Hair Extensions & Homicide / Supernatural Sinful Box Set

by Frankie Bow

  “Caden Wilson?” I said. “I think I know who he is. On the husky side, reddish beard, wears a fedora?”

  “Why, yes! Don’t call it a fedora, though. He’ll be sure to remind you that it’s a trilby. Oh my, you must be the Blonde.”

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “Why, you look perfectly intelligent to me. And I don’t think you’re ‘too tall’ at all.”

  “No? Oh, good. That’s a huge relief.” I stood up. “Thanks so much for the tea, Mary-Alice. We’ll head back and let you and Celia settle in. Celia, if you get any more of those threatening messages, save them, and pass them along to Mudbug PD. They’re the ones handling Tatienne Tauzin’s murder now. Or they should be. Since the murder occurred in Mudbug.”

  Ida Belle drove the Jeep back to Sinful while I called Harrison. He picked up immediately.

  “I just wanted to check if you got the email I forwarded you.”

  “I got it,” he said. “You’re not the target of this, right?”

  “No. The recipient was Celia Arceneaux. The mayor-elect of Sinful. She’s—”

  “I know who Celia Arceneaux is.”

  “Of course you do. This is the latest one. There have been others. Every time she’s tried to report the threats, she’s been brushed off. Now someone’s dead and it looks like the person sending the threats is either the killer or knows enough about Celia’s movements to make her think they’re the killer.”

  “As far as the previous threats, yeah, in a lot of cases the laws haven’t really caught up to the technology. But sure, I’ll pass this along. Maybe someone’ll have some time to work on it. Glad to hear you’re not in the middle of it. For once.”

  I put my phone away. Harrison had been there for me since the beginning of my career, and I hoped we could remain friends after I retired. I’d still have fun visiting Harrison’s upstate property for a day of target practice and blowing stuff up. I could see Carter enjoying it too. Assuming he was still interested in a future with me.

  “You didn’t have to do that for Celia.” Ida Belle steered around a washed-out part of the skinny one-lane road. “She wouldn’t lift a finger to help you.”

  “Fortune’s a better human being than Celia is,” Gertie said.

  “Not really,” I said. “But whoever is behind this is destroying the town of Sinful. If I’m going to make my life here, which I still want to do, then I want to do what I can to protect it.”

  “If you’re really going to stay on here, there’s one loose end you need to tie up,” Gertie declared.

  “I’m not calling Carter again, Gertie.”

  “I didn’t say call him. I say we pay him a visit, and make him forget all about that redhead.”

  “You know what?” Ida Belle said. “Gertie’s right. I can’t stand seeing you moping around.”

  “I have not been moping.”

  “Yes, you have. Let’s get this thing settled one way or another.”

  Chapter 16

  Two retired Vietnam-era spies. One CIA operative. All of the tricks of spycraft at our disposal. So this is what we did: We drove to Carter’s house and knocked on his front door.

  Sometimes you get your best intelligence just by talking to people.

  As I had feared, a woman answered the door. It took me a moment to recognize her.

  “Emmaline!” I exclaimed.

  Carter’s mother looked tired, but she managed a smile.

  “Why don’t you come in?” Her voice was almost a whisper. “We need to keep it down. He’s resting.”

  “Your hair,” I stammered. “It’s red.”

  “It’s called balayage. I thought I’d try something different.” She touched her hair. “In fact, I had just come out of the beauty parlor when I got the call from Doctor Stewart—anyway. Would you like some sweet tea?”

  We all declined politely, still full from Mary-Alice’s hospitality.

  “So, Emmaline. You’re a redhead now,” I repeated when we were all seated in Carter’s living room. Gertie, I noticed, was very deliberately avoiding eye contact.

  “I’ve been kicking myself for sitting in the salon while Carter was…well, how would I have known?”

  “What is going on with him?” I asked.

  Carter’s mother sighed.

  “Fortune, the doctor doesn’t want Carter to have any exertion in his state. He doesn’t even want me to bring him his mail or play his phone messages until he recovers some.

