by Cathy Tully
Bitsy hung up, and Susannah pushed the door open; tiny bells jingled, announcing her presence. Bitsy dropped her marker and rushed around the counter with open arms. She pushed past a tangle of leather shoulder bags, rocking the stainless steel rack on which they hung. The high-end bags, which to Bitsy’s credit were in a variety of colors besides peach, convulsed spasmodically as she grabbed Susannah, squeezing her arms hard enough to bruise.
“Oww,” Susannah said, trying to wriggle out of her grasp.
Bitsy released her and stepped back. “Goodness gracious. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, crushing a burgundy-colored bag between them as she pulled Susannah in for a hug. She waved a hand over Susannah’s bandaged head. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital? I thought you had a concussion.”
“Who told you?” Susannah was not surprised. Gossip traveled through town faster than the Norfolk Southern freight trains.
“My cousin Junior works at the police station. He called me soon as he heard.”
“I thought your cousin Junior drove a wrecker.”
“That’s plain Junior. This here is Little Junior.”
Susannah nodded. Bitsy had cousins in every nook and cranny of the county, most with equally odd nicknames.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Junior told me Anita Alvarez is dead and you were knocked out flat. Why aren’t you at the hospital?”
“I refused to go.”
“Refused to go? Why wouldn’t you go?”
“Because I’m fine.”
Bitsy took Susannah’s hand and led her past the peach-speckled tote bags with their matching wallets and through a curtain that led to the back room where she stored her inventory and ate her lunch. She ushered Susannah into a folding chair and patted her hand.
“Stop.” Susannah wriggled her hand from Bitsy’s steely grasp. “I need to talk.”
“Girl, give me a second, then I’m all ears.” Bitsy strode to a heavily painted cupboard and wrenched the knob. Warped from age, the door was long and narrow; its hinges squawked, and the bottom edge scraped along the floor. She stuck her head into the closet, delving into its dark recesses. “Oof,” she grunted as parts of her ample upper body overflowed the meager doorway. As she withdrew, her shawl snagged a nail, and she yanked it free. The building that housed Peachy Things belonged to the historical district and was over a hundred and fifty years old. Susannah had never understood why a style maven like Bitsy didn’t tear out the crooked wooden cabinets and creaky pine board floors and replace them with materials from the twenty-first century. Even the twentieth century would do.
“I got something special for you.” Bitsy brandished a black drawstring pouch on her palm as if she were balancing a plate on a stick. Her hand trembled from its weight. She glanced excitedly at Susannah as she placed it on the table and set her long fingernails to work untying the string.
“What is it?”
“This here is an old family recipe. One sip and you’ll be good as new.” She pulled out a mason jar filled with a clear liquid and twisted open the lid.
“Is that moonshine?”
“You’ve heard of it, hunh?”
“You know I don’t drink this early in the day.”
“This isn’t drinking—it’s medicinal.”
Susannah was doubtful. “I’m fine.”
Bitsy raised a brow and peered into Susannah’s face. “Humph. You’re not fine. I know you think some gluten-free vitamins and a massage can fix everything, but I can see that ghost-scared look in your eyes.”
“Fight evil spirits with some evil spirit, eh?”
“You shouldn’t mock the spirit world.” Bitsy regarded her through narrowed eyes, as if assessing her impact on the spirit world.
Susannah didn’t answer.
“I see you’re not arguing with me.”
“I’m still not drinking that.”
Bitsy glared at her. “Well, someone has to.” She lifted the jar to her lips and took a small sip, shuddering as she swallowed. She placed the jar on a small table and screwed the lid back on. “What did you want to talk about?”
“When you were at the Cantina the other day, did you notice any problem between Anita and Tomás?”
“No. Why?”
“Because I heard them arguing in the kitchen. Tomás stuck his head out of the kitchen door, and he was so angry his face was red. Anita just laughed it off.”
Bitsy nodded. “So you think Tomás might have done her in?”
