Killer in Crinolines (6 page)

“And smothered pork chops and you only get it if I’m the one picking up the package at Waverly Farms.”

“That there’s blackmail pure and simple. Your mamma would have a stroke if she knew you were into blackmail. Besides, I’m fine as can be. Guess I could do with a doughnut.”

“You’ll have to get your own doughnut. Honey, you’re not yourself these days. You got everyone over at St. John’s Church in a tizzy, phones are ringing off the hook, Twitters are tweeting and it’s not even noon. If you meet up with Waynetta, you’ll fight like dogs over a bone, and your bail might get revoked and you’ll wind up in jail looking guiltier than ever.”

Chantilly eyed the bag and licked her lips. “I’m not sure I like you right now.”

“Give me the keys to the truck so I can pick up the package at Waverly Farms, I’ll give you the bag. No eating in the Beemer or KiKi will have a conniption.” I held the bag high. Chantilly squared her shoulders and did likewise with the truck keys. “On the count of three we swap,” I suggested.

Chantilly nodded; I counted and on
three
grabbed the keys and Chantilly grabbed the food. “You also have a pickup over at Icy’s fish house down by the docks,” Chantilly said around a mouthful of smothered pork chop, gravy coating her fingers. “Don’t mess it up,” she said between licks. “I’ll get fired for sure. My boss is on his last nerve with me.”

“Gee, imagine that.” I peeled Chantilly’s hat off her head deciding that since I had on a brown Gap T-shirt, the hat was all the UPS uniform I really needed. Gap, UPS—letters were letters, no one paid attention. I climbed in the truck and took off.

Sitting on a log and munching corn bread, Chantilly waved a bye-bye pork chop at me, then faded into the distance. Waverly Farms forked left and I followed the painted plank fence to the big white house, fountain splashing in the front. I killed the engine and jumped off the truck just like a real UPS person as Reese Waverly shouldered his rifle and took aim. Holy mother-of-pearl! And here I thought everyone loved UPS!

I considered diving under the truck to take cover but realized Mr. Got-bucks wasn’t aiming at me but a life-size cutout of Simon propped against the fence. A shot rang out, leaving a hole right smack in the middle of Simon’s forehead. There was dead and real dead. What did Simon do to have Reese Waverly taking potshots at him when he was already at the morgue?

“Pickup is around back,” Waynetta said from behind, making me jump. Gunshots will do that to a person. Waynetta had on a yellow cotton skirt, white blouse, pearls, and the tiara she’d won as Miss Peaches-and-Cream some years ago. I figured that her self-esteem must be in need a little boost after the wedding from hell, but this wasn’t exactly a picture of a grieving bride.

“I’ll get the package and be on my way,” I said.

Waynetta gave me the
I can do anything better than you
look that she did so well. It was the have and have-nots of the tiara world and a UPS driver clearly had not. “There’s more than one package,” Waynetta ordered. “Fact is I have a whole living room full. I’m returning all my wedding gifts. My fiancé was murdered; you probably read about it in the papers. Bessy May has done packed up all my gifts, took her a full day, and I do declare I’m plum worn out from the experience.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“That’s mighty neighborly of you.” Waynetta offered a wobbly smile, then sniffed and swiped at a nonexistent tear. “There was a truly lovely silver tea service I’ll miss something awful.”

I was referring to Simon dead as a bedpost down at Savannah’s House of Heavenly Slumber. Another shot rang out, the cutout of Simon swaying from the impact. “I take it your daddy wasn’t all that fond of Simon.”

The
I can do anything better
look turned to an
eat dirt and die
look. “I’ll have you know Daddy loved Simon. They were pals, he treated Simon like a son, and the reason Daddy’s shooting at his likeness is that he’s so mad at Simon for getting himself done in that he has to let off steam.” Waynetta’s eyes got all watery again but the wishing-me-dead part lingered.

Waynetta didn’t mourn the death of her almost husband and was doing her best to convince me that her daddy liked Simon when obviously he didn’t. Savannah-style mourning consisted of rounds of forty-year-old bourbon, Havana cigars, and a deviled egg or two, but not bullets in the head.

I waited for Waynetta to go inside but instead of heading for the back of the house to get the packages, I strolled out to Reese Waverly. Something was going on out at Waverly Farms and it wasn’t a lot of crying and carrying on.

“What?” Reese asked, not taking his eyes from the target.

