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  She was right. Both dogs had suffered traumas due to their allegiance to us.

  “What else would you claim as a talent?” she asked.

  “I’m tenacious.”

  “That’s such a nice way to say you’re pigheaded.”

  “I’m making this list, so leave me be. I don’t need editing from a haint who refuses to move on. Talk about mulish, take a look in the mirror.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  “I’m a good friend.”

  “You are indeed.” She pushed a card toward me on the table. I didn’t touch it, but I read it. “What gives you the most satisfaction?”

  I hadn’t anticipated that question. “You got a thirty-minute recipe to help me with this answer?”

  She stood up. “You don’t need thirty minutes. You know. You just don’t want to say it.” The first rays of dawn pierced her and filtered onto the table.

  “Don’t you dare leave.” Jitty had the most aggravating habit of starting something and then fading away when the going got sticky. “You can’t say something like that and leave.”

  Her only answer was a soft chuckle. A gust of wind whipped across the table where we’d been sitting, and the index card swirled into the air and vaporized. Jitty had learned a new and impressive stunt.

  There was nothing to do now but go inside and talk with Tinkie. I didn’t relish the idea of starting trouble between her and Oscar. They were my heroes, a married couple who shared and cared in the manner my own parents had loved. But my father, James Franklin Delaney, would never have attempted to govern my mother the way Oscar—and Graf—had stepped into mine and Tinkie’s lives. While I regretted the idea of talking with Tinkie, I loved her too much to hide this from her.

  __________

  When Tinkie woke up, it was nearly nine o’clock. I sent Hedy to find Starbucks coffee and a New York Times, two items I hoped would be in scarce supply in Greenwood. Meanwhile, I retrieved two cups of the hotel’s aromatic brew and locked our room door.

  “We need to talk,” I told Tinkie.

  She sipped her coffee and listened, and for the first time since we’d become partners, I was unable to read her. Whatever she was thinking, she kept her face neutral.

  When I finished, she put her coffee down and got out of bed. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “It isn’t just me,” I reminded her. “This involves you, too. What are you going to do?”

  She stretched and trotted into the bathroom. I heard the water running, then she came out with a towel, dabbing at her face. Her expression remained unfathomable as she climbed up on the edge of my bed. “Oscar and I have been married nearly fifteen years, Sarah Booth. I married him ten seconds after I graduated from Ole Miss, and I only waited that long because Daddy said he’d paid for a degree and it would bear the name I was born with.”

  “But your father wanted you to marry Oscar.” Avery Bellcase as much as admitted he arranged Tinkie’s marriage, in the way of royalty creating alliances through legal contracts.

  “He did. He picked Oscar for me and pushed me hard. I wasn’t certain it was the right choice, but I’d been born and bred to marry. Life with a man like Oscar was the proscribed pattern of my life, and I was eager to get on with it. You never had that pressure on you, Sarah Booth. It didn’t matter that you left college unmarried and were considered a failure and an old maid.” She bit her bottom lip lightly, and it popped free of her teeth, making her look young and vulnerable. “I would never in my entire life dream of disappointing my daddy.”

  The point she was making came to me. In the past two years she’d grown immensely. She’d shed the cocoon that society had spun around her. Day by day, week by week she’d emerged from those expectations and built a life of her own design. Oscar was initially opposed to Tinkie working with me, but he’d come around. Or so I’d thought. But what she was saying involved a skill I’d never learned.

  “I can’t just pretend that it’s okay with me for Graf to discuss my future with Oscar as if I were a child incapable of making a decision for myself.”

  “You said yourself you upset Graf. Honey, if you’d told me you’d left a potential murderer in the room with Cece, I would have been shocked and might have reacted badly.” She ran her hand down my arm, lightly touching the place where the bone had broken. “When someone loves you, he wants to protect you.”

  “I can’t be suffocated.”

  “You don’t get everything exactly like you want it, Sarah Booth. I’m telling you. Let this go. Don’t chew it ’til it bleeds.”

  “What will you say to Oscar?”

