“Bobby? Uncle Charlie’s assistant?”
“I met him at the funeral home. Claude Akers passed, and he called here asking for you to do the makeup. I went in to pinch-hit.”
“Well, thanks.” I hope. Listen, I’m a stickler about making the deceased look their very best for the hereafter. I just hope Darlene’s work held up to my standards.
“He’s a neat guy,” Darlene says.
“Who? Akers?”
“No. Bobby.”
“Huckabee?”
“Yeah.”
Neat is not the word that comes to mind when I think of Bobby. He’s clumsy and socially inept and he tries too hard to please. Plus, his psychic blue eye is a bit unsettling.
But I can see how a woman who won’t do my clients’ nail colors without consulting a horoscope first would be attracted to him. And I’m glad. Really, I am.
“That’s great, Darlene,” I tell her, and I really mean it. “I’m glad you two are becoming friends.”
I pocket my cell phone, then stroll to the railing to join my group. Uncle Charlie is nowhere in sight, and Mama is plucking feathers from her hair, casting them on the water.
“Mama, what’s going on?”
“Shhh.” Fayrene puts her hands over her lips. “We’re doing a
come on home
ceremony.”
“Lovie, come back.” Mama intones as she casts a shiny black feather toward the sea. It floats over the water awhile and then settles into the waves.
Fayrene chants, “Kumquats, melons, can-ta-loupe.”
A few people nearby turn to look at us in a funny way. Which is nothing new. Even in Mooreville, the Valentine entourage attracts attention, which is good both for business and for gossip. I have to say, my family and friends are the backbone of Mooreville’s entire social structure.
Another feather flies out of Mama’s hand and rises up on a breeze that has sprung up over the Caribbean.
“Oranges, pineapple, man-goes.” Fayrene sways while she names off her
erotic
fruits. I can almost hear her thinking how she’ll use these so-called native techniques in the back room of Gas, Grits, and Guts.
“We’re waiting for you,” Mama chants in an ethereal voice, then lets fly another feather. “Come back to us, Elvis.”
Nearby, a sixtyish woman in tank top and shorts printed in a purple hibiscus that emphasizes her varicose veins goes into some kind of swoon. An aging man with his shorts’ waistband hiked over his large belly by suspenders mops her face with his handkerchief.
“Get away from me, you old fool.” The woman shoves him and straightens her tank top. “Elvis is on this boat and I intend to find him.”
Chapter 19
Voodoo, Film Noir, and the Final Journey to Glory Land
W
hen we get off the ferry, we leave behind mild bedlam (nothing new for us) and rumors of Elvis sightings (a more than thirty-year phenomenon that seems to still be going strong).
On the ride to the Cozumel Palace, Mama tries to crank up a discussion of our sleuthing plans, but Uncle Charlie shakes his head and changes the subject.
“The undertakers’ convention is probably in full swing,” he says.
Mama’s smart. She immediately rises to the challenge. “It won’t take me long to catch up, Charlie. I’m in a par-tee moood.”
“Woo-hoo!” Even Fayrene gets in on the act.
The fact is, we don’t know who is in on the kidnappings. The best thing we can do is act as if everybody we see is the enemy. And that includes the taxi driver. Who, by the way, bears a striking resemblance to Rosita—hatchet face, dark hovering eyebrows, facial expression that says
I’d as soon rip you apart as look at you.
After Uncle Charlie pays the cab fare and we’re left alone in front of Cozumel Palace, I reference the driver’s family resemblance to Tulum’s surly cook.
“I noticed,” he says. “Small island, small native population. I’ll look into it.” Uncle Charlie hails a bellhop. “Let’s get settled in, then meet in Callie’s room. Say, twenty minutes.” He looks Mama straight in the eye. “Ruby Nell, till then, stay out of trouble.”
“I never have let you tell me what to do, Charlie Valentine. Do you think I’m going to start taking your advice at this late date?”
“Probably not. Still, it’s worth a try.”
I’m so glad to see the easy camaraderie has returned between Mama and my daddy’s brother. There were times back during the Elvis Ultimate Tribute Artist Competition in Tupelo and during the Memphis Mambo Murders when I feared they’d alienated each other so much that we’d have an empty seat at Mama’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners down on the farm.
Checking back into the hotel is no problem. We never checked out of our rooms. While Uncle Charlie pulls a few strings to get Mama and Fayrene switched to the room next to mine so we can keep an eye on each other—his words, not mine—I take the elevator up and walk straight back into civilization. Flat screen TV, carpet, ornate bedspread and draperies, watercolors on the walls, Jacuzzi calling my name.
It will have to wait. Twenty minutes is not time enough to do a hot tub justice.