I held up my handy-dandy DIAD signature thing. “I just need for you to sign that I’m picking up packages. I’m sorry for your loss.” That line got Waynetta talking and I hoped it would do the same thing now. “Yeah, some loss.” Reese neutered Simon with one pull of the trigger.

“Waynetta doesn’t seem all that upset,” I ventured.

Reese snarled, “She’s plenty upset. Cried and carried on something fierce all night long. She keeps her feelings to herself with strangers is all.” He scribbled on the little machine. “Packages are around back. Go collect them and be on you way.” This time Reese put a bullet clean through Simon’s heart.

Taking the hint, I scampered back to the truck, put it in gear, and headed for the rear entrance just as a red ’57 Chevy convertible crunched its way down the crushed-oyster-shell drive. Walker Boone? No one else I knew had that car. It wasn’t exactly a silver SUV like the rest of the country drove. What was that man doing here? The Waverly horse farm was third-generation Southern sophistication; Walker Boone was first-generation legit and at times even that was questionable. Boone had his share of snobby friends and even belonged to the country club, but he and Reese Waverly didn’t run in the same circles. They barely lived on the same planet. Yet here they were.

If Boone can drop in on me, I can eavesdrop on him, right? I got the truck out of sight, killed the engine, then wiggled between the magnolia tress in front to catch a peek. Boone shook Dead-eye’s hand, but it was more businesslike than good-old-boy friendly.

“You are some kind of busybody,” Waynetta said from behind me again. “I’m calling your supervisor right this very minute.”

“Thought I dropped something out of the truck is all. Thought it rolled into the bushes and I was looking for it.”

“Why are you spying on my daddy?” she hissed. “Are you spying on me, too?” She eyed my T-shirt. “Gap is not UPS. I know you. You’re that Summerside person. Your mamma’s running for city council and you own a consignment shop and got divorced from Hollis Beaumont. I should call the police; I bet you’re here trying to run off with all my stuff to sell at your place. You’re nothing but a thief and up to no good and causing me more problems than I already have.”

I pointed to Big Brown. “I
am
UPS and I don’t need any of your stuff to sell,” I lied on both accounts. I was faux UPS, Waynetta had first-rate stuff, and it would sell like hotcakes at the Fox. Since I was already busted I decided to push on. “You don’t seem all that upset about Simon being dead and I’m wondering why.”

“I most certainly am upset.” Waynetta put the back of her hand to her forehead drama-queen style, knocking her tiara kittywhumpus. “I’m in such a sorry state by all this nonsense and it’s frightful hot out here. I’m going inside and you better leave if you know what’s good for you, or else.”

With sweat sliding between my boobs and my hair stuck to my scalp, I loaded the truck. When I left a half hour later Boone’s car was still parked out front. Maybe he was doing some legal work for Waverly Farms, but Reese for sure had his own band of legal eagles, so what was with Boone?

I hung a left onto the two-lane. Whoever assigned the UPS delivery routes was determined to keep Chantilly out of town and doing pickups more than deliveries. Guess they figured that was one way to minimize problems. I took Lighthouse Road down to the weathered docks stretching far out into the river to accommodate tides. I parked Big Brown next to the clapboard sun-bleached building with “Icy’s Fish and Shrimp” scripted in faded blue on the side.

Two shrimp boats with huge black nets hanging loose bobbed at the end of the pier. Men who looked as if they did more than lift a pencil or peck a keyboard for a living hosed off decks and scrubbed. In May when the ocean was cool, shrimpers stayed out twelve days at a stretch to get their quota. Now that the water was warm they shrimped a few hours in the morning or late at night. Come fall they’d be back to long weeks onboard. It wasn’t that I knew so much about shrimp boats but I knew plenty about fresh shrimp stuffed with crab and wrapped in bacon.

Inside the building, refrigeration hummed and a man stood behind a display case, his back to me as he packed shrimp in ice. A chalkboard reading “Catch of the Day” sat to one side, and the smells of ocean hung heavy in the air. “UPS for a pickup,” I called out.

The man turned, his once-white apron wet and dirty. He was late fortyish, thinning hair, no smile, no shave, no bath, and built like a backhoe. He pulled five brown paper packages out of the display case. “Packed in dry ice. Don’t put ’em in the sun.”

I handed over the signature gizmo that looked lost in his huge hands and would smell like shrimp for a week. “You were at the Waverly wedding,” I said, making a little innocent conversation as he wrote. “I saw your truck. That sure was some affair. Have people talking for months. Bet you did the shrimp for the shrimp cocktail. Bet it was great.”

Shrimp shoved back the gizmo along with a look cold as the dead fish in the case. “Best mind your own business.”

