Chapter 10

The phone rang at precisely nine o’clock the next morning. I stumbled to answer it before it woke Claudia. Tammy Lynn Snow, Sheriff Wiggins’s girl Friday, informed me her mean ol’ boss wanted to see Claudia in his office and take her statement. I reminded Tammy Lynn that my friend had been advised not to speak without her attorney present during questioning. I felt proud of myself for remembering this. My brain’s usually a bit fuzzy until my second cup of coffee kicks in.

I heard Tammy Lynn sigh all the way from Brookdale. “I’ll call Mr. Davenport’s office and set up a time.”

She called back minutes later. We agreed that I’d drop Claudia off at the sheriff’s office at noon. After finishing up in court, “Bad Jack” Davenport would meet her there. That settled, I refilled my coffee cup, sat down at the kitchen table, and pondered my next move.

Claudia was in one heck of a fix. Lance was dead, and she’d pulled the trigger. There was no way to pretty up the facts. It was time to rally the Babes and see whether we could put our heads together to come up with some sort of plan. I reached for the phone. As I always say, twelve heads are better than one.

Pam, my true blue best friend, was first on my list. Thanks to the grapevine, which thrives better than kudzu, she already knew the gory details. Kudzu, as I discovered upon my move from Toledo, is also nicknamed the “foot-a-night vine,” the “mile-a-minute vine,” and the “vine that ate the South.” Compare our grapevine to run-of-the-mill kudzu, and you get an idea of how fast gossip travels here in Serenity Cove. Pam insisted I need worry only about getting Claudia up and running. She’d man the phone lines and round up as many of the Babes as she could on short notice. Armed and dangerous, we’d meet for a showdown at noon at the Koffee Kup, the local diner and coffee shop.

Getting Claudia moving took prodding, cajoling, and a gallon of high octane French roast. Her moods shifted between morose and manic. One minute she’d be sobbing and sad, then shift into defiant and angry. The sobbing and sad I could understand. I wasn’t too sure about the defiant and angry. In some obtuse way, she seemed to blame Lance for what had happened. But I knew that beneath the crying, beneath the ranting, she was terrified-terrified she’d spend her golden years locked in a jail cell because of some freak accident.

I managed to get her ready with enough time left to swing by my home for a quick shower and change of clothes. I delivered Claudia into Tammy Lynn’s capable hands minutes before her lawyer arrived, briefcase in hand.

He gave us both a broad smile. “Don’t y’all worry about a thing. They don’t call me Bad Jack for nothin’. I earned that title. And I’m damn, pardon the expression, proud of it.”

I gave Claudia’s shoulders a pat before Bad Jack hustled her down the hall toward the sheriff’s office to meet her doom. Doom? A slip of the tongue. I meant meet her fate.

My BFF, Pam, was waiting when I arrived at the Koffee Kup, where she had secured the large corner booth at the back of the diner. “Claudia OK?” she asked by way of a greeting.

I slid in next to her. “As OK as anyone can be after shooting her husband ‘deader ’n a doornail,’ to quote ferret-faced Bernie.”

“Ferret-faced? Kate, cut the poor guy some slack,” Pam admonished. “Please tell me the man didn’t really say that.”

I solemnly drew a giant X across my chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.”

“Figures. He can be such a jerk at times.”

“At times? You mean all the time, don’t you?”

Glancing around, I noted the diner was filled to capacity. The owner had taken its cue from the popular Cracker Barrel restaurant chain when it came to décor. Antique kitchen utensils, farm tools, and photos of long-lost relatives in ornate frames hung on the walls. Tables covered in red-checkered cloths held small vases of plastic flowers. The diner featured old-fashioned home cooking, reminiscent of Sunday dinner at grandma’s, with classic offerings such as meat loaf, mac and cheese-a staple here in the South-catfish, and, of course, finger-lickin’-good Southern-fried chicken. And pies. Pies here at the Kup were phenomenal-pecan, key lime. My hands-down favorite was the lemon meringue with its meringue mounded mile high. But I’m wandering off course. We weren’t here to talk food, but how to save Claudia’s butt.

“Where’s everyone?” I asked. “Did you stress that this is a matter of life and death?”

“Connie Sue’s having her mammogram. Said she’d call later to see what she could do.”

“What about Monica?”

“Monica’s a nervous wreck worrying about meeting the sheriff later today. She said the mere mention of food nauseates her.”

I picked up a menu but didn’t open it. “Did you call Rita?”

Pam nodded. “Rita said the sheriff instructed her not to discuss the case until he talked with her.”

The sheriff, it seemed, was a busy man. I wondered if I was on his hit list. I wasn’t sure if I should feel relieved or disappointed not to have heard from him. But on the bright side, since I hadn’t heard from him, I was free to talk about the case with whomever I chose.

Pam spread her napkin on her lap. “All I could muster on short notice were Janine and Gloria.”

“If Gloria comes, so will Polly. No way she’ll miss the excitement.”

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the bell over the front entrance jangled. I looked up to see Janine trailed closely by Gloria and Polly. Janine’s pretty face wore a worried frown. Gloria looked somber in a gray turtleneck and a gray and burgundy plaid polyester pantsuit with a flotilla of gold chains around her neck. Polly’s face crinkled into a smile when she spied us. She’d dressed for the occasion in a marigold yellow knit top emblazoned with the purple-sequined question, AT WHAT AGE AM I OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER?

We made a production of jamming five people into a booth designed for four. A waitress, a slender brunette I hadn’t seen before, approached our booth. She wore a HELLO, MY NAME IS name tag with Krystal scrawled in the blank space provided. She handed us menus, then departed to fill our drink orders.

“Claudia been arrested?” Polly wanted to know.

I shook my head. “Not as of ten minutes ago. I stayed at the sheriff’s office until Bad Jack arrived.”

“Who’s Bad Jack?” Polly demanded. “Sounds like a bounty hunter.”

I had to remind myself the others hadn’t been present the night before. They had received all their information second or third hand. “Bad Jack, called BJ by his friends, is Badgeley Jack Davenport the Fourth, Claudia’s attorney.”

“Quite a moniker,” Gloria murmured.

“Actually, it suits him. He’s quite a guy.”

“Bad Jack, hmm?” Behind her trifocals, a wicked gleam lit Polly’s eyes. “Sounds like a man after my own heart. I could go for one of those ‘bad boy’ types. I like a man a little on the naughty side. He good-looking?”

“Mother!” Gloria sounded exasperated to the nth degree. “I swear I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

“How’d she find him?” Janine asked, interrupting the mother-daughter exchange.

“I called Eric Olsen and asked whom he’d recommend. Apparently Eric’s watched Bad Jack’s performance in the courtroom a time or two and been impressed.”

Polly gave Pam a broad wink. “Eric’s a nice young man. He seems to be taking quite a shine to your Megan.”

I had to agree. I’d noticed the byplay between the pair as well. Megan and Eric were cast as sweethearts in Forever, My Darling-Megan the ingénue; Eric the rooky detective. They were both unattached and made a cute couple.

Pam shrugged diffidently. “Megan likes him, too, but claims they’re only friends. We’ll see how the friendship holds up once the play is over.”