The Sassy Belles
Beth Albright
Meet the Sassy Belles.They’re strong as a mint juleps, sweet as peach cobbler, and no matter what, they stick together. There are only two seasons in Tuscaloosa—football and waiting-for-football. When Lewis Heart, football announcer and voice of the Crimson Tide, vanishes after an impromptu romp with Vivi Anne McFadden at the Fountain Mist Motel, Vivi does what any Southern woman would do: calls her best friend, Blake O’Hara Heart, attorney-at-law.With the town gossip swirling around them, Vivi and Blake are determined to find out what happened to Lewis and clear Vivi’s reputation. Because after all, men may come and go, but the Sassy Belles are forever. Not since Steel Magnolias have we fallen in love with such sexy, strong and hilarious Southern women.So grab your best girlfriends and join these Belles on the first of many joyrides through the Deep South…. Sexy Southern fun…with a hint of magnolia!
Meet the Sassy Belles.
They’re strong as a mint julep, sweet as peach cobbler, and no matter what, they stick together.
There are only two seasons in Tuscaloosa—football and waiting-for-football. When Lewis Heart, football announcer and voice of the Crimson Tide, vanishes after an impromptu romp with Vivi Ann McFadden at the Fountain Mist Motel, Vivi does what any Southern woman would do: call her best friend, Blake O’Hara Heart, attorney-at-law.
With the town gossip swirling around them, Vivi and Blake are determined to find out what happened to Lewis and clear Vivi’s reputation. Because after all, men may come and go, but the Sassy Belles are forever.
Not since Steel Magnolias have we fallen in love with such sexy, strong and hilarious Southern women. So grab your best girlfriends and join these Belles on the first of many joyrides through the Deep South....
The Sassy Belles
Beth Albright
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For my mother, Betty, the original Sassy Belle, who pushed me to keep writing, who believed in me no matter what I was trying to do. A little piece of you is in every one of these women. They are smart and funny. Motivating and warm, strong and wise, beautiful and stubborn, they are the heart of all I admired in you. And you were the heart of my childhood. Not only my mother, but my very best friend, you loved me into my potential. I am so grateful. You are the wind beneath my wings. I love you more than any words can say. This is all for you.
For Brooks and Ted, my universe.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u9785080c-0092-5822-a6fd-6113ce6c675b)
Chapter 2 (#u6145b879-a093-5ab7-954a-240860f7f6d2)
Chapter 3 (#u364f9c7a-c329-5456-a327-628488549720)
Chapter 4 (#uac2daef1-0b37-56ca-a929-d8c7a7a43901)
Chapter 5 (#u0e414017-8b8e-5c93-847e-0cdf86d9ab15)
Chapter 6 (#uf242be6b-46b5-58cb-bbf3-85adf2bb495c)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
1
My name is Blake O’Hara Heart and, boy, do I have a story to tell! It wouldn’t be such a story if Vivi, my best friend since forever, hadn’t done what she did. You have to understand that women in the South, women of Southern blood, just don’t partake in scandalous adventures—and when we do, it’s in a discreet manner. We have reputations to consider, after all. But since Vivi’s trouble became headline news, our lives became anything but discreet. I’m an attorney, and even I wasn’t sure I could get her out of this one.
When I met Vivi in the third grade, we were silly nine-year-olds in ponytails and Catholic school uniforms. She was exciting and confident. I loved her immediately. I was new to St. Catherine’s, Tuscaloosa’s Catholic academy, and didn’t know a soul. Vivi made a beeline across the room, her pale and freckled arm outstretched. “Hi,” she said. “My name is Vivi Ann McFadden. I’ll take care of you today and make sure you don’t get lost. This is my fourth year here including kindergarten. So, I’m an expert.” I loved her self-assurance, outspokenness and all that crazy, wild red hair, which she was constantly pushing from her face.
She took care of me that day, it’s true. But from eight o’clock the very next morning I have been taking care of her. I always want to protect her, but she makes that difficult. Her huge messes are almost always of her own making. Luckily for both of us, I’ve always known how to get her out of jail, so to speak. But this particular instance, on this particular day—well, let’s just say she must think I’m a miracle worker.
See, the problem is, in Alabama, women are most definitely…women. Vivi—well, some would call her opinionated. Others would say, “Bless her heart, that girl is just a redneck!” That’s a little secret of the South: you can say awful and insulting things about anyone, and as long as you start with “Bless her heart” you’re not really gossiping. Like, “Bless her heart, that girl looks like a pregnant heifer in that dress.” See? That makes it look like we’re so sad for her, when you know we really think otherwise. Women from Alabama are strong—well, stubborn—and, above all, we are beautiful. There’s nothing in the world a little spackle and Aqua Net won’t fix. We are trained by way of the beauty pageant system. In the Deep South, pageants aren’t just fun, they’re a way of life. With the heavy doll makeup applied to perfection, the big hair jacked up to Jesus and the princess-cut, bedazzled gowns with full crinoline and sometimes even a hoop skirt underneath—we are brought up to walk the runway. And a proper Southern girl always has a strand of pearls around her neck. That way, if anyone ever needs to be strangled, we have the perfect tool. Just remove and use.
But Vivi never quite fit into the fru fru of it all. Her frizzy, wiry Irish curls and endless sea of freckles made her a standout for all the wrong reasons. Her skin was so white she was almost blue. But I thought she was beautiful. She had a wonderfully infectious smile, straight, pearly white teeth, ruby-red lips that never needed lipstick and I thought her green eyes were just perfect. Vivi was a real Southern blue blood, too. She came from sugar cane. Really! An actual plantation was part of her family history. And that made what Vivi did seem like the end of the world. Someone from the “uppa crust” wouldn’t dare be involved in such activities. But Vivi wasn’t quite as “uppa crust” as the rest of her family. I mean, how could a blue blood be a redneck? That’s exactly what made me love her. She was different. Unexpected. Surprising. What she did was a surprise, all right, but not the kind you hope for on Christmas morning….
Harry, my husband and my law partner, was in the lobby of the old Tutwiler Hotel when the news came. He was waiting to meet me. It was our tenth anniversary and we were meeting for lunch. We did this every year; same table, same bourbon-n-peach cobbler. I wasn’t looking as forward to this lunch as I had been on other anniversaries, though. Harry and I had been having some problems. Well, unless you don’t consider silence a problem. We had been growing apart as he grew ever closer to his political dreams. With every step toward his coveted Senate seat, he stepped farther away from me. My plan was to talk to him during our lunch, to tell him that I’d had enough of his absentee husband routine. I spent all morning gearing up to tell him that I was through with being second to his career and his political dreams—it was time to focus on our marriage, or I wanted a separation. Of course, I’d been a nervous wreck since I’d opened my eyes that morning. But, lucky for me, I was saved by the belle…a belle named Vivi.
I was running late that morning, which was basically on par for me. I was stuck at the law school in an alumni meeting that was reaching into an eternity. I was sure Harry stood patiently waiting, checking his pocket watch at least once every 23 seconds, then glancing into the nearest mirror to check his gorgeous hair. If there was a mirror within 20 yards, you’d find Harry looking at himself—usually in admiration—but checking, always checking, for perfection. Every thick strand of hair in place, gold cuff links hitting just at the hem of his suit sleeves—down to the last detail, Harry liked to be in control. His cell phone rang in his vest pocket. It was Vivi.
“Harry, where are you?” she said.
Now, Harry is rock-solid by anyone’s standards, by far the most patient soul. His emotions are buried deep, like down near the Earth’s core. But, as even-keeled as he is, Vivi could almost always manage to rattle his cage. This phone call would shake Harry to his soul.
“I’m in the Tutwiler waiting on Blake,” he answered.
“Shit! I forgot it’s your anniversary,” she said. “Harry, forgive me for this. I need Blake.”
“She’s at the university, Vivi. You okay?” Harry asked.
