I picked him up and tucked him into my coat as I duck-walked out of the kennel. When I could stand up straight, I hurried to the car. “Stay here,” I said as I settled him onto the floorboard. I got a quilt out of the trunk and thanked the heavens Harold was prone to impromptu picnics. He keeps quilts, blankets, bug spray—all the necessities of outdoor life in the South—in the trunk of his car.
I covered Roscoe. “Don’t make a sound,” I told him. “I’ll rescue Harold and we’ll take you to the vet.”
My impulse was to rush into the house and snatch Bijou by the hair of her head, drag her outside, and kick her ass all the way to the wretched kennel she’d stuffed Roscoe into. Then I wanted to shut her in there, lock the door, and leave her to freeze. Wisdom tamped down my fury. Such action would give me emotional gratification, but I’d lose the upper hand.
Instead I rushed into the house and flopped on the sofa where Harold and Bijou cuddled. “I’m sick,” I said. “I think Bijou poisoned the alcohol.”
“You stupid beast, you poured your own drink. I didn’t touch it.”
“Oh, no, I’m going to barf.” I got on my knees and made gagging noises as I leaned over Bijou’s lap.
“Get away from me.” She tried to push me aside, but I collapsed on her, wallowing and gagging and moaning.
“Remove her,” Bijou said, “and don’t ever bring her back.”
“I’m so sorry,” Harold told her. “I’d better take her home. Why don’t you come over to my house in half an hour?”
If she did, Harold would find some inventive way to torture her once he learned what she’d done to Roscoe.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll pick up where we left off.”
“What about Yancy?” I asked. “Isn’t he your lover?”
Bijou was a little taken aback, but she had a ready answer. “I don’t owe you an explanation, but Yancy is a business partner.”
“Is Gertrude Strom a partner, too?”
“Get out of my house.” She’d had enough of me.
Harold helped me to my feet and supported me out the door. I decided to keep the warm coat I’d borrowed. Screw Bijou. It might come in handy at the voodoo shop when I found time to vacation in New Orleans. Didn’t they need an article of clothing or some hair to make the curse work properly? If so, I could meet the need.
At the car, I gripped Harold’s arm. “Roscoe is hurt. We need to go straight to the emergency clinic.”
He tried to turn around and go back in the house, but I stopped him. “Roscoe needs you, Harold. Bijou can wait.”
“I intend to hurt her like she’s never been hurt.”
“And I’ll help. Now drive.” I snuggled the dog in my arms as we roared down the darkened driveway.
9
The emergency clinic was staffed by a young vet I didn’t know but who took Roscoe into an exam room with Harold as soon as we walked in the door. The minutes ticked slowly by. A few whimpers came from behind the closed door and I cringed. Roscoe had to be okay. He couldn’t be seriously hurt. Harold would blame himself until the cows came home.
He’d left his jacket and cell phone in the chair beside me, and when his phone rang I remembered that Bijou was supposed to meet him at his house. She would be enraged. Good. I picked up the phone. “Darling, Harold and I are busy. What do you want?” I panted and moaned. “Oh, yes, right there, Harold. That’s the spot. Oh, baby, yes, I know I’m the sexiest woman around.”
“I’ll get you both for this.” Bijou hung up.
Whatever Harold had planned for her, my little prank wouldn’t mess it up. He’d wait. He understood the old maxim was based on truth: revenge was best served cold. Bijou had a serious comeuppance in her future. And she’d be totally unprepared when it hit.
I pulled out the fliers I’d liberated from the slave cabin. The ugliness and hatred spewed across the page nauseated me. Bijou might not know what her foreman was up to, but I found it hard to believe. Yet, give the devil his due, as Aunt Loulane would say, it didn’t make sense, if Bijou wanted to capitalize on the upswing in tourism that a real blues club would bring into Sunflower County, that she was participating in printing handbills that decried the music, saying it “reeked of the devil” and would do all kinds of evil, including bring down democracy and destroy the earth.
At last Harold and Roscoe came out of the exam room. Harold was wrung out, and Roscoe rested, relieved of his pain for the time being. “What?”
