“Until Katrina. Then I decided to go back to college, so ended up at Ole Miss. You can let me out at the next corner. I can walk from there. It’s only a few houses down.”
I stopped on Randolph to let her out.
“You know, Heather,” I said as she opened the car door, “I never got your last name.”
She turned to smile at me. A street lamp behind her lit up her pale hair. “Lightner,” she said. “Heather Ann Lightner.”
After she thanked me for giving her a ride, I watched her walk down the side street toward one of the huge homes that had been divided up into a boarding house of sorts. For some reason, an annoying tickle traveled down my spine all the way to my toes. Elusive trivia nagged at me, tidbits of information that might actually form a cohesive solution if I thought about it long enough.
I drove home slowly. It would come to me. I just had to think about it for a while.
****
My brain has an amazing capacity for hiding intriguing pieces of what I consider vital clues when I’m trying to solve a puzzle. But I knew I was on to something. I just wasn’t sure what.
I used the method Rayna had used and wrote down everything I could think of on a sheet of ruled paper. Then I went down the list with a pencil and ticked off everything that was either resolved or unrelated.
That left me with hanging pieces of the puzzle. When I asked myself if the answer could involve Heather, it began to make more sense. But did I dare accuse someone who might be innocent of such heinous crimes as murder? I’d better be sure of myself.
So the next day I called Rob Rainey. At first he didn’t want to discuss it with me, but when I told him what I thought, he swore me to secrecy.
“Right off the bat,” he said, “we’re going to throw out what Bitty’s psychic said. Just leave that out of the equation.”
“All right, but I can’t help but think that she meant Heather when she said there was darkness inside the light. Heather’s last name is
Light
ner. Don’t you think that’s a bit too much of a coincidence?”
Rob sighed. “Trinket, don’t get hung up on what a psychic had to say. She could have meant anything. Let’s just go with facts, okay?”
For the sake of expediency, and so he wouldn’t think I was just as crazy as Bitty, I agreed. “Fine. Have you had any luck finding the black truck?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’ve found out so far, but don’t tell anyone else yet. Especially my wife. She’s obsessed with this craziness, and I don’t want her taking any more risks. Or you, for that matter. Will you promise not to go off on your own?”
I thought about it a millisecond, then agreed. “I’ve discovered I’m not that brave on my own. Or with someone else. I’m good with letting others take the risk and the credit.”
Rob laughed. “The credit will go to the Holly Springs Police Department, as it should. All we can do is share what we find with them. They’re the ones paid to take the risk, so they can have the credit.”
“In your line of work, don’t you ever run up against dangerous situations? I mean, like someone getting mad because you’ve caught them in fraud?”
“Occasionally. Not as much as you might think. Now look, here’s what I found out about Rose Allgood. She was born into money, but her father had a big gambling addiction, so by the time she was fourteen, they were living in a shotgun shack on state assistance. Her father died early, and that left Rose, her mother, and another sister. Get this: Rose’s younger sister was once engaged to—”
“Race Champion,” we both said at the same time.
“Boy, was there any woman in the state of Mississippi he didn’t ask to marry him at one time or the other?” I wondered aloud. “Did he ever actually go through with a wedding?”
“Ah, funny you should ask that. Yes, as a matter of fact, he did. In October of 2005, records show he married Dawn Jeannette Hardy. Shortly after they married, Race came back to Holly Springs and filed for a divorce. Since he filed, he’s been engaged at least three more times that I can find. Probably more. Every time he got drunk, which is every time he drank, he’d ask whoever he was with to marry him. Most of them said yes, and he apparently didn’t know how to tell them he was already married once he sobered up.”
“Good lord.”
“Some of this I’m just guessing at, of course, but records and facts tell the truth of it.” Rob paused. “I’m still trying to track down Dawn Hardy Champion. So far, no luck.”
“Do you think she killed Race and Naomi?”
“It’s a good bet.”
“Which means all my theories just went out the window. Drat. And they were such good theories, too.”
Rob chuckled. “Truthfully, until I found that marriage license, I had my alternate theories.”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
Another deep chuckle, then Rob said, “Well, I was really leaning toward Rose Allgood or her sister. Especially after reading the information collected by you Divas. Rose fits the bill just about perfectly. In fact, I’m still not quite sure she doesn’t have something to do with it.”
