by Duffy Brown
Raylene pointed to the back. “Raimondo is putting the final touches on the gardens, and for pity’s sake. don’t step on anything and kill it dead, but get that fountain running. That newswoman here from Atlanta is taking pictures of the gardens tonight and doing interviews.” Raylene stood tall, looking very impressed with herself. “She’s interviewing me and Junior in the library, so don’t you be wandering in there and disturbing her while she’s setting up.”
Raylene scurried off, and I followed the hallway past lovely rooms filled with beautiful antiques and rich fabrics in shades of gold, yellows, and blues. Raylene may be a snob of the first order, but she had an incredible house. Pushing through the double French doors that led outside, I spied Raimondo bent over an azalea bush. He expertly cut off blooms that had dared to die in Raylene’s yard and stuffed withered petals and stems in his pocket so as not to leave plant shrapnel.
“Mr. Baldassare?” I came up behind him, enjoying the view—and not of the flowers. Raimondo was tall, dark, and gorgeous, with an excellent butt.
He stood and turned, then flashed a dazzling smile, his teeth white and perfect against his Italian skin. “Ciao e saluti.”
I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded sexy as all get-out and turned my legs to Jell–O. I put out my hand to shake his. He held out a withered dogwood bloom. He laughed and slid it into his pocket, but when he pulled his hand out a dead daffodil petal and tulip leaf came with it. “I am like a kangaroo with many pouches.” He laughed, his dark eyes twinkling as he shook my hand. He picked up the leaves and petals, and I took the fountain pump from my purse.
“Sorry I wasn’t around when you stopped by my house,” I said to Raimondo. “I’ll get the fountain up and going in no time.”
My fountain was made up of metal and stone lily pads, with water flowing from one to the other, surrounded by birds and animals. Raimondo had it tucked into a corner of the garden surrounded by tulips, daffodils, and green moss. As much as I hated to admit it, the fountain looked a lot better in Raylene’s garden than it ever did at my place. That she had a top-notch Italian gardener on retainer and an endless supply of money may have had a little to do with it.
“It only takes a few minutes to get the hoses connected,” I explained. “Then I’ll need to fill the basin.”
“I will do that for you.” Raimondo’s smile widened a bit, and he added, “The blue color of your dress is beautiful with your eyes. You have lovely eyes.”
I suddenly felt light-headed and with an honest–to–goodness urge to swoon. Until this moment, I had no idea what a swoon was. I think I thanked Raimondo, than floated over to the fountain and started sticking tubes and plugs together, the chore taking twice as long as it should have since floating got in the way of concentration.
A string quartet started up from the veranda, and oohing and aahing guests spilled out into the torch-lit garden. I stepped back to check that the fountain trickled from lily pad to lily pad without sloshing over the edges and bumped right into Walker Boone. Tonight he had on a navy sport coat and khaki pants. Considering he spent his pubescent years between street fights and drive–by shootings, he cleaned up pretty good.
He snagged a glass of champagne from a waiter wandering though the crush and handed it to me. Very un–Boone-like, and I wish he’d snagged a deviled egg instead. “What do you want?”
His brows drew together questioningly, but it was strictly for show. He knew I was onto him.
I said, “So, what—you give me something and now you want something in return.”
“Actually the drinks are free.”
“You still want something.”
A waiter served Boone a beer in a bottle with some snooty label, but a beer is a beer, and it suited Boone better than champagne ever would. “Are you staying away from church rallies?” He held up his hand to stop my protests. I guess the Drop dead expression on my face hinted as to what I was thinking. “I know you don’t take orders from me, but this time do it. There are more people involved with Hollis’ case than you think, and they all have a lot to lose. Let me handle things, and forget about your house. There are other houses.”
“Not ones I’ve rebuilt from the ground up.” Or maybe it was the top down. It was hard to remember with all that rebuilding going on, but this latest information from Boone about more people being involved was very interesting. I’m sure his intention in telling me this was to get me to back off, but it had just the opposite effect. What people? What were they losing?
“You’re out of your league, Reagan.”
“Or maybe I’m getting too close to finding out what’s really going on, and you’re worried you’ll look bad if I get to the truth before the big, bad lawyer.”
