The Sassy Belles (3 page)

Vivi looked lost, like Little Orphan Annie. Harry looked
exasperated, but there was something else hiding behind his frustration. At that
moment, Vivi picked up on it, too. Then, “Oh, Harry! Are you thinkin’ he could
have still been alive?”

“My client did not call an ambulance right away,” Harry
answered officer Dooley. “Instead, she called my wife, Blake O’Hara Heart.”

Oh, shit,
I thought to myself, now
using Vivi’s vocabulary. With his statement, I knew that I would definitely be
dragged into the investigation. I also knew that I would never forget my tenth
anniversary.

I turned to Officer Dooley. “Yes, Vivi was trying to call me.
But my husband, Harry Heart, was the first to speak with her.”

“One moment, Officer Dooley, would you, please? All of this is
so sudden that we haven’t had a chance to speak with each other,” Harry
said.

While Dooley crossed his arms impatiently, we moved to the back
of the little office and I leaned in and whispered to Vivi to keep quiet for a
second. That would take a miracle all its own! I then looked at Harry and
discreetly said, “You remember that you were in fact the first one to speak to
our client after the fact? Remember? I was still at the school.”

“Yes,” he said. Well, Vivi tends to rub off on people, and I
was sure Harry was the one thinking
Oh, shit
in his
own head now.

* * *

Clearly, we were all still in a mumbo-jumbo state of
shock. We continued to whisper while we watched Vivi fidget.

“But I’m her attorney,” he said, looking at me in
desperation.

“But you weren’t at the time,” I reminded him.

“It doesn’t look good, Blake.” Harry’s voice had become firm.
He didn’t get angry often, but you knew it when it happened. Harry was feeling
trapped.

I heard Officer Dooley tapping his pen pointedly against the
desk. So did Harry, who didn’t want this next bit to be overheard.

“Excuse us, Officer Dooley, for one moment. I need to confer
with my co-counsel,” Harry said.

“Why don’t I just put my pen down for a second,” Officer Dooley
said.

Harry took me by the hand and pulled me just outside the door
of the musty little office. Vivi stayed up front with Officer Dooley, still
fidgeting uncomfortably, shifting from side to side, crossing then uncrossing
her legs.

“Blake,” Harry began, “first and foremost, I am Lewis’s
brother. Second, I am now Vivi’s attorney. That, in and of itself, is strange,
considering my connection to them both. But the idea that, after the…deed…I’m
the first one she calls? Me, of all people, who has the worst possible
relationship with Lewis? This screams conspiracy! It shouts premeditation if we
have a dead body over there. It further implicates her and jeopardizes her. And
when it comes out that I haven’t spoken to Lewis in over six years, it begins to
implicate me! Blake, this could put my career in question. My eventual run for
the Senate will be shrouded in this controversy.”

Harry stopped abruptly. The depth of the situation had
overtaken him.

“Harry, snap out of it!” I said, squeezing his arm. “Lewis had
been charged with investment fraud and you distanced yourself from him. There’s
no crime in that—it just proves how respectable you are, not wanting to
associate with such a person, brother or not. But your cell phone will register
the call from Vivi and what time it came in. All of her missed calls to me will
register, as well, with the times they were missed. The truth will be easy to
prove, so there’s just no point trying to cover it up. Now, I have been her best
friend since third grade. Harry, we both know she didn’t do anything. This was
all just a terrible, unfortunate accident if anything—and, well, a bit
disgusting.”

Harry’s face softened and he gave me a little nod. We both
hurriedly returned to Vivi’s side.

Harry cleared his throat and began more calmly, “Vivi McFadden
did not call an ambulance right away. She tried to call my wife and co-counsel,
Blake O’Hara Heart, and when she couldn’t get her, she called me.”

“Well,” Officer Dooley said, “then I go back to my original
question: Where is the body?” Officer Dooley pushed his tiny glasses up his tiny
nose and looked pointedly at Vivi.

“I left the body at the Fountain Mist motel and that was the
last time I saw Lewis. Dead on the bed.”

“An ambulance was called once we’d managed to talk to Vivi and
find out what had happened. It should be there right now,” Harry said.

Officer Dooley looked relieved. “Well, now. That wasn’t so
hard, was it? I’ll send an officer and squad cars over now.” Vivi collapsed back
into a chair.

