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“MARRY HIM?”
“Well, not legally,” Gertie said. “But we’re sure going to make it look legit.” She nodded toward my beer and got up from the sofa. “You have any more of those around?”
“In the fridge.”
Ida Belle got up as well and followed Gertie into the kitchen. I trailed after them. Gertie took out two beers and handed one to Ida Belle.
After popping the top, Gertie held up her beer in a toast. “To becoming Mrs. Cliff Dow.” She and Ida Belle tapped their beers together.
“Aren’t we making it a little more complicated than it need be?” I asked. “We’ll go get the jewelry box and pendant. The pawn shop owner can give a description of Cliff as the one who brought it in. That would be enough evidence for Carter to charge him. Once he searches Cliff’s house, he’ll see all the evidence of past crimes. This guy could be sent away for a long time. And Carter gets a good bust.”
“And what fun would that be?” Ida Belle asked. “Cliff will probably take a plea deal and none of those women will get the satisfaction of seeing him go down. We want to make a big deal of exposing this guy to all the women in town. Shame him publicly.”
“We have the names and addresses of some of the other women he’s contacted,” Gertie added. “We’re thinking that maybe some of them would like to be my wedding guests and add to Cliff’s public humiliation.”
“And after we let some of his victims have at him,” Ida Belle said, “then we’ll turn him over to Carter.”
“You’re thinking of actually having a wedding?”
“The biggest and best Sinful has ever seen,” Gertie said. “And Marie wants to pay for it. She said she can’t think of a better way to spend some of her lousy dead husband’s money than exposing Cliff for the gold digger he is. She wants to do it for Marge, to make up for not putting her letter in a safe place.”
“I wish Marge could be there for it,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie tapped her bottle to Ida Belle’s. “I have a feeling she’ll be there in spirit.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and took a swallow of beer.
“You don’t look excited,” Gertie said, joining me at the table.
“We just had your funeral, and that didn’t go so well.”
Gertie dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “We’ll make up for a dud funeral with a fun wedding. I think I can get The Divas to perform again.”
The Divas from Down Under was a group of female impersonators from New Orleans. They helped save the day during Gertie’s fake funeral by picking up old ladies and carrying them outside the rec center to avoid being blown up. They also belted out a mean rendition of “Like a Virgin,” Gertie’s funeral dirge.
“And how are you going to get Cliff to ask you to marry him?”
“By making myself financially irresistible, of course.”
I looked over at Ida Belle who was leaning against the counter sipping her beer. “I can’t believe you’re okay with this.”
“Okay with it? I thought of it,” she said, smiling. “I’d marry him myself, but I gave a vow to Walter that I’d never marry any man but him. Even though this is going to be a fake wedding, it just wouldn’t seem right.”
“You in?” Gertie asked. “You can be one of my best ladies.”
“Not that I have much wedding experience, but I think men are the ones who get a best man.”
“Sinful Ladies can have any kind of damn wedding they want,” Ida Belle said indignantly. “And if she wants to have a best lady up there, she can have a best lady. Hell, I’ll be one as well and she’ll have two best ladies.”
I shrugged at Gertie. “Why not? I gave the eulogy for your fake funeral while you were still alive, I guess I can be the best lady at your fake wedding.”
* * * * *
THE NEXT DAY WE WENT to retrieve Marie’s jewelry box from a pawn shop in Westlake, a small town of about fifteen thousand residents. The cashier sold it to us for fifty bucks, but said he couldn’t give up the name and description of the man who brought it in. I decided to nudge him a bit, and complimented his middle-aged, doughy body by asking if he worked out a lot.
He licked his lips. “I try not to let myself go.”
Well, you failed. You might see Ryan Reynolds staring back at you in your bathroom mirror, but all my eyes are seeing is the Pillsbury Doughboy’s separated-at-birth twin.
Yeah, I didn’t say that.
“You must be benching at least two hundred,” was what I really said. And I took a breath as if I had to hold myself back from tearing my clothes off and letting him have his way with me.
“Three,” he responded, flexing his upper arm while trying to get the lethargic hula girl to dance.
“Oh my,” Gertie said, fanning herself and getting in the act. “You Westlake men make the Sinful men look like little girls. Are you sure you can’t give us the name and description of the man who brought this jewelry box in?”
His face took on a pained expression, especially when I licked my lips and smacked them at him. “I wish I could, but...”
Ida Belle was having none of it. She opened her purse, slammed her handgun down on the counter and stared at him with her steely blue eyes.
Without saying a word, Doughboy reached under the counter and pulled out a folder, leafing through the papers until he found the one he was looking for. He placed it on the counter. John Summers was the name on the license, but it was definitely Cliff, albeit with a phony beard. “He had some rings with him, too, but he said my offer was too low and that he’d hold onto them awhile.”
