Part 20 (1/2)

Dahlia House was out of the way, but I ran by to pick up the dogs. Tinkie needed the comfort of her hound, even if her canine was a dustmop that looked more like a stuffed toy than a real dog. Chablis was tiny, cute, and had the heart of a lioness. She could give Tinkie what I could not--the sense that her family was still complete.

”I'll be back with the dogs in a flash,” I told Tinkie as I hopped out of the roadster. Tinkie didn't look as if she had the strength to climb the stairs to Dahlia House.

I entered the front door and stopped. Cigar smoke curled in the light from the front windows.

Someone had been smoking in my home. And cigars! I didn't know anyone who smoked those things.

”Put your hands in the air.” The voice was cold and menacing. I complied, my mind jumping backward to Cece and her beating and ahead to Tinkie and what a weakened target she would be if I failed to handle this.

”What do you want?” I asked.

”Turn around.”

I was reluctant to face my attacker. Most criminals preferred not to leave eyewitnesses alive.

”Do it. Now.”

I moved slowly. The man standing in the shadows of the parlor wore a pin-striped suit, a hat, and held a machine gun. Though his fedora concealed his features, I could see a thin mustache that emphasized the narrowness of his lips. He was slender, and the c.o.c.k of his hat told me he was bold.

I'd never seen him before.

”Where are the dogs?” Concern for Sweetie Pie and Chablis made me step forward.

”Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said. Beneath the harshness of his words was something else, an echo of another statement . . . another voice.

I studied him, noting the slender frame and the tiny little curl of a smile.

”d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l and back, Jitty. You scared me.” I dropped my hands. ”Now I need to change my pants. I hope you're happy.”

Instead of the chuckle I expected, Jitty only tipped up the brim of her hat, revealing her luminous eyes. There was sadness there, not humor.

”Did you know John Dillinger was a hero to a lot of people in America? They cheered him on in his robberies.”

Now it was a history quiz? ”Give me a break.” I filtered through the little bit I knew of 1930s gangsters. ”He was viewed as a Robin Hood of hard times. He robbed banks and shot cops. Except to my knowledge he never gave a dime to the poor.”

Jitty shrugged. ”J. Edgar Hoover wore a dress.”

I rolled my eyes. ”What is this about? Tinkie is in the car. Cece has been severely beaten. Coleman is fis.h.i.+ng a dead man out of the Mississippi. Oscar is still sick--what's your obsession with outlaws gunned down by the FBI?”

”Times were different when John Dillinger was on the loose.”

”Your point is?” I had good cause to act brusque. The chance to make things right was slipping away from me hour by hour.

”Wanted posters of Dillinger were everywhere, but hardly anybody recognized him on the street. Folks didn't expect to see a bank robber pa.s.sin' by on the sidewalk. No television to show his mug. No Internet. No cell phones. None of the things that make life so dang complicated today.”

Doggie toenails scrabbled on the hardwood floor as Sweetie and Chablis launched themselves through the swinging kitchen door and rushed me. I patted and stroked, but Jitty was trying to tell me something. Jitty never actually helped me with a case, but sometimes she helped me with a much bigger problem--me.

”Okay, Dillinger remained on the loose for a long time. I'll give you that. And some folks did protect him. Willingly.” That summed up my knowledge of the outlaw.

Jitty stubbed out her cigar in a leaded-gla.s.s ashtray. Had I committed such a violation of Delaney antiques, she would have badgered me for weeks. ”The FBI shot and killed Dillinger in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago. It was a Sunday, July 22, 1934.”

Jitty had lived--or haunted--through most of this; far be it from me to argue with her. ”Fascinating. But why should I care right now?”

”The FBI knew Dillinger would be in that theater.”

Something niggled at the back of my brain. A betrayal. A huge one. ”A woman called the FBI, right?”

”Bingo!” Jitty laid the old-fas.h.i.+oned tommy gun on the table beside the sofa. The prop department in the Great Beyond could obviously furnish anything.

She continued talking. ”Ana c.u.mpanas, her married name was Ana Sage, was the madam of a brothel. She's the one fingered Dillinger to the FBI. She told them the theater, the time, the film, and she even went to the movie with Dillinger and his latest girlfriend.”

A factoid floated to the surface of my brain. ”She wore a red dress. That's how the feds identified him.”

”Actually, it was orange, but in the lights of the theater's marquee, it looked red. He was shot in a nearby alley. Some folks dispute as to whether he ever even pulled his gun.”

”Okay, so how does all of this apply to me?”

”Ana believed she'd be deported to Romania if she failed to deliver Dillinger to the FBI. She came over from Romania and had some run-ins with the Indiana law. The FBI supposedly promised her the deportation action against her would be dropped.”

This was going to have a bad ending.

Jitty brought out a cigar from the inside pocket of her elegant suit jacket and twirled it between her fingers. ”She was deported in late April 1936. The only thing she got out of her betrayal was a portion of the reward money for Dillinger. Five grand.”

”So the moral of the story is never trust a madam in a red dress.” I had hoped to make her laugh, but not so.

She started to fade, but I could still hear her. ”Think about it, Sarah Booth. Trust is the issue.”

”Jitty, what are you telling me? Should I trust or not? Will I be betrayed by someone in a red dress?”

Even though I listened for nearly a full minute, there was no answer. Like Elvis, Jitty had left the building.

I was left with one more puzzle to study on top of the pile I already had.

Tinkie cuddled Chablis to her chest as we rode through the cool April evening. Sweetie Pie sat in the backseat and occasionally leaned over to slurp Tinkie's neck or cheek. The top was down on the roadster, and the wind whipped a bit of color into Tinkie's face, but the fine lines and wrinkles that hadn't been there a week before testified to the stress she was under.

Though the plan had been to go to the court house, by the time I got into town, Tinkie had fallen asleep.

I shook her shoulder lightly. ”Tink, I'm taking you home.” Besides, I wanted to check out Cece before she saw the damage done to our friend.

When she didn't argue, I knew how exhausted she was. ”If I find something, I'll fetch you,” I promised her. ”The best thing you can do is sleep.”

She was so far gone, she didn't acknowledge me. With Chablis and Sweetie keeping me company, I drove to the big house on the hill that Tinkie called home.

By the time Tinkie was settled on the sofa with Sweetie Pie beside her and Chablis curled in the nook of her arm, she was sound asleep. A quick call to the sheriff's office garnered the information that Cece had arrived at the hospital. From Dewayne's voice, I could tell things were dire.

Fighting images of what I was likely to discover, I parked in the hospital lot beside the Sunflower County sheriff's car. As I marched toward the door, I struggled to weave some plausible story from all that had happened. But there was no connective tissue--that I could see. Turning the pieces every which way, I couldn't make them lock together.

While the Carlisle land was presumed to be the source of the disease or infection or mold that had leveled Oscar, Gordon, and the two realtors, no one had proven it.

The boll weevils--and the strange genetically altered cotton--were an added twist. Was this some form of agri-terrorism? But why Mississippi and why a crop like cotton with no application for use in weapons or the drug trade?