I snapped up the packages and headed for the truck. What happened to my innocent conversation? First Pillsbury didn’t want to be recognized at the wedding and that I understood. But now Icy Graham—that was the name he scribbled on the DIAD device—had a nasty reaction to the situation. Why? Bad shrimp? Did he overcharge the bride? Maybe he ripped off the caterer? He could have knocked off the groom except I couldn’t imagine Icy in a peach bridesmaid dress or running with the likes of pretty-boy Simon. Then again, I didn’t know Simon very well and Icy could have had a female accomplice.

The DIAD was equipped with GPS but the back roads on Whitemarsh meandered all over the place like a drunken snake. I had a better chance of not getting lost if I headed back toward Waverly Farms and drove to town from there. The sun hovered at a blinding four o’clock angle, making me do the how-could-I-forget-my-sunglasses squint. The air smelled hot, still, swampy, and stagnant. Sea oats and grasses stood tall, not a puff of breeze anywhere.

I was tired and hungry and needed to have a little heart-to-heart with Chantilly. I couldn’t do this every day; I had a shop to run and keep out of Hollis’s money-grubbing clutches and a hall to paint and—

Something smacked the truck from behind, snapping my head forward and lurching the truck to the side. I fought the steering wheel, Big Brown swaying back and forth across the road, packages sliding everywhere, stuff crashing to the floor. I was hit again harder, this time packages flying through the air. The tires caught the side berm, dragging the truck off the road. I gripped the wheel for all I was worth, bracing myself, heading toward the water, cattails and oats smacking the windshield as I sank down, down, down into the murky, smelly Savannah swamp.

T
HE
engine sputtered and died. Water rushed in the open doorway, trapping me inside, inching up my legs, covering my knees, making me wish I was six-two for a little more breathing room instead of five-five.
Lord, get me out of this one and I’ll do something really nice,
I bargained. Not that God needed a bargain from me but I figured He was always up for a good laugh.

Big Brown settled onto the bottom, dropping into the primal goo, leaving me dry as a bone from the waist up. I made the sign of the cross and rolled my eyes skyward. “I thank you kindly, Sir, I truly do.”

Marsh bugs chirped, the stillness of the swamp closing in around me as if nothing life-threatening happened at all. Packages bobbed about like toys in a bathtub; a silver teapot swirled by, then dropped into the murkiness. A turtle swam by, then climbed onto one of the packages from Icy, the little flotilla drifting out the door into the marsh.

“Is everything okay down there?” bellowed a voice from the road.

“Just peachy,” I yelled back, not wanting anyone to see me in such a state. I was still shaking, I smelled like
sweat eau de swamp
, and my clothes stuck to me, showing off things best not exposed by accident and only by choice. A swamp encounter was not by choice. I scooched off my driving perch, the water creeping to just below the Gap on my shirt. Cautiously I stepped into the squishy bottom, now wet up to my boobs and instantly losing my flip-flops in the goosh. Pushing aside a growth of cattails I took a few steps, the muck sliding up between my toes. Something slithered against my leg and I bit back a screech. If it was a snake, the Lord himself would not be the only one walking on water.

I wiggled between more grasses, caught sight of the road, breathed a sigh of relief until I gazed up at a red Chevy convertible and Walker Boone beside it fit, trim, and perfect.

“Reagan?” Boone’s brows arched over his aviator sunglasses. He slid them off to get a better look no doubt, a smirky smile making its way across his lips. “I should have guessed.”

I poked my head around a clump of weedy things, keeping the rest of my transparency out of view. “No, you shouldn’t have guessed it was me out here. I don’t usually drive a UPS truck into a swamp.”

“But you wind up in some mighty fine messes and this time you outdid yourself. I came around the bend and saw the truck take a header into the water. What happened? Too used to driving KiKi’s Beemer?”

“I can drive a truck just fine, thank you very much.”

“Uh, Reagan, you got to get out of there.”

“So you can see my clothes stuck to me and give me a lecture on getting in shape and not eating junk food.” I parked my hands on my soggy hips. “I’ll tell you what, I happen to like junk food. It makes me happy, a lot happier than I am right now. I’m all about Snickers and doughnuts and I hate tofu. It’s like eating sponge. It’s gross.”

“Gator.”

“I hate alligator meat, too.”

“It’s not mutual. Alligator behind you. Run . . . or maybe swim.”

“Gator?”

“Now, Reagan.”

