Dixie Divas (15 page)

“Trinket’s right,” Rayna said firmly. “Let’s just keep this among ourselves for now. So, do we come back for him tonight, or leave him here?”

“We can leave
him
here,” Bitty said, “but we’re not leaving my rug. I paid nearly ten thousand dollars for that rug, and Philip Hollandale threw such a fit when I bought it, then had the nerve to demand it in the divorce settlement, that I’m damned if I’ll let him get it now.”

“Bitty,” I began, but she gave me one of those mulish looks that had always promised a fit when she was in elementary school, and the tenacious resistance of a wolverine ever since she’d hit junior high school. I sighed and looked at the others. “Maybe you should take a vote,” I said.

The final decision, I think, made us all a little uncomfortable, but it seemed like there was nothing else we could do.

Chapter Eight

“Yes, Mama, everything is just fine,” I lied to my mother without the least bit of guilt. Why should both of us be terrified? “I’m staying the night with Bitty. Yes, she’s a bit upset with all those Breaking News interruptions on TV, as well as everyone in Marshall County calling to tell her how sorry they are to hear about the senator missing, and they hope she’s doing all right.”

Mama’s still sharp as a tack, and she knows very well that the real reason people keep calling Bitty is to see if she knows anything reporters aren’t telling. But here I was on the phone telling my mother a whopper of a lie so I could go back out at midnight and steal a corpse from a vault in the cemetery. I hadn’t told her this big a fib since I’d told her that Perry was doing just fine in his job and we were still deliriously happy. That’d been last year. The truth does have a way of coming out eventually.

“Well sugar,” Mama said, “Bitty’s a lot stronger than anyone thinks. But I’m glad you’re staying with her tonight, anyway. Maybe Eddie and I can chase each other around the kitchen table while we’re here alone.”

Lately I’ve wondered if the doctor over at Williams Clinic has given Daddy a prescription for Viagra, but not only have I not had the nerve to ask, I don’t want to know the answer.

“Don’t fall and break anything,” I just said, and Mama laughed.

“No chance of that. I have no intention of running very fast. It’s much more fun when I get caught.”

When I hung up, I looked over at Bitty. “I’m not at all sure those people are my parents. I think someone abducted my real parents and replaced them with sixteen year olds in wrinkled birthday suits.”

Bitty, stretched out on the couch in what she referred to as her parlor but what was really more of a den, smiled and took another sip of hot coffee that I’d forced on her as soon as we got back to her house. “They’re just frisky. I hope I’m still like that when I get their age.”

“I don’t think I’ve been like that at any age.”

“Like I told you, your problem is just that you’ve never had an orgasm.” Bitty laughed when I made the usual uncomfortable sound I make whenever she says something like that. “I’m telling you, Trinket, once your eyes roll back in your head and you shout ‘Hallelujah Jesus, I’m comin’ home!’ you’ll know exactly what you’ve been missing out on for thirty years or so.”

“That’s sacrilegious,” I mumbled as I looked at a picture on the wall of a young woman in a flowing dress and big hat with trailing ribbons being pushed on a swing by a handsome young gentleman dressed in nineteenth century clothes.

“What’s sacrilegious is that you’ve been cheated all these years. It’s against nature. Besides, I haven’t noticed you showing up at church on Sunday mornings lately.”

I looked at her. “I’m afraid the walls will cave in. Especially if I sit by you.”

“You’ve got God confused with Darth Vader. Keep in mind that God created us just like we are, and all we have to do is follow a few rules and everything will be just fine. It’s very simple. No cheating, stealing, or killing, and we can go to heaven and visit with Elvis.”

“There are seven other rules you’ve left out,” I said. “What about lying?”

Bitty gave me a pitying look. “Bearing false witness means you shouldn’t tell lies that’ll get other people in trouble. I only stretch the truth when absolutely necessary to save myself or to spare someone else pain. That’s not at all the same thing.”

Discussing theology with Bitty is something like finding a talking frog. While you’re amazed the frog can talk, you just know there’s a trick to it somewhere.

“What time are the Divas coming back over?” I asked, though I knew very well that we’d set the time at eleven-thirty, well before the sinister hour of midnight, and late enough to ensure that most of Holly Springs would be sound asleep in their beds.

