by Shari Hearn
“Let your inner girlie shine, Gertie. All of us have a glamorous side begging to be released once in a while,” he said, running a hand over his emerald-green gown. The gown was accented with sparkling sequins that reminded me of a cache of stolen diamonds I had retrieved from a gunrunner in Somalia.
French Fry tossed me a look. “Your inner girlie would be screaming to be let out too if you didn’t have her gagged and hogtied. But if she could talk she’d say, ‘please let French Fry work her magic on our face.’”
“Touch me and I’ll kill you.”
French Fry laughed and put his fingers to his lips.
“No, she really does mean it, French Fry,” Gertie said, shaking her head.
“Oh. In that case, I’ll make like a salad and toss myself out of her way.”
“Smart move,” I said as French Fry gathered his makeup kit and sauntered over to the other Divas assembling next to the stands.
Gertie straightened her blouse—cotton, short sleeve, with purple flowers against a lavender background—the blouse usually reserved for Francine’s Friday night specials. “Don’t look,” she said, sticking her hand inside her white capri pants and yanking at her underwear. She caught me gaping at her. “I said, ‘don’t look.’”
“Yes, and when I hear ‘don’t look,’ I can’t help but look. What are you doing?”
“I think my underwear shrunk. It keeps sliding up.”
“Maybe it’s all that sausage you ate yesterday.”
Gertie folded her arms. “Well, don’t look now, but five weeks of Francine’s breakfasts are spilling out over the top of your jeans. Nice of you to wear your favorite T-shirt to my funeral, by the way. Those stains really make it a work of art.”
“You said it was a casual funeral. Besides, this ordinary T-shirt is in honor of you. I was wearing it the day you and I climbed up that tree to spy on a real funeral.”
It seemed a decade ago, but in reality it had been only two short weeks since Gertie and I hid in a tree to take photos of Ted Williams’s burial in hopes of ferreting out his killer.
“Oh, that was fun.”
“You fell out of the tree and almost broke my neck when you crashed on top of me.”
“Oh… right.”
“And I was wearing this T-shirt when you and I snuck behind the Swamp Bar to take incriminating pictures of Melvin.”
“We had a blast that night, didn’t we?”
“You sped away in the boat, knocking me in the bayou and I was caught by Carter wearing nothing but a plastic trash bag.”
“Oh… right. You really get yourself in messes, don’t you, Fortune?”
The double doors opened and Ida Belle stepped inside. Behind her I could see a line of people melting in the hot sun.
“Hurry up, we’re gettin’ ripe out here!” one voice called out as Ida Belle closed the doors behind her.
“The natives are getting restless,” she said as she hurried over. “The Sinful Ladies are all lined up. They’ll come in first and pay their respects, then Delphine and her one-hundred-year-old mama will do a drive-by.”
Gertie rolled her eyes.
“Well, I can’t keep them out. You said it was open to the public.”
“Those two women are the mother and daughter from hell,” Gertie said to me.
Ida Belle continued the rundown. “Delphine and Cookie will be followed by the Sinful Splits bowling league. After that, whoever wants to come and gawk at you can. Fortune, you’ll stand at the head of the casket.”
Gertie smiled and clapped her hands. “It’s time. Let’s do this.”
Ida Belle and I helped Gertie up and into her coffin, where she settled in. I then took my place next to the open lid.
“You finished her eulogy, didn’t you?” Ida Belle whispered.
I nodded and flashed her a thumbs-up. Truth was, I hadn’t finished her eulogy. But I was a trained operative. And if I couldn’t BS my way through a fake funeral, then I should turn in my CIA card. If they issued them. They didn’t. “Don’t worry, it’ll be great.”
She blew out a breath. “Okay, then.” She scurried off toward the doors to let the grieving masses in. “Hit it, Divas!”
With Lady Lamé and Her Divas from Down Under singing Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings, Ida Belle tore open the doors. The fifteen women of the Sinful Ladies Society, all dressed alike in white capris and white T-shirts with “RIP Gertie” emblazoned across their chests, solemnly marched in and made their way single-file past Gertie, who was lying with closed, pretend-dead eyes in her camo casket.
