Vivi was mumbling to herself, “See what horny can do? You see? If Lewis and I weren’t always so horny, I’d have beautiful roses on my supper table tonight and Lewis would still be here.” She kept walking and mumbling and looking at her feet as she stumbled to the path. She looked up at me. “Okay, I know it’s not possible for us not to be who we really are, but I just cannot believe that my last vision of Lewis alive will be with that holster on and Deputy Dick in his hand.”
Vivi and I linked arms like two old women and walked down the curvy stone walkway to the riverbanks. The footlights along the daffodil-strewn path twinkled in the encroaching darkness. It led us, roaming, down the hill and delivered us to the wooden planked bridge that guided us to the gazebo.
I heard the sounds of the sirens coming in the distance.
We located Sonny and found a small huddle of people standing east of the gazebo and, at the center of the group, with bare shoulders shaking, stood young Mandy Morrison, Tuscaloosa’s Miss Everything. She was head cheerleader, Miss Tuscaloosa High School, Miss West Alabama Fair Queen…. She had plans of moving to New York and launching herself on Broadway.
Seeing how distraught she was, I had a feeling this event might slow things up a little.
Mandy, her mom, dad and younger brother were all at the Cypress Inn celebrating her high school graduation and acceptance into a small liberal arts college in New York when Mandy and her dad went for a little father-daughter stroll along the river. They had stopped to smell the wandering vines of honeysuckle when Mandy spotted the body—well, part of the body.
Right there, bobbing against the bank, was someone’s leg and the lower half of their torso.
Vivi and I pushed into the little crowd of people just as Mandy was recounting her unfortunate vision.
“I was just giving my dad a hug and, like, I looked over his shoulder and I saw a leg! At first I thought it was, like, a log….”
Mandy kept talking…enjoying the attention even though she was somewhat “grossed out.” As she kept up the frenetic, breathless encounter of her graduation dinner surprise, Sonny took notes and the officers collected the evidence.
Vivi and I peeked over the crowd of people now gathering at the banks.
“For God’s sake!” she hollered. “It’s not even the whole entire body! But this is the half I know best. No. No way is this my Lewis.” Vivi could not keep it to herself.
Harry jumped in immediately. “This is not a good time to share your opinions unless someone asks, okay?” He was clearly on edge.
Vivi looked up at me with her half-drunk eyes. She was purely exhausted and it was showing. She pulled me down the bank away from Mandy and the crowd and headed toward the river. “C’mon, Blake, I’ve got to get a better look.”
“Vivi, say nothing unless it is in a whisper directly to me. The last thing we want is to get you any more involved than you need to be. This is critical.”
“I’ve got it, Blake. But if there’s a chance in hell this is my Lewis, don’t you think I ought to at least try to identify the half of the body that just washed up?”
“Honey,” I said, “I’m right behind you.” My curiosity had taken over, too. I just had to see it, not that I would recognize the half that just washed up. But down to the muddy riverbank we went. I knew that with Sonny nearby, he would make sure we were able to slip through the crowd without a problem.
We reached the edge of the river and there it was. Big and hairy, it was definitely the leg of a man. Sonny joined us. We were on the slope, and he was above us in the crest of the bank. At six-three he was a big presence anyway. But up on that riverbank he loomed like a superhero there to save us all. Vivi moved a little closer to him and leaned in as if in secret.
“Sonny, it’s only half a body,” she said quietly.
“Yes, Miss Vivi, we’ve got that part figured out.”
Vivi stood between us, her head moving from side to side in slow motion, in disbelief. Silence fell over us. The three of us stood there on the banks of the muddy Warrior River under a darkening Southern sky.
Vivi broke the silence. “Well, thank God this is the half I know best, huh? This is not my Lewis.”
She leaned in and squeezed Sonny’s arm and tears rolled down her cheeks. We stood on the bank and watched the river roll. I looked at Sonny and noticed his face had softened in the moment. He looked at me full on and gave a little grin. I knew with his help we would all be okay.
Harry walked toward us in his determined, deliberate way. He looked exhausted but still pulled together. His white oxford shirt still looked as starched as it had been that morning, the silver wire frames sitting on his nose sparkled along with the silver hairs sprinkled throughout his dark hair.
“Well, the body part is already causing a problem.”
“Why, Harry?” Vivi asked. “’Cause there’s no dental record for you?” Vivi smirked.
Harry then told us the police would perform the DNA tests in the morning, and would try to match what they swiped at the motel room. He wanted to talk to me alone. Then Vivi said she wanted to talk to both of us alone.
“Well, I know when I’m a third wheel,” Sonny said and winked at me.
“Do you have anything else for us?” I asked Sonny before he walked off. I didn’t realize it, at first, but I was touching his arm.
“No, Blake, I’ll get in touch with you in the morning,” he said. Something came over me. I squeezed his wrist and, I don’t know, but a feeling of comfort swept in and it made me feel warm and calm. I looked up at him and he was looking right through me. I let go and looked forward to the morning.
