Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery)

by Brown, Duffy

  I got the daily cash for the Fox out of the Reagan vault, also known as the rocky road container. I transferred the money to my Godiva chocolate box I kept at the counter. Cheap, functional, and it smelled like dessert when I made a sale.

  KiKi wrote up a sale for two customers at the counter, and three more customers came in the front door. Mamma hung up clothes from the dressing room. Business! I felt a little less panicked about the heating bills soon to be gracing my mailbox as Chantilly strolled in hand in hand with Pillsbury. Shoppers paused, Pillsbury’s black leather jacket with dollar signs embroidered on the back, boots, and muscle-bound physique not those of the typical customer to frequent the Prissy Fox.

  “I got that job with Rachelle Lerner,” Chantilly said as the two came up to the checkout door. “Her shop is as cute as a button. It has a few tables for eating, but it’s mostly catering and carryout. I’m already working. I dropped off quiches, sticky buns, and fruit salad to the First Baptist Church on Bull Street this morning and helped them get things organized for their brunch. Rachelle makes dynamite sticky buns, even better than my mamma’s, but you can’t be telling my mamma that. Problem is Rachelle’s hurting for business, and I don’t know why. Her menu is perfection.”

  Pillsbury drew Chantilly a little closer, the dopey, happy grin on the badass man of the hood a little startling. “This girl of mine is off the hook,” he said in his deep baritone voice that sort of vibrated clear through the floorboards. “Scrambled eggs and French toast.” Pillsbury kissed Chantilly on the cheek. “Babe.”

  “That means she’s a good cook,” I translated for KiKi then asked Chantilly, “Did you learn anything?”

  “You bet. I’m a natural at mac and cheese, and you should see me whisk egg whites. Beat those suckers into shape in no time. I think I found my calling.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of Rachelle doing you-know-what to you-know-who.” I leaned across the checkout door. “Let me know if she mentions anything about a guy named Dozer or Butler Haber.”

  “Haber?” Pillsbury’s brows drew tight together, his face hard, mean, scary, and back to badass. Not the kind of guy you want to meet up with all alone in an alley. Whatever Butler did he shouldn’t have.

  “Bad dude,” Pillsbury added. “Big Joey helped fix up a house. Last week the woman fell through the steps and busted a hip. Had to vacate the premises; she’s in a wheelchair. Haber thinks poor folk are stupid ’cause they don’t live in some fancy digs. He gives them cheap wood for prime prices. Bad business that.” Pillsbury shook his head. “Real bad business.”

  “Why do you think the wood’s bad?” I asked Pillsbury. “Maybe it was something else. It could be the weather or even termites?”

  He shook his head. “Wood don’t rot like that in a few years unless something’s wrong with it.”

  “What’s going on?” Mamma asked, bringing a customer up to the counter to check out a dress and shoes. Mamma stopped dead when she saw Pillsbury. Oh boy, it was going to be one of those didn’t-I-send-your-best-friend-to-prison confrontations, and things would get ugly fast.

  “Well now, if you aren’t the spitting image of Gerome Morehead,” Mamma said to Pillsbury. “He used to do my taxes till he retired some years back and moved off to Arizona. He’s a true wizard with numbers. Saved me a bundle, I can tell you that. I sure do miss him.”

  “He’s my granddaddy.” Pillsbury beamed. “Did he ever play his ukulele for you?”

  “‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ was my favorite. Tell him I said hello, now, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I sure will.” Pillsbury took Mamma’s small hand in his much larger one and gave her an ear-to-ear smile that warmed the heart. Mamma was the one woman who never ceased to amaze me.

  KiKi was busy in the afternoon with a secret cha-cha lesson with the Danforths so they could show up the Reynolds at the next country club shindig. That was followed up by another secret cha-cha lesson with the Reynolds so they could show up the Danforths. It was the year of the great Savannah cha-cha wars.

  Mamma and I were busy as ants at a picnic with customers and sales, and we locked up the Fox at five sharp. “I have dinner with the judges filling in for me,” Mamma said. “I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  I gave Mamma a big hug. “We’re going to straighten this out, and you’ll get your courtroom back, and then we’ll give Archie Lee a run for his money.”

