Dixie Divas

by Virginia Brown

  “Why do you think they’re keeping it a secret? And what on earth reason could Jefferson Johnston have for asking you out and hanging around with you?”

  Bitty sat up indignantly. “Well really, Trinket, you don’t have to be insulting.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way and you know it. It just doesn’t make sense, Bitty. I mean, he’s been here for six months or so, he’s establishing his business, bought an old house that’s going to be on the tour, and obviously has money, and it’s not like he’d be the first man to marry his secretary or at least sweet-talk her into bed.”

  A little mollified, Bitty took another bite of her sandwich and nodded. “That’s true. I just thought at first maybe he wanted to make sure his house got on the pilgrimage, you know, since it all has to be done properly, but that didn’t take long at all. Lately, he’s taken to calling me a lot and dropping by . . . maybe he’s trying to make Melody jealous?”

  “At the risk of offending you, wouldn’t it make her more jealous if he flirted with Cindy Nelson or Marcy Porter? Or Naomi Spencer?”

  “Mention that last name in my house again, and I’ll take back Mama’s pimento cheese.”

  Since her mother’s pimento cheese is unarguably the best in all of Mississippi, and maybe even the South, and Sharita is the only who can make Aunt Sarah’s old recipe turn out at all like it should, I licked a glob of the delicious stuff off my fingers and nodded.

  “Consider it unmentioned.”

  “Anyway, while Jefferson is certainly handsome enough, and it’s been flattering in a way to have him hanging around, I’m not fool enough to lose my head. Although I have to admit, it’s been amusing to see my boys concerned I’m going to run off with a con man and spend all their inheritance.”

  “Why do you call him a con man?”

  Bitty frowned. “I don’t know. That just popped out. I guess I meant younger man.”

  Sometimes Bitty says the right thing even when she doesn’t mean to say it.

  in0

  Chapter Seventeen

  When we were children, Bitty and I loved fairy tales. We acted out parts, with Bitty always being the princess or fairy queen, while I usually preferred being Robin Hood, a horse, or even the giant of Jack and the Beanstalk fame. There was something appealing about stomping around and saying in my deepest voice, “Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded really menacing. Maybe because anything with the word blood in it had to be scary.

  As an adult, I still like to frighten myself with dire possibilities. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t worry about things like Mama and Daddy snow-skiing in the Alps, white water river-rafting, or being shanghaied on clipper ships. Nor would I lie awake at night wondering if Bitty would run off with a foot doctor and spend all her children’s inheritance on Dr. Scholl’s shoe pads and Fed Ex shipping charges. Logic assures me that Bitty may have been unwise with men, but she’s never been stupid with money. That annoying little voice in the back of my head whispers that there’s always a first time.

  Add to that the annoying little voice still muttering about Generals Grant and Forrest, and the persistent clamor that I’d overlooked the obvious, and I began to feel like a group meeting was going on inside my head without me in charge. Perhaps Whitfield takes reservations.

  “Is this Sarah’s pimento cheese?” Mama asked me when I went downstairs the next morning. She had her head inside the refrigerator, poring over plastic bowls of leftovers.

  “It’s all I could coax out of Bitty. If the US currency system collapses, she can use Aunt Sarah’s pimento cheese as barter and still be a multi-millionaire.”

  “Do you think Bitty’s a multi-millionaire?” Mama asked as she got out the pimento cheese and a loaf of light bread.

  “Not yet. One more husband ought to do it. Is the coffee fresh?”

  “It’s the divorces that make her money, not the husbands,” Mama said, and added, “It was fresh at five this morning.”

  I grimaced. It was nearly nine-thirty. “I really have to stop hanging around Bitty. Her bad habits are rubbing off on me.”

  “Nothing can rub off on you unless you let it,” Mama said. I watched her slather spoons of creamy pimento cheese atop bread slices.

