“Saint Peter jumping hurdles. I sound like some soft-sop talk show.” And on top of that, I was talking to myself. Sweetie looked up with red eyes and flopped back down with a sigh.
Time for action—I’d had enough sitting. I checked my backside in the glass doors of the bookshelves. My butt wasn’t that big. Maybe it was an inch or two wider than in college, but I was older. I couldn’t expect to keep a freshman figure forever.
Beneath the bookshelf, I rummaged around in the cabinets until I found my leg weights and a DVD of exercise routines. Time to wage war against the inches.
Wearing gym shorts and sneakers, I launched into step aerobics with weights. Thirty heart-pounding minutes later, I collapsed on the floor for sit-ups. My thighs screamed against the abuse I’d heaped on them.
“A hundred sit-ups.” I spoke aloud to seal the commitment.
I crunched up and down. Pluto sauntered over and pawed at my hair as it splayed on the floor. Bored with hair, he climbed on my stomach. His little kitty pile-driver paws went straight through the layer of fat into my internal organs. It was unbelievable a cat so fat could have such dainty paws.
“Get off, Pluto.” I continued to lever myself up and down. “Fifty-two!” I huffed. “Get off me!”
Pluto was unimpressed with my self-improvement routine or my sweaty midriff. I figured fifty-two sit-ups with the cat’s weight added to my own would count for a hundred normal crunches. I rolled onto my hands and knees and paused to catch my breath—and convince my trembling legs they could, indeed, support me.
I’d begun to think I would spend eternity on all fours when the phone rang. That propelled me upward into a chair, where I snatched the device out of the cradle and answered.
“Dah-link, were you in the middle of hot, sweaty sex?” Cece asked. “If so, I want details.”
“Dream on,” I managed. “I was exercising.”
“Trying to trim your caboose down to a manageable size?”
“You are a bitch.” And she was. Cece was a woman, but she’d retained rights to the slender hips and tight butt of her years spent as Cecil. It was graphically unfair, and she loved to rub my nose in it.
“Calm down, dah-link! I’m only teasing you.”
“What’s the haps?” I asked, stealing a line from one of my fictional heroes, Dave Robicheaux.
“It’s Jeremiah.”
She didn’t have to go into detail. Her brother was in jail in Holmes County because he was a mental midget and a nutcase. “I’m sorry, Cece.”
“I’m not. Please, don’t think I’m calling because he finally ended up behind bars. I hope they keep him until he’s too old to harm anyone else.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been digging into the Heritage Pride Heroes. They inhabit a crazy damn world, Sarah Booth.”
Up until recent events, I’d honestly viewed them as a dozen old farts who met up in the woods, got drunk, and shot off their guns to prove their manhood. I’d never given them serious consideration. Cece was on the right track, one I should have already gone down. “What have you found?”
“They’re redneck morons, but some of them have guns.”
“Everybody in the South has a gun.”
“Maybe so, but not all gun owners are emotionally unstable. While Jeremiah was in jail, I made a trip home. Magnolia Grove is in ruins.”
“You should have called me to go with you.” I didn’t like the idea of Cece tripping down a razor blade–filled memory lane. The Falcon estate, the home she’d grown up in and been kicked out of, held only pain. She needed a good friend for such a journey into the past.
“It’s done now. It’s distressing stuff.”
Cece never used the word “stuff.” She was a reporter. Details colored every sentence.
“What?”
“I don’t want to say on the phone.”
“Paranoid, some?” I tried to make light of it.
“Maybe.” She wasn’t laughing.
“Come over. Graf’s asleep.” I didn’t want to mention I couldn’t walk after my exercise-a-thon.
“Meet me at Millie’s Café.”
Then again, I could force myself to move if it meant Millie Roberts’s homemade apple pie. Screw exercise! Screw my caboose! “I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
When it came to hot apple pie, I could drive like the wind.
* * *
Millie’s was hopping with the late-afternoon crowd of coffee drinkers, the teenagers who gathered after school, and the farmworkers who’d been hitting it hard for the past ten hours and wanted rib-sticking food. Millie’s was the common ground for all segments of Delta society.
