Elvis and the Grateful Dead (4 page)

G
rabbing flashlights (which I have two of, thanks to Jack Jones, who believes in always being prepared), I drag Lovie back to the courtyard.

“We’re not supposed to cross the crime scene tape,” she says.

“How are we going to find clues if we don’t?”

“The deputies already searched there.”

“Everybody in Lee County knows Fayrene doesn’t know a Confederate jasmine from a warthog. Besides, everybody’s already tromped all over my courtyard. What will two more hurt?”

“You know what I always say.”

Lovie and I give each other the high five while we chant, “
If nobody sees you, you didn’t do it
.” Then we clamber over the yellow tape.

On our hands and knees, we train flashlights onto every inch of ground
except
that around the Confederate jasmine. In spite of the sophistication I have single-handedly brought to Mooreville—candles banked on the tables (which the sheriff’s deputies already snuffed out) and white lights strung around every bush and tree—there’s not enough illumination to find clues on the ground in the dark without added light.

I adore being in my gardens, especially at night. I’ve made sure the artificial lights don’t overpower nature. Nothing is more soothing than lying in my Pauley’s Island hammock watching the stars and moon, reveling in the beauty and power of the universe. Everything is in perspective then, life’s tribulations reduced to a speck of dust.

Except murder, of course. And maybe those involving Jack. Whom I would give my eyeteeth to see right now.

In spite of his flaws—which are legion—he had a way of making me feel safe. And still does when I’m not too mad at him to notice. I don’t know. Sometimes the only reason you can breathe is that somebody holds you close and says
everything is going to be all right.

Which brings me back to the current dilemma. If I thought losing Lovie to a split-level in Las Vegas and three children would be tough, what about losing her to Parchman Penitentiary and prison chef?

Behind me there’s a crash. Training my flashinglight in that direction, I see Lovie sprawled on the ground under my tea olive.

I race over to pull her up. No easy task. “Are you all right?”

“I will be if I can get out of this ant bed.”

While I brush dirt and twigs off the seat of her skirt, she says a word that’s good practice for being a hardened criminal.

“Did they bite you?”

“Are you kidding? After being crushed by this ass the little suckers are down there burying their dead.” She plops into a chair. “I’m not built for squatting. You’ll have to look for clues by yourself.”

So far I’ve turned up nothing except a half-buried chew toy. Elvis’s work, I’m sure. He’s so determined not to share with Hoyt, he deprives himself of the pleasure of his doggie toys by trying to put them six feet under.

I’m beginning to think this search is hopeless, that Fayrene made up the Bertha-behind-the-bush story to get in the limelight. But I don’t say this to Lovie. She needs to think we’re making progress in clearing her name.

Elvis, who reads minds and knows when somebody’s hurting, prances over to Lovie and licks her foot, then joins me and starts nosing under the tea olive. Dropping to one knee, I shine my flashlight in his direction.

“I found something.” Scooping it up, I sit beside Lovie and hold out my palm. Resting inside is a rhinestone hairpin.

She leans forward to inspect it. “Do you think it belongs to Bertha?”

“It could be. There’s only one way to find out.”

“Find out where she lives, then break and enter.”

Lovie and I slap palms. Lucky for us, Lovie dated “Slick Fingers” Johnson, who was always one step ahead of the law. One of the many things she learned from him was how to pick locks.

I change into a black outfit cat burglars would wear while Lovie changes into the jeans and navy T-shirt she brought; then we search the telephone book looking for Dick Gerard’s address. There are two Richards and two Dicks. The only problem is we don’t know which one is the dead Dick.

“We’ll just have to call and find out.” I glance at the clock. It’s not quite ten, still early enough to call without being impolite.

“If we use your phone or either of our cell phones, anybody with caller ID can finger us.”

There Lovie goes again, speaking in film noir. When we accidentally got into detective work via the Bubbles Caper, she started sounding like Dick Powell in
Farewell, My Lovely
and Humphrey Bogart in
Dark Passage
. Of course, this is not surprising since one of our favorite pastimes is kicking back with a big bowl of buttered popcorn, watching the classic movies on TV. Hers or mine. It doesn’t matter as long as we watch together.

Now here we are, up to our necks in murder again, formulating a plan as we race to Gas, Grits, and Guts to use the pay phone outside.

The plan is for me to make the calls because Lovie’s Luscious Eats is all but famous and so is her sexy drawl. Think Kathleen Turner with a Marlene Dietrich twist. The cover story is that I’m doing a feasibility study for Ole Miss regarding a continuing education course on global warming at the Tupelo campus. Lovie wanted to make it a Masters and Johnsons type of survey, but common sense (mine) prevailed.

