Dixie Diva Blues (45 page)

“Did you get back that manufacturer’s certificate that Bitty took from the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale?” I asked.

Rob looked surprised. “Yeah, I just got it back late yesterday. It came FedEx.”

“It’s the key to all this,” I said.

First he frowned, then he grinned. “Ah, I’m beginning to see where you’re going with this.”

“Let’s hope we’re traveling in the right direction.”

“Well,
I
don’t see where she’s going with this,” said Bitty irritably. “I went to a lot of trouble to get that certificate and it was all for nothing. There was no padlock on the storage unit so it’s not a combination, and it’s not any kind of code. They’re just lot numbers.”

“Maybe not,” I said, and to make her feel better I added, “You may have solved this case by being smart enough to recognize an important clue.”

Bitty immediately brightened. “Really? I did? How?”

“Here. Look at this,” I said when Rob pulled the aged manufacturer’s certificate out of a manila file folder labeled
Miscellaneous
. “See these letters?” I pointed to the F#AdC#EdAG#. “These are musical notes. Larry played the blues, remember? So he just used these as his password.”

Rayna looked unconvinced. “But why write the password down on something like this? Wouldn’t he have it written somewhere else for safekeeping?”

“Not if he knows Walsh and Garcia are after him. They’d be able to find it too easily. I think Larry knew he was in trouble, and that’s why he kept missing his court dates. Whoever Big Al is, he didn’t intend to play nice any longer. He sent his assistants to track Larry down, and to get the password from him.” I tapped the certificate with my finger. “This certificate is for a Baldwin piano.”

“So?” Bitty asked with a puzzled look on her face. Because of her Botox, I often confuse her puzzled expression with her constipated expression, but I was pretty sure I had it right this time.

“
So
,” I said, “that antique piano in the shack is a Kimball, not a Baldwin. Larry brought this with him and hid it in the back of the piano.”

Bitty smacked her forehead with her palm. “I should have noticed that at once, even without the name on the front! I guess I was just distracted by all the decrepit furniture surrounding it. But why hide the certificate?”

“He knew he was being followed. He worried that they’d catch up with him and get the password.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Rayna said after a moment. “Why leave it
there
?”

“If you check, I bet you’ll find that Lee Hazen had reservations for the Robert Clay Shack within a few days of Larry being there.”

“Only I got there first,” said Bitty with a satisfied smile. “So even if Lee Hazen had kept his reservations, I already had what he was looking for. Oh—why didn’t he keep his reservations? And what was he doing at Strawberry Plains?”

“He probably didn’t keep his reservations because he got bumped from that cabin when Rayna called in a favor and
we
stayed there,” I said wryly. “He ended up staying in one of the Bins at the Cotton Gin. Then, of course, he broke in to our shack and tried to find where Larry had hidden the paper with the password on it.”

“That didn’t end well for him, I understand,” said Rob with a shake of his head.

“For me and Gaynelle either,” I retorted. “She got clobbered on the head, and I got a karate chop to the neck.”

“And both my kitten heel slippers were ruined,” said Bitty sadly. “It was awful.”

Rayna and I exchanged glances and rolled our eyes.

“That still doesn’t explain why he went to Strawberry Plains to be murdered,” said Bitty, who had noticed our eye rolling. “So, Miss Know-it-all, explain that.”

“The nearest thing I can figure is that Hazen hoped to talk to one of us and find out if we’d discovered anything . . . interesting, in the shack. Or maybe see if he could get you or me to help him somehow. I don’t really know the answer to that yet.”

“He was probably going to kidnap me and hold me to ransom the password,” said Bitty. “Criminals always want to kidnap me.”

I shrugged and nodded. “Could be. You
are
irresistible.”

“True. But I still don’t see why Lee Hazen chose Strawberry Plains to try and do his dirty work.”

“Where’s a better place than a crowded tourist attraction to create a little havoc with the least notice? There were so many people there, and almost anything could have happened without people really paying attention.”

“Except murder,” Rayna pointed out, and I nodded.

“Except murder,” I agreed.

“So the murderer was right there among us and no one saw him?” Bitty shook her head. “That seems unlikely if he was a big guy with a beard and scar. Wouldn’t someone have noticed a man like that?”

“Not if he was familiar or even wearing some kind of disguise,” said Rob. “He could have been an employee, a volunteer, or a tourist. People tend to overlook the familiar. It’s the ones who stand out that get noticed. Happens all the time.”

He looked over at me. “You know, Trinket, you’ve given all this some in-depth thought. I’m impressed. I don’t know if all your theories are right, but I’m willing to bet a lot, or even most, of them are.”

“Well,” I said modestly, “it’s a gift.”

Bitty hooted. “A gift, my—”

She didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence.

“I’ll take that off your hands,” a deep voice said from the office doorway, and we all turned to look. A masked man blocked the opening. He wore a ski mask over his head and he held a gun in one hand. He put his other hand out and waggled his fingers. “Give it over.
Now
.”

Rob had frozen when the man appeared in the doorway. He unlocked his hands from behind his head and slowly, very slowly, sat up straight in the office chair. The Baldwin piano certificate still lay on the desk right next to him.

“Give what over,” Rob said, and glanced at the certificate. “This?”

“What d’ya think? Yeah. That. Give it here.”

My heart had dropped into the region of my stomach, and over the pounding of it I was pretty sure I recognized the man’s voice. But that didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t supposed to be out of jail yet. Was he?

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, and the eyes behind the ski mask went a little flat.

“Shut up, lady. And don’t move. I’ll shoot you first if anyone tries anything funny.”

