by Duffy Brown
“Okay, okay, and I’ll cover your dancing lessons, and”—I gritted my teeth and sucked in air—“I’ll take care of…” Devil cat. “… Precious.” KiKi cut her eyes my way, a sly grin sliding across her lips. A queasy feeling pooled in my gut. “You played me?”
“Well, the Moonstruck part is true enough, and the Pines has happy hour with Mr. Jim making the best three-olive martini in all Savannah. They got a deal cooked up with Spa Bleu over there on Bull Street, and I’ve been wanting to go for months now. I hear they got a massage guy to die for.”
“Where is all this coming from? You’re a married woman, for Pete’s sake.”
“I’m just looking is all, and the way I see it, it’s good for my heart. It gets it pumped up and going, kind of like aerobics but a lot more fun than going to the gym, I can promise you that. Aldeen’s due for her rumba session any minute now, so I’m off to sprain my ankle.” Auntie KiKi kissed my cheek. “Wish me luck.”
KiKi started for her house, and I stared at her in disbelief. Auntie KiKi, the queen of making things come out just the way she wanted them to. Why hadn’t I inherited that gene instead of the family sweet tooth? I stepped back inside to set up for the day at the Fox just as Aldeen swung her Honda into KiKi’s driveway. She got out and fluffed her pink dancing skirt that flowed around her like a cloud, a really big cloud. She was twirling her way over to meet KiKi when Boone parked a red, slightly dented pickup truck at the curb. BW stuck his head between boxes piled in the back, and Big Joey waved from the passenger side.
Big Joey and Boone were brothers in all ways except parentage and skin tone. Big Joey was the Grand Poobah of the Seventeenth Street Gang and, whereas this wasn’t exactly a step toward sainthood, the gang kept guns and drugs out of schoolyards and parks and Big Joey had given more than one kid a roof over his head and food at the table, kept him in school, and put him on the straight and narrow.
Boone lowered the tailgate for BW and he leaped off, heading straight for Elsie and Annie Fritz’s house to do his business. Why oh why didn’t dogs ever do such things in their own yard?
“Yo,” Big Joey called, uncurling himself from the truck. His navy T-shirt hugged six-pack abs that had made more than one woman in Savannah weak in the knees. “Word is you got yourself a new roomie and I got myself a gig as best man. ’Bout time.” He closed the truck door, grinned, and spread his arms wide.
“How do you like fuchsia?” Aldeen added as she wandered over. “And gold shoes. I just love gold shoes.”
“And the Bar-Fighting Bulls are doing the tunes, so all’s cool.” Big Joey lifted me off the ground and swung me around. “My boys been practicing on and off for weeks now. Gonna be great.”
Weeks? How did brides get away with eloping to Niagara Falls or running off to Vegas while I got a fuchsia wedding, man-food at the reception, and who knew what kind of music? Okay, I could pitch a fit, but it was a beautiful day in Savannah and Boone and everyone looked happy. If Boone was happy, I could put up with anything, right?… maybe?… if I tried real hard?
Big Joey returned me to earth, then snagged two boxes from the truck and followed Boone up the sidewalk to the house. Tail-wagging BW joined the little parade with something clutched in his teeth. Usually he brought me a stick as a doggy present or maybe the neighbor’s newspaper or … or … was that a blue hat hanging out of BW’s mouth? The blue hat? It was covered in dirt. Why dirt? Oh, Lord, why dirt? With Aldeen front and center and a dead-body MIA, it was best to save any and all questions till later.
“Well, that little devil,” I laughed, snagging the hat from BW as Aldeen and KiKi looked on. “He must have gotten this right out of the shop.”
“It’s kind of dirty to be selling here at the Fox,” Aldeen said as BW headed off. “Maybe he retrieved it from your donate pile?”
“Yep, that’s it,” I chuckled, my stomach doing flip-flops. “Dogs. You never know what they’re getting into. Once BW brought me a dead snake, and then there was the pink bra with rhinestones,” I babbled on. “I had no idea where the bra came from, but somebody sure knew how to have a good time, and—”
“Is that a red purse in your dog’s mouth?” Aldeen asked as BW trotted our way looking proud. I grabbed for the purse but Aldeen headed to BW and beat me to it. “I’m not exactly what you’d call a purse girl,” she said, staring at the bag, “but I think I recognize this one.”
