A Parfait Murder

by Wendy Lyn Watson

  I’m sure she was violating company policy, but the woman at the front desk recognized me from the A-la-mode and handed over Sonny and Char’s room number with a smile.

  I knocked on the door to room 307.

  “Jesus, Sonny, did you forget your key a—”

  The door swung open, and Char stopped midsentence when she saw me. She was dressed to travel in low-slung jeans and a baby-doll T-shirt, her paprikacolored hair in a ponytail high on her head. I hadn’t noticed before that she was so much younger than Sonny.

  “Hey, Char.”

  “Sonny isn’t here.”

  “Oh. Shoot. Well, mind if I wait for him? It’s really important.”

  She narrowed her eyes. I could almost see her weighing the pros and cons in her head, trying to decide which was better: getting rid of me or figuring out why I was there.

  Finally, she stepped back and let the door swing open. “Suit yourself.”

  They’d pulled the drapes in the room, so the only light came from a couple of brass lamps. I made my way to the upholstered chair by the window and sat. Char flipped closed the suitcase sitting on the kingsized bed and zipped it before stepping over to the vanity.

  “You leaving?” I asked innocently.

  “Just for a few days. Family emergency.”

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

  Char reached up to wrap her ponytail into a loose bun. As she did so, her skimpy T-shirt rode up her torso, and I caught a glimpse of green on her abdomen. An arc of dark green . . . a flash of gold . . . a tattoo of a champagne bottle.

  I gasped. “Spumanti?”

  Charlize slid her eyes to the side to meet my gaze in the mirror. For a second, I thought she would protest, but then her lips curled in a feline smile. “At one time,” she conceded. “Shirley, Spumanti, Charlene, Shireen—” She punctuated each name by stabbing another pin in her hair. Her arms dropped to her sides. “Just names.”

  “You look . . . different.”

  She rolled her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “Better living through chemistry? A little silicone here, some collagen there, enzyme peels, bleach for my teeth, colored contacts.” She shrugged again, and flopped back to sit on the bed. “And Pilates. Lots of Pilates.”

  “I can’t believe. . .”

  “Lordy, Tally. Can’t finish a sentence, can you?” She laughed, a low and knowing sound. “Can’t believe what? That Sonny and I are still together?”

  Bingo.

  “I—uh, no, of course not.”

  “Oh, it’s okay. I know what y’all thought of me. Just a sad little junkie looking for a father figure, right? Figured Sonny’d dump me for a new flavor-of-the-month the way he dumped Bree?” She narrowed her too-blue eyes. “I was a sad little junkie. But I was also a smart little junkie. You know my secret to holding on to Sonny?”

  I shook my head.

  “Sonny likes new things, right? So I became someone new every chance I got. Hell’s bells, Sonny has moved from one girl to the next . . . but every one of them has been me.”

  A smart little junkie, indeed.

  “I got good at reading his moods, paid attention to the girls he watched with that special look in his eyes. Got a boob job after I caught him panting after this double-E cup in Cincinnati. Went red when he said Reba McEntire was foxy. Made myself into his dream girl.”

  A tiny crease marred the space between her eyes, and the corners of her plump, glossy lips tightened. “For some reason, I never noticed that his dream girl— the girl I see in the mirror every morning—looks just like Bree.”

  “But Sonny left Bree,” I said. “He chose you.”

  Charlize or Shirley or whatever her name was rolled her eyes and blew out an exasperated breath. “In case you didn’t notice, Sonny’s an idiot. He ran off because he got an itch in his drawers. And he didn’t choose me. I just happened to be the nearest warm body when that itch came over him.”

  “The result’s the same,” I insisted.

  “No, it’s not. Sonny would have come back to Dalliance with his tail between his legs within a week of leaving, ’cept he was sure Bree would geld him with a kitchen knife.

  “I guess I was an okay substitute. But Bree’s got one thing I can’t get from a cosmetic counter or a plastic surgeon.”

  “What?”

  “Alice.”

  “Oh.”

