by Duffy Brown
A red ’57 Chevy convertible, top down, pulled up to the curb. Boone had company; a tall blonde with heavy makeup and a red-sequined dress occupied the passenger seat. She was just his type, with enough boob to attract attention from fifty paces and lips red enough to stop traffic at every intersection. Boone tapped his watch. “Took you long enough to get here.”
“You could have given me a ride, you know.”
“I hoped you’d come to your senses and stay away. I’ve got to get Conway here to work; his car died. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“His?” The word slid out before I found the good manners to keep it in. Normally, my social graces were better honed, but my life hadn’t been normal in quite a while and showed no signs of improving in the near future.
Conway gave me a big wink, a wide grin, and a little finger wave, complete with flawless manicure. “Hello there, dollface. I’m Cinnamon Sugar.”
Drag queen. A very well-made–up drag queen. Club One over on Jefferson had the best drag show in three states, made infamous by that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil book. Cher was right–on about drag queens being much better at getting attention than flyers ever could. I said to Cinnamon Sugar, “Great nails. What polish do you use?”
“Come around and see me sometime, honey, and I’ll give you a bottle. I get it made up special.”
I said I’d try and make it to a show, told Conway to break a leg, and then Boone sped off. I didn’t want to be here when Boone came back, but I needed to look around the town house. I figured the intruder was hunting for evidence and probably hadn’t found it or he wouldn’t have come back a second time. I didn’t see him, but maybe I could find what he was looking for. Least it was worth a shot.
I went back inside and surveyed the wreckage. The only way to find anything was to straighten up. It irked me to clean Hollis’s love nest, but kicking around stuffing and broken furniture and dishes wouldn’t get me anywhere. Righting the leather couch was out of my league by about fifty pounds, and thank heavens the three big plants and the Eastlake secretary that Hollis’s uncle had given him were all still standing and unharmed. Not only were they the heaviest things in the place, but also hands down the most expensive.
I set up chairs, the coffee table, and matching end tables and balanced the broken lamps between books that I picked up off the floor. I piled ruined cushions by the door to take out later, then found a broom and swept up broken pieces of Moss Rose china—Grandmother Summerside had the same pattern, which she used every Thanksgiving and Christmas—magazines, junk from drawers, glasses, smashed DVDs and…
Glasses?
I stopped sweeping and stared down at the pile. Hollis didn’t wear glasses and neither did Cupcake, least not these glasses. They weren’t those cute half-size yuppie glasses for reading expensive menus; they were big and thick. I stooped down. They were horn-rimmed. Holy mother of pearl—I knew these glasses!
The door opened. “Reagan? You still here?” came Boone’s voice from the entrance hall. I slid the glasses into my skirt pocket and stood.
“What’s going on?” Boone asked as he came in.
“Nothing,” I said too quickly, sounding guilty as all get-out. I tried to smooth things over with, “You try cleaning up your ex’s place and tell me how it feels. It’s a little unnerving.”
Boone flipped up the couch as if it were a toy. He sat on the overstuffed arm, staring off into the room, thinking who-knows-what. I took the opposite arm, thinking about my cheese and crackers back at the club.
“You suppose whoever did this found whatever Janelle had on them?” Boone asked in an offhanded manner.
“He didn’t, because the person who picked the lock and let himself in came back while I was here. I figure he wanted to take another look around because he didn’t get the job done on the first pass, and the chances of two different people coming to the town house on the same exact night are slim to none. I’m telling you this because you saved my bacon in that alley, and now we’re even.”
Boone gave me a long, steady stare. I’d surprised Walker Boone and was willing to bet that didn’t happen often.
“Did you see who it was?”
“If I tell you anything else, that would make us uneven, and I sure don’t owe you that much.”
“You should tell me everything.”
“I can’t afford you.”
“This person had a reason for coming back. He had to get something out of here right now, or maybe he found what he was looking for and didn’t get a chance to get to take it.”
