Then an unearthly shriek that sounded worse than the crows came from the cabin, and we all burst into action. I started toward the cabin in a gait somewhat similar to that of a crab on a pier, since my knee throbbed from having hit the dashboard earlier. Beside me, Rayna ran much more gracefully—and faster—to leap up on the cabin porch ahead of me. Gaynelle and Cindy weren’t far behind us, while Deelight huddled in a crouch on the ground next to Marcy Porter and Cady Lee. Sandra had disappeared.
Rayna, going into the cabin at a run, met Bitty coming out of the cabin at a run. They collided just inside the doorway. The impact knocked them both backwards. Bitty landed inside on the floor, and Rayna sprawled on the porch.
I had a stitch in my side from trying to run the hundred yards or so to the cabin and arrived out of breath and holding a hand to my ribs. Rayna looked dazed but okay. I lurched toward the still open door. Bitty had landed on her rear end, hard. It had obviously knocked the breath out of her. I hovered over her, hair straggling down in my face and my hand to my side, trying to talk but still struggling for breath. Gasping, I held out my other hand for her to grab.
She looked up at me and recoiled, then seemed to recognize me and took my hand. As I helped her to her feet, I heard Gaynelle call from outside, “Is it a bear, Bitty?”
Rayna sounded edgy “How many bears do you know that drive a Volkswagen Beetle?”
“It smells funny in here,” Cindy commented as she sidled into the cabin.
I looked around. It was a nice cabin, as cabins in the woods go. It was open plan, with living room and kitchen on opposite sides, and a well-stocked bar dividing the room. Beyond the living area I could see a huge bed in a back room, but no sign of an intruder.
Bitty, still breathless from the impact with Rayna, clutched at me with her other hand. I could see she had smacked her mouth in the collision; blood dripped from her bottom lip. She said something unintelligible, and I shook my head.
“Catch your breath, honey. You’ve just got a split lip. We’ll deal with whoever is trespassing.”
I still sounded a bit wheezy myself, but apparently Bitty understood me because she shook her head vigorously.
“No! Me!”
“No, no, you need to rest and catch your breath,” Gaynelle said in her best teacher voice, but this time it didn’t work on Bitty.
She jerked away from me, but caught my wrist and dragged me toward the room with the bed in it. “No . . . me!” she got out again. “No . . . me!”
It wasn’t until she had me all the way inside the bedroom that I saw what she was really saying.
A body lay lifelessly atop a comforter spread over the bed. Blond hair spilled atop white pillows, and the face turned toward me was purple and contorted. A silk scarf was knotted tightly around the neck.
Someone had strangled Naomi Spencer.
CHAPTER 7
Not all outings with Bitty end this way, though lately her ratio is rising. Sandra, who had gone back to the car to get her first aid kit, something she usually carries with her when traveling with Bitty, checked Naomi’s vital signs and agreed that she was, indeed, dead. Since Sandra is a registered nurse, I tended to believe her.
Unfortunately, none of our cell phones worked on this hilltop thick with pine trees and crows. Rayna offered to drive down the hill until she could get a signal, and we all thought that was the best thing to do. The police would have to be called, of course. Since we were now in Benton County instead of Marshall County, the nearest sheriff would be from the county seat of Ashland.
Dazed, Bitty just nodded to everything that was suggested. That was how I knew she must be in shock.
“Should I make her some coffee?” I asked, but Gaynelle quickly said for me not to touch anything in the cabin.
“Fingerprints or evidence, you know. I don’t have any coffee with me, but I do have something in the car for emergencies.” She headed for her car, picking her way carefully down the rather steep slope covered in pine needles.
We were all out on the front porch, not really knowing where to sit or look or not look—it seemed incredible that Naomi Spencer was dead. Deelight echoed my thoughts.
“It’s a Sunday,” she observed in a soft voice as if afraid to disturb anyone. “It’s not even noon yet. She can’t be dead. Why, she’s . . . she’s so young.”
I don’t know what Cindy must have been thinking, especially with Bitty sitting right there on the porch with us and all, but the moment Cindy started to say, “Well, the good always die young,” Bitty leaped up from the porch with an angry shriek.
“Good?
Good?!
