by Duffy Brown
Chapter Six
THE engine sputtered and died. Water rushed in the open doorway, trapping me inside, inching up my legs, covering my knees, making me wish I was six-two for a little more breathing room instead of five-five. Lord, get me out of this one and I’ll do something really nice, I bargained. Not that God needed a bargain from me but I figured He was always up for a good laugh.
Big Brown settled onto the bottom, dropping into the primal goo, leaving me dry as a bone from the waist up. I made the sign of the cross and rolled my eyes skyward. “I thank you kindly, Sir, I truly do.”
Marsh bugs chirped, the stillness of the swamp closing in around me as if nothing life-threatening happened at all. Packages bobbed about like toys in a bathtub; a silver teapot swirled by, then dropped into the murkiness. A turtle swam by, then climbed onto one of the packages from Icy, the little flotilla drifting out the door into the marsh.
“Is everything okay down there?” bellowed a voice from the road.
“Just peachy,” I yelled back, not wanting anyone to see me in such a state. I was still shaking, I smelled like sweat eau de swamp, and my clothes stuck to me, showing off things best not exposed by accident and only by choice. A swamp encounter was not by choice. I scooched off my driving perch, the water creeping to just below the Gap on my shirt. Cautiously I stepped into the squishy bottom, now wet up to my boobs and instantly losing my flip-flops in the goosh. Pushing aside a growth of cattails I took a few steps, the muck sliding up between my toes. Something slithered against my leg and I bit back a screech. If it was a snake, the Lord himself would not be the only one walking on water.
I wiggled between more grasses, caught sight of the road, breathed a sigh of relief until I gazed up at a red Chevy convertible and Walker Boone beside it fit, trim, and perfect.
“Reagan?” Boone’s brows arched over his aviator sunglasses. He slid them off to get a better look no doubt, a smirky smile making its way across his lips. “I should have guessed.”
I poked my head around a clump of weedy things, keeping the rest of my transparency out of view. “No, you shouldn’t have guessed it was me out here. I don’t usually drive a UPS truck into a swamp.”
“But you wind up in some mighty fine messes and this time you outdid yourself. I came around the bend and saw the truck take a header into the water. What happened? Too used to driving KiKi’s Beemer?”
“I can drive a truck just fine, thank you very much.”
“Uh, Reagan, you got to get out of there.”
“So you can see my clothes stuck to me and give me a lecture on getting in shape and not eating junk food.” I parked my hands on my soggy hips. “I’ll tell you what, I happen to like junk food. It makes me happy, a lot happier than I am right now. I’m all about Snickers and doughnuts and I hate tofu. It’s like eating sponge. It’s gross.”
“Gator.”
“I hate alligator meat, too.”
“It’s not mutual. Alligator behind you. Run . . . or maybe swim.”
“Gator?”
“Now, Reagan.”
“My feet are stuck. It’s like quicksand in here.” I was so scared I couldn’t have moved anyway. I forced myself to look back at the alligator, is tail swaying gracefully back and forth, propelling his long, dark green sleek body toward me at a nice, steady pace. He sized me up, I could tell, thinking one bite or two, his mouth of seventy-five teeth opening. Seventy-five? Where did that come from? Amazing what you remember when facing the jaws of death.
Boone turned for his car.
“You’re leaving me! You can’t leave me. I’ll haunt you every night, I swear I will.”
He reached into the backseat, then jumped into the marsh, dropping to waist-high water, baseball bat in hand. He slogged toward me. “A bat!” I yelled. “You’re from the hood and you’re packing a bat? Where’s the gun, the heat? The AK-47.” I didn’t know what an AK-47 was, but it sounded powerful and mean and right now that was a good thing.
“I don’t shoot gators.”
“Just people?”
“On occasion.”
“For crying in a bucket, Boone, he wants to eat me!”
“Had that feeling a time or two myself.” Boone grabbed my arm, yanking me out of the goop like a toy, and whacked the gator on the snout. The gator arched up, flung his tail and looked pissed as all get-out. He opened his mouth wider and snapped at Boone, chasing us backward.