Boone stood, walked around the room, then stopped in front of me. “I don’t know if you saw this guy or not, but I got a real bad feeling he saw you. Whoever broke in here may be the killer. All the people being blackmailed are desperate to get back what Janelle had on them and make sure no one else gets that information. That puts you right in everyone’s crosshairs.”
A little shiver crawled down my back, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside and everything to do with the too-quiet tone of Boone’s voice. He tucked his finger under my chin, tilting my head, our eyes meeting. His were black and serious. “I told you to back off. That your house isn’t worth the risks, but that ship has sailed. Too many people know you’re involved in this case, snooping around and unearthing God-knows-what. You’re in this up to your armpits.”
“Hey, so are you.”
“Yeah, but I have resources. You just have Auntie KiKi. Go home, lock your doors, and don’t come out till this is over. Someone’s out for blood. Yours.” Boone turned for the door.
Chapter Eleven
“YOU’RE not going to scare me off,” I yelled after Boone, the door closing behind him. I picked up an already cracked plate and threw it against the door, smashing it into even smaller pieces. What was this about blood? I looked at my scraped hands. I did not need more blood.
I took the horn-rimmed glasses from my pocket, gaining some confidence that I knew things Boone didn’t. Baxter Anderson had been here in the town house tonight. These glasses were distinctive, memorable, and fearful ugly. What was the man thinking? Considering Baxter’s usual attire, I would have thought he’d have better taste even when traveling incognito.
I didn’t have enough energy to go on cleaning and looking for evidence, whatever it was. Truth be told, it was a little creepy being in the town house all alone after Boone’s speech. Baxter knew I was here. He knew I might have seen him, and I probably had his glasses, the ones he dropped. If he did see me and KiKi that day at the Marshall House coming out the back entrance, he knew I could connect him to his clandestine female activities there. I could tell Tillie, and that could lead to divorce court and end the easy life as he knew it.
I dropped the glasses in Old Yeller, flipped off the lights, and stepped out onto the stoop, hoping to feel safer in the company of traffic and late-night walkers. Except the wind blowing through the trees and lightning flashing over the ocean had chased everyone inside. The streets were deserted, with only an occasional car, the carriages and tour buses calling it quits. Leaves somersaulted across the sidewalk, and flowers tossed their heads in all directions. I could wait for a bus, but they only ran every hour or so this time of night, and a storm was brewing. It was about a fifteen-minute walk to Cherry House, fifteen lonely minutes, and I did it in ten, walking mostly in the street, avoiding shadows, listening to the wind blow though the trees.
Home looked especially good as I trudged up the walk. I took a hot dog I’d gotten at Parkers and put a chunk of it on the steps. I clapped my hands. “Look what I have, Bruce Willis,” I singsonged. “Come and get it, the big surprise.”
Bruce stuck his nose out from under the porch, spied the hot dog, then came all the way out and scarfed it down. I put another piece on the next step and Bruce ate that, then the next step, and all the way across the porch to the front door. “You wait right here.” I handed off the last bit of hot dog. “I’ll be back.”
I got a blanket in hop
es of enticing BW to stay on the porch as my four-legged alarm system, but when I got back outside, there was no doggie. I looked in his usual residence, finding two eyes and a thumping tail. “What happened to being man’s—and woman’s—best friend? What happened to protecting your turf?” I patted the steps. “This is your turf.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and another gust tangled my hair around my face. “I’m your turf. I’m the hand that feeds you.” I scratched him behind the ears. “See you in the morning, big boy. Bite anything that moves.”
I went back inside, turned on every light, and locked and braced the back door. I curled up in a chair by the front door with the baseball bat as a pillow and my Old Yeller beside me as a backup weapon. It occurred to me that my life was not improving. It also occurred to me that I was still living in the house I loved, and for the moment, that seemed good enough.
SUNLIGHT STREAMING THROUGH THE WINDOWS IN the dining room proclaimed it was morning. I tried to unbend myself from the chair. My left arm had that tingly feeling from being squashed, my neck wouldn’t straighten, and my head was listing to one side. I looked like a Picasso painting, probably the blue period. There was a knock at the front door, and I opened it to Auntie KiKi with her arms folded, foot tapping, her eyes glaring holes right though me. “Good, you’re up and dressed,” she huffed. “I’d hate to be yelling at you in your pj’s. Want to tell me what’s going on with you and Boone?”
