Divas and Dead Rebels (9 page)

I put my hand over hers where it still clutched the top of her purse. “Calm down, sugar. That’s very doubtful. The killer probably just chose their room at random.”

“Do you really think so?”

She sounded so hopeful I had to say yes. “Of course, honey. It was just chance that the professor was left in their room. Once the police find the killer, it will be just fine, you know it will.”

When we both turned toward Rayna, she had her head tilted to one side and a skeptical expression on her face. “Maybe we need to get some objective opinions.”

I knew what she meant.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll call Cady Lee and Deelight, you go ahead and call Gaynelle and Cindy. Bitty, you call Sandra and Marcy. I’ll stop by the lingerie shop and tell Carolann and Rose. Where should we meet?”

“My house, of course,” said Bitty. “Rob will be too nosy if we have an emergency meeting at Rayna’s, and I’m afraid Aunt Anna and Uncle Eddie will hear us if we have it at your house, Trinket. Say, in three hours? That should give everyone enough time to be free.”

“Got it,” said Rayna. “Five o’clock your house, Bitty. Don’t bother about food or drinks. I’ll tell everyone to bring something.”

Bitty nodded. “That gives me enough time to get over to Luann Carey’s house for Chen Ling, then get back home. We need to figure out a strategy.”

“What we need,” I said bluntly, “is to figure out how to put the body back where it was originally and turn back the hands of time.”

I swear, when Bitty looked at me, I think she was actually trying to figure out how to do that.

Chapter 5

Divas come in all sizes and all stages of life. Our youngest Diva is Marcy Porter, who at thirty just had her third child this summer. Cindy Nelson is only a couple years older than Marcy and lives with her husband and several kids in Snow Lake, about fifteen miles east of Holly Springs. Sandra Dobson is in her early thirties, a registered nurse, and lives between Snow Lake and Holly Springs. Gaynelle Bishop is currently our oldest Diva; she’s a retired school teacher in her sixties and lives in a cute bungalow a block away from Bitty. Cady Lee Forsythe, whom I’ve known since grade school, is now married to Brett Kincade, whose family owns a chain of department stores. I still call her Cady Lee Forsythe most of the time. It’s hard to break old habits. Bitty Hollandale is my age—that is to say, we are ageless ladies in our very,
very
early fifties. Okay, fifty-two. Don’t ask Bitty her age, though. She still claims she’s “nearly fifty” and justifies that white lie by pointing out that two years over the fifty mark is just as close to fifty as two years under the mark. Arguing with her logic is a futile thing, so don’t bother.

I stopped by Silk Promises, the real name of Carolann Barnett’s lingerie shop, though the locals all just refer to it as Carolann’s. She and Rose Allgood, her business partner in the shop, are our newest Divas. Carolann is a year younger than I am, a little chunky in size, and addicted to the New Age lifestyle. Or maybe just clothes style. While her shop has the most up-to-date designer garments in lingerie and silk blouses, Carolann wears tie-dyed peasant dresses and beads with peace signs around her neck. She has red, curly hair and an infectious laugh.

Rose is tall, slender, and a cool blonde. She manages the Blue Velvet Room in the shop and sells exotic panties without a crotch and rainbow colored, sometimes iridescent, dildos. There’s other merchandise in her retail cases, but those are the two things that stick out most in my mind. They stick out on her shelves, too, lined up like happy little—or big—soldiers.

Anyway, both Carolann and Rose said they would be at Bitty’s at five, since on Sunday afternoons the shop closes at four. It’s a small town, and she makes the hours that suit her and her clients best.

“Oh my,” said Carolann, “an emergency Diva meeting again so soon?”

It hadn’t been an awful long time since we’d had another emergency meeting to help cheer up one of our Divas.

“Bitty needs some advice,” was all I said, and Carolann nodded.

“Just as long as it’s not about murder, I can offer all the advice she needs.”

I smiled.

Rose picked up on my smile, somehow, or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t say it wasn’t about murder, because she lifted her eyebrows at me.