“Harry, I’m drivin’ and I don’t have a destination,” Vivi said in her thick-as-molasses Southern voice. This wasn’t the typical Vivi call for help.
“Vivi, where are you?” he said.
“I don’t know. I’m just drivin’. When can I talk to Blake? When will she be there?”
Harry was having trouble making sense of her words between her frantic nonsense and the god-awful cell reception.
“Vivi, just tell me where you are and Blake and I will meet you,” Harry said.
There was no response.
“Vivi! Vivi! Can you hear me?” Harry shouted. By this time, he’d stepped outside onto the courtyard for a little more privacy once he realized everyone in the lobby was staring at him for all the wrong reasons.
Vivi answered slow and sober. “Harry…I think I’ve just killed Lewis.”
Silence followed.
“Harry? Did you hear me? Lewis is layin’ dead in the bed, buck naked and blue, at the Fountain Mist on I20!” Vivi screamed.
Harry Heart came from a long line of legal counsel—defense attorneys to be exact. Generations upon generations of Hearts were all University of Alabama Law School graduates.
All except for Lewis. Lewis was Harry’s younger brother. He was the wayward son who wound up on the radio. He was the play-by-play announcer for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide; a partygoer so popular with the women, he never married—never had to. All of his needs were met nightly by the groupies, from cheerleaders to professors to coach’s wives. Lewis Heart was at your service, so to speak.
Harry stood among the gardenia blossoms in the Tutwiler courtyard, dumbfounded, wanting to utter something, but unable to make a sound. Finally, he managed to ask, “Vivi, are you talkin’ ’bout my Lewis?”
“Yes, dammit, Harry,” Vivi said. “Who the hell else? Oh, my God, he’s dead. He’s dead, Harry! And I’ve killed him, I know it!”
“Stop, Vivi. Slow down,” Harry said. “Okay. Let me get Blake. We’ll meet you at Mother’s.”
“I’m sittin’ in front of her house right now, Harry. I didn’t know where else to go.”
* * *
Meredith Blakely Fletcher is my maternal grandmother and the matriarch of everything. She is known affectionately as “Mother” to everyone who knows her. Her house has always been the command center. At one time or another it had been home to all of us, both friends and family alike. It became known as “Mother’s” decades before I was even born.
Mother has a real rags-to-riches story. A young woman during World War Two, she was born in the mud of the Mississippi Delta, surrounded by money and old plantations, but never quite able to grasp it herself. She was absolutely gorgeous, a movie-star type of beauty with dark, wavy hair and eyes as blue-green as the Gulf. She worked at a five-and-dime during the war as a cosmetic salesperson. One day a handsome young law student by the name of Frank Fletcher came into the store and approached the lunch counter. Her Southern beauty caught his Yankee eye and they were together for 41 years, until his death twenty-one years ago. My New York–born grandfather always bragged that he found a million-dollar baby in the five- and ten-cent store, just like the song says.
Frank gave Meridee, as he affectionately called her, everything: a big Southern home and the exciting life of a wealthy lawyer’s wife in the late forties and fifties. Frank set up his practice and Meridee gave birth to three children. She entertained with lavish parties for Frank’s clients and two maids helped her care for her home and children. Meridee was the epitome of a Southern blue blood, even though her blood had originally run plain ole red.
Eventually, after much success on his own, Frank Fletcher and Hank Heart set up practice together. Yes, Hank is my Harry’s grandfather and, no, mine was not an arranged marriage. They were affectionately known in Tuscaloosa as Hank-n-Frank, Attorneys-at-Law. Go ahead and laugh now and get that out of the way.
I remember as a child, Mother’s house was my favorite place to be. Her bedroom was so full of the thick scent of perfumes that I can’t think of her and not recall those fragrances. Her dressing table was a place of pure fascination to a little girl. The French pink glass bottles and the powder she had custom mixed to match her delicate skin tone made that table an island of enchantment to me. And the silver makeup brushes were the wands of magical transformations. Meridee wore black transparent stockings with seams running up the back. Her long nails were always perfectly manicured and always matched her endless array of bloodred lipsticks. I wanted to grow up to be just like her.
Mother’s was a stone’s throw from the law school, so it made for a very convenient hangout. Frank was a huge success as an attorney, but on Saturdays in the fall, you’d find him in the broadcast booth of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Frank was the play-by-play announcer for the famous football team. He was so proud of that. Our blood runs perfectly Crimson in my family. Their house was a place for everyone, and Meridee made sure that all felt welcome. All my life, in any moment of crisis or excitement, we always wound up at Mother’s. No surprise, it’s where we all wound up on that day.
* * *
Harry drove like a bat out of hell over to Mother’s. He later told me he knew it would be bad for his Senatorial run if he had gotten a speeding ticket, but for once he didn’t think about the political dreams first. Amazing.
When Harry got to Mother’s, he found Vivi sitting in her car, gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead in a dazed stupor.
Harry had called me as he was driving to Mother’s. When I found the ringing cell in my red leather Gucci bag and saw the caller ID announcing it was Harry, I don’t know why, but I instantly suspected something awful. Harry never sounds hurried or breathless. He is the consummate lawyer, always in control. So when I answered the phone and heard his voice, I knew it was something awful.
“Blake!” Harry sounded like he had been jogging. “Meet me at Mother’s—now!”
“Harry, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“Blake, just come now.” A silence. Then, “Lewis might be dead and Vivi’s involved.”
“What? I’m on my way.” He explained all the details as I sped through town.
I don’t remember the drive over there. I don’t think I breathed even once in the five minutes it took me to arrive at the familiar cracked driveway. You had to angle your car just right to get in and out of it so as not to bottom out. I wasn’t thinking of any angling as I ripped right in behind Harry’s Mercedes and Vivi’s powder-blue convertible Thunderbird. Harry was standing beside her car. The shock of what I’d just heard was stealing my breath, but I knew they both needed me. I opened my car door and turned and touched my high heels to the cement.
“Tell me again—what the hell happened?” I heard Harry say to Vivi. “Go slow this time. I need every detail.”
The consummate lawyer. Even when his own brother could be dead, Harry was in full lawyer mode.
“For God’s sake, Harry, you aren’t takin’ a freakin’ deposition are you?” Vivi reacted in pure Vivi form. “Your damn brother, my lover, is dead, Harry! Dead! Dead! Dead!”
Vivi is a tactless wonder. “I did it, but it was an accident! I thought he was enjoying it. He was yellin’ and moanin’ and…Harry, he just stopped,” she said. “I don’t know if I suffocated him or what, but oh, my God, he’s dead!” She was crying and trembling, pushing the red, wiry frizz away from her eyes.
By now, Harry was visibly shaken. He pulled off his wire-framed glasses and dragged his long fingers through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was in his late thirties, but if you keep yourself so bottled up all the time you go gray before you know it. Harry was bottled and corked.
“Vivi,” he said slow and steady, “is Lewis still at the Fountain Mist?”
“Well, Harry,” Vivi answered with as much sarcasm as she could muster, “unless you believe in the walkin’ dead, he’s still right there where I left him, buck naked.”
“Vivi, if Lewis is actually dead, you need an attorney,” I interjected. “My God, we need to call an ambulance! The police.”
“Well, y’all,” Vivi said, “aren’t I lookin’ at two lawyers right now?”
Harry and I stood, looking dumb and stupid, first at each other, then at Vivi. Still, Harry looked the most confused. The most disoriented. I could tell he was trying to process how this little development might impact that precious blossoming political career.
He and his brother, Lewis, had never been close and Harry had spent a lifetime bailing Lewis out of one mess after the next. Lewis was the baby of the family. He was good-looking, but in a Field and Stream sort of way. He was the polar opposite of Harry. Harry was prep-school gorgeous. Straight out of GQ. Lewis was two years younger, with a loud, center-of-attention boom of a voice that could really get irritating. Actually, overall, Lewis was quite irritating. Why in the world Vivi would shack up with him was beyond me. I looked at her and, despite her mascara-stained eyes, her sheet-white skin and runny nose, well—honestly, my thought was that Vivi could do better than Lewis. But what I loved in Vivi was her wild streak. She was one of the few people who really lived in the moment. Hell, Vivi lived for the moment. And I was sure that’s what attracted Lewis.
