Savannah Blues

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “Go?” Weezie looked confused.

  “Jail,” Bradley said. “That’s how it works when you get charged with murder.”

  Chapter 16

  I spent the night in jail. That much I could remember. Everything else, my subconscious wiped clean. Thank God.

  The next morning, James and BeBe bailed me out. James brought the Mercedes around to the jail’s side door, and BeBe came bustling in carrying a huge garment bag and her own makeup case, which is as big as what most people use for a week’s vacation.

  “What’s all that?” I asked wearily. “I just want to go home, Babe. I’ll shower and change when I get home.”

  “Not in this lifetime,” she said fiercely. “There’s a whole mess of reporters waiting outside for you. All the television stations, the Savannah paper, Atlanta, Jacksonville, there’s even a gal out there interviewing people who swears she’s from People magazine. If you think I’m letting you walk out of here looking like something the cat dragged in, you better think again. Now come on, let’s duck into the ladies’ room and get busy cleaning you up. I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to cover up those dark circles under your eyes. And those bug bites! I swannee, Weezie.”

  “No,” I whispered. “Why? Why are they here?”

  BeBe blinked. “Honey, I hate to tell you this, but this is a big story. Not just for Savannah. For anywhere. Caroline’s daddy is some big shot architect in Chicago. And Tal, well, you and I know he’s just a little chickenshit pencil-pushing geek, but he is from a prominent old Savannah family, and he was engaged to her. And you are Tal’s ex-wife. And let’s face it, the two of you have a history. You had issues.”

  My stomach lurched. My best friend thought I’d killed Caroline.

  “But I didn’t do it. I was with you. You told the police that, right?”

  She nodded vigorously. “I told ’em. I told ’em over and over again. We were together all evening. Right up until, what? Midnight? The trouble is, Weezie, we drank all that wine, and I fell asleep. You know how I am once I get a snootful. I could sleep through a hurricane. In fact, I did sleep through Hurricane Floyd.”

  “But you don’t think I killed her, do you?”

  “Did you? I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you had.”

  I groaned. “BeBe!”

  “OK, OK,” she said hastily. “No. Of course you didn’t kill her. Absolutely not. Eloise Foley is not a person who kills another person.”

  “Thank you,” I said lamely.

  “Although if you’d asked me to help, I would have bought the bullets.”

  “Don’t even joke about that,” I said. “Did I tell you they made me wear handcuffs? And while I was riding in the back of that police car, another car pulled up beside us? Guess who looked right at me?”

  “Who?”

  “Patti Dowd.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Patti Dowd, president of my class at St. Vincent’s. And Marcia Watts was sitting right beside her. And Janisse Haddad was driving! You can’t miss that yellow Viper her husband bought her for her thirtieth birthday.”

  BeBe groaned. “If Marcia Watts saw you, she’s probably the one who alerted the media.”

  “It’s no joke. The deputies frisked me. I had to wear jail shoes. And my cell had a stainless-steel bench that was part toilet.”

  “Eeeww,” BeBe said, wiping her hands on her slacks. “I wish you’d told me that before I hugged you. No offense.”

  While BeBe kept the ladies’ room door barricaded I stripped off every stitch of clothing I’d worn the night before, and threw them in the trash barrel. I took a birdbath right there in the ladies’ room in the Chatham County Jail, scrubbing at my skin until I was the color of a tomato. Then I put on the panties and bra BeBe brought me from home. She unzipped the garment bag and pulled out a navy blue linen sailor dress, complete with bib collar and red bow and hip pleats. I swear, the thing had puff sleeves.

  “Ick!” I said, holding it at arm’s length. “Where are the jeans and T-shirt you were supposed to bring me?”

  “At home,” she said firmly. She unzipped the zipper and tried to pull the dress over my head, but I pushed her away.

  “Where in God’s name did you find that rag? Punch n’ Judy?” It was a Savannah boutique that sold high-priced kiddie clothes. My mother had force-fed me frilly Punch n’ Judy dresses until I was twelve years old and sprouted breasts no amount of smocking or flounces could hide. Mama wept when the saleswoman told her they didn’t carry a B-cup training bra in the Teen Time department.

