Soul Man

by Shari Hearn

  “As in nude modeling?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Well, you don’t beat around the bush.” She looked at Ida Belle and then Gertie. “As you can imagine, my parents would have thrown a fit.”

  Ida Belle’s eyes widened. “Your daddy was the choir director in church. Your mama was my Sunday School teacher. A fit is putting it mildly.”

  “Everything I did was totally legitimate,” Jo said. “Art classes on college campuses always need human models to pose nude. So I applied. I attended college in New Orleans, so I chose a school one town over. And there I was, buck naked on my first assignment with none other than Cootie Bates sitting at an easel. He was getting his masters at the time.”

  “Of course, Cootie was in a class drawing nudes,” Gertie said.

  “He was the best in the class,” Jo said. “Remember, Cootie might be a good old boy, but he’s had paintings shown in some pretty prestigious galleries. He could have made it in the art scene in New York, but he liked painting Louisiana and the people in it.”

  She took another sip of tea. “Now, I admit, I didn’t like him when I knew him in Sinful, and I wasn’t wild about him seeing me naked, but then I got to know him better.” She pulled in a breath and slowly let it out. “Then I posed privately for him. Nude. On a horse.”

  Tea sprayed from Gertie’s nose. When her coughing fit finally subsided, Gertie looked at Jo and said, “A horse? Continue.”

  Jo cleared her throat. “And then we got involved. When I came back home for the summer, he was back in Sinful and we continued our relationship. Drove my parents wild. Which, you know, I didn’t mind. I liked to let them know I was independent. But I still didn’t want them knowing about my nude modeling.”

  “Not to mention on a horse,” Gertie muttered. “Your parents had horses, right?”

  Jo nodded. “When I found Cootie interested in other women, I called it off and asked for the nude drawing he did in class and the painting. He gave me the drawing, which I destroyed, but he wouldn’t let go of the painting. Said it was the best thing he’d painted so far. He did promise he wouldn’t display it or show it to anyone.”

  “Except, now he’s dead,” Fortune said.

  Jo nodded. “Which is horrible, of course. I still can’t get over it. But my past with nude modeling is something I don’t want Walter and Emmaline to find out. Not to mention my kids and grandkids.”

  “We heard there was phone communication between you and Cootie recently,” Ida Belle said.

  Jo nodded. “He texted me and said he had something I wanted. Said he had a proposition for me. I knew he was talking about that painting.”

  “Proposition?” I said. That didn’t sound good. “What was your response?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “‘I’m coming to Sinful. We need to settle this once and for all.’”

  Ida Belle looked down at a sheet of paper with the text of their interaction, as provided by Myrtle. “He wrote back, ‘Once again you’ve underestimated me.’”

  Jo’s eyes widened. “Dang, you are the Geritol Mafia. How’d you find out?”

  “We have our sources,” Gertie said.

  “Carter said you left early this morning to go photograph the sunrise over Atchafalaya,” Ida Belle said.

  Jo nodded. “I can prove it. I have the photos on my camera.”

  Ida Belle smiled. “I’m sure you do. Make any stops before going there?”

  Jo gestured toward the paper Ida Belle held. “If you have the content of the texts, you’ll know Cootie invited me to go fishing at Glass Eye Lake with him and a friend of his, Redneck. He gave me the location where they would be parked. You’ll see I declined, saying I would meet him at the Mudbug Diner at one.”

  “But you changed your mind,” I said.

  “I wanted to get it over with. I’d hoped to get there before he went out on the boat. I was going to demand he give me the key to his place so I could go in, get the painting and leave his key in his mailbox. When I got there, I saw he’d already left.”

  “Any other cars around?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “After that, I went to the Refuge and took photographs. When I got back to Emmaline’s house I discovered Cootie had been found dead.” Tears streamed out of her eyes. Gertie grabbed the tissue box and pulled out several and gave them to Jo. “For all his faults, we did have fun together.”

  “Did Cootie ever want to get back with you? After your husband died?” I asked.

