Murder Boogies With Elvis (20 page)

“I don’t remember. There were two of them.” She looked toward the door. “Here’s Olivia.”

Olivia looked much better than she had the day before. She looked as if she had had some sleep, and she had put on some makeup. Aunt Maude pointed toward the sleeping Tammy Sue, and Olivia sat down quietly. “He okay?” she whispered.

“Sleeping.” Aunt Maude stood, put her crocheting in a bag, and said that she had to go home before she dropped.

“Let’s go then.” Buddy jumped up. “I’ll get the car and meet you at the front door.” He was in such a hurry that he bumped Tammy Sue’s feet.

“What,” she said, opening her eyes.

“Sorry, Sis. I’ll talk to you later.” And he hurried out of the waiting room. I glanced at Olivia, who was looking after him yearningly. I had a feeling that this tick knew she wasn’t going to stick.

Tammy Sue yawned. “Hey, y’all.”

“We just came by to check on you,” Sister said. “To see how Larry’s doing.”

“He’s conscious. But I know Daddy told you that.” She rubbed her eyes. “He doesn’t remember a thing, though. The police have been questioning him.”

“Well, would you like to get out for a while?” Sister asked. “Patrcia Anne and I are going to Parisian to look for shoes. It would do you good to walk around some, get some fresh air.”

“Go ahead,” Olivia urged her. “I’ll go in and visit Larry.”

Tammy Sue stiffened. “You are not. Not without me.
I’m not going to have you upsetting him with your wild tales about it being your fault he got hurt.”

“Well, maybe it was,” Olivia said. “I knew Dusk Armstrong was involved with the Mooncloth guy. They were having a knockdown, drag-out argument at his apartment. I heard them when I went to open up the one next door, and then I saw Dusk run out. If I’d told the police about that when he was killed, she wouldn’t have been free to hit Larry.”

“Why didn’t you tell them?” Tammy Sue asked.

“Wasn’t any of my business,” was Olivia’s smug answer.

Please, God, don’t let this tick burrow into Virgil, Jr.

Mary Alice stepped between the two of them, which was a good idea. “Come on, Tammy Sue. Let’s go down to the cafeteria and get something to drink. It’s easy to get dehydrated sitting around a place like this.”

Tammy Sue leaned around Sister and spoke to Olivia. “You go in there without me, and I will kill you. And nobody will blame me. I’ll start with your skinny toes. I’ll cut off every one of them one at a time. And then your legs and your arms and your ears. And then—”

Olivia blanched. Tammy Sue was still dissecting her, and she had gotten as far as her squinty eyes, when Mary Alice led her from the room. One woman sitting in the corner clapped. “Better be careful, honey. I think she means it.”

I figured she did, too.

The most you can say for hospital cafeterias is that they try. And University Hospital has tried. The food is decent, their health rating proudly posted above the
cashier is a ninety-nine, but let’s face it: The ambience doesn’t make the grade. Fiberglass trays, metal tables, fluorescent lights, green scrubs, and white coats. The sweetest elevator music in the world wouldn’t help out here.

“Vanilla-and-chocolate swirl?” Sister pointed to the frozen yogurt.

Tammy Sue shook her head. “Just something to drink. Tea?”

“Me, too,” I said.

She and I found a table by a window. Outside on Nineteenth Street the traffic was moving well. Spring sun angled through the window and drew a line across the floor of the cafeteria.

“Is it warm outside?” Tammy Sue asked.

“Nice. You want to go out and walk around a little?”

“I’d better not.” She reached over, got a paper napkin from the dispenser, and wiped the top of the already immaculate table. “You think Olivia knows what she’s talking about? That Dusk Armstrong killed Griffin Mooncloth and hit Larry with the bat?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Then I told her about Dusk’s disappearance.

“She could have left town. Run away.”

“Maybe.”

“Here,” Sister said, putting a tray on the table. She had gotten herself a swirl. “I got an extra spoon if you decide you want some of it,” she told Tammy Sue.

“The tea’s fine. Thanks.” Tammy Sue reached for the sugar. “Mrs. Hollowell was just telling me that Dusk Armstrong has run off.”

“Yesterday, apparently.” Sister dipped into the swirl,
tasted it, and declared that we didn’t know what we were missing.

