Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  She was just finishing with the photos when her best friend, Nina, arrived, fashion-plate runway-model perfect in her rosy stilettos and a gauzy translucent blouse so blush pink and skin-toned, Bobbie Faye had to double take to make sure there was a shirt there at all. Her male neighbors seemed to be having the same problem, and two men fell off Old Man Collier’s front stoop as they rubbernecked Nina gliding past.

  Bobbie Faye grimaced at the only semidry clothes she’d been able to salvage from her waterlogged closet: a pair of low-rider jeans a shade too tight and a skimpy white baby-doll T-shirt that read, SHUCK ME, SUCK ME, EAT ME RAW (subtitled LOUISIANA OYSTERS), which her sister had given her as a gag gift one Christmas. Her old, beaten-up cowboy boots completed the ensemble.

  She sighed; she was, of course, used to Nina’s regal beauty. Half of the time, she could barely run a comb through her own tangled mess, whereas Nina could have taken over a small third world country without even slightly disheveling her cool blond bob. They’d been best friends since kindergarten, nicknamed “Fire and Ice” their senior year, and Nina was one of the few people Bobbie Faye would trust to watch over all her worldly possessions. She glanced at the chartreuse plastic peacocks in the barren flowerbeds that she’d meant to turn into a garden one day, and thought maybe she should delete “worldly” from that description.

  Nina cast a merciless grin at Bobbie Faye as she peered over her Ray-Bans. “B, you are the first person I know who’s managed to drown a trailer.”

  “Bite me.”

  Stacey’s eyes opened wide as she swiveled from Bobbie Faye to Nina, who picked up Stacey and gave her a hug.

  “Don’t worry, Stace. You’d be a big wad of grumpy, too, if you’d just killed your home.” She turned to Bobbie Faye. “I got your message to bring the wet-vac, but something tells me we’re way past that.” She waited for the glare, and grinned again. “What can I do? You want me to take Stace to school?”

  “Um, no, not exactly.” Bobbie Faye had never, ever not told Nina a secret. She’d maybe held off a couple of hours, but never a full day, and she expected Nina to see right through her now. “I’ll do that. I’ve got to go run an errand.”

  “I’ll go. Whaddya need?”

  “No, thanks. It’s something I’ve got to sign for.”

  As expected, Nina peered over her sunglasses with a who-do-you-think-you’re-kidding expression.

  “I need you to stay here and guard my stuff.” She and Nina glanced at all of the barbecue grills and the two dozen or so neighbors sitting in lawn chairs. The sound of pull-tabs popping on beer cans hammered the morning quiet. “I’ve seen some of these people pick a garage sale table clean in five seconds flat, and it wasn’t even anything they wanted.”

  “And just how am I supposed to stop the looting?”

  Bobbie Faye grabbed a pair of ice tongs and thrust them into Nina’s hands. “Show no mercy.”

  Nina regarded the naked greed on the neighbors’ faces, then scrutinized the plastic tongs. “Please, God, tell me this is secretly a Taser.”

  Bobbie Faye snatched up her purse, transferring Stacey from Nina’s hip to her own. A few moments later, she and Stacey pulled out of the trailer park lot, her rusty yellow Bondo-and-duct-taped Honda Civic chugging hard and billowing black smoke.

  Roy watched as Vincent leaned back in a leather chair behind a gleaming burled walnut desk. Vincent flipped through the photos in Roy’s wallet, thumbing past glamour shots of various ex-girlfriends. He stopped, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

  “Nice family photo,” Vincent said, his voice dropping to a purr, and the hair on the back of Roy’s neck stood at attention. Vincent examined the shot of Roy, Bobbie Faye, and their younger sister Lori Ann, who was holding a then-three-year-old Stacey. “Quite . . . enticing. Particularly Bobbie Faye.”

  “How do you know which one’s Bobbie Faye?”

  “My dear boy, everybody knows the Contraband Days Queen. Besides, she has what I want. I made it my business to know.” His lips twitched at the photo. “I bet she’d be much more delightful tied up than you, dear boy. I think I’m looking forward to meeting Bobbie Faye.”

  Protectiveness surged through Roy, which was quickly replaced by futility as he strained against the ropes tying him to the chair. Even though he suspected Bobbie Faye could take care of herself, Roy didn’t ever want her to have to deal with the lascivious expression on Vincent’s face.

