Crossed Bones (14 page)

The whole time I was getting ready, I kept looking over my shoulder for Jitty. A date was a big occasion for her to boss me around. It was strange that she didn't put in an appearance.

Just as I finished applying my Peach Perfection lipstick, a loud crack of thunder was followed by a terrific flash of lightning.

Dahlia House was plunged into darkness.

12

Jitty-had she been around to comment-would
have said that getting dressed in the dark was one of my major talents. But she wasn't around, and I managed to ready myself for a romantic evening without the high-voltage companionship of Reddy Kilowatt or Jitty.

I was still wondering where Jitty had gone when the power came back on and Bridge arrived to whisk me to Zinnia. Though his main office was in
Memphis
, he'd rented an antebellum town house only a few blocks from Cece.

The residential section of Zinnia was not as old as estates like Dahlia House. This section of town had been developed for the merchant class, those men who made their living in commerce rather than on the land. The house Bridge had settled into was designed for lawn parties and entertainment. The exterior was all gracious Southern charm. Inside was a big surprise. Bridge had transformed the front parlor into a temporary Bedouin chamber. Pillows littered the floor, and candles glowed through layers of gauzy hangings, creating soft and intimate illumination.

I stopped in the foyer and simply stared. It had been a long, long time since a man had gone to this much trouble for me. "Wow." My statement was totally inadequate.

"Make yourself comfortable," Bridge said, dropping to one knee. He took my hands in his. "Do you trust me?"

"In what regard?" I wasn't exactly comfortable looking down at him.

"Close your eyes, Sarah Booth," he urged.

My Aunt LouLane always cautioned me that curiosity killed the cat. I was dying to know what Bridge was up to. I closed my eyes and felt his fingers at the straps of my sandals. In less than a minute I was barefoot and reclining in the middle of a sumptuous pillow while he'd gone to make drinks.

"I decided to forgo the goatskin filled with fermented grapes," he said, handing me a crystal martini glass. "I was more in the mood for cosmopolitans."

The pink drink was just fine with me. Jack Daniel's was normally my party companion, but I could shake up my habits when an opportunity presented itself.

Bridge had prepared--or had had prepared--a cold dinner of boiled and peeled shrimp, fruit, and crusty French bread. We nibbled and talked. Bridge had graduated from Ole Miss four years before I started. He and Oscar had been in the same classes, the same fraternity, the same social order.

I had a moment of concern, but it passed. Bridge obviously knew nothing of my college capers. He'd gone on to Harvard to pursue his master's by the time I arrived at Ole Miss. There were others who'd known me when I'd rejected sorority life, protested against the unfair double standards of class and gender, thrown in with the unorthodox theatre crowd, and generally disavowed my heritage and birthright.

Bridge might run into some of my old alumni, but I doubted they'd think to talk about me. Tinkie was the only
friend
Bridge
and I shared in common, and Tinkie would never spill the beans. I certainly wasn't in a confessional mood, so I simply let him think we shared the same view of our college days--golden and fraught with unlimited earning potential.

We finished the shrimp, and Bridge cleared the food and dishes away. He made us fresh drinks, and when he settled onto the pillow beside me, I figured it was time to fish or cut bait. He was interested in me. Very interested. And I was at war with myself.

As if Jitty were sitting on my shoulder tweaking my libido, I felt the urge to shift a little closer to this man, to brush my calf across his shin, to let my fingers slide over his ribs on the way to holding his hand. These were all tiny gestures that gave a man the idea that he could take the next step without fear of being slapped. A very large part of me wanted Bridge to take the next step.

He was an eligible man, and I did desire him. He had wealth, good looks, social position, refinement, education, and a sense of humor. If his clothes weren't so obviously Italian, I would have suspected that he made them himself. In other words, he was perfect.

There were complications, though.

Tinkie's words danced in my mind. Bridge wasn't a man who liked an easy acquisition. He appreciated the game, the struggle, the challenge. An easy victory would eventually lead to boredom.

The idea that a man might grow bored with me was scalding. But that wasn't what was holding me back.

Coleman was the fly in the ointment. Ineligible, poorly paid, working in dangerous conditions, and married. This was the man who stood between me and "marrying up."

"What's on your mind, Sarah Booth?" Bridge asked. He leaned back on his elbows in the pillows, effectively relaxing
and
putting a little distance between us.

"I have a lot on my mind," I answered, which wasn't a lie.

"Scott Hampton?"

It was a logical assumption on Bridge's part. "When I'm talking to Scott, I believe completely that he's innocent. When I'm away from him and I think about the evidence, I have doubts." It was much easier to talk about Scott than it was about me.

"He's very charismatic. I bought some of his CDs yesterday. Shall I put them on?"

"Sure."

Bridge rose and started the music, mixing fresh drinks while he was up. When he settled back into the pillows, he offered his arm for me to lean against. "No pressure," he said. "I don't like pressure, and I suspect you don't either."

Add perceptive to his list of dazzling qualities. I shifted and leaned back against him, knowing that he was a gentleman. I sighed with pleasure.

"That's a girl," he said. "Relax. We'll never get to know each other if you feel on guard all the time."

I snuggled deeper into the pillow, and Bridge, and listened to Scott Hampton's wailing guitar take over the room. I thought I might be able to lounge back and enjoy the evening. But blues aren't the proper music for casual lounging. The blues get in the blood and move around the body. Pretty soon, the body's moving around, too. I didn't want that to happen, so I took a candle over to Bridge's music collection, which covered three shelves of a big bookcase. "You have everyone," I said, my finger tracing down the spines.

