by Liliana Hart
The black wool coat she wore swallowed her whole and she’d left it unbuttoned, displaying a leopard-print velour jogging suit beneath. She wore white tennis shoes that were so bright they hurt to look at and a magenta scarf was wrapped around her neck. Her hair was a shock of white that had been permed within an inch of its life and shellacked with such success that not even the misty rain and frigid winter wind had budged it. She topped off the look with the signature bright red lipstick I’d never seen her without.
“I smell cinnamon rolls,” she said, shoving her gun back in her handbag and brushing past me and Kate. “I didn’t get breakfast.”
Scarlet followed her nose into Kate’s office and shrugged out of her coat, handing it to Kate to hang up. She left the scarf around her neck.
“Do you have a permit for that gun, Scarlet?” Kate asked.
“Darling, I don’t need a permit. I was in the OSS. I have a pass.”
“They don’t hand out passes to carry weapons because you slept with Nazis seventy years ago.”
“I’ve always liked you, Kate,” Scarlet said with a smile. “Let me give you some advice. Germans are terrible in bed. Avoid them at all costs. But if you want to get them to talk, just stick your finger straight up their butthole. Works every time.”
Scarlet looked around the room and wandered to Kate’s desk, picking up the candy dish of Hershey’s Kisses and sticking the entire thing into her purse.
“I’m married,” Kate said dryly. “He’s Scottish.”
“Well, maybe you can do better next time, dearie. I enjoyed my fourth husband immensely.”
Scarlet poured herself a cup of coffee and helped herself to one of the cinnamon rolls before sitting in the chair Kate normally occupied during meetings.
“Sit, girls. Time is of the essence here. I could die tomorrow.”
I shrugged and freshened my coffee and got a new cup for Kate as well. Kate and I had been friends forever, but sometimes I was a trial. And that included stray family members that had popped in and out of my life through the years.
“Does Mom know you’re in town?” I asked, taking my usual spot on the sofa next to Kate.
“Heavens no. And we’re going to keep this our little secret. Your mother is always trying to steal my thunder. There can only be one eccentric in a family and until I die that’s me.”
Though Scarlet had been married five times, she’d stopped changing her name after her second husband because she hated the lines at the social security office. She’d said she was born Scarlet Holmes and that’s how she wanted to die.
“I thought you were living on one of those cruise ships,” Kate said.
Scarlet waved the statement away and took a bite of the cinnamon roll. She was a Holmes all right. I got that same look on my face whenever eating sweets or having an orgasm.
“That ended after Thanksgiving. I think the captain was drugging me and sneaking into my room at night to fondle me. I woke up every morning with a horrible hangover and no underwear. He tried to tell me it was because I was drinking too much and leaving my underpants on the craps table for good luck, but that’s ridiculous. I don’t even play craps. Everyone knows that roulette is my game.”
A horrible thought struck me and I blurted out, “Are you moving back to Whiskey Bayou?”
“Hell no,” she said, appalled. “Lord, I hate that place. Though I like to go and visit the cemetery because I know everyone buried there. It’s a lot easier to talk to people when they don’t have the capability of talking back.”
She let out a gentle belch and then leaned back and propped her sneakered feet on the table.
“After the cruise ship I found a little resort place in Florida. It’s always warm and it’s right on the water. I can’t wait to get back. This cold is terrible on my bones. Can’t even feel my nipples. I smashed one of them in the car door and didn’t even notice.”
“You drove here?” I asked, unsuccessful at keeping the terror out of my voice.
“You bet. Just bought a brand new Hummer. It’s a real beaut. You don’t even notice when you run over things.”
“Christ,” Kate said under her breath.
“How long are you staying?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to explain. We need to get back there lickety-split.”
“We?” Kate and I said together.
“You girls don’t have the sense that God gave a goose. I’m trying to tell you something important here. I’ve found a murderer!”
Chapter Two
You might think one would get excited or concerned over Scarlet’s news. But the truth was, Scarlet had a tendency to bend the truth on occasion. She also had the tendency to steal things that caught her eye, and she’d once gotten caught using a blow dart gun when the Jehovah’s Witnesses wouldn’t leave her alone.
“You girls are very calm and have excellent poker faces,” she said, nodding. “The OSS could’ve used you.”
I was personally glad to hear this, because I’d been working on my poker face. Before I’d started working for Kate, pretty much everything I thought was broadcast on my face for the world to see.
“We’ve dealt with our fair share of murderers,” Kate said diplomatically. “Did you witness the murder?”
“I sure as heck did,” she said.
This caught me by surprise. Either she was hallucinating and making up a heck of a story or she’d really witnessed a murder. Her answer had been definitive.
“That no-good bastard Elmer Hughes is a coldblooded killer. And he’s my neighbor to boot. Nearly scared me to death when I saw him eating alone in one of the restaurants at the resort. I couldn’t even finish my crème brulee.”
She must’ve been terrified. Not much came between a Holmes and dessert.
Scarlet’s eyes narrowed to beady slits and she tapped her crimson nails on the arm of the chair. “I’m not a coward. They didn’t call me Bouncing Betty during the war for nothing. So I walked right up and asked if he’d like some company. He didn’t remember me. The bastard. I admit I’ve changed a little since the last time we saw each other, but I haven’t changed that much.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Kate asked.