I’d hobbled to a table by the time Cece arrived, exquisite in a pale amber sundress, black heels, and an amber sunhat with black polka dots. Along with slender hips, she had shoulder blades to die for, and the halter-style sundress showed them off to good effect.
“Sarah Booth, why are you trembling?”
“Anticipation of pie. I must have burned off two hundred calories all at once doing aerobics. My body is about to go into shock.”
She laughed as she sat down, and every man in the place gave her an appreciative look. “If you’re not careful, you’ll get fat.”
“Graf likes a woman who doesn’t stab him with bones.”
Cece caught Millie’s eye and waved her over for a hug. “It’s been ages, it seems,” she said to the café owner and head cook.
“I stay in the kitchen,” Millie said. “We’re busy from the time we open at five a.m. until we close at nine p.m. And I’m not complaining.”
Millie worked hard, but she loved her work. She frowned at me. “What happened to you, Sarah Booth? Have you been afflicted with palsy?”
“She worked out and her muscles are spasming.” Cece grinned wickedly. “Chunky-girl syndrome.”
“Enough.” They tickled me, but I didn’t want a dang complex about my weight. “Apple pie. Hot black coffee.”
“I’ll have the same,” Cece said.
“You’re in luck. Deep-dish apple pies are just out of the oven.” Millie touched my cheek with a fond gesture. “I read in the National Enquirer Elvis and Elizabeth Taylor were caught dancing at the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. Wouldn’t it be something to see those two together? I think we need to make a road trip.”
Millie loved the outrageous tabloids that reported fake movie star news and other questionable tidbits of science and society. “A road trip sounds like a great idea. The four of us haven’t been on a junket in a long time.” Tinkie, Cece, Millie, and I were the four musketeers. Tammy Odom, aka Madame Tomeeka, was the fifth.
“There was a photo,” Millie said. “A clear one. I don’t think it was faked. They were dancing. Cheek to cheek. They were young and gorgeous. It just did my heart good. They both suffered a lot in this lifetime. I believe they’re happy now.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Gives me hope for the future,” Cece threw in. “I would like to see a little unrestrained joy and dancing before I die.”
“Now that Sarah Booth has her a man, we need to focus on finding one for you, Cece. A great man. Someone who will love you for the remarkable person you are.” She bent down and kissed Cece’s forehead. In a lot of ways, Millie played a maternal role for all of us even though she wasn’t much older.
When she was gone, Cece looked at me. “Why couldn’t she have been my mother?”
I didn’t have the wisdom to answer that question. “So what did you find out about your brother?”
“I found incriminating things at the house. Jeremiah is into crazy shit up to his eyeballs.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. Jeremiah had once had a future. Now he was like a scorpion in a hole. He only came out to bite. If anyone dared poke a stick at him, he plotted revenge. “How bad is it?”
“Homeland Security, twenty-five to life. Maybe execution, depending on how you define treason.” She sighed. “I’m exa
ggerating, but it’s pretty damn depressing. My brother has lost his mind.”
“What’s he into?”
“That stupid group, the Heritage Pride Heroes, they’re plotting all kinds of ridiculous events. They want to surround Twist and march her out of town.” Her lips twisted into disgust. “They think they’re the freaking Minutemen, that they’re protecting the honor of the South. My parents would be so ashamed of Jeremiah. He was educated. He should know better.”
Jeremiah had a degree in chemistry and a doctoral degree in biochemistry. I could only imagine if he put his mind to mayhem. “It’s not bombs?” I whispered.
She stiffened. “No, thank goodness, not bombs. At least I didn’t find any indication of firepower to that degree. The idiot has been teaching an online class in surviving the coming class war. Like how to hide wealth and necessities from the hoards soon to be roaming the landscape.” She gripped the table. “He’s become one of those nabobs who feel entitled to a certain life. One only the elite deserve. My family home is the location for a cell of the Evergreen Tree Identity group.”
“Saint Joseph on a trapeze.”
