Killer in Crinolines

by Duffy Brown

  “You just did fried oysters and cookies. You’re going to explode.”

  “We just did oysters and cookies, and I have to keep up my strength for all this work.”

  The deliveries on Habersham and Price were foodless and quick-in/quick-out with keeping comments about smelly sewers to a minimum. Chantilly was right as rain in that no one noticed that a blue-eyed do-it-yourself blonde was delivering packages instead of tall, thin gal with brown eyes and hair. I hung a left onto East Broad and parked in front of the oldest restaurant in Savannah. “You figure out where we go from here,” I said to KiKi while I grabbed the delivery. “I’m not trusting you anywhere near Pirate House pecan chicken and she-crab soup.”

  “Sourpuss.”

  The lunch crowd hadn’t swarmed the place yet, only a few early stragglers wandering in. “There’s a terrible sewer backup outside,” I offered to the waitress with a blonde side ponytail and Cleopatra-blue eye shadow. I held out the package. “This is for your chef.” When I didn’t let go, the girl gave me a strange look and tugged to get it. “You were at the Waverly wedding,” I added. “I ran into you. Suellen, right?”

  “I wasn’t at that there wedding and I have no idea who you ran into in that hallway.” Suellen froze at the mention of hallway . . . which I hadn’t mentioned. “Go away,” she hissed. “Git out right now! I was supposed to be working here last night. You’ll get me fired.” A tear slid down her cheek. “How can Simon be dead? This is terrible.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Of course I knew him. I mean, a lot of girls around here knew him. I gotta get back to work.” She yanked the package out of my hands and ran off, her ponytail swinging side to side as she trotted down the hall.

  I made my way back to the van and climbed in. “Simon’s fan club continues to grow. This is all kind of strange,” I said to KiKi.

  “I’m sitting here in a UPS truck that’s hotter than a ten-dollar pistol with my knees to my chin and my brain on meltdown. What strange are we talking about?”

  I charged up the van. “Remember yesterday?”

  “I’m trying to forget yesterday and I’m adding today to the list.”

  “Right before the Simon encounter in the dining room, I told you that I ran into a waitress in the hallway. That same waitress is at the Pirate House and all upset over Simon’s demise. When we ran into each other at the wedding she said something about, Now what am I going to do? You think Simon had something going on with this gal, too?”

  “I bet ponytail girl’s cute, young, and sexy as all get-out. If that’s the case, I’d say Simon was playing her and Lord only knows how many others. If bed-hopping was an Olympic sport, he’d take the gold.”

  “GracieAnn isn’t what I’d call sexy.”

  “She was good for free eats and dessert, if you know what I mean. Simon kept all the girls on a string till he came across Waynetta, who is not cute or sexy but who’s loaded, and that trumps everything.” KiKi studied the delivery gizmo. “Jeez Louise. I got a fine idea on how we can make up some time. There’s a package in back we should just lose. Say we couldn’t find it. I figure that will save us a good twenty minutes.”

  I hung a right onto State, passing Oglethorpe Square with live oaks and Spanish moss and midmorning strollers hiding from the sun. “Is there a package for the police station back there? You think there’s a law against impersonating a UPS driver?”

  “We have a delivery for a Mr. Pillsbury over there on Seventeenth Street. I say we drop it at the corner, floor this here means of transportation, and go like the devil’s after us.” KiKi studied the delivery information. “Except the package is insured for over a thousand dollars and we need a signature. How do you feel about forgery?”

  Seventeenth Street was the home of do-rags, not-so-concealed weapons, and a collection of Savannah badasses. I visited this location a few months ago and had no desire to repeat the experience. Taking my dearest auntie to this location was out of the question.

  “Tell you what,” I said, stopping for some wayward tourists who probably got one heck of a deal on hotel rooms this time of year. “We’ll do the rest of the deliveries and then I’m dropping you at Clary’s. You can get yourself a nice, cold chocolate milkshake. I’ll make the delivery to Seventeenth Street, then swing by and pick you up.”

  Auntie KiKi gave me the slitty-eyed look, her lower lip in a pout. It was never good to get the slitty-eyed look and the lip. I was in for a lecture, and lectures were even worse than Cher-isms, especially in a hot truck. “Are you implying that I’m not up to the challenge?”

