by Peggy Webb
“No family pictures,” Ruby Nell says.
“What’d you expect? She never got married.”
“Who’d have the heifer? Certainly not my Michael, though she threw herself all over him every chance she got.”
“Lord help us, Ruby Nell.”
“What?”
“This looks like a perfumed letter.”
They tromp around like a herd of wild antelope and then Ruby Nell says, “Flitter, that’s just a letter from her brother. That tells us exactly zero except that he gave up all claims to the flower shop. What we need is substantial evidence.”
There’s enough tromping to wake the dead, then Ruby Nell yells, “I’ve got it!”
Suddenly I see the downstairs lights go off. I backtrack for a view of the living room and what to my horror do I see? Martha Jo is heading toward the staircase.
I race back to the window and sound the alarm. But my howling rendition of “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” gets caught up in the storm. Plus, my handsome basset coat is turning into a soggy mess. I’m glad that cute beagle babe up at the truck stop can’t see me now.
A high pitched scream splits the air, probably Martha Jo. I can pick my two senior humans’ screams out from a crowd of thousands.
“Quick,” Ruby Nell’s bellow can be heard in a category four hurricane. “Stash it and run for the hills!”
“Stop!” Martha Jo yells. “Thieves!”
It’s raining so hard I barely see Batman and Robin catapult onto the balcony. They both get one leg over when a lamp sails past Ruby Nell’s head and over the railing. Thanks to my magnificent swiveling hips, I sidestep in the nick of time. The lethal lamp whizzes past me then goes rolling down the hill to land with a splash in Feemster Lake.
I do my best barking version of “It’s Now or Never.” Two senior cat burglars in my care get the picture and scramble across the railing and into the trees.
Martha Jo lobs another object toward the fleeing Super Heroes – the M volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which just goes to show that she’s totally out of touch with the digital world. It thumps onto the ground too close to my handsome tail for my comfort. If her aim keeps improving I’m gonna sit right down and cry. Being the brilliant dog that I am, I take prudent measures and hide behind a tree.
There’s dead silence from the enemy’s camp – that would be Martha Jo, who is probably calling the cops – but the big commotion in the trees has me risking my neck for a look.
Well, bless’a my soul. Batman is straddling a puny branch that’s whipping in the wind, but I don’t think Ruby Nell would like it if I barked, “Ride ‘em, cowboy!”
Meanwhile Robin is hanging from a fat limb by her great green cape. Any minute, they’re both liable to fly off like witches on a broomstick. Maybe I’ll hitch a ride. With these kinds of tailwinds they’ll end up at Graceland, and I could sure use a peanut butter and banana sandwich. It’s the best stress-reducer in the world and that would come in handy right now. If my radar ears are accurate – and they always are – there’s a whole bunch of squad cars heading this way.
Fayrene yells out, “Quick, Ruby Nell, think of something!”
“I can’t think and ride a bucking branch at the same time.”
Flashing blue lights cut through the storm and enough cops to arrest everybody in Lee County swarm toward us.
“The cops are fixing to incinerate us! If we don’t die first.”
“Flitter, Fayrene. Nobody’s going to die.”
Ruby Nell is suddenly lit up like the nation’s capitol in a Fourth of July fireworks display by the beams of a dozen flashlights. Even my best friend Trey couldn’t have done a better job treeing her like a ‘possum, and he’s the best red bone hound dog in north Mississippi.
“Call off the cops, Sheriff!! If I ever get down out of this tree, a few folks are going to wish they were dead.”
Sheriff Trice is not the least bit intimidated by Ruby Nell’s threat. If I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, he’s got his tongue rammed into his cheek so he won’t laugh his head off.
After the sheriff gets himself under control, he issues a few orders and deputies swarm the trees to extract the hapless would-be cat burglars.
Of course, you know the rest of the story. Here we sit behind bars, wishing we were five hundred miles away and toting a good luck charm.
Ruby Nell and Fayrene are beginning to complain about being hungry, but not loud enough to rouse the drunk in the next cell. I’d offer them a little smackerel of my treat, but I don’t think they’d appreciate a dry dog bone. I hum a few bars of “I’ll Hold You in my Heart” while I polish off the dog biscuit, and then I sashay my ample but handsome self over to the wall-hung bunk and lay my head on Ruby Nell’s knees.
