The Sassy Belles

by Beth Albright

  “Sonny,” I chimed in over Vivi’s escalating shrill, “can we just answer that?”

  “Definitely, Lewis is alive,” he said. “Well, not definitely, but we are pretty sure we know who has the answers.”

  “Lemme guess,” Vivi said, “Dallas?”

  “No, not her,” he said with a laugh. “Let’s just wait till everyone gets here.”

  “Sonny, can I see you in the hall a sec?” I said, getting up from my seat. We walked down the hall and out of earshot of Vivi, Sonny leading the way. He turned to me and didn’t speak. His presence was commanding, yet such a comfort. He looked down at me, smiling.

  I had on thin, charcoal-gray yoga pants that tied with a drawstring at the waist, a white, low-scooped tank top and a long, gray cashmere, hooded sweater. My hair was wavy from air drying on the way over, and I had only mascara and lip gloss for makeup. We had left in such a hurry, no time for the usual pageant-hair and full face.

  “God, you look good enough to eat,” he said. Images of Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf entered my head for just a quick second, enticing me with excitement, then I relaxed and grinned at him.

  “Sonny, that is not what I brought you out here for….”

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll keep that thought for later. We think Lewis is alive. All the evidence is pointing that way. Just this afternoon, we got a positive ID on the cigarette.”

  “Dallas, huh?” I said. “She seems to be making the rounds on the Heart men.”

  Sonny’s face turned serious.

  “Actually, Blake…” His voice deepened and his eyes widened.

  “What’s going on, Sonny?”

  “Blake, when I was with you last night—well, after I was with you… When I went to the bathroom just before I left, I took some of Meridee’s hair from her hairbrush to just see…well, you know, if there was any connection. I mean we both knew she did have this secret communication with Lewis. And we’d already tested the rest of us, so it just seemed like the logical next step.”

  “And?” I prompted. My heart felt like it was choking me.

  “Blake, the hot-pink lipstick came back positive for Meridee.”

  “What? Are you kiddin’ me?”

  “This is no joke, Blake. Your grandmother was in Lewis’s condo twelve hours before he disappeared.”

  “Oh, my God!” It finally hit me. “All this time… Well, what in hell was she thinking? Does this mean she’s known where Lewis was all along?”

  “Well, that’s why we wanted to see both your mother and grandmother,” Sonny explained. “You told me last night that Kitty would get the answers from her. I’m just hoping she did.”

  21

  I slipped into the vending room and Sonny followed me. I was in shock. I fumbled around in the bottom of my sweater pocket for change. I felt Sonny behind me. He kissed the back of my head and placed both of his hands on my shoulders.

  “What’s your poison, beautiful?” he whispered in my ear. “Still Diet Coke?”

  I nodded.

  “And Miss Vivi…Dr Pepper?”

  I nodded again.

  “I got it.” I stepped aside and let Sonny take care of it. He handed me the ice-cold can and Vivi’s Dr Pepper.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Anytime, sweetheart,” he said. “It will be okay, Blake.”

  I smiled at him. I popped the top and sipped the Diet Coke. I knew Sonny was right. Eventually it would work itself out. Sonny was facing me and I looked up at him, Just as I was about to say something, Harry appeared in the doorway. The sight of him took my breath away. It startled Sonny, too, since he was just holding me and calling me sweetheart.

  “Hi, Blake,” he said quietly. This was the first time I’d seen him since I caught him giving Dallas a breast exam.

  “Hi,” I said, looking at him—no, glaring at him—and not sure exactly what I was feeling. I had done my own deed, I knew that, but the situation with Dallas made me feel like I had lost. Blake O’Hara does not share. I didn’t even like sharing my clothes with her, let alone my husband! Even if I thought I was through with him, some jealous, girl-who-gets-everything part of me was sad. Sonny interrupted my thinking.

  “I was just telling Blake about the cigarette and Meridee and that we both believe Lewis is alive.”

  Back to business.

  “Wait a second, Sonny. I got the whole DNA, letters, Meridee connection,” I said. “But why does all of this make you think Lewis is alive?” I looked at them both. I knew those looks—they had not told me everything.

  “C’mon, you two. What is it?”

  “Let’s go back to my office,” Sonny suggested.

  Vivi was up and pacing when we all walked in.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said, looking straight at Harry.

  “Vivi.” Harry acknowledged her, then stared straight at her belly. Vivi was beginning to show and she was dressed in a too-tight navy tank top and a light white sweater hanging open in the front. The little baby bump was now just barely visible and the look on Harry’s face almost made me laugh.

  “Yes, Harry. I am pregnant. It’s time I said it out loud for everyone,” Vivi said. “And, yes, it’s your missing brother’s baby. Now somebody better damn well tell me right now, is my Lewis alive or not?” Vivi was understandably upset. “Now!” she demanded.

  Harry and Sonny both stopped and stared for a minute. They both looked like this just added another fly in the ointment.

  “Okay, well, I believe a congratulations is in order here,” Sonny said, leaning over to Vivi and giving her a kiss on the cheek. All Harry could manage was a smile and a nod.