  “What state?” Gertie asked. “None of us has seen Carter at all lately. And with all due respect to Sheriff Lee and Deputy Breaux—”

  “Sinful is falling apart without Carter,” Ida Belle interrupted. “Some hacker’s been draining Sinful’s accounts. And they’ve been threatening Celia, trying to get into the pension fund. Sheriff Lee and Deputy Breaux are completely useless. And an innocent woman is dead, probably because the murderer mistook her for Celia, and no one knows who killed her.”

  “Oh!” Emmaline gasped.

  “Carter must be quite ill,” Gertie said.

  “What’s wrong with him, anyway?” Ida Belle asked.

  “It’s called post-concussion syndrome,” Emmaline explained. “The injury from, well, from that time you saved his life, Fortune. Doctor Stewart said that we can’t predict when or whether PCS will happen. But for Carter, it came on suddenly and hit him hard. He gets terrible nausea and dizziness, he’s very sensitive to light…”

  “Sounds like a hangover,” Ida Belle said.

  “Much worse than a hangover, I think,” Emmaline sighed. “It’s awful, watching him go through it. And I can tell he hates being shut up in his room, but Doctor Stewart insisted…”

  Emmeline appeared lost in thought.

  “You know, there’s a reason why they say ‘in sickness and in health.’ Fortune, do you believe in that?”

  “I…what?”

  “If you love someone, doesn’t that mean you’ll stick with him in sickness and in health?”

  “Of course.” As I said it, I realized I meant it.

  Emmaline stood up.

  “Come with me. Gertie and Ida Belle, maybe I’ll just have Fortune visit for now. Carter’s still quite ill, and not ready for a lot of company. Please help yourselves to some icebox cake.”

  “Works for me.” Ida Belle stood up and headed to Carter’s refrigerator.

  Carter’s bedroom had a close, sour smell. The shades were drawn and the lights were off. Carter was in bed, covers drawn up to his chin despite the stuffy warmth of the room.

  “Carter?” Emmaline murmured. “You have a visitor.”

  Carter turned his head toward me, squinting. I don’t know what propelled me, but I moved to his bedside and took his hand. When I looked back at his face his eyes were closed.

  “Carter, I’ll be right back,” Emmaline said, and disappeared.

  I perched on the edge of the bed. Carter didn’t let go of my hand.

  “I’ve been a little under the weather,” he murmured. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Did you miss anything? How much can you handle?”

  “Tell me everything. Doctor Stewart told my mother to lock me in a lead-lined box until I was all better, and she’s a stickler for following doctor’s orders. They both think I need to be handled with kid gloves. No excitement, no bad news. It’s like sensory deprivation in here. Except for the headaches.”

  I brushed his hair back from his forehead.

  “Here’s the short version. Gertie was arrested for Celia’s murder. It looked bad for Gertie, but then Celia came back from the dead.”

  A smile played around the corner of Carter’s mouth. His eyes were still closed.

  “That’s funny, Fortune. Seriously, though, something must have happened in Sinful over the last few days. Sorry for not getting up. I have to lie here with my eyes closed so the room doesn’t start spinning.”

  “Well, I guess this explains why you didn’t return my call.” Carter still looked handsome to me, although his d
ark hair was plastered to his forehead, and his skin looked a little waxen.

  Carter’s eyes opened. “Your call? What call?”

  “Nothing urgent. Just saying hello.”

  His eyes drifted shut again.

  “So no news is good news?”

  “I actually wasn’t kidding about Celia and Gertie. Let me tell you the whole story from the beginning.”

  I did. Emmaline came into the room at one point. Carter was sitting up by now, and listening raptly. She flashed me a radiant smile and drifted out again.

  “So we thought it was over when they established the victim’s identity,” I said. “But then this new threat to Celia came in. They know where Celia lives.”

  “You should notify the FBI,” Carter said.

  “We tried. They told her to hire a lawyer and try to sue them.”

  “Celia’s not staying at her house, is she?”

  “No. We drove her out to stay with her cousin-in-law or whatever you want to call her. Mary-Alice Arceneaux. Out in Mudbug.”

