Dixie Diva Blues (35 page)

“Oh, he probably just meant the TV room. Where all the cameras are, you know.” She shrugged. “Sometimes he spent more time there than on the floor.”

“Are the police up there now?” Jackson Lee asked.

“That’s one of the first things they did when they figured out Mr. Walsh wasn’t here anymore. I think I heard that they asked for all the tapes that ran today.”

Mad as I was at Jake Hankins for failing to keep Bitty safe, I felt that he was doing all he could to find her. I just hoped it would be enough.

While Jackson Lee asked the pert little bartender more questions, I wandered over to one of the huge TV screens that usually showed football or baseball games. This one had been turned to the news channel, and I recognized Bailey’s. It was a live interview with one of the casino officials.

“We always take extra careful precautions with our customers,” the man was saying earnestly. “And we check the backgrounds of our employees very carefully. This will be under our investigation to find out how these two individuals passed our rigorous screening to become Bailey Casino employees.”

The camera slowly panned across the crowd outside the casino. People gathered at the yellow crime scene tape like ghouls, watching all the activity as police and officials searched the casino grounds. In Mississippi, casinos cannot be on solid land. They have to be built on floating barges. As far as I can recall, it was one of the concessions the casino people had to make to be able to run their sinful establishments in the Bible Belt. We take religion seriously in the South, but that doesn’t mean we can’t negotiate terms for businesses that promise to give back to the community.

As the camera swept over the casino grounds and several Bailey’s officials, I saw an elderly woman stagger up behind them. It was obvious the poor old thing was having a terrible time walking. She looked like a bag lady of sorts, and while the camera remained on the officials and an anchor talking into a microphone, I couldn’t help but watch the straggly-haired person limp toward them. Her clothes sagged on her, and were torn and filthy, and her hair stuck out in all directions as if it had never seen a comb. Something that looked like silver ribbons fluttered at her wrists, and it looked as if she wore only one shoe.

While I watched, someone ran toward the woman to guide her off-camera, and a man I guessed must be the news channel’s producer or director waved impatiently to get her out of the shot or shift the camera’s focus. For some reason, the cameraman zoomed in on the elderly woman for a brief second before shifting the viewpoint back in another direction. I caught my breath. There was something terribly familiar about that old woman.

“Jackson Lee,” I said. “Jackson Lee! Come here . . . is it just my imagination, or do we know that woman?”

He joined me at the gigantic TV screen, but the camera had already moved away. I caught his arm.

“Whoa,” he said, “what’s going on, Trinket?”

“I’m sure I just saw a ghost,” I said as I dragged him toward the front of the casino.

“What are you talking about?”

“Either I’ve gone crazy—which is always a good possibility—or I just saw Bitty.”

We were both almost running by the time we got outside, and to my dismay, I saw no sign of the elderly-looking woman in rumpled clothing and one shoe. “She was here a minute ago,” I said, “I swear she was!”

“Trinket, honey, we’re both under a lot of stress. You may have seen someone who reminded you of Bitty.”

“No, that’s not it. This woman looks like a bag lady. Her clothes are all torn and her hair sticks straight out like she’s met up with a porcupine. But she’s wearing only one shoe.”

“And a bag lady makes you think it’s Bitty?”

Jackson Lee sounded skeptical. Lights from news trucks and the casinos flashed over us, some of them blinking on and off. I shook my head.

“No. The one shoe she’s wearing makes me think it’s Bitty.”

“Trinket—”

“It’s a hot pink stiletto, Jackson Lee. Badgley Mischka. I was with Bitty when she bought them.”

“Dear god . . . are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. Who else would wear hot pink stilettos to a casino?”

“Cher. Maybe Lady Gaga. Other than that . . .”

We both went to find the nearest policeman. He got on his radio and it didn’t take long for Jake to find us out front. By now it was pretty dark, so that the parking lot was in deep shadow and only the areas illuminated by the casino lights or the camera lights were easily visible.

