by Peggy Webb
Bobby doesn’t react like a suspicious man, which casts serious doubts on his psychic abilities.
“He’s here,” Bobby says.
“Where?”
Bobby glances around the ballroom, perplexed. “Well. He was here a minute ago.”
“Oh, great.” Lovie rolls her eyes.
“Yeah. How about that?” Bobby says. “And him with a bandaged leg.”
Strike two for the psychic eye. Lovie’s irony whizzes right over Bobby. But it’s not him I’m worried about: it’s unmasking Thomas Whitenton before he kills my mother.
The jitterbug competition is winding down, and time is running out. Lovie and I need to leave before the dance is over. If we don’t, we’ll have a hard time escaping Mama and Uncle Charlie. She’s already miffed about being left out of all the fun and he’s already warned me to lie low and let Jack handle things.
That’s the last thing I need. Every time I let Jack handle my things, I end up between the sheets in my house or backed up against the rinse sinks at Hair.Net.
If Lovie and I don’t get into Thomas Whitenton’s room before my almost-ex gets in from China, we might as well forget it. Skirting around the senior Valentines is one thing; skirting around Jack Jones is a whole ’nother ball game.
Suddenly Lovie elbows me and nods toward the door. Thomas has appeared with two cups of punch, probably one for him, one for Mama. He’s certainly not bringing Uncle Charlie something cool to drink, especially after the twin humiliations of being flogged and being beat out of a chance to show his stuff on the dance floor with Ruby Nell Valentine.
Lovie nudges me again. Hard. I’m going to get her for this.
“Oh my goodness! I almost forgot.” I glance at my watch, feigning panic. “Lovie, if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss our spa appointment.”
As we stand up to leave, Bobby says, “If you’ll leave your key, I’ll check on Elvis after the competition.” He winks at me. “While you snoop.”
We stop dead in our tracks. When we turn around to face Bobby again, Lovie’s mouth is hanging open. I guess mine is, too, because it takes me a while to say anything.
“How did you know?”
“Psychic eye.” He winks again.
“What’s it telling you about the Peabody killer?”
“There’s danger from a dark-eyed stranger.”
Holy cow! I should have known better than to believe in his psychic eye.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he says. “The dark-eyed stranger of this vision is somebody you know, somebody who could rain hellfire and brimstone on the head of the killer.”
That would be only one person. Jack Jones.
Fishing in my purse, I find my room key and hand it to Bobby.
“Thanks for looking after Elvis. I’ll call you after we’ve finished our…” What’s the nice way to put what we’re planning to do?
“Snooping,” Lovie says, winking at him, then we hightail it out of the ballroom.
We race as fast as we dare without calling attention to ourselves. We’re making good progress till Lovie suddenly vanishes. One minute she’s beside me, the next she’s gone.
“What on earth?”
“Shhh.” Her hiss is coming from behind a potted palm. She reaches out and snatches me behind the scraggly tree so fast I nearly break the heel of my Manolo Blahniks. “Somebody’s after us.”
“What do you mean, after us?”
“I distinctly heard somebody behind me whisper, ‘Die, hoothie mama.’”
“Hoothie?”
“Hoochie, Callie. Has your mind taken a leave of absence?”
I don’t generally take exception to Lovie’s remarks because I know she has my best interests at heart. But I’m full of frazzled nerves and plane-from-China anxiety, and I’m lucky to remember my own name. I’m fixing to take exception.
“I wouldn’t cast aspersions on my mind if I’d picked the scrawniest palm in the entire room to hide behind. Good grief, Lovie. It’s the width of a swizzle stick.”
In her sequined dress, Lovie is the approximate size of Arkansas. She’s shining through the branches like sunrise over the Pacific. But I stop short of telling her all that. I pride myself on being nice to everybody, even when I’m mad.
Lovie says that’s one of my major faults. Actually what she always tells me is, “Get some backbone, show some spunk.” Maybe she’s right. Maybe after all this is over, I’ll work on the assertive side of my personality.
