Change of Fortune

by Jana DeLeon

  “I’m holding my breath now,” I said, and stuck my head out the window. “I might hold my breath until next year.”

  Ida Belle rounded a corner, the vehicle’s tires squealing.

  “This isn’t the way to your house,” Gertie said.

  “I know,” Ida Belle said. “It’s the way to your house. Until this SUV is one hundred percent stench-free, it’s going to reside in your garage.”

  “What about my Cadillac?” Gertie said.

  “Stop pretending you take care of that car,” Ida Belle said. “I’m not having this thing stink up my garage and waft into my kitchen. You can clean it and live with it until there’s no more smell of garbage.”

  “Fine,” Gertie said. “But you’re going to be sorry when my quick thinking solves the mystery.”

  Ida Belle shot a dirty look at Gertie in the rearview mirror, and I was pretty sure she didn’t care if Gertie had found the fountain of youth in the bottom of that garbage bag. I drew in another breath of hot, humid air and counted the seconds until we reached Gertie’s garage. We pulled up to the curb and Gertie stomped inside to get the keys to her Cadillac. I jumped out of the SUV and went to stand in the flower bed. It had been recently fertilized, and I swear to God, it smelled better than the SUV.

  Ida Belle paced in front of her vehicle, giving it worried looks and occasionally patting the hood as though she were comforting an injured child. Finally, the garage door came up and Gertie backed out her Cadillac. Ida Belle pulled into the garage and Gertie parked in the drive, then we hurried inside where Ida Belle was already lifting the back hatch on her SUV.

  “Close the garage door,” Ida Belle said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” she said. “If Marco comes looking for us, we’d be easy to spot with the door open.”

  She had a point. There probably weren’t many black SUVs with Marco’s garbage inside them. He might catch on that we were the ones going through his trash. I punched the button and the door began to lower, then I hurried to the back door and opened it. I wasn’t sure it helped, but at this point, it couldn’t hurt. I scooted to the back of the SUV to find Ida Belle staring at the inside, the expression on her face somewhere between terrorist and serial killer.

  I knew the bag had been open when Gertie tossed it into the vehicle, and I figured some stuff had spilled out, but this was way worse than I’d imagined. The bag looked as if it had met up with something in Gertie’s purse.

  It had exploded in the back of the SUV, leaving only shards of plastic and the rest of it random garbage. Shrimp heads, banana peels, milk cartoons, beer cans, and a lot of stuff I couldn’t readily identify covered the once-pristine liner. I immediately launched into action.

  “The liner is rubber, right?” I said. “So we’ll make sure everything is on it and pull it out. The carpet beneath should be fine. Maybe just some spot cleaning.”

  “The hell you say, spot cleaning,” Ida Belle grumbled.

  I reached in to knock a couple of beer cans onto the liner, then moved to one side and motioned for Ida Belle to do the same. Carefully, we pulled the liner out and laid it on the garage floor.

  “Okay,” I said, looking at the mess. “Where are the bacon boxes? We need to find the stamp for the café on them to be sure.”

  Gertie gave me a look like I’d lost my mind and pointed to two white boxes with red lettering that were torn and rumpled. “Right there in front of you.”

  I glanced at Ida Belle to make sure she wasn’t pulling a gun out, then sighed. “Those say bagels, not bacon.”

  Gertie leaned over to inspect the boxes then raised back up. “Oops.”

  “Give me your keys,” Ida Belle said, and stuck her hand out to Gertie. “I’m taking your car. I’ll drop Fortune off.”

  “What about all this trash in my garage?” Gertie asked.

  “You can clean it up,” Ida Belle said, “and bleach my liner, and shampoo my carpets. Tomorrow morning, you can make an appointment for the eye doctor.”

  “When are you bringing my car back?” Gertie asked.

  “When mine no longer stinks,” Ida Belle said. “Come on, Fortune.”

