Drop dead divas, p.5
Drop Dead Divas, page 5
It’s a testament to the power of great recipes that everyone in the Divas, and probably in Holly Springs, knows that Sarah Truevine had the best pimento cheese recipe ever. I spread what was left of the batch Sharita had made on light bread, cut off the crusts, cut the sandwiches into triangles, then arranged them on the Limoges platter that matched the teapot, cups, and plates. Good thing Bitty had bought an entire set. I’m sure it had set back whatever husband she was married to at the time a pretty penny. Or franc.
When we returned to the living room, Rayna carrying the tray with the potent tea and teacups and me the platter of sandwiches, Bitty seemed to have adjusted to the unexpected. She still sat on the sofa, now wedged between Cady Lee and Gaynelle, but without the presence of Chen Ling. Long before Trina arrived, I’d convinced Bitty it would be much safer to let the pug nap upstairs rather than expose her to possible violence. She’d laughed, but followed my advice, I am glad to say.
Rayna set the tea tray on the Turkish hassock and began pouring, while I passed around small plates with pimento cheese sandwiches. I’d found a can of mixed nuts and poured them into a small bowl that didn’t match the Limoges china but fit on the tray better. Bitty eyed it with a frown. She’s very particular about how she likes to show off. I pretended not to notice.
About then, Gaynelle Bishop took a big sip of tea and choked. Bitty pounded her on the back as Gaynelle gasped for air.
“It must have gone down the wrong way,” Bitty said solicitously, and handed Gaynelle a cloth napkin.
“My,” Gaynelle said after recovering her breath, “this is . . . quite strong tea.”
“It’s Earl Grey,” said Bitty, blissfully unaware that we had introduced Earl to Jack. “I purchased several boxes while in England last year.”
I decided it was best not to tell Bitty she could have bought it in the Holly Springs Wal-Mart as well. There are definitely some things better left unsaid. Rayna just smiled and poured more tea as cups were drained. I must say, Earl Grey has rarely been so popular.
Soon the living room sounded like a grade school auditorium, everyone talking at once. By the time a third pot of tea had been made, I think Rayna didn’t even bother to use any kind of teabags. It tasted like straight Jack Daniel’s to me. Cady Lee’s eyes were a bit glazed as she held out her cup for Rayna to pour more tea, and the usually prim and proper Gaynelle was giggling like one of her former third grade pupils. Deelight Tillman had a smudge of pimento cheese on the end of her nose, but no one else seemed to notice.
Then Cindy Nelson, a young mother from nearby Snow Lake and a fairly new member of the Divas, hiccupped loud enough to stop all conversation. She clapped a hand over her mouth at once as if to stifle the sound, but it didn’t help. Another hiccup erupted between her fingers, then another, rolling from her in a tsunami of spasms.
“Give her a teaspoon of sugar,” Gaynelle advised, and Cady Lee disagreed.
“No, she should blow into a grocery sack.”
“Plastic or paper?” Deelight asked in a rather slurred voice.
“Oh my, not plastic. She would suffocate,” Gaynelle said at once. She can usually be counted on to know things like that since teaching a legion of Holly Springs’ children to read, write, and not make rude noises in public.
At that point, Bitty leaned forward, her gaze intent upon Trina Madewell. “Were you the one who found the body?”
All conversation ceased. At last we’d come to the real reason Trina had been invited to tea. Everyone leaned forward in their seats, except poor Cindy who kept a hand over her mouth to muffle the tide of hiccups.
“No,” said Trina. “But when I heard the commotion I got down to the cottage as quick as I could, of course. It was . . . awful.”
We all hung on that last word for a moment before Gaynelle asked, “How awful?”
Apparently Gaynelle still expects detailed answers to test questions, so she can be excused for asking what we were all wondering anyway.
Trina’s hand shook slightly and the Limoges teacup rattled in its saucer. Mascara-thick eyelashes fluttered briefly over her brown eyes. Somehow her purplish-red lipstick had smeared from her bottom lip to her chin. With purple eye shadow arched on her lids a bit too high, her face had the rather odd effect of a circus clown in half makeup. All she needed was for her nose to get a little redder and she’d qualify for Barnum and Bailey’s.
