by Shari Hearn
“Well, of course I can match the photos. I’m the best makeup artist around. But I will hate myself for doing it. All during the after-party at Francine’s she kept staring at me in my dress and asking what I did with my manly parts. That’s plain rude.”
Gertie shrugged. “It’s not like we all haven’t wondered.”
French Fry folded his arms and shot Gertie a cold stare.
Ida Belle set her mug on the coffee table and reached behind her, under her waistband, retrieving her Glock and setting it on the table next to the mug.
“Do not make me use that, French Fry. I’ll be grumpy for the rest of the day.”
“Fine,” French Fry said. “I will transform this beautiful woman into one of God’s rejects. But I’ll need space to work my magic, an unending supply of coffee, and there’s a Jerry Springer marathon on TV today. I need it on in the background for inspiration.”
After ordering Gertie and Ida Belle to another room and setting up his supplies on the coffee table, French Fry went to work.
“So, what’s your real name?” I asked French Fry while Jerry Springer took a commercial break.
He muted the sound. “Bradley Simms. What’s yours?”
I shifted in Cookie’s wheelchair. “Sandy-Sue Morrow.”
“Sandy-Sue’s your drag name,” he said, pulling on my extensions. “Underneath these extensions is a short boy cut.”
“I had an accident with a curling iron,” I lied. “I had to cut it off. So I went with extensions.”
“Don’t lie to French Fry,” he said with his breathy French Fry voice.
“I’m not lying.”
His voice deepened. “Look, sister, my entire life has been built on a lie. So I can recognize when someone’s hiding something.”
My pulse quickened. Who is this guy?
And did I have to worry about him?
“Fine, it’s okay you don’t tell me. Lord knows I didn’t tell people who I really was until I was, oh… about thirty. But, you know what? The problem with shutting down a part of your life is that all your energy goes into maintaining the lie. The authentic parts of you get lost. And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”
I sat in silence while he clipped my hair up and slipped one of Gertie’s wigs over my head. I knew he had a point. Living a lie was taking a toll. I tried to imagine my relationship with Carter without the lie of being Sandy-Sue.
Hello, Carter, I know you thought I was a librarian, but I’m actually a CIA assassin. I will disappear for weeks at a time and you won’t have a way to contact me or know if I’m alive or dead. And when I’m home I can’t talk about my work. I might sometimes appear withdrawn. That’s just me working through the images of a successful kill. You’ll get used to it.
And then I imagined his response.
Thanks for the warning. Have a nice life. Bye-bye.
“So, when people found out who the real Bradley was, did you lose friends?”
French Fry shook his head. “No. I found out who my real friends were.”
I sighed. That was the problem. I didn’t want to know who would stay and who would walk away.
It took two hours of adding prosthetics and makeup, creating lines and wrinkles, and wig styling before French Fry allowed me to view his masterpiece—my face. Actually, Cookie’s face.
He handed me a mirror. “I present to you: evil incarnate.”
I’m glad I wasn’t chewing gum at the time or I would have choked on it.
“Holy crap!”
“Hmm-hmm. You asked for it.” French Fry turned in the direction of the kitchen, where he had exiled Gertie and Ida Belle two hours earlier. “Ladies, she’s ready for you.”
Gertie ran into the room. Ida Belle was close behind. I looked up at them. Gertie screamed and dropped a piece of coffee cake. Ida Belle clasped a hand over her mouth.
French Fry held up his hand and flicked his fingers toward himself. “Praise. I want to hear some praise.”
“You’re scary good,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie nodded. “I’m afraid to go near her.”
“Now you’re talking,” French Fry said, gathering his makeup and accessories. “FYI, when that dreadful Cookie woman does finally bite the dust, I would appreciate if you suggest to her next of kin that I NOT do her makeup. This has been a very traumatic experience for me.”
“Think how I feel looking like her,” I said, still staring at Cookie in the mirror. I saw a few pieces of something hanging from my face and neck. “I think something weird happened here. What are these things?” I touched one of them.
