Authors: Duffy Brown
Another thing to consider was that stuffing a body in a car trunk didn’t smack of gang ritual. I imagined they had far more creative ways of disposing of a body in our geographic location, which was surrounded by swamps, marshes, and an active alligator population.
On the other hand, the idea of Urston, Raylene, and Belinda wrapping a body in plastic and stuffing it in a Lexus made a certain kind of sense. It was neat, clean, and a snobby ride. I exited at Gwinnett and crossed the street to the Kroger’s grocery store. I grabbed a bag of doggie kibble, a few groceries to keep body and soul together, and a Perky Blonde hair-dye kit. I hoofed it back to the Fox by one thirty. Two customers waited on the porch with clothes to consign. I apologized for being late and brewed the last bit of cinnamon coffee I had to make up for my tardiness. Happy customers spent money; at least that was the theory. Too bad today it wasn’t a reality.
After they left, I went outside and looked under the porch for Bruce Willis. Two eyes stared back. I heard thumping sounds from a wagging tail hitting the ground. Bruce seemed happy. Not quite ready to give up his monastic life under the floorboards, but better. I filled a bowl with food and refilled the one with water as the sultry beat of a rumba drifted out from KiKi’s house. That meant she had made it back from Urston’s without the wrath of Belinda doing her
in and that the couple taking dance lessons was older. My guess was the Paxtons were doing one last run-though for their twenty-fifth-anniversary shindig out at Sweet Marsh Country Club tonight. Not that I was invited. I would have been if I was still Mrs. Hollis Beaumont the third, but now instead of rubbing shoulders with the rich and mighty at the club, I exchanged pleasantries in the hood.
I stayed open until seven thirty, hoping to catch the working-girl crowd, but it didn’t happen. Business was spotty, bills were due, and I had an extra mouth to feed. I needed to advertise. Problem was, advertising cost a lot of money. I ran upstairs to get ready for the wake and lose the skunk look. When gang members saw fit to comment on the condition of my hair, it must be really bad.
I draped my bathroom with an old sheet to catch splashing dye. The place was now celery green, with Irish-cream-colored tile and a claw-foot tub that I found dirt cheap over in Garden City. The room used to be rust brown, and not from a paint job but from dripping water, with old fixtures dangling precariously on a cord from the ceiling, crumbling tile, and a mildew smell that would knock your socks off.
I worked goo into my hair per the directions and spent the time needed to turn me perky blonde painting my toenails Hot Chili Pepper red. Somehow, before, I’d always managed to scrounge up enough money from the bottom of my purse, under my car mats when I had a car, between the cushions of my sofa when I had one of those, to afford to get my hair done by Jan, down at the Cutting Crew. Jan was a hair diva, her name mentioned in reverent tones. No one did hair like Jan. Those days were behind me. At least until I could get the Prissy Fox to turn some sort of real profit
and secure Cherry House from the clutches of Walker Boone.
Forty minutes later, I jumped in the shower, shampooed, dried, then checked the mirror. I was blonde again, sort of, with the skunk stripe now the color of my old bathroom and the rest of my hair a match for Urston’s doorknocker. This two-tone look never happened on those hair-dye TV commercials. There the girl swished around her newly colored locks, and some handsome dude took her to dinner in a Jaguar.
I clipped my hair up on top of my head and hoped the bicolored effect wasn’t so obvious. I dressed in funeral-black capri pants and a black blouse with taupe trim. I slipped on my best flip-flops, which I saved for special occasions, to show off my new toes. The shoes were so cute, with little flowers and rhinestones. Maybe no one would notice the hair.
I couldn’t hitch a ride to the wake with KiKi and Putter, because they were at the Paxtons’ party—I would simply meet them there. I decided to forgo the bus, save two bucks, and walk. I started up Drayton alongside Forsyth Park, which was brimming with flowers, blooming tress, joggers, walkers, and the Confederate Monument, with soldier Archibald McLeish atop, facing north to the enemy. In Savannah, some things are never forgotten.
Streetlights flickered on as I rounded the corner onto Broughton. Up ahead was the Marshall House, with distinctive black wrought-iron railing across the second floor. The white-gloved doorman tipped his hat and said, “Good evening.” I headed for the bar area, which was even more crowded than usual.