“Good God, you’re making him mad.”
“You got a better idea, Blondie?”
“He’s Southern. He’s a foodie.” I tore open one of Icy’s packages floating by and flung fistfuls of shrimp at the gator. He chomped at the food, all those teeth coming together in one loud ferocious bite after another.
“Well, I’ll be,” I said in complete astonishment. “It worked.”
Boone snagged me around the waist like a football and propelled us through the cattails to the bank. We stumbled up the muddy side, across sand and rocks, and scrambled into the car. Gators were fast as greased lightning on land but they couldn’t open car doors for diddly . . . yet. You never knew for sure about gators.
“Why aren’t you in your shop?” Boone said between pants, his shirt glued to finely sculpted six-pack abs. Bet the gator was female; no wonder she went after Boone. If she’d been screwed over by him in a divorce, she’d know better.
“Don’t call me Blondie, and why were you out at Waverly Farms?”
Boone plucked up a strand of my scraggly hair and slowly gave it a twirl, his breathing settling back to normal. “But you are blonde. On occasion that is. And you act blonde.”
I folded my arms over my chest hoping for a dollop of modesty with things poking out of a wet T-shirt that shouldn’t be poking. “Don’t you stereotype me, Walker Boone. You can get sued for that, you know, and you’re just trying to change the subject and get me ticked off. What about Reese? What are you up to?”
“Right now, saving your bacon.”
“Hey, I’m the one who threw the shrimp. That makes me saving your bacon, again, I might add.” I caught a glimpse of Big Brown all forlorn in the swamp and felt a huge tug of sadness. “Guess this means Chantilly will get fired for sure.”
Boone started the car but instead of speeding off down the road he turned to me and swiped a smear of mud from my chin. He touched a sore spot on my forehead and gave me a strange sort of look. “Are you okay? I mean are you really okay?”
Boone concerned about me? What? How’d that happen? After two years of torture and anguish this was sort of . . . sweet. “I’m okay; are you okay?” I picked a glob of weed from his shoulder and flung it back into the swamp.
“Been though worse.” My gaze met Boone’s for a split second, something dark and mysterious lurking there. He cleared his throat, then hit the gas. “Try not to drip on my seats, okay.”
I held up a wet arm. “What am I supposed to do? Will myself dry?”
“Sit on the floor. You smell like a swamp.”
“You’re no rose garden yourself.” And here we were leaving sweet in the dust and back to scum-sucking lawyer in less then thirty seconds flat.
• • •
“Well, it’s official,” Chantilly whined as she shuffled into the Prissy Fox the next morning munching a doughnut, coffee in the other hand.
I had the door open enjoying the morning cool before the city turned into a blast furnace. I happened to be in the midst of changing the display in the front bay window from a yellow cropped jacket and green capris to fall colors of denim and khaki and cute ankle boots. I needed something to get people thinking about fall and a new wardrobe. If I could figure out a way to get the temperature out of the nineties and into the seventies, that would help a ton.
Chantilly scratched Bruce Willis behind the ears, fed him a chunk of pastry, then plopped down on the little green stool. She parked her chin in her palm, elbow resting on the old door serving as a counter. She broke off a section of doughnut for me, then polished off the
rest. “UPS fired my sorry behind and it’s all because of a few broken dishes and packages of shrimp. Everything was insured; I don’t know what all the fuss is about.” She licked the glaze from her fingers one by one. “How could this happen? Where’s the understanding, the compassion? I’m an overwrought woman here.”
“Their package truck and delivery acquisition information device is in the middle of a swamp.”
“There is that. I suppose I’ll just have to work here at the Fox.” When I didn’t reply in the affirmative, Chantilly peered at me out of the corner of her eyes. “You owe me, you know. You were the one who drove into the water.”
“I was rammed off that road from behind,” I offered in my own defense and added a navy jacket to the display.
“Well, I never get run into a swamp and neither does any other driver I know. A flat tire now and then and maybe a parking ticket but never this. What did you go and do?”