“Well, we have two fairly new arrivals in Holly Springs. One is Rose, and the other is Heather. Both are cool blondes, both lived in Biloxi, but only one of them lived in Biloxi
and
Oxford. After talking to Heather last night, I was almost certain it must be her. For one thing, she’s a runner, she’s a tri-athlete, she’s been working out, and she fits all three qualifications.”
“Who set those qualifications?”
I tried to think. Then I remembered. “Race’s brother Ronny. He saw a note left on Race’s windshield by some girl who’d followed him from the races in Biloxi, to Oxford, and then to Holly Springs. According to Ronny, it spooked Race .”
“Hm. Race didn’t seem like the kind of guy easily spooked by a woman. I wonder if it was his wife threatening to out him?”
“That does sound more logical. He went through a lot of women. I can’t believe he didn’t get caught.”
“Apparently, he did,” Rob said dryly.
“So true. Have you told the police yet?”
“I’m headed up there in a little bit. I want to get some more info first, and see if I can track down Dawn. It’s strange that she seems to have just dropped out of sight. But she can’t hide forever, not from my magic software program. In this marvelous age of information, hardly anyone can disappear without a trace.”
“Well, that shoots down my retirement plans, I see.”
Rob laughed again, a nice sound, and we hung up. I was a bit deflated. I’d really thought Heather had to be the one. She fit all the clues we had. She was an even better candidate than Rose Allgood, with or without her rubber penises. Well, a lot depended upon finding Race’s wife. It was possible she had an iron-clad alibi. If so, we’d be back to square one again. And the choice of Rose or Heather as our murderer.
It boggled my mind that a woman could be so cold and cruel as to kill a man, even a current or former husband. Not that there weren’t times when I hadn’t thought of doing something painful to Perry, of course. Painful, not permanent. It had taken great restraint not to Superglue him to a job. Not that it would have changed him. He’d just have found glue remover, and we’d have been on our way to the next job, state, and town. Ah well. That is behind me now. For which I am very thankful.
I looked at the clock, and it was a little after ten. I had the rest of the day to kill—pardon the pun—so decided to see if my parents needed anything. When I went downstairs, Mama had a small cardboard box filled with things like flour, sugar, canned goods, and inexplicably, toilet paper.
“Take this over to Bitty and the boys,” she said. “I know she doesn’t think about things like staples.”
I gazed at the nice little care package my mother had lovingly packed and shook my head. “It’s not that she doesn’t think about things like staples, it’s that she has no idea what they are. Or how they’re used. Except for the Charmin, of course. That she’s familiar with. Tell you what. Instead of you going to all this trouble, I’ll just take Bitty to Wal-Mart. She’s been wanting to go anyway.”
Mama thought about it a moment, then agreed. “That’s true. The boys would know what to do with sugar and cans of soup, but they may prefer pizza or something else. I’ll just bake a couple cakes, maybe make a big pot of chicken and dumplings—or beef stew—for you to take to her later. That would probably be a lot better.”
Daddy came in from the yard, mopping sweat off his forehead with an old rag that left streaks of dirt. “Not even eleven yet, and it’s hot enough to fry eggs on the porch.”
“I’ll take mine over easy,” I said, and he laughed.
“What’s that Brownie has in his mouth?” said Daddy, squinting down at the dog hovering close by my mother’s feet. “It’s something sparkly . . . here, give it to me. Give it,” he said in a sterner voice than I’d heard him use with the little beast.
Brownie must have recognized that tone, because he immediately gulped down the offending object before my father could get it from him.
“Ahhh!” said Daddy. He took Brownie’s collar, pried open his jaws, and tried to fish out the item, but the stubborn creature resisted. Mama bent to help. That made the dog even worse. He knew he could count on my mother to baby him.
“Dagnab it,” Daddy finally said in disgust, and put one hand atop the kitchen table to help him get to his feet. “He swallowed most of it. Wonder what it is?”
“Let me see,” said Mama, now cradling Brownie as if he’d just been attacked by wolves. The dog looked up at her pitifully. His ears were back, his eyes were big, and his front paws dangled over his chest in an attitude of prayer.
