Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  She was now officially scaring the locals.

  Then she noticed a small puddle of water, thanks to drips from her purse. She tried to look completely innocent and gladly took a step forward when the first nun was finally finished.

  Fifteen minutes later, Avantee had just progressed to helping the third nun and Bobbie Faye decided it was a good thing she’d had to wear old clothes, because when she spontaneously combusted, at least Lori Ann could take some of her better clothes and sell them. Bobbie Faye caught herself bouncing again in rhythm to the snores wheezing from old Harold, the eighty-year-old bank guard, and her impatience was definitely not improving the twitchy nerves of the poor nerdy guy behind her.

  She noticed Melba, the insect-thin bank manager, darting over to a desk, and Bobbie Faye, filled to the brim with all the patience she could manage for an entire week, much less one morning, said, “I hope you have a good retirement plan, Melba. I’ve been here long enough to apply for one.”

  Melba sighed the very long, drawn-out sigh of one who carries the entire weight of the world, which did not faze Bobbie Faye one whit. Melba had been sighing like that since first grade. She sighed again, more resigned this time, and said, “What can I do for you, Bobbie Faye?” in a tone that implied she had met her quota of helping people back in the womb.

  Bobbie Faye rushed to Melba’s desk and handed over the check that Ce Ce had given her.

  “I need to cash this,” she said, trying to sound entirely normal, like her brother’s life didn’t depend on it. Before the words you have to wait in line could form in Melba’s plodding thoughts, she added, “And I need to, um . . .” She slid a glance around, then dropped her voice. “Check on my safe-deposit box.”

  Melba arched a painted eyebrow so high, it stabbed her hairline. Bobbie Faye tried not to flinch.

  Melba asked, “You have your key, of course?”

  Shit. Key.

  Bobbie Faye rummaged in her soggy purse, knowing it had to be in there, that was the last place she put it, and please God don’t make her have to go home and try to find a key in the middle of a trailer lying on its side, with most of her belongings strewn in the middle of her lawn. She tossed all the debris from her purse out of her way. Finally, from the bottom, she pulled up a box full of hairpins and various important things and lo, there was the key. Melba cleared her throat and Bobbie Faye looked up. She’d covered Melba’s entire desk with the wreckage from her purse; most of it was wet and already leaving water marks on Melba’s prized leather blotter.

  “Oh. Sorry, Melba.” She raked the contents back into her purse and ignored Melba’s sour expression.

  The safe-deposit boxes were stored in the former oil change pit, which still smelled like mud and oil decades after it had been converted. Bobbie Faye sat at the little student’s desk the bank used for a table and stared at the box, her hands shaking. Melba turned her key and waited for Bobbie Faye to put her own key in.

  When the box was unlocked, Melba said, “I’ll go cash this for you while you visit your box.” She turned to hurry out, then paused a moment at the door. “Your mamma would have been tickled pink to see you takin’ such good care of her tiara. I always figured you’da lost it.”

  Bobbie Faye frowned at Melba as she left. She turned to the box and, holding her breath, opened it, moved the tissue aside, and lifted out the tiara. It was made from iron, molten and beaten into shape with four odd half-moon curves at the top, two on each side facing each other, and a star in the center, taller than the half-moons. Nary a gem, diamond or otherwise, not a single ounce of precious metal, just iron. Slightly rusted, scratched and plain. Bobbie Faye stared at it, flabbergasted that someone could put so much value on something her great-great-grandfather made as a toy for his daughter; save that it was old, it had no more value than an antique horseshoe.

  She held it tight to her chest a moment, getting a few rust marks on her white T-shirt. She closed her eyes, her thumb absently running across the first half of the inscription, the only part still visible: TON TRÉSOR EST TROUVÉ. The rest of the lettering was so worn, only faint marks remained. Her mother had made a little ceremony out of “passing the flame” when she first crowned Bobbie Faye with the tiara. There were flowers for their hair and beads and silly costumes. Her mom read the inscription, saying, “My little treasure,” and Bobbie Faye had imagined that’s what her great-great-grandfather would have said to his daughter when he first crowned her.

