Do Wah Diddy Die

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “I always thought Mickey was kind of cute.”

  He felt himself grin. Could tell it was the stupid one, but he didn’t seem to care. It was enough to look into her eyes while she looked into his. It was enough to wonder how a mouth so straight could curve like that and would it taste as good as it looked?

  A clang of machinery made them both jump.

  “Yes, well.” He shook himself, then said, “I just have a few questions for you, Miss Seymour—”

  She twitched. If he hadn’t been watching her closely he would have missed it. “What?”

  Her mouth pursed in distaste. “It’s just, being called that makes me feel like my mother.”

  “Miss Seymour reminds you of your mother?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Her sigh was just shy of dramatic.

  He opened his mouth, remembered his plan and jumped right over this little bit of quicksand. He asked his questions, resisting her efforts to digress, until he got to his last question.

  “Can you think of anyone who might want to kill you?”

  She looked startled, then thoughtful, as if the question interested her in some distant, academic way. “I suppose anyone can have enemies and I am a Seymour, which means I bring out the homicidal in people.”

  Mickey opened his mouth to ask, then realized what he was about to do and stopped himself.

  “I also know a lot of excitable gun-toting types, you understand, but none of them drive a Yugo. They drive off-road vehicles with gun racks, wear orange hunting vests and never wear joke glasses.” She folded a blouse and tossed it in after the jeans, then picked up a silky scrap of white and lace. “Did you say you were in homicide?”

  “Yes.” Mickey felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in warning.

  “Oh.”

  “Despite the many TV plots,” he said, “most perps try to avoid shooting a cop. It just gets them more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “So someone wasn’t trying to personally kill you?” The quantity of bullets fired at them seemed awfully personal to her, but she wasn’t a homicide cop.

  “I can’t know for sure, of course, but I don’t think so.” He looked at her with a lot of wary in his eyes. “Why?”

  “I was sort of hoping this—” she held up the white scrap to show him a bra with two blown cups, “would be covered under your insurance?”

  No one came to the tiny French Quarter club for the drinks, though buying them at an exorbitant rate was required for sitting at ringside. Its claim to fame was its female mud wrestlers. Patrons had another good reason for buying liberally. They needed to get really drunk to get past their natural fear of getting down and dirty with said wrestlers, especially the one kicking patron ass at the moment. Even the dullest wit had to know she hadn’t lost her front teeth just because of poor dental hygiene.

  Fern watched the woman toss the over-confident college student clear across the ring. It wasn’t possible for her to get drunk enough to crawl in there and get her ass tossed, but it was cathartic to watch someone else get tossed after their very public defeat. It didn’t help to have an prosperous looking Artie sitting across from them laughing his ass off about their failure at the airport.

  Donald let Artie pay for their drinks, which wiped the grin off his face. He’d always been a tight bastard. When the waitress was about two steps out of earshot, Fern said, “A guy who keeps all his dollars in one place—”

  Artie pulled his feet in to keep a passing patron from stepping on his new shoes. “Hey, it’s not easy to launder dollars. No one wants to bother with small bills anymore.”

  “No kidding,” Fern said. “Let’s see, I wonder why that could be?”

  “Gets me.” Artie leaned closer to confide, “Think about it. People freak if they lose five bucks in a scam. Have the postal inspector all over you. But for a buck? Not a peep. Just not worth their time to complain.”

  It made enough sense to be scary. Fern wasn’t used to Artie making sense. She put down her drink. Maybe the cheap beer was affecting her more than she realized.

  “Tell you what,” Donald said. “I won’t tell you how to scam if you won’t tell me how to kill.”

  “Okay, okay.” Artie threw his hands up. “The AK-47 was a bad idea. You do your thing and when you’re done, let me know so I can do mine. Agreed?”

  He pulled out a handkerchief and bent to wipe a speck of mud off his shoes.

  Fern looked at Donald. He grinned. “What say we get ourselves an Uzi?”

  A rare smile lit Fern’s face. She should have been looking at the ring instead of at him. She just had time to register his look of horror before the wall of mud hit all three of them.

