by Hearn, Shari
Millie opened the door, having since taken the curlers out of her hair, but in the middle of styling it. She held a small, round brush in her hand. “You caught me trying to get beautiful,” she said with a giggle.
“You don’t have to try hard.” I could feel Gertie poking me in the back.
“Aren’t you sweet?”
I handed her the phone. “Thanks for letting me use your phone. I told my cat sitter about the vet appointment.”
“You’re so welcome. I hope the phone worked okay. It’s a cheap, pay-as-you-go model. Hank stomped on my last phone and I haven’t taken the time to pick out a new one.”
“It worked fine. Look, Millie, you might hear a commotion at some point, and we’d like you to stay in your cabin awhile.”
“A commotion?”
“It’s no big deal,” Gertie said, “but I’m going to create a little diversion to distract Starlight so Fortune can get something out of my purse locked in the office.”
“Oh.” Millie’s eyes widened. “What’s in your purse you want? I’m sure Starlight would get it out for you if there’s something you need. She seems like a nice gal.”
Yeah, some nice gal. She might have murdered Starlight and you may be next. I hadn’t let go of my theory that Millie’s ex was behind it all.
“She is a nice gal,” Gertie said, “but I have a couple bottles of hooch in my purse and, well… Fortune drank me out of house and home last night during Monopoly.”
I turned and glared at Gertie. “I drank it all?” The story we’d agreed on was that we’d sold all the cough syrup and had a request for two more bottles.
Gertie patted my shoulder. “You were missing your cat. I understand.” She turned back to Millie. “Anyway, it would be best if you stayed inside your room until we come by later and say it’s okay to leave.”
Millie nodded. “I appreciate the heads-up, Miss Gertrude. You know, you might have been a notorious bank robber in your past, but you are one stand-up lady today.”
“I try.”
After Millie shut her door and we turned to leave, I slugged Gertie on the shoulder.
“Ow!” she said, rubbing the spot. “Elder abuse.”
“Now Millie thinks I’m a raging drunk in love with my cat.”
Gertie waved me off. “I thought it was a touching story.”
We approached our next stop, the cabin housing two sisters from Mudbug who set fire to a picnic table in a park during their annual family reunion. Somehow it revolved around a cousin with a big butt, a pilates instructor, an alligator and potato salad. I hadn’t exactly been listening when Sister Number One gave a blow-by-blow account in group therapy yesterday.
Our plan was simple: create a diversion by inciting a war between two cabins. What better place to find angry women than at an anger management camp? Hopefully the fight would get heated enough to draw Jenny out of the administration building, giving me a chance to steal Gertie’s purse and our cell phones. Since Gertie lost the poker game, she had the job of stirring the pot and getting the women agitated.
We padded up the steps to the sisters’ cabin and Gertie put her ear to the door, listening for the sounds of activity.
“No sound,” she whispered. “I think they’re still asleep.”
“Let’s go to the next cabin, then.”
The next cabin over housed the Cyndees, so named by me after the two women rooming together—Cyn and Dee. The Cyndees hadn’t known one another before yesterday, but I could tell they hit it off during group therapy. They both were waitresses with rage issues.
Gertie put her ear to the Cyndee’s door. “I hear them talking,” Gertie whispered. She pulled a ten-dollar bill from her pocket, a bill she acquired from the sale of a bottle of SLS cough syrup, and knocked. I hid behind a bush next to their cabin.
The door opened. “Oh… hi.”
“Well, good morning, Cyn,” Gertie said. “Is that Dee I see in there? Hello, Dee. Look, I hope it’s not too early.”
“Never too early for you, Miss Gertrude.”
This real Gertrude Roy must have had some reputation, because all the women at the camp seemed to regard Gertie with a measure of fear.
“I don’t mean to be a buttinski, but…” Gertie held out the ten-dollar bill, “I believe this is yours.”
“It is?” Cyn asked, taking the money. “How so?”
“Well, one of the girls here noticed a fellow camper with some loose fingers going through your purse yesterday on the bus.”
