To Live and Die In Dixie Read Free Page B

Atlanta’s Tenth Street “Hippie Strip” during the heyday of the city’s version of Haight Ashbury. The conviction had been overturned on a technicality so quickly that he’d barely had time to get settled into jail before being set free again.
    The murder charge alone would have been enough to make Littlefield unpopular in most neighborhoods. But Littlefield compounded his sins in a number of ways. Neighbors couldn’t fail to notice the steady stream of young girls coming and going from the mansion. “Shop assistants,” Littlefield called them, and a few of them supposedly had worked in the antiques shop he ran out of the mansion’s carriage house.
    That antiques shop was a sore subject in Inman Park, whose neighbors had fought a twenty-year-long uphill battle to gentrify what had declined into a seedy slum of broken-down bungalows, boarding houses and dilapidated apartment buildings. Eagle’s Keep, with its rose red brickwork and elaborate gingerbread picked out in shades of sand and ivory, should have been the pride of the community, as it had been when a Yankee department store magnate had built it in 1893. But a century later, neighbors claimed Littlefield’s clients hogged precious on-street parking, and his practice of renting out the mansion for large fund-raisers and noisy parties also set their teeth on edge.
    Twin Confederate flags fluttered in the breeze from flagpoles mounted on either side of the front door of Eagle’s Keep that day.
    â€œUh oh,” Baby said, from the back of the van. “I don’t like the looks of this.”
    â€œSomething tells me this ain’t the Inman Park NAACP headquarters,” Jackie chimed in.
    We all piled out of the van and I opened the cargo door to unload the cart full of cleaning gear.
    â€œI wonder which room they found that girl’s body in,” Edna said, peering up at the twin turrets disappearing into leafy green treetops.
    â€œSomebody say somethin’ about a cup of coffee?” Baby asked. “I’d like me a Coca-Cola if it’s all the same.”
    Sister grabbed Baby’s arm for guidance and leaned her lips up against Baby’s ear. “They talkin’ bout a body in this here house,” Sister shouted. “Right here in this house we fixin’ to clean.”
    â€œThat’s nice,” Baby replied, patting her sister’s arm and guiding her carefully over the curb. “Step up here now so you don’t take a fall.”
    Jackie clasped her arms around herself and shivered, despite the warmth of the late afternoon. “No kiddin’, Callahan,” she said. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies. And I ain’t even been inside yet.”
    â€œNow look ahere, missy,” Neva Jean said, addressing herself to Jackie, who stood staring at the flags. “Just because Mr. Littlefield happens to fly the Stars and Bars don’t mean he’s the Grand Lizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Lots of people who are interested in history fly the Rebel flag. It don’t mean nothin’ against colored people. Why, me ’n’ Swannelle got a Confederate flag on the pickup truck. Jackie, you know how I feel about you. Why, if I had a colored sister, you’d be it.”
    Jackie glanced over at me and shook her head. “I know, Neva Jean. And if I had to have a redneck bleached-blond honky for a sister, I’d pick you too.”
    â€œThat’s sweet,” Neva Jean said, pecking her friend on the cheek. “Come on, let’s get in there and get busy before I have to leave for my ball.”
    We pressed the doorbell, setting off a sonorous set of chimes somewhere inside, and waited. And waited. Finally, a woman pulled the heavily carved door open. A green apron was wrapped around her skeletally thin body. She was short, with spiked mahogany-colored hair and a harried expression. “Yes?” she said, looking expectantly at our