  5

  It was late by the time Mickey found a car to take them to Luci’s aunts’ house. That it was a Yugo didn’t help his headache.

  “Did you get a chance to call your aunts and let them know—”

  “You don’t call my aunts,” Luci said. “They have this aversion to technology.”

  “Uh huh.” Mickey stowed her blasted belongings, then opened the door for her. “I could have sent someone—”

  Her smile cut him off. It was too close, too charm-intensive with only the car door between them.

  “They lost track of the last twenty years of my life. I don’t think they’ll notice I’m a few hours late.”

  She slid in, giving him a generous glimpse of her thighs as her skirt rode high. When her hands smoothed the skirt back into place, the memory lingered with him as he crossed to the driver’s side and got in. He hesitated, then had to ask, “Are they always—”

  “Always,” she said.

  He reached for the key, then stopped. “Except for Miss Gracie.”

  Her straight brows rose for a moment, a look that could have been surprise widening her eyes. “You...met Miss Gracie?”

  “Met her?” Mickey didn’t hesitate. “I love her. She tried to save me from the pig and she did save me from the dragon.”

  Her smile widened, upping the charm factor by ten. “My cousin and I got them the same day. They were too big to take with us when we left.”

  “Too bad,” Mickey said, with heartfelt emphasis.

  Luci chuckled. “That’s what Miss Gracie said when I left it.”

  Mickey grinned. “She’s so...so...” He realized what he’d almost said and stopped.

  “So…what?” Luci asked, like she wanted to know.

  “Well…” Mickey paused, then decided she’d asked for it. “Normal.”

  “Really.” It didn’t sound like a question the way she said. Her face was thoughtful when she added, “How interesting.”

  He started the engine. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Do that. Be like them. Your aunts.” He gave a shudder as he pulled away from the diminishing confusion of the shooting.

  “I can’t help it. I am like them. You’ve just been too busy looking at my legs to notice.”

  Since he couldn’t admit that even her legs hadn’t kept him from noticing, Mickey said, “Well, they are good.”

  Luci’s laugh was rich and warm. “They have to be. I’m a dancer.”

  “Dancer?” Mickey didn’t mean to make it a question.

  “Would you let them go to waste?”

  Mickey didn’t hesitate. “No.”

  “Well, there you are then.” She relaxed back in the seat as if the discussion were over.

  Mickey steered the car onto the freeway. “You’re right. You are like them.”

  “It’s a genetic imperative.”

  “You could fight it.”

  “I could do a lot of things.”

  It was a good thing he had three lanes to himself. Her punctuating smile put a swerve in his heart that the car mimicked. He straightened the car and tried to straighten his heart. It wasn’t easy with the smell of her, lightly overlaid with smoke, filling the air around him. It was as distinctive as the woman from whom it emanated. Mysterious. Unusual. Somewhat anno
ying.

  She was quiet for several miles before breaking the silence with a soft chuckle.

  “What?” Mickey gripped the steering wheel, bracing for another round of the unexpected.

  “I was just thinking, I don’t have a thing to wear.” Her voice was husky with sleepy amusement. He heard a rustle of movement as she shifted and looked at him. “Guess I’ll have to go shopping.” She didn’t sound sorry. “Though my neighbor, Helen, would tell me not to be hasty.”

  “Why?” Mickey had passed from exhausted into the stupor zone. It gave him a measure of protection from anything weird she might say, so he felt safe asking the question. It was just a dream from which he would soon waken and wonder what he ate that caused it.

  “She thinks my stars are out of alignment or something. She’s a great believer in stars and convinced there is purpose behind seemingly random events. Like when she hit her husband with her car.”

  “She hit her husband with her car?” This made a small ripple on the surface of his stupor, but he was able to ride it out.

  “He wasn’t her husband when she hit him. That’s the purpose part. If she hadn’t hit him, she wouldn’t have met him, wouldn’t have married him—so it must have been meant. Otherwise, why hit him?”

  “Because he was in the way?” Mickey said.

