Whiskey and Gunpowder

by Liliana Hart

  Chapter Eight

  It was February, and my patience had run out with the weather. Winter gear was a pain to put on and take off, and there was no moving fast. I’d picked black leggings and a royal-blue turtleneck that mostly covered my butt. I’d picked it because it matched my jacket perfectly.

  By the time I drove into Whiskey Bayou I was right at the hour mark. The roads had all been sanded, and there was more traffic on Main Street than when I’d been there the day before. Apparently, everyone had decided to show up for work today.

  The house I’d grown up in was on the other side of town, past the fire station and the school. It was a little three-bedroom rock house with a shaker roof and diamond-paned windows. It was like a little fairytale cottage, and I’m sure it was adorable to anyone that didn’t have to grow up in it with only one bathroom. One of the first things my mom had done after my dad had passed away was paint the front door bright magenta. My dad was more of a neutral kind of guy.

  The second thing she did was sell her very practical beige Corolla and buy an exact replica of the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. I shuddered to think of how much of her personality my mom has kept hidden over the majority of her life.

  I pulled up in front of the house, and was going to get out to help Scarlet, but she must have been waiting by the front door because she was already closing it behind her before I could get out.

  I hurried up the sidewalk to help her. She was weighed down with a floor-length mink coat and a duffle bag slung across her body. She was also dragging a suitcase behind her. Her ponytail was a little worse for the wear this morning, a few sprouts sticking out from the side of her head, but she’d taken the time to put on bright red lipstick.

  “Good grief,” I said. “Where’d all this stuff come from? I thought you left most of your stuff on the cruise ship.”

  “I’m switching cruise lines,” she said. “They stopped serving all-you-can-eat crab legs in the lounge, and they hired a new girl to call out the bingo numbers. She mumbles. I would’ve had blackout if I could’ve heard the last number she’d called. She cost me a thousand bucks. It was the mega pot.”

  “Yikes,” I said. “Bad for business.” I put her bags in the back and then helped her into the front seat.

  “You’re telling me. All us life cruisers jumped ship at the next port. They lost business a lot sooner by cutting corners.”

  “Sooner than what?” I asked.

  “We’re all gonna die soon. All us life cruisers are at the end of the road. Someone’s always dying on the ship, and they stick them in the little morgue way down at the bottom. I paid them a fortune so I could at die at sea, and look how they betrayed me. I told the captain straight to his face that I wouldn’t have it.”

  I’d never understand Scarlet’s fascination of dying on a cruise ship, but she said it had been a dream of hers for most of her life. I guess when you’d spent most of your life as a spy and dealing in life and death situations, you had a tendency to think about how you wanted to die.

  “What’d you do with the rest of your stuff?” I asked.

  “I rented a storage locker near the port,” she said. “A car will pick me up Friday and drive me to Florida. The new ship departs Saturday morning.”

  “I’m getting married Friday,” I said.

  “Perfect timing,” she said. “I hate weddings. And I went to your last one.”

  “But I didn’t get married.”

  “It’s all the same. Same people, same clothes, same food, same music…” She waved her hand in the air. “I’m heading to Australia. Y’all come visit me down under and I’ll treat you to the best damned crab legs you’ve ever eaten. Where are we going first? I’ve got to stay incognito to avoid the Fuzz.”

  I blew out a breath and put the van in gear. “I’ve got to stop by and pick up Rosemarie. Her car doesn’t handle icy roads well.”

  “Hmmph,” Scarlet said. “That girl is a terrible driver on dry pavement.”

  I grunted in agreement, still a little perturbed about the wedding diss. Aunt Scarlet and I had been through a lot together. I was probably the closest family member she had.

  By the time I’d pulled up to Rosemarie’s little duplex, Aunt Scarlet had put on sunglasses and moved to the back seat.

  “I’m too visible in the front,” she said. “If you get pulled over I’m going to hide in the bathroom. I can probably kick the toilet out of the way and crawl out the bottom of this thing if push comes to shove.”

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” I said.