“Stop that silly saint cursing, Sarah Booth. Just say it. The stupid bastard is in a world of shit. He’s sitting in the Holmes County jail, but if anyone really looks into him and Buford, they’ll both end up at the state mental institution.”
I wanted to ask if that would be a bad thing, but I didn’t. “What, exactly, is the Evergreen Tree Identity?” I’d never heard of it.
She rolled her eyes in vexation. “Don’t you keep up with the news?”
I considered a moment. “No, but I’ll hazard a guess and say it isn’t a horticulture group.”
“Absolutely not. They’re religious kooks. They claim they’re God’s chosen people. You know, like the Aryans are the master race. Mostly, they’re white, male pinheads who have bought into a conspiracy theory similar to Bilderberg.”
I knew a little about Bilderberg. It claimed to be a group of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men. They were rumored to control the president—any president from Nixon to the present—and plotted to create a world order that would ultimately be administered by them.
“This is dangerous, Cece.”
“You’ve only heard the tip of the iceberg. From what I ascertained, they honestly think a class war is not only imminent but necessary. They want this. It’s the final step before they all go up in the Rapture.”
A lot of things tumbled through my mind, and none were good. FBI shoot-outs, crazy cult people, racists, Nazis, people driven by ignorance and a desire to be better than someone else. “Tell me about the Evergreen Identity.”
“They believe only males of pure Aryan extraction should have a vote. They think the government is controlled by a tiny group of wealthy people. And Jeremiah, bless his poor demented brain, wants to be one of them. He’s lost it, and I feel partly to blame.” Her brow was a thunderstorm. “He wants to take the vote—and driver’s licenses—away from women. Keep them home where they belong.”
“Cromwell in a top hat, this is crazy.”
“I need help getting his computer.” She blinked back tears. “He’s turned my mother’s art studio into this vile place where he holds classes in survival technique. There are cots all over the house where these idiots have been sleeping. A bunch of grown men acting like kids in a fort. The place stinks to high heaven, and it’s filled with tracts and pamphlets dripping venom.”
“I’m here to help. Whatever you need.”
“He is such a spoiled, entitled bastard he thinks he won’t be punished for this insanity.” One lone tear rolled down her cheek and she dashed it angrily away. “I should let them take him. If they can prove he’s crazy, they’ll take Magnolia Grove for back taxes. Of course he hasn’t paid in the last three years. If the county confiscated the property it would serve him right. I don’t know why I even care.”
“It’s your home, and he’s your brother.” That said it all to me.
“He’s renamed the place. There’s a big sign: ‘Falcon Crest.’ Like the old TV soap opera. I’m sure he doesn’t even see the irony of it.”
I rubbed her arm lightly. “I’m sorry.”
She bowed her head and put a hand to her brow. “I thought I was done with that place. After I left with such bitterness, I really thought I’d grieved and gotten over losing my home. My parents didn’t want me there. My brother hated me, fine. But, Sarah Booth, when I saw the way the house and grounds have deteriorated…” She turned away to gather her emotions. “No repairs have been made in years. The house hasn’t been painted in over a decade. Shingles are off the roof. And did I say it stinks?”
“I’ll go with you to clear out what we can. You need to get someone to take Jeremiah’s website down.” I wondered about the implications of even taking the damn thing down. “Hopefully, no one but his crazy buddies know about it.”
“Should I tell Coleman?” Cece asked.
Millie brought the pie and coffee, and I had a minute to think through my answer. “I think you have to. Jeremiah hasn’t broken any laws, as far as I can tell. He’s mean-spirited and nuts, but if that were illegal, half the county would be locked up.”
Forkful of pie halfway to her mouth, Cece halted. Her eyebrows rose. “I’m so humiliated.”
“You aren’t responsible for his craziness.” Cece had successfully killed my appetite and I signaled Millie for a go-box.
Cece took another bite of pie. “Maybe I should just kill him and be done with it.”
“That would be the simplest solution.” I hesitated to bring this up, but I had to. “Did you find anything relating to poisons?”
