Elvis and the Blue Suede Bones

by Peggy Webb

  “Do you have an album from your high school days?”

  “Flitter. Why do you want to know? I look twice as good as I did then.”

  “I’m looking for motive, Mama. From the past.”

  Mama doesn’t even answer me, but I hear her shouting to Fayrene, “Cal’s going to crack the case, and we’re going to help!”

  “I’m going to heap acolytes on her head!” Fayrene yells. “We’ll be the killer’s worst enema!”

  Holy cow. Considering the trouble those two stirred up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, it would have been simpler to drive back to Mama’s and search for the album myself. Still, I’ll have to say she’s a trooper and there’s a comfort in knowing my mama always fights on my side, no matter how absurd my cause.

  “Mama, are you still there?”

  “I was just having a little consult. Fayrene and I are going back down to the farm to unearth my high school year book.”

  “Be careful. And thanks.”

  I pride myself on manners. I don’t even say a word when Lovie emerges from her bedroom with her baseball bat. This is my cousin’s weapon of choice. In a pinch, I’d pit Lovie and her bat against some of the Company’s most lethal operatives.

  *

  Mama and Fayrene are waiting in my front yard that’s lit up like a Broadway stage. Lovie pulls into the driveway behind me and bails out of her van.

  “For Pete’s sake! You weren’t kidding about Jack’s over the top protection methods.”

  “Wait till you see the bars in the kitchen.”

  But with murder afoot, I guess the flood lights aren’t a bad thing. And looking on the bright side – with every pun intended – there is no danger of tripping and falling in the dark.

  Mama and Fayrene get out of her ostentatious pink Cadillac and the four of us make quick work of unloading the left-over party food and stowing it in the kitchen. I explain as little as possible about the iron bars, but the way Mama and Fayrene are giggling and casting side-long glances at each other, I’d say they’re enjoying a joke at my expense. Still, I’m glad to see she’s not letting the bones in her back yard get her down.

  “Who wants Prohibition punch and sausage balls?” Lovie asks.

  Everybody says yes, except me, of course. I’m not about to pass along bad habits to Jackie Nell in the womb. Good mothering starts in pregnancy, I say. And so do all the parenting and pre-natal care magazines tucked into every book case and book basket in the house. If Jack’s baby purchases hadn’t tipped Mama off, the magazines surely would have. Maybe, subconsciously, I wanted her to know.

  I grab a glass of milk and a dog treat for Elvis then steer us into the living room. Considering that Mama’s bound to be the prime suspect no matter who the victim is, we don’t need any bars to remind us that she might end up in jail.

  I sit in my favorite wing chair so I can prop my feet on an antique stool that looks like the cushion is held aloft by mermaids, one of the many touches of whimsy in my house. Fayrene plops onto the sofa with Mama right beside her, hugging her high school yearbook as if she’s guarding state secrets while Lovie opts for the chaise within easy reach of the food.

  “Before I open the yearbook, I want everybody to know that pictures lie,” Mama says.

  Fayrene nods her head in agreement. “My old ones give me acid reflex.”

  “In person I looked ten times prettier than my pictures, and if you don’t believe me, ask Fayrene. I was voted most beautiful three years in a row.”

  “Every year expect our senior year when that heifer Evelyn Lawson stole most beautiful and most likely to recede right out from under Ruby Nell’s nose.”

  “Flitter. The only thing she was likely to succeed at was stealing your boyfriend.”

  Lovie shoots me this look, a secret language we perfected as children. I nod at her, and she runs with the ball.

  “Did she try to steal Uncle Michael?”

  “She was totally smitten with Michael Valentine,” Mama says. “And who wasn’t? He was the best looking man in high school, the best athlete, the best everything!”

  I discreetly wipe my eyes so Mama won’t see. All of a sudden it has hit me that my daddy will never get to see his grandchild.

  “He was a catch,” Mama is saying, and I try to get my head back in the murder game. “Every girl at Mooreville High was in love with him.”

  “Except me. He might have been the most edible man there, but he was yours, Ruby Nell. I wouldn’t have touched him with a ten foot pole.”

  “Well, not everybody is as loyal as you, Fayrene, especially Evelyn Lawson. Remember what you wrote in her senior yearbook?”

