Authors: Virginia Brown
Peering at Bitty with a slight frown, Gaynelle asked, “You’re saying you
don’t
wish him to be put in your cellar, am I correct?”
Her question made me ponder Bitty’s past activities, but I just said, “I think what Bitty means is that the police have already been here once, and if they come back with a search warrant it won’t look very good for Philip to be in her cellar next to bottles of twenty year old wine.”
“Well,” Georgie suggested almost timidly, “he’s already dead, so why don’t we just hide him in the cemetery?”
Gaynelle patted her arm. “That is indeed the logical place, dear, but I’m afraid they’d be certain to notice a new grave, even if we were able to dig one without being seen. We’d be rather conspicuous, I fear.”
Georgie, rather shy and bookish, with long red hair in a French braid down her back, blue eyes, and horn-rimmed glasses, shook her head. “I know that, Aunt Gaynelle, but you know how so many of those above-ground vaults are cracked and broken. They took off some of the broken lids to repair the vaults. They use a kind of resin that dries fairly quickly, but once it bonds, it lasts longer than the original stone.” She paused and pushed at the glasses sliding down her nose, then bit her bottom lip before adding, “I was out there yesterday and I happen to know where there’s an empty vault with the lid mostly off. The gates close at five this time of year, but the workers are already back at the maintenance sheds by four-thirty.”
“It’s an excellent idea,” Gaynelle said, and looked at Rayna. “What do you think?”
Rayna looked around at us. “Divas?”
We all looked at each other. Unanimous agreement was signaled by raised right fists and thumbs pointing toward the ceiling. I wasn’t certain if I’d just been unofficially inducted into the Dixie Divas or not, but I was definitely included in the graveyard shift.
* * * *
There was some difficulty loading the senator into a vehicle for his journey. I pulled my Taurus up into the driveway behind Bitty’s sports car and close to the back door. When I opened my trunk, I looked doubtfully from the car to the plastic and duct-taped figure lying on the back porch. The senator had been nearly six feet tall, and probably weighed a hefty two-fifty.
“I don’t think he’ll fit,” I said.
Bitty put her hands on her hips. “We can cut off his legs. I have an electric kitchen knife I only use at Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
“Someone get Bitty a Jack and Coke,” Rayna called, and gave her a gentle nudge toward the house. “We’ll get it all worked out, hon. You just go on inside and have a drink.”
“Come along, dear,” Gaynelle said, her usually brusque manner softened to a tone useful with a five year old. “We’ll have us a toddy while we wait. Won’t that be nice?”
Rayna, Sandra, Georgie and I studied the situation with the combined skills of women completely out of their league. I’m glad to say that none of us had ever before encountered the necessity of carting off and hiding a dead ex-husband.
Sandra finally suggested, “Let’s wrap him up in one of Bitty’s old rugs and stick him in my SUV.”
“Bitty doesn’t have an
old
anything,” Rayna replied. “She donates to charities a lot. It’s a great tax write-off and she gets to flaunt the way she’s spending her alimony so Philip can seethe. I guess now she’ll have to find another entertainment.”
“God forbid,” I said. “She’ll have to get a new ex-husband to make miserable, and I’m not sure any of us want to go through that again.”
“Just be glad you weren’t here during the worst of it,” Sandra said with a shake of her head. “I thought they were actually going to end up in a gunfight in court square after one of the hearings.”
Thank God for small favors.
Now that we had a plan, we had to make it work. Sandra seems to be very organized. In her mid-forties, about five-four, sturdy, and practical, she works only part-time now, filling in at hospitals or doctors’ offices when and where as needed. As a matter of practice, she keeps a well-stocked kit similar to that of an
So Sandra’s SUV was backed up the driveway, the senator rolled into a rug that Bitty grudgingly let us haul down from an upstairs guest bedroom, then carried out by six sweating pallbearers, including Gaynelle Bishop who refused to shirk her Diva duty. Even Bitty grabbed a hunk of fringe and wool rug, though a bit unsteadily since she had a whiskey glass in one hand. We all heaved at the same time, and Philip thunked into the back of the SUV like a sack of Irish potatoes. We looked at the results of our efforts. A good two feet of him still stuck out.
