“Isabel wanted both her girls to marry well. She’d married well, and Paul isn’t a bad sort, even if he does stay gone too much. But Bel has always put too much stock in money and social position. Want a beer?”
“A beer? Is it cold?”
Nana laughed. “Yep. Don’t have a washer and dryer here, so I have to keep it in this tiny little ice box. All those years of drinking it warm, now it tastes funny cold.”
Harley got Nana a beer from one of those small apartment-sized refrigerators that saved space but had plenty of room for whatever Nana wanted to put in it. Like beer.
“Why did you drink your beer warm, anyway?” she asked Nana.
“My mother lived with me, and I didn’t want her to know I liked a beer now and then. Of course, she had to know. She always knew things.” Nana chuckled. “Still, it made me feel better, so I kept doing it even after she died.”
“So what’s the reason Grandmother Eaton doesn’t like Yogi? He doesn’t have money?”
“Part of it. Most of it was that Deirdre ran off to marry him even after she was told to have nothing to do with him. Felt like he’d stolen her daughter and brainwashed her into living in a cult. It was sixteen years before Deidre came back, and Bel never has quite gotten over it.”
Harley thought of her early years in California, moving from commune to commune, free in many ways, but constricted in ways that had meant little to Diva but a lot to her. She hadn’t liked the looks they got in some towns, the derisive stares and comments when they went into stores. Hippies. Trash. Thieves. Gypsies. All those words had hurt. When Yogi had inherited his parents’ house in Memphis, it was Harley’s dream come true. Not that she wanted to be just like everyone else. She didn’t. She liked her individuality, but nothing beat indoor plumbing.
“I don’t think Diva has gotten over it either,” she said after a moment. “She doesn’t say it, but I think she misses Grandmother Eaton.”
“Probably. It doesn’t matter how much you disagree, there’s no bond like that between a mother and daughter. Even when they don’t want to admit it. Foolish stubbornness, I say. I never let Bel try that nonsense with me. Kenneth, neither, though sons are more likely to tell you just how they feel instead of sulk.”
“How is Uncle Ken?”
“Doing really well. Lives up north with the Yankees in Virginia.”
“Last time I heard, Virginia was below the Mason-Dixon line.”
Nana snorted. “Right. You ever been up there? They sound like Yankees and eat like Yankees. Can’t even cook grits properly. I don’t know what they do to their barbecue, but it’s not right, either. Tastes awful. I liked their biscuits, though. Best I ever had, and that’s saying a lot. It’s a pretty place, too, some of the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen. Rivals the Smokies.”
Nana had been born in west Tennessee nine months after her father had returned from World War I. Her sturdy Irish ancestors had first settled in Memphis in the early 1800s, eventually moving out to the country right before the Civil War. Nana still called it the War of Northern Aggression, as her parents had done, and their parents before them. Stories passed down through generations told of the hard struggle during those war years, and Nana still had a big cardboard photograph of the large house the Jordans had once owned. It had four columns in front like Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but wasn’t as elegant. A dogtrot right down the center of the house provided cool air during the melting hot summers, with a door open at each end to allow in breezes, and big transoms over the top. Nana’s great-grandparents and grandparents stood in front of the house with big smiles. Next to that framed photograph on her wall hung an after-the-war photo that showed the solemn family group in front of a white picket fence. A small two-room house sat behind the fence—once the overseer’s cabin on their thirty thousand acre Tennessee estate, and after the war, home to three families. Hard times hit when taxes were raised so high only carpetbaggers could pay. As the story went, when the men who came home after the war saw what was left to them, they spent the rest of their days sitting on the front porch talking of how it’d have been if the South had won, while the women took in washing and worked gardens. But of course, that was from the women’s point of view. The men no doubt had their own version.
“No,” Harley said, “I’ve never been to Virginia, but I can tell you a lot about California.”
“Those folks out there are a bit wild, aren’t they? Just do what they want when they want. Must be the heat. Like here. Speaking of crazy, when do we start hunting down that idiot who’s killing all the Elvises?”
“We? Hunt down? Nana, I’m not leaving here, and we certainly aren’t going anywhere.”
“We have to be back before seven-thirty,” Nana said, getting up from her chair and going into her bedroom. Her voice drifted out. “They lock the doors then. I’m changing into my tennis shoes. Be ready in a minute.”
“Nana, we’re staying here. Remember? It’s safe here. There’s a killer loose, and I’m on his short list.”
Appearing back in the doorway, Nana put both hands on her hips. “Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to be gained by being a sitting duck. Time to take the bull by the horns. No time like the present. And any other dumbass saying I can think of that’ll make you see it’s stupid to be the rabbit when you can be the fox.” Harley stared at her. Nana was a force to be reckoned with. But she’d met her match.
