Murder on a Bad Hair Day (17 page)

“Looks that way.”

Leota folded her hands and brought them to her chin. The fingers were in the “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple” position. The “steeple” pushed against her lips. She was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she turned her hands over (“here’s all the people”) and said, “Y’all gonna buy any quilts?”

We were. Mary Alice bought three, one for each of her girls and one for Haley. I bought the Heaven and Earth. Less money my children would have to worry about.

With the bright quilts inside the car and the Christmas trees tied on the top, we looked festive as we pulled up to the clinic to pick up Bubba. James Butler was just coming around the side of the building, waved, and walked over. He was smiling brightly.

“Claire has shown up,” he said. “She’s okay and Thurman has gone to check on her.”

“I’ll bet I know where he’s gone,” I said. “To the Tutwiler Hotel.”

“I’ll be damned,” James said. “How did you know that?”

“Would you believe a wild guess?”

“With you ladies, I’d believe anything. Y’all come on in and tell me about it. Bubba’s chomping at the bit.”

“Chomping at the bit?” Mary Alice murmured.

I laughed. “Well, what do you expect when you take your cat to a horse hospital?” We got out and followed James into the clinic.

“H
ow come Thurman Beatty was still married to Mercy if he was so in love with Claire Moon?” Mary Alice asked as we made our way home through the Christmas traffic on Highway 280. Bubba’s carrying box was on the front seat between us, and, between yowls, he would snake his leg out of the holes, claws unsheathed.

“Maybe Bonnie Blue’s wrong about Thurman. Maybe he’s just a nice man, worried about a lady in distress,” I said, dodging Bubba’s paw. “This cat is dangerous.”

“He just wants some attention because he’s sick.”

“I’d hate to see him mad.”

“He’s a good boy, yes he is.” Mary Alice patted the top of Bubba’s box and jerked her hand back as Bubba made a swipe. She wasn’t quite fast enough. “Shit!”

“He’s a good boy, yes he is. Maybe he’s a coycat.” I watched her sucking her wrist.

“Shut up, Patricia Anne, and get me a Kleenex out of my purse. I mean,” she continued after she had wrapped the tissue around the scratch, “supposing Bonnie Blue is right. People don’t have to stay together nowadays unless they want to. If you were in love with someone else, would you want to stay with Fred?”

“I’d take him with me.”

“You probably would.” She put on her right turn signal.

“Where are you going?”

“Jake’s. I’m starving.”

“What about Bubba? Or are you getting something to go?”

“He can go in. Nobody will know he’s there.” Bubba howled his answer to that lie.

Jake’s Joint has the best barbecue in the whole state. In the South. Jake doesn’t fool around with all that other stuff like slaw and beans and Brunswick stew. He serves barbecue, period. With white bread. And there are always crowds of people waiting to commit gastronomical suicide. Ask any of them if they know they are shortening their lives by hunkering down over a rack of ribs that requires a loaf of white bread and dozens of paper napkins to soak up the fat and they’ll just grin, their mouths encircled with either red or yellow barbecue sauce. For here is the cosmic question Jake has presented us with: red or yellow sauce; the red being more traditional, the yellow a mustardy, spicier sauce. Families have split over which is better. Baptists tend to order red, Unitarians yellow. A routine question asked Alabama political candidates is “Red or yellow?” It’s a good question, but being Alabama political candidates, they all say the good old traditional red sauce. Occasionally a maverick will admit to liking both.

A notice on the door proclaimed that shirts and shoes must be worn and that no pets were allowed.

“Signs like that are so tacky,” Mary Alice said. “Makes us all look like a bunch of hicks. Like we’d go to a restaurant without shirts and shoes.” She sailed through the door carrying Bubba.

For once, Jake’s wasn’t too crowded. A couple were leaving a booth in the corner and Mary Alice made a dive for it, putting Bubba’s carrying case beside her on the seat.

“Maybe you better put him on the floor,” I suggested.

“He’s too upset.”

Bubba did, indeed, sound upset. His yowls blended in with the other loud noises, though. Acoustics have never been at
the top of Jake’s priority list. Not only does a jukebox play nonstop country music—at the moment it was Hank Jr.—but the waitresses scream each order toward the back. When the order is filled, this is announced loudly as it is slapped on a high counter for the waitresses to pick up.

