The Sassy Belles
Meet the Sassy Belles.
They’re strong as a mint julep, sweet as peach cobbler, and no matter what, they stick together.
There are only two seasons in Tuscaloosa—football and waiting-for-football. When Lewis Heart, football announcer and voice of the Crimson Tide, vanishes after an impromptu romp with Vivi Ann McFadden at the Fountain Mist Motel, Vivi does what any Southern woman would do: call her best friend, Blake O’Hara Heart, attorney-at-law.
With the town gossip swirling around them, Vivi and Blake are determined to find out what happened to Lewis and clear Vivi’s reputation. Because after all, men may come and go, but the Sassy Belles are forever.
Not since Steel Magnolias have we fallen in love with such sexy, strong and hilarious Southern women. So grab your best girlfriends and join these Belles on the first of many joyrides through the Deep South....
The Sassy Belles
Beth Albright
For my mother, Betty, the original Sassy Belle, who pushed me to keep writing, who believed in me no matter what I was trying to do. A little piece of you is in every one of these women. They are smart and funny. Motivating and warm, strong and wise, beautiful and stubborn, they are the heart of all I admired in you. And you were the heart of my childhood. Not only my mother, but my very best friend, you loved me into my potential. I am so grateful. You are the wind beneath my wings. I love you more than any words can say. This is all for you.
For Brooks and Ted, my universe.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Acknowledgments
1
My name is Blake O’Hara Heart and, boy, do I have a story to tell! It wouldn’t be such a story if Vivi, my best friend since forever, hadn’t done what she did. You have to understand that women in the South, women of Southern blood, just don’t partake in scandalous adventures—and when we do, it’s in a discreet manner. We have reputations to consider, after all. But since Vivi’s trouble became headline news, our lives became anything but discreet. I’m an attorney, and even I wasn’t sure I could get her out of this one.
When I met Vivi in the third grade, we were silly nine-year-olds in ponytails and Catholic school uniforms. She was exciting and confident. I loved her immediately. I was new to St. Catherine’s, Tuscaloosa’s Catholic academy, and didn’t know a soul. Vivi made a beeline across the room, her pale and freckled arm outstretched. “Hi,” she said. “My name is Vivi Ann McFadden. I’ll take care of you today and make sure you don’t get lost. This is my fourth year here including kindergarten. So, I’m an expert.” I loved her self-assurance, outspokenness and all that crazy, wild red hair, which she was constantly pushing from her face.
She took care of me that day, it’s true. But from eight o’clock the very next morning I have been taking care of her. I always want to protect her, but she makes that difficult. Her huge messes are almost always of her own making. Luckily for both of us, I’ve always known how to get her out of jail, so to speak. But this particular instance, on this particular day—well, let’s just say she must think I’m a miracle worker.
See, the problem is, in Alabama, women are most definitely…women. Vivi—well, some would call her opinionated. Others would say, “Bless her heart, that girl is just a redneck!” That’s a little secret of the South: you can say awful and insulting things about anyone, and as long as you start with “Bless her heart” you’re not really gossiping. Like, “Bless her heart, that girl looks like a pregnant heifer in that dress.” See? That makes it look like we’re so sad for her, when you know we really think otherwise. Women from Alabama are strong—well, stubborn—and, above all, we are beautiful. There’s nothing in the world a little spackle and Aqua Net won’t fix. We are trained by way of the beauty pageant system. In the Deep South, pageants aren’t just fun, they’re a way of life. With the heavy doll makeup applied to perfection, the big hair jacked up to Jesus and the princess-cut, bedazzled gowns with full crinoline and sometimes even a hoop skirt underneath—we are brought up to walk the runway. And a proper Southern girl always has a strand of pearls around her neck. That way, if anyone ever needs to be strangled, we have the perfect tool. Just remove and use.
