Death Crashes the Party (6 page)

The professor rose in a gentlemanly fashion and greeted each of us with a nod and a smile. We slid into the booth, facing him. He waited for us to be seated before sitting down again.

“This is Dr. Maurice Shapiro, ladies. Now, if you'll excuse me, I better get back to work,” Ted said, putting on his hat and turning toward the door.

“Ladies, I'm charmed. I'm also grateful for a ride home. I understand the nice sheriff has pressed you into service on my behalf. I hope it's not too much of an inconvenience.”

“Not at all,” Di said. “It's our pleasure.”

“Do you recommend anything particular on the menu?” he said.

“The daily special's always a safe bet,” I suggested.

“Excellent. I shall have the chicken-fried steak.”

Dr. Shapiro was as cute as a baby's bonnet. He sported a tweed jacket and a bow tie, a neatly trimmed white beard and round horn-rimmed glasses.

The professor asked about our town's history, noted the charm of our town square, and commented about how much he was looking forward to some down-home cooking. Most of his chatter might have been simply polite conversation. It was obvious, however, that he was serious about the down-home meal by the way he tucked into his supper.

As the dinner crowd swarmed into the diner, Di and I silently agreed to save any questioning of the professor about the Confederate collectibles for the drive to Memphis. As Dr. Shapiro noisily scraped the last bit of gravy and green beans off his plate, I couldn't help noticing he looked somewhat less dignified with corn-bread crumbs peppering his beard.

He insisted on picking up the tab for dinner, and then we loaded into my SUV, with Di in the back and the professor in the front passenger seat, cradling a black briefcase between his calves.

Just after we turned onto the highway, Dr. Shapiro spoke up. “The sheriff told me that you two would probably have a lot of questions about the Civil War relics I examined today.”

I heaved a sigh of frustration, assuming the sheriff had invoked a gag order.

But the professor continued, “Sheriff Davidson also suggested that I could save myself considerable aggravation by simply answering your questions. So, ladies, what would you like to know?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Di.

“You're the expert, Dr. Shapiro,” Di said in a saccharine voice. “Why don't you tell us what you found most interesting about the collection?”

The professor waxed academic about some of the items and went off on a tangent about a couple of important Civil War battles. But by the time we made it to East Memphis, we knew everything we needed to know about the items in Darrell's storage unit, and then some. All but a couple of things were authentic. Many were valuable, and some were extremely rare and expensive.

“The only articles I could not authenticate with confidence were some Confederate currency,” he said. “That's not my area of expertise.” From his long-winded lecture, which included his curriculum vitae, I knew his area of expertise was weapons. “I'm flattered that the sheriff considered me trustworthy enough to take a couple of samples to a colleague of mine for examination and authentication,” Dr. Shapiro added, patting the briefcase, which was leaning against his knee.

“I always thought Confederate money was worthless,” Di said.

“To the people who possessed it at the time, it was. By the end of the war, it wasn't worth the paper upon which it was printed. Now, however, it is quite valuable. Even a fairly common twenty-dollar note can be worth one hundred to three hundred dollars,” he said.

We dropped the professor off at a handsome bungalow on a tree-lined street just a few blocks from the main campus of the University of Memphis. He thanked us profusely. Di climbed into the front seat for the ride home.

About twenty minutes outside Dixie, Di's cell phone buzzed. She told me it was Dave and put the call on speaker.

“How did your fact-finding mission go?”

“I resent that,” Di said. “This was a mission of mercy.”

“Okay. Whatever it was, I'd appreciate you keeping anything the professor told you to yourselves. I'm a little nervous about having so much valuable stuff sitting in that storage unit. The fewer people who know, the better.”

“You're just going to leave it there?” I asked.

“I don't really have any choice,” Dave said, with more than a hint of irritation. “The FBI won't take it, and I don't have room for all that stuff in the tiny property room at the sheriff 's office in Dixie. At least people have to enter a code to drive into the mini storage, and it has security cameras. Ted put a new heavy-duty lock on the storage locker. That's the best we can do for now,” Dave said before ending the call.

I pulled in front of my office on the square, next to Di's car, and switched off the engine. We both fell silent for a long moment.

“The biggest crime in Dixie is usually some guy driving off from the gas pump without paying. Now we have a double murder, a stash of valuable Civil War items that were likely stolen, and maybe a drug-smuggling ring all in the same week,” Di said.