  BeBe tried to look hurt. She couldn’t sell it.

  “This happens to be from the Young Careers shop. It’s a very nice dress.”

  I crossed my arms over my bra. “Fine. You wear it. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing. Where are my jeans?”

  She sighed. “Your uncle James suggested this. We have to think about your image, Weezie. You can’t just blow out of the jailhouse in your raggedy-ass jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts with all those reporters and photographers out there. You’ve got to look sweet. Demure even. Innocent.”

  “I don’t have to look innocent. I am innocent.”

  “Well, they don’t know that.” She reached back in the bag and brought out a pair of navy blue pumps. With blue grosgrain bows at the toes. Swear to God. Bows.

  “Here. Put these on too.”

  I gave her a murderous look. “What, no white anklets?”

  Once she had me dressed, BeBe applied about a quart of concealer, a quick dusting of powder, and the faintest coat of pale pink lipstick.

  I frowned when I saw what she’d done. “Give me some blusher, will you? And some mascara. I look like I need a blood transfusion.”

  “That’s the look we’re going for,” BeBe said. “Pale. Emaciated. Heartsick.”

  When she’d finished dressing me up like Dolly Dimples, BeBe stood back and studied her handiwork. “I like it. Simple. Virginal, even. Let’s go.”

  A sheriff’s deputy walked us out to the back door, but when he pushed it open, a surge of people pressed toward me.

  A dozen long-lensed cameras were pointed right at my face. I spotted half a dozen TV cameras. People were calling my name. “Weezie! Eloise Foley! Did you kill the other woman? Why’d you do it, Weezie?”

  James pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed one arm, and BeBe grabbed the other. She was in her element, shoving cameras out of the way. “No comment!” she bawled. “Miss Foley has no comment!”

  James yanked the back door of the Mercedes open, and before I knew it, BeBe had shoved me inside. She jumped into the front seat beside James, and a moment later, we roared away from the curb.

  BeBe was laughing like a banshee. “That was great!” she crowed.

  James turned around and gave me a sympathetic look. “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head. “OK. Tired. Humiliated. You think they’ll really put it on TV?”

  “Afraid so, sweetheart,” he said. “Reporters have been calling all morning. They came to my house first thing, banging on the door. And they’ve got your carriage house staked out. Tal’s house too, of course. So we can’t go back to Charlton Street right now.”

  I bit my lip. For the first time all day, I felt hot tears welling up in my eyes.

  “Where are you taking me then?”

  “My house,” BeBe said quickly. “Not a soul will know where you are.”

  “All right,” I said, defeated. My body ached and my eyes burned from lack of sleep. I put my head back against the cool leather of the headrest. And then I remembered something. The dress.

  “BeBe?”

  She turned around. “What is it, sugar?”

  “Where’d you get this dress? The Young Careers shop closed years ago.”

  She smiled. “Your mama brought it over. She’s been saving it for you.”

  When I stepped inside BeBe’s front door, Jethro jumped up and nearly knocked me over. He barked and wagged his tail—and piddled all over t
he floor.

  “That dog is going outside,” BeBe said, grabbing for Jethro’s collar.

  “Please, Babe,” I said, trying to look pale and virginal and innocent all at the same time I was mopping up the piddle with a paper towel. “He won’t do it again. He was just excited to see me. Please don’t put him out. I just want to lie down and have a little nap. He’ll lie down with me, won’t you, Ro-Ro?”

  Jethro stood on his hind legs and rested his paws on my shoulders and licked my face soundly. It felt grand.

  “How are you gonna get some sleep with that big ole hound slobbering all over the place?” BeBe fussed. “And what about fleas? If he gives fleas to my cats I’m gonna skin that hound and nail his hide to the back door.”

  “He doesn’t have fleas, do you, Ro-Ro?”

  Jethro wagged his tail vigorously.

  “That means no,” I explained.

  James kissed the top of my head and I gave him a hug. “I’m gonna go see if I can earn my keep now,” he said. “I’ve been doing some research. I’m pretty sure none of that stuff they found at the house—like the antique pistols or the plastic bag with the receipt for your wine—can be used as evidence against you, because those rent-a-cops let so many people in the house they can’t be sure who touched what. But I’m gonna go out to Beaulieu and walk around, see if I can find out any more about what happened out there Friday night.”

