7
The heavy equipment arrived at the top of the shoe just as dawn was breaking. It was all parked strategically, then the workers who delivered the equipment climbed into the back of a pickup truck and sped off. At the last second, one of them hopped out of the truck to plaster a yellow sheet of paper onto the side of a bush hog. He leaped back into the truck.
Diddy, who always woke early, walked out to her porch and almost fainted when she saw all the heavy machinery. The urge to scream at the top of her lungs was so great she had to pinch herself to hold back the scream. Instead, she tromped across the lawn and up to the top of the shoe, where she snatched the yellow sheet of paper and read it. This time she did scream. Within seconds Dodo and Diddy were running toward her.
“Look! Look! This is a provisional license for Bella to have all this equipment set up here. How did this happen?” Diddy screeched so loud her sisters covered their ears.
“I’ll tell you how it happened. That…that…twit used Russell’s death to aid her in this crazy scheme. She was on television nonstop for days saying how many lives she was saving or making better. She even likened herself to Mother Teresa, saying she only thinks of others, never herself,” Dodo said angrily.
“Darby warned me this was coming. We have to do something. Something drastic. We can’t let this happen. We do carry some weight in this town. It’s time to act like the eight-hundred-pound gorilla we are. We still have a small window of time to come up with a plan,” Ducky said.
Arm in arm, the three sisters walked back to Diddy’s house, where she popped sweet rolls into the oven and made coffee.
“We’ve never been able to discredit that woman before because we can’t get anything on her. It’s like she was born the day she arrived here. We should hire a private detective to get the goods on her. I bet she has some dark, secret past she doesn’t want anyone to know about. She’s going to ruin those houses. They’re going to look just like that monstrosity she lives in, mark my words. How in the damn hell did she convince the committee to give her a provisional license?” Dodo fumed.
“I told you how. She’s using Russell’s death to get what she wants. We can’t let her get away with this,” Ducky said. “Not only is it disgraceful, it’s sinful for her to use Russell like this. The more I think about it the better I like the idea of hiring a private detective. Maybe one in New Orleans, so no one knows what we’re up to.”
“That works for me,” Dodo said. “Diddy?”
“Whatever it takes. I don’t want to see Bella Gunn living in one of those houses. They belong to Ben. Marcus told me once he was leaving one to Ben and one to Russ. I don’t know if he made a will to that effect or not. Maybe we should go to the courthouse and see what’s on file. I have a dental appointment this morning. I can go to the courthouse when I’m finished.”
Dodo felt her eyes grow misty. There were two houses. One for Ben and one for…She squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to give up her dream of another family living in the second Gunn house. She bit down on her lower lip. Sometimes no matter how hard you wished for things, they simply didn’t happen. Another dream shot to hell, she thought bitterly.
Ducky nudged her sister, and both busied themselves clearing the table. There were some things that were so private, so personal, one simply didn’t acknowledge them.
When Dodo finally had her emotions under control, she said, “Okay, this is what we do. We get dressed up and go visiting. We make our feelings known where Bella is concerned. Ducky, you take on the Garden Club. Invite them all to lunch if you have to. I’m going to see Simon and the members of the Preservation Society. We need to agree that if we have to get down and dirty, we do it. Meaning, of course, that we will shut down the brewery. That will put the fear of God into all of them. Bella or the brewery. A definite no-brainer. Bella is forcing us to resort to her tactics, so she deserves whatever happens.”
Hours later, Dodo silently crept out of her room and tiptoed down the steps, grateful that they didn’t creak. She quickly called both of her sisters, and within minutes she was carrying a tubful of the family beer to the gazebo in the backyard. Diddy was to bring the ice. Ducky, as usual, brought herself and nothing else.
Meeting in the gazebo late at night was nothing new for the three sisters. They did it on a regular basis in times of crisis, and if there wasn’t a crisis, they conjured one up. Now, they huddled around the wooden table, each with a bottle of the family beer in her hands. Dodo took the initiative. “We need a plan, something foolproof. Something that will make this all easier for us to bear. What that boils down to is we have to chop Bella Gunn off at her bony knees,” Dodo said, her voice ringing with vengeance. “We have to figure out a way to discredit her.”