  She kissed me on the cheek. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”

  “Because you trust the system.”

  “Of course, and if I’m not alderman, worse things have happened.” She glanced around the shop. “You have a nice business here. The displays were a little shoddy until I came along, but you’ve done well. You’re going to need some help. Maybe I’ll take early retirement and come lend a hand. I had fun today.”

  Mamma collected her purse, and I followed her out onto the porch. She headed for her black Caddy parked across the street. “Okay, God,” I said while waving Mamma off as she drove down Gwinnett. “I did the church thing this morning, I was even nice to Ross and didn’t take her doughnuts, and now you hit me with Mamma working at the Fox?” I rolled my eyes skyward. “Are you having a good time up there or what?”

  I gave BW a potty break, cleaned up after him like a good doggie mommy, then grabbed my denim jacket from inside. The two of us headed for KiKi’s, me looking forward to martinis, BW looking forward to handouts from the fridge. At my house food was pretty much the great unknown . . . do I have some or not? At KiKi’s the fridge was Southern cooking at it’s finest packed in Tupperware, and the golf ball cookie jar was always full of something chocolate.

  BW and I went around the back of the house, letting ourselves in through the iron-rose gate that had graced the premises since before the Yankees came a callin’. I turned the doorknob to let myself in like I always did, except the door was locked.

  “KiKi,” I bellowed like a cranky five-year-old. I added a few knocks to the door for good measure. The only response I got was a big dose of worry sliding down my back. She wasn’t home, and KiKi was looking forward to digging into the Seymour/Dozer/Butler quagmire as much as I was . . . maybe more. So where the heck was she?

  I hustled to the garage. No car. “Maybe she had to run an errand,” I explained to BW while trying to convince myself it was true. I know it’s not logical to panic because your auntie isn’t home to serve up a martini, but cutting KiKi out of the action, in this case the Dozer action, had consequences. In my mind I was keeping her safe; in KiKi’s mind it was So she thinks I’m too old, does she; well, I’ll show her. I had a bad feeling this was one of those I’ll-show-her situations.

  The manila folder! I tore open Old Yeller to find no copies inside. Of course they weren’t inside; that sneaky auntie had distracted me with visions of Mamma doing the display in the bay window and snatched the papers in my time of decorating distress. The missing copies of the articles and the picture of the lumber stamp coupled with Pillsbury’s tales of Butler and the collapsed house told me where KiKi was. Well, I didn’t know exactly where she was, but after letting myself into KiKi’s house and dialing up the Chantilly/Pillsbury duo for the address of the house where the floor collapsed, BW and I were hoofing it toward Blair Street at record speed.

  Maybe KiKi had just left, I reassured myself. Maybe she was just poking around the abandoned house and had lost track of time. Maybe she was lying unconscious in a gutter. I walked faster.

  Clouds of mist hugged church spires and treetops; a cold damp fog snaked at my ankles, BW looking as if he were walking on little tufts of smoky cotton. It was six and felt like midnight, only a few people out and about, darting to where they needed to be and staying put. Wind whipped through the trees, and I shivered as much from the chill as apprehension. We hung a right onto Heartridge then over to Blair, streetlights dim, few porch lights on, my footsteps and BW’s nails on the sidewalk the only sounds, a boogieman behind every bush. It was a jump
y kind of night.

  KiKi’s shiny navy Beemer sat at the curb completely out of place in the land of the dated. A few homes glowed from within, but 214 Blair sat dark and deserted except for one light deep inside, a new ramp for wheelchair access nearly complete. BW and I started up the brick walk to the house, BW giving me the where the heck are you taking me look.

  “This place is a little creepy; can you butch it up a little?” I said to BW. “It might come in handy.”

  I got out my flashlight but didn’t turn it on. I didn’t need the neighbors calling the cops. Two encounters of the criminal kind between Mr. Suit and Ann Taylor would take a lot of explaining, and right now I had a lot more questions than answers. I followed the narrow driveway that circled around to the back, looking in the deserted house windows as I went, no movement anywhere. A wood deck extended from the rear entrance, and something smelled strange, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Where the heck was KiKi?