“Really? I had my purse in my lap.”
“When you’re a skilled pickpocket, you can slip in and slip out without being noticed.”
“Who did it?” Cyn’s anger kicked in.
“I don’t want to name names…” Gertie hesitated a beat, then subtly nodded her head toward the next cabin over housing the sisters.
“Them? The sisters? Was it them?”
Dee joined them at the door. “What’s going on?”
“Those skanky sisters next door stole money from me.”
“Those bitches,” Dee said.
“The girl who gave it to me said one of the sisters accidentally dropped it outside the bus,” Gertie said. “The girl would have given it back to you herself, but she’s a bit of a timid one, and didn’t want to get involved. Especially since those sisters are the toughest girls around here.”
“Hell if they are,” Cyn said, laughing.
“I could take ‘em,” Dee added. “Did they steal from me too?”
“Well…” Gertie said.
“Your bracelet!” Cyn said. “The one missing after group therapy. You thought it slipped off. Maybe it didn’t.”
“They stole my bracelet!”
“What should we do about this?” Cyn asked Gertie.
“Well, this is an anger management intensive. You could calmly talk about it during our group check-in. That would be awfully big of you, of course, letting the sisters off the hook. Especially after they snickered during y’aaaall’s stories yesterday.”
“I thought I heard one of them snicker,” Dee said.
“What would you do?” Cyn asked.
“Oh, honey, you don’t want to know what I’d do. I’d have gone ballistic if she’d called me the ‘D-word.’”
“She called me a ‘D-word?’ What is that?”
“You don’t know the ‘D-word?’ You must not be Cajun. Well, darlin’, I’m not going to spell it out for you. I may have a checkered past, and am feared in these parts, but I still go to church. I don’t think my Lord would want me to say the ‘D-word’ out loud.”
“Let’s go kick their butts,” Dee said. “My boyfriend won that bracelet in a poker game. It has sentimental value.”
Dee stormed away from their cabin. Cyn followed close behind her. They still wore their nightclothes.
Dee barged up the steps to the sisters’ cabin porch and banged on their door. “Wake up, you stealin’ tramps!”
Gertie joined me on the side of the Cyndee’s cabin. “I’ll get one of the other gals to go tell Jenny about the fight. The second she leaves the administration building, you go get my gun.”
“Okay.” I started toward the back path, then stopped. I had to know. “What’s the ‘D-word?’”
Gertie shrugged. “Nothing, really. You put the word ‘word’ after any letter and it automatically sounds terrible.”
“What are you doing waking us up?” One of the sisters shouted. A few expletives later I heard a scream. Then another scream. This would be one brawl I would be happy to miss.
I ran on the back trail and hid behind a bush a few yards away from the back of the administration building. Minutes later one of the women ran to the entrance of the building, yelling for Starlight. Jenny opened the door and asked, “What’s going on?”
“There’s a fight back at the cabins,” the woman answered.
Jenny locked the front door to the building, joined the woman and took off running toward the guest cabins. Once she cleared
the area, I made my way to the window with the broken lock and entered the group therapy room, then rushed to Starlight’s office. I zeroed in on a free-standing, five-foot wooden cabinet secured with a combination lock, the only locked storage unit in the office. The locks were useless, though, because I could just unscrew the three hinges and take off the door. I whipped out a screwdriver from my pocket, courtesy of Gertie’s toiletry kit, and worked on loosening the screws.
A creaking noise from the next room made me stop and drop to the floor behind Starlight’s desk.
“Fortune.”
It was Gertie.
“In the office.”
Gertie entered the room, a big smile on her face. “It worked like a charm,” she said, “though we’d better work quickly. I heard Jenny yelling something about confining the women to their cabins. She might decide to come back.” She glanced at the cabinet door. “How dumb can people be to put a padlock on a door with exposed hinges you can just unscrew?”
“Apparently not too dumb. These screws seem as if they’re superglued into place. And the heads are worn, making them tough to turn.”