  She blew her nose. “Sure. He waited a couple of years, I’ll give him some credit. He called to see if I might like to have dinner with him. I declined. He called a few more times the past three years. I declined all his invitations. This last one, though, it sounded like a threat. I knew I had to nip it in the bud. But you know I’d never kill him.”

  “Of course, we do,” Ida Belle said. “I assume you didn’t ask us to meet you just so you could spill your guts.”

  She gazed at Ida Belle, then Gertie, before landing at me. Her eyes bore into me. Carter’s eyes. “I want that painting back.” Jo’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her purse and looked at the display. “Sinful Sheriff’s Department.” She sighed, put the phone back in her purse. “You don’t have to do much. Just stand guard while I break in his house and try to find it. I can’t pay much, but—”

  Ida Belle interrupted her. “We wouldn’t accept money and you know it. And we won’t stand guard while you go inside.”

  Jo quickly stood. “I’m sorry, it was too much to ask. I’ll have to do it without a lookout.”

  Ida Belle stood as well. “That’s not what I meant. We’ll go inside.”

  “I can’t ask you to break the law.”

  I had to stop myself from laughing. If she only knew the places we’d broken into since I’d come to Sinful. It could read like a Dr. Seuss book for budding criminals. We’d title it Oh the Places You’ll Break Into. I could picture the illustrations. Me dressed like a hooker and Gertie falling out of a tree.

  “We insist,” Gertie said. “Besides, we might be more... skilled at it than you are.”

  Jo shook her head. “I can’t ask you to do that. Just stand watch and I’ll do it.”

  I held up my hand. “What we’re trying to say is, we don’t want you to screw it up and get us all arrested. In fact, we want you as far away from Cootie’s house while we’re there.”

  Jo looked at me, a little taken aback. After a moment, she smiled. “Why couldn’t MY son meet someone like you?” She stood. “Well, okay, I heard if anyone could get things done in this town it was the Godmothers of Sinful.” She picked up her purse. “Thank you so much for this and for the tea. So I’ll call you tomorrow?”

  Ida Belle shook her head. “If Mudbug is looking at your cell phone calls, we might want to avoid any further phone communication.”

  “How will I know if you found my painting?”

  “We heard Redneck is having a memorial for Cootie tomorrow at the rec center,” I said. “We’ll meet there and ‘bump into’ one another.”

  Jo nodded and then made her way to the front door and peered outside, casting a furtive glance to the right, then the left. When she was satisfied there were no snoops watching, she raced out the door and hurried down the sidewalk.

  WHILE IDA BELLE, GERTIE and I lived west of downtown Sinful, Cootie’s house, what Ida Belle referred to as “Creole cottage” style, was located on the eastern edge of town. The house itself (blue clapboard with white trim and red shutters) was raised above ground level, as were many of the homes in Sinful, and appeared to be one story with an attic/loft. A red picket fence surrounded the property. I had to smile at the whimsical statue in the front yard of a man pushing a lawn mower, pointed directly at the flower beds.

  We sat in Ida Belle’s parked SUV, five houses away from Cootie’s. A Mudbug Sheriff’s SUV and Deputy Breaux’s SUV were parked in front of the house.

  “They’re coming out now,” Gertie said, watching through a pair of binoculars. �
�One of the Mudbug deputies has a couple of small evidence bags. Another one has a larger bag, maybe the size of a laptop. Deputy Breaux is carrying a few hunting rifles.” She lowered the binoculars.

  The Mudbug deputies were probably there to gather any information about possible suspects they might glean from notepads sitting by the phone, a messaging machine, if he used one, calendar pages, laptops, computers, those sorts of things. Deputy Breaux was most likely clearing the house of any weapons, the same thing Carter had done with Marge’s house after she’d died, in case anyone had the bad idea of going inside and stealing some weaponry. Of course, Carter didn’t know about the secret gun vault built into the back of Marge’s bedroom closet. I intended to keep it that way.

  “The good news is they’re not hauling out any nude paintings,” I said.

