Dixie Diva Blues Read Online Free PDF

never worth the price of admission. Trust me. Stay out here with the rest of us.”
    While Bitty sulked, Rob stepped into our conversation again. “Seriously,” he said, “I intend to investigate on my own even though I have to do it from home. I’ll figure this out. Jackson Lee agreed to take my case, so I know I’ve got one of the best lawyers in the state of Mississippi.”
    Bitty brightened. “Oh, that’s good! Jackson Lee really is the best.”
    Rayna asked the question that was burning on the tip of my tongue: “So what happened, Rob? How did you come to be accused of this murder?”
    “Damned if I know,” he said, and shrugged. “I mean, I know why I’ve been accused, but I have no idea how or what happened.
    “See, I tracked Larry to Ground Zero, the blues club in Clarksdale owned by actor Morgan Freeman. I knew the guy loves the blues, that he likes to sit in on some sets on occasion and play. He does—did—a pretty mean saxophone. So I got a tip he was in the Clarksdale area and managed to find him staying in a rental cabin.”
    “Morgan Freeman rents out cabins?” Bitty asked.
    “No. He doesn’t have anything to do with it as far as I know. This place is a mile or two outside town. These are old sharecropper cabins done up pretty comfortably for tourists to rent. Old-time style, you know, calico curtains, cast iron skillets, wood stoves, stuff like that. Anyway, I knew Larry had rented one of them and I followed him so we could talk privately. I’ve been looking for him a couple weeks now. All I had to do was take him in, get his bond settled, make sure he showed up at court, and I was done with my part.”
    He slowed the car at an intersection and then turned onto Highway 161. Our lights scrubbed the dark from the blacktop for a brief moment before we picked up speed again.
    “Anyway,” Rob continued as we sped eastward through the darkened delta, “I knocked twice on the door, identified myself, and when he hollered at me to go away, I went on in. The door wasn’t locked, I remember. Larry was standing in the middle of the room just looking at me. He had a gun in one hand, but held it at his side. He had this . . . trapped . . . look on his face, like he’d just been caught, so I knew he might make a run for it. I eased my pistol out of the harness . . . told Larry we could do this the easy way if he’d drop the gun and put up his hands. Then everything seemed to happen at once.
    “I took a step forward, heard a noise behind me, half-turned, and Larry made a run for the open door. Then something hit the back of my head and I went down and out.”
    Rob sucked in a deep breath and focused on the road for a moment, but I had the feeling he was seeing that cabin instead of blacktop unfurling in front of the SUV.
    “When I woke up . . . Larry was on the floor not far from me. My Glock was close by my hand and I grabbed it in case he got up. But then when I looked closer at him—I was still so woozy from being hit on the head—I saw his pistol was missing. It took me a little bit to figure out he wasn’t going to ever get up again. That’s when the cops showed up. They took me into custody, of course. At first I wasn’t worried about it. I mean, I knew that I hadn’t shot him, but then ballistics preliminary said Larry was shot with a bullet like mine. And my pistol had been recently used. That’s when I called Jackson Lee.
    “I told him not to worry you, honey,” he said, glancing over at Rayna, “until I found out just what was going on. There was still a chance they might let me go on my own recognizance. I guess a murder charge is too big to expect me to stick around. At least they didn’t put a cuff on my ankle.”
    “Are you referring to one of those electronic cuffs that monitor your whereabouts, by chance?” asked Gaynelle.
    Rob glanced in the rearview mirror and nodded. “Yeah. I thought for a minute or two that they would only release me with an electronic