  As penance for sleeping late, I poured stale coffee into a mug, and then added extra cream to cut the sharpness. And to punish my thighs for filling out my sweat pants a little too much, I only ate one pimento cheese sandwich along with my coffee. I can be a stern taskmaster if needed. A cold nose nudged my arm, and I looked down into Brownie’s reproachful eyes. He’s not allowed table scraps. He knows that, but it’s done nothing to curb his mimicking of the big-eyed stray puppy left out in the cold and rain. Mama had her head in the refrigerator again, so I fed the dog the last crust of my bread that had only a slight smear of pimento cheese left on it.

  In return for my kindness, he barked for more, and Mama straightened and turned to look at me. “Did you just feed him scraps?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But it wasn’t so much scraps as it was my last bite. And I shared. You’ve always encouraged me to share.”

  “Good heavens, Trinket, for a grown woman you’ve been doing some awfully silly things lately.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black . . . .

  She came and picked up Brownie, cradling him in her arms like an infant as she scolded him for begging. He quivered, ears back and flat to his head, looking up at her with pleading eyes until she told him she knew it was all my fault. I propped my chin in my palm and my elbow on the table, and as Mama walked away, Brownie looked over her arm at me with a smirk. I don’t know why people use phrases like “dog tired,” and “dumb as a dog,” when it’s quite obvious most of them have mastered the art of getting exactly what they want. Brownie and Chen Ling are two excellent examples. I’m sure there are many more. There’s a lesson to be learned here somewhere.

  Mama was right about one thing, though, and that’s that I’d been doing some awfully silly things lately. I needed to be smarter. I needed to have a plan. And first, I needed to figure out my priorities.

  Since I’d been drifting along, letting odd questions temporarily inhabit my brain until some other distraction came along so I could worry about that for a while, I decided to be ruthless and focus on one thing at a time. Number one priority: Generals Grant and Forrest. There had to be a logical reason I kept thinking about them both in connection with Philip Hollandale’s murder. Grant was easy. Philip had been killed with a statue of him. But why fixate on Forrest? What on earth could he have to do with the murder? I just had to try and remember when it’d first begun to bother me.

  My process of elimination required meditation. It’d been a long time since I even tried to meditate. I knew I was supposed to have a mantra, but it’d vanished about the same time as my confidence in myself. First, I must clear my mind of all thoughts other than one that’d bring me peace. I chose an image and sound of a waterfall. Then I remembered that usually made me have to go to the bathroom, so I thought about focusing on a mountain scene, but that reminded me of the time our U-Haul broke down on the steep road going up the Continental Divide and Perry left me and Michelle with it while he went into the next town to call a tow truck. It’d been a long time ago, and if not for a friendly trucker who called U-Haul and got us a tow truck, Michelle and I might still be there by the side of the road waiting for the U-Haul to just start sliding backward while Perry drank beer and played pool.

  Okay, a mantra wasnquote t going to be as easy as it’d been when I was thirty. I got out a pad of paper and started going backward, jotting down key points, some in remnants of shorthand that’s been outdated by technology. Finally I got stuck at the point of going back with Bitty to wipe her fingerprints off the statue of General Grant.

  The statue . . . there was something about that statue of General Grant that bothered me. I had no idea what it could be, but it felt like it was key to the murder. Of course, the statue had been s
ent to Jackson, the state capitol, for DNA analysis, along with Philip’s body and all the evidence collected. Only Philip had been returned. But Jackson Lee, the attorney, may well have photographs of the crime scene I could see. Since the photographs would only be of an empty space in the foyer, not pools of blood, my stomach would be just fine. All blood trace had been sent along with the murder weapon, and Sanders’ and Bitty’s antique carpets as well.

  So that’s where I found myself by eleven, sitting in Jackson Lee Brunetti’s office waiting on his secretary to get permission from him to show me the crime scene photos. Jackson Lee was out in a pasture somewhere with a cow and a vet. I wondered if the vet was Dr. Thompson or Dr. Coltrane. My stomach did that annoying little flip again. Maybe I was just coming down with a stomach virus. That’d certainly be preferable.