  It was the only thing her family had passed down besides the gene that made them all screwups, and the tiara was worth more to her than gold. She remembered her very first parade as the Contraband Days Queen, stepping into her mother’s place, feeling wrong, out of sync. It was the first time she’d been forced to acknowledge that the cancer was going to win and her mother wasn’t always going to be there. Then she remembered her mother’s delight when she had first worn the tiara, and she blinked away the tears.

  I’m sorry, Mamma. She lifted her face to the ceiling. Roy’s in trouble, and I need this. “And then I’m going to beat the crap out of him,” she said, aloud. Catching herself, she looked back up at the ceiling and amended, “I mean . . . help rehabilitate him.”

  By the time Bobbie Faye made it back to the lobby, Melba stood motionless at her desk, one hand holding out Bobbie Faye’s cash from her check, the other hand hovering midair, holding a telephone receiver halfway to her ear.

  “ ’Bye, Melba.” Bobbie Faye grabbed the cash and shoved it into a plastic bag with the tiara. She tied the bag closed as she hurried across the lobby floor, eyes down on her task, until she bumped into the twitchy guy, who was now standing in front of the line, twittering with nerves.

  Bobbie Faye glanced over to Avantee, who held a wad of cash intended for the twitchy guy. She had paused there with her arm stretched halfway out, as if all of the synapses regulating efficient motion had finally short-circuited. Bobbie Faye rolled her eyes, snatched the cash from Avantee’s hand, said, “For God’s sake, how hard can it be to hand it over?” and turned to hand the cash to the twitchy guy.

  Who was holding a gun. On Avantee.

  “Thank you,” the twitchy man said. Then he yanked away her plastic bag and, waving his gun at her, added, “I’m very sorry. I’m going to be needing this as well.”

  “Oh, you have so got to be kidding.”

  He indicated his chest, beneath a lightweight windbreaker, where sticks of TNT were strapped.

  “This is your first time,” she said, and he blushed.

  “I didn’t know whether to use a gun or dynamite.”

  “Well, next time you paint your paper towel rolls, try to make sure ‘Bounty’ isn’t showing through.”

  When he looked down to see if she was right, she grabbed for her tiara bag, and what she’d assumed was a fake gun went off—shooting the ceiling—all while Harold the guard slept soundly.

  Plaster fell and smacked Bobbie Faye in the head, coating her hair with white dust. She gaped at the bank robber.

  “That’s not my fault,” he said, pointing at the ceiling dust.

  “Fine. Give me back my ti . . . uh. Lunch. Now.”

  “Hey, Professor Fred,” one of the two geeky boys said from the front door. “I think I hear sirens. We need to go!”

  Fred turned to run just as Bobbie Faye lunged again for the tiara, and it seemed like the next moment took a billion years.

  The welder guy edged closer as—

  Professor Fred slipped in the puddle from Bobbie Faye’s purse—

  And as the Professor fell, he threw the bag-o’-tiara-and-cash to the two geeky boys freaking out at the bank door, next to a still-sleeping Harold. The tiara arced high, way beyond Bobbie Faye’s reach, and she leapt up—

  Tripping over the Professor just as the welder guy pounced on him, knocking the gun from the robber’s hand.

  The gun slid one direction on the concrete floor and Bobbie Faye rolled in the other.

  She scrambled across the welder and Fred, gra
bbed the gun, and ran out just in time to see the geeky boys climbing into a white Saab. They sped out so fast, she didn’t have time to even get a plate number, and she spun around in the parking lot, desperate, her brain chanting no no no no no no no.

  Sirens screamed a few blocks away, heading toward the bank, and there was her car, dead to the world and no hope of reviving it, much less managing a high-speed chase. There were several other cars in the parking lot—an old station wagon with a harried dad and four kids; a Volkswagen Beetle piloted by the librarian; a silver Ford Taurus helmed by a nattily dressed blond guy; a couple of work trucks, one obviously belonging to the welder inside; a red tricked-out Ford step-side that gleamed in the morning sun, whose driver hunched down at the wheel; and, beside it, a blue Porsche, whose owner was nowhere in sight.