I had to hand it to the Sinful Ladies, they sure knew how to fake grief. “She looks so lifelike,” eighty-something Polly Pendergaff said, her bottom lip shaking.
The Sinful Ladies Society, or SLS, had run Sinful behind the scenes since the sixties. Its current entrance policy was very strict: a woman had to be over 40, and either never married or unattached to a man for the past ten years, so their minds wouldn’t be muddled.
SLS treasurer Sass Benedict threw her arms up in the air and wailed to the heavens, “Why? Why? Why?” and then flung herself over the lid opening.
“You’re blocking my air supply, Sass,” Gertie’s muffled voice called out.
“Hah! I made you crack,” Sass said as she straightened up, grinning. She glanced toward the other Sinful Ladies. “I told you I would make her break character. You owe me a free pedicure, Babs.”
“You’re evil, Sass Benedict,” Gertie said.
“Hurry up in there!” someone shouted through the open doors.
“Hold your horses!” Ida Belle shouted back. “Ladies, pick it up.”
The Sinful Ladies cried their final goodbyes and marched to their seats in the front row of the bleachers.
“You and Cookie are next, Delphine.”
Delphine and her older-than-the-Big-Bang mother rolled in. Literally. Delphine, who must have been mid-seventies herself, drove a tricked-out, three-wheel mobility scooter with a Louisiana flag flying from one of the handle bars and a Don’t Tread on Me flag flying from the other. Her extra-large basket was filled with a purse, large hand mirror, a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi, and a Kleenex box. Her mother, Cookie, rode a motorized wheelchair, a cane resting on her lap. Delphine proceeded toward the casket. Cookie veered off course, heading toward the Divas, where she stopped a few feet away and stared, her mouth gaping open.
“Mama!” Delphine stopped her scooter and zipped it around to face Cookie. “You’re going the wrong way! She’s over here!” Delphine zoomed over in her scooter and grabbed at her mother’s arm. “This way, Mama! This way!”
Apparently Cookie was hard of hearing, because every word out of Delphine’s mouth sounded as if a megaphone had been implanted in her voice box. It took a bit of maneuvering, but Delphine managed to align her scooter with Cookie’s wheelchair and point her mother in the right direction.
The Divas had finished with Bette’s song and were about to start another number when Cookie shouted, “Are those men or women?”
“Men, Mama!”
“Those dresses are tight. Where do they stick their manly parts?”
“You’d be surprised,” French Fry shouted back.
“French Fry, that’s nasty,” Diva Sugah Pops said, giggling, before Lady Lamé held up his hands and signaled the Divas to begin a solemn arrangement of Like a Virgin.
Delphine and Cookie finally parked themselves in front of Gertie’s casket. Delphine whipped out the mirror from her basket and handed it to me. “Let us get a look at her.”
I positioned the mirror over Gertie’s face so her image could be seen from Delphine and Cookie’s positions in their chairs.
“Is she finally dead?” Cookie asked.
“No, Mama.”
“What?”
“I said, no, Mama. She’s still alive!”
“That blouse makes her look fat.”
Gertie held up her middle finger.
“Did she give me the bird?”
“Let’s go, Mama!”
Before turning around to leave, Cookie held out her cane and slammed it against the casket. “Go to hell, Gertie!”
It took another twenty minutes before the rest of the mourners were allowed to pass by Gertie and take their seats. I noticed that neither Yankee Hater nor Grabby Hands were in the audience. Maybe Carter’s wish for an uneventful funeral would come true after all.
When the Divas were finished with their final number, a rousing rendition of I Am Woman, Lady Lamé approached me, speaking into his microphone to the crowd. “On behalf of the Divas, I want to welcome you to the tenth annual funeral of Gertie Hebert, a woman we’ve all come to know and love. And I also want to remind you all that the Divas will be performing at Booty Shakers in New Orleans next Saturday night at nine p.m. Well drinks half off. And be sure to order a bucket of Shorty’s hush puppy balls. The yummiest balls this girl has ever tasted. And now, I’m turning the microphone over to… what’s your name, darlin’?”