“Well, when you put it that way, I’m not sure.”
“Me neither. You know how hot-tempered restaurant workers are. You ever watch Gordon Ramsay? Were they telling each other to piss off?”
Susannah chuckled at her reference to the volatile tempers in the reality TV kitchen. “Maybe I am making too much of it.”
Bitsy’s cell rang, and she removed it from her pocket, answering with a deft swipe of the thumb. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay.” Her eyebrows peaked as she listened.
Susannah turned away to give her privacy and found herself contemplating piles of purses, clutches, and totes. A low wooden shelf held cardboard boxes and sealed plastic bags filled with boutique fodder. Bitsy loved accessories as much as Susannah loved chiropractic equipment.
Susannah had spent many years in this town as a healer, a vocation that suited her much better than her short-lived career as a police officer had. That choice seemed preordained by growing up in a family of law enforcement officers. Some of her first memories were of being captured and tied up by her older siblings in their games of cops and robbers. As the youngest of four children, she had been relegated by her brothers and sister to the role of the bumbling robber—an opinion one brother maintained as she grew into adulthood. Sadly, her career in law enforcement had done nothing to change this opinion. She had pushed away the humiliation she felt when she resigned her position with NYPD. Chiropractic school had been her true calling, and it had delighted her to discover that she was a natural healer.
However, there was nothing delightful in what happened today. Her office had been the location of a repugnant act, one that stained her reputation and hurt her soul. What was worse, it had been perpetrated against someone she knew and liked.
Bitsy ended the call and shot Susannah a pointed side-eye while jamming the phone into her rear pocket. She gave the mason jar a wistful parting glance and crammed it back into the bag, then closed the warped door with a kick. “Let’s go. I’m taking you home.” She hurried to the front door and with a flick of the wrist flipped the Open sign to Closed.
They left the shop and crossed Main Street to where Bitsy had parked her black Ford Explorer. Susannah, trailing behind, asked, “Who was on the phone?”
“That was Junior again. Seems a detective by the name of Weathers was kicking up a fuss about Anita’s murderer.”
“It’s Withers.”
Bitsy stopped next to her truck, her peach-shaped key chain dangling from a manicured finger. “That’s what I said, Weathers.”
“I already talked to her. I think Junior is relaying old news.”
“No. This is new news. Junior has his ears on the situation, and he says Detective Weathers has been trying to convince Randy to bring you in.” She looked down, avoiding eye contact with Susannah. “Junior says she’s ranting about how alternative doctors are dangerous because they take advantage of sick people by taking their money and keeping them away from real doctors. Junior thinks she’s—” She pointed to her temple and twirled her finger to signify crazy, then opened the passenger door for Susannah and pushed her in. She got in the driver’s side, started the truck, and gunned the engine. “Junior heard Keith tell her he’s been in your office many times. He told her that him and Tina get their backs cracked.”
“I don’t know how that changes anything.” She fingered the bandage on her head as Bitsy maneuvered out of the parking place. “I thought Anita died from head trauma like me.”
Bitsy slammed on the brakes. The truck p
itched and stopped. She faced Susannah, grabbed the flesh of her upper arm, and squeezed, twisting like she was wrestling with a key stuck in a lock.
“Hey!” Susannah slapped her hand away. “Stop doing that.” She reached out and pinched Bitsy above her elbow, grabbing a piece of her peach-colored shawl in the process.
“Ow!” Bitsy cried, slapping Susannah’s hand away. “I’m making sure I ain’t talking to no ghost.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said, ‘Anita died, like me.’” Bitsy sailed out of the small lot and onto Highway 42. She shot a look at Susannah. “You for sure alive.”
“I meant, I thought someone hit her in the head, like they hit me.”
Bitsy smoothed down her shawl. “Why do you think that? Did Keith tell you that?”
“No. Not exactly.” Susannah tried to remember his words, but her phone interrupted her thoughts. She stared at the number in surprise. “It’s Randy.” Susannah frowned.