But Vivi never quite fit into the fru fru of it all. Her frizzy, wiry Irish curls and endless sea of freckles made her a standout for all the wrong reasons. Her skin was so white she was almost blue. But I thought she was beautiful. She had a wonderfully infectious smile, straight, pearly white teeth, ruby-red lips that never needed lipstick and I thought her green eyes were just perfect. Vivi was a real Southern blue blood, too. She came from sugar cane. Really! An actual plantation was part of her family history. And that made what Vivi did seem like the end of the world. Someone from the “uppa crust” wouldn’t dare be involved in such activities. But Vivi wasn’t quite as “uppa crust” as the rest of her family. I mean, how could a blue blood be a redneck? That’s exactly what made me love her. She was different. Unexpected. Surprising. What she did was a surprise, all right, but not the kind you hope for on Christmas morning….
Harry, my husband and my law partner, was in the lobby of the old Tutwiler Hotel when the news came. He was waiting to meet me. It was our tenth anniversary and we were meeting for lunch. We did this every year; same table, same bourbon-n-peach cobbler. I wasn’t looking as forward to this lunch as I had been on other anniversaries, though. Harry and I had been having some problems. Well, unless you don’t consider silence a problem. We had been growing apart as he grew ever closer to his political dreams. With every step toward his coveted Senate seat, he stepped farther away from me. My plan was to talk to him during our lunch, to tell him that I’d had enough of his absentee husband routine. I spent all morning gearing up to tell him that I was through with being second to his career and his political dreams—it was time to focus on our marriage, or I wanted a separation. Of course, I’d been a nervous wreck since I’d opened my eyes that morning. But, lucky for me, I was saved by the belle…a belle named Vivi.
I was running late that morning, which was basically on par for me. I was stuck at the law school in an alumni meeting that was reaching into an eternity. I was sure Harry stood patiently waiting, checking his pocket watch at least once every 23 seconds, then glancing into the nearest mirror to check his gorgeous hair. If there was a mirror within 20 yards, you’d find Harry looking at himself—usually in admiration—but checking, always checking, for perfection. Every thick strand of hair in place, gold cuff links hitting just at the hem of his suit sleeves—down to the last detail, Harry liked to be in control. His cell phone rang in his vest pocket. It was Vivi.
“Harry, where are you?” she said.
Now, Harry is rock-solid by anyone’s standards, by far the most patient soul. His emotions are buried deep, like down near the Earth’s core. But, as even-keeled as he is, Vivi could almost always manage to rattle his cage. This phone call would shake Harry to his soul.
“I’m in the Tutwiler waiting on Blake,” he answered.
“Shit! I forgot it’s your anniversary,” she said. “Harry, forgive me for this. I need Blake.”
“She’s at the university, Vivi. You okay?” Harry asked.
“Harry, I’m drivin’ and I don’t have a destination,” Vivi said in her thick-as-molasses Southern voice. This wasn’t the typical Vivi call for help.
“Vivi, where are you?” he said.
“I don’t know. I’m just drivin’. When can I talk to Blake? When will she be there?”
Harry was having trouble making sense of her words between her frantic nonsense and the god-awful cell reception.
“Vivi, just tell me where you are and Blake and I will meet you,” Harry said.
There was no response.
“Vivi! Vivi! Can you hear me?” Harry shouted. By this time, he’d stepped outside onto the courtyard for a little more privacy once he realized everyone in the lobby was staring at him for all the wrong reasons.
Vivi answered slow and sober. “Harry…I think I’ve just killed Lewis.”
Silence followed.
“Harry? Did you hear me? Lewis is layin’ dead in the bed, buck naked and blue, at the Fountain Mist on I20!” Vivi screamed.
Harry Heart came from a long line of legal counsel—defense attorneys to be exact. Generations upon generations of Hearts were all University of Alabama Law School graduates.
All except for Lewis. Lewis was Harry’s younger brother. He was the wayward son who wound up on the radio. He was the play-by-play announcer for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide; a partygoer so popular with the women, he never married—never had to. All of his needs were met nightly by the groupies, from cheerleaders to professors to coach’s wives. Lewis Heart was at your service, so to speak.
Harry stood among the gardenia blossoms in the Tutwiler courtyard, dumbfounded, wanting to utter something, but unable to make a sound. Finally, he managed to ask, “Vivi, are you talkin’ ’bout my Lewis?”
