by Lynn Shurr
“Surprise? Was I supposed to walk back to the Hill after seeing the doctor? George, I need to speak to you—alone.”
Too late, she noticed that Mrs. Angers had come up behind him. The four-inch heels on which she teetered allowed her to look down on Suzanne and cling to George’s arm for balance at the same time.
“Oh, Georgie, you devil, have you gotten this child into trouble? He was so wicked with college girls, don’t I just know.”
Suzanne expected George to blush and stammer, but he stood there content with being considered wicked. She felt hot, top to toe, for a variety of reasons as she watched the two interact.
George and the stripper looked fine together, about the same age, half a dozen years older than Suzanne—but that hardly gave them the right to call her a child. Mrs. Angers appeared to be very tall, at least in those high heels, and remarkably big-busted for a slim woman. Her red hair and very green eyes contrasted nicely with George’s darkness. If she had been capable of objectivity, Suzanne would have said Mrs. Angers was just what George needed to put some fun in his life. Unobjectively, she felt she and George were having enough fun together without adding a third party.
“She can’t be in trouble—yet,” George roguishly denied to his “client.”
Beginning to agree with Randy Royal about George’s having a cruel streak, Suzanne scowled, and seeing her reaction, he sobered up.
“Actually, Miss Hudson is working up at the Hill. She was ill the other week. I drove her to the doctor for a checkup.”
“And we have business to discuss,” Suzanne added.
“Well then, George. I must go in search of a room for the night if I’m staying over to have dinner with you. I only intended to visit for an hour or so while I passed through. I never did send my condolences when I heard your dear mother passed away. Ronald and I were having our own troubles at the time. I’m so self-centered, I’m afraid, but the divorce is behind me now. When I read about the robbery of all that silver from your lovely old mansion, I knew I wanted to stop by and cheer you up. Remember the old times when you’d come back to school from a weekend at home so low I practically had to crawl under you to give you a little pick-me-up. Remember?”
The divorcee ran one of her long, coral nails down George’s cheek. Suzanne wondered if Mrs. Angers intended to give him a little pick-me-up right there in a public place in front of witnesses. Sure seemed so. Lonnie Breaux struggled to the door with four Styrofoam cups of coffee sitting on top of a flimsy bakery box threatening to collapse in the middle. Suzanne opened the door for the secretary and relieved Miss Breaux of two of the cups. She offered one to George while Lonnie shoved another toward Mrs. Angers.
“No, thanks. I really must go find a room.”
“Look, Cherry,” George began.
“Cherie. I changed it. Having a lawyer for a husband was so convenient for a while. Ronald felt ‘Cherry Fontaine’ sounded like a stripper’s name.”
“Or white trash,” Miss Breaux added helpfully.
Suzanne nodded to show she agreed with both of them.
“Cherie Angers.” She gave the name a strong French accent. “Has much more class than Cherry Fontaine ever did.”
“Basse classe,” said Miss Breaux under her breath.
“Cherry or Cherie, we have room for you at Magnolia Hill tonight.”
He took both of his old girlfriend’s hands and smiled into her eyes. What a graceful gesture, one Suzanne had never seen George do, but perhaps, he channeled Jacques or the Devil’s Horseman, her horseman.
“I’ll call Birdie and make arrangements.”
“And I’ll be on my way. Until tonight, my dear Ghost.”
Suzanne thought she might puke if George kissed Cherie’s hand. Instead, he simply put an arm around his old girlfriend’s waist to steady her as she crossed the cracked concrete of the pavement to her car. Cherie drove a two-year-old, racing green Jaguar without a scratch, ding or dent, parked at the curb. Somehow Suzanne had overlooked the out-of-place vehicle in her hurry to share a new theory of the theft with George.
She waited in his office while George completed an overly long good-bye, curbside, with Cherie. Jeez, he would see his old flame tonight. Catching up on bygone times could wait. She scalded her tongue taking an incautious gulp of coffee. Their conversation took so long she’d assumed her beverage would be cold by now.
George returned and spent a minute or two rearranging his desk before he felt like talking. When he did, he chose the topic of Cherie.
