Lethal in Old Lace

by Duffy Brown

  “No!” Annie Fritz gasped.

  I folded my arms and glared. “What the heck’s going on around here?”

  Annie Fritz looked innocent as the new-fallen snow, not that we got any of that stuff around here. “I believe you’re overstressed with getting engaged to Walker Boone and think you saw Bonnie Sue. That must be it.”

  “You think I imagined Bonnie Sue?”

  “Of course not.” Annie Fritz’s laugh was a little too high-pitched to be real. She nodded to the picture behind me. “A picture of the woman’s right there, so you think you saw her another time. It’s a case of bridal brain freeze.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Happens all the time. Tell me this, did anyone else see Bonnie Sue in our Caddy or on your porch?”

  “Well…”

  “There you go. A case of brain freeze, pure and simple.” Elsie gave me an “I win” giggle, then backed me toward the door. “I need to get these juices to the dining room, and you need to be going home now and putting your feet up and taking a deep breath so you can start planning that wedding. Sister and I will look in on you later after we finish up chatting with Mr. Jim about getting in some more business around here with Willie’s room needing to get filled.”

  Annie Fritz balanced the tray on her arm, opened the door, gave me a little shove onto the porch, and then nudged the door with her hip, closing it in my face. I gave the door a frustrated kick, then spun around and smacked right into Hollis. “And this day just keeps getting better and better.”

  Hollis was in his work uniform—Brooks Brothers khakis and navy polo with “Beaumont Realtors” stitched on the pocket—and, as always, flashing his big bleached-white smile. “Kicking doors? What’s the problem, Reagan, trouble in paradise already? Boone come to his senses about marrying you and run for his life like I did?”

  “I’m here on business, and I’m guessing you’re here to sell Sleepy Pines right out from under Mr. Jim.”

  Hollis glanced up at the decorative arch over the door, the dental molding at the eaves, and salivated. “I’ve been trying to get him to put the place on the market for years. It’s got great bones and a fine history, though a coat or two of paint sure wouldn’t hurt. Robert E. himself slept in this very place, you know.”

  “According to you, Robert E. slept in every house in Savannah.”

  “Helps jack up the price, I can tell you that, but I’m here for a social call to see my dear Uncle Foley.”

  “Who’s rich, getting up there in age, and spending way too much time with a woman who might wind up in his will instead of you? Just so you know, cousin Foley seems to be truly smitten with Miss Bonnie Sue, to the point where he’s declared a duel to win her fair hand. I’d say things are getting serious between them.”

  “Impossible.” Hollis’s eyes narrowed, his lips thinning. “I’ll … I’ll get an attorney,” he snorted. “I’ll have Folly declared incompetent if that’s what it takes. That money’s mine, all mine, I’m next in line to inherit. I’ve sucked up to that old goat for years, and that money is not going to some woman he’s taken up with!”

  And there, ladies and gentlemen, is a little glimpse as to why Hollis Beaumont the Third—money-grubber extraordinaire—was my ex and not my current. I headed down the steps, turned for home, then jogged off, regretting every doughnut and cookie I’d ever eaten.

  “You look like something the dog hunted down and buried,” Auntie KiKi said through the open window of the Beemer as she rolled up beside me on West Charlton. “What in all that’s holy are you running from now?”

  “Fat. Must … get … into … wedding … dress.”

  “Keep this up and you’ll be getting into a coffin.”

  I could feel the coolness of the Beemer’s AC and glanced at the exquisite comfy brown leather interior. I wanted to be part of that AC and leather more than anything. Then I imagined looking like a cream puff on my wedding day. I gave KiKi a “See you later” wave and stumbled off as she stopped for a light. Some people had great mind-clearing revelations when jogging. The only thing on my mind was trying not to pass out in the middle of the sidewalk and embarrass myself.

  I cut across the grassy knoll of Forsythe Park, around the sparkling white fountain then turned onto Gwinnett, Cherry House just ahead. Holy cow, there really was a line of people on my sidewalk, and they were all looking up at something.