  As Bitty’s defense lawyer, Jackson Lee gets copies of the crime scene photos, as does the prosecutor. The secretary showed me into a small room with a big conference table—antique, of course—thick carpet, soft chairs, and the kind of strong lighting usually only seen in hospital emergency rooms.

  “May I get you some coffee?” she asked when I was seated at the table with the folder of photos, and I nodded.

  “If it’s strong, please.”

  She grinned. “We’ve got three strengths, one-hundred yard dash, five-hundred yard sprint, and marathon.”

  “Five-hundred yard sprint, please. I’m not sure it’s marathon time yet.”

  Laughing, she went off to get the coffee and I flipped open the folder. Scenes from Sherman Sanders’ foyer slid out in eight by ten glossies. I spread them out on the gleaming pecan table. Tags gave date, time, and place of photographs. After a few minutes, during which Diane Wright, Jackson Lee’s secretary, brought me coffee strong enough to have hiked in there on its own, I picked out the photos I thought might give me my answer.

  I lined them up the way I recalled seeing things when walking in the door that first time with Bitty. Foyer, parlor to the left, dining room to the right, staircase rising up on the right-hand side just outside the double doors leading into the dining room. The little table holding the statue sat there at the bottom of the staircase. A closet door had been built under the staircase, obviously added after the home had originally been built. I didn’t remember seeing that. I did remember the walnut mantle carved with hunting scenes, and the array of photos sitting atop it, along with the crystal candlesticks. I studied that more closely. Something looked different about it. I wasn’t sure what. I set it aside after a few minutes, in a pile I designated as Questionable.

  There were photos of the carpet in the foyer, with little markers like the kind steak places use to put on your plate so the servers will know if you’d ordered the well-done, medium, or rare. I assume the numbered markers point out evidence to the crime team.

  Anyway, when I got to the photo of the table and the statue, I pulled the pair of what my father calls “cheaters” out of my purse, those drug store reading glasses that magnify things. It’s not that I’m too vain to wear glasses; it’s just that I have a habit of putting even my sunglasses in odd places and forgetting where they are. As long as I can pay just a few dollars for cheaters and they work when I need them, I’m going to go that route.

  I studied the photo closely, admired the graceful curve of wood and intricate top of the table, and then focused on the statue. The bronze statue is nearly a foot high, with the general wearing his uniform and hat. I thought about Bitty picking it up and Sherman Sanders’ reaction that first day we went out there. Was there something special about the statue, something that might hold a hint to what was driving me crazy?

  The general had struck a militant pose, head lifted as if in defiance of the enemy, his body straight with military discipline even mounted on his horse. Then I looked a little closer. Where was the sword he’d held up? Wait—I didn’t remember a horse. While details weren’t that easily seen in this photo, it looked to me as if the insignia on the hat said CSA instead of US. I held the photo up right to my nose. General Grant would hardly wear the enemy’s hat, not even in the fevered imagination of some crazed sculptor. Why, this wasn’t General Grant at all, this was General Forrest!

  I sat up straight. So that’s what had been bothering me all this time. Sherman Sanders had said it was Grant, but it was Forrest. But then, Bitty had said it was General Grant, too, and while she may very well be as scattered as chickens in a tornado, she definitely knows General Grant from General Forrest.

  Diane gave permission for me to use the telephone, and I called Bitty immediately.

  “Bitty,” I said, cutting into her surprise at hearing me call from the Brunetti offices, “I’d like for you to answer a quick question for me, then I’ll tell you why I’m here. That first day we went out to Sanders, you know, when the mule ate the chicken and dumplings, do you remember looking at the statue on the small table at the foot of the staircase?”

  “Well for heaven’s sake, Trinket, of course I do. It was a heavy bronze statue of General Grant. Don’t you remember Sanders getting all huffy when I just politely mentioned it?”

  “Yes, I certainly do. You’re sure it was Grant.”

