Dixie Diva Blues (10 page)

An indignant Bitty emerged five minutes later with cream smeared on her face, a towel wrapped around her head, a silk dressing gown covering silk pajamas, and pink feathers on her feet. She stalked across the room to the vintage refrigerator. “Really, you’d think a person would be allowed more than ten minutes in there.”

“You’ve been in there over an hour, Princess Glitter,” I said. “Why on earth are you wearing feathers and heels to bed?”

“These aren’t
heels
, Trinket, as you’d know if you could ever find anything big enough to fit those snowshoes you call feet. These are
slippers
with kitten heels. They’re called that because of the tiny heel. Very sophisticated, I’ll have you know.”

“And practical, too, I’m sure. You look like one of those teenage girls in the movies who always gets chased by a zombie or the guy with the chainsaw. They all wear heels and they all fall down at least once so they can get eaten or dismembered.”

Bitty stared at me. “You’re such a ghoul tonight. Here. I think you need this.”

She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a small bottle and tossed it to me. I managed to catch it before it hit the floor and shattered into a million pieces. I turned it over and saw from the label that it was an excellent champagne.

“They’re selling this in six-packs now?” I was incredulous. “I mean, just how convenient can they make it? Winos all over the state are probably clapping their hands in glee.”

Bitty lifted a brow as far as possible. “I hope you don’t mean that personally.”

“Heavens no. You’re much classier than the average wino.”

“I know you’re an expert on winos, so I’ll take your word for it.”

I smiled. “See how hanging around with you improves my education?”

“Do they do this all the time?” Carolann asked Gaynelle, who had called dibs on the bathroom next and was gathering up her PJ’s and toiletries.

Gaynelle nodded. “You get used to it. Just think of them as Heckle and Jekyll.”

“Doctor Jekyll?”

“No, the cartoon talking crows. Or magpies. I forget. It’s possible to tune them out if you turn up the radio very, very loud. Good luck.” Gaynelle stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind her.

Bitty and I looked at each other, shrugged, and popped the tops of our portable champagne bottles. Very convenient.

Since I was the last one who had called dibs on the bathroom, I figured I’d get no hot water, but to my surprise, there was plenty. With no one waiting on me, I took my time in the shower, and by the time I got out, dried off, pulled my white cotton nightie over my head and opened the bathroom door, the shack was dark. I tiptoed across the floor just fine without the help of kitten heels. Bitty slept in the double bed close to the wall, and since she was my sleeping partner for the night, I lifted the edge of the cotton spread and slid in next to her. While the wood headboard and frame looked authentic mid-twentieth century, the mattress was a very comfortable twenty-first century edition.

Bitty was on her side, facing the wall, the ribbon strap of her pajama top halfway down her left arm. Very gently, I slid it back into place. She didn’t even stir. I rolled to my back and watched shadows filtering through the gauzy window shades play across the ceiling. A harmonica sighed the blues somewhere, plaintive notes rising above the wind that plowed across the rich delta.

It occurred to me as I lay there looking up at the same ceiling that once covered people trying to scrape out an existence, that they would never have believed their humble homes would one day be rented out as guest cottages to people willing to pay good money to experience their hardscrabble lives. What would they think now, I wondered, if they came back to their former dwellings?

I’m old enough to remember the mid-sixties and the people who lived in shacks very much like these. They worked hard, from sun-up past sundown and later at times, sowing crops, weeding, toting water, handpicking cotton and stuffing it in long burlap snakes; the faster they picked the more money they made, and it was hot, sweaty, back-breaking labor. Even the kids worked. I can recall seeing them as we drove by on our way to school or maybe even to swimming, kids no older than six or seven out working alongside parents in the fields. I didn’t think much about it then. I was too young to notice the differences in our lives, and too self-absorbed to think about why they all seemed skinny and dusty.

We’ve all come a long way since then. I’d like to think my generation has become more civilized, recent evidence to the contrary.

I fell asleep listening to faint notes of music drift from the Cotton Gin bar.

It seemed like only a few minutes later when I was yanked from sleep by a sharp, sudden noise. While the snores of three other women were strange enough, some alien sound had penetrated my REM sleep. I lay there, blinking up at the ceiling, my heart pounding crazily in my chest.

Something was wrong. I felt it more than saw it, and the hairs on my arms stood up and the back of my neck prickled. Bitty still lay next to me, and I heard Gaynelle mutter in her sleep. Carolann? Maybe she had gotten up.

I pushed myself up to lean on one elbow and reach for the bedside lamp. As I did, I heard a distinct scrape of something heavy across the floor in the main room. I groped for the lamp switch then paused. Maybe I should leave the lights off. I crept out of bed slowly.

My first impression was that all four of us were in bed. My second impression was that someone who wasn’t on the guest list was busily fumbling about out in the next room. Truthfully, I felt like jumping back into bed, pulling the covers over my head, and hiding. That was my first instinct.

Then, of course, my sense of duty kicked in and I roused the others as quietly as I could. “Get up,” I hissed. “We have a prowler.”

Gaynelle sprang from her bed immediately, while Carolann bolted upright in bed clutching a pillow in front of her like a shield. Then she tumbled out her side of the bed to fall flat on the floor. Meanwhile, I had snagged the first weapon I could find—one of Bitty’s kitten heels—and I grabbed Gaynelle by the arm.

“Come on,” I whispered as I tugged her toward the main living area. “Grab some kind of weapon!”

Gaynelle really is good to have around in emergencies. Rarely does she require long explanations before rising to the occasion. She snatched a heavy metal pitcher off the dresser and dumped the plastic flowers. Fully armed, we stormed the front room.

