“YOUNG MAN!”
Oh, God.
“DO YOU HAVE A LADIES ROOM?”
“Didn’t she just go?” Fantasy whispered. I shrugged.
“Yes, Ma’am,” linebacker said. “If you’ll follow the gold signs to our gift shop, you’ll find facilities there.”
Gift shop?
“WHAT’D HE SAY, DAVIS? I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY.”
Another one of the football players spoke up. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “just follow us.”
The gift shop was Holy Smokes Saks: shiny marble floors, sacred symphony music, and soft chandelier lighting. We followed a woman wearing a dove-gray suit through a large section of leather coats (chained to the hangers and emblazoned with the church logo) to the Ladies Lounge. Fantasy and I waited outside the double doors, smiling gratuitously, scratching things that didn’t itch, and shuffling our feet. Our four escorts kept their distance, but escorted nonetheless. We checked out their surveillance and exchanged a look agreeing that they had as much, if not more, spying going on than at the Bellissimo. Granny finally emerged, smelling like a hooker.
“THEY’VE GOT EVERYTHING IN THERE, DAVIS. LINEN TEA TOWELS, DIPPITY-DO, AND WIND SONG.”
“What’s dippity-do?” Fantasy took a giant step back.
“She means hair spray,” I said.
“What’s wind song?” Fantasy fanned her face.
“PERFUME.”
Fantasy sneezed.
“I feel like shopping,” I said.
“Let’s do it.” Fantasy shot off.
We bypassed the book section that featured the church’s two bestselling authors: Marion Beecher and God. We zipped through Casual Apparel, men’s on our right, ladies’ left, with Granny between us, and stopped near the front of the store to look around. I spotted security linebackers out of the corners of both eyes. So Help Me God’s Emporium had case after case of fine jewelry, gold, silver, and platinum pen sets, engraved this and that, and crystal everything: praying hands, miniatures of the main sanctuary, and busts of the Reverend Beecher. I turned to a different gray-suited salesgirl. “Are there photographs of the pastor?”
“Oh, absolutely!”
“Is there anything that tells the history of the church?” Fantasy asked.
“Oh, absolutely!”
We followed her, turned a corner, and found ourselves in a shrine to the Reverend. His likeness was on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and oven mitts.
The salesgirl checked us out. “Cash or charge?”
“Cash.” Fantasy and I said it together.
The girl wrapped and bagged our purchase, explained the no-refund-no-return policy, and sprinkled some blessings on us. We could not get Granny in the back seat fast enough. We couldn’t get out of the parking lot fast enough, and we couldn’t get out of town fast enough. We didn’t lose our black-sedan tail until we were safely on I-85 on our way back to Pine Apple to drop off Granny and pick up Fantasy’s small child before heading home to Biloxi.
We pulled over at an IHOP to unwrap our gift.
We found what we were looking for on page 277. A small photograph. In it, Marion Beecher sat on a throne. Bold script cut through his middle: Pastor Beecher. Below it: God Bless. Crossed hands rested on his left shoulder. Attached to the hands, standing, was a perfectly preserved, stylishly dressed middle-aged woman. The wife. On the hem of her skirt in dainty cursive: Praise Him, Helen. On the other side of the reverend were two adults. The feminine handwriting across both their middles read In His Name, The Maffinis, Peyton & LeeRoy. Except it wasn’t the Maffinis, Peyton & LeeRoy. It was Peyton Reynolds, Bianca’s AWOL personal assistant, and Matthew Thatcher, our own Mr. Microphone.
We stared at it for the longest.
* * *
The traffic through Montgomery had doubled.
“It’s not too hard to connect these people to each other.” I used my fingers to tick off a list. “Matthew Thatcher was a preacher before he worked at the Bellissimo, he was married to Peyton, who is a preacher’s daughter, and he’s related to the little old lady who loves slot tournaments. I guess our job,” I scratched my head, “is to figure out what they’re up to at the Bellissimo.”
