Bitch Factor Read online

  “Look at it this way,” Belle persisted. “If he’s skipped, then he’s already on the street where he can ‘kill another kid,’ as you put it. The only way justice can be served is if we bring him back to stand trial.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what I think of Texas justice.” Dixie slid the Christmas snapshot of the Keyes girls from under its paper clip and compared it to the news photo taken the previous May in the courtroom, the two girls looking bewildered and older than their years. Her mouth filled with bitterness. It galled her to know the man who killed Betsy was running free while the family sat with an empty chair at the Christmas table this year.

  She turned the snapshot over. On the back, in big, loopy, girlish script was written, The Keyes 3-2gether Forever.

  “You know I wouldn’t ask you to do this,” Belle coaxed, “if it wasn’t important. I hope you can find him quickly—”

  “Ric, he’s probably draped over a bar stool within a few blocks of his house. Which means that if I decide to look for him, this will be the quickest ten thousand bucks I ever made.”

  “Ten thousand?”

  “He’s out on a hundred thousand dollars bail, right? At ten percent, you’re getting my preferred customer discount.”

  “On second thought, I hope he gives you a merry damn chase.”

  Dixie got to her feet. “Tell you what. If I find this guy tonight, I’ll keep him tucked away nice and tight until midnight on January third. That way you can worry all through the holidays and feel grateful as hell when he walks in before the judge drops his gavel.”

  Glancing at the darkening sky beyond Belle’s window, Dixie headed for the door. If she wasn’t home when Amy arrived, the evening would start with Dixie’s feeble apology, and she hated that. She hoped to enjoy a pleasant evening with no arguments.

  “You’d really do it, wouldn’t you?” Belle said. “Keep Dann hidden away and let me sweat.”

  “Just want you to feel you’re getting your money’s worth.” She closed Dann’s file and slipped the Christmas photo into her pocket.

  “Flanni?”

  Dixie raised an eyebrow at the familiar nickname.

  “If I’m wrong, if Dann really is guilty, he won’t be easy to bring in. He’s already facing a manslaughter charge. Adding one more felony to his record won’t seem too high a risk to a desperate man. He could be dangerous.”

  “Don’t let Amy hear that. She already worries too much.” Dixie snapped a rubber band around the folder.

  “Dixie, this case—”

  “I’ll let you know later tonight whether you’ll need to find another skip tracer.” Dixie grinned and rained a few Hershey’s Hugs in the middle of Belle’s desk. “Meanwhile, sweeten up, Ric. It’s almost Christmas.”

  But as she pushed through the mahogany doors, thinking of those two dark-eyed girls with a dead sister, Dixie’s own holiday spirit fell like loose gravestones.

  Chapter Two

  Eight months earlier, Sunday, May 3

  Courtney Keyes looked at the room full of reeking flowers and darkly clad grown-ups standing around in hushed groups and thought a cuss word. She didn’t want to go into that room.

  Courtney had never said a cuss word out loud, not even the D-word, because Mama had about the best ears in the world. (“If I ever hear you girls talking filth, I’ll wash your mouths out with Tide”) But Courtney thought cuss words plenty of times, especially the F-word, because she liked the sound of it.

  This time, though, she wasn’t even specific. She tightened her lips and thought: Cuss word! Cuss word! Cuss word!

  Ellie tugged at Courtney’s hand to get attention. “I want to see Betsy.”

  “Okay, shhh. You can see Betsy in a minute.”

  There were no other kids in the room, which meant she and Ellie would STAND OUT. Everyone would know who they were and either whisper to each other as they walked by or cluck like their neighbor Mrs. Witherspoon. (”I swear, those girls were so close, it must be awful for them, like cutting off an arm. Thank the good Lord the little ones still have each other.”)

  “I want to see Betsy NOW.”

  “Okay, Ellie. Just be quiet for another minute.”

  One way Courtney was like Betsy was that neither liked to STAND OUT. Being the oldest, though, Betsy naturally took the lead, and sometimes she got too damn bossy, especially when Mama left her IN CHARGE. Courtney ignored her, which made Betsy really mad. But mostly Betsy had a magical way of making things happen without causing a fuss. Now Courtney was the oldest and wished she had paid more attention to her sister’s magic.