Diddy squirmed on the bench she was sitting on, knowing what was about to come next. She beat her sisters to the proverbial punch by saying, “No! Don’t go there, either one of you. I’ll help, but I’m not going to do what you want. I mean it!”
Dodo struggled for a normal tone of voice. “Of course you’ll do it. If you don’t, I’ll have to kill you.”
“All you want to do is kill people. Kill me dead, see if I care! Then where will you be? Nowhere, that’s where!” Diddy’s voice was so belligerent, both sisters patted her arms to show they understood her inner turmoil, knowing that, in the end, Diddy would do what was required of her. This was all about family, and when it came to family, the Lane sisters united.
Dodo tried another tack. “Diddy, don’t you think if there was anyone else or another way, we’d try it? You’re it! Drink your beer, and let’s make a plan.” Both sisters waited a minute or two to see what Diddy’s response would be. When none was forthcoming, they got down to business.
“I think we’re right back where we were earlier this afternoon,” Diddy said. “I didn’t find out anything at the courthouse we didn’t already know. The two Gunn houses are in Marcus’s name. There was no way to find out about his will, so I don’t know if he kept his promise to leave them to Russell and Ben. It was a total waste of time even though I tried to gossip with some of the older clerks to see if they might have picked up something here or there. No one knew a thing.”
“I didn’t fare any better with the members of the Garden Club. With the exception of Sarabess and maybe Honoria, they’re going to vote to include Bella in the tour. They bought into her good Samaritan crap. Bethany had the gall to tell me I was jealous of Bella. When I threatened to close the brewery, they just looked at me and dared me to do it. If we three vote no and Sarabess and Honoria vote no, it will be a tie. It’s a crapshoot,” Ducky said sourly.
The three women sat in silence, each busy with her own thoughts.
A long time later, Dodo squared her skinny shoulders. “It’s raining!” she said. “I get brilliant ideas when it rains, for some reason.”
“So what?” Ducky snarled. “The worst thing that will happen is our hair will frizz into giant bushes, we’ll get wet, and we’ll keep drinking Granddad’s beer. What kind of ideas?”
Dodo drained her bottle of beer. It never paid for them to allow Dodo to get ahead of them when they were in their serious planning stages. She leaned forward and spoke in a hushed whisper. “Now hear me out and for God’s sake let me finish before either of you goes off the deep end. The Garden Club is getting ready to send out the invitations for the Christmas Candlelight Tour. Now, we all know that Bella Gunn would sell her soul to have her house included. It might look like the club is going to approve Bella, but it isn’t going to happen, because we are going to stop the process. Right now, Bella thinks she has an inside track, so we’ll trade on that. Ducky will invite her to lunch to congratulate her while…while…Diddy and I go to the house and…and snatch Marcus. This is crunch time and we need to pull out all the stops,” Dodo said, barely stopping to take a breath. “All in the interests of preserving the shoe and getting Ben to stay in town. Marcus can talk and has alert moments, according to Ben. Marcus must have some kin
d of dirt on Bella. We need to find out exactly what that dirt is. We don’t have a whole lot of time here, girls. The clock is ticking, and that provisional license could turn into a conditional one if Bella puts pressure on the committee. While Ducky is entertaining Bella, Diddy and I go to the house and snatch Marcus. Diddy’s the bait. I’m the muscle.” Ducky choked on her beer.
Diddy’s eyes glazed over. “No,” she mumbled.
“Yes. Then we take him to Rayne, to Trixie’s house. Trixie and Fred can keep Marcus for a while till we see just what the hell is wrong with him. That way no one can pin anything on any of us. Ducky will be with Bella, and we’ll just spirit him away. We have to stop Bella before she ruins the two houses in the shoe. I hate to keep saying this, but the clockis ticking. Even if we snatch Marcus, there is no guarantee he will help us. If that happens, we’re back to square one, and the clock is ticking faster. I suppose we should give some thought to Plan B if Marcus can’t or won’t help us. For all we know that witch could have some kind of evil hold on him. Having said that, let’s give some thought to hypnotizing Marcus, if all else fails.