  A bird? A plane? Actually, it really was Superman. Walker Boone stood on my porch roof, heaving boards and hammers and doing all those manly things needed to fix the gaping hole there. I didn’t normally have gaping holes in Cherry House, but this one had come about the previous week when a snoopy reporter crashed through while looking for Boone in my bedroom when he was on the run. Right now, Boone had an appreciative audience, including me. I paused to catch my breath as Bruce Willis bounded my way.

  “I missed you, too,” I said, scratching between his ears. “You’re all hot and sweaty, mister. Were you making goo-goo eyes at the cute poodle over on Calhoun again? You have to pace yourself, my friend. The heart can only take so much.”

  Avoiding the crowd, BW and I circled around to the back door. I needed to open the Fox on time in case any of those ogling ladies stayed around to buy something. More than likely they were there only to enjoy early-morning eye candy along with their Starbucks. Not that I blamed them. Too bad I couldn’t charge for the privilege.

  I got BW’s daily veggie hot dog from the fridge. “Sit.” BW did. “Hot dog.” BW barked twice, earning his treat. BW never barked, and I wasn’t big on telling him what to do; after all, he never ordered me around. This was just our little game.

  I got what little cash I had from my own personal bank, which happened to be a Rocky Road ice cream container in the freezer. Keeping with the tempting treats theme, I sorted the bills into the Godiva candy box that served as my cash resister and wondered how long I could keep the Fox and Cherry House going with no customers. I hustled into the hallway and set the box on the green door laid across two chairs that I used as a checkout counter. I studied the stack of bills sitting at the end. The Abbott sisters weren’t the only ones with cash flow problems, and the thought of Hollis actually getting his grimy real estate paws on my house and selling it because I couldn’t afford to keep it made me sick.

  I hobbled upstairs, trying to ignore my poor aching jogging muscles, then ducked into the bathroom. I peeled off my sweaty clothes, scrubbed, shampooed, then hurried into my bedroom for clean clothes, and—right there, staring in my window from his perch on the porch roof, was Walker Boone.

  I stopped dead, my heart jumping into my throat. Boone was shirtless, I was clothesless, and he had … the look. Lord have mercy and saints preserve us, every woman with a pulse knew the look.

  Chapter Five

  “I have a shop to open,” I said in a feeble voice that was the result of twelve years of Catholic education where hard work and responsibility had been drummed into my head and trumped everything else, including a severe hormone attack. “Later maybe?”

  The smile joined the look, and Boone hitched his leg through the open bedroom window.

  “Your fan club below will miss the view.”

  “But I like this view.”

  “Me?”

  “Definitely you.”

  My heart raced, I couldn’t breathe, and I felt a little dizzy as Boone slowly … oh so very slowly, with fire in his eyes and a devil smile on his lips … prowled my way. Any thought of later vanished. Maybe was not even an option. Boone took my left hand, then my right, pinning them behind my back as he kissed my lips and neck and lower, much lower. And twenty minutes later I opened the Prissy Fox with a big dopey grin on my face.

  “It’s about time you got here. We have plans and they don’t include waiting for you,” Anna said, her sister Bella right behind her as they hurried inside, their six-inch heels clacking on the hardwood floor. The women who’d watched Boone on the roof now stood on the front porch gazing into the shop
, but they didn’t enter. Why?

  “I was … sort of busy,” I said to Anna and Bella. I retrieved the candy box, then said to the maybe-customers huddled at the door, “The Prissy Fox is open for business. You all can come on in now. I won’t bite.”

  “It’s not your biting we’re worried about,” a lady in jeans said, still not budging from the doorway.

  “We got business here with you,” Bella interrupted. “And we’re wanting to get it over with as fast as possible.”

  Anna and Bella were known far and wide as the gold digger sisters who’d married Clive and Crenshaw … though I could never remember who was married to whom. C and C were little old men with big houses and even bigger bank accounts. I didn’t care about the sisters’ trophy marriages, but I did care about the boutique they’d opened that sold designer clothes at a fraction of the cost. How could they do that? Well, they couldn’t. The clothes were knockoffs bought from a sleazy company, and when the cops showed up at Anna’s and Bella’s Boutique one fine day, they weren’t there to shop. Instead they closed them down.