  “Near Mudbug Technical College. Where you said the hit-and-run happened. How do you know this Mary-Alice isn’t the one who’s been threatening her all along?”

  “That is an excellent point,” I conceded. “I don’t know that Mary-Alice is blameless.”

  “And you just delivered Celia right to her.”

  Carter leaned back and closed his eyes again.

  “This is the one thing I hate about civilian work. In a war zone, it’s usually pretty clear who are your friends, and who’s the enemy.”

  “Usually,” I said.

  “Well, yeah. But out here… Listen, Fortune, is this Mary-Alice in any financial trouble?”

  “Good question. She said her house was paid off. Could’ve been lying. Or she could’ve paid it off with stolen money. I don’t know.”

  “Nice of you to worry about Celia. I doubt she’d do the same for you.”

  “That’s exactly what Ida-Belle said.”

  “I’d tell you to stay out of it, but I doubt you’d listen.”

  “It would be nice if someone stopped this person before they managed to drain Sinful’s pension fund too.”

  “The pension fund? They got the pension fund?”

  “No. They want it, but they don't have it.”

  I could tell the conversation was tiring Carter out. In sickness and in health. It was kind of an alien concept to me. In my line of work, you were like a bullet. When you were expended—say your cover was blown, or you were disabled—then you were done.

  But I liked the sound of it. In sickness and in health.

  “I’ll let you rest,” I said. “Need some help with the pillow?”

  “I got it.”

  Carter relaxed back into the pillow, still holding my hand tightly. I watched his breathing become slow and regular, and felt his grip loosen. I started to pull my hand away, certain he was asleep.

  “Are you going back to Mudbug Tech tonight?” he mumbled.

  “For class? I think so. Yeah. We are.”

  “Be careful.”

  Chapter 17

  The analytics class seemed particularly well-behaved tonight. Maybe the students were finally learning to act like grownups. I didn’t hear any side conversations starting up. If anyone was goofing off on their phone, they were doing it quietly.

  The relative silence made the sudden buzzing of my phone all the more noticeable. Professor Jackson paused her lecture at the sound. I excused myself quickly and darted out into the hallway.

  Harrison was on the line.

  “We know where the email originated,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Mudbug. Not far from Sinful. You know where Mudbug is?”

  “I’m in Mudbug right now. That was fast. Good work. Now what?”

  “Know anyone there with a grudge against Celia Arceneaux?”

  “Everyone in her drama class, for one.”

  “Did you say her drama class?”

  “Harrison, could they narrow it down to a specific location?”

  “Sorry. There was some complicated technical reason why they couldn’t, which they were kind enough to explain to me in detail.”

  “Okay. Gertie’s enrolled in the drama class, and she’s keeping her ears open. I’ll see what I can find out from her.”

  “Great. Let me know how that goes.”

  I slipped back into class just in time to be dismissed for our break.

  I was halfway out the door, on my way to meet Gertie and Ida Belle at the cafeteria, when I heard Professor Jackson say,

  “Cody, where’s Caden tonight?”

  That’s why class had been going so well. Mary-Alice’s trilby-wearing grandson wasn’t there to sigh and roll his eyes and contradict the professor.

  “His grandma’s car got in a wreck so he’s been taking the bus,” Caden’s friend said. “Anyway, he texted me to tell me he missed the bus so I’m taking notes for him.”

  I made a U-turn, marched back into the classroom, and inserted myself into the conversation.

  “There was a car wreck?” I inquired with all the sympathy I could muster. “That’s terrible. When did it happen?”

  Cody’s neck flushed a mottled red and his pimples blazed like warning lights.

  “Uh, he told me about it Wednesday, I think?” His voice cracked.

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Nah. His grandma’s fine, but Caden can’t drive the car till it’s fixed.”

  Tuesday was the night Tatienne Tauzin had been run down in the parking lot.

  “Well, I do hope Caden’s grandma is okay,” I said breezily as I left the classroom a second time. The minute I was out the door I pulled my phone out and called Ida Belle.