After a long, awkward silence in the warmth of the late morning sun, Vivi spoke. “Well,” she said, as if she had been picked last to play kickball, “since I don’t really have a turkey wishbone handy for y’all, somebody be my damn lawyer already! Do we need to play eeny meeny miny moe or what?”
Harry answered first. “No matter what, not reporting a death in a timely manner is a real crime, so if we don’t call the police and an ambulance, we will all need lawyers.”
I took out my cell.
“Here, honey, let’s get this over with. You need to call the ambulance first, even if you think he’s dead.”
I handed the phone to her as I rubbed her shoulder and then looked over at Harry. He had turned around and was leaning against Vivi’s car, running his fingers through his hair over and over—his nervous tic. He looked lost in thought—as though floods of terrible memories were coming back, like waves crashing a shoreline. I wanted to say something, but had no good words at the moment. My thoughts turned back to Vivi. She was waiting for the 911 operator to answer.
Vivi had been through this before. No, she hadn’t ever killed anyone, but short, steamy love affairs were basically on par for her. At one point, she’d been married to a congressman who lived full-time in Washington. He was twenty years older than Vivi and totally unattractive, but another blue blood just the same. The marriage didn’t last too long, though no one ever thought it would. Vivi would never leave the South. That would be like asking cotton to grow up North. Vivi just couldn’t be planted anywhere else. But the congressman had to live in D.C. With all that time apart everyone knew it would just grow stale. And it did after just a few short years. Besides, Vivi loved to be…well, let’s call it social. Yes, social was a perfect word for Vivi Ann McFadden. I’m not saying that she was a party girl, but she loved, thrived actually, on social interaction. Okay, Vivi was a party girl. She was an only child of wealth and privilege and most of the time she took the privilege part too far.
She never gave anything much thought. She just flew by the seat of her pants, or anyone else’s pants. Her free spirit was enviable. She swore like a sailor, even during high school, and had the reputation as a bit of the wild child of Tuscaloosa. She was popular and, no, not just with the men. Everyone loved her because she was so damn funny. The only little problem was that if Vivi thought it, it popped right out of her mouth before it ever stopped to register at her brain. Vivi never learned that some things should be thought but not actually said. Sometimes that got her into trouble. But she had such a hilarious personality she stayed at the center of the most sought-after social circles.
As I listened to her choke out her story to the 911 operator, I could tell that this event with Lewis would change her.
* * *
Harry and I left Mother’s with Vivi to go to the police station. I suggested to Harry that he could go on to the Fountain Mist and meet the ambulance, but he insisted he would prefer to stay with us. He didn’t seem to want to see Lewis, dead or alive. I tried my best to persuade him, but he wouldn’t budge. After all the years that had gone by, six, I think, since he and Lewis had even spoken, Harry just didn’t want to be the one to ID the body. If he got there first, it would be just him and poor, dead Lewis. And Harry didn’t want that, not after the way things had been between them. So he led the way to the police station downtown. After that we would all go together to the motel.
My emotions were in overdrive. Vivi was my best friend since third grade, my sister in every way, and Harry was my husband, my college sweetheart, though we had had our share of troubles. Between these relationships, the fact that Lewis was dead and the fact that I’m an attorney, too, well, I’ve never felt so stuck in such a messy fix as this. I didn’t know which feeling to feel, never mind knowing the right thing to say or who to say it to. We were all in shock for different reasons, and the trip to the police station was a silent one.
We arrived at the station in minutes. That’s the good thing about Tuscaloosa—everything is only minutes away. We got out of our cars and walked into the little building. It was on the corner of the street that faced the Warrior River. We stepped inside and I stood next to Vivi and held her hand as she talked to the police. Harry stood on her other side, trying with every fiber in his being to hold it together, to cover his emotions. Luckily for him, it was something he’d being training himself to do for ages now—even with me. A politician should be stoic, composed, unruffled—and I can tell you, he was great at that.
The little balding officer sat in front of us, diligently taking down Vivi’s half sentences and descriptive details of her last breathless moments with Lewis. When she finished, the pudgy officer looked up with his mouth open and eyes bugging through his tiny square glasses and eventually spoke. “Ahem. Anything else, ma’am?”
Officer Dooley knew Vivi. He used to work detail for her mother at the gate of the famous McFadden plantation and had known the family for years. Tuscaloosa is a small college town, where everyone knows everyone and has probably slept with their best friend’s brother. Believe me, I know that one for sure.
This scene at the station reminded me of the principal’s office in the fourth grade. Standing there together with Vivi and Officer Dooley and all his questions took me back. Vivi and I were in Catholic school together and were in Sister Pauline’s class—and she was the meanest old nun in the entire school. One day, Vivi brought a big roll of clear packing tape to school and we carefully devised the plan. At recess we practiced. Sister Pauline went out of class at 1:30 every day to meet with Father Mike about the religion lesson.
On the big day, we waited until she’d left for her meeting, and then Vivi rolled the clear tape all over the back of her chair. When Sister P. came back she sat down in her chair, snapping her ruler sharply on the desk and ordered us into silence. I remember the look Vivi and I passed each other. We were full of the devil, you could say—typical schoolgirls, at least most of the ones I knew.
“Here it comes,” said Vivi with a huge smile on her freckled face.
“Oh, my goodness, I gotta think of something in case we’re busted,” I said. I was always a lawyer. Even in the fourth grade.
As Sister P. got up to go to the board, a loud ripping noise tore through the silent class. In a split second, the veil full of curly brown hair fell from her head, flopping there over the back of the chair, sliding down into a puddle as Sister Pauline moved toward the chalkboard.
The classroom erupted with laughter and it could be heard all the way to the principal’s office, which is where, of course, we ended up—standing together at the principal’s desk, holding hands just like we were right now.
I was snapped abruptly back to the present when Officer Dooley launched another question at Vivi. “Where’s the body?”
“Shit!” Vivi said.
That was actually Vivi’s favorite word. She used it whether she was happy or sad, surprised or bored. However, this time it was more like an Oh, shit as she began to utter those next few words.
“I left the body…”
“Stop, Vivi,” Harry jumped in. “As your lawyer, I’m advising you not to discuss these details further, not without consultation.”
“Wait, are you my lawyer?” Vivi asked with an excited mix of relief and worry. “Harry, I hate to remind you, but your brother is the…um, dead guy.”
“Well, Vivi, I know you didn’t do anything but screw his brains out,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. It was a familiar tactic—covering up emotion with sarcasm. “Of course, I’ll help you. Besides, there is no case if Lewis died ’cause you wore him out. That’s not murder. For God’s sake, it’s a death pure and simple. But if you were the last one with him when he died, you will still need counsel.”
That vision will remain branded on my brain for all eternity.
Harry helping Vivi. She needed him and, while Harry wasn’t the most cuddly, affectionate guy anymore, he seemed a little like his old self at that moment. Ever since the big family breakup with Lewis years ago, and now even more as he pushed to climb the political ladder, Harry had learned to turn off the emotion and the feeling and keep the business hat on at all times. Even with me—especially with me.
But he was softer with Vivi for the moment. I could see a small glimpse of him, the old Harry, there with Vivi in the musty police station.
Maybe it was because Lewis, for whom he had shown such absolute disdain, could actually be dead. Harry hadn’t always been this cold, but over the past couple of years I had certainly become quite lonely for affection and good conversation. We never talked about anything but work and politics and career climbing. I was lonely, but as I noticed a shadow of the old Harry there in the little room, I began to hope that maybe this drama with his brother might bring the real Harry back. My Harry was at least there in the police station for the moment. And it was good to see him.
