Dixie Diva Blues (29 page)

Little Brownie, who had been investigating the contents of the empty trap, came when I called him. This is a great improvement over his usual disdain. It’s as if he knows he has to depend on me for meals and treats when my parents are gone, so figures he has to pretend I’m the boss. Once they return, it’s back to the norm.

As soon as the dog spied the possum, he provided an immediate distraction. I was able to open the trap door without losing a finger. Then all I had to do was grab the dog, and the possum should hightail it out of there. Possums rock from side to side when they run, which probably explains why so many of them end up as roadkill. They aren’t very fast. Once the possum chose flight over fight, all would be well. I dragged Brownie back from the trap toward the house to give the possum a good head start.

While I held the struggling, barking dog by his collar, the possum flopped over on its side and stuck all four legs in the air. I was aghast. Had Brownie scared it to death? Oh, I hadn’t meant to be lethal, just possum-free. I leaned close to see if it was breathing but couldn’t tell. I eased the trap up on its side and shook it. No sign of life. I’d killed it. I’d known rabbits could die of fright, but it never occurred to me that possums could. I felt a little sad that I’d accidentally killed harmless wildlife.

“Get back,” I said to Brownie, and lifted the trap to take it to the edge of our yard. I hated to put the poor little thing in the garbage, I thought, so I’d just leave it in the trap for now and let Daddy take care of it when he got home. I set the wire metal trap down near our big plastic garbage cans. Brownie was a little too intrigued and kept barking, so I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back toward the house.

Then I heard the clank of metal and turned around just in time to see the “dead” possum spring to life and bolt from the trap to head across the empty field.

Brownie wrenched free of his collar. For an instant I stared stupidly at the empty collar with his name and rabies identification tags jingling nicely in my grasp. Then it hit me that Mama’s dog was liable to disappear into the gathering dusk in pursuit of the possum, and I’d never find him.

One thing in my favor was that Brownie has no concept of the word
quietly
. He possesses the loud bay of his beagle ancestors, and the stubborn tenacity of his dachshund ancestors. So while he can run pretty fast, he leaves a trail of noise that I can follow as long as my hearing and legs hold out. I took off after him.

While Cherryhill is now limited to just a few acres and the house, it is surrounded on the west side by subdivisions, and on the east side by fields and woods that haven’t yet caught the eye of land developers. That is where the possum headed, and that is where it was pursued by a little brown dog and a large irritated woman. I’m sure that anyone who happened to drive down Truevine Road near dark that day was startled by the sight of a possum, a dog, and a raving woman racing across furrowed fields.

By the time I managed to catch Brownie—only because he treed the possum and was trying to climb an oak to reach it—I could barely see my hand in front of my face. It was fortunate the possum had climbed the first tree it came to, because if it had gone deep into the woods I doubt any of us would ever have been seen again. As it was, I was dirty, tired, and rethinking my life choices when I stumbled into the house at last.

Brownie, of course, was none the worse for our little excursion. He promptly sat in the kitchen floor and stared expectantly at the refrigerator. I sagged against the nearest wall and tried to get my heartbeat back to normal. When I thought it had slowed to a speed less than two hundred beats a second, I made my way to the nearest chair and fell into it. Brownie barked at the refrigerator.

“Forget it,” I told him. “I don’t have the energy to feed you. We’re going to still be sitting here when Mama and Daddy get home next week, and they can feed you.”

Brownie is no fool. He left the refrigerator for the lure of KFC on the kitchen table. It was probably cold. I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure I had enough energy to open the little cardboard box anyway. Besides, I wasn’t really worried about him getting to it since it was sitting in the middle of the table. He looked up at me and tried his pathetic, big-eyed puppy pose that almost always works on my mother. I’m made of sterner stuff.

“No way. That’s
my
dinner. You get dog food.”