I sat with Vivi, holding her hand and looking around at the old
room we were in, thinking back to my days as a child and visiting my grandfather
in his office just down the block. Nothing changes much in Tuscaloosa. It’s a
town that thrives on its rich history. And I loved that. I noticed that the
decor at the station hadn’t changed since probably 1945. Cracked leather chairs
with cotton seeping from their seats were scattered around the office.
Slow-moving, black ceiling fans whirred around the musty, damp air. The large
windows were just slightly open and the fragrant late Southern spring floated
inside, like slow deep breathing. The room became still. Officer Dooley called
in the incident.

“Which room, Ms. McFadden?” he asked.

“Room 106,” Vivi answered. “It was…our room.” The impact of the
moment suddenly strangled her and her voice weakened. Harry squatted down on one
knee to face Vivi eye to eye.

I walked over to the old water fountain and grabbed one of
those pointy paper cups. I filled three, one for each of us, and walked to Vivi
and Harry and handed them the water.

“Shouldn’t we head over there?” I said.

“Yes and no,” Harry said. “Yes, Vivi will need to be there for
statements, but no, I’d rather her not talk. But…we don’t have a choice about
that.”

We all took a swig of the water as if it were bourbon in a shot
glass, throwing it back like it would stop this nightmare.

“C’mon, honey,” I said to Vivi. “I’ll be right there next to
you.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

She grabbed my hand and pushed her red mass of curls from her
eyes. I could see Vivi breaking, tears coming quickly now. I squeezed her hand
and helped her up.

“It’s okay, honey,” I said. “We all know you did nothing wrong.
You are going to be fine. Besides, you’ve got the two best attorneys in the
state.”

And I was sure hoping I was right.

2

“V
ivi and I will go in my
car,” I said.

“Okay,” Harry agreed. “I’ll take mine in case I have to leave.”
We heard the sirens of the police and emergency vehicles racing ahead of us as
we walked to the parking lot behind the station.

The warmth of the late-spring sun hit my face in the street.
God, I so loved this time of year. With the magnolias in full blossom, the smell
of the coming Southern summer was overwhelming and transporting. A sweet,
pungent aroma lingered in the breeze, reminding me that summer and good
watermelon were just around the river bend.

As though a time portal were drawing me in, I was suddenly
eight years old and on my grandmother’s screened front porch. I could smell her
roses and honeysuckle and the huge magnolia trees in the front yard. I watched
the bees on her camellias. I loved Mother’s, every corner of it. I took in a
deep whiff and pulled in as much of the fragrance as I could, held my best
friend’s hand and put her into the Navigator.

As I walked around to get into the driver’s seat, I felt so
protective of Vivi. People could call her a lot of things, but they certainly
could never call her a murderer.

As I slid onto the warm leather seat and put my key into the
ignition, Vivi looked over at me with her wet green eyes full of insecurity. “Am
I goin’ to jail, Blake?”

I answered her without hesitation. “Not on my life, sweetie.
Not on my life.”

“Blake,” she said. “Thank you.”

“For what, honey?”

“For always being my Swiss Army knife.”

I smiled at her. I knew what she meant. I also knew how much
she was counting on me to get her out of any mess that lay just on the other
side of the river.

Vivi would be a person of interest simply because she was the
last person to see Lewis alive. She wasn’t guilty of a thing. They were just
screwing, for God’s sake. But Vivi is a reactionary. She will think the absolute
worst and in the most dramatic way possible. It’s just part of being Vivi.
Regardless, I was bound and determined to make sure she would never be charged
with anything.

Vivi broke the conversation in my head. “I’m a nervous wreck,
Blake.”

“Why, honey?”

“It’s just that, well…uh, we had a little friend with us in the
motel room.”

“What? You were in a threesome?”

“Oh, my good God, no, honey. I meant—you know…a sex toy. I
named him Deputy Dick.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake…I thought you were fixin’ to really
shock me. I know you and Lewis can be a bit on the kinky side, no big deal.”

“I just don’t want the police to discover him. It. I will just
die of embarrassment. But I have no idea where he got to. I was in such a panic
when I ran for help.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you aren’t the only woman in the world
to play with toys in the bedroom. I’m sure he will turn up.” I tried to get my
thoughts together as we drove, and wondered if Vivi had any other interesting
details she needed to divulge.

Though we rode in silence, I never let go of her hand. The
emotions were stuck in our mouths. Vivi and I have never really needed words. In
moments we had crossed the bridge over the Warrior River to the Fountain Mist
motel. We drove in and parked as Harry made his way over to us. He opened Vivi’s
door and helped her out.

The Fountain Mist was one of those old, side-of–the-highway
kinds of motels. The kind that could charge by the hour. It had a red neon sign
out front and a lighted fountain, like one of those old silver Christmas trees
from the sixties that had the colored lights spinning underneath. The fountain
changed colors and definitely helped to cheapen the motel’s appearance. Inside
the lobby, the green carpet was threadbare and fading. The entire place needed
painting. And sanitization.

