The Sassy Belles (6 page)

5

I
t was a quiet drive back to the
McFadden place. The crystal-clear night sky was ablaze with starlight. The
moon hung over the tall pines and dodged in and out of sight, like a thief
following us.

I sat in back with Vivi, her head on my shoulder. The quiet
felt good. No radio. No conversation. We had all been through a tremendous
amount of emotions and it was a relief to take a minute and let everything
digest.

I stared out the window at the cloudless night sky. As the city
baked in moonlight, slow-motion movie scenes flickered like a Super 8 film in my
head. Scenes of my life with Vivi.

It had always been just like this. I’ve always taken care of
her. I think we both liked it this way. I’m older than Vivi by only three
months, but Vivi’s the kind of girl who always needed a caretaker. I’m a little
stronger, a little more able to focus. I am on a perpetual schedule. I like
things neat and orderly…and predictable. Meanwhile, Vivi is full of adventure.
She always loved a spontaneous road trip, though for me, that meant I had no
time to pick out all the shoes I would need for the journey. But Vivi could just
jump in her Thunderbird with no luggage, saying, “Oh, hell, we can get what we
need when we get there.” Oh, I still jumped in the car with her, but immediately
I’d get out my notebook and pen and start making a list. The more I thought
about it, the more I realized we balanced each other out. She may have needed me
to take care of her, to organize her life and keep her on the right track, but I
needed Vivi to remind me of my wild side. To remind me to really live in the
moment. As I sat in the car reflecting on the days I’d been living lately,
playing second fiddle to my husband’s burgeoning political career, trying to
forget what true love and romance really felt like, I realized that maybe I
needed to be reminded of everything Vivi was. Maybe I was the one who needed
Vivi right now, not just the other way around.

Vivi was an only child, and her parents were quite a bit older
than the rest of ours. Her society-bred mother was always somewhat sickly, and
her father was a loudmouthed, hard-drinking, gambling partygoer who loved
women—often several at a time. They lived on a massive plantation, and though
she was surrounded by wealth, no one was ever really there to care for Vivi
aside from her nanny, Corabelle, and the gardener, Arthur. She loved those two
people like
they
were her parents. And truly, they
were. In all the most important ways.

Vivi ran the whole place now. It was certainly not a plantation
anymore; it had been decades since it was even active, and little by little,
acre by oak tree, it has been sold off to developers. There was about a hundred
acres left of it, and Vivi and Arthur were the only ones who lived there anymore
since they had moved Vivi’s mother to that fancy retirement center.

After we finished high school, Vivi had gone to the University
of Alabama and gotten her journalism degree. Now she did freelance work, writing
articles for magazines and newspapers on subjects that were dear to her heart,
such as women’s rights, gardening, home and friends.

Vivi was deeper than she let most people see, and her energy
and wild streak made her seem crazier than she actually was. But she was just
fine running the place all by herself. “Plus, I have Arthur,” she’d always say.
And she did.

She loved that man maybe more than she’d ever loved anyone.
They were family as far as she was concerned. He loved taking care of her and
took such pains around the place to keep it feeling like home.

Arthur had his own room in the house, and it had been appointed
with the finest things. He was family since the beginning. Interestingly, he was
actually born there, on the plantation, nearly fifty-five years ago when both of
his parents had worked for the McFaddens. When Vivi’s father died when she was
young, Arthur just moved in and took on the responsibility of caring for her and
her mother.

Corabelle, Vivi’s nanny, died a few years back when she was
nearly seventy-five. Arthur and Vivi took it pretty hard, but you could just see
that they would get through it with each other to lean on.

Harry was always asking me why I kept rescuing her. Was it
because I’m really all she’s got? Was it because that’s the way it’d always been
and I love being needed? Well, maybe a bit of both. And I knew it would always
be this way with us.

As I held her in the moonlight, she fell asleep on my shoulder,
trusting me, as always, to keep her safe. And I would, even if I didn’t know
quite how at that moment. I knew I would figure something out. She was counting
on me. I was her Swiss Army knife.