Boone took a swig of his beer and rocked back on his heels. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Or you’re afraid it will.” I made little chicken sounds. I was poking the bear, and it felt good. “This time there’s no prenup or legal mumbo jumbo getting in the way of my doing what I want.”
“This isn’t something you and your auntie talk about over sticky buns and pecan coffee for kicks. This is serious.”
Two years ago, Boone could intimidate the snot out of me, but not now, not this time. “How much do I owe you so far? It better not be much because you haven’t done much. Hollis is still in jail.”
I handed my glass to a waiter, hiked Old Yeller up on my shoulder, and turned to leave, but the heel of my cute little strappy sandal got stuck in the grass. I wobbled, trying to steady myself, promising God I’d go to church for a month if he’d spare me from falling flat on my face at Raylene’s party and—most of all—right in front of Walker Boone, who I had just made chicken sounds to. Like Cher says, “The worst thing in the world is to be uncool.” Uncool was happening real fast.
Boone snagged my elbow, holding me upright. God did indeed work in mysterious ways. “You can’t even walk across the garden without causing a scene. The killer will see you coming a mile away,” he whispered as he drew close.
I wiggled my arm from his hand and took off in search of a deviled egg. To eat it or throw it at Boone, I wasn’t quite sure yet.
“Honey, what’s got you all in a dither?” Auntie KiKi said, sidling up next to me.
I glared at Walker Boone’s back as he chatted with Urston Russell. Urston had his red notebook tucked under his arm. He and his committee must have just come from judging someone else’s garden. Word had it Urston would go off by himself after a judging and make notes. He never let that red notebook out of his sight, and everyone knew that at home he kept it under lock and key. KiKi’s gaze followed mine, and she let out a dreamy sigh. I was willing to bet the bank she wasn’t sighing over Urston. She said, “Whatever that man did to you this time, he did it while looking right nice. Walker Boone sure does fill out a jacket to perfection.”
KiKi cut her gaze back to me. “I came over here to let you know your fountain isn’t working right, and water’s spilling over the sides and making a soggy mess in the grass. You know how Raylene is about messes. Given half a chance, she’ll use it as an excuse to stop payment on your check.”
I glanced at the fountain, which was making uneven splashes instead of tranquil drip-drops. “I’ll take care of it. I’m counting on that check to pay bills. I think we should go to the wake Dinah Corwin’s hosting tomorrow night.” What better place to find out who else was involved with Cupcake?
KiKi took a glass of champagne from another waiter passing by and downed it in one gulp. “I knew when I saw you and Mr. Hunk together there’d be fireworks. You got something cooking in that brain of yours, I can tell.”
If I told KiKi the truth about going it alone on finding the killer, she’d wring her hands, say novenas, and add me to the prayer list at church. “No fireworks,” I assured KiKi with a big smile. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to stop by Boone’s office tomorrow for a chat. I might find something out at the wake that could help him out.”
I could go to Boone’s office, so this wasn’t a lie at all. His secretary and I had become good friends during the divorce. I could sneak up the back stairs that had been closed off when the offices were remodeled, chat with Dinky, the secretary, over lattes, and not have to see Boone. She might even know some dirt about Cupcake. “We’ll get free martinis from Dinah,” I said to KiKi. “We’ll see who else at the Marshall House is celebrating Cupcake’s demise.”
“And you’ll tell Boone all about it?”
I’d tell him to take a long walk off a short pier, but instead I said to KiKi, “I promise to go to his office.”
KiKi batted her green-shadowed eyes. “Well, now that I think about it, Marshall House does do a right-fine martini, with those big olives stuffed with blue cheese. I’ll bring Putter. You wouldn’t believe the gossip that takes place over those little white balls. It makes the gals at the beauty salons look like a bunch of amateurs. We have to do an obligatory appearance at the Paxtons’ anniversary party first, but we’ll be there.”
