A Parfait Murder

by Wendy Lyn Watson

  But even for the Pole Cat, Spumanti was sorta pitiful. Something about her—her lank blond hair, her unwholesome complexion, her lifeless eyes—something reminded me of overcooked grits.

  “Dang,” I said, smothering a snort of laughter, “you remember that tattoo of hers?”

  Peachy perked up. “What tattoo?”

  “She had this upended champagne bottle on her tummy, made it look like someone was pouring champagne on her . . . well, you know.”

  Peachy whistled. “Her mama must have been so proud.”

  “I don’t think her mama cared a lick,” Bree said. “Which is how she ended up stripping and running off with a married man. Anyway, I bet this new lady doesn’t have a tattoo on her cooch. She was dressed all classy, like a Junior Leaguer.”

  “Are you sure she was with Sonny?” I quipped.

  Bree snorted. “Sonny always did like a little sin in his sugar.” Her lips twisted in a self-deprecating smile. My cousin had a big ol’ brain and a heart the size of Texas, but she also had a wild streak a mile wide. Even dressed for scooping ice cream, in a skintight Remember the A-la-mode T-shirt and sprayed-on skinny jeans, she looked like trouble. Norma Jean Baker just waiting to be transformed into Marilyn.

  She shrugged. “The lady was a little buttoned up for Sonny, but she had a wiggle in her walk. And maybe his tastes have matured a bit.”

  Peachy dipped a hand in the wide pocket of her barn jacket, which she wore no matter the occasion or the weather, and pulled out her pipe and a rolled bag of tobacco. With fingers gnarled by age but still sure and steady, she set about the small ritual of filling her bowl with her favorite dark cherry blend.

  “Gram,” I said, “you can’t smoke in here.”

  She shot me the hairy eyeball. “Says who?”

  “Says the government. It’s a fire hazard and probably a health hazard, too.”

  She snorted. “This pipe’s safer than that old rattletrap ice cream freezer.”

  We all paused to study the freezer. It was a bit disreputable, its motor emitting a high-pitched whine as it struggled to fight against the brutal August heat.

  “That may be,” I conceded, “but the law doesn’t see it that way.”

  “Lord a’mighty,” she said, even as she began rerolling her tobacco stash. “You’re no better than the clipboard Nazis out at Tarleton Ranch.”

  Peachy had recently given up the real ranch she’d managed for the last fifty-some years in favor of a studio apartment—complete with all the amenities of modern life—at a senior living community called Tarleton Ranch. She joked that the only livestock at Tarleton Ranch were blue-haired hens and randy old goats.

  Peachy carped about the rules (especially the one that made her go outside to smoke her pipe), the food, the “clipboard Nazis”—who were really just aides who patrolled the halls checking on the residents, and even the upholstery in the card room, but that was just Peachy’s way. She wouldn’t stop finding fault until she cocked up her toes for good. I could tell that, deep down, she was having a blast bossing around the other ladies and flirting with the gents.

  “Hello?” Bree waved her hand above her head trying to get our attention. “Can we get back to my problem?”

  I pulled a can of diet soda from a chest cooler and then sat on the lid as I cracked it open. “I know it’s a shock, Bree, but I’m not really sure it’s a ‘problem.’”

  “Heck yes, it is. We have to keep him away from Alice. That man isn’t getting within a hundred yards of my child.”

  Peachy harrumphed. “Alice can decide for herself if she wants to see her daddy. And whatever she decides, we support her.” Bree opened her mouth to argue, but Peachy cut her off with a waggle of her finger. “It’s her choice, Sabrina Marie. Not yours.”

  Before they could get into a knock-down, drag-out fight, Finn poked his head over the counter of our stall. “Hey. Can I come in?”

  Every time I saw the man, my heart went pitter-pat. I gave him a big dopey smile and gestured to the door on the side of the stall. He smiled back before he disappeared, a little heat and promise in his evergreen eyes.

  “So I asked around,” he said when he’d joined us inside. “Didn’t take long for the word to get around. Sonny’s not exactly lying low.”

