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IDA BELLE, GERTIE AND I waited at Marie’s house (located next door to Celia’s) for Ally to send an “all clear” text. Ally’s role was to play the dutiful niece who would set up the table and make sure Celia was under a sheet and lying face-down on the table when we arrived. She would also make sure the room was darkened, lit only by a few candles. Our wigs, glasses and medical-looking spa uniforms were pretty good disguises, but we didn’t want to give Celia the opportunity or the lighting to get a long, good look at us.
Marie sipped her coffee and studied our outfits. “I don’t want to know what you’re up to, do I?”
Gertie shook her head. “Just helping a friend.”
Marie nodded and took another sip. She must have heard that from Marge, Ida Belle and Gertie a million times throughout the years. “Well, now that I’m mayor, it’s my duty to encourage the citizenry to help one another. Do carry on.”
My phone vibrated. “It’s Ally. The pigeon has landed on the massage table.”
In addition to helping me don a credible spa disguise, Gertie had used the rest of our two-hour window to give me instruction on basic deep-tissue massage, a skill she and Marge had honed during their spy days. We’d also dug up a container of putrid swamp mud from behind my house. We’d use that for our grand finale. What good is a high-quality massage without some healing mud to go with it?
“If you forget all I’ve taught you,” Gertie said as she, Ida Belle and I made our way up the sidewalk to Celia’s house, “just poke her with your fingers or karate-chop her.”
“I’m a martial-arts expert. I might chop her too hard.”
“And that’s a problem, how?”
We reached Celia’s doorstep. Gertie steeled herself, then knocked on the door. A few seconds later, Ally answered.
“You must be Inga and Ilka,” she said loudly, winking. “Right this way.”
We followed Ally into the living room. The curtains were drawn, and scented candles filled the room with the scent of lilacs.
“Aunt Celia, they’re here,” Ally said gently as we walked up to a lump, or rather, Celia, lying prone on the massage table set up in the middle of the room. Her robe was folded neatly on the sofa.
Celia lifted her face from the hole in the face rest and craned her neck to get a look at us. Gertie reached over and placed her hand on the back of Celia’s head and pushed it back into the face rest. “My daughter Ilka and I have no time for pleasantries,” Gertie said in an exaggerated German accent.
“Oh,” Celia said through the hole in the face rest. “I just wanted to tell you what areas you should work on.”
Gertie cracked her knuckles in Celia’s ear. “Your body vill tell us vat to vork on.” Gertie pointed to Ally. “You, niece. You may leave now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ally said. “I hope this makes up for Marta going away on a cruise, Aunt Celia.”
“Probably not. But we’ll see, won’t we?”
Ally brought her hands up and made choking motions, then left as Ida Belle quietly waited by the stairs. In the event Celia had the tattoo, Ida Belle would search the upstairs and attic for any sign of Jo’s painting.
Gertie waited for Ally to close the front door. “Zat niece of yours is very nice to call us on your behalf.”
“Hmmmph,” Celia said into the face cushion. “She owed it to me. She’s the one who recommended Marta to me in the first place. I wouldn’t put it past that girl to have recommended Marta knowing full well she was going to abandon me to go on a cruise. My niece always has ulterior motives. She takes after her mother.”
Gertie lifted her hand. Luckily, I managed to stop it before her hand made buttfall. Gertie took a moment to get back into character. “Oh my,” she said ominously.
“What?” Celia asked, her voice panicky.
“Shhhh,” I said. “My mother is listening to your body.”
“Yes,” Gertie said, “and vhat I’m hearing is not pleasant. In addition to cellulite you have a pain in zee butt!”
“Yes, I do!” Celia said. “Three of them, to be exact. Gertie, Ida Belle and Fortune.”
“Poor baby,” Gertie said. “However, you are in luck. I’ve just come back from a vorld tour where I learned the latest advanced diagnostic tools. First I need to make a visual inspection.” She scrunched up her face. The last time I’d seen that look on her face, Gertie had just eaten a bad clam. “Ilka, remove her sheet please.”
“What?” Celia asked, alarmed.
I quickly whipped the sheet up and glanced at Celia’s right cheek. A saggy, sad hummingbird looked up at me from Celia’s doughy, dimply right cheek as if begging me to put it out of its misery. Its desperate eyes will haunt me till the day I die.
Celia’s hand reached back and pulled the sheet down. “For heaven’s sake! Slow down! Marta slips the sheet aside a little at a time when she needs to work on... more sensitive areas.”
I looked at Ida Belle and nodded. She padded up the stairs.
