Dixie Diva Blues (46 page)

My stomach dropped. “You’re thinking of mass murder? That’s what it would be if you killed all of us. Have you sunk that low, Jake?”

“Maybe. I admit it’s not my first choice. You’re family, after all.”

Bitty said fiercely, “Not anymore! I refuse to have a blood relative who’s nothing but a common criminal!”

Jake laughed without real amusement. “Too late, cupcake. That ship has already sailed. Let’s get this over with.”

Just as he gestured with his pistol, Chen Ling seized the moment. She rushed at him without warning, her three canine teeth sinking into the flesh of his calf muscle. Jake yelped in pain and surprise, and with his attention momentarily distracted, Rob kicked up and out with both feet and caught Jake’s gun hand just right. The pistol went sailing through the air and landed somewhere on the other side of the room. Rob lunged forward, his wrists still bound with duct tape, and head-butted Jake right in the mid-section.

Jake went down with Rob on top of him, and Bitty decided to join the fray. Since she was the only one of us with her hands unbound, she grabbed the first weapon that she saw. It happened to be a toilet plunger. Why it was in Rob’s office is still a mystery to me, but since he’s also the hotel’s general handyman, I guess it’s feasible.

At any rate, Bitty began beating Jake in the head with the hard rubber end of the plunger, screaming things at him like, “Red-neck trash! Hillbilly hooligan!”

Some of her names were a little more inventive and on the impolite side of the verbal scale, so I won’t repeat them here. Suffice it to say that Bitty can have a most inelegant turn of phrase when really angry. Her language choices would have made the most seasoned sailor blush, I’m pretty sure.

I am
very
proud of her.

It took two cops to pull Bitty off Jake Hankins. They arrived just in time to save one of their own from a humiliating beating at the hands of a petite Diva with a plunger. I have rarely been so sad to see police show up.

EMTs arrived right behind the police, and took Ray Walsh off on a stretcher. He was still alive, but barely. Uniformed officers filled the room and began cordoning off the crime scene. Rob and Rayna were untied and taken into the front of the hotel to give their statements separately. That left just me and Bitty there with Jake and the police. Not to be forgotten, Chen Ling barked almost nonstop until Bitty shushed her.

Jake lay still on the floor, surrounded by his fellow officers. Lieutenant Marcus Stone, Sharita’s brother, took custody of Jake. First he cuffed him with his hands behind his back, then hauled him to his feet and read him his rights. I thought it rather ironic.

Bitty pointed the plunger at Jake’s battered face. “You should be ashamed!”

He shrugged as best he could since his hands were cuffed. “Maybe. But you don’t know what it’s like to be without money all your life. I do.”

“Lots of people are without money, but they aren’t dishonest enough to steal. Or to kill for it,” said Bitty. “You are lower than a snake’s belly, Jake Hankins. You deserve whatever you get.”

Before a uniformed officer could take him away, Jake looked at me. “How did you figure it out? I made sure there wasn’t anything to tie me to Walsh and Garcia.”

“I have a feeling Lieutenant Stone can answer that question better than I can. Until a few minutes ago, I wasn’t sure it
was
you.”

Stone looked over at me and smiled. He’s a pretty big guy, and even though he had once taken me to jail when I was dressed only in one of Bitty’s caftans, I rather liked him. He was pretty no-nonsense, and open to a limited amount of suggestion. He nodded at me.

“Don’t be too modest, Miz Truevine. Trudy Partee asked for me because you told her to, the way I understand it. Of course, somebody setting her trailer on fire didn’t help much. She got scared enough to come in and talk, and said you’d told her to ask for me.”

Bitty scooped up Chen Ling and sat her in an empty chair, then asked, “She
did
? When did you talk to her, Trinket?”

“Actually, it was Miranda who must have passed along my message. I thought if anyone might know the real identity of Big Al it would be her. That’s why Lee Hazen got killed. He’d found out that the guy behind the casino thefts was a cop. So he sent him a message to meet him at Strawberry Plains to talk about swapping the flash drive and the password for money. I think he thought that he’d be safe in a crowd. He was wrong.”