“Hey, ladies,” said a skinny woman in a short maroon uniform with “Mavis” on the pocket. She had a damp rag in her hand which she swiped across the table. “What you want?” If she saw Bubba, she chose to ignore it.

“Small order of ribs with red,” Mary Alice said. “Sweetened ice tea.”

“The same,” I said.

Mavis gave us a disgusted look over the order pad poised in her hand. The damp gray rag dangled from her fingers. “Why don’t y’all order a large and half it? Get the same amount, maybe a little more, and save yourselves a dollar and a half. Enough to get a fried pie. Peach today.”

“Can we get yellow sauce on half?” Mary Alice asked.

“No.” Mavis was not one to argue with. “Large, red!” she screamed toward the back. Bubba screamed, too, but his voice was drowned out.

When Mary Alice and I were growing up, our father told us never to eat at a restaurant with dirty windows. He said the condition of the windows told more about the restaurant than any health inspection score.

“Look at the window.” I pointed.

Mary Alice took a napkin, reached across Bubba, and wiped a small circle on the glass. “The sun’s come out.”

“I mean, look how dirty it is. Remember what Daddy always said.”

“It’s not dirt. It’s barbecue sauce.”

I looked around nervously. “Do you see their score posted anywhere?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mouse. The food doesn’t stay here long enough for any bacteria to grow in it.”

She had a point. Nevertheless, salmonella was not on my wish list for Christmas. I spotted the cleanliness scorecard posted above the cash register, slid from the booth, and
worked my way through the crowd waiting to pick up orders and pay—“98” it proclaimed in black Magic Marker.

Mavis was putting our tea down when I got back to the booth. Big Mason jars served as glasses. “Y’all want lemon?”

We nodded that we did. She reached around to the booth next to us and handed us a saucer with small wedges of lemon on it.

“Well?” Mary Alice asked me, squeezing a piece of lemon into her jar.

“Ninety-eight,” I admitted. “Somebody’s on the take.”

“You are so picky, Patricia Anne. You ever hear of anybody getting sick at Jake’s?”

“I guess not.” I reached for some lemon. “I just don’t need food poisoning on top of everything that’s happened the last few days.”

“Well, you have been borrowing trouble, that’s for sure. Dragging those Needhams in off the street. Lord!” Mary Alice shook her head. I thumped a piece of squeezed lemon at her, hitting her on the arm.

“Is it safe to put this down?” Mavis asked, standing over us with a platter of ribs.

“Sorry.” I unpeeled my arms from the sticky table.

“That’s okay. I got a girlfriend I throw stuff at all the time.” Mavis put the ribs and a stack of white bread on the table.

“She’s my sister, not my friend,” I said, nodding toward Mary Alice.

“Got one of them, too. Y’all want anything else?”

We said that we didn’t, that it looked wonderful. And it did. For the next few minutes we concentrated on eating. Mary Alice slipped a few choice morsels through the holes in Bubba’s carrying case.

“I thought James Butler put him on a diet,” I said.

“Starting tomorrow,” Mary Alice said. “He needs to build his strength back up first.”

“You know,” I said, after the stack of bread and ribs had diminished considerably and I was feeling more kindly to
ward my sister, “Claire’s back, and I’m relieved she’s okay. Now I can wash my hands of the whole thing. Whoever killed Mercy or Ross or tried to kill Claire, that’s for the police to find out. Right?”

“Right.” Mary Alice put another crumpled napkin on top of the considerable pile on the table. “What’s that policewoman’s name who keeps wandering in?”

“Bo Mitchell?”

“That’s it.”

“Why?”

“I just wondered.”

Mary Alice never “just wondered” anything in her life. “Why?” I asked again.

Mary Alice shrugged and reached for the last rib. “You want some peach pie?”

“Might as well.” I stood up and waved for Mavis, who, miraculously, saw me and came to take our order. “Now, what about Bo Mitchell?” I asked when Mavis had left.

“If I called the police station, I’d want to know who to talk to.”

This was getting more and more curious. “Why would you want to call the police station?”

“I think I know where Ross Perry was going the day he was shot.”

“Where?”

