Viola Rose looked around the table, clicked the top of her pen a few times and said, “Well I guess I can take a hint.” She clicked the pen once more stuck it through her teased hair and put the order pad in her pocket. “Just give me a holler if you decide you want anything.”
As she walked off, Miss Vivee said, “Hadn’t I already told her that I would?”
I laughed. But Mac picked the conversation back up. He seemed keen to hear what Miss Vivee had to say.
“So, Vivee,” Mac said. “Who’s the murderer?” He eyed her. “Do you know?”
“Not yet. But I’ve been doing some investigating and I’ve got a list of suspects.”
“Really now. And who’s on the list?”
She looked at me and back at him. “It’s incomplete right now. But we’re on the trail of a couple of them.”
He nodded his head slowly, and let his eyes drift upward. He seemed to contemplate Miss Vivee’s theory of murder.
“So since you know that she was murdered, you must know how she was murdered,” he said bringing his eyes down to meet hers.
“I do,” she said and took a sip of her tea.
My ears perked up. She had yet to share her thoughts of how Gemma Burke was murdered with me. It seemed as if she felt like I should just have blind faith in her and follow her every command, without question, as she carried through on her inquisition.
I chuckled. And that was exactly what I had been doing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I don’t know if Miss Vivee’s pregnant pause was for a dramatic effect or if she had lost her train of thought. But it took her a few minutes to fill us in on how she thought Gemma had been killed. The silence was killing me.
“When Gemma came into the Maypop she was coughing,” Miss Vivee finally said. “She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Her face looked distressed and she complained to Renmar of chest pains and that she felt really tired.”
“Wait,” I said. “You told me she bounced in. Ponytail swinging. This is the first I’ve heard that she was sick when she came in.”
“I used the word ‘bouncy’ metaphorically,” she explained. “You know, to show the contrast in her state of being in a short amount of time – alive when she came in and dead when she left,” she explained.
I rolled my eyes.
“Anyway.” Miss Vivee directed her attention back to Mac. “She had on one of those running suits.”
“Sweats,” I offered.
“No. She wasn’t sweating,” Miss Vivee said. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see her.” She looked at Mac. “She didn’t see her.”
“No. I meant her outfit. We call them sweats.”
“Oh. Okay. I didn’t want Mac to think that sweating was one of the symptoms, because it wasn’t.” Miss Vivee took a sip of her tea. “Anyway. She coughed the entire time she was there until she fell over dead in her bowl of bouillabaisse. And her ‘sweats’ were dirty, like she’d been on the ground.”
A knowing smile crossed Mac’s face and his eyes lit up. “Like she had had a fall?”
“Exactly.” Miss Vivee’s eyes gleamed.
“You think she dry drowned, don’t you?” he said.
Miss Vivee practically leapt up in her seat. Then she turned and grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “See? He agrees,” she said to me. “Mac thinks the same thing I do. Gemma Burke was murdered.”
“Wait! What?” I was totally confused.
“Vivee thinks Gemma dry drowned.”
“In the bouillabaisse?”
“No.” Miss Vivee frowned up her face. “Not in the bouillabaisse,” she said with some frustration in her voice. “Are you always this slow?”
I opened my mouth to talk and then thought better of it.
“Tell her, Mac,” Miss Vivee ordered.
“From what Vivee tells me, I’d have to concur. I think she dry drowned.” He scooted up closer to the table. “You see people drown when their lungs can’t get enough oxygen from the air. Normally a person drowns because of some kind of fluid in the lungs. But dry drowning is when a person can’t pull in enough oxygen for some reason other than the presence of water.”
“Isn’t that the same as suffocation?” I asked.
Miss Vivee clucked her teeth.
“It’s the cause and effect,” Mac offered. “Gemma suffocated yes, but the reason was because she drowned.”
“The no water drowning,” Miss Vivee said. “So it’s called dry drowning.”
I looked over at Vivee and back at Mac. I had never heard of dry drowning before. I was so tempted to pull out my iPhone and Google it. But that would upset Miss Vivee that I had to confirm what she and Mac were telling me. I made a mental note to look it up later. In the privacy of my room.
