Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery)

by Brown, Duffy

  I braced my hands on the table and levered myself across, my face an inch from Boone’s. “You let me blubber on and on about BW and Cherry House, and you knew I was getting out of here?”

  “You didn’t give me much chance to jump in, Blondie.”

  “Don’t you Blondie me.”

  Boone did a Cheshire cat grin.

  “You’re despicable, you know that.”

  “Do you want to get out of here or hang around and call me names?”

  Boone had the top down and heat humming as we turned onto Bull Street. Bull was Savannah’s scenic route circling five of the major squares. If getting somewhere fast was that important, you needed to move to New York and take the subway. The late afternoon sun hugged the horizon, casting long shadows across the city. Off in the distance St. John’s rang out six o’clock. Seeing the city in a convertible was intimate; you were part of the scene. There was no chunk of metal to insulate you from what was happening around you, like Mr. Red packing up the palm roses and hats he made right there in the square and had sold to tourists for going on nearly twenty years now or the lights on in Scummy’s campaign headquarters where Delray Valentine was headed in the front door, his arms piled high with boxes.

  Okay, this was the second time today I’d run into Delray Valentine, and I’d probably only seen the man a handful of times my whole life. Earlier today he was at Eternal Slumber, and now he was going into Scummy’s campaign headquarters. Why the headquarters at six o’clock at night? Something was going on.

  “What am I keeping you from?” I said to Boone. “My guess is Auntie KiKi called you, and I know you didn’t get all spiffed up to come rescue me at the police station. Hot date?”

  “A meeting.”

  “Something to do with Scummy’s murder, and you’re not telling me, no doubt.”

  “Why don’t you—”

  “If you say go sell hats and dresses, I swear I’ll beat you about the neck and shoulders.”

  A half smile tipped the corner of his mouth. “I was going to say have a long bubble bath and some tea. You’ve had a tough day.”

  “You are so lying.”

  “Sounded pretty good even to me.” Boone stopped, letting a band of merry tourists cross over to Wright Square, and I got out of the car. “What are you doing?” Boone asked me.

  “Walking home so you can get to your meeting.”

  “Reagan?”

  “I’m walking,” I said, backing away from the car with a little swagger I couldn’t resist. “Just walking.”

  “Now who’s lying?” he called after me, the car behind giving a toot for him to move on.

  “It was my turn,” I yelled back, fading into the crowd at the square.

  I watched the Chevy’s taillights fade down Bull, then doubled back to Scummy’s campaign headquarters, where a Lexus was parked out front. Money-Honey? She could be cleaning things out, and Valley helping her made sense. I strolled by, doing the woman-in-a-hat-minding-her-business routine and cut my eyes inside the headquarters. Money-Honey was there all right, looking ticked off, flapping her arms up and down, and yelling at someone. It was life as usual in the campaign world, nothing else, and I was here on a wild-goose chase.

  I walked back in the other direction, catching a glimpse of the old red London phone booth that stood outside Six Pence Pub. A little splurge on onion soup and shepherds’ pie was just what I needed after a really crappy day, I thought as the door to Scummy’s campaign headquarters flew open and poodle-pin girl darted out. She collided into me full force, both of us crashing against Money-Honey’s perfect iridescent white Lexus.

  “I’m so sorry,” poodle girl stammered, tears streaming down her face.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not a slut,” she sobbed into my shoulder.

  “Of course you’re not,” soothed mamma-bear Reagan.

  “We were in love,” poodle girl choked. “He was going to leave her and run away with me to Cancun. I was there on spring break. I told Kippy he’d love it in Cancun. We’d be happy, open up a T-shirt store right there on the beach, and make love under the stars.”

  Kippy?

  Poodle girl looked up at me with big watery eyes. “That witch said Kippy had others, and I should tell everyone what a fornicating bastard he was,” she blubbered. “But that’s a lie! Kippy loved me, just me, only me. He gave me a cute poodle pin, and I gave it back to him. I wanted Kippy to have it with him in heaven. How will I get along without the love of my life for ever and ever?” she sobbed louder.