Bitty yawned despite the massive amounts of caffeine I’d been pouring into her. “Really, Trinket, you need to pay attention to things. We’re to meet at eleven-thirty at the Inn. Georgie and Gaynelle are going to meet us, and Sandra promised to come, too. No one’s liable to notice, especially if we go in the back way.”

With that fervent hope in mind, we did what I can only describe as skulking outside the back garage door of Rayna’s section of the hotel. I’ve often thought it would be wonderful to live in that big old building, with its former suites rented out to nineteenth century passengers, the lovely marble lobby, and what was once a dining room that served over a hundred people. Rayna has plans with a few developers to renovate and turn the room into a gift shop and a small, quaint restaurant. It’d be an excellent stop on the railroad if ever we could get a historical train to run down the tracks from Memphis or up from New Orleans to bring tourists. Especially during the April pilgrimage.

Anyway, there we were in the dead of night, clustered outside the rear of the Inn and waiting on Rayna to come out and meet us. Rob’s car was gone, so chances were good that he’d had to go out on a call. That happens a lot since he owns a bail bonding business as well as an insurance investigation company.

“Good Lord,” Rayna said when she saw Bitty, “who are you supposed to be?”

“Well, we all agreed that dark clothing is best,” Bitty defended her
haute couture
. She’d poured herself into a tight black jumpsuit that I swear looked like a leather body stocking, wore a black leather jacket, mid-calf suede boots with high heels, and had a black purse on one shoulder.

“I couldn’t talk her out of it,” I said. “She thinks she’s one of the
Charlie’s Angels.
”

“She looks more like one of the Hell’s Angels,” Sandra observed, and we all nodded in a silent agreement except for Bitty, who chastised our sadly lacking fashion expertise.

Since I still had on the clothes I’d worn earlier, the comfortable blue Lee jeans and yellow shirt and jacket, I’d borrowed Bitty’s black crocheted poncho to cover up my bright colors. It still smelled faintly of
Beautiful
, that perfume by Liz Taylor.

“All right, Divas, let’s go,” Rayna said, and we set out in grim determination to retrieve what we all hoped was a still-frozen senator from the cemetery.

As promised, Georgie did indeed have a key to the gate lock, and with car lights off and the only illumination a ragged half-moon to guide us, we made our way very slowly down the narrow, sloping road to the vault that held Philip Hollandale. My heart was thumping so hard I worried it’d fracture a rib, and my dry mouth prevented speech. Apparently, the others were having similar reactions, as no one spoke until we reached the stone vault.

Then we just stood and looked at it for a few moments. Wind sighed through holly limbs and oak branches, and in the distance a dog howled. It was very Sherlock Holmes. If a sudden fog had sprang up and curled around our feet, none of us would have been surprised.

Finally Rayna, our undeclared leader, said softly, “Let’s do it.”

We positioned ourselves around the opening, and reached inside to grab the carpet and haul the senator out by his feet. To my surprise, he was much deeper than I remembered, because I felt only empty air. I wasn’t the only one. Bitty reached so far inside I thought she might just fall all the way in, so I grabbed her by her purse strap. It was the only thing loose enough to grip. Her jumpsuit looked painted on.

After a few moments, Gaynelle said the obvious: “The senator is no longer here.”

We all looked at each other, dumbfounded.

“Where the hell is my carpet?” Bitty demanded, but I could tell from the slight quiver in her voice that the expensive rug had lost some measure of importance to her.

“No doubt,” Gaynelle said, “still with the senator. Oh dear. This could be a problem.”

That was an understatement. It couldn’t have escaped anyone’s notice that all our fingerprints were likely to be on the plastic Leaf and Garden bags, and Bitty’s rug could certainly be traced back to her. But what puzzled and bothered me most, was the question of just who had found the senator in the cemetery, and who had put him in Bitty’s coat closet in the first place. It was quite likely to be the same person or persons who had killed him in Sanders’ foyer.

Even in the dim light afforded by the moon, when I looked at Gaynelle, I saw from her expression that she’d come to the same conclusion.

“Perhaps we’d best leave and discuss this matter elsewhere,” Gaynelle said, and most of us instantly agreed.