  Bobbie Faye picked the logical and obvious choice. For Bobbie Faye. She ran to the passenger side of the tricked-out step-side, knowing that it was going to be occupied by some sort of testosterone-fueled gangly, pimply teenage boy who measured manhood in just how many inches the truck could be jacked up on supersized tires. This kid apparently had a deeply insecure ego because the Monster Mudders were at least three times any normal tire size. A kid like that was usually persuaded easily enough by breasts, but on the off chance that hers might not do the trick, she held Fred’s gun on him.

  Except he was so not a teenage boy. Instead, the guy was about mid-thirties, weathered hard, tall, muscled. His hottie factor jump-started her hormones with a vengeance, especially the really nice biceps, which unfortunately led to a hand holding a gun on her. One glance at his expression soured every single surging hormone, because Bobbie Faye knew instantly he was the type of guy with the mean pit-bull attitude of someone who was ex-military, ex-cop, ex-husband, and seriously lacking in the patience department.

  Shit. Why couldn’t he have been a wimp?

  “I need your truck,” she said, keeping her gun on him. “I need to follow that Saab.”

  “You need a psych exam.” Then he saw the Jolt Cola he’d knocked over fizzing all over his jeans. “Sonofabitch! Look what you made me do.”

  “You drink that? That stuff will kill you.”

  He nodded pointedly at both guns, facing off.

  “I don’t have time to argue.” She moved the barrel of her own gun slightly and shot the truck over his head, putting a crisp hole just inches above him, and then just as quickly had the gun aimed at his face again.

  “You shot my truck! I can’t believe you just shot my truck.”

  “You need a grown-up truck, anyway. What is the deal with you?”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “Yeah, like that’s a news flash. I need you to follow that Saab.” She climbed in, keeping her gun trained on him.

  The sirens were closer now.

  He gazed past her to something in the parking lot, and his expression darkened, though she wouldn’t have thought it possible. “Lady,” her hostage said, seething and obviously straining not to fire his Glock, “unless you want a bullet hole in that cute shirt, you’d better get out. I’ve got my own emergencies.”

  “You think calling my shirt cute is going to make me go all wilty and fluttery and step out of this truck? You have seriously been dealing with the wrong kind of woman.” She aimed Fred’s gun at the fancy GPS/DVD/CD player. “Either you follow that car, or the DVD bites it.”

  “What’s so all-fired important about that Saab anyway?”

  “They stole . . . something.” She followed his glance to the Saab a couple of blocks away and disappearing fast. “I’ll make it worth your while if you help me get it back.”

  Oh dear Lord. That look he was giving her would melt steel. Steel protected in a nuclear fallout shelter. She tried for nonchalant as she glanced down to make sure her clothes were still intact.

  He holstered his own gun. “Fine. Just don’t shoot the truck. It took me three years to get this thing in shape.”

  “Start sharing life stories, and I may have to shoot you.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  He raced after the Saab, cutting off the silver Taurus which was pulling out of the bank’s exit.

  Wow, that was easy. Really easy. Too easy. What was wrong with this picture?

  “What kind of reward?”

  So much for freaking easy. She had no money for a reward. Nothing to hock. And the Saab was so far away, if this guy didn’t keep going . . . She glanced his direction and caught him reading the text on her shirt. And grinning. What had he paid Satan to have a grin like that?

  “I am not even a part of the reward,” she said, waving the gun in his face. “It’ll be a real reward. Of some sort.” Her Hormones voted that it wouldn’t really be a bad thing to be a teeny part of a reward. Shut up shut up shut up . . . then she saw his bemused expression and realized oh crap, that was out loud.

  “Don’t even ask,” she answered. “I’ll figure out a good reward.”

  “If I’m going to risk jail time, lady, it better be worthwhile.”

  Holy freaking geez, what on earth could she give a guy who was such a guy’s guy that he obviously liked stupid big-wheeled trucks and guns and . . . oh. Yeah.

  “I know where there’s a 1929 Indian Scout you could have.”