“She used to have long hair that hung down to here.” He vaguely sketched two large breasts. “She’s a real redhead.”
But she’s getting a little help from a bottle now, Suzanne thought.
“And she used to be rounder, you know.” George sculpted a well-stacked figure in the air. “But then, she’s been through a lot. Her husband saw to it she didn’t get a cent of alimony in an airtight pre-nuptial agreement. She got nothing but a few worthless gifts he gave her over the years.”
“I really feel sorry for her, left with only a nearly new Jaguar, expensive clothes, and a diamond worth enough to feed a family of three for a year.” Suzanne burnt herself again taking another gulp of coffee. “Look, I know who stole the silver.”
“Again?” George snorted.
She could see his mind remained in another time when he reigned as the Ghost, a sports hero with a red-haired girlfriend and no financial worries, disgusting when they had a crime to solve.
“Okay, you don’t want to listen. Then, drive me home. Tomorrow night, I’ll invite a few guests to dinner. Maybe they will want to hear what I have to say.”
“If you had decided to leave a little sooner, you could have ridden with Cherie,” George said, annoyed, but then, so was she.
“I didn’t want to ride with Cherry!” Suzanne shouted. “I want to ride with you.”
“Don’t be a child, Suzanne. I still have to work for a living, and you could have saved me some time.”
“You had enough time to listen to poor Mrs. Angers’ sob story,” she shrilled at him. “And you—you are acting like an over-thirty has-been trying to relive his youth.”
She stopped from saying “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” and sticking out her tongue. She really was behaving childishly over George, the real George. From his expression, Suzanne knew she’d wounded him. Sticks and stones and words can hurt you.
He did drive her back to the Hill at top speed and through the town’s single red light. Suzanne felt sick remembering their more leisurely ride in the back of Linc’s truck. She resolved to be more mature about Cherie Angers in the future, but the future came upon them before she knew it. Cherry Fontaine was unpacking in Suzanne’s bedroom.
While Birdie explained the situation to George in the hallway, she got her information directly from the source. Mrs. Angers turned a brilliant artificially-whitened smile on Suzanne and talked as she unpacked a red lace thong from her bag.
“That gothic room is so gloomy and frankly, I knew I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep in her room. You never met Mrs. St. Julien.” Cherie lowered her voice. “A real b-i-t-c-h. I didn’t think you’d mind sleeping in there for a few nights.”
Suzanne wanted to ask when one night had become a few. Mostly though, she wanted Cherie out of her room, the one closest to George by both hall and balcony. “Act like a grownup,” she told herself. Gritting her teeth into the kind of smile often seen on dead people’s faces, Suzanne packed a few things in a carryall and moved into Virginia Lee’s room.
The three of them shared an awkward dinner that night to say the least. Suzanne felt like the little daughter forced to sit through a meal while her daddy and a chum reminisced about the good old days. In this case however, the guest was a former lover who had added an extra layer of green eye shadow to her makeup and wore a clinging sheath of emerald, obviously her best color. Speaking of color, George had put in his absurdly deep blue contact lenses for the evening. They made his eyes sparkle as well as blink. Suzanne found sh
e preferred his dowdy old glasses. He’d gotten new frames—exactly like the old ones, for heaven’s sake!
None of the stories they told about “back when” ever finished in her presence. Each episode seemed to end with a wink and a leer.
“And then we came across that old motel with the little cabins in the back. The man didn’t want to rent to Linc because of his being black, but you claimed he was your twin brother since you both had the same last name and age, so he let you have the key….” Wink. Leer. And George accused her of immaturity!
Birdie stayed late to serve the “something special” George asked of her. The menu consisted of smothered quail over wild rice with steamed asparagus. The asparagus was stringy, and the meat so scanty on the quail it was barely worth picking off those tiny bones, but her fellow diners did not seem to notice. Cherie drank the wine, fiddled with a quail leg, and laughed excessively. George consumed everything without seeming to taste the food.
Suzanne braced for more misery when the party adjourned to the red parlor for coffee and dessert. Birdie brought a tray holding china cups already poured because, of course, the silver service had been stolen. She also served chocolate cups filled with a mint liqueur on a clear glass plate. Suzanne managed to grab only one because the long-lost sweetheart gobbled them up. Clearly, she preferred booze and dessert to good, wholesome food.