Harry and I had a good beginning. Watching him there in that moment took me back to the very first time we met. I had been attracted to him immediately.
We met in law school, but not at a party or the library like most college sweethearts. Harry and I met in New York City in line at the half-price tickets booth in the middle of Times Square. We were in line for a little-known Broadway show called Baby. I had gone to NYC for an internship at Columbia, and Harry was there that summer, working in the city.
I felt him getting close behind me as I stood in line. I was listening to him talk to a buddy and I knew I detected an unmistakable Southern lilt in his deep, sexy voice. I liked feeling him close to me. I could smell his aftershave and then…my turn at the ticket window.
“Two for Baby, please.” I was picking up tickets for me and my roommate, Alexa, for that evening’s show
“Last two for today ma’am, good timing.”
“Noooo,” Harry groaned from behind me.
In a split second, I thought, What do I do? Little did I know my entire future lay in these next few seconds and how I chose to handle this deliciously terrible, heart-pounding, awkward situation. I hesitated only for a breath, then something else took over. This “something else” spoke for me.
“Oh, I have one extra.” My alter ego sounded just like me. Evidentially the other me decided in that split second, Oh, the hell with Alexa. Alexa who?
“But what about…” Harry was motioning to the spot where his buddy had been standing seconds ago and saw that he was halfway across the street walking backward and nodding with two thumbs up. I giggled and he said, “Are you sure?”
“Sure am.”
He smiled at me.
Harry, ever the curious attorney, furrowed his brow and asked, “Weren’t you originally asking for two tickets?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling cross-examined.
“Well, who was the other ticket for?”
“Alex, my female roommate from New Jersey.”
“Oh,” he said, smiling. “But won’t she be expecting her ticket tonight?”
“Oh, my goodness,” I said in an overanimated Southern accent. “Didn’t you hear? They just sold out.” A smile crept across his preppy boy face and I knew I was in for something wonderful.
Behind his desk, Officer Dooley cleared his throat, dragging my thoughts away from the once-romantic Harry and back to the police station.
“Where is the body?” he asked again, trying to get an answer.
“I left him when he began turnin’ blue,” Vivi said. “I slapped him a few times. Well, I had slapped him before, but that was durin’ our—well anyway—he asked me to. But after he stopped movin’, I slapped him really hard and when he still didn’t budge an inch, I ran for help.”
“Did you call an ambulance?” The chubby officer continued.
“When he stopped breathin’, I panicked and ran for Blake.”
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
“Vivi 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.
“Hey, Blake, how are you?” She leaned in and gave me a hug. I had met her at a function at City Hall for the police benefit the month before. “We’ve got us a squirrelly little situation here, I see,” she said as she quickly took in the room.
“I know,” I said. “Vivi is just a mess because of it.”
“Well, look here, Vivi, not to fret. We’ll get to the bottom of this before long. Just trust me and Sonny. We got this, okay?” she said as she snapped on her latex gloves. And with that, she bent over and began looking all around the bed, lifting the bed skirt until…
“Oh, my good God in heaven above. What in all hell is this?” And up she came with Deputy Dick in her hand, holding it like it was the Olympic Torch.
“Vivi, you recognize this nasty thang?”
Vivi turned ten shades of crimson, threw back the last sip of her water and choked.
“We’re gonna need us a big ole’ plastic bag for this. Just somebody get over here quick and take this disgusting thing from me!” She was holding it by two fingers, her face contorted somewhere between fear and nausea, turning in circles in the tiny motel room looking for anyone to take the rubbery blue dildo from her perfectly manicured, and thankfully gloved, hand. “Ooh, Lawd have mercy, I need to have my hands sanitized after this!”
Vivi leaned into me and said, “That’s Deputy Dick.”
“Well,” I said, “I am so happy to finally meet him in person. He is certainly a lovely shade of blue.” Vivi smiled and that relieved her embarrassment, but only for a second. Another officer came in with a bag and Bonita dropped the “deputy” into it.
“Have mercy, I ain’t never seen such a big ugly thing as that. It’s gonna give me nightmares….” She went to the sink, tossed her gloves and washed her hands, muttering to herself as she primped in the mirror. Her makeup was a thing of perfection. She looked like a doll with the most beautiful hair and all of it in place, all the time. She, too, was a former pageant queen and knew how to carry herself, plus size and all. Her weight never seemed to matter—if anything, Bonita gave curves a good name. All anyone ever noticed was her beauty and her spunk. As a detective, she was able to avoid the uniform—which was a good thing, since her sense of fashion would never stretch to black polyester. Today, she was wearing one of her many Chanel suits, cream and trimmed in black. She was stunning to the eye.
Vivi had gathered herself and was wiping her face with the wet cloth Bonita had handed her when she finally spoke.
“Uh, yes, to answer your question, Bonita, I do recognize that, um, item. It is mine and I had it with me here in the room.” Vivi let out a huge breath as if she had just admitted she knew the secrets of the Vatican.
Bonita finished cleaning and primping herself and came over to Vivi. “Now don’t you go worrying yourself over this, Vivi. All of us got our kinky little secrets.” She winked at her.
Vivi smiled up at her from where she was still sitting on the bed.
“Certainly this one is a good bit…shall we say…bigger than most, but it’ll all be okay.”
Sonny and Bonita stepped to the doorway and planned their next steps. Vivi was too out of sorts to notice them chatting, but I strained to listen.
“Sonny, what do you make of this?” Bonita asked.
“Well, at the moment, none of this is gonna make any sense till we talk to Miss Vivi. Maybe she saw something out of the ordinary, or maybe we can jog her memory when we talk to her.”
“Do you need me to question her or do you wanna do those honors?” she asked sarcastically. It was clear Bonita would rather hear any story other than the one Vivi would be telling.
“No, you go on. I’ll talk to her. I’ve known her a long time and she can be, shall we say, difficult. She enjoys being difficult. I’ll handle her.” Sonny kept thinking and talking. “I think you ought to check the usual spots—the hospitals, coroner’s office. Maybe someone already moved the body and this is all just a problem of miscommunication. But just in case, maybe get together a list of Lewis’s coworkers at the university that we can talk to. Somebody’s bound to know somethin’.”
“No problem, Sonny. I swear, this may be the craziest case I’ve ever worked on and we’re just getting started. That Vivi, she is sure somethin’ else. I don’t believe I’ve ever bagged evidence quite like that little blue friend I found.” They both laughed and shook their heads.
“Okay, I’ll keep ya posted. Have fun talkin’ to Vivi. Almost wish I could be a fly on the wall for that one, but I’m already gonna have nightmares after meeting the little blue man in there.” She laughed.
Bonita was a good soul, even if she did talk too much. She did one last mirror check of her lipstick, then hugged me and Vivi and headed outside. I heard her car start and drive away.
“Vivi, do you have any ideas at all about where Lewis could be?” I looked at her as I took the cloth from her and wiped her cheeks.
She began to tear up. “I swear, Blake. With God as my witness, I do not know where he is or where he went. He was laying right there on this bed, dead and stiff and naked. He was stiff and naked before, but I swear…” She paused and looked at me in the eyes. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Of course.” I pulled her frizzy red head under my chin and held her. “You know you will have to go into all the details with Sonny? He’s the chief investigator for the police department. You need to tell him everything. I still can’t believe Sonny married Laura Logan.” I couldn’t help it from blurting out. I knew now was not the time to be gossiping, but seeing Sonny again had stirred something up inside me.
“Oh, my God! Laura Plain and Tall?” Vivi recalled Laura’s elementary school moniker. “I haven’t thought about her in ten years. I guess the whole convent thing really didn’t pan out for her.”
We both let out a laugh. It relieved the heaviness of the situation. It felt good to almost forget where we were, even for just a moment.
Harry pushed back through the little room and touched me on the shoulder.
“Blake, is Vivi able to talk to Officer Bartholomew?”
“Yes, she’s much better. Let’s go outside.”