“My feet are stuck. It’s like quicksand in here.” I was so scared I couldn’t have moved anyway. I forced myself to look back at the alligator, is tail swaying gracefully back and forth, propelling his long, dark green sleek body toward me at a nice, steady pace. He sized me up, I could tell, thinking
one bite or two
, his mouth of seventy-five teeth opening. Seventy-five? Where did that come from? Amazing what you remember when facing the jaws of death.

Boone turned for his car.

“You’re leaving me! You can’t leave me. I’ll haunt you every night, I swear I will.”

He reached into the backseat, then jumped into the marsh, dropping to waist-high water, baseball bat in hand. He slogged toward me. “A bat!” I yelled. “You’re from the hood and you’re packing a bat? Where’s the gun, the heat? The AK-47.” I didn’t know what an AK-47 was, but it sounded powerful and mean and right now that was a good thing.

“I don’t shoot gators.”

“Just people?”

“On occasion.”

“For crying in a bucket, Boone, he wants to eat me!”

“Had that feeling a time or two myself.” Boone grabbed my arm, yanking me out of the goop like a toy, and whacked the gator on the snout. The gator arched up, flung his tail and looked pissed as all get-out. He opened his mouth wider and snapped at Boone, chasing us backward.

“Good God, you’re making him mad.”

“You got a better idea, Blondie?”

“He’s Southern. He’s a foodie.” I tore open one of Icy’s packages floating by and flung fistfuls of shrimp at the gator. He chomped at the food, all those teeth coming together in one loud ferocious bite after another.

“Well, I’ll be,” I said in complete astonishment. “It worked.”

Boone snagged me around the waist like a football and propelled us through the cattails to the bank. We stumbled up the muddy side, across sand and rocks, and scrambled into the car. Gators were fast as greased lightning on land but they couldn’t open car doors for diddly . . . yet. You never knew for sure about gators.

“Why aren’t you in your shop?” Boone said between pants, his shirt glued to finely sculpted six-pack abs. Bet the gator was female; no wonder she went after Boone. If she’d been screwed over by him in a divorce, she’d know better.

“Don’t call me Blondie, and why were you out at Waverly Farms?”

Boone plucked up a strand of my scraggly hair and slowly gave it a twirl, his breathing settling back to normal. “But you are blonde. On occasion that is. And you act blonde.”

I folded my arms over my chest hoping for a dollop of modesty with things poking out of a wet T-shirt that shouldn’t be poking. “Don’t you stereotype me, Walker Boone. You can get sued for that, you know, and you’re just trying to change the subject and get me ticked off. What about Reese? What are you up to?”

“Right now, saving your bacon.”

“Hey, I’m the one who threw the shrimp. That makes me saving
your
bacon, again, I might add.” I caught a glimpse of Big Brown all forlorn in the swamp and felt a huge tug of sadness. “Guess this means Chantilly will get fired for sure.”

Boone started the car but instead of speeding off down the road he turned to me and swiped a smear of mud from my chin. He touched a sore spot on my forehead and gave me a strange sort of look. “Are you okay? I mean are you really okay?”

Boone concerned about me? What? How’d that happen? After two years of torture and anguish this was sort of . . . sweet. “I’m okay; are you okay?” I picked a glob of weed from his shoulder and flung it back into the swamp.

“Been though worse.” My gaze met Boone’s for a split second, something dark and mysterious lurking there. He cleared his throat, then hit the gas. “Try not to drip on my seats, okay.”

I held up a wet arm. “What am I supposed to do? Will myself dry?”

“Sit on the floor. You smell like a swamp.”

“You’re no rose garden yourself.” And here we were leaving
sweet
in the dust and back to scum-sucking lawyer in less then thirty seconds flat.

• • •

“Well, it’s official,” Chantilly whined as she shuffled into the Prissy Fox the next morning munching a doughnut, coffee in the other hand.

I had the door open enjoying the morning cool before the city turned into a blast furnace. I happened to be in the midst of changing the display in the front bay window from a yellow cropped jacket and green capris to fall colors of denim and khaki and cute ankle boots. I needed something to get people thinking about fall and a new wardrobe. If I could figure out a way to get the temperature out of the nineties and into the seventies, that would help a ton.

Chantilly scratched Bruce Willis behind the ears, fed him a chunk of pastry, then plopped down on the little green stool. She parked her chin in her palm, elbow resting on the old door serving as a counter. She broke off a section of doughnut for me, then polished off the rest. “UPS fired my sorry behind and it’s all because of a few broken dishes and packages of shrimp. Everything was insured; I don’t know what all the fuss is about.” She licked the glaze from her fingers one by one. “How could this happen? Where’s the understanding, the compassion? I’m an overwrought woman here.”

