Better Dead

by Pamela Kopfler

  “Thank you,” she said, never quite looking at Nelda.

  If she were any skinnier, she’d be invisible. Holly didn’t like Sylvia, and it wasn’t because she was too pretty, though that didn’t help. She spoke to Nelda and her like they weren’t really there or, worse, as if they were part of the “great visual.”

  “By the time you leave, I could put five pounds on you,” Nelda said, eyeing Sylvia up and down.

  Sylvia actually looked at Nelda. “Pardon me?”

  “You like fried chicken? Everybody loves my fried chicken,” Nelda said.

  Sylvia stood in front of the bowl of holy water. “I’m vegan.”

  Nelda waved a hand through the air. “That’s okay. I got a friend who’s Muslim. She loves my fried chicken.”

  “I don’t eat meat,” Sylvia said, bending to touch the bowl of holy water in the center of the pentagram.

  Nelda tilted her head to the side and eyed Sylvia. “Your God told you not to eat meat?”

  Sylvia looked at Nelda as though she were a bug.

  “Nelda, Miss Martin’s religious beliefs aren’t our business,” Holly said. No need in embarrassing Nelda by defining vegan in front of Sylvia and rubbing Nelda’s nose in her mistake.

  “It is if I got to cook for a vegan, and I don’t know what that vegan God lets ’em eat,” Nelda said.

  “I eat vegetables, as long as they aren’t cooked with animal fat.”

  “Butter count?” Nelda said.

  Sylvia stood and leveled her eyes at Nelda. “Yes.”

  “Humph. That’s why you ain’t got no meat on your bones.”

  “We always accommodate our guests’ special dietary needs,” Holly said, giving Nelda a look she hoped would shut her up.

  “We aim to please,” Nelda said, with a touch of sarcasm in her voice.

  “Sylvia, if you’ll just have a seat in the foyer, I’ll have your room ready shortly,” Holly said.

  Nelda huffed back to the stove, then turned down the gas. “She still ain’t got nothin’ to eat if I don’t know what to feed her.”

  A digital version of “New York, New York” blared on a cell phone.

  Sylvia flipped open her handbag and took a sleek phone from a side pocket. “Where are you?” She tapped a well-heeled foot. “Lost? You’re driving to the end of the world and you didn’t rent a car with a GPS? Hold on.”

  She reached in her purse and pulled out a car key, then extended it to Holly. “It’s the red Lexus. Tell the bellman I need all the bags in the trunk and the one on the passenger’s seat.” Sylvia walked out of the kitchen into the foyer as she ranted into the phone.

  Holly looked at the key in her hand and turned to Nelda. “I don’t like her.”

  “Bless her heart. She just don’t know no better,” Nelda said.

  “Well, she needs an education.” Holly slapped the car key on the counter near Nelda. “When she gets back, tell her we don’t have a bellman and to meet me at Abe’s cabin with her luggage.”

  “TV stars ain’t used to carrying their own suitcases,” Nelda said as she picked up the key. “I hear millions of folks watch Inquiring Minds.” She took Holly’s hand and placed the key in it. “If I was you, I’d pack that pride away and tote them suitcases in.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Jake had taken a chance that one part of Dog’s mutt mix was bloodhound, and walked him to Mackie’s bike at the riverbank. The scent was old, but he had to give it a try. No way in hell could Jake believe that Mackie had fallen in the Mississippi or that anyone would be stupid enough to throw him in and leave his bike to mark the spot.

  He clipped a leash on Dog’s collar in case she caught the scent. Then he pulled one of Mackie’s dirty work shirts out of a plastic bag and held the shirt to Dog’s nose.

  “Find Mackie,” Jake said, like the mutt was a pedigreed tracking hound. “Mackie might not be much of a master or a father, but he’s the best we’ve got.”

  Dog whiffed the shirt, and her tail thumped the bare ground.

  “You smell him, don’t you, Dog?” Jake said, stuffing the shirt back into the plastic bag.

  She circled the bike and sniffed the ground. She lifted her dirt-crusted snout and whiffed the air. Passing her nose over the ground, Dog padded to the bank. Her front paws sank into the mud, and she looked across the river and sniffed. She snorted, then sniffed again and sat.