“It's too big a coincidence,” I noted. “They have to be connected.”

“I hate to point it out,” Di said, “but the only obvious connection I can see is McKay Trucking.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

“It looks bleak right now, but there is an upside to all this,” Di said.

“What's that?”

“They're making progress on the murder case. I mean, the drugs on the truck and the stolen collectibles have to somehow be connected to the Farrell brothers getting killed. Now that Dave has something to go on, he should be able to solve the murders.”

“I hope so. I'm just afraid that before the cops get around to figuring it all out, the business Larry Joe's grandfather started may be damaged beyond repair. Not to mention Daddy Wayne's health. You should have seen him, Di. He looked like he should be in the hospital.”

“I'm sure a good night's sleep and some of Miss Betty's cooking will have him in the pink by tomorrow,” Di said.

Chapter 7

It was almost 1:00 a.m. when Larry Joe finally made it home, ready to drop. I tried to talk him into setting the alarm clock for a later wake-up call, but he insisted he had to get to the office early.

“I told Dad to come in late, that I'd go in early to handle anything that comes up,” Larry Joe said.

I knew the chance of Daddy Wayne going into the office late was as remote as me convincing Larry Joe to go in late, but I didn't say so. I understood that Larry Joe was worried about his dad—and so was I.

He was out cold by the time his head hit the pillow, and I finally drifted into a fitful sleep around 2:00 a.m.

Larry Joe had already left for work by the time I woke up, but a half pot of coffee was still on the heat when I stumbled, only half awake, into the kitchen. Two cups of coffee and two pieces of toast brought me nearly to a state of lucidity. All I needed now was a shower. The upstairs shower hadn't been operational for months. I told myself to be thankful that at least the toilet worked. Of course, I had threatened to kill Larry Joe if he ripped out the commode and forced me to go traipsing down the stairs in the middle of the night, should nature call.

As I started gathering everything I needed to take with me to the downstairs shower—clothes, makeup, and so on—my face began to flush with anger. I could, at the very least, put on my make-up in the upstairs bath if Larry Joe would just install the light fixture that he had dragged me down to Home Depot to pick out months ago. It was sitting on the floor, still in the box, even though I had asked Larry Joe over and over to put it up. He kept telling me that he would, just as soon as he had cut a hole in the ceiling for it. The single bare bulb hanging over the sink offered barely enough light to brush my teeth by.

I'd had it.
How hard can it be to cut a freaking hole
? I thought. Since I didn't have to rush to the office this morning, I decided to tackle it myself.

I left the clothes and other things on the bed and went into the spare bedroom, where Larry Joe had all his tools strewn about. I grabbed a ladder, a drop cloth, some safety goggles and a small electric saw thingy that looked like it would be perfect for cutting holes. I opened the light fixture box to measure how big the hole would need to be and found a handy template for the hole size tucked next to the instructions.

After tracing the outline for the hole on the ceiling with a pencil, I plugged in the saw and ascended the ladder. I switched on the saw, and its vibration shook me so violently, I nearly fell off the ladder. I realized I wouldn't be able to steady myself on the ladder and operate the saw at the same time.

If only I'd given up at that point.

In a stroke of brilliance, I deduced that it would be much easier to cut the hole from the attic side of the ceiling, instead of teetering on a ladder. So I scrounged a long nail from the toolbox in the spare bedroom and hammered it through the ceiling to mark the center point of the hole that I wanted to cut. I went up to the attic, with saw, goggles and template in hand, and located the protruding nail I had driven through from the underside. Piece of cake.

I placed the template over the nail, traced the outline with a pencil, and put on the safety goggles, and after a couple of minutes of getting acclimated to using the saw, I started to get the hang of it. I cut a nearly perfect circle. I was sweating, I was covered with sawdust, and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. But after pushing out the wood and plaster, I looked down through the hole at a bird's-eye view of my bed. Apparently, the nail I had driven into the ceiling was not the only nail sticking up through the attic floor.

After muttering curses for a few minutes, I gathered my wounded pride and picked up the cell phone. I started to call Larry Joe but just couldn't bring myself to punch in his number. Why should I give him the satisfaction? I could fix this, or at least I could hire somebody to fix this, I thought. After pouring myself a glass of iced tea from the refrigerator and taking some aspirin out of the medicine cabinet, I called Winette.

