The Sassy Belles
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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.”