Read Online Dixie Diva Blues by Virginia Brown - Free Book Online Page B

Of course, the words prosperous and sharecropper in the same sentence are a definite contradiction in terms.
    The front screen door had holes in it, and I didn’t know whether they’d been put there recently or a few decades back. Inside, old floors and walls had been basically left alone. Dark horizontal plank walls ran above vertical boards painted white; wainscoting extended all down one wall, and an old church pew provided seating. Next to it sat an old plaid couch. Across from the couch an old piano squatted against the wall, and next to it was a bar with stools, lights, and a corrugated metal overhang. The tiny kitchen had modern conveniences like a microwave, refrigerator, and coffee pot. An old mirror hung over the battered piano. The bathroom was decorated with wash basins and corrugated metal—and despite Bitty’s fears, a nicely working toilet—and supplied with clean linens. A color TV was tuned to a Sirius station that played only the blues. Fitting, I thought. The kitchen sported old flour sacks made into tea towels, original fixtures either well-maintained or well-copied, and the entire effect was old-style charming. There were two double beds in the back, in a room decorated with battered old mirrors; the beds were covered with shabby but clean bedspreads.
    Even after a week, however, the main room held a faint smell of gunpowder. That surprised me. Maybe the porous wooden walls retained odors. Or maybe I’m just highly suggestible.
    “Oh my!” Carolann said in a gasp, and I turned to look at her. She was staring at the faintest outline of what must have been police chalk. Someone had tried to scrub it all away, but here and there could still be seen the outline of a body. A darker stain on wood floor and red carpet must be where Larry Whittier had bled to death from a bullet that had nicked his aortic valve. The coroner’s report had been specific on the details of his death, but the results from the police lab down in Jackson still hadn’t come in yet. They were pretty backlogged.
    “You know,” I mused as I peered out a window and looked toward the former gin now turned into a bar and music hall, “someone had to have seen or heard something the night Larry Whittier was murdered. It’s what, maybe twenty or thirty yards to the gin?”
    Carolann came up behind me to look out the window. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Unless the band was playing so loud no one heard the shot.”
    “I guess that’s possible,” I said. “But the next shack is only about twenty feet away. Wouldn’t they have heard something and reported it?”
    “Who did report it?” Carolann asked, and I turned to look at her.
    “That’s a good question. Who and when. According to Rob, he couldn’t have been unconscious for very long, but the police were already here when he came to. How did they get here so fast? Did something happen to make someone suspect there was going to be trouble? Or were the police that close by? I think we need to read the police reports.”
    Carolann looked surprised. “We can do that?”
    “Well, Rob’s attorney certainly can.”
    “Rob’s attorney certainly can do what?” Bitty asked as she and Gaynelle came in the front door.
    “Put up with you,” I said, and Bitty smiled.
    “Why yes, Jackson Lee puts up with me very well. But that wasn’t what you were saying at all, I’m sure. What’s up?”
    She flung her purse to the seat of a carved wooden stool and looked around the room with her hands on her hips. “I have to admit, this is a bit better than I expected,” she said. “It’s even . . . charming. In a shabby sort of way. Wait—I do believe that is an actual antique console piano!”
    Bitty immediately crossed to the piano and began inspecting it with the same fervor a pest exterminator has for finding termites. She picked up and set down several old-looking knickknacks, then pulled the heavy-looking furniture out from the wall a bit to look behind