  The gold diggers faced the door, and Anna put two fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle that would have done any construction worker proud. “Attention, everyone out there on the porch. Listen up. Bella and I are here to say that the Prissy Fox does not have and never did have bedbugs.”

  My mouth opened and closed and nothing came out. “Wh … What?” I finally managed. “Why would anyone, any of you”—I waved my hand at the shoppers—“think the Prissy Fox had bedbugs?”

  “Because,” Bella offered in an exasperated huff, “Anna and I spread the rumor that you did, a big old infestation of the things. We wanted your customers to be our customers, and we got them, but now we have even bigger plans on the horizon and don’t need your customers for that. We got our eye on a whole new demographic.”

  The gold diggers exchanged fist bumps as Bella raised her voice, saying to the crowd, “You can all shop at this”—she made a sour face as she glanced around—“place. So come on in, get out those little old cell phones, start tweeting and texting and messaging and spreading the word like you all do. The Prissy Fox is alive and well and open and there are no bugs and there never have been. It was just a little joke between friends, nothing more.”

  I wasn’t laughing. The customers at the door exchanged looks again. The gal in jeans tipped her foot inside the foyer as if testing pool water.

  “That’s it, my little shoppers,” Anna said in a singsong voice. “Come on in, all is well. See, Bella and I are in here, and you can trust that if there were a hint of a bug, any kind of bug, we’d be running for our lives and screaming our heads off.”

  Two older ladies in summer floral dresses slowly followed the gal in jeans. They inched forward, other shoppers now following. Their eyes darted side to side, on high alert for anything crawling about. In unison they shuffled into what had once been my living room before I converted the first floor of Cherry House into a consignment shop.

  Racks of gently worn evening and garden party dresses now hung on one side of the room; jackets, blouses, and tops adorned the other side. I’d kept the lovely crystal chandelier that came with the house along with the old Oriental rug and blue drapes pulled back to add to the prissy part of the fox. Shoes were arranged in the back, and a lovely mahogany table and chairs that once upon a time in my married life had served as a dining room table now displayed jewelry, purses, and hats.

  Bella slapped two papers on the green door counter and fished a pen from her pink and totally adorable (and expensive) bag. “Okay, we apologized and set things right and even got shoppers in your place, so now we’re done here. Sign these and we’ll be on our way.”

  Still in shock, I watched the customers, real live customers, milling around, picking out clothes, trying on shoes and hats and scarves.

  “Yoohoo.” Anna waved her hand in front of my face, snapping her fingers to get my attention. “Eyes on me. We don’t have all day, you know. Sign the blasted papers, will ya, and get this over with.”

  I looked at the heading on the paper with the words printed there finally registering. “Liars Anonymous? What the heck is Liars Anonymous?”

  “Mostly it’s a total pain in the rear,” Anna huffed. “But it’s better than jail, and we want to put this behind us as fast as possible so we can get on with our plans. Our lawyers are working on straightening things out, and Clive and Crenshaw pulled strings with some old fart judge they go fishing with. Now Bella and I have to do this stupid twelve-step program and attend meetings, and there’s community service involved, like driving decrepit old people around who can’t drive themselves. We never thought we could get into trouble for having a little fun like opening our boutique. We just opened it in the first place ’cause we’re tired of everyone thinking we’re nothing but dumb blonde trophy wives. We’re a lot more than that, you know.”

  Like felons, I added to myself as Anna pushed the papers closer and handed me a pen. “Put your name at the bottom with the date.”

  “So your boutique is closed for good,” I said as I wrote.

  Bella parked her perfectly manicured hand on her perfect left hip, which was covered by a really nice cream silk skirt that cost more than I’d make all day. “You just don’t get it, do you? How do you think you got your customers back? If our boutique were still open, no one would be here shopping in this hovel, that’s for sure.”

  I parked my unmanicured hand on my not-so-perfect hip. “Meaning they’d be at your place buying knockoff junk?”

  “Ancient history. We have other ideas—bigger, better ones.” Anna snapped up the papers, stuck out her tongue at me, and the gold digger sisters left the building.