  A ruffling came from the tangle of trees and bushes that butted up against the yard. I shined my light in that direction. KiKi was pushing and fighting her way out of the growth looking like Lindsay Lohan on a bender. “Where in the world have you been?” I fumed.

  KiKi opened her purse to two eyes and a meow.

  “You have a cat in a Gucci bag?” I put my hand in to pet it, and it hissed. “A mean cat in a Gucci bag.”

  KiKi swiped her mangled hair from her dirty face and tried to straighten her torn skirt.

  “And you have scratches. That’s bad from a stray. Maybe we should get you to the ER.”

  “It’s not from the cat; it’s from climbing the tree. I was thinking of naming him Guilt Trip. I was checking this house just to see if it was tied in any way to the Dozer copies, and the cat was living under the deck, and I scared him, and he ran off, and the dog next door chased him into the woods and up a tree, and all I could hear was this pitiful meow.”

  “You really climbed a tree?”

  “These things happen.”

  “It was that help-others sermon, wasn’t it? Does everyone else get into this much trouble after going to church on Sunday morning?”

  “No one’s fed us to the lions yet.”

  “It’s not even seven; there’s time.” I put my arm around KiKi. “Let’s get some tea.”

  “Forget tea, I have martinis chilling for us in the fridge.”

  “Amen.” BW, KiKi, and I followed the flashlight down the drive to the front of the house. “Don’t you smell that?” I asked KiKi.

  “All I smell is cat pee in my purse. It costs twelve hundred dollars.”

  We crossed the deserted street to the Beemer, the fog giving the streetlights a soft golden haze. “You sure you want to keep that cat?” I asked.

  “He’s hungry.”

  “Twelve hundred dollars?”

  “And sixty-three cents.”

  “That’s a lot of dance classes. Next Sunday we should sleep in. For now you stay here while I go find us a box. Cat pee in the Beemer may not go over too well with Uncle Putter. He wasn’t there for the sermon.”

  I handed KiKi BW’s leash and started back across Blair, looking at the deserted house, trying to pinpoint that weird smell and—

  Kaboom!

  Fireballs blasted out the doors, windows, and roof. Bricks, wood, and God knows what else flew into the air; the impact slammed me backward, yellow flames and heat singing my skin as I landed hard on my butt, rattling the fillings in my teeth. Gasping for a breath, I glanced at KiKi to see if she was okay; the blaze reflected off her face, her eyes huge against the dark night. Two more pairs of eyes stared from under the Beemer . . . and three cars down a red ’57 Chevy convertible sat at the curb.

  Boone! What the heck? Pillsbury must have told him KiKi and I were here, and he feared for the neighborhood! But where was he now? This was my fault. If I wasn’t here and KiKi wasn’t here, Boone wouldn’t be here . . . somewhere. God knows where! That cat wasn’t the only one tagged Guilt Trip tonight. I cut my eyes back to the fire, orange and yellow flames devouring what was left of the walls, roof, and porch. I pushed myself up, then stumbled my way toward the blazing house.

  The inferno lit up the night with thick black smoke billowing out every opening. I dodged a burning door in the middle of the street, jumped over a chunk of table, and prayed I didn’t come across body parts. Oh, God, please no body parts. “Boone!”

  My voice sounded muffled in my own head, the blast knocking out my hearing along with everything else. Flaming debris littered the sidewalk and the neighbors’ yards. My jacket caught on fire till I smashed it out with the flat of my hand. “Boone!”

  A wall of flames from a chunk of blown-out house blocked the driveway, keeping me from the backyard. Was Boone trapped there? Fire scorched pristine white clapboard, the flames coming closer and closer. Good Lord, a chunk of wall was falling right at me!

  I screamed and was suddenly airborne, landing spread-eagle on my back in the grass, staring up at sparks soaring into the sky. Walker Boone landed on top of me, all hundred-and-whatever superb pounds squashing me into the ground. Fire crashed down next to us, shaking the ground, with flames and heat everywhere. I could feel Boone’s heart pounding against my chest, his hot breath on my right ear, his rough stubble on my cheek, my hips firm against his . . . oh boy.

