Lethal in Old Lace

by Duffy Brown

  “Seventeenth Street Boys buying up Pinky Masters right around the corner. Needed to check out night foot traffic. It closed last year, we’re all missing the Tabasco popcorn, and adding it to our real estate holdings gives the young guns employment and some business sense.”

  “And it has that really sweet old jukebox from the fifties.”

  “Aces on the box.” Big Joey planted a soft kiss in my hair. “Got my digits?”

  I pulled the flip from my hoodie pocket.

  Big Joey laughed. “Babe.” He gave me one last hug, BW a pat, then left.

  BW and I headed home, taking the long way around to Troop Square where there was a doggy fountain and BW could do a little canine communing and get a drink. It gave a whole new meaning to local watering hole. We headed up Habersham and spotted Dex and Eugenia entering the Firefly. Really? First he’s out with Arnett, now Eugenia? Two dates in one night? You’ve got to be kidding! And Eugenia was clearly getting the short end of the dating stick. The Firefly was nice and had great jerk chicken, but it didn’t hold a candle to upscale Italian and amazing pesto sauce.

  By the time I got home, I was more depressed than ever. I felt terrible for Auntie KiKi, terrible for Uncle Putter because he was so unhappy, and sorry for Eugenia because Dexter was playing her like a well-tuned fiddle. Damn the man.

  I checked the front display window to make sure the light was on so passersby could see the cute stuff I had for sale, then headed upstairs. I showered and crawled into my fave Hello Kitty nightshirt. It wasn’t sexy, even had a chocolate stain from where I’d spilled cocoa when I hadn’t been calorie crazy, but Kitty and I were pals and tonight I needed a friend. BW curled up at my feet.

  “Are you sleeping?” Boone whispered in my ear as he crawled in beside me an hour later.

  “Not really.” I sat up and stared at him through the dim light shining through the window from the streetlight outside. “I know you met with Uncle Putter and I know he’s divorcing Auntie KiKi and it’s all my fault for getting her involved in my dead-body problems, but we have to stop the divorce no matter what it takes and I don’t give a rat’s behind about your confidentiality promise. This is serious, Boone, and you got to help me fix it. Uncle Putter and Auntie KiKi cannot get divorced no matter what!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Boone propped himself up on his elbow, his dark eyes black as the night around us. “Eavesdropping can get you in a lot of trouble, sweet stuff.”

  “You knew I was at the office?”

  “I’ve lived in that house for a few years now and pretty much know every old creaky board in the place. Besides, I saw your reflection in the window. And for the record, Putter and KiKi are not getting a divorce and that’s all I can say.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Putter is my client and—”

  “Not that why, but why aren’t they getting a divorce?” I shoved my hair that needed bleaching bad out of my face. “I mean, Auntie KiKi jumps first and wonders where she’s going to land midair, and I’m not exactly a good influence. Uncle Putter is a surgeon. He’s grounded, settled, methodical.”

  “And KiKi is his reason for living. She keeps life interesting and fun and he loves her.” Boone kissed me and it was a really good kiss. “I can relate.”

  I felt a sappy smile slide across my just-kissed lips. “I make your life interesting and fun?”

  “Sometimes I feel myself turning gray right on the spot, but yeah, you do.”

  This time I kissed him. “But if it’s not a divorce, something else has Uncle Putter upset and it involves KiKi and I can’t let people I love swing in the breeze when I can help them.”

  Boone snagged me around the waist and flipped me on top of him, our noses touching, his smile meeting mine. “This time you’re on the sidelines and I want you to promise me you won’t tell KiKi there’s a problem when you don’t even know what it is. You’ll get her upset for nothing, Reagan. Putter and I are on this; you have to trust me.”

  “I’m not much of a sidelines kind of girl.”

  “Do tell.”

  “And when you said nothing, you didn’t look convinced, so there is something and it’s important and about the family or you and Uncle Putter wouldn’t be meeting in the middle of the night with your heads together over a bottle of bourbon.”

  “Just this once, stay out of it. Do it for your Auntie KiKi.”

  * * *

  “Well, are you ready?” Mamma asked me as she barged through the front door of the Fox. She held her hands high and danced around the hall, BW barking right beside her. “This is going to be a wonderful day and…” Mamma put her hands down. “Reagan, you look like death warmed over. What’s going on? You can’t go trying on wedding dresses with a frown on your face and bags under your eyes.”