“Someone kicked him and broke two of his ribs. He was lucky they didn’t puncture a lung.”
Beneath the expression of worry and exhaustion, fire crackled in Harold’s eyes. There would be blood. “Will he be okay?” I asked.
“Yes. Dr. Knizley wrapped his ribs to give him a little support and protection. I have to keep him quiet and still.”
“Good luck with that.” Roscoe cannonballed through life like he’d been charged with jet fuel.
“We’ll do just fine. He’s my boy.” Harold stroked his head.
“Let me drive you to Dahlia House. You and Roscoe can stay with me if you’d like. Sweetie Pie will mother him.”
“Maybe just for tonight.” Harold bumped me with his shoulder. “Thank you for saving him.”
“It was your plan. I’m just glad it worked. Oh, and Bijou called. I pretended we were having sex.”
Harold’s smile was slow, but it arrived nonetheless. “I reserve further comment because I don’t want you to know what I have planned. You can cling to your innocence.”
“The first time in history. Let’s head home.”
I drove slowly, glad Roscoe had been sedated and now slept. I still had on Bijou’s coat, and I reached into the pocket to search for gloves she might have left. My fingers found a small card. I handed it to Harold. “What does it say?”
He switched on the interior light. “It’s a business card from Alton James, the attorney.”
“Now that’s a damn twist of events.” I filled him in on Gertrude and the lawyer, wondering the whole time how Bijou was involved. The heiress seemed to have her finger in everyone’s pies. “Do you think she’s paying for Gertrude’s legal defense?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. Bijou has a streak of perversity. She seems to support Scott and the club, but that could be a façade. A vibrant blues club would help her B&B business, but it would be a lot more lucrative if she owned and controlled the club.”
“She told Angela Bowers she’d prefer a ballroom dancing and dinner club. A better class of clientele was how she put it. She is devious.”
“Not to worry. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, too.”
“How about a burger from the Sweetheart Café?” Millie’s was closed, but the drive-through was still open.
“My treat,” Harold said. “It isn’t dinner in Venice, but it will have to suffice until Roscoe heals.”
“You’re on.”
* * *
We ate our burgers and milkshakes, then, stressed to the max, Harold and Roscoe collapsed in the green guest room the minute we got back to Dahlia House. I paced my bedroom. The cruelty of Roscoe’s treatment left me fueled with a desire to exact revenge. Now! But there were other demands on my time. Namely, doing more research on Mason Britt.
I doubted that Bijou had used her Manolo Blahnik–clad foot to kick Roscoe, but Mason Britt wouldn’t hesitate if the order were given. They both epitomized the word vile. What else could I unearth on Bijou’s foreman?
I fired my laptop up and was sitting down to work when I heard something moving around the house. Two security men, compliments of Scott’s team, were on the premises. I’d seen them step out of the trees lining the driveway when Harold and I pulled up. They were on the grounds, but not in the house. The noise I’d heard came from inside.
I put aside the laptop and roused Sweetie Pie with my bare foot. She lifted her head, eyes bloodshot as if she’d been on a bender, and flopped back down. She snored softly.
“Fine watchdog you are,” I told her.
I crept to the bedroom door and listened.
The sharp sound of a trumpet combined with a plunking six-string guitar. Jitty was in the house. Judging from the music, she was downstairs. She scared me senseless when she materialized behind me.
“Wanna set the world on fire?” she sang, and continued with talk of mad desire and devils in disguise. And murder.
She was slender and beautiful and her dark hair was cut in a pageboy with bangs that hung straight into her eyebrows. “Who are you?” I loved the song, but I didn’t recognize her.
“Josie Miles.” She sat on the bed, the slit in her long skirt revealing an elegant leg. “She could belt out a song about revenge.”
“I don’t want to sing about it. I want to act on it.”
Jitty chuckled, a sound so warm and real it was hard to believe it came from a ghost. “Karma works in its own good time, Sarah Booth. Remember that. It isn’t your job to hurry it along.”
“Not my job, maybe my destiny.”