* * * *
“This is insane,” Harley muttered under her breath as they waited at a red light. Nana sat in the passenger seat looking like a sweet little old lady, when she was really the wolf dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. She wore a flowery dress that hit midway between her knees and ankles, a string of pearls around her neck, a white hat with pink and blue flowers atop her head, and two hundred dollar running shoes on her feet. She held a white wicker purse with wooden handles on her lap. White gloves covered her hands.
Dear Lord. It was the Terminator disguised as Opie’s Aunt Bea.
“Not at all insane,” Nana said calmly. “I can protect you.”
Harley fought the urge to break into hysterical giggles. “Nana, you’re barely five feet tall and weigh maybe eighty-five pounds, though I grant you that your hearing seems to be excellent. You can’t protect butter. How do you expect to protect me?”
Opening her wicker purse, Nana pulled out a .38 Smith and Wesson with pearl handles. “Smitty here beats a fist fight every time.”
The light turned green, but Harley couldn’t summon up the energy to press the gas pedal. She felt faint. Horns honked behind her, and finally she dredged up the will to move forward, but the Toyota bucked and died when she didn’t hit the clutch in time. More honking. She fumbled a moment, and then got everything moving right.
“Do the supervisors at the home know you’ve got that?” she asked when they were a little bit down the road, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “And put it away, please.”
“It’s not a home. It’s a retirement community. And to answer your question, no they don’t and don’t you dare tell them. I’ll know when it’s time to give it up, just like I knew when it was time to give up driving. Of course, I’ve had cataract surgery since then and I see better than ever now, so maybe I’ll get me a car. Something snazzy.” Nana slid the pistol back into her purse and snapped the latch. “I’ve been handling firearms since I was ten years old. Started out with a rifle, but that’s too big to carry in my purse, of course.”
“Of course. So where do you keep your Uzi?”
“Don’t be a smartass. I used a .22 to hunt game back then. Buckshot makes it too hard to clean. Could pick a squirrel off a tree limb at twenty yards without thinking about it. Shot rabbits, possums, and raccoons, too, though I didn’t much care for the meat off the last two. Deer meat now, that’s something I miss. And sassafras tea. Grew wild around our house when I was young, and it smelled so sweet. They used to make root beer out of it, you know, though God only knows what they pu
t in those drinks now. Chemicals, probably. Rot your innards out, not to think about what it does to your brain.”
“Apparently, one of us in here has drunk too much root beer. Do you have any idea what can happen if we get stopped by the police and they find that gun in your purse?”
“I do. Not a damn thing.” Nana looked smug when Harley glanced at her to see if she was having some kind of stroke. “I’ve got a permit.”
That took Harley aback for only a second. “To carry concealed?”
“Yep. You may not remember, but my second husband, Ed Sheridan—you never met him—was a deputy sheriff. Died of a heart attack when we were having our morning fun on the kitchen table. Try explaining to the medics why your dead husband’s lying on the kitchen table with his bare ass up in the air and his ding-a-ling hard as a brick sometime. I’ve had better moments. Anyway, he got me the permit to carry concealed back when some yahoo was threatening to kill him and his family after Ed arrested him for armed robbery.”
Harley’s head swam. This was more than she wanted to know. Yet it explained so much about her family tree. “Isn’t there an age limit on those permits?” she asked weakly.
“You’d think there’d be, wouldn’t you? But not that I know about. I’ve still got Smitty and I’ve still got my permit. So don’t worry. You’re safe with me.”
That was subjective. Harley slid a nervous glance toward the white wicker purse. “Is that thing loaded?”
“What the hell good would an unloaded pistol be to anyone?”
“Uh hunh. Can you make sure it’s pointed in the other direction? Just in case it goes off by accident.”
Nana snorted. “The only guns that go off by accident are those carried by children or fools, and I’m neither of those. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll put my purse on the floor.”
“It does.”
“So, where are we going first?” Nana asked when her purse was safely between her sneakers.
“I haven’t thought that far yet.” Truth was, she had, but that was before Lydia had been killed and she’d turned chicken. Cluck cluck.
“I say we find out how all those Elvises got on buses that the killer was on. Couldn’t be by coincidence.”
Nana could be really sharp.
“The first two were sent postcards inviting them to a special TV interview. I imagine the last one was, too.” Harley thought a moment. “I gave that information to Bobby, so I’m sure he’s already checked up on it.”
“Bobby? That skinny Italian kid I used to see hanging around your house all the time?” Nana pronounced Italian as “Eye-talian.”
“That’s the one. He’s a detective now, and he isn’t skinny anymore.”
“Still cute?”
Harley thought a minute and nodded. “Most women think so.”
“Who knew there were so many hot cops in Memphis? I bought one of their calendars a while back, you know. Those six-pack abs and bulging biceps made me want to lick their photos.”
“You’re a dirty old broad.”
Nana smiled. “I know. It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?”