  Jake’s hope deflated. He rubbed Dog’s ear. “You tried, girl, but I can’t believe he’s in there.”

  Dog turned her snout downriver and took three quick whiffs. She lunged ahead, pulling Jake behind her through the dense underbrush at the edge of the Mississippi. Mud caked Jake’s boots as Dog led him on a slow jog along the riverbank and over fallen logs, washed-up ice chests, and debris left from the last high watermark.

  After fifteen minutes at a steady pace, Dog stopped at the river’s edge, then doubled back to a bent-over cottonwood. The branches dipped into the river like long, strong arms. Dog snorted and rubbed her snout in the ground as she turned in a circle at the slanted tree trunk. A perfect snag in the river for Mackie to pull himself out of the current.

  The leash jerked against Jake’s wrist, and Dog made a sharp turn away from the river, then picked up speed. Jake dodged saplings and low limbs. He gave Dog slack on the leash to run. Dog zigzagged, with her nose to the ground, up the slow grade to the levee base, and then she shot up the steep side. At the top of the levee, she stopped and whiffed the air, as though she had a better scent from that elevation. Nose to the ground, she trotted down the other side of the levee.

  When Dog reached the foot of the levee, she bolted, ears pinned back and in a full-out gait, over a grassy patch to a sugarcane field. Jake sprinted behind her in the valley of a cane row. He wrapped the leash around his wrist twice to keep a firm grip. Blades of cane whipped across his face and stung his cheeks. Jake lifted a hand to block the blades but didn’t slow down. In a blind run through twelve-foot-high cane, Jake trusted Dog to lead the way like he’d never trusted a human, much less a female.

  They burst through the cane into a narrow clearing.

  The maze.

  Dog stopped and pressed her nose to the path. She sniffed, plowing her snout over the ground, and then trotted a few steps. Dog kept her nose down, sniffing and snorting, as she took nervous steps in one direction, then another.

  Giggles came from nearby, probably from another path in the maze. How many people had tromped through the maze this week? A hundred? Two hundred?

  Jake let out a ragged breath and rubbed Dog behind the ear. Too many scents for a dog that was one-fifty-seventh bloodhound. At least Dog had validated Jake’s hunch that Mackie hadn’t drowned in the river, no matter how drunk he might have been. He’d made his way to Holly Grove. But why here? Why hadn’t he gone home?

  “Come on, Dog.” Jake tugged on Dog’s leash. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Dog didn’t give up. She sniffed and snorted as they meandered through the maze.

  Jake had no doubt Mackie had abandoned his bike. He’d either jumped or been pushed into the river. Then he’d grabbed on to the low-lying cottonwood limb to pull himself out downriver. If he’d jumped, who could have been chasing Mackie? Who was more dangerous than a swim in the most treacherous river in America? And why would they want Mackie?

  It all came back to the drug smuggling. If he was pushed, why would they leave the bike on the bank to be found? Unless, they wanted it found. But why did they want it to look like Mackie had drowned? No body. No crime. Mackie could be alive or dead.

  Dead. Jake shook the thought out of his head. If he let that thought in, he’d have to face the guilt that came with it. Jake kicked a black dirt clod.

  Why was I too hardheaded to be concerned when Mackie went MIA, until now?

  Mackie had always said he wasn’t worth killing, or he’d have been dead a long time ago. Jake sucked in a breath. Mackie was in trouble, the kind that made him worth killing.

  Jake looke
d ahead as the path widened at the entrance of the maze. Holly Grove stood about fifty yards away.

  The drugs Burl had packed through Holly Grove could get a man killed. Or a woman.

  Jake quickened his pace. He couldn’t allow Holly to risk getting caught snooping around the rooms. If Mackie’s disappearance and the smuggling at Holly Grove were connected, he had to cut her out of all aspects of this investigation, whether she liked it or not.

  Dog buried her nose in the grass and yanked Jake on a parallel path to Holly Grove along the edge of an old fence line overgrown with trees. Dog’s tail wagged double time.

  “You’ve got his scent again, don’t you, Dog?” Jake looked down the fence line. Abe’s cabin stood in the distance.

