LITMIR.BIZ

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      By the time I get to the farm, it’s pouring.

      My hair’s the good, thick straight kind I could put through a typhoon and it would still fall back into place. I don’t have to worry about makeup, either. With my brown eyes and olive skin I could go without a smidge and you’d hardly notice. It’s my Juicy Couture sandals with the turquoise and rhinestone straps I’m worried about.

      I kick them off in the truck, then race into Mama’s brick bungalow barefoot.

      “I doubled your money.” Mama hands me a towel to dry off. “But the roulette wheel double-crossed me.”

      “Which means you lost my money.”

      “Well, not all of it.”

      She fishes in her purse and hands me ten dollars, which I won’t even dignify with a comment. Instead I tell her about Elvis’ disappearance.

      “I thought I saw him a little while ago,” she says. “I went out back to pick some fresh basil for soup and I thought that was Elvis and another dog streaking across the pasture.”

      I jump up and rummage in Mama’s closet till I find her raincoat and boots.

      “Where are you going?”

      “To see if that was my dog.”

      “You’ll catch cold and die of double pneumonia, and I don’t even have any more Italian marble monuments.”

      “Good grief, Mama.”

      Thank goodness the rain has slacked. I slosh across the pasture yelling, “Elvis. Come here, boy.”

      “He ain’t here.”

      Holy cow! At first I think I’m looking at an apparition, and then I realize it’s a strange man wearing a black slicker and rain hat and carrying a fishing pole. He looks shady to me.

      I’m torn between running and asking how he knows my dog. Elvis wins.

      “You’ve seen Elvis?” I ask.

      “No, but my wife did. Over at the Piggly Wiggly in Fulton. She said he’d lost about fifty pounds and was wearing one of them tight blue suits with all them rhinestones on it. Of course, you might not want to believe her. She’s gone mental.”

      Maybe he has, too, and maybe I’m fixing to stand here and get my throat cut. What’s he doing in Mama’s pasture, anyhow?

      “You’re on Valentine property.”

      “Yep, I knew your daddy. He used to let me come here all the time. I guess you don’t remember.”

      He’s right about that. But I do remember that Daddy would never say no when a stranger showed up on the farm with his fishing pole and a yen to try for the catfish bottom-feeding in our two-acre lake.

      “You’re fishing?”

      “Yep. Fish bite in weather like this. Hope you don’t mind. Name’s Buck Witherspoon.”

      “You’d better take that up with Uncle Charlie. Charles Sebastian Valentine. He’s listed in the phone book.”

      When he leaves I make a mental note to ask Uncle Charlie about him. I believe in fate, not coincidence. You never can tell who might want to steal a body. Maybe he’s checking to see what else he can steal from the Valentines.

      Mama would call my encounter in the pasture a brush with death, but I’m not about to tell her and give her one more reason to tell me I should go back to Jack Jones.

      “For protection,” she’d say. I know her like a book.

      She has hot soup and corn bread waiting, and we have a late lunch before I head back to the beauty parlor. On the way, my cell phone rings.

      “I have news,” Lovie says. “Bubbles Malone checked into the Holiday Inn.”

      “Great.”

      “Not so great. She’s checked out. There’s no telling where she is now.”

      “Las Vegas.” I tell her about Fayrene’s Bubble sighting at Gas, Grits, and Guts. “Fayrene even remembers the car she was driving. A ninety-eight Honda hatchback. With Nevada license plates.”

      “That still doesn’t mean she’s on the lam with a stolen corpse.”

      “I know, but why did she leave Tupelo in such a hurry? If she was close enough to inherit all his money, wouldn’t you think she’d want to stick around for the funeral?”

      “Yeah, unless she’s afraid one of the disinherited will do her in. And how would she get a stiff in that little bitty car?”

      Good grief. Now that we’re part-time sleuths (more or less), Lovie’s started talking like Humphrey Bogart doing film noir.

      “Lovie, she’s the only lead we have.”

      “I guess that means we’re taking a road trip out West.”

      “Don’t mention Las Vegas to Mama or she’ll want to go. I can’t afford for her to lose another spin of the roulette wheel.”

      “I’m very good at creative truth.”

      Of course, this means I’m fixing to have to tell a few lies, myself, because how I can go off on a road trip when I have a house full of Latons who don’t know their daddy’s missing, a missing dog who thinks he’s a rock ’n’ roll legend, and an almost-ex who’s just itching for me to prove myself an unfit pet mother?

      Chapter 4

      Big City, Big Lies, Big Trouble

      Expert sleuths would probably jump into their car and tail Bubbles across the Painted Desert, but Lovie and I are real women with business obligations and real lives (sort of). We have to make plans before we can leave town.

      When I leave the beauty parlor I make another circuit of the neighborhood hoping to spot Elvis. No luck. I drag myself home in the rain feeling lower than a fattening hog on butchering day.

      The Laton crew is not back at my house, but Jack Jones is. Sitting on my front porch swing bigger than sin. I can’t say, “Get off my property,” because he still owns it.

      “Callie, I’m leaving town.”

      “As if I want to know. Permanently, I hope.”

      “You never could lie.”

      “That’s not a lie. It’s wishful thinking.”

      I don’t tell him I’m leaving town, too. It’s none of his business.

      “I’ll be in the Black Hills.”

      “Panning for gold?”

      “Cute, Callie.”

      All six delicious feet of him unfolds and I prime myself to be backed against the porch railing and seduced in plain view of the neighbors. Instead he rakes me close, gives me a black-eyed stare that nearly sets my hair on fire, then turns me loose so fast I don’t know whether I’ve been almost ravished or run over by a freight train.

      “If I get started, I won’t stop.” He strides to his silver Jag and roars off into the sunset. Or what would be the sunset if it weren’t still raining cats and dogs.

      Every dog, that is, except Elvis.

      After I get my galloping libido under control and stick another Band-Aid on my patched-up heart, I take care of my temporary cats and short-term dog. (I only started collecting strays a year ago when Jack left, and I wonder what that tells me about myself.) Afterward I eat a pimento sandwich standing up, then go into my bedroom to decide what I’m going to take to Las Vegas.

      Seized by sudden inspiration, I go into the guest bedroom and search through the Latons’ luggage. I don’t know what I expect to find. Daddy Laton stuffed in the Luis Vuitton?

      If

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