“Oh no,” she said, her voice a cool contrast to Carolann’s louder tones. “Again?”

“Well . . . not really. At least—I mean, it’s nothing like the last time. We just need a few extra opinions on what should be done, that’s all.”

Rather dryly, Rose observed, “Maybe I should bring my lawyer.”

I shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt.”

Carolann said, “Good lord!” in a tone so loud it rattled the glass prisms of one of her pretty overhead chandeliers. “Is this about another murder?”

“Be prepared to discuss many topics tonight,” I said, “and I’m sure one of them is going to be about murder. Oh, and bring something chocolate.”

Chocolate and murder
, I thought when I went back to my car parked across the street on the court square; as incongruous as the latter may be in conjunction with a nice evening with friends, they’re becoming a regular ritual at our Diva meetings. It could be worse. If we ran out of chocolate, for instance.

First I stopped at the Pig—our local name for the Piggly-Wiggly grocery store—to buy something delectably chocolate for the evening, then I leisurely made my way down 311 Highway toward my ancestral home named Cherryhill. I share the house with my septuagenarian parents, who are very active. It’s where I grew up, and I have many fond memories of my childhood with my twin sister and two older brothers. We may not have had a lot of money, but we did have a lot of fun.

My sister Emerald lives across the continent in the Pacific Northwest, my brothers both died in Vietnam when I was still very young, and Mama and Daddy are usually off to some part of the country they always wanted to see but never had the money or time. I am the pinch hitter; that means when they take off for a trip, I hold down the fort at home. It might be easier if all I had to do was ward off invading hordes of Vikings or whatever while they’re gone, but my time is spent feeding and caring for feral cats, and to render my services to their spoiled, neurotic dog. Brownie makes Chen Ling look like a piker. Both of them shamelessly manipulate the women who adore them. It’s simply not true that dogs cannot reason. I have seen canines at work far too many times.

That said, I was looking forward to the holiday season this year. Last year I’d still been moving when Thanksgiving arrived, and by the time the Christmas season rolled around I was still numb from the trauma. Moving isn’t a picnic, but I thought at the time that getting a divorce and moving simultaneously must have a ranking
somewhere
in the nine levels of hell described by Dante.

Looking back, I can truthfully say that I had no idea what was in store for me. The shock of finding my parents much more mobile—and prone to escapades of an intimate nature in unexpected places—than I had been led to believe was barely absorbed before I was introduced to my first corpse. From that point onward, it has been a roller coaster ride of often unbelievable thrills and chills. It is not a ride I recommend to the faint of heart.

Mama was already in a tizzy when I walked into our kitchen, and as I paused to survey the array of baking ingredients spread upon the countertops, Brownie greeted me by throwing up on my shoe. I’m his favorite receptacle for all things unpleasant.

Of course, Mama was immediately concerned and rushed to the rescue.

“Oh, my poor baby,” she crooned. “Mama’s here. It will be okay.”

I knew better than to think she was talking to me. I reached over to take a roll of paper towels from the counter to wipe off my shoe. It was an icky mess.

“Do you think he’s eaten something bad for him again?” Mama asked as she tried to pry open Brownie’s jaws to check.

My reply was a bit grumpy. “If he’s awake, then I’m certain he’s eaten something bad for him again. Probably a tin can or a roll of toilet paper. You should have named him Billy Goat Gruff. It’s much more suitable.”

Brownie, a part-beagle, part-dachshund, closed his brown eyes and quivered with his best show of distress. The little faker.

I watched while he wrapped my mother right around his left front paw. Ignoring me, she patted him and spoke softly to him until he allowed her to get his maw open wide enough for her to be sure he didn’t have anything he shouldn’t have in his mouth—like a table leg. Jewelry. Watches. Dental bridge. Those are just a few of the things he has ingested since showing up on my parents’ back deck one cold, icy night a few years back. Since then he has turned his big-eyed waif act into a thriving career. The single fact that my father—after years of not allowing animals in the house—actually lets this dog not only in the house, but in his bed every night, speaks volumes for Little Brown Dog’s repertoire of beggar tricks.

