| |
IT WAS 11:00 PM WHEN Gertie finally arrived at her parents’ home from their outing at the Swamp Bar. If anything confirmed that the three of them needed a place of their own, it was the sight of her father and mother sitting in the living room when she came through the door. Fortunately, she was able to wash the streaked makeup off her face at Marge’s house once they’d snuck in through the window into Marge’s room.
“Thank goodness you’re home,” her mother said, making a show of glancing at the time just before the annoying grandfather clock made it official. What made it even worse was the way her mother counted along with the chimes. “My goodness,” Mom said, her voice tinged with exasperation, “I could probably count with one hand how often we’ve been awake to hear the clock chime that many times at night. We’re usually deep in sleep at this hour. The world is usually asleep by eleven o’clock at night. Nice young women are usually asleep by then as well.” Her mother turned to her father. “Wouldn’t you say, dear?”
Her dad cut to the chase. “What the heck you been doin’ this late at night?”
“I did say I would be late,” Gertie said, trying not to let her own exasperation show. “Remember, I told you the girls and I went to visit Babs Babineaux. Well, we haven’t seen her in forever, and lost all track of time. And are you aware I’m almost thirty?”
Her mother patted at the curlers in her hair. “That’s right. Old enough to tell time. Didn’t you have lights out by eight o’clock every night in the Army?”
Gertie edged toward the staircase. “No, Mama, sometimes we worked late hours. The war didn’t punch a time clock.”
“Don’t get fresh,” her dad said half-heartedly as her parents followed her up the stairs. But his wink told her he appreciated her efforts.
Her mom came up beside her. “This will make you happy. Mrs. Girard called tonight after you’d left with the girls. She went on and on what a wonderful young lady you were.”
Dear Lord, Gertie thought, was that horrible dinner just tonight? She and her friends could sure pack a lot in one day. “That’s nice, Mama, but I’m tired.”
Mom stopped and crossed her arms. “Of course you’re tired. It’s eleven oh-so-late o’clock. Hopefully you’ll think about that the next time you and your friends go out. But back to Mrs. Girard. She thought maybe we could all get together and have dinner sometime next week since you and Gill are destined to become close.”
Gertie arrived at her door. “We’re not, Mama.”
Mom dismissed her with a wave of her hand. “She said it appeared you and Gill hit it off.”
Gertie looked at her father. “Daddy, tell her we didn’t hit it off.”
“I’m staying out of this,” he said, kissing her on the cheek and shuffling off to his own bedroom. “Next time, don’t stay out so late.”
“Mrs. Girard would like to invite her sister, if that’s okay,” Mom said.
Gertie smiled. “You all have a nice dinner without me.”
“It will be a nice opportunity for you to show off your cooking skills,” her mother said as Gertie leaned in and kissed her cheek, said goodnight and closed the door before her mother could invoke Jesus. The closed door didn’t stop her mother from continuing to talk. “And don’t stay up reading. Even if it is the Bible. Jesus wouldn’t want you to get bags under your eyes before your dinner with Gill’s family.”
Damn.
It was no wonder that Gertie’s dreams that night found her signing rental papers for a new house far away from her parents.
“By the way, where is this house?” Gertie said in her dream as she handed the contract to a woman who closely resembled Bonnie Cotton. The Bonnie look-alike pointed toward a window and Gertie went to take a look. She found herself on a spaceship looking down at the Earth.
“Not far enough,” Gertie said as she turned around to find Gill, dressed in a tuxedo and holding a jiggly, gelatin ring box. Jesus stood beside him and smiled broadly before saying, “In the name of me, I now pronounce you, Mrs. Gill Girard.”
Gill held the jiggling box out to her and opened it. Inside was a gelatin mold of Mrs. Girard’s head.
“The three of us will be very happy together,” the head said.
In the dream she screamed, but then stopped when she heard a noise coming from the outside of the spaceship. It sounded like crunching leaves.