“Don’t touch!” French Fry screamed at me. “Those are skin tags. Her face is covered with them. And that brown-crusty thing on the side of your nose? Wart. I had to mix a few of my powders to get the color right.”
I looked closely at my image in the mirror. “You gave me nose hairs?”
French Fry nodded. “You probably thought I was tweezing your nose hairs, didn’t you? No. I was gluing some in. When you’re done with this sick masquerade, you need to yank real hard to pull them out. Expect a nosebleed.”
“What about her teeth?” Gertie asked.
French Fry picked up a row of fake teeth from the table. “These slip on over her own. And, if you’ll notice, Fortune, I added some latex to make your ears longer. Did you know ears continue to grow throughout life? Well, they do. Older people have bigger ears.”
I noticed both Gertie and Ida Belle tugging at their ears.
“You’re magnificent, French Fry.” And I meant it. I’d been done up by CIA makeup artists, and I don’t think one of them produced the type of results French Fry had just achieved.
“Yes, in fact I am magnificent, dear,” he said in his French Fry voice. “I’m fabulous and wonderful. And, sadly for you, I must go.”
Ida Belle picked up her purse. “How much do we owe you?”
French Fry waived his hand at me. “Do you really think I would take money after turning a beautiful woman into this?”
“We have to pay you something,” I said.
“Oh you will. Someday I’m coming back to Sinful and turning you into the goddess lurking somewhere inside your rough exterior. You owe it to me, bitch.”
I swallowed hard. “Are you sure you won’t take cash?”
He shook his head. “When you least expect it, I will be back for a girls’ day out. We’ll shop for shoes, sit on park benches and whistle at all the hot men we see, and then we’re coming back here and I’m doing your makeup. Ta-ta.”
Arms loaded down with his makeup bags and prosthetic kits, French Fry strutted to the front door. He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Hello.”
Gertie ran to the door and opened it for him, waving to him as he sauntered down the walkway. She then closed the door.
I ran my hand lightly over my face. “It feels like I gained a hundred pounds with all the stuff he had to add to my face.”
Gertie winced. “Those are the most realistic skin tags I’ve ever seen. God help me, I want to snip them off.” She bit her hand.
Ida Belle stared at my chest. “Amazing. How did he get your boobs to sag?”
“They’re not mine. My real boobs are smashed back with an ace bandage. The saggy ones are prosthetics.” I squeezed one of them. “Can’t feel a thing.”
Gertie reached over and gave them a squeeze. Ida Belle slapped at her hand. “Do that again and I’ll have to have my eyeballs removed.”
The aroma wafting in from the kitchen beckoned me. “Did you cook something?”
“Hmm-hmm. We thought you’d be hungry after all this,” Gertie said, walking into the kitchen. I trailed after her in the wheelchair.
She went to the stove and lifted the lid off the dutch oven. “I remembered Delphine saying this was her mom’s favorite. Cabbage soup. It’s actually the recipe that caused the gas that killed poor Missy LeFort ten years ago.”
“We’re hoping it’ll give you that I’ve got gas face that Cookie’s known fo
r,” Ida Belle said.
“Why don’t I just fake it?”
Ida Belle placed her hands on her hips and stared down at me. “This is Mission Next-to-Impossible. If you’re going to survive another outing at the Swamp Bar you have to make a believable Cookie.”
“And no amount of latex is going to fake that sour face,” Gertie said as she scooped a ladle full of soup into a bowl. “When you’re done with this bowl, I’m feeding you another. I hope to get a few bowls down you before tonight.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but then stopped. An operative needs to do everything possible to pass while in enemy territory. And I was definitely going into enemy territory.
If I wanted to return home alive from my mission, I had to be Cookie—warts, gas-face and all.
CHAPTER SIX
The sun bid goodbye to another day in Sinful. An hour to go before I would wheel myself into the Swamp Bar in an effort to find a potential killer.
I’d been living in Cookie’s chair all day. Eating the foods Cookie ate. Watching old Hee Haw reruns that Cookie watched. I even made a call to Walter’s store pretending to be Cookie, complaining about a bottle of fizz-less Coke he sold me.