“How do you two know that?” I said instead.
“The symptoms of course,” Vivee said. “She came in coughing. When she sat down to eat she told Renmar that she thought some of her soup would help her. And she had dirt on her clothes.”
“Coughing?” I said. “That’s all?” I shook my head in disbelief.
“And the dirt on her clothes,” Miss Vivee said again.
“You could tell from that?” I said confused. “That’s what made you know she dry drowned. Or whatever it’s called. Maybe she just swallowed the wrong way, or she was catching a cold.”
“You don’t die from a cold. Or from swallowing the wrong way. Leastways not that quickly. And you don’t cough that long.” Miss Vivee didn’t like the idea that I wasn’t just falling in line with her coughing culprit version of Gemma’s death.
“Vivee said that Gemma complained to Renmar of being tired. Having chest pain,” Mac said.
“I heard Renmar tell the Sheriff that,” Vivee said and gave a quick nod of her head. “And Brie confirmed it.”
Mac looked at me. “I know it seems quite incredulous for us to make that assumption on so little information. And you’re right, there’s lots of things that’ll make you cough. But there aren’t many things that will make you cough and kill you.” He nodded his head slowly. “Go ahead. Gaggle it,” he said and sat back in his seat, seemingly quite pleased with himself.
“Gaggle it?” I crunched up my nose.
“You know,” Miss Vivee said. “On the World Wide Web.”
I started laughing. I had planned to later on, but since they were okay with it, I whipped out my phone.
“Just do a search for coughing as a symptom,” he said.
And while I searched, I heard Miss Vivee talk to Mac about what she had come to ask.
“Mac,” she said. “Like I said, we’re on the trail of a few of the suspects. And it’s led us to a strip club in Atlanta.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And . . . Well. Logan and I, upstanding women that we are, can’t go into one of those places by ourselves.”
“So you and Logan are solving the murder?”
“Logan’s an archaeologist,” Miss Vivee said.
I glanced up when she said that. I wondered was being an archaeologist a step up or down from me being “a good friend and companion.”
“And she knows all about solving murders,” Miss Vivee continued, her voice was so sweet it could have sweeten a whole sea of iced tea.
“And?” he asked. He seemed eager to find out what she wanted.
“Well.” I saw her lick her lips out the side of my eye. “I want you to ride to Atlanta with us,” she said, rather meekly for her. “You know. For protection and to help with our investigation.”
He smiled. “When you thinking about leaving?”
“Tomorrow,” she said and smiled.
“I’m in,” he said returning the smile.
“Thank you, Mac,” she said. She batted what was left of her eyelashes and blushed. “I knew I could count on you.” Then in the same breath, the smile disappeared and she raised an eyebrow. “And when we go,” her voice dropped an octave lower. “Don’t wear any of that pomade.”
She patted her hands on the table
and said, “Now, we’re all set.” She nodded her head at me. “I’m going to the little’s girl’s room. You need to go?”
“No. I’m good,” I muttered barely looking up from my phone. There really was a thing called dry drowning. I Googled “cough symptom” and every illness it listed wasn’t very serious or took a really long time like emphysema or lung cancer. Except for dry drowning. It took anywhere from one to twenty-four hours to kill a person. The symptoms, according to WebMD were coughing, chest pain and shortness of breath.
Wow. Maybe Miss Vivee really did know what she was talking about.
Once she left, Mac slid down his bench so he was directly across from me. “I know Vivee must’ve told you that story about me, her and Betsy.”
“Huh,” I said and looked up from my phone. “Betsy?” the name sounded familiar.
“Her car. My limp.” He pointed down to his leg.
“Oh yeah,” I said realizing what he was talking about. “She told me.” My face cringed remembering the incident.
“Well. I’m sure she made it sound a lot worse than it was.”
“Oh?” I said, my mouth linger in the shape of the letter “O.” Was he getting ready to defend her for hitting him with her car? Oh my goodness. He couldn’t be. “She said she ran you over with her car and broke your hip,” I said slowly waiting to hear his answer.