“But, y’all,” I said, “I didn’t say she’s run off. There’s a good chance she’s been kidnapped.” I repeated my conversation with Bernice Armstrong.

“A wild animal?” Sister had stopped spooning in yogurt.

“They have a grizzly bear named Maurice in their foyer?” Tammy Sue’s tea remained halfway to her mouth.

“Knocked over like there had been a struggle.” I paused. “And that’s a big, heavy bear.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me this sooner, Mouse? I swear.”

“I don’t know. You were telling me about Mama and the Lucky Strikes and I sort of got sidetracked.”

The yogurt and the tea resumed their journeys. Mary Alice and Tammy Sue looked at me as if I were guilty of something. I picked up my tea and looked out at the traffic again. A white police car pulled up to the curb and a black policewoman got out. Bo Mitchell? My good friend who had had me arrested.

Well, you did have a murder weapon in your purse, Patricia Anne,
I told myself.

That’s beside the point. She’s my friend, and she knew I didn’t have anything to do with killing anybody.

But rules are rules, and you know that Bo’s not going to break any of them. After all, she’s planning on being the police chief one day.

But they arrested me! Handcuffed me like a criminal. My neighbors saw me.

Oh, they did not. Nobody was paying any attention
to you. Most of the folks in that neighborhood can’t see ten feet in front of them, anyway.

I realized that Sister and Tammy Sue were staring at me.

“She has these fugue states,” Sister explained. “She goes to white sales at places like Bed Bath & Beyond.”

“What do you buy, Mrs. Hollowell?” Tammy Sue asked politely.

“I was not at a white sale. I was thinking.” I pointed out the window. “I think I just saw Bo Mitchell come in.”

Sister licked her spoon. “She’d be on my list if I were you.”

“She was just doing what she had to do.” I drank my tea and looked at the sunlight and the traffic, at the people hurrying down the street and ambulances pulling up to the emergency room. Suddenly I longed for Robert Anderson High, the school where I had spent most of my teaching years, the school that was built in the early sixties without windows. Seasons changed, it rained, it snowed, and we sat inside that womb, protected. Inside that womb, I hadn’t fallen over a single dead body. I sighed. Today would be fried chicken day in the cafeteria. I’d consumed a lot of good cholesterol at Robert Anderson.

Mary Alice and Tammy Sue had segued to the wedding outfits, which for some reason reminded me that I needed to get Haley’s christening dress out and check to see that it was in perfect condition for Joanna. But would Philip want Joanna christened? Surely he wouldn’t mind. He’d been happy enough to be blessed by the pope.

“Did you have Debbie christened?” I asked Sister.

She looked surprised. “Of course I did. Don’t you remember? She threw up on the preacher.”

“That was Debbie? Which christening was it when the hailstorm hit and we thought the windows were going to break?”

“I don’t know. Alan’s?”

“Your Philip didn’t mind having Debbie christened?”

“Of course not.” She turned to Tammy Sue. “My second husband, Philip Nachman, Debbie’s father, was Jewish. A lovely, lovely man. Patricia Anne’s daughter, Haley, is married to his nephew, also a Philip Nachman.”

“You didn’t tell him you had her christened, did you?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mouse. We’re talking about important stuff here.”

She hadn’t told him.

Bo Mitchell walked into the cafeteria, stuck some money in a vending machine, and retrieved a can of Coke. When she turned she saw us and came over looking slightly sheepish.

“Sorry, Patricia Anne,” she said.

“It’s your job.”

“Some job,” Sister muttered.

“Sometimes,” Bo said, not taking offense. She pointed toward Tammy Sue with the can of Coke. “You’re Mrs. Ludmiller?”

Tammy Sue nodded.

“I’m going to be sitting with your husband. He might remember something, and we want to be there if he does.”

Tammy Sue narrowed her eyes. “You’re there to protect him, aren’t you? You think that when whoever
hit him hears he’s regained consciousness, they’ll come after him again.”

“That, too,” Bo said. “Won’t hurt.”

“Oh, I saw that on a Lifetime movie once,” Sister said. “And the policeman went to sleep, and the killer walked right in and put a pillow over the victim’s head and killed him.” She paused. “Maybe he didn’t die. Maybe he just had brain damage.”

“Lot of that going around.” Bo grinned, said she would see us later, and left.

“She seems nice,” Tammy Sue said.

