telling her, but I just couldn’t carry the burden of that secret all by myself.
I just told her about their argument. I wasn’t going to spill the beans on my going-to-make-me-famous fish. My lips were sealed tight on that. But when I relayed the quarrel she clutched her chest, like she was having coronary attack, eyes rolling around, she kept making whoosh sounds with her mouth like she was in labor.
“Lord have mercy,” she said and whooshed again.
I had to guide her over to a chair and fan her with my hands.
“Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” she screeched. “Do I look okay? You tell me that my daughter is a murderer and then expect me to be okay?”
“Miss Vivee,” I said. “I didn’t say she was a murderer. I just told you that she and Oliver had had words.”
“And that she told Oliver that she’d kill ‘em.”
“Yeah. Well. That too. But I didn’t say she was a murderer.”
“I don’t know how you manage to live on your own, girl. You can’t put two and two together and come up with four.” She grimaced at me. “You sure you went to college?”
I ignored her question.
“This changes everything,” she said.
“Changes what?” I frowned up my face.
She started digging down in her purse. “I can’t just let the investigation be a brain teaser to keep my mind sharp. Not anymore. I’ve got to actually solve this thing.” She found her memo pad and a pencil.
“No you don’t, Miss Vivee.”
“I have to save my child,” she said and pushed my fanning hands away. “You’ve got to hurry and get me my notebook. We’ve got to work quickly.”
“Hold on, Miss Vivee.”
She swiveled her neck and looked up at me standing over her. “Listen here, Missy. You don’t tell me to hold on. I don’t know what kind of poison killed Oliver. It might just be the kind that disappears before even an autopsy can get done. So we can’t waste any time.”
“Miss Vivee. I can almost assure you that modern technology doesn’t miss anything these days. As much as you watch TV, you should know that. Don’t you watch Forensic Files? CSI?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t television. This is real life.” Miss Vivee was working up a lather. “And the killer could get away,” she said. “Did you ever think about that, Missy?”
“If there is a killer, Miss Vivee, Bay’ll catch him.” I assured her. “They caught Gemma Burke’s killer didn’t they?”
“I caught Gemma Burke’s killer,” Miss Vivee corrected. “I’m the one that figured it out. Don’t forget that.”
That was true.
“Bay’ll be upset,” I said, singing out the words. “He told you to leave it to him.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled down on it making my face even with hers. “We can’t tell Bay that Renmar is a suspect. It’ll kill him.”
We can’t tell him because that man was all business. He’d threatened to throw me and Miss Vivee in jail – his two best girls – I’m thinking he’d do the same to his mother.
“We won’t have to tell him anything,” I said. “Because we won’t be finding out anything.” I sat down next to Miss Vivee and looked directly in her eyes. “No investigating, remember?”
“I raised Bay. What you think, he’ll really arrest me for obstruction of justice?”
I raised my eyebrows and pulled my lips in a tight line.
I kind of did.
“I’ll do this by myself. I don’t need you,” she said, she seemed to have fully recovered from her near death experience. She hopped up, turned and looked at me. “I can still drive and I’m still able to do anything I put my mind to.”
I thought about how she had ran over Mac with that two-ton monstrosity she called a car and fractured his hip, his obvious limp showing what she was capable of. Then I could vividly see her tearing through the streets, people diving out of her way as the crunching sounds of the bones of her victims lay in plain sight in the gas fumes of her car as she drove away . . .
I studied her. She did the same to me. I shook my head and took in a breath.
How in the world did I think I could win this argument with her?
Chapter Thirteen
“Miss Vivee,” I said. “What makes you think that’s the way Oliver died? That he was poisoned?”
I had decided to try and play two against the middle. Keep Miss Vivee happy by getting her a notebook and indulging