Bitty sat in the office chair as if rooted to the spot, but Chitling began to growl in a very menacing manner. Rob and Rayna had some pretty big dogs, and I wondered how he’d managed to get past them and into the hotel. And Jake had assigned a guard to cover the hotel, hadn’t he? Where was the guard? Had he been killed?

The man I was pretty sure was Walsh gestured impatiently at Rob. “Hand it over here!”

Rob had to half-rise from the chair to give him the certificate. He kept his eyes on the pistol Walsh held. “Easy, fella,” he said as if soothing a dog or horse when Walsh snatched the certificate from his hand. “No one here is going to try to stop you. You’ve got what you want, so just go on.”

“I intend to, but I’m not about to let you call the cops the minute I turn around. I brought a little insurance.”

He leaned back in the doorway and reached for something, and when he brought his hand back around I saw a roll of duct tape. He gestured to Bitty. “You. Blondie. C’mere.”

Bitty’s eyes narrowed and I thought for a moment she intended to refuse. Then she shifted, set Chen Ling on the floor, and stood up.

“Don’t speak so familiarly to me,” she said haughtily. “My name is Mrs. Bitty Hollandale, not
Blondie
.”

“Right, right, I know who you are. Get over here.”

He handed her the tape and told her to tie us all up with it, Rob first, then Rayna, then me. “And don’t try any cute stuff like not tying ’em tight, either,” he added. “I’ll shoot the first one to try and come after me.”

“Look, Walsh,” I said when Bitty had gotten Rob tied to his chair, then Rayna, “you know most of the cops in Mississippi will be out after you. You don’t have a chance of getting away. Why don’t you just surrender and make this easier for yourself? Don’t add any more charges to the ones already against you.”

Walsh gave a surprised exclamation. “How’d you know it’s me?”

I shrugged. “You can hide your face but you can’t disguise your voice. I still hear it in my nightmares.”

He just laughed. “Yeah, well don’t worry about me, lady. It’s all figured out. By the time the law figures anything out I’ll be long gone from Miss’sippi and outa their reach. Just tend to your own business.”

“But you’ll have to run the rest of your life, looking over your shoulder, waiting for the sword to fall,” I persisted. “And what about your partners? Do you totally trust them to look out for you? I’m willing to bet even Big Al cares more about his own skin than he does yours.”

Walsh’s eyes narrowed behind the ski mask. “Shuddup. You don’t know nothin’.”

“I know that Big Al is the one who committed the murders and not you,” I threw out wildly. It was worth a shot in the dark. “How far do you trust
him
?”

Walsh hesitated. He looked at Bitty where she’d finished with Rayna and had come to where I sat on a small bench. “Go on,” he said to her, and she started wrapping duct tape around my ankles. “Tie her up really tight. And put a strip of tape across her mouth, too.”

Before she could, I said desperately, “Think about it, Walsh. Big Al is the one who set all this up. He just uses you and Garcia to do the grunt work, but who’s going to take the fall if the police do catch up to you? Not him. He hasn’t left any evidence of his participation behind; it’s just the two of you who’re hiding from the police. Look who’s taken all the risks. Not Big Al. Is that fair?”

Bitty tore off a strip of duct tape and wound it around my wrists. I made brief eye contact with her. She looked mad and scared at the same time.

“Not too tight,” I murmured, and Walsh took two steps into the room.

“No talkin’! Just get her tied up, Blondie.”

I noticed that he was getting pretty fidgety. Maybe some of what I said hit home with him.

“Whose name are all those bank accounts in?” I asked as Bitty tore off another strip of duct tape. “
Yours
? No. Who set up those hidden bank accounts, and where are they now? Dead, right? Larry and Lee got in the way, didn’t they? What do you think’s going to happen to you when it comes time to split up the money? That’s what all this is about. It’s about money. You know what happens when people get greedy.”

Walsh didn’t say anything. I saw the knitted folds of ski mask move in and out with his breathing. He was obviously thinking over what I’d said. Would it sink in before he escaped?

“Hold still, Trinket,” said Bitty as she tried to put tape over my mouth and I turned my head. “I can’t do this if you won’t cooperate.”

I gave her a
What the hell?
look and kept avoiding the tape.

“Think about it, Walsh,” I said desperately. “Greedy people tend to get vicious.”

Before Walsh could respond, I heard a loud
pop!
For a second it didn’t penetrate my brain that what I’d heard was a gunshot. When it did, instead of me or Bitty or anyone else being shot, it was Walsh who crumpled to the floor. I stared stupidly at him.

Then a movement at the door drew my immediate attention. Imagine my horror when our cousin Jake stepped into the doorway. He held a pistol in one hand, and looked down at Walsh for a second, then lifted his head to survey the rest of us.

“Everyone okay?” he asked.

Rob was the first one to answer. “Did you have to kill him?”

Jake smiled. “Yeah. I had to kill him.” He looked over at me. “How about you, cupcake? You okay?”

My throat tightened. I hadn’t wanted it to be true. Everything had come to me in a rush, all the events of the past few weeks coming together to point an accusing finger in only one direction.

“Oh, Jake—
why?
”

His smile vanished and his dark eyes got hard and cold. “Dammit, Trinket. Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”

I shook my head. “You know why. It’s not right, Jake.”

Bitty looked between Jake and me, and her eyes got wide and round. “This isn’t happening, is it? I mean—
you
, Jake?

He shrugged. “What, did you think I wanted to live like white trash all my life? I don’t, thanks anyway. Money’s what makes this world go ’round, and I got tired of being stuck in a hole all the time.”

He bent and took the piano certification from Walsh’s outstretched hand, then he picked up the pistol. When he straightened, he surveyed Rob, Rayna, Bitty and me with a slight frown. “Now I just have to figure out what to do with all of you.”