“Yes, dammit, Harry,” Vivi said. “Who the hell else? Oh, my God, he’s dead. He’s dead, Harry! And I’ve killed him, I know it!”
“Stop, Vivi. Slow down,” Harry said. “Okay. Let me get Blake. We’ll meet you at Mother’s.”
“I’m sittin’ in front of her house right now, Harry. I didn’t know where else to go.”
* * *
Meredith Blakely Fletcher is my maternal grandmother and the matriarch of everything. She is known affectionately as “Mother” to everyone who knows her. Her house has always been the command center. At one time or another it had been home to all of us, both friends and family alike. It became known as “Mother’s” decades before I was even born.
Mother has a real rags-to-riches story. A young woman during World War Two, she was born in the mud of the Mississippi Delta, surrounded by money and old plantations, but never quite able to grasp it herself. She was absolutely gorgeous, a movie-star type of beauty with dark, wavy hair and eyes as blue-green as the Gulf. She worked at a five-and-dime during the war as a cosmetic salesperson. One day a handsome young law student by the name of Frank Fletcher came into the store and approached the lunch counter. Her Southern beauty caught his Yankee eye and they were together for 41 years, until his death twenty-one years ago. My New York–born grandfather always bragged that he found a million-dollar baby in the five- and ten-cent store, just like the song says.
Frank gave Meridee, as he affectionately called her, everything: a big Southern home and the exciting life of a wealthy lawyer’s wife in the late forties and fifties. Frank set up his practice and Meridee gave birth to three children. She entertained with lavish parties for Frank’s clients and two maids helped her care for her home and children. Meridee was the epitome of a Southern blue blood, even though her blood had originally run plain ole red.
Eventually, after much success on his own, Frank Fletcher and Hank Heart set up practice together. Yes, Hank is my Harry’s grandfather and, no, mine was not an arranged marriage. They were affectionately known in Tuscaloosa as Hank-n-Frank, Attorneys-at-Law. Go ahead and laugh now and get that out of the way.
I remember as a child, Mother’s house was my favorite place to be. Her bedroom was so full of the thick scent of perfumes that I can’t think of her and not recall those fragrances. Her dressing table was a place of pure fascination to a little girl. The French pink glass bottles and the powder she had custom mixed to match her delicate skin tone made that table an island of enchantment to me. And the silver makeup brushes were the wands of magical transformations. Meridee wore black transparent stockings with seams running up the back. Her long nails were always perfectly manicured and always matched her endless array of bloodred lipsticks. I wanted to grow up to be just like her.
Mother’s was a stone’s throw from the law school, so it made for a very convenient hangout. Frank was a huge success as an attorney, but on Saturdays in the fall, you’d find him in the broadcast booth of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Frank was the play-by-play announcer for the famous football team. He was so proud of that. Our blood runs perfectly Crimson in my family. Their house was a place for everyone, and Meridee made sure that all felt welcome. All my life, in any moment of crisis or excitement, we always wound up at Mother’s. No surprise, it’s where we all wound up on that day.
* * *
Harry drove like a bat out of hell over to Mother’s. He later told me he knew it would be bad for his Senatorial run if he had gotten a speeding ticket, but for once he didn’t think about the political dreams first. Amazing.
When Harry got to Mother’s, he found Vivi sitting in her car, gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead in a dazed stupor.
Harry had called me as he was driving to Mother’s. When I found the ringing cell in my red leather Gucci bag and saw the caller ID announcing it was Harry, I don’t know why, but I instantly suspected something awful. Harry never sounds hurried or breathless. He is the consummate lawyer, always in control. So when I answered the phone and heard his voice, I knew it was something awful.
“Blake!” Harry sounded like he had been jogging. “Meet me at Mother’s—now!”
“Harry, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“Blake, just come now.” A silence. Then, “Lewis might be dead and Vivi’s involved.”
“What? I’m on my way.” He explained all the details as I sped through town.
