by Peggy Webb
I lead them into my kitchen, which is Lovie’s natural habitat. If she’s going to be the prime suspect just because she was dancing with the deceased, the least I can do is give her an edge during the interrogation.
“Can I sit in for the interrogation?” It’s my house. I don’t see why not.
“I’m sorry. This one has to be in private.”
Before I close the kitchen door I see Lovie reaching for a chocolate éclair. She’s going to be all right.
That’s what I’m telling myself when Mama and Fayrene walk in and catch me still standing at the kitchen door.
“Are you eavesdropping?” When I tell Mama no, she says, “Why not?”
She and Fayrene grab two of my crystal glasses off the coffee table, dump the leftover wine into my potted peace lily, then proceed to put the rim to the kitchen wall.
I grab a glass and follow suit. But not before I lock the front door so we won’t get caught. Listen, if this was the worst thing I’d ever done, I’d be nominated for sainthood. And we all know that’s not going to happen.
“Did you notice anything strange when you were dancing with Dick?” I hear the sheriff asking Lovie.
“No. Not at first. The music was loud, rock ’n’ roll, and I was really into it.”
“You said not at first.”
“Yes. I thought something was amiss when he began to lean heavily on me. Then I realized he wasn’t gyrating to the beat.”
“What was Dick doing?”
“I’m no doctor, but I’d say he had a seizure of some kind.”
“You’re in charge of the food here. Is that correct?”
“Yes. I always cater the Valentine parties.”
“What about the festival? Are you in charge of the refreshment booth?”
“Not really. The officers of the Elvis fan club are in charge of it.”
“That would be…”
“Beulah Jane Ball, Tewanda Hardy, Clytee Estes, and James Holman.”
“Who provided the food for the booth?”
Holy cow! It’s Lovie, of course. Any southerner worth his salt who wants the best always uses Lovie’s Luscious Eats.
The sheriff is building a case for murder right in my kitchen. And all I can do is stand outside the door and wait.
Mama, of course, has other ideas. “I’m going to march in there and snatch him bald-headed.”
She grabs the door handle and I pull her back in the nick of time. Putting my finger to my lips, I lean in to pick up the thread of interrogation.
“Did you know Dick before this festival?”
“Yes,” Lovie says. “He delivers my mail.”
“Is that all he delivers?”
There’s a long pause, which means something’s up. Probably something I’m not going to like.
“We were lovers.”
Lovie tells me everything. Why didn’t I know about Dick?
“But that was a long time ago, before he married Bertha,” she’s saying. “Until this festival, I hadn’t seen nor spoken privately to Dick in six months.”
“So he jilted you?”
“No. He did not.”
“The two of you broke up and you had hard feelings.”
“The only beef I have against Dick Gerard is that he scatters my mail all the way from Church Street to Highland Circle.”
Chairs scrape against my kitchen floor, and we jump into action. I put the telltale glasses on a tray on the coffee table, then race to unlock the front door while Fayrene grabs a book off the shelves and pretends to be reading. Mama plops onto the piano bench and starts belting out “Suspicious Minds.”
Leave it to Mama. Sheriff Trice, who knows his Elvis, glares at her, but she just winks and keeps on warbling. Normally her voice is pure as rain, but considering the kind of pressure we’ve suffered this evening, she’s considerably off-key.
The sheriff comes over to me and says, “Callie, can you point out that Confederate jasmine bush?”
I lead him back to the courtyard and point out the bush. While the deputies search for clues and gather food and drink samples, Uncle Charlie pulls Sheriff Trice aside to request that the guests be allowed to leave.
Very few people can get by with telling the law how to do their job, but everybody has deep respect for Uncle Charlie, including Sheriff Trice.
“B. B. King is in concert tonight at the Elvis Festival,” Uncle Charlie tells him. “It’s a pity for all these people to miss it if they don’t have to. Especially our international guests.”
“They’re free to go.”