“We’ve seen enough,” Gertie said gravely. “Fräulein, you have vhat is referred to in my country as shitzkriegfartenugen.”
Celia gasped. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“You failed to mention you had a tattoo.”
“Oh that. My stupid, former husband Max had me get it when we first married. Funny, you’re the second person today to mention it. But I don’t see what it has to do with my treatment for cellulite and sciatica.”
My ears perked up. “Second time?”
“Yes. I got a call a half-hour before you arrived. Someone tried to blackmail me and said they had a painting of me naked wearing a tattoo.”
“Blackmail?” Gertie said. “Who would do such a thing?”
Celia started to lift her head again, but I quickly eased her face back into the face rest. “I’ll tell you who,” she said. “Those three pains in my butt I was telling you about. It’s one of their pranks, I just know it. I don’t know how they found out about the painting or my tattoo, but they’re very sneaky.”
“Tell me more about zis phone call,” Gertie said.
“No. It was just a prank and I’ll retaliate, don’t you worry. What I’d really like is my massage.”
Gertie grabbed the lotion bottle and pumped a big blob on her hands. She slapped them on Celia’s shoulders and began massaging her.
Her next words came out gently. “The thing is, fröken, you are quite correct.” Inga the cranky German had now become Inga the gentle Swedish lady. “Your sciatica is related to these evil women. Emotionally you are a wreck and their poison is destroying you. You need to purge them from your body. You need to tell me everything they have done to you, starting vis the phone call zis afternoon.”
Celia moaned with pleasure from Gertie’s hands on her shoulders. Gertie wrinkled her nose. She’d need more than a shot of cough syrup when we were done here.
Gertie looked down at Celia’s feet. Do her foot, she mouthed.
What?
Her foot.
I sighed, greased up my hands and began massaging Celia’s foot. I enjoyed the cranky German girl better.
“Oh yes!” Celia called out. “This is more like it.”
“The phone call, fröken. What did these evil women say?”
“Oh, it was so amateurish. They either had Walter call or used one of those voice changers.”
“And?” Gertie prompted.
“They said, ‘I have a nude painting of you by the late Cootie Bates.’ He was murdered yesterday. And then they said, ‘Place three hundred dollars in a brown paper bag or I’ll make copies of the painting and put them up all over Sinful.’ Can you imagine? And after the poor man was murdered.”
“Zis man painted you? In zee buff?”
Celia sighed. “I let him do it to get back at Max who always had a woman on the side while we were married. But Cootie said he destroyed the painting, which is something those three wouldn’t know.”
Of course, what she didn’t know was that Cootie lied to her. I saw the proof earlier today. Whoever clunked me on the head was now trying to blackmail Celia. “What did you say to this prankster?” I asked.
“I said that was the dumbest thing they’d ever dreamed up and I hung up.”
“Did these evil women tell you what to do with the bag of money?” I asked, digging my thumbs into Celia’s foot.
“Yes,” she moaned. Ick. “They told me to place it in a trash can on the south side of Sinful Park.”
Gertie stopped massaging Celia’s neck. “When?”
“What difference does it make?” Celia said, growing annoyed. “Oh, I can feel my sciatica acting up. Do you mind massaging a little lower?”
“When did they tell you to drop the bag of money?” Gertie asked gently.
“I didn’t pay attention. I said it wasn’t important.” She raised her other leg. “I’m ready for the other foot now, Ilka.”
“After the healing mud treatment,” Gertie said.
“Healing mud?” Celia asked. “Shouldn’t you finish the massage first?”
I handed the container of Sinful Bayou slime to Gertie as she said to Celia, “Who is the expert here, Fräulein, you or me?” The cranky German had returned. “Now, I am going to place this mud on your body. You will describe all the evil things these ladies have done to you and zee mud vill absorb all the negativity in your body.”
Gertie yanked the lid off the container, unleashing the aroma that had intensified while being covered. I held back a gag.
“Oh my Lord,” Celia said. Her hand flew beneath the face rest to cover her nose.
“You are lucky,” Gertie said. “I still had curing mud left over from my last visit to zee Blue Lagoon in Iceland. Normally I charge five hundred dollars for zis treatment. Because you are on zee brink of a total health collapse, though, I am taking pity on you.” Gertie scooped out a handful of gooey mud and slapped it on Celia’s exposed back, prompting a yelp from Celia.
“Shouldn’t this be warmed up?” Celia asked.
“Not if you vant it to vork. Besides, you don’t vant to smell zis stuff heated up.” Gertie lifted the sheet and, without looking, dumped the rest of the slime on Celia’s lower body. Celia shrieked. Gertie dropped the sheet back in place, the mud seeping through.