“Shouldn’t we just look around a little bit first,” Georgie asked, “to see if maybe dogs or something dragged him out?”

“It’d have to be really
big
dogs,” Sandra said uneasily.

“Not to mention dogs with a key to the gate since the fence keeps them out,” I observed.

“No, sections of the fence are down,” Georgie said with a shake of her head. “But I don’t really think dogs could drag him away.”

“Maybe he thawed,” Rayna said. “Or even melted. No. That’s ridiculous. I must be a little bit hysterical. The rug would still be here.”

“My lovely rug is
gone
,” Bitty said. I decided that focusing on the non-essential details kept her from descending into hysteria, and gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder.

“Bitty dear,” Gaynelle asked, “do you still have that bottle of Jack Daniel’s with you?”

Wordlessly, Bitty reached into her purse and took out a bottle. “I brought it along just in case,” she said, and we passed it around, then went and got back into our cars.

* * * *

Back at the Inn, the general consensus was that we were all in a great deal of trouble. If the police had been notified of a body being found in an empty vault, their investigations would certainly lead to us.

“If pranksters saw us,” Sandra suggested hopefully, “maybe they just hid the body somewhere else and it’ll turn up in a day or two.”

“What kind of pranksters,” Rayna asked, “Transylvanian teenagers? Who steal bodies?”

“Apparently,” Gaynelle said darkly, “
we
do.”

Bitty brushed that aside. “Oh for heaven’s sake, Gaynelle, we didn’t steal him. We just moved him. Knowing Philip, the devil probably threw him back up here and he just landed in the wrong place.”

“What are we going to
do
?” Sandra asked plaintively, and silence fell for a moment.

Finally Georgie said, “I’ll go out there and look around for him tomorrow. I go out there so much anyway, no one will ever suspect I’m trying to find the senator or a clue as to who took him. Everyone will just think I’m still doing my historical work.”

“An excellent and practical solution,” Gaynelle approved. “I’m glad to see my brother’s intellect is thriving in you, my dear.”

Georgie looked very pleased.

“And if we don’t find him? What then?” I asked, hating to prick their bubble of hope but forced to ask the unavoidable question.

A discussion ensued in which several ideas were passed back and forth, everything from reporting it to the police, to staking out the cemetery like resident ghouls and waiting to see if the killers or pranksters returned to the scene of the crime. The former idea of reporting it to the police did not, I regret to say, gather much support. Even Gaynelle thought it a risky idea.

“There was so much rancor between the senator and Bitty, that they may very well jump to the immediate supposition that she killed him. Especially since he’s still wrapped in the carpet that made the judge in their divorce threaten to cut it in two and give each a half. Solomon’s solution is still remarkably effective in so many instances.”

“I don’t know about Solomon,” Bitty remarked moodily, “but Philip was more than happy to cut it in two rather than give it to me.”

“That’s the idea, Bitty,” I said. “The judge then knew who really wanted the carpet most, the person willing to destroy it, or the person willing to give it up to preserve it. See? Solomon’s choice.”

Bitty just looked at me. “Well, that’s just the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Solomon Schreiber would never cut up an expensive carpet, and neither would I.”

There are times Bitty can be quite obtuse, but since we were all under a great deal of stress, I thought it best not to continue with explanations.

“So then,” Rayna said, “why don’t we go home and sleep on it tonight, and when we get up in the morning, we’ll see what’s happened. If the police announce they’ve found Philip Hollandale’s body, we should all go in immediately and tell them exactly what happened before they get to the truth themselves. If no one says anything, we can assume pranksters—or the murderer—found him and did something with him. Either way, I think we’re going to have to tell the police what’s happened. We can’t just keep moving the senator around like a chess piece, especially once he starts to really thaw out.”

Rayna said it so much better than I had, and after the shock of the evening’s events, Bitty seemed to listen. She nodded thoughtfully.

“I’m sure you’re right. Chess never was my game. Philip was always much better at it, but then, aren’t politicians supposed to be good at strategy as well as lying and stealing?”

“Most of them are multi-taskers,” I agreed.

We all parted with a flexible game plan of waiting for the morning, then making a much more informed decision.