Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

by Toni McGee Causey

  She saw the night sky above them, which was really weird when you think about it, because she was inside and she didn’t remember this building having skylights. But there it was, filled with stars, and she floated somewhere above the city. Maybe she had died back there, but she didn’t feel like haunting anyone just yet. She felt like floating there, watching the stars, until from somewhere far away she heard Ce Ce say, “Now call her back, Trevor.”

  When she opened her eyes, Trevor breathed a haggard sigh, his face drawn and worried. He was on his knees, cradling her in his arms in the center of the circle, Cam kneeling just inches away, a sick expression in his eyes. Bobbie Faye looked back and forth between them, and Trevor said, “I’ve been calling your name for five minutes.”

  She looked around and saw Ce Ce, who was handing out her card to the musicians. “Ceece, did it work?”

  “Honey, it worked, or you wouldn’t still be here.”

  “Are you okay?” Cam asked as Trevor helped her up, and she didn’t know how to answer that. In a way, yes. There was a peace she felt that she hadn’t expected, and maybe that was because of the outcome of the spell—hell, she was still alive, score that one in the win column—but the how and the love amidst the loneliness in her life? Nothing made sense. “You’re kinda,” Cam looked her up and down, “glowy.”

  She looked down and sure enough, there was almost the impression of a halo effect around her, and she lifted her arms and examined them. “Well, it beats the hell outta being blue.”

  “Now that we know,” Francesca bit out, not hiding the seething all that well, “that everyone in the universe luuuuuuuuvvvvvvs our precious Bobbie Faye, what is the deal with the diamonds? Do you know where they are, or not?”

  Bobbie Faye beamed at her cousin. “Oh, Frannie, wouldn’t you like to know. I think I’m going to take my newfangled power and get me some diamonds.”

  “But . . . you can’t do that!” her cousin sputtered. “Those belong to m . . . Mamma.”

  “Sure I can. I’ll give some of them to the police”—she turned to Cam—“and you can get the credit for finding them. All I need is one—then I can afford to get out of the country ’til I get a good attorney.”

  “She . . . you . . . She can’t do that!” Francesca snapped. “You’re a cop,” she said to Cam. “You can’t let her do that.”

  Cam smiled at Bobbie Faye. “Oh, yes I can.”

  Benoit blinked and a ceiling came into focus. It wasn’t the ceiling in his house. There was a dark armoire with a TV on it to the left across from the foot of his bed, but the TV was off and everything around him sounded hushed, like his ears had been stuffed with cotton. A monitor beeped rhythmically to his right and when he finally managed to turn his head, he saw an IV stand and clear something-or-other dripping down into a tube.

  A cute blond nurse hovered over him just then, and he blinked again, trying to decide if she was real or a very nice dream, and he decided he very much liked whatever it was dripping down into the tube if this was the result. She smiled, extremely pretty, and she looked excited for a moment, then disappeared—only to be replaced by his red-faced captain, whose worn and exhausted face bent too close. Benoit thought the man was going to kiss him. He was radically changing his opinion about the clear drippy stuff if dreams of pretty nurses could morph this fast.

  “Benoit,” the dream-captain said, “you’re in the hospital. Do you know who shot you?”

  Oh, that’s right. He’d been shot. People sometimes said being shot didn’t hurt. People were full of shit.

  “Was it Bobbie Faye?” the captain asked, and images spiraled in Benoit’s mind. Someone shooting him, and he saw a face; it floated there a moment, then he saw Reggie on the ground, bleeding, and he knew he was supposed to remember something about Bobbie Faye, something important, but it slid away from him.

  “Did you see Bobbie Faye there?” the captain asked again, trying to make it easy for him to answer, and he nodded. Then shook his head, because no, there was something wrong with that image, but he couldn’t speak and the captain wasn’t looking at him. “That’s it—he’s confirmed she’s the shooter. I want her, now.”

  “What are you doing in here?” some deep male voice asked from the doorway, and Benoit looked over to see blue scrubs. “I told you he’d be out of it for hours—he’s still critical.”

