Dixie Diva Blues (44 page)

“That’s what I thought. Yet, someone is looking for something they think you have.” I thought for a moment. “And someone broke into Rayna’s house, too, but only Rob’s office was disturbed.”

“It’s just like I said earlier, there’s a criminal element in this world that’s getting entirely out of hand. We need to put them all in jail.”

I looked at her, but all I said was, “Your blinders are falling off.”

She reached up to catch the pink nightshades she wore to bed at night just as the elastic band snapped free. “So do you think it’s the same prowler?” she asked me.

“If not the exact same person, someone connected,” I replied after a moment. “I’m beginning to see a pattern here. It’s strange, but I think all this is related to Larry Whittier’s murder somehow.”

“Good lord, Trinket, do you mean the same guy who just broke into my house is the same guy who murdered Larry Whittier?”

“And probably killed Lee Hazen, too,” I said.

“Oh, that does it. I’m calling the police.” Bitty turned toward the phone but I put out a hand to stop her.

“No. Not yet.”

Bitty stared at me. “You’re always the one whining about calling the police every time the least little thing happens, and now you’re saying you
don’t
want to call the police? Really, Trinket, I wish you’d make up your mind.”

“There’s something going on here that doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make sense if it happened the way it’s supposed to have happened. I have to think about it for a while.”

Bitty shrugged and started toward the kitchen. “If we’re going to be thinking, I need some brain food. I always think better when I eat chocolate.”

I followed right behind her. Everyone knows chocolate is a brain food, I’m sure.

Once we had two leftover brownies, a slice of lemon pie, and Mississippi Mud Pie slices on the granite countertops, I brought out the sweet milk. Bitty keeps it in a pitcher so it gets really cold. I kinda miss the old milk deliveries when it came in glass bottles. There was just something wonderful about opening your back door early in the morning and finding ice cold sweet milk and buttermilk waiting on you.

Perched on bar stools dragged up to the kitchen counter, we stuffed our faces and I ran several theories by Bitty. Sometimes she’s more perceptive than usual. Sometimes she even listens to what I’m saying, too.

“So what you’re telling me is,” she began after she’d swallowed the last bite of chewy brownie, “that Larry Whittier getting killed was just the start of it all, and that Lee Hazen was involved with Larry, while these other guys have to be partners or all this stuff wouldn’t still be happening.”

“That’s a simplified version, but yes, that’s what I suspect.”

“That still doesn’t tell us who really killed Larry.”

“Sure it does. Big Al.”

“What?” Bitty blinked at me. “I’m not following.”

“Okay, pay attention. Walsh and Garcia are the toadies, the aides, so to speak, of this criminal enterprise. Big Al, whoever he is, sends those two out to terrorize and do the dirty work for him. They do an admirable job, but if you’ll notice, neither one of them has actually done major harm to anyone.” I put up my hand to forestall what I knew was going to come out of her mouth. “Present company excluded, of course. But you have to admit, Bitty, that all Walsh really did was threaten you and tie you up. He didn’t try to strangle you. And Garcia, for all his threats, didn’t try to shoot me, or even Brownie. Although I think he might have been really tempted to do the last.”

Bitty hugged Chitling closer to her, and the dog protested with a snarl. Lovely creature. So polite and affectionate.

“So how does all this play out then?” asked Bitty. “Walsh is in custody now, and only Garcia is out there, but according to you, this Big Al is the really dangerous one. Do you think the police know this?”

“I’m not at all sure what the police know. As far as the Clarksdale police are concerned, Rob is who killed Larry Whittier, and they’re leaving it up to the Holly Springs police to find out who killed Lee Hazen. I’m sure they suspect the two murders are related.”

Bitty’s eyes widen. “Then do they think Rob killed Lee Hazen, too?”

“Well, he was in town, but he was supposed to be on house arrest. They may wonder if he was able to get around that. But somehow, I get the feeling that Rob isn’t their primary suspect in Hazen’s murder. That brings us back to Big Al.”

“Wasn’t there a radio guy named that way back when?” Bitty asked.

“Possibly. But I hardly think this will be the same guy. Most radio personalities don’t go around killing people.”

“Well, people you never suspect often turn out to be killers, you know,” Bitty pointed out, and I nodded slowly.

“That’s very true. We’ve learned that lesson first hand this past year, haven’t we.”

“We certainly have. More milk?”

While Bitty poured me another glass of sweet milk, I ruminated on all the scraps of information floating about in my cluttered brain. There had to be a common thread that held all these random pieces together. I just had to find it.

When gluttony hour was over, we tidied up our mess. Wine bottles from the sack I’d cleaned up earlier were still scattered over the kitchen floor, the obvious point of entry for our prowler. He’d come in the back door, gone out the front door, just like he knew the layout of the house. I guessed that any savvy crook would study houses he intended to burgle, but this one didn’t even steal anything. You’d think that the first order of business would be to establish where the valuables were and what they were.

One more point in my building theory that all these little incidents tallied up to one big crime: murder.

Motive was a vital component of most murders. While Bitty had once voiced the opinion that a lot of murders were over silly things like three dollars or hijacked parking spots, my idea was that our murderer had a lot bigger stakes. I narrowed my motivation down to the facts that Larry Whittier was an accountant for Walsh and Garcia, who were pit bosses at Bailey’s casino. If the two men were embezzling funds—which I assumed they must be—and working for Big Al, then the stakes were obvious. So either Whittier had decided to cut himself into the proceeds, or he’d meant to inform authorities of what was going on.

I went with the former. Nothing makes criminals more angry than someone else wanting something for nothing. Besides, it was the only thing that made sense, seeing that Hazen was involved. Lee Hazen was a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. How had he become tangled up in this mess?