Gertie shot up in bed. Her heart pounded, and she had a momentary flash of being in her quarters in Vietnam. But as her eyes scanned the room that was lit by moonlight outside her window, she realized she was back in her childhood bedroom. The sound of crunching leaves continued, and it was coming directly below her opened second-story window. Could be a cat or a raccoon, she thought. Could be Louanne Boudreaux making a night-time visit as she had the previous night at Marge’s house. Could be absolutely nothing.
But, with a murderer on the loose, why take chances?
Gertie slid out of bed, grabbed a pistol she’d hid in her dresser away from the prying eyes of her mother and tiptoed to the window. Her room was located in the back of the house, overlooking the wide porch where she, Marge and Ida Belle had spent many a summer day in their youth reading their Nancy Drew books. At the moment, however, that porch was being approached by a mystery man dressed in dark pants and dark hooded sweatshirt. The figure climbed up the steps, disappearing under the awning.
Gertie tore out of the room and raced for the stairs, almost colliding with Granny Magoo who held a shotgun and was herself racing for the stairs.
“Did you hear that?” Granny Magoo whispered.
Gertie nodded and sped past her grandmother, tore down the stairs and headed for the kitchen. Padding through the archway into the kitchen, she could see the shadow of the hooded man through the sheer curtains covering the window at the back door.
The man was bending over and picking something up from one of the wooden chairs. As he turned to leave, Gertie unlocked the door, hoping the sound wouldn’t alert him. In the silence of the early hour, the click of the lock was amplified. The man started to run from the porch.
Gertie pushed the door open and ran after him. He scrambled down the porch stairs. She leapt off the porch and landed inches from him, grabbing his hand and pulling him face-down to the ground. She reached for his other hand to grab whatever he had taken from the porch, but his hand was empty. He kicked her onto her back and sprang up from the ground.
“I’m armed,” Gertie yelled as she recovered from the kick and stood. “Drop to the—”
Her warning was interrupted by a screaming body slamming against her from the back, knocking her to the ground.
The man bolted away, running away into the darkness of the early morning.
Gertie turned to confront her attacker, coming face to face with Granny Magoo.
“Oh, crap,” Granny Magoo said as she pulled herself off Gertie. “I tripped.”
Without answering her, Gertie shot up from the ground and ran in the direction where the intruder had fled. She rounded the house and saw the man racing up the street, disappearing between two parked cars. She gave chase, but after several minutes of searching, realized she’d lost him.
When she returned to the house, she found her parents on the now-lighted porch flanking Granny Magoo, who sat in a rocker rubbing her knee.
“Did you catch him?” Granny Magoo asked.
Gertie shook her head.
“You ran after the prowler?” her father asked. Her mother stood speechless, holding her hand over her mouth.
“Of course I went after him,” Gertie said. “And he wasn’t a prowler, he was a thief. He was trying to steal something from our porch.”
“He could have hurt you,” her father said.
Gertie held up her handgun. “Meet Eloise.”
Her mother gasped. Her father looked impressed.
Granny Magoo laughed, holding up her shotgun. “I knew you took after me.”
“Mother,” Gertie’s own mother said, addressing Granny Magoo. “Don’t encourage her.” She shook her head. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go to Vietnam. You were surrounded by bad influences.”
Gertie ignored her mother and scanned the area where she’d brought down the thief, noticing what looked like a paper bag caught in the middle of the bushes. Retrieving it, she opened it up and pulled out a baseball cap and held it up to the light.
Atlanta Braves.
Gertie joined the others on the porch. “Isn’t this the cap Dolly Harkins left for you on your picker’s route?”
Her grandmother took it from her and nodded. “I left it in a bag on the chair.”
“Why did you do that? I thought you liked it.”
“I did,” Granny Magoo answered. “But Dolly called and said I took the second bag by mistake.”
“She did?” Gertie asked.