“Where are the little bubbles in my Coke?” I had screamed at him when he picked up. “If I wanted to drink something brown with no bubbles I’d go out and get me a glass of swamp water. You want me to drink swamp water?”
“No, Miss Cookie,” Walter said to me.
Gertie had listened while I made my prank call, holding her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. I must have been convincing because Walter apologized, offering to comp me a brand, spanking new two-liter bottle of Coke the next time I came into the store.
I was ready.
Eighty-thirty finally arrived. Gertie left the house first, in order to scout for any nosy neighbors lurking about. Luckily there were only a couple of teenage girls sitting on my neighbor’s low brick wall surrounding his yard. They were engrossed in some emotionally charged discussion about some guy named Wyatt who was found sucking face with some girl named Ashley. They wouldn’t be a threat. At least to me. Couldn’t say the same for Wyatt and Ashley.
I wheeled myself down my walkway to a van Ida Belle had borrowed for the night from one of the Sinful Ladies; it was equipped with a wheelchair lift. A cane rested on my lap. Ida Belle said Cookie could walk with a cane, but that after her daughter, Delphine, started whizzing around in her mobility scooter, Cookie insisted on wheels of her own. She would still get up and walk if the occasion called for it, like a square dance at the senior center, or, Ida Belle was told by an informant, a game of pool at the Swamp Bar.
We were a few feet away from the van when Ida Belle, who walked by my side, whispered, “Uh-oh, we’ve got trouble.”
Following her gaze, I saw the sheriff’s department SUV pull up in front of the neighbor’s house and stop.
Carter stepped out and shut the door.
My pulse raced. My hour of reckoning was coming sooner than I thought. It was one thing to fool a drunk in the Swamp Bar. But, Carter?
“Ladies,” Carter said, walking toward us. But his focus was totally on me. “Miss Cookie?” He arched an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”
I scrunched my face. “What?”
“He asked what you’re doing here, Cookie,” Ida Belle screamed.
“None of your business,” I said to him.
“Delphine’s a little under the weather,” Gertie said. “So we offered to keep her mother company for the day.”
“Really? That’s… unusual for you, isn’t it?”
“Are you saying we’re not kind enough people to want to lend a hand to Sinful’s elders?” Ida Belle asked, playing up her indignation by placing her hand on her hip.
“No, it’s just… What with all you’ve been through with the funeral… And I’ve never seen you take an interest in Cookie.”
“Your zipper’s down!” I screamed.
Carter looked down.
“Ha-ha, made you look,” I said, pulling my head down into my shoulders.
Ida Belle walked around the van and opened the side passenger door. “We should get her back to Delphine’s house.”
“O-kay,” Carter said, still confused. “Well, you have a nice rest of the evening, Miss Cookie.”
He headed toward my front door.
“She’s not home,” Gertie said. “We brought Cookie over to see if Fortune could recommend some books to her, being a librarian and all. But she wasn’t home.”
“Yeah,” Ida Belle said, coming back around and grabbing my chair. “Then I remembered she was going out with Ally tonight. I think a late movie or something.”
“Huh. Well, okay. I was just checking on you three. When I didn’t find you at your houses I thought I’d try Fortune’s.”
“You know, you don’t have to check up on us so much,” Ida Belle said. “I bet whoever rigged the casket is long gone by now.”
“But it is sweet of you,” Gertie said, reaching her hand out to pat Carter’s shoulder. “We’re so lucky to have you around, aren’t we, Ida Belle?”
“Yeah, lucky.”
“Where’s a puppy?” I screamed.
“No, we said we’re lucky!” Gertie yelled.
“Lucky?” I screamed. “I haven’t been lucky since that sailor in seventy-five! Oh, jeeze, who just cut one?”
“Was that my radio?” Carter asked. “I have to go.” He turned and sprinted for his car, yelling back over his shoulder to call him if we noticed anything out of the ordinary. He burned rubber before his door had fully slammed shut.