“When I got there,” Trina said in a husky voice, “my sister was hysterical. She was the one who found . . . Race. I suppose she’d gone to wake him for breakfast. That’s part of the package we offer, a free breakfast is included in the night’s stay.”
“What do you serve?” Deelight asked, and I saw Bitty elbow her sharply. “Oof! I was just curious.”
In Deelight’s defense, she still has children at home and is always looking for new menu ideas.
Bitty patted her on the arm. “I know, dear, but it’s rude to interrupt.” She looked back at Trina. “More tea? It seems to have an especially energizing effect today.”
When Trina held out her cup, I slid a glance toward Rayna, who kept a poker face as she poured from the teapot. I don’t know how she did it. Rayna is a woman of many talents.
“It must be the caffeine,” said Gaynelle, “but do go on, Trina.”
The center of rapt Diva attention now, Trina seemed to swell with importance. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, prolonging our suspense before she said, “I went into the cottage because I couldn’t understand a word Trisha was saying. She was just so hysterical, screaming and crying—well! I got no farther than the bedroom door when I saw him. There he was, lying across the bed just inside the door, naked as a jaybird and with his—you know—stiff as a poker and standing straight up. It was so big you could have hung a flag on it.”
At that, Cindy Nelson’s hiccups stopped.
I think a few of us stopped breathing for a moment, too, and I know all of us were visualizing Race Champion with his you know flying a flag. We must have looked foolish sitting there in a circle of chairs with slackened jaws and glazed eyes, and I am very glad Bitty’s windows have curtains.
Gaynelle recovered first. “Well then,” she asked briskly, “how could you tell he was dead?”
“The hole in the middle of his forehead. It was quite noticeable.”
“Oh my,” Deelight said in a squeaky voice, “oh my!”
Trina nodded. “It was awful.”
An understatement, I thought.
“I heard he was shot twice,” Rayna said.
“Yes, so did I, but all I noticed was that hole in his forehead. It looked so big and perfectly round, like someone had used a hole-puncher.” Trina leaned forward to set her empty teacup on the tray in the middle of the ottoman. “Of course, I didn’t get too close to him. All I could think was that whoever killed him might still be hiding in the cottage and that Trisha and I should get back to the house and call the police.”
“I wouldn’t have known what to do,” Cady Lee said in a horrified tone. “I think I would have just fainted dead away right there.”
“Well, I felt like it,” Trina said with a light shudder that seemed more put on than real, “but I knew I had to get Trisha to safety just in case.”
“Oh, you were so brave!” Cindy said now that she was hiccup-free. “You just never know what you’ll do until it happens to you, I guess.”
Not too long ago, Cindy had been the victim of a deranged assailant who is now safely in custody, thank heavens. Since I’d also been bashed in the head, I figured she might appreciate a bit of commiseration.
“But we both made it through,” I said to her softly.
Tears came into her eyes and she nodded, and so she wouldn’t feel alone, I got all teary, too. We hugged each other over Rayna’s head, since she was sitting between us, and I heard her mutter, “Good lord!”
Bitty, ever the consummate hostess even after far too many cups of tea, said to ease the sudden downward turn in our conversation, “Would anyone like more tea?”
“Good god,” Cady Lee said in a groan, “if I have anymore of this tea I’ll need to call Brett to drive me home. I swear I feel tipsy. Am I the only one?”
“No,” said Gaynelle, frowning at her empty cup, “I feel . . . odd. What is in this tea, Bitty?”
Looking a bit bewildered, Bitty peered into her cup and then sniffed the contents. I knew the instant she recognized the scent. Her head jerked up in surprise. “Someone spiked our tea!”
All eyes turned toward me.
I said the first thing that came to mind: “Talking about murder requires something stronger than tea.”
Heads nodded in agreement, and the moment passed. Rayna smiled at me and I smiled back. Divas always stick together.
“When you found Race dead,” Cady Lee asked Trina, “didn’t that make you feel just awful? I mean, y’all dated for such a long time.”