  “I could maybe compete with Sonny’s ex, but I can’t hold a candle to his little girl. He loves that child.”

  “He’s got a funny way of showing it. He denied her the minute he got to town.”

  Char snagged a short black leather jacket from the head of the bed and shrugged into it. “You’re so naive, Tally. That lawsuit wasn’t Sonny’s idea. It was mine.”

  “But he went along with it. He must not have cared that much about Alice.”

  “It didn’t really have anything to do with Alice. Look, the con . . .” She tilted her head in an inquiring angle. “You know it’s all a con, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. It’s exhausting, you know? Anyway, the con required Sonny to flash around a lot of cash. But that meant Bree would probably go after Sonny for child support, and that would mean Bree, the county, and God knows who else poking around in Sonny’s financial records. It wouldn’t take long for them to figure out there was no fortune. We’ve been living from scam to scam for fifteen years. At the moment, we don’t have nothing but a lease on that fancy car and the clothes on our backs. We’ll be lucky to get out of town before the hotel realizes our credit cards are no good and call the law on us.

  “We had to stall. I came up with the idea of claiming Sonny wasn’t the daddy. We figured there’d be a week or two before we got to court, then another couple of weeks for the DNA results. . . by then, we’d be long gone.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.”

  “It was,” she huffed. “But then Sonny got drunk and spilled the beans to Kristen, and she started whining about how she was an officer of the court and couldn’t—what did she say?” She screwed up her face in concentration. “Oh, right, she couldn’t perpetrate a fraud. It would be an abuse of process. Blah, blah, blah. All a bunch of lawyer talk for ‘I’m gonna sell you guys down the river.’”

  “So Kristen really did ask to meet Bree that morning?”

  “Yeah. Can you believe that? I watch enough TV to know that she wasn’t supposed to do that. We had privilege.”

  I had a sneaking suspicion Char was right. Kristen might have had an ethical obligation to withdraw from the case, to not help Sonny and Char, but she probably wasn’t supposed to have a private tête-à-tête with Bree, either.

  “She was full of shit, too. Kristen didn’t have any problem with fraud. Her whole life was a fraud. She walked around this town all high-and-mighty in her fancy shoes with her law degree, but she got started just like me. Working a pole to buy meth. Heck, she was worse than me. Even I didn’t do porn.”

  I filed away that little tidbit for future reference: on the sleaziness scale, apparently “stripping” and “snorting crank” were above “porn.”

  “She knew we were scamming the minute we got to town. Like I said, she and I went way back. She knew I wasn’t born to the name Charlize Guidry, and I sure as heck wasn’t in the oil business. She didn’t seem to have any problem with taking a cut of our money until that night.”

  “That night? What night?”

  “The night before she died. We met Kristen at the Dutch Oven, late, to talk about the incorporation papers for the fracking scam. We’d copied some boilerplate language from a form contract we found on the Internet, but we wanted to make sure we had the heading right for the Texas courts. We didn’t want to involve Kristen too much in that side of our plan, but we wanted to make sure our i’s were dotted and our t’s were crossed.

  “Sonny’d already had a six-pack, maybe more, and then he ordered shots with his pancakes. Pretty soon he was all weepy and gabbing away. At first, Kristen just sat there and listened.”
Char laughed. “We’d both spent plenty of hours listening to drunk guys babble. It’s an art. Her eyes were all unfocused, staring out the front window of the restaurant, and every now and then she’d nod. Just like you’d do if you were listening to a john talk about how much he really loves his wife but she just doesn’t get him anymore.”

  She sobered again. “Then, all of a sudden, she said she wanted to get her smokes from the car. She was gone for maybe five minutes, then came back and didn’t even have her cigs.”

  That must have been when she saw Alice sitting on the hood of the Bonnie outside and gone out to talk to her.

  “After that,” Char continued, “it was like she’d blown a gasket. She chews out Sonny about how she wasn’t gonna have any part in his scam. Worked herself into a tizzy and then finally excused herself to use the ladies’. I followed her, real quiet. I heard her in the stall, talking to Bree.”