“Well, now that she’s watching Larry, do you want to go with us to Parisian?” Sister asked.

“Are you going to the downtown one?”

“We can. Why?”

“I’d better not leave, but I need you to do me a favor. If it’s not too much trouble, could you go by the Alabama and see if you can find his glasses? He didn’t get to the hospital with them. The police said they would look for them, but they haven’t. Larry’s blind as a bat without them, bless his heart.”

“You think somebody might have turned them in?” Sister asked. “Reckon somebody’s at the theater?”

“Probably.” Tammy Sue fished in her purse and brought out some keys. “If they’re not, one of these fits the side door. There’s usually somebody there, though, practicing for a play or something.” She handed Sister the keys. “It’s possible they’re still on the floor back there where he was hit. I hope nobody’s stepped on them.” She looked at both of us. “Do y’all mind?”

“Of course not. We’re going to be down there anyway. I’ll call you if we find them and send them by Virgil tonight.”

Tammy Sue’s eyes filled with tears. “You just don’t know how much I appreciate this. I’d do it myself, but I swear I’m so tired I don’t think I could drive my car down there.”

“No problem,” Sister said.

Famous last words.

T
he side door of the Alabama Theater was unlocked. The sun was shining so brightly on the sidewalk outside that the hall inside seemed black. I looked at the few people walking by us and decided that I wanted to remain where they were, on the outside.

“Looks spooky in there,” I declared.

“Don’t be silly,” Sister said. “And listen.”

I took a step inside where I could hear a woman singing “Ave Maria.” That certainly wasn’t frightening. Nor was the bevy of bridesmaids waiting nervously in the Hall of Mirrors when we came up the steps. The bride herself stood at the foot of the red-carpeted stairs that led to the second tier, looking as if she might faint or burst into tears at any minute.

“How about this,” Sister said. “A wedding.”

I had forgotten that the Alabama Theater was a popular place for weddings, even more popular now that
Vulcan Park is closed. All of the weddings that had been planned for the Vulcan site had had to be moved and the Botanical Gardens and the Alabama had immediately been booked.

None of the wedding party paid any attention to us. A lady in a pale yellow suit, obviously the director, was scurrying around, lining up the bridesmaids, straightening dresses. This was a Southern wedding, hoopskirts and all. Fortunately the Alabama boasts double doors and wide aisles.

“Smile, Anna,” a photographer said, kneeling before the bride, who was an ethereal-looking blonde with wide blue eyes.

“I have to pee,” she said through clenched teeth. “Right now.”

The photographer motioned frantically. “Mrs. Bolin!”

The lady in yellow came up. “Something wrong?”

“She needs to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh, damn. Well, hurry up, Anna.”

Anna looked totally miserable. “I don’t think I can make it down those steps.”

“Of course you can. Just pick up your dress and run.” Which Anna did. The woman turned to us. “I swear I can’t believe they designed a building with the restrooms in the basement.” She looked around. “Where’s the father of the bride? Have you seen the father of the bride?”

We said that we hadn’t.

“Damn it. He’s going to be drunk as a skunk by the time they start down the aisle.” She clapped her hands lightly. “Girls, have you seen the father of the bride?”

None of them had. Inside, the woman held the last note of “Ave Maria” an impressively long time. There
was rustling, coughing, and then the first majestic notes of “Ode to Joy” from the Mighty Wurlitzer.

“Oh, God!” The woman clutched her chest. She grabbed the first bridesmaid’s arm. “Cheryl, you walk as slow as you can, now. We’ve got to give Anna time to get back from the bathroom and see if we can find her daddy.”

“Mrs. Bolin, there’s a man sitting out yonder in the ticket booth,” one of the bridesmaids said. “Reckon that’s him?”

“It better be him or his ass is in a sling.” She pointed toward the photographer. “Go get him.” The photographer ran.

“Lord, I love a wedding,” Sister murmured to me. “And I love these dresses, don’t you?”

“We couldn’t walk down the aisle of the church at Tannehill in them. It’s too narrow.”

“I guess you’re right. But I like that each one’s a different color. They look like a bouquet of flowers, don’t they?”

“Absolutely.” And there wasn’t a magenta one in the bunch. “I think that’s a great idea.”

