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BY THE TIME WE GOT back to Aunt Ida Belle's house, my feet were aching. I kicked off my shoes and slipped on a pair of pink satin bedroom slippers. The temptation to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head was hard to resist, but I knew Aunt Ida Belle was stewing. I made my way out to the living room. Aunt Ida Belle needed comfort. She needed company. She needed commiseration.
“You need a beer.” Fortune set a bottle in front of her. “It’ll help you think.”
Aunt Ida Belle pushed it away. “I don’t want to think.”
Fortune pushed the bottle back toward her. “Then it will help you relax.”
Honestly. She sounded like a snake oil saleswoman. “Herbal tea might be a better alternative.” I sat beside her. “Let’s remember that Gertie hasn’t left yet. Maybe she’s still in the planning phase, or it’s just a day dream and she’ll snap out of it.”
“Gertie’s impulsive,” Fortune said.
“Impulsive and stupid are too different things,” I countered.
Aunt Ida Belle punched a throw pillow. “That’s just it, Gertie isn’t stupid. Stubborn, yes. Clueless at times, yes. But she’s never been stupid before, and especially not over a man.” She threw the pillow against the far wall. “But this time something else is going on.”
“Then you need to stop her.” I snapped my fingers. “I know. Why don’t we stage an intervention?
I saw a look pass between Aunt Ida Belle and Fortune but I couldn’t decipher it. “What? Why is that a bad idea?”
“It’s not that it’s a bad idea,” Fortune said. “It’s just that Gertie’s not like most people.”
This much I’d figured out already.
“What Fortune means is that when Gertie gets like this, she’s gonna do what she’s gonna do, and there’s no stopping her.”
We sat in an uncomfortable silence for several torturous minutes. “I’ll just put a pot of tea on then,” I stood. “What do you say, Aunt Ida Belle?”
Her answer was a moan, or a groan, I’m not sure which. But I took it for a yes. I prepped the china cups, adding a plate of lady fingers to the tray. Hopefully a soothing cup of tea would work restorative wonders on her bruised heart. A few minutes later I carried the tray in and looked around the empty room. Where had they gone? “Fortune?” I called out. There was no answer. “Aunt Ida Belle?”
I blew out a long, and I’ll admit, exasperated breath. These women were wonderful human beings but absolutely unlike any other women I’d ever known. Spending time with them was akin to socializing on an alien planet. I set the tea tray on the coffee table. My great-aunt’s beer sat untouched. I didn’t see Fortune’s bottle so she couldn’t have gone far.
She hadn’t.
I found her sitting on the front steps. “May I?”
She waved her hand at the empty space beside her. “Be my guest.”
I sat and arranged my skirt to cover my knees. “I thought maybe you and Aunt Ida Belle had taken off after Gertie.”
Fortune shook her head. “I suggested that very thing but Ida Belle said she wanted to take a nap.”
“Oh.” I hardly knew what to say to that. My aunt wasn’t the napping kind.
“Exactly. That tells you how bad this is.” She took a long swig of beer. “I’ve never seen Gertie acting this crazy before either.”
“What do you suggest we do?” I had no ideas of my own.
She shifted so that she sat facing me. “I’m glad you asked. I propose we team up and get to the bottom of this.”
“What if this is what Gertie really wants? What if it’s what makes her happy? I’m not sure it’s our place to stand between her and happiness.”
“I’m not saying that we keep her from dating Bull if that’s what she wants,” Fortune said. “But she needs to slow down this runaway train. Leaving town is extreme, especially since she’s just met this guy.”
I decided to play devil’s advocate. “Sometimes it doesn’t take long to decide you’re really attracted to someone. How long did it take you and Carter to recognize there was something between you?”
“Twice the time it took you and Agent Mayeux,” she shot back. “Look, I’m not good at this kind of touchy-feely girl talk. No one wants Gertie to be unhappy. It’s just that we don’t think she should run off and start a new life without thinking it through.”
It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea where Gertie and Bull were headed. “All this fuss isn’t because she’s moving to Mudbug, is it?”
“Try Los Angeles.”
My eyes widened. Gertie in Los Angeles? Oh, dear.
“Exactly. It’s a bit of an extreme move, isn’t it?”
From the Louisiana bayou to the City of Angels? I nodded. “It definitely is.”
“I know you haven’t been here long, Stephanie, and I haven’t either for that matter. But I do know your aunt and she would never stand in the way of what was good for Gertie. Even if it meant Gertie leaving town. Ida Belle’s a smart woman and she’s known Gertie her whole life. If she feels that this is wrong, it likely is.”
I took her point. “If I’ve figured out anything since I’ve arrived, it’s that Gertie and Ida Belle are true friends,” I said. I’d also figured out that Fortune wasn’t exactly who she said she was, but I knew Aunt Ida Belle trusted her implicitly. That held sway with me. But what did she see in Fortune that I didn’t? Maybe working with her to sort out this Gertie thing would help me get to know the real Fortune. “Okay, I’m in. I’ll help however I can.”
“Good.” Fortune stood and extended a hand. I got to my feet and we shook hands, a new alliance formed through our mutual caring for Aunt Ida Belle and Gertie.
I felt a surge of certainty that with a bit of delicate handling, we could bring some sanity to the situation. “How do you suggest we start?”
“With breaking and entering.”
Of course. Why didn’t I see that coming?
***
WE ARRIVED IN MUDBUG just about the time my stomach started to growl. “Is there any place to eat here?” I looked around as Fortune guided her Jeep down the town’s main street. “Do they have the equivalent of Francine’s Diner here?”
