Wedding Bell Blues (28 page)

These little white feet belonged to a child or someone small, someone in a long white dress. A ghost? We didn't have a ghost at the Dixie Dew. Not unless Miss Lavinia, the first guest who'd died in my B and B, had come back to haunt me. Debbie Booth was too newly dead to be a ghost yet.

“Go away,” I said, and waved my hand. “Go on. Get out. Get you gone.” That sounded pretty good. Commanding. Definite. “Git.”

“Beth?” squeaked out a tiny voice. “It's me. Lesley Lynn Leaford?”

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

She let out a small sort of strangled sound and I saw another person on the stairs behind her, holding her left arm around Lesley Lynn's throat and waving a gun with the other.

“Awurk,” I said. “Who are
you
?” I must have sounded like a very confused owl.

The person holding the gun pushed poor Lesley Lynn down a few steps and I saw the flyaway, crazy blond hair, the tattoos on the arm holding the gun. Mrs. Butch Rigsbee. Lesley Lynn gurgled.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” I finally blurted.

The woman laughed. “What do you think? You hussy.”

“Not me.” I put up both hands.

“You were in his motel room. I saw you go in. You answered his phone. I saw you go out, hiding behind that preacher man.” She was screaming now. The spit from her words glistened on poor Lesley Lynn's left cheek. Lesley Lynn squeezed her eyes closed.

“I wasn't seeing your husband. I don't even know your husband. Never saw him before in my life. Honest.”

Lesley Lynn waved a frantic arm.

“Let her loose,” I said to Mrs. Rigsbee. “She doesn't have anything to do with this.”

“Please,” Lesley Lynn said, grabbing at the muscled arm around her throat.

“Let her go!” I said again.

“Okeydokey. Here she comes!”

The woman turned Lesley Lynn loose and she slid down the stairs,
bumpety, bumpety, bump,
landing at my feet. She stood and shook herself, like she could shake off this whole nightmare.

“What did she have to do with anything?” I asked as I reached for Lesley Lynn.

“Why, nothing,” the woman said and waved her gun. “I had to have somebody hostage. I had to have somebody between me and this ‘who's on first, doesn't know shit from shinola' law enforcement in this town. They sure didn't seem concerned when I talked to them earlier this week. Nothing. Acted like a cheating husband was just another cheating husband. Podunk. This town is Podunk. I'm holding this so-called beauty queen and marching her down to that little bitty hole of a police station until I get somebody in this town serious about finding my husband.”

Nobody had told her that her husband was dead. That Bruce and Ossie had even identified the killer. They had probably been trying to contact her where she lived and didn't know she was here in Littleboro. Of course if they had listened to me in the first place, I could have helped them find her. Ossie thought from the get-go I had made up the whole thing about her threatening me.

“So that was you in the car? The one following me.” I put my arm around poor Lesley Lynn, who was shivering like Sherman does when he comes in soaking wet. I looked down to see if she was licking herself. No, just shivering. Poor thing. One minute she's onstage in the spotlight getting her crown of glory and the next being kidnapped by a crazy woman. What a roller coaster of a night.

Lesley Lynn wavered and rocked against me. I put both arms around her. Both of us rocked.

“Stand still,” Mrs. Rigsbee said. “So I can shoot you.”

Lesley Lynn still rocked. I put up my hand, as if that would do any good, as if it could stop a bullet. Used to work in the
Wonder Woman
comic books. Or was it
Superman
? I read more
Wonder Woman
than
Superman
when I was growing up.

“Don't you dare.”

“I mean it,” Mrs. Rigsbee said, and came down a few steps closer.

I thought about her shooting the balloons at the fairgrounds. Practicing. Maybe she's not such a good shot.

“Don't do it!” I screamed.

 

Chapter Forty-eight

About that time the gun went off with a loud
pop
. Mama Alice's big hall light fixture came down on me and Lesley Lynn in a lot of hard chunks and knocks and clatter. I instinctively put up my arms to try to shield us as the little glass hangy-downs rained around. Some of them hit my head and probably Lesley Lynn's, too. Glass fell in tinkles at our feet, all those hanging doolollies Mama Alice used to put me on a ladder once a year with a bucket of soapy water to clean, were now broken shards of glass. It looked like somebody had dumped a barrel of cracked ice on us. All that glitter. Glass and more glass.