  “The sale,” I said. My heart sank. The biggest estate sale of the century, and I’d been in jail all day. “It’ll be over by now. God. My one chance.”

  “Think again,” BeBe said briskly. “The cops were all over that house like stink on a polecat. They canceled the sale, sugar. And you should have heard the ruckus the dealers raised. Lewis Hargreaves looked like he might have a myocardial infarction right there on the spot, his face was so red. I thought a couple of those folks were gonna storm the place. And they would have too, except for the fact that the cops chased everybody off the property and put yellow crime-scene tape all the way around the house.”

  I smiled and then yawned. It was the best news I’d heard all day. Of course, it was still the worst day of my life.

  I slept the sleep of the angels. Or the damned. But it was sleep, and I was so tired I felt I might never wake up again. Somewhere off in the distance, I heard a phone ringing, and the tapping of BeBe’s heels on the hardwood floors. I heard water running, and voices, and the faint drone of a television coming from a distant place. But I slept and slept.

  When I woke up, Jethro was gone. I looked out the window of BeBe’s guest room. It was dusk. Fireflies glittered in the fronds of a palm tree outside the window. I’d slept for nearly six hours.

  I went in the bathroom and washed my face. Looked in the mirror and saw that I was still wearing the sailor dress. I left it in a heap on the bathroom floor and walked out to the bedroom, where I found a paper sack with my beloved jeans and T-shirt, even my favorite pair of flip-flops.

  BeBe was in the kitchen, talking on the phone. “Oh,” she said, looking over at me and covering the receiver with the palm of her hand. “You’re awake. Just in time. Daniel sent supper over for you. I was afraid it would get cold.”

  “Daniel?” The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

  “He saw it on the news. He’s called here twice, asking about you.”

  BeBe took her hand off the phone. “Look, Emery. I can’t talk now. I’ve got company. Call me later.”

  I sat down on one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter. BeBe went to the counter and started lifting white cardboard take-out containers from a paper sack.

  Warm smells wafted through the kitchen. Garlic, onion, some herb I couldn’t identify. Jethro appeared from nowhere and put his paws on the counter beside BeBe, who pushed him aside.

  “Isn’t this the sweetest thing?” BeBe asked. “He’s fixed you chicken country captain, and rice pilaf, and just look at this gorgeous Caesar salad.”

  She raised the lid on a box of crisp green lettuce leaves.

  My stomach did a neat little flip.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Bullshit,” BeBe said. “I know for a fact you haven’t eaten in at least twenty-four hours.”

  “James gave me part of a Little Debbie,” I said weakly.

  BeBe opened a cabinet and took down two white china plates. She set them on the counter and added napkins and silverware. Then she got a bottle of white wine out of her stainless-steel restaurant refrigerator and poured us each a glass.

  When the plates were loaded with food, she took her place beside me and pointed at my plate with her fork. “Now eat,” she said sternly. “Or I’ll call up one of those reporters at Channel Three and tell ’em where you’re hiding out.”

  “Blackmailer,” I said. But I nibbled a bite of the chicken. Divine.

  BeBe smiled angelically. “See,” she said. “The man can cook. And he’s interested in you, Weezie. Very interested.”

  “But I’m not interested in him,” I said, taking another bite of chicken. “All I wanna do is finish my dinner, take my dog, and go home. And forget this day ever happened.”

  Chapter 17

  I closed and locked the door behind me and took a deep breath. I was home. Jethro nudged my knees with his head. I sat down on the floor and took his muzzle in my hands. “You thought I left you, didn’t you, buddy?” He licked my chin. “You thought the bad guys locked me up for good, didn’t you?”

  Another lick. I put my head against the arm of my sofa and closed my eyes. But only for a minute.

  I walked from room to room in the carriage house, switching on all the lights, letting my fingertips drift across tabletops. Everything was just the way I’d left it, what? Only a day ago?

  In the kitchen, the red message light on my answering machine blinked furiously. I backed away from it as though it were a coiled snake. I knew that blink. Mama. I would call her back, later. Just not now. I didn’t have the strength right now to cope with Mama’s hysteria.

