Demise in Denim

by Duffy Brown

  “That’s not going to work this time, lawyer boy. Yes, I was worried and all the time you were . . . Where were you?” I glanced around. “Where the heck were you?”

  “You have an attic; actually it’s more like a third floor that a lot of older houses have and got blocked off over the years. There’s an access panel in the hallway that you can crawl through, and in the bathroom there’s—”

  “I didn’t finish off under the sink in case I needed to get to the plumbing again, an old house hazard. It leads to the attic.” I punched Boone in the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?”

  “Well, you see, you sort of get this dopey look when you talk about me,” Boone said, looking a little smug.

  “You rat.”

  “You’re the one who looks dopey and it’s cute, actually it’s adorable, but if you knew I was right over your head, well, everybody would know I was here.”

  “Mamma knew, didn’t she? That’s why I got the care package and why it all disappeared so fast. You’re the one who got rid of that stalker guy, and you’re the one who pulled that fire alarm at the Plantation Club and pulled me away from getting run over by that truck. And you ate all my Fig Newtons. How’d you know about the third-floor attic? I didn’t even know how to get up there. You know more about my house than I do?”

  Boone ran his hand over his rough chin and studied the hardwood floor. “I sort of had your house appraised. Look,” he rushed on. “When you were divorcing Hollis, he wanted to sell the place and I talked him out of it.”

  “And I got the house. All along I thought it was because Hollis didn’t want people to think he was a complete ass, except Hollis is a complete ass and no way would he not sell the house and kiss off all that money.” My eyes shot wide open. “You paid him for my house?”

  “No, of course not. I waived my attorney fees and we called it even, so can we eat now or what?”

  It was after midnight; BW was in my bed and Boone wasn’t. Deckard knew something was going on when he showed up tonight, and like Boone said, the next time he came calling it would be with a warrant and half the Savannah police department. They’d find the attic.

  I stared at the ceiling from my mattress on the floor and watched shadows dance across the cracks that needed plastering and painting. I’d told Boone about Russell not buying the Old Harbor Inn, and we agreed that if he did knock off Conway and frame Boone for it, Russell wouldn’t have walked away from the deal. We also agreed Tucker had to be spitting mad and that he was suspect number one. The problem was still how to prove it.

  • • •

  Dinky was at the Fox at nine sharp with a fresh fruit salad and mini muffins and a little bit of baby puke down her back that we got cleaned up. The phone guys said they’d come tomorrow to work their magic and set Dinky up with a fax. I got in a platform rocker, twin beds, a nice yellow rug, and two desk lamps. A moving truck pulled to the curb and unloaded a dining room set, a step stool, and four bar stools and said the consigner would come around later to fill out the papers.

  “This is never going to work,” Dinky said to me as I dragged furniture around to arrange things. “You’re too busy; it’s like a three-ring circus here.”

  I swiped hair from my face and massaged my achy arms. “Yeah, now I got a house full of furniture but I need customers. The customer part is the whole point.”

  “I know,” Dinky said with a clever look on her face. “I’ll move my desk into the kitchen. That way I’ll be out of the traffic area and closer to the coffee. Great idea, huh?”

  Now I had no bed, no money, no customers, and no kitchen, but Dinky did bring fruit salad and muffins. “Sure, I’ll help you. We can lift the door off the back of the two chairs and take it into the kitchen, then come back and get the chairs and just reassemble the—”

  “There you are!” Tucker Adkins yelped as he staggered through the door and into the hall. His eyes looked like Google Maps, his breath at about eighty proof and counting, his suit wrinkled and dirty, no shower, no shave, lots of odor.

  “You’ve ruined my life.” He waved his hand in the air. “Everything was going to work out and then you had to start poking around, make Russell nervous, and now he’s gone.”

  “Actually I think he’s just down at the Savannah River Inn.”

  Eyes huge, Dinky inched closer to me and held my hand. Tucker picked up the flowered stapler from her desk and threw it across the room, breaking one of the lamps that had just arrived.

  “The Old Harbor Inn should be mine,” Tucker slurred. Dinky squeezed my hand hard as Tucker added, “I shouldn’t have to wait for Boone to get out of the way to get it. It’s mine! Conway bought it with my mother’s money.”