I showed Jake where I’d seen her, and he sent a couple of men to look for her. It wasn’t really necessary. Less than five minutes after Channel Five Action News had sent an employee to get the bag lady out of the way, Bitty grabbed a live microphone and yelled into it, “Get me my lawyer and a shot of Jack Daniel’s!”

I would have said “I told you so” to Jackson Lee, but he was already halfway to Bitty by then. He can run pretty fast when he’s motivated.

CHAPTER 17

“Are you sure that blood all over you isn’t yours?” Jackson Lee asked Bitty for what must have been the fifth or sixth time. “It’s everywhere!”

Bitty, who had received both her requests in record time, took another sip of Jack Daniel’s and blinked her baby blues at her attorney. “No, sugar, it’s not my blood, I promise. The EMTs said I’m just fine.”

“But there’s so much,” I said. “That restroom area looks like there was one heck of a fight in there.”

Bitty sniffed. “I had no idea that hitting someone in the head with a high heel can be so messy. I can’t believe my lovely shoe is ruined.”

Fascinated, both by her remarkable ability to always land on her feet like a cat and her composure in the face of what she’d been through, I asked, “How did you get your hands free? Last time I saw you, you were tied up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

“You tie up your turkey? Mine is usually wired.”

“Bitty,” I coaxed, “don’t digress.”

“Oh, yes. Well, that horrid man made the mistake of letting me get one hand free after I threatened to—well, use the bathroom on him if he didn’t give me time to go. So the minute he freed my hand, I smacked him right on top of his head with my shoe. You should have heard him holler, too. I thought for sure security or someone would come running to see who was making all that noise, but no one did.”

She took another sip of her drink, then cut her eyes to our cousin Jake, who stood impatiently right beside her chair. He’d wanted to do a proper police interrogation, but she had refused outright. Jake apparently knew when to shut up. He let her have her way on this one.

“So,” Bitty continued, the center of attention and enjoying every moment of it, “I knew I was on my own. I tried to run, but the heel of my shoe had gotten stuck to the top of his head and it was hard to run in only one shoe. I didn’t get far before he caught me.”

“You sure you’re not hurt, honey?” Jackson Lee asked again. He looked at her so anxiously I thought maybe he should be drinking the Jack and not Bitty.

“I’m sure, darlin’. I’m just fine. Thirsty and dirty, but all things considered, I’m doing just fine.”

I stared at her in astonishment. This was not the Bitty of my experience. The Bitty of my experience got melodramatic over things like a broken fingernail. A spot of dirt on her favorite chair. The Bitty of my experience did not go through such a horrendous ordeal and then announce that she was “just fine.”

“Can’t we get a doctor to check her over and make sure she hasn’t been hit in the head or something?” I asked Jake. “She may be delirious from fright.”

“I’m fine, Trinket,” said this new and improved Bitty version. “Really.”

“That’s really good,” said Jake, leaning toward her with a small notepad and his pen poised over paper. “Tell me again, from the beginning, just how you managed to get away and where you think Walsh and Garcia might have gone.”

“Well, as I already said, after that wretched man left me tied up in that abandoned house just around the corner here, I heard him talking on the porch. I think he was talking to one of his accomplices or something, because he said he’d meet him—I guess it could have been a her, but it doesn’t seem likely, do you think? I mean, this guy didn’t strike me as especially bright, and most women I know can’t put up with stupidity for very long. Present company included, of course,” she added with a wicked smile in Jake’s direction. He just sighed. I’m sure he figured he’ll let her say what she likes since he almost got her killed.

Okay, so that last remark isn’t quite true. Still, it could have happened. Bitty’s lucky she’s still here to be tacky about her ordeal.

“Any idea where they were going to meet?” Jake asked next.

“No. He was on a cell phone, so I have no idea who he was meeting or where. All I knew is that he’d tied me up again, gagged me, and left me to die in that old house. I could be there until next winter and no one would ever have found me. It’s a good thing I’m getting much better at yoga, or I would never have been able to twist out of those blasted tapes around my wrists.”