“Their package truck and delivery acquisition information device is in the middle of a swamp.”

“There is that. I suppose I’ll just have to work here at the Fox.” When I didn’t reply in the affirmative, Chantilly peered at me out of the corner of her eyes. “You owe me, you know. You were the one who drove into the water.”

“I was rammed off that road from behind,” I offered in my own defense and added a navy jacket to the display.

“Well,
I
never get run into a swamp and neither does any other driver I know. A flat tire now and then and maybe a parking ticket but never this. What did you go and do?”

“I picked up packages, period.” I made a cross over my heart in promise style and left off the part about interrogating Reese, infuriating Waynetta, and ticking off Icy, all pretty much Reagan style.

“Well, Lord be praised!” Auntie KiKi hurried through the front door. She threw her arms around my neck. “You could have been eaten by a gator. Thank the saints in heaven Walker Boone came along when he did and saved you. I got a tweet this morning from Elsie Abbott.”

“Since when do you tweet?”

“Couldn’t let the Abbott sisters outdo me now, could I. I’d be kicked off the kudzu vine as a has-been.” Kiki pulled out her iPhone, touched the screen, and read,
“FTW. Reagan in Gray’s Creek with gator and Boone. Delish. Who to eat what.”

“What were the Abbotts doing on Whitemarsh? And for your information Boone did not save me. And what in the world is
FTW
.”

KiKi and Chantilly exchanged exasperated looks. “
For the win
, honey,” KiKi said as if teaching me how to conjugate verbs like she did in the fourth grade. “It’s my tweet kicks your tweet right in the patoot.”

“You started all this.” I glared at Chantilly, shaking my finger at her. “No one’s going to get away with anything with this tweet stuff going on.”

“Like you and Boone together?” Chantilly grinned.

“He insisted I sit on the floor so I wouldn’t drip all over his car and he said I smelled. Guess the sisters missed that part.” I didn’t have a phone. My mode of transportation when I wasn’t mooching KiKi’s Beemer was the Chatham Area Transit system and the only tweets I got were from birds outside my window.

KiKi continued, “My guess is the sisters were out at Bonaventure for a wake since August seems to be a right popular month for people dying. My guess is folks are just plum tired of the heat around here and want to escape any way they can. Elsie and AnnieFritz went over to Basil’s Deli out that way for one of those margarita wraps. They probably got lost in the back roads, they usually do that too, and happened to see Boone rescuing you in the swamp.”

I started to protest the rescue bit again but got distracted by Percy Damon standing outside on my sidewalk. He had on a blue suit with high-water pants, white starched shirt, red tie, and sweat slithering down his cheek. By noon he’d look like a drowned flag. He’d talk to my would-be customers. They’d listen, then run off as if chased by evil spirits. I said to Chantilly, “What’s going on out there?”

Chantilly’s gaze followed my pointing. She closed her eyes for a moment and massaged her forehead. “Percy said if he has to question every single person in Savannah to prove I’m innocent, he’d do that very thing. He’s really into my case. I mentioned I was working here and he figured the real killer might show up to find out what I know. That he’d return to the scene of the crime.”

“The Fox isn’t the scene of any crime, and I have few enough customers as it is without Percy scaring people off with murder questions. No one’s going to give up vital information out there in the open air on a sidewalk. They could be implicated, and if they do know anything, they’ll clam up all the more so as not to get involved. What is he thinking?”

“He’s trying to be helpful.”

Another lady in a nice dress with a Coach bag over her shoulder hightailed it back down my sidewalk. A scream inched up my throat but that wouldn’t do much to attract customers either. “What I want to know is why on earth did you get Percy as your lawyer in the first place? He’s a nice kid and all but has no experience. UPS pays fine. You should have savings enough to find better representation.”

“I’ll have you know that my hiring Percy has been good for his self-esteem. He wasn’t the most liked kid in school with his classmates teasing him about his name, his red hair, and being short. He worked his way through law school doing odd jobs and it took him three tries to pass the bar.”

“You hired him because you feel sorry for him?” KiKi said. “Honey, invite him to dinner or sit next to him at church or fix him up with a hot date for Saturday night. Don’t put your life in his hands.”

Chantilly rolled her shoulders in defeat. “I’m sort of broke after the cruise and the down payment on the condo. Percy’s right cheap. I’m afraid he’ll have to do.”