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Callie.”
“You use it all the time.”
“It suits me.” She cranes her neck around the palm. “All clear. Let’s hustle.”
When we get to the fourth floor, Elvis is nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t even come when I call, but that’s not unusual. Elvis has a take it or leave it attitude about obedience. Mostly, he leaves it.
When that happens I do what every smart dog owner does, I resort to bribery. This time it’s a Milk-Bone treat.
“Elvis, want a cookie?”
Lovie snorts. “If you want a male to come, give him something worth coming over.” She digs into her stash for a doughnut. “Doughnut, Elvis. Get your fat butt out here.”
He waddles out, snatches the doughnut, then retreats back into the closet without even coming by to lick my ankles. I swear, when I get back to Mooreville, I’m putting him in obedience school.
Right now, though, I have to change. And fast.
Lovie and I start shucking clothes. Correction. I shuck, she’s stuck. I grab her zipper and tug while she says words that ought to make the Guinness Book of Bad Language.
“Suck in, Lovie.”
“I’m sucking. They’re not making size twelve as big as they used to.”
Holy cow! No wonder I’m going to have to rip seams and break the zipper. If she’s a twelve, I’m Donald Trump.
Two ripped seams and a broken fingernail later, Lovie and her dress part company. We get in maid disguise, then race toward the elevators, hightailing it from a room that looks like somebody slaughtered a sequined goose.
For once the gods of wacky women are with us. The only person on the elevator is a petite blue-haired woman wearing a hearing aid and glasses with Coke-bottle lenses. Squinting up at Lovie, she says, “Young woman, that’s a nice hat you’re wearing.”
“Wig’s on backward,” I whisper.
Lovie flips it back around, fluffs it up, and winks at the woman. “I like the feathers in front.”
“I must say, it does look better.”
The elevator inches upward, and though it stops at every floor, nobody else gets on. The bantam-size, nearsighted woman probably pushed every button.
She gets off on the tenth and totters down the hall. If she goes any slower, she won’t make it to her room till Thanksgiving. There’s no way we can break and enter while she’s in sight.
“I could yell fire,” Lovie says.
The mood I’m in, I’m about ready to let her. Which just goes to show the levels you’ll sink to when murder enters the picture.
The poor little woman finally makes it to her room. I’m about to say the coast is clear when I spot the back of the most delicious man God ever put in the path of a Valentine woman.
“Quick, Lovie. Hide. The stairs.”
Thank goodness she doesn’t ask questions till we’re inside the stairwell.
“Is it the cops?”
“Worse. Jack.”
“You’re sure?”
“Even if my eyes deceive me, my libido never does.”
Let me come within yelling distance of Jack Jones and you can hear my motor revving all the way to the Mississippi River.
Lovie says a word that could bring down the roof. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll never get into Thomas’ room.”
My sentiments exactly. But I don’t tell Lovie that. I pride myself on acting optimistic, even when I’m feeling exactly the opposite.
Which is why I’m going to face Jack head-on this tim
e. Look him in the face and say: I want a life. I want a child. I want a divorce.
Of course, I have to get out of the stairwell first.
“Let’s go, Lovie.”
“Make up your mind. Are we coming or going?”
“Cute, Lovie.” I barrel out and she’s right behind me.
“Just when I’m getting to like this place.”
In the hall, I pull down my short skirt and stick out my chin, geared for battle.
Alas, the enemy has left the corridor.
Chapter 20
X-rated Capers, Balconies, and Busted
Fortunately, nobody else is in the corridor, either. We head toward Thomas’ room and it takes Lovie less than five seconds to get us in.
“If you ever decide to give up catering, you could make it picking locks.”
“What’s got you in such a piss and vinegar mood?”
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m standing firm with Jack this time. No more pussyfooting around.”
“Great.”
Lovie is a woman of action, let the consequences fall where they may. She would have already decided between Jack and Champ. Since I’ve been in pre-divorce limbo, I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s said to me, “Quit dillydallying. You never know how something’s going to turn out till you try it.”
