Smarty Bones (4 page)

I got no further. Tinkie burst into her tinkling trademark laughter. “You are pulling my leg, aren’t you? Olive Twist. What is she, a martini garnish?”

“A toothpick would be more apt. Her parents were Victorian scholars.”

“Olive Twist. Like the Dickens character, only female.” She caught on fast.

“Correct. Or so I’ve been told.” One thing about the education we’d received from our literature teacher, Mrs. Nyman—we knew our classics.

“So she’s from where? Duke? Emory? Vanderbilt?”

“Camelton College. In Maine. It’s an up-and-coming Ivy League—”

“I know where it is. But why is someone from there interested in the Lady in Red?” She caught the fabric of the whole quilt. “Oh, I see. She believes one of Oscar’s relatives was mixed up in the assassination of Lincoln. This is a big deal. She can come down here and dig up crap on prominent families and hope she gets enough notoriety out of it to publish a paper or get tenure.”

“Not just Oscar’s ancestors, but Cece’s, too. And she said something about a bestseller. Her ambitions go beyond academia.” Oscar was the most even-keeled man I knew. Olive Twist wouldn’t get under his skin, because he wasn’t invested in the past. Cece was another matter. Her past was a wound. She lived with it, but I knew how deeply she hurt. “If Twist gets wind of Cece’s background, she is going to have a heyday.”

Our friend Cece Dee Falcon had once been Cecil. Now he was a she and she was the head of the society pages and the best investigative reporter at the
Zinnia Dispatch
. When Cece had demanded the right to be her own person, her family had disowned her. This would all be grist for the mill of Dr. Twist’s book. Cece had lived through this once. She shouldn’t have to confront it again.

“I don’t like this one little bit.” Tinkie snatched clothes out of the closet without even looking. “Where is this person staying?”

“The Gardens B and B. I’ve already been there and tried to talk to her. All she did was run up a bar tab and thumb her nose at me.”

“One call to Gertrude and Miss Sassy Britches will be out on her ear.” She slid into a cute pair of capris and sandals. “You’ve seen her. What’s she like?”

“Really skinny. Like a number two pencil. And glamorous with a peculiar sense of fashion. And mean as a pit viper. She enjoys upsetting people. She disrupted the meeting of the Daughters of the Supreme Confederacy. That’s how I got on to her. Frances Malone came by Dahlia House and asked me to speak to her, for all the good it did.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to take a swing at her. I’ll cancel my appointment.”

That was exactly what I feared Tinkie might do. “First, let’s go out to the Egypt Plantation and see what we can find out. Maybe if we talk to the folks there we can find a reason to make Olive Twist go away.”

*   *   *

The drive to Holmes County was beautiful. Fall temperatures wouldn’t arrive in the Deep South for another four weeks, but I could see hints of approaching cooler weather in the quality of light. The sun was still brutal, but the pale yellow of approaching October edged the horizon and seemed to linger in the green leaves of the trees. I loved this time of year, the last, lingering days of summer’s heat. When I was a child, September had meant excitement. A new school year filled with potential and fun—though everyone wore shorts to the Friday-night football games.

I wasn’t a geek or a bookworm, but I liked school. I loved the workbooks in which language and math problems could be solved with a sharpened pencil. September included the dizzying smell of a new box of crayons, opened for the first time. It was as if each color had its own special scent. Recess was kickball and jumping rope.

If I could go back in time for a week, or even a day, I would halt life and step into the past. I’d had no cares, no worries, no guilt, and no regrets. What a shame we grew out of utopia and into adulthood.

Tinkie’s manicured fingers touched my shoulder. “You’re far, far away, aren’t you?”

“The past.” I could confess such things to Tinkie. She had a kind and understanding heart.

“Not a bad place to visit, but don’t put down roots. People who live in the past are doomed to unhappiness. You have me, Graf, and all your friends anchoring you right here in the present.”

“Thanks.” With so little effort, she’d pulled me into the moment. “I think we’re almost there.”

The little town of Cruger, population under five hundred, was really only a blink. Holmes County had the lowest life expectancy of any county in the United States. The soil grows excellent cotton and soybeans, but the people struggle.