Fantasy sneezed three times in a row.
“GASUNDHEIT.”
Fantasy pulled up the hem of her shirt and was dabbing her eyes with it.
“Are you crying about this?” I asked.
“No, Davis.” Her eyes were red, swollen, and pouring. “That perfume of Granny’s is killing me.” We drove the rest of the way with most of the fourteen car windows down. The polluted air felt good.
“Are you okay back there, Granny?” Her blue hair was airborne.
“IT’S PONDS COLD CREAM,” she said. “I SWEAR BY IT.”
EIGHT
I spent my first night in our new condo alone. It was a wreck. The whole place was an obstacle course of furniture clusters and box towers packed by the 777 Movers. The first box I opened contained these things: a dish towel, three screwdrivers, an empty shampoo bottle, a television remote, a lone lawyer shoe of Bradley’s, hardback books, a potato smasher I’d never seen before, and his-and-hers clothes. All of it beneath an emerald green water-balloon bra that had been splayed across the top. Very funny.
My living quarters have always included an assortment of hand-me-downs and mix-and-match Ralph Lauren florals, overstuffed everything, and homey touches, like quilts and antiques scattered here and there. I’ve always been surrounded by, and not so much by choice as by birthright, more than a few ruffley things, almost all monogrammed. Bradley’s spaces, before us, were traditionally more mahogany, glass, and stainless-steel, with a general color theme of chocolate. There was no middle ground between dark contemporary and cabbage-rose yard sale that we could come up with. So, with both of us snowed under at work all the time, we hired a decorator. She’d used the words “soft palette” often, which, I could see now, translated to “stark-raving white like the pure-driven snow.” Had we signed off on all of this?
The condo itself was the stuff of decorator magazines—travertine floors, granite, inlaid mosaics, built-in this and thats, a screened and shuttered terrace (no view of the ocean) on one side, an open liana (view of the ocean) on the other, and even a butler’s pantry. A butler, we did not have. We did, however, have two guest rooms, a total of four powder-your-nose rooms, and the master bedroom was a master piece. It was large enough to hold four beds, had his-and-hers closets and dressing-rooms separated by a showplace of a marbley bath, and it all spilled into a step-down den-entertainment-office corner with a full Gulf view.
We chose it for two reasons: the private elevator, and Bradley picked it up for a song on the courthouse steps at a short-sell auction after the owner (surprise, surprise) gambled away his oil-rig business. I don’t pretend to know what all that involved. We loved it empty, paid no more for it than a starter home, and signed on each of the four hundred lines the nice lady told us to. There weren’t many condos in Biloxi, certainly not many new and spiffy choices (think post-Katrina), and everything else we’d looked at had neighbors I couldn’t be neighbors with and stay anonymous at the same time. There were Bellissimo department heads up and down the beach, and I cared very little about sneaking in and out of my own home so no one would make me.
I fell onto the circular sofa, a hundred-thousand marshmallows, and felt like I was getting it dirty. It would take my sister, who was a wizard in the taste-style-transformation department, to make this space livable.
Digging into a second box total strangers had packed willy-nilly, I found a fleece blanket that smelled comfortingly like our old place. I found a pillow in the fifth box I opened, along with a tea kettle (I’ve never had a cup of tea in my life, and I’d bet the same was true of Bradley Cole) and a lampshade. Making my way to the masterpiece, I heard an unfa
miliar trilling sound. It was my purse. Digging, I located the source: the burn phone. Mr. Microphone was calling me. Or should I say Mr. Maffini. To get to the noise, I’d passed an unfamiliar bulky drug-store bag. Handwritten on the front were the words Housewarming Gift! in Fantasy’s handwriting. Inside, a home-pregnancy test.
I didn’t take Mr. Microphone’s call for a number of reasons, the main one being I opened the door to the dark masterpiece bedroom and was assaulted by an odor so horrific the only thing it could be was a big dead body and I was too tired to deal with a big dead body. I backed out, pulled the door to, and slept on the marshmallow sofa with the fleece blanket that smelled like Bradley Cole, dreaming about dead bodies and weddings.
