Dixie Divas

by Virginia Brown

  “God forbid,” I said. “She’ll have to get a new ex-husband to make miserable, and I’m not sure any of us want to go through that again.”

  “Just be glad you weren’t here during the worst of it,” Sandra said with a shake of her head. “I thought they were actually going to end up in a gunfight in court square after one of the hearings.”

  Thank God for small favors.

  Now that we had a plan, we had to make it work. Sandra seems to be very organized. In her mid-forties, about five-four, sturdy, and practical, she works only part-time now, filling in at hospitals or doctors’ offices when and where as needed. As a matter of practice, she keeps a well-stocked kit similar to that of an EMT in her car. Handily enough, if a spot of blood gets noticed in her car, it’s less likely to arouse suspicion.

  So Sandra’s SUV was backed up the driveway, the senator rolled into a rug that Bitty grudgingly let us haul down from an upstairs guest bedroom, then carried out by six sweating pallbearers, including Gaynelle Bishop who refused to shirk her Diva duty. Even Bitty grabbed a hunk of fringe and wool rug, though a bit unsteadily since she had a whiskey glass in one hand. We all heaved at the same time, and Philip thunked into the back of the SUV like a sack of Irish potatoes. We looked at the results of our efforts. A good two feet of him still stuck out.

  “I’ll put the back seats down,” Sandra said, “but we’ll have to take two cars now.”

  Georgie and I got in the front seat and pulled, while Sandra and Rayna pushed from the rear until we managed to get the respected member of Congress wedged into the cargo area.

  “I think I’ve got a hernia,” Georgie gasped when we finished, and she collapsed in the driver’s seat with a hand pressed against her side.

  “And just think,” I reminded her cheerfully, “we get to carry him from the car to the vault next.”

  Georgie gave me a pained look. I smiled. Maybe I’m not as old as I thought.

  With the back seats laid flat and Philip dragged forward, only wool tassels hung slightly over the edge. When we slammed shut the cargo door, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Bitty refrained. She sucked down the rest of her whiskey and glared at the SUV.

  “That rug costs more than Philip’s hair-weave and his last underage tart’s new boob job combined,” she said, and as Gaynelle escorted her back into the house to freshen up her glass, Bitty added, “I just hate it when bad things happen to good carpets, don’t you?”

  Rayna elected to ride with Sandra just in case of trouble. None of us knew exactly what kind of trouble might arise, but then, when we’d awoken this morning, I daresay none of us had expected to soon be hiding a frozen corpse, either.

  Georgie, our designated time-keeper, pointed to her sports watch and said, “Three minutes until lift-off.”

  That gave us added incentive, and Gaynelle hustled Bitty from the house and out to the curb, while the rest of us tried to appear as normal as possible, just friends donating a carpet to the local charity or Goodwill box. We had ten minutes until law offices, banks, and government employees got off work and into their vehicles to crowd the streets. Since everyone practically knows everyone else, should the police ever ask, someone was bound to remember that Sandra and Rayna had been hauling a carpet around, followed by Gaynelle, Bitty, Georgie and me.

  When Sandra pulled out, the rest of us piled into Gaynelle’s twenty year old light blue Cadillac and followed the SUV at the seemly pace of a funeral procession. At the intersection of North Maury, Sandra went straight and we turned right, just in case. A few streets up we turned onto South Market Street by the court square, tooled at a reasonable speed past old homes and office buildings, then passed Chulahoma Street and under the wrought-iron sign at the main entrance of the cemetery.

  Hill Crest Cemetery, also known as “the Little Arlington of the South” because of the notable generals buried here, is enclosed by fencing and wrought-iron gates. It’s not the only cemetery in Holly Springs, but it’s the biggest. There’s another cemetery on East Boundary Road just off Old 78 Highway, but it’s new and doesn’t have the ancient, gnarled holly trees, oaks, and marble monuments dating back to the early nineteenth century like this one. Truevines are buried here in several plots, being a rather fertile family in the past. There’s even a Truevine here who joined the Union army. His grave has a small marker with a carved Confederate flag crossed by a Union flag as testament to the love borne a son despite parental disagreement.