I’d driven my antique roadster, and we tooled down a two-lane road bordered by fields and kudzu. The kudzu vine, originally introduced to halt erosion, had taken to the Southern states like a tick to a dog. The vines could grow twelve inches in twenty-four hours. They wrapped around fences, trees, lampposts, buildings—anything that couldn’t move away. Some farmers considered it good fodder for cattle, but most did everything they could to eliminate it because of its propensity to take over.

“That looks like a dragon,” Tinkie said, pointing to several trees and possibly a billboard buried under kudzu. “I wish I could breath fire. I’d toast Olive Twist’s hair.”

I caught the incredible scent of the purple kudzu flowers in bloom. It was so intense I could almost taste grape. “They’ve virtually eradicated kudzu in Sunflower County.”

Oversized sunglasses shaded Tinkie’s blue eyes, but consternation hardened her features. “Just like I intend to eradicate this Olive Twist person. She has no right to be here tampering in our history.”

She was aggravated, and I understood. Tinkie didn’t mean legal right, she meant something far more difficult to pin down. The legends, stories, and places were ours. Not personally hers or mine, but the collective “ours” of the state. We passed folklore and tall tales down from generation to generation. This community knowledge partially defined us. The Lady in Red was part of this, a story every Delta child knew, and most of us had made up our own interpretations of where she’d come from and who she was. And none of them involved Abraham Lincoln.

My mother had told me the Lady in Red legend when I was nine. She and my father had driven me to Egypt Plantation to see the manager’s house where the coffin had been accidentally unearthed.

I could still hear my father’s voice. “They were digging a field line for the septic tank here at the manager’s house when they hit the casket. They brought her up and discovered she was a beautiful woman. Lots of red hair piled up on her head. And she wore a red velvet dress with a white collar. Whoever buried her had loved her, because the casket was cast iron and made to order. It was shaped to her body and then sealed with a glass top. The coffin was filled with alcohol, and the body was perfectly preserved, but only for a short time. The backhoe cracked the seal on the coffin, and as the alcohol leaked out, the body decayed.” My father had put a hand on Mama’s back. “Something sad transpired to bury her here, alone, without any of her loved ones around.”

My father had been a lawyer, and he didn’t spare me from the realities of life and death. He protected me, but he didn’t try to paint a pretty picture when it didn’t fit the scene.

“When did you first hear about the Lady in Red?” I asked Tinkie.

“I was maybe seven. I was at the bank spending the afternoon with my father. Mr. Sampson from Holmes County came in for a visit. He and Daddy were friends, and the subject of the Lady in Red came up. They both told me about it and how no one knew who she was. I remember thinking how sad it was. She was buried in the yard of a house with none of her people around her.”

“That’s exactly what my father said.” I pondered another question. “Do you think she’s one of Oscar’s or Cece’s relatives?”

“Anything is possible, but I doubt it. If she were a cousin, the Richmonds would have gotten her body to Sunflower County for burial. They wouldn’t have left her in a backyard. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Remember the stories we made up about her? She was always exotic, always a woman of wealth.” The memory came from that point of innocence that made childhood so wonderful. Children seldom fantasized about starving or ugly people, at least not little girls in the Delta. It was always princesses or movie stars or women who had a grand destiny.

“It doesn’t matter where she came from, she’s ours now. She isn’t up for inspection or dissection by outsiders.” Tinkie pushed her sunglasses up her nose. “I won’t have it.”

“Legally, I don’t know how to stop Twist. She can write what she wants.” I had to be up-front. Once Tinkie dug in, she didn’t give up.

“Do you think she was murdered?” Tinkie asked.

“Murdered and then preserved? The casket had to be expensive. Probably shipped up from New Orleans.” In a weird way, it made sense. Sometimes people killed the very thing they loved the most. The expensive funeral preparations and the unmarked grave would follow that train of thought.

“Maybe she was running away from her wealthy New Orleans husband,” Tinkie said.

“Maybe she was meeting her lover. A tryst that went wrong.”

“Maybe she was foreign, like a mail-order bride.” Tinkie pulled down her sunglasses so she could look at me. She really liked that theory. “And she got here and met her husband-to-be and hated him and ran away. Maybe she got to the plantation and they tried to help her, but he caught up with her and killed her.”