That little harpy shouldn’t even know about this place, much less come here to be killed!
Ohhhhh!”
The last was uttered with a frustrated, furious gritting of her teeth. She looked and sounded like a mad cat. If she had fur, it would be standing straight out. As it was, she stomped a foot and clenched her fists.
“Damn Philip Hollandale! This is all his fault!”
Thankfully, Gaynelle returned about that time with her emergency “coffee” and unscrewed the top. “Here. This should help.”
Bitty took the bottle she held out and downed a healthy swig, then gave it back. I recognized the familiar scent of Jack Daniel’s. Gaynelle took a drink then passed it to the rest of us. It’s amazing what just a tiny bit of whiskey can do to calm the nerves.
Since Bitty seemed much calmer, I couldn’t help asking, “How is this all Philip Hollandale’s fault, Bitty?”
She sat back down on the porch, this time picking a bent-willow rocker despite the cushion being dirty and strewn with leaves. “Philip must have brought her here. She wouldn’t know about it any other way, I’m sure.”
“This is—was—his cabin, then?”
“No. This is my cabin. I had it built right before Philip and I married. It was where he and I could ‘get away from it all’ when we wanted to be alone. It was supposed to be our hideaway, and no one else was to know about it. This is where we spent our . . . our wedding night.”
I remembered what Mama had said about Bitty grieving over Philip. If she loved him, this must be terribly painful for her. Although I was sitting on the porch floor with my legs hung over the side, I reached up to put a hand on her foot. It was the only part of her I could reach to offer comfort.
“And now those lovely memories have been ruined for you.”
“Lovely? Hardly. The man was drunk as a sailor on leave and about as romantic. I had to hold his head while he puked in a bucket. And after I’d gone to so much trouble, too, with candles, and champagne, fresh flowers and silk sheets—good god! I hope those aren’t my silk sheets on that bed!”
Ah. Bitty must be feeling better.
It was a good thing, since about the time we heard Rayna's SUV coming back up the goat track road, distant sirens could be heard as well. Ashland police were certainly on the ball.
Ashland, Mississippi is the only town in Benton County that has a traffic light. It’s not a large town. It has a lovely old court house with a clock that doesn’t work, a small library, a grocery store, a dollar store, a motel/Laundromat built sometime back in the 1940s, and various other small businesses scattered here and there. Since this is the South, and we believe strongly in salvation, there are several churches in town, of course.
Brunetti and Brunetti has an office located on the court square there, too. That turned out to be a really good thing.
Across a vacant lot from the grocery and dollar stores sits the Ashland police station. It is a gray concrete block building. The new court house is on the other side of the police station a short distance and has all the modern amenities.
While we didn’t have to travel with the police in handcuffs, our immediate presence at the police station as possible
witnesses
—which I translated to mean
suspects
—was greatly desired. On our way back down the steep hill from the cabin, the coroner’s van pulled over to the side of the narrow road to let us pass. That was when the enormity of it all had really hit me.
Not only had we found a body, but it was the body of a young woman who used to date Bitty’s husband, and with whom Bitty had publicly quarreled just the week before. Those were the unpleasant facts.
Déjà vu all over again.
As there were nine Divas in all and the station was rather small, we were parceled out to several officers for our interviews. It was disconcerting to be separated and seated in a very uncomfortable chair directly across from a uniformed officer and a tape recorder. I don’t know which cop got the short straw and Bitty, but my interviewer must have had a terrible headache. He was decidedly grumpy.
“Let’s hear it,” he said, leaning back in his chair to glower at me from under eyebrows that resembled large black centipedes. “Wait a minute. The damn thing isn’t working.”
That was in reference to the tape recorder, I think. He punched a button and that must have fixed it, because he leaned back again and stuck his thumbs into his armpits. I just stared at him. Wasn’t he supposed to ask questions?
“Name!” he shouted, and that made me jump a little.
“Whose name?” I asked somewhat frantically.
I’m not normally obtuse. In fact, I can usually grasp a situation fairly quickly. If not frightened out of my wits by having just seen the dead body of a murder victim I knew, I might have already picked up on the fact he wanted my name.
The officer heaved a great sigh that sounded disgusted and rubbed at his eyes with thumb and forefinger. I heard him mutter, “Why do I always get the crazies?” but I pretended he was talking about someone else.