  It had been a long, long, over two-years-long, time since I’d been in this particular position, and never in a million years did I ever think it would be with Walker Boone!

  Chapter Eleven

  BOONE pushed himself up, grabbed my arm, and propelled me through the flames to the sidewalk.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Boone whispered. I was 100 percent sure it wasn’t a whisper at all, but my nonworking ears made it sound that way. It was probably more like a million-decibel roar. I tried to tell Boone I couldn’t hear, but the man was on such a rant I decided against pushing the point. Least this way he could get it all out of his system and I didn’t have to listen to it, or at least I listened at a decreased volume.

  “I was looking for you,” I explained when I could finally squeeze in a word.

  Boone said something, but it was lost in the blast of sirens from fire engines, two police cruisers, and two ambulances outfitted with enough strobe lights to be seen from outer space. Firefighters stretched hoses and hooked them up to hydrants, and a cop made his way over to Boone to ask if anyone was in the house.

  Everyone knew Boone with him having one foot in the law enforcement camp, one foot in the hood from days of yore, and his behind in half the female beds in the city . . . or so the kudzu vine reported. I took the opportunity to back away into the night, fading into the crowd of neighbors pouring out of houses and gathering in the street.

  “We should get out of here now while everyone’s busy,” I said to KiKi as I pulled up beside her, BW wiggling out from under the car. “We’ll have to get the Beemer later. It’s hemmed in by all this equipment.”

  “Was that Boone I saw you with?” KiKi asked. “He saved your sweet Southern behind when that there wall collapsed. Maybe you should bake him a cake, or buying him a cake might be better.”

  “Hey, I can cook.”

  “Of course you can, dear.” She held up Old Yeller. “That explosion blew it right off your arm, not a scratch on it. We should tell the army about this here purse.”

  I straightened KiKi’s hair to calm down the finger in the socket look she had going on. “We just act normal, like we belong to the neighborhood,” I said. “We don’t need the police asking why we were at the house.” I took in KiKi’s tree-climbing attire and looked down at my ripped denim jacket, filthy khakis, glued-together shoes caked with soot and burned, and spotted Mr. Suit getting out of a cruiser.

  “We need to get out of here now; that guy with the cops is bad news. I met up with him at Dozer’s.”

  KiKi pointed to her purse. “We can’t leave without my cat.”

  “He’s not your cat.”

  Tha
t got me the sad auntie look, which is the one thing even worse than the ticked off auntie look. “If I hadn’t climbed that tree,” KiKi said with a hitch in her voice, “I might have been in that house. God works in mysterious ways. He sent us to church.”

  “Meaning you were supposed to follow the cat?”

  “Meaning I’m supposed to give him a home.”

  There was no arguing with the God theory. I took off what was left of my jacket and shimmied under the Beemer, dragging my jacket with me. I reassured myself this would just take a minute and that I really didn’t hate confined spaces as much as I thought I did.

  Rocks, leaves, and other street flotsam ground into my elbows and forearms. I knocked my head on the undercarriage and came face-to-whiskers with the cat from hell. “You should know it’s been a bad day and I’m not in a good mood and I hate, hate, hate being under here.”

  He hissed. I hissed back, flipped my jacket over his head, and tied the arms together, making for a bag full of snarling, screeching, scratching feline. I started to back out and caught sight of shoes, not black police uniform shoes or firefighter boots, but Sperry Top-Sider loafers from the Macy’s catalog, the obvious choice of young, obnoxious up-and-coming Southern detectives everywhere.

  I curled my feet under the car to stay hidden, beads of sweat slithering down my back. I had no idea what Suit said to KiKi but trusted the queen of half truths and story spinning to save the day and somehow explain away her appearance, a BMW on this street, and a cat howling his head off under the car, and that she’d do it fast. The Top-Siders walked away, and I forced myself to count to ten then shimmied out dragging Hellion with me. I peeked over the car hood to make sure Suit wasn’t hanging around and caught site of Boone still chatting with the cops, his hand tucked behind his back and favoring one leg. Neighbors crowded closer, a WSAV news van with enough antennae to reach Mars pulling up.