We stepped out into the warm afternoon air. The police inside kept up their search for anything that might lead us to Lewis, and the evidence was stored in plastic bags—including the big blue rubber penis. I saw the wrecker pull out from behind the motel with Lewis’s red Corvette attached. They would take it to the police station and hold it until it had been fully searched and swiped for evidence.
I hesitated on the sidewalk as Harry, Vivi and Sonny walked through the dusty parking lot over to Sonny’s truck. I knew every hair, fiber and drop of semen could be used against Vivi if they ever found Lewis’s body. For a moment my eyes began to fill with tears, but then anger took over and I thought, No! Over my dead body. Then I thought, There is no dead body. And with no dead body, there was no murder. Only a missing person. I sniffed and wiped my eyes, then put my lawyer face on. I felt transformed into a heroine for all Southern women: Scarlett O’Hara and a Steel Magnolia all in one. I joined the group already gathered at the truck. However, my bravado may have faltered a bit as I stumbled in the parking lot, realizing that high heels were definitely not the appropriate foot fashion for gravel. As I approached them I overheard Vivi.
“Harry, I just cannot discuss this.”
“Vivi, you have to. You have no choice. You were the last one with Lewis and you reported him dead—although his body is, well, not where you left it. You are still at the center of this investigation. And Officer Bartholomew is the chief investigator. You have to tell us the details of the day as you remember it.”
“This will help us find Lewis,” I explained to Vivi. “Harry, I think we better move this discussion elsewhere if you want all of this from Vivi. This is the scene of the…well…whatever it is, and Vivi has already fainted once. Let me help you with her and we’ll get all we need.”
I turned to talk to Vivi.
“It’s okay, honey. I’ll be right there with you. What do you need?”
“Oh, Blake, I can’t possibly discuss this tête-à-tête in mixed company. I’ll die of total embarrassment.”
“Sweetie, you don’t have a choice.” We all stood there in silence waiting for Vivi to tell us what would make this easier for her. It was an awkward moment. We knew what we were asking her to do. We knew what we would be hearing. The very last dirty details of the sexual escapades of Lewis and Vivi. It was a lot to ask for any of us to sit through that! But everyone stood there, the hot sun baking the long minutes that dripped by like molasses from a hot spoon. Then finally—
“Well, okay,” Vivi said, letting out a deep breath. “About five Long Island iced teas might do it.”
“What, honey?” I asked.
“You asked me what I need, right? So I’m tellin’ you. I’ve got to have a drink or three or this story will, through no fault of my own, stay locked in my head. It’s just not somethin’ I can discuss without lots of help, from Jack or Jim…. As in Daniel’s and Beam—drinks I mean, not more men!”
“Okay,” Sonny said, “let’s run over to the Tutwiler. It’s close by and the bar opens at four, and that’s right about now.”
Harry and I looked at each other and nodded our heads in agreement.
“Fine,” Harry said.
So, we would go to the Tutwiler and sit and watch Vivi get stone drunk while listening to her recount her last day with Harry’s estranged baby brother, Lewis, screwing his brains out till he was dead, while my former lover sat across from us taking notes. Yes, it looked like Harry and I would have our anniversary date at the Tutwiler, after all.
3
We got in our cars and headed back across the bridge to the Tutwiler, looking for all the world like some sort of procession. Driving across the Warrior River to downtown, I looked over at Vivi. She sat motionless, white-knuckling the door handle as we rode to the old historic hotel.
“I can’t do it.” The words shook loose from her mouth. “Blake, I just cannot tell all this to Sonny. You can’t tell me they need to know everything.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Why in the world do they need to know that Lewis was a licker?”
“What?” I said, in utter confusion at what I thought she said.
“You know. A licker. He wasn’t much of a kisser but, God, he sure loved to lick. Can you tell me just why Sonny needs to know that?”
I started feeling drops of perspiration dripping down between my breasts, and my breath had left me. But I grabbed Vivi by the arm and explained, “We are trying to clear all of this up so we can find Lewis.”
“And by learnin’ all about Lewis lickin’ me from my knees to my neck, I’m a free woman?”
I slammed on my brakes, realizing we had reached our destination and I was about to jump the curb getting into a parking space. Vivi and I looked at each other.
“Maybe we can leave that little detail out.” I was already feeling nauseous. “It’ll be fine,” I said, hoping I was right. “Let’s go.” I parked and we got out.
The Tutwiler was so elegant. It was a regal 1920s hotel with most of its original architecture still intact. Dapples of yellow and cream splashed the walls, shadows of the afternoon sun dancing and darting up and down the curving banisters and sprinkling light across the 20-foot ceilings. Sunlight peeked through the palms planted in oversize ceramic pots scattered throughout the lobby. White ceiling fans whirred slowly, just enough to stir the jasmine-scented air and cause the palms to wave in their breeze. The large French doors around the lobby opened onto the courtyard at every corner, and the three-layer fountain stood in the center offering a watery lullaby to the early evening. Every sense was stirred here. It was intoxicating.
Harry and Sonny had arrived first, and I could see them in the shadows of the bar off the lobby. Sonny was propped up on a bar stool, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and Harry was talking to the bartender. Harry motioned to us. I wanted to linger a little longer.
The courtyard beckoned, and I was swept back ten years earlier when Harry, fresh out of law school, stood in the spring sun in the middle of the Tutwiler courtyard. He had a martini in one hand and a peach-colored rose in the other. God, he was gorgeous. Dressed in navy dress pants and a heavily starched, crisp white shirt, silver wire frames and his wavy mass of dark hair, he looked straight out of a magazine. His cuff links glistened in the sunlight.
I loved that Harry wore cuff links. I’d never known anyone who wore cuff links. They made him seem elegant and refined, classic. They were a symbol to me of who Harry was. Eccentric and his own man in every respect. He was unexpected. The cuff links were unexpected. They made you notice that he was confident, but not in a flashy sort of way.
That evening in the courtyard was about a month after we’d graduated from law school and I was meeting him for drinks. Harry had had a job interview with the most prestigious firm in Tuscaloosa that day. They had offices in Atlanta and Birmingham and Harry had wanted to work for them ever since I had first met him. When he called to invite me to drinks, I thought, Oh, he got the job! He wants to celebrate! I had hurriedly dressed in my favorite suit, covered myself in my perfumed body cream from my hot-pink toenails to my tan shoulders, slid my favorite pink lipstick over my lips and flew out the door.
When I met Harry at the Tutwiler, I expected to hear all the nitty gritty details of the interview. I spotted him in the courtyard and raced across the lobby and out through the French doors, throwing my arms around him once I’d reached him.
“Hey, honey! How’d it go?”
“Great! They told me they were hoping the next Heart out of law school would choose their firm. My name is my reputation,” he said proudly.
“Oh, baby, that’s great!” I said, but I sensed something else. “Harry, what’s wrong?”
He cocked his eyebrow up.
“Oh, no, they’re not sending you to Atlanta, are they?”
“Blake. Sweet, sweet, Blake,” Harry whispered as he pulled me closer. “No, darlin’, I’ll be here in Tuscaloosa, ’cause I told them I couldn’t leave at the moment. They’ll hand me my first file next Monday.”
I continued holding him tight. “Oh, thank God. I don’t think I’m cut out for long-distance.”
“Sweetie, they’re looking for one more fresh-faced attorney.”
“You mean…me?” I blurted out.
“Well, I took the liberty of suggesting you and they’d like to talk to you in the morning.”
“Harry! This is our dream coming true! To practice together until we can open our own firm. I can’t believe it’s really happening.” My eyes had filled with happy tears and I felt Harry move his hand from behind my waist just as a waiter in a crisp white serving jacket and a black bow tie approached. He had a sterling silver tray with a round silver dome over it.
“Your order, Mr. Heart.” Harry reached into his front pocket and handed the man a tip.
By this time, I was thinking, Okay, time for a champagne toast. Harry told the waiter to set the tray down on a nearby table. He slid his fingers through mine and looked down at me and smiled in a way I had never seen. As if he had a secret.
