Soul Man

by Shari Hearn

  “Looks like she just had it painted,” Ida Belle said. “Nice job.”

  Gertie agreed. “Good thing, too. Remember those pipes of hers that burst when she was on vacation last year? This place was covered in water stains.” She nudged me. “Don’t worry, though, she got all the mold under control.”

  Ida Belle crinkled her face. “If you ask me, the moldy walls caused Dotty’s rash.”

  Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but I began to itch.

  Gertie shook her head. “No. I think it was the weed killer that Charlie poured on her lawn last year.” She looked at me. “Charlie’s such an idiot. Not only did he use weed killer that’s been banned for ten years, but he didn’t read the instructions right and didn’t dilute it. Poured it full strength over every inch of the yard.”

  “Is it still in the soil?” I asked.

  Gertie shrugged. “You don’t spend much time outside in the yard, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “That’s not true. I love spending time in the hammock outside.” In fact, it was one of my favorite things about Marge’s house.

  Ida Belle waved me off. “Just take a hot shower and scrub yourself good after being out there. You’ll be fine.”

  Gertie went to one of the windows and inspected it. “New windows. Nice.” She looked out and waved to someone below. “Looks like Bridget might be pregnant again. I heard a rumor she had fertility treatments. Might be expecting triplets.”

  Ida Belle laughed. “Poor Bridget and Ed won’t get any sleep.”

  And neither will I. My mind flashed to the first few nights in Sinful when I had been driven sleepless by one lone croaking frog. Earplugs were useless. What would I do with crying triplets? My thoughts drifted to the future when the triplets became screaming toddlers, then screaming grade schoolers, then screaming teenagers. I’d never have a moment of quiet.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I said, heading downstairs. “I’d rather be tortured by Ahmad than live here.”

  We thanked Dotty and headed down her walk.

  “I thought it was perfect,” Ida Belle said. “But if you’re going to be picky...” She shrugged.

  Gertie patted my shoulder. “We’ll help you find the perfect place, don’t you worry.”

  I stared at Gertie. I have the perfect place. A hammock in the backyard I can relax in without being poisoned by banned chemicals. A glider swing on the porch great for making out with Carter. A rock fireplace Marge built herself, where, if you look hard enough, you can spot the one stone that juts out at an odd angle, hiding a wad of cash in case Marge had to “disappear” for some strange reason. A place I finally feel at home in.

  Instead of saying what I truly felt, I just nodded.

  “You know, I hear Ed Fletcher has one of those tiny houses he’s selling,” Ida Belle said.

  “Good idea.” Gertie looked at me. “Sure, it’s tiny, but it has loads of character. I heard you can sit on the toilet and take a shower at the same time.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” I asked.

  “I don’t think you’d have a choice,” said Ida Belle. “The shower head’s directly above the toilet.”

  Ida Belle launched into the virtues of a combination bed and dining table when Midge Allair, who was picking up trash in her yard next door to Dotty’s, interrupted her with a loud curse.

  “What’s wrong, Midge?” Gertie called out to her.

  “My neighbors. Would it kill them to bag up their trash before they put it in the cans?” She bent down and picked up a handful of paper with her gloved hands. “If it’s not bagged up, the trash blows all over the place when the trucks empty it.” She picked up a tissue. “Can you imagine the germs on this thing?” She shoved it in a plastic bag. “Bet you dollars to donuts this belongs to Boots Callahan. I heard her sneezing yesterday. Oh heck, it could be any of my neighbors. Dotty, Bobby Wells, Martha Simms, Redneck. I think every person on this block has left their trash unbagged at one time or another.” She glanced at me.

  I said, “Nobody told me I had to bag up the trash when I first moved in,” which prompted a grunt from Midge.

  Gertie opened her purse and pulled out several pairs of latex gloves and gave Ida Belle and me a pair. After a minute of helping Midge rid her yard of her neighbors’ trash, Gertie held up a piece of paper.

  “Look what I found. Someone’s lottery play slip with one set of numbers inked in. This I’ll keep.”

