The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club (17 page)

“Clothes and mail,” I said.

“That’s right.” Mother seemed suddenly less garrulous as she fiddled with a chunky gold watch on her wrist, one that would’ve looked eminently suitable on a middle-aged man with a comb-over, an open-necked polyester shirt, and a hairy chest covered with chains.

“That’s not all you’re going to do, is it? Because it seems a mite over the top to dress up in animal prints and the Wig That Ate Cleveland in order to clean out Bebe’s stuff for her cousins and fetch the mail for her attorneys.”

Annabelle had a brief coughing fit.

Cissy shifted in her chair. “Well, perhaps I’ve left out a few minor details.”

Much as I figured. “Do fill me in.”

“Well, if you must know, Sarah Lee’s sister Margery asked me to supervise the packing of Sarah’s personal belongings before they’re shipped off to South Dakota, which will afford the opportunity to compare crime scenes before Annabelle sends the housekeeping crew in to get things shipshape for the next person on the waiting list.”

I stuck a finger in my ear and wiggled, to make sure I’d heard correctly.

Did she say “compare crime scenes”?

Why didn’t she just throw on a trench coat, mash on a cigar, and call herself
Columbo?

Annabelle’s face reddened, as if she were no more pleased with Cissy’s use of those words than I was.

“Let me get this straight. You’re staying at Bebe Kent’s place,” I reiterated, “and you’ll be going through her things, ditto Sarah Lee Sewell’s, playing the part of a new Belle Meade denizen, using a crooked governor’s name, and trying to solve two alleged murders before church next Sunday morning, or until the blood tests on Mrs. Sewell return, whichever comes first. Have I got that right?”

The black wig bobbed. “I’d say that about covers it, yes.”

“And you’re really going along with this?” I turned on Annabelle. “You don’t mind her flitting around like Angela Lansbury dressed for Halloween and potentially disturbing the peace and quiet of this lovely community?”

Annabelle squirmed in her seat, fiddling with her hair again. “You know the situation, Andy. Like it or not, I’m at the mercy of your mother for the next few days. I feel a lot like Martha Stewart when she did her stint at Camp Cupcake.” She thrust her forearms toward me, wrists pressed together in invisible shackles. “Someone whip up a puff pastry stuffed with a nail file, and make it quick!”

Cissy chuckled.

I was not amused. “You’re both raging lunatics.”

This was beyond nuts. It was a freaking disaster waiting to happen. Was I the only one here who could see that?

“Won’t the Wednesday bridge players recognize you?” I threw the question at my mother in a last ditch attempt to derail this train.

“
You
didn’t even know who I was, so how will they?” She wrinkled her nose, and pushed at the bridge of her pointed specs. “The group’s not meeting this week, anyway, not after losing two players. And, believe me, I won’t seek them out. But if they see me around Belle Meade dressed like this”—fingers stacked with cubic zirconium fluttered from her head to her toes—“well, they won’t recognize me any more than you did. And the rest of the residents won’t give a lick who I am.”

“But people saw you at the reception . . .”

“Not decked out like a refugee from a Tunica Casino shuttle.” She primped at her frothy black beehive. “Besides, I didn’t stay in the dining hall long. I went looking for Sarah Lee right after I gave you the slip.”

“Dr. Finch and Patsy saw us both at Mrs. Sewell’s,” I reminded her.

Annabelle waved that one off. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. I’ll make something up about Miriam being a distant relative.”

“I’m wondering if they shouldn’t be in on it. The security guards, too. What if Mother gets in a jam”—but Annabelle made short work of my protest.

“If your mother wants to do this, she has to fly under the radar and not disrupt the staff or the residents. That’s part of the pact.”

“You worry too much, Andrea,” my mother said.

“Can you blame me?” I tried to stare her down, but I was no competition for her, not with those freakily magnified eyes.

Then it hit me. The Mother of All Wrenches to toss in their plan.

What if—and I’m talking a
Big
“what if”—there really was a killer?

Not that I believed it for a minute. Well, I highly doubted it, anyway. But, say, there was a one-in-a-million shot he existed and had gotten away with two murders so far; until “Miriam Ferguson” moved in and started acting like a very grown-up and badly dressed Nancy Drew, threatening to blow the lid on him.

All right, all right
, I told myself.
You have something there. Go with it. Stick ’em hard and burst their bubble!