As I wheel my monster truck into the parking lot, I notice Fayrene’s husband, Jarvetis, through the plate-glass windows. Thank goodness he’s the one closing the store tonight instead of his wife, who would barrel out bent on sniffing out our mission. Even worse, she’d want to
help.
Like Mama, Fayrene doesn’t know the meaning of
discreet.

I park as far away from the door as I can get. As I get out of the truck, I hear the distant rumble of thunder. My gardens need rain, the farmers need rain, everybody needs rain except two amateur detectives who have enough trouble without skulking around in a downpour.

“You can wait in the truck if you want to, Lovie.”

She clambers out behind me. “I’m the one knocking off old lovers.”

“Good grief. Brian was your lover, too?”

“No, but if I’d met him before he kicked the bucket, he would have been.”

I think she’s kidding, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. Lovie has had her share of
experiences,
but she also covers up a lot of deep feelings with jokes and laughter.

We pool our quarters and I start making calls. I get voice mails with the two Richards and a proposition with the first Dick. He lives on Enoch, never heard of Bertha, and thinks I’m his twenty-first birthday present from his buddies at the factory.

On the final try we find the dead Dick’s unfortunate wife. In 225 Magnolia Manor. Jack’s apartment building.

I stand in by the pay phone thinking about that tacky yellow brick building with the pretentious name and the socially unacceptable address. Cracked asphalt parking lot. One pitiful pine. Not a flower in sight. As far as I know, not even a blade of grass.

And Jack, who loves gardens and cool breezes and porch swings, is living there. All because of me. Well, because of him, too. But still…

“I can’t go barging into Magnolia Manor, Lovie. What if I run into Jack?”

“I thought you said he was leaving town.”

“For all I know he caught a magic carpet and has already made a trip to Tibet and back. Besides, he didn’t say
when
he was leaving. My point is, I don’t want him to know what we’re up to.”

“We’re going to be up to our asses in rain, if we don’t hurry.”

A crack of thunder underscores her prediction as we race to the truck. I peel out of the parking lot just in time to be spotted by Jarvetis. That means he’ll tell Fayrene, who will tell Mama, who might tell Jack. Not that Mama would betray me, but she’ll do anything she can to get us back together. Because of my daddy, Michael Valentine, she believes in one true soul mate, and in her opinion, Jack is mine.

If I thought that, I’d just give up and my poor unused eggs would go out and commit suicide.

Rain sprinkles my windshield as I drive west toward Magnolia Manor.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” I say. “We can’t just go barging down the hall for you to pick the lock.”

“We should have worn disguises.”

“I could be wearing an elephant suit and Jack would recognize me.”

“Maybe I can do this by myself.”

“Yeah? And how will you explain yourself when Jack catches you breaking and entering?”

Lovie says a word I’ll bet even the devil doesn’t know. “You’re getting paranoid, Callie. Jack’s out of town. And if he’s not, we’ll lie.”

“Oh, right. Like he won’t know.”

She says another word, even worse. “Fetuses can hear,” I tell her.

“Are you telling me you’re pregnant?”

“No, but someday I will be. You don’t want to pollute the ears of your little goddaughter.”

“Give me two weeks’ notice and I’ll quit. Are you satisfied now?”

“Maybe.” Actually I won’t be satisfied till I’m home in my bed. I don’t like the idea of being in Jack’s territory in the dark. “I can tell you one thing. I’m not sleeping with him again.”

“I didn’t know you
slept.
”

“That’s mean, Lovie. And you know that’s not what I meant.”

“Okay. Forget I said that.”

The entrance to Magnolia Manor looms ahead. I press down on the accelerator.

“You passed it, Callie.”

“I know. I’m thinking.”

“Of what?”

“A way to get to the second floor without being seen.” And I think I just might have it. If the tree is in the right place.

I turn around in the parking lot of the Putt-Putt golf course next door, then head back to the Magnolia Manor. It’s even uglier than I remembered, the yellow brick getting dingy, the hideous brown shutters peeling, and the dinky wrought-iron balconies looking like they’re about to fall off the side of the building.

A postage-stamp patch of dirt surrounds the building, which sits in the middle of the parking lot. The lonesome pine presses close to the yellow brick. Right where I remembered.

“You see that tree?” I ask Lovie. “It’s near Jack’s window. He’s in 221, which means Bertha is two doors down.”

I bail out of the truck, but she sits there like she’s hatching eggs. I stick my head back in the cab. “What?”

“The only elephant I ever saw in a tree was Dumbo. The next thing I know, you’ll be telling me I can fly.”

“We grew up climbing trees, Lovie.”

“Yeah, but I was thirty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter.”

“Well, all right, then. You sit here. I’ll do it myself.”

I’ve gone only half a dozen yards when Lovie catches up. I knew she would. We’ve been a team since Lovie beat the tar out of Johnny Lipscomb in the sandbox in Ballard Park for stealing my pail. She was four, I was three.

