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visions of spending years in the same eight-foot-by-eight-foot jail cell as Bitty. I’d probably end up strangling her.
    Bitty joined me at the bus stop to report that the moving van was gone. “Now they’ll find him far from Clayton’s closet,” she said with obvious satisfaction.
    “And far from the actual murder scene, too,” I pointed out. “How will the police know where to investigate?”
    “We could always send them a little note,” Bitty suggested.
    I stared at her in disbelief. “That says what? ‘Excuse us, but we moved the body of Professor Sturgis from the dormitory where he was really murdered’?”
    “Honestly, Trinket, you’re always so pessimistic. Things will work out. As long as my sons aren’t implicated, it doesn’t really matter to me who the killer is. The police are very good at finding out that kind of thing. We probably need to hurry to get to the dry cleaners before they close, so I hope this bus arrives soon. Sure you don’t want me to call a taxi?”
    “Yes,” I said as I saw the bus lumbering toward us. “So I’m just to forget that we ever saw a dead man, that we ever moved his body, and that you’re crazy as a Betsy bug. I’ll erase all those memories from my mind and be a clean slate. Right?”
    “You’re so dramatic sometimes. Just try to have a good time tonight and forget all about Professor Sturgis. He’ll be found, and the police will track down his murderer. It’s what they do best. Good lord—how am I supposed to get on this thing?” she ended as the bus wheezed to a stop, and the door swooshed open.
    I eyed her snug skirt and high heels with rather petty satisfaction. “Just hike up your skirt and hop on. I’m sure the bus driver’s been flashed before.”
    I waited until we were sitting in her car and driving toward the dry cleaners before I said, “I think we’re becoming too blasé about dead bodies. We’ve seen so many in the past year that we don’t properly appreciate the horror or magnitude of murder.”
    “Nonsense. If anything, I appreciate the awfulness of it much more than I would if I was sitting at the breakfast table reading about it in the paper. I just don’t let that cloud my judgment at the moment.”
    “Well, isn’t that handy. I haven’t perfected that talent just yet.”
    “That’s okay, honey. You’ll get it sooner or later.”
    I shut my mouth so tightly my jaws ached. We turned on to Jackson Avenue right in front of an oncoming car, but my jaws didn’t unclench in time to scream. The car missed us by maybe a foot. I just closed my eyes. There was absolutely no point in trying to get Bitty to see the error of her ways. There never had been, but I still kept on working at it as if somehow I’d get through to her. But then, that would probably change her entire personality, and I didn’t really want to do that. I just wanted her to be a little more wary of getting in trouble with the police. The best way to do that, I’ve found, is to follow the law.
    Too bad other people don’t believe in that. Until recently, I’d never thought about murder much. Since returning home to Holly Springs, I’d come into close contact with more murder victims than I had ever dreamed possible. Not that Marshall County has experienced a dramatic rise in number of murders. No, not all the victims were killed in Marshall County.
    Divas have branched out to other Mississippi counties with our involvement as well. We are not always appreciated. Law enforcement at the state level has been notified of our efforts, I’m told, so Divas had better have an excellent reason for getting involved in any future murder cases.
    Apparently none of that mattered much to Bitty. We were now involved in a murder that hadn’t been discovered yet, and I was pretty sure that when it was—we’d be in it up to our necks.

Chapter 3
    Football at Ole Miss is more of a religious experience than a sports game. If football is a religious experience, then the