  Using Alice’s phone, I thought, which had Bree’s landline number programmed into the contact list.

  “I knew she was going to tell.”

  “Why would she call Bree? Why not call the cops?”

  “Like I said, she didn’t really care about our con. At least, not enough to risk her license by going public with privileged information.” Char shook her head. “No, she blew up about the fracking scam, but I know Kristen—it was the paternity suit that bothered her. And, besides, it was safer to spill the beans to Bree than to go to the authorities. Less chance of her getting in trouble with the bar.”

  Again, I guessed Char had hit the nail on the head. Given Kristen’s own experience with a deadbeat dad, I bet Kristen identified with both Bree and Alice. And, from what Jason and Maddie had said, Kristen had a hard time reconciling the ethical obligations of her profession with her own sense of morality.

  “Why did you have to kill her?” I asked. “Why not just pack up and leave, hit the road and try your con in some other town?”

  Char cocked her head, puzzled. “Oh no. I didn’t plan to kill Kristen. I planned to kill Bree.”

  chapter 26

  It felt as if all the blood drained from my body, leaving behind nothing but aching cold.

  “Bree?”

  “Yeah. Stupid contacts. They’re expensive. I had to choose between colored lenses and ones that correct my astigmatism. Duh, I went with the blue contacts. Color’s called Marine Magic. But I can’t see for crap in the dark. First bullet, I think I took out a power line, and I only had time to get off one more shot before I heard people coming.”

  I couldn’t believe how close Bree had come to dying. Saved by this crazy woman’s own vanity.

  Char got up again, returned to the dressing table, and bent down to study herself in the mirror. She brushed her finger along her jawline, testing the elasticity of that delicate skin. “At first I thought, ‘Oh well. I need Bree gone. Prison’s as good as dead, right?’ But then Sonny started talking about how Alice was gonna need her daddy. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Sonny getting all paternal was the last thing I wanted.”

  She sighed. “The way I saw it, after I screwed up trying to kill Bree and she got in trouble with the law, there were two ways this could play out. Either we stuck around and Sonny decided it’s time to be a father . . . in which case he would definitely kill the con and probably dump me. Or else I convinced him it’s time to bail. So I told him the FBI was on to us.”

  Wow. Really smart junkie.

  There was a knock at the door. Cal. Finally.

  But when Char peeped through the peephole—a prudent step she hadn’t taken when I knocked—she laughed. “Well, it’s turning into a regular hen party.”

  She swung open the door, and there—of course—was Bree. How could my cousin miss an opportunity to stumble into trouble?

  “Come on in, shug,” Char gushed.

  “Hey, Char. Tally.” Bree managed to keep a smile on her face, but as she looked from Char’s big smile to my look of misery, I saw the realization in her eyes. . . the realization that this was not a good scene.

  Char shut the door behind Bree and threw the safety latch. She stood there, between me and Bree and freedom.

  “What’s up?” Bree asked.

  Char looked over her to catch my gaze. “I take it she’s not quite up to speed.”

  I shook my head.

  Char sighed. “Too bad. Well, the short version is that you two picked the wrong time to stop by. Another hour, and Sonny and I would have been gone. But now I’ve gotta think on my feet.”

  She reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and drew out a gun. Just a tiny thing, not much bigger than a deck of playing cards. But I knew that, when it came to firearms, size didn’t matter nearly as much as aim and determination.

  To her credit, Bree kept her cool. She took a step back, her legs hit the edge of the bed, and she sat down hard. But she didn’t scream or cry or anything. Me, I was too scared to make a sound.

  “I think I can make this work,” Char mused. “Bree comes over with Tally and has a hissy fit about me and Sonny. Woman scorned stuff. Pulls out a gun. Tally’s here to stop her, but a struggle ensues . . . Bree shoots Tally by accident, I shoot Bree in self-defense.”

  Bree shook her head. “Sorry, darlin’. I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

  “Why not?”

  Before Char finished her question, the pounding commenced.

  “Charlize Guidry? This is Cal McCormack from the Dalliance Police Department. I’m here to conduct a welfare check.”