I fixed a grim stare on my Mother. “Okay, Miss Marple, let’s assume for a moment that there’s a dangerous assassin running around Belle Meade, targeting lonely widows. What if he catches on to you, huh? You won’t have anyone watching your back. What if you get yourself in trouble and need assistance? Who will you turn to? Annabelle? Sam and Bob, the security guards from Mayberry?” I recalled how long it had taken the one to appear in his golf cart after being summoned to the Sewell house. “By the way, Barney and Andy might not see through your costume, but surely they have your plate numbers from the Lexus and Bentley down pat.”

“Which is why I drove Sandy’s Buick,” Mother said.

“
Who
,” I asked again, “will you have on your side during this ruse? Will the rent-a-cops be watching over you every minute?”

“Great balls of fire, no!” Annabelle declared. “They’ve got enough to do, what with sittin’ in the guardhouse and all.”

“So you”—I said pointedly, staring straight at her—“aim to play Robin to her Batman?”

“Me? Oh, no.” Annabelle threw back her head and chortled, before she very primly pointed at me with the silver pen. “You, Sparky.”

I begged to differ. “Now, wait just a cotton-picking minute.”

“Yes, sugar, that’s where we figured you’d fit in.” Mother eagerly scooted toward the edge of her chair, stretching a zebra print arm over the space between us to touch my fingers. “You’ll be my backup.”

“Your backup?” I nearly choked on the words.

“Oh, I get it. You’re not the one in charge, so you don’t want to play. Your father was right. You’re a stubborn cuss and something of a control freak, which you obviously inherited from his side of the family.” She withdrew to her chair and sat ramrod straight—something she’d learned at her Little Miss Manners lessons a generation before I—then she fussed with a thing-a-ma-bob on her earlobe that looked like a seashell awash in beads and glitter.

“I’m not being stubborn, Mother, really.” How could she not see how preposterous this was? What a horrible position she was putting me in, not to mention Annabelle? As for inheriting my control freak gene from Daddy’s side of the family . . .
puh-leeze
! “I just don’t see how I can support this charade. I won’t.”

“Oh, Andrea, don’t be like this. I can’t do this by myself, sugar. Every good detective needs a sidekick.”

“You’re not a good detective, Mother,” I reminded her. “You’re not even a bad one.”

“Please, don’t fight me on this. It’s something I must do, but I can’t do it alone. You’re here, aren’t you? That must account for something.”

“That I’m in need of a good therapist?”

“Oh, pish, don’t be silly. Haven’t I helped you out before, sweet pea? Wasn’t I there for you when you were playin’ dress-up after an old school chum got in trouble? I’m not asking for much, just a short couple of days.” She fluttered the spiderleg lashes on her distorted eyes. “Say you’ll be there for your poor, old mother who gave you life and hasn’t asked for much since.”

There she went again, using that break-my-heart drawl that had coerced me into accompanying her to Bebe’s service and the reception at Belle Meade. Even if the Wizard of Oz had given me a double dose of courage, it would’ve been impossible to tell her “no.”

I wanted to drop to the floor and cry, pound my fists.

Why did she always win?

“Great balls of fire! Tell her to count you in, Sparky, so she can stop pouting and we can get this over with.” Annabelle glanced at her watch. “We’ve got brunch at eleven, and I’d like to have Cissy . . . er, Miriam settled before the church shuttles start returnin’ and this place turns into Grand Central Station.”

Coercion was such an ugly thing to witness.

“Okay, what if I agree,” I said, coming frighteningly close to relenting. “What am I supposed to do, huh? Follow her around? Like that won’t look suspicious. Besides, maybe no one paid attention to Mother at the reception yesterday, but I got cornered by a woman named Mabel, who’d spot me in a pinch.”

“Mabel Pinkston?” Annabelle’s chin came up.

“Yes, and I mentioned I was at the reception with my mother, so won’t she be suspicious if suddenly my ‘distant relative’ moves in?”

“Why’s that suspicious?” she asked, but sounded nervous. “Look, we’ll make up a back story to cover your tracks. Something about Miriam being a poor relation from Arkansas whom your mother’s taken pity on. So she’s your honorary auntie.”

“Yes, your auntie,” Cissy chimed in.

Why weren’t they listening to me?