  Five wrought-iron gates mark the entrances; three are left open during the day. Sandra chose the one farthest from the maintenance sheds and office. The narrow road dips sharply and loops around, branching off through twenty-five acres. At the far end of the cemetery lies a small trough that makes a path between neatly mowed grass and tall pines. In front of that is the newer section. It’s rather bare-looking. Near the old gates, tall monuments mark old family plots and the passage of two hundred years.

  Sandra’s SUV slowed down, and she seemed to be looking in her rearview mirror for directions.

  “When we get to the right vault, tell me and I’ll stop so you can get out,” Gaynelle said to Georgie in the back seat, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “I thought to bring some flowers.”

  Bitty, sitting up front with Gaynelle and the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, stared at Gaynelle as if she’d just said she’d voted for a Democrat in the last election. Gaynelle’s known to be an ardent Republican. “You’ll put flowers on that pervert’s grave? I think you’ve lost your mind, Gaynelle Bishop.”

  To Gaynelle’s credit, she didn’t fly off the handle, but then, after years of teaching pupils liable to do everything from throwing spitwads to setting the chemistry lab on fire, I imagine she has a great deal of self-control. She just reached over to pat Bitty on the arm.

  “Bitty dear, the flowers aren’t for the senator. They’re just in case anyone should notice us and wonder what we’re doing. It’s a ruse. Once we’ve gotten him into the vault, you can burn them if you like.”

  “I think I’ll do just that.”

  “Suit yourself, dear. It’s a lovely dried arrangement I took from your dining room table.”

  Bitty’s answer to that was another splash of whiskey into her empty glass. Apparently, Coke and ice took up too much room.

  Fortunately, Georgie spied the vault just ahead. It was getting close to five, and soon the cemetery gates would close for the night. It occurred to me that no one had suggested just how we were going to get back in to get him moved before morning.

  Before Georgie got out of the car I asked, “If we’re supposed to come back for him after dark, how will we get in?”

  “It won’t be that hard,” she said, and held up a cell phone. “Before we left Bitty’s I called the cemetery office and told them I had a little more work to do for the historical society, and it might take me until dark. I come here a lot. The caretaker gave me a key last week, and I haven’t given it back yet. It fits the lock on this gate. I like to sit out here sometimes at night. It’s quiet.”

  “I think you need more friends your age, dear,” Gaynelle said, but I began to realize that Georgie is probably used to being underestimated. She just smiled and closed the car door.

  It must have been a strange procession, should anyone happen to have seen it, six women advancing on a broken vault with a bulky rug and an expensive arrangement of dried flowers. It was going pretty well until Bitty tripped over a carved statue of a boy and his dog. She held on to the edge of the rug to keep from falling, and put us all off-balance. We struggled valiantly, but the rug came open, the senator fell out, and Bitty sat down hard on the grass right in front of the stone statue. As the senator rolled downhill toward her, she put out a foot to stop his progress.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said to the plastic-wrapped corpse, then knocked back a slug of Jack Daniel’s.

  “How did she do that,” Sandra wondered, “without spilling a drop of whiskey?”

  “Bitty is a woman of
many talents,” said Rayna as she covered the senator discreetly with the dark burgundy carpet.

  We got him tucked into it again, ignoring Bitty’s suggestion that we “Just stick his head back up his ass and roll him like a truck tire the rest of the way to the vault.”

  “You stay right there, dear,” Gaynelle said to Bitty, “and hold the flowers.”

  Bitty, I’m happy to say, agreed.

  As Georgie had said, a broken vault had half the top off to one side, the other half still in place but askew. It was a plain vault, about three feet high and eight feet long, with one of those thick stone slabs supposed to be set in place on top. The cover had broken in half, right across the carved names that are almost illegible, worn away by time and weather. I could barely make out the date of 1835. No coffin resided inside, and with a great deal of huffing, puffing, a few words suitable only for pool halls and maybe jail cells, we managed to slide Philip Hollandale into the burial vault.

  “This is . . . a lot of trouble . . . if we’re just coming . . . back in a few hours,” Rayna got out between gasps for air. “I say . . . we leave him here.”