* * *
Richard and Bianca Casimiro Sanders hadn’t married so much as they’d merged. It had been a business deal fifteen years ago. I’m not judging; I married twice for the wrong reasons, the same idiot both times. To understand why I’d do something so self-destructive, you’d have to grow up in a town of four hundred and have no idea a man like Bradley Cole even existed. All that was behind me now, thankfully. It would be farther behind me if Eddie the Sloth would move to the Mohave Desert, or grow up and get a job, or just stay the hell away. From me. From my family. And without a doubt, from my boss’s wife.
Somehow, the Sanders have stayed together. He’s kept the marriage intact, I believe, for the sake of their son, Thomas, who is far, far away at school. Mr. Sanders moved him a year ago, when Bianca’s lifestyle became so atrocious he decided it was best his son not witness it. At the time, he was working twenty-five hours a day, and Thomas was being raised by a male nanny who his mother, as it turned out, was also sleeping with. It was all very Jackie Collins. No Hair, Fantasy, and I were paid royally to keep our mouths shut and look the other way.
Mr. Sanders, fed up with it, cut her a deal. Instead of divorcing her—and this was right around the time (two minutes after) I agreed to be her body double—he told her she could sleep with whomever she wanted, whenever she wanted, but from that moment forward, he would too. That’s all it took to settle her down.
Settling down meant Bianca stayed in town, which turned out to be somewhat of a problem for me. She parked herself in Biloxi, found plastic surgeons she liked, and trained a hawk eye on her husband. She became more active in the community. (She did not. I became more active in the community.) She found her inner humanitarian. (She did not. I found it for her.) She played the dutiful hostess when her husband couldn’t attend five-hour dinners with high rollers, famous golfers, and secretaries of agricultures. (She did not. I secretly yawned through those.) Bianca insisted she had “no time for that kind of nonsense.”
I woke up Tuesday morning on my marshmallow sofa staring at the vaulted ceiling of our new home thinking about something she’s had plenty of time to do but hasn’t bothered: take some target practice. The woman couldn’t shoot a gun straight to save her own life. If the idea ever did pass through her brain, she’d want me to take the target practice for her, and I was already a sharp shot.
Bang.
The ceiling of our new condo was more cathedral than vaulted, because all the slopes were equal, meeting in the middle.
I knew where the seventh bullet was.
Bang, bang.
All of a sudden, I knew exactly where it was.
No way was I going into my bedroom. Something nasty was going on in there I’d have to deal with later. Much later. I drove to work in my pajamas.
* * *
“Dammit, Davis.”
“Good morning, Meredith!”
“Where are you?”
“On my way to work. Where are you?”
“I’m at home with Granny, who is supposed to be in Biloxi.”
“Can you bring her?”
“I don’t have much of a choice, now, do I?”
“What do you want me to say, Meredith? I’m sorry I have a job?”
“You know what I ought to do, Davis? I ought to let Mother bring her.”
“Meredith! Do you hate me all of a sudden? First you send Eddie here, and now Mother?”
“Get dressed!”
I pulled the phone away from my head and looked at it. “Can you actually see my pajamas?”
“I was talking to Riley, and no, I don’t hate you. Why are you driving to work in your pajamas?”
“Long story.”
“Tell me the long story about why Granny is here instead of there.”
“I had to go to Beehive.”
“Why?”
“Long story.”
“Tell the long story about Granny first.”
“I couldn’t leave her alone in Biloxi, Meredith, so I took her with me. And she could have ridden back with me last night, but she was so tired I just couldn’t do it to her. She needed to be home in her own bed.”
“You dropped her off here, Davis. Her own bed isn’t at my house. You snuck her in, grabbed Kyle, then hit the road.”
“Who’s Kyle?”