“I picked up packages, period.” I made a cross over my heart in promise style and left off the part about interrogating Reese, infuriating Waynetta, and ticking off Icy, all pretty much Reagan style.
“Well, Lord be praised!” Auntie KiKi hurried through the front door. She threw her arms around my neck. “You could have been eaten by a gator. Thank the saints in heaven Walker Boone came along when he did and saved you. I got a tweet this morning from Elsie Abbott.”
“Since when do you tweet?”
“Couldn’t let the Abbott sisters outdo me now, could I. I’d be kicked off the kudzu vine as a has-been.” Kiki pulled out her iPhone, touched the screen, and read, “FTW. Reagan in Gray’s Creek with gator and Boone. Delish. Who to eat what.”
“What were the Abbotts doing on Whitemarsh? And for your information Boone did not save me. And what in the world is FTW.”
KiKi and Chantilly exchanged exasperated looks. “For the win, honey,” KiKi said as if teaching me how to conjugate verbs like she did in the fourth grade. “It’s my tweet kicks your tweet right in the patoot.”
“You started all this.” I glared at Chantilly, shaking my finger at her. “No one’s going to get away with anything with this tweet stuff going on.”
“Like you and Boone together?” Chantilly grinned.
“He insisted I sit on the floor so I wouldn’t drip all over his car and he said I smelled. Guess the sisters missed that part.” I didn’t have a phone. My mode of transportation when I wasn’t mooching KiKi’s Beemer was the Chatham Area Transit system and the only tweets I got were from birds outside my window.
KiKi continued, “My guess is the sisters were out at Bonaventure for a wake since August seems to be a right popular month for people dying. My guess is folks are just plum tired of the heat around here and want to escape any way they can. Elsie and AnnieFritz went over to Basil’s Deli out that way for one of those margarita wraps. They probably got lost in the back roads, they usually do that too, and happened to see Boone rescuing you in the swamp.”
I started to protest the rescue bit again but got distracted by Percy Damon standing outside on my sidewalk. He had on a blue suit with high-water pants, white starched shirt, red tie, and sweat slithering down his cheek. By noon he’d look like a drowned flag. He’d talk to my would-be customers. They’d listen, then run off as if chased by evil spirits. I said to Chantilly, “What’s going on out there?”
Chantilly’s gaze followed my pointing. She closed her eyes for a moment and massaged her forehead. “Percy said if he has to question every single person in Savannah to prove I’m innocent, he’d do that very thing. He’s really into my case. I mentioned I was working here and he figured the real killer might show up to find out what I know. That he’d return to the scene of the crime.”
“The Fox isn’t the scene of any crime, and I have few enough customers as it is without Percy scaring people off with murder questions. No one’s going to give up vital information out there in the open air on a sidewalk. They could be implicated, and if they do know anything, they’ll clam up all the more so as not to get involved. What is he thinking?”
“He’s trying to be helpful.”
Another lady in a nice dress with a Coach bag over her shoulder hightailed it back down my sidewalk. A scream inched up my throat but that wouldn’t do much to attract customers either. “What I want to know is why on earth did you get Percy as your lawyer in the first place? He’s a nice kid and all but has no experience. UPS pays fine. You should have savings enough to find better representation.”
“I’ll have you know that my hiring Percy has been good for his self-esteem. He wasn’t the most liked kid in school with his classmates teasing him about his name, his red hair, and being short. He worked his way through law school doing odd jobs and it took him three tries to pass the bar.”
“You hired him because you feel sorry for him?” KiKi said. “Honey, invite him to dinner or sit next to him at church or fix him up with a hot date for Saturday night. Don’t put your life in his hands.”
Chantilly rolled her shoulders in defeat. “I’m sort of broke after the cruise and the down payment on the condo. Percy’s right cheap. I’m afraid he’ll have to do.”
Auntie KiKi handed me a khaki skirt with ruffles at the hemline to add to my display and said to Chantilly, “Get a second mortgage. You must have equity in the condo or you wouldn’t have been able to buy it. Banks are right cranky these days about who they lend money to. A year or so ago Delta Longford over at the bakery tried to expand the place. The banks refused outright. Then she and Tipper got divorced and she gave up the idea.”