“You’ll have to narrow it down a bit.” I stood back to let Auntie KiKi inside.
“How about the bit where you looked me right in the eyes and told me you shared information with Boone, that you were letting him take the lead in snagging the real killer. That you were backing off of Hollis’s case. When I saw Boone at the country club last night, he had no idea what I was talking about. I felt like a fool.”
“I didn’t want you to worry, and I knew you would.” KiKi and I sat on the stairs. “I think I know more about who may be the killer than Walker does. I can find him quicker, and I don’t charge three hundred bucks an hour to do it.”
“Great. Your savings can buy your tombstone.”
“He ticked me off. He said he could take care of things because he has resources and I just have you. He called you the dancing kudzu vine.”
KiKi’s eyes shot wide open. “He called me what!” KiKi jumped up, all five feet five inches shaking in outraged indignation. She poked herself in the chest. “I do declare, who does that middle-Georgia redneck think he is, talking about me that way?” Her eyes got beady. “I did gigs with Cher, I danced the rumba with Arthur Murray, and I married Putter Vanderpool the fourth and helped put him through medical school by giving dance lessons.” She jutted her chin. “I’m KiKi Summerside Vanderpool and I am not a ‘just.’”
Uh–oh. I’d wanted to get Auntie KiKi’s support so she wouldn’t pressure me into handing the case off to Boone. I thought she might be ticked that Boone had downplayed our abilities, but I hadn’t counted on an out-and-out hissy fit. I took Auntie KiKi’s hand. “That’s pretty much the way he makes me feel all the time. You’ll get over it.”
KiKi swiped her hand back. “I will not get over it, and no one picks on a Summerside without spoiling for a fight.” She jabbed her hands to her hips. “The way I see it, we got ourselves a pretty fair list of people who wanted Cupcake dead. Now we figure out which one did the deed, and we tell the police. To do all that, we need sticky buns and pecan coffee. The brain works much better with a good old sugar rush.”
She pulled me up, my joints not happy about moving. “And I got both at my house right this very minute.”
I followed KiKi out my door to hers, surrounded by yellow buttercups and purple wisteria. I brought the blue-enamel coffeepot and Spode cups to the table, KiKi snagged the sticky buns from the antique pie safe in the corner. Even as a kid I thought a safe for pies had to be the best idea ever—as long as I had a key, of course.
KiKi got a pen and paper. Things were getting serious if lists were involved. There was no way I could get my dear auntie to back out of finding the killer now, but Boone was right in that it was dangerous. I didn’t mind putting myself in harm’s way, but it wasn’t right to do that to KiKi. If I lost my house, that was one thing, but if anything happened to my auntie…Well, that simply wasn’t an option.
KiKi plopped two cubes of sugar in her coffee, gave a quick stir, then picked up her pen, which had a little plastic tulip sticking out of the top. At KiKi’s house, nothing was simple; everything was a bit over the top.
“For suspects so far we have Urston and Raylene, Sissy and Franklin, and Dinah Corwin.” KiKi stopped writing. “I forgot to ask, did you find out anything at the club about Baxter? Is he playing golf like Trellie thinks he is, or is he playing bedroom bingo over at the Marshall House like we think?”
I took the pen and paper and added Baxter Armstrong. “The bartender and servers had no idea who Baxter Armstrong was, and there’s more. Last night Hollis’s town house was broken into. My guess is by one of the people Cupcake blackmailed. I went over there to look around and found—you’re going to love this—horn-rimmed glasses.”
“Baxter’s!” KiKi said in a gasp.
“How many people have you seen in glasses like that? Hollis wouldn’t be caught dead in the things, and they surely aren’t from Cupcake’s accessory drawer.”