  She slid her gaze toward the object she’d been avoiding, the long box on the table crowded with flowers at the back of the room. The COFFIN.

  Having never seen a coffin before, except on TV, she expected it to be black. Instead, it was a pearly grayish-white, a puke color, but not as bad as black.

  Betsy would hate being here today, being the center of attention, with everybody standing around whispering and walking by to look at her inside the box. Courtney wanted to yell, “Go away! She’s our sister. We want to be alone with her.” Of course, she’d never do that.

  “COURTNEY, I WANT TO SEE BETSY!”

  Oh, fuck, Ellie, now you’ve done it.

  But it wasn’t as bad as she expected. Only half the people in the room turned to look at them. Mama, surrounded by a knot of ladies, hadn’t even heard, and Daddy Travis was outside smoking with some men.

  Courtney straightened her shoulders, clasped Ellie’s hand tighter, and started toward the coffin. Actually, Ellie had been pulling her toward the coffin all along; now Courtney stopped resisting. Too bad Ellie wasn’t the oldest. Ellie loved to STAND OUT.

  Courtney avoided looking inside the box until she stood right beside it. She had never seen a dead person before, except on TV, of course, which didn’t count because everybody knew the actors weren’t really dead. She’d had a cat once that died. The cat didn’t look any different, except it got stiff. But one time Mama ran over a dog—Mama didn’t mean to, it darted right in front of her car—and the dog looked really gross, its head all mashed and bloody.

  Mama said Betsy was run over by a car.

  “Courtney, I can’t SEE!”

  “Okay, Ellie, I’ll pick you up, but be quiet.”

  First, she had to make sure it wasn’t too gross. She didn’t want Ellie having nightmares about her own sister. She peeked real quick—and it wasn’t gross at all.

  But it wasn’t really Betsy, either. More like a doll made to look like Betsy.

  “COURTNEY…”

  She picked Ellie up, and they stood looking at the Betsy doll in the coffin.

  “Can Betsy come home now?”

  “No, she can’t come home,” Courtney whispered. Now that she had finally made herself look, she couldn’t seem to stop looking. Was Betsy really in there? Or was this a big dumb doll someone had made to fake them out? And why the fuck had Mama made Betsy wear that pink dress?

  Betsy hated that dress. She’d have wanted the purple shirt.

  Hot tears crowded behind Courtney’s eyes, threatening to spill over. She blinked hard, willing them to BACK OFF. Betsy would hate knowing her sister was standing here blubbering over her.

  “Betsy’s sleeping, Courtney. Wake her up.”

  “I can’t wake her up, Ellie.”

  “I can wake her!” Ellie lunged toward the doll in the box.

  Courtney pulled away in time to keep Ellie from smacking the doll’s face, but Ellie grabbed the side of the coffin and held on.

  “BETSY, WAKE UP. LET’S GO HOME.”

  A man appeared instantly beside them.

  “Now, now, child. Elizabeth doesn’t want to wake up just now. Let’s let her rest awhile longer.” His voice was low and friendly, but firm. The man loosened Ellie’s fingers and turned the girls toward a larger room with fewer people and more chairs.

  Courtney had never seen the man before. He wore a black suit and looked like part of the furnit
ure. She was glad he came along when he did. A few minutes later, she and Ellie were seated, each with a cinnamon sugar cookie and a plastic cup half filled with syrupy red punch.

  “Will Betsy ever come home?” Ellie’s voice sounded smaller.

  “No.” The doll in the box was not Betsy. Courtney didn’t know whether she believed in heaven, but she knew Betsy was someplace good, because even when she was too damn bossy she was a good sister.

  Courtney scooted her chair closer to Ellie’s. Ever since Betsy’s… accident… she hadn’t let Ellie get too far away. “Bad things always come in threes” Mrs. Witherspoon had once said. Betsy getting killed was the first really bad thing that ever happened to them. A part of Courtney felt sure that what Mrs. Witherspoon said was only superstition, like “seven years bad luck” when you broke a mirror, but another part of her had squeezed down around a terrible feeling that Mrs. Witherspoon might be right.