Lady stuck the microphone in my face. “Uh… Sandy-Sue, but everyone calls me Fortune.”
“I don’t blame them, honey. And now, here’s Fortune to give the eulogy.” Lady handed me the microphone.
I cleared my throat. Amplified, it sounded like a lawn mower running over gravel, prompting a round of boos and groans from the audience. I lowered the mic several inches from my mouth.
“Thank you, Lady. Well… those hush puppy balls do sound tasty. High praise, indeed, huh, folks?” The mourners in the stands stared back at me.
“Um… I, um… met Gertie when I first came to Sinful five weeks ago,” I said softly.
“Louder!” one man in the back shouted.
“What can you say about this fine lady?” I said loudly, gesturing toward Gertie in the casket. I was struck by how small she looked lying in that big coffin with her teased-up white hair, and her favorite dinner-out blouse, and the pin she had made up to resemble a bottle of Sinful Ladies cough syrup that everyone in this dry town of Sinful knew was illegal hooch.
The truth was, what I wanted to say, I couldn’t. What could I say about a woman whom I trusted with my best-kept secret? A woman I’d come to know as family? She, Ida Belle, Ally and Carter were really the only family I had. Sad, considering I’d only known them for five weeks. And I knew by the end of summer I would have to leave Sinful. Return to my old life. A life where nothing was ever personal, and I never attached myself to anyone. Because it made things easier, vital really, to doing my job.
“Is she saying anything?” Cookie asked loudly.
“No, Mama, not yet!”
“Does she think we all have bladders the size of swimming pools?”
My mouth was inches from the mic, but no words came out. Every time I thought about what I’d really like to say, a lump crept up in my throat. I looked back down at Gertie. Another image popped in my head. Not of an older woman, but a younger one. One who had a whole life ahead of her.
My mom.
Suddenly I became a little girl again, watching as they closed the casket lid on my mother. I remembered it well. As they lowered my mother’s coffin into the ground, I had started to cry. My father pinched his fingers into my upper arm and said, “Be strong. You’re my little soldier now.” And I was. And I’d been strong all these years. Because being strong was how I survived.
“Just say something,” Gertie whispered.
I love you, Gertie! And, dammit, how dare you remind me I will probably lose you and Ida Belle someday. You’re just like my mother! Damn her for dying and leaving me with my father!
The words that burst into my head horrified me.
“Fortune, come on, just have fun with it,” Gertie whispered again.
“No!” I shouted at her. “It’s not fair! I will not lose someone else! I’ve only known you for five weeks. Dammit, Gertie! I love you! I’m not ready for you to go. Even pretend!”
What did I just do?
Something wet trickled from my eye. I turned away from the audience and wiped it from my face.
What the hell is happening? CIA assassins don’t cry!
Be strong, Fortune. My father’s voice.
I looked down at Gertie’s stunned face. I mouthed, “Sorry” to her before turning back to an equally stunned audience. Ida Belle held her face in her hands and shook her head.
“Fortune,” Gertie whispered from the casket.
I turned and looked back down at her. “I screwed up, Gertie. I’m sorry. I don’t know why, but I can’t do this.”
“Fortune, shut up and listen. Do you hear that?”
I listened for a moment. There was no mistaking the beeping sound. “Yeah, I hear beeping. Where’s it coming from?”
“Fortune, I could be wrong, but I think there’s a bomb under my butt.”
“A bomb under your butt?” I said loudly.
“What’d she say?” Cookie screamed.
“She said there’s a bomb under Gertie’s butt!” Delphine answered.
A collective scream erupted from the stands. Ida Belle jumped up from her seat and rushed over, followed by Ally, who was almost run over by Delphine and Cookie as they cranked up the speeds on their motorized scooter and wheelchair and raced for the doorway. The Divas kicked off their heels and sprung into action, grabbing those using walkers and canes, hauling them over their sequined shoulders and sprinting outside.