  I forced a smile; the bags were ironed in. “I had a restless night.”

  “Couldn’t you and Walker restless some other night than the one before wedding dress shopping? This is a big day.” Mamma sat me down on the third step that led upstairs. She unzipped her purse and got out her makeup bag. She tipped my chin to face her. “Make kissy lips.”

  She added lipstick like she had when I was fourteen and going to my first high school dance. She smoothed on foundation, blush, and a dab of mascara, then she and BW stood back and admired her handiwork. “Better.” Mamma sat down beside me on the step. “Now what’s wrong? Are you and Walker okay? Ohmygod, you found a lump.”

  “Boone and I are good and I did not find a lump.”

  “You’re pregnant!” Mamma squealed. “Not a problem; we can push up the date and—”

  “I am not pregnant.” I scratched BW behind the ears. Having BW beside me was always comforting, especially when things got messy and I didn’t know what to do next. “There’s a situation. I promised Boone I wouldn’t get involved, but telling you isn’t getting involved, it’s sitting and talking, right? There’s something going on with Uncle Putter and Auntie KiKi but I don’t know what. All I know is divorce isn’t the issue and Boone made me promise not to upset Auntie KiKi and tell her something was up with her husband. I’m out of the loop. Most of the time I am the loop.”

  Mamma’s face changed from wishful mamma to serious judge. “If Walker’s not telling you what’s going on, then Putter’s hired him and what they discuss is between them and that’s not going to change.” Mamma took my hand. “You do have to trust Walker, honey. If he says not to tell KiKi, then we won’t. But…” She tilted her head, the sister side of Gloria Summerside brightening her eyes, “It doesn’t mean we can’t find out what’s happening on our own. If we find anything important, we can let Putter and Walker in on it, but we need to sniff around. They won’t be happy about what we’re doing, but they’ll have to deal and it’s what they would do if they were in our shoes.”

  Mamma gave me a hug. “We Summerside girls, and dog, stick together. So what’s going on lately besides the wedding? Maybe that has some bearing on this KiKi/Putter situation?”

  “Auntie KiKi and Uncle Putter are hosting the wedding, but they’ve had big parties before, so nothing new there. Boone and I are finishing the attic and expanding Cherry House and the place will be torn up for months, but that involves Boone and me and the workmen. KiKi hasn’t mentioned anything out of the ordinary, though what’s ordinary in the life of KiKi Vanderpool is anyone’s guess.”

  Mamma stood and hauled me to my feet. “Well, something’s got your uncle in a state if he’s talking legal stuff with Walker, but right now the Summerside girls have a wedding dress to shop for and that takes top priority.” She smoothed back my hair. “We have to look and act normal or KiKi will know something’s not right.” Mamma and I slapped big smiles on our faces. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  I opened the door to find the Abbott sisters standing on the front porch. “Lord save us,” Annie Fritz gasped as she and Elsie walked in. “What’s happening now?”

  “I think we need to dial the smiling back a
notch.” Mamma gave BW a pat good-bye and we headed for her car parked at the curb. When we got to the Pines, Mamma slowed, craning her neck as we passed a shiny red Mustang convertible, top down, circa sometime before I was born. “Now that’s a car, the muscle car of all muscle cars.”

  “What do you know about muscle cars?”

  “Believe it or not, I too was twenty and wild and reckless.”

  The twenty maybe, the wild and reckless part, never. She was my mother! The car was parked behind a moving van that was parked behind the Goodall Plumbing truck. Mamma tooled around all three, then glided into the lot. She killed the engine and we took the path between the glorious azaleas, Mamma pulling me to a stop before we got to the patio.

  “We are in serious need of a normal check since we didn’t do so good with the attempt at smiling. We can’t have KiKi thinking anything’s up or she’ll grill us till we cave. No one grills like your auntie. She’d make the CIA proud.”

  “Put your judge face on; that’s normal for you.”

  Mamma’s brows knit together, eyes beady, lips thin, jaw set.

  “Less Judgment at Nuremburg, more ‘Did you really run that red light?’”

  Mamma softened her features. “What about you?”