  Here we go. “You’re always up for the challenge.”

  “You think those bad boys can put one over on me? That I’m old?”

  Oh, Lord have mercy, she’s playing the old card. “No one can put anything over on you, honey.”

  “Don’t you honey me, and I can darn well handle myself.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “We come from good stock. Don’t you forget that our great-great granddaddy was General Beauregard Summerside of the Confederate States of America.”

  Yeah, and look how that turned out. “You know how golf is the great equalizer around here with everyone playing,” I said, trying to come up with an excuse to keep KiKi from making the delivery. “What if the Seventeenth Street boys are into golf and meet up with Putter and they say they saw his wife, the dance teacher, down their way.” Not that golf wasn’t the equalizer. My guess was that the boys had more important things on their minds like street fights, gun deals, and the occasional carjacking to keep them occupied than how to birdie on the fourteenth hole.

  I continued, “If Putter finds out you’re frequenting Seventeenth Street, he’ll have a conniption. Do you really want him huffing and puffing and stomping around the house muttering how you’re a wild woman and whatever is he going to do with you?”

  KiKi parked her hand on her hip, left brow arched. “What if someone from that particular area goes and tells your mamma where you’ve been hanging out? Then she’ll be the one huffing and puffing around you.”

  “The boys of the hood do not voluntarily chat it up with judges. I’ll be fine. Think of it this way, a UPS truck is neutral territory. It’s like Switzerland. UPS doesn’t choose sides, we just do our thing and all’s well.”

  KiKi did a finger drum on the dashboard. “Cher says you have to love spontaneity. It puts you in some strange and wonderful places in life. I should go with you.”

  “I don’t think Cher was talking about Seventeenth Street.”

  We did the deliveries to the locksmith, then Fabrica, Book Lady Bookstore, Bohemian Gallery, and a raft of other places before I dropped KiKi at Clary’s. When I drove off she had a double chocolate shake in her hand and a plate of fries. If I wasn’t back in fifteen minutes, I knew she’d call the police and I’d be facing Detective Ross . . . again!

  I took Oglethorpe and crossed Martin Luther King Drive. The street numbers got lower, the houses closer, yards smaller. Georgia red clay took the place of green lawns, ACs hummed in the windows, keeping the boys inside and the hood empty. Sweat slithered down my back. It had little to do with heat and everything to do with geography.

  I killed the engine in front of a grayish clapboard bungalow with used-to-be green shutters, two red crape myrtle trees the Savannah Garden Club would salivate over, and a decent front porch. I hunted for the package, the contraption used for signing, and some guts. I figured this would take one minute, two tops. I knocked and the door that matched the shutters opened to see . . .

  “Big Joey?”

  My eyes widened; Big Joey’s narrowed. He folded his thick ebony arms across his thicker chest. He gave me a smile sporting a new gold tooth. I considered complimenting his grill but he didn’t look in a complimenting mood.

  “White woman. You here again making trouble?”

  Big Joey and I got acquainted some months ago, and he helped me out a time or two, mostly when there was something in it for him.
I rolled my eyes up to the official hat. “UPS.”

  “You got flip-flops. UPS don’t allow no flip-flops. They run a tight operation.”

  “I have special dispensation.” I held up the package. “I’m looking for Mr. Pillsbury.”

  “Bet your mamma don’t know you’re here.” Big Joey pinched his nose. “What’s that stink?”

  “Sewer backup.”

  “Never happens in this part of town. I’m calling the sanitation department. What’s this here city coming to?” Big Joey stepped aside, and a guy I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting before came out onto the porch. He stood a head taller than Big Joey, had a piggy bank tat on his left bicep, a dollar sign on his right, hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a yellow number 2 pencil behind his ear. J. P. Morgan on steroids?

  “I’m Pillsbury,” he said in a deep baritone vibrating through the porch floorboards. I held out the package. What could it be? Guns, ammo, body parts. I gave it a shake.