  I texted Rosemarie to let her know we were there, and we waited as she stood at her open door and kissed her dogs goodbye like she was never going to see them again. She had two Great Danes that she’d named Johnny Castle and Baby, and her relationship with them was ambiguous at best.

  “That’s sad,” Scarlet said. “Those dogs probably spend most of their time licking their butthole, and there she is kissing them like they’ve got gold bullion stuck in their teeth. You never know what people do in their personal lives. There’s a lesson in that somewhere.”

  “What kind of lesson?” I asked. And then I mentally kicked myself.

  “Never trust anyone. They might be secondhand butthole lickers and then where will you be?”

  Rosemarie opened the passenger door and hoisted herself in. She was wearing her bright yellow puffy coat and a matching hat with a white puffy ball at the end. She had perpetually rosy cheeks and hair the color of corn silk that she wore feathered back from her face like Farrah Fawcett.

  “Lord, it’s cold out here,” she said, little puffs of breath escaping her mouth. “Johnny Castle nipped my earlobe and I thought part of it snapped clean off.”

  I wrinkled my nose but didn’t say anything, and then I took the long way through town so I could drive by the church and see if Pastor Charles was there or if anyone was lurking about. His car was there, a blue secondhand Toyota, and it was parked in front of the rectory. There were several other cars in the lot this morning as well. It reminded me that I still needed to call the church in Silver Springs, Nebraska and talk to Tilda Sweeney. I just added it to my mental list of tasks I still needed to get done for the day.

  “Here,” I said, handing Rosemarie my stack of case files. “Look through these on the way to the cake place and tell me which looks the easiest to get done. They weren’t supposed to give me anything that involved too much prep work or recon, unless those last two cases Lucy gave me are doozies.”

  “Spy,” Scarlet said.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “That Asian vampire girl. She’s a spy. I know my own kind when I see them. She’s got a good cover. Secretary my ass.”

  Since those were some of the most sensible words I’d heard Scarlet speak recently, I thought it might be worth it to probe a little more.

  “Who do you think she works for?” I asked.

  “Looks like a spook to me,” Scarlet said. “She’s deadly, I know that for sure. Look at the way she moves. Always in a position where she can easily snap a neck or stab someone with one of those chopsticks she wears in her hair. If I was Kate I would watch my back. She’s probably privy to some pretty secret information with the level of clients that agency draws.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “I think she’s very nice,” Rosemarie chimed in, looking back at Scarlet. “She’s just a little shy. That’s probably why she feels comfortable around me.”

  I almost slammed on the brakes. “I’m sorry, what?” I asked. “Are you saying you’ve spoken to her?”

  “Sure,” Rosemarie said, looking confused.

  “Actual words?” I asked again.

  “Sure. What else would she use to answer the phone all day? She’s just very professional. But get her talking about things she’s interested in and she’ll talk your ear off.”

  “What’s she interested in?” Scarlet asked, scooting up in her seat.

  “Oh, you know,” Rosemarie said, h
er hands animated. “The usual stuff. She likes puzzles.”

  I relaxed a bit. That didn’t sound like the hobby of someone who killed on a daily basis.

  “Oh, and she’s a black belt in all kinds of stuff,” Rosemarie continued. “And she likes knife throwing and is an expert marksman. And she said she’s pretty good with a bow and arrow too. And parachuting. She’s one of those extreme sportsmen. Jumps out of all kinds of planes and off waterfalls and stuff. And she occasionally paints.”

  “Paints?”

  “You know,” she said. “Like Picasso. She’s a real Renaissance woman.”

  My eyes met Scarlet’s in the rearview mirror and I raised my brows. She mouthed the word spy, and I had to agree.

  Kate had been right about traffic heading into downtown Savannah. It was at a standstill for miles, and I was starting to get hungry. I was on less than empty after my bad coffee experience.

  “I can’t take this traffic much longer,” Scarlet said. “I could walk faster. I’ve got to pee and I’m hungry.”

  “We’re going to eat wedding cakes for lunch,” Rosemarie said.