  Dog bolted ahead with a bead on Mackie’s scent.

  Mackie had always been crafty when he needed to be. He would know the cabin was rarely rented and it’d be a safe place to hide. If the smugglers were staying at Holly Grove, they wouldn’t think to look there for him. They’d expect him to go as far away from them as possible.

  Jake charged toward the cabin.

  * * *

  “Bellman, my big toe,” Holly muttered under her breath as she pushed a cart loaded with Italian-leather suitcases down the brick path.

  Nelda was right. Holly would have to suck it up to get the publicity she needed for Holly Grove’s future, but she didn’t have to like it or Sylvia.

  The smallest of the suitcases teetered on the top of the pile.

  Why would anyone pack this many suitcases for two nights?

  She secured the bag on top of the other five and sighed.

  Because real divas don’t have to carry them.

  When she reached Abe’s cabin, a toppled potted plant cluttered the path to the door. Holly stepped over the pansy remains. Mercy. If the raccoons could open the door, they’d move in. She made a mental note to come back with a broom to clean the mess as she slipped the key in the door.

  Abe’s cabin smelled of cypress and spent fires. She’d loved the scents when she’d played house in the cabin as a child.

  Holly placed the suitcases on the floor. Four chairs with deerskin bottoms surrounded the table. She picked up the water bucket from the center of the table and sat it on the potbellied woodstove as a reminder to orient the guests to 1850s life. She’d have to show Sylvia where the well was and how to light the stove.

  Holly unfolded the thin moss-stuffed mattresses onto the rope-bottom beds on each side of the room. She dressed the beds in fresh cotton sheets and patchwork quilts, then surveyed the cabin. Habitable.

  She climbed the ladder to the loft and peeked into the dark room. As her eyes adjusted, she noticed the mattress lay flat on the bed and the sheets were mussed, as though someone had slept there. A chill danced across her arms. She’d removed the sheets and rolled up the mattress when she and Nelda cleaned the cabin. Raccoons sure as sin hadn’t slept in that bed.

  What if the smuggler was camping out here? Holly frowned. Not logical. The moocher was more likely a vagrant or teenagers, like Matt and his friends. But the door had been locked. Holly groaned, remembering the broken window latch Mackie had never gotten around to fixing.

  The sharp click of heels on the front porch sounded, and Holly jerked toward the noise below. Sylvia gingerly stepped over the uprooted pansies. Her lip curled as she looked from the pansies across the room.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Holly called down from the ladder. “Raccoons. I’ll clean that up as soon as I finish here.”

  “Are you telling me raccoons just wander around here?”

  “Only at night.”

  “And this is your suite for three?”

  “It will be as soon as I get it ready,” Holly said, forcing more cheer into her voice than she thought she could.

  “This isn’t acceptable.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “This isn’t a suite.”

  “It does sleep three. I thought you knew it was rustic. I told your producer all about Abe’s cabin and sent her the Web link so she could check it out. She made the reservation.” Holly lifted a shoulder. “Besides, it’s all I have available.”

  “I’ll just rent a room in town. Have the bellman put my luggage back in the car.”

  “The bellman is gone for the day, and there isn’t a hotel within thirty miles. I’m it.”

  “Great.” Sylvia looked up at Holly. “What are you doing on a ladder, anyway?”

  “Getting your room ready.”

  “Up there?”

  “It’s called a loft. It’s more private, but if you’d like to sleep in one of the beds downstairs, that’s fine with me.”

  Not waiting for an answer, Holly crawled into the loft. She scrambled to the bed and snatched the dirty sheets off of it. A paperback tumbled out of the sheets. Silence of the Lamps. She opened the novel to find Miss Alice’s name inside. Holly eyed the ladder. No way had Miss Alice climbed up here. She stuffed the paperback in the wad of dirty sheets, then grabbed a fresh set of sheets from the nook beside the bed.

  “Where are you?” Sylvia’s voice carried to the loft as she spoke on her cell phone and Holly changed the sheets. “Finally. Follow the brick sidewalk, only go left, away from the house, and look for a shack.”