I don’t remember the drive over there. I don’t think I breathed even once in the five minutes it took me to arrive at the familiar cracked driveway. You had to angle your car just right to get in and out of it so as not to bottom out. I wasn’t thinking of any angling as I ripped right in behind Harry’s Mercedes and Vivi’s powder-blue convertible Thunderbird. Harry was standing beside her car. The shock of what I’d just heard was stealing my breath, but I knew they both needed me. I opened my car door and turned and touched my high heels to the cement.
“Tell me again—what the hell happened?” I heard Harry say to Vivi. “Go slow this time. I need every detail.”
The consummate lawyer. Even when his own brother could be dead, Harry was in full lawyer mode.
“For God’s sake, Harry, you aren’t takin’ a freakin’ deposition are you?” Vivi reacted in pure Vivi form. “Your damn brother, my lover, is dead, Harry! Dead! Dead! Dead!”
Vivi is a tactless wonder. “I did it, but it was an accident! I thought he was enjoying it. He was yellin’ and moanin’ and…Harry, he just stopped,” she said. “I don’t know if I suffocated him or what, but oh, my God, he’s dead!” She was crying and trembling, pushing the red, wiry frizz away from her eyes.
By now, Harry was visibly shaken. He pulled off his wire-framed glasses and dragged his long fingers through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was in his late thirties, but if you keep yourself so bottled up all the time you go gray before you know it. Harry was bottled and corked.
“Vivi,” he said slow and steady, “is Lewis still at the Fountain Mist?”
“Well, Harry,” Vivi answered with as much sarcasm as she could muster, “unless you believe in the walkin’ dead, he’s still right there where I left him, buck naked.”
“Vivi, if Lewis is actually dead, you need an attorney,” I interjected. “My God, we need to call an ambulance! The police.”
“Well, y’all,” Vivi said, “aren’t I lookin’ at two lawyers right now?”
Harry and I stood, looking dumb and stupid, first at each other, then at Vivi. Still, Harry looked the most confused. The most disoriented. I could tell he was trying to process how this little development might impact that precious blossoming political career.
He and his brother, Lewis, had never been close and Harry had spent a lifetime bailing Lewis out of one mess after the next. Lewis was the baby of the family. He was good-looking, but in a Field and Stream sort of way. He was the polar opposite of Harry. Harry was prep-school gorgeous. Straight out of GQ. Lewis was two years younger, with a loud, center-of-attention boom of a voice that could really get irritating. Actually, overall, Lewis was quite irritating. Why in the world Vivi would shack up with him was beyond me. I looked at her and, despite her mascara-stained eyes, her sheet-white skin and runny nose, well—honestly, my thought was that Vivi could do better than Lewis. But what I loved in Vivi was her wild streak. She was one of the few people who really lived in the moment. Hell, Vivi lived for the moment. And I was sure that’s what attracted Lewis.
After a long, awkward silence in the warmth of the late morning sun, Vivi spoke. “Well,” she said, as if she had been picked last to play kickball, “since I don’t really have a turkey wishbone handy for y’all, somebody be my damn lawyer already! Do we need to play eeny meeny miny moe or what?”
Harry answered first. “No matter what, not reporting a death in a timely manner is a real crime, so if we don’t call the police and an ambulance, we will all need lawyers.”
I took out my cell.
“Here, honey, let’s get this over with. You need to call the ambulance first, even if you think he’s dead.”
I handed the phone to her as I rubbed her shoulder and then looked over at Harry. He had turned around and was leaning against Vivi’s car, running his fingers through his hair over and over—his nervous tic. He looked lost in thought—as though floods of terrible memories were coming back, like waves crashing a shoreline. I wanted to say something, but had no good words at the moment. My thoughts turned back to Vivi. She was waiting for the 911 operator to answer.
