7

IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN O’CLOCK WHEN I WALKED OUT OF THE courthouse and into the most gorgeous October morning that had ever been created. My mind was whirling with the angles of my new case, and for the first time in weeks, I felt as if my life was moving forward.

Doreen was on her way to New Orleans, and I was headed to the bakery to pick up some cheese Danish and coffee. Lucky for me my close personal friend, Cece Dee Falcon, society editor of the Zinnia Dispatch, was a workaholic with a looming deadline. I needed to talk to Cece, but I also needed access to the newspaper files. Sunday was the perfect time to look—without the scrutiny of the rest of the newspaper staff.

Bribe in hand, I went to Cece’s office window and peeped in. The pale light of her computer screen highlighted her classic profile and tawny hair. Her perfect nails were a blur on the keyboard.

Before Cece became society editor and long before she became my source for historical Sunflower County facts, Cece was Cecil. We’d gone to high school together. The weather put me in mind of a few Friday night football games where we’d huddled beneath the bleachers drinking Wild Turkey and Coca-Cola, talking about our futures. I had wanted to be an actress, and Cecil had wanted to be a girl. My trip to New York was daring, but Cecil’s trip to Sweden was the bravest single act I knew.

I tapped on the window and then walked around to the front door as she unlocked it.

“Dahling,” Cece said, reaching for the bakery bag. “These are so fresh they’re still warm.” We walked back to her office.

I put a cup of coffee in front of her. Three creams, two sugars. Just the way she liked it.

She took a bite of the pastry, revealing her strong white teeth, and I had time to identify the Little Red Riding Hood nail polish that was the hit of the season. She was dressed in a mocha turtleneck and brown suede pants that hugged her lean hips perfectly. I frowned at her. “If you were a real woman, you’d have wider hips.”

She licked a bit of frosting off her perfect lips and smiled. “Don’t be a bitch, Sarah Booth, just because you have improper distribution of fat deposits. That old ‘more to love’ crap is just that—crap.”

I laughed out loud. Cece was hard to best.

“What brings you to the newspaper on a beautiful Sunday?” she asked. “Something about Doreen Mallory?”

“Tinkie and I are helping her.”

“Did she kill her own baby?” Cece asked, suddenly still. She was on the scent of a story.

“She says no.” I was careful.

“And what do you believe, Sarah Booth?”

“I believe I have a lot of work to do to find out the truth.” Incredible as it seemed, I was beginning to believe that the spiritual healer/sex therapist actually had not killed her own baby.

“And somehow I’m going to play a role in this truth-finding, right?” Cece was always willing to jump into the middle of a good case.

“Absolutely.” I grinned. “I need to look up Lillith Lucas. See if there are any stories about her in the paper.”

Cece lifted one eyebrow in a way that was strictly predatory. She licked her fingers. The Danish was gone. “I heard the rumor that Doreen is her daughter. I also heard that Lillith had over fifty thousand dollars in the bank when she died. Doreen is the sole heir.”

Cece’s sources were often as good as my own, but I had the scoop on her this time. “There’s a brother,” I said, watching her take it in. “He may or may not be alive.”

“Boy, that Lillith. Talk about ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ Didn’t she ever hear about ‘practice what you preach’? Remember the night we left the junior prom early and stopped at the Revolving Root Beer? She was hiding in the bushes and jumped out at us. ‘Sex is the Devil’s highway.’ That’s exactly what she said.”

“Then she said, ‘And you’re traveling down it at breakneck speed.’ ” It was a funny memory now. Back then she’d nearly scared us to death. I was caught between frenzied hormones, lack of real knowledge about sex, and total fear of a rogue sperm with superpowers.

“She looked totally insane,” Cece recalled. “Her eyes were burning with that fervor that put me off religion once and for all.”

“She was frightening.”

“Remember what else she said?”

I did, but I’d rather have forgotten it.

“She said that God could smell sex on us. She said we reeked of it, and that we’d burn in hell.”

“Now that’s a series of images I’d rather not have in my head,” I said. I had been kissing Roger Wayne Gillum that night and I went home and took six showers before I would allow Aunt LouLane near me. Lillith had truly scared me and most of my friends—but that was before we realized that Lillith was just a crazy old woman. I was thinking about the contrast between Doreen and Lillith. Doreen saw sex as the door to love. Lillith saw it as the threshold to hell.

I looked at Cece. “I wonder why no one ever locked her up?”

“Good question.”

Cece eyed the Danish that I’d only taken two bites out of.

“Help yourself. Can we go to the records?”

“Of course, dahling. One should always take up activities that might make one blind just to help a friend.”

Cece’s fears were far overstated. I knew she wouldn’t stay in the microfiche room and help me hunt. But she did get me started, and by noon, I’d found three references to Lillith Lucas. Two were notices of a tent revival where she was a featured preacher, and the third was a 1963 arrest for public drunkenness. That was it.