“My name,” I said with what dignity I could muster, “is Trinket Truevine, and I’m from Holly Springs. We, my friends and I, went for a Sunday drive out to my cousin’s cabin, where we found . . . Naomi Spencer. She was dead.”
The officer scribbled something on a notepad. Apparently a tape recording wouldn’t be enough to try and hang me. I assumed that was what he intended to do. And really, I couldn’t blame him. Much. After all, Ashland is only fifteen miles from Holly Springs. They get
The
South Reporter
, too, and would know all about the death of Race Champion and Naomi’s arrest. And if the police read Miranda’s gossip column, they’d know all about the Dixie Divas as well.
“Why were you going to the cabin?” he asked without looking at me.
“It’s a nice day, and we decided to have a get-together.”
“In a remote cabin?”
This time he looked up at me. His brows crowded his eyes like fuzzy caterpillars. This camouflage didn’t fool me. I knew he was watching me carefully.
“Sometimes we just like to get out of town for a while.”
“Right.” He sat back in his chair and studied me until I began to feel like a bug under a microscope. Since my roots needed a touch-up and I’d just pulled my hair back with a barrette, I probably looked somewhat like a bug. Not that it mattered. I’ve learned that the police don’t care who you are or what you look like if you’re suspected of being involved in a crime.
“How well did you know the victim?” he asked next.
“Not well at all. I’ve met her a few times here and there, of course, but we were not friends of any kind.”
“Would you say you were enemies?”
“Of course not!”
“What was your relationship?”
“Acquaintances. None of us know her well.”
He squinted at me. “She must have known you well enough to join your day out at the cabin.”
“No, we had no idea she would be there. It was a complete surprise. In every sense of the word, I might add.”
“Who found the body?”
“My cousin, Elisabeth Hollandale.”
“Were you with her at the time?”
“I was just outside the cabin with the others.”
“Name the others.”
I reeled off the list of names as best I could. By now my palms were sweaty, my all-day deodorant had expired, and my knees had gotten shaky. It was obvious he was doing the math: Bitty plus Naomi equals trouble. Bitty plus friends plus Naomi equals a lot of trouble.
“You’re part of this club, the Ditsy Divas, right?” he asked out of the blue, and I got a little indignant.
“It’s the
Dixie
Divas!”
“Hunh,” he grunted, which I took to mean he apologized for his mistake, so I said he was excused.
At that he sat back in his chair and stared at me for a long, long moment. I began to fidget. Really, he could be quite unnerving. Not just because he was gruff, but because he wore a badge. Not to mention a gun. It was the gun that could be most unnerving. I did my best to look not only innocent, but harmless.
But he only asked me where I worked, if my address was current, did I have a cell phone where I could be reached, and then stood up.
“We may have more questions later. If we do, we’ll be in touch.”
“So I can leave?” I said hopefully.
He stepped to the open door and motioned me through it, rather impatiently I thought. “Please,” was all he said, and I was relieved.
It could have been worse. Much worse. That was why I’d argued for telling the truth. Not the
complete
truth, mind you, but the simple facts. We’d discussed it on the ride down that rutted road, and called Rayna and Gaynelle to be sure we were all on the same page. We were to tell the truth. With a caveat: No one need know all the details about a secret meeting to make plans on investigating if Trina Madewell had a hand in the murder of Naomi’s fiancé. That would only complicate matters.
So imagine my surprise when I was finally returned to what must have been the holding area for deranged witnesses to find Cady Lee chatting up a complete stranger and telling all the details of our excursion. The complete stranger wore a tan blouse that said
Ashland Police
on an arm badge, but she looked quite nice and sympathetic to what Cady Lee was telling her.
“Yes, I read that article,” she was saying as she smiled at Cady Lee, and I knew then we were all dead ducks.
“Well, it was just
awful
,” Cady Lee said with a mournful shake of her head, and I felt like pushing her out of the chair and onto the floor. “It wasn’t at all like Miranda made it out to be. Bitty’s dog jumped in the middle of the tea tray, and food went just everywhere—have you ever tried to get pimento cheese out of white linen? It never comes completely out, you know.”