Cheryl, dressed in pink, stepped through the double doors and started down the aisle very slowly. The father of the bride, looking a little sheepish, came back with the photographer. The bride came huffing up the steps just as the last bridesmaid stepped through the door.

There was time to straighten her dress, arrange her veil, and then the sound of “The Wedding March.”

Anna froze. “I can’t do this. I’ve changed my mind.”

“The hell you have.” The director gave her a mighty shove that catapulted her down the aisle. Fortunately Anna was holding on to her father’s arm. The audience
rose, and the lady in the yellow suit closed the double doors quickly.

“By damn,” she said to Mary Alice and me, who were still standing by the steps. “There’s got to be an easier way to make a living.”

“Everything looked nice,” I said.

“Huh. There’s still the reception to get through.” She went over, sat on a stool behind the candy counter, and closed her eyes.

“Praying?” I whispered to Sister.

“I don’t know, but I’m impressed.” Sister went over and tapped the praying woman on the shoulder, and the woman cringed. When Sister asked her if she had a business card she said hell no, that wild horses couldn’t drag her to another wedding.

“But this is a little one at Tannehill church.”

The woman shrugged and closed her eyes again.

“Testy,” Sister whispered as she came back to the stairs.

“Well, let’s go see if we can find Larry’s glasses.” I said. “How do we get there from here?”

“I’m not sure. I’m turned around. Last time we went from the stage.” Sister went over and tapped the praying woman on the shoulder again. Again, the woman cringed. “How do you get to the dressing rooms from here?”

The woman pointed down the steps toward the basement. “Somewhere down there. The place is a warren. I still think we’re missing a bridesmaid.”

“What do you think the chances are of our finding Larry’s glasses intact?” Sister grumbled as we started down the steps.

The lady was right. The place was a warren. At the very bottom of the steps was the huge living room with
the fireplace and round velvet bench, where Sister and I had received so much of our education. About three-fourths of the way down, though, the steps curved, and there was a landing with a door opening onto it. I had never paid any attention to this before. But today the door was open, and the hallway leading from it was lighted.

“Here we go,” Sister said. “I had no idea this was here, did you?” I admitted that I hadn’t.

She stopped and looked around. “Let’s see. Last time, we came in from the stage so it should be way up at the end. Does any of this look familiar?”

I shook my head. It just looked like a hall with a bunch of doors. “Maybe these are the stars’ dressing rooms. When this place was built, they still had vaudeville.” I knocked lightly on one and opened it. A broom closet.

“They’d be farther down, closer to the stage.”

I closed the door and followed Sister without the least trepidation. Above us Anna was marrying somebody, hopefully. I’ll bet it was a pretty scene on that stage, all of the girls in their pastel antebellum dresses and hats. I wondered what the men were wearing. Her father had had on a plain tux. I’ve been to some of the old South weddings where the groomsmen wore faux-Confederate uniforms, sometimes blue, because gray uniforms are so drab. But they always carried swords. The newlyweds marched under the swords while the photographers took pictures. Real swords. Made me nervous as hell. One careless groomsman and the marriage is a short one.

“Here.” Sister stopped suddenly, and I walked into her. “Damn, Mouse. Watch where you’re going.” She pulled her shoe back on where I had stepped on it. “I
think it’s one of these rooms.” She pointed. “There are the steps we came down the other day.”

“Maybe there’s still a police ribbon around it,” I said.

“Oh, I doubt it. Besides, we’re just going to look around on the floor.”

I sneezed. “Lord, they need to run over these floors with Endust. Look at the dust bunnies.” I casually pushed my foot against one of the larger pieces of dust that had lodged against the wall. It didn’t float away like it should. I leaned over and looked at it.

“What?” Sister asked when she saw me looking.

I pushed at the grayish dust again. The whole piece moved.

“What is it? A dead mouse?” she asked. “God, that gives me the creeps.”

I squatted down and examined what I had thought was a dust bunny. Long gray hairs, I realized, attached to a small piece of dried skin.

“You got any tweezers?” I asked.

“For what? What are you going to do?”

“Pick this up.”

“Why? Have you lost your mind?”

“No, damn it. But this looks like a piece of Maurice.”

“The grizzly bear?”

“Give me some tweezers.”