“Okay, ya’ll. Listen to me,” Vivi began after Sonny headed back up the banks. “That is not Lewis’s lower half. There is no way in hell. I would bet my life on it.”
Harry and I were silent and looking at each other.
“Dammit! I know him. This is not him! Believe me…that little thing would have never kept me coming back!”
5
It was a quiet drive back to the McFadden place. The crystal-clear night sky was ablaze with starlight. The moon hung over the tall pines and dodged in and out of sight, like a thief following us.
I sat in back with Vivi, her head on my shoulder. The quiet felt good. No radio. No conversation. We had all been through a tremendous amount of emotions and it was a relief to take a minute and let everything digest.
I stared out the window at the cloudless night sky. As the city baked in moonlight, slow-motion movie scenes flickered like a Super 8 film in my head. Scenes of my life with Vivi.
It had always been just like this. I’ve always taken care of her. I think we both liked it this way. I’m older than Vivi by only three months, but Vivi’s the kind of girl who always needed a caretaker. I’m a little stronger, a little more able to focus. I am on a perpetual schedule. I like things neat and orderly…and predictable. Meanwhile, Vivi is full of adventure. She always loved a spontaneous road trip, though for me, that meant I had no time to pick out all the shoes I would need for the journey. But Vivi could just jump in her Thunderbird with no luggage, saying, “Oh, hell, we can get what we need when we get there.” Oh, I still jumped in the car with her, but immediately I’d get out my notebook and pen and start making a list. The more I thought about it, the more I realized we balanced each other out. She may have needed me to take care of her, to organize her life and keep her on the right track, but I needed Vivi to remind me of my wild side. To
remind me to really live in the moment. As I sat in the car reflecting on the days I’d been living lately, playing second fiddle to my husband’s burgeoning political career, trying to forget what true love and romance really felt like, I realized that maybe I needed to be reminded of everything Vivi was. Maybe I was the one who needed Vivi right now, not just the other way around.
Vivi was an only child, and her parents were quite a bit older than the rest of ours. Her society-bred mother was always somewhat sickly, and her father was a loudmouthed, hard-drinking, gambling partygoer who loved women—often several at a time. They lived on a massive plantation, and though she was surrounded by wealth, no one was ever really there to care for Vivi aside from her nanny, Corabelle, and the gardener, Arthur. She loved those two people like they were her parents. And truly, they were. In all the most important ways.
Vivi ran the whole place now. It was certainly not a plantation anymore; it had been decades since it was even active, and little by little, acre by oak tree, it has been sold off to developers. There was about a hundred acres left of it, and Vivi and Arthur were the only ones who lived there anymore since they had moved Vivi’s mother to that fancy retirement center.
After we finished high school, Vivi had gone to the University of Alabama and gotten her journalism degree. Now she did freelance work, writing articles for magazines and newspapers on subjects that were dear to her heart, such as women’s rights, gardening, home and friends.
Vivi was deeper than she let most people see, and her energy and wild streak made her seem crazier than she actually was. But she was just fine running the place all by herself. “Plus, I have Arthur,” she’d always say. And she did.
She loved that man maybe more than she’d ever loved anyone. They were family as far as she was concerned. He loved taking care of her and took such pains around the place to keep it feeling like home.
Arthur had his own room in the house, and it had been appointed with the finest things. He was family since the beginning. Interestingly, he was actually born there, on the plantation, nearly fifty-five years ago when both of his parents had worked for the McFaddens. When Vivi’s father died when she was young, Arthur just moved in and took on the responsibility of caring for her and her mother.
Corabelle, Vivi’s nanny, died a few years back when she was nearly seventy-five. Arthur and Vivi took it pretty hard, but you could just see that they would get through it with each other to lean on.
Harry was always asking me why I kept rescuing her. Was it because I’m really all she’s got? Was it because that’s the way it’d always been and I love being needed? Well, maybe a bit of both. And I knew it would always be this way with us.
As I held her in the moonlight, she fell asleep on my shoulder, trusting me, as always, to keep her safe. And I would, even if I didn’t know quite how at that moment. I knew I would figure something out. She was counting on me. I was her Swiss Army knife.
* * *
We arrived at the plantation at almost nine that evening. Harry pulled the car around the circular gravel drive. A fountain spilled over its edges creating peaceful, soft splashes under the moonlight. Vivi’s home was something special. A true Southern plantation, the main house was huge and stately, typical antebellum Greek Revival architecture. Wide, white, round columns surrounded a wraparound front porch, and floor-to-ceiling windows doubled as doorways much of the year. The upper level held a sweeping veranda, hugging the columns with a whitewashed wooden rail. Rocking chairs were scattered around every few feet. Hanging baskets were full to brimming and dripping with ferns, English ivy and petunias, while bell-shaped purple-and-pink verbena hung at every window and spilled over the sides of the containers. The gravel drive was long and shaded on either side by huge oak and magnolia trees that reached across the road and lay gently upon each other, branch intertwined in branch, forming a fragrant flowering tree tunnel all the way to the front of the house. The side yards were full of pecan trees and tall pines. Just as you reached the porch, the left side yard held a huge rose garden with every colorful variety imaginable growing and blooming. The fragrance surrounding the main house was mesmerizing on a hot summer night with a breeze drifting in the humid air.