  “I guess that’d be okay,” Scarlet said. “I did a cake diet once. I lost a bunch of weight on account of all that icing makes you poop like a goose.”

  “Good to know,” I said. I took Truman Parkway all the way to President Street, along with everyone else trying to get into downtown.

  “You should’ve gotten off on Wheaton,” Scarlet said. “The best cakes in Savannah are on Taylor Street.”

  “Oh, no,” Rosemarie said, shaking her head. “The cake shop is on Drayton. These are the best cakes I’ve ever had. No one comes close to making cakes like Suzanne.”

  I decided to divert the conversation before Rosemarie and Aunt Scarlet got into a pissing match over cakes.

  “Did you see anything interesting in the case files?” I asked Rosemarie.

  “No, they all look boring. Nothing high-stakes like we’re used to.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Scarlet asked. “They can’t give us these kinds of cases. We’re a BFD. We’ve got reputations to maintain.”

  “I figure it’s a toss-up between the cheating wife and the fraud,” Rosemarie said.

  “Let’s go with the fraud,” Scarlet said. “After Big Mo, I’ve seen all the dong I want to see. In all my years, they’ve never gotten any better looking. You ever wonder why God made penises?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “All the time,” Rosemarie said, nodding in agreement. “I have so many questions to ask God when I get to heaven, and that’s one of them.”

  “I’ll ask him for you,” Scarlet said. “And then I’ll send you a message with the answer. Unless you go first, then you can ask him yourself.”

  Rosemarie pressed her lips together, and put the other files back in my bag.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Scarlet said. “I’m an old lady. I can’t hold it like I used to.”

  It took her several tries to get out of the seat because her hair and the fur coat were weighing her down. When she stood up she shrugged out of the mink so it fell to the floor and made her way back to the tiny bathroom. I caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror, and was glad I was stopped in traffic. She was wearing a skintight leopard print velour tracksuit and white sneakers, her ponytail bobbing as she made her way down the aisle.

  “I’m never going to find parking,” I said to Rosemarie. “I’ll drop you and Scarlet off and see if I can find a miracle.”

  “There’s no way this thing will fit in the parking garage,” she said. “Maybe park in the alley. There’s lots of service trucks in and out. Just put on your flashers and maybe they’ll think you’re making a delivery. It’s not like we’re going to be in the cake place that long.”

  She made a convincing argument. Traffic started moving again, and I heard a loud thump from the back along with the toilet flushing.

  “You think she’s okay?” I asked.

  “Demons never die,” she said, repeating my mother’s sentiment. “It was everything I could do not to look for stray lightning when she said she was going to ask God about penises when she gets to heaven. That woman is probably on a first-name basis with Lucifer. Though maybe she knows both of them. She’s been around since the beginning of time.”

  I grinned as we came up a side street near the bakery, and I made a turn into the narrow alleyway. It wasn’t trash day, so I wasn’t concerned about the garbage trucks being able to get in and out. The sign on the brick wall clearly said the alley was for delivery only. Since I was delivering all of us to the cake shop I thought Black Betty fit the parameters nicely.

  Scarlet came stumbling out of the bathroom like she’d spent the last ten minutes in a martini shaker and she grabbed her mink off the ground.

  “Y’all probably want to vacate the premises,” she said. “I don’t know what happened in there, but it wasn’t pretty.”

  It smelled like an animal had died and been left out in the sun for three days. I started gagging, and I hit the flashers and jumped out of the car. I was sweating like a pig, and sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep the nausea down.

  When I felt like I was halfway in control of my gag reflex I looked over at Rosemarie. She was pale, sweat dotted her upper lip, and her hat sat askew on her head.

  “Maybe you should just abandon it,” she said, panting. “Leave the keys in it and see if someone steals it.”

  “Whew,” Scarlet said, wrapping her coat around her. “That cold air will take your breath away. Come on, girls. I made some room for some cake. I’m starving.”

  Rosemarie and I followed Scarlet out of the alley and Rosemarie whispered, “There’s only one explanation for why no one has ever murdered that woman in her sleep.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “She made a deal with the devil.”