“Did you say a bomb?” Ida Belle asked as she ran up to us.
“You help Gertie out of the casket.” I dove under the coffin, held up above the floor by a steel frame on wheels.
I didn’t see an explosive secured underneath the casket, so I hopped back up to check beneath the quilting where Gertie had been lying. Yanking it all out I saw it. A molded clay cylinder, about four inches long, attached to a cell phone detonator. It appeared to be C-4 explosive. And the digital display on the attached timer told me it would blow in five minutes, forty seconds.
“We have five minutes till it goes off. Get the hell out of here!” I yelled to Ida Belle, Gertie and Ally.
“If this thing explodes in here, the flying debris might kill someone,” Ida Belle said.
“I know. I’m going to leave it inside the casket and roll it to the swamp out back. I just hope this steel is strong enough to minimize the blast.”
I shut the half-lid, unlocked the parking brakes on the metal-frame rollers with my foot, then grabbed onto the casket, rolling it around to face the back emergency exit that emptied out to the bayou. Ida Belle came up beside me and placed her hands on the casket.
“Get out of here!” I screamed at her.
“Not without you.”
Gertie squeezed in on the other side of me and grabbed on as well. “Ally, you go push the stragglers out.”
“No, maybe I should help push—”
“Go!” we all screamed.
“Get those people out of here!” I added.
She turned and ran back to the crowd rushing for the doors.
“Let’s go!” I shouted to Gertie and Ida Belle.
We pushed the casket as fast as we could toward the double-door emergency exit, which stood closed about ten yards away.
“Fortune, you go open the door!”
I let go of the casket and bolted ahead for the emergency doors. They wouldn’t budge. I checked the locking mechanism and saw a loose bolt jamming the handle. Gertie and Ida Belle slowed to a stop inches away from me.
Gertie lifted the lid and peeked inside. “Three minutes, Fortune.”
“It’s stuck. We’ll have to use the casket as a battering ram.”
“With a bomb inside?”
“It’s C-4. Movement won’t cause it to go off. Just the ignition.” I had never seen Ida Belle’s and Gertie’s faces reflect such terror before. “It’s the only choice we have.”
I joined them on the far side of the casket. “We’ll have to back it up and hit the door hard.”
“I’ve used this stuff before. Trust me.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Gertie said. “If you’re wrong, thank you for your kind words today. I love you too. And I love you, Ida Belle.”
“And I love you both,” Ida Belle said.
We pulled the casket back a good ten feet.
“On my signal,” I said. “Go!”
We rushed toward the door with the casket. It made a dent. But a dent wouldn’t be good enough.
Gertie lifted the lid to check the time. “Two minutes, twenty-five seconds.”
“Again!” I shouted.
We pulled the casket back another ten feet.
“Go!”
We charged at the emergency exit doors. Everything went in slow motion as they burst open, spilling us and the casket onto the grassy area out back. The bayou beckoned another thirty yards away. I glanced around to make sure no people were in our intended dumping spot. It was hot, so there was a good chance no one would be out in the swamp.
“Let’s aim for that clear spot between the trees and down the bank,” I said. “It should explode in the water. When I say, ‘let go,’ we’ll give it a hard shove and run like hell back around to the front of the rec center.”
We ran toward the clearing. When the ground started tilting downward I yelled, “LET GO!” We shoved the casket and it went sailing toward the bayou.
And then I spotted it. A boat. Heading in the direction of the intended explosion.
“No!”
Ida Belle and Gertie noticed it too. We ran toward the boat as it slowly approached, flailing our arms. Crap, it was Carter. He sat in the boat, along with Celia and a man I didn’t recognize. He must have been the location scout Carter spoke about.
“Go back!” I screamed at them. “Bomb!”
Carter swung the boat around and headed in the opposite direction. I looked back and saw the casket had hit the water and was sinking fast.
“Run!” I screamed to Gertie and Ida Belle.
We hustled our butts up the grassy hill. Seconds later the casket exploded, sending muddy swamp water, wet quilting and assorted fish raining down on us.
But it could have been worse. Much worse.