“Fantasy’s son!”
“Right. Granny was pooped, Meredith. She needed you.”
“I guess so. You dragged her all over Alabama.”
“She had fun.”
“She smelled vicious.”
“Yeah, she got a hold of some Wind Song perfume. I think it was as old as she is.”
“Speaking of old, are you in your new place yet?”
The words I’d been waiting for. “Almost. I need your help, sweet sissy, my best friend ever; I’d step out in front of a train for you; I’ll give you a kidney if you ever need it.”
I waited.
“I’ll give you all my kidneys. Right now.”
And waited.
“Dammit, Davis.”
* * *
He was waiting for me in control central.
“Did you know Bianca’s assistant was Matthew Thatcher’s ex-wife?”
“Do you know you’re wearing pajamas?”
Fists on hips.
“Yes,” No Hair said. “I knew.
“Why didn’t you just tell us?” I found a chair and fell in it.
“There wasn’t much to tell until his grandmother registered for all the slot tournaments.”
“What’s he up to, No Hair?”
“That’s just it, Davis.” No Hair’s tie had Dalmatian spots on it. “I have no idea.”
“How much of this does Mr. Sanders know?”
“He doesn’t.”
We sat in silence until I said, “We’ll get to the bottom of this, No Hair.”
Flashing images from the monitors mounted the walls cast light and shadow on No Hair’s bald head.
“Davis?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know my name?”
I nodded.
We listened to the mainframe whir.
“Davis?”
“Yes?”
“We have to find the girl and figure out what Matthew Thatcher is up to before Richard gets back.”
“We will.” Go Team.
Fantasy burst in and went straight for No Hair. “Did you know Bianca’s assistant was Matthew Thatcher’s ex-wife?” Then to me. “Why are you wearing pajamas?”
Which reminded me. “I know where the seventh bullet is.”
“Is it in Peyton?”
“No.”
“Good,” he said. “Now tell me you know where she is.”
“Not just yet.”
“Find. That. Girl.” He stood, then crossed to the door in one giant step, scaring the floor to death. He turned. “You two listen up—” Then there was a whole lot of do this, and even more do that. Do the other. Just do it.
* * *
I did it. I could
hack Santa’s List.
One of my degrees is in Computer and Information Science (the other in Criminal Justice), and like everything else at the Bellissimo, my mainframe was Five Star. What would have taken me three days on any other system took a little more than an hour at my desk in control central.
Lee County, Alabama, issued a marriage license to Peyton Elaina Beecher and Pastor LeeRoy Gerard Maffini ten years ago, then granted them a divorce five years later. Peyton was the only child of the Reverend Marion and Helen Beecher, of So Help Me God Pentecostal Church fame. Those details out of the way, I set my sights on the church. My first quick search turned up nothing. Donate here. Join us for worship at these times. Isn’t our preacher Godly looking?
Hackity, hack, hack, hack.
So Help Me God Pentecostal Church had an operating budget of $45,000,000 and change, with fifty-three percent of that going to salaries and benefits (that’s a lot of salary), but with $61,000,000, give or take, in contributions last year, So Help Me God was way, way, way in the black, black, black.
Honestly, does the Bellissimo have these kinds of numbers?
Which begs the question: If you had a few extra million sitting around, taking up valuable counter space, what would be your best bet? A casino or a mega-church? The only difference I could see was that one was very upfront about taking your money, while the other, I’m not so sure.
Who are these people pumping up the church numbers? Where was the church getting all its dough?
So Help Me God was a non-profit organization. (Now, there’s a funny.) As such, it was tax-exempt, somehow satisfying the requirements of section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Code. It paid payroll taxes, along with Social Security and Medicare, on almost three hundred employees, but that was it. Which meant it could prove to the IRS that each of the sixty-one million dollars they’d collected last year was used for religious, charitable, or educational purposes, none of the net earnings benefited any private individual, and it wouldn’t dare attempt to influence legislation.
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