“Well, blast his cheating hide!” KiKi fanned herself with a yellow napkin. “Cupcake found out Baxter was messing around with other women and blackmailed him.” KiKi sat back in her chair, took a bite of sticky bun, and said around a mouthful, “I don’t rightly know what to do now. This will break Trellie’s heart if she finds out, and you know she will.”
KiKi finished chewing, her eyes fixed in deep concentration. She slapped her palms on the table, making the paper, pen, and me jump. “We should tell that lily-livered cheater that we know what he’s doing, and he needs to put a stop to it right this very minute.”
“He could be more than a blackmail victim,” I added. “He could be the killer, and if we confront him, he could add us to his list.”
“Trellie was there for me when my daddy passed, and I remember when her Frank dropped dead so sudden-like on the sixteenth hole over at Sweet Marsh. She was so sad that I didn’t think she’d ever get over it, and then she met Baxter, and the twinkle was back in her eyes. I can’t let her heart get broken all over again, now can I?” KiKi stood up. “First thing we’ll do is follow Baxter and see what he’s up to, and then we knock some sense into him. Go get your bat.”
This was like trying to stop a runaway train.
KiKi added, “You need to get the Fox ready for the week. While you’re doing that I can follow Baster.” Her eyes got steely, just like the time she set her mind to do the 5K walkathon for breast cancer. That she hobbled around for months after was of little consequence.
“You have to call me every hour and check in, and we confront Baxter together, remember that word—together. There’s safety in numbers.”
“Honey child, calling’s going to be a mite hard since you don’t have yourself a phone, now do you. Maybe you can use Hollis’s; he doesn’t have any use for it.”
Duh! Hollis’s phone. All this time I hadn’t even thought about that option. “I’ll run down to his office and see if it’s there and call you with the number. I’ll close the Fox at noon, and we’ll meet up then.”
“I have a tango lesson at one, so you can take my place following Baxter, and I’ll go on back home.” KiKi pursed her lips. “You know, I truly can’t see Baxter Armstrong as the killer. If he was, he’d have knocked off Trellie by now for the money.”
“How do we know she’s not next on his list?”
KiKi made the sign of the cross, and I left her with that less-than-happy thought and went back home to grab a quick shower. I needed to get to IdaMae for the phone before I opened the shop. I pulled on my last clean pair of underwear, the ones I liked least, the ones that had lost their elasti
c zing and now classified as droopy drawers. I slipped into jeans too tight from eating too many sticky buns. Bruce Willis’s bowl sat on the second step, and I filled it with food mixed with a hot dog. With a little luck, he’d stay on that step, and sooner or later I’d work him up to watchdog position. I clapped my hands. “Come and get it, boy.”
Bruce charged out, eyed his bowl, and chowed down, looking like me and cranberry stuffing at Thanksgiving. I didn’t like cranberries but suffered though them to get to the rest of the stuffing, which was simply sublime.
At the office, IdaMae was typing away at the computer but at Cupcake’s desk. IdaMae had two pink African violets in full bloom, a candy bowl, a caddy of matching pens, and a framed picture of her cat, Buttercup.
“Reagan, honey!” she gushed. “You look lovely today, I must say.”
“Truth be told, you’re the one who looks lovely.”
“It’s the hair.” IdaMae blushed and fluffed her soft curls, now a honey blonde with subtle highlights. “I went to that Cutting Crew place Janelle frequented, and they fixed me right up. They didn’t have much good to say about Janelle—I can tell you that.”
“And new lipstick and makeup?”
“Those Clinique girls out at the mall know their stuff. I got new shoes.” She stuck out her foot from behind the desk. “Sensible but stylish, that’s what the lady at Macy’s said. I figured I best be looking professional if I’m in charge of the office till Hollis gets himself back home. I have to spruce myself up if I’m showing houses and all.” She held up a big, black handbag. “Put all my real-estate stuff in it and keep it right here by my chair. I can grab it and go.”
I held up Old Yeller. “I keep my bag on the counter at home for the same reason. Hollis is lucky to have you on the job. With him not being here, I was wondering if I could use his cell phone. I’m financially distressed at the moment.”