  “Well, just between you and me, that’s what I think. I can’t see where it’s helped her all that much to be married to him, because he’s gone to Cleveland every other week. And she has to be Mrs. Maxwell Artesian. Not a name I’d personally like to be saddled with. Especially when she’d almost made it through her life without it.” She shifted in her seat to ask, “Don’t you think it’s kind of a coincidence that we both know people, I mean like Helen and your uncle, who are embarking on late-life marriages?”

  This rippled a little deeper, but a yawn cut it off. He hid it behind a hand. “Lots of people get married late in life.”

  “I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced, but it wasn’t in his job description to convince her. “It’s made her obsessed with marriage. Which wouldn’t be a problem if she understood about Seymour women. That’s why I didn’t tell her about the car that almost hit me last week. She’d have had me engaged, even though we don’t.”

  Mickey realized he’d missed a crucial key to understanding what she’d just said. “You don’t—what?”

  Luci looked surprised. “Get married.”

  “Ever?”

  “Never,” Luci reaffirmed.

  “Oh.” Mickey took the exit on auto-pilot while his tired brain studied this revelation with an interest that wasn’t nearly disinterested enough. It seemed, he decided with a discreet look at her legs, that even a really dark cloud had a silver lining.

  6

  Luci’s aunts lived in an area of narrow, rutted streets and mixed architectural ancestry just off St. Charles in a house that was a narrow embellished Victorian built just prior to the turn of the century. Set on a corner lot, it had long settled into the midst of an abundant tangle of shrubbery and flowers barely confined by the high wrought-iron fence that circled the property.

  Their handyman, Boudreaux, a small Cajun with a speech impediment that made it difficult for the non-Seymour to understand him, kept the house in pristine condition. His tall, spare and mute-by-choice wife, Louise, cared for the aunts. Both had been with the aunts for as long as Luci could remember.

  Coming down that first morning, Luci ran into Louise in the hallway outside the breakfast room. She carried a covered tray, so Luci held the door open for her, then followed her in to where the aunts were seated around the long light table in the even longer, lighter dining room.

  Despite the long passage of time, they were just as she remembered them. Well, maybe a bit more transparent. They had always looked like they’d just marched off a Russian assembly line, since they were as similar in looks as folk art nesting dolls and not similar in height. Easy to believe that they’d emerged from inside each other rather than the more conventional birthing.

  Each had a round white bun on the crown of her head, a round face, round eyes, and round spots of rouge on each cheek. Their skin was white and crepe thin, like tissue paper that had been crushed and then smoothed. Their mouths were crumpled pink bows. Their now faded blue eyes still reflected constant, utter delight with life and living.

  Miss Weena, the youngest and shortest, was also the trendiest, favoring caftans in wild colors that were too long and constantly tripped her. She was, Luci recalled as the past made a return engagement, the adventurous sister and the only one who had ever held a brief, but real, job. It was a source of wonder to the family that anyone had actually hired Miss Weena, let alone armed her. Her employer had paid a brief but painful price for his lack of judgment, to his heart and his manhood. But as Miss Weena was wont to point out, he was too old to have children anyway.

  It was one of Miss Weena’s caftans that Luci had donned for her first foray outside her bedroom. That it landed just below her knees didn’t trouble her . Vanity wasn’t part of the Seymour profile.

  Miss Hermi, the middle sister, favored gray and lavender, which suited her drift-through-life personality. She suffered from the illusion she was a gardener, much to Boudreaux’s dismay, and she had a gentle passion for cement gargoyles. It must make the back garden a nightmare to tend but had been a delight to small children with big imaginations.

  Miss Theo, the eldest and tallest sister, still wore black, plain and classic. She was considered the sensible sister, though non-Seymours might find this assessment hard to swallow. Her eyes were bright and intelligent, if somewhat remote. She tended to look at life as something quite interesting, but not her concern.