Though everything looks the same as when I left, I enter my room cautiously, peering under the bed, inside the closets, and under the draperies for snakes and kidnappers and no-telling-what-all. Listen, I know I’m not in the middle of a B-grade movie, but I can’t forget how I almost donated body parts to the Frankenstein aspirations of Morgan a.k.a. Bela Lugosi.
The coast looks clear. Usually the first thing I do is unpack my bag and hang my clothes. Not today. The first thing I do is strip off my shorts, strap on my leg holster, and change into a denim miniskirt. I view myself from all angles in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. Satisfied the holster doesn’t show, I slide a clip into the gun, heft it for balance (which makes me feel as if I know what I’m doing), and secure it in the holster.
Now I’m a hairdresser packing heat. And I’m not talking blow-dryer.
Standing in front of the mirror, I practice my draws. Clint Eastwood in Jimmy Choo stilettos. John Wayne in Bare Minerals Clear Radiance and Blush Secret.
I draw again and hit Morgan three times, twice in the groin, and once in the heart, for good measure. He’s going down and I’m giving a rebel yell, when there’s a knock on the door.
My watch tells me it’s too early for Uncle Charlie and the gang.
“Maid service.”
With my hand on the gun-size lump on my hip, I leave my phantom corpse on the carpet and move toward the door, expecting to find the ubiquitous Juanita standing there with an armload of sheets.
To my relief, the maid is an Asian teenager in pigtails, with buckteeth.
Well, I’m sure she’s not really a teenager, but when your eggs are fainting from despair and you’ve just aged sixteen years at the hands of a kidnapper threatening to turn you into Peg Leg Pete, anybody under the age of thirty looks like a teenager.
“You called for fresh linens?” The maid holds out an armload of fluffy towels.
I’m getting ready to tell her I didn’t call for linens when my instincts start screaming bloody murder. Stepping quickly into the hallway and around the startled maid, I spot a dark-haired woman vanishing into the snack room down the hall.
“Rosita!” I’d know that tacky hair anywhere. I take off running. Tulum’s cook can only be in the Cozumel Palace for one reason: she’s Morgan’s female partner, and she’s here to finish the job he started.
“Stop!” I yell, then nearly crash into a cart emerging from the room three doors down. The tiny Mayan maid pushing it jumps back into the room and slams the door, the devil take her cart.
Pumping into high gear, I sprint toward the snack room, round the corner, and skid to a stop. Sitting at the small formica-topped table with a diet Pepsi and a pack of Nabs, Rosita looks at me as if I’m three years old and not very bright.
“Señorita?” Her unplucked eyebrows rise toward an ugly hairdo that would take a miracle for even someone of my styling talents to fix. “Is there something you wanted?”
“What are you doing here?” I know.
I know.
Not very subtle. But if you’d spent the last day chained to a bed with threats of knives and dismemberment in your immediate future, you’d ditch subtlety, too.
“Visiting my mother. Carmita.” She indicates the woman beside her.
Chagrined, I notice a woman in the uniform of the Cozumel Palace maids sitting at the table. She looks old enough to be Juanita and Rosita’s mother. The older woman is much darker, one hundred percent Hispanic, I’d guess, while Rosita has the café au lait coloring of someone with mixed heritage.
Rosita’s companion is beautiful in the way of older women who age gracefully and well—no artifice, no makeup, no niptuck enhancements, just a sweet spirit that shines through her tears.
If Carmita is really the mother of the hard-as-nails Rosita, no wonder the poor woman is crying.
The least I can do is be nice to her. I introduce myself and extend my hand.
“It’s lovely to meet you.”
She grabs me and hangs on as if I’m a long lost friend. Then she proceeds to nod and pat my hand.
I guess that means she speaks no English. Or that she’s discovered that pretending not to know what some of the guests in this hotel are saying saves her all kinds of grief. Smart woman, Rosita’s mama.
Now what? I fumble in my pocket, come up with change, and get a 7-Up from the soda machine.
“Thirsty,” I say. I lift the can and take a long swig. Let them think I was running because I was practically dying of thirst. Let them think I’m an ugly American who likes to make a scene wherever I go. I don’t care. They don’t fool me and I probably don’t fool them.
“Enjoy your visit,” I say, all smiles, then stroll back down the hall determined to find out more about the mysterious Carmita and why on earth the surly cook, Rosita, followed us to Cozumel.
I’m about halfway down the hall when Mama and Fayrene streak out of the adjoining room, howling. As much as I’d like to think they’re hungry and racing to be first in the lunch buffet line downstairs, the one coherent word I pick up tells another story.