  Inside five minutes, the three of us were in my Jeep, speeding toward Mary-Alice Arceneaux’s house.

  “So it was Mary-Alice after all?” Gertie asked from the back seat.

  “Either that, or this is the world’s biggest coincidence. And we just delivered Celia right into her would-be murderer’s hands,” I said.

  “What’s her motive?” Ida Belle asked. “I mean, apart from the obvious. I’m certain everyone who meets Celia Arceneaux wants to murder her sooner or later, but no one actually does it.”

  ”If Mary-Alice is the one who’s been draining Sinful’s funds,” I said, “that would explain how she paid off her house.”

  “Pretty brazen of her to brag about it to us,” Gertie said. “You think she’s planning to murder Celia?”

  “If she’s smart, she’ll just get Celia drunk and get the password from her that way,” Ida Belle said.

  “Then why hasn’t she done that already?” I asked.

  We were in the suburban outskirts of Mudbug now.

  “Okay, which way was it? I’m usually pretty good at navigating by landmarks, but these little suburban houses all look the same. Can we call the house? Anyone have Mary-Alice’s number? Or Celia’s?”

  No, no one did.

  “Can someone call Directory Assistance to get Mary-Alice’s home number?” I squinted at the dark road lined with cookie-cutter houses. “I hope I can find this place again in the dark. I might remember how to get there coming from Sinful, but this is a different direction.”

  “We don’t know Mary-Alice’s last name,” Gertie objected.

  “Arceneaux,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, Gertie.” Ida Belle's voice sounded strained. “You were too busy arguing with Celia to pay attention.”

  Gertie dialed Mudbug Directory Assistance and got Mary-Alice's number. There was no answer when she called it.

  “I think the house is that way,” Ida Belle said. “Where that orange glow’s coming from.”

  “Orange glow?”

  Gertie was dialing 9-1-1 before I could finish speaking.

  We pulled up in front of the blazing house, and I got the fire extinguisher out of the back of the Jeep. It wouldn’t be enough to vanquish the flame
s that danced behind the oversized windows of Mary-Alice’s living room, but it was all we had.

  I sprinted up the front porch and peered into the window. The flames lapped along the bottom of one wall, exactly as if someone had poured out something flammable. I didn’t see anyone in the living room, but that didn’t mean no one was in the house.

  “Here!” I heard Gertie yell from the side of the house. She was standing by a small window, on top of an overturned pail. I peered in through the window.

  There, wrapped in duct tape and sitting on the closed toilet, was Celia Arceneaux. Her eyes were wide and terrified over her tape-covered mouth.

  “What a monster,” I muttered.

  “Go easy on her,” Gertie said. “She’s having a bad day.”

  “I was talking about Mary-Alice. Get back.”

  I used the bottom of the fire extinguisher to smash the glass out of the bathroom window. I could fit through the opening to get Celia, but I wasn’t so sure about being able to push Celia back out. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  Ida Belle ran up and joined us.

  “I called the dispatcher again. Told them to get a move on—is that Celia in there? She looks like a big silver caterpillar.”

  “Should we try to find the hose?” Gertie asked.

  “No. Water could make things worse. See what you can do with this. It’s rated for grease and electrical fires at least.” I handed the fire extinguisher to Ida Belle and hoisted myself up through the window. I landed hands-down on the bathroom tile and tucked into a roll to absorb the impact. Then I stood up and brushed the bits of glass away. Celia was staring at me, wide-eyed.

  “Sorry Celia. This is going to hurt.”

  It turned out she wasn’t taped to the toilet. She was just wrapped up like a mummy. I picked the edge of the duct tape at her ankle and started to pull. It made a ripping sound as it went. Whoever had tied Celia up had used one continuous piece of tape, making it easy to unwind. Easy for me, that is. Celia was making a lot of noise behind her duct tape gag. I ripped that off last, with a flourish.

  “Okay, Celia, I came in through the window, so we should be able to push you out.”

  She opened and closed her mouth as if to make sure it was still working.