  Luci waited until Louise arranged the tray on the table before greeting her. Louise needed both hands free to scribble a greeting on the chalkboard that hung by a chain from her belted waist. Out of deference to Louise’s carpal tunnel syndrome, the greeting was brief. Luci kissed each aunt’s papery cheek before taking her own chair, feeling most of her twenty-seven years peel away. So little had changed here, she felt like a time traveler.

  Until Louise lifted the lid from the tray.

  No succulent eggs and sizzling bacon. No pancakes dripping with real butter. Luci looked at what was there, then looked up to ask, “Can I have the Fruit Loops?”

  Designed in the early 1950s by the Israeli government to use against the PLO, the Uzi submachine gun is capable of firing 950 rounds per minute. Over time, improved technology has made it the choice of military forces worldwide, including the U.S. Secret Service.

  It was also Fern’s choice.

  She didn’t want it because it had a 9mm chamber or a folding metal stock. She wanted it because it was cute and compact. Neat. Manageable. Especially the mini version that they finally chose from Chainsaw Teddy’s supply of deadly hardware. On his advice they got the semi-automatic version, which, because of the higher firing cyclic rate, would be easier to control.

  Teddy had a smirk on his meaty face when he told them this, but they chose not to respond. Explanations of what had gone wrong were unnecessary. He’d seen the news and been expecting them. Donald didn’t even give the AK-47 a regretful glance as they left.

  “So, what do we do now?” Fern tucked the Uzi out of sight under the seat of their stolen Ford.

  “We head over to where the broad is staying and scope things out.” He tossed her a map of the city. “I marked it on the map. But let’s get some grub first.”

  “Drive-through okay? Wouldn’t like to leave our Uzi alone in case someone steals our stolen car.” Fern rubbed the Uzi with the heel of her shoe and smiled.

  “Yeah, just keep it outta sight. Bulls are still jumpy after last night.”

  “Yeah.” Fern looked grimly cheerful. “Read in the paper that they think we’re part of a radical senior citizens group. It’s too bad we had to be so visible for so long last night.” Fern thought back to the moment when it seemed like the Seymour woman was
looking right at her. How observant was she? And if she had fingered them? It would make the stakeout more difficult. “We should never have tried it at the airport like that. Planes are never on time.”

  “Damn Artie.”

  “Are you quite sure you don’t want to be Unabelle’s flower girl?” Miss Theo asked, her spoonful of Lucky Charms quivering just shy of her mouth.

  “Completely quite sure,” Luci said. She’d polished off the Fruit Loops in crunchy short order. The roof of her mouth was a tad sore, but her sugar craving was at least assuaged, while leaving room for the beignets she had her sights set on.

  “But you’d get to strew rose petals in Unabelle’s path, Luci dear,” Miss Weena said, disbelief predominant in her fluting voice. Fruity Pebbles was her all-too-appropriate breakfast of choice.

  “Not everyone wants to strew rose petals.” Miss Hermi put her faint but pursuing opinion into the mix. She liked Captain Crunch. She’d always, Luci recalled, had a soft spot for a man with a mustache.

  “I’ve always wanted to strew,” Miss Weena said dreamily. “Or to be strewn.” Her hopeful glance slid in Miss Theo’s direction.

  Miss Theo ignored her, her attention centered on snagging the last soggy Lucky Charm floating listlessly in milk. Miss Weena looked so crestfallen Luci decided to help her out.

  “Could she fit in the dress, Miss Theo?”

  Miss Theo looked up, her gaze assessing Miss Weena’s all too diminutive figure. Miss Hermi threw her lot in for Miss Weena—and the cause of peace—with, “Who else will we find now, Theo?”

  “All right,” Miss Theo said. “You can strew. Maybe Unabelle won’t notice.”

  Three pairs of eyes widened and looked at her.

  “Maybe?” Miss Weena asked.

  “She could,” Miss Theo said, a hint of defensive taking the burnish off her usual regal style. “She noticed when we tried to switch her puce dress for a white one.”

  “You’d think,” Luci said, “that someone who’d waited as long as Unabelle would be panting to wear white.” Luci realized what she’d just said and knew what her aunts were thinking. It was hard to imagine Unabelle panting, let alone—