I left the newspaper a little disappointed, wondering what I’d hoped to find. None of this bore directly on Doreen, but somehow, I sensed a connection. Doreen had come to Sunflower County to search out her past—to talk to her dead mama. There was a link here, I just wasn’t sure what it was.

I was tempted to stop in at Millie’s for lunch, but I went home instead. I called Tinkie and filled her in on what had happened, and she filled me in on the fact that she’d arranged for rooms for us at the Monteleone Hotel in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans for the next several days. She explained that the bank kept several suites of rooms at the hotel for official bank business, but we could use them. Tinkie came through in the most unexpected ways.

“What’s got you grinnin’ like a ’coon in the chicken house?” Jitty asked from behind me.

I sat down at my desk and took in her latest outfit.

In contrast to my khakis and olive-green cotton pullover, Jitty wore a bejeweled gown that shimmered with iridescence when she walked. It was a sack design and it looked as if she’d somehow bound her chest to fit into the boyish silhouette. Nonetheless, she was stunning.

“I’m going to New Orleans for a few days. Remind me to call Lee and ask her if she’ll feed Reveler and Sweetie Pie.” Lee was a fellow horse-lover who adored her daughter Kip and all creatures with four legs.

“I love New Orleans,” Jitty said. “That’s the town that invented sin and then turned it into an art form. There’s not a single vice, from eatin’ to drinkin’ to shoppin’ to sexy late afternoons, that ain’t been improved on in New Orleans. When do we leave?”

“We?” It had never occurred to me that Jitty would follow me to the Crescent City. Jitty was of Dahlia House. This was the only place I’d known her.

“I been to New Orleans. I went with Alice when she first married and Dahlia House was being built. We bought furniture and dishes, and they all had to be brought back up the Mississippi River and then carted overland in a wagon. I sat with all that china, cradling it in my arms like it was a sick baby.”

I’d heard all the family stories of how Great-great-grandma Alice and the slave who’d been hired to be her nanny and who had become her best friend had seen to the design and décor of Dahlia House. Only a few years later, they’d watched as their home was nearly destroyed by a war that cost them both their husbands and the futures they’d dreamed of.

Jitty was a ghost with a mind of her own, but she wasn’t going to New Orleans with me.

“Where we stayin’?” she asked.

“The Monteleone.”

She nodded approval. “That’s a hotel for nice women. They’ll take care of you there. Knowin’ you, I was afraid you’d stay in some fly-by-night flophouse. Tinkie musta found the rooms.”

I gave her a sour frown. “Why don’t you haunt Tinkie, since you think she’s so much more refined?”

Jitty grinned. “’Cause you the one who needs me. You’re mine, Sarah Booth. Like it or not, you and I are bound together.”

“Where are you headed?” I wanted to change the topic.

“A little speakeasy that just opened up.” She grinned.

I never could tell when Jitty was pulling my leg or when she was serious. Her remarks and adventures were almost always thematic—aimed at telling me something I needed to know.

“You take so much for granted, Sarah Booth. You can pack to go to New Orleans without a husband or a father. There was a time that wasn’t so for women.”

“I know.” Jitty had a point. I had inherited a lot of rights and privileges because someone else paid the price for me to have them.

“It’ll do you good to get away from Zinnia. You keep seeing that sheriff every day, that fire you stomped out is gonna recombust.”

I didn’t bother to deny it. Seeing Coleman every day was like living in a candy store. The temptation was ever present and always hard to resist.

“Let me call Lee and make arrangements for the pets,” I said, picking up the phone. It hadn’t even rung yet, but there was someone on the other end. A very excited someone.

“Guess what, dahling?” Cece said, her drawl put to the test by her eagerness.

“What?”

“You’re going to the famous Black and Orange Ball!”

We both squealed. Then I frowned. “What’s the Black and Orange Ball?” I asked.

“Only the most fabulous Halloween ball in the entire world. It’s held every year at the Bogata home in the Garden District. It is the ball of the year. And we’re all going. Me, you, and Tinkie. Since you’re going to be in New Orleans anyway, you simply have to say yes.”

“How did you arrange this?” I asked. Cece must have pulled some mighty big strings.

“I simply said I couldn’t attend because I had guests. The hostess graciously extended the invitation to you and Tinkie. And Oscar,” she added without a lot of enthusiasm. “I wish it was just us girls.”

“Oscar can dance with us,” I said. He was a terrific dancer for a man who looked as stiff as cardboard.

“Now, you have to have a gown. It has to be black and orange only. Understand?”

“A new gown?” I was torn between economic pettiness and joy at the prospect of a ball gown.

“Black and orange. I’ve seen photos of some of the dresses and they are incredible. We only have a short time to pull this together. Tinkie is going to Memphis with me this afternoon to shop. Do you want to come along?”

I did, but I had a far better idea—and one I wasn’t sharing. When it comes to having the best ball gown for a big society event, a girl can become quite competitive, even with her best friends.