  I wandered upstairs to the second floor. It had once been an unfinished attic space, but when I’d taken over the carriage house, I’d left the sloping ceilings open, painted the dark old exposed beams white, and turned it into a bedroom loft, complete with the master bath of my dreams—courtesy of a claw-foot cast-iron tub I’d bribed a garbage man fifty bucks to haul home from behind the burned-out shell of a Victorian row house on Thirty-eighth Street.

  I’d placed a big antique brass bed in the middle of the loft space, where I could look out a pair of lace-draped windows to the tiny wrought-iron balcony facing the back of the big house.

  I’d been in such a rush to leave the day before that I hadn’t even made the bed—unusual for me. Making the bed was a ritual I loved. Over the years I’d collected baskets full of old sheets and pillowcases—Irish linen sheets with hand-crocheted edging, pillow slips with lavish monograms (never my own initials), pin tucks and embroidery and convent-made lace. I topped the bed with an old white matelasse spread with scalloped edges. At the head of the bed I had a mound of starched pillows. At the foot I kept the quilt my grandmother Foley had made as a wedding present for Mama.

  I knew a lot about quilts, but this was a pattern I’d never seen anywhere else, probably a variation on an Irish chain. The colors were soft pastels, Depression era, probably made from old feed sacks.

  The quilt had slipped to the floor. I picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed. Jethro jumped up beside me. I draped the quilt around my shoulders and buried my nose in the folds of cloudlike cotton. Even after all these years the quilt still smelled of my meemaw—of lavender and Ivory soap flakes. Mama didn’t like anything as old-fashioned as a quilt, so she’d left it in her cedar hope chest for all those years, until I’d begged her to let me have it.

  I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes again. Maybe I would sleep and this jumpy, unsettled feeling would disappear. Maybe I could shut out the image of Caroline’s waxen face, and all the other horrors of the past
twenty-four hours.

  But sleep wouldn’t come, not even after I took a long hot bubble bath and slipped into my coolest cotton nightgown. I was still restless, boiling over with some weird, pent-up energy. Finally I tossed the quilt aside and went back downstairs.

  In the kitchen, I kept my back to the answering machine and rooted around in the refrigerator for something to settle my nerves. There wasn’t much in the way of food, because I’d been too busy getting ready for the sale to go to the store. I had eggs, some half-and-half, some cheddar cheese, and a questionable foil package that turned out to be sliced ham Mama had sent home with me after Sunday supper the week before.

  An omelette! I whisked the eggs and cream together and set the ham to sizzle in a scandalous amount of butter in a black iron skillet.

  While the ham browned, I grated the cheese and beat it into the eggs and cream, along with some salt and ground black pepper. The smell of the frying ham almost made me swoon. Of course, Jethro demanded his share of the scraps.

  When the omelette was done I poured myself an iced-tea glass full of chardonnay and went to sit at the tiny bistro table in the kitchen. But the air conditioning was suddenly too chilly. I shivered, then decided to sit outside in the courtyard to eat my midnight supper.

  The worn bricks of the patio still held the heat of the day, and they felt good under my bare feet.

  I put my plate and glass down on the wrought-iron table beneath the shade of the pink crape myrtle tree. Humidity closed over me like a blanket, but I welcomed the warmth.

  I took a bite of the omelette and sipped the wine, willing myself to relax. I loved this time of night in the courtyard. Most of the time, the historic district these days buzzes with activity, with the roar of tour buses and traffic and the jackhammers of the never-ending restoration process. But now the streets were quiet. The tourists had been tucked into their pricey bed-and-breakfasts, and it was as though I had the town to myself.

  I nibbled at the omelette and let my eyes wander around the courtyard. There was a white climbing rose clambering up the brick around the door of my carriage house, and the rose had been loaded with blooms six weeks earlier. Now it needed deadheading, and probably a good watering, since we’d had a bone-dry spring. I stood up and walked across the courtyard to the tiny goldfish pond by the tea olive shrub. I sat on the rock edge of the pond and dropped in a bit of omelette. The pond was so tiny there was room for only two koi—Rocky and Bullwinkle. Now they appeared under the surface of the water, nibbling at the egg.