The Marshall House was a bed-and-breakfast that had
been everything from a boardinghouse back in the early eighteen hundreds, to a hospital for Union soldiers when Sherman had his change–of–address cards read Savannah. When I was in high school, the place was rehabbed. To the delight of kids and ghost tours, amputated body parts were found buried in the basement. Over the years, I’ve heard ghostly stores of pictures falling off walls, electrical systems failing, alarms going off in the middle of the night, guests getting locked in their own rooms, and apple pie flying across the kitchen. Wish I’d been around to see that one. All in all, the elegant Marshall House was the perfect place for a wake.
“I’m so glad you could make it,” Dinah Corwin gushed, as she breezed over to me in a red dress and ruby shoes. She snagged a glass of champagne from a tray and slipped it into my hand. “Drink up, girlfriend. The wicked witch is dead.”
Dinah danced between the tables of those she recognized and the regular customers, though some could have been there to celebrate as well. Hard to tell. Not everyone wanted his or her name connected with a dead cupcake. Dinah chatted with IdaMae, AnnieFritz and Elsie, and Auntie KiKi and Putter, with his golf club. I said hi to Jan, from the Cutting Crew, and suspected Cupcake had her manis and pedis done there. Sarah, from Shoes by Sarah, sat next to Jan, both with martinis in their hands and smiles on their faces. I headed for KiKi’s table in the back and caught a glimpse of Sissy Collins. The reverend wasn’t there, but Sissy wore a dopey smile and was obviously soused from a little too much celebrating. When she spotted me, the smile morphed into a glare. She downed the rest of her martini and hustled out the side door. I guess I wasn’t loved by one and all either.
“Where in the world did you go off to this afternoon?”
KiKi asked in a rush as I sat down in Putter’s chair while he refreshed his martini and talked wedges and irons with Raimondo and Baxter Armstrong at the bar. KiKi picked up a strand of my hair. “Honey, you’ve been striped.”
“Things happen.”
“To some of us more than others.” She let out a resigned sigh, then leaned closer and whispered, “Why didn’t you come back into the garden with me and Urston? Belinda said you weren’t feeling well and had to leave right quick, but I didn’t buy that little fib for one second. She lies worse than you, with her lips twitching and eyes blinking as a dead giveaway she’s up to something.”
KiKi glanced from side to side to make sure no one was listening before continuing. “So, did you find the scuffed loafers?”
I did a thumbs–up. “Now we know Urston and Raylene were the ones arguing at the party, and they’re connected to Cupcake. There’s more. Get this, I saw Urston’s red notebook.
The
notebook. It was right there in his bedroom on a desk, and not locked up like we all think.”
“Honey, if you didn’t take a look inside that book to find out who’s winning Best of Show so far, I’m having a stroke in this very chair.”
KiKi grabbed my hand tightly and leaned closer, her voluptuous cleavage nearly spilling out onto the table. I prayed she had the girls pulled in tight or there’d be more celebrating going on than the end of Cupcake, and we’d have a new Best of Show right here in the Marshall House.
KiKi added, “I heard at the country club that Raylene’s made reservations at the Pink House. That means she thinks she’s going to win again and showing off with a fine,
expensive dinner—of all the nerve.” KiKi was so close our noses nearly touched. “So, is she going to win?”
“I don’t know.”
KiKi jolted back in her chair. “Whatever do you mean you don’t know?”
I pulled KiKi back to hush-hush position. “There was nothing in the notebook about the gardens. The book was blank! If Raylene is making noises like she’s a shoo–in, and Urston isn’t making notes on what garden is best, then something fishy’s going on in Savannah.”
“I do declare. It’s like maybe Urston already knows the outcome and so does Raylene? Why on earth would Urston get himself involved in such a thing?”
I said to KiKi, “Remember when you told me that Urston had a love affair with the ponies? I found a racing form tucked in the notebook. My guess is Urston’s run up gambling debts and needs money, and Raylene’s paying him off so her garden wins. We all know Urston is the one who persuades the rest of the judges to do things his way, and Raylene has no problem flashing her checkbook around when she wants something bad enough.”
“Cupcake was part of the Homes and Gardens meetings. She must have been digging up dirt on people. She found stuff on Franklin and Sissy, and she got the goods on Urston and Raylene.” KiKi giggled. “This is all mighty fine dirt, too, and we’re the only ones who know.”