  “Why?” Ida Belle asked. “That set of numbers probably lost.”

  “A loser for last game may be a winner for next time. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe we’ll win on this number next time and be millionaires.”

  “Didn’t someone already win the huge pot last Wednesday?” I asked.

  “The Powerball jackpot starts at forty million. That’s plenty for us.”

  Gertie studied the play slip as Ida Belle and I picked up the last of the trash and put it in Midge’s plastic bag.

  Gertie drew our attention with an audible gasp.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Gertie’s face blanched. She held her phone in one hand and the play slip in another. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Are we done here?” she asked, slipping her phone into her purse.

  Something was definitely wrong. When Midge turned to take the plastic bag to her trash can, Gertie signaled us to huddle around her.

  “This play slip is a winner,” she whispered.

  “What?” Ida Belle whispered back.

  “All of the numbers inked in are the five winning numbers from last Wednesday’s Powerball, minus the actual powerball. Whoever played these numbers won a million dollars.”

  “Are you sure?” Ida Belle asked.

  “Damn sure. They seemed real familiar, so I double-checked the winning numbers on my phone. 50-51-59-61-63. Powerball was four, but this person chose number five. Not the big winner, but a million bucks is still a lot.” She rubbed her chin. “Everybody in Sinful buys their tickets at the Mudbug Mini-Mart. Want to go there and see if they know the local person who won the million?”

  Ida Belle shook her head. “It’s not like we’re going to get any of the money.”

  Gertie put on her begging face. “Please. I need to satisfy my curiosity. Besides, we can toss around some ideas about who might be Bruno’s accomplice on the ride over. You know I don’t like driving to Mudbug by myself.”

  “What the hell,” I said, her begging face getting to me. “It won’t take long.” I glanced at Ida Belle. “We need to stock up on beer, don’t we?”

  Ida Belle finally relented. “One can never have enough beer.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  MARGE

  THE SECOND MARGE SAW Gertie pick up the lottery play slip it hit her like a brick. She flew over to Cootie’s house as fast as her ghostly energy would take her and charged through his front door. “Cootie!”

  “In here, Marge,” his voice called out from his kitchen, where she found him drinking an imaginary cup of coffee from an imaginary mug that mimicked one of his favorite stripper mugs.

  “I did it, Marge,” he said proudly, holding up the mug. “I’m drinking a pretend cup of coffee, just like you said I could. Tastes pretty good, too. I even conjured up a mug to go with it. The gal’s clothes slip off when I imagine the coffee getting really hot. Wanna see?”

  “Charming, but no. Look, yesterday you said you and Redneck went to the Mini-Mart for beer and lottery tickets.”

  He nodded, bored, then stared at his mug as the woman’s clothes slowly slipped off.

  “Pay attention,” Marge said. “This is important. You said something yesterday about starting with the number fifty in your private pick.”

  He grinned and recited his numbers: 50-51-59-61-63. “Powerball of five,” he added. “Now, you’re probably wondering why I started at fifty. Good question.”

  “Didn’t ask and don’t care. Do you know if you won anything?”

  He shrugged. “I never check the numbers. Redneck calls me the nex
t day to let me know what the winning numbers are.”

  “And did he call you the next day?”

  Cootie thought a moment. “I can’t remember.”

  “That’s because you were killed early the next morning while fishing.”

  He cocked his head. “What’s this all about, Marge?”

  She pulled in a breath and exhaled. “Except for the extra powerball number, you got all five numbers correct in the last draw.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  He whistled. “Damn, I got close, didn’t I?”

  She shook her head. “Cootie, they still give a prize for picking the other five numbers. A million bucks for last Wednesday’s game.”

  Cootie froze. He dropped his imaginary nudie cup. Slowly a smile crept over his face. “I’m rich,” he said softly. Then he yelled, “Marge! I’m rich!”

  She shook her head again. “No, Cootie. You’re dead. Whoever has your ticket is rich.”

  “Someone stole it?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. What happened to your play slip? Or the printed ticket?”