He doesn’t fool me. And he knows he doesn’t fool me. We get along quite well when my parents are gone, because I generally don’t cater to him, and he generally lets me bump along in my selfish way until my mother returns. We have an unspoken truce. It works pretty well for both of us.

“Excuse me,” I said to my mother, “I need to reach the garbage can with this mess I took off my shoe.”

“For heaven’s sake, Trinket, go around that way. Just don’t let it drip. Did you see anything in it that could have caused him to throw up?”

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at my mother, who still knelt on the floor with Brownie cuddled up against her. “I have no intention of looking through it to see. If you’d like, I can hand this to you.”

Mama looked up at me, and then she laughed. “I guess that is asking a bit much of you, isn’t it.”

“Yes. Oh yes. I’ll put it in the garbage can and take the can outside. What are you baking?”

“Pies that will freeze well. I have two chess pies in the oven already. We’ve asked Emerald and Jon if they want to come for Thanksgiving this year.”

I had already pulled the garbage sack out of the can. My mother’s statement made me drop it, and trash spilled across the floor. “What?” I said.

Mama turned to look at me. “Emerald and Jon. I asked if they’d like to come over for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine . . . you say that as if they live just around the corner. They live all the way across the country, for heaven’s sake. If they come for Thanksgiving, will they bring all their kids, too?”

“My goodness, Trinket, what are you thinking? Of course they will. That’s one reason your father and I said we’d pay their way, because it’s so expensive to travel with a large family. Are you sure you’re all right? You look funny.”

“I’m fine. It’s just . . . the spilled garbage. I’ll get it. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. If they bring all those kids—how many is it again? Six? Seven?—where will they sleep?”

“Oh, we’ll find places to tuck them here and there. Yours and Emerald’s old room still has a good bed in it, of course, and the boys’ room . . . I’ve kept it with twin beds in it that will sleep at least two of her boys. That would be nice, don’t you think, to have boys in Jack and Luke’s old room again?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess her boys can’t be any more destructive than Jack and Luke were. Their room’s still in one piece, so I doubt Emerald’s kids could destroy it in only a few days. It is only a few days, right?”

“What’s the matter with you?” Mama asked me as she got up from kneeling on the floor by Brownie, who seemed to have fully recovered from his brief bout of nausea. “You don’t sound very excited.”

“I don’t? Hm. Are you aware that one of her kids set the house on fire a while back?”

Mama looked at me. “So did Bitty not so long ago.”

Good point. I tried again.

“It wasn’t too long ago that she told me her youngest twins are going through the terrible twos. They screamed the entire time she was on the phone with me.”

“I didn’t get more than an hour’s sleep at a time from the day I brought you home from the hospital until you and Emerald started kindergarten,” Mama countered. “And her youngest twins aren’t two anymore.”

Drat. She trumped me again.

“They’ll probably torment Brownie,” I said in what was a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. “You know he doesn’t like kids.”

“He bites. They’ll learn.”

I gave up. “You’re good,” I said, and she nodded sweetly.

“I know. It’ll be just fine, Trinket. You can always hide at Bitty’s house when the kids get to be too much for you.”

“That will be about four minutes after they arrive,” I said glumly. “I never could handle a lot of children at once. That’s why I had just one. And there were times I got crazy with only one child.”

I finished picking up the trash I’d spilled, holding my breath so I wouldn’t gag, and took the bag outside to dump it in one of the big plastic bins. My twin sister would be here for Thanksgiving. Really, that’s not a bad thing. I love her and miss her. It’s just that she has so many little rug rats that my head begins to pound and my eyes begin to twitch, and they make fun of me. One of them insists upon calling me “Auntie Tinkle.” She giggles when she says it, so I know that she thinks it’s naughty. She’s my favorite.