“Don’t they wish.” Fortune swung into a parking space. “There’s a place called Spanky’s down at the end of this street. My guess is that they’ll know of Bull in there.”
My eyebrow’s rose. “Spanky’s?” If she thought I was going to hang out in a strip joint, on a Sunday no less, she was crazy. I told her so.
“Spanky’s isn’t a strip club. It’s a diner. The owner is a cantankerous old guy named Spanky, but he won’t be there today. He takes Sundays off.”
“How do you know all of this?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Recon comes naturally to me.”
I decided not to ask. If she and I were going to be successful in working together, I was going to have to let some things slide.
“My source told me—”
Make that a lot of things.
“—that Gertie and Bull were heading in to New Orleans for the day,” Fortune continued. “That gives us plenty of time to do what we came to do.”
“Which is?”
“You’re heading to Spanky’s to grab a bite to eat. While you’re there, discreetly ask about Bull. See what you can find out. Just leave Gertie’s name out of it. Can you handle that?”
“Of course,” I lied. “I’ll just sashay in there, make up a story out of thin air, and start gathering information. Piece of cake.” Unfortunately, my words came out a bit more sarcastic than I meant for them to. I really needed to do better if we were going to work together. “What about breaking and entering? When are we doing that part?”
“We’re not. I am.” Her expression was slightly apologetic. “No offense, but you’ll slow me down. Besides, you’re not dressed for it.” She gave my kitten heeled sandals a pointed look. “Not very practical if we need to do some running.”
I looked down. She was right. I’d chosen these sandals because they were white and it was almost September. Labor Day would be upon us soon and I’d have to put them away until after Memorial Day. “You don’t need a look-out?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m heading over to the boarding house where Bull has a room. You’d look conspicuous standing around in your Sunday finest.”
And so it was settled. Fortune drove off, promising to be back within the hour. I headed for Spanky’s, determined to uncover information to share with Fortune.
***
THE TIME THAT I SPENT at Spanky’s hole in the wall, for I wouldn’t call it a diner, was the longest twenty minutes of my life. From the moment I pushed open the door and stepped in, I felt more out of place than I could ever remember feeling before. One quick look around the darkened interior was all I needed to see to know that I’d much rather have been breaking into Bull’s lodging. Still, however uncomfortable I was, I had a job to do.
I perched on a barstool at the counter. The bar top was sticky, so I kept my hands in my lap. The establishment was more than half full, and the clientele predominantly male. I didn’t have to wait long before the bartender made his way over to me.
“Well, lookee here, ain’t you prim and proper?”
My eyebrows rose. “You know who I am?”
His forehead wrinkled into a frown. “Huh?”
My cheeks flamed as I realized that he didn’t recognize me, he was mocking me. “I’d like a lemonade please.”
In short order he set a glass of something yellow in front of me. There was no way I was willing to add my fingerprints to the several dozen that adorned the glass, however, so I didn’t reach for it. My mind raced to think of a way to get the information I’d come for so I could get out of there. “I was hoping you could help me,” I said to the bartender. “I’m looking for a Mr. Dozer.”
He wiped the counter but didn’t raise his eyes to meet mine. “Bull?”
“Yes, that’s right. Do you know him?” I waited for an answer but none came so I plunged ahead. “I recently attended a wedding where things got a bit out of hand.” A true understatement considering the amount of blood that had been shed. “Mr. Dozer was kind enough to assist us in keeping order. I wanted to thank him.”
“Why didn’t you thank him then?”
How to answer this? Because the bride’s father had been shot dead minutes before the ceremony, and three people, including my great-aunt had been kidnapped, and we went chasing after them. There was just no way to make that sound coherent. “Things got hectic, I’m afraid. Would you be so kind as to tell me where he’s employed so I can drop by tomorrow and thank him in person?”
The bartender threw back his head and laughed. A few of the other patrons at the bar snickered. “Bull, work?” He shook his head. “You must have the wrong guy. His full-time job is to avoid work.”
“Oh.” That certainly took the wind out of my sails. It had never occurred to me that Bull was retired. I didn’t know his precise age but he didn’t look much over fifty, fifty-five tops. Had Gertie mentioned something about his line of work? I strained to remember but I couldn’t come up with anything definitive. Embarrassing as it was, I had to admit that when Gertie began to gush about Bull, I hadn’t listened as carefully as I might have.
I thanked the bartender, laid a five-dollar bill next to my untouched lemonade, and hurried out into the sunshine to wait for Fortune. Hopefully, she’d been more successful than I had, which shouldn’t be difficult considering that I’d come up with exactly nothing.
I knew I was early and would have time to kill before Fortune returned for me, but only a few moments after I’d reached our designated meeting spot, I heard her Jeep careen around a corner. With eyes wide, I watched as she came to a screeching stop in front of me.
“Get in,” she ordered.
I used both hands to wave away the dust she’d kicked up by tearing down the street like that. “What on earth is going on?”
“Just get a move on,” she barked, glancing over her shoulder. “We don’t have time to lollygag.”
Her words propelled me into action. I rushed around to the passenger seat and jumped in. My bum was barely in the seat before she gunned the engine and we tore off. I fumbled for my seat belt and clicked it into place before I shifted in my seat to face her. “Good heavens, Fortune, why are you driving like the devil’s chasing us?”
She ignored my question for a good half of the trip. I held my tongue until she dropped her speed to a mere twenty miles over the speed limit. “Did you find out anything?” I asked.
She glanced over at me and nodded. “Bull’s trouble.”
This didn’t entirely surprise me. “How much trouble?”
“Plenty,” she replied. “I think he’s planning to kill Gertie.”