I wish I could tell her what I hear – the sound of that big Hemi engine as Callie’s Dodge Ram roars toward the jailhouse. Elvis is about to leave this building.
Chapter 10
Lies, Clues and Jailbirds
After the mess Lovie and I made of our criminal investigation in tonight’s storm, I don’t have the heart to lecture Mama about landing in jail. Anyhow, it wouldn’t do any good. She thinks she’s above reproach and the law, too.
She and Fayrene are out of their Batman and Robin costumes, thank goodness, and I’m out of my wet clothes. We’re all sitting around my kitchen table drinking mugs of Lovie’s delicious Mayan hot chocolate. If you didn’t know better – and if you didn’t see all the depressing amount of wrought iron I’m too wimpy to take back – you’d think we were just four ordinary women enjoying a bedtime snack.
Evidence to the contrary sits on the table along with my cute mugs from Elvis’ Birthplace (the real icon, not my dog): my laptop computer and a photo album Mama snatched from Martha Jo Matthews’ house. Turns out, Fayrene’s cape was good for more than hiding a senior figure in need of aerobics.
“You find anything yet?” Lovie asks.
“If Shooter Maxey left a digital footprint, I can’t find it. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.” I shut down the computer, frustrated that my online search for Shooter Maxey has been as futile as Lovie’s and my attempt to question the victim’s mother, Fannie Lawson.
“Fortunately, I’ve got this.” Mama snatches up the album and starts thumbing through. “Did I hit the jackpot or what?”
The album turns out to be a pictorial history of Matthews Flowers. It seems they’ve captured every landscape job since the beginning of their business, starting with black and white and ending with color photos.
“Look at that.” Mama points to a grainy photo about mid-album.
Everybody clusters around except Elvis, who is over in the corner having a snack of PupPeroni. I know he needs to be on a diet and I need to toughen up where he’s concerned, but it’s my fault he had to do time in the Lee County jail house. I’m the one who left him with Mama. I’m the one who knows good and well that she and Fayrene are not going to use a lick of common sense about anything whatsoever. I just hope she reforms before little Jackie Nell is born.
Of course, I might need a little reformation, myself, but I’ve already made up my mind what to do. I’ll help Mama prove she didn’t bash in Evelyn’s head, and then I’m giving up sleuthing.
“Look at what?” Fayrene leans closer to album. “I don’t see anything except a bunch of indigent wild life.”
“Flitter, Fayrene. That’s the farm in the background.” Mama stabs her finger onto the photo. “This is my garden, just the way it looked when Michael had it planted for me. And see, down here.”
“I don’t see anything but a couple of blurry people, Mama.”
“Look closer, Cal. That’s Martha Jo Matthews. She was skinny as a racer snake in high school.”
Lovie gets right over the picture. “That’s her, all right. She’s got that same uptight stance I see every time she decorates for an event I’m catering.”
“I don’t know why the ineffectuals down at jailhouse took us in instead of her,�
� Fayrene says. “She helped plant your garden and probably stuck poor old Evelyn six feet under at the same time.”
I consider myself a wonderful judge of character, and I don’t think Martha Jo is capable of murder. I’ve seen her enough at Uncle Charlie’s funeral home to get to know her pretty well. Although she insists on going to a less-talented hair stylist, I’m not about to throw her under the bus because of that.
I decide to speak up before Mama and Fayrene railroad her.
“She’s so mild-mannered, I can’t picture her killing anybody, let alone burying a whole dead person all by herself. She’s looks too puny.”
Lovie leans over my shoulder and taps the photo of a young man with his baseball cap shading his face. “Aunt Ruby Nell, who’s that boy with Martha Jo?”
“Who do you think I am? Houdini? I don’t have a clue. Do you, Fayrene?”
“I don’t know, but he looks omnibus to me.”