  “Pisses you off, does it?”

  Dinky gave me a shut the heck up look and Tucker pushed the fax machine off the desk; the machine crashed, pieces scattered everywhere. I took that as a yes, he was ticked.

  “Wish Boone never showed up?” I said, trying for more information as Dinky kicked me in the shins.

  Tucker hurled the lamp on Dinky’s desk across the room.

  “Wish Boone were dead? Glad Conway is? How did you get Boone’s gun from his desk? Swipe a key? Get a locksmith?”

  “Key?” Tucker blinked, trying to fight through the alcohol fog. “Gun?” He wobbled. “I didn’t kill Conway. Russell came to me, said he’d take care of everything.”

  Tucker stumbled, then tumbled onto the desk; the door listed to one side, then flipped up and smacked Tucker on the forehead, sending him backward onto the floor, completely knocked out.

  “Dear Lord above!” Dinky shrieked, her hair standing straight up. She took a closer look. “Is he dead?”

  Dinky nudged Tucker’s arm with her toe, and I bent down and felt his neck like they do in the movies. “He’s alive . . . I think.”

  “Too bad. What do we do now, call the police?”

  “Freaking no, not the cops. Let’s call his wife. Poor Steffy Lou, she’s got to live with this . . . thing. I don’t know her phone number.”

  “I do. She and Mr. Boone were on that theater project together.” Dinky retrieved her computer off the floor and pried it open, and the screen came to life. Dinky folded her hands and gazed skyward. “And God bless Apple.” She scurried over to her iPhone, which had skittered into the corner, and punched in the numbers.

  “Uh, Mrs. Adkins,” Dinky started. “Your husband is out cold over here at the Prissy Fox on Gwinnett, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news but he’s still alive, he’s just sort of a big blob in the hallway. So if you could come get him we’d be mighty grateful.” Dinky disconnected.

  “Bad news? A big blob on the floor?”

  “I was nervous.”

  I looked back to Tucker, and Dinky did the same; then she jumped back. “He’s making noises!” She picked up her flowered stapler and stood over Tucker in battle mode. “I’ll protect us.”

  I leaned closer. “I think he’s snoring.”

  A car squealed to a stop at the curb and I caught sight of Steffy Lou hustling up the walk. She threw open the front door. “Land of Goshen, can anything else happen in my life?”

  She nudged Tucker with the toe of her shoe, and her nudge was a lot harder than Dinky’s. “Get up, you drunken sot, you’re embarrassing yourself to no end and me right along with it. I do declare, sometimes I wonder what in the world I got myself into marrying you like I did. I could have been on Broadway.”

  For a second I thought Steffy Lou might burst into song, but instead she pulled Tucker’s big beefy arm to get him up. Not wanting Tucker in our hallway, Dinky and I each grabbed a leg.

  “To the car,” Steffy directed, dragging Tucker out onto the porch, and Dinky and I followed. Pushing and pulling, we manhandled Tucker Adkins to the white Lexus SUV. Steffy Lou opened the back hatch, and it took all three of us to hoist the two-hundred-plus
pounds of inebriated fat into the back.

  Dinky ran back inside to answer her phone, which was ringing like no tomorrow, and Steffy Lou said to me, “My housekeeper will help once I get him home.” She leaned heavily against the car. “First I lose Harper; now Tucker’s off the deep end, and if something doesn’t happen right fast the Tybee Theater will go to Grayden Russell.” Steffy Lou swiped away a tear. “I just can’t let that happen. I’ll have to figure something out. She looked back to me. “I hate to ask, but I’d be mighty grateful if you’d lend a hand.”

  “Steffy Lou, if I had a spare dime, you’d be the first person I’d give it to.”

  She smiled oh-so-sweetly, just like a true Southern belle. “Not that, honey. I just need to sit with somebody and chat a spell. I know you’re tied up with trying to find Walker innocent, but maybe together we can come up with a way to save the theater. You were so helpful with the Odilia chant. I’ll have Blanch make us up a batch of her shortbread cookies. They are truly divine.”