"About ten years ago I bought this map of
Mississippi
and it had the places marked where every blues musician in the state was born. I started collecting from there.
Mississippi
has produced some remarkable artists."

I sat cross-legged on the floor and let my index finger slide over the plastic covers.
Tick-tick-tick-tick,
all the way as far as I could reach. He had a vast collection. "Pinebox Simpson! My mother had an album of his."

"They redigitalized it and put it on CD. Better sound."

I slipped out a Wailin' Betty CD. One of the guest vocalists was Big Dumplin' Blues Mama. I'd caught her act in a seedy bar in
New Orleans
some ten years before. She was hot!

I felt Bridge ease down beside me. His fingers slid up my bare arm, resting on my shoulder. It was a gesture that could be taken as friendly, or something more. He was leaving it all up to me.

"Do you have anything with Ivory in it?" I asked.

"I have everything he's done," Bridge said, leaning forward so that his chest came against my shoulder. A very solid chest, I might add.

He pulled out a CD and put it on. As soon as the music started, there was no doubt the man on the piano was a master.

"Who's he playing with?" The lead guitar was good, but it wasn't Scott "The Blizzard"
Hampton
.

"Band called Mad Dog Blues. That was the band he was playing in before he went to prison."

"How come you know so much about Ivory?" I asked him, suddenly curious.

"I know about all of the
Mississippi
blues artists," he said. "But Ivory is local, and he was still very much alive and performing until recently. I took a special interest in him because I could see him perform live."

"Did you ever go to his club?"

"A couple of times," he said. "I haven't been home that much in recent years. I regret that."

"Ivory served time for murder." I let the statement hang out there.

"He did. I heard the story from a reliable source, but I never talked to him about it."

"Will you tell me what you know?"

"Of course." He glanced at my drink to make sure I wasn't running dry. "Ivory was a handsome man, by anyone's standards. He was tall and lean, with a neatly trimmed mustache. And he was a ladies' man. As you know, it's part of the blues."

I understood this on one level. The life of musicians, particularly the bluesmen of the past, was one of travel, long weeks on the road, and an abundance of easy women.

"Ivory made his living traveling around to nightclubs, playing music that made the folks listening want to abandon themselves to sin and pleasure." He shrugged. "Pain and death are always just around the corner, so better take pleasure where you can. That's the motto of the blues, Sarah Booth. Ivory played them with all his heart. He lived them, too."

I nodded. Temptation, for an average man or woman, is hard to resist. But give a person fame and charisma, put them on a stage performing down and dirty music, have the women in the room calling out invitations for sex and fun, and trouble is hovering in the air.

"It still doesn't make cheating on his wife right," I said, wondering how Ida Mae had finally put all this behind her.

"It doesn't," Bridge agreed. His hand swept under my hair, lifting it off my neck so that the air-conditioned breeze touched off a racy little chill. "Nothing makes cheating right. But I think you have to concede that a certain lifestyle leads one into temptation easier than another. A musician has a hundred chances to stray each time he plays live. That's a lot of temptation to resist."

I didn't say anything. Scott Hampton was on my mind. Women loved him. They got excited watching him play and perform. They'd lay down on the stage for him. I doubted he had much respect left for the entire gender.

"Ivory was playing up in
Detroit
. The band was a huge success and was drawing bigger and bigger crowds. There was a female vocalist by the name of Darcy Danton."

"I haven't heard of her," I said.

"Her career was short-lived."

"She was killed, wasn't she?" It was a guess, but a good one judging from the look on Bridge's face.

"I would call it murder. She was singing at the club, and she and Ivory became very close. The story goes that her husband was abusing her. She'd come into the club with bruises, black eyes, broken fingers. One night she came in after her husband had nearly strangled her to death. She couldn't sing. Couldn't make a sound." He paused. "Ivory moved her into his room."

Train wreck coming. I could see it clearly. "And one thing led to another."

"Exactly. What started out as comfort, friendship, and support ended up between the sheets. It didn't take her husband long to track her down, and he entered the room just about the time Ivory entered . . . well, you get the idea."

I did, and I was amused at Bridge's wry humor. "Ivory was caught
en flagrante
."

"The enraged husband knocked Ivory out, pulled Darcy from the bed, and began to beat her viciously. Ivory regained consciousness and got his gun. He shot the husband twice. Both times in the back."

"Self-defense would be hard to prove." I could visualize the scene where Ivory had done only what he had to do. But convincing a jury with two shots in the back would be hard.

"The man would have killed Darcy if Ivory hadn't stopped him when he did. As it was, she was hospitalized for a month. Brain damage. She was never really right after that. Her death was tragic."

I was certain I didn't want to hear this, but I had to ask. "How did she finally die?"

"She froze to death in an alley behind the club where she sang with Ivory's band. Story goes that she was waiting for Ivory to finish his set. She couldn't grasp that he was in prison."

"Well, shit." It was a tragic story. It seemed that Ivory's life, and death, had been closely twined with tragedy.

"I know. And now Ivory is dead."

"Murdered." I knew that certain people, take Spider and Ray-Ban for instance, lived in a world of violence and suffering. They chose violence. But Ivory hadn't been that kind of man. He'd been caught in one violent act. Yet it had followed him home to the Mississippi Delta.

"I've only met Mrs. Keys once. She seems like a very strong woman," Bridge said. "I guess she'd have to be. Ivory served a long time, and she waited for him. She forgave him and waited."

Greek mythology was filled with such women, and Ida Mae, indeed, was a mythic force. "She is remarkable," I said.