To Live and Die In Dixie by Kathy Hogan Trocheck Page B

Burdette said. “Hell yeah, there were plenty of people in and out over there. But I wouldn’t know who any of them are, because we don’t travel in the same social circle.
    â€œSee ya,” he said, then he disappeared inside the house.

9
    T HE FAINTEST PROMISE of a breeze wafted down the street, and I felt the stream of perspiration trickling down my face cool and dry. While I’d been busy detecting, twilight had descended on Jasmine Way. Fireflies filled the treetops along the darkening street, their lights flickering on and off in some mad, urgent mating call. A chorus of crickets competed with the trill of one die-hard mockingbird who sat and sang his heart out from the highest branch of the crepe myrtle tree in front of Eagle’s Keep.
    Those so-called sensible shoes I’d slipped into hours ago at home had raised blisters on my feet. I took them off and walked barefoot across Elliot Littlefield’s side yard, sinking my burning toes into the dew-soaked grass, breathing in deep lungfuls of the hot, damp honeysuckle-scented air swirling around me.
    Time to check on my patient. Regretfully, I shoved my feet back into my shoes and let myself in the back door again, pushing my way past Ping-Pong.
    Littlefield was still in outer space, snoring loudly. Ping-Pong, who’d shadowed me into the room, leapt nimbly onto the bed and settled himself acrossLittlefield’s chest. Maybe he planned to suck the breath out of his drugged master. Maybe Littlefield hated cats too. I checked my watch again and sighed. It was still only seven forty-five. I thought back to that blood-splattered room at the top of the house.
    Littlefield’s key ring jangled in my skirt pocket. Maybe I’d check Bridget’s permanent quarters before calling it a night.
    A tasteful pair of brass carriage lamps threw a pool of yellow light onto the front window of the two-story brick carriage house. The front door had a plaque over it: Eagle’s Keep Antiques, Prop. E. L. Littlefield. By Appointment Only . The window had a deep gray painted backdrop and contained a single piece of furniture, a fancifully grain-painted blanket chest that fairly screamed big bucks. I fiddled with the key ring, trying every key on it before concluding that Littlefield must have had a separate set for the shop.
    Just in case, though, I circled around to the back, stopping beside a weatherbeaten wooden door. Pots of marigolds were clustered on the brick stoop, and a purple ten-speed bike leaned against the wall. A bare bulb hung from a rusted fixture, moths batting about it. This time it took only two tries to find the right key, and a few seconds more to switch on the light and deactivate the alarm.
    Bridget Dougherty had been an orderly little soul.
    The old white iron bed was neatly made, with a faded yellow and white Sunbonnet Sue quilt smoothed up to a pile of pillows covered in scraps of old forties chintz. A battered stuffed monkey, the kind made out of old men’s wool socks, nestled among the pillows. I’d had a monkey like that as a child; Pookie, I’d called him, until my baby brother Kevin had gotten revenge for somechildish offense by field dressing Pookie with my dad’s Swiss army knife.
    Most of the other furniture in the room looked like the stuff I’d had in my college/first apartment days: a cast-off painted white dresser, a coffee table made from a cut-down wooden cable spool, and tables and storage cabinets fashioned from plastic milk crates.
    One crate was Bridget’s kitchen, turned on its side. It was stacked with her groceries: boxes of herbal tea, Cup-A-Soup, crackers, Froot Loops. On top of the crate was a tiny one-slice toaster and a hot plate.
    Two more crates held her library. Lots of New Age paperbacks, some schoolbooks, and a pamphlet describing the requirements for a high-school equivalency diploma. There was a Norton’s Anthology of Poetry . She’d dog-eared the pages with the