Harry had his legal pad in hand and was standing with the
police and the paramedics outside room 106. Everyone was in a panic, and Harry
looked like he’d gone into shock.

“Where’s the body?” a paramedic yelled out at us as we
approached. “There’s no body here!” Vivi and I walked over to the door at a
clip. The dust from the gravel parking lot swirled in the air.

A frenetic chaos filled the room. The motel manager was
standing on the dusty carpet, answering questions while a police officer took
notes. I couldn’t see for the glare as the sun bounced from the mirror of the
cheap dresser. Two officers and two paramedics had turned the room upside down.
The frustrated sounds came again from the first paramedic. “Where the hell’s the
body? We got a call from someone saying that her boyfriend had stopped
breathing.”

“I left him right there, dead on the bed, buck naked and blue
as blue blazes,” Vivi said with fear and panic in her eyes. I looked at Harry
and he looked at Vivi.

“Vivi!” Harry said. “Where the hell is Lewis?”

In a split second, a breathless silence fell over the room and
Vivi fell over backward right onto me. I caught her just as she slumped
sideways, and a paramedic rushed to her while a policeman radioed the
station.

No body,
I thought.
Is Lewis possibly alive? Or is someone hiding
evidence?
I held Vivi up till the paramedics got hold of her.

I looked at my stoic Harry. I knew he was thinking of his
public image and trying not to show any emotion. At the same time, I knew he was
trying to process and manage this unbelievable situation. But this was typical
Harry. Sometimes so closed off he became his own worst enemy. He locked everyone
out to make sure his image was so perfect it was almost not even human. It was
robotic, with all the right responses, always so prepared with just the right
answers. Sometimes he was just exasperating.
Feel,
I
thought.
Let me see you.
Though he would say that I
feel too much. I
overfeel,
he had said once. Too
happy, too sad, too angry.

What was happening to us was much like the story of Scarlett
and Rhett. You don’t show me any emotion, so I won’t show you any. Both of us
would be independent, spirited people, strong and stubborn, who just didn’t need
anyone but ourselves.

And so it had gone for about six years now. Lots of work, lots
of career building and even lots of sex. But not much lovemaking.

I wanted him to really
see
me
again. But he was not about to let me see him. In that moment I just felt sad
for both of us.

We were still all crowded inside room 106 with the bright sun
streaming in like a laser beam through the open door. It made it difficult to
see anyone except in silhouette. But the next image I saw coming through that
door was a shape that I knew well. At six foot three, he looked ominous in the
shadows, even with his slender frame. Shadows or not—I knew that body all too
well. I’d know that man anywhere.

Sonny Bartholomew had been all mine at one time. From my first
year of high school to my first year of college, Sonny was my on-again,
off-again love. Over those years we went from harmless exploration to seriously
discussing forever. And now, on the rare occasion that Harry and I had a heated
conversation, Harry would say, “Why don’t you just go look up your cop? I’m sure
you should have just married him anyway.”

This
was my cop. My detective,
actually.

Sonny Bartholomew. Homicide Investigations.

I fell in love with him back when he was the yearbook
photographer during our freshman year of high school. Back then, he was sort of
a misfit like me. Sonny had the cutest smile I had ever seen. He would cock his
head to one side as he grinned at me. That’s all it took. His smile turned up at
both corners of his mouth. He was precious, with his sandy hair and oversize
feet and it all came together to make him even cuter. And he sure grew into
those feet.

At fifteen we were just the right age for the beginning of the
end of our innocence. But we never did go all the way. I was the good girl—at
least in that respect. Though, somehow, I have always wished I hadn’t been so
good back then. He should have been my first.

It felt really good—and really odd—to see him standing there in
the doorway of the motel room. It had been a long time since I had run into him
last, at a Bama game a few years back. It was a fall football Saturday, with
bright blue skies and a bite in the air. We were in line for a beer at one of
the bars along the strip. I’d asked him about his life and prodded him for
information about his wife, a wallflower of a girl, Laura Logan. She’d gone to
Catholic school with me and Vivi. She was so quiet and certainly was never
involved in any of our infamous pranks. Laura was so shy and good that we
believed she might actually become a nun.

Obviously, she did not.

Sonny had seemed uncomfortable during our chance encounter in
the beer line. I told him I was married.

“I know,” he said. “I saw it in the paper.”

At that moment, standing in line on that football Saturday, I
suddenly couldn’t imagine a life without Sonny.
We should
be friends,
I’d thought. At least friends.