Cherie had a friendly tussle with George over the last bit of chocolate. Naturally, he let her win. But then, Cherie told him to open his mouth and close his eyes. She popped the little delicacy between his lips, removed a drop of spilled liqueur from George’s chin with her fingertip, and sucked her finger clean. By that time, George’s eyes were open, wide open. He had this silly grin on his face that Suzanne wanted to wipe off with her cocktail napkin.
She sat across from the couple occupying the Belter settee and pleased herself by thinking how garish Mrs. Angers looked against the red velvet, how she contrasted poorly with the cool blonde dressed in white and pearls whose portrait dominated the parlor. As for self-evaluation, Suzanne felt the snug, black dress too fancy and sophisticated for the Roadhouse and Joe’s Lounge wasn’t quite enough this evening, even with her best pushup bra. She’d always been happy with her 36C’s, but somehow, they no longer seemed adequate. Cherie Angers’ breasts couldn’t be real. They simply could not. George would find them hard as rocks if he touched them, certainly. That part worried her, too.
At least, the parlor locale improved the tone of the conversation. Suzanne drank her coffee, very bitter this evening, and listened to Cherie Angers hold forth on antiques, knowledge acquired when as the rich lawyer’s wife, she furnished their place in the Garden District. Of course, Cherie still had some of the lovely things in her new apartment, but she no longer owned a grand old house like Magnolia Hill for her very own to love and care for. Oh, boohoo to you, Cherry.
What a pity the lovely silver service Cherie remembered so well from her first and last visit to the Hill had gone. But then, how very fortunate the mortgage had been cleared and George could get on with his life, settle down, marry. Suzanne found this conversation only a slight improvement over what had gone on at dinner after all.
She excused herself early, went to Virginia Lee’s room to work on her paper, and made little progress at the spindly-legged secretary. The twosome downstairs moved noisily from the parlor to George’s den. Birdie had long gone home. Glasses clinking, they helped themselves to stronger beverages than wine, liqueur, and coffee.
Suzanne went into her former room to retrieve some notes, but could not concentrate afterwards. The image of Cherie’s flimsy underwear tossed around the room, her provocative nightie, green and shiny and transparent, laid out on the bed, her heavy perfume stinking up the air, replayed in her mind like a bad song, hated but unforgettable. Sleep wouldn’t come either. Tossing in Virginia Lee’s bed, she heard Cherie and George come staggering up the stairs at midnight. Whispering and laughing filled the hall, but two separate doors closed.
She thought she could rest after that, but still awake at one a.m., she had to suffer through listening to more to-do, this time on the gallery. She tried not to think about George and his cape and the window she left unbolted hoping the Devil’s Horseman might visit in the night. Putting the pillow over her head, Suzanne tried to stifle the sound of the giggles and the mock struggle on the balcony. Pulling the quilt over the pillow, she cried on and off until dawn.
****
Birdie woke everyone with her rendition of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!” Yeah, right. Suzanne looked into the mirror and saw awful—puffy eyes, dark circles, and pale cheeks. George, coming from his own room, appeared even worse, hung over and suffering. That shouldn’t have pleased her, but it did. She wondered about Mrs. Angers condition, but being unemployed, the divorcée evidently planned to sleep in until noon. By the time George got home from work, Cherie would have pumped herself up to gorgeous again.
Suzanne worked on squeezing drops into her eyes to take out the redness and heard Birdie knocking politely to see if Miss Cherie wanted any breakfast. She hoped the divorcee gained five pounds from eating Birdie’s biscuits because she certainly had. She attempted to keep her left eye open for the descent of the fluid while Birdie “took a peek” to see if Mrs. Angers was all right because she didn’t answer. When Birdie screamed, the Visine squirted clear across her face. While still wiping her chin, Suzanne learned their guest had vanished. The window to her room stood wide open. Oops, her fault.