I was more amused than irritated, because it was my parents having to deal with him and not me. But then my mother said, “Why, this looks like part of an earring. Where on earth could he have gotten it, I wonder.”
Sometimes I can think quickly. I immediately went back upstairs, where I found my bathroom cup on the floor and my treasured earring missing. I looked all around on the tiles, up under the clawfoot tub, the sink, around the toilet, under a wicker chair, a wooden cabinet that holds toiletries, and under the bathroom rug. No sign of it. I knew what that meant.
“He’s eaten my earring again,” I said when I got back downstairs, and I glared at the offending little beggar until he began to whimper.
Alarmed, my mother looked up at me. “Well, we just have to get him to the vet immediately, of course.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not that big a stone. We’ll just have to supervise his daily poop for a while.”
“Oh no,” said Mama. “He’ll need X-rays to make sure it hasn’t gotten into an intestinal pocket.”
“Into what? I never heard of such a thing. He’ll be fine. Really. He’s done this before, you know.”
“And Dr. Coltrane said we had to keep an eye him, too. The next time it could get lodged somewhere it shouldn’t.”
When I saw actual tears in my mother’s eyes, I surrendered. “Okay, I’ll take him by the vet’s office. Then I’ll take Bitty to Wal-Mart and go back for him. Will that make you feel better?”
Mama nodded. Daddy just shook his head. “I think we need to take that trip to Canada, Anna,” he said after a moment. “It’s too blamed hot this year.”
I was greatly alarmed.
“Oh no, you don’t. That means you’d leave me here with the dog and all those cats. If you go to Canada, I’m going to Canada. Don’t even
think
about going without me!”
Daddy didn’t say anything, but he did look perturbed. Mama got the leash and told me to call her from the vet’s and let her know if Brownie was all right. I held my tongue until I got in my car with the culprit. He looked up at me with his ears back and big pleading eyes, and I ended up just telling him I was very disappointed in his behavior. It had worked wonders when my daughter was small, but I didn’t hold out much hope that Brownie would care.
Kit greeted me in the examining room with a big grin. “Your mother called. I understand he’s ingested jewelry again.”
I set Brownie on the stainless steel table. The dog groveled at Kit’s side with his tail thumping madly against steel.
“I’m thinking of letting him keep it. Or wear it in his ear. The gold setting is squashed.” I wasn’t quite ready to admit I’d found the earring, then carelessly left it out for the dog to devour. “It’s just the stone. A rather nice emerald.”
“I’ll take care of him. It may take some time, as I have surgeries scheduled for the next couple hours. Would it be inconvenient for you to come back around four to pick him up?”
I shook my head. “I’m taking Bitty shopping anyway.”
“That’s great. So she’s not worried about money any longer, I take it.”
“No, she’s still whining about being a poor widow. I’m taking her to Wal-Mart.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish. If I’m not here by four-thirty, send out the Mounties. You’ll most likely find me curled in a fetal position and sniveling in Housewares.”
Kit laughed. “If you survive, I’ll treat you and Brownie to dinner tonight. My place.”
My toes curled. His place? We’d never been that alone before. Was I ready to take our relationship to the next level? I wasn’t sure. Still, maybe a bit of privacy with Kit would be just what I needed.
“You’ll have to ask my mother first,” I said. When his eyebrows went up, I added, “She won’t care if I’m home late, but she will care if Brownie isn’t there by curfew.”
“I’ll promise to keep a close eye on Brownie.” He grinned. “And a closer eye on you.”
My stomach did that flipping thing again, and my face felt hot. Very hot. I think I said something like, “Sounds good to me” before I left, but I’m not quite sure. All I could hear was my heart racing ninety to nothing.
By the time I reached Bitty’s house, I’d regained my composure, if not my nerve. Did I really want to be the one to introduce Bitty Hollandale to a Wal-Mart Superstore? It could go one of two ways: either Bitty would be so horror struck at the lack of brands like Versace or Giorgio that she would collapse in a cart, or she’d find the aisles and aisles of perfectly useless items like strainers and egg-slicers absolutely necessary to her well-being. Neither option seemed pleasant.
First, I soon discovered, I would have to find Bitty in order to take her to Wal-Mart. Clayton said she’d left about thirty minutes earlier to get a manicure.