“Cannibals!” This from Fayrene, who streaks past me. The door to the fire stairwell bangs open and the last I see of her is the tail of her pea green housecoat disappearing into the bowels of the stairwell.
I grab Mama before she lopes past. But not before I peer down the hall toward the snack room to see how Rosita and her mother are reacting to this disturbance. They’re staying out of sight.
Is that a sign of innocence or of guilt? My money is on guilt. Listen, if I’d been messing around in the room of somebody with Mama’s known volatility, I’d be fully prepared for the ensuing hullabaloo. I’d sit tight with my diet Pepsi too and play blind and deaf.
“Mama, what’s going on?”
“This.” Mama hands me a voodoo doll riddled with pins in painful places.
Furthermore, the doll looks suspiciously like Mama, with raven hair and brightly colored caftan, Mama’s usual and most distinctive garb of choice. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a note attached that reads,
You’re next.
“You shouldn’t have touched it, Mama.”
“I’d like to know why not? If you think I’m going to keep this ugly thing sitting around staring at me, you’re wrong.”
“Uncle Charlie might be able to have prints lifted.”
“Well, listen to you. I do believe my daughter’s turning into a detective.”
“I’d as soon turn into a fashion disaster as spend the rest of my life chasing petty criminals and major monsters.”
“What you ought to do is chase Jack.” Leave it to Mama to find a way to bring my love life into the conversation. I believe she could do it from the front pew of Wildwood Baptist Church in the middle of a hellfire and damnation sermon.
“That subject’s off-limits.”
“Flitter, nothing’s off-limits with me. It comes with the territory.”
“What territory?”
“Motherhood, which you’d find out if you’d let that hunk of a husband back in your house.”
“Ex.”
“Not yet.”
I give up. But I’m not about to let on to Mama. It won’t do to let her see how easy it is to win every argument with me. Lovie says I’m a pushover, that I let people take advantage of me. I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. Really, I am. The only problem is, there are so many leaves to choose from, I can’t make up my mind which one to turn over first.
I lead Mama back into her room. “Listen, we’ve got to find out everything we can about a maid named Carmita.”
I quickly fill her in on the family reunion in the snack room.
“You’re going to tell Charlie?”
“Of course. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to sit back and do nothing.”
Mama gives me a wink and a high-five, then I pull out my cell phone to call Uncle Charlie. Within five minutes he’s in the room.
“Show me exactly where you found the voodoo doll, Ruby Nell.”
“Over there. Sitting on my bedside table putting the evil eye on me.”
“There’s no such thing as the evil eye, Mama.”
“That’s what you said about my inner animal, and look how that turned out.”
I have to agree, but I don’t tell Mama. Any further ammunition and she’s going to turn completely native on me.
“Any word from Jack?” I ask my uncle.
“No, but that’s a good thing.”
Meaning Jack can handle anything. Meaning Jack won’t call unless he’s surrounded by Morgan’s minions who plan to use him for target practice. Or he’s fending off cannibals with a hankering for a very tough bad boy.
I wish I could control my own hankering. Sounds like leaf number one to me. As in
turning over a new . . .
“Cal,” Uncle Charlie tells me, “I found out Lulu Farkle’s in charge of the seminar on ‘Makeup for the Final Journey.’ You need to go.”
“Holy cow, is that what they’re calling it?”
“Lulu’s from Arkansas,” Mama says, which explains everything.
We Southerners love our euphemisms. The dead never die. They
pass on, go to Glory Land, embark on a final journey, expire, head to the great tent revival in the sky.
Or as Mama is fond of engraving on tombstones at Everlasting Monuments in Mooreville, they
boogie on up to dance with the saints.
What can you expect? She’s fond of the TV show
, Dancing with the Stars.
“While you’re in the makeup seminar, I’d better find Fayrene,” Mama says. “She’s probably halfway to Mooreville by now.”
She grabs her purse and hustles out the door while I explain to Uncle Charlie about seeing Rosita and her so-called mama. Our plan is for him to follow that lead, plus others I’m sure I don’t even know about, and see if he can get fingerprints from the voodoo doll, while I waltz on down to the seminar.
First I zip into my room, refresh my makeup—listen, I’m not about to attend a seminar on beauty, even if it’s for the dearly departed, without looking my best—then face the mirror and do my best imitation of Rita Hayworth to Glenn Ford in the film noir classic,
Gilda.
“
If I’d been a ranch, they would’ve named me The Bar Nothing.
”
With a lethal weapon up my skirt and a recently adopted bad attitude, I head out the door to the elevator. The electronic ping announces its arrival, and I slip inside, grateful I’m alone for a few minutes. Leaning my head against the wall, I deep breathe as I glide downward.