“Surely if there had been a gunshot or knife wound the law would have investigated.”

“Not if she was buried without anyone ever notifying the law. People could do a lot of things back then. Folks believe she died right after the War Between the States, from what I can remember of the story. There was a lot happening around here. Union and Confederate troops had been all over the area. Remember, Sherman burned Jackson to the ground, and Jackson isn’t that far away.”

Tinkie had a point. Anything could have happened. Our dead woman could have been a prostitute, or a thief, or a con artist, even a card sharp. People had been shot for a lot less. As far as that went, she could have been the wife or sister of a soldier searching for a lost relative.

“Maybe there’s more solid information at Egypt Plantation,” Tinkie said.

“Let’s start there. They reburied the Lady in Red in a cemetery in Lexington. But maybe someone at the plantation knows the history.”

The flat land of the Delta broke at Holmes County and became more rolling. We drove to the plantation—six thousand acres of cotton, corn, soybeans, and peanuts. There had been a time when the plantation was like a small town. Workers had lived on the property. Churches and stores had sprung up within walking distance. The community of Egypt Plantation, like all of the large plantations in the Delta, would have been self-sustaining.

Things had changed. Folks had cars and drove into Lexington for shopping and supplies. Huge pieces of equipment did the work of hundreds of hands. But the land was the same, and the crops growing were lush, abundant, and well tended.

The manager had no new information for us and wasn’t aware of any recent interest in the woman once buried there. He sent us on to Lexington, the county seat, to the Odd Fellows Cemetery where the Lady in Red was reinterred. Tinkie and I found her without any trouble.

“I wonder who paid for the gravestone?” Tinkie asked, her finger tracing the lettering on the marker. “Nineteen sixty-nine … that’s when she was found … 1969. I guess they judged her age by the clothes she wore.”

My family members were all buried at Dahlia House in the family plot. Mama, Daddy, Aunt Loulane, Great-great-great-grandma Alice, Uncle Lyle Crabtree, and Jitty rested among the markers with names I didn’t know. This woman was all alone. “I don’t want to be buried,” I said.

“Well, it’s not something we have to worry about today, Sarah Booth.”

“Excuse me, ladies. Are you here about the exhumation request?”

Tinkie and I both started and whirled around. A distinguished-looking gentleman stood only ten feet away. He wore a suit and a starched shirt even though it had to be over ninety degrees. “Who are you?” Tinkie asked.

“A request to dig up the body has already been filed?” I asked.

He chuckled in a deep baritone. “So you aren’t the woman who petitioned to exhume the Lady in Red?”

“No,” we answered in unison.

“I don’t like the idea of disturbing the dead,” the gentleman said. “Excuse me, ladies. I’m Meshach McFail, the coroner of Holmes County.”

“Who requested the exhumation?” I asked, though I knew the answer. Dr. Twist had been a busy, busy lady.

“She didn’t sound like she was from around here,” McFail said. “Had a clipped voice with a strange twang. And real bossy.”

“Olive Twist.”

His smile widened. “She’s filed a petition with the circuit clerk to have our Lady in Red exhumed. She said it was really important.” He tilted his head to indicate the grave. “Since there’s no one to speak for the dead lady, I guess she’ll be dug up. Seems like a shame, though. She was already brought up once before. By accident.”

“How can we stop this?” I asked.

He gave me an approving nod. “I’d speak to the circuit court clerk right up there in the courthouse in Lexington. He’ll know what you need to do. Like I said, it would be a shame to disturb this poor lady’s rest a second time.”

“Who has the authority to exhume the body?” I asked.

“Anyone can request such a thing. Usually it’s in cases where homicide is suspected. But Red, that’s what we call her, she’s been dead over a hundred years. No one has ever mentioned murder. Even so, the person who killed her would be dead, too.” He gazed down at the headstone. “To be honest, I didn’t care much for Ms. Twist.”

“Everyone she meets feels the same way.”

“She was awful to the young man who was with her.” His lips compressed. “When he asked a question about the exhumation process, she told him he was stupid. She dressed him down right in front of me and the clerk. The young man was embarrassed. Why would a mother treat her son with such disrespect?”

“He’s her employee, not her son.”