by Dixie Cash
“Why, of course, sir. We have a lovely room available and a registration book at the front entrance. A family member usually sits or stands there to greet visitors as they enter.”
Bob smiled appreciatively but didn’t have the heart to explain that it was unlikely there would be any visitors except for the people he had traveled with from Texas. He followed the gentleman into a chapel and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Mike already present.
“Hey, boss. We thought you might appreciate some company.”
“We didn’t mean to run out on you, Bob,” Eddie said.
“But we’re here for you now,” Mike added.
Valetta Rose stood near Mike, but said nothing. This didn’t trouble Bob. She probably didn’t know what to say. With the exception of himself, she was probably the closest to Roxie.
Moisture formed in Bob’s eyes and a lump that had sprung to his throat prevented him from speaking for a few seconds. What more could be said anyway? He gathered all three in a bearlike hug.
With Buddy’s expert driving and the help of the GPS, Debbie Sue and her group arrived at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. Debbie Sue’s mom had been right. The hotel was so close they probably could have found it on their own. They were all admiring its beauty when Debbie Sue said, “Let me out at the front door and I’ll go in and register us.”
“Great idea,” Buddy said. “Since we’ll be leaving so soon, I’m not going to use valet parking. I’ll find a spot in the parking lot.”
“I’ll go with you, Debbie Sue,” Edwina volunteered.
They entered through the massive doors and headed for the registration desk. Edwina babbled on about the size and beauty of the lobby. “I feel just like Scarlett O’Hara arriving at Tara.” She stopped at a directory near the registration desk. “Good Lord, Debbie Sue, come look at this map. This place has eight bars and seven restaurants, all under one roof! I’m moving here, right here to this spot.”
Debbie Sue turned away from the desk with a set of key cards and a puzzled expression on her face. “Uh, Ed, they said we have a suite, the Presidential Suite.”
“Cool. What does that mean?”
“I’m not altogether sure, but it doesn’t sound basic.”
Buddy and Vic came through the doorway with a young man behind them wheeling a cart loaded with bags and suitcases.
“Here she is,” Buddy said to the bellhop. He approached Debbie Sue. “What are our room numbers, darlin’?”
“There’s no number. It just says the Presidential Suite.”
“Ah, yes,” the bellhop said. “The elevator’s to your left. We’ll be going to the ninth floor.”
They entered the elevator and the bellhop pressed the ninth floor button. When the doors glided open, he said, “It’s to your left, at the end of the hallway.”
Everyone turned left and trekked up the long hallway with the young man towing the baggage cart behind them. At the end of the hall Debbie Sue started to insert her key card in a door on the left, but she was halted by the bellhop. “Oh, no, not that door, ma’am. That’s your kitchen. You’ll want to use the door directly in front of you.”
Debbie Sue and Edwina exchanged glances. “Would you look at that?” Edwina said. “There’s a doorbell at the door in front of me. I didn’t know hotel rooms had doorbells.”
The bellhop stepped ahead of them, lifted the key card from Debbie Sue’s hand and opened the door. “The Presidential Suite does.”
Debbie Sue and her group entered the suite, one by one. “Good Lord,” she said.
She could see an expansive room before them, with adjoining rooms. They strolled farther and found a dining room large enough to accommodate at least a dozen people, a modern kitchen, two oversized bedrooms and three bathrooms, all opulently furnished. No one said a word.
The bellhop’s look swung to each of them. “Is everything all right?”
“Absolutely. Thank you,” Buddy said and dug cash from his pocket for a tip.
As soon as the bellhop was out of sight, Debbie Sue pawed in her purse for her cell phone. “I’m calling Mom. We’re not going out to supper tonight. I’m telling her to come over here. We’re having supper in our suite.”
“The Presidential Suite,” Virginia Pratt Miller exclaimed, when she came on the phone with Debbie Sue. “My goodness, I didn’t expect Harold to be that hospitable. That band I got for him must have been better than I thought.”
Debbie Sue laughed. “We want to have dinner here tonight, Mom, in our suite.”