I had loved him for as long as I could remember and so I’d
grabbed his hand in mine and said, “Look, we’re both married now. Can’t we all
get together sometime, all four of us? For a cookout? I know Laura, for heaven’s
sake. She was at my birthday parties growin’ up. We made our first communion
together. Whatdaya say? I really miss you, Sonny.”

Sonny still had a face full of freckles and the darkest brown
eyes. They could always see right through me. And I could still see that
fifteen-year-old in him. As he paid for his beer, he looked at me with that
smile and his famous one eyebrow up, cocked his head and said, “Blake, we run in
different circles now. You’re all elite with your law school buddies and your
near-blue-blood husband. My friends are good ol’ boys, rednecks, ya know? On the
weekends we got longnecks in one hand and a remote in the other. And I always
said, Blake, if I can’t have you in every way, I can’t bear seeing you, knowing
somebody else is lovin’ you.”

I had been lost in his words and that curled-up smile when the
beer lady’s shrill voice had shattered the moment. “Honey, you want yer change
’er what? C’mon now.”

Sonny tipped his baseball cap to her and shoved his change into
his too-tight jeans. He’d looked back at me, leaned in and kissed my cheek. “It
was good to see ya, Blake. Hi to Harry.”

With that I had felt a sudden chill in the October air. I’d
watched him walk away for only a second, then I turned to the lady with the
shrill voice. “I’ll have one of those longnecks, please.”

Room 106 was now filling to capacity. Nobody knew if it was
really a crime scene or what. The police took a few notes and never even
cordoned off the scene. No one seemed to know how to classify it. Vivi, now
revived, sat on the side of the bed sipping water from one of those little
square glasses from the motel bathroom. Harry moved toward her and Sonny stepped
fully inside the room.

“Hey, Blake. How are ya?” Sonny greeted me with a quick kiss on
the cheek. He sounded happy with his deep baritone, honey-dripping, slow
Southern drawl. Seriously, he had me at “Hey.”

I swallowed instead of speaking and smiled at him. But I
couldn’t stop myself. I stood.

“Hey, Sonny!” I stepped in closer and gave him a hug. That’s
how Southerners say hello. We hug everyone, all the time, both hello and
goodbye. It’s bad manners not to. In fact, it’s downright hurtful. I heard the
heavy Southern drawl in my hello. When I’ve had a few drinks or I’m feeling a
little flirtatious, my accent seems to intensify. And Sonny, well, I guess he
just brought out a tinge of my inner redneck. We all have some. Inner redneck, I
mean. There’s someone in everyone’s family that’s a teeny bit red. Think about
it. For me, it came from my dad’s side. Way back in his line were the
moonshiners. Yep. I know. Unreal, huh? My mom’s family is a bunch of lawyers.
One story has the moonshiners on my dad’s side being defended by the lawyers on
my mom’s side. And of course, if you think about it, you can imagine what the
payoff was—yep, fresh whisky, right from the backyard! I’m not from stupid
lawyers!

As I stood, Harry caught Sonny’s reflection in the mirror. He
left Vivi and came over with his hand extended. Harry’s not a hugger anyway, but
he would
never
hug Sonny. This was my
cop,
remember?

“Hey, Sonny. Thanks for coming.” Over the years, these two men
I loved had come to an understanding through work. This was not the first case
they had worked on together and I’m sure it would not be the last. Harry and
Sonny stepped outside into the late afternoon sun and I sat down on the bed next
to Vivi.

“You okay, hon?”

“Oh, I’m just fine, but you’re lookin’ a little red,” she
teased.

“Oh, stop it,” I said.

“He does it to you, doesn’t he?” She scooted back on the bed to
make room, but kept one eyebrow cocked.

“He who?” I shot back as if shocked at the insinuation.

“You know, there was a time I thought you’d marry that boy.”
She looked at me, seeing right into my soul as only Vivi could.

“I’m taking the Fifth,” I said, grabbing her water and taking a
swig. I decided to get the conversation back on track. We needed to talk about
the body, or lack thereof. This was no time to be gossiping about my love
life.

Just then, in walked Bonita Baldwin, the newest investigator on
Sonny’s team. She was African-American, plus-sized and drop-dead gorgeous. Sonny
had just hired her from Mobile and it was in all the papers that she’d be
joining the force. The daughter of Tuskegee professors, this apple sure didn’t
fall far from the tree. She’d graduated top of her class and her loud,
opinionated mouth had all of our attention, as did her designer shoes. She could
size things up in seconds, and she wasn’t afraid to tell it like it was. That’s
why Sonny hired her.