  It sounded like an excellent idea to me. At least the police would be notified and could begin looking for whoever murdered him.

  Bitty reached us, limping slightly with the flower arrangement under one arm and empty glass in her hand. She peered into the vault. “I say we mount him naked on a pole in court square. Philip loved to be naked and mounted.”

  Sandra looked at her. “Now that we’ve got him far away from your house, just exactly how did Senator Hollandale get that fatal head wound?”

  “I know how,” Bitty said, “I just don’t know who did it.”

  Gaynelle gave the others a swift summary of the events at Sherman Sanders’ house, and ended by saying, “Now Sanders is missing, so it’s quite probable he killed the senator and fled.”

  “So you see,” said Bitty rather plaintively, “unless I tell the police that I saw Philip in the foyer and didn’t report it, they won’t suspect Sanders at all. Though they do know he’s missing.”

  “What about the dog the police found?” Rayna asked. “Do you think it’s Sanders’ dog, and if it is, do you think it has any connection to all this?”

  “We can ask Faye Harper,” Gaynelle said. “She works part time in the animal clinic. She may very well know something.”

  A cold breeze rustled the holly branches of a tree, and whistled through the bare limbs of an oak nearby. I shivered. Things were getting too complicated, as if hiding a dead body wasn’t complication enough.

  I wasn’t quite sure how to bring up the subject, so I just dove in. “Listen, I think we all should keep this to ourselves for now. The less people involved, the better it will be. If the other Divas don’t know anything, the police can’t accuse them of obstruction.”

  “Trinket’s right,” Rayna said firmly. “Let’s just keep this among ourselves for now. So, do we come back for him tonight, or leave him here?”

  “We can leave him here,” Bitty said, “but we’re not leaving my rug. I paid nearly ten thousand dollars for that rug, and Philip Hollandale threw such a fit when I bought it, then had the nerve to demand it in the divorce settlement, that I’m damned if I’ll let him get it now.”

  “Bitty,” I began, but she gave me one of those mulish looks that had always promised a fit when she was in elementary school, and the tenacious resistance of a wolverine ever since she’d hit junior high school. I sighed and looked at the others. “Maybe you should take a vote,” I said.

  The final decision, I think, made us all a little uncomfortable, but it seemed like there was nothing else we could do.

  Chapter Eight

  “Yes, Mama, everything is just fine,” I lied to my mother without the least bit of guilt. Why should both of us be terrified? “I’m staying the night with Bitty. Yes, she’s a bit upset with all those Breaking News interruptions on TV, as well as everyone in Marshall County calling to tell her how sorry they are to hear about the senator missing, and they hope she’s doing all right.”

  Mama’s still sharp as a tack, and she knows very well that the real reason people keep calling Bitty is to see if she knows anything reporters aren’t telling. But here I was on the phone telling my mother a whopper of a lie so I could go back out at midnight and steal a corpse from a vault in the cemetery. I hadn’t told her this big a fib since I’d told her that Perry was doing just fine in his job and we were still deliriously happy. That’d been last year. The truth does have a way of coming out eventually.

  “Well sugar,” Mama said, “Bitty’s a lot stronger than anyone thinks. But I’m glad you’re staying with her tonight, anyway. Maybe Eddie and I can chase each other around the kitchen table while we’re here alone.”

  Lately I’ve wondered if the doctor over at Williams Clinic has given Daddy a prescription for Viagra, but not only have I not had the nerve to ask, I don’t want to know the answer.

  “Don’t fall and break anything,” I just said, and Mama laughed.

  “No chance of that. I have no intention of running very fast. It’s much more fun when I get caught.”

  When I hung up, I looked over at Bitty. “I’m not at all sure those people are my parents. I think someone abducted my real parents and replaced them with sixteen year olds in wrinkled birthday suits.”

  Bitty, stretched out on the couch in what she referred to as her parlor but what was really more of a den, smiled and took another sip of hot coffee that I’d forced on her as soon as we got back to her house. “They’re just frisky. I hope I’m still like that when I get their age.”

  “I don’t think I’ve been like that at any age.”

