Free Smarty Bones by Carolyn Haines

arrived, Graf walked her into the parlor and poured her a glass of sherry. She was old-school. I abstained, until I got past the bad news.
    “I’m so sorry, Frances, but Dr. Twist isn’t planning to leave town. In fact, she’s holding a press conference tomorrow to announce the exhumation of the Lady in Red.” I blurted the facts before she interrupted.
    “This can’t be true.” Frances looked at Graf, hoping I was playing an awful practical joke. “Surely she won’t be allowed to desecrate a grave?”
    Graf sat down on the horsehair sofa beside her and patted her free hand. “She’s petitioned for the right to exhume the body. I don’t know if she’ll be granted legal permission. It’s up to Judge Colbert. Do you happen to know him?”
    “Delbert Colbert? Of course I know him. And his daddy, and his granddaddy.”
    “Then I suggest you make a few phone calls. If there’s a protest against the exhumation, it will at least delay it. But you have to have grounds to stop it.”
    Frances drew herself up and belted the entire glass of sherry. “That grave is a historic site. It should not be tampered with so an interloper can test out a ridiculous theory she’s concocted.”
    “Exactly what you need to tell the judge.” I felt relief. If nothing else, we could create a delay.
    “This is already causing trouble in our community. Serious consequences will occur if this desperate woman isn’t stopped,” Frances continued.
    I didn’t think heart palpitations in the Daughters of the Supreme Confederacy would really be viewed as a dangerous situation, but who was I to discount the weight of a clique of heritage ladies? “The judge needs to hear this.”
    “And so does Oscar Richmond,” she said.
    “I’m not sure I follow.” Graf rose from the sofa and refilled her glass.
    “Then you haven’t heard?” Frances sipped the sherry.
    “No, ma’am. What have we missed? Sarah Booth and I were … rehearsing some movie parts this afternoon.”
    I’d thought I heard the phone ring, but to be honest, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention. I’d been very, very busy with other things. “What happened?”
    “Tinkie was supposed to call and tell you that Buford Richmond, Oscar’s ne’er-do-well cousin, showed up at The Gardens this afternoon and got into it with Dr. Twist. Some harsh things were said, mostly about her feet.” Her eyes widened. “Have you noticed how huge her feet are?”
    Olive’s tootsies didn’t interest me. “What did Buford say?” Oscar’s cousin was a loose cannon. He was a survivalist nut who’d once bought every roll of toilet tissue in the Piggly Wiggly and refused to share. Several folks in town who’d run out of Charmin had wanted to string him up. He said he was storing the tissue and soap for “the coming apocalypse.”
    “Well, he heard Dr. Twist intends to connect the Richmond and Falcon families with a conspiracy, and that’s all it took. He had a gun, actually an old derringer—and he threatened to blow Olive’s ‘mud flappers from here to eternity.’”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Buford acting like an idiot would be fuel to the flame of Olive’s prejudice against Southerners. “I wish the townspeople had whipped some sense into him when he hoarded the toilet paper.”
    “It gets worse. I can’t believe you haven’t heard anything about all of this. It was a real scene.” Frances gave me the stink eye. “What were you doing all afternoon?” She watched the blush rise up my cheeks and then she looked at Graf, who to my amusement also blushed. “I see,” Frances said.
    “What else happened?” I tried to put the conversation back on track.
    “Jeremiah Falcon showed up looking every inch the buffoon. He had on the blue seersucker suit with the white panama hat, acting all lord of the manor.”
    Cece’s brother, Jeremiah, was a good ten or fifteen years older than she was. He fancied himself a planter, except he’d never done an honest day’s work