“Are you going to use room service?”
“Seeing as how we’re not paying for a room, maybe we can afford it.”
“Who’ll be there? Do I need to dress up?”
“I wouldn’t recognize you in anything other than jeans, Mom. There’ll be the four of us, plus you and Doc and Bob Denman. Hopefully, he’ll have Darla’s backup musicians and a young girl who did their makeup.”
“What time should we be there?”
“You come whenever you want, Mom. I can’t wait to see you. We’re going to the funeral service soon, but we should be back in a couple of hours. Can you come early? We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
“I’ve been ready to see you since you called. Give me a ring when you get back to the hotel and we’ll come right over.”
Debbie Sue hung up and wrapped herself in a body hug. “I can’t wait! It’ll be nice having a bunch of people here this evening. Better than going out to a restaurant.”
“Edwina!” Vic’s voice boomed from one of the bedrooms. “C’mere. You need to see this.”
“Well that sounds inviting,” Edwina said, then called out to Vic, “I’m on my way, Puddin’.”
Buddy walked up, finishing the last button on a fresh shirt, “Did you talk to Virginia?”
Debbie Sue smoothed Buddy’s collar. “She and Doc are coming. They’ll be here when we get back. I want to ask Bob to come back with us and if Mike, Eddie and Valetta Rose are there, they should come, too.”
“For dinner?”
“If they want to.”
“Isn’t that time you’ll want to spend with Virginia and Doc Miller? Why would you want to bring in strangers?”
Debbie Sue hesitated. Buddy’s question made perfect sense, but she couldn’t let him know her real intention was interrogation.
“I think it would be a decent thing to do is all. We’re going to a funeral and whether we liked her or not, Roxie was Bob’s wife. Someone needs to extend a hand of kindness.”
Buddy moseyed to the wing chair that flanked the massive velvet couch and took a seat. “We’ve flown all the way up here from West Texas. I think that’s showing quite a bit of kindness.”
Debbie Sue could feel her scalp crawling, as it always did when she feared Buddy was on to her true motives. Dammit, where was Edwina? She could use that woman’s ability to change the subject and stick her foot in her mouth about now. What could Vic have found that was so enticing that she would be tied up this long?
“Don’t forget that Mom’s in the music business too. She has some things in common with these people. Besides, we can’t invite Bob and not the others.”
“If they even come to the service.”
Damn, that trio just had to be at Roxie’s service. “You’re right,” Debbie Sue acknowledged reluctantly. “If they come.”
Just then, Vic and Edwina strolled in the room, arm in arm. Debbie Sue was afraid to ask what they had been up to.
“Man, this place is really something. Mama Doll, what say we stay here for a couple of months?”
“My God, I wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if I stayed here that long. Being waited on hand and foot, maid service, room service? Holey moley.”
“I thought you’d gotten lost,” Debbie Sue said.
“I decided to touch up my makeup and hair. And then Vic and I tried that big tub out. We didn’t fill it with water, of course, but we did get inside to see if we’re gonna fit later on.”
Buddy lau
ghed.
“That’s more information than I was counting on, Ed,” Debbie Sue groused.
Buddy glanced at his watch. “Let’s head out. We don’t want to be late.”
Chapter Twenty-five
The mood in the SUV became somber as they neared the funeral home. Everyone seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. “I still can’t believe all of this,” Debbie Sue said to Buddy in a hushed voice. “I wish you and Vic could’ve heard her sing.”
“If only songs had been all that came out of her mouth,” Edwina said from the backseat.
“Ed, that’s a terrible thing to say,” Debbie Sue said.
“Let’s don’t be hypocrites, Debbie Sue. As far as I could see, she was a first-class bitch to everybody who knew her, even her husband. You wanted to knock the fillings out of her teeth yourself. You said so.”
“It sounds like there could be more than one person who might like to see her dead,” Buddy said.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say anyone wanted her dead,” Debbie Sue said, “but Ed’s right. We never saw her treat anyone very nice.”
“She pissed off more people than Bernie Madoff,” Edwina quipped.