  “I’m a bride; I can look any way I want and it gets chalked up to wedding jitters and ‘He better show up or else.’” We crossed the patio. The double doors leading inside the Pines were propped wide open.

  “Coming through,” bellowed Anna with Bella behind her, pushing a wheelchair with Clive—or maybe it was Crenshaw—on board. “We got a delivery here,” Anna added. “And we’re in a big hurry, so move it.”

  Mamma and I jumped out of the way, letting the three pass followed by two swanky-looking forty-something gals strutting their stuff and wheeling in suitcases. These gals took moving men to a whole different level. Auntie KiKi stood inside, cane in one hand, a tote bag over her shoulder, the black eye still visible under layers of makeup, and an arm in a sling. A sling? What the—

  “We can’t talk here,” KiKi said, cutting Mamma and me off before we could ask questions. KiKi hitched her head toward the patio. “Let’s get in the car. These walls have ears.”

  “But—”

  That got me the evil auntie eye, so I shut up and trailed behind Mamma and Auntie KiKi thump-stepping out into the morning sun. We dodged two more movers in tight jeans, red silky tops, and heels hauling in a double bed and wicker headboard. We loaded KiKi into shotgun and I took the back seat. Mamma powered up the hearse and turned to KiKi. “All right, we’re here in the car. Now talk!”

  “I’m faking it. At least the arm part is a fake.” KiKi flashed a big grin, pulling her arm out of the sling and waving it around. “See, good as ever. My bed collapsed and I rolled out and hit the floor, and don’t either of you start with the ‘You’re coming home now’ lecture.”

  “Why on earth,” Mamma yelped, “would you fake a broken arm, and beds just don’t collapse on their own.” Mamma backed out of the parking space not bothering to look behind, making two walkers jump out of the way.

  “I had to add the arm ’cause the cane just wasn’t cutting it anymore,” KiKi said. “Everyone here has a cane, and the bed collapse was a good excuse to up the stakes. I promised Doc Abrams that Putter would give him one of his standing Saturday tee times out there at the country club if he’d come over and put me in a sling.”

  “And Doctor Abrams went for it?” Mamma asked, sliding to a stop at a traffic light.

  “For a weekend tee time at the club, I could have gotten Charlie Abrams to cocoon me in a full-body cast. And there’s more,” KiKi bubbled. “You saw Clive, or maybe it was Crenshaw, coming into the Pines this morning. Well, Emmitt told me that Anna and Bella aim to get their antiquated husbands—who are suddenly having accidents”—KiKi added air-quotes to accidents—“into the Pines, come hell or high water. Seems it’s the only place C and C consented to go. So, suddenly there are two openings at the Pines, or at least there were until I swooped in and snatched one.”

  I sat up in my seat to be closer to the conversation. “And I saw Anna and Bella tooling around town with two guys, older, good-looking, not C and C. You think they’re ditching C and C at the Pines and looking for newer husbands? The car they were in was vintage sweet, and the two guys in front were good-looking dudes.”

  “All I know,” Auntie KiKi said, “is that a few weeks ago C and C were on a fishing trip, and now they’re hobbling around needing help. How did that happen, huh? And two openings were needed at the Pines, and suddenly now that happened too. Plus Anna and Bella were around the Pines doing their volunteer work, so they had time to soak in what was going on around there. Suffocating the bony Bonnie Sue and dumping her in the sisters’ Caddy would be easy enough, and it fits right in with C and C and their accidents. They had to know about Willie’s peanut allergy.”

  “We did catch them snooping in your room,” I said to KiKi. “They had that measuring tape, and I bet it was to see if furniture would fit, and they made it clear they wanted you out of the Pines or else. Maybe all your accidents are the or else?”

  Mamma jumped the curb and squealed into BleuBelle’s parking lot. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “So now we have two sets of suspects who could have done in Willie and Bonnie Sue: the gold digger sisters to make room for C and C and the smelly-shoe guys, whoever they are.”

  “And Dexter Thomas,” I added. “He’s in a hurry to buy the Pines, and fallout from the two recent deaths makes the place much more affordable. We’ve got suspects with motives, but we don’t have proof. Nothing we can take to Aldeen Ross to get Elsie and Annie Fritz off.”