  “There’s nothing to tell him. I got the impression you didn’t want to take this case, anyway. So why start a fight over a nonexistent case?”

  “What about Hedy?”

  “There are other investigators, I’m sure. None as good as we are, but competent ones.” She went to the closet and selected her wardrobe for the day. “Our cooking class today is main courses. This should be fun.”

  She acted as if the issue were resolved. Fat chance of that. Maybe she could brush off Oscar’s chauvinistic attitude, but I couldn’t say the same about Graf. I’d always pitied women who said things like “I have to ask my husband” or “if my husband says it’s okay.” Perhaps it was part of a workable relationship, but to me it smacked of subservience. “I’m not okay with this.”

  She smiled, and something akin to sadness flickered across her face. “I didn’t think you would be. You weren’t raised in the tradition.” She came to stand at the bedside holding several coat hangers and clothes. “Most of the time I admire the fact you fly in the face of the conventional way of doing things, but it hurts you in relationships with men, Sarah Booth.”

  “So you’re going to let Oscar bully you and make your decisions?”

  She put a pair of black slacks and a white pin-tucked shirt on the bed. “No. I won’t let him bully me, but I also won’t ram him head-to-head. There’s no point when I know I’ll do exactly as I please in the long run. Graf can’t control you, but men need the illusion they have control.”

  Tinkie was wise, and I was headstrong. “I can’t pretend and I won’t manipulate my life partner.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  There was a knock on the bedroom door, and Tinkie went to open it. Hedy stood with a tray of coffee and a newspaper. “Best I could do,” she said, extending both to me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Tinkie and I will take your case.”

  I saw Tinkie’s smile shift from ear to ear.

  I had been played by a master.

  8

  We’d barely pried the lids off our coffees when the door burst open. Police Chief Jansen and five policemen rushed into the room. The officers carried weapons, all pointed at three women, one of whom still wore baby-doll pajamas. The guns shifted from Tinkie and me to Hedy.

  A bit of overkill for a young woman who weighed no more than 115 pounds.

  “Hedy Lamarr Blackledge, you’re under arrest for the murder of Janet Menton.” Jansen grabbed Hedy’s wrist and spun her around to cuff her.

  “Do something!” Hedy wailed over her shoulder at Tinkie.

  “We will,” Tinkie assured her. “I’ll get you a good lawyer and make your bail.”

  “Tinkie, be careful what you commit to,” I whispered to my partner. Even with the plush salary I’d made as a movie star, I still owed on Dahlia House. I’d refused attempts by Tinkie’s father, Avery Bellcase, to cover my debt because I’d stayed in Zinnia to help solve Oscar’s mysterious illness. “Hedy doesn’t have any money.”

  “But I do,” Tinkie said, and her blue eyes danced with mischief. I could see her game. Not only was she going to do what she damn well pleased, she’d stick it to Oscar in a way he couldn’t ignore: spend his money providing legal defense for her client. Tinkie, as I had ascertained, was nobody to mess with.

  Jansen led Hedy from the room, the police officers withdrawin
g in a backward crawl as if they expected Tinkie and me to storm them, maybe beat them to death with one of my fuzzy meerkat slippers.

  When the door closed, Tinkie hopped into action. “First a shower and then we need to get busy. Surely there’s a good lawyer here in Greenwood. Since you’re already dressed, would you mind checking the hotel’s computer for legal counsel?”

  “Even better, I’ll ask the concierge.”

  Betty was an impressive source of information, and within the hour I’d provided Tinkie with the name of the best defense lawyer in Greenwood. Tinkie hired Russell Dean over the phone and sent him to talk to Hedy.

  “We have to find out what evidence Jansen has against Hedy,” Tinkie said, reasonably enough. “It must only be circumstantial, because she’s innocent.”

  “Somehow I don’t think Jansen is in a sharing mood.” It wasn’t my imagination that the police chief didn’t like us—he’d stated it.