  Daddy Jon, who was Ellie’s real daddy but not Courtney’s or Betsy’s, had said all three of his girls had special gifts. Betsy was a storyteller—a “philosopher,” Daddy Jon called her. Ellie was a performer. She loved to dress up in Mama’s high heels and put on a show when friends came over.

  Daddy Jon called Courtney his “clairvoyant,” because she sometimes got these feelings that something would happen. Maybe if she had gone to school with Betsy that day, one of her feelings would have tapped her on the shoulder to warn, “Don’t let Betsy cross the street.”

  “No,” she said again, smoothing Ellie’s dress. “Betsy won’t be coming home. Ever.” She felt a squeeze inside as she rubbed at a tiny wrinkle. “But eat your cookie now and drink your punch. When we get home, if you put on your pajamas without a fuss, I’ll read you a story.”

  “A Betsy story?”

  “Yeah.” Courtney blinked hard. “A Betsy story.”

  Courtney had gotten one of her feelings when she looked at Betsy in the coffin—an awful feeling—that if she didn’t take special care of Ellie, another bad thing might happen.

  Chapter Three

  Wednesday, December 23

  “Aunt Dixie! We might get snow!” Ryan bounded through the back door, enthusiasm bubbling ahead of him.

  Hearing her nephew’s bullfrog voice, which had started to change the past few weeks, Dixie’s own enthusiasm welled up. Ryan was the best part of every holiday. Maybe trimming the tree with him would rekindle her Christmas spirit.

  “Snow? It’s seventy-five degrees.” She pitched the Parker Dann file on the buffet, out of sight, out of her indecisive mind, at least for the moment, and found Ryan halfway down the hall, cradling two Tupperware containers. “This is Houston,” she told him. “We get rain, or maybe sleet. Once in a coon’s age we get hail. We never get snow.”

  “Dad says every eleven years. Last time I was a baby. We have pictures!”

  “I know we have pictures. Who do you think bought you that baby snowsuit, special overnight delivery from Denver—and you only wore it three days?” She ruffled his hair, an affection Ryan hated. But with his hands full, he was at her mercy. “What smells so great?”

  “Chocolate chip cookies and pecan pie. I made the cookies!” He grinned, standing hunched over from the weight of his backpack. Dixie could see the bulge of his laptop computer stuffed inside, and a favorite game, Gorn & Tribbles, threatening to tumble out. “Where’s Mud?” he asked.

  “At the vet, getting poked and clipped.” When Ryan’s grin faded in disappointment, she punched him playfully. “Hey, kid, who’d you come to see, anyway, that mongrel pup or me?” Aiming him toward the dining room, she copped a swift kiss. “Put the food on the buffet.”

  Then Dixie turned to help her sister carry a pair of enormous shopping bags. Amy looked all cushiony and warm, in a rose-pink nubby sweater and wool pants. Pearl earrings dangled beneath her blond bob. In high school, she’d been a knockout cheerleader, the girl everyone wanted to chum with. To Dixie—short, plain, brainy, a total nerd—Amy had been a goddess. You didn’t compete with a goddess, you worshiped her, even when she asked your help with homework two grades harder than your own, or when she cried in your room over a different boy every week, but especially when she knuckled your head and said you were the world’s greatest sister. Now Amy’s glamorous curves had softened and spread. “Happy fat,” Dixie often teased. “The downside of a contented lifestyle.”

  “Here, Amy, give me one of those!” Dixie said now. Red and gold Christmas balls peeked from the top of the bag. “What is all this?”

  “Christmas decorations. You didn’t buy anything new for the tree, did you?” Freed from carrying the shopping bag, Amy patted Dixie’s shoulder and tucked her hair back. She could win first prize in a patting-and-tucking contest.

  Dixie waited until Amy looked away, then untucked her hair.

  “I thought we could use the stuff from the attic.” Actually, Dixie had stopped at a Trim-a-Tree store, but the vast selection there had overwhelmed her. She hated shopping for anything that came in more than one color. Besides, her adoptive parents, during their fifty-odd years of marriage, had collected boxes and boxes of trimmings.

  “Dixie, you’ll have enough Christmas ghosts in this old house without drenching it in memories.”