“And my daughter?”
While his deputies are loading up the food samples and little plastic bags of whatever evidence they’ve found, the sheriff puts his hand on Uncle Charlie’s arm. “Mr. Valentine, with two impersonators dead on the same day and both of them in their prime, we’ll treat this as a criminal case until the autopsy shows otherwise. Right now we don’t have enough evidence for an arrest, but I’d appreciate it if you’ll see that your daughter doesn’t leave Lee County.”
With those chilling words, Sheriff Trice and his deputies get into their patrol cars and leave. In short order my house and grounds are clear of everybody except family.
Gathered on the front porch watching the last of the blue lights flash down the street, we don’t say anything.
Lovie is suspected of murder. It’s like having a big pink elephant in the porch swing. We all know it’s there, but nobody wants to be the one to acknowledge it.
Finally Uncle Charlie stands up, puts his hands in his pockets, and rattles his car keys, a habit when he’s trying to sort things out. “‘Better to leave undone than by our deed acquire too high a fame.’”
He’s quite a scholar and always quotes Shakespeare, especially in time of stress. That’s his way of telling us to be still and let the law catch the killer.
“Ruby Nell, are you ready to go?” Uncle Charlie’s talking about the blues concert, which is this evening’s main event at the Elvis Festival.
“I’m always ready, Charlie.”
If I needed any proof that Mama meant her double entendre, all I have to do is look at her wicked grin.
In his courtly way, Uncle Charlie offers Mama his arm. “Relax, dear hearts. We’re going to hold our heads high and get through the rest of the festival in true Valentine fashion.”
After Uncle Charlie and Mama leave, Lovie and I make a beeline for the Prohibition Punch. I guess you could say that when true Valentine fashion was passed around, I was at a fifty-percent-off sale looking for Juicy Couture shoes and Lovie was in the bedroom searching for the right man to appreciate her holy grail.
Elvis strolls through the doggie door with Hoyt trailing along behind. I remove my basset’s wig and bow tie, then give them both a doggie treat.
Lovie says a word that sends Hoyt scurrying under the table.
“What?” I put the box of Milk-Bone back on the shelf, then refill our glasses.
“You know what this means, Callie?”
“We’ll have hangovers?”
“We’ve got to find the real killer.”
She’s right, of course. With one successful (more or less) bit of detective work behind us, we’re primed to sleuth. And I know just where to start.
Chapter 4
Rhinestones, Half-Baked Plans, and Moaning Strangers
Grabbing flashlights (which I have two of, thanks to Jack Jones, who believes in always being prepared), I drag Lovie back to the courtyard.
“We’re not supposed to cross the crime scene tape,” she says.
“How are we going to find clues if we don’t?”
“The deputies already searched there.”
“Everybody in Lee County knows Fayrene doesn’t know a Confederate jasmine from a warthog. Besides, everybody’s already tromped all over my courtyard. What will two more hurt?”
“You know what I always say.”
Lovie and I give each other the high five while we chant, “If nobody sees you,
you didn’t do it.” Then we clamber over the yellow tape.
On our hands and knees, we train flashlights onto every inch of ground except that around the Confederate jasmine. In spite of the sophistication I have single-handedly brought to Mooreville—candles banked on the tables (which the sheriff’s deputies already snuffed out) and white lights strung around every bush and tree—there’s not enough illumination to find clues on the ground in the dark without added light.
I adore being in my gardens, especially at night. I’ve made sure the artificial lights don’t overpower nature. Nothing is more soothing than lying in my Pauley’s Island hammock watching the stars and moon, reveling in the beauty and power of the universe. Everything is in perspective then, life’s tribulations reduced to a speck of dust.
Except murder, of course. And maybe those involving Jack. Whom I would give my eyeteeth to see right now.
In spite of his flaws—which are legion—he had a way of making me feel safe. And still does when I’m not too mad at him to notice. I don’t know. Sometimes the only reason you can breathe is that somebody holds you close and says everything is going to be all right.