“What if someone decides to Google the name ‘Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson,’ discovers she was a Texas governor in the nineteen twenties and can’t be alive unless she’s been resurrected!” I screeched at them, sounding remarkably like a squawking seagull.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t be such a chicken,” Cissy said, drawing a lipstick from an oversized rhinestone-encrusted purse and touching up her burnt-umber lips. “It’s not like folks haven’t been named after dead people for centuries. Besides, every good Southern family has crazy aunts they hide in their attics. No one will think twice about where Miriam hails from.”

“But what about Mabel . . .”

“It’s all right, Andy,” Annabelle said, though I noted slim furrows of concern between her eyes. “She’s been with me for a long time. If she has any questions, she’ll come straight to me. Besides, she doesn’t live on the grounds. She rents some rooms over a garage in Garland, even though I offered her an apartment here.”

“An independent sort, is she?” Mother remarked.

Annabelle nodded, frowning. “She volunteers as much as she works, because she has to watch what she earns, else she’ll get kicked off Medicaid”—Annabelle tugged an earlobe, her distress obvious—“but that’s her choice, isn’t it? She won’t let me help her.”

“What does she do exactly?” I dared to inquire.

“She’s something of a floater, working wherever we need her, delivering meds from the pharmacy, taking books back and forth from our library, sometimes she carries meals to folks who are sick or bedridden.”

Speaking of the sick. “What about Dr. Finch and Patsy?” I continued my attack. “They definitely saw me at Sarah Lee Sewell’s house with Mother, so they’re aware of our connection . . . and the connection between Mother and Sarah Lee.”

“Hell’s bells, Andy, you’re making too much of things.” Annabelle tossed the pen down on her desk and leaned back in her chair. “So they saw you with Cissy? Whoop-de-do. That has nothing to do with Miriam Ferguson. Her, they won’t know from Eve. Besides, you’ll be working here, so you’ll have a reason to be on the grounds besides visiting your aunt.”

Wait a minute. Back up the bus.

Working? I absolutely hated the sound of that, dreading to hear what else these designing women had cooked up for me. I swallowed before I asked. “What kind of job did you have in mind for me?”

Without skipping a beat, Annabelle said, “I’ve arranged for you to volunteer in our library, since you’ve always been such a bookworm. It’s the perfect cover.” She picked up an envelope from her desk and shoved it at me, so I reached forward and took it. “Your key’s in there, and a name badge, which gives you staff privileges, like access to most everywhere on the grounds.”

“What’ll that entail, exactly?” I asked as I jammed the envelope into my purse.

“We have a well-stocked library, Andy, full of novels and nonfiction, as well as reference books and online computers.” Annabelle glanced at her watch and fidgeted. “Just show up and give Mildred a break now and then. I think you can handle that.”

“Of course, she can.” Mother added her two cents’ worth.

Wow. I was stunned. The pair of them should win the Nobel Sneak Prize for teamwork. I’d been outgunned, and I knew it.

So I figured I might as well grin and bear it.

“That takes care of that, huh?” I said, playing along. “You all have an answer to everything, don’t you? You think you’ve got this all figured out, except for one very important thing.”

“What thing, Andy?” Annabelle looked suspicious.

“What did we miss, darling?”

Heck, if I couldn’t beat them, I might as well do a running cannonball and jump right in.

“How about some very vital stuff, like do I get a fake name?” I commented. “And what about a disguise? Shouldn’t I have more of a cover than saying I’m Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson’s honorary niece? Can’t I call myself something like Arletha Lynn or Daisy Duke and dress in platform boots and have fake body piercings?”

“No!” they cried in unison.

I sank back in my chair, giving them as dirty a look as I could muster. “Geez, always the bridesmaid, aren’t I?”

“Does that mean we can count on you, Sparky?” Annabelle asked, wide-eyed, ready to get this over with.

I glanced at Mother, peering beyond her outlandish getup, and reading the hopefulness in her face, and I realized the choice wasn’t mine to make. “I’m in,” I said, much as it pained me.

Cissy’s lips shaped the words, “Thank you.”

I blushed and glanced down at the floor and my green-painted toes.

“Good, then it’s settled,” Annabelle said, slapping a palm on her desk as a judge would a gavel. “And just in the nick of time, because I’ve got some paperwork to finish before brunch. So if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

“Yes, we’ll get out of your hair,” I said, taking the supersized hint. “You ready, Moth . . . er, Aunt Miriam?”