  “I’m sure if the deputies saw it, they stopped and gawked at it a moment.” Ida Belle rolled her eyes. “They’re men, after all. But they wouldn’t have known it was a painting of one of their ‘persons of interest.’”

  Gertie nodded. “Luckily it wasn’t Carter who went in there. He’s probably seen photos of his Aunt Jo as a young woman, so he’d at least know what her face looked like.”

  We watched as the Mudbug Sheriff’s Department vehicle pulled away, leaving Deputy Breaux to string several feet of ‘Do Not Cross’ tape across the door. Minutes later, he hopped in his SUV and drove off.

  I directed my binoculars toward the side of Cootie’s house and noticed how the thick branches of the neighbor’s tree reached right up to the attic window. I was greeted with a surprise. “It looks like Cootie left the side window open. Easy access from a neighbor’s tree.” I lowered the binoculars. “I say two of us go in through the neighbor’s backyard while one of us keeps the neighbor occupied.”

  Ida Belle frowned as if I’d said she had to wade across a field of cow dung to get inside.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That house belongs to Barb Geroux.”

  Barb Geroux happened to be one of the most disliked women in Sinful. Same age as Ida Belle and Gertie. In fact, she’d gone to school with them and had always been in competition with Marge, losing to her in school elections, talent contests and fencing tournaments. We’d invited her to Marge’s posthumous birthday party a week ago to pump her for information on a series of crimes we’d been investigating. The woman had perfected the art of the insult, and she seemed to enjoy watching someone’s face when she cut them down to size.

  A master ventriloquist, Barb often used her sock puppet to do the insulting, as if that let her off the hook.

  “The least amount of contact I have with Barb Geroux the better,” Ida Belle said.

  I agreed. “I’m certainly not going to be the one to distract her. She’s not too fond of my Yankeeness. She’ll slam the door in my face. I think it should be the one who’s had a bad history with climbing trees.”

  Ida Belle and I looked at Gertie. She folded her arms. “You fall out of a tree once and—”

  “Three times.”

  “Twenty-nine. I’ve known her longer,” Ida Belle said.

  “Fine,” Gertie hissed. “I’ve been wanting to get back in contact with Barb anyway. See if I can catch her talking to any dead people.”

  Ida Belle glanced at me with raised brows.

  “I see that look,” Gertie said.

  Several people around town had reported hearing Barb addressing empty space with names of people who’d died, convincing Gertie that Barb could communicate with spirits. Ida Belle was a bit more skeptical. Not that I was a big believer in ghosts, but Barb HAD argued with some unseen person at the party, referring to the person as a “cheater,” something she’d accused Marge of being.

  “Barb Geroux is a crazy, annoying puppet lady who talks to herself,” Ida Belle said. “She’s not a medium.”

  “I think she’s crazy, annoying AND a medium,” Gertie countered. “She can be both. Nope, she’s communicating with ghosts and I’m going to catch her in the act and get her to contact Marge.”

  Ida Belle threw her hands in the air. “I give up. While you’re at it, get Barb to ask Cootie who shot him.”

  “Maybe I will. But first, I need cookies to get my foot in the door.”

  Chapter Eight

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when we made our way back to Cootie’s house. Gertie, armed with a plate of cookies, walked up the brick path to Barb’s front door while Ida Belle and I hid behind a row of azalea bushes to the side of the walkway.

  Gertie knocked. Moments later the front door opened. “Gertie Hebert?” Barb said, surprised.

  Gertie turned on the charm. “In the flesh. And hello to you, Cloris,” she added, looking down at the Lambchop sock puppet on Barb’s hand. She and the puppet were inseparable. “I noticed how you enjoyed the oatmeal raisin cookies I made for Marge’s birthday party the other day and thought I’d make up a special batch just for you.”

  “You’ve never brought me cookies before.”

  “Well, shame on me. It was so nice seeing you there, though, to be honest, I did catch you talking to someone, someone who wasn’t there, and I just wondered if you could maybe tell me—”

  “Where are your cohorts?” Barb asked, interrupting her.