Which brings me back to the current dilemma. If I thought losing Lovie to a split-level in Las Vegas and three children would be tough, what about losing her to Parchman Penitentiary and prison chef?
Behind me there’s a crash. Training my flashinglight in that direction, I see Lovie sprawled on the ground under my tea olive.
I race over to pull her up. No easy task. “Are you all right?”
“I will be if I can get out of this ant bed.”
While I brush dirt and twigs off the seat of her skirt, she says a word that’s good practice for being a hardened criminal.
“Did they bite you?”
“Are you kidding? After being crushed by this ass the little suckers are down there burying their dead.” She plops into a chair. “I’m not built for squatting. You’ll have to look for clues by yourself.”
So far I’ve turned up nothing except a half-buried chew toy. Elvis’s work, I’m sure. He’s so determined not to share with Hoyt, he deprives himself of the pleasure of his doggie toys by trying to put them six feet under.
I’m beginning to think this search is hopeless, that Fayrene made up the Bertha-behind-the-bush story to get in the limelight. But I don’t say this to Lovie. She needs to think we’re making progress in clearing her name.
Elvis, who reads minds and knows when somebody’s hurting, prances over to Lovie and licks her foot, then joins me and starts nosing under the tea olive. Dropping to one knee, I shine my flashlight in his direction.
“I found something.” Scooping it up, I sit beside Lovie and hold out my palm. Resting inside is a rhinestone hairpin.
She leans forward to inspect it. “Do you think it belongs to Bertha?”
“It could be. There’s only one way to find out.”
“Find out where she lives, then break and enter.”
Lovie and I slap palms. Lucky for us, Lovie dated “Slick Fingers” Johnson, who was always one step ahead of the law. One of the many things she learned from him was how to pick locks.
I change into a black outfit cat burglars would wear while Lovie changes into the jeans and navy T-shirt she brought; then we search the telephone book looking for Dick Gerard’s address. There are two Richards and two Dicks. The only problem is we don’t know which one is the dead Dick.
“We’ll just have to call and find out.” I glance at the clock. It’s not quite ten, still early enough to call without being impolite.
“If we use your phone or either of our cell phones, anybody with caller ID can finger us.”
There Lovie goes again, speaking in film noir. When we accidentally got into detective work via the Bubbles Caper, she started sounding like Dick Powell in Farewell, My Lovely and Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage. Of course, this is not surprising since one of our favorite pastimes is kicking back with a big bowl of buttered popcorn, watching the classic movies on TV. Hers or mine. It doesn’t matter as long as we watch together.
Now here we are, up to our necks in murder again, formulating a plan as we race to Gas, Grits, and Guts to use the pay phone outside.
The plan is for me to make the calls because Lovie’s Luscious Eats is all but famous and so is her sexy drawl. Think Kathleen Turner with a Marlene Dietrich twist. The cover story is that I’m doing a feasibility study for Ole Miss regarding a continuing education course on global warming at the Tupelo campus. Lovie wanted to make it a Masters and Johnsons type of survey, but common sense (mine) prevailed.
As I wheel my monster truck into the parking lot, I notice Fayrene’s husband, Jarvetis, through the plate-glass windows. Thank goodness he’s the one closing the store tonight instead of his wife, who would barrel out bent on sniffing out our mission. Even worse, she’d want to help. Like Mama, Fayrene doesn’t know the meaning of discreet.
I park as far away from the door as I can get. As I get out of the truck, I hear the distant rumble of thunder. My gardens need rain, the farmers need rain, everybody needs rain except two amateur detectives who have enough trouble without skulking around in a downpour.
“You can wait in the truck if you want to, Lovie.”
She clambers out behind me. “I’m the one knocking off old lovers.”
“Good grief. Brian was your lover, too?”
“No, but if I’d met him before he kicked the bucket, he would have been.”