She knitted her brows as she undid the clasp and pulled out a gold compact, a comb, an inhaler, and a wallet covered in pink lipstick kisses. “Says here this belongs to Bonnie Sue McGrath. The address is over there at Sleepy Pines, and the Pines reported her missing just this morning. Seems they thought she might be visiting friends, but no one’s heard from her. I got a picture of Bonnie Sue sitting on my desk, and she has this very purse clutched in her hands.”
Aldeen looked from me to Kiki to BW. “What’s it doing here all covered in dirt?”
Without saying another word, Aldeen followed BW as he headed for Elsie and Annie Fritz’s backyard.
Chapter Eight
“Holy saints above,” Aldeen sighed as Auntie KiKi and me stopped right behind her in Elsie and Annie Fritz’s neatly tended backyard. BW continued on across the edged grass, rounding the wheelbarrow and continuing into the garden lined with sprouting veggies … some of them sort of plastic looking? He wiggled under the wire fence, his little black butt dancing back and forth till he got to the other side and resumed digging, dirt flying into the air.
“W … well, isn’t this a nice surprise,” Annie Fritz gasped as she stumbled out onto the porch, the screen door slamming closed behind her. She had on a wrinkled floral housecoat and a smile plastered on her dirt-smudged face. Her arm crooked in a come-here wave to get our attention. “I bet you all would like some mighty fine blueberry pancakes this morning? As luck would have it, you’re just in time. Elsie has the griddle hot and ready and—”
“There’s a hand sticking out of the middle of your garden,” Aldeen said in a calm voice, as if she came across such things every day.
“Hand?” Annie Fritz gulped. “What hand?”
“That hand,” Aldeen snarled, jabbing a stiff finger at the exposed digits. “The one next to the dog.”
“That there just happens to be a … a new vegetable Sister and I put in this year, and…” Annie Fritz’s voice trailed off as Aldeen snagged a trowel from the wheelbarrow, opened the garden gate, gave BW her best “I am the police, so get lost” look, then bent down. She dug next to the hand, slowed, then stopped. She stared back at Annie Fritz and Elsie, both now standing on the stoop looking like death warmed over.
“Is there some reason Bonnie Sue McGrath is planted in your backyard?”
“Fertilizer?” Elsie ventured in a squeaky voice, and Annie Fritz added, “And just because Bonnie Sue happens to be in our yard does not mean we had anything to do with her getting herself there, now, does it? I mean, we’re not the only ones who didn’t have much use for her, and someone else could have hidden her there to frame two little old ladies for something sinister. I do declare, what is this here world coming to?”
“And that someone just happened to add plastic greenery to cover things up?” Aldeen held up a fake leaf.
Annie Fritz blushed and grinned. “Nice touch if I do say so. Bet it came from that dollar store over on Price.”
Aldeen closed her eyes for a second, then stood and dusted her hands. “You’re saying neither of you is responsible for this corpse and there will be no fingerprints or forensic evidence that will implicate you two in any way when we get Bonnie Sue to the morgue?”
“Maybe a teensy bit if you look real hard.” Elsie let out a deep sigh. “You see, the truth is, we sort of found Bonnie Sue in our Caddy when we were parked over at the Pines yesterday. She was leaning over on the back seat. At first we figured she went and took a little nap and the nice warm Caddy seemed like as good a place as any to get away from the men always fighting over her. Then we tried to wake Bonnie S
ue and she was as stiff as a mean dog’s tail. We sat her up but then we didn’t quite know what next to do with her.”
“Like maybe call the police?” Aldeen arched her left brow.
“Except that Bonnie Sue makes it two who croaked over at Sleepy Pines in the last week.” Elsie wrung her hands. “With this amount of dead people never happening there till Sister and I got into business with Mr. Jim, it looks like we’re a big fat dead-and-gone jinx. That is not one bit good for business for either of us.”
“This is about business?” Aldeen wanted to know.