  He shrugged. “Normally I put them in my wallet when the cashier at the Mini-Mart hands them back.”

  “We need to reenter your memory.”

  “I don’t know, Marge, it got me pretty tired yesterday.”

  “It’s important.”

  He balked, but she finally convinced him to go back to when he and Redneck pulled into the Mini-Mart.

  Cootie entered his memory much quicker than yesterday, catching Marge off guard. She leapt into his aura seconds before he disappeared.

  She saw things through his eyes now.

  Once they pulled into the Mini-Mart, Cootie told Redneck his knee bothered him. Would Redneck mind getting everything? Cootie opened his wallet, pulled out a play slip and thirty-five dollars.

  “Twenty for our pool tickets, ten for the beer and two bucks for my personal lottery play,” Cootie said to Marge. “I also asked him to get me a slushee.”

  On his return, Redneck held two grocery bags of beer in one arm and Cootie’s drink in the other. He handed Cootie his slushee through the window, then stuck the bags of beer in the back seat. Once inside the car, Redneck reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small stack of lottery tickets. “These are gonna make us all stinking rich, I can feel it.”

  Redneck stuck the tickets in the center console near the cup holder. He reached in his pocket again and pulled out Cootie’s folded play slip and the resulting printed lottery ticket. “Here’s your losing ticket.”

  Cootie took the pieces of paper and stuck them on the dash.

  Once at Cootie’s house, they said their goodbyes and Cootie stepped out of the car.

  Without his separate play slip and printed lottery ticket.

  “Stop!” Marge said to him.

  Once back in the present, they stood for a moment in the middle of his kitchen, speechless.

  Marge’s eyes locked into Cootie’s. “You never took your ticket with you. Redneck is now the winner of a million bucks and you’re dead. We call that a motive for murder.”

  “No,” Cootie said. “He wouldn’t want me dead. When I told him about my diagnosis, he didn’t take it well. He said the doctors had to be wrong. We were buddies. He’d never kill me.”

  “For a million dollars he might.”

  Cootie shook his head, not allowing himself to believe it. “Friends don’t do that.” He pulled his brows close together. “Do they?”

  “They do if they’re desperate,” Marge said gently. “As long as I’ve known Redneck he always had money problems. And if he knew you were sick anyway he might have thought...”

  Cootie’s face fell. “That it didn’t matter.”

  Marge began pacing. “Now, if we could just figure out how Bruno Guerin fits into all of this.”

  Cootie balled up his fist. “I know how. It’s all starting to make sense now. Remember when I said that Ivy Guerin and I hadn’t dated in years?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The guy she’s really having an affair with is Redneck. I swore to him I’d never tell a soul. Well, you’re a soul. I just broke my promise.”

  Marge’s eyes widened. “Ivy could have given Bruno’s rifle to Redneck to kill you with and a cigarette butt to plant at the scene.”

  They raced over to Barb’s house next door, causing her to choke on her toast when the two of them walked through her back door.

  “I told you about that!” she screamed.

  “We found out who killed Cootie. It was Redneck. He killed him because Cootie won a prize in last Wednesday’s Powerball to the tune of a million bucks. Cootie left his ticket in Redneck’s car.”

  Barb placed her fingers in her ears and shook her head. “You lied to me, Marge. You said you’d play checkers, then walked away, just as I was going to win. From now on, you’re dead persona non grata to me.”

  “You need to call the sheriff’s department. An innocent man is being framed.”

  “On what evidence?” Barb asked. “I’ll look like an idiot if I go to the police and tell them they’re wrong.”

  Marge had had it with this woman. “Fine. We’ll do it without you.”

  “How, Marge? We can’t call the sheriff,” Cootie said.

  “We’ll try to get through to Ida Belle and Gertie somehow. I don’t know how, but at least we’ll give it a try.” She stomped to the door, then stopped and turned back to Barb. “You know why I always win when we compete? Because you play it safe. That checkers game we have going? It’s not going to take me long to whip your butt. How? By cheating?” Marge shook her head. “No. You hug the edges, Barb. You want to control the board? You need to go right out in the middle. That’s what a Sinful Lady does, Barb. We don’t hide on the edges. We get right out there. But you go right ahead. Play it safe. Continue losing.”