“See. That’s what I mean. She didn’t run me over, she just kind of bumped me with it. I could have moved out the way, but I didn’t really believe her when she said she was ‘gonna mow me down.’”
I just closed my eyes and shook my head.
“And she didn’t break my hip,” he continued. “It was just fractured.” He rearranged the silverware in front of him. He seemed to be thinking over what he wanted to say.
“I wasn’t messing with that woman, you know. ‘The Hussy,’ as Vivee calls her,” he said sounding like he wanted me to believe him. “She was messin’ with me. I told her I didn’t want no parts of her or her cooking.”
“Miss Vivee told me she’s dead now.”
He looked at me, curiosity flashing across his face. “She didn’t tell you she killed her, did she?”
“Did she kill her?” I said a little louder than he liked.
“Shhh!” He reached over the table and squeezed my wrist. “Don’t talk so loud,” he said and scanned the room checking to see if anyone had heard me. He let me go, took a sip of his iced tea and cleared his throat.
“Nobody saying she killed her,” he said, almost fussing at me. “But the woman died not too long after the incident with the car.” He glanced at me and then fiddled with the straw in his glass. “I just always wondered if it was Vivee . . . The coroner up in Augusta said it was a heart attack. But you know Vivee with her herbs and concoctions . . . She could make it seem like a heart attack.”
“I’m learning a lot about her capabilities,” I said and took a sip of my pop. “No wonder she’s so interested in finding Gemma’s killer. They’re two of a kind.” I said low, almost muttering.
“I’m back!” Miss Vivee came waltzing, well as much as she could as ninety-something, back over to the table and slid into the booth next to me. Happiness oozing out of her.
“What you two got your heads together about?” she said all smiles.
“Nothing,” we said in unison.
She looked at the two of us. “Well good. Now. Did anyone order anything? I’m starving.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Interstate Route 20, North
Wednesday Afternoon, AGD
“What’s in the bag, Miss Vivee?”
We were in Miss Vivee’s car, the 1994, gas guzzling, “Mow Your Man Down Lincoln,” on our way to Atlanta. She had refused to go in my Jeep Wrangler saying she didn’t want to ride for hours on end that high up. Plus, she had said, she would wrinkle her dress climbing in and out of it. She acted as if we were going on a road trip across the country. So I was stuck driving the weapon she’d used to assault and maim Dr. Mac Whitson.
“Our lunch,” she said and shook the bag at me.
“Lunch? There’s plenty of places on the way to eat,” I said.
“And spend good money buying food when there’s perfectly good food at the house that we can take with us? Nonsense.”
“What do you have?” Mac asked. He had come over to the Maypop before we left. Miss Vivee refused to go to his house to pick him up. She wouldn’t even let me leave by myself and go and get him.
“If he wants to go, he can get here on his own,” she had said. She must’ve forgotten she’d asked him to go. I knew, though, it was all because of the vow she made never to set foot in his house again.
“I packed egg salad,” Miss Vivee said to Mac. “Viola Rose heard about my trip and brought me over a whole tub of it. I brought goose liver for you and Logan.” She pulled out a waxed paper wrapped bundle and waved it in the air. “I put it both on white and wheat bread. You can take your pick.”
I stuck out my tongue. “Yuck.”
“You don’t like goose liver?” she asked.
“No. I. don’t.”
“I do,” Mac said from the backseat. “Hand me one of those.”
I took it from Miss Vivee and handed it over the seat to Mac.
“So, Vivee,” Mac spoke with a chuck of goose liver in his jaw. “Have you come up with a theory on who killed Gemma and why?”
“I’m thinking that it was one of the Becks that killed her,” Miss Vivee said.
“Who are they?” Mac asked.
“We found a letter,” I offered. “It was from a man named Jeffrey Beck to Gemma. In it he said he’d be willing to leave his wife, Miranda, if Gemma would take him back. Evidently she had broken it off with him.”
“Ah,” he said. “A love triangle. Always a good motive.” I watched in the review mirror as he shoved the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and then asked, mouth full, “Got another sandwich up there?”