  “Does eight work for you?” How could I say no to Steffy Lou after all she’d been through, and of course there were shortbread cookies to consider and seeing the Hampton Lillibridge House up close and personal.

  “Why, that will be perfect.” Steffy Lou brightened and started for the driver’s side, then turned back. “Tucker’s a lot of things, you know, but he’s no killer. He didn’t do in his own daddy. He simply doesn’t have it in him. Tucker’s all show and bluster, and a bit of a drunk at times. If we put our heads together, maybe we can figure out who’s responsible for these terrible murders. I never did like that Russell person, maybe because he’s after my theater, but there’s just something about him you can’t trust.”

  Steffy Lou drove off, and I caught up with Dinky cleaning her desk off the floor. “And here I thought working at a law office was drama. Lordy, honey, if I worked here I’d be on Prozac in no time at all.”

  Except for the busted fax machine and broken lamp, we got Dinky back in business in the kitchen. Auntie KiKi buzzed in for a second to say she and Uncle Putter were doing a charity golf outing at Sweet Marsh Country Club and not to have fun while she was gone. By four Dinky declared her nerves totally shot, that she couldn’t put two intelligent thoughts together if her life depended on it, and she was headed for home with a good bottle of wine.

  I gussied up Gwendolyn in chic business attire and set her behind a desk in the display window, then added a “Furniture for Sale” banner that I ran off on Dinky’s printer. I missed selling cute clothes, I really did, but there was no use in taking them in if all my customers were at the boutique shopping their little ol’ hearts out.

  Hoping for a little more business, I stayed open till seven before closing up. I headed for a shower and peeked under the vanity to the gaping hole I’d left in back and nearly forgotten about. I wondered where Boone was now. I doubted he was in the attic, but he wasn’t far away, I just knew it, I could feel it.

  I pulled on white capris and a navy top and pilfered a bouquet of roses and hydrangeas from KiKi’s garden. No Southern woman would show up to tea and cookies empty handed, but expensive florist flowers were out of the question.

  “Well, aren’t you the sweetest thing to be bringing me flowers,” Steffy Lou said when she answered the door. “I do declare, after the day I’ve had, they surely are a lovely sight.”

  “This is an amazing home,” I said to Steffy Lou as we headed to the back of the house. The place wasn’t all that big, but every nook and cranny was done to perfection with just the right antique, painting, or expensive acquisition. “Is the house really as haunted as they say?”

  “Oh my, yes, shadows and noises all the time; it certainly is haunted and probably going to get worse before it gets better.” Steffy Lou put the flowers on the tea table, then turned around with a lovely Southern belle smile on her face and a gun in her hand. “Now why don’t you take a seat over there by Tucker. He’s a little drunk and he’s passed out at the moment, but that’s all part of the plan. The fact that he overindulged and had a hissy at your place was just an extra bonus I hadn’t counted on.”

  I didn’t move, I couldn’t. I just stared at Tucker Adkins slumped over in a gorgeous peach brocade wingback chair next to a piecrust cherry table set with a silver tea service and cookies. Steffy Lou gave me a hard shove. “Move along now, ya hear?” She waved her gun toward a matching peach chair. “These were my dear grandmother’s. She left them to me in her will. They were owned by Robert E. Lee himself, and Tucker intended to sell them to pay off his marina. Fact is, he intended to sell my house here and move me out to the wilds of some godforsaken marsh so he could afford his boats. I gave up everything for him. I gave up Broadway, I gave up the theater, until I get one of my own on Tybee.”

  “You . . . you killed Conway!” I sat in the peach chair mostly because I couldn’t stand.

  “I had to, dear, you can understand that. Mr. Financial Wizard is in hock up to his eyeballs. Conway cut us off and then left the cash in his estate to that clinic place and the inn to Walker. I had to fix things. I even had Harper helping me out by planting those pictures in Boone’s house and setting that fire at the theater to drum up support.”

  “And she spiked my drink? I could have killed my own auntie!”

  “That was the plan. Then Harper got greedy and planned to blackmail me. She had to go.”

  I took a deep breath. “You killed Conway, framed Walker, so Tucker will inherit the inn?”