  “That’s okay, doc, we got a confirmation on the shooter that we needed.”

  Shooter, Benoit thought, mulling over the word. He had the distinct impression that something was wrong with what just happened, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He felt a warm lethargy creeping up on him again, and he slid away into a welcoming darkness.

  Lori Ann mingled among the guests, heaving a fucking heavy tray of hors d’oeuvres around to snotty people who all towered over her in their shiny, happy clothes. She kept trying to ignore the trays upon trays of champagne as they passed by her, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she knew Bobbie Faye was somewhere in the building in ass-kicking mode, she’d have been very very tempted.

  Roy circled around a group of people with an empty tray of his own. “Have you seen anybody matching the description of the people we’re supposed to be watching for?”

  “I can’t see anything but cleavage and bow ties.”

  “Well, I planted that thing where Bobbie Faye told me to, and I think those are Trevor’s guys waiting over there,” Roy sort of nodded toward a corner near a big display of Marie’s bizarre artwork, “but so far, I haven’t seen anyone like the guys she described.”

  “Do you think the GPS thingie is broken?”

  “Fuck if I know. Bobbie Faye was holding it earlier. It’s probably a miracle it didn’t melt down in fear.”

  Trevor carried the small contraption that Bobbie Faye had requested from her uncle as they entered the Old State Capitol through the servants’ entrance at the basement level. Bobbie Faye knew it grated on Trevor not to just end it all now, throw a net over Francesca and then whisk Bobbie Faye away to safety. She could sense his growing unease—she was putting herself at risk, and he knew it, opposed it, and yet, agreed to help her do this her way. Every single time he touched her—a palm at the base of her spine to balance her as she teetered down the stairs in those heels, the brush of his hand at her hip as they turned a corner into a dark corridor, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear—sent jolts of light through her, and she half-expected to short-circuit the building with her energy surge. Instead of making it difficult to focus, as she would have expected, it made her hyper-aware of all of their troupe trampling through the underbelly of the building.

  Trevor had demonstrated his slick ability to con anyone when he convinced the governor’s office manager, Michele, that the governor really wanted to meet the singer of the band. Michele led the way. Cam—who’d worked construction in his summers during high school and had worked the renovation of this old building—followed, and then Francesca. (Kit and Mitch were made to wait outside, as were her uncle and dad.) Bobbie Faye walked behind Francesca while Trevor watched their backs.

  They stopped at a dark brown wooden door and Michele turned to Bobbie Faye and said for the third time in the last ten minutes, “You know, you really do just look so familiar. Are you sure we haven’t met?” Cam had to look away to not smile.

  “I’m sure I would have remembered,” Bobbie Faye answered, and she was certain the only reason Francesca hadn’t ratted her out (and had her arrested just for the joy of it) was because her cousin was waiting to see where the diamonds were.

  Michele shrugged and unlocked the door. They wound their way through an outer storage space filled with empty desks and open shelves, and she knocked on another inner door. Laughter and boisterous voices vibrated from inside, and when no one objected, she opened it and ushered them in. Two state police guards sat off to the side in easy chairs while the governor and several buddies sat at a round walnut table, shuffled cards and dealt another hand. Cam nodded to the fellow cops as he ste
pped inside the room—halfway blocking her view.

  “The singer’s here, Governor,” Michele announced.

  “She needs a shave,” the governor quipped when he glanced up and saw Cam at first, and his friends laughed a little too loudly. “But I didn’t—”

  Cam turned and let Bobbie Faye move past him.

  Trevor could not believe how she worked that dress. He was going to have to figure out how to get her into dresses more often. Well, privately. Because, damn.

  He should not have been surprised—even when she hated doing something, she didn’t quit, didn’t give in—but he had never seen her dressed up in all of the time he’d surveilled her. He hadn’t known what to expect, though he had convinced her he was going to need her in a dress to distract, and dear God, did it work.