Now she’s standing with her hands on her hips surveying Thomas’ room. He brought enough stuff from Mississippi to hold a small garage sale on the Peabody’s tenth floor.
“There’s no telling what we’ll find buried in all this junk,” she says.
“Let’s hope it’s not another body.”
“Let’s ransack this place and find out. I’ll start with the bathroom.”
This could take a while. Now that I’m this close, I’m not even sure I want to find evidence that Thomas is the killer. What kind of daughter am I, hoping my mother’s dance partner is a murderer? When I get home I’m lighting white candles and burning sacred white sage.
I glance around the room, trying to decide where to start. Obviously Thomas likes to take his treasures with him. In addition to three suitcases, he has shoeboxes stacked three deep on the closet floor. The desk in the corner has so many stacks of fat manila envelopes, you can hardly see the lamp.
“Find anything in the bathroom, Lovie?”
“Relief.”
The toilet flushes and she comes out tugging at her uniform.
“What’d you see in there, Lovie?”
“Thomas pees on the toilet rim.”
“Get serious. Anything of interest?”
“He uses frownies.”
“Oh, good grief, Lovie. You take the desk, I’ll take the closet.”
If Lovie gets on her knees, it might be Christmas before I get her back up. Hiking my tight skirt up past decency, I sit cross-legged on the closet floor and open the first of eighteen boxes. Inside are Florsheims. Black patent. Although the soles show lots of wear, on the top you can hardly tell these shoes from brand new.
The next two boxes also hold Florsheims polished to a high shine. I wish I’d known this about Thomas earlier. A man who loves shoes can’t be all bad.
I’m reaching for the fourth box when Lovie says, “Callie, you’d better have a look.”
I unfold my long legs, stretch to get the kinks out, then join Lovie at the desk. There’s a stack of empty envelopes at her elbow and an array of photographs fanned across the desktop. Even when they are upside down I can see that most of them feature Mama. Who can miss her bright yellow caftan and Queen of England crown jewels?
Going around the desk, I lean over Lovie’s shoulder. There’s Mama getting out of her red convertible in front of her monument company, Mama on the farm standing at the lake, Mama on her front porch sipping iced tea. I hope. With Mama you never can tell.
“These look candid.”
“Yeah. I wonder if Thomas took them without Aunt Ruby Nell knowing.”
A chilling thought. Even more chilling is the photograph Lovie points out. The beautiful woman playing with her dog in front of a giant magnolia tree is none other than Babs Mabry Mims.
I pick the photograph up to study it more closely. Babs is in severe need of a good haircut.
“Of course,” Lovie says, “we’ve already established that he knows Babs.”
“Yeah, but this one is just like the ones of Mama. Unposed.”
“How do you know?”
“No woman with any pride is going to let somebody take her picture when her hair looks that bad.”
Lovie takes the picture from me and lines it up beside the ones of Mama. “Look at this, Cal. They’re all made from a distance.”
“What does that prove besides Thomas doesn’t know how to use a telephoto lens?”
“Maybe he wasn’t aiming for art. Maybe he was a murderer stalking his prey with a camera.”
Now I’m wishing I hadn’t ducked into the stairwell when I saw Jack. I’m wishing I’d asked him to break and enter with us and help us get to the bottom of all this before the next victim turns out to be somebody I can’t live without. Mama. Lovie. Uncle Charlie.
Except for one big thing. “Lovie, do you realize not a single one of the murder victims has been a man?”
“You’re right.” Suddenly Lovie says a word that peels paint. “Remember what the attacker said to Aunt Ruby Nell? And me? The killer’s looking for ‘hoochie mamas.’”
“Keep digging, Lovie. We’re going to search every inch of this room.”
I head back to the closet to see if I can find something besides Florsheims. In the next box, I do, but it’s only a pair of Air Nikes that could use a good spritz of deodorant foot powder.
I’m about to despair, but on the last box I hit pay dirt.