“I’ll put the back seats down,” Sandra said, “but we’ll have to take two cars now.”
Georgie and I got in the front seat and pulled, while Sandra and Rayna pushed from the rear until we managed to get the respected member of Congress wedged into the cargo area.
“I think I’ve got a hernia,” Georgie gasped when we finished, and she collapsed in the driver’s seat with a hand pressed against her side.
“And just think,” I reminded her cheerfully, “we get to carry him from the car to the vault next.”
Georgie gave me a pained look. I smiled. Maybe I’m not as old as I thought.
With the back seats laid flat and Philip dragged forward, only wool tassels hung slightly over the edge. When we slammed shut the cargo door, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Bitty refrained. She sucked down the rest of her whiskey and glared at the SUV.
“That rug costs more than Philip’s hair-weave and his last underage tart’s new boob job combined,” she said, and as Gaynelle escorted her back into the house to freshen up her glass, Bitty added, “I just hate it when bad things happen to good carpets, don’t you?”
Rayna elected to ride with Sandra just in case of trouble. None of us knew exactly what kind of trouble might arise, but then, when we’d awoken this morning, I daresay none of us had expected to soon be hiding a frozen corpse, either.
Georgie, our designated time-keeper, pointed to her sports watch and said, “Three minutes until lift-off.”
That gave us added incentive, and Gaynelle hustled Bitty from the house and out to the curb, while the rest of us tried to appear as normal as possible, just friends donating a carpet to the local charity or Goodwill box. We had ten minutes until law offices, banks, and government employees got off work and into their vehicles to crowd the streets. Since everyone practically knows everyone else, should the police ever ask, someone was bound to remember that Sandra and Rayna had been hauling a carpet around, followed by Gaynelle, Bitty, Georgie and me.
When Sandra pulled out, the rest of us piled into Gaynelle’s twenty year old light blue Cadillac and followed the SUV at the seemly pace of a funeral procession. At the intersection of North Maury, Sandra went straight and we turned right, just in case. A few streets up we turned onto South Market Street by the court square, tooled at a reasonable speed past old homes and office buildings, then passed Chulahoma Street and under the wrought-iron sign at the main entrance of the cemetery.
Hill Crest Cemetery, also known as “the Little Arlington of the South” because of the notable generals buried here, is enclosed by fencing and wrought-iron gates. It’s not the only cemetery in Holly Springs, but it’s the biggest. There’s another cemetery on East Boundary Road just off Old 78 Highway, but it’s new and doesn’t have the ancient, gnarled holly trees, oaks, and marble monuments dating back to the early nineteenth century like this one. Truevines are buried here in several plots, being a rather fertile family in the past. There’s even a Truevine here who joined the Union army. His grave has a small marker with a carved Confederate flag crossed by a Union flag as testament to the love borne a son despite parental disagreement.
Five wrought-iron gates mark the entrances; three are left open during the day. Sandra chose the one farthest from the maintenance sheds and office. The narrow road dips sharply and loops around, branching off through twenty-five acres. At the far end of the cemetery lies a small trough that makes a path between neatly mowed grass and tall pines. In front of that is the newer section. It’s rather bare-looking. Near the old gates, tall monuments mark old family plots and the passage of two hundred years.
Sandra’s SUV slowed down, and she seemed to be looking in her rearview mirror for directions.
“When we get to the right vault, tell me and I’ll stop so you can get out,” Gaynelle said to Georgie in the back seat, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “I thought to bring some flowers.”
Bitty, sitting up front with Gaynelle and the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, stared at Gaynelle as if she’d just said she’d voted for a Democrat in the last election. Gaynelle’s known to be an ardent Republican. “You’ll put flowers on that pervert’s grave? I think you’ve lost your mind, Gaynelle Bishop.”
To Gaynelle’s credit, she didn’t fly off the handle, but then, after years of teaching pupils liable to do everything from throwing spitwads to setting the chemistry lab on fire, I imagine she has a great deal of self-control. She just reached over to pat Bitty on the arm.
“Bitty dear, the flowers aren’t for the senator. They’re just in case anyone should notice us and wonder what we’re doing. It’s a ruse. Once we’ve gotten him into the vault, you can burn them if you like.”