  “Oh, you’d probably hate her. The last guy she dated wanted to kill her.” Roy grasped suddenly that Vincent might take that as a suggestion, and added, “Not that you would. You know. Want to kill her. The one before that became a priest.” This wasn’t getting any better. “She’s kinda a handful.”

  “Feisty? I like feisty, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my plans.”

  “Oh, she wouldn’t. I swear. She’ll get the tiara and go straight to wherever you tell her.”

  “You’d better hope so, Roy. It’d be a real shame to have to torture you and kill you.”

  Vincent smiled and Eddie and The Mountain chuckled, as if it was a great joke. They were jovial, having a little fun, right? Roy ground his teeth, though he tried not to show his concern. This was just perfect. Bobbie Faye rarely did what anyone told her to do, nor did she seem to care about other people’s opinions of her . . . which made her so unlike all the women Roy had been able to con, he sometimes wondered if she was really Southern. Or even American. In the words of the lovely singer, Jo Dee Messina, Bobbie Faye’s give-a-damn was busted. Now his life depended on Bobbie Faye following directions.

  He was doomed.

  Roy’s stomach lurched and dropped, and sweat popped out in places he didn’t even know had sweat glands.

  Bobbie Faye’s sad little car coughed its way up the drive of Goutreaux Elementary School, which was not much more than a series of small brick buildings slung low in a line and hunkered down as if they were on permanent hurricane watch. The sidewalk teemed with little kids lining up before the first bell of the day. Her car was billowing so much black smoke, the kids backed up as a unit and held their breath as soon as they heard her car approach. Stacey climbed out and bounced her way to a small circle of girls who hugged her and immediately enveloped her in the group. The rest of the kids moved back in unison and held their breath again when Bobbie Faye pulled out of the drive, her car belching its protest at being accelerated again so soon.

  Every instinct screamed at her to zoom to the bank as soon as possible, breaking every traffic law in the process. But Roy’s kidnappers wanted subtle and that meant she needed an excuse to go to the bank since she wasn’t due to take the tiara out of the safe-deposit box until the final day’s parade. Not to mention zoom wasn’t in her car’s vocabulary, though humiliation apparently was. A teenaged boy on a John Deere tractor actually passed her, shaking his head at her pathetic excuse for a ride.

  Bobbie Faye’s car hiccupped to a stop in front of her place of employment, Ce Ce’s Cajun Outfitter and Feng Shui Emporium. The hand-lettered sign on the old Acadian-styled house, converted years earlier, had seen better days, and previous manifestations of Ce Ce’s businesses were showing through the paint. The faint outline of print indicated it had once been the Outfitter and Pet Rock Emporium, proving there was no fad Ce Ce was afraid to embrace full throttle.

  Bobbie Faye was pretty sure Ce Ce wouldn’t know Feng Shui if it jumped up and bit her in the ass. As Bobbie Faye opened the front door, she chuckled. Ce Ce had apparently received another shipment of crystals, and if one crystal would help someone achieve balance and enlightenment, she obviously had concluded a hundred would be Nirvana. Ce Ce was apparently ready just in case every living soul in Louisiana wanted a few thousand. Crystals were stacked in every nook and dangling from the ceiling. Bobbie Faye could see fourteen billion reflections of herself as soon as she walked in the door.

  As strange as that was, it fit with the jumbled sense of the place that Bobbie Faye had loved from the first moment she’d walke
d in at age sixteen. The old Acadian house had been added onto several times over the decades; rooms opened onto random porches and sometimes a person would have to travel through a closet to get to another room. The former owner had started the business selling crickets and bait to fishermen headed for the lakes or the Atchafalaya swamps and, over the years, had added rods and tackle, hunting gear and everything cammo, camping equipment and portable Coleman stoves, lanterns, fish scent, deer scent, biscuits in the morning, the best gravy in the world, and any sort of odds and ends that someone might want in a camp on the river or back in the swamp. When Ce Ce took over, the odds and ends quotient had jumped exponentially and she became the place for that weird thing you had heard about that might help with fishing, hunting, or your love life, but couldn’t find anywhere else. It didn’t hurt a bit that Ce Ce was also the go-to Voodoo priestess if you wanted a love spell thrown, or a revenge spell, or even just a plain old good luck charm. She had every angle covered.