“Yoga?” I couldn’t help repeating. “When have you been doing yoga?”

“I started doing it every morning. Well, almost every morning. Anyway, I do it whenever I remember. Chen Ling—oh, I’m so glad my darling wasn’t with me! There’s no telling what that nasty man might have done to her . . .”

I didn’t bother relating Garcia’s threat to shoot Brownie. A lot of people have threatened to shoot that dog but no one has dared do it yet.

“Anyway, Chen Ling sits with me when I do my yoga. It’s very relaxing, Trinket. You should start doing it, too.”

“I use vodka to relax, thank you. I’m considering being an alcoholic. Just as soon as I can get my stomach to agree.”

Ignoring me, Bitty went right on with her tale. “Anyway, I waited until he left and I was sure he wasn’t coming back for me, then I started working free of the tape around my wrists. It wasn’t easy, believe me. I lost my wristwatch somewhere, too. If I hadn’t been afraid he’d come back any minute to finish me off like he said, I’d have stayed to look for it once I got free. It’s my gold one, and—”

“He said he was
coming back
to finish you off?” Jake interrupted. “Are you sure he said that?”

Bitty gave him an exasperated look. “Of course, I’m sure. It scared me half to death. I just knew that Big Al was coming back any minute to break my neck like that man said he would.”

“Big Al?” Jake echoed. “Walsh said someone named
Big Al
was going to break your neck?”

“For heaven’s sake, have you got a hearing problem? You keep asking me to repeat myself, Jake, and it’s getting very annoying.”

Bitty brushed a stalk of dried grass from one leg of her formerly hot pink pantsuit. It looked more of a gray color now than pink, but that was probably due to the fact that she’d been lying on dusty floors for a while. Dust powdered her hair, too, and made it look like she wore a gray wig. Luckily, she hadn’t passed a mirror yet. When she finally saw her reflection, I feared her scream of horror would break the sound barrier.

“Yes,” said Bitty to Jake, “Walsh said that Big Al would break my neck because I knew too much now. He also said some other things that I didn’t appreciate.”

She sounded so calm, not at all hysterical as she should be.
Can there be such a thing as a Stepford Syndrome?
I wondered briefly. This was too unnatural for Bitty. She sounded—dare I think it?—rational.

“It’s a good thing that abandoned house is so close,” she said, and started to run her fingers through her hair. Her hand immediately caught on a snarl of twisted hair. It took her a moment to disentangle herself before she continued, “I walked all the way up here—it isn’t easy doing that when you’re only wearing one shoe, you know—and then that rude TV person tried to get snippy with me. I can only take so much before I get irritated. When I saw that open mike, I grabbed it.”

Jackson Lee pulled her toward him where he sat on the arm of her club chair. “It was the sweetest sound I ever heard, sugar lump.”

She looked up at him with a smile not even Botox could improve upon. “Was it, my sweet-ums?”

He nuzzled the top of her head with his chin. “You better believe it, honeypot.”

“Good lord,” I said. “You two are giving me a sugar high just listening to you. I think I need something salty.”

Bitty looked up at me. “Margaritas?”

I thought about it a minute. “Yep. That sounds pretty good.”

Jake held up his hand. “Wait a minute. I still have questions.”

“I thought you weren’t on the case anymore,” I said at the same time Bitty said, “You can ask them later.”

Bitty and I looked at each other and smiled. Then she got up from the club chair and said, “I need to see a mirror.”

I blanched. No one moved or spoke. Jackson Lee looked as if someone had just pole-axed him, and even Jake looked doubtful. Then they both looked at me.

“Uh, no,” I said after several moments of silence went by, “I don’t think that’s the best move right now.”

“Why not? You all keep looking at me strangely, and some guy across the room just pointed my way and laughed. I think he’s one of the news anchors. I’m forming a dislike for them. They can be very rude.”