  Marge pulled her attention back to Cootie. “We have a murderer to catch. Let’s go find some reinforcements.”

  Cootie looked at Barb. “You have a gift, Barb. Marge never had it. I never did. But you do. I wish you’d reconsider.”

  “Save your breath, Cootie.”

  With that, they whisked themselves into the ether to find a headless pirate.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “WHAT WOULD BE THE FIRST thing you’d do if you won a million dollars?” I asked Ida Belle. We stood outside of my Jeep while Gertie went inside the Mini-Mart to get chummy with the clerk and pick up some beer.

  Ida Belle didn’t answer. She was distracted, her gaze holding on a blue SUV parked at the far end of the Mini-Mart lot. The top luggage rack stuffed with boxes and suitcases. Someone sat in the passenger seat.

  “Something you want to share with me about that car?”

  She started to answer when the bell above the door jingled. Redneck walked out of the store, carrying a grocery bag in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. He smiled at Ida Belle. His smile contained a hint of nervousness.

  “Hey, Ida Belle. I saw Gertie inside and thought I’d find you out here.”

  Ida Belle smiled. “I thought that was your SUV over there. Looks like you’re going on vacation.”

  He nodded. “Heading to Baton Rouge. This whole thing with Cootie. I need to get away for a bit.”

  Ida Belle nodded and glanced back at his SUV.

  Redneck kicked a rock with his boot, looking down at the ground. “I asked a lady friend to accompany me.” I couldn’t help but notice the Irish Setter boots he wore. He looked up at us. “I best be going. You take care.”

  Redneck hurried to his SUV and shoved the grocery bag in the back seat before sliding into the driver’s side. As he pulled out of their space the woman turned her head slightly in our direction, trying to view us in her side mirror before pulling it back quickly toward Redneck. He stopped his SUV at the Mini-Mart’s exit and waited for a couple of cars to pass.

  “What the hell?” Ida Belle said. “That’s Ivy Gueri
n.”

  “Ivy? Why would she be with Redneck?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ivy Guerin was out of town when Cootie was murdered, wasn’t she?” I asked.

  Ida Belle nodded. “So she said.”

  “Just FYI, Redneck wears Irish Setter boots. And he has big feet.”

  Ida Belle pulled her brows together. “Yes, but he has an alibi. He was in jail for indecent exposure.” She cocked her head and looked at me. “Or was he? What time did he go outside in his underwear?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  We both shot looks at one another. “Time of death was somewhere between four thirty and six thirty. How long would it take for SOMEONE to get back to Sinful from Glass Eye Lake after shooting Cootie?” I asked.

  “Half an hour.”

  “He doesn’t have an alibi,” I said. “He has the illusion of an alibi. One he gave himself by going outside in his underwear when he knew Midge Allair would be retrieving her paper.”

  Redneck’s SUV pulled onto the road just as Gertie ran out of the Mini-Mart. “Now I remember!”

  “We just saw Redneck,” Ida Belle said.

  “With Ivy Guerin,” I added.

  Gertie waved me off. “The winning lottery number. The clerk didn’t know who won. But seeing Redneck with his grocery bag kept tugging at me. Then I remembered. Two weeks ago, when we came to get our own numbers, Cootie and Redneck were here together. Cootie droned on and on about what his special numbers were and why. They must have just stuck with me. I think the play slip I found was Cootie’s. And I bet it was in Redneck’s trash.”

  I looked at Ida Belle. “Redneck won the lottery.”

  Gertie nodded. “With Cootie’s numbers.” Gertie’s eyes widened. “Did you say Ivy Guerin was with him?”

  I nodded. “And she had access to Bruno’s rifle, phone and cigarette butts.”

  We scrambled into the Jeep. I pulled onto the road in the direction Redneck had driven.