  Bobbie Faye passed through the over-stacked aisles, the warm glow from the antique overhead lights giving the place a cozy, homey feel (and hiding layers of dust). The smell of freshly baked biscuits made her stomach growl. She hurried past her own section (guns and knives) of the store and waved to Alicia and Allison, the twins no one had ever been able to tell apart, who were manning the live bait register. Then she pasted on a perfectly calm “nothing-is-wrong-here, move along” expression and zipped into Ce Ce’s office.

  Ce Ce was on the phone. Ce Ce was almost always on the phone, solving someone’s problems all while weaving something or other into her dreads the way other people doodle. Today it was colorful beads. She could barely wedge her barrel-shaped body between the desk and the wall and Bobbie Faye chuckled when she saw Ce Ce using her large breasts as a shelf for the bags of beads. She hadn’t known how much she needed to see Ce Ce’s warm smile until it spread across the woman’s face to her eyes.

  “That’s right, sugar,” she was saying. “Better sex. How many crystals should I put you down for?” Ce Ce listened as Bobbie Faye looked askance at her, then said, “A whole gross? Honey, are you sure? You want your man to live through it, don’t you?” Then she laughed, marked down a gross next to a client’s name, and hung up.

  “Tell me you’re not actually selling those crystals as an aphrodisiac for better sex,” Bobbie Faye said, weaving around stacks of oddball items and mountains of office clutter. She dropped into a chair opposite Ce Ce.

  “Of course I am, honey. Confidence breeds confidence, don’t you know that?”

  Bobbie Faye just shook her head and laughed.

  “Now what you want, honey?” Ce Ce asked, her chubby cheek propped on a fist. “ ’Cuz you got that look.”

  Bobbie Faye had barely had the words “I need an advance” out of her mouth when Ce Ce was already writing out a check.

  “I don’t get it,” Ce Ce said. “Why’re you paying for electricity when it’s dead on its side? Seems to me you should just shoot it, bury it, and get yourself a man.”

  “Only if they let me shoot and bury him when he’s useless, too.”

  “No wonder you’re still single.” Ce Ce handed the check to Bobbie Faye. “It ain’t like you to throw good money after a bad cause, unless it’s your . . . dammit. It’s Roy, ain’t it?” Ce Ce asked, her all-too-knowing gaze making Bobbie Faye uncomfortable. “What’re you up against?”

  “I told you. Gotta get the electricity turned on to wet-vac out the place.” Bobbie Faye swallowed, wondering if Ce Ce had heard that wobble in her voice. “You know, once I get it standing back upright.”

  The only way she had been able to think to be subtle when going to the bank was to have something normal to do, like cashing a paycheck. Ce Ce didn’t owe her one for another week, but Bobbie Faye could rationalize asking for an advance instead of telling Ce Ce the truth. Thing was, Ce Ce was the smartest person Bobbie Faye knew, and one of the kindest, and if there was anybody who might be able to figure out a way to help Roy, it might be her. Then Bobbie Faye remembered the picture of their dismembered cousin and shuddered, knowing she could never put Ce Ce at risk.

  “It’s nothing, Ceece. I gotta run.”

  Ce Ce gave Bobbie Faye a big hug, and said, “You call me if you need anything, chère. You got that?”

  Bobbie Faye nodded and hurried out of Ce Ce’s office, grabbing a biscuit from Alicia (or maybe Allison) before going back out to her car. She checked the time on her cell phone; a quarter ’til nine and the bank was just one block over. She would get the tiara, she’d give it to the creeps who had Roy, and he’d be safe.

  The car hiccupped. And wouldn’t start. After the starter throbbed a bit to no effect, Bobbie Faye put her head on the steering wheel and tried not to scream. She then calmly opened up her glove box, got out a small ball-peen hammer, went around to the front, lifted the hood, and smacked a few engine parts indiscriminately.

  “You,” she said, seething through gritted teeth as the ball-peen hammer made contact, “stupid,” smack, “car.” smack. “You’re going to be,” smack, “tin cans,” smack, “if you don’t freaking start.” Wham. She got back behind the steering wheel, turned the key. The car chugged a bit, but the starter wasn’t quite catching.

  “I swear. You’ll be a freaking toaster!”

  She stomped her foot and the engine roared to life.