  “That’s my job,” KiKi beamed. “I’m your mole and I saved the best bit of information till last. You know how you just mentioned the gym shoe guys? Well…” Kiki reached in her tote bag and pulled out gym shoes, a gray pair and the navy. “I found these by the trash cans last night. Now we know for sure those two we saw in Mr. Jim’s office are from the Pines and they’re starting to get squeamish about what they did.”

  “When I dropped KiKi off that first night,” I said to Mamma, “we heard two men toasting the demise of Willie and Bonnie Sue, but all we could see were their shoes moving around the room.”

  “Well, this isn’t good at all.” Mamma turned off the car. “The shoes in the trash means these two guys realize KiKi saw them.”

  “I think the gym shoe guys were just not taking any chances,” KiKi said, “No way could they have known we were there, but I’m getting closer to finding out who they are, that’s for sure. But enough of suspects and murder.” KiKi pulled her iPhone from her purse. “Now it’s on to finding Reagan a great wedding dress. I want to take pictures and remember this day.” KiKi made the phone do a dance in the air.

  “Holy cow!” I yelped. “That’s it. The gym shoe guys know you were in Mr. Jim’s office, or at least they suspect you might have been there. They saw the Louis Vuitton luggage there, and you bought the iPhone cover to match it. That’s why they got rid of the shoes; they’re afraid you’re on to them. They’re getting too close. You need to get out of the Pines right now.”

  “Are you kidding? When we’re so close to finding the killer? It’s got to be these gym shoe guys or the gold diggers or Dexter. No way am I moving out of the Pines till we figure this out, and that’s final.” KiKi folded her arms and did the stubborn Summerside glare.

  “I agree,” Mamma said, a suspicious glint in her eyes that I didn’t like one bit. “And there’s only one thing to do—I’m moving into the Pines with KiKi. With both of us together, what could happen?”

  “Do you want a list?” I protested, my hair feeling as if it were on fire.

  “I can sleep in that big chair in the corner of your room,” Mamma rushed on, steamrolling right over my objections. “I’ll tell Mr. Jim you need special care with your arm in a sling.”

  “It’ll be like a sleepover. It’s our chance to help Annie Fritz an
d Elsie, who are always there for everyone else. Now it’s our turn to help them.” KiKi did the high-five thing with Mamma, both beaming like kids on Christmas morning. I started to object again but got the no-nonsense look from Mamma, so I shut up. All kids know when they’ve lost the battle, and this was my Waterloo to be sure. I was no match for Mamma and Auntie.

  “You have to call me,” I insisted. “You have to check in.”

  “We’ll call, we’ll call. Stop nagging. Now let’s go shopping.”

  Still beaming, Mamma and Auntie opened the car doors to get out and a bolt of panic ran up my spine. This time it had nothing to do with dead bodies or suspects or sleepovers and everything to do with the steamrolling part of our last conversation.

  “Stop.” I held up my hands. “Now it’s my turn. You two are getting your way on staying at the Pines and now I am getting mine. I don’t want a long wedding dress with yards of tulle. I am so over tulle, and lace; no lace anywhere. I did all that with Hollis and we saw how that ended up.”

  I faced Mamma. “Remember the conversation we had at the coffee shop about a nice short coral dress with a frilly skirt for dancing? That’s what I want.” I reached in Old Yeller, pulled out a wrinkled paper, and held it up. “Like this one. I tore it out of a J.Crew catalog. If we can’t find something in BleuBelle, I can order this one online.”

  “An online wedding dress,” KiKi gasped, making the sign of the cross. Mamma following suit.

  “Repeat after me,” I said, adding a bit of stern for good measure. “Simple dress.”

  “Simple,” Mamma and Auntie KiKi said at the same time with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

  Feeling immensely better about my little coral dress, I climbed out of the back seat and led Mamma and Auntie KiKi into BleuBelle Bridal. The little blue bell over the door tinkled merrily as we entered, the aroma of silk, taffeta, and never-ending tulle washing over us. A crystal chandelier sparkled in the center. Blue-carpeted raised platforms and big gilded mirrors were scattered here and there with changing rooms behind, giving each bride her own space to feel special. I wouldn’t need that, of course. A normal-sized skinny mirror hanging on a wall would do for a short coral dress suitable for a fall wedding.