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MARGE OPENED THE DOOR and rushed outside. Ida Belle was holding Gertie back. Celia was planted in the middle of her yard waving the bat.
“You want to use that thing?” Gertie yelled in her Granny Magoo “old lady” voice. “Come on over here and we’ll see how far you get!”
“You put that thing down, Celia,” Marge yelled.
Celia turned toward her. “Where the hell did you come from? You tell your granny to stay out of our trash! It’s undignified and an invasion of privacy!”
“You know what’s undignified?” Gertie asked. She reached into Celia’s trashcan and held up a magazine. “Your daddy salivating over Miss January!” She opened the magazine and let the foldout centerfold fall open to its three-page length.
Celia’s mouth dropped. Marge couldn’t help herself. She broke out in laughter.
“That is not my father’s magazine!” Celia sputtered. “You put that in there, you old goat.” She turned to Marge. “You tell your grandma and her old-as-dirt friend to move along, or else.”
Marge stopped laughing. She folded her arms and glared at Celia. “Or else, what?”
“Are you threatening me?” Gertie yelled.
“Okay, why don’t we all just take a breath,” Ida Belle said, doing a decent job as Granny Boudreaux. “My support hose are killing me. And I do mean that literally. Why don’t we just call it a day?”
“You know what happens to young ladies who threaten old ladies?” Gertie dropped the magazine and reached into the trash again. She yanked out a liquor bottle and threw it at Celia, then grabbed what looked like an arm from the trash can and waved it in the air.
What the hell? Marge thought.
“Need a hand?” Gertie called out, laughing.
Celia dropped the bat and picked up a hose lying in the yard. Marge sighed. It was time for this party to end. She ran to Bonnie’s gate just as Celia turned on the water.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Marge yelled, joining her two friends who were hauling butt down the alley.
They ran past several houses and arrived at one without a back fence. Ida Belle pointed to the right. “Through here.”
Marge joined them, making a beeline for the street, where Granny Magoo’s pink Rambler wagon was waiting by the curb. Marge’s own Granny Boudreaux was sitting in the front passenger seat.
The three scrambled into the back seat. Gertie first, then Ida Belle, then Marge.
“Go!” Gertie shouted.
Granny Magoo checked the side view mirror, then slowly pulled away from the curb.
“My my, we could hear that Celia screaming all the way over here,” Granny Boudreaux said.
“Maybe it was me having my circulation cut off with your support hose,” Ida Belle said as she quickly removed her shoes and reached under the granny dress she was wearing, yanking off the tortuous garment. She moaned in relief.
“Do you think maybe you could go a little faster?” Gertie asked her grandmother.
“Well, we want to be safe,” Granny Magoo said.
“I know, but this is the getaway car. As in, get away. Not crawl away.”
“Do I tell you how to go about your daily business, hmmm? Do I?” Granny Magoo asked. She looked at Granny Boudreaux. “Does your little Marge talk to you like that?”
“Younger generation,” Granny Boudreaux said. “They’ll learn. Someday when they’re in their seventies, they’ll meet some young little smarty pants who will try to tell them how to drive.”
Granny Boudreaux turned in her seat and shook her head. “Did you bring back something good?”
Gertie pulled out a handful of cookie cutters from the canvas sack and dropped them into Granny Boudreaux’s outstretched hand.
“That’s it, huh?”
“Well, there was an arm from a mannequin, but I didn’t think you’d want that.”
Granny Boudreaux pouted. “I would have wanted it. It’s not every day you find an arm.”
“That’s what I was thinking when I stuck it in Celia’s trash,” Gertie said.
Marge leaned forward. “Speaking of Celia, she’s going to call the Sheriff. We need to speed things up.”
“I knew we should have gotten a car when we were in New Orleans,” Ida Belle grumbled.
“We’ll be fine,” Granny Magoo said. “Did you get that dog’s samples like you wanted?”
“Yep,” Gertie said.
Granny Magoo glanced at Granny Boudreaux. “Gertie’s boyfriend is a Brainiac over at the Fish and Game Department. He’s going to help her get all these samples analyzed.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Gertie said.
Granny Boudreaux lifted her chin. “Did I tell you my little Margie is dating one of the Wienermobile boys?”
“Not so,” Marge said.
Gertie leaned toward the front seat. “Can you drive at least ten miles an hour faster? Knowing Celia, calling the cops won’t be enough for her. She’s likely to—”
“Try to find us,” Ida Belle said, pointing ahead past the windshield.
Turning onto their street and heading their way was Celia, driving a new VW bug. Word had it that Celia’s parents gave it to her to make her a more-attractive marriage prospect to Max Arceneaux. Marge couldn’t blame them. She’d buy Celia a car too if she were her mother and that’s what it took to get her married off and out of her house.
Celia slowed as she passed Granny Magoo’s car and peered at them, giving them a smug smile. She sped up and pulled into a driveway a few houses away to turn around.
“Oh, great,” Marge said. “Our third day back in town and we’re beat by Celia.”
“You know, Caroline,” Granny Boudreaux said to Granny Magoo, “now would be a good time to put the pedal to the metal.”
“You think so? I promised my daughter I would never speed with any of my grandchildren in the car.”
“I won’t tell,” Granny Boudreaux said, smiling.
Marge and Gertie both craned their necks around Ida Belle, who sat in the middle of the back seat, and gave each other eyebrow-raising glances.
“All right, then,” Granny Magoo said. “Hang on, girls.”