“I’m going to sue somebody if I fall,” she says.

“You’re not going to fall. I’ll go first.”

I know I sound brave, but believe me, if healthy thirty-seven-year-olds could have heart attacks from fright, I’d already be dead. To say this tree is spindly is putting it mildly. These branches look like they wouldn’t hold a squirrel, let alone a hairstylist with a harebrained scheme and a hundred-and-ninety-pound bombshell. In addition, they’re slick with rain.

Not to mention that Jack has probably already picked up my scent and is getting ready to do no telling what.

“Let’s just go home, Callie, and forget it.”

I almost take her advice. But I’m no quitter. “Shh. We have to be quiet.” In the dead of night in this heavy humidity, there’s no telling how far our voices carry.

Reaching for a limb, I swing myself upward. My foot slips and I can see the headlines:
Death by Tree
.

Silently calling on every deity I know and a few I don’t, I hang on. “Come on up,” I whisper. “It’s fine.”

Lovie is more athletic than she looks. Though I’m taller and skinnier, she can outrun me by two lengths. And growing up on the farm, she could always outclimb me.

Tonight she proves she still has what it takes to conquer a tree. In spite of rain, fear, and excess baggage, we gain the uppermost branches, then sit there with the tree swaying.

“Which window?” she whispers.

From this perspective, I have no idea. But I’m not about to tell Lovie. She’d say a word that would wake everybody in Magnolia Manor.

“We’re right under it.” Of course, I could be wrong.

I swing my leg over the balcony rail and hear a tiny
clunk.

“What was that?” Lovie whispers.

“My car keys.” Hitting the ground.

She says a word that perfectly expresses my feelings. I wish it was in my vocabulary.

There’s no time to climb back down and search for keys. Besides, who’s going to find them? Lovie and I are the only ones breaking and entering in the middle in a rainstorm. Well, it’s not actually a storm, but it’s getting worse.

I haul myself over the railing, then reach out to help Lovie. The wrought iron creaks alarmingly.

“Quick, Lovie.”

Before we fall
, is what I’m thinking, but she’s through the window before I can even finish the thought. I follow, then stand there letting my eyes adjust to the dark.

Suddenly somebody or
something
moans. Lovie and I grab each other and freeze.

“What’s that?” she whispers.

“A cat?”

The scream we hear next is no cat. It’s a woman. And judging by the sound, she’s being murdered.

The only good thing I can say is that we’re not in Jack’s apartment.

Y
ou’d think after all the excitement around here, a dog could get a decent night’s sleep. But
no
. I’m having to put up with that upstart cocker spaniel. Just because Callie bought him a personalized doggie bed, he thinks he owns the bedroom.

Don’t think I didn’t see him nosing it around the end of Callie’s bed trying to get on my side. Next thing you know he’ll be trying to claim credit for my recording career. That’ll be all she wrote.

With my sophistication and savoir faire, I may look like I breezed to success on the back of somebody’s rich coattails, but let me tell you, I’m a dog who learned the hard way. While I was a skinny teenager gyrating and singing “Keep Your Hands off of It” at the government housing project in Memphis, Tennessee (Lauderdale Courts to be exact), I was learning to back up my actions with my fists.

I may be a tad paunchy now (if I don’t suck my stomach in), but I can still put Hoyt six feet under.

I get off my private pillow (guitar shaped and embroidered with my name
and
a TCB thunderbolt, thank you, thank you very much), prance my ample butt around the corner of the footboard, and growl like I mean business. Hoyt gives me this dumb cocker spaniel look, then tries to lick my face. He’d better learn he’s dealing with a King who grew up the hard way.

And if fisticuffs fail, there’s always Ruby Nell’s rat poison.

Speaking of which, I wonder if that’s what somebody used to knock off the two impersonators. After those sorry performances over in Tupelo, I’d have done it myself if I could have found an escape hole in the fence and Ruby Nell’s stash.

If I didn’t know her so well, I’d say she killed them. Callie’s mama does not suffer fools, and anybody who puts on my signature jumpsuit and then slaughters my songs falls into that category.

Anyhow, the rhinestone hairpin I found is not Ruby Nell’s style.

Okay, so I let Callie think
she
found it. Listen, anybody suffering a broken heart and a near-terminal case of worry needs all the affirmation she can get. Since Jack left it’s a full-time job around here.

She puts on a good front and everybody thinks she’s this naturally cheerful spirit, but I can smell blues a mile. I know what I know. A dog’s sacred duty is to make sure his human mom feels well loved and understands her own worth.

I excel at these things.

Just as Ruby Nell excels at never growing old. And why should she? Unless, of course, she could be reincarnated as a basset hound.