“How does he know your cell number?” Bitsy asked, alarmed.
“We were on that planning committee last year.” Susannah chewed a cuticle. “Maybe I should go talk to him.”
“No.” Bitsy grabbed Susannah’s phone without looking at the display and tucked it under her thigh. “I’m gonna have to do your thinking for you, on account of this concussion.” She pointed at Susannah’s head. “If the police want to talk to you, you do not want to talk to them. And no fleeing the jurisdiction. You can hide, but you better not run.”
“It’s Randy. He knows me,” she said, though her voice wavered. Randy had never been more than an acquaintance, and his snide remarks about her former occupation had revealed disdain, not friendship. He never let an opportunity pass to joke about her training with the NYPD. She bit her lip. Maybe he felt a smidgen of professional rivalry. Inept or not, the NYPD was the largest police force in the country.
Stupefied, she realized that she had no idea what he actually thought of her. She’d lived in Peach Grove for years, but Randy always talked to her like she had moved in last week. She tugged at her blouse and swallowed. She didn’t need him sniffing around the NYPD to find out how her career had ended.
Bitsy pointed at Susannah, shaking her finger while she drove. “Randy is the Chief of Police, but the mayor hired this detective. That means she wants to make the mayor happy, not him.”
Susannah’s face fell. She and the mayor were not on the best of terms thanks to a slight misunderstanding. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should lie low for a while. Let them find out what happened to Anita before I talk to that woman again.”
“You can come home with me until you figure out what to do next.” Bitsy edged the truck across the railroad tracks with a gleam in her eye. “I’ll cook you up a mess of greens and some cornbread, dripping with butter.”
The truck rattled over the last rail, and a stabbing pain struck Susannah’s neck, making her eyes water. Her phone rang. She cast her eyes down at Bitsy’s thigh. “Half a mile away from the police station is hardly off the grid.”
“Oh baby girl, if you want to get off the grid, I can help with that too.” She pulled in front of her Queen Anne cottage, a Victorian style of architecture common to rural Georgia. Painted light blue with bright white trim, it had an understated look, at least from the front. Originally constructed in 1890 with no indoor plumbing or heating, subsequent residents had added on to it, giving it a haphazard flow that Bitsy called eclectic. “I’ll park the truck way behind my gardening shed, and no one will even know that I’m here.”
Bitsy loved to garden. Her shed was her pride and joy, a prefabricated aluminum unit that looked like a gingerbread house trimmed with blue tulips. She felt it gave her an edge against the archenemies of Georgia gardeners: fire ants and their hungry cousins, termites.
She turned into the rutted drive, which at first glance appeared to be a two-track dirt road running alongside a row of overgrown hedges. Despite her slow speed, the truck rattled and bumped over the hard clay soil. Susannah shut her eyes and stifled a moan as pain shot from her neck to the top of her head.
“Hang on, we’ll be on the grass in a—”
Susannah opened her eyes to see Bitsy’s truck nose to nose with Randy Laughton’s cruiser.
CHAPTER SIX
Randy Laughton met Susannah’s eyes and lifted his thick fingers off the steering wheel in acknowledgment. The bent grass at the foot of the cruiser told her he had not been waiting long.
Bitsy shifted into reverse, her hand clenched on the wheel, her foot poised over the accelerator. Without taking her eyes off Randy, Susannah tapped Bitsy’s hand. “Don’t,” she said, her mouth dry, the rules of her former profession coming back to her. “We can’t run.”
A woman was dead, her body discovered on Susannah’s property. The police were disregarding the fact that she had been assaulted. If she didn’t cooperate, she would appear guilty. Besides, the more she mulled it over, the more questions she had. Why had Anita been at her office? Was she meeting someone? Perhaps someone who had access to the office? Larraine was two counties away at the time of the murder, but what about Tina? It horrified Susannah to think Tina could have had anything to do with such a vicious crime, but Tina knew the building would be deserted and was one of only three people who had a key.