“Wait a minute.” I scramble around in my everything kitchen drawer to find the magnifying glass. Still, we can’t make out the features on the unidentified male. “Think, Mama. Do you know any boys who might have worked part-time with Matthews Flowers during the time they planted your flower garden?”
“Her brother, of course, but he was always been built like a brick outhouse. I don’t think that’s Sammy.”
“He wouldn’t have killed her, anyhow,” Fayrene says. “He thought Evelyn Lawson was his density.”
“But the rumor had it, she ran off with Shooter Maxey,” I say. “Mama, did Shooter ever work for Matthews Flowers?”
“I don’t know. Could be. Lots of high school boys made extra money working for them summers and weekend.”
“Maybe Shooter found Sammy and Evelyn together and killed her in a jealous rage,” I say. “Or maybe the opposite happened. Maybe Sammy is the one who murdered over love. Both of them would have had motive. And practically anybody could have gone into a freshly turned garden on a quiet farm and buried a body.” I give Lovie that look, and she throws up her hands. “Sammy Matthews lives just past the truck stop, Lovie.”
“If you think I’m breaking and entering again, you’re out of your mind.”
“We won’t take a pie this time.”
“Nope. Not doing it, Cal.”
“What if we get somebody to go along as lookout? Say Billy Jessup?”
“Billy’s too young and therefore unreliable,” Mama says. “I’ll go.”
“You’re not going anywhere near another suspect’s house, Mama. We’ll both end up in jail.”
“Flitter. That jail thing was just a fluke.”
“Still, you need to stay home where you’ll be safe.”
“Safe from what? Whoever killed Evelyn is probably dead by now.”
This is Mama, dead out, for you. Stubborn as a mule. She won’t listen to anybody except maybe Uncle Charlie. If I want her to do want I say, it’s going to take a bit of convincing.
“We might as well show her the note, Lovie.”
Mama doesn’t bat an eyelash at the threatening note somebody slipped under my door, and neither does Fayrene.
“Just let them try to mess with you, Ruby Nell. Sheriff Trice is going to end up with another futility on his hands.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Fayrene.” I don’t even want to picture her going around with a gun. She’s dangerous enough with the business end of a mop. “You’re not carrying a weapon, are you?”
“I thought we’d need it for our intergration of Martha Jo, but I’m too smart to make a pubic display of it.”
“Holy cow! Where is it?”
“In my purse.”
“I’ll feel a lot better if you’ll let me put it in Jack’s gun safe, Fayrene.”
“What about our infestation tonight? Coach Matthews is one tough dude. We can’t just walk in there and give him an ultomato.”
We? After that Batman and Robin stunt, I wouldn’t let either one of these senior pistols within a country mile of another break-and-enter.
Lovie yawns and stretches. “Nobody’s going anywhere tonight. If I don’t get some beauty rest, I’m going to turn into Godzilla.”
Thank goodness for cousins who know exactly the right way to rescue me from my own bad intentions. After riding out a storm and rescuing Mama from jail, the last thing I need tonight is to be caught stalking Mooreville’s well-built ex football coach.
“Lovie’s right. Goodnight, Mama, Fayrene.” I lean over and give both of them a peck on the cheek. “Fayrene, just put the gun outside the door. I’ll lock it in Jack’s gun safe when I come upstairs.”
Lovie and I clean up the kitchen while Mama and Fayrene trot upstairs to get a good night’s sleep. At least, I hope that’s what they’re doing. Knowing those two, they could be plotting their own secret break-in at Coach Matthews’ house.
“How hard do you think it will be to break into the coach’s house, Lovie?”
She says a string of words that would make your hair fall out. “He’s got the most vicious dogs in Lee County living with him, and he’ll be no pushover, himself.”
“You’re right. The last time I saw him, he was two hundred pounds of muscle and mean.”
Lovie gets this look that always spells trouble. “We don’t have to break in.”
“I already don’t like this.”
“The poor unfortunate Mrs. Coach Lulu is dead, and I’m free and looking.”
“You are not! What about Rocky Malone?”
“He can’t get his nose out of a dig on the back side of nowhere long enough to discover my national treasure.” Words she had tattooed across her hips in one of our inglorious moments on Beale Street in Memphis, Tenneessee.