Located on the right and to the far back of the main property was Arthur’s new BBQ place. It had its own entryway down from the main road and would eventually be a takeout BBQ spot for pickup. He was busy working on it much of the time to get it ready for football season and the tailgating orders that came with it. The Moonwinx was what he called it and he planned to just serve good, sweet Southern BBQ. The whole plantation was regal and lovely and had been Vivi’s home her whole life, and her father’s place before her, going back for generations.
Harry got out and opened the back door of the car to help Vivi out. We all walked up the four gray-painted steps of the porch.
A note from Arthur was waiting on the door. G’nite, Miss Vivi. Hope you had fun visitin’ with your Mama. Tomorrow I think we should get those hydrangea bushes lookin’ good. Arthur.
Exhausted, Vivi went directly upstairs and into the large master suite, and I followed her up to say good-night. She had taken the room over after her 71-year-old mother went to the Center. Vivi had had the suite redone in her favorite colors and fabrics, and the bedroom was spectacular, covered in periwinkle silk and taffeta. Drapes fell into a pale blue puddle on the wood floor, framing the old floor-to-ceiling windows. The night air drifted in through the open windows and the fragrance of roses and honeysuckle blanketed the room. I gave her a hug, but didn’t say a thing. We didn’t need words right now, just the knowledge that we were there for each other was enough.
Back downstairs, Harry was waiting in the hallway, the moonlight bouncing off his glasses. “Let’s go,” he said, and leaned over and kissed my cheek.
His face was rough with evening whiskers, and I was shocked at the closeness. He had let me in for a brief moment and I wanted to stay there, pressed up against him a little longer, feeling his skin and smelling his end-of-the-day cologne. He pressed his hand into mine and we turned and left the house. He held on to me as if he would lose his way in the darkness if he let go. We stopped at the bottom of the porch and Harry pulled me into him and said, “Blake, I need to talk to you.”
I remembered it was our anniversary, but I could tell he was not thinking of that. I pulled away from him. I knew this tone and I didn’t like it.
“What is it, Harry?”
“I don’t know…I just have a strange feeling.”
“About what?”
“About Lewis,” he said.
We sat down on the step, moonlight drenching the hydrangea bushes that bloomed on either side, framing the entrance. The humid night air kissed my skin and I took a deep breath. Lightning bugs dotted the darkness. I remembered Vivi and me as children, chasing the glowing amber fireflies every late spring evening when I spent the night there. We call them lightning bugs down South. They go hand in hand with sultry warm Southern nights when the damp humidity descends, the sun sets and the twilight sparkles with the flying magical insects. We’d catch them in old Mason jars and bring them inside and sit in the dark, telling ghost stories around the glowing jar, then we’d let them go. I listened to Harry but lingered in the safe memory of my childhood for another minute.
“I don’t think that was Lewis tonight, do you?” he asked.
I said no and asked him what he was thinking. He was rubbing his fingers through his hair and saying he didn�
�t know, but he just knew something was not quite right.
“It’s just not clicking,” he said.
“Harry, we’re both tired and we haven’t eaten. This day has been about as crazy as it could possibly be. Let’s just put this to bed for tonight, okay?” I was so exhausted all I could think of was a long, hot bath and my down-filled comforter. But Harry needed to talk and so he did.
“I don’t think that was Lewis,” he said.
“I know, honey, that’s what Vivi said.”
“I know, Blake…but that’s just it. If that’s not Lewis, then where the hell is he?”
Harry did not look exhausted like me. He looked wide awake. He had that look in his eye that he always had when he was pursuing a case.
“Harry, what are you thinking?” I asked. “That Lewis isn’t dead?” I waited for a response but Harry was in another place in his head now. I could see it.
He looked straight up into my eyes. “Dead men don’t just up and walk away. Lewis isn’t dead, Blake. I know him and this is typical Lewis. He’s done so many things in the past and then come running to me for a bailout. I’m sick of saving his ass. Not this time. He’s up to something again. I’m sure of it. Somebody must know where he is. And I’m gonna find out who.”
6
The next morning, a ringing woke me from the depths of sleep. It was one of those heavy slumbers that, when you wake, it takes you a few seconds to realize where you are and what’s going on, and the night before is still clinging to you and leaving its essence in all the wrong places. The tired was still stinging all over.
It took another second for me to figure out that the ringing was the phone and not the alarm clock. With my eyes still closed, I moved to reach across Harry and answer when I realized that he wasn’t there.
The digital clocked glowed 6:47 a.m. in the dim morning light.
The Sassy Belles Page 6