  “Software.” Pillsbury took the package and scribbled his name like he’d done this before. “Gives immediate visibility into our key performance indicators.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sees where the boys pocket the Benjamins.” Pillsbury tucked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans looking like a stealth bomber ready for takeoff. “It tracks what pays, what don’t. Joey says you have yourself a business? You need the cloud, girl. How you expect to stay in business without a data center?” Pillsbury tsked, he truly did. I swear it was just like KiKi. Hey, if three hundred pounds of living, breathing wrought iron wanted to tsk like a Savannah belle, it was fine and dandy by me. “Tells where you make the most dough.”

  “Pillsbury?” Lightbulb moment. “Money! You’re the dough boy.” I did the head-slap, duh thing. “That’s really cute.”

  Pillsbury’s eyes turned hard and cold and he looked nothing like the smiling pudgy guy on a roll of biscuits at the grocery store. “Or not so cute, but you do look sort of familiar. We’ve met?”

  Pillsbury stood taller, adding another six inches to his immenseness, and I hustled back to the truck. If there was a list of things not to say in the hood, cute and you look familiar had top billing.

  I picked up KiKi at Clary’s and I relayed the story of Pillsbury as we chugged our way home through rush-hour traffic of heat and hydrocarbons. Chantilly reclaimed her truck and I begged AnnieFritz and Elsie to stay on for a few minutes so I could grab a shower and toss Chantilly’s uniform in my old Maytag. I decided to keep the Fox open till eight, hoping to entice late-night customers. It never happened.

  By August, everyone was tired of summer clothes, and shopping for fall sweaters, jackets, and suits in ninety-plus heat was not happening. Day business was no better, proven by the fact that AnnieFritz, Elsie, and Chantilly had time to leave me a pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge and a fresh-baked pan of corn bread.

  While trying to figure out how to pay the taxes on Cherry House due next month, I locked up and stashed the meager daily take in a Ben & Jerry’s container I kept in the freezer. Not exactly Bank of America, but unless a burglar had a hankering for Rocky Road I figured I was safe.

  “Good thing you like hot dogs instead of steak,” I said to Bruce Willis, who was sitting on my foot, both of us staring into the mostly deserted fridge. “How do you feel about peanut butter and jelly? It may come to that, you know. Times are tough.”

  “I hate peanut butter and jelly,” a voice said behind me. “But the corn bread’s mighty tasty.”

  Chapter Five

  I JUMPED, yelped, and spun around to Walker Boone leaning against my kitchen counter eating my corn bread. BW jumped too, putting his front paws on Boone’s shoulders and licking his face. Worst watchdog in three states. “How’d you get in here?”

  “I can’t tell if you’re stupid or have a reoccurring death wish.” Boone swiped his hand across his mouth, cleaning away corn bread crumbs. “What were you doing over on Seventeenth Street?”

  “Men talk more than women ever thought about doing. Bet I wasn’t even back in the UPS truck after making my delivery before the boys were texting you.” Boone gave BW a chunk of bread and I snagged the pan away, knowing full well those two would kill off the rest given half a chance. “I was helping Chantilly with UPS deliveries, if you must know. She wasn’t up to the task and I was helping out.”

  “Heard you went the wrong way down Drayton and nearly ran over a troop of Girl Scouts by the Juliette Gordon Low house. That’s not good for tourism.”

  “We were looking for addresses. Do you know how difficult it is to find addresses in this city? Are you so bored with life you’ve taken to spying on me?” Boone had on a faded Crab Shack T-shirt, cutoffs, boat shoes, and a day’s growth of beard most men didn’t sport for a week.

  “No need for spying. Did you realize Chantilly taught AnnieFritz and Elsie how to use Twitter? The kudzu vine just got kicked into the twenty-first century and word has it you’re the guilty party who left the fearsome threesome together. Folks are mighty upset. I’d keep an eye out for voodoo dolls if I were you.”

  I racked my brain for the patron saints of tweets and dolls with pins. “They were supposed to be minding my store. Working.”

  “That’s your job. You should stick to it. Pillsbury said you recognized him. Not good. He’s more of a lay-low kind of guy, fades into the woodwork.”

  “I got news for you. At six-five and two-fifty-plus, the man’s not fading anywhere.”

  “Seems you’ve made a day out of pissing people off.”