“One last thing.” Dodo’s voice turned fierce when she said, “Family should stick together, be together. That’s what life is all about. Family. That’s why we’re doing this, and don’t forget it. It’s all about…family.” Her voice cracked and broke as her sisters rushed to her, their eyes meeting across Dodo’s bowed head.
“Aren’t you forgetting the nurse and all the household help?” Ducky queried, trying to change the subject.
“I have to work on that a little. What do you think of the plan so far?” Dodo asked, clearly grateful to put her mind to the task at hand.
“It stinks,” Diddy said. “What makes you think Trixie and Fred, our oldest and dearest friends in the whole world, will do this? It’skidnapping!”
Dodo sighed. Trixie and Fred McGuire, aka, T. F. Dingle, writer of blood-and-guts mystery stories, now retired, and training K-9 dogs for police departments all over the country, were the perfect couple to hide Marcus Gunn. And Rayne was just under two hours away, so they could easily keep tabs on Marcus and his condition.
“It’s not really kidnapping if we can get him out under his own power. They’ll think he just wandered off. You know how us old people do that from time to time,” Dodo said airily.
“Shut up, Dodo. This is illegal. We could go to jail. Fred and Trixie could go to jail. Think aboutthat!” Ducky hissed as she uncapped her third bottle of beer. “I know, I know, you’ll just kill anyone who gets in the way. We need to get real here. Why are we even planning this anyway?”
“Because Bella did the unforgivable. She ignored Russell’s last wishes. She gave away his body parts when he expressly said he didn’t want that to happen,” Dodo said.
“That’s illegal, too,” Diddy sniffed. “You can’t hypnotize someone against their will. Even I know that!”
Dodo slid off the bench and proceeded to do some limbering-up exercises. “He’ll never know he’s being hypnotized. That’s the beauty of it. Stop worrying. We can do this if we each do what we’re supposed to do. Ducky, Bella will be drooling over your invitation. You’ll have so much to talk about, your nips and tucks, your designer wear, all those boy toys you play around with, your world travels, et cetera. Your reputation for being as loose as a goose will sit well with Bella.”
“Oh, God!” was all Ducky could say.
“I saw Marcus’s chart. Darby copied it yesterday. It said the nurse takes Marcus out to the garden every afternoon for lunch, weather permitting. That’s when we snatch him. We’ll use the pickup truck and take the battery-operated wheelbarrow. We just dump him in it, hoist him into the back, and off we go. All the way to Rayne. You just wait and see, Marcus will thank us when this is all over,” Dodo said cheerfully. “See, I’m planning as we talk. That’s how a plan comes together. Find one thing wrong with anything I’ve just said.”
“I hate you, Dodo. I can’t believe you’re my sister,” Diddy said sourly. “Your mind is warped.”
“Yes, it is. I’m taking that as a compliment. Well, are you in or are you out? I guess your silence means you’re in. I’m proud of you.”
“What if Trixie and Fred say no?” Ducky asked.
“Think of the excitement, the challenge. Us against that damn Bella. From here on out, I want you both to think positive. Would you look at that rain! I think Ben is smitten with our Darby. She’s smitten with him, too, she just doesn’t know it yet.” She continued, “We’re going to need a private dick, too. We’re going to get the skinny on that woman once and for all. I’m telling you, Marcus is going to thank us when this is all over. There’s no doubt in my mind that we can pull off this caper. I like that wordcaper almost as much as I like the wordspecificity,” she jabbered.
Diddy shook the beer bottle in her hand till it was almost all foam and squirted it at her sister. “I’m going to pray tonight that you get lockjaw, Dodo,” Diddy said, reaching down to the tub for a fresh beer.
“I second that,” Ducky said. “When was the last time we took our clothes off and ran through the rain?”
“A hundred years ago,” Dodo said. “Now I’m going to smell like a distillery. Why did you do that, Diddy?”
“Because I hate you. I’ve always hated you. I will continue to hate you forever.” She didn’t mean a word of it, and Dodo knew it.
A ripe discussion on each other’s naked attributes followed. No one took offense.