* * *

We arrived at the plantation at almost nine that
evening. Harry pulled the car around the circular gravel drive. A fountain
spilled over its edges creating peaceful, soft splashes under the moonlight.
Vivi’s home was something special. A true Southern plantation, the main house
was huge and stately, typical antebellum Greek Revival architecture. Wide,
white, round columns surrounded a wraparound front porch, and floor-to-ceiling
windows doubled as doorways much of the year. The upper level held a sweeping
veranda, hugging the columns with a whitewashed wooden rail. Rocking chairs were
scattered around every few feet. Hanging baskets were full to brimming and
dripping with ferns, English ivy and petunias, while bell-shaped purple-and-pink
verbena hung at every window and spilled over the sides of the containers. The
gravel drive was long and shaded on either side by huge oak and magnolia trees
that reached across the road and lay gently upon each other, branch intertwined
in branch, forming a fragrant flowering tree tunnel all the way to the front of
the house. The side yards were full of pecan trees and tall pines. Just as you
reached the porch, the left side yard held a huge rose garden with every
colorful variety imaginable growing and blooming. The fragrance surrounding the
main house was mesmerizing on a hot summer night with a breeze drifting in the
humid air.

Located on the right and to the far back of the main property
was Arthur’s new BBQ place. It had its own entryway down from the main road and
would eventually be a takeout BBQ spot for pickup. He was busy working on it
much of the time to get it ready for football season and the tailgating orders
that came with it. The Moonwinx was what he called it and he planned to just
serve good, sweet Southern BBQ. The whole plantation was regal and lovely and
had been Vivi’s home her whole life, and her father’s place before her, going
back for generations.

Harry got out and opened the back door of the car to help Vivi
out. We all walked up the four gray-painted steps of the porch.

A note from Arthur was waiting on the door.
G’nite, Miss Vivi. Hope you had fun visitin’ with your Mama.
Tomorrow I think we should get those hydrangea bushes lookin’ good.
Arthur.

Exhausted, Vivi went directly upstairs and into the large
master suite, and I followed her up to say good-night. She had taken the room
over after her 71-year-old mother went to the Center. Vivi had had the suite
redone in her favorite colors and fabrics, and the bedroom was spectacular,
covered in periwinkle silk and taffeta. Drapes fell into a pale blue puddle on
the wood floor, framing the old floor-to-ceiling windows. The night air drifted
in through the open windows and the fragrance of roses and honeysuckle blanketed
the room. I gave her a hug, but didn’t say a thing. We didn’t need words right
now, just the knowledge that we were there for each other was enough.

Back downstairs, Harry was waiting in the hallway, the
moonlight bouncing off his glasses. “Let’s go,” he said, and leaned over and
kissed my cheek.

His face was rough with evening whiskers, and I was shocked at
the closeness. He had let me in for a brief moment and I wanted to stay there,
pressed up against him a little longer, feeling his skin and smelling his
end-of-the-day cologne. He pressed his hand into mine and we turned and left the
house. He held on to me as if he would lose his way in the darkness if he let
go. We stopped at the bottom of the porch and Harry pulled me into him and said,
“Blake, I need to talk to you.”

I remembered it was our anniversary, but I could tell he was
not thinking of that. I pulled away from him. I knew this tone and I didn’t like
it.

“What is it, Harry?”

“I don’t know…I just have a strange feeling.”

“About what?”

“About Lewis,” he said.

We sat down on the step, moonlight drenching the hydrangea
bushes that bloomed on either side, framing the entrance. The humid night air
kissed my skin and I took a deep breath. Lightning bugs dotted the darkness. I
remembered Vivi and me as children, chasing the glowing amber fireflies every
late spring evening when I spent the night there. We call them lightning bugs
down South. They go hand in hand with sultry warm Southern nights when the damp
humidity descends, the sun sets and the twilight sparkles with the flying
magical insects. We’d catch them in old Mason jars and bring them inside and sit
in the dark, telling ghost stories around the glowing jar, then we’d let them
go. I listened to Harry but lingered in the safe memory of my childhood for
another minute.

“I don’t think that was Lewis tonight, do you?” he asked.

I said no and asked him what he was thinking. He was rubbing
his fingers through his hair and saying he didn’t know, but he just knew
something was not quite right.

“It’s just not clicking,” he said.