  “Like it was yesterday. You wrote, Roses are red, violets are blue, flirt with my man and you will be, too. And I wrote, Ditto.”

  “Aunt Ruby Nell,” Lovie asks, “was she jealous enough to murder somebody and try to pin it on you?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past that heifer,” Mama says.

  “But the garden wasn’t built until two years later,” I say. My parents had gone to Itawamba Junior College in nearby Fulton, Mississippi, and married after graduation there. Granddaddy Valentine’s wedding gift to his son was a hundred and sixty acres, which became the farm/wonderland of my childhood.

  “Oh, Evelyn followed Michael to junior college. She’d have followed him to the moon.”

  “So what did she do at your wedding, Mama?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking for the heifer. I only had eyes for your daddy.” Mama turns to Fayrene. “Do you remember?”

  “All I remember is how ravaged you looked in your wedding dress, and all I could think about when you cut the cake was I’m about to lose my best friend. I was trying my best not to get historical and ruin the deception.”

  “Mama, where is Evelyn now?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. That heifer!”

  “Did she ever marry?”

  Mama ponders this a minute then turns to Fayrene. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “Who’d have her?” Fayrene shrugs then adds, “But it seems to me I did hear a rumor she ran off to Mexico and was living down there in a condom.”

  “How come you never told me?”

  “Because it didn’t seem reliable, Ruby Nell, just a rumor some old crackshot with magnesia was spreading around.”

  I’m stifling back laughter and so is my cousin. She reaches over and pinches me and I give her the evil eye. Listen, I don’t know if their memories are hampered by age or Prohibition punch. With Mama and Fayrene, it’s always hard to tell. But put the two of them together and they’re always the best entertainment in Mooreville.

  “Evelyn Lawson sounds like a prime suspect to me.” Lovie winks at me then grabs a handful of sausage balls and holds up her empty glass. “Does anybody want a refill?”

  Mama and Fayrene sound like a Greek chorus with yeses.

  “Just bring the pitcher, Lovie,” Mama adds.

  My evening of careful and thoughtful sleuthing takes a nose-dive. Another glass or two and Mama and Fayrene will be blaming men from Mars for the bones in her garden. I make a last-ditch effort at undercover work before Lovie returns.

  “Mama, can you think of anybody else from those days who might have wanted to pin murder on you or daddy? Maybe somebody who was jealous of him?”

  “Michael was a saint! Everybody loved him, and I’d better not hear any different.” Mama flips open her high school yearbook and points to a woman with tight ringlets surrounding a face that might have been described in her day as pert or gamine. “Just look at that! That’s a conniver if I ever saw one.”

  Lovie comes back with a chilled pewter pitcher and peers over Mama’s shoulder.

  “Who’s that? She looks like a fox.”

  “The killer. Evelyn Lawson!” Mama slams the album shut and holds up her glass for a refill. “As far as I’m concerned, this case is solved!”

  Chapter 5

  Elvis’ Opinion on Flawed Logic, No Remor
se and the Wrong Victim

  These are my kind of days, nothing to do but loll in the sunshine and munch on Lovie’s good cooking. Things are more or less back to normal at home, if you can call normal the bars in the kitchen that Callie can’t bring herself to take back for fear of hurting Jack’s feelings, Lovie coming and going with the regularity of a Tupelo-to-Memphis shuttle and Callie leaving for work in her new daisy printed face masks while Ruby Nell and Fayrene sit on her front porch drinking Prohibition punch and scheming.

  “We need to find that murdering heifer.” Ruby Nell’s curled into one of Callie’s porch rocking chair, her shoes kicked off and her feet tucked under while she enjoys her third cup of punch. I know. I’m counting.

  And the murdering heifer she’s referring to is none other than Evelyn Lawson. Ruby Nell thinks she’s already cracked the case, but suspicious minds know it’s not likely you’ll find the killer until you know the victim. Even Sheriff Trice doesn’t know. Ruby Nell’s called him on his cell phone. Nine times. In the last three days. The Mooreville grapevine has it, he’s trying to get his number changed.