  Lies and bedbugs? I’d nearly lost my business because of a malicious rumor and designer names glued in crappy clothes? How could those stuck-up witches do such a thing? I considered running after their shiny black Escalade and ripping up those papers and letting Anna and Bella rot in their twelve-step program. Then I heard hammering overhead. Boone! Not Clive, not Crenshaw, but my totally divine fiancé.

  Forget the gold diggers. I was too much in love to think about them, and I hadn’t been in love in years. Hollis had not been great at in love. He hadn’t even been mediocre at in love … unless you were talking about how he felt about himself. But Boone … the man was perfection. Boone made in love a true art form. Mozart could compose symphonies, Shakespeare pen sonnets. How’d I get so lucky to be in love with Boone? I had no idea, but I promised myself I was not going to screw this up, no matter what.

  I wrote up a sale for a really ugly green blouse I’d never thought I’d get rid of, then took in a group of nice designer clothes from a new consigner with terrific taste. Social media was the best of times and for sure the worst. Spreading rumors of bugs had kept customers away, and now tweets and messages of bargains were bringing customers back.

  “What catastrophe did Thing One and Thing Two bring on this time around?” Auntie KiKi wanted to know as she swished into the Fox, her red dancing skirt floating around her ankles. “I just finished up a lesson with Aldeen Ross to get her ready for the policeman’s ball and spotted the ‘I M FAB’ license plate on the Escalade at the curb. Gave me shivers just knowing they were in the neighborhood.”

  Aldeen was the local police detective KiKi and I ran into more times than any of us wanted. She was short and sometimes plump, depending on recent exercise and doughnut consumption. We’d bonded over dead bodies, trips to the Cakery Bakery, and hunting the bad guys—not necessarily in that order. Aldeen was more friend than foe, but the law was the law and she had the badge and took it seriously.

  “Honey,” KiKi went on as she gazed around, “what are all these people doing in here?”

  “Shopping. The gold diggers came to apologize for the bedbug rumor.” I looked at Auntie KiKi; she looked at me and, without missing a beat, hung up a jacket to be priced.

  “You knew!”

  “Everyone knew.” K
iKi buttoned a taupe sweater. “But we didn’t have any idea how to fix the lie. The more we tweeted that the Prissy Fox was fine and the rumors were false, the more the slimy sisters insisted it was true, and of course they had just opened that boutique that had everyone talking. We didn’t tell you because you had enough on your plate trying to save Walker from the gallows.”

  KiKi rolled her eyes up toward the hammering. “And now you have your very own handyman, and my guess is he’s mighty handy in more ways than one around here, if you get my drift.”

  I blushed, then my right foot tripped over my left and thank heavens a high school kid in jeans and a blue plaid shirt came to the counter then, getting my mind off Boone and back on business, at least for the moment.

  “Are you looking for a tux for the prom?” I said to the teen. A tux was about the only reason a boy this age would venture into the Fox unless his mother dragged him here kicking and whining. “I have a few you can try on.”

  The teen took a Snickers from his pocket, dropped it on the counter with a solid thunk, and glared at Auntie KiKi. “You stole one of these right out of my Grandpa Willie’s pocket. I saw you do it, then asked around and found out who you were.” The kid took out his cell phone. “I have a video of the whole Snickers thing right here. Want to see yourself? I can post it real fast on YouTube and Instagram.”

  KiKi jutted her chin and squared her shoulders. “I did not steal; I swapped. That video will show that I left a very nice Clif bar that is so much healthier. It was more a work of mercy.”

  “Grandpa’s dead,” the kid said as I kicked KiKi under the counter and added a “Did you really just say that?” look. The kid’s lower lip quivered, his shoulders sagged, and he choked back a sob. “I loved Grandpa. I was named after him, and I promised him I’d get him a Snickers to take to heaven. He was allergic to peanuts and loved ’em as much as I do.” The kid sounded more little boy than teen. “Now you made me break my promise and tomorrow they’re going to bury Grandpa without the Snickers. You made me a liar, and it doesn’t matter to you but it does to me.” The kid’s voice got louder, and customers started to stare. “I never lied to my grandpa. Never!”