“Sweet Deal Realty, Winette speaking. How may I help you today?”

“It's Liv. I'm in desperate need of someone to repair a ceiling. Can you recommend anybody?”

“I thought Larry Joe was your handyman.”

“Don't taunt me, Winette. I've had a rough morning. I need someone who can repair a ceiling quickly—and preferably discreetly.”

“Mmm-hmm. Well, I do have a friend at church whose nephew does odd construction and repair jobs. He does good work and charges reasonable.”

“Anything else I should know about him?” I asked sheepishly.

She paused. “He's a recovering drug addict, but he's been coming to church real regular since he got out of jail.”

“He's hired. What's his phone number?”

“I'll have to find out and call you back in a few minutes.”

True to her word, Winette called back in less than five minutes.

“His name is Kenny. The only catch is you'll have to pick him up. He doesn't have a car, or a driver's license, for that matter. He lives over at the Howe Apartments on Pine Street.”

“Thanks, Winette. You're a lifesaver.”

She gave me his phone number, and I arranged to pick up Kenny in an hour.

I showered and got dressed. While I was slapping on some makeup, I remembered reading in the obituary that the Farrell brothers had also lived in the Howe Apartments. Maybe Kenny could be helpful in more ways than one.

The Howe Apartments are comprised of six units, three upstairs and three down, with an outside staircase and front doors and windows facing a small parking lot. I assumed the young man sitting on the stairs with a toolbox was Kenny, so I rolled down my window.

“You Ms. McKay?”

I nodded and motioned him over. We shook hands through the car window, and he introduced himself. Kenny Mitchell, a slender young man with short dreadlocks and wearing a T-shirt that said
GOT CHRIST
? stowed his gear—a toolbox and a couple of milk crates filled with various boards and other materials—in the back of my SUV before climbing into the front passenger's seat.

“I got material and tools for a basic patch job. If it's complicated, we'll have to go to the hardware store.”

“Let's go take a look at the ceiling, and you can figure out what you need.”

Kenny was pretty chatty as I drove, making conversation about what a nice lady Winette was and how he had turned things around since he gave his life to Jesus. At the house, Kenny got out of the car and retrieved his gear. He didn't think that fixing the hole would be a problem—news that gave me a great feeling of relief. Kenny went to work from the attic side and told me he'd need a stepladder or a kitchen chair to stand on to finish up from the bedroom side.

I went in the kitchen and checked my voice mail, then retrieved a stepladder from the garage. I helped Kenny push the bed over a few feet. After he had attached some Peg-Board from the attic side, Kenny positioned the stepladder under that spot in the bedroom and used a putty knife to coat the underside with drywall compound.

I told him I wanted to watch him work because, obviously, my husband and I were in the process of remodeling the old house and still had a lot to learn. He explained step-by-step what he was doing. In between steps, I pumped him for information about the Farrell brothers. After he had applied two coats of compound, Kenny said he'd need to wait about fifteen minutes before applying a third and final coat. I offered him a cold Coke, and we sat down at the kitchen table.

I learned from Kenny that he had lived in his apartment building for only about six months and had pretty much just known the Farrells to speak to. Other than an occasional visit from various shapely females, the only people Kenny remembered seeing at their apartment were Ray and sometimes a friend of Ray's, someone they called Bobo.

“Duane, you know, the slow one, would sit on the steps sometimes, writing in this little notebook. I'd stop and talk to him for a minute. I felt sorry for the guy. I had a feeling Darrell sent him outside when he was entertaining a lady.”

“Did you ever go in their apartment?”

“Yeah, just once. They had a Fourth of July party and said they were inviting everybody in the building. It was pretty obvious they just wanted an excuse to invite over the new girls who had moved in downstairs without seeming too bold, you know? I dropped in for a beer, just to be neighborly. But I didn't stay too long. They had all this Civil War crap sitting around the apartment and a big rebel flag on the wall. It kinda creeped me out. And when one of the girls Darrell was trying to impress started looking me over, I knew it was time to leave.”

“Was Ray or Bobo at the party?”

“Yeah, Ray was there. Then Darrell got a call on his cell phone. Darrell and Duane excused themselves for a minute, saying they had to take care of some business, and Ray went with them. The three of them went down to the parking lot to talk to Bobo, all urgent like.”