Chapter Seventeen
Suzanne’s story
Frankly, Suzanne did not care if Mrs. Angers in an amorous, drunken passion had fallen off the gallery while trying to get to George’s bedroom, but no broken body lay below on the verandah. Maybe George revealed during pillow talk after sex, that though he’d saved the old plantation, he had no money to support it. If Cherie wanted to be mistress of Magnolia Hill, she’d have to spend the rest of her life giving guided tours through the place. Suzanne imagined Cherie saying, “No, thanks,” and deciding upon reconciliation with Ronald, leaving posthaste in the middle of the night to get away from the broke guy. Unfortunately, her green sports car still sat in the driveway.
George called Sheriff Duval. The sheriff took a glance at Mrs. Angers’ room with its sexy clothing strewn about and its rumpled covers. Shaking his head, he went downstairs to the kitchen with George and Suzanne trailing behind like a police escort. While drinking Birdie’s coffee and putting away a plate of biscuits, he gave them the lecture about how many hours a person had to be gone before being declared missing. He eyed George.
“George, looks to me like you did some drinking last night. Getting to be a habit with you. Lucky the Patout boys didn’t press charges the last time you went on a drunk. You get a little rough with Mrs. Angers and scare her off, huh?”
George flushed, whether from embarrassment or anger, Suzanne couldn’t tell.
“If you had been on the receiving end of the kiss she gave me last night, you’d know I wasn’t the one doing the assaulting, Sheriff.”
“You tell him, George,” she wanted to say so badly, but held it in.
“Okay. So, you had sex with the woman and then what?”
“No. Absolutely not. After that kiss, I went to my own room and locked the door. I don’t remember anything since my head hit the pillow.”
George glanced sidelong at Suzanne as if assessing her reaction. She wondered if she should tell the officer about the noise they’d made on the balcony. Sex comes in all kinds of shapes and flavors. Many don’t require actual penetration. George could be using the Bill Clinton defense. Still, this lie lay between them, not George and the sheriff.
Birdie whimpered. “I just know something bad happened to Miss Cherie. When she stayed here last time, she wanted a big breakfast served in bed ’round ten.”
Suzanne could see the sheriff thought black women were prone to hysterics. He cleared his throat and fiddled with his notepad.
“Come on n
ow, Mrs. Angers might have wanted fresh air last night and opened her window. Maybe she’s one of those gals who like to go for a long jog in the morning,” Duval said.
“Not likely,” sobbed Birdie. “Not her, she ain’t the fresh air and jogging type. She’d tell me to crank up the AC and then go to some fancy gym in the city.”
Pleased by Birdie’s remarks making Cherie out to be a high-maintenance woman, Suzanne pointed out the unexpected guest brought only an overnight bag with her, and all the clothes they’d seen her wear lay in a heap on the bedroom floor awaiting maid service. No sign of the nightgown she’d seen the night before, a green transparent, slutty sort of garment no woman, even Cherie Angers, would wear outdoors.
“Miss Hudson, I appreciate your deductions. Honestly, I do. But, don’t you think if Mrs. Angers went out for a walk, she’d be wearing any practical clothes she might have brought along.”
“I’ve only known Mrs. Angers for a very short time, but she didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would go anywhere without makeup, tons of it. Her case is sitting unopened in exactly the same place as last night.”
“Amen to that,” Birdie agreed.
Truthfully, Suzanne agreed with the sheriff. Cherie Angers was probably doing nude aerobics or suggestive yoga poses somewhere George could see her from his window if he’d put on his glasses first thing in the morning instead of stumbling to the bathroom half blind. She’d heard him bumping into furniture early that morning. Cherie knew how to hog attention and excelled at it.
“Ya’ll call me if Mrs. Angers doesn’t get in touch by tomorrow night. I’ll tell my boys to keep a lookout for her in case she sprained an ankle along the road or got snake bit or something.” Folding a biscuit into a napkin, the sheriff prepared to leave.
Very suddenly, Suzanne decided to take ill. She clutched her stomach and begged for Doc Sonny.
“I’m so upset about Mrs. Angers, I feel sick. Maybe I’m having a relapse. You know, Sheriff Duval, a serial killer of young women is on the loose in Philadelphia. Maybe, poor Cherie has become a victim of the same kind of man.” She shivered, not faking it.