  I dropped the bread on the counter and glared at Boone. “Then you tell me what Pillsbury was doing at the Waverly wedding? I know he was there because I saw him with my own two eyes. He had on a suit that made him look shrink-wrapped and I’m willing to bet he wasn’t on the guest list anymore than I was.”

  Boone’s eyes darkened just a smidge. That meant he had to do something he didn’t want to and right now that was tell me something. If he didn’t, I’d keep poking around. “Pillsbury has a thing for Chantilly and figured she might cause trouble at the wedding like she did at the engagement party. He was looking out for her.”

  “Well, he didn’t look hard enough, now did he; the girl’s accused of murder.” I broke off a chunk of corn bread and munched, trying to digest this latest piece of information of Chantilly and Pillsbury. “You really think Pillsbury killed Simon because he did Chantilly wrong?” I took another bite of corn bread and considered that. “That’s kind of sweet.”

  Boone grinned. “Pillsbury’s been called a lot of things but I doubt if sweet is one of them.”

  “What about cute?”

  “You didn’t.”

  “It may have slipped out.”

  Boone snagged the last chunk of bread from the pan and I gave him an evil look. “You know it’ll go straight to your hips,” he said. “Nothing more pitiful than a belle with big hips. You’ll get the Ain’t she just precious treatment.”

  Nothing puts the fear of God into a Southern woman more than the precious treatment. Ain’t she just precious is what people say about you when there’s nothing much good to say at all. At present I was divorced, over thirty without a man, and couldn’t cook to save my life. If I got big hips, I’d definitely be in the precious category. I dropped my corn bread back in the pan and Boone grabbed it up.

  “You played me.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Tired to the bone, I hitched myself up onto the yellow counter and tucked one leg under the other, trying to get comfortable. “Sweet or not, Pillsbury wielding a cake knife doesn’t compute. A man that size appreciates food—he’d never harm a raspberry layer cake—and my guess is the boys have more effective ways of disposing of a body than in the middle of a wedding.”

  Boone pulled out the pitcher of sweet tea. He poured a glass, took a drink, then poured tea into a bowl, setting it on the floor for BW. The pecking order of man, dog, Reagan.

  “Caffeine and sugar? Really?” I groused. “BW will be
up all night driving me crazy.”

  “Who else is on your radar of suspects?” Boone gave me a sideways glance. “I’m just helping Pillsbury and he’s on Chantilly’s side.”

  I swiped the glass from Boone and took a long drink. “I’ve never even heard Chantilly mention Pillsbury. Secret relationship?”

  “So secret she doesn’t know. He’s from the hood, her daddy’s a retired cop. Some things aren’t meant to be. About those suspects?”

  Meaning he told me about Pillsbury and Chantilly so now it was my turn to cough up information. “GracieAnn’s baking dead-guy cookies over at Cakery Bakery. They look an awful lot like Simon. Waynetta Waverly is more concerned about keeping her wedding gifts than her almost-husband facedown in fondant and buttercream. Neither seems all that upset that Simon’s taking up permanent residence out at Bonaventure Cemetery.” I considered mentioning Suellen from the Pirate House as a suspect but decided she was more of an upset waitress who saw a dead guy in a cake. Then again, there was that mumbling about Now what am I going to do. “Who do you think killed Simon?”

  Boone snagged back the sweet tea, drank, and shrugged. “GracieAnn had motive. She was at the wedding and knows her way around a cake knife.” Boone put down his glass. He turned to me and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. A caring gesture not like Boone at all and there was a glint of devilment in his eyes. Boone was trouble enough without the devil thrown in. He said, “Last time you went snooping for a murderer you nearly wound up dead in your own shop. This time I might not be around to save you, Blondie.”

  I parked one hand on my still-somewhat-narrow hip and poked Boone in the forehead with my index finger. “Don’t call me Blondie, and your memory is a touch foggy because I saved you.”

  Boone arched his left eyebrow, then headed for the kitchen door. I threw the pan at his head, missing by a mile. The canine vacuum cleaner gobbled the corn bread and I watched through my back window as Boone disappeared down the walk to the street. “I did save your sorry, miserable hide, and right now I’m wondering why I went and did such a dumb thing.”