Gertie leaned in close to get a better look. “Can you wedge the screwdriver under the screws and try to dig them up?”
“I’d prefer not to damage the cabinet so bad she’ll notice it. We want to pick the right time to confront her, and I’d rather she didn’t get clued in that we have a gun.”
“I think that shrimp boat’s sailed. We have to get the gun and go confront her now. Smash the cabinet if we have to.”
I tried pounding the screwdriver beneath the screw. The screwdriver dug about a quarter of an inch into the wood. “It’s going to be slow going, but it might work.”
“I don’t know if we have that much time.”
“Oh, I’d say you don’t.”
Jenny’s voice.
Gertie and I turned to find Jenny standing in the doorway to the office. Holding a gun aimed straight at us.
“Surprise,” she said, smiling.
Chapter Eight
Gertie and I stood by the cabinet with our hands up. Jenny nodded toward a chair. “You,” she said, looking at me. “Sit in the chair beside the desk. Granny sits behind the desk.”
Gertie pulled out the chair, but didn’t sit. I didn’t move. I thought it best to play dumb. “Jeez, Starlight. A gun’s a little much, isn’t it? We were just trying to get some hooch out of Gertie’s purse.”
“This anger management thing is taking its toll,” Gertie added.
Jenny laughed. “Oh, I think you’re here snooping for information. You didn’t get all what you came for last night, so you decided to come back.”
“Hooch, Starlight. That’s all we wanted,” Gertie said.
“Didn’t I tell you to sit behind the desk? I think you’d better do that.”
Gertie sat in the chair. “I have a bad back. Mind if I put my feet up on the desk?”
“Knock yourself out,” Jenny said.
Gertie placed her feet on the desk and leaned back. “Oh, yes, that feels better.”
“You,” Jenny snapped at me. “Don’t make me tell you again to go sit in the chair at the side of the desk.”
I sat in the old, cheap metal chair, making sure my right hand clasped the arm of it tightly. If Gertie had planned what I thought she’d planned, I’d need to be ready.
“Nice stunt you pulled back at the cabins. Luckily I enlisted someone to deal with it,” Jenny said.
Gertie didn’t disappoint. She leaned so far back in the chair she tipped over, screaming. This startled Jenny, giving me the element of surprise as she moved toward Gertie.
The cheap metal chair I sat in was lightweight enough to lift with one hand, yet could do damage as a weapon. In one swift movement I jumped from the chair and lifted it with my right hand and swung it at Jenny, knocking her back into the door frame. She dropped the gun and I kicked it several feet away from her, let go of the chair and landed a punch into her nose, the force of which knocked her head back into the door frame.
Her limp body dropped to the floor.
“You okay, Gertie?”
“Yeah, fine,” she said, pulling herself up and joining me in front of Jenny. “Good job.”
“I guess I don’t have to be so delicate with the cabinet now,” I said, lifting the metal chair and slamming it into the wood. After a few good whacks, I made a dent near the latch. With a few good shoves of the chair legs into the wood with full force, the dent became holes. Then bigger holes.
“Is that my purse?” Gertie asked, peering through the hole.
“If it’s the size of a refrigerator, it’s probably yours.”
She reached through the hole I’d made and pulled her purse out. “Come to mama.”
I managed to rip the door away from the latch and pulled out my backpack and our cell phones. Gertie opened her purse, checking for her wallet. “Little thief took my money.”
“She probably took everybody’s cash for her getaway.”
“She left my gun though,” Gertie said, holding up her pistol. “That’s not too bright.”
We heard a noise in the hallway. Gertie pointed her pistol at the doorway before Millie’s head timidly popped around the corner. “Oh my,” she said, seeing Jenny on the floor, her mouth hanging open. Her eyes widened after registering that Gertie held a gun. “Don’t shoot, please.”
Gertie lowered her gun. “Millie, I thought we said stay in your cabin, honey.”
