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GERTIE PLAYED WITH the cord of the telephone receiver, remembering the time she’d tied up a Russian operative who was posing as a West German bartender in Saigon. How she’d like to take this cord right now and tie up whoever invented elevator music, which had been droning away for the past ten minutes while she waited for Gill to answer her call.
She never did get the skinny from Ida Belle about her encounter with Walter, but her friend definitely looked deep in thought about something during the drive back to the Heber house. Even a shot of bourbon hadn’t loosened Ida Belle’s lips. But Gertie imagined Ida Belle was struggling with the same thing she was: What to do with her life post Army and how not to let anyone, not even someone she had the potential to fall in love with, derail her.
Although Gertie wanted to be a teacher and help educate and shape young minds, she wasn’t particularly eager to have children or be tied down to one particular man. Lucky for her there were plenty of men who felt the same way. Yep, a Whitman Sampler of men is what she wanted.
A voice over the telephone receiver broke her reverie.
“Hello?”
It was Gill. Definitely not one of the men she’d like to “sample.” Unfortunately, though, he was the man who could help them find out who had really killed Wade Guillory. She pulled the lever on the side of her dad’s recliner and returned the chair to an upright position. “Oh, yes, hello Gill.”
“Gertie, how nice to talk to you. And are you having a zip-a-dee-doo-dah day?” He laughed that annoying laugh of his. “As for me, I’m up to my elbows in scat samples. One might say I’m ‘scattered’ today.” Another annoying chuckle.
Gertie forced out a laugh. Marge and Ida Belle walked into the living room from the kitchen and sat on the sofa, munching praline cookies that Granny Magoo had set out on the table. They looked at one another. “Gill,” they both said, no doubt noticing the sickened look on her face.
“’Scattered.’ How do you come up with them?” Gertie asked, tossing her friends a roll of her eyes.
“Actually, I was going to call you, Gertie,” Gill said. “I took a look at those dog...” He stopped. “How do I put this delicately?”
“Poop,” Gertie said.
“Uh, yes. Okay. That’s what I meant.”
“That’s wonderful, Gill,” Gertie said. “I suppose your friend hasn’t had an opportunity yet to look at the dog hair sample.”
“The white fur?” Gill asked. “No, not yet. I believe he’ll take a look at that the day after tomorrow. He has a number of primate fur samples he’s backlogged on. Some would say he’s ‘harried.’”
Gill was silent. “Did you hear me? I said, he’s ‘harried.’”
“Hah,” Gertie said with little enthusiasm. “Well, actually it’s a good thing that he hasn’t started on the dog hair sample because I have the comparison sample I’d like him to run as well. I could bring in the samples to your office today or drop them in an after-hours slot if you have one. That way I wouldn’t interrupt your day.”
“I’ll go you one better, foxy lady,” he said, chuckling. “I’m driving into Sinful and having dinner with Mother tomorrow night. She’d love to meet you.”
“Oh, no, I don’t want to intrude on your time with your mother.”
Marge snickered, which prompted Gertie to hold up a hand and give Marge the finger.
“Nonsense. In fact, I would prefer it,” he said in a way that meant having dinner with him and his mother would be the only way they were going to get the samples compared.
“Just one moment, Gill,” Gertie said, frowning. She placed her hand over the receiver and glared at her cohorts. “I have to have dinner with him and his mom tomorrow night,” she whispered. “You two owe me a ride in the Wienermobile. I don’t care if you have to steal it to make it happen.” She took a deep breath, forced a smile on her face and resumed her conversation with the male version of decaf coffee. “I would love to meet your mother and you for dinner.”
“Great! I’ll have Mother make her famous turtle drop mousse. She created it in my honor.”
“I’m sure it’ll be as delicious as it sounds.”
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at six, then.”
Gertie waited until she heard him hang up before slamming the receiver onto the phone. “Your Aunt Louanne owes me some of her finest moonshine from her reserve stock,” she said to Marge. “And I want Cole to deliver it with his shirt off.”