  “And now dear Tucker has to go. If he gets the inn he’ll sell it to save his marina. If I get the inn, I sell it and the money goes to save the theater, a true philanthropic endeavor. And the bonus is that I can sell his marina to pay the mortgage on my lovely home here. It’s a perfect plan, you see.”

  “You just can’t kill Tucker. People will know, and why am I part of this?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you? You’re the worm on the hook. Where you go, Walker goes, and of course he has to die. Conway, Walker, Tucker, then me, that’s how the inn gets passed on. It has to wind up with me.”

  Steffy Lou looked at the hall clock as it bonged out the half hour. “And it’s just a matter of time now before Walker shows up. I left a little note taped to your door that says Tucker’s the killer, like you figured it out all by yourself. Walker the wonder boy is going to come looking for Tucker, thinking you’ve gotten in over your head like you always do and not suspect a thing when he sees me.”

  “Hey, I do not always get in over my head.”

  “Look where you’re sitting, dear. I’ll simply shoot Walker with Tucker’s gun and make it look as if Tucker did the deed, then had brother’s remorse and took his own life. Messy, but all good drama is terribly messy. After it’s all over I’ll go retrieve my note.”

  “Why would anyone think Boone would come here? He’s a wanted man, there’s a price on his head.”

  “And Tucker put that price on his head to try to get Walker in jail quick so he could get the inn. The way people will see this is that Walker is a distraught individual. He’s already killed the father who abandoned him, so it makes perfect sense that he’d go after the brother who cheated him out of everything. You’re collateral damage. You came to keep Boone, the man you love, from making a terrible mistake and got caught in the crossfire.”

  “What crossfire?”

  “Honey, he’s coming to save you; he’ll have a gun.”

  “And you’ll be the witness to all this.”

  “I’m a performer; I could have been on the New York stage. I am magnificent!” Steffy Lou squared her shoulders and tipped her chin, and if she burst forth with “Give My Regards to Broadway” I’d strangle her with my own two hands, the consequences be damned.

  A weapon, I needed a weapon. There were tea and cookies, a fire poker just beyond, and a quick shadow in the mirror over the mantel. Here’s the thing, it could be Boone, meaning I�
��d have backup if I tried something. Or it could be one of the infamous Hampton Lillibridge ghosts. Never in all my born days did I think my life would depend on ghost or no ghost.

  “I think I’d like some tea,” I said to Steffy Lou, my heart pinballing around in my chest.

  “Last meal and all, help yourself.”

  I picked up the teapot. Steffy Lou looked back to the clock, and I took the lid off the pot and threw it in Tucker’s face. He jumped awake, blubbering and drooling. Steffy Lou looked to him and I jumped on her as Boone tore in the back door. The gun went off; a vase of immaculate white magnolia blooms blasted into the air as we wrestled Steffy Lou to the floor.

  “Let me go,” she yelled. “I have to save the theater, it’s my destiny.”

  I handed Boone a gold tasseled window tieback for Steffy Lou’s wrists and laughed. “You’re not a ghost.”

  “I think I’ve come close a few times this week.” Boone laughed back, fatigue melting from his face.

  I leaned back against the blue love seat, with Boone beside me. Tucker staggered awake, rubbed his eyes, and tried to focus. “Walker. What are you doing in my house? I’ve had enough of this. I’m calling the cops.”

  “Tucker, for once in your life do something,” Steffy Lou bellowed as Deckard barged through the front door, with Ross right beside him.

  Arms spread, I jumped up in front of Boone in full defensive mode yelling, “He’s innocent, He’s innocent! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  All smiles, Boone stood up next to me. “They know, blondie.” He put his arm around me. “It’s okay. They know it’s a setup just like I knew.”

  I watched the uniformed cops haul the arguing Steffy Lou and Tucker out the door, and I looked from Ross to Deckard to Boone. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t I know it was a setup?”

  “That’s because you didn’t see the note on the front door,” Deckard shrugged. “Walker, it’s Tucker. Steffy Lou might just as well have written I did it.”

  “Because?”

  “Because you never ever call me Walker.”