“No, I have something I have to do. Then I have to pack. You girls have fun.”

“What are you up to, Sarah Booth?”

Cece was nobody’s fool. She knew I had an ace up my sleeve.

“Cece, I’m in the middle of a case,” I said, trying to sound mildly injured. “I’m working.”

“If you come up at the last minute with some excuse that you don’t have a gown, Tinkie and I are going to wrap you in black garbage bags, tie an orange bow on you, and drag you to this ball anyway.”

“I get the picture,” I said, smiling. I had a far better plan than garbage bags.

         

MOLLIE JACKS WAS the finest seamstress in the state of Mississippi, or she had been until arthritis crippled her hands. But her husband, Bernard, had told me that Mollie still sewed for a few special people, and I didn’t have to guess how much of a thrill she’d get out of designing a gown for a fancy New Orleans ball. My trip to Mollie’s would also kill two birds with one stone. She lived right behind Pine Level Cemetery. I wanted to stop off at Lillith Lucas’s grave. Call it gut instinct or total foolishness, I just couldn’t let the Lillith thing go.

I headed out of town, the top down on the roadster, enjoying the golden breeze in my hair. October was my favorite month. In years past, my mother’s birthday had always been a big occasion. My father would throw her a huge party, complete with PA system and a pulpit. It was her day to get on a soapbox about anything she wanted. Her friends came every year to hear the speech she worked on for weeks. No one could ever predict the topic. Mama always pulled the rug out from under folks.

My mind was in the past and I almost passed up the tree-shaded turn into the cemetery. I made a sharp right and pulled beneath the oaks. In the distance the old headstones were marbled with age. As a little girl, I’d loved to take rubbings from the stones. The sayings were wonderful. “She has risen into the light of heaven, our beloved mother.” Or “The Lord has guided our best friend and husband into the land of plenty.”

I parked and walked, wondering if I should have called a caretaker to try and figure out where Lillith might be buried. My gaze wandered over the monuments and stones, many of them ornate and lovely. I was drawn to a stone depicting a woman surrounded by flames. The cold marble seemed alive, the flames licking at her gown. Yet she looked up to heaven.

A jar of freshly picked lilies centered the grave.

Lillith Lucas
March 4, 1942–December 18, 1992

There was the standard quote from the Bible about God’s rich and unfailing love, and then something more interesting. I read the words carved in the stone with a chill. “Born of fire, she perished in flame.”

“Lillith,” I whispered, “what secrets are you hiding?”

Movement at the back of the cemetery caught my eye and I saw Mollie slowly stand up. She’d been kneeling at a grave. Was it coincidence or synchronicity that had brought the woman I needed to see into the cemetery at the same time I was there?

“Mollie!” I called to her.

She turned and a smile lit her face. “Why, Sarah Booth, for just a minute there I thought your dear mama was calling me from heaven. You sound that much like her.”

I took her arm and helped her walk under the shade of a big cedar at the back of the cemetery. It was a crisp October day, but the sun was still warm.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

“Same as you, visiting the dead,” she said easily. “Did you see those pretty lilies I left at Lillith’s grave? I met her daughter here.”

“Yes, the flowers are beautiful.” I was surprised. “You left them for Lillith?”

“More for that daughter of hers. I never much cared for Lillith. She was a woman tormented by her own hot blood. But I sure did take to her daughter. Doreen. She’s got a gift.”

“Where did you meet Doreen?” I was a little lost.

“I was here Thursday, putting some flowers on Bernard’s mother’s grave,” Mollie continued. “Yesterday was her birthday and I always try to come and put out something bright for her. Anyway, I saw Doreen at the grave and we talked awhile. She had a lot of questions about her mama. Most of them I didn’t answer, even when I could.” She shook her head. “No point speaking ill of the dead, and Doreen seemed to have a lot to carry already. She lost her little girl.”

“I know. It was a terrible thing.” I didn’t think Mollie knew that Doreen had been arrested for the murder of her child, and I wasn’t going to tell her.

“What are you doing at Lillith’s grave?” Mollie asked.

“Trying to sort out the past. How long has that gravestone been there?”

“Oh, about three years. Something like that. One day Bernard and I came out to visit our kin and the stone was there. Nobody knew a thing about where it came from or how it got put up. It was just there.”

“Did you walk over here?” I asked, looking around for her car.

“I sure did. I got up this morning feeling fit as a fiddle.” She smiled. “I’m going to drive into town and see about buying some material. I got the urge to sew again.”

“Really?” I couldn’t hide my excitement. “I was going to ask if you could make me a gown for the Black and Orange Ball in New Orleans Halloween night, but I wanted to make sure your hands were feeling okay.”

“My hands are—” Mollie held them out, the fingers straight and lovely. She flexed them. “My fingers are just fine. Better than fine.” She grasped my hands with hers. “Doreen held my hands, Sarah Booth. She held them tight and she prayed over them. When she let go, the arthritis was gone.”