  “Yes, congratulations,” he said.

  Sonny picked right back up on the business at hand. “We brought Dallas in for questioning today,” he said.

  “Oh! How convenient for you, Harry. Was she just as easy to talk to as she was to—”

  “Vivi!” I cut her off. “We have to remember we are here for Lewis.”

  “We had known for quite a while about that interesting phone call she got the day Lewis disappeared,” Harry said. “It was one of the first things she told Blake the day of the press conference.”

  “I remember,” Vivi said.

  “So,” Sonny broke in, “we questioned her. She told us that the day that Lewis met you at the Fountain Mist, someone, her source, had called with some strange information. A tip,” he explained.

  “A tip that Lewis would go missing?” she asked.

  “No, actually,” he answered. “But that he was seen at the bank and withdrew a large sum of money.”

  “Well, what do we believe?” Vivi asked, becoming impatient.

  “We believe Lewis may have owed someone some money,” Sonny began to explain. “We believe he had to pay someone by the end of the day. He met you for your…uhh, meeting, and couldn’t bring himself to tell you. So he made the snap decision to just go ahead and get outta Dodge. Get the money and get it delivered. We think someone was helping him. We don’t have any idea why he owed the money. We are hoping Kitty or Meridee can fill in the blanks.”

  Harry took over. “We do know now for a fact that Meridee was the smoker in the condo the night before Lewis went missing.”

  “What?” Vivi jumped up again. “You mean to tell me that Mother was the woman with Lewis the night before? Oh, my good God, why? Somebody explain that one to me.”

  I shook my head at Sonny. Harry’s sense of t
iming had always been off. Sonny jumped in. “She’s on her way here and she is going to be the one to explain it to all of us.”

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “The night before Lewis disappears, Meridee is at his condo. Is this a fact?”

  “We think so, based on the cigarette evidence. We can place her there between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m.”

  “Okay,” I continued. “Then the next day, Lewis meets with Vivi, disappears then later that day Dallas gets what will be the first of many phone calls saying someone saw Lewis at a bank in Birmingham a couple of hours after Vivi had reported him missing. The bank records show it was in fact Lewis, and that he withdrew a large sum of money and no one has seen him since. Do I have this straight so far?” I said like I was in a trial.

  “Yes, so far, unless you count all those sightings at Walmart and the Piggly Wiggly, I think that’s what we’ve got,” Sonny answered.

  “So, where is Lewis? Who does he owe the money to?” I asked.

  “Well, why don’t we ask Miss Meridee herself,” Sonny suggested.

  And in the doorway of Sonny’s office stood Meridee and Kitty with a look on their faces I will never forget. They looked like two little girls who had been caught stealing from the candy store and were in a huge heap of trouble. I looked directly at Kitty. She looked exhausted but raised an eyebrow at me that told me she got everything we were after. I nodded and looked at tiny little Meridee. She’d be eighty in a week and she was still causing trouble. She looked at me and made no gestures. She looked full of both guilt and pleasure at the same time. She seemed to almost relish in the confusion that surrounded her. Vivi approached her and placed both hands on Meridee’s shoulders.

  “Look at me, Mother. Please, please, tell me.” Tears fell from her cheeks. “Is my Lewis…is he alive?”

  Meridee, all five feet of her, looked at Vivi straight in her eyes and nodded. “Yes, he is.”

  Vivi lost it. “Well, why in hell didn’t you tell me? You knew I was losing my mind! I can’t believe you let me go through that for all this time! Meridee, why?”

  Sonny moved over to Vivi to steady her.

  “Why don’t we all step down the hall to the vending room. We can sit at the big table in there and get all this out in the open,” Sonny said.

  I looked at Sonny and he lifted his drink as if in a toast. I got it. He was telling me not to worry. But I had to. It’s what I do.

  I walked between Vivi and Sonny. Harry walked between Meridee and Kitty. We all found seats at the big table and the questions began flying. Everybody was talking at once and voices were escalating. Harry and I avoided even making eye contact. Vivi was crying and mumbling over and over, “Where is my Lewis? Where is my Lewis?” It was completely out of control.

  After a few minutes, Meridee stood.

  “If y’all would hush for one damn minute, I could just tell y’all what ya wanna know.”

  The room fell into silence. The tiny woman with the face of an aging beauty queen commanded the group. She was fixin’ to have her say.

  “Okay, Meridee, the floor is all yours,” Sonny said. Meridee looked slowly at each of us with her ocean-blue eyes, which squinted now as she studied us. No one dared speak or even breathe loudly. Mother was about to talk.

  “Harry, several years ago, you and Lewis had that damn family-splitting fight…and all over money. I thought, my God, your daddy and granddaddy both would turn over in their graves. You ought to be ashamed,” she said.

  Harry was silent.

  “That stormy night, your poor, drunk-ass brother showed up soakin’ wet at my door. I put him to bed with some coffee and hoped he would sleep it off and that everybody would come to their senses and fix it in the morning. Little did I know, he would wind up in jail.

  “While he was in jail, he wrote to me. He knew I took him in before, and he knew I was still behind him. I believed in him. I always did. He loved that microphone and that Crimson Tide like my sweet Frank did.”