“I know, but…” She carefully entered the office and stepped over Jenny’s body. “I was worried about you two.” She spotted Jenny’s gun on the floor several feet away. “Did Starlight have a gun?” Millie bent down to inspect it.
“Don’t touch it!” Gertie and I both screamed.
Millie straightened.
“That woman’s not Starlight,” I said. “She’s a woman named Jenny Franklin. That gun might have been used in a crime against Starlight. So we’d rather not get our prints all over it. We’ll let the police handle it.”
Gertie dug through her purse. “I have a couple pair of handcuffs in here somewhere that should hold her until the police arrive.”
“Did you call them already?” Millie asked.
“No,” I said, holding my cell phone. “I’ll call them after I call our friend, Ida Belle.”
“Girls!” Millie shouted, pointing at the window. “Someone’s outside.”
Gertie held her gun up and we both turned toward the window. I saw nothing but the shadow of a nearby tree. Gertie went to investigate further.
“My mistake,” Millie said.
I turned back to Millie and noticed her holding Jenny’s gun in her hand. Pointing it at us. And the sweet, adorable look she had earlier? Gone. Her eyes now were cold. Dead.
“Gertie,” I said, “look what Millie has.”
Gertie turned away from the window.
“Millie,” Gertie said with a bit of exasperation in her voice as she hurried back to my side, “we told you not to touch Jenny’s gun.”
“So you did.”
“What’s this about, Millie?”
She ignored my question. While holding the gun pointed at us, she kicked Jenny. “Wake up, you idiot.”
“You know her?” Gertie asked.
“You might say.” Millie kicked her again. “Wake up!” she screamed. Jenny stirred, moaning.
I made a move toward Millie. She jabbed the space between us with her gun.
“Come any closer,” Millie said, “and I will blow your pretty head clean off.”
“Millie,” Gertie said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have a gun pointed directly at you. I’m an experienced shot, and I would hate to kill you without finding out what this is about and who you really are.”
Millie laughed. “I know you’re an expert shot. But that would require you to have bullets in your gun. Something I made sure to remove before Jenny locked your purse in the cabinet yesterday.”
“I don’t
believe you.”
“Go ahead. Shoot me.”
“Oh, my pleasure.” Gertie aimed her gun at Millie’s leg and pulled the trigger. Nothing but an empty click.
Millie reached behind her back and pulled out another gun from her waistband, now pointing one at me and one at Gertie. “Well, well, well, this is a real pickle you found yourselves in, isn’t it?”
Jenny pulled herself onto her hands and knees. She grabbed at the back of her head and cursed.
“You okay?” Millie asked her.
“My head hurts like hell, but, yeah.”
“Good.” Millie raised her foot and kicked Jenny’s butt. “That’s for letting them get the drop on you.”
“Sorry, Grandma.”
“Grandma?” Gertie and I said in tandem.
“So much for your granny crush,” Gertie whispered.
Jenny slowly stood and sidled up next to Millie, who shoved one of the pistols at her. “Hold onto it this time.”
She pulled her gaze back at us. “My daughter was a mistake from a one-night stand a week before my wedding. She popped out two herself. Jenny’s one of ‘em.” We heard the front door to the administration building open and close. “I believe that’s the other one.”
“You in here, Grandma?”
“In the office,” Millie called out. She rolled her eyes. “Her name’s Brittany. Her Jell-O never quite set right, if you know what I mean.”
Moments later a gangly young woman entered the room, someone I didn’t recognize from the anger management class.
Midtwenties, five-foot-six, dark brown eyes bugging out of their sockets. Jumpy, eager for action. Threat Level: this Jell-O was ready to blow.
“Everything secure back there?” Millie asked Brittany.
Brittany nodded. “I told ‘em I was a staff aide.” She laughed. “I confined the whole group to their cabins, and said if any left early I’d haul ‘em off to jail.”
“I take it you’re not here for the anger management class, Millie,” Gertie said.
Millie shook her head. That explained why there was no info card on her. “Just passing through until Brittany secured a safe house for me.”