With a dull thud followed by some bumps and thumps, Mrs. Rigsbee rolled down to land at the foot of the stairs. She lay still, glass on top and all around her. And us. For a moment the loud bang and crashing thumps still rang in my ears, then it was quiet. A strange sort of eerie quiet seemed to surround us.

At the top of the stairs stood Miles Fortune, holding Mama Alice's
Gone With the Wind
lamp. “I hit her with it,” he said with a laugh. “And it didn't even break.” He put the lamp back on the small hall table that stood on the landing. Mama Alice loved that lamp with its round white globes, the pink and green painted flowers.

Mrs. Rigsbee lay in a tangled heap at our feet. Miles came down the stairs.

“Is she dead?” I asked.

He lifted her limp wrist and bent to check the pulse in her neck, which I noticed had a tattoo of a match in flame on it. Weird. But so was this whole thing.

“I didn't hit her hard enough to kill her, I don't think,” he said.

By this time Lesley Lynn had let go of me and stood looking down at the body on the floor. She wrapped both arms around herself like she was freezing cold. Both of us just looked at the body at our feet, a very large, lumpy, not moving body at the foot of the stairs. By some miracle nobody was bleeding.

Miles Fortune pulled his cell phone from his pocket, a phone whose battery wasn't dead like mine, and called 911. I heard him tell them no one was hurt. I looked at Lesley Lynn, who nodded she was all right. I echoed her nod as Miles talked. “We don't need medics,” he said, “just the local law people.”

By this time Mrs. Rigsbee had come to, sat up and asked for a slug of “something to cut this hellfire headache.”

I groaned. At least the ambulance and the EMTs wouldn't come, but where was Ossie when I really, really needed him? At a bachelor party, probably paying some lap dancer or pole dancer or whatever guys thought was wild and funny. And getting looped, or snookered or whatever they called it. I hoped he'd get stopped on the way home. Pulled over, maybe ticketed for DUI by the highway patrol. Or did professional courtesy come into play more often than any of us ordinary citizens thought? Scott was with Ossie. Maybe as best man he'd be the designated driver. “Best man”! Just the two words reminded me how Reba got confused and started this whole mess.

Miles and I helped Mrs. Rigsbee to the living room where she sat on the couch, bent at the waist, head down and holding it. “When I find whoever hit me, he's gonna be a dead SOB,” she muttered.

Miles and I exchanged looks that said don't say a word. Say nothing.

I handed Mrs. Rigsbee a small cordial glass of Mama Alice's blackberry wine. “Sip it slowly,” I said. I even gave her a cocktail napkin, which she promptly unfolded and used to mop her face.

“Air,” she said. “I need air.”

Fifteen minutes later Bruce Bechner rang the doorbell. I let him in, showed him into the living room.

“This woman”—I pointed to Mrs. Butch—“kidnapped Lesley Lynn, tried to shoot me, shot down my grandmother's chandelier and I think you need to arrest her.”

Mrs. Butch stood and took a few steps toward Bruce. She had both hands on her hips and walked hard, like she was ready to stomp a hole in my floor. (I knew it wouldn't take much.)

“My husband is missing. He was last seen in this piddly Podunk town and somebody, somewhere better find him for me or—”

“Let's go down to the station.” Bruce took her arm, smiled at her sweetly and started to lead her from the room. “I've got a fresh pot of coffee brewing. We'll sit down and have a nice little chat. Then we'll talk about your good husband.”

“He wasn't good!” she screamed as they left. “He was a no-good, rotten, lying, thieving snake. He turned on me. Turned rotten after I married him. More rotten every year.”

She was still spluttering as they went into the night. Poor Bruce, I thought. You're going to need that pot of coffee.

Only then, when the door closed behind them, did I relax and introduce Lesley Lynn to Miles, who extended his hand. She accepted it with hers, which was still shaking. He patted her hand.

“She's our newly crowned Miss Green Bean,” I said.

“And I missed getting her crowning on film. What was I thinking? The grand event of a lifetime.” He laughed and went into the dining room. “Ladies,” he said as he crossed the hall, “I think we all need and deserve a little bit of libation, if Miss Beth doesn't mind.”