“Girl, your mama is havin’ a hissy fit. She wants to come down here and slap a knot on some people right beside you. One thing about Miss Libby and Mr. Franklin, they didn’t hold with hurtin’ helpless animals, not that Roscoe could be called helpless. That dog is too smart.”
Talking about my parents always calmed me down. Jitty knew it and played it to advantage. “Mama would think of something to do. You know she would.”
“Yeah, something like a batch of Ex-Lax brownies. I could tell you stories about Libby Delaney. She was an evil genius when it came to payback.”
The brilliance of her suggestion struck home. “Perfect!” If Bijou LaRoche wanted to talk shit, she’d have it coming out of both ends.
“Thank you, Jitty.”
“I shouldn’t encourage you.”
“No, I can sleep tonight knowing tomorrow karma will have a little assist.”
A slight chill touched my cheek, almost like a kiss, and she was gone. Sweetie rolled to her back with a moan. Tomorrow I would research Mason Britt and Ex-Lax brownies. Now I would sleep. While vengeance belonged to the Lord, payback was headed to Bijou.
* * *
Massive cloud formations tinted peach, fuchsia, and gold filled the sky as I drove to the pharmacy at the butt-crack of dawn. I was on a mission. Sweetie rode in the passenger seat beside me wearing her signature sunglasses and scarf to keep the wind out of her ears and her identity hidden.
Watching the sky, I imagined a dragon, an angel with spread wings, and what looked like a panel truck. The clouds shifted and changed forms as wind currents caught them. The clouds were magnificent, but they also brought a warning. Rain would be upon us within the next twenty-four hours. Koby’s funeral service was set for the afternoon, and the club reopening for seven.
Scott was an early riser, as I knew well. Since I was running errands, I called to ask if he needed any supplies from the local megastore. It wasn’t a place I normally shopped, but it was also the only place open at six thirty in the morning.
Plastic bowls to serve the jambalaya Curtis Hebert was cooking, sporks, paper towels. The list was short but important.
“I worried about you last night, Sarah Booth. The security team reported to me every few hours, though. I knew you were safe.”
“Harold and Roscoe are still asleep in a guest room.” I told him the whole sordid tale of Roscoe’s abduction and torture. “But don’t you worry, karma is headed to Hemlock Manor, which is the nickname I’ve given Bijou’s house. With enough repetition, I can make it stick, too.” Cece would help me. In every newspaper article she wrote from now on, Bijou’s home would be Hemlock Manor. Oh, the load of caca about to descend on Bijou’s styled head was just getting started.
I pulled into the store parking lot, amazed at the people already out shopping on a Wednesday morning. America had become a land of zombie shoppers. They were out all the time, wandering down aisles crowded with bad food products, loading carts, and hauling it all home. And I had become one of them!
I gathered up the items for the club opening and my few purchases and drove home.
Harold greeted me on the porch with a cup of coffee and a very subdued Roscoe.
“He’s in some pain,” Harold said. He was still in the sad mode. Soon he’d hit revenge and we could partner up to show Bijou a thing or two.
He followed me to the kitchen and didn’t ask a single question when I brought out the laxative and dumped it in the brownie mix, along with some chopped walnuts and extra chocolate chips. Bijou would definitely bite into this prank.
“How will you deliver them to her?” Harold asked as he stirred the batter while I greased the baking pan.
“A gift from an anonymous admirer. It’s a perfect play to her ego.”
“She’s going to kill us if she figures it out.” Harold was pleased rather than concerned.
“There may be nothing left of her but fancy shoes.”
He laughed heartily. “You make me feel so much better, Sarah Booth. You know, we make a great team.” He captured my hand and squeezed it.
My thumb gave a tiny throb of pleasure at his compliment. Harold and I had a complex relationship. He supported me no matter what. When Graf or Coleman had tried to control me “for my own good,” Harold had helped me. He trusted me to know what was best for me. No other man in my life had ever believed in me as much as Harold did. And he was a damn accomplished man with more polish than anyone else I knew. And sometimes the most questionable taste in women.
“How did you get involved with Bijou? You’ve both been single for years. Why suddenly date her now?”
“She stalked me at the bank.”