  Kippy and poodle girl together was interesting. That Honey and Valley knew about Kippy and poodle girl was the icing on the cake and motive for murder. If it got out that Kippy was messing with the help, he’d never get elected, and maybe knocking him off was the only way out. So why did Honey want poodle girl to tell all now?

  I put my arm around poodle girl as she choked back more tears, and I led her toward Six Pence. “You will survive, I promise. There are Kippy’s everywhere, and you can do much better than a Kippy. Let’s get you something to eat.” And a copy of Married Men Don’t Buy the Cow When the Milk’s Free . . . especially when the old milk has money.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AFTER I fortified poodle girl with caffeine, soup, and a box of tissues, I walked her to her sorority house then turned for home. It seemed like a year since Suit had hauled me off to the police station. Tired to the bone, I finally got to Cherry House and trudged up the sidewalk to the porch, footsteps sounding behind me. At last count I was on Archie Lee’s, Dozer’s, Butler Haber’s, and Suit’s black list. Crazy Cazy and his black belt were unpredictable as the weather, and Boone . . . only the Lord himself knew what was going on with Boone and me.

  I gripped Old Yeller in both hands, spun around, and nearly took out Mercedes right there in my own front yard.

  “Whoa, girlfriend.” Mercedes held up her hands in surrender. “I come in peace. Nice hat.”

  “So everyone keeps telling me. Did you have to let Boone know about me being dead under the sheet?”

  A big, toothy grin broke across Mercedes’s face, and she perched her ample weight on one foot. “Something that funny’s for sharing, and Mr. Boone needs cheering up these days. He’s trying mighty hard to find that killer and not having much luck as best I can tell. My previous employment gave me special insight into the male half of the population.”

  Mercedes held up her big pink bag. “I felt right bad about not getting a chance to fix your hair and all. You just give me an hour now, and you’ll be a new woman.” She pulled off my hat. “Okay, two hours.”

  Mercedes followed me inside, BW all excited I was back to home and hearth. I’d like to think his dancing and whining was because he missed me, but truth be told his internal clock had chimed out hot dog time and he needed me to open the fridge. I gave BW a backyard break and told him I’d bequeathed him to Boone with proper eating and sleeping instructions. When we went back inside, Mercedes had moved Mamma’s election posters to one side of the kitchen and set a chair in the middle. Garbage bags were spread over the floor, and hair paraphernalia sat out on the counter.

  “Put your head in the sink and let’s shampoo you up and get started,” she said to me. “I’m the Rembrandt of hair.” She nodded to something bushy lying on the counter.

  “Bugs!”

  “Eyebrows. Superglue’s a wonderful thing. You look like a bowling ball in a hat, so anything’s got to be an improvement, right?”

  I stuck my head in the kitchen sink, and Mercedes turned on the water. “What are you doing tonight?” I asked around suds floating over my face.

  “Fixing it so you quit scaring the daylights out of people. How do you expect to get Mr. Boone interested if you look scary?”

  “I don’t care if Mr. Boone’s interested.” Mercedes rinsed and wrapped my head in a towel, and I sat in the chair. “Did . . . did he say anything about me?”

  “Uh-huh. Thought you weren’t interested.” I heard the sni
p, snip of the scissors, pieces of scorched hair falling onto the bags.

  “Just curious.”

  “Honey, every woman in Savannah’s just curious about that man. The thing is he’s one of those quiet types, so you never know what’s going on with him. He’s sort of like his grandma if I remember right, God rest her soul.”

  Grandma? That got my attention. “How’d he wind up a lawyer?”

  “Same way Big Joey is The Man, Pillsbury watches the Benjamins, I’m the dead-hair diva, and you got a shop. You do what you got to do to survive in this here world, and right now if you intend to survive a little longer, you should be a brunette. You need to forget blonde hair and being all flashy. Draws too much attention to your sorry, unfortunate self. I got a plan: we’ll give you a low-profile image and try and prolong your life expectancy, which’s looking right poor at the moment. You need to fade into the woodwork for a while.”

  “Yeah, but do I have to look like the woodwork.”

  Mercedes’s answer was to slather brown goop on my head. “So, how about we take my hair out for a test drive after we finish up here?”

  “Now you’re talking. I’m down for martinis at Jen’s and Friends.”