“And a locket,” I said. “Did he have a locket?”
Doughboy shrugged. “Yeah, I think he had one of those.”
Ida Belle shoved her gun back in her purse, picked up the jewelry box and we headed out.
“I suppose you won’t consider having a beer with me sometime,” Doughboy called out as I slammed the door shut.
When we got back to my Jeep we checked the inside lining and found the letter.
“He must have a place where he stores the more expensive stuff like the gold coins and jewelry,” Ida Belle said. “Probably a storage unit around here somewhere.”
Gertie held up the letter. “But at least she gets back what’s important to her.”
I felt a knot in my stomach. “No, we have to get that pendant back to her. Marge gave it to her. She has to get it back.”
“What’s with you and the pendant?” Gertie asked.
I turned over the engine. “I don’t know. It just feels important.”
Gertie glanced at Ida Belle in the backseat, then sighed. “We’ll try to get it back, then.”
While in Westlake we decided to look up several of the women Cliff had contacted in the area. I was so ready to bring this guy to justice after talking with the first few of his victims. Each one told the same story. They had fallen for his charms and his “manly prowess.” They each followed a similar pattern: After a “chance meeting” he would treat them to dinners and shower them with gifts. But soon after he started seeing them he would tell them stories of how his money had suddenly become unavailable due to some investment he couldn’t pass up. They all believed this to be a temporary situation, so they were more than happy to lend Cliff money to tide him over until his financial situation became more fluid. Of course, none of them had documentation that these were loans. Getting their money back was going to be a difficult task.
Our list also included five names of women who lived in Mudbug, twenty miles to the north of Westlake, so we headed there next.
The first three Mudbug victims gave us a laundry list of grievances, interspersed with intimate details of their brief romances with “Charles,” the name Cliff had used in Mudbug.
Victim number four slammed the door shut in our faces when we mentioned his name. After listening to more than three hours of nine women tell the same stories of flirtations, loans and finally, abandonment, we were exhausted. We finally arrived at the home of Mudbug victim number five, 80-year-old Clotille Reneau. A real pistol. Literally. After knocking on her door and announcing we were there to talk to her about Charles, Clotille flung open the door, whipped out a .45 from the pocket of her Bermuda shorts and shouted, “Where is he?”
What was it about old ladies in Louisiana and handguns?
“I asked you a question, you young punk,” Clotille said, poking Gertie with her cane and almost knocking her into the rose bushes.
After Ida Belle calmed her down with assurances we were on her side, we learned that Clotille was out to “Charles” to the tune of $10,000.
“The money was for my wedding ring,” Clotille said. “Can you believe that? He said his accountant was wiring him some money, but that he wouldn’t be able to get it in time for our ceremony. So I gave it to him. And then, guess what? A day before we got hitched I found him locking lips with Bernadette LaBelle. So I kicked him to the curb.”
I recalled the name. A page with Bernadette’s info had been included in Cliff’s Mudbug file, but it was folded over. I had just assumed that Cliff had decided against pursuing her.
Clotille never invited us inside. She chose instead to rant about “the stinking con artist” from her doorway.
Ida Belle explained that we would try to get her money returned.
“I want interest!” she snarled, waving the gun at Ida Belle. “And you tell that snake that he owes me thirty-five dollars for all those pairs of edible underwear he made me buy! Those Candy Pants dissolved the first time I put ‘em in the wash!”
We told Clotille we’d be in contact with her and then staggered back to the Jeep, tired from a day of intel gathering.
“I’m going to have to scrub my brain with bleach to get some of their stories out of my head,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie nodded. “Yeah, I could have gone without hearing about Cliff’s edible underwear.”
One thing had me puzzled. “What exactly did that one woman in Westlake say she and Cliff did with Ben Gay and feathers?”
“You don’t want to know,” Ida Belle said. “These women must have been desperate for companionship to find that con artist desirable.”
Gertie fastened her seat belt. “I say we buy a bottle of the finest whiskey for sale in Mudbug, go back to my house, heat up some leftovers and pop Magic Mike into the Blueray. I need a hard body to replace the images of wrinkled old Cliff with his feathers and edible underwear in my mind.”
I started the engine. “I was hoping we could make one more stop. Clotille mentioned the name of Bernadette LaBelle. I thought she was someone Cliff decided against pursuing, but apparently she and Cliff had also been an item.”
Gertie sighed. “Do we have to?”
“Fortune’s right,” Ida Belle said. “We’re already in Mudbug. We might as well talk to her.”
“Fine. But if she starts talking about nibbling on his Candy Pants, I’m out of there.”
