Coleman and I looked at each other. We’d play charades for a while, but then we had other business to attend to.
6
I’d cracked the balcony door open just a little so I could hear the wind soughing in the trees and drink in the clean, fresh smell of winter. I didn’t know what had awakened me, but I was restless, and Coleman was sound asleep. The room was a little too cold, so I slipped out of bed, found my slippers and warm robe, and stepped out on the balcony for a moment to glance up at the clear sky dotted with a zillion pinpricks of light. The wide-open nocturnal Delta vista was incomparable, but Columbus, with this view across the wide black river, had a pretty good nightscape, too. My room on the third floor of the B and B put me above the treetops.
I heard the door creak open behind me. I’d tried to be quiet, but obviously I’d awakened Coleman. “Come sit by me and keep me warm.” I patted the extra-wide chaise I’d curled up on.
“I don’t ever remember feeling this awake.”
I whipped around because the voice was female, not Coleman. The woman standing in front of me lifted up a pair of cat’s-eye dark sunglasses to reveal deep blue eye shadow. She wore red lipstick and capris. Her brown hair was windblown. She wasn’t anyone I knew.
“Who are you? Why are you in my room?”
“You said you’n’me was gonna get out of town and for once just really let our hair down. Well, darlin’, look out, ’cause my hair is comin’ down.”
Maybe it was the sweetness of her voice that gave her away. A woman-child finally on the brink of adulthood. I knew her then. Thelma stood in front of me, waiting for me to pick up on the role of her sidekick and friend Louise. They were a movie duo that had burned into celluloid history. Thelma was a fictional character, but she was being played by a ghost.
“Nice job with the makeup, but Jitty, you need to go home to Dahlia House. Sweetie Pie and Pluto are missing you.”
“I’m not a dog you can order around.” Jitty was still in her Thelma persona. She put her hands on her hips and stared me down.
“I’m not ordering, I’m asking reasonably. You have to get out of here. You’re going to wake up Coleman. Then what am I going to do? What if he sees you? You could be banished from ever going back to Dahlia House.” The thought made me really sad. My home wouldn’t be my home without Jitty. She was so much a part of Dahlia House now that I couldn’t do without her.
“You gonna have to tell him about me sooner or later.”
“Later. Once I know what the end result will be.” I motioned her to come sit beside me. “I can’t do without you, Jitty.” Tinkie was my partner and best friend. Cece owned a hunk of my heart, as did Millie. But Jitty—she was the key to my past, and like it or not, my past haunted me the way Jitty haunted Dahlia House.
Jitty put on a pout that almost broke my heart. “I can’t ever go back.”
I recognized the line from the movie, when Thelma finally understands she can’t ever return to the abusive life she’d finally escaped. “Are you talking about Dahlia House or something else?”
“I’m trying to speak my lines.” Jitty’s impatience relieved me. She was merely playing her role.
“Didn’t you kill a man in that movie?”
“Maybe.”
There was something dangerous in her lovely Geena Davis face. Thelma was a woman who’d reached her limit. Driving off a cliff was preferable to going back to a life she could no longer tolerate. “What are you up to, Jitty?”
She grinned, and slowly my beautiful ghost began to show through the Geena Davis actress playing Thelma. “Life tests us, Sarah Booth. You know that better than most.”
“Why are you showing up as women who murder people? Or at least who want to murder people.”
She shook her head. “Not sure even I know. I just like the sunglasses and convertible.”
And that would have to do for an answer as she spun in a circle and sparks of red and green shot out from her. Another moment and she was gone, leaving only the smell of pumpkin spice and cedar. Jitty knew how to make an exit.
I went back inside and slipped under the covers, trying hard not to disturb Coleman. I thought I’d spend some time thinking about Jitty and her strange appearances, but instead, I was out like a light in under thirty seconds.
I awoke the next morning to an empty bed and sun streaming through the open balcony doors. Coleman was sitting out on the chaise. “Wake up, sleepyhead. Tinkie has been up here twice, and I told her if she woke you up, I was going to withhold her Christmas present this year.”
My watch showed eight-forty, and I sat up and stretched. The bedroom was chilly with the door open, but it felt good. At least while I was under the covers.
Coleman came into the bedroom with a steaming cup of coffee for me. “Darla made a tray with a carafe,” he said. “She’s a superior hostess. She made some cheese Danish for breakfast, so it’s kind of eat when you’re hungry.”
“I’m hungry.” I yawned, remembering Jitty’s appearance as Thelma. “Did Darla say anything about the incident of the Cadillac buried in cement?”
Coleman sat on the edge of the bed. “She said Columbus was a conservative town, but that there were people here, like everywhere else, who got caught up in passion. She said Tulla and Bricey had both been rumored to have affairs with married men. Darla kind of felt like the wives had decided not to take it lying down anymore.”
“Revenge.” It was the theory I’d already gone to. And a messy motive at