He led me over to the table and said, “Time for a toast!” He lifted the tray top, revealing two champagne flutes full of amber bubbly.
Handing me a glass, he said, “To us, and our future.”
On the tray next to the glasses was an antique china plate covered in pink and white and peach-colored rose petals. In the center was one large pink blossom.
“For my Southern beauty,” he said.
As I picked up the large center rose, and lifted it to my nose to breathe in its sweet fragrance, underneath it I saw lying on the rose petals an amazing, large, square-cut diamond ring. The sunlight flickered in its brilliance.
“Oh, my God,” I said for about the ninetieth time that day. “Oh, my God, Harry!”
He knelt down before me, slipping my fingers through his and said, “Blake O’Hara, I love you and want to share every breath with you. You are the sweetest, most beautiful girl in the world. I love every little thing about you—the way you smell and the way your hair frizzes at the slightest bit of humidity. I love it that when you sing you continually change keys. You are my very best friend, and I can’t imagine my life without you. I promise to take the best care of you that I can. I promise your happiness will be what I strive for every day. I promise I will keep you in legal pads for the rest of your life. Will you please do me the honor of a lifetime and be my wife and partner?”
I lost all sense of time and space and was down on my knees before I knew it. I could barely speak. I looked into his blue-gray eyes and put my hands on his clean-shaven face and pulled him to my mouth, kissing him before I answered.
“Harry, I love you more than life itself and I will never be able to have joy without you. Yes, baby! Yes!” Between every yes I kissed him on the lips, then the cheeks, then the lips. “Yes! Yes! Yes! I’ll marry you! Yes!”
There we were. In the courtyard of the Tutwiler. Both on our knees. Both crying and holding each other, my tears mixed with his. In that moment, the whole world went away and there was only us. The bees were buzzing, the dandelions floated by, the jasmine and magnolia filled the May air. I was in Harry’s arms, in the bosom of my hometown, and it was the single best moment of my life.
I was shaken away from that memory by Vivi. Literally shaken when she grabbed my shoulder.
“Blake, honey, you home? I’m talkin’ to ya. Your eyes are somewhere else.”
“Yes, Vivi. I’m here. “
“Oh, damn,” Vivi murmured under her breath. “I get it, honey. You and Harry. Today, it’s…”
I interrupted, “It’s okay.”
“No, dammit. It’s not okay. You and Harry should be kicking up your heels. Oh, my God, and this is your spot. Oh, Blake, this is so awful!”
“No, no, Vivi, this was all beyond your control today. Let’s go on to the bar and get this over with.” She knew Harry and I had been in a slow-motion free fall for a while now, but I had not even discussed with Vivi my plans to talk to Harry during our lunch date earlier today.
I am by no means a needy person. But I am all female and I do like to be pursued. Romanced. Fussed over. Maybe even the center of attention. Harry’s attention had been elsewhere for so long and every attempt to talk to him ended with him saying, “Well, what do you want from me, Blake? You knew this was the life I wanted when you said you’d be my partner.” Little did Vivi know, she probably saved me from asking Harry for a separation today. But I couldn’t decide which was worse—being at the Tutwiler to discuss a divorce, or being there to discuss a missing brother-in-law! I took Vivi by the arm and we headed into the abyss.
The bar in the Tutwiler was massive, made of deep, rich mahogany wood with intricate carvings. The ceilings were at least twenty feet high and the moldings had the same beautiful etchings. There was a huge mirror over the bar that reflected everything and everyone. It was all done in dark mahogany. The hardwood floors were a throwback to the 1920s. Just entering the bar was an event. You went through time to the elegant era of Bugsy Segal and flapper dancers and it always felt like you needed a long strand of pearls to twirl. They even had music from the 1920s playing, usually by a live band over in the corner. Maybe this location would help to ease the tension of the moment.
Though Harry and Sonny were both waiting at the bar, neither of them was drinking. Sonny was on duty so he had his usual, a Dr Pepper. Harry had club soda. We all knew this was going to be very uncomfortable, so there was an agitated, prickly uneasiness in the air. Like trying to swallow hot peppers with a whisky chaser followed by dill pickle juice. It was just too much at one time for the tongue.
Vivi and I stepped up and slid onto our stools. I ordered a seltzer water with lime, and Vivi ordered a Jack Daniel’s straight.
“Ms. McFadden,” Sonny began, “I’m going to be recording this and taking a few handwritten notes. You are not at this time a suspect of anything. There is no crime at the moment. We are treating this as a missing person case, and we will until such time as it becomes something else. Any details you can provide may go a long way in helping us locate Mr. Heart. But this is informal, so please feel relaxed and try your best to remember everything. Even some things you don’t think are important might become just the details we need later on. You were the last one to see Mr. Lewis Heart. Can you please describe your encounter with him?”
Oh, Lord, I thought. Here we go.
“Okay.” Vivi looked over Sonny’s shoulder to where I had positioned myself next to Harry. She grabbed her shot glass and threw her Jack Daniel’s back in one swig, her mop of orange frizz flying.
“Lewis called me this mornin’. I was out at the Big House.” (That’s what Vivi called her family’s plantation.) “I had been tendin’ the rose gardens with Arthur, my gardener. I love it when I can get my hands in the soil and feel the earth damp and squishy in my palms. Know what I mean, Mr. Sonny?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sonny answered. “But, please, can we jump on over to when you met up with Lewis?”
“I’m gettin’ there, Mr. Sonny. Another JD straight up, please,” Vivi said to the bartender. “Make it a double. Anyway, when the phone rang, I told Arthur I’d be right back. I ran in the house and grabbed the receiver. It was Lewis.
“He said, ‘Hey, Red.’ Only Lewis calls me Red.
“‘Hey, baby,’ I said. ‘Whatcha need?’
“‘You, baby. Lots of you,’ he said. Lewis sounded, uhh…needy.
“‘Okay, sweetie. You name the place and I’ll be there,’ I told him.
“‘Fountain Mist,’ he said. ‘Our room.’ I knew that meant 106—it’s where we always met.”
“Miss Vivi, you said you always met Mr. Heart there,” Sonny said. “How many times would you say and over what period of time? Were these encounters going on for a while?”
Vivi stopped him. “What do you mean by a while?” Vivi was being difficult and by this time I had ordered a strong drink. I’m usually a margarita kinda girl but I drink those when I’m celebrating something, not when I’m trying to spring my best friend in a missing persons case. When the bartender served me my Bloody Mary, I looked over my left shoulder at Harry who had ordered his usual dirty martini by now. It was our anniversary, after all. He cocked his eyebrow and toasted me silently. We took a simultaneous “Yeah and happy anniversary” swig, then turned our attention back to Sonny and Vivi. Sonny was explaining what he meant by “a while.”
“Miss Vivi, how long have your ‘meetings’ with Mr. Heart been going on?”
“A couple of years,” Vivi answered.
Harry rolled his eyes and shook his head and I choked on my celery stalk.
“And when you had these, um, meetings…was it always at the Fountain Mist?” Sonny kept a straight face and dove head-on into the questioning.
“No,” answered Vivi. “Sometimes we ‘conferenced’ in his car. And sometimes we had meetings at the Big House since we moved Mama to that fancy retirement center last year.”
“Would you say that the Fountain Mist was the main place for your conferences?” Sonny asked.
“Oh, without a doubt. Room 106 every time.”
Sonny kept writing. “Okay, back to the events that led up to the disappearance of Mr. Heart.”
“Well, I said goodbye to Lewis and hung up the phone. Then I went upstairs and sprayed my entire body with rose water and told Arthur Mama needed me at the center and I’d be back in a jiffy. He said, ‘Okay, Miss Vivi, you tell her I say hello.’ I put the top down on my car and flew to my meetin’ with Lewis. When I got there, Lewis’s red ’72 Corvette was parked outside in the back. He had already gone inside. I pulled in next to him. We always parked in the back ’cause both our cars are a dead giveaway. Anyway, I walked to our room about halfway down the sidewalk. When I got there I stopped for a second to catch my breath and straighten my dress. When I reached for the door handle, I realized it was already open.”