  “I think I can tell the difference between Grant and Forrest by now. You’re not saying my eyes have gone bad, are you?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I’m just trying to remember everything, that’s all. You know, for the court case.” No point in saying anything to Bitty until I talked to Jackson Lee. There may be a good explanation for General Grant having turned into General Forrest.

  When I hung up after giving Bitty a promise to come right over after I left the law offices, I went back to the table and studied some of the other photographs again. I pulled a few from the Questionable stack, and focused on the one of the parlor and the mantel. A fire had been burning the day we were there. It looked cold and dead in the photo. I studied the hearth, then the mantel. Photos, candlesticks . . . and an oddly empty space. Something else had been there the day I visited, though that didn’t necessarily mean it had anything to do with the murder. Still, sometimes the smallest details make the biggest differences.

  Jackson Lee came in before I’d finished studying the photographs, and while he had a bit of mud on his boots, fortunately, there was no hint of cow manure.

  “So,” he said genially, sitting down in a chair at the head of the table by me, “did you find anything?”

  “Yes. Or at least, I found an answer as well as some questions without answers.”

  “That works.” He leaned forward as I pushed two photographs toward him. “Let’s look at it.”

  “I haven’t mentioned this, because I thought maybe I was just unhinged by everything, but I’ve been really bothered since the beginning about Generals Grant and Forrest.” Jackson Lee kept his expression of polite attentiveness, and encouraged, I went on. “The first day Bitty and I were out there, we admired the statue of General Grant on this table.” I tapped the photo.

  “That’s General Forrest,” Jackson Lee corrected me, and I nodded.

  “I know. But it was General Grant when we were there. We did say that in our statements, I’m sure.” Jackson Lee nodded, still without a change of expression. “And now there’s an empty space on the mantel. I remember looking at the mantel that first day, there was a fire on the hearth . . . anyway, there was a bronze statue on the mantel. I recall seeing it, though I can’t say for certain that it was General Forrest. I didn’t look that closely. I just remember there being a bronze statue of a man on a horse. I know this may seem completely unrelated, but I don’t think it is.

  “And when I went back with Bitty to wipe off her fingerprints it wasn’t Grant then, either. I was too rattled to notice, at least consciously, but the statue I wiped clean was this one, not the one Bitty says was on the floor next to Philip, or the first one we saw. The one that goes on this table. I think that the murder weapon is missing, that the statue here on the table in this crime scene photo is not
the one used to kill Philip Hollandale.” I ended with a Perry Mason flourish, and Jackson Lee sat back with a little smile.

  “This morning we got the preliminary test results back from down in Jackson. There was no blood or fingerprints on the statue taken from the crime scene. It’s not the weapon that killed Senator Hollandale.”

  “Then that’s good for Bitty, right?”

  “I wish I could say that, but the prosecutor is probably going to claim she killed him with something else. Since you and she both say it was a statue of General Grant, and Forrest is the only statue in evidence, it’s going to be difficult to prove she didn’t dispose of it. We need to find the murder weapon. The senator’s fatal injury is consistent with a blow to the head from a heavy object like that statue, so since Grant is missing . . . . ”

  He left the sentence unfinished. I filled in the blanks. “And since Bitty had motive and the opportunity, my brilliant deduction doesn’t help at all.”

  “Not much,” he agreed.

  I felt deflated. All this time worrying myself to death about a tiny detail like the difference between Grant and Forrest, and it didn’t help at all when I finally figured it out. Apparently I’m more Pink Panther than Perry Mason.

  “So,” I said, “Inspector Clouseau strikes again.”

  Jackson laughed. “But it does help a theory that’s been forming in the back of my mind. I researched that Nissan plant you told me about, and the senator’s possible involvement, and if Sanders had been contacted by Nissan. It’s fact that Nissan has been looking in this area, and it’s fact that Sanders’ land backs up to Highway 7 and is in a good spot for a plant. Nissan denies talking to Sanders. Hollandale is known for making deals that benefit him more than landowners, unless they’re corporate donors.”