“Buddy, what if someone kills a person accidentally?” Debbie Sue asked. “What’s the penalty for that?”
“That’s manslaughter if the DA wants to go in that direction. Depends on a hundred things. Killing someone accidentally or in self-defense isn’t a capital crime. It doesn’t call for the penalty that premeditated murder does, but there’s still been a death and somebody has to pay.”
Everyone became quiet again and soon Buddy turned into the funeral home parking lot and parked in front. They exited the SUV and walked through the massive oak entrance. Buddy lifted off his hat.
A gentleman dressed impeccably in a dark suit with a dark tie and a red carnation on his lapel appeared from out of nowhere. “May I be of assistance?”
“We’re here for the Denman service.”
“Yes, sir, please follow me.”
Debbie Sue deliberately looked for his footprints in the deep pile carpet because he appeared to be gliding instead of walking. After passing several open entrances to rooms of various sizes, he stopped and gestured toward a small parlor with the sweep of his left arm.
Bob was sitting there with two men and a woman. It took a few seconds for Debbie Sue to realize his companions were Mike, Eddie and Valetta Rose. They’d shown up.
Debbie Sue’s heartbeat quickened. She immediately glanced at Mike’s hand. The bandage was still there. Now it was a large Band-Aid that blended so well with the color of his skin, she could see how it could be missed. She was still positive that she hadn’t seen it before Roxie was killed. She wondered if Detective Finley had seen it and questioned Mike about it.
Bob looked across his shoulder, rose immediately and came to them. “Thanks for coming,” he said, touching cheeks with both Debbie Sue and Edwina.
Buddy and Vic voiced their condolences then. Bob introduced them to the three members of Darla’s entourage. Debbie Sue watched closely for any undue nervousness or uneasy reaction when Bob mentioned that Buddy was a sergeant in the Texas Rangers. That information usually got people’s attention. Debbie Sue had seen people drop things and stammer in Buddy’s presence. She thought she saw a flicker of something in Mike’s face, but in the darkened room it was hard to read anything.
Everyone took a seat and within minutes music began to filter through the speaker system. It was Roxie’s rendition of “Amazing Grace.” A shiver crept up Debbie Sue’s spine. The deceased Roxie’s beautiful, pure-as-crystal voice singing the haunting words of the old hymn soon had moisture threatening Debbie Sue’s eyes.
The gentleman who had met them stepped to a small podium and read a poem and a scripture from the Bible, and just as quickly as it started, it was over. No one had shed a tear.
The small group met again in the lobby for good-byes and Debbie Sue invited them for dinner in their suite at the Gaylord, trying to sound cordial and not as desperate as she felt.
Bob accepted graciously, but Eddie, Mike and Valetta Rose exchanged glances. Finally Valetta Rose said, “Sure, we’ll come. I’ve always wanted to see a suite at the Gaylord.”
“You won’t be disappointed,” Debbie Sue said much too gaily.
“Yeah,” Edwina said, “it’s not often you get to stay in a mansion in the sky.”
“Except when you die,” Eddie mumbled. “That hotel might be my only chance.”
They delivered Bob to his address, a loft downtown he said Roxie had insisted on buying. “Roxie believed that anyone who’s anyone lives downtown,” he said dully, as if he was thinking of something else altogether. Debbie Sue still didn’t have a read on his true feelings, but she suspected his mind and heart were back in Texas.
“Are you having food served from the hotel restaurant?” he asked before leaving the SUV.
“We haven’t made a plan about that yet,” Debbie Sue answered.
“The best barbeque pork ribs you’ll ever eat are right here in Nashville at Maggie Mae’s,” he said. “You might hear the best is somewhere in Memphis, but take my word for it, Maggie Mae’s is the best.”
“Sounds good to me,” Edwina said. “I’ve never had Southern-style barbecue.”
“If you decide on that, don’t forget to get the apple pecan cobbler for dessert,” Bob added. “That’s their signature dish.”
“Oh, yum,” Edwina said. “Bring on the pecans. I swear, I just put on ten pounds.”