“What time of day was this?” Sonny asked, swigging his Dr Pepper slowly.
“It was at eleven o’clock this mornin’.” Vivi had obviously returned body and spirit to room 106. Her demeanor had changed. The alcohol had subdued her normally frenetic pace.
“Go on. What happened next?” Sonny kept up the questioning.
“Well, my God!” Vivi yelped. “You know what the hell happened next. Dammit, Sonny, just use your imagination!”
“Miss Vivi,” Sonny said, slow and steady, “we have no choice. The details here are important. It could lead us to Lewis.”
“Vivi, remember,” I said, “the details are what will clear all of this up and maybe lead us to what happened to Lewis. That has to be your focus.”
“Okay,” she said. “Lewis was already waitin’ for me in bed. I kicked the door closed and he revealed himself to me. He was deep into a fantasy.”
“What do you mean?” Sonny said.
“He had a gun holster on,” Vivi answered directly.
“He had a gun?” Sonny shot back.
“No, no!” she said. “He had on a holster. He had no gun. But he did have a little surprise for me where the gun goes.”
“What was that?” said Sonny.
“A toy,” Vivi answered, swigging her drink a little faster.
“What kind of toy?” Sonny was dead serious as he continued taking notes.
“A sex toy, you idiot! A ginormous blue penis! We named it Deputy Dick.”
I threw back the rest of my Bloody Mary in one gulp.
“I’ll have a double scotch on the rocks,” Harry announced once he’d flagged down the cute bartender.
“It had fiber optic rainbow lighting,” Vivi explained. “Lewis told me to grab it, so I slipped out of my shoes and pulled up my dress. I had no panties on and my thighs were still moist from workin’ in the rose garden. I began to perspire on my neck and the water rolled around and down under my breasts. I unbuttoned my dress just enough so he could see I had no bra on either.”
Sonny had a bewildered look on his face. He’d asked for the details, but by no means was he expecting a play-by-play account of their sexual escapade. He looked at me helplessly, and I tried to think of a way to get Vivi to shut up without embarrassing her. But before I’d come up with anything, Vivi continued to reveal her dirty little story.
“Lewis looked hungrier than ever. He said, ‘Hey, Red, save a horse, ride a cowboy.’ You know like that song says? So I thought, What the hell. I slung my leg over and sat straddling him with Deputy Dick in my hand. ‘Ride it first,’ he said, so I did. Did you know that with each little movement that damn thing turned a different color?”
“Vivi!” I said with my eyebrows up. There was no time to be polite—I needed to stop her before it got any worse. “Stop! That’s enough. I think that will do. You’ve said plenty.” I was talking with my eyes bugging out, trying desperately to make her stop, but Vivi being Vivi and after a few drinks, she just kept right on talkin’.
“Lewis threw me over on my back and crawled under the covers to the end of the bed and started suckin’ my toes and lickin’ my calves. His body was to die for—he had bulked up a little lately, trimmed down some. He was in amazing shape, and those great big shoulders and that thick black hair… God, I was so into him.”
“Can’t you stop her?” Harry mumbled to me as he took a big swig of his scotch. “I don’t think she’ll ever get to the finish line. And this is making me queasy.”
“Miss Vivi, please. That’ll be all for this part. Can we try to skip to the place where he stopped breathin’. Please?” Sonny tried to redirect her, but Vivi didn’t hear anything, she was lost in the story, unfortunately reliving it for all of us like it was a sick skin flick. With all that had happened to her today, none of us felt ready to be harsh with her. There was nothing to do but keep right on listening.
“Lewis kept licking—all the way up to my thighs, then I felt his mouth on my abdomen, sliding his tongue below my navel. Just as he was on arrival, he slipped the toy out of my hand and flipped me back over on top of him, and said, ‘How ’bout a ride on the real horse, Red? Let’s go for a trot.’ He was full of the devil! And I loved it. I positioned myself just right. He was primed and ready. He started buckin’ like a wild bronco. I was bouncin’ up and down when…when it happened.”
We all sat up, backs straight on our bar stools, bug-eyed, mouths dropped open. I was afraid to ask, but someone had to do it. “When what happened, honey?”
“When suddenly, I felt him stop,” Vivi continued. “No sounds. No movement. No nothin’.” Vivi stopped talking. Her face dropped. She took a minute and we were all sitting still in the hushed silence.
Then she added, “I looked down at him, and he looked a little purple. But his eyes were open. So I…dismounted.”
By this time we could tell she was feeling her alcohol.
“I called his name out. ‘Lewis, Lewis!’ I got louder and louder but he just turned bluer and bluer. I slapped his face and nothin’. So I jumped up, and buttoned my dress and kept shoutin’ and shoutin’ the entire time. I shook him and still he didn’t budge. So I reached across his chest to the chair, grabbed my purse and fumbled for my cell phone and called Blake while running out of the room to my car. I just started driving aimlessly. Not sure where I was headed—I just knew I needed to be doin’ something. When I couldn’t get a hold of Blake, I called Harry.”
“Vivi? You okay?” I said. She looked at me, her eyes drooping. She heaved a big sigh. We all sat quietly. We had been through all of the emotions. No one spoke. I could hear the noise of the bar, but the mood had dropped. We all stared at Vivi. Sadness was hanging in the air like a wet drape. It was a crushing heaviness suffocating us.
“Okay, Miss Vivi, is that your statement?” Sonny was trying to remain professional, but I could see even he was shaken. “Would you like to add anything else?”
I motioned to Vivi to say no, but she couldn’t focus anymore. With all the Jack Daniel’s she had, she felt she needed to jabber.
“Mr. Sonny,” Vivi said, her eyes brimming with tears, “I never meant to hurt Lewis. He is my dear friend. I love him. Please find him. He may be out there confused. Maybe he had a seizure and when he came to, I wasn’t there. Or he could have forgotten who he is. Please…” Tears now spilling down her cheeks, she was like a child that needed to be held through the night after a nightmare.
Harry shoved a hundred-dollar bill at the bartender, stood up and straightened his tie. “Okay,” he announced. “I think my client’s done all she can and, personally, I don’t think she’s physically able to do much more.” He stood up and touched my shoulder. “We need to get her home.”
Harry said he would drive both me and Vivi in my car. We’d leave his vehicle at the Tutwiler. He shook Sonny’s hand and helped Vivi down from the stool.
“Thank you, Miss Vivi, you’ve been very helpful. We’ll be in touch,” Sonny said.
I balanced Vivi on my left side and Sonny leaned down and kissed my cheek. “Good seein’ you, Blake. Take care of yourself. I’ll be in touch.” He turned to walk away and his cell phone began ringing. He kept walking as he answered.
“Officer Bartholomew.”
Silence. Then, “Okay. I’m there in ten.”
He hung up and abruptly turned and looked at all three of us in the twilight of the Tutwiler lobby.
Sonny cleared his throat and looked Vivi in the eyes as he announced, “We’ve got a body.”
4
The chandelier in the Tutwiler lobby could have dropped and none of us would have moved. We were frozen. I looked immediately at Harry. This was possibly his baby brother. And though he and Lewis had not spoken in years, I could see he was visibly shaken.
“Where is it?” Harry said.
“Washed up at the Cypress Inn out at the river,” Sonny answered. “Some girl discovered it while taking a walk at the restaurant.”
The Cypress Inn was a longtime Tuscaloosa mainstay. It was built up high on the banks of the Warrior River, and it had a beautiful walking path that led down from the restaurant to the water.
Vivi started to cry at Sonny’s announcement. I held her still with my arm tightly around her shoulder.
“No, no, no… It isn’t true, is it? It’s not Lewis, is it? I don’t know what could have happened to him. Oh, I think I’m gonna throw up. Am I gonna be charged with murder now, Blake?”