“When I was seventeen.”
Kate and I both stayed silent. I’d seen pictures of Scarlet at seventeen. The only thing that looked even remotely the same from those days was the color of her eyes—and even that had faded a bit.
“Seventeen?” Kate asked. “This isn’t a current murder?”
“Don’t be so impatient, girl. I’m getting to that. There’s no statute of limitations for murder, right?”
“Right,” Kate said. “Sorry, keep going.”
“He went by Frank back when I knew him, and Lord, was he a handsome devil. Charming too. He had me wrapped right around his little finger.”
“Did he break your heart? Is that the real reason Grandpa Holmes shipped you off to Paris?” I asked curiously.
In secret, I kind of wanted to be like Scarlet, but I was already in my thirties and certain parts of my body weren’t as high up as they used to be. I wasn’t holding out hope for spying for our country or having mad affairs with handsome foreigners. Though the more I thought about it, I was spying for the McClean Detective Agency, and I was having a mad affair with a hot Irish detective, and I’d almost had a mad affair with a super-hot Native American FBI agent. I was cultural as shit. And maybe I was more like Aunt Scarlet than I knew.
“Hell, no,” she said. “I wanted to go to Paris. Men are nothing but trouble. You sleep with them and all of a sudden they think they own you. And then they do stupid things like shoot each other. Here’s more free advice. Penises mostly all look and function the same. Ride it until it’s dead and then move on.”
I sighed and thought I might need a third cinnamon roll to get through this conversation.
“Getting back to Elmer—or Frank—whoever he is…” Kate said.
“Like I was saying, Frank charmed t
he pants right off of me. We only had one night together, but it’s still one of my top five sexual experiences. He was an animal. A real beast. Lordy, it’s getting hot in here,” she said, unzipping her leopard-print jacket.
“What happened? Did he sneak out on you in the middle of the night?” I asked, getting a little worked up myself. I hadn’t had sex in three weeks.
“Of course not,” she said. “No man has ever snuck out on me in the middle of the night.”
Scarlet brought her feet down from the table and leaned forward, staring at both of us intently. I couldn’t help but lean forward myself, waiting for whatever was coming with anticipation.
“The next morning I went to my job as a teller at the bank, and about ten minutes after we opened we were held up at gunpoint. He was masked, but there was something about the way he moved that seemed familiar to me. The hips don’t lie, you know. Somebody famous once said that,” she said, nodding with great wisdom. “Frank waltzed right up and handed me a long-stemmed rose while he pointed the gun at my face and demanded that I put money in the bag.”
“Holy shit,” I said, my mouth hanging open.
“Yep. That about sums up my reaction too. And then he shot my friend Susan right in the face.”
Chapter Three
“So you’re saying the Elmer you walked up to in the restaurant is Frank the bank robber?” Kate asked.
Scarlet nodded. “They called him the Romeo Bandit. He always seduced a female that worked at the bank and then gave them a red rose as a parting gift when he robbed them.”
“They never caught him?” Kate asked.
“Never,” Scarlet said. “At the time, he was one of the most wanted men in America. When he robbed the bank in Whiskey Bayou he was already a pro and had been at it for several years. He’d robbed more than twenty banks all over the country and killed more than a dozen people. I never suspected a thing.”
“He didn’t ask questions about the set-up of the bank when you were out together?” Kate asked.
Scarlet laughed and her rheumy eyes brightened, showing a glint of wickedness. “Honey, we didn’t go out together. I never had a chance,” she said, shaking her head. “To this day, I’ve never seen a man as handsome as he was. Maybe Sean Connery in his prime comes close, but that still doesn’t do him justice. He was one of those men that just oozed raw sex appeal. And not to toot my own horn, but I’d been known to have my fair share of sex appeal too. I might have only been seventeen, but when I looked at him I felt like the most worldly of women.”
She sighed and I knew exactly how she felt. That’s how I’d reacted the first time I met Nick.
“It was a Tuesday just before close, and I was drawn to him the moment he walked through the doors of the bank. He came right up to me and asked to open a new account. Lord, Susan was peeved that he never looked twice at her. She told me straight to my face that I exuded trampiness and that’s why men always approached me first.
“Let me tell you, I looked like a lady. And I was a lady outside the bedroom,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. “That’s the trick, girls. Men are drawn to confident women who own their looks and sex appeal. And it drives them crazy when they see properness on the outside and can only imagine what might be unleashed in the bedroom. I’m giving you girls all this free advice because I love you like family.”
“I am family, Aunt Scarlet,” I said.
“Then you’re especially lucky I’m not charging you. Family is a pain in the ass. But you remind me a little of me, so I’ve always been partial to you.”
“Thank you. I think.”
“Like I said, he went by the name Frank in those days. Frank DeCosta. And he had proper identification and everything. He deposited two hundred dollars and asked if I was free after closing for coffee. I told him I was available for dinner. He winked at me, and then left the bank. I wondered if I’d misplayed my hand, but when I walked out of the bank that night he was leaning against his car. He had a bottle of champagne chilling in the backseat and a dozen red roses.”
