Divas and Dead Rebels (7 page)

Bitty, of course, carried a sterling silver cup engraved with her name and filled with bourbon, simple syrup and mint—a Mint Julep. While I didn’t have a sterling silver cup engraved with my name, I did have a sterling silver cup engraved with Bitty’s ex-husband’s name: Philip Hollandale. I didn’t care. I doubted seriously that Philip would need it where he was, although he might think about it wistfully. And I needed it badly. I had awakened with a horrible hangover that Bitty insisted upon treating with “hair of the dog that bit ya,” and I felt as if I had been pretty badly mauled, not just bitten.

Amazingly, a little vodka and tomato juice made me feel much better. Almost every tent where we paused had plenty of refills for our cups, too. It was a good thing. I wore stilettos at Bitty’s insistence, and I honestly don’t think I could have managed it if not for vodka. It gave me just enough false courage to pull it off. Normally, I’d rather wear live alligators on my feet than five-inch heels. But Bitty harassed me until I bought some very nice shoes at one of the resale shops before we came down to Oxford.

“It must be meant for you to wear those, Trinket,” she’d said, “because I never would have thought anyone else has feet as big as yours. Maybe they came from a drag queen with good taste.”

“You mean like that dress you’re wearing?” I’d responded, and we’d both smiled. It pleases us to insult each other.

At any rate, I wore navy stilettos and a navy blue sophisticated dress, and Bitty wore a red Gucci dress and Christian Louboutin sandals that were dark blue and white gingham on the uppers, with red and white striped knot bows and dark blue and white striped stiletto heels. I felt instant lust for the shoes but not the nearly nine hundred dollar price tag. I’m funny that way. Still, I was glad Bitty had insisted I wear stilettos since almost every female I saw teetered on at least four inches of heel. If one of us tripped, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all to find us all toppling like dominoes.

Bitty and I flitted from tent to tent in our fancy footwear like giddy butterflies, occasionally stopping to greet someone we knew—or more likely, that Bitty knew—and sample their food and, of course, their libations.

It was a lovely autumn day with warm sunshine gilding the skies and the leaves turning colors, and seemed to be one of those perfect times in life. If I hadn’t had the worry in the back of my mind that somehow our foolish act of moving a corpse would come back to haunt us, I would have had a wonderful day. Just like Bitty.

Two and a half hours before game time, Ole Miss football players appeared under an arch that named it the Walk of Champions; they strolled down the brick pathway between all the tailgaters. The coach walked with them, and the entire crowd went crazy. Over all the hollering and Rebel yells could be heard the Ole Miss Hotty Toddy cheer:

Are you ready?
Hell yes! Damn right!
Hotty Toddy, gosh almighty,
Who the hell are we? Hey!
Flim flam, bim bam,
OLE MISS, BY DAMN!

Even though I was a little surprised I still remembered it, I fell right in with all the others and yelled so loud my throat got dry. That called for another sip from my sterling silver cup, of course. Throughout the rest of the afternoon before the big game, I heard the Hotty Toddy countless times. All it took was one person yelling
“Are you ready?”
for the rest of us to chime in.

Really, Bitty can be right about some things. It was a lot more fun to lose myself in the enjoyment of the camaraderie and familiar rituals than it was to think about a dead professor.

I should have known the Law of Retribution would catch up with me sooner rather than later.

Chapter 4

By the time Bitty and I returned to Holly Springs the next day, I was exhausted. Ole Miss had won their game, the boys had their new bedding, their laundry had been cleaned and returned, and no one had said anything about a dead professor.

Maybe Bitty was right. Maybe I was OCD and just worried for nothing most of the time.

It was still before noon Sunday morning when we pulled into the driveway of Six Chimneys, her sprawling antebellum home with front and side-porches. An iron railing fence encloses a small front yard, and her triple-wide driveway ends at a four car garage behind and to one side of the house. My car, a five-year-old beige Ford Taurus, sat on the concrete and brick drive where I’d left it.

Huge iron or concrete planters held pansies, purple kale and maiden grass, with tendrils of ivy trailing over the edges. Bitty has a gardening service that makes sure her home is always up to date with the current season. Her house is pink with cobalt blue shutters and white trim on the gingerbread scrolling. Crystal chandeliers hang from the porch ceiling, but they’re the outdoor kind that weather well.

Bitty also has an alarm service, but she rarely remembers to set it. This time I’d reminded her, so she opened the front door and started punching in numbers. It beeped at her a couple times until I told her the code. She entered it and then looked at me.

“How do you know my code?”

“Simple. I know you. It was easy to figure out.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “No, it’s not.”

“Really, Bitty, anyone who knows you could figure it out pretty easily. You should use something unusual, not your dog’s name.”

“I only used part of her name.”

I rolled my eyes, Bitty muttered something rude, and I set down my overnight case and asked if she had anything cool to drink.

“Mimosas sound okay?” she said as she started toward the newly remodeled kitchen.

“Only one of those for me, since I have to drive home. I see no point in giving our local police an excuse to stop me.”

“Hah. As if they need an excuse. Do you know that Rodney Farrell stopped me the other day for something he called a ‘rolling stop’ at the stop sign? I told him there was no such thing, and I had no intention whatsoever of letting him write me a ticket.”

While Bitty got out the orange juice and a bottle of champagne, I took glasses down from one of the cabinets.

“Did he write you a ticket?” I asked as I held out the glasses for her to pour in the juice and sweeten it with champagne.

“No, but he was fixing to until I told him that I’d tell his grandmother how rude he’d been to me.”

“There
is
such a thing as a rolling stop, you know,” I said when my glass was full. “It’s a traffic violation.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” Bitty recorked the champagne bottle and put it back in the cooler. “I never heard of it. If they go around making up new laws, they should put out some kind of announcement about it.”