  Shack? “Well, la-di-da,” Holly whispered to herself as she finished changing the sheets. If she didn’t need the publicity, she’d evict Sylvia from the shack. Holly tamped down her ire as she backed down the ladder with the basket of soiled sheets. Two days. That’s all she had to endure of Sylvia, and millions would see Holly Grove on her show. More reservations. Cash to pay taxes, bills, Nelda . . . Holly stepped onto the cypress planks and turned to find Sylvia waiting, arms crossed.

  “We’re going to shoot everything tonight, during the séance. I won’t be staying tomorrow night.”

  Good. The sooner she leaves, the better. “Aw, I’m so sorry to hear that. Abe’s cabin isn’t for everyone, but some people appreciate it.”

  “Who? Survivalists?”

  Holly nearly laughed, but Sylvia’s face posted a “no-fun zone” look. “Let me show you around,” she said.

  Sylvia looked left to right and smirked. “I believe I can see it all from here, except the loft. Unless you have a sauna and a feather bed up there, I’m guessing it’s the same.”

  “All true to the period.” Holly straightened her spine to address the prima donna. “You may not know it, but this place is on the National Register of Historic Places.”

  “Well, I live in the twenty-first century and like it that way.”

  “Well,” Holly said, mocking Sylvia and not too subtly, “in that case, there are a few things you need to know about the nineteenth century and the historical accuracy of the cabin.”

  A clatter came from across the room, and a young woman, loaded down with equipment bags, stumbled through the door. Her auburn hair was swept into a ponytail, which whipped around as she dumped the bags on the floor. She wore khaki pants, a pocketed vest, and not a bit of makeup.

  Sylvia let out a groan. “This is my backpacking-naturalist producer, Liz. Holly owns this place, and her husband is the ghost.”

  “Technically, he’s not my husband anymore. You know, until death do we part and all that.”

  Liz’s green eyes narrowed as she looked the room over. “Is this place what I think it is . . . or was?”

  Holly nodded.

  “If walls could talk,” Liz said.

  “They’d probably cry.” Holly sighed. “Most of the slave quarters have been torn down at the antebellum homes that survived the Civil War. Places like this are a reminder of an ugly part of history, but one that is important to remember. I restored the only one left standing here as accurately as I could.”

  “I see,” Sylvia said and turned to Liz. “Where’s Bob?”

  “He’s setting up the equipment to get some exterior shots before dark,” Liz answered.

  Holly checked her watch. “I’ve got a tour in thirty
minutes, so I better show you a few things that may prove useful before morning.”

  She walked to the fireplace and took a box of matches from the mantel. She shook the matches. “We’re expecting a cold front tonight. Just light the newspaper under the kindling if you get cold.”

  “You have that, Liz?” Sylvia said.

  “No problem.”

  Holly crossed the room to the potbellied stove and took the water bucket off the top. “If you want hot water to bathe, light the wood in the stove the same way.”

  “No hot water?” Sylvia glanced around the room. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “I’m getting to that.” Holly grabbed the bucket and walked to the back door.

  Sylvia’s mouth hung open. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Holly opened the door and pointed to the outhouse. “It’s all part of the authentic eighteen-fifties experience.”

  Sylvia clutched her chest. “You’re serious.”

  “Cool,” Liz said. “I’ve never used an outhouse before.”

  Holly automatically liked Liz.

  “And I never will,” Sylvia added as they followed Holly out the back door.

  “There’s a guests’ bathroom downstairs at Holly Grove, if you want to make the walk, but there’s no tub. The well is over here.” Holly turned toward the well and saw Jake, led by Dog, fast approaching.

  Jake jogged across the grass like a pro football player in game-day shape. She could have sworn she heard a collective sigh from the other two women.

  Sylvia shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted. A smile inched across her lips as Jake came closer.

  “Mmm. Is he a guest here?” she said, never taking her stare off Jake.

  Who could blame her?

  “That’s Jake.” Holly smiled and waved at Jake as he jogged closer to them. “We’re old friends,” she said, but it didn’t sound quite right. Heat pricked her cheeks.

  Sylvia looked down at Holly and smirked. “Old friends, huh?”

  “If he’s staying here, she’ll be camping out here as long as he does,” Liz said, rolling her eyes at Holly.