“Smooth,” I said, admiring the play. They didn’t make men like they used to.
“Oh, yes. And if I’d been thinking with the brain in my head instead of my loins I would’ve realized he’d had to prepare all of that before he came into the bank. There was no place close by to get roses or champagne. It was Whiskey Bayou and it was 1943. We weren’t known for our sophistication and class.”
“Nothing much has changed,” I told her.
“It was pure romance,” she said. “We drove around until we found a secluded area, and then we drank the champagne and talked. God, he was easy to talk to. Susan had called me a tramp, but I knew good and well what I was. I was a young woman looking for any way possible to escape my father and get the hell out of Whiskey Bayou. And the only way to do that was to find a man with plenty of money to take me out of there.”
“An admirable goal,” I said. I understood the need to escape Whiskey Bayou. I’d felt the urge to run screaming out of town since grade school, but I guess my goals hadn’t been as lofty as Scarlet’s. I’d never thought of trying to marry my way out.
“I tell you,” Scarlet said. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. If Frank hadn’t robbed me that day and made me lose my job, I never would have been at loose ends and seduced Roger Greene when I went to his law office to apply for secretarial work. And if I hadn’t gotten the job as Roger’s secretary, I never would’ve met Dean Walker when I went to the distillery to order bottles of whiskey for Roger to send to his best clients. Dean had more money than Croesus, but he didn’t know jack squat about lovemaking. Never in my life have I met a man that didn’t know a clitoris from an elbow.”
Scarlet shook her head in pure disgust. “And if I hadn’t taken those men to my bed, they never would’ve tried to kill each other to win me over and I never would’ve gotten sent to Paris, where I met my dear first husband, Pierre, who did happen to know an elbow from a clitoris. Of course, he was a spy and dragged me into the whole thing by accident. But it turned out I was pretty good at being a spy, and Pierre got shot while on assignment and I ended up with all his money, so things turned out okay.”
“Yes, I can see how that was all the Lord’s work,” Kate said dryly.
“Anyway, back to Frank. We finished our champagne, and drunk on hormones and expensive champagne, we went back to my place, where he showed great ingenuity by climbing up the side of the house to sneak into my bedroom window. For the next eight hours we didn’t leave that bed. And we didn’t do any sleeping either, if you catch my drift. He left just before the sun came up, and I had to be at the bank at eight o’clock to open up.”
I decided to be brave and speak up. “I still don’t understand how you’re so sure this Elmer guy you met at your retirement village is the Romeo Bandit. It’s been more than seventy years. I’m sure he looks very…different,” I said, thinking that if Elmer had changed as much as Scarlet had he was probably virtually unrecognizable.
“That’s what I’m saying. There are some things that you can’t erase. And one of those is tattoos. It’s how I knew for sure it was him when he robbed the bank. Frank had a tattoo that covered the whole bottom half of his arm. Tattoos in those days weren’t common, especially in visible locations. Especially something as crude as a naked woman. She was a voluptuous thing with dark hair, and I didn’t even know he had it until I got him naked and tied to the bed.”
My eyebrows rose and Kate had chosen that unfortunate time to take a sip of coffee. I pounded her on the back a couple of times until she waved me off.
“So what you’re saying is Elmer has the same tattoo as Frank?” Kate asked after she’d gotten herself under control. “Couldn’t it be possible that someone else could have the same tattoo?”
“I doubt it,” Scarlet said. “It’s very distinct. When I asked him about the tattoo he told me the woman was his wife. She’d died in childbirth a couple of years before and it was his memorial to her. He’d given her a l
ong-stemmed red rose on their first date and he laid one on her casket after she died. He had the rose twined around her body in the tattoo, along with a rosary, so that she might rest in peace.”
“That’s sad,” I said.
“Yep, I’m a real romantic at heart, so that story was a little bit of a buzzkill. I almost untied him and suggested we go out for dinner after all, but he turned things around pretty quick. It turns out he didn’t even need his hands to get the job done. That’s talent right there.”
Kate and I both nodded in agreement. That was indeed a talent.
“Frank told me that his wife always called him her Romeo. And the word Romeo was written in fancy script right between his wife’s legs. Not his real wife,” she clarified. “The tattoo of the wife.”
“Gotcha,” I said.
“Do you know what this means?” Scarlet asked. “After more than seventy years, I’ve caught the Romeo Bandit. Do you think there’s a reward?”
Chapter Four
It turned out there was a reward. A really, really big one. And I was suddenly a lot more interested in the Romeo Bandit’s capture. If, in fact, Elmer was the Romeo Bandit. First we had to prove it.
Kate got her laptop from her desk and set it up on the coffee table. “What’s Elmer’s full alias?” she asked Scarlet.
“Elmer Hughes. He lives in Villa one twenty-seven—three down from mine. He walked me to my door after I asked if I could join him that evening, and he was quite the gentleman. You know what that means?” Scarlet asked with a snort.
“What?” I said curiously.
“It means his plumbing doesn’t work anymore. That thing is useless as a monkey with a meat grinder. He didn’t even try to kiss me goodnight.”