Jake shook his head in disgust. “You nearly caught me. I thought for a while that you’d seen me.”

“I didn’t. You didn’t have to kill Lee Hazen, Jake.”

“Why not? He lied to me. He didn’t have the right flash drive, and the password he gave me was gibberish. He would have been trouble down the road sooner or later. It’s always best to deal with small problems before they get to be big ones.”

I cocked my head to one side and looked at him. There was no remorse in his eyes at all. This man I’d known since he was a boy had become a total stranger to me. How had I ever trusted him for even a second? I shook my head at my own stupidity.

“And to think that I suspected Travis of killing Hazen.”

Jake blinked. “Who?”

“The Audubon employee who helped me up after you pushed me down. I’d begun to think he must have killed Lee Hazen. He was the only other person who had the time to do it. It just never occurred to me for a long time that it might be you, Jake.”

“Sorry to disillusion you, cupcake.”

“And that’s how I tied you into all this in the first place,” I said. “You use that name a little bit too much. Once Bitty came home saying it after being around Walsh like she was, the next time you said it I started to wonder if it was just coincidence.”

Jake stared at me a couple seconds, then shook his head. “Looks like you should have been a cop instead of me.”

“If I had, I know of two people who’d still be alive,” I retorted.

When the uniformed officer escorted Jake out, Bitty turned to look at me again. “Why didn’t you share any of this stuff with me?”

“Because I wasn’t sure I was right about most of it. It was all
if
this, and
if
that—I didn’t want to be wrong.”

“Well, being right didn’t help you too much. If it wasn’t for Chen Ling, we’d all be dead by now.”

“Probably.” I shuddered. “Although he did say he didn’t want to kill us, so maybe Jake just would have tied us up and left us somewhere.”

Lieutenant Stone had stepped to the door, but turned around to look at us. “Don’t be too sure of that, Miz Truevine. Jake Hankins isn’t exactly the kind of guy to let too much get in his way when he’s after something. The same traits that made him a good cop are the same ones he used to be a good criminal.”

“That’s a scary thought,” said Bitty.

“You might think about that the next time you go chasing after criminals, ladies. You Divas have been stepping on police toes far too much. So far we’ve been pretty soft on you, seeing as how you didn’t do much damage, but this time—you cost the city quite a bit of money with that business at the All-Right Storage units.”

“You need to put the blame for that right where it belongs,” I said sharply. “Jake Hankins was behind it since he’s the one who convinced police that Hazen had partners who might come after whatever was hidden in the storage unit. Wasn’t he?”

Stone didn’t respond, but I saw his expression shutter and I knew I was right. He just couldn’t admit it, whether for official reasons or personal, but that didn’t matter.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to answer me. I have a feeling you’ll find out from Jake, if he decides to cop a plea, that he didn’t know where Larry Whittier had hidden the flash drive and password, that all he knew was Lee Hazen had a storage room Larry had tried to break into. I’m quite sure he searched it long before we got there, but just didn’t think to look inside the saxophone. Or maybe it took me busting the thing over someone’s head for the flash drive to come out. But even after we foolishly gave it to him thinking he’d turn it in as evidence, he didn’t have the password necessary to open up the bank account information Larry had hidden.”

Marcus Stone slowly shook his head. “You have a most interesting theory there, Miz Truevine.”

I smiled. “Don’t I? I’m betting Trudy Partee had some interesting theories of her own to share with you. She
is
the reason Lee had talked his way into the middle of a deal between Larry and the two thugs Jake hired, I’m sure. Lee wanted her back. He made her some wild promises, I’ll bet. That’s why he stole the saxophone from Larry and locked it in his storage unit, so that Larry wouldn’t be tempted to cut him out of the deal. Lee had the flash drive with all the offshore bank account numbers, but Larry had the password to access them.