  The two state cops had yet to scrape their chins off the floor. He was ignoring Cam’s reaction (for now), but when she placed one long, tanned, high-heeled leg around Cam and walked through that doorway, every man in the room had stopped, mid-motion. He had both cops disarmed and very disgruntled, though they probably would have been much more trouble if he hadn’t flashed his badge. They were still distracted . . . and while he had the cops sit, he watched the expression on the governor’s face: first, utter appreciation of what a stunning woman she was, then slight puzzlement as to why she looked so familiar, then growing confusion as she got nearer, and finally, when she stood next to the table and said, “Hiya, Delano, how are ya?” the governor screamed, tossed his cards in the air, and dove under the table.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding,” Michele said. “It’s the Contraband Days Queen. That’s why she looked so familiar. I didn’t recognize her all decked out.” She turned, angrily facing Cam. “It took me all damned day to coax him out of his bedroom because I promised him she was on the other side of the state.”

  “Oops,” Cam said, and Trevor had to laugh.

  “Delano, come out from under there and fight like a man,” Bobbie Faye said, motioning the governor’s buddies to back away from the table. They took one look at her expression and moved.

  “It’s not as bad as when she accidentally blew up your limo,” Cam offered, and there was a distinct sobbing sound coming from beneath the table.

  “Or the time she accidentally set fire to your vacation home,” Trevor added, and Bobbie Faye pulled an exasperated glare at him and Cam arched a brow in surprise—not many people knew about that one, but then, he’d done his homework.

  “Or that time you were hiding in the—”

  “Will you two quit helping?” she interrupted Cam. “Thank you.” She turned and tapped the poker table, which quivered. “I have one word for you, Delano, if you don’t come out from under there. Pictures.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he sniffed.

  “Ya think?”

  “I want ’em back if I help you.”

  “If you want them back, you’ll have to deal with Nina. But if you don’t help me, they’ll be in the news by tomorrow.”

  “I’m not breaking any laws. Not with all of these witnesses!”

  “Nice to see your moral ambiguity’s still intact.”

  Twenty-eight

  Bobbie Faye sat on the corner of the table where she could accomplish two tasks: give Delano an ample cleavage shot and keep her eye on Francesca, who was fuming. The governor had reluctantly crawled out from underneath the table, making it a point to stand on the other side, putting ten feet of mahogany between him and Bobbie Faye. He was nearing sixty; his silver hair and suave looks had clearly gotten him elected—it certainly hadn’t been his platform, which would have been entirely comprised of “huh?” if his staff hadn’t micromanaged him.

  “What do you want?” he asked her, though he couldn’t lift his eyes from her chest to her face.

  “I want to see Marie’s art.” He looked blank, and then guilty, and then tried to go back to blank. She noticed he had the fewest poker chips in front of the chair where he’d been sitting.

  “It’s all upstairs on display,” he said, motioning her away like he would a fly. “Go on up there and have a gander.”

  “No, Delano, I want to see the stuff you have in your safe.”

  “I don’t have anything in my safe.”

  Bobbie Faye held out her hand and Trevor pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I think it wouldn’t take Nina long to log onto her computer files and—”

  “Fine!” the governor said. “Here.” He went over to a side door that had two combination locks on it and he spun them. “But I don’t know what you’re so fired up about.”

  “Delano, this thing you have for lying is going to get you killed. Because Francesca over there—you remember Marie’s daughter, right? The one she got pregnant with by Emile when she was supposed to be engaged to you? Yeah, I called a few people and got the specifics of that little his tory. Or . . . are we absolutely sure she belongs to Emile?” she asked when Delano looked suddenly very awkward. “Hmmmm . . . Now that could explain a lot, too. Anyway, Francesca ran around telling everyone I could find the diamonds.”

  “That has nothing to do with me,” he huffed, then sat down.

  “Isn’t it interesting how the word ‘diamonds’ doesn’t surprise you? Diamonds. Worth millions. Marie had them and needed to get them out of the country. And wow, her old boyfriend is the governor, and guess what he’s going to be doing?”