“You can have mine,” I said and handed him the neatly wrapped package.
”Either a love triangle with both the husband and wife involved,” Miss Vivee explained to Mac. “Or maybe it was just Jeffrey Beck who killed Gemma Burke in a jealous rage.”
“Maybe he killed her because she was a stripper,” Mac offered.
“Who kills people because they strip?” Miss Vivee’s voice had gone up an octave. “Being a stripper is like any other job – archaeologist, cook,” Vivee unwrapped the sandwich she made from the egg salad Viola Rose gave her. “You don’t go around people killing people just ‘cause they work in a diner do you?”
“It was just a suggestion,” Mac said.
“I was a stripper once,” Vivee said matter-of-factly, taking a small bite of her sandwich.
“You were not,” I said.
“I could have been. Times were hard trying to raise my girls after their daddy died. I had a friend that owned a juke joint down in the swamps. And I worked there for a good little piece. Dancing. Had to smile at the customers, keep’em happy, you know. And believe me when I tell you, some of them got right friendly at times.”
“Wish I’d a known you back then,” Mac said.
“That’s not the same as a stripper.” Neither one of us paid attention to Mac’s comment.
“Almost,” she said. “It almost made me a stripper. Sometimes I felt like I was.”
“You can strip for me anytime, Vivee,” Mac said, with a sly grin working its way across his wrinkled face.
“Then I won’t be the blame for just your broke hip, but for that heart attack you’d have,” she said over her shoulder. “You can’t handle what I’ve got to offer, you old goat.”
“At least I’d die with a smile on my face.”
I took my hands off the wheel and covered up my ears. “Please you two. I can’t take any more.”
“He started it,” Miss Vivee said. “I was trying to have a civilized and proper, mind you, conversation about being a stripper.”
Chapter T
wenty-Seven
Atlanta, Georgia
Wednesday Night, AGD
Colin Pritchard had sworn to Miss Vivee that all he remembered about the club where Gemma had worked was its general location. Not its name. Not what it looked like. Not even which side of the street it was on.
I was beginning to see what Miss Vivee meant about him not being so smart.
He seemed hurt about Gemma spurning him, so finally confronting her should have been a big deal. Especially when he saw her in her stripper costume. Something like that should be etched in his memory. Forever. Something he’d share over a beer with friends when they talk about the one that got away.
But when we got there we found that there was a whole row of stripper clubs on Piedmont Avenue south of Main – the directions he’d given us – which presented a dilemma: In which one had Gemma Burke worked?
Miss Vivee checked her notebook twice, reading and rereading from the notes she had scribbled down once we got back from speaking with Colin. She was hoping to find something more specific he’d said about where Gemma worked. Because here we were and with the number of clubs – Nipp-o-lopolis, Kitty City, and Dancing Bare, just to name a few – it looked like we were going to have to go bar hopping the rest of the night. It made me regret agreeing to come to Atlanta. And with names like those I didn’t care to find out which one Gemma had worked in. I was ready to turn around and head back to Yasamee.
Mac, on the other hand, was keen on not wasting any time determining Gemma’s employer. He suggested that he would go into each one of them first, alone, and do some reconnaissance. Miss Vivee gave him the evil eye and then told me to park the car, we were all going in.
I would have voted for Mac to do the honors and then come back and share any info he had gleaned. But unfortunately for me, Miss Vivee’s world was not a democracy.
We tried Club Kitty City first. I found a handicap spot (go figure) right in front, we hooked the handicap sticker around the rearview mirror and headed in.
Red and purple strobe lights and half naked girls were everywhere. The club’s atmosphere had to be meant to mesmerize and tantalize its clients. It immediately put Mac in a trance. He walked in, lost his limp, and sprung a grin that lasted the entire time we were there. He had worn a gray suit that looked at least thirty years old. It had narrow pinstripes, which he complimented with a white shirt and a brown polka dot bow tie. Minus the pomade, he still tried to control that shock of white hair that framed his face by constantly rubbing it down with his hand.
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