  I considered jogging home, as it looked like the safer alternative, but when we got to the front drive, I hopped in the passenger seat of Gertie’s car and watched as Ida Belle silently started the car and backed out of the driveway. I’d seen her mad before, but not like this. I made a mental note to never, ever do something to harm Ida Belle’s car. It was apparently like injuring a firstborn.

  She turned the corner but instead of heading for my house, went back in the direction of Marco’s. “I wanted to see what was going on,” she said.

  As she drew up to the corner, I practically vaulted over her and switched off the headlights. “Keep going!”

  She stared at me a second as if I’d lost my mind, then looked past me and saw Deputy Breaux’s truck parked in front of Marco’s house. Ida Belle pressed the gas evenly but guided the car quickly across the intersection and headed for my house.

  “I swear that woman is going to make me crazy,” Ida Belle said. “I know she’s my best friend, and now she’s your friend, but if you move forward with this whole PI thing, you should tell her she can’t help unless she gets new glasses.”

  When I thought about the trash cleanup, and the liner bleaching, and the carpet cleaning that were all in Gertie’s immediate future, I figured the problem might rectify itself. Not to mention that Gertie probably knew she’d finally crossed Ida Belle’s line in the sand. Blowing up purses and shooting holes in boats was one thing. It was completely another to soil Ida Belle’s SUV.

  “I have a feeling she’s going to get on that one,” I said. “But in other news, we’re back to square one again on the food thief.”

  “Yeah, I know. I wish I had a clue as to where to look next but I have to be honest with you, none of the remaining people look good for it.”

  “Based on what I’ve gathered from you guys and Ally, they don’t to me, either. But that food’s not walking out of the café on its own.”

  “No. And I agree that it’s most likely an employee. A friend or relative getting the key and going in at night is one thing, but taking food out during the day would take some serious cojones.”

  I nodded. “No one would look twice at an employee carrying a frozen chicken, but if their cousin dropped by to visit and then walked around with one, it would probably look strange.”

  “Unless they have one of Gertie’s bottomless purses of fun.”

  “There is always that angle.”

  Ida Belle pulled into my drive, and I looked over at her. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Worst case, Francine gets her security cameras set up and she knows who it is by next week anyway. This was just an exercise.”

  “I know, but I wanted it to be a successful one.”

  Something in her tone made me pause. Maybe a sense of urgency that I didn’t expect. “Why is it so important to you?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Because I was thinking that if you were successful at solving this, it would help cement your decision to stay. And I really want you to. Not if you’re still in danger, of course. But if you have the option of anywhere, I really want it to be here.”

  “Even if it means never knowing what Gertie has in her purse?”

  She looked over at me and smiled. “Even if it means having trash thrown in my vehicle. You’re important to me, Fortune. And I don’t say that about a lot of people. You’re important to a lot of good people in this town, and we’d all lose something special if you left.”

  “Thank you,” I managed, feeling a little choked up. “That goes the same for me. So please don’t worry. On that one thing, my mind is made up. As long as it’s an option, you’re stuck with me. Besides, no way would I leave and let Celia off that easy.”

  “Got that right. Go on inside and get some sleep. You need to be in top shape for the days coming.”

 
It occurred to me that if this exchange had happened between two normal women, they probably would have hugged, maybe even cried. But Ida Belle and I weren’t exactly normal women. I climbed out of the car, then leaned over and looked at her.

  “Have a good night,” I said.

  It sounded like one thing, but from the look she gave me before pulling away, I knew she got it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My phone went off the next morning, jolting me out of sleep. I bolted up and grabbed my pistol, scanning the room as my feet hit the ground. It took a second for me to register that it was my phone and not something nefarious, and I tossed the gun on the bed and lifted the phone from the nightstand. Six friggin’ a.m. This better be good.

  It was a text from Gertie.

  NEED HELP NOW!

  That was all it said. I sent a text back that consisted of only question marks, but no reply was forthcoming. I tried calling but no one answered. Now worried, I grabbed a couple spare weapons and ran out of the house. I made the drive to Gertie’s house in half the time it should have taken and almost clipped Ida Belle as we turned onto the street from two different directions. We both flew into the drive and jumped out of our vehicles, guns blazing.