I think she’s kidding, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. Lovie has had her share of experiences, but she also covers up a lot of deep feelings with jokes and laughter.
We pool our quarters and I start making calls. I get voice mails with the two Richards and a proposition with the first Dick. He lives on Enoch, never heard of Bertha, and thinks I’m his twenty-first birthday present from his buddies at the factory.
On the final try we find the dead Dick’s unfortunate wife. In 225 Magnolia Manor. Jack’s apartment building.
I stand in by the pay phone thinking about that tacky yellow brick building with the pretentious name and the socially unacceptable address. Cracked asphalt parking lot. One pitiful pine. Not a flower in sight. As far as I know, not even a blade of grass.
And Jack, who loves gardens and cool breezes and porch swings, is living there. All because of me. Well, because of him, too. But still…
“I can’t go barging into Magnolia Manor, Lovie. What if I run into Jack?”
“I thought you said he was leaving town.”
“For all I know he caught a magic carpet and has already made a trip to Tibet and back. Besides, he didn’t say when he was leaving. My point is, I don’t want him to know what we’re up to.”
“We’re going to be up to our asses in rain, if we don’t hurry.”
A crack of thunder underscores her prediction as we race to the truck. I peel out of the parking lot just in time to be spotted by Jarvetis. That means he’ll tell Fayrene, who will tell Mama, who might tell Jack. Not that Mama would betray me, but she’ll do anything she can to get us back together. Because of my daddy, Michael Valentine, she believes in one true soul mate, and in her opinion, Jack is mine.
If I thought that, I’d just give up and my poor unused eggs would go out and commit suicide.
Rain sprinkles my windshield as I drive west toward Magnolia Manor.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” I say. “We can’t just go barging down the hall for you to pick the lock.”
“We should have worn disguises.”
“I could be wearing an elephant suit and Jack would recognize me.”
“Maybe I can do this by myself.”
“Yeah? And how will you explain yourself when Jack catches you breaking and entering?”
Lovie says a word I’ll bet even the devil doesn’t know. “You’re getting paranoid, Callie. Jack’s out of town. And if he’s not, we’ll lie.”
“Oh, right. Like he won’t know.”
She
says another word, even worse. “Fetuses can hear,” I tell her.
“Are you telling me you’re pregnant?”
“No, but someday I will be. You don’t want to pollute the ears of your little goddaughter.”
“Give me two weeks’ notice and I’ll quit. Are you satisfied now?”
“Maybe.” Actually I won’t be satisfied till I’m home in my bed. I don’t like the idea of being in Jack’s territory in the dark. “I can tell you one thing. I’m not sleeping with him again.”
“I didn’t know you slept.”
“That’s mean, Lovie. And you know that’s not what I meant.”
“Okay. Forget I said that.”
The entrance to Magnolia Manor looms ahead. I press down on the accelerator.
“You passed it, Callie.”
“I know. I’m thinking.”
“Of what?”
“A way to get to the second floor without being seen.” And I think I just might have it. If the tree is in the right place.
I turn around in the parking lot of the Putt-Putt golf course next door, then head back to the Magnolia Manor. It’s even uglier than I remembered, the yellow brick getting dingy, the hideous brown shutters peeling, and the dinky wrought-iron balconies looking like they’re about to fall off the side of the building.
A postage-stamp patch of dirt surrounds the building, which sits in the middle of the parking lot. The lonesome pine presses close to the yellow brick. Right where I remembered.
“You see that tree?” I ask Lovie. “It’s near Jack’s window. He’s in 221, which means Bertha is two doors down.”
I bail out of the truck, but she sits there like she’s hatching eggs. I stick my head back in the cab. “What?”
“The only elephant I ever saw in a tree was Dumbo. The next thing I know, you’ll be telling me I can fly.”
“We grew up climbing trees, Lovie.”
“Yeah, but I was thirty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter.”
“Well, all right, then. You sit here. I’ll do it myself.”