She was breaking down now and crying hard. I held her a little closer and told her we weren’t even sure who the body was. She was shaking and going into shock.
“Vivi.” Harry was trying to help her get hold of herself. “The body has to be identified and the cause of death has to be determined, too. Nothing is gonna happen until we do the ID. Let’s get over to the Cypress Inn and see if we can get some answers. I’ll drive.”
Harry had a way of doing that. Taking charge. He was good at it, especially in a crisis. He could turn off the feelings and purely think—quite easily, actually. Sometimes I hated that.
We rode back over the bridge, back to the river for the third time that day and headed to the restaurant. The drive was a total blur, but ten minutes later we were all in the parking lot of the Cypress Inn.
Dusk is beautiful at the river. The reflection of the sun shimmering on the water can take your breath away. Flaming pinks and soothing turquoise draw blurry patterns across the indigo water. A liquid sunset. The expanse of the river is wide and the bank is thick with trees and snaky roots and kudzu vines that creep and crawl all the way down to the muddy water.
It’s a fast-flowing river, full of waves and ripples. It’s thick with underbrush and debris, making it notoriously one of the hardest areas for police divers to find anything. Or anyone. The Warrior is used for transportation. Time here is marked by the occasional slow-moving barge pushing coal up and down the river. Every so often, a speedboat races past, causing heavy waves to lap against the banks. A beautiful old riverboat called the Bama Belle would paddle down past the restaurant till sunset, when service would stop on the old vessel.
The Bama Belle was a sweet part of the fabric of the river. It was just for show. Tourists and out-of-town family loved it and kept it in business. But it was one of the main reasons I loved to eat at the Cypress Inn, especially at dusk. It was beautiful to see the boat in all her original glory just meandering along the curve of the river, on her way home, straight toward the setting sun, with her paddle wheel churning the muddy, ink-colored water below.
The Cypress Inn is built hanging off the hillside. All glass and old driftwood, it looks like it has been there forever. Two stories and facing the river, it’s built in a triangle shape so everyone can watch the river while they eat their catfish and hush puppies.
Hanging baskets of azalea and begonias drip blossoms over the outdoor porch. And the trees are thick with magnolia blooms big enough to hold the spoonfuls of occasional afternoon rainwater that was a daily, almost unnoticeable part of Southern springtime.
It was this gorgeous scene that we all stepped out of the car to see, though the beauty of it was muddied by the dark reason we were all gathered there. Harry left us as he jogged ahead to catch up with Sonny. I knew he needed to see the body for himself. I also knew he wasn’t fully embracing the possibility of what might actually be waiting for him at the bottom of that path. But I was.
Vivi was mumbling to herself, “See what horny can do? You see? If Lewis and I weren’t always so horny, I’d have beautiful roses on my supper table tonight and Lewis would still be here.” She kept walking and mumbling and looking at her feet as she stumbled to the path. She looked up at me. “Okay, I know it’s not possible for us not to be who we really are, but I just cannot believe that my last vision of Lewis alive will be with that holster on and Deputy Dick in his hand.”
Vivi and I linked arms like two old women and walked down the curvy stone walkway to the riverbanks. The footlights along the daffodil-strewn path twinkled in the encroaching darkness. It led us, roaming, down the hill and delivered us to the wooden planked bridge that guided us to the gazebo.
I heard the sounds of the sirens coming in the distance.
We located Sonny and found a small huddle of people standing east of the gazebo and, at the center of the group, with bare shoulders shaking, stood young Mandy Morrison, Tuscaloosa’s Miss Everything. She was head cheerleader, Miss Tuscaloosa High School, Miss West Alabama Fair Queen…. She had plans of moving to New York and launching herself on Broadway.
Seeing how distraught she was, I had a feeling this event might slow things up a little.
Mandy, her mom, dad and younger brother were all at the Cypress Inn celebrating her high school graduation and acceptance into a small liberal arts college in New York when Mandy and her dad went for a little father-daughter stroll along the river. They had stopped to smell the wandering vines of honeysuckle when Mandy spotted the body—well, part of the body.
Right there, bobbing against the bank, was someone’s leg and the lower half of their torso.
Vivi and I pushed into the little crowd of people just as Mandy was recounting her unfortunate vision.
“I was just giving my dad a hug and, like, I looked over his shoulder and I saw a leg! At first I thought it was, like, a log….”
Mandy kept talking…enjoying the attention even though she was somewhat “grossed out.” As she kept up the frenetic, breathless encounter of her graduation dinner surprise, Sonny took notes and the officers collected the evidence.
Vivi and I peeked over the crowd of people now gathering at the banks.
“For God’s sake!” she hollered. “It’s not even the whole entire body! But this is the half I know best. No. No way is this my Lewis.” Vivi could not keep it to herself.
Harry jumped in immediately. “This is not a good time to share your opinions unless someone asks, okay?” He was clearly on edge.
Vivi looked up at me with her half-drunk eyes. She was purely exhausted and it was showing. She pulled me down the bank away from Mandy and the crowd and headed toward the river. “C’mon, Blake, I’ve got to get a better look.”
“Vivi, say nothing unless it is in a whisper directly to me. The last thing we want is to get you any more involved than you need to be. This is critical.”
“I’ve got it, Blake. But if there’s a chance in hell this is my Lewis, don’t you think I ought to at least try to identify the half of the body that just washed up?”
“Honey,” I said, “I’m right behind you.” My curiosity had taken over, too. I just had to see it, not that I would recognize the half that just washed up. But down to the muddy riverbank we went. I knew that with Sonny nearby, he would make sure we were able to slip through the crowd without a problem.
We reached the edge of the river and there it was. Big and hairy, it was definitely the leg of a man. Sonny joined us. We were on the slope, and he was above us in the crest of the bank. At six-three he was a big presence anyway. But up on that riverbank he loomed like a superhero there to save us all. Vivi moved a little closer to him and leaned in as if in secret.
“Sonny, it’s only half a body,” she said quietly.
“Yes, Miss Vivi, we’ve got that part figured out.”
Vivi stood between us, her head moving from side to side in slow motion, in disbelief. Silence fell over us. The three of us stood there on the banks of the muddy Warrior River under a darkening Southern sky.
Vivi broke the silence. “Well, thank God this is the half I know best, huh? This is not my Lewis.”
She leaned in and squeezed Sonny’s arm and tears rolled down her cheeks. We stood on the bank and watched the river roll. I looked at Sonny and noticed his face had softened in the moment. He looked at me full on and gave a little grin. I knew with his help we would all be okay.
Harry walked toward us in his determined, deliberate way. He looked exhausted but still pulled together. His white oxford shirt still looked as starched as it had been that morning, the silver wire frames sitting on his nose sparkled along with the silver hairs sprinkled throughout his dark hair.
“Well, the body part is already causing a problem.”
“Why, Harry?” Vivi asked. “’Cause there’s no dental record for you?” Vivi smirked.
Harry then told us the police would perform the DNA tests in the morning, and would try to match what they swiped at the motel room. He wanted to talk to me alone. Then Vivi said she wanted to talk to both of us alone.
“Well, I know when I’m a third wheel,” Sonny said and winked at me.
“Do you have anything else for us?” I asked Sonny before he walked off. I didn’t realize it, at first, but I was touching his arm.
“No, Blake, I’ll get in touch with you in the morning,” he said. Something came over me. I squeezed his wrist and, I don’t know, but a feeling of comfort swept in and it made me feel warm and calm. I looked up at him and he was looking right through me. I let go and looked forward to the morning.
“Okay, ya’ll. Listen to me,” Vivi began after Sonny headed back up the banks. “That is not Lewis’s lower half. There is no way in hell. I would bet my life on it.”
Harry and I were silent and looking at each other.
“Dammit! I know him. This is not him! Believe me…that little thing would have never kept me coming back!”
5
It 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
The 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.
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