“You’ve never been quiet.”
“But I do look like a sweet little old lady, and that fools people into thinking I am. Works every time.”
Harley braked to avoid hitting a Mercedes that cut in front of her. “I didn’t know you could be so devious, Nana.”
“It’s one of my best virtues. Don’t let anyone tell you that life’s fair and you should always play by the rules. You’ll get your ass kicked if you do.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Make your own rules. Be fair, objective, kind, and as generous as you can afford to be. If someone tries to hurt you or yours in any way, take them down hard.”
“Good God. My Nana is really Dirty Harry.”
Nana only smiled.
Maybe Nana still went by pioneer justice, but there were pesky little things like rules of conduct in the modern world that frowned on that sort of thing. Not that it wasn’t tempting. There just had to be a compromise between the two.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Harley said. “You keep Smitty tucked away, and we’ll make a stop or two just to check some things out.”
“Sounds good,” Nana said with satisfaction. “Just let me know if you need Smitty.”
“I will.” Harley rolled her eyes. Like that would ever happen.
“The library?” Nana demanded in disgust when Harley parked in front of the big library on Poplar Avenue. “This isn’t detective stuff.”
“Sure it is. There’re some things I have to look up on the Internet. You can go in the adult section and read dirty books while I do my work.”
Still disgruntled, Nana followed her inside, after their brief discussion about the wisdom of taking a loaded pistol into the library where children were had ended in the gun being locked safely in the Toyota’s glove compartment. At least she’d won one battle with Nana. A red-letter day.
It didn’t take too long to find out what she needed to know—if an hour and a half wasn’t too long. Tootsie could probably have found the information in less than ten minutes, but she didn’t know how to hack into web sites like he did. Just about the time Nana turned rebellious and threatened to go into the music room and do a hootchy-kootchy dance to Ragtime Gal, Harley slid off the seat and said, “All right. I’m done. On to the next adventure.”
“If this is your idea of adventure,” Nana muttered, “I’d be better off playing strip poker back in the dining room.”
“You frighten me, Nana.”
That seemed to please her and she smiled. To those who didn’t know better, she could be an old darling, one of those elderly women that sang choir in church every Sunday morning, and baked cookies and knit sweaters for the homeless. Right down to her pretty lace collar beneath the string of pearls. No one would ever suspect Nana was Outlaw Annie in disguise.
“So who lives here?” Nana asked when they pulled up in front of a nice East Memphis home, a gray stone sixties modern with a red door and sharply angled roof. “The perp?”
“A suspect. I see you keep up with Law and Order.”
“And CSI. I take turns watching one and taping one. So? Is this where the perp lives?”
“Suspect. Maybe a suspect. Let’s just say, a person of interest.”
“Ha!” Nana looked gleeful. “Give me your car keys a minute.”
“You’re not thinking of driving, are you?”
“Of course not. My license expired. Wouldn’t want to break any laws.”
Harley handed her the keys, then immediately regretted it when Nana unlocked the glove compartment and took out her pistol.
“Oh God. Put that thing away. We’re not going to a shoot-out. We’re just going to talk to this guy a little bit.”
“You never know. Better safe than sorry. A penny earned is a penny saved—” She paused and frowned. “Wrong cliché. Well, you know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I do. Look, Dirty Harry, put up the pistol. You’re going to get us in trouble.”
Nana stuck the pistol into her wicker handbag and snapped it shut. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when we go bird hunting. Put the gun back.”
“That wasn’t the right cliché at all. Damn. Maybe my meds are wearing off.”
Harley felt faint. This was insane. She should never have let Nana talk her into leaving the home. Now she was in a car in front of Claude Williams’s house, stuck with a fully armed senior citizen off her medication. She smacked her forehead with her palm. What was I thinking?
“Stop being so dramatic,” Nana said calmly. “I’m all right. I just get a little confused at times. Nothing to worry about.” Before Harley could grab her, she had the door open and one foot on the curb. “Come on. Let’s go grill him.”
Ordinarily, now that she’d regained her senses, Harley would have insisted Nana get back in the car and would h
ave taken her straight back to the home. But the red front door of Williams’s house opened and out stepped Preston Hughes. Or a man who looked very much like the Preston Hughes in the Elvis competition photos she’d found on the Internet. Since he was dressed in jeans and a shirt instead of black leather, there was a chance she was wrong, but it certainly did look like him. Might as well forge ahead, hit two birds with the same stone.
Lord. Now she was thinking in clichés like Nana.
Williams looked surprised to see her again, and Hughes looked angry, but that could have been because of the conversation he’d been having with Williams. They’d seemed to be arguing.
“I hope I’m not intruding, Mr. Williams,” she said as pleasantly as possible, “but I had a few more questions I wanted to ask you on behalf of the company. This is my great-grandmother, Mrs. McMullen.”
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