  “We’re not joined at the hip, Barb. I do have a life separate from Ida Belle and Fortune.”

  “Coulda fooled me,” she said through Cloris. Her next words were from her lips. “Thanks for the cookies. See ya.”

  “Wait, Barb!”

  Then a scream from Gertie.

  “What the heck?” Ida Belle whispered.

  “You damn near broke my foot, Barb.”

  “Well, why’d you stick it in my door?”

  “Ice. I need ice.”

  “For Pete’s sake,” Barb said. “Alright. Come inside you big baby, and I’ll get you some ice for your poor foot. But Cloris and I are watching Wheel, so don’t go shouting out the answers before they solve the puzzle. Cloris hates that.”

  Once the door closed, Ida Belle and I scurried to Barb’s side gate and let ourselves into her backyard. I hopped onto one of the lower branches of the sycamore tree and pulled myself upward onto the next branch, then the next and the next, until I was level with Cootie’s window.

  “How are you doing?” I asked Ida Belle.

  “Fine,” she whispered as she made it onto the branch that held me.

  I shimmied across the branch until I was inches away from the sash window that was three-quarters of the way open. The flimsy screen appeared to be dislodged slightly from the left corner of the frame. After dislodging it further, I eased my hand inside and lifted the screen from the bottom. Soon the screen popped out of the frame and fell to the floor inside.

  I froze for a moment, peered around the canopy of leaves. Satisfied the noise hadn’t attracted attention, I pulled myself through the opening, tumbled onto the floor of the room, then lifted the window completely open before helping Ida Belle through.

  The loft appeared to be used by Cootie as his workroom. An unfinished canvas sat on an easel in the corner. An abstract of an alligator. I liked it.

  Ida Belle took one look at it and shrugged.

  A huge work table took up one side of the room. Shelves lined the walls with Cootie’s supplies: paints, brushes, canvas, frames. Several finished paintings leaned against the wall, but none of them a nude woman on a horse.

  The stairway led down to a family room in the back of the house. We divvied up the first floor. I would take all the rooms on the right side of the house and Ida Belle would take the left side of the house, including the back family room.

  An eerie sadness permeated Cootie’s house, as if the house knew he’d never return. I had felt it from Marge’s house as well the first few weeks after I moved in. A letdown whenever I’d step inside, as if the house knew I didn’t belong.

  Cootie’s bedroom was located toward the back. The bed had been hastily made and his closet door left ajar. On the bedside st
and sat a landline with an older answering machine attached that used microcassettes. I flipped open the plastic covering to find the cassette missing. No surprise there. The Mudbug deputies would have taken it. Several framed art pieces of Cootie’s hung on the walls, but none of them nudes. I searched under the bed and in the closet. Nothing.

  The front living room was filled with paintings signed by Cootie. No nudes, however. I was impressed by his talent, especially the painting over the mantel. A little girl held by a man I assumed to be her father, feeding a carrot to a horse.

  I couldn’t help but smile, Cootie having captured the delight in the girl’s eyes as the horse accepted her food offering. The dad looked just as delighted as the girl. Certainly not a scene I’d experienced with my own father. Oh, we’d been around horses. My father was a first-rate equestrian and wanted me to be the same. Much like every other expectation he’d had of me, though, I’d fallen short.

  I realized I’d been staring at the painting for several minutes when Ida Belle called out from the next room. “I’m finding squat. How about you?”

  I followed her voice and joined her. “Same here. It’s not in his house. Maybe he actually did destroy it.”

  We left through the attic window. I replaced the screen and joined Ida Belle as she shimmied down the tree. I had just dropped to the ground when Barb Geroux’s back door flew open.

  Barb rushed outside, followed closely by Gertie.

  “Barb, you’re missing Wheel!” Gertie shouted.

  “Freeze!” Barb yelled, pointing to us as we moved toward a storage bin. “You thought you could pull one over on me.” She turned to Gertie. “Those cookies were just a ruse.” She pulled her phone out of her pants pocket.

  “Who are you calling?” I asked.