  “What about being down for breaking and entering into Seymour’s campaign headquarters? I need a lookout.”

  Mercedes puffed out a big sigh. “Girl, do you ever just have fun?”

  “I have fun, lots of fun. I’m a real fun girl. I eat sprinkle doughnuts . . . and stuff.” There was no stuff, but I had to add something to the doughnuts. “Here’s the thing. When I was visiting with you this morning at the Slumber, Seymour’s campaign manager was paying the funeral bill. He said the campaign wasn’t over, that Archie Lee as alderman wasn’t a slam dunk. I’m not great at math, but there’s only one candidate left; the other two are down for the count. What do you think the guy meant?”

  “I think he was just shooting off his mouth like they do in politics. They make up junk to feel important. Kip Seymour sure liked to feel important, I can tell you that. You couldn’t swing a dead cat around this city without hitting one of his campaign posters. That man thought he was the cat’s meow.”

  “Well, Mr. Meow was diddling the cute chickie volunteers, and his wife and campaign manager knew about it, and they both told one cute chickie to spread the word. Why would they want that information out there?”

  “Well, now you got yourself two questions without answers. Maybe there is something going on with that election. I suppose a little night stroll on the way to Jen’s and Friends can’t hurt anything.”

  It was ten when Mercedes, BW, and I headed out the door. I fastened the one remaining button on my jacket, and Mercedes pulled up the collar on her purple coat. “We could have taken my car, you know.”

  “You mean the inconspicuous pink Caddy? If Suit picks me up again, I’m toast.”

  We took Habersham and cut across Oglethorpe, the Cemetery just ahead lit with floodlights, red, white, and blue banners flying, “God Bless America” blaring from a speaker. Popeye handed out bags of boiled peanuts and pamphlets to late-night passersby, telling everyone, “Come to Liberty Square tomorrow at six o’clock for the rally to support our next great alderman, Archie Lee.”

  “We should head ’cross the street to the other side,” Mercedes said, pulling on my sleeve, a little chunk coming off in her hand. “You need to keep with the low profile and stay away from anything to do with elections, especially Archie Lee and elections.”

  Mercedes started to the other side, but I didn’t follow, slowing my steps. “He’s handing out boiled peanuts,” I said to Mercedes. “How about I walk real quick. Maybe he won’t recognize me and will just hand me the peanuts. I have short dark hair now. Bet my own mamma wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “It’s not your mamma I’m worried about.”

  BW and I picked up the pace with Mercedes at my side grumbling about me not having the good sense God gave little green apples. We blended into the back of a line of people. Popeye smiled, and then his smile faded when he got to me. “You’re like a bad penny; you just keep coming back.”

  “I have brown hair and glued-on eyebrows, and you still recognize me?”

  “That ugly purse.”

  I held Old Yeller tight. “It’s a great purse.”

  “And here we go,” Mercedes said on her second deep sigh of the night.

  “You better stay away from this here rally if you know what’s good for you,” Popeye said to me. “Archie Lee is going to win this election and be the best alderman ever, a heck of a lot better than your snooty-ass mamma would be.”

  I was all ready to walk away, I truly was, but then he had to go and bad-mouth my mamma. I poked him in his big barrel chest. “I wouldn’t go counting my chickens before they’re hatched, if I were you. Word on the street is there’s something going on, something real big with the election. Maybe Archie Lee’s going to get disqualified, didn’t fill the paperwork out right; you never know what can crop up in an election.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus.” Mercedes closed her eyes as Popeye’s voice dropped to a growl deep in his chest.

  “I’m warning you, you better not do anything to mess this up for Archie Lee. He says he has everything under control, and you better not interfere. Got it?”

  “Yep, we got it loud and clear,” Mercedes said, grabbing my arm, tugging me along. “We need to go.”

  “Listen to Ms. Chubalini there,” Popeye sneered. “Archie Lee said I needed to be nice to people, but no one’s around right now, so I don’t gotta be nice to you and pork chop in purple. You aren’t voting for Archie Lee, so you can go pound salt.”

  Mercedes stopped dead, her eyes thin slits, little puffs of smoke curling from her nostrils. Could be from the chill in the air, but I didn’t think so.