“He’s a wonderful man, and I am not about to let you go parading your national treasure in front of a murder suspect, even if he is Mama’s age!”
“All right, Callie. You think of a way to get past that killer pit bull and we’ll talk.
She marches upstairs, and I yell after her, “Not all pit bulls are like that. Some are sweet as pie.”
I half expect her to turn around and ask me to name one. Lovie always enjoys the last word.
But no, she keeps on marching and I’m left with my last nerve shredded and little Jackie Nell in a turmoil. If I weren’t pregnant and responsible and halfway sane, I’d sit down here by myself and have a glass of Prohibition punch. Instead I go upstairs, stow Fayrene’s gun then climb into my bed and pull the sheet over my head. The upside of this is that Jackie Nell quits kicking. The downside is that worry knows how to burrow right under the sheets with you.
*
I am blasted out of bed by a screech that raises every hair on my head. Still bleary-eyed and weary from yesterday’s unfortunate escapades, I race into the hall and run smack into Lovie. She says a whole paragraph of words you won’t find in Webster’s dictionary, and I cover little Jackie Nell’s ears with both my hands. Does she have ears yet?
I don’t have time to look it up because Mama’s bedroom door is wide open and she’s nowhere to be seen.
“Holy cow, Lovie.” I grab her arm. “Let’s go.”
Another screech splits the air, one that sounds all too much like Mama, and we race side by side down the stairs. This is not the way to conduct a pregnancy. I hold onto my womb, silently apologizing to Jackie Nell, and then hit the bottom step, still running.
“Mama? Where are you?”
The front door bursts open and I nearly give birth on the spot. Mama rushes into the living room with her cheeks flushed and her uncombed hair standing on end like she’s just come from the eye of a hurricane. Fayrene follows at a fast trot, clutching her cabbage green robe at the neck and moaning.
“Holy cow! What’s wrong?”
Fayrene sinks into one of my wingback chairs. “I’m so upset you might as well call Jarvetis to start planning my eurology.”
I’m not about to follow that advice. For one thing, Fayrene’s husband is too laid-back to run every time she crie
s wolf. For another, Mama is prancing around waving a note like it’s a red flag and I’m the bull.
“Oh, hush up, Fayrene. You’re going to live. Me? I’m not too sure.” She waves the note under my nose one more time. “Just listen to this. I know what you did, you evil witch. Turn yourself in. You’re not fit to be a grandmother.”
“Too late to call the sheriff. Her prints are all over it.” Lovie says exactly what’s on my mind.
“Flitter! Who wants to call him anyhow? After the way he put Fayrene and me in jail, he’s not going to hear pea turkey from me about this case. Just let him flounder around on his own. Callie, you and Lovie can crack the case.”
I’m not about to tell her my record so far is Callie: zero – Blue Suede Bones – 2. She wouldn’t believe me if I did. Fortunately, my phone rings, saving me.
A quick glance tells me it’s Eternal Rest Funeral Home. It could be Bobby Huckabee, assistant undertaker, but I’m hoping for Uncle Charlie.
“Hello,” I say and my uncle’s cheerful hello lifts me right out of this morning’s blue funk.
“Callie, dear heart! How’s everybody doing? Staying out of trouble?”
Good grief, I can’t lie to Uncle Charlie, but up until I got pregnant I could reinvent the truth to suit mine and Lovie’s purposes. Before I can stop myself, I’m filling him in on all our failed escapades while Mama glares at me through narrowed eyes, and Lovie makes a strangling motion across her throat. Even Fayrene is miffed. The only person in the house who still loves me is Elvis. He sidles up and licks both my ankles, and then I swear he howls a few bars of “Can’t Help Fallin’ in Love.”
I scratch behind his ears while Uncle Charlie tells me to stay put and let the law handle it. If they need some reinforcements, he says he can always call Jack home and let him solve the crime on the QT. Once a Company man, always a Company man. Everything they do is undercover, and I’m guessing that most of it’s dangerous. Might I add, right now I’ve got my hands full without worrying whether my baby’s daddy is going to come home in one piece.