  He eyed her. She didn’t blame him for being suspicious.

  “Almost completely restored. It was my brother’s.”

  “Was?”

  “You help me get back that thing they took, he’ll sign it over to you.”

  “Why in the hell would he sign over an expensive collector’s motorcycle?”

  “Do I strike you as the kind of big sister that takes ‘no’ for an answer?”

  “You strike me as a total loon, but I suspect that works in your favor.”

  Four

  If I have to take on Bobbie Faye as a client, I quit.

  —Diane Patterson, former high school guidance counselor

  Bobbie Faye crowded the truck’s driver as they passed the intersection where Eva’s Grocery sprawled, all four hundred square feet of it, with two whole gas pumps and three locals in the gravel parking lot selling everything from shrimp to watermelon out of the back of their camper-trucks. She spied the car running along a parallel street, and as she craned to get a better perspective, she blocked the driver’s view of the road. He whipped the truck into a sharp left turn and the momentum smacked Bobbie Faye against the passenger door.

  “You did that on purpose!”

  “Yeah, it’s called ‘driving’ and I thought that was the point.”

  Her cell phone rang; it was Nina. She snapped it on while watching the Saab ahead of them make a sharp right turn. “Not a good time right now,” she answered.

  “Sure, B. I just thought you might want to have a say in whether or not your trailer got winched up.”

  “Winched? . . . What the hell? I thought you were going to protect my stuff?”

  Bobbie Faye heard the crack of a whip and she sunk her face into her free hand. “Oh, God, please tell me that wasn’t the whip.”

  “The whip?” the hard-assed pit-bull driver asked, but she ignored him.

  “Okay. That wasn’t the whip.”

  “Jesus, Nina, it isn’t even ten a.m. Don’t you think it’s a little early?”

  “There’s an appropriate time for a whip?” her hostage asked.

  Bobbie Faye scowled. “It’s not my whip, so quit looking hopeful.”

  “Oooooh. You have a man there interested in my whip?”

  “No. He is not a man.”

  “He definitely sounds like a man to me. And he sounds sexy.”

  “Don’t even go there. He’s not a ‘date’ kind of man. He’s my hostage.”

  “Oh, Bobbie Faye. Not again.”

  “Lady, I am not your hostage. Aside from the minor detail that you said there’d be a reward, I only let you in the truck since you seemed so distraught.”

  Nina laughed. “You know how to look ‘distraught?’ Is that a
nything like ‘homicidal’?”

  “Quite a lot like ‘homicidal,’ ” Bobbie Faye said pointedly to the driver, who obviously could hear Nina. “I shot his truck.”

  “Is it nice?”

  “No, it’s a big candy-ass monstrosity.”

  “Figures. But at least he was interested in the whip. He shows potential.”

  “No. He is most emphatically not interested. In the whip or any of the other, um, things, you might be carting around in the trunk of your car.” Bobbie Faye cast a questioning look toward the driver, whose wicked grin made her want to throttle him. And then she mentally slapped herself, because she definitely did not care what he was interested in, no matter how nice those biceps were.

  “What a shame,” Nina said, and Bobbie Faye heard her crack the whip again and a male voice yelped. “You planning to tell me what the hell’s going on?”

  “Maybe later. I have to go get something first.”

  “Like your mind?”

  “Why are you my best friend again?”

  “I’m the stable one.”

  “Yeah, you and your whip.”

  “Well,” Nina drawled and Bobbie Faye could sense the catlike satisfaction of her toying with the men around her, “this whip is way more efficient protection than the ice tongs. Right now, however, you have a decision to make. I can either protect your trailer or your stuff.”

  “What do you mean, ‘protect the trailer’?”

  “The LeBlanc brothers are here and they’ve both got winches on their trucks. They’re pretty convinced they can pull your trailer back upright, but I thought you should know your neighbors have them at two-to-one odds of failing badly.”

  “Oh, holy shit.”

  “If it’s any consolation, the disaster betting pool has completely filled up, though there was a huge fight over who got the spot where you definitely killed someone.”