“Honey, when you’re living on retirement income, everything is about business,” Annie Fritz said. “We happened to be putting in our garden anyway and it was the perfect resting spot. We figured that since Bonnie Sue was the queen of bed-bouncing bingo at the Pines, where jackpot takes on a whole new meaning, her heart couldn’t keep up with the bingo part. More than likely she keeled over in the heat of the moment and that’s how she got that there nasty bump on her head. Whoever she was messing up the sheets with then dragged her pitiful worn-out remains to our car that was parked at the curb and half hidden by the big fir tree. Our guess it was one of those married catting-around lotharios at the Pines who didn’t want to get caught with his shriveled do-da in the wrong do-de and thought it best to get rid of the evidence.”
“Isn’t the Pines a retirement center?” Aldeen said, a confused look on her face.
Elsie wagged her finger schoolteacher-style. “Well, Bonnie Sue is living proof that they didn’t retire from everything, though the living part doesn’t count for much now. It took Sister and me a bit to dig the hole back here, and we moved Bonnie Sue from one place to the next so no one would get suspicious. Seemed fittin’ to plant her in with the hot peppers.”
“That’s it.” Aldeen tossed the towel to the ground and headed for the gate. “I need to call the coroner, and you two need to come to the station and write this down. If I tried to put it into a report, I’d get accused of drinking my breakfast, and I’m not just talking OJ. Didn’t either of you think that someone would go looking for Bonnie Sue and start asking questions?”
“Asking questions doesn’t mean that people have answers, now, does it?” Annie Fritz sniffed. “Believe it or not, we’re good at keeping our traps shut when there’s a real need.” The sisters trudged along with Aldeen, and I whispered to Auntie KiKi, “Did you just hear what I heard?”
“That we were invited in for blueberry pancakes and now it’s not going to happen?”
“That the sisters are good at keeping their mouths shut. What else are they hiding? I better get Boone before the sisters start talking their heads off down at the police station and say something about the Spring Chicken scam and getting taken for a bunch of money. That ties them to Willie in a big way and could get them into a lot more trouble.”
“I think the trouble part is already in play, but we need to act fast and find out who wanted Willie dead before this all get worse. I’ll give Bernard Thayer a call and start up his lessons again. He still thinks that being Mr. TV Weather for twenty years gives him a shot at Dancing With the Stars, and with Aldeen in official cop mode and on the sisters’ trail, we need to get cracking. Everyone will believe Bernard and his two left feet sprained my ankle, and I bet the Pines will run right on over here to get me after losing two paying customers like they just did.”
“Bernard Thayer? Really? Do you have to? You get his two left feet, but I’ll get his roving hands and bad breath when I take over the lessons.”
“If you feel the need to start whining about this, get it out of your system now before tonight when you bring me my things. We need to get a move on. Come around eight. I’m betting everyone at the Pines will be watching reruns of Perry Mason and we can have a look-see. I’m thinking that whoever did in Willie did in Bonnie Sue, with them both living at the Pines.”
“Unless Bonnie Sue died of natural causes and it’s a coincidence?”
“From your lips to God’s ears, but I don’t think the sisters are that lucky.”
KiKi started for Rose Gate, and BW and I studied the hand flopped limply over the edge of the veggie grave. “You just couldn’t be content with digging up bones like other dogs, could you? You had to go for fashion, a matching hat and a purse, no less. I guess this is what happens when you live in a consignment shop. Next time try to find something without a body attached, okay?”
We turned for the front of Cherry House and Boone standing by a pile of boxes at the curb, hair mussed, shirt dirty, eyes dancing, and without a doubt the sexiest man alive. “Big Joey’s picking up the last load,” Boone said to me. “And why were the Abbott sisters getting into the Honda with Aldeen Ross, and is that the coroner’s van pulling up to the curb?”
Boone gave me a long, steady stare. “Sweet thing, we were apart for fifteen minutes. How could all this happen in fifteen minutes?”
“You know that dead body I told you about? It wound up in the sisters’ pepper patch, and now they’re off to the police station to explain how it got there. If you keep them out of jail, you might score red velvet cake for the rest of your life.”
“Motive?”
“None that I know of.”