“I think I’ll do just that.”
“Suit yourself, dear. It’s a lovely dried arrangement I took from your dining room table.”
Bitty’s answer to that was another splash of whiskey into her empty glass. Apparently, Coke and ice took up too much room.
Fortunately, Georgie spied the vault just ahead. It was getting close to five, and soon the cemetery gates would close for the night. It occurred to me that no one had suggested just how we were going to get back in to get him moved before morning.
Before Georgie got out of the car I asked, “If we’re supposed to come back for him after dark, how will we get in?”
“It won’t be that hard,” she said, and held up a cell phone. “Before we left Bitty’s I called the cemetery office and told them I had a little more work to do for the historical society, and it might take me until dark. I come here a lot. The caretaker gave me a key last week, and I haven’t given it back yet. It fits the lock on this gate. I like to sit out here sometimes at night. It’s quiet.”
“I think you need more friends your age, dear,” Gaynelle said, but I began to realize that Georgie is probably used to being underestimated. She just smiled and closed the car door.
It must have been a strange procession, should anyone happen to have seen it, six women advancing on a broken vault with a bulky rug and an expensive arrangement of dried flowers. It was going pretty well until Bitty tripped over a carved statue of a boy and his dog. She held on to the edge of the rug to keep from falling, and put us all off-balance. We struggled valiantly, but the rug came open, the senator fell out, and Bitty sat down hard on the grass right in front of the stone statue. As the senator rolled downhill toward her, she put out a foot to stop his progress.
“Don’t even
think
about it,” she said to the plastic-wrapped corpse, then knocked back a slug of Jack Daniel’s.
“How did she do that,” Sandra wondered, “without spilling a drop of whiskey?”
“Bitty is a woman of many talents,” said Rayna as she covered the senator discreetly with the dark burgundy carpet.
We got him tucked into it again, ignoring Bitty’s suggestion that we “Just stick his head back up his ass and roll him like a truck tire the rest of the way to the vault.”
“You stay right there, dear,” Gaynelle said to Bitty, “and hold the flowers.”
Bitty, I’m happy to say, agreed.
As Georgie had said, a broken vault had half the top off to one side, the other half still in place but askew. It was a plain vault, about three feet high and eight feet long, with one of those thick stone slabs supposed to be set in place on top. The cover had broken in half, right across the carved names that are almost illegible, worn away by time and weather. I could barely make out the date of 1835. No coffin resided inside, and with a great deal of huffing, puffing, a few words suitable only for pool halls and maybe jail cells, we managed to slide Philip Hollandale into the burial vault.
“This is . . . a lot of trouble . . . if we’re just coming . . . back in a few hours,” Rayna got out between gasps for air. “I say . . . we leave him here.”
It sounded like an excellent idea to me. At least the police would be notified and could begin looking for whoever murdered him.
Bitty reached us, limping slightly with the flower arrangement under one arm and empty glass in her hand. She peered into the vault. “I say we mount him naked on a pole in court square. Philip loved to be naked and mounted.”
Sandra looked at her. “Now that we’ve got him far away from your house, just exactly how did Senator Hollandale get that fatal head wound?”
“I know how,” Bitty said, “I just don’t know who did it.”
Gaynelle gave the others a swift summary of the events at Sherman Sanders’ house, and ended by saying, “Now Sanders is missing, so it’s quite probable he killed the senator and fled.”
“So you see,” said Bitty rather plaintively, “unless I tell the police that I saw Philip in the foyer and didn’t report it, they won’t suspect Sanders at all. Though they do know he’s missing.”
“What about the dog the police found?” Rayna asked. “Do you think it’s Sanders’ dog, and if it is, do you think it has any connection to all this?”
“We can ask Faye Harper,” Gaynelle said. “She works part time in the animal clinic. She may very well know something.”
A cold breeze rustled the holly branches of a tree, and whistled through the bare limbs of an oak nearby. I shivered. Things were getting too complicated, as if hiding a dead body wasn’t complication enough.
I wasn’t quite sure how to bring up the subject, so I just dove in. “Listen, I think we all should keep this to ourselves for now. The less people involved, the better it will be. If the other Divas don’t know anything, the police can’t accuse them of obstruction.”