That information caught all our immediate attention.
I didn’t know where to look. Trina seemed caught off-guard by the question, and Cady Lee looked guileless. Of course, with Cady Lee it’s hard to tell sometimes. When we went to grade school together she was always voted the prettiest and had all the boys buzzing around her like bees at a sorghum mill. I still don’t know how she managed to keep them in order. It must have taken a certain amount of guile, after all.
I’ve learned through the years that we are who we are no matter how much older we’ve gotten, or how much life we’ve experienced. We may learn certain lessons, even if it’s not to do that again, but we just can’t help ingrained personality traits. Cady Lee is still a belle and the prettiest girl at the school dances, even though she’s now fifty and her once-brown hair is blond and her once-brown eyes are green or blue, depending upon which set of contact lens she’s wearing. She pulls it off marvelously. So you see, she could have dropped that little gem about Trina Madewell dating Race Champion innocently, or she could have said it knowing it would discomfit Trina. It was a toss-up.
Trina’s face had flushed to an unflattering crimson. She flapped one of her hands at Cady Lee as if to say Oh, that, and remarked, “I hadn’t seen him in ages.”
“But you two were such a hot item. I always thought you’d end up married to him,” said Cady Lee. “Didn’t he give you an engagement ring once?”
Now I was pretty sure Cady Lee meant to needle Trina, or at the very least, get her to say something incriminating. Breathlessly, we all waited for Trina’s answer.
If she said yes, then it gave her a motive for shooting Race, who had, after all, been found by her and/or her sister in her parents’ bed-and-breakfast cottage. We had only their word on that, as did the police, I was pretty sure. Sisters have been known to lie for one another.
Of course, if she said no, it was likely she would still be a “person of interest”, as the police like to say. Oh, this was getting good. It may turn out that Naomi hadn’t shot Race at all.
There are some people who are lucky in life, and others who are not. Today, it was Trina’s turn to get lucky. Or so it seemed at the time.
Just as Trina opened her mouth to say whatever it was we were all dying to hear, Bitty’s expensive Limoges teapot exploded off the matching tray set upon the Turkish ottoman. Lukewarm tea—or Jack Daniel’s—spewed into the air, teacups shot off the tray, pimento cheese triangles launched onto laps, and mixed nuts peppered the antique carpet and guests like small missiles.
Amidst the confusion, I recognized a familiar porcine snort. Chen Ling! How on earth had she gotten out of the upstairs bedroom?
It’s amazing what a fifteen pound dog can do to a set of expensive china when it lands right in the middle of it. I suppose we had all been so eager to hear what Trina would say that no one had noticed the pug’s arrival in the living room. Not one to be ignored for long, and probably sniffing out forbidden foods, Chen Ling had taken matters into her own hands . . . er, paws.
Chaos reigned. Squeals of surprise and horror filled the air as guests leaped to their feet. While the dog gobbled up pimento cheese triangles and nuts, Bitty scrambled to save what she could of her Limoges teapot and dinnerware. Divas hastily scraped tempting bits of sandwiches and nuts onto the floor, either to keep from staining clothes or to avoid being viewed as possible food by a determined pug.
Crawling around on her antique carpet, Bitty gathered up pieces of china and held them to her chest with one hand as one would a small child. It was rather sad, really, so I got down on the floor with her to pick up what I could.
By the time we’d picked up what was possible to get without a vacuum, Rayna had Chen Ling firmly in hand and the other Divas were fairly composed. Bitty deposited remnants of teapot and cups on the still intact tray and managed a shaky laugh.
“I apologize for this, ladies. Usually Chen Ling is much better behaved.”
Since all the Divas knew better, I looked around for Trina to see how she was dealing with the unexpected arrival of a fat pug in the middle of our tea tray. About the time I realized she was no longer in the room, I heard the roar of a car starting and tires squeal on the street outside Six Chimneys.
Apparently, Trina Madewell had made her escape.
CHAPTER 5
Holly Springs, Mississippi has a population of less than ten thousand people, and according to statistical records, that population is fairly even in the ratio of male to female. Considering those facts, you would think there would be enough eligible men for eligible women. Apparently, this is not the case.