Vivi had been through this before. No, she hadn’t ever killed anyone, but short, steamy love affairs were basically on par for her. At one point, she’d been married to a congressman who lived full-time in Washington. He was twenty years older than Vivi and totally unattractive, but another blue blood just the same. The marriage didn’t last too long, though no one ever thought it would. Vivi would never leave the South. That would be like asking cotton to grow up North. Vivi just couldn’t be planted anywhere else. But the congressman had to live in D.C. With all that time apart everyone knew it would just grow stale. And it did after just a few short years. Besides, Vivi loved to be…well, let’s call it social. Yes, social was a perfect word for Vivi Ann McFadden. I’m not saying that she was a party girl, but she loved, thrived actually, on social interaction. Okay, Vivi was a party girl. She was an only child of wealth and privilege and most of the time she took the privilege part too far.
She never gave anything much thought. She just flew by the seat of her pants, or anyone else’s pants. Her free spirit was enviable. She swore like a sailor, even during high school, and had the reputation as a bit of the wild child of Tuscaloosa. She was popular and, no, not just with the men. Everyone loved her because she was so damn funny. The only little problem was that if Vivi thought it, it popped right out of her mouth before it ever stopped to register at her brain. Vivi never learned that some things should be thought but not actually said. Sometimes that got her into trouble. But she had such a hilarious personality she stayed at the center of the most sought-after social circles.
As I listened to her choke out her story to the 911 operator, I could tell that this event with Lewis would change her.
* * *
Harry and I left Mother’s with Vivi to go to the police station. I suggested to Harry that he could go on to the Fountain Mist and meet the ambulance, but he insisted he would prefer to stay with us. He didn’t seem to want to see Lewis, dead or alive. I tried my best to persuade him, but he wouldn’t budge. After all the years that had gone by, six, I think, since he and Lewis had even spoken, Harry just didn’t want to be the one to ID the body. If he got there first, it would be just him and poor, dead Lewis. And Harry didn’t want that, not after the way things had been between them. So he led the way to the police station downtown. After that we would all go together to the motel.
My emotions were in overdrive. Vivi was my best friend since third grade, my sister in every way, and Harry was my husband, my college sweetheart, though we had had our share of troubles. Between these relationships, the fact that Lewis was dead and the fact that I’m an attorney, too, well, I’ve never felt so stuck in such a messy fix as this. I didn’t know which feeling to feel, never mind knowing the right thing to say or who to say it to. We were all in shock for different reasons, and the trip to the police station was a silent one.
We arrived at the station in minutes. That’s the good thing about Tuscaloosa—everything is only minutes away. We got out of our cars and walked into the little building. It was on the corner of the street that faced the Warrior River. We stepped inside and I stood next to Vivi and held her hand as she talked to the police. Harry stood on her other side, trying with every fiber in his being to hold it together, to cover his emotions. Luckily for him, it was something he’d being training himself to do for ages now—even with me. A politician should be stoic, composed, unruffled—and I can tell you, he was great at that.
The little balding officer sat in front of us, diligently taking down Vivi’s half sentences and descriptive details of her last breathless moments with Lewis. When she finished, the pudgy officer looked up with his mouth open and eyes bugging through his tiny square glasses and eventually spoke. “Ahem. Anything else, ma’am?”
Officer Dooley knew Vivi. He used to work detail for her mother at the gate of the famous McFadden plantation and had known the family for years. Tuscaloosa is a small college town, where everyone knows everyone and has probably slept with their best friend’s brother. Believe me, I know that one for sure.
This scene at the station reminded me of the principal’s office in the fourth grade. Standing there together with Vivi and Officer Dooley and all his questions took me back. Vivi and I were in Catholic school together and were in Sister Pauline’s class—and she was the meanest old nun in the entire school. One day, Vivi brought a big roll of clear packing tape to school and we carefully devised the plan. At recess we practiced. Sister Pauline went out of class at 1:30 every day to meet with Father Mike about the religion lesson.
On the big day, we waited until she’d left for her meeting, and then Vivi rolled the clear tape all over the back of her chair. When Sister P. came back she sat down in her chair, snapping her ruler sharply on the desk and ordered us into silence. I remember the look Vivi and I passed each other. We were full of the devil, you could say—typical schoolgirls, at least most of the ones I knew.
“Here it comes,” said Vivi with a huge smile on her freckled face.