“A body in the backyard is pretty damning, but for red velvet cake I’ll see what I can do. Big Joey can drop me off at the station.” Boone kissed me on the forehead, then grabbed up a box.
I snagged his arm. “I love you.”
He grinned.
I held tighter. “I mean I really love you, like in a corny, Valentine’s-Day-sappy, can’t-live-without-each-other kind of way. I just thought you should know.”
Boone put down the box, snapped a daffodil from the patch by the Prissy Fox sign, and tucked it behind my ear. “Right back at you.” He scooped me into his arms and kissed me long and slow and delicious until I heard …
“That’s it, that’s it,” came Mamma’s voice. “Don’t let me interrupt.” I cranked open one eye to an iPhone pointed my way. “This is a great picture for your wedding book. I got the guy who does the mug shots at the police station as your photographer; he gave me a great deal. Why is the coroner over there at the Fritzes’ place?”
“Pancakes,” I said, reluctantly breaking the kiss. I had to do something before Mamma scurried over to the sisters’ house to check things out for herself. I thrust a big box into her arms to keep her attention. “No one does pancakes like Elsie Fritz, and since you’re here, you can help move Boone’s stuff inside. Many hands make a light load, and Boone needs to be hurrying off to meet a client.”
“Your mother does not have to do that.” Boone made a grab for the box, but I gave Mamma a little nudge to get her going. I needed to get her in the house. Any minute now Bonnie Sue’s traveling bag would make an appearance, and I didn’t want to face another lecture on being a dead-person magnet.
“You know,” Mamma said, juggling the box up the sidewalk. “We can use my car and KiKi’s to help with this move. My car has a big trunk and so does the BMW, and—”
“No thanks.” A trickle of sweat slithered down my back. “There’s not much more to move and the Beemer needs to rest. KiKi read it in the manual.”
Mamma staggered in the front door and made a right turn for the stairs. “My sister read a manual? How did I ever miss hell freezing over?”
I plopped my box in the hall, then went to the kitchen as Mamma’s footsteps sounded overhead. I retrieved the cash from the Rocky Road container to get ready for a day of entrepreneurship-on-a-shoestring. I poured a cup of kibble into BW’s blue bowl, which had his name scripted on the side in white in case he learned how to read and forgot where he dined. KiKi had bought the bowl for his last birthday. I wasn’t sure of the exact date, since BW had been a rescue pup, so I’d given him my birthday. We shared everything else … house, food, bed, Boone … it just seemed like the natural thing to do.
“You know,” Mamma said, coming into the kitchen while I put the money into the Godiva box
, “Walker isn’t the complaining sort, but it’s kind of cramped up there.” She pointed to the ceiling. “You don’t even have a living area, and the man would probably like a desk or at least a nice chair, and my guess is Walker’ll have to duck to get his head under the shower fixture in the bathroom.”
I counted the tens and twenties, wishing there were a few more. “There’s some room on the second floor to expand for a sitting area, and when business picks up, I can maybe relocate the Fox to a storefront. Then Boone and I can redo the downstairs and have plenty of room.”
“I’ve got a better idea.” Mamma’s eyes twinkled. “Finish off the third floor up there in the attic and keep the Prissy Fox exactly where it is.” She grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “It’ll be perfect for the children. You can watch them and run the store at the same time if you get in a little help to mind Gloria Elizabeth and Graham Robert with feedings and the like.”
“Gloria? Graham?”
Mamma puffed out her chest. “Named after their amazing grandmamma and granddaddy, just like they should be.”
“Boone and I haven’t even set a wedding date!”
“We have an appointment for tomorrow to take a look at the Sugar Bell House over on Bull Street for the reception. If you ask me, there’s nothing lovelier than a Southern wedding with crystal chandeliers and Victorian arches, and the two-hundred-year-old magnolias in the back should be in full bloom.”
“The magnolias bloom next month!”
“I know. The girl I talked to said there was a cancellation.” Mamma pressed her hands to her heart. “It’s a pity your daddy’s not here to see all this.”
“There’s nothing to see!” I yanked back the curtain on the back door to prove that today was just like every other day, at least on this side of the house where a dead body wasn’t being carted away. Except things weren’t normal here either.