Mama makes his dog food with boiled chicken and long grain rice, and adds peas and carrots and broth to it, so that’s hardly a punishment. She includes vitamins and all good doggy things, and makes it up ahead of time and freezes it so that he always has a steady supply. I’m pretty sure she never did anything like that for me and my siblings when we were growing up, but then, we never had the influence over her that this one small dog does, either.

About the time the phone rang, I summoned up enough energy to get up from the chair and shake leaves from my hair. I debated on whether or not to answer. Lately it seemed as if answering phone calls led to something unpleasant. When the phone stopped ringing, I expected to hear the answering machine click on. Instead, my purse began to play music. At first I was a bit confused, then I recalled my father programming my new cell phone to play a song instead of ring like an ordinary phone. Since my purse sat on the kitchen table within reach, I pulled the cell phone out of the front pocket.

“Hi Trinket,” Daddy said when I answered. “Where are you?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Whose kitchen?”

“Our kitchen. I’m about to feed Brownie.” I made a face at the dog while saying that, and his ears perked up as if he understood.

“Did you check all the traps?” Daddy asked next.

“Yep. Two cats, one possum, no kitten.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “Nothing in the other trap, then?”

“Not yet. I’m sure the kitten will show up soon. It just isn’t hungry enough yet.”

As if on cue, my stomach growled. KFC beckoned me from the red and white cardboard box. I let my fingers do the walking and pulled out a juicy fried chicken leg with extra crispy crust. It was still hot enough to dribble juices down my chin when I took a bite. Brownie barked at me.

“What’s the matter with Brownie?” Daddy asked. I think that’s what he asked. The dog was barking so loud I wasn’t sure. I peeled off a portion of crust and tossed it to him.

“He’s hungry. We haven’t eaten yet. How do you like Colorado so far?”

“Great! Your mother’s already bought a cowboy shirt for both of us. We don’t want to look like tourists.”

I imagined there would be nothing Mama could buy that would disguise that fact, but didn’t want to destroy my father’s illusions.

“So you’re climbing Pike’s Peak tomorrow?” I asked instead.

“Oh no, we’re saving that for day after tomorrow. Tomorrow we’re renting a car and driving up to Cripple Creek. They have a lot of casinos there, and it’s still got a lot of nineteenth century buildings. Your mother wants to explore.”

“Tell her I said to stay away from the one-armed bandits.”

“Bandits? Trinket, I think it’s pretty safe.”

“I meant the slot machines. Have a great time. I hope you win a lot of money.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice? Be sure to call us when you catch that kitten. You know how your mother worries. Oh—she said to tell you if you catch it at night, be sure to keep it in the house until morning. Then you can take it to Dr. Coltrane.”

Taking the kitten to Kit Coltrane would be the highlight of my week. We hadn’t seen too much of each other lately, what with me being involved in criminal activities and all.

While talking with my father, I had wandered into the living room and turned on the lights. It’s a big house and can seem spooky at night when it’s dark. I’ve never felt unsafe there, since it’s where I grew up and I figure any ghosts or goblins made their escapes a long time ago when we were all kids. No self-respecting ghoul would stick around where it was liable to be more scared than those it haunted.

With the house so quiet, I picked up the remote and clicked on the TV. As usual, my father had it set to a news station. If he’s not watching WWII movies or the History Channel, he has to be tuned to one of the major headline news stations.

By the time I hung up from my parents, I had located yet another news channel. This one caught my eye because of the streaming news at the bottom of the screen. I was sure I had seen a familiar name go by. I stood and waited, and in a couple minutes it came by again. My mouth dropped open.

A Clarksdale grand jury had indicted Robert Rainey of Holly Springs for murder.

CHAPTER 14

“An indictment’s not the same thing as a conviction,” Bitty said when I called her. “Or at least, that’s what Jackson Lee says, and I think he’d know.”

“I’m sure he would.” I still sat on the living room couch staring at the TV, and every time the streaming news tape reached
Clarksdale grand jury indicts Robert Rainey of Holly Springs for murder,
I shuddered. “Have you talked to Rayna?”