  “What’s he doing here? Where the heck has he been?” Bree demanded.

  Finn held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m going as fast as I can, Bree.”

  I handed him a soda and he leaned his back against the wall, settling in for a good chat. “Okay, so I don’t know how long Sonny was up north, but he apparently spent some time in Pennsylvania developing a natural gas field there.”

  “Natural gas?” I said.

  Bree snorted. “The only way Sonny could develop gas is to eat a can of beans.”

  “Wow,” Finn said. “Aren’t you just the picture of genteel southern womanhood? I can’t believe the League of Methodist Ladies hasn’t recruited you for their board.”

  She flipped him the finger, and he laughed.

  “Look, I’m just telling you what I heard. Dave Epler from the Chamber of Commerce said Sonny showed up at the Parlay Inn last night, buying rounds of tenbuck-a-glass Scotch, and talking about how he made a bundle working an old field with some hot new technology. He’s got the wad of bills and the shiny sports car to prove it.”

  “Who’s the woman?” Bree asked. The chill in her voice made me shiver despite the triple-digit weather.

  “That I don’t know,” Finn admitted.

  “And why’s he here?”

  Finn shrugged. “Dave said Sonny got real cagey when folks started asking him that. But Dave and Mike Carberry got to talking, and they think maybe Sonny has a bead on a way to extract more gas from the Altemont Shale.”

  The Altemont Shale was a geologic formation that ran under dang near all of Lantana County. Petroleum soaked the rich, porous rock, but getting it out had never been cost-effective. New developments in drilling technology, though, had made other similar shale deposits profitable, and so squeezing black gold from the Altemont had become a favorite source of speculation for the barflies and old-timers around town.

  Bree snorted. “All I know is if Sonny Anders has money, he owes me a passel of it.”

  Finn raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Sonny never paid a lick of child support,” I explained.

  “That should be easy to fix. The state should be able to calculate what he owes based on the order and go after him for it. You don’t need to lift a finger.”

  “There is no order,” I said.

  Bree’d been taken to task for her failure to secure a support order often enough to anticipate Finn’s reaction. “Before you go off on me, just remember that when Sonny left, he hadn’t had a paying job in over a year.”

  “No-good, shiftless piece of garbage,” Peachy snarled.

  “Yes’m, I know,” Bree sighed. “Huge mistake marrying him. But spilt milk and all that. Anyway, far as I knew, getting child support from Sonny would be like getting blood from a turnip. Probably would have cost me more to find him and sue him than I ever would have got out of the deal. And I had a baby girl to raise all on my own. I didn’t have the money to spend hunting down that sleazeball.”

  “Is it too late?” Finn asked.

  “Nope,” Bree said. “Alice is still a minor, won’t be eighteen until next February.”

  Finn frowned and I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. I was just about to ask him what was on his mind when Peachy spat—loudly—on the ground at my feet.

  “Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” she growled.

  In unison, Bree, Finn, and I turned to follow Peachy’s slit-eyed stare. There, leaning over the counter with a big ol’ grin on his face, stood Sonny Anders.

  chapter 2

  Sonny’d aged a fair piece, and he’d definitely changed his look. When Bree and Sonny were an item, he’d been channeling his inner Elvis with a rockabilly pompadour, tight
T-shirts, and a permanent sneer. That afternoon at the fair, he looked like a business tycoon of the old-school Texas variety: short, slicked hair, threepiece suit, and a bolo tie.

  Still, Bree lied when she said she almost didn’t recognize him. I’d have known him anywhere. He’d always been whip thin and sinewy, as tough and spare as the west Texas desert he called home. If he’d put on a paunch, I couldn’t see it beneath his snazzy suit vest. A bit of silver threaded through his coal black hair, but it hadn’t thinned or receded a bit. Sleepy lids fringed with ridiculously long lashes hooded his near-black eyes, making him look as if he’d just roused after a night of wickedness. He had a few more lines on his face—the mark of a man who’d spent his youth in the unforgiving Texas sun—but otherwise, he just looked like Sonny.

  In other words, like the devil himself.