  “Like I told you, your problem is just that you’ve never had an orgasm.” Bitty laughed when I made the usual uncomfortable sound I make whenever she says something like that. “I’m telling you, Trinket, once your eyes roll back in your head and you shout ‘Hallelujah Jesus, I’m comin’ home!’ you’ll know exactly what you’ve been missing out on for thirty years or so.”

  “That’s sacrilegious,” I mumbled as I looked at a picture on the wall of a young woman in a flowing dress and big hat with trailing ribbons being pushed on a swing by a handsome young gentleman dressed in nineteenth century clothes.

  “What’s sacrilegious is that you’ve been cheated all these years. It’s against nature. Besides, I haven’t noticed you showing up at church on Sunday mornings lately.”

  I looked at her. “I’m afraid the walls will cave in. Especially if I sit by you.”

  “You’ve got God confused with Darth Vader. Keep in mind that God created us just like we are, and all we have to do is follow a few rules and everything will be just fine. It’s very simple. No cheating, stealing, or killing, and we can go to heaven and visit with Elvis.”

  “There are seven other rules you’ve left out,” I said. “What about lying?”

  Bitty gave me a pitying look. “Bearing false witness means you shouldn’t tell lies that’ll get other people in trouble. I only stretch the truth when absolutely necessary to save myself or to spare someone else pain. That’s not at all the same thing.”

  Discussing theology with Bitty is something like finding a talking frog. While you’re amazed the frog can talk, you just know there’s a trick to it somewhere.

  “What time are the Divas coming back over?” I asked, though I knew very well that we’d set the time at eleven-thirty, well before the sinister hour of midnight, and late enough to ensure that most of Holly Springs would be sound asleep in their beds.

  Bitty yawned despite the massive amounts of caffeine I’d been pouring into her. “Really, Trinket, you need to pay attention to things. We’re to meet at eleven-thirty at the Inn. Georgie and Gaynelle are going to meet us, and Sandra promised to come, too. No one’s liable to notice, especially if we go in the back way.”

  With that fervent hope in mind, we did what I can only describe as skulking outside the back garage door of Rayna
’s section of the hotel. I’ve often thought it would be wonderful to live in that big old building, with its former suites rented out to nineteenth century passengers, the lovely marble lobby, and what was once a dining room that served over a hundred people. Rayna has plans with a few developers to renovate and turn the room into a gift shop and a small, quaint restaurant. It’d be an excellent stop on the railroad if ever we could get a historical train to run down the tracks from Memphis or up from New Orleans to bring tourists. Especially during the April pilgrimage.

  Anyway, there we were in the dead of night, clustered outside the rear of the Inn and waiting on Rayna to come out and meet us. Rob’s car was gone, so chances were good that he’d had to go out on a call. That happens a lot since he owns a bail bonding business as well as an insurance investigation company.

  “Good Lord,” Rayna said when she saw Bitty, “who are you supposed to be?”

  “Well, we all agreed that dark clothing is best,” Bitty defended her haute couture. She’d poured herself into a tight black jumpsuit that I swear looked like a leather body stocking, wore a black leather jacket, mid-calf suede boots with high heels, and had a black purse on one shoulder.

  “I couldn’t talk her out of it,” I said. “She thinks she’s one of the Charlie’s Angels.”

  “She looks more like one of the Hell’s Angels,” Sandra observed, and we all nodded in a silent agreement except for Bitty, who chastised our sadly lacking fashion expertise.

  Since I still had on the clothes I’d worn earlier, the comfortable blue Lee jeans and yellow shirt and jacket, I’d borrowed Bitty’s black crocheted poncho to cover up my bright colors. It still smelled faintly of Beautiful, that perfume by Liz Taylor.

  “All right, Divas, let’s go,” Rayna said, and we set out in grim determination to retrieve what we all hoped was a still-frozen senator from the cemetery.

  As promised, Georgie did indeed have a key to the gate lock, and with car lights off and the only illumination a ragged half-moon to guide us, we made our way very slowly down the narrow, sloping road to the vault that held Philip Hollandale. My heart was thumping so hard I worried it’d fracture a rib, and my dry mouth prevented speech. Apparently, the others were having similar reactions, as no one spoke until we reached the stone vault.