Marge smiled. “Thanks,” she said.
“Not as if I have a choice. But I was serious. I want a ride in the Wienermobile.”
“I’d like one of those myself.”
They all turned to find Granny Magoo entering the living room from the hallway, carrying a tray of Velveeta and crackers, her curly gray hair sticking out of the bottom of a baseball cap she was wearing. “I thought you could use some snacks.”
“What’s with the hat?” Gertie asked. She’d never known her grandma to wear baseball caps. This one was blue, boasting an Atlanta Braves logo.
Granny Magoo set the tray on the coffee table. “It was in one of the goodie bags that Dolly Harkins left for me to pick up.”
“Why’d she do that?” Marge asked.
Granny Magoo shrugged her shoulders. “I’m the only hooker willing to spend some one-on-one time with her to help improve her technique.”
Gertie rolled her eyes. “Knitter. You’re a knitter.”
Granny Magoo rapped Gertie on the head with her knuckles. “You know what I’m talking about.” She tapped the cap on her head. “I don’t ordinarily wear baseball caps, but maybe I’ll start.” She turned her head, modeling the cap.
“Very becoming,” Gertie said. “But don’t you think it’s odd?”
Granny Magoo rolled her eyes. “What’s odd?”
“For starters, Dolly lives behind the crime scene, right where the guy with the cap appeared from the woods behind her house.”
Granny Magoo folded her arms and glared at Gertie. “If you’re thinking Dolly had anything to do with Wade’s murder, you can stop right there. That Dolly might be strange, but she’s left some good stuff for me over the years. Just last month she left me a jigsaw puzzle of Jesus holding a baby lamb. And only one piece missing. Jesus’s thumb. Puzzles like that don’t come to pickers often.”
“I imagine they wouldn’t,” Gertie said. “It’s just odd is all I’m saying.”
Granny Magoo started making her way to the kitchen, stopping to adjust the Hebert’s own homage to Jesus, a needlepoint of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount created by Gertie’s great-grandmother Leger. It hung on the wall below the pink poodle clock, a reminder in the Hebert household that any time is a good time for Jesus.
Once Granny Magoo disappeared into the kitchen, Ida Belle turned to Gertie. “You’re not thinking that baseball cap is related to the murder, are you? My daddy owns a ton of baseball caps, but I would venture a guess that he didn’t kill Wade Guillory.”
“I just think Dolly is weird, is all,” Gertie said. “I believe the killer is Bonnie Cotton, but I could see Dolly finding a baseball cap on her property and giving it to my granny just so she’ll continue giving her knitting tips. But I know if I ask Dolly where she got it, my granny would blow a gasket.”
Ida Belle cut a slice of Velveeta and placed it on a cracker. Luckily, Velveeta was one luxury they didn’t have to go without in Vietnam. “I guess it’s possible. We could take a trip to the Swamp Bar tomorrow night and ask around, see if anyone knows of anyone who wears Atlanta Braves caps. We should take a trip out there anyway, just to feel people out about Guillory’s murder.”
Gertie started thinking of disguises they could wear to the Swamp Bar. When it came to undercover in a bar, the sleezier they dressed, the looser the lips. “So Marge, hot pants or bells and tube top?”
Marge sighed. “Why do we always have to sex it up? I was hoping we were done with all that.”
“Because nuns don’t go to the Swamp Bar,” Gertie said. “Listen, Marge, I know you’re getting into all this women’s lib stuff and that’s great. But a trained spy knows she’d rather give the men something to focus on other than her face that they could identify later. And that ‘something’ certainly isn’t our brains.”
“Where’s your dignity?” Marge asked, cutting herself a slice of Velveeta.
Gertie reached over and plucked the Velveeta from Marge’s hand and popped it in her mouth. “Well, tomorrow night it will be in my boobs and my butt.”