She felt guilty for even imagining that it could involve her assistant. Her thoughts were sluggish, like boots stuck in Georgia mud. Were Tina and Anita even acquainted? And if they wanted to meet, why not do so at the restaurant?
Her eyes connected with Randy’s. Normally blue-gray, today they appeared the color of steel. She felt a tingling in her neck. Could the police suspect Keith? A fellow Peach Grove police officer and husband to Tina, Keith would have known the office was closed and about the secluded nature of the back parking lot. He could have gotten Tina’s key off her key ring without her knowing. She swallowed. Could Keith have been meeting Anita for a rendezvous?
Bitsy’s voice roused her from her thoughts. “We could hide until we figure this out. I know every backwoods road around here.”
“And Randy does too.” Randy and Bitsy had attended the same schools and had spent years on the rural roads of the county. It was tempting but not realistic. “You should know that.”
“I know what I know, and I know what Randy don’t know.”
“I have to talk to him.”
“You’re makin’ a mistake.”
Susannah shot her a look. “Anita’s dead, and I need some answers.”
“Don’t get in his car.” Bitsy exhaled. “Meet on neutral ground.” She threw the truck into park, her fingers tapping. “Keep away from them handcuffs. If he touches you, you yell, ‘Police brutality!’ and raise your hands up so he don’t shoot. I’ll come running and record the whole thing on my phone. One time, my Uncle Moses Long—”
Susannah put a finger to her lips, stopping what she knew would turn into a rambling history of the Long family’s dealings with the law.
A rap on the driver’s-side window sent the fringe on Bitsy’s shawl shuddering like a frightened tabby. “Ladies.” Randy stooped, peering into the truck.
“Randy,” Susannah said, the word sticking in her throat. Bitsy tried to smooth her shawl, her fingernails tangling in the decorative weave.
“I thought I might find you together.”
“That ain’t no feat of detective work,” Bitsy mumbled.
Randy placed one arm over the other and leaned his elbows on the car door. “Susannah, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
“Humph,” Bitsy said, shifting her leg to make sure that her thigh covered the face of Susannah’s phone.
“Could I have a word in private?”
Bitsy turned to Susannah. “You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to talk to him.” She turned back to Randy. “We know our rights.”
“I’m not fixin’ to arrest her. I only want to talk.”
“That’s what they said to Uncle Moses.”
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Susannah got out, slammed the passenger-side door, and glared at Bitsy through the windshield, silently urging her to stay put as she followed Randy to the side yard. He stopped next to Bitsy’s monster privet hedge, which bowed under the weight of fragrant white flowers. There was a formality to his bearing, a stiffness to his posture, and a seriousness in his manner Susannah had never seen. Whatever he meant to say, she wasn’t going to like it.
“Ms. Susannah, we’ve known each other awhile.”
She tried not to bristle at being called Ms. instead of Doctor. Using Ms. with a woman’s first name was common in Georgia, but she felt the slight like a slap in the face. She forced a slight smile, all the while imagining her Ms.-sized hands throwing him into the hedge and pummeling him.
“This is strictly off the record.” He glanced over at Bitsy and turned his back to the truck. Susannah saw her lean her elbow on the truck’s door frame, unabashedly jutting her head out the window.
“I’m glad to hear that because I have some questions that I would like answered.”
Randy shook his head. “I can’t give you any information in an ongoing investigation.”
“I thought we were off the record,” she retorted, turning away.
“Listen to me,” he said, reaching out to her. “I’m off the case. Detective Withers is in charge now.”
“She is?”
He nodded. “You best watch yourself.”
“What does that mean?”
“I just mean cooperate with her.”
“Am I a suspect?”
Randy hooked his thumbs over his belt. “Right now, you are a person of interest.”
“What? Why?”
“Keith told us you closed the office and were going out of town. Detective Withers looked into your flight arrangements and noticed you have a one-way ticket to Tampa.”