I laughed out loud. Harold was blunt—but accurate. “How dangerous do you think she really is?”
He didn’t answer quickly. “At first I thought she was merely a huntress. One of those women who love the chase. Once they catch their prey, they kill it and move on. I went into the game understanding that, at the conclusion, she wouldn’t care what happened to me, figuratively speaking. I knew there were no real feelings between us, but what I failed to grasp was how she literally did not care if I lived or died. And to hurt Roscoe as some juvenile form of revenge—she is sick.”
“She’s a classic narcissist.”
“To the tenth degree.” He pushed the bowl of batter to me so I could pour it in the pan and bake it. “Something is missing from Bijou’s personality. Maybe it is narcissism. Or maybe she’s a sociopath. What she wants is all that matters. Once the want is gone, there’s nothing left but a black void.”
I brought up the flyers I’d found and showed him. “Sarah Booth, this is vile. And dangerous. And beyond ignorant.”
“I know. Would Bijou work against her own self-interest?”
“What we don’t know for a fact is what her interest is. She’s gadding about with Yancy Bellow now, but is it because they share a business interest in developing B&Bs or because she wants to bed him?” He examined the flyer. “Or some other reason we have yet to uncover.”
Harold’s blunt assessment wasn’t the sentiment of a man who had feelings for a woman. “You don’t care a thing about her, do you?”
“I don’t even like her. I shouldn’t have slept with her, but it was exciting.” He shrugged. “One of the few times I let the little head do the thinking and it almost got my dog killed. Lesson learned.”
I leaned over and kissed Harold’s cheek. “You are a very special man, Harold Erkwell.”
“Not as smart as I once thought.” His gaze searched mine. “When the dust clears, I do want to take you to Venice for dinner.”
“It’s a date. As long as you know I’m not able to care about anyone now. Not in the way you deserve.”
“Heard and understood. I want you to play. There hasn’t been enough of that in your life, Sarah Booth. Play is vastly underrated.”
I poured the brownie batter into the glass pan and put it in the oven. Roscoe gave a low whine so we took the dogs outside while our secret weapon
baked. Roscoe was pitiful. He could hardly hike his leg to water my favorite lily. Anger burned fresh in my chest, and when I glanced at Harold, I knew he felt it too.
“Never tell a soul about the brownies, Sarah Booth. Not Tinkie or anyone else. This is between us. Most folks are caught because they blab. Bond of silence.” He held out his pinky finger, which I hooked with my own.
“Bond of silence.”
When the brownies were baked, I let them cool, slipped on some crime scene gloves to keep from leaving fingerprints, and cut them into squares. I’d purchased a beautiful Victorian painted tin and lacy tissue paper. When Harold and I finished, the brownies resembled a gourmet delight. I printed out a note on card stock: “I’ve admired you from afar, but I sense the time is right for a closer acquaintance. Enjoy these handmade sweets from Memphis. I’ll be in touch.” We settled on the initials P.P. It was our little joke for poopy pants.
“Do you think she’ll really eat the brownies?” I asked.
“She loves chocolate. And she’s greedy. She won’t share.”
“Karma is sometimes a load in your pants.”
We both laughed as I gave Harold the tin. He had a trusted friend who would put the confections in Bijou’s mailbox.
Our work complete, Harold went home to dress for work. Roscoe would accompany him to the bank, though I offered to mind the little demon. Harold wanted him close. I sent the files I’d photographed to Harold’s phone so he could study them at the bank. Then I called Tinkie and suggested we research the band members and the ex-manager, Wilton Frasbaum. Tinkie took the former band manager while I did background on Jaytee and the gang. Tinkie was simply better with financial matters, so it made sense she’d tackle Wilton from a business angle.
Scott had given me a list of former friends and associates of the band members. At the top of my list to call was Jaytee’s brother, Beegee. The family had a real issue with spelling out initials as names. From all accounts, the brothers weren’t close. A pissed-off relative could be a great source of information, and I intended to find out if Prince Jaytee had any warts. Protecting Cece was my first concern, but I had to be certain Jaytee didn’t figure into what was happening in Scott’s life.
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