  “Hey, y’all,” he said, honey dripping from every syllable, “I heard this is the place to get something cool and creamy.”

  Bree shot out of her seat and lunged across the counter. Finn and I both grabbed for her, struggling to pull her away, while Sonny danced back, his hands raised in surrender.

  “Sabrina Marie,” Peachy barked, “cool your jets.”

  Bree relaxed in my grasp, but her eyes still burned with pure hate.

  Sonny eyed the neatly printed sign propped next to the samples of our signature salted caramel sauce: CARAMEL KNOWLEDGE: TRY SOME!

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he murmured. He picked up a tiny clear plastic cup with a lime green tasting spoon propped in a puddle of gooey amber deliciousness. He managed to get the spoon to his mouth before a drip of caramel escaped, closed his lips around the treat, and moaned. “Oh my. Sin on a spoon.”

  “Have a little more, Sonny,” Bree growled. “Maybe we can send you straight to hell.”

  Sonny’s eyes narrowed and he chuckled softly. “I missed you, too, kitten,” he purred.

  “Jackass,” Bree snapped.

  He tsked. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

  “You are no friend of mine, Sonny Anders. Friends don’t take off in the middle of the night without so much as a note.”

  Sonny cocked an eyebrow. “Technically it was the middle of the afternoon. But I see your point.”

  “Uh-huh. You’ll be seeing my point in court, mister,” Bree said. As zingers went, it fell a little flat, but she was way too p.o.’d to come up with a snappy retort. “I hear you finally stopped mooching off of women and got yourself a job. Maybe it’s about time you took care of your child, don’t you think?”

  A shadow flickered over Sonny’s face. For a second I thought I’d witnessed a miracle: real human emotion from Sonny Anders, some warmth beneath the facade of reptilian charm. But then the shadow passed and he grinned.

  “I’m one step ahead of you, kitten, and I couldn’t agree more.” He rocked back on his heels and tucked the tips of his fingers in his pants pockets. “I’ve enjoyed a certain material success in the last few years, and I would be honored to share that bounty with the fruit of my loins.”

  Bree frowned, and I felt a twinge of unease in the pit of my gut. This seemed too easy.

  Way too easy.

  “Yessir,” Sonny continued, his voice rich and well modulated, like an old-time Dixiecrat making a stump speech on election day, “I will support my child. Assuming she is my child.”

  Bree snapped to attention, and I tightened my hold on her arm. “What are you implying?” she growled.

  “I’m not implying anything, kitten. Just doing my due diligence, like any good businessman would.”

  Peachy shouldered her way past me, Finn, and Bree, to square off against Sonny over the counter of our booth.

  “Listen up, young man. You deny that precious grandchild of mine and I will personally see to it that you get a sneak peek at hell before you die. You got that?”

  Sonny laughed. “Jeez, kitten, I see where you get your claws.” He tutted softly, as if he were calming an ornery animal. “I’m not denying nothin’,” he said. “I’m just gonna let science make the call.”

  He glanced to his left and his smile brightened. “I’ll just let the counselor here explain.”

  We all followed his line of sight. Kristen Ver Steeg headed our way. The blistering sun washed the color from her pale lemon suit and her champagne-colored upswept hair. With her face devoid of expression, she looked as if she were carved out of butter.

  A big man all in black—jeans, T-shirt, leather vest, biker boots, and wraparound shades—followed close behind her. He looked vaguely familiar, but it took a moment for me to place him.

  Nick DeWinter, better known as “Neck,” graduated a year behind me in high school. He was a star defensive lineman until he got caught boosting car stereos in the teacher parking lot. I’d heard he did a little time after school, but that might have just been gossip. Still, he looked as if he could go toe-to-toe with the baddest felon in the yard.

  His dark massiveness made slim, pale Kristen look even more fey by comparison.

  The unlikely duo marched up to the booth.

  Kristen offered us a bland smile and extended her hand toward Bree. Bree glanced at the proffered hand but did not take it. Kristen’s smile tightened, but never wavered as she let her hand drop to her side.

  “Ms. Michaels, my name is Kristen Ver Steeg. Mr. Anders has retained me to represent him in regards to his paternity suit.”