  “It’s so much more pleasant to work with Coleman.” Tinkie slipped on a pair of killer heels. Amazingly she was able to sleuth and style. “But we’ll manage to bend Jansen to our will.” Tinkie had taken Jansen on as a personal challenge. He’d just waded into very deep water with a clever shark.

  “He’s arrested her for murder, so he must have something on her other than the fact that she shared a room with one woman and was in a contest with both victims.”

  “There have been other incidents,” Tinkie pointed out. “The hot pepper in Babs Lafitte’s hair spray. The chocolate roaches for Karrie Kompton.”

  We looked at each other. “Karrie Kompton,” we said simultaneously, perfecting the stereo rendition of our brilliant and parallel thoughts.

  “She’s bitch enough to send herself chocolate roaches,” Tinkie said.

  “Too true. But would she actually bite one in half?” I shuddered at the thought.

  I could deal with spiders and snakes, albeit reluctantly, but roaches terrified me. The bastards had a habit of flying at me and clamping down on my skin with their scratchy, filthy little legs. When I was ten I’d accompanied my father to a fancy party in town for a visiting politician. I’d been forced to wear a frilly dress with a starched petticoat. My father and I were walking downtown singing one of his favorite Western songs about a faithful horse when a big ol’ cockroach flew from the roots of an oak tree onto my leg and crawled under my petticoat. Needless to say, neither the dress nor petticoat survived.

  The scandal that ensued came mostly from the fact that the First Baptist Church had just let out their evening service and the congregation burst out the front doors to find me on their steps tearing my clothes off and screeching like a wild thing.

  The minister thought I was possessed and rushed over with a Bible to drive the devil out of me.

  All in all, it was a hallmark event that scarred me for life when it comes to roaches. “I hate roaches,” I said.

  Tinkie poked me in the arm. “You’re remembering the day you tore your clothes off in front of Reverend Johnny Finch and the entire Baptist church, aren’t you?” She laughed. “Two of the choir ladies fainted and gave themselves concussions when they hit the cement steps. It was a helluva sight.”

  “Daddy gave me his shirt to cover my ‘nekkedness’ as everyone was screaming.” I laughed, too. It was an awful but funny memory.

  “Little tatters of your dress and petticoat blew around town for at least a week. People found them in shrubbery. Mrs. Hedgepeth was going to file a complaint against you.”

  I hadn’t thought of Mrs. Hedgepeth, the town grump, since she’d had Sweetie Pie arrested for trespassing. “Mama took care of her. She paid her a visit and whatever was said, Mrs. Hedgepeth quit yapping about my ‘littering up the whole town.’ ”

  “If anyone tried to hurt you, Sarah Booth, they had Libby Delaney to deal with.”

  “Yeah. Mama had my back, even when I was in the wrong.” The memory was bittersweet.

  “About the roaches. The answer is a big yes. Karrie Kompton would do almost anything to win this contest. If she’s the one behind the murders, she’s perfectly capable of eating a roach to shift the finger of blame away from herself.”

  “You really think Karrie could do these terrible things?” I asked.

  “Perhaps my reasoning is colored by my dislike of her.” Tinkie was nothing if not honest. “Nonetheless, until we have another lead to follow, let’s go at this as if Karrie is behind it.”

  “Coleman wouldn’t approve of selecting a suspect before the evidence is viewed.”

  “Oh, grow up. Coleman does it all the time. How else do you explain how he arrested you for murder?”

  I zipped my lip on that one. I had volleyed with Tinkie and lost. Now it was time for action.

  The Delta Correctional Facility was on Baldwin Road. Hedy was hotter than a hornet who’d been swatted with a stick, but based on lack of evidence, Russell Dean had convinced the prosecuting attorney not to file murder charges. Still, Jansen made it clear that Hedy was his number-one suspect. As she walked out of the facility with me and Tinkie, Jansen called out, “Enjoy the free air. No one commits murder in Greenwood and gets away with it.”

  Hedy turned and started back, but Tinkie restrained her. Judging from the hot pink of Hedy’s cheeks, a physical assault on the police chief was not beyond her.

  At the hotel, Hedy had been assigned a new room, which she had all to herself. The other girls refused to share space with her.