“She hasn’t answered my calls. I’m worried about her.”

“Do you know if they’re home?”

“Well where else would they be? He can’t leave the house, remember?”

“Unless he’s in police custody,” I pointed out, and we both went silent for a few moments while mulling that over.

“I’m going over there,” Bitty said finally. “I’ll call you back.”

“Okay.” I clicked off the cordless phone and walked back to the kitchen.

Carnage met me just inside the door. Red and white cardboard littered the floor and the top of the table. I stopped short and stared in disbelief. What was left of my KFC three-piece meal with extra biscuits and gravy wouldn’t have been enough for a church mouse. Brownie hunched over a chicken thigh, blissfully chewing the extra-crispy crust. Biscuit crumbs left a trail from table to the rug on the floor by the kitchen sink where he now happily dined. A few bones were scattered about. Gravy made a brown puddle atop the table. The only thing intact was my coleslaw. Its Styrofoam container sat untouched.

“What have you done?” I demanded in a shrill voice. “My dinner!”

Brownie looked up with an innocent canine expression that clearly said he had no responsibility at all in the destruction. Chicken had just fallen from the sky into his jaws. Of course, we both knew better. While I cleaned up the mess, I said words that would no doubt make a sailor blush. Brownie remained supremely unaffected by anything but the loss of his pilfered meal.

After taking away the last of the chicken thigh and cleaning up the other bones, I ate my coleslaw with a peanut butter sandwich. Brownie got a healthy dose of Maalox, just in case he’d ingested part of a chicken bone.

While he sulked, I went back into the living room to wait on Bitty’s call. When I sat down, I noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine to signal a message. I hit the button to replay. Nothing but silence played back. I thought maybe I’d missed it, and replayed the message. Again, there was a long silence, although this time I was sure I heard someone breathing into the phone before the disconnect. The Caller ID read,
Unknown Caller
. Great. An obscene caller and I missed it. I always had a few choice things to say to those kind of calls, and rarely did I receive another one. Despite conventional wisdom that states one should just quietly hang up, I’d found it more effective to offer a few insults before hanging up the phone.

I sat down in Daddy’s recliner and turned up the volume on the TV. After several minutes went by and Bitty hadn’t called, I checked the cordless to see if it was working. A dial tone sounded, so I put it back on the charger just in case. I flipped through a few channels, paused briefly to watch a homeowner demolish his kitchen wall, then surfed on to a channel that showed some guy in a white coat screaming at kitchen staff. That was too horrible to watch, so I moved on to a crime show depicting a woman being stalked.

By the time the show ended, Bitty still hadn’t called. I picked up the cordless to call her in case she’d forgotten me. It’s been known to happen. The blasted thing had no dial tone. I put it back on the charger, then picked it up again, and still no dial tone. That meant I’d have to go to another phone since this one was being cranky. I muttered to myself as I went into Mama and Daddy’s bedroom to use their bedside phone. It’s one of those really big ones with large numbers that light up in the dark. It wasn’t working either.

I went back into the living room and tried the first phone again. Nothing. Great. A technician would have to be called. That meant I’d probably have to be at the house when he came out. Which meant I’d have to schedule it on my days off. Since I didn’t yet know when those would be, it was going to mean a lot of finagling back and forth that would probably drive me crazy. I went into the kitchen to retrieve my cell phone from my purse. I had put my purse on top of the refrigerator to keep it away from Brownie. I would have put everything he might conceivably eat up there as well, but unfortunately most of it wouldn’t fit. I’d just have to take a chance the kitchen table and chairs would survive him.

Just as I reached for my purse, all the lights went out. Living in the country, that’s not as shocking as it might be if I lived in town. It happens. The cause could be anything from a car knocking down a pole, to ice on the lines, to Anderson Ames getting drunk and mad at the electric company, and mowing down every pole he came to with his huge Massey Ferguson combine. Those things are pretty big.