“Please,” I answered.

He returned with two cordial glasses and the decanter of blackberry wine, poured one each for me and Lesley Lynn. “This is the stuff for civilization, for shock to delicate systems.”

I offered a toast to Miss Green Bean and Lesley Lynn smiled. Weakly.

Then Miles produced a shot glass and a dusty bottle of Scotch I thought I recognized. “This”—he held up the bottle—“is my stuff. The kind of stuff with guts. I gotta restore mine.” He poured himself a slug, downed it, poured another. “In the back of the corner cupboard,” he said as if he had read my quizzical look. “That's where I found it. Good stuff.” Shaking his head side to side as though he'd come upon scenes like this all the time in L.A. where somebody was making a movie on every corner, he said, “I don't know what all this business was about, but things are better sorted out in the daylight.”

I took Lesley Lynn upstairs, ran her a hot bath in Mama Alice's big old footed tub, poured in the bath salts, and told her to climb in and soak. That's my remedy for a bad day and this had been a bad day and a bad night. Then I brought her some of my flannel pajamas (good old L.L.Bean), a robe and slippers, turned down the bed where Miss Lavinia had slept her last sleep and told Lesley Lynn good night and I'd see her in the morning.

Downstairs Miles had swept up the glass. “Somehow hanging up there, that fixture didn't look like it had this much glass in it.” He emptied the last of it in the metal trash bin, the big one with the Norman Rockwell
Saturday Evening Post
Thanksgiving cover stamped on it, the grandmother smiling as she served a huge turkey on a platter to her adoring family. What a lot of sweet rot we all tried to live up to every Thanksgiving. The trash bin tinkled as he carried it to the kitchen, then he said good night and headed up the stairs.

I looked up the number for the Presbyterian manse in the well-worn Carelock County phone book and called from my dependable landline telephone. Barbie Pittman answered. I told her Lesley Lynn was spending the night here at Dixie Dew. She thanked me, said she wouldn't have worried. Would have just assumed Lesley Lynn was staying with her aunt.

“Her aunt?”

“Yes. Her aunt Calista.”

Wow, I thought. There was only one person with that name in Littleboro: our mayor, Miz Honorable Moss. The whole world must be related, and it is a very small world.

I followed my own advice for a good soak in a tub with bath salts, lavender oil and anything else therapeutic I could pour in. I needed it. Afterwards I put on my favorite flannel pajamas and robe and padded in my slippers to check the house for the night.

Sherman was curled in his bed by the back door, Robert Redford beside him. I yawned, so tired I felt limp and my bones were loose. I checked the back and front door locks and fell into bed. Tomorrow
had
to be a better day.

When I was just about asleep I jerked awake and sat upright in bed. What had happened to Mrs. Rigsbee's gun? Where was it? Had Bruce taken it? Had he even asked about it? I think he just wanted to get her calmed down and down to the station. Maybe there he could handcuff her to a chair since we didn't have a jail or even a courthouse anymore. Where would he hold her? Probably run her over to Moore County jail. In the middle of the night? I bet she'd scream and cuss the whole way there. But what had happened to the gun? I couldn't remember. I was too tired at the moment to remember anything clearly. I went back to sleep.

 

Chapter Forty-nine

The next morning when I went in the kitchen to start the coffee, there stood Scott holding the gun. Pointed right at me!

“Whoa,” I said, holding up both hands and starting to back out.

“What's this doing in the wastebasket with all that glass? All those little dead hangy-down things?” he asked.

When Miles Fortune had swept up the glass he probably hadn't noticed Mrs. Rigsbee's little silver handgun, the kind you could stash in a pocket or a purse, and he'd dumped it all in the wastebasket. There had been a
lot
of glass dangles in a heap and scattered, plus the hall was dark without the overhead light.

I nearly fainted. “It's loaded,” I said.

He took the bullets out and laid them in a saucer on the table, then handed me the gun.

“What do I do with it?”

He grinned. “Put it under your pillow, my love.”

I was in no mood for his humor. I put the gun and bullets in my kitchen junk drawer and started the coffee. Then I sat down and told Scott the whole thing.

“So where's Lesley Lynn now?” he asked.