I nodded. “It’s on the driver’s license test. A driver must come to a complete stop at a stop sign, regardless if it’s a three-way, four-way, or even one-way stop.”

Bitty gave me a sour look. “Well, aren’t you little Miss Traffic Cop today. How do you know this, may I ask?”

“Because when I came back home I had to change my driver’s license from one state to another, and they required me to take the test since it was time for me to renew anyway. I had to study the Mississippi driver’s manual. Would you really have told his grandmother?”

“Probably not. But he didn’t know that.”

I pictured Officer Rodney Farrell’s horror at Bitty’s threat. He reminds me of a character or two from the old
Andy Griffith Show
reruns, since he acts like Barney Fife and looks like Opie Taylor. Bitty and I have vast experience with old TV shows and old movies. We frequently finish one another’s sentences when quoting lines from oft-seen television reruns.

I said, “Well, he probably just wanted to ‘nip it, nip it’—”

“‘Nip it in the bud!’” we both finished together and laughed at our own silliness in quoting a line used by the fictional Barney Fife.

Once we were seated in Bitty’s small parlor and had our feet up on ottomans, she asked, “What new plans do Aunt Anna and Uncle Eddie have in mind lately?”

Aunt Anna and Uncle Eddie are my parents. My father’s brother was Bitty’s father, now deceased. My parents have come down with a bug in their later years—the travel bug. While I sometimes suspect them of luring me home just so I can take care of their neurotic dog and feral cats while they go climb Pike’s Peak and gamble at Cripple Creek, it’s more like I’m a temporary custodian. They’re usually only gone a week at a time, and I’m usually so glad to see them return I forget the horror I’ve endured while they were absent. It’s something similar to childbirth; once the baby gets here, labor pains fade from memory. That just about describes my feelings about caring for their creatures.

“It’s so near the holidays,” I replied to Bitty’s question, “that they haven’t made any new plans that I know of. I should be safe until after the first of the year. Then I can start worrying about them taking off for the pyramids or Machu Picchu.”

“Bless you.”

I looked at her. “What?”

“Didn’t you just sneeze?”

I thought a moment. Then I shook my head. “No. I was just telling you that my parents have sent off for brochures again, this time adding Machu Picchu to the list.”

Bitty stared at me. “They sent off for brochures to
where?
”

“Machu Picchu. It’s an ancient abandoned village atop a mountain in Peru.”

“Oh. Good gawd. I’d hate to think of them traipsing around mountains and all. They’re in their seventies. Why don’t they go somewhere flat?”

“I’m hoping they don’t find out they’ll need passports until it’s too late. That may slow them down a little bit.”

“Speaking of ancient history,” Bitty began, “I think that professor just had it out for Clayton for some reason. Why wouldn’t he allow him to take his exam, or do some extra work or something to make up those missed days? Why just flunk him for no good reason?”

I’m getting pretty good at following Bitty’s swift conversational sidebars.

“Were his grades good up until then?” I asked.

“Not too bad. Some Cs but more Bs, and he usually turned in all his assignments on time. By flunking him, Sturgis could really have hurt Clayton’s future chances.”

“At what?”

“Who knows? My boys have changed their major so many times, I can hardly keep up with it, but good grades are almost always required in most cases.”

“Is Brandon still determined to be an attorney?”

Bitty shuddered. “Yes, so he says. Jackson Lee is delighted.”

“He would be. He’s an excellent attorney. So why aren’t you pleased about it?”

“Law is all right for some people, but I’d like to see my son go into a field that’s more respectable.”

“What’s disrespectable about the law?”

“All those lawyer jokes, for one thing.”

I rolled my eyes. “Honestly, Bitty, and you accuse me of being OCD. You’re much more illogical than I am.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

We stuck our tongues out at each other, laughed, and took another drink of our mimosas. Regression to childhood is always more fun with a companion.

Since it was early afternoon on a Sunday, we decided to go to brunch at Budgie’s. The current name is really the French Market Café, but Budgie used to own it and is still the manager, so locals still refer to it as Budgie’s. Old habits are hard to break.

There were several tables still available, so the lunch crowd hadn’t yet shown up when we arrived. Since Budgie had recently been forced to implement a No Pets rule, we were without Bitty’s usual furry accessory, and I anticipated a quiet, leisurely meal with no puggy interruptions. Not that Chen Ling isn’t cute in her own, inimitable way. It’s just that meals are so much more palatable without her porcine snorts as she gobbles down whatever she can reach on Bitty’s plate.

After the stress of our discovery at Ole Miss, I decided that something fattening was in order. Truthfully, I don’t need an excuse. I eat stuff that’s bad for me all the time. It just doesn’t seem fair that artery-clogging fats should come in so many delicious flavors.

I ordered fried okra, fried green tomatoes, chicken fried steak, black-eyed peas with fatback, cornbread sticks with butter, and sweet tea to drink. For dessert, I planned to order butter roll and coffee. That should encompass all the main food groups in recipes from the South: butter, salt, sugar and grease. Vegetables, meat, fruit and grains are just accidental in my favorite meals.

For those unfamiliar with butter roll, it’s similar to a cobbler without fruit. Or to a cinnamon roll swimming in custard sauce. Legend says it originated in slave cabins years ago, and they were kind enough to share the recipe and ingredients with other poor families who passed it along. It’s delicious and an excellent way to end a meal.

Bitty didn’t seem stressed at all, so she stuck to a light meal of fried catfish and hushpuppies, with a side order of coleslaw. Sweet tea is
de rigueur
at Budgie’s. As Dolly Parton said in the movie
Steel Magnolias
, “It’s the house wine of the South.” Amen.