Cece bit her bottom lip. Her gaze dropped to the table and even though I waited a full sixty seconds, she didn’t answer or look up.
“You did, didn’t you?”
“The place is overrun with rats. There was some rat poison in the kitchen cabinet. I’m surprised one of those morons hasn’t accidentally knocked it into a pot of gumbo or something. But he wouldn’t poison a woman.” Cece’s eyes pleaded with me to convince her that her brother wasn’t living on the lunatic fringe. “Would he?”
“Let’s just hope this is a fantasy world and not something they intend to actually bring about.”
8
The old Falcon estate looked sad and forlorn as Cece drove us down the long, winding driveway to the house. Since Magnolia Grove wasn’t visible from the road, the decay hit me hard. Once upon a time it had been a beautiful plantation with fields of cotton, corn, soybeans, and peanuts. Once upon a time it had been a place where high school kids gathered for barbecues, dances, and fun. Back when Cece was still Cecil and the apple of his mother’s eye.
Now most of the large tract of land was under lease with a farming concern, but the property around the house was sadly neglected. Weeds and scrub trees clumped in small islands in what had historically been fertile fields and a lawn that had hosted tennis, croquet, and touch football matches.
Jeremiah’s stewardship of the property was remiss.
I hadn’t set foot on the property since Cece was in high school, but my heart ached for her. She had grit, though. Tears glittered in her eyes, but she held them at bay.
She drove over the stone bridge across Black Water Creek built by Lucien Falcon during the Civil War. The Falcon land dated back to prestatehood. Lucien moved to Mississippi from Georgia in the early 1800s. He’d purchased the land on both sides of Black Water Creek and constructed a traditional two-story antebellum house with four rooms on each floor and galleries running the length of the front and back.
Over the years, wings had been added. And outbuildings. A pool in the shape of a four-leaf clover featured tiles fired by “old country” Irish master masons. Everything was done with taste and a sense of permanence.
Twenty years ago, it was a showplace, and Jeremiah and Cecil were heirs apparent to a productive farm and a fine tradition.
Cece slowed. “Depressi
ng, isn’t it? In my heart, I knew Jeremiah was running the place into the ground. My solution was to avoid coming here.”
“Yes, it’s depressing.” There was no point lying. “I want to beat Jeremiah with a stick.”
We passed the ornate sign announcing Falcon Crest, and I said nothing. Jeremiah’s fanciful creation was complete with some made-up family crest showing a pheasant, cotton, and a Latin phrase. “The man has lost his mind,” I said. “What is this family crest bullshit?”
“He wants to be somebody. The curse of inherited wealth. When a person is handed everything, he’s never tested to learn who he is. In a way, I was lucky because I was forced to stand on my own two feet.” Cece saw it clearly. “I haven’t come here because I didn’t want to cling to the past. But honestly, Jeremiah has turned this place into a ghetto.”
“He should have married. Maybe a wife could have kept him straight.”
“Maybe he could marry Snooki.” Cece aimed for comedy and hit her mark.
I grinned. “I think even she has more taste than to settle for Jeremiah. How has this happened to a man who had everything—brains, looks, and money?”
The curving driveway passed the gazebo where I’d first kissed Coleman on a dare. It had taken all of my middle-school courage to boldly kiss an older boy, but it was a bang-up memory. And now the scene of my daring foray into adulthood was in ruins. Half of the gazebo’s roof had collapsed. The foundation, built with bricks hand-fired by slaves, was still in good shape, but the wooden structure was a lost cause.
“What the hell has he been doing here? Everything has gone to hell.” I was angry. Jeremiah had destroyed Cece’s family home, and he’d tromped all over a bunch of my memories. “I think you should have him committed and take the property over.”
“My parents didn’t want me to have it,” Cece reminded me.
That would always be salt in her wound. “They wouldn’t want to see how Jeremiah has treated the place.”
She nodded. “Legally, it’s his to do with as he chooses.”
“Legal and just can be two different things. And if he ends up a ward of the men in white coats, maybe the place will revert to you.”
Smarty Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery Page 12