I sucked air through clenched teeth. “Not exactly. Belinda found me in her bedroom, and I got sort of nervous and might have let it slip that I saw Raylene and Urston talking at the garden party. Now she knows that I know about the notebook and I might have figured out what Raylene and
Urston are up to. I decided to leave the premises when Belinda picked up a candlestick and looked as if she knew how to use it for more than just holding candles.”
“Mercy! Cher says, ‘If you really want something, you can figure out how to make it happen,’ but this is going too far.” KiKi plucked the toothpick out of her martini and slurped the green olive right off the end. “What ever happened to you flying under the radar? I think you just crashed and burned.”
“I’ve asked a few questions, but being that Hollis is my ex and the prime suspect, I don’t believe anyone entertains the thought that I’m after the killer. Most assume I’m happy as can be Hollis is in a mess and that he’s got it coming. I bet Belinda just thinks I stumbled onto some information about the Homes and Gardens Tour is all.”
“Cupcake stumbled onto that very same information and look where that got her. Belinda may not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but even she knows people don’t go snooping in closets and notebooks without being up to something. Thank the Lord above you’re taking all this to Boone and letting him handle things from here on out. Now you can concentrate on the Prissy Fox and stay out of trouble. It’s time for you to back off.”
“Back off what?” IdaMae asked as she sat down across from KiKi.
I held up KiKi’s glass. “Martinis.”
IdaMae’s eyes laughed. “Well, she can’t do that tonight. This is a mighty good party now, isn’t it? I suppose I shouldn’t be saying a thing like that when poor Janelle is in a big, old black hearse this very minute, careening across Highway 16 on her way to Atlanta.”
KiKi quirked a brow in surprise, and IdaMae added, “Hollis asked me to take care of the arrangements. Janelle’s mamma is simply too distraught to handle funeral affairs though, best I can tell, there’s not going to be much of a funeral. She doesn’t want the press sniffing around and asking a lot of nosy questions about the murder, and, of course, Hollis can’t attend. Just plumb awful the way he was hauled off to jail like that. Who would have thought?”
“How did your house showing go?” I asked. It wasn’t a very subtle change of subject on my part, but IdaMae brightened right up.
“Well, my goodness, do you believe I went and sold my very first piece of real estate? When Hollis called me about the funeral arrangements, I told him about the house. He was all atwitter. Said it was nice to have someone bringing in money, and I was pretty much running the place now. Everything’s going to be better than ever when he gets home. Poor Hollis. I feel so bad for him.”
Home!
I pictured Hollis’s town house full of dead vegetation and stinking like a swamp, all because of me. “I forgot to water his plants.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” IdaMae said to me, patting my hand. “I went and got the complex manager to let me inside Hollis’s place. I knew you were busy with your shop, so I took care of it. That’s what I came over here to tell you.”
I promised IdaMae I’d take over watering duty. I thanked Dinah for a lovely party and told KiKi I’d catch up with her tomorrow. Not everyone was at the bar for the wake, of course, with Marshall House being a popular Savannah watering hole. I said good-bye to Uncle Putter, with his
trusty putter; Raimondo, taking a break from work and with withered petals by his left foot; and Baxter Armstrong, taking a break from being married and with his Porsche convertible in the parking lot. Golf was the great equalizer around here and made for eternal male conversation. Saint Peter probably played golf.
After last night’s activities of building display racks and booting Walker Boone out of my house at three in the morning, I needed sleep. I grabbed Old Yeller and headed down Broughton. Traffic was heavy, with everyone out enjoying the weather. I turned onto Abercorn and ran into a ghost tour at Colonial Park Cemetery. The place dated back to before
the
war, and, of course, there was only one war talked about around here. I crossed to East Charlton, which had oaks so dense they formed a canopy overhead. Side gardens with trickling fountains, flickering gas lamps, and raised porches to avoid dust from once-upon–a–time mud streets made Savannah picture-perfect Old South.
The shadows deepened to near black, but I’d walked this way often enough to know where tree roots and lose sand made for uneven cobblestones. An open-air orange tour bus rumbled by, spouting the glories of Oglethorpe and his loyal followers, and I was suddenly yanked from behind by my purse strap and pushed into a narrow alley between two of those perfect Southern houses. I hit my head against one of the stone foundations and stumbled to the ground, getting a mouthful of dirt. My heart stopped, and I couldn’t breathe. Glass and gravel dug into my knees and elbows, and all I could see were rocks and weeds.
Scream
, my brain demanded, but nothing came out.