“Holy cow! Lovie, come quick.”
In my hot little hand is a three-volume set of DVDs: “The fully restored ‘XXX Diaries.’” Starring none other than Gloria Divine and Latoya LaBelle.
“Bingo,” Lovie says. “Victims two and three.”
Which brings another chilling thought: if he really is the killer, we could be next.
“Maybe we ought to call the police, Lovie. Or at least Uncle Charlie.”
“Forget it. Playing safe is no fun.”
She snatches the DVD set from me and shoves the first disc into the player on top of Thomas’ TV.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m fixing to view the evidence.”
“We’re not the cops, Lovie.”
“First come, first served.”
“We could get in big trouble, here, Lovie.”
“Are you going to sit in the closet all day and argue?”
Lovie has made herself at home on Thomas’ bed, and is now leaning against the headboard on both pillows, her feet crossed at the ankles. This is what she does when we watch movies at home. She’s settled in for the duration. All she needs is buttered popcorn.
I feel like Custer staging his last stand.
“We can’t stay here, Lovie. Thomas is liable to come back.”
“Put the night latch on. I’m not leaving till I see this.”
“The night latch is already on. I did that after we broke in. I also hung up the DO NOT DISTURB sign.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Get your skinny butt over here before you miss the show.”
I do what she says, but I refuse to sit on the bed. Instead, I drag the desk chair closer and plop down.
The names of the dubious “stars” flash across the screen and the camera pans a set that looks like something out of Arabian Nights. Amid the crash of cymbals and the twanging of exotic stringed instruments, two women slither onto the set. Gloria Divine and Latoya LaBelle—younger, more voluptuous versions of the woman found floating in the Peabody fountain in a Technicolor dress and the woman strangled with her own scarf at the duck parade.
I wouldn’t call what they’re doing a show. To put a polite spin on it, we’ve uncovered Thomas’ stash of exotic entertainme
nt.
“Where’d they learn to dance like that?” Lovie says.
“Not in Sunday school. I wouldn’t even call it dancing.”
“What would you call it?”
“Foreplay.”
“Just because Jack’s in the hotel…”
“Jack has nothing to do with it. Besides, he’s out of the picture.”
“Good. You’ll feel better once you make a complete break.”
Will I? I don’t think I have Lovie’s capacity to live my life forward, make instant decisions, keep what I want, discard what I don’t, and never look back. Never, ever.
I tend to zigzag—live forward a while, then go backward and agonize over what might have been. I dither over whether I should throw everything out and start over or whether I should backtrack and try to glue broken pieces together, tie baling wire around ripped-apart goods I never meant to throw away in the first place.
“Turn it off, Lovie. We’ve established that Thomas knew all the victims.”
“What about motive? There might be something in these tapes to show why he’d want to kill them.”
“What do you think? Thomas is going to make an appearance as their stud muffin?”
“Aunt Ruby Nell thinks he has the goods.”
Holy cow. I hope not. Though the connecting door sends up all kinds of red flags, I’m still clinging to the hope that all Mama wants from Mr. Whitenton is his dancing feet.
“Lovie, we can’t hole up in Thomas’ room all day watching porn videos. Somebody’s liable to catch us.”
“Relax, Cal. It could enhance your reputation.”
I know good and well what she means, but I choose to pretend otherwise. Everybody in Mooreville thinks I’m demure. Everybody except Jack. And he no longer counts. I think. I hope.
“My reputation’s just fine, thank you very much. I’m the best hair stylist in northeast Mississippi. And that’s not bragging. Everybody says so.”
“Not that reputation.”
Ordinarily, we’d engage in this kind of good-natured banter half the day, but I’ve got to get my crazy cousin moving. Besides, she’s hitting a little too close to home for my comfort.
What if I do need to loosen up, roll with the punches, as Lovie is always saying? What if my love of routine and advance planning is one of the reasons Jack left me? As much as I’d like to think it was all his fault, I’m not that kind of one-sided, wrong-headed woman. I pride myself on being fair.