  I hated to talk bad about family, but I was starting to think Rosemarie might be right.

  Chapter Nine

  “Crazy Cakes?” I said, looking up at the flashing sign in front of the cake shop. “What the hell is Crazy Cakes?”

  The display windows were eclectic to say the least. There was a naked mannequin wearing nothing but purple and gold Mardi Gras beads and holding a cake shaped like a very nice pair of breasts, complete with nipple and a thorny rose tattoo. There was another mannequin kneeling on top of a pile of gold doubloons holding a tray of cupcakes shaped like penises. There were even electric sparklers stuck in the end of each one to complete the look.

  “She makes sex cakes?” I asked, completely stunned.

  “She makes every kind of cake,” Rosemarie said. “Look at this one.” She pointed to the next display window.

  It was a woodland scene with trees and a family of small bears, and cooking on a spit over a fire was a pair of squirrels that looked suspiciously like Chip and Dale. They were skewered and their eyes were open with little x’s on them.

  “Ohmigod,” I said.

  “Isn’t she great?” Rosemarie asked. “She’s taking Savannah by storm. We’re so lucky there was a cancellation for Friday. Let’s go in and taste some cake.”

  Rosemarie opened the door and a warm blast of air greeted us. The inside of these old buildings downtown mostly looked the same—original wooden floors and high ceilings with exposed beams and ductwork.

  “Oh, wow,” I said. My mouth started watering the second we stepped inside. It smelled heavenly.

  “I think I just had an orgasm,” Scarlet said. “I don’t know what kind of cake that is but I want to make love to it.”

  “Suzanne sells cake batter in her erotic cake kit, along with the plastic sheets so you don’t get your floor dirty.”

  “I don’t understand,” Scarlet said. “You bake an erotic cake on the floor?”

  “No, you pour the batter out on the plastic sheet and make love on top of it. Food can be very sensual.”

  “Huh,” Scarlet said. “I’ll have to try that.”

/>   “Please, God,” I whispered. “Make it stop.”

  There was a long glass case filled with pastries, pies, and cakes. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted to buy everything.

  “Y’all hold on a second,” a voice from the back said. “I’ll be right out.”

  “That sounds just like Kathleen Turner,” Scarlet said. “Did she quit acting to open a cake shop?”

  “It’s us, Suzanne,” Rosemarie called out. “We’re here for the tasting.”

  “I’m just getting y’alls cake samples together,” Suzanne called back. “Take a seat at the little table. Help yourself to coffee, tea, or water there on the credenza.”

  “You should get some of those penis cupcakes for the reception,” Scarlet said. “I’d pay a thousand bucks to see Nina Dempsey eat one of those things.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be at the wedding?” I said.

  “I’ve got eyes everywhere,” Scarlet said. “Never forget that.”

  The kitchen door swung open and Suzanne came though pushing a tea cart. There could’ve been a million dollars or a naked Hugh Jackman on that tea cart. I wouldn’t have known, because my eyes were glued to Suzanne.

  “Holy shit,” Scarlet whispered.

  Suzanne was several inches over six feet and had the blackest, most flawless skin I’d ever seen. Her hair was platinum blonde and parted down the middle, her brows skillfully arched, and her contouring was at Kardashian level. She was wearing a red, skintight jumpsuit and four-inch platform boots in black. She also had an Adam’s apple.

  Rosemarie squealed and jumped up to hug Suzanne, and then she turned back to us, beaming.

  “This is Suzanne,” she said. “We went to college together.”

  “We both sang in the choir,” Suzanne said. “And now look at us.”

  My brows raised of their own volition. Seeing Suzanne and Rosemarie standing side by side, it was kind of a shock to the eyes.

  “How do you get your cleavage to look like that?” Scarlet asked.

  “It’s a little trade secret, but since you’re about to eat my cake I’ll let you in on it. You’ve got to use tape. Makes ‘em stand up real perky, and gives you just the right amount of cleavage.”