“Harry, we’re both tired and we haven’t eaten. This day has
been about as crazy as it could possibly be. Let’s just put this to bed for
tonight, okay?” I was so exhausted all I could think of was a long, hot bath and
my down-filled comforter. But Harry needed to talk and so he did.

“I don’t think that was Lewis,” he said.

“I know, honey, that’s what Vivi said.”

“I know, Blake…but that’s just it. If that’s not Lewis, then
where the hell is he?”

Harry did not look exhausted like me. He looked wide awake. He
had that look in his eye that he always had when he was pursuing a case.

“Harry, what are you thinking?” I asked. “That Lewis isn’t
dead?” I waited for a response but Harry was in another place in his head now. I
could see it.

He looked straight up into my eyes. “Dead men don’t just up and
walk away. Lewis isn’t dead, Blake. I know him and this is typical Lewis. He’s
done so many things in the past and then come running to me for a bailout. I’m
sick of saving his ass. Not this time. He’s up to something again. I’m sure of
it. Somebody must know where he is. And I’m gonna find out who.”

6

T
he next morning, a ringing woke
me from the depths of sleep. It was one of those heavy slumbers that, when you
wake, it takes you a few seconds to realize where you are and what’s going on,
and the night before is still clinging to you and leaving its essence in all the
wrong places. The tired was still stinging all over.

It took another second for me to figure out that the ringing
was the phone and not the alarm clock. With my eyes still closed, I moved to
reach across Harry and answer when I realized that he wasn’t there.

The digital clocked glowed 6:47 a.m. in the dim morning
light.

“Blake?” It was Vivi.

“Vivi? Hi, honey.”

“I am just crazy.” She thought I needed a phone call to confirm
this? She continued, “Oh, my God. I am so sorry about last night.” An apology
bathed in embarrassment. “I was so tired I don’t even remember getting up the
stairs.”

“Don’t you worry, it was a long day for all of us. Are you okay
this morning?”

“Oh, yeah, honey, I’m always okay…you know, just nervous as a
long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs, that’s all. I don’t know what
to do next. Just pacing everywhere…waitin’ for the other shoe to drop. Any
word?”

I was still on my stomach with the phone tucked under me,
pushed into my pillow, eyes still closed.

“No word yet. I’m going to get up and I’ll meet you at Mother’s
at eight-thirty. Okay?”

“Is Harry there?” she asked.

“No, he must’ve left early.”

“Oh…do you think there might be some news?”

“He would let us know right away if there was. Try not to
worry. I’ll see you in a few.”

We hung up and I lay there, clutching the phone to my chest and
breathing in the morning air. I tried to exhale, pushing away the events that
were about to play out.

I turned over in my bed and stared at the double crown molding.
I loved this old house. It was built in the 1800s. You know…one of those huge
old Southern homes with the sweeping, wraparound front porch. The ceiling fans
turned in slow motion all the time. I never turned them off. Slow-turning
ceiling fans were so inviting. To me they meant someone was home, cooking
something, the down pillows were all fluffed and waiting for you to rest your
weary head, iced tea and fresh chocolate cake were waiting somewhere in the
kitchen. The fans welcomed me home every night, even if the house was empty.
Somehow I believed they made the place feel full, awake and alive.

Harry and I bought this house five years ago as a gift to each
other. It was for our fifth anniversary. We had lived in a little town house
near the campus up until then. We both loved this house from the minute we found
it that evening in November. It needed a little love, but it felt like home the
second we walked in the door. Harry and I didn’t say a word to each other…just a
glance and we knew. We could love this house into our home. Of course we walked
the whole house, holding hands, almost giddy with the rush of the future and all
it held tingling between us.

There was a sweeping, curved front staircase, a wide and airy
front hall, two large parlors on each side, creaking wood floors and brick
fireplaces in nearly every room creating a fairy-tale ambience that I had never
felt anywhere before. Sleeping many nights with the dance of the firelight on
the walls was a comfort that is indescribable.

Many a spring night we slept with the windows open. I loved the
seasons in that house. Each one has its own indelible fingerprint on my memories
of living there. I had hoped the house would be a new beginning for us. The year
before we moved in, when things had just started to become cold between us
around the time of the awful disintegration of Harry’s relationship with Lewis,
I still had a lot of hope for us. The house symbolized a new start. It never
really became that for us, but even lying in bed the morning after Lewis went
missing, I still loved it there. It was home for me.