  “Who you calling ‘Chubalini’?” Mercedes said with a curled lip and a snarl. “Pork chop?”

  “Uh, maybe you should apologize,” I said to Popeye, meaning it for his own good. “She has connections at Eternal Slumber. Dead is her thing.”

  “Can’t be her thing. There’s no coffin big enough to hold her.” Popeye laughed, and Mercedes connected with a left hook, sending Popeye stumbling backward, tripping into the tub of nuts, knocking over the speaker, breaking the spotlight, and tearing down the banners, all of them landing across his prone body bedecked in discarded peanut shells.

  I pulled Mercedes along behind me. “The cops are going to be here any minute, and I do not need cops.”

  I hustled us across the street to Colonial Cemetery, which was surrounded by a wrought iron fence and high brick wall, except for a broken section by the magnolia tree that I knew about as a haunted Savannah guide. I shoved Mercedes through the opening, tugged in BW, and squashed myself behind them as sirens and cruisers zipped by.

  “Archie Lee’s going to give us up to the cops, and Suit’s going to find me and have me arrested and hauled off to jail, and Mamma will have a cow, and Boone will laugh his behind off . . . again.”

  Mercedes grinned. “You really think that big-mouth piece of crap barkeep is going to say he was decked by a woman?” Mercedes let out a full-body laugh and took my hand, dragging me out into the open. “He’ll make up some story about tripping or duking it out with another guy, something that has nothing to do with a woman getting the drop on him like I did. Lordy, child, we are free as a bird. Now let’s get to that headquarters and finish up our business so we can be moving on to the martini portion of the night’s activities.”

  We rounded the corner onto Bull, the headquarters just ahead, the street pretty much deserted. “You and BW stand out front, and I’ll duck down the alley,” I said to Mercedes. “Knock on the window if someone’s coming, and don’t give BW any peanuts. He’ll have gas all night and we live together.”

  “It’s after ten.” Mercedes scanned the street. “Who you expecting to show up at a campaign headquarters at this hour?”

  “See this hair?” I pulled at a tuft.
“See this jacket.” I held up a ragged sleeve. “Unexpected is my life.”

  “That’s from when you had the blonde-hair curse.”

  Mercedes and BW continued on, and I headed around back. The windows were above eye level, a light in one; the other in Scummy’s office was dark. Black garbage bags lined the side of the building along with a can overflowing with smelly gross stuff. Using a piece of jacket, I dragged the can under the dark window, pulled myself up, and pushed up against the glass. The can wobbled then flipped over backward, taking me with it.

  The window flew up, Mercedes and BW sticking their heads out. “What in all that’s holy are you doing out there?” Mercedes whispered down to me, sprawled on my back gasping.

  “Getting a concussion. What are you doing in there?”

  “Key under the front mat. BW and I needed a drink. Lordy, you stink something fierce, and you’re covered in garbage.”

  “Is it moving?”

  “Bugs in the summertime; fall is more mouse and rat season.”

  I jumped up doing a quick rodent check while swiping off pizza sauce, half an eggroll, some orange rinds, and a piece of doughnut. How could someone throw away a doughnut? “Meet me at the door.”

  Mercedes’s nose crinkled. “Do I have to?” She fought back a gag then closed the window.

  I kicked the garbage back into the can, picked up a black garbage bag to toss in, Kip Seymour campaign flyers falling out through the hole in the bottom. The other bags were stuffed with pamphlets, buttons, and those cardboard stand-ups of Scummy. Kip Seymour was dead and buried in more ways than one. I craned my head around the corner of the building then slunk my way to the door, Mercedes letting me inside.

  “You still have noodles in your hair,” Mercedes said. “Lo mein. Stinking lo mein.” She plucked them out and tossed them into a garbage can. “So now what are we looking for?”

  “Nothing.” I held up a campaign button, Kippy smiling back at us. “Seymour’s wife and Delray Valentine, the campaign manager, were here earlier. They must have spent the day clearing the place out.” I waved my hand over the empty tables and cabinets. “Everything from Seymour’s campaign is in garbage bags out back. I thought there was something going on with the campaign because I wanted it that way, not because it’s so.”