Or so I have been led to believe by the inexplicable actions of a few citizens.
In my youth, I was admonished on several occasions about the evils of gossip. My admonisher was nearly always my mother. We children received strict lessons on the proprieties and improprieties in social graces. Gossip was then regarded as harmful to not only the person being gossiped about, but the impressionable soul of the person doing the gossiping. I tell you this only because I now regard those lessons with some regret.
Bitty and I were seated in the garden shade of Rayna Blue’s home, the Delta Inn. It’s a lovely historic hotel being considered for registration with the historical society. While Bitty and Rayna theorized about motives for Race’s murder, I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling them what I’d heard only that morning from my own mother.
Sidebar here: As she ages, Mama regards some information about our neighbors as necessary, and some as just gossip. The catch is that I can never tell which is which, so I have to wait until she asks a direct question or chooses to share a juicy tidbit with me. If she shares, she’s quite likely to hang a restriction on it, such as not to pass it on.
Mama had done that very thing earlier in the day after telling me how Trina Madewell had made a huge scene at church last year when she accused her sister of trying to steal her boyfriend. It had been on a Sunday when the minister had decided to try an innovative approach to the entire “confession is good for the soul” thing. He should have left it to the Catholics. Methodists don’t seem to be as good at it. Or maybe as used to it. My opinion is that confession is only good for the soul when it is not shared with the wronged party. Anyway, Atonement Day was a disaster from start to finish.
There were two fistfights in the pews, a scuffle in the vestibule, and the screaming match between Trina and Trisha in the church parking lot. Mama reported that it may have been just coincidence, but two couples from the congregation filed for divorce the week after the Atonement Day event.
Mama had been an unwilling witness to the Madewell hysteria in the parking lot. It wasn’t a scene she was likely to forget.
“I thought they were going to snatch each other bald the way they kept yanking at each other’s hair,” Mama had mused over a second cup of coffee, while Daddy went out to the barn to feed the furry flocks their morning cat chow. As she was battling the start of a summer cold, Mama stayed in to sit with me while I ate a breakfast of sugary cereal and drank coffee with sweetener. There is no rhyme or reason to my dietary choices most of the time.
At any rate, Mama was in a talkative mood, and after I’d told her about the tea at Bitty’s house and how it ended, it reminded her of Trina and Trisha’s disagreement. That is how I learned they’d both dated Race Champion, and neither of them knew he was still seeing the other one until Atonement Day outed them all.
Mama shook her head and peered at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “None of this should go any further, of course. That would be unkind gossip.”
I was flabbergasted. “But how is it considered gossip if you witnessed it?” I had asked. “You cannot have been the only one to overhear them.”
“Still, under these circumstances it’s best to let them be the ones who tell the police.”
Sometimes Mama operates under the belief that all church-going people are always honest. I could tell her a few things. But I won’t.
That is how I found myself sitting at Rayna’s garden table biting my tongue, while she and Bitty batted around all kind of crazy theories about Race Champion’s murder and Trina Madewell’s possible part in it. Some of their theories really made me squirm.
“Maybe Trina’s pregnant and Race’s engagement to Naomi put her over the edge,” Bitty said, but Rayna shook her head.
“She’s too old to have babies. Besides, she had a partial hysterectomy when she was married to Russell Irons.”
“I remember Rusty. Didn’t he end up dead in some bridge accident?”
Rayna nodded. “He was an ironworker. Rusty’s now part of one of the concrete piers that hold up the bridge over the Tallahatchie. He’s on the Oxford side, closer to Leflore County, I think.”
A cool breeze wafted the sweet, lemony scent of magnolia blossoms toward us. A huge magnolia tree nearly two hundred years old sits square in the middle of the garden. I tried to focus on how much history this old tree must have seen rather than the discussion going on around me. It was too tempting to jump in and tell what I knew.
How could my normally sweet mother have done this to me? It was torture sitting there and not saying anything. So when one of Rayna’s dogs came up to me to be petted, I was delighted to have the distraction.