“That sounds like a winner, Bob,” Debbie Sue told him. “We’d better go. We’ll see you this evening.”
Buddy keyed in the Gaylord address and the GPS voice gave him the directions.
“Too bad they don’t have one of those gadgets for life,” Edwina said. “You know, marry him, don’t marry him. Run like hell, this one is a wacko, that one already has a wife in El Paso.”
“I think there is one, Ed,” Buddy said. “It’s called common sense.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Edwina replied. “I’ve never had that in my whole life. Guess that’s why I need a GPS for living.”
They pulled into the hotel’s port cochere and an unmistakable voice could be heard through the closed windows. “Debbie Suuue! Honey! Buddeee!”
Debbie Sue turned toward the voice and saw her mom, an older, shorter, slightly heavier version of herself. She was waving her purse in the air and fast-walking toward her, leaving Doc Miller behind. Debbie Sue made an exit from the SUV and matched her pace and the two met in the middle in a warm embrace topped off with kisses.
“Mom, I’ve missed you so much.”
“I know, but isn’t it wonderful seeing you in Nashville?” She looked around. “Oh, my gosh. Where’s Doc?”
Debbie Sue had to grin. Her mother had worked years for Salt Lick’s only veterinarian at the time and after all these years and a marriage to boot, she still called him Doc, just as she had when she drew a paycheck from him.
Dr. Miller joined the group. The atmosphere became festive and Debbie Sue momentarily forgot why they were here. “Mom, you won’t believe the suite they’ve given us. Our house in Salt Lick could fit in it twice.”
“But that wouldn’t make it a home would it?”
“No ma’am,” Debbie Sue said with pure affection. “It sure wouldn’t.”
After another hug, she continued, “We’re ordering dinner tonight from a place called Maggie Mae’s. Have you heard of it?”
“Oh, heavens, no one in Nashville can say they haven’t. Have you called in the order yet? Be sure to get the apple pecan cobbler.”
“That’s twice we’ve been told that,” Edwina said. “Vic, when you call the order in, get plenty of that.”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Debbie Sue said. “We’ve got lots to catch up on.”
They made their way through the lobby to the elevator and up to their suite. While Buddy, Vic and Doc enjoyed ice-cold beers from the kitchen refrigerator, the women
toured the suite, oohing and aahing and gasping.
“So this is where rich people stay when they need a hotel room,” Virginia said with a laugh.
“It’s a far cry from the way my life has always been,” Edwina said. “I’m trained to go the low-on-funds route. You know, everybody pile into one room in the cheapest place you could find, which is usually the most flea-bitten dive in town.”
Debbie Sue’s mom laughed warmly. “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed, Edwina.”
Buddy came into the room. “Y’all are having too much fun in here. We’ve called the order in for ribs. It won’t be ready for another thirty minutes, but we’re going to pick it up now.”
“Why now?” Debbie Sue asked.
“I’m guessing Doc wants to show them the Tennessee Titans stadium,” Virginia said.
Phooey! Debbie Sue had been counting on having the time to do a little snooping while they toured the Titans stadium. If they did it now, it would throw everything off and now, even more than before, she needed to focus on Mike. “You’re not taking the tour now, are you?”
“Naw, we’re just going to drive past it. We’ll be back in less than an hour.”
“How much beer’s in that fridge?” Edwina asked as soon as the men had left. She marched to it, opened the door and found three bottles. They had no sooner sat down to relax in the living room before the doorbell buzzed.
“Lord, I might never get accustomed to having a doorbell in a hotel room,” Debbie Sue said. “I don’t even have a doorbell at home.”
She left her comfortable spot on the sofa. Looking through the peephole, she saw Bob Denman in the hallway. She opened the door and he stepped into the foyer. “I know I’m early,” he said, “but I called and no one answered.”
“Oh, hell, I turned off my phone during the funeral and forgot to turn in back on.”
“I was going to call everyone and tell them I’d pick them up and we’d all come here together, but Mike’s landlady told me he’d rushed in, packed most of his stuff and left.”