  “That’s why,” Bree said softly.

  “I’m fine,” Char yelled through the door. “You can go.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m afraid I can’t. We got a report of suspicious activity in your room, and I need to verify with my own eyes that you’re okay.”

  “Go. Away.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Cal must have gotten a passkey from the manager, because the door opened as far as the safety latch would allow. Char jumped back as if she’d been stung.

  Bree, always quick on her feet, took advantage of Char’s momentary confusion to jump up and knock the gun from Char’s hand.

  Char dived for the gun, but by then I was in motion. I scrambled off the chair, kicked the gun under the bed, and sat on Char, while Bree lunged for the door.

  “Ow!” Cal yelled as Bree slammed the door closed so she could release the safety latch.

  Bree threw open the door. “She’s got a gun,” she yelled as she stepped out of Cal’s way.

  Cal pushed his way into the room, gun drawn, and froze when he saw me sitting on Char.

  “Lord a’mighty, Tally,” he swore softly. “This is the second time in six months I’ve busted into a room to find you sittin’ on someone.” He sighed. “We gotta get you a new hobby.”

  chapter 27

  Within twenty-four hours, everything changed.

  Char—nee Shirley Mackintee—had been hauled off to jail. Sonny had been arrested for fraud, but Cal said he was already talking about a deal: immunity in exchange for his testimony against Char and a return of all the fake investment money. He’d taken the news of Char’s crimes pretty hard, but he’d taken the news that he wasn’t Alice’s daddy even harder.

  Closer to home, now that Bree was off the hook, the rest of us could try to put the pieces of our lives back together.

  First and foremost, that meant me figuring out whether I could stay with Finn despite the fact that he and Bree had had a fling. Despite the fact that he had a child with my cousin and best friend. Despite everything.

  To give myself the space to think, I’d passed up home and the A-la-mode in favor of a red vinyl booth, a basket of onion rings, and a giant chocolate-dipped cone of soft serve. I’m not sure how Wayne found me at the Tasty-Swirl, but he did. I guess after seventeen years of marriage, we knew each other pretty well.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “It’s a free country,” I grumbled. I licked a drip of melting ice cream as
it escaped the edge of the waxy chocolate shell.

  Wayne set down a tray loaded with two cheeseburgers and a basket of fries and slid into the other side of the booth.

  I nodded toward the food. “What happened to your diet?”

  He patted his rounded belly affectionately. “Well, I did try to keep eating right in honor of Brittanie, but I was having a lot of stress after her death. I tried taking up running, but that didn’t take. Finally had to decide between maintaining my sobriety and my waistline. Sobriety won.”

  After our divorce, I learned that my husband suffered from a sexual addiction. I didn’t begin to understand it, wasn’t even sure I believed in such a thing, but I knew he’d worked real hard to get his life back in control. If he needed to binge on nachos in order to keep Little Wayne corralled, so be it.

  He dunked a fry in a paper cup of ketchup and popped it in his mouth. “I heard about your troubles.”

  Good Lord. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since Char had been arrested. I pitched the half-finished cone in the empty onion ring basket and swiveled in my seat to dump them both in the trash.

  “How is that even possible?” I wondered.

  “Bad news travels fast in a small town.”

  “Huh. Then how’d it take me nearly two decades to find out you were cheating on me with everything in a skirt?”

  Wayne winced as though he’d been burned, and I instantly felt chagrined.

  “Aw, jeez. I’m sorry, Wayne.”

  He waved off my apology. “It’s okay. You’re right. I managed to cover my tracks pretty good. And there’s something about you that makes people protective. I think folks kept hush because they didn’t want to see you hurt.”

  I laughed. “Guess that fad has passed.”

  Wayne was tapping the excess ketchup from another fry, but he set it back in the basket, folded his arms on the table, and leaned in. “Tally, no one wanted to hurt you here.”

  “But they did.”

  “Yessir, I guess they did. But both Finn and Bree love you. Bree’s the one that called me, actually. Said I should come find you.”