I left KiKi and skirted around an array of purple and white creeping phlox, the grass verdant and green. I stooped down behind the soggy fountain, which was listing to one side and making—God forbid—a puddle. I wedged myself between the fountain and the bamboo fence, which was covered with yellow trumpets of Carolina jessamine that separated Raylene’s garden from the yard next door. Rummaging around in my purse that was just about the same color as the trumpets, I came up with a lipstick, a spiky brush that did horrible things to my hair, a mascara I hated because it left clumps, and two rolls of half-eaten cherry Life Savers. I’d contemplated cleaning out my purse, but, thankfully, I hadn’t gotten around to it. Now I could jam all that unwanted stuff under the back edge of the fountain and level it out.
I plastered my bag against the fountain as a cushion to push it forward, the water making it heavy. I slid the mascara tube under the one end, followed by the lipstick, then heard Raylene’s voice low and threatening coming from the other side of the trumpet-covered fence. A lot of what she said got lost in the splashing of the water, but it was Raylene’s holier-than-thou voice in a tirade saying, “The little slut is dead, so what’s stopping you?”
As far as I knew, there was only one recently dead little slut around here. So Raylene Carter was a member of the we–hate-Cupcake fan club. Someone replied to what she said, but it was more of a whisper, and Raylene added, “I paid a pretty penny to take care of our problem.”
Paid who? About what? Where did Cupcake fit into all this? Hunched down, all I could see through the vines and fence was a pair of dark loafers. They were nice, Italian maybe—at least they looked a lot like the Italian loafers in that Nordstrom’s catalog KiKi brought over—but they were roughed up, with a dark smudge on the side, and not new. Raimondo probably wore Italian loafers, especially to this affair, and with him working in the garden, they wouldn’t be polished. Of course, I couldn’t be sure if Raimondo wore loafers tonight since my gaze had never traveled below his derriere. But Raimondo wasn’t the only guy in Savannah to wear expensive loafers.
Loafer guy walked off, and I assumed Raylene did the same. It occurred to me that there were a lot of clandestine payoffs going on around Savannah, and Cupcake was right smack in the middle. What was she up to besides stealing my husband (among others), threatening a minister, and winding up dead?
The fountain wobbled against my shoulder. I tried to steady it, the corner sinking deeper into the mushy ground. Lily pads, cute animals, and a lot of water tipped backward toward me, and I jumped out of the way to avoid being flattened. The fountain landed with a solid thump, murdering a mound of tulips and sending a metal frog rolling off into the daffodils. My dress was soaked, plastered to me like a second skin; my strappy shoes were ruined; and the pump made dry gurgling sounds.
The music stopped; everyone stared. My wet dress was more revealing than it had been when dry, and the red-polka-dot underwear I had on underneath probably explained the arched eyebrows, a few winks, and Auntie KiKi with her hand to her forehead, Lord-have-mercy style. Raylene looked as if she might have a coronary right there under the wisteria archway.
Embarrassment inched up my neck to my face, which now, undoubtedly, matched the polka dots. Where were tighty-whiteys when you really needed them? In the wash, that’s where. I crossed the grass, the crowd parting as if I had the plague. At least the deviled-egg waiter was near the door, and from the grin on his face, I’d say he was a real fan of polka dots. I grabbed an egg and mentally bid farewell to my pride and a well-stocked fridge.
Three hours later, Mr. Sayjack, city bus driver for thirty years and now six months away from retirement, let me off right in front of Cherry House instead of the designated stop at the corner. It was a probably a pity stop because I’d told him about the fountain fiasco at Raylene’s and using that blow-dryer thing in Leopold’s bathroom to dry my dress before I met up with my ghost tour. No need to have my polka dots on display for the half of Savannah who’d missed the show over at Raylene’s. More than likely, he let me off as payback for giving him the fries from the Happy Meal I’d picked up after my tour.
I watched bus taillights fade into the dark, along with a cloud of lung-clogging exhaust. I took off my ruined sandals, which had shrunk from the fountain dousing and were now killing my feet. I had just started up the walkway when I noticed two golden eyes peering from under the porch. The eyes were too big and far apart to be a rat or even a raccoon or cat. After having given a haunted tour, my ghost senses were on high alert, but these eyes didn’t seem all that eerie. I caught a glimpse of a snout. “Dog?”
I got a doggy whine in reply. What was a dog doing here? I’d tried owning a cat once, Miss Fluffy, till I gave her a bath and she tore a hole clean through the back screen door, never to be seen again.