She fumbled in her purse, fussing that I had lost my mind and that I was going to get bubonic plague because rats carried bubonic plague, and I’d better not give it to her. Nevertheless, she handed me some tweezers and moved back while I picked up the scrap and examined it. It wouldn’t take a forensic scientist to
tell that this was a piece of dried skin with long, gray, silver-tipped hair attached.

“Look,” I said, holding out the tweezers to Sister. “I swear I think it’s Maurice.”

She backed up. “Maybe somebody got scalped. Or maybe it’s off of a costume.”

But I knew what I was looking at. I stood up and looked around. Much of what I had thought was dust was hair. There were also a few pieces similar to the one I held with the tweezers.

“We need to call the police,” I said. “If Maurice was knocked over when Dusk was kidnapped, then she might be here somewhere.”

“You said Bernice said he looked like he’d been attacked by a wild animal.”

A shiver ran over me. “I know. Maybe what happened was that Dusk grabbed at the bear while she was being dragged out of the house. Maybe she tried to push him over on the person who had her.”

“Oh, my Lord, Mouse. I’ll call, but they’re going to think we’re nuts.” She reached into her purse for her cell phone. “You stay away from me with that bubonic patch, though.”

“Put the phone away, Mrs. Crane.”

Sister and I both jumped. Mr. Taylor was walking down the hall toward us.

“But there’s a good chance that Dusk Armstrong may be here somewhere, and we need to call the police,” I said.

“Look, you twit. Nobody’s calling the police.” He grabbed both Sister’s purse and mine with his left hand. In his right was a pistol I had failed to notice as he walked toward us. Sister asked later how on God’s
earth I had missed that detail, and the only thing I could think of was because he was a teacher and teachers don’t carry guns. Hah, she said, she’d heard that before.

Mr. Taylor dumped the purses on the floor and handed me a key. “Unlock that door.” Which I did. I still wasn’t very scared. Things hadn’t begun to come together yet.

“Hurry, damn it. I’ve got to go back and play the recessional.”

You see what I mean? Nobody’s going to kill you and then run back upstairs and play the recessional at a wedding. Some things just don’t fit.

I got the door open. Another broom closet, this one carpeted with green indoor-outdoor carpet.

“Now pick up that green bucket in the corner. Hurry.”

I hurried. For a second I considered turning and hurling it at him, but only for a second.

“Pull the carpet back. There’s a handle under there. Pull it up.”

I did as he said. Nothing happened.

“Move back, you fool. You’re standing on the trapdoor.”

This was no time to argue that I wasn’t a fool. I moved back, lifted the trapdoor, and saw what appeared to be a lighted room beneath it.

“Climb down,” was the next order. And again, “Hurry.”

I pulled the trapdoor back, said a little prayer, and lowered myself onto a dangling metal ladder that hung between the closet and the floor beneath. It was the kind of ladder that people who have bedrooms on up
per stories keep under their beds in case of fire, the kind that hooks over a window, in this case a trapdoor. It swayed as I descended.

“Now you,” I heard him tell Mary Alice.

There was no way on God’s earth that Sister was going to be able to fit into that trapdoor. And if by some miracle she squeezed through, there was the fragility of the ladder, of the hundred fifty pounds more of Sister than there was of me. Just then my feet touched a carpeted floor. That was a plus. If the ladder broke or came loose, could I cushion her fall some way without getting smushed? I stood to one side, ready to do what I could. But Sister came through the trapdoor and down the ladder with no problem. Mr. Taylor scampered down behind her, holding on to the ladder with one hand, the pistol in the other still pointed at us.

Afterward, thinking about this, I realized that if we hadn’t been so astonished at what we were seeing, we could probably have jumped him as he came down the ladder and knocked the pistol away. He wasn’t a large man or a young man, and there were two of us.

We were standing in a Matisse painting. A deep burgundy carpet covered the floor. Atop this was an oriental rug in shades of orange and burgundy. There were several more rugs hanging on the wall and a circular table in the middle of the room with books stacked beside a large arrangement of red lilies. In the corner was an ornate brass bed covered by a floral throw, and on this bed lay a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl. Pure Matisse except for the fact that the girl was tied to the bed and had electrical tape over her mouth. Dusk Armstrong, her eyes large with fear.

“My God,” Sister said.

“Here.” Mr. Taylor handed her a roll of electrical tape. “Strap your sister to that pipe.”