“Maybe they planned to cut out Walsh and Garcia altogether, I don’t know, but what they didn’t count on was ‘Big Al’ being involved. Once Lee found out about it, he got scared. Either he or Larry told Trudy that a dirty cop was involved, and they needed to get out of town and go into hiding, I’m sure. After Larry was murdered, I imagine both Lee and Trudy were scared witless. Then Lee did a very, very foolish thing—he sent the message to ‘Big Al’ that he wanted to trade the flash drive and password for a portion of the money. He probably thought he could get away before anyone found out they were fakes. He just didn’t expect a stone cold killer.”

“But Trinket,” Bitty said, “if that’s true, why didn’t Lee Hazen just keep the flash drive for himself?

“For one thing,” I replied, “he didn’t have the password. And for another, he’d have no idea how to get to those bank accounts if he’d had the password right in front of him. Larry was the accountant, not Lee. Lee never finished high school. He was just a small-town Alabama boy with dreams of big money. So who could he trust to help him? No one. He had to try to make a deal, or he’d be cut out altogether. But that didn’t mean he was willing to let go of the big money by giving up what he had, either.”

I looked back over at Lieutenant Stone. “Once you’ve built your case or Jake takes a plea, I’d be quite interested to learn how much of what I suspect is correct.”

Stone nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. And you keep in mind what I said about the Divas needing to take a back seat and let the police do their jobs.”

“We’ll certainly keep that in mind, Lieutenant,” I said with a smile.

He nodded, started out the door, then turned back to look at me. I saw from the sudden awareness in his eyes that he knew exactly what I meant.

No promises.

CHAPTER 22

“I’d make a fabulous Lady Gaga, don’t you think?” Bitty said to me and Rayna. “I mean, we’re both blonde, and I’ve been told I have a lovely singing voice.”

“I want us to go as Charlie’s Angels,” Rayna protested. “You know why.”

I looked at her. “So Rob still hasn’t sufficiently begged your pardon for that
faux pas
, I assume?”

“Rob is lucky I don’t starch his tighty-whities,” replied Rayna. “I’m letting him sweat it out for a while yet. Imagine, insulting us like that!”

“Yes. Imagine,” I said aloud while privately thinking that we’d been called much worse than “over the hill Charlie’s Angels” a time or two, and probably deservedly.

We sat on Bitty’s front porch, having successfully devoured an entire platter of freshly baked muffins, and were working on nice mugs of Irish coffee to offset the chill in the air. Autumn was sneaking in to Holly Springs at last.

“So where do you think we should have our Diva Halloween?” asked Bitty as she readjusted the furry gnome in her lap. “We could always decorate the Inn like a haunted house again, don’t you think, Rayna?”

“
No
,” came Rayna’s swift, blunt response. “It took me weeks to get all the Silly String off the ceiling, and whoever decided to bring a live bat for realism never came back for it. I spent two months thinking a vampire was in my bedroom closet waiting for me to go to sleep. Rob finally caught it, but said the next Halloween party I decided to host had better be in the cemetery where no one could get hurt.”

“Hm,” said Bitty, suddenly busy adjusting Chitling’s little sweater around her fat, furry body.

We both looked at her suspiciously. When Bitty goes quiet, it usually means she’s up to something or guilty of something. I tried to imagine where she might have gotten a live bat, but then Rayna came up with a new idea.

“Oh, I know the perfect place to have our Halloween party!”

“Don’t say the cemetery,” began Bitty, “because I’m not about to—”

“Of course not. I was thinking of the Shack Up Inn. It’s perfect! We can rent some of the shacks and no one has to drive home, and all the Divas can stay there.”

“That’s a great idea, Rayna,” I said. “Do you think enough shacks will be available?”

“I can certainly find out. Bitty? What do you think?” Rayna turned and asked.

“I think I should go as Lady Gaga. It will still be a costume party, right?”

“Right. But I think we should go as Charlie’s Angels. It’s a lot more appropriate since we managed to solve two murders and keep Rob from going to prison for life.”