  Bobbie Faye backed out of the lot, edging onto the main street through town as the car’s engine surged and paused, surged and paused, surged and paused, all while billowing more black, acrid, eye-watering smoke than normal. The engine’s surging worsened as she sputtered through the red light and turned toward the bank, and all Bobbie Faye could think about was how on earth she was going to get the tiara to whoever the hell was holding Roy if she didn’t have a way to drive there? Lake Charles wasn’t exactly big on cabs, especially ones who’d drive her around for free.

  She couldn’t pull Nina off guard duty or else she wouldn’t have a single thing left to come home to, Lori Ann’s car had been repossessed last month given that she’d drunk up all the car payments, Ce Ce’s car was in the shop, and the last guy Bobbie Faye had dated had decided that life would be much calmer in war-torn Iraq and so had sold all his worldly goods, including a perfectly usable go-cart. Which, at this point, would have been a step up for Bobbie Faye, but noooooooo, he had a sudden desire to help people in a combat zone. He’d said he now understood their need, after having dated Bobbie Faye. His leaving the country couldn’t possibly have been because she’d come home early from work and found him at her own trailer, comatose next to a prepubescent hussy he’d picked up and, in a drunken stupor, brought to Bobbie Faye’s trailer instead of his own. She wondered if his hair had grown back in yet from where she’d shaved him bald in his sleep, or if he’d ever been able to remove the dye she’d used to paint “Little Dick” on his forehead.

  The car lurched toward the bank, clanging into the parking lot of the re-purposed former Texaco station. Bobbie Faye gripped the steering wheel, swearing every curse word she knew under her breath and making up a few new ones as something loud popped under the hood and black smoke poured out in earnest, as if all the previous smoke had been amateur tryouts and this was now the pros.

  Then the car died. Deader’n hell.

  Four feet away from an actual parking spot, with not even the grace to coast the rest of the way in, and she was blocking the bank entrance. She put the car in neutral, got out, and pushed with every single cell she had to get the car into the spot, then saw too late that it was in crooked and blocked another spot. At that point, she kicked the door. Which fell off.

  “You goddamned fucking pile of crap!”

  There was an audible gasp behind her from the three nuns and four other customers clustered in front of the bank. Bobbie Faye straightened up, tugged at her tight SHUCK ME, SUCK ME T-shirt, which was riding up her ample boobs, grabbed her soggy purse, and joined the line forming at the bank entrance as if everything was perfectly normal
. She pretended not to notice when everyone edged slightly away from her.

  Besides the three nuns, the other four customers were comprised of two geeky twenty-something boys spastically air drumming to music beating through their headphones, a weathered older man in a welder’s cap, and a skinny man hunched into a permanent question mark. She bit her lip to keep from trying to push her way past them to be the first in line; several more customers arrived and lined up loosely around her, everyone having that casual competitive air of wanting to be the first in line but not wanting to appear to be the kind of person who’d push a nun out of the way.

  Three

  Warning: Bobbie Faye crossing

  —homemade sign placed by Bobbie Faye’s neighbors

  When the bank opened, the nuns were first inside; this being a heavily Catholic town, Bobbie Faye suspected the likelihood of lightning bolt revenge made everyone walk slowly behind them. This didn’t stop everyone from cutting in front of each other, putting Bobbie Faye farther back in line than she’d begun. On any normal day, she’d have drop-kicked anyone who was being an ass, but Roy had stressed subtle and so by God, she was going to be subtle if it killed her.

  She examined the check Ce Ce had given her, hoping that the activity made her seem normal. Whatever the hell normal was. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever met up with normal. With the line not even moving, Bobbie Faye craned to see who the teller was, and sighed as soon as she saw it was little Avantee Miller, who was barely nineteen and already thoroughly bored with the world.

  The skinny, bespectacled man stood in line directly behind Bobbie Faye. As she bounced on her toes, fidgeting, watching Avantee ever so slowly help the very first nun, the man behind her twitched and flinched and gawked at her as if she was something from another planet. She thought she’d reassure him with a little friendly banter, because that’s what normal people who are being subtle do, right?

  “We’d have to drive a stake in the ground to see if Avantee moved,” she joked, expecting to get at least a hint of a grin from him. Nothing but a blank stare. “You know, create a fixed mark? Something to measure from?” He sort of shuddered, barely grimaced acknowledgment, and tried to avoid meeting Bobbie Faye’s gaze, which made her wonder if she’d even remembered to brush her hair.