  The garage door was open, so we made a beeline for it. And just as we got to the entry, Carter stepped out. We drew up short and he stared at both of us, his mouth partially open. Finally, he shook his head.

  “You two are frightening,” he said.

  I looked over at Ida Belle. She was wearing a camouflage bathrobe and had a head full of curlers and some kind of brown mask on her face. In her right hand, she held a shotgun. In her left, a nine-millimeter. The hilt of a hunting knife stuck out of her pocket. Now concerned, I glanced down as I couldn’t remember what I’d worn to bed and hadn’t taken the time to dress before running out.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that all the important things were covered by shorts and a tank top, but just barely. I had my nine in my right hand and a .45 in my left. Neither of us wore shoes.

  “The knife is a nice touch,” I said to Ida Belle. “I only had time to grab another gun.”

  “I keep the knife in the robe,” Ida Belle said.

  “If this meeting of the two scariest women in Sinful is over,” Carter said, “I’d like to address the situation inside.”

  Gertie!

  “Is Gertie okay?” I asked. “I got a text.”

  “Me too,” Ida Belle said. “But she wouldn’t answer.”

  Carter nodded. “I got the same text. I just got here faster and even managed shoes. Gertie is fine, but she’s got a situation. Not a police situation, so I’m tempted to leave you two to deal with it and go back to bed for another hour. But since I suspect there’s more to the story than what I’ve heard, I’m going to stick around for a bit and see how things shake out.”

  Uh-oh.

  I glanced over at Ida Belle, who wore her signature blank look. The woman really was a pro. “So what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Come see for yourself,” he said and motioned us inside the garage toward the door to the house, which was propped open. When we got within a couple feet of the door, two cats shot out of the house, almost tripping Carter as they went.

  “What the heck?” Ida Belle asked, clearly as confused as I was.

  Gertie scrambled to the door, her hair sticking out in every direction, her face flushed. But that wasn’t even the interesting part. I’d seen the nun costume before when we did one of our undercover adventures, but I couldn’t fathom a reason why she would wear it to sleep in or why she would put it on after waking up. I knew that a crisis often brought people closer to God, but Gertie wasn’t even Catholic, so this was taking things a bit too far.

  “Why are you dressed like a nun?” Ida Belle asked.

  “It covered the most of me,” Gertie said. “They’re relentless. You have to help me get them out.”

  I heard glass breaking and caught a whiff of fish. I peered behind Gertie, and that’s when everything made sense. Well, more sense than it had before.

  At least twenty cats raced through her house, running up curtains, jumping from counter to table to chair then windowsill, all in a frenzy, and they only stopped running long enough to fight with each other. Ida Belle pushed past me, took one look at the chaos, and began to bark orders.

  “Get as many aerosol cans as you have—hair spray, deodorant, air freshener—doesn’t matter,” she said. “Fortune and I will look in the kitchen. Carter, check the garage. And no bug spray.”

  Gertie didn’t even hesitate before running off toward the guest room. I cast a glance at Carter, who shrugged, and then I hurried into the kitchen after Ida Belle and started searching cabinets and drawers for spray, pulling out cans and plopping them on the counter as I went. Gertie sped back into the kitchen with the nun robe pulled up and a load of cans in it and dumped them all in the kitchen sink.

  “Cats hate the sound of aerosol spray,” Ida Belle said. “So Fortune and I will take some cans and head upstairs. Gertie, take the guest bedroom. Scare the cats out of the rooms with the spray and close the door afterward. We’ll head downstairs, forcing them all toward the kitchen. Gertie, you get them down the hall and into the kitchen. Carter, make sure when they run out, they don’t come back in the house.”

  “I think I have something to handle that,” he said, and headed back into the garage.