Bernadette lived one block over, her house overlooking the bayou, with a well-attended rose garden out front and an SUV sitting in her driveway. Not well off, but not poor either. Cliff probably saw her as spending change. She had just enough for him to get a few free meals and maybe a “loan” worth a couple thousand dollars.
Gertie knocked on the door and after a minute, Bernadette answered.
Early seventies, about five-foot-four. Short, white hair. Wearing jeans and a Disney World T-shirt. Threat Level: Low.
And it just made my blood boil. She could have been my grandmother. That is, what I imagined my grandmother to look like. I’d never known either of them as they both died before I was born.
“Hello,” Bernadette croaked. It appeared we had caught her napping. She cleared her throat and asked, “May I help you?”
Ida Belle told her we were there to speak with her about “Charles Westin.”
She hesitated to answer for a few seconds, as if weighing her answer carefully. “I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know a Charles Westin. But you have a good day.”
She closed the door. I wasn’t surprised she denied knowing him. She probably didn’t want anyone else to know she was so gullible.
“I’m going to slip my name and number under your door,” Gertie said, “in case you remember him. He’s a con artist, Bernadette, and you weren’t the only victim, so you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it. We haven’t gone to the police, but we do intend to make him pay.”
Gertie pulled a small notebook and pen from her purse and began writing her information on it when the door opened again. This time Bernadette motioned us to come inside. “Maybe we’d better have some tea.”
Once we settled in her living room with cups of tea, we shared all we had learned with Bernadette. With each new revelation about the man she knew as Charles, she would take a deep breath and shake her head. Her voice trembled as she shared her story of how Charles had made off with half of her bank account. Luckily, she had several mutual funds that he wasn’t able to touch, or she’d be looking at a very bleak future. She said the worst part was that she fell in love with him and that she thought he loved her too.
“I lost my husband three years ago,” she said. “I never thought I could love another man and then Charles stepped into my life.” She took a deep breath and wiped at her eyes. Gertie reached for a tissue box on the coffee table and offered her one. Bernadette shook her head. “To be honest, I’m all cried out. Now I’m just drained and embarrassed. I’ve been so lonely the past three years that I guess I just ignored the warning signs about Charles.”
“Did you go to the police?” Gertie asked.
“Heavens no,” she said. “I didn’t want my children to find out how stupid I was. I just took it as a $30,000 lesson. At my age, it was probably just wishful thinking that a man would want me.”
She covered her face with her hands. “No, I refuse to cry.”
Gertie got up and sat next to her and placed her arm around her. “It’s not wishful thinking,” Gertie said. “You just ran into the wrong man, that’s all.”
Bernadette excused herself to go get more tea. We heard her crying softly in the kitchen. A table crowded with photographs caught my attention and I walked over to take a closer look. Many of them featured a much-younger Bernadette in a veterinarian’s outfit tending to wild animals. One showed her with a young woman also in a veterinarian outfit, kneeling together beside a bear that had been subdued. A lump formed in my throat as I scanned various pictures of a young, beaming Bernadette, decked out in a white wedding dress, holding onto a handsome man standing proud in his tuxedo.
I turned to Ida Belle and Gertie. “Someone’s going to have to keep me from killing this guy.”
“Damn straight.” Gertie dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
Bernadette came back into the living room with another pot of tea. She noticed me checking out her photographs.
“I see you discovered Memory Lane,” she said, refilling our cups. “My daughter followed my footsteps and became a veterinarian, specializing in exotic animals.”
“Are these your sons?” I pointed to a photo of a younger Bernadette with two teenage sons, recreating a see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil pose. Bernadette was speak no evil and had her hand over her mouth. The son portraying see no evil held both hands over his eyes. One of his hands was bandaged.
She nodded and smiled. “Yes, Bobby and Sam. Poor Sam burned his hand while trying to get one of those homemade volcanoes to work.”
“That must have hurt.”
She nodded. “He felt self-conscious about the scar until I convinced him it looked like the state of Florida. After that he thought it was cool.” She laughed and then sighed. “What a mess I got myself into.”
“We’re going to help everyone get their revenge on this guy,” Ida Belle said. “And hopefully we can get your money returned. Then after that, he’ll be the police’s problem.”
Bernadette sat and took a sip of tea. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping someone you don’t even know?”
Ida Belle shrugged. “We’re Sinful Ladies. It’s what we do.”
“What she means is, we’re nosy old broads who love an adventure,” Gertie added, clapping.
Bernadette looked over at me. “And you?”
I’m bored half out of my mind polishing the silver of a great-aunt I’m not really related to because I’m addicted to adventure because I’m constantly trying to prove I’m as good as my supercritical dead father who was a legend at the CIA.
I shrugged. “Someone has to make sure these two don’t get themselves killed.”