Of course!”

I continued, “This past Friday, Bitty and I went to her sons’ dorm room to see if they were back yet from their morning classes. Earlier that morning Bitty had a parent meeting with Clayton’s ancient history professor. It did not go well.”

I paused, uncertain quite how much to divulge at this point. I didn’t want to say anything that would put either Bitty, Clayton, or any of the Divas at an uncomfortable disadvantage should they be interviewed by the police. There always seems to be that point to consider lately.

So I said, “Imagine our surprise when we arrived at their dorm room to find it unlocked and neither boy there. Instead, there was the professor whom Bitty had argued with only a few hours before about Clayton’s grades.” I paused before adding, “He was in the closet and very, very dead.”

Someone gasped, someone else groaned, and I was pretty sure it was Cady Lee Forsythe who muttered, “Here we go again . . .”

“Seeing as how he was in her sons’ dorm room,” I said as soon as the gasps and groans had died down, “there seemed to be only one thing to do so no suspicion could be directed at one of the boys.”

“Oh . . . my . . .
gawd
,” said Sandra Dobson. “You didn’t! Not again!”

Sandra had been briefly involved in the last case of the traveling corpse and still shuddered when it was mentioned.

“Oh, yes,” Bitty piped up, “it was the only thing to do.”

“Needless to say,” I said loud enough to drown out anything incriminating Bitty might say next, “matters have progressed rather rapidly. Rayna has come across some new information . . . do you want to share it, Rayna, or would you rather I did?”

“I can, if you’d like.” When I nodded, she stood up with a glass of wine in one hand and a fudgy brownie in the other. “It’s like this. Oxford police think the professor was abducted since his living room is torn up pretty badly. There’s no sign of blood, so they assume it’s an abduction for ransom. We know otherwise.”

“Are you sure it’s the same guy?” asked Cindy Nelson. “It could be one of those terrible coincidences.”

“Very sure,” said Rayna around a mouthful of brownie. She chased it with a sip of wine before continuing. “For one thing, Bitty and Trinket recognized him when he was found dead. For another, his wife is supposed to be near hysteria and saying the worst, that someone has probably killed him. It’s the same man.”

“Why does she think he’s dead if the police think he’s kidnapped?” Marcy asked. “If that was my husband, I’d hope for the best. Wouldn’t you?”

She looked around at the others, who all nodded except for Bitty, Gaynelle and me. While Bitty and I have been married and divorced, Gaynelle has never married. None of us would qualify to answer that question, I thought. I was then proven wrong.

“You may hope for the best,” said Gaynelle after a moment, “but you might also fear the worst. Some people are better than others at holding in their emotions.”

I thought about Emily Sturgis; she was someone whom I would have picked as able to hold in her emotions. Tragedy affects everyone differently, I suppose. And since police usually suspect the spouse when a partner is murdered, maybe she feared the worst for that reason, too.