  “She’s probably one of those paragon schizophrenics, Ruby Nell. You told Sheriff Trice about her. Let him handle it.”

  “Since when have I ever sat back and let somebody else do my dirty work?”

  “If you keep worrying about this, your blood pressure’s going sky high and before you know it you’ll be prostate on the floor and I’ll have to give you VCR.”

  “I’m not worrying. I’m just thinking about calling Bobby Huckabee.”

  “Great minds!” Fayrene nearly topples out of the swing leaning over to give Ruby Nell a high five. “A séance is just the thing to unmask that criminal.”

  I don’t think Bobby Huckabee with his mismatched eyes is going to be their good luck charm, even if his blue eye is psychic. Besides that, they’ll have to wait until he’s off work to conduct their séance. Charlie’s got a soft spot where Ruby Nell is concerned, but that doesn’t extend to letting his assistant over at Eternal Rest leave a bunch of folks grieving over their dearly departed at the funeral home while he races off to talk to the conjured up dead in the back room of Gas, Grits and Guts.

  Still, I sidle up to Ruby Nell and give her my best iconic stare to let her know this famous dog detective’s got his mojo working and is just the one to crack the case.

  All I get is an absent-minded pat on the head and a sausage ball. Oh, well. Que sera, sera. The sausage ball helps make up for being ignored.

  “Reckon we ought to tell Callie about the séance so she and Lovie can come?”

  “Flitter, Fayrene. I don’t want my daughter there.”

  “Why not? I don’t think it will hurt the baby.”

  “I intend to ask the spirit world if my grandbaby is a boy or a girl, and I don’t want her to know I’m meddling.”

  “Well, that’s different then. But I can tell you right now, she’s having a boy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw her aurora. It’s blue.”

  “I don’t want to burst your bubble, Fayrene, but I don’t think I’m going to depend on your sixth sense.”

  “Suit yourself, Ruby Nell. But your aurora tells me we’re in a heap of trouble.”

  “Flitter, Fayrene. That’s not my aura telling you. I can see that car as well as you can.”

  Neither one of them has my radar senses. I heard Sheriff Trice’s car long before it pulled into Callie’s driveway. The sheriff parks the patrol car under the magnolia tree and strolls toward the porch with his hat in his hand.

  “Good afternoon, ladies.” I’ll have to hand it to Sheriff Trice. He’s got manners and a charming way with the public, particularly women. Even if he didn’t have such a good reputation for catching criminals and keeping the county clean, he could get re-elected on charm alone.

  “Sit down and have a cup of punch with us, sheriff.” Ruby Nell untucks her legs and slides her feet into her shoes in a flirtatious manner that would horrify my human mom. Listen, ever since I fell from Graceland and came back in a dog suit, I can tell you I know the Valentine family better than they know each other. Ruby Nell’s all class. And good-looking too, for a senior. If Callie’s not watchful, some man’s going to snatch her mama up and say, “Baby, let’s play house.”

  “I’ll have to say no to the punch, Miss Ruby Nell. I’m on duty.”

  Sheriff Trice is no dummy. Everybody in Mooreville knows what goes into Lovie’s famous punch. Most of them have had it one occasion or another, mostly at weddings and barbeques on Ruby Nell’s farm. But about ninety-five percent of our adult female population enjoy a glass every now and again at Callie’s beauty salon.

  “I hope you’ve got good news,” Callie’s mama says. “I’m all ears.”

  “I don’t know if you’d call it good, Miss Ruby Nell. The victim is a high school classmate of yours, Evelyn Lawson.”

  “It can’t be!” Ruby Nell leaps out of her chair and starts pacing up and down the porch so fast her caftan flies out behind her like a psychedelic flag. “This is just impossible!”

  “I’m afraid not.” The sheriff twists his hat in his hands, probably trying to figure out how to handle a woman falling apart on her daughter’s front porch. “The lab report is comprehensive.”

  “Flittter, flittter, flittter! They’ve made a mistake.”

  “Ruby Nell,” Fayrene says, “if you keep on like this you’re going to have a Caesar.”

  “Miss Ruby Nell, are you all right? Can I get your something?”

  “The truth! That’s what I want.”