“Could you hear any of what they said?”

“Naw. I was standing by the window, but they had music playing. I could see 'em. It looked like Bobo was all worked up about something and they were trying to calm him down. Bobo drove off after a few minutes, and the rest of them came back in. I left right after that.”

“What does this guy Bobo look like?”

“He's a scary-looking white dude, heavyset with a shaved head,” Kenny said. “He's got these deep-set eyes, and his eyebrows are so faint, it looks like he ain't got any.”

Kenny said the final coat of compound on the ceiling would need to dry for twenty-four hours. After a light sanding, it would be ready to paint. I paid him the price we had agreed on and drove him back to his apartment. He said he'd be glad to come finish the job for no additional charge, but I told him I thought I could manage the sanding and painting part myself.

 

 

After dropping Kenny off, I headed to the office to go over details for a couple of upcoming events with my assistant, Holly Renfrew. Actually, referring to Holly as my assistant is akin to referring to Batman as Commissioner Gordon's little helper. A recently widowed admiral's wife who is experienced in hosting parties for dignitaries around the globe and who doesn't really need the job for the money, she's been absolutely invaluable to the business. “Doesn't really need the money” is especially crucial, since I could never possibly afford to pay Holly what she's worth. Of course, her cachet has just enough quirk attached to it to keep things interesting.

Her personal style is Jackie Kennedy—the Onassis years, complete with oversize eyeglasses in a changing array of colors, and gypsy-chic head scarves in batik fabrics. She refuses to work on January 8 or August 16—Elvis Presley's birthday and his date of death, respectively. However, all this is a small price to pay for her expertise and enthusiasm.

After going over a few items for the Erdmans' party, I stuffed some papers for a bridesmaids' tea we had booked into my satchel, and the two of us moved across the square to the diner for a late lunch. With the lunch crowd cleared out, we had relative quiet in which to work. Gert Carter, called Meemaw by everyone in town, including me, had enlisted Liv 4 Fun to plan her granddaughter's bridesmaids' tea. Meemaw has six grandchildren, but Andrea is the only girl in the bunch, so she wanted everything to be perfect—and so did I.

While bridal showers can run the gamut from very casual to quite formal, bridesmaids' teas or luncheons are typically a more formal affair. Bachelorette parties, while gaining popularity, are still not a given in the South, but bridesmaids' teas generally are. This occasion provides an opportunity for the bride to spend some quality time with her best girlfriends and to present them with their bridesmaids' gifts. The tea is usually held about a week before the wedding, although it may be held a day or two before the big day if some of the bridesmaids are traveling in from out of town. The bride and her mother may host the bridesmaids' tea, but it's typically hosted by an aunt or cousin or, in this case, a grandmother.

Meemaw's instructions to us were, “Simple Southern elegance.”

“I think the menu and the decorations we have planned so far exude the Southern elegance Meemaw is looking for,” Holly said, pronouncing
for
as “fo-wah,” her accent shaped and polished by a proper Southern finishing school. “But we're still missing that . . . sparkle.”

The waitress refilled our iced teas, and Holly's clunky bracelet clanked against the glass as she stirred in some Splenda.

“Tea lights in the afternoon wouldn't add much sparkle to an outdoor event,” Holly said absently.

“Mason jars filled with crystals?” I offered. “No,” I added. “Too New Agey.”

“I know,” Holly said with a pleased look. “We should go through Meemaw's costume jewelry and scatter some on the table, among the flowers and china.”

“That's absolutely perfect,” I said. “It's personal, and I bet Andrea even has memories of playing dress-up at Meemaw's house with some of that jewelry when she was growing up.”

Holly said she'd set up a time with Meemaw to rummage through her costume jewelry.

The key to throwing a successful party—and keeping your sanity—is meticulous planning. Even more important than my glue gun and duct tape, which have helped me avert disaster on any number of occasions, are my checklist and timeline for every party. The checklist, which may start out sparse and grow exponentially, includes every single item needed for a particular event, along with every contact name and number. The timeline starts weeks or months before the event and then counts down to the days leading up to the party, with descriptions of what to do, and finally, it becomes a schedule for the day of the actual event, broken down into fifteen-minute increments.