When I flicked on the light, there seemed to be no one there. I stood stock still. Had I dreamed it? Gaynelle glanced at me, and I knew she must be wondering the same thing. Then we both heard the clatter of dishes hitting the floor in the tiny kitchen area.

You’d think a midnight prowler would have sense enough to get out after being discovered. Or at least stop what he was doing. Not this one. Despite our menacing appearance, he kept opening cabinet doors and drawers.

Our intruder wore what looked like a black Ninja outfit. It did not flatter. He was a bit chunky and not much taller than me. Nor did he move very fast as Gaynelle and I bore down on him like a freight train. Instead of screaming in fear and fleeing out the front door—which stood wide open to help facilitate his escape—he turned away from the cabinet he had opened and threw something heavy. It was a Mason jar, and it hit poor Gaynelle right smack in the middle of the forehead. She dropped to the floor like a sack of flour. I looked down at her, then up at the masked intruder. Eyes glittered at me from the tiny eyeholes, and as he seemed to be unarmed—no more Mason jars at hand—I let out a bellow and charged him.

If I’d thought about it more, I would have dropped the slipper and run to lock myself in the bathroom. However, adrenaline must have taken over my body and my brain. It was certainly not common sense.

Holding the slipper high in my hand as if it was a machete, I got within two feet of him before he brought his hand down against the side of my neck. It dropped me like a rock. Dazed but not unconscious, I flopped around a little bit. Everything was fuzzy. My ears rang. My vision blurred. My head swam. Banshees screeched.

Really, it was Bitty screeching. She just sounded like something other-worldly. At the time screeching banshees seemed perfectly possible. My brain was as scrambled as an egg at a kindergarten egg toss. Random bits of information processed very slowly.

I heard swear words—male, and outraged protests—female. I became vaguely aware that there was a flurry of motion over my prone body. Something pink zipped past me. I dimly registered it at the same time as I heard a yelp of pain.

Bitty,
I thought hazily,
I must save Bitty . . .

Somehow I rolled over, her slipper still clutched in my right hand. I saw feet not far from my head. They did not look familiar. They looked big. The feet had on boots and I was pretty sure none of us had worn work boots to bed. So I hammered the feet with my weapon as hard as I could, over and over even though they were a blur of motion that danced sideways. All my focus was on those black work boots.

In what seemed like forever but was probably only a few moments, the boots left my line of sight. I hacked at the floor a few times anyway, just in case. No boots returned, and I finally rested my forehead against the back of my hand. Feathers tickled my nose but I didn’t care. The Ninja guy was gone. I knew from the sudden absence of sound that he had run like a rabbit. We had scared him away.
We are invincible
, I remember thinking.

But, really, I think it was Bitty’s screeching that convinced our intruder to leave, more than even her sharp fingernails. Since she sounded like an air raid siren, I’m sure he figured someone with more sense and a bigger slipper would show up to ask him what he was doing. It worked, and I won’t argue with that.

The pink flurry I had seen earlier knelt down beside me. “Trinket, are you okay?”

“Yep. Just trying to take a little nap here.”

“Honestly, you don’t look too good.”

I opened one eye and turned my head slightly to look up into Bitty’s face. She still had night cream slathered from one side of her nose down to her chin. A pair of ruffled pink night-shades perched halfway off her head. Blonde hair stuck out from beneath a ruffled pink cap askew under the blindfold. Her pink silk robe covered her from head to toe. She looked like a lopsided cupcake.

I whispered, “Were you in a bakery explosion? All that pink icing . . .”

“She’s delirious,” announced Bitty as she stood up. “Someone get a bucket of ice water.”

“No way,” I heard Carolann say. “I saw her go after that guy with nothing but a shoe. Besides, I think Gaynelle may have a concussion.”

Before Bitty could say anything there was a thunderous knock at the door and a voice demanding, “Are you ladies all right? We heard a lot of commotion in there.”

Help had arrived. While they weren’t the Mounties or a St. Bernard with a barrel of rum under his hairy chin, they were concerned employees who had heard the racket we made. I didn’t think about it then, but later it occurred to me that people had been able to hear Bitty screaming—so why didn’t anyone hear a gunshot the night Larry Whittier was murdered?

I asked that question
of one of the employees the next morning. His name was Joe Pettit, he was in his early twenties, and he had been working in the Cotton Gin bar for six months.

Shrugging, Joe said the band had been pretty loud. “At ten at night, you know, a lot can be going on. Music, drinking. It gets really busy. All I have time to pay attention to is dirty glasses and wiping things down.”

“So you didn’t notice anything unusual? Anything that maybe seemed out of place or someone who looked out of place?”

He shook his head. “About the only thing that was out of place was Mandy.”

“Mandy? What is that?”

He grinned. “It’s a who. Mandy Downs. She was supposed to show up for work and didn’t. I ended up having to cover my station and hers. She’s cute, and always has some crazy story to explain why she doesn’t show up, but it gets old after a while. Know what I mean?”

I did. I nodded sympathetically. “Amazing as it may seem,
cute and crazy
gets by with far too much.” I paused to look at my notes. “So when did you find out there had been a murder?”

“When I went outside on my smoke break. I saw the first cop car come up.”

“No one had mentioned anything about a shooting yet?” I was surprised. It had happened less than thirty yards from where he worked. Someone had to have reported it to the employee who called it in, and after all my years working in the hospitality industry, I knew how quickly something like that would get around to all the employees.

Joe shrugged. “Guess not.”

“Do you know who called it in?”

“Yeah, I know who they
said
called it in, but I don’t know how they got it so screwed up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I heard one of the cops asking for Mandy; said she’s the one who called in the nine-one-one, but that can’t be right. She wasn’t even here.”

“Could the dispatcher have meant a name that sounded like Mandy? Candy, or something like that?”