  “All I know so far is that the bones definitely belong to Evelyn Lawson and her death dates back to…let me see.” Sheriff Trice pulls a small spiral bound note pad out of his pocket and scratches his head while he reads. “Looks like she vanished the same year you married Michael Valentine. Some coincidence, huh?”

  Is Lee County’s sheriff skirting on the edge of reality here or does he have facts that spell T. R.O.U.B.L.E for Ruby Nell? I sashay my portly but handsome self close to Ruby Nell to let her know she’s got a powerhouse in her corner. Stand by me, that’s my motto. I’m the loyal dog who knows more about building a bridge over troubled water than any engineer who ever earned his degree.

  “If you’re trying to say something, Sheriff Trice, don’t hem and haw around. Just spit it out.”

  See, now, that’s what I’m talking about. Put this top dog in your corner and you can wrestle alligators.

  “I’ll just be frank here, Miss Ruby Nell. Things are not looking good for you, particularly after your reaction on hearing the name of the victim.”

  “If you’re saying I’m guilty of murder, you’re barking up the wrong tree! Evelyn Lawson is the killer, not the victim. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

  Ruby Nell flounces back into the house in an exit worthy of my heyday in Las Vegas, and I had access to all kinds of special effects. Fayrene takes off right behind her, but I’m not about to leave the scene of the crime, so to speak. The sheriff squints after them like he can’t believe what he just saw and heard. Then he pours himself a hefty glass of Prohibition punch and drinks it in two gulps. I guess he’s either off duty now or his scruples only apply when somebody is looking.

  I’ve got news for him. I’m somebody with a capital S. And before this whole murder investigation is over, he’s going to find that out. It wouldn’t surprise me that by the time I unmask a killer, Sheriff Trice will be so impressed he’ll give me a little deputy doggie badge. Maybe even suggest erecting a monument to my important self in front of city hall over in Tupelo.

  Right now, though, he’s trying to reclaim his cool on Callie’s front porch.

  “Shoot!” He plops his empty glass back onto the table then cups his hands around his mouth and yells. “I’ll have to advise you not to leave town, Miss Ruby Nell.”

  Callie’s front door opens a crack, and out comes Ruby Nell’s bejeweled hand, middle finger flipping him the bird. />
  Chapter 6

  Hairdos, Gossip and Suspects

  It’s a relief to get away from all the talk of murder at my house and be at Hair.net dispensing New York hairdos. The mayor’s wife is in Darlene’s chair getting her nails painted hot pink, a personal favorite of mine, and I’m pulling Bitsy Morgan’s hair through a coloring cap so I can highlight her mouse-gray with medium blond.

  “Do you think I’ll look a bit like Marilyn Monroe?” Bitsy asks.

  “No doubt about it. This is going to be a beautiful shade for you.”

  “When I was in high school everybody said I was the spit image of Marilyn. Of course, your mama was always the beauty. How’s she holding up?”

  “She and Fayrene are having a good time together at my house.”

  “Who’s running her monument place, then?” Bitsy’s question might seem nosey anywhere else, but here in Mooreville, it’s usually a comfort to know everybody cares about your business.

  “She’s closed it for a few days.” Everlasting Monuments is next door to the beauty shop. If a customer pulls into her driveway, I can always run out the door and tell them Mama will be right back then give her a call.

  “Ruby Nell always could carry on, in spite of things.” When Bitsy purses her lips, I know she’s fixing to drop a bomb. “But I don’t see how she can carry on, considering.”

  “Considering what?” Darlene asks the question, and I’m bound to hear the answer, whether I want to or not.

  “They say there was a hole in the victim’s skull big enough to drive a Peterbilt rig through.”

  Bitsy’s always full of gossip you can’t depend on, but when Junie Mae pipes up with, “I heard the same thing,” I get this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Everybody knows she has sources in both the mayor’s and the sheriff’s offices, and nine times out of ten it’s as reliable as the local six o’clock news.

  “Furthermore,” Junie Mae adds, “I heard the victim was Evelyn Lawson.”

  Holy cow! I recall her yearbook picture, that closed-up, narrow face that made Evelyn look like she was keeping a million secrets – and Mama’s absolute certainty that she’s a killer.