LITMIR.BIZ

      After I roust Lovie out of bed, we climb into my Dodge Ram and hotfoot it to the funeral home.

      The only other times I’ve seen Uncle Charlie this upset were when Aunt Minrose passed away and when he lost his favorite fishing pole in the Tennessee/Tombigbee Waterway.

      “What happened?” I ask, and he leads us into the viewing room where we get a shocking view of Leonard Laton’s empty casket. “Who would want to steal the doctor’s body?”

      “Not Janice or Mellie,” Lovie says, “unless Janice wants to leave him in a field for the vultures.”

      “Besides,” I say, “neither one of them looks stout enough to tote a dead body. Unless they were in cahoots.”

      “Those two?” Lovie says. “If they were Siamese twins they’d try to live in different states.”

      “How do you know?” I ask.

      “Yesterday before Janice stormed off in her rental car I overheard her telling Mellie she’d fly her lawyer out from California. Mellie said she’d eat arsenic before she’d trust anybody with an earring in the wrong ear.”

      “My question is how?” Uncle Charlie closes and locks the casket. “I have a security system. It would take an expert to crack it, but apparently that’s what happened. There was no sign of forced entry.”

      “Uncle Charlie, what did Grover Grimsley say about Bevvie?”

      “Nobody’s seen her since last Tuesday when she left the Serengeti.”

      “Look on the bright side,” I tell him. “Nobody knows when we can bury the doctor. And his children certainly aren’t going to waste their time standing around viewing the body of a man who cut them out of his will.”

      “I’ve never lost a body. You and Lovie have to help me find it before anybody knows it’s missing.”

      Good grief. Lovie can barely find her car keys and I can’t even find my dog. How does Uncle Charlie expect us to find a missing corpse? Still, I can’t disappoint my favorite—and only—uncle.

      Mama sweeps in looking like the empress of a small county in a purple tunic embroidered with gold and green dragons, black toreador pants, and cute wedge-heeled espadrilles I covet.

      “You’re late.” Uncle Charlie kisses her on the cheek. “How are you, Ruby Nell?”

      Richer, I’m hoping, but now is not the time and place to ask.

      “How’d that old codger escape, Charlie? Knowing him, I thought he might have come back from the dead, but I didn’t see any resurrected rakes driving a black Mercedes on Highway 78.”

      The four of us go into his office for a family summit. The gist of it all is that although the doctor’s public viewing won’t be held till Bevvie turns up, everybody in town who read the obituary knows he’s dead and anybody could have done the dastardly deed. (Mama’s term for the body snatching.)

      The bottom line: Lovie and I will search for the wandering corpse while Mama and Uncle Charlie stall the Latons on the remote chance any of them will find the milk of human forgiveness in their souls (another of Mama’s terms) and want to see their dead daddy.

      “Daddy, we can’t just go barging around town asking if anybody’s seen a corpse.”

      “Go about your ordinary business, Lovie. Between you and Callie, you see just about everybody in Lee County on a daily basis. And, sweetheart, be discreet.”

      He might as well tell a brass band to tone down.