  I hurried upstairs with Ida Belle and into a spare bedroom. Two cats were fighting on the bed, so I stepped up, positioning myself behind the cats, and sprayed. The cats immediately broke apart and ran for the door. I chased after them, following up with another spray for good measure. Then I looked under the bed to make sure there weren’t any lurking underneath and hurried out of the room, closing the door behind me. I gave the hall bath a quick once-over, then moved out into the hallway, where Ida Belle was pulling the door to the master bedroom closed behind her. Five more cats were headed for the stairs.

  We ran downstairs behind a wave of cats, dodging even more at the bottom of the stairs as Gertie herded them down the hallway from the guest room. With a lot of effort, we managed to get them from the living room into the kitchen, and that’s when things got more difficult. Whatever Gertie was cooking—and I assumed it was a stinky fish casserole for Godzilla—was too attractive for the cats to leave. They had allowed themselves to be pushed into the kitchen but that’s where they dug in, refusing to go out the back door, no matter how much we sprayed.

  “Move!” Carter yelled, and waded in from the garage with an air compressor, closing the garage door behind him. He stood in the entryway between the living room and kitchen and ordered us to stand behind him and block the opening. We took our position, and he let loose with the compressor.

  The compressor was easily ten times louder than the aerosol cans and sent the cats into a frenzy. They must have thought a lion was in the room hissing at them because they ran over everything in the room and one another trying to get out the door. As the last one exited, I heard Gertie yell, and then she shoved me in the back and ran past all of us and out the back door. We hurried behind her as she ran into the yard, thrashing about, the nun suit flapping around her.

  “Straggler!” she yelled.

  I knew we should do something but since I had no idea what was going on, I had even less of an idea what to do about it. I glanced over at Carter and Ida Belle, but they didn’t look any more enlightened than me. Finally, Gertie tripped over the leg of a lawn chair and went sprawling onto the lawn. A cat shot out of the robe and took off across the lawn, clearing the six-foot fence in the back like an Olympic athlete.

  Gertie flopped back on the lawn, arms and legs splayed out, and I could see her chest heaving with the effort to breathe. We hurried down the steps and leaned over her.

  “Are you all right?” Ida Belle said.

  “I need a drink,” she said.

  “I need an explanation,” Carter said. “So heft her up, and let’s get insi
de and close the doors before we have a repeat visit. Then you can explain why you’ve suddenly become the Pied Piper of cats.”

  I glanced over at Ida Belle as we helped Gertie up, and she raised an eyebrow, which let me know she had the same concern I did—that Carter was onto our trash thieving. I just hoped she had a good story for this one, because I didn’t have anything. We headed back inside, making sure the door was closed and locked for good measure, and Ida Belle poured us all a shot of whiskey and put on a pot of coffee.

  Carter waited for Gertie to get her breath back, then held out his hands. “So? Why the cat invasion? And before you attempt to go with whatever stinky thing you’re cooking in your oven right now, I’d like to point out that your garage smells of bleach and carpet cleaner and Ida Belle’s SUV is parked inside, not your Cadillac.”

  “A package of chicken necks I took to Fortune’s for bait leaked in the back of Ida Belle’s vehicle,” Gertie said. “She went totally mad cow on me and insisted that I clean the thing and that it stay here until the smell was gone. So I bleached and shampooed it yesterday and was hoping it was aired out by today, which is why the back door of the garage was open. I forgot about the doggy flap on the door from the garage and into the house.”

  “You don’t have a dog,” I said. “And if you did, why would he need to go into the garage?”

  “I did at one time,” Gertie said, “and he peed every five minutes when he got old. So I put a doggy door on the back door in the kitchen, but then last year, I replaced that door with the glass insert one for a better view and moved the old one to the garage since it was heavier-duty than the one that was there. I had no idea the flap was open. It’s plexiglass. I couldn’t tell.”

  “You could if you got new glasses,” Ida Belle grumbled.

  Gertie shot her a dirty look, then directed an innocent gaze at Carter.

  Surprisingly, it all sounded completely reasonable. At least to me. I looked over at Carter to see if he was buying it, but his expression hadn’t changed. Which meant Gertie hadn’t sold it well enough, or he had more information that he hadn’t hit us with yet. I was betting on the latter.