  We left her there to prepare for another night of the competition. Hedy needed the title for financial reasons, and now she was more determined than ever to win. Her secrets would come out one way or another, and she was like me: She’d spit in the devil’s eye just to spite him.

  Tinkie made a quick trip to see the lawyer, while I decided to find the county coroner, one Marlboro Tanner, also a preacher. In most Mississippi counties, coroners are elected and require no medical training. In cases of homicide, the state crime lab performs autopsies, and that’s where Janet’s body had been sent. Brook’s too, I supposed. But Marlboro Tanner would be a good place to get an idea of what evidence, if any, Janet’s body had revealed.

  Marlboro’s appearance was in direct contrast to the image of the tough cowboy his name brought to mind. The clean-cut young man with kind eyes was in the Church of Redemption office working on a sermon. He appeared to be no older than fifteen. When I told him my business, he waved me to a chair.

  “This coroner’s position isn’t the job for me,” he said. “Those poor girls. What awful ways to die. Burning and then poison. I’ll never get that out of my head. The last coroner served four years and never sent a body to the crime lab.”

  “You’re certain it was poison?” There’s no denying Brook’s fate, but it could have been accidental. That was a thought I intended to plant deeply in the young coroner’s subconscious.

  “Chief Jansen says he can’t be certain about Miss Oniada. The autopsy isn’t back yet on her. Probably a couple of days, and more time for Miss Menton. The state lab is backlogged, from what I hear. Bodies are stacked on top of each other.”

  Not exactly the kind of image one wanted floating about in one’s head. But it gave Tinkie and me time to find out what was really happening with the beauty contestants.

  “Prior to Janet’s . . . death and Brook’s . . . accident, there was an incident with Babs Lafitte.”

  “The pepper thing.” Marlboro leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, an appropriate gesture for a minister. “Chief Jansen said something about sending samples off to the lab. He did take some cooking things from the school for testing. But I have to say, what appears to be a practical joke, while unpleasant for Miss Lafitte, isn’t the chief’s highest priority right now.”

  Good to know. I felt an obligation to tell the coroner, who appeared to be an open book, that Jansen wouldn’t appreciate his candidness with me. But why mess up a good source? “What do you think happened?”

  “That young woman this morning . . .�
�� He went to the window to look out over the churchyard, a vista of carefully clipped centipede grass highlighted with flowering shrubs. “I thought at first it was a heart attack. My mind doesn’t normally run to murder. But I do think poison killed her.”

  “Could she have taken something? Not on purpose, but . . .”

  He arched an eyebrow. “I guess that depends on what type of poison was used.”

  “I mean, could she have been taking a prescription drug and had a negative reaction to it? There are a lot of ways to unintentionally kill oneself.” Doubt was the crop I was trying to harvest. The coroner in rural counties relied on the findings of the state crime lab, but he might raise some questions.

  “Anything is possible,” he agreed. “But not likely. What’s interesting is the absence of her roommate, Miss Blackledge. Had she been in the room, she might have been able to get help for Janet in time to save her.”

  That was an angle I hadn’t thought about. Had someone lured Hedy out of the room . . . but she’d left because she couldn’t sleep and wanted to play her violin? “It’s possible Hedy is alive only because she wasn’t in the room.” I gave it ten seconds to sink in. “Did Miss Menton eat anything before she died?”

  “She ordered from room service around ten o’clock. And there were some pastries on the floor. I’m guessing she died shortly after midnight, but the state lab will be able to tell me more.”

  “When you get the test results back on Brook and Janet, would you let me see them?”

  He considered. “The fact you’re asking tells me Chief Jansen won’t want me to do that.”

  While I can fudge the truth in almost all situations, I’m not great at direct lies to a minister, especially one as decent as Marlboro. “Probably not. Jansen has already said Hedy is his primary suspect, and my partner and I are working on Hedy’s behalf. But the important thing here is the truth, don’t you think?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “That’s true. The reports are factual. I don’t see the harm in giving you a copy, so I’m happy to do that.”