  She walked around the table and stopped again at Harry, just over his shoulder. He looked down.

  “You know, I always liked your brother,” she went on. “He had a lot of potential, but you were an arrogant SOB to him. I never liked that. Anyway, he needed my help to repay some bad loans, and then he needed someone to invest in a dream of his. So he wrote to me. Couldn’t come to you now, could he, Harry? I have my own money. I decided to help him. Frank would have greatly approved. And I didn’t need anyone else’s approval. So we’ve been working on something and it has finally started comin’ to a head. He needed to put it to bed. And it was nobody’s damn business, ’cause nobody else would have supported him anyway.”

  Again, she was staring at Harry, but she had a choice look for me, as well. I was clearly enjoying this verbal beating of Harry, but I knew I had to accept some of the blame myself. I’d followed Harry blindly, after all. And that was no one’s fault but mine.

  “Lewis had to do what he had to do,” Meridee continued. “And he had to do it totally alone, ’cause y’all would have tried to stop him. So he left.”

  “Where did he go?” Vivi asked. “I am carrying his little one now and wherever he is, he will be a daddy soon.”

  Meridee walked over to Vivi. She bent down to look her in the eyes. She kissed her cheek and said, “I am so happy for you and I know Lewis will be ecstatic. He’s very much alive, baby girl, and I am so sorry I had you worryin’ this whole time. He’s coming home to you soon. He is wrapping up something important.”

  “What the hell has he gone and done now?” Harry stood up, boiling over at all the accusation he’d faced in Meridee’s eyes. “You think you’ve got Lewis under control—but you’ve just been naive! He’s taken you for a ride, just like he did to me and my mother.”

  Meridee stood up straight and shot Harry a look that could knock the breath out of you. She was so good. The original Sassy Belle.

  “You know what?” she said firmly, “I really appreciate your underwhelming concern for me and my money, but that boy came to me for a reason. You’ll just have to wait and see what that is. Not one damn bit of this concerns you.”

  She wasn’t finished. “And Dallas is another one y’all disrespect. That girl is rough around the edges for sure. Having a damn lunatic for a mother who was a no-show most of her life sure as hell didn’t help, either. But she’s got balls, that girl. And she knows how to get that story. It’s high time all of you quit your snobby lookin’ down at her and give her some respect.”

  “Nanny!” I stood and shot back. “How dare you? She made out with Harry! Yesterday! Right in my own backyard!”

  “Well, Harry made out with her, too, don’t you forget. And last I checked, she’s not the one who’s married.”

  I sat back down and strictly avoided eye contact with Sonny.

  “So yes, everybody, make your judgments. It was me at Lewis’s apartment before he took off. And, yes, Kitty—I was smokin’.”

  “What about the clothes? The ones that washed up in the river? I know they were his,” Vivi said.

  Sonny broke in. “We think he may have thrown those in the day he disappeared.”

  “He was doing whatever he had to do to make this work and keep Harry off his trail,” Meridee explained. “He wanted—no, he knew this would work if he just could do it without interference. No law against throwin’ your clothes in the river.”

  I took a big swig and finished off my drink.

  Meridee went
over and spoke to Vivi quietly.

  “Vivi, listen to me. You know Lewis. He is doing a good thing. Don’t you worry. He’ll come back to you soon and he’ll have you a story to tell. You’ll be proud of him. It’s all he ever wanted. Someone to be proud of him. I know I am.”

  “Why would he not want me to know about this?” Vivi asked.

  “I know he meant to tell you. That’s why he called you to meet that morning. But he was worried it would put you in an awful spot with the media and all. And especially with Blake. Both of them, Blake and Harry, would have hounded it outta you till they got what they needed to stop him from doing this deal. He just needed to get gone and put it all to bed. I’m sure when he sees you he will tell you everything.”

  “Well, I may be proud of him later but right now that really makes me mad,” Vivi said. “I’m so mad I could cry, but I’m so happy he’s alive, too. I’ll have to beat the livin’ crap outta him when he gets back.”

  I touched Meridee’s old hand that still held her wedding rings, slipping around on old bony fingers. “Nanny,” I said, looking over at her. “I understand, I think. Is that why you left to go gambling? Were you helping him somewhere?”

  “Hell, no—” she laughed “—I was gambling just like I said. I just decided to get the heck outta town when he left. It’s been hard enough to hold my tongue. I didn’t want to have to lie, too. Besides, nobody would suspect the little old lady, would they? Especially if I was gone.” She laughed. “Y’all trust me. I have never been wrong about a person in my life, and I’m not about to start at eighty years old.”

  Sonny spoke up. “Meridee, we also found a set of keys in Lewis’s apartment. I matched it with the bank. But no box is registered to Lewis.”

  “That’s ’cause they’re my damn keys,” Meridee said. “I gave Lewis a copy of the keys just in case.”

  “In case what?” I asked.

  “In case I died! I am nearly eighty, and as hard as I was plannin’ on partyin’ on the gamblin’ boat, well, you just never know, so I wanted him to have a copy of everything.”