“Leota Wood’s.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, when I had to go to the bathroom, I just happened to open the door and look in her back bedroom to see if there were any more quilts there, and, Mouse, it was stacked full with stuff from all the Outsider artists. I couldn’t look but a minute, but I swear I saw some of Abe’s paintings. And Lonnie Holcombe’s and Ruby what’s-her-name. There was a lot more stuff than at Mercy’s gallery. Just piled in there.”

I skipped over Mary Alice’s just “happening” to open the bedroom door at Leota Wood’s house and went right to “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“And what did you decide?”

“That Ross and Leota are art thieves. They were stealing the Outsider art and selling it on the black market and Leota told Ross—remember that phone call he made at the restaurant?—that their connection, probably some big art Mafia man, had just called and told her that he was going to make a deal with them that afternoon and Ross rushed out there, only it was a ruse and they were hiding in the woods and shot him.”

I looked at my sister, who nibbled the last bit of barbecue from the last rib. She added the bone to the pile on the platter, dipped a napkin into her water glass, and wiped her mouth and hands with the damp paper. She didn’t look like a woman who had suddenly taken leave of her senses.

“Well?” she said.

“You were figuring this out while you were driving down Highway 280 in Christmas traffic?”

“It makes sense.”

“You think this makes sense? A Mafia art connection shooting Ross Perry in the middle of Shelby County makes sense?”

Mavis slapped down two fried pies and two forks. “Coffee?”

We shook our heads no.

“Don’t burn yourself,” she warned automatically as she walked away. Unnecessarily, also. Smoke poured from the pies.

“Ross was on his way to Leota’s. I feel it in my bones,” Mary Alice said, picking up her fork. “They were up to something.”

“Well, Bo Mitchell wouldn’t have anything to do with it. This is Shelby County. You’re going to have to call the sheriff and explain the feeling in your bones. He needs to be alerted about that art Mafia, anyway. God knows we don’t need that element running around down here in the Shelby County woods.”

Mary Alice plunged her fork into her pie. “Okay, you explain it, then.”

“I can’t. I’m not even going to try. My sister warned me a few minutes ago to quit borrowing trouble. I’ll dump a little more meat in the stew, though. I called the Butlers’ the other night and got Abe. He thought I was Leota and told me, and I quote, ‘The pictures ain’t ready. Git off my ass.’”

Mary Alice blew on a piece of hot peach pie, touched her tongue to it, and blew on it some more. “It means something, Mouse,” she said between puffs.

Bubba screamed for more barbecue.

“Everything does,” I said.

We had a terrible time getting my tree off Sister’s car. At least getting Sister’s back on. The man at the Christmas tree farm had tied them together. So when we loosened the rope in my driveway, both trees fell. We were struggling to get Sister’s back on top when a florist delivery truck pulled up and a young man got out with the largest poinsettia I had ever seen. At least two dozen brilliant red flowers, splashed with white as if someone had dripped a paintbrush over them, glowed in the winter sun. The plant was in a brass container, so large it was awkward for the young man to carry.

“Hollowell?” he said.

“That’s me.”

He shifted the plant’s weight slightly. “You better let me put this inside for you.”

I rushed to open the front door and held it open while the man climbed the steps carefully and came into the hall.

“I’ll put it where you want,” he offered. “It’s not heavy as it looks. Just bunglesome.”

I had him put it in the bay window in the kitchen. It was so beautiful, I caught my breath.

“Who’s it from?” Mary Alice asked. She had followed us into the kitchen.

I opened the card and read aloud: “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Hollowell, and thanks for kidnapping us. Glynn and Lynn.” I teared up a little.

“Oh, come on, Mouse. No tuning up.” Mary Alice turned
to the deliveryman. “You know, I’ll bet this nice young man would help us put my tree on the car.”

And he did. And left smiling happily because of the “little Christmas something” Mary Alice gave him for helping.

After she and the still-unhappy Bubba left, I dragged my tree around the back and went looking for the stand. It had been so long since we had had a live tree, I wasn’t sure where we had put it last. But I lucked out. It was on a shelf in the basement right by several strings of big colored lights. I eyed them for a moment, then decided that would be pushing Fred with his fear of fire too far. I was going to have to make a trip to the Big B for some tiny lights.

“What have you done, Mama?”

I jumped. I had been concentrating so, I hadn’t heard Haley come to the basement door.

She answered her own question. “You’ve bought a live tree and Papa’s going to have a fit.”