  Bree, Finn, Peachy, and I all spoke at once. “Paternity suit?”

  Kristen cleared her throat. Her eyes darted briefly in Sonny’s direction. “Yes. I would urge you to retain a lawyer, but I think you’ll find the complaint selfexplanatory.”

  She looked at Neck and jerked her head toward Bree. Neck stepped forward and reached a hand around his back to pull something from his waistband. I was halfway into a crouch, expecting a gun, before I realized he held nothing more deadly than an envelope.

  He stretched his arm across the counter and waved the envelope. “Bree Michaels?” he asked in a voice that sounded like gravel at the bottom of a well.

  “Uh-huh,” Bree choked, a trembling hand taking the envelope from his fingers.

  “You’ve been served.”

  chapter 3

  In the end, it might have been easier for Bree if Neck had pulled a gun out of his pants. At least doctors can remove bullets.

  Kristen, Neck, and Sonny took off right after serving Bree with the papers claiming Sonny wasn’t Alice’s father. We were left to clean up the mess.

  Bree sagged into the folding chair, her hands trembling as she unfolded the paper, her eyes haunted as they scanned the words written there.

  “Son of a . . .” She threw the packet of papers across the booth. “He’s claiming I was a tramp.”

  Finn bent down to scoop them up. “I’m sure it doesn’t say that,” he muttered, handing the papers back to Bree.

  “Not in so many words, but that’s the gist. This paragraph right here”—she stabbed at the paper as if she were squashing the life out of the printed words—“says ‘Plaintiff is informed and believes and based thereon alleges the Defendant engaged in an ongoing and public course of sexually promiscuous behavior during the months prior and subsequent to June of 1992, including but not limited to the evening of June twenty-second, 1992.’” She made a choking sound. “And, of course, he points out that Alice was born less than nine months after he and I met.”

  Finn cocked his head, his eyebrows wrinkling into a look of shock. “What?”

  Bree speared him with a hard stare. “It’s not what you think,” she said, each word a tight little packet of pain. “Alice was premature. Her due date was nine months to the day after Sonny and I first . . . met.” She sniffed and lifted her chin. “We hooked up at a party to mark the start of summer.” A hard laugh escaped her. She waved the papers in her hand, and scrunched up her face in mock seriousness. “‘On or about June twenty-second,’” she intoned. Then the starch went out of her spine. “Alice was due on March f
ifteenth, but she was born on Valentine’s Day.”

  She dropped her chin and stared at her hands, resting limp in her lap. “She was so tiny. My little peanut.”

  “Hey, Mom! Aunt Tally!”

  My heart leaped into my throat at Alice’s excited shout. She tumbled into the tiny booth with Kyle Mason, my employee and Alice’s boyfriend, practically on top of her. She looked around at the crowd of solemn faces and giggled. “Look, Kyle, it’s everybody!”

  Kyle folded his lanky body around my little slip of a niece, his arms encircling her. If he could have cradled her in bubble wrap, he would have.

  They were an unlikely pair. Kyle had finally won a war of attrition with his high school teachers and graduated in June, while my precocious seventeen-year-old niece already had a year of college under her belt. Kyle dressed in shades of black and mumbled on those rare occasions he opened his mouth, while everything about Alice was as bright and crisp as line-dried linens. Still, the physics of romance could not be denied. Kyle and Alice had pined for each other for over a year before she finally surrendered to the hormonal gravity between them, and now they were inseparable.

  Alice wiggled a little in Kyle’s grasp, more settling in than struggling. “Hey, Mr. Harper. I finished that biography of Virginia Wolfe you recommended. Pretty cool.”

  For a heartbeat, Finn stared at Alice as if she’d sprouted a second head. Then he muttered something about a deadline and, with a perfunctory wave in my direction, slipped around the teenagers and disappeared. I guess the fact that he wasn’t technically family had suddenly hit home. Lord knows, a part of me wanted to run off with him. But the stricken look on Bree’s face held me back.

  “Jeez. What’s everyone so glum about?” Alice asked.