As I made my way to the shower, I decided to call Harry.

“Hey, sorry about running off this morning. I didn’t want to
wake you,” Harry said. He sounded breathless.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Seems like Lewis’s clothes, or
someone’s
clothes, washed up at the river last night…about fifty
yards up from the Cypress Inn.”

“Have the clothes been tested yet?” I asked.

“They are actually on their way to the lab, but we were
thinking maybe Vivi could ID them. We need to know if these were the clothes
Lewis was wearing when she was with him at the Fountain Mist. We’re still
waiting on the DNA results of the washed-up body parts, but this could
definitely get things moving.”

“I talked to her this morning. She’s meeting me at Mother’s at
8:30.”

“Sonny and the police are all already involved,” Harry said.
“I’ll meet you there, too. We should let Vivi know what’s going on. That way we
can warn her before she has to look at the clothes. There’s going to be a press
conference at noon.”

I figured that would be next. Since Lewis was the
play-by-play…
is
the play-by-play announcer for
the Alabama Crimson Tide, the news of his disappearance would have the media in
a frenzy. See, Tuscaloosa is not just any football town. There are plenty of
college towns with good teams. But in Tuscaloosa, football
is
the town. Everyone there, whether they went to Bama or didn’t
even go to college, is a fan. There are only two seasons here—football and
waiting
for football. As soon as the season ends,
usually with us in the national championships, the town goes into what you could
almost consider a mourning period, then a depression and then the countdown
calendars come out with “Only ___ days till kickoff….” We think, eat, sleep and
breathe football—365 days a year, every single year.

Tuscaloosa on game day is especially a treat. The quad is
literally covered in tents for one humungous tailgate party. The air is thick
with excitement and the sweet smell of meat on the grill. Everyone cooking and
drinking—they even clip satellites to their tents for their big-screen TVs. My
very favorite moment of the entire season is when I’m standing in that stadium
when the song “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd begins.

So for Lewis to be missing from the Bama pulpit in
Tuscaloosa—well, it was like the Pope missing from the Vatican. I knew the
entire population would show up for his press conference, as well as every
reporter for college football from all over the country.

The gravity of the situation stole my breath for a minute, but
Harry’s voice brought me back.

“Hell, the entire South Eastern Conference will be sending
their reporters to swarm Tuscaloosa, especially since we’re the national
champions,” Harry said.

While the reason for the press conference was a bit depressing,
the thought of being on camera excited me and I suddenly felt much better.

“Where’s it gonna be?” I asked.

“Denny Chimes.”

I began to picture the fiasco that was about to blow into
town…and how Vivi would be in front of the mic, flanked by me and Harry on one
side and Sonny on the other. As Vivi’s attorneys and Lewis’s most immediate
family, Harry or I would have to be the spokesperson.

“Vivi cannot speak on camera!” Harry was stern. “Those
reporters will have a field day with her. And God only knows what she would say.
Part of her would love this attention, and the other half of her will be scared
to death. She’d be completely uncontrollable.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it. I’ll see you at Mother’s,” I said,
but he had already hung up.

I laid the phone down on the marble vanity and turned on the
shower. The steam began to fog the mirrors. I stepped inside. The hot, pulsating
water felt good. I didn’t want to get out. I knew what this day was going to
look like and I had barely been awake fifteen minutes.

I wanted to let the water rain over me all day. I turned a
couple of tired steps so the water could hit my face. I knew the day would be
nearly unbearable, and none of it would feel as good as this moment. Even the
thought of being on camera started to make me feel anxious, so I stood still, on
purpose, avoiding the day that lay ahead.

Then I heard it in my head. Harry’s words from last night.

Lewis is alive. And someone knows where he
is.

The words jerked me right out of my serenity. What is he
thinking? All of the scenarios from the ridiculous to the haunting invaded my
peaceful shower. I rinsed my hair and turned off the water, leaving my oasis
behind. I lost the last of my tranquility in my next thought:
Does Vivi know anything about Lewis and his life that could
lead us to him?