“We’re old now,” Dodo said sadly. “Does either of you ever think about what kind of legacy we’re going to leave behind when we…you know,go?”
Neither sister answered her. Dodo shrugged. The heavy rain continued to beat on the roof of the gazebo. Off in the distance, the tree frogs talked to one another. She loved the sound. She didn’t even mind when one or two of them got into the house. She viewed them as company.
Dodo looked toward her house. She could barely see the dim yellow light on the second-floor hallway. A dog barked. She wondered if it was Willie or a dog beyond the shoe. In the scheme of things she realized it didn’t matter one way or the other. She looked toward the shoe the way she always did late at night or early in the morning. Then she would daydream about a family living there, a special family. A family with children running and laughing, playing. Dogs, cats, friends. Bicycles, red wagons, roller skates, all the things chilren needed to be children. If she had a say in the matter, it would happen. It had to happen. Maybe it was time to go in and go to bed. Walking across the yard in the rain would wash away most of the beer smell on her clothes. “What time is it?”
“Almost midnight. The witching hour,” Ducky said. “Why do you want to know, and what difference does it make? By the way, in case either of you are interested, I canceled my plans and am staying here. I’m going to let my hair go gray, I’m going to eat like a truck driver, and I’m going to wear bib overalls so I look like the two of you. I’m just going to get old.”
“Really. That’s interesting.”
Ducky ignored her sisters, her thoughts far away as she wondered if she could adjust to life in Baton Rouge again. With a flip of her frizzy hair, she decided she could. Life here in Baton Rouge would be whatever she made it.
“It’s a good thing we decided not to getnekkid and romp through the yard. You want to talk about a caper, that would be the ultimate,” Ducky gurgled. In the blink of an eye, her nightgown sailed over the railing of the gazebo, and she was running through the rain.
“When in Rome…” Dodo said.
“Fools!” Diddy said, as her nightgown landed on top of Ducky’s.
On the second-floor balcony, Ben’s jaw dropped as he squeezed his eyes shut and ran into the house and into his bed. He pulled the covers over his head to stifle his laughter. He was still smothering his chuckles when he heard Dodo marching down the hall to her room.
Damn, it’s good to be home.
The noise was harsh and loud, unlike any noise the Lanes had eve
r heard in the shoe. The Lane sisters, Ben, and Darby all bolted out of bed and raced to their respective front verandas. The sight that greeted them rendered the sisters speechless. Not caring that they were in their nightclothes, they raced down the steps, across the lawn, and up to the two Gunn houses. Darby was tying the belt to her robe as she joined them. Ben, dressed only in a pair of khaki shorts, brought up the rear.
“What the hell’s going on?” he bellowed.
Still speechless, Ducky pointed to the road, where bulldozers, a wrecking ball, assorted trucks, and men were standing. A radio blasted from one of the many pickup trucks; heavy metal sounds that grated on the ears. Two huge dump trucks pulled up, adding to the confusion.
“Who’s in charge here?” Ben shouted to be heard over the cacophony of sound.
A big, burly man wearing a hard hat stepped forward, his hand outstretched. “Jay Tigger. Tigger Construction. We’re here to demolish these two houses,” he said, pointing to Ben’s father’s houses, which sat opposite each other on the Horseshoe. “I have all the paperwork. Mrs. Gunn signed off on it. She hired us to build two new houses, replicas of her own house.”
Ben snatched the sheaf of papers out of Tigger’s hands.
“She can’t do this. These are historical houses. They can’t be torn down. Marcus knows that!” Diddy screeched. “Dodo, go in the house and call the Historical Society and while you’re at it, call the police and Simon from the Preservation Club. She can’t do this with a provisional license.”
“The ladies are right, Mr. Tigger. Historical houses can rot to the ground, be repaired, but they cannot be torn down.” Ben turned to Dodo and said, “Call the mayor and the newspaper.” He turned back to Jay Tigger. “I’m Ben Gunn. These two houses belong in my family. You’re going to have to wait until someone in authority gets here. My father would never agree to this. Never!” Yet even as he said the words, Ben wondered if what he was saying was true.
Hey, Good Looking Page 10