  “Shipping the whole Louisiana Folk-Art Show to France . . . and then Italy,” Trevor explained. “Anything with the governor’s seal on it wouldn’t be opened when it goes through Homeland Security checks.”

  “What does me shipping some art have to do with an ex-girlfriend and some diamonds?”

  “Well, you see, Marie is kinda obsessive about leaving little notes. Everywhere. And she left one that our dear Francesca over there found and deciphered:

  d’s safe check copies check b.f. knows where

  “I thought at first it meant that the diamonds were safe, and the word ‘check’ was as if she was checking off a list. Then ‘copies check’ meant she’d checked off her list that she’d had copies made. It was the ‘b.f. knows where’ which got me. The FBI and a whole host of people thought that meant I knew where they were.”

  Francesca piped up, “I didn’t find any note.”

  “Sure you did, Frannie. Your dad told me you had, and you said yourself that you and the cousins had been all over your mom’s house, looking for the diamonds. You couldn’t have missed the note in the day planner. It was real cute of you to add the ‘knows where’ to the end of that sentence.” Bobbie Faye turned back to the governor. “See, it originally read: ‘d’s safe’ . . . as in, ‘delano’s safe’ . . . and then ‘check copies,’ which confirmed to Francesca the fact that there was more than one set of copies of the diamonds. And finally, ‘check b.f.’ was ‘check before Friday.’ Marie had abbreviated days of the week all through that day planner. But you know how sometimes you look at something and you think it’s one thing and it gets locked that way in your brain? We all only saw that last part as ‘b.f. knows where’ and assumed it was a part of the original note. But Frannie knew she wasn’t going to get access to anything over here in your safe—not with the bad blood between you and her dad, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Frannie was in desperate need for a way to get in here to find the diamonds. Or should I say . . . the real diamonds. How’s that purse working out for you, Frannie?”

  Francesca gasped and gaped at Bobbie Faye and then looked down at the flamingo-pink-feathered purse.

  “You have never carried the same accessories twice, Frannie. And yet, I have seen this butt-ugly purse two days in a row. And all of those posters for your mom’s art? Featured a weird sculptural installment with a dozen purses like that.”

  “I like this purse. It was designed for me,” she pouted. “And it was featured in InStyle.”

  Bobbie Faye grabbed the Geiger counter Trevor had carried in and turned it on as she walked into the small s
afe room—though everyone could still see her since it wasn’t more than a glorified walk-in closet. “Oh, Frannie, you wanna know where you slipped up?”

  “I did not slip up.”

  Bobbie Faye beamed at her. And Francesca looked murderous. “Um, yeah, gotcha. It’s called ‘excess,’ Frannie. You should look it up. You’d found a couple sets of diamonds and you probably tried to fence them. Maybe you thought they were all real, just hidden in two spots, or maybe you thought one was real. But which one? So you go to Sal. He’d worked with your mom. Maybe even fenced other jewels for her in the past. Except Sal wouldn’t tell you how many fakes there were, and even though you’re listed as your mom’s assistant in her business—the FBI is a really handy friend to have—there was only one place your mom would have access to that you didn’t: here.”

  “How do you know she didn’t just ship them somewhere already?” Francesca asked.

  “She’s too much like you, Frannie—Marie is a strategist. She was always good at games and hell, she dated a politician and an organized crime leader at the same time—there’s no way she’d let those diamonds, worth that many millions, out of close sight. You knew that. This was the one and only place those diamonds were safe against what your mom thought was her biggest threat: you.

  “You needed access to this location and there wasn’t a single soul you could con to get past Delano. Except me. You overplayed that, Frannie—bringing in the cousins. Although using the sniper to convince me you were in danger back at Ce Ce’s—nice touch. I might not have been convinced without the sniper and might have just left you to the authorities. But you couldn’t trust that. You definitely didn’t trust me to stick by you, even though you were family, and you knew if you changed that day planner entry to make it look like I was a part of Marie’s plan to hide the diamonds, the Feds would probably force me to help. Or you could blackmail me, I guess, if they hadn’t stepped in. You should have settled for one or the other strategy—you didn’t need both.”