“I don’t do well with pets.”
This got another pitiful whimper, so I took a McNugget from my bag and, with the tip of my ruined shoe, pushed it under the porch. Immediately, I heard chewing. Hungry. I heaved a sigh, and my heart felt a little heavy. I knew all about hungry, and the poor fella was probably scared. I could relate to both. More times than I would care to admit over the last two years, I’d pulled the covers over my head and thought, What am I going to do now? That’s when KiKi would bring over coffee and pastries with lethal fat content, and I felt instantly better. KiKi helped me; I could help the dog.
I sat on the grass next to the steps, pushed another nugget to my guest, then stuffed one in my mouth. “You should know that things are sort of lean around here.”
“Who are you talking to down there?” KiKi asked as she ambled across the yard. She had on the blue lounging robe I’d given her for Christmas last year and a cup of something hot and steamy in her hand.
“There’s a stray dog under my porch.”
“Uh–oh.” KiKi sat down on the steps. “Maybe you should call those SPCA people. Remember Miss Fluffy?”
“What happened after I left Raylene’s?” I took the mug from KiKi and sipped coffee laced with Kahlúa. KiKi had lounging down to an art form.
“Things were downright boring after you hightailed it out of the party, though they had to give Raylene a few sniffs from Bernice Clark’s portable oxygen pack to keep her from fainting dead away. Raimondo fixed the fountain easy enough, and two women wanted me to ask you where you got your underwear.”
“Did you happen to notice if Raimondo was wearing loafers?” A starry night peeked down at us through overhanging cherry blossoms, and the warmth from the earth kept the chill at bay. Summer wasn’t far off.
“Honey, when it comes to that man, I’m not looking at his shoes. Well, except for tonight. Raimondo had on loafers, and so did Urston and Baxter Armstrong. Now there’s another delicious piece of eye candy, though he sure shuns the cameras. He leaves the limelight for Trellie.”
Baxter Armstrong was a blond, blue-eyed boy toy from Atlanta, the new husband of Trellie Hudson (now Armstrong), one of the richest wome
n in Savannah. That Baxter was twenty-nine and Trellie was fifty-plus did not bother the two of them one little bit, but it rivaled the Hollis-Cupcake extravaganza for top billing on the kudzu vine.
KiKi snagged a McNugget, and that was fine by me because she left me the Kahlúa. “Putter said he wanted loafers for his birthday, and he went on pointing them out so I’d get the expensive ones and not cheap knockoffs. I told him that-there putting green we’re having installed was setting us back enough, and he’d jolly well have to wait for his loafers.” She took a bite of nugget. “What’s this all about? Are you consigning men’s clothes, too?”
“That’s a good idea. Most women buy for their husbands. The shoe thing is about me overhearing Raylene and a man arguing. They were on the other side of the fence when I was working on the fountain. Raylene said she paid off somebody, and it sounded like she meant Cupcake or that she paid someone to knock her off. Hard to tell. Loafer guy’s answer got drowned out by the splashing water. All I could see were his shoes, but he’s involved in a big way.”
“We all know nothing drowns out Raylene if she’s having a hissy.” KiKi took the mug. “But why would she pay off Cupcake or want her dead?”
“Boone let it slip that there’s more than one person involved with the murder. We know about Urston giving Cupcake money at the Telfair. There could be a connection from Urston and Cupcake back to Raylene, especially since Urston had on loafers tonight. Maybe they both wanted her out of the picture for some reason.”
I handed off the last nugget to the big, pitiful eyes beside me now instead of hiding in the shadows. “Hollis told me today that Cupcake knew secrets.”
KiKi took a gulp from the mug. “Blackmail? That’s my guess. I can’t imagine any hanky-panky going on with Raylene and Urston. Raylene would just as soon throw herself off the Talmadge Bridge than risk a divorce and losing the Carter name and money over the likes of Urston Russell. If Urston even thought about cheating, Belinda would skin him alive.” KiKi turned to me, eyes wide. “But I think you’re right, something is going on, and Cupcake had the goods. Cher says, ‘If you really want something, you can figure out how to make it happen.’ I think Cupcake wanted money, and blackmail was the way to get it. Do you think she had the goods on more people?”