Once he squealed around the corner at the end of the block we sprung into action. Using the van’s lift, my chair and I were hoisted up and secured inside. Ida Belle hopped into the driver’s seat and Gertie slid into the passenger side.
“Time for Mission Next-to-Impossible,” Gertie said, flashing me a thumbs-up as Ida Belle peeled away from the curb.
The drive to the Swamp Bar lasted about thirty minutes, the last ten minutes of it on a bumpy dirt road that I would never recommend to anyone who had eaten four bowls of cabbage soup.
If the parking lot was any indication, the Swamp Bar was already packed.
“I wish I could go in and watch Fortune work,” Gertie said, as she and Ida Belle lowered me from the van to the ground. “I remember the first time I dressed as a little old lady on a sting. Do you remember, Ida Belle?”
“How could I forget? We found ourselves in the middle of a riot.”
“We were investigating a crooked Bingo game down at the senior center,” Gertie explained. “Well, old Barbara Cook accused old Edna Fusilier of stealing her lucky dauber. So Edna grabbed a dauber off the table and started daubing Barbara’s face with it.”
Ida Belle laughed. “Then old One Leg Parsons took his prosthetic leg off and bashed Barbara on that hump she had on the back of her neck. Sheriff Lee had to call in reinforcements to get it under control.”
Gertie shivered. “I still can’t go to a Bingo game without having flashbacks.” She pulled her gaze at me. “Don’t worry, Fortune, I don’t think anyone in there’s packing a dauber.”
“Lucky me,” I said. “You brought a thermos of coffee, right?”
Ida Belle nodded.
“And a backup disguise for me, in case I have to go in and perform an extraction,” Gertie said.
“Good. Settle in, girls, because this could be a long night.”
Ida Belle shut the van door. She and Gertie threw me a thumbs-up and scurried back into their front seats.
Mission Next-to-Impossible had officially begun.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I raced up the wood plank that served as wheelchair-accessible access onto the Swamp Bar’s porch. Without warning the door to the bar, now just a few feet away, swung open.
“I said get the hell out!” a beefy man said as he pushed a short, skinny guy through the door.
“You can’t make me leave!” Skinny Guy yell
ed.
“Hell if I can’t,” Beefy Man shouted back. “Your wife threatened to come on down if you don’t get your skinny butt outta here and back to home. Your wife and her rifle are bad for business.”
Skinny Guy stood defiantly in front of the door. Beefy Man pulled out a pistol. “It’s new. Give me an excuse to use it.” He then coughed up a good one and spit a wad at Skinny Guy’s feet.
Skinny Guy shouted a string of cuss words, turned and jumped off the porch. He stormed across the dirt parking lot, kicking up angry dust clouds with every step.
Beefy Man looked down at me. “Cookie? What the hell are you doing here on a Thursday night?” he screamed, obviously used to Cookie’s hearing issues.
I shrugged. “I got thirsty. Sue me.”
“Come on in, then.”
Beefy Man held the door open and I wheeled myself into the bar. I’d been here three times before, but it looked different from a seated perspective. Everyone looked a little bigger. And drunker. I looked around and noticed a cork board behind the bar. Photos were pinned onto it and one in particular stood out. Me, in a hooker getup, wearing a “Best Boobs” sash I had won in the Swamp Bar’s wet T-shirt contest while on surveillance a couple of weeks ago.
“Hey, Mitch, you’re up,” the bartender said to a guy standing at the bar and sucking every last drop from his bottle of beer.
Mitch slammed the bottle down, hoisted himself from his bar stool and walked over to the cork board, kissing his fingers, rubbing them on my photo.
I ordered myself not to take my Cookie cane and beat him to death with it. In my Swamp Bar briefing with Ida Belle and Gertie, I found out my photo had become a good luck charm for a few of the pool players, who rubbed their fingers over it before playing. One thing to hear about it, another to see it in action. I couldn’t beat the finger kissers to death, but I could at least screw with one of them.
Mitch was about to take his shot as I wheeled behind him and jabbed him in the butt with my cane.
“Shit!” he screamed as the ball he was aiming for jumped up from the table and bounced on the floor.