“I didn’t have enough of a down payment for the condo so Simon lent me money.” Chantilly looked all dreamy-eyed and clasped her hands to her bosom. “Fact is that’s how we met. I was having a beer down at Wet Willies and telling GracieAnn about my financial state of affairs. She told me about Simon and that he might be able to lend me the money I needed. I don’t think she considered the possibility that Simon and I would get on like we did. GracieAnn and I had a falling out over Simon and that’s a pity, but I just couldn’t help myself. Simon was some kind of handsome and dressed fine as can be and then got that canary yellow Audi sports car he drove all over the place.”
KiKi studied my display and did a thumbs-up. “Well, I hope that cruise was worth it.”
“I’m here to tell you it was worth it and then some. Mamma and Daddy had the best time. They even got to have dinner with the captain himself right there at his table.”
“You sent your parents on the cruise?” And here I gave myself a big pat on the back when I took Mamma to lunch once in a while.
“Mamma and Daddy were so down in the mouth after Daddy got shot in that drug bust last year they needed cheering up so I sent them on the cruise. Then this condo came up for sale not far from my apartment and Simon knew the owner. He got a fine deal on it for me. Daddy can’t keep up the house anymore and after doctor bills there wasn’t much equity. Simon was such a great boyfriend, for a while.” Chantilly sniffed. “And now he’s gone.”
Chantilly was one fine daughter and here was Simon taking advantage of her and she didn’t even realize it. I thought of Simon dumping GracieAnn for Chantilly and then Chantilly for Waynetta. Dear dead Simon was working his way up the financial food chain and finally hit the silver tuna at the top with Waynetta. “What interest rate did Simon charge you?” I asked Chantilly.
“Interest rate?” Chantilly had a wide-eyed oblivious look about her. Love wasn’t blind, it was just plain old stupid. I knew that firsthand from my prenup experience with Hollis. Too bad Chantilly suffered from the same affliction. “Does Percy know about this loan?”
“Why would any of that matter?”
KiKi patted Chantilly’s hand. “Honey, you owed Simon thousands and now he’s dead.” We all made the sign of the cross for the dead. “It’s called motive for wanting Simon gone and out of your life.”
“But I didn’t want him gone or out of my life,” Chantilly protested, her eyes misting. “I
loved Simon. I know he treated me badly but that wasn’t the whole story.”
“When you figure out the interest rate he was charging you, you’ll probably spit on his grave.” I made a display of scarves on the counter.
“I would never do such a thing.”
“Give it time, honey. You will when you realize how much you were going to pay him over the years. I wonder where he got the cash to lend to you. His mother is a server at the Pink House and he’s a junior officer at the bank. Money had to be coming in from somewhere if he was lending it out.”
Chantilly folded her arms, her lower lip in a stubborn pout. “Simon had nice things, a condo in the Oglethorpe Building, corner unit that faces York Street and gets the morning sun and not the cheap ground floor. He gave me a big old diamond I truly loved when we got engaged. ’Course he took it back, but this all goes to prove the man had some business sense about him. He was even named Employee of the Year over there at the bank and has the trophy to prove it.”
“How does somebody get their hands on serious money?” I said aloud, trying to put the pieces together.
“They inherit it, work for it, steal it, marry it, make it,” KiKi said in an offhanded manner as someone who knew a lot more about big bucks than I did. She added a shoulder bag and brown belt to the scarves.
“If he was printing money in his attic, he’d be caught by now, and if he was skimming from the bank, he’d be in the slammer for sure. Marrying money was next on his list. That leaves stealing.” I slapped my hands on the counter making my dear auntie, Chantilly, and BW jump a foot. “Look around here. What do you see?”
KiKi gave the Fox a once-over. “I see a lot of clothes you want to sell and not doing very well at it.”
“I don’t sell a sweater, then pay off the person who consigned that particular sweater with that same money. I have other consigners and pay the next one who comes in with that money. My guess is that’s what Simon did.”