  “I’m not afraid of ghosts—certainly not Barney and Kathleen. And Christmas would be damned empty without memories.” Dixie bit down on a grain of annoyance. Kathleen had been dead only eighteen months, Barney less than a year. She wanted to remember them, and she couldn’t understand why Amy, their own blood daughter, wanted to bury the memories like old bones. She stopped short of saying it, though, having promised herself no arguments tonight. But dammit, it was Dixie’s house, Dixie’s tree, and if she wanted to deck the place with cobwebs of Christmas Past, why shouldn’t she?

  “That porch has a loose rail,” Carl called from the doorway. The smell of smoked meat drifted down the hallway with him. Carson Royal had his faults, but no one could barbecue a yummier brisket. “What I’m saying, someone’s going to fall, and you’ll have a lawsuit. Mailman takes a tumble, sue you for everything you own and then some.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out, Carl. Cheers to you, too.” As they entered the living room under one of Kathleen’s needlepoint maxims—Visitors Always Give Pleasure: If Not The Coming, Then The Going—Dixie congratulated herself on keeping the edge out of her voice. Her brother-in-law could get under her skin quicker than anybody, but tonight Carl’s tiny barbs were going to bounce like water off a glass dome.

  She mentally encased herself in a bubble… filled it with tranquillity… and lifted the corners of her mouth. Yes, that would work. That would definitely work. She would enjoy this evening if it killed her.

  “I see you haven’t stained the fence lately.” Carl shook his head. “Got to keep that wood treated, keep the damp out, or it’ll rot. I told Barney you’d never be able to keep this place up.”

  Bounce… bounce… bounce…

  “Too much work for a woman, running a pecan farm. Best thing is to sell the place now, while you can still get top dollar. What I’m saying, once you let it run down—”

  “Carl, the same people are handling the orchard who handled it for three years before Barney died. You and Amy received the financial reports and your profits from this year’s crop.” Dixie dropped the bulging shopping bag near the Christmas tree, where Amy was already unloading ornaments. The room smelled pleasantly of wood smoke. By turning the air conditioner down to freeze, Dixie had felt justified in building a fire in the fireplace.

  “Now, Carl, stop nagging,” Amy said, patting a huge red velvet bow into place on a tree limb. “Mom and Dad left the orchard to Dixie because they knew she’d take care of it.” She twirled a faceted gold ball. Light fragments darted around the room.

  “All I’m saying is she’ll never get top dollar—”

  … bounce… bounce… bounce…

  What Carl was not saying was that he’d rather have thirty percent of a two-million-doll
ar sale to invest in the stock market than twenty-thousand-a-year income.

  Actually, it had been Amy’s idea that Dixie inherit the family home and pecan orchard. From the day twenty-seven years ago when the Flannigans adopted Dixie as a troubled adolescent, they’d treated her as their own. Amy, an only child nearly three years older, had been eager to have a little sister. And Dixie had clung to all their love and attention like a flagging swimmer to a life raft—but she’d never hoped to inherit more than a few family mementoes. Then the day Kathleen learned she had cancer, Barney called a family meeting to discuss the property. “I don’t want to run a pecan farm,” Amy had told her parents. “And Carl wouldn’t know how. I’ll never understand why Dixie loves this moldy old house, but she does, so she should have it. We’ll take the summer house in Maine.” After Barney’s death, the will specified that proceeds from the pecan farm would be split seventy-thirty in Dixie’s favor, with a provision that she could sell at any time. So far, she hadn’t wanted to.

  A thunder of drums blasted from the stereo.

  “Ryan!” Amy shouted. “Turn off that racket.”

  “It’s Christmas music, Mom.”

  “Find a station playing traditional carols. And turn it down” Amy handed Carl a string of colored lights. “Plug these in, would you, honey? I think they’re supposed to wink.”

  Dixie opened one of the boxes she’d brought down from the attic. Some of the decorations were still in their original boxes, but older ones were wrapped in recycled gift paper. Dixie found the beaded balls she and Amy had made in a craft class, then the salt-and-cornstarch gingerbread men Kathleen had baked and the girls had painted. She carried them to the tree. Amy had already tied several gold balls to the limbs with red velvet bows.