Granny Magoo nodded. “She called before I went to bed. She said she put the cap in a bag and set it outside of her house because she was going to send it to her brother. Said I shouldn’t have taken it. If she didn’t want me to take it, she should have written on the bag. How can I tell what’s left for me and what’s not? Next time I see her, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind.”
“You will not, Mama,” Beatrice Hebert warned. “She’s coming to dinner soon with her sister and nephew Gill. For Gertie’s sake, I hope you’ll be civil to her.”
Gertie was about to protest that she had no intention of having dinner with Gill, his mother and his Aunt Dolly when the realization hit her. Gill’s aunt was Dolly Harkins. Dolly, the one who kept insisting that Bonnie Cotton was having an affair with Mr. Guillory. Dolly, the one who kept insisting it was Bonnie Cotton who had killed Guillory. Dolly, the one who’d had a beef with Mr. Guillory but then forgave him and now worked taking care of his sick wife. Or had she forgiven him? What if Dolly were tending to Philomena just to get close to her enemy?
“Why would someone want to steal a baseball cap?” Gertie’s father asked.
Gertie looked at him. “Good question, Dad.” The intruder seemed to ignore everything else on the porch and went straight for the rolled up bag. She turned to Granny Magoo. “Did Dolly tell you where to leave it?”
Granny Magoo nodded. “She said leave it on the chair next to the porch swing. She said she’d come by sometime tomorrow morning to pick it up. Which is today. But she wouldn’t come by at 2:30 in the morning.”
“No,” Gertie agreed, “and that wasn’t Dolly I was chasing. I believe it was a man.”
“Well, we should call the sheriff,” Beatrice said. “Let him know there’s a porch thief running around.”
Gertie nodded. “Good idea, Mama, but since I was the one running after him, I think I should do it. You and Daddy go back to bed now and I’ll do it at first light.”
They all filed back inside the house. Her mother glanced down at the pistol in Gertie’s hand. “Where did you get that?”
“Military. They give everyone a pistol when they leave the service. Even women.” She was surprised how quickly she came up with the lie.
“They didn’t give me one when I left the service,” her father said.
“New policy,” Gertie lied. “The world’s gotten more dangerous. Army knows that.”
“A word of advice, honey,” her mother said. “Men don’t really care to date a woman who’s packing. It makes them nervous.”
“I can attest to that,” her father said.
“You’d do well to get rid of it.” That was her mother’s parting word of advice before she and her dad shuffled back upstairs.
Gertie kissed her granny and said goodnight.
“Aren’t you coming up?” Granny Magoo asked.
“In a minute.”
Granny Magoo shuffled toward the living room. “By the way,” she said on her way out of the kitchen, “Eloise is a dumb name for a pistol.”
“I like the name,” Gertie said. “Nobody expects an Eloise to be a threat. She can slip under the radar. There’s power in that.”
Granny Magoo thought a moment. “Makes sense. And you can keep it as far as I’m concerned. During Prohibition, I used to provide security for your grandfather when he’d deliver his hooch to New Orleans. Sometimes a man does appreciate a woman who’s packing.”
This took Gertie by surprise. “Granddaddy was a hooch runner?”
Granny Magoo’s eyes widened. “Forget I said anything. Goodnight.”
Gertie made a mental note of asking Granny Magoo about the secret life of her grandfather, who she’d thought all her life was pretty dull, but for whom she now had a greater fascination. For now, though, she had a job to do. Once she heard Granny Magoo trudging up the stairs, Gertie turned off the light and sat down at the kitchen table. It was a longshot, but in the event whomever dropped the bag came back for it, she’d be ready for him.
She sat in the dark thinking about the cap.
And about Dolly.
The revelation that Dolly was Gill’s aunt changed things. If Gill was involved in the murder, was Dolly helping him? Tomorrow at first light she would make a call. But not to Sheriff Lee, who was dead set on fingering Louanne for the crime. She’d call Ida Belle and Marge. It was time they find out just what Dolly knew and what type of woman she really was.