I looked over at Bitty as we headed toward the staircase to go back upstairs and to bed again. “We need to see what Rob and Rayna can find out about Lee Hazen.”

“Or we need to go back over to Miranda Watson’s house and demand that she tell us how she found out about Walsh and Garcia,” Bitty retorted. “She’s in this up to her pig’s neck, I just know she is.”

“Maybe.” I doubted it, but if it made Bitty happy to think her current nemesis was involved in murder, then I wouldn’t argue. Everything would come out eventually.

CHAPTER 21

Cell phones are remarkably resilient, I discovered when I finally got out of bed at the late hour of eleven that morning. All I had to do was replace the battery in the little slot and plug in two tiny wires, and it made a nice little sound to let me know it was still alive. Getting the plastic back on it was the most difficult part, but I finally managed it.

Bitty was already in the kitchen when I went downstairs. Maria the miraculous and invisible maid had come and gone, because the granite countertops gleamed and there was no sign of our late night revelry or our early morning snack-fest.

“I think a troop of elves come in to do your cleaning,” I said as I sprinkled more sugar on my grapefruit half so that it made a nice, white mound. “Maria is a myth.”

Bitty eyed my breakfast with a jaundiced eye. “It’s a wonder you don’t have sugar issues. Like diabetes or something.”

“So says the lady eating the last piece of chess pie for breakfast.”

“It’s nutritional,” Bitty defended herself. “Milk, butter, eggs, cornmeal—”

“Sugar,” I reminded.

“You’re just annoyed because I got the last piece.”

I thought about it a second. “You’re right.”

“Then you should have gotten up earlier, like I did.”

“I couldn’t go back to sleep,” I said. “Things kept going around and around in my head. It was daylight before I even closed my eyes.”

“Well, I slept very well, thank you. Chen Ling and I always do.”

I eyed her a bit sourly. “I can never figure out if you sleep so soundly because your conscience is clear, or if it just means you’re brain dead.”

“Clear conscience,” Bitty said cheerfully. “So what are our plans this morning?”

I yawned, and covered my mouth with one hand. “Excuse me. Well, I need to go see Rob and Rayna. I have some questions for them, and I want to see if Rob was able to find out any information about Lee Hazen. That’s the only loose end that really needs tidying up for me.”

Bitty looked surprised. “You know who the killer is?”

“Yes. I already told you. Big Al.”

“Trinket, there’s no such person as ‘Big Al.’ Not really.”

“That’s not his real name, no.”

“So what is his real name?”

I had to admit I didn’t know. “But I have a couple suspects,” I added when Bitty rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I just can’t choose between them.”

“I’d ask who they are, but I’m afraid I might be one of them.” Bitty got up from the kitchen chair. “I’ll call Rayna and see if it’s a good time for us to visit. Then we can do your Perry Mason thing, and still get back here in time for Jackson Lee to come for dinner.”

“Are you cooking?” I couldn’t help but ask, since it’s still a fear of mine that Bitty will decide to actually turn on the stove burners or use something other than the microwave.

She paused in the doorway to look back at me. “It would serve you right if I said Yes, but I’m afraid my insurance will go up if someone hears about it. Sharita delivered a nice lasagna this morning while you were still lying in bed.”

“Am I invited for dinner?” I asked as I followed her from the kitchen. “I’ll be nice and quiet, really I will.”

By the time we set out for Rob and Rayna’s, I had secured an invitation not only for myself, but for Kit to join us for dinner. Sharita Stone’s lasagna is not something I ever want to pass up.

“How did you finally find this out?”
I asked Rob. He leaned back in his office chair, hands clasped behind his head, his leg bent and his ankle propped atop one knee. He smiled.

“Lee Hazen is from Alabama. I had to search surrounding states before I could find out anything about him.”

“So he’s married to Trudy Partee from Potts Camp, and she’s Miranda Watson’s cousin.”

“
Was
married to her,” Rob corrected me. “Trudy divorced Lee about five or six years ago.”

“Now we know there’s a link between Miranda and Lee Hazen,” I said as I ran the connection through my head a couple times. “Maybe that’s how she found out about Walsh and Garcia.”

“I would think so. Lee kept in touch with Trudy as far as I know, even after she got married again to Evan Partee.”

“That would explain why she was scared to come forward, I suppose,” said Bitty, who was sitting in a chair next to the desk with Chen Ling perched in her lap. “Most new husbands are picky about their wives remaining in contact with former husbands.”

“So says the lady who’s been married four times,” I pointed out. “She’d know.”

Bitty smiled. “Darn right I do. Franklin was always jealous of Frank, even though I told him he didn’t have anything to worry about in that area. Frank went to prison for much too long for him to be a threat of any kind. Besides, I try not to repeat the same mistakes.”

I looked at my cousin for a moment, remembering that she’d been married four times to four different men, and finally realizing that she doesn’t consider the marriages as mistakes so much as she does the grooms. It makes sense, in a Bitty kind of way. After all, each husband was completely different from one another. While it’s hard to think there are that many flawed individuals in the world, I can attest that if the husbands had put as much work into the marriage as Bitty did, she’d still be married.

To one of them, anyway.

“What do you think our prowlers were after?” Rayna asked with a frown. “It’s not like we have a lot to steal. We just live in this run-down hotel and try to get by.”

“I don’t think the prowlers were after valuables. At least, not what we’d consider valuables,” I replied. “Walsh said something to me yesterday that made me think, and I’ve come to the conclusion that he thinks we have the password to get into the flash drive program.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Because we
do
have it.”

The three of them just looked at me like I’d lost my mind. I hoped that I’d be able to prove them wrong. Temporarily, anyway. Long-term is too much to hope for.