“While the healing mud is drawing toxins from your body, you vill recite all the things these terrible women have done to you, starting from the very last incident. We vill give you privacy and wait outside. Vhen you are finished, call us and we vill remove the healing mud and with it all the toxicity. After zat, we will massage you until you fall asleep like a baby.”
As Celia began reciting, I padded upstairs and explained the situation to Ida Belle. We hurried downstairs and quietly slipped past Celia (who was now recounting her street fight with Gertie during the July 4th celebration) and joined Gertie outside.
“This has to be the same guy who clunked you,” Ida Belle said. We rushed back to Marie’s to clean up from the mud and change from our Inga and Ilka disguises and back into our street clothes.
I nodded. “He’s supposed to be at the park sometime today expecting payment for Celia’s painting.”
“Which means we have to hurry and get over there and see who he is,” Gertie said. “Maybe he’ll have all the paintings with him, and we’ll find the one of Jo.”
After changing, we said our goodbyes to Marie and headed out to my Jeep. Celia burst out of her house at that moment, wrapped in her white robe. Correct that, her formerly white robe. The back side of it was saturated in mud. “Inga! Ilka!”
She hurried to the end of her walk and scanned the street, clutching her robe tighter when she spotted us. “What are you gawking at?”
“You have to ask?” Ida Belle said.
Celia sauntered over to us, her air of superiority clashing with the putrid swamp smell. “I’ll have you know I just had a very exclusive spa treatment. The Queen of England had this treatment.”
I held my nose. “And did she smell as stinky?”
“This is very expensive healing mud from Iceland.”
I took a whiff. “Smells like it came from my backyard.”
Celia shivered. “I doubt if anything good has ever come from your backyard.” She once again scanned the street.
“Looking for someone?” Gertie asked.
“Yes, my masseuses,” she said, haughtily. “A mother and daughter. They’ve massaged royalty. They said they’d wait outside while the mud took away the toxins that YOU created.” Her face creased with worry as she peered down one side of the street and then the other.
I unlocked our doors and headed around to the driver’s side. “We’re in a hurry. Hope you find your missing masseuses.”
Ida Belle opened the front passenger door. “FYI. Half of Iceland is oozing down your leg.”
Gertie slipped inside the back. “PU. If Iceland stinks that bad, I’m taking it off my vacation list. If I want swamp smell, I’ll save my money and stay home.”
I started the Jeep and pulled away from the curb. In my rear-view mirror, I watched as Celia continued her search for Inga and Ilka.
“Did Celia have any idea who called her?” Ida Belle asked.
Gertie settled back in to the seat. “No. Whoever it was used a voice changer.”
Ida Belle pulled her phone from her purse and glanced at the screen. “Hmmm.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I haven’t checked my phone all day. Every Sinful Lady in town has been trying to get ahold of me.” She gave her phone a few swipes. “Here’s a text from earlier this morning from Theresa Comeau. “I’m being blackmailed. What do I do?”
“What?” Gertie asked, alarmed.
Ida Belle tapped another message. “Theresa’s being blackmailed. What should she do?” And another. “Ida Belle, where are you?” She blew out a breath. “The last text from Bea said Theresa called the Sheriff and they were setting up a sting. Damn. This guy’s serious. First Celia, then Theresa.”
“Oh crap,” Gertie said. “We’ve been so busy today I turned my phone off too.” I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw Gertie digging around in her purse. She pulled out her phone as well and turned it on. Seconds later, the theme song to the Pink Panther began playing, her signal for having received a text. It played again, and again, and again. She muted it. “Shoot. Now the law’s going to interfere. We blew our chance to find those stolen paintings.”
My stomach clenched. “If Jo’s painting is one of them, Carter will see it.”
As I approached the park, I spotted a sheriff’s department SUV. Sheriff Lee sat atop his horse, keeping a small crowd of people from entering the grounds.
“Damn,” I said as I parked along the curb. “We’re late to the party.”
We parked and joined the onlookers. Nothing like a sting and an arrest to bring the townspeople out.
Midge Allair stood with another Sinful Lady, Edilia Cheval. Midge’s hair was dripping wet, half of her head bound in curlers. Edilia, a popular hairdresser who worked out of Sinful Cuts on Main, took a curler from inside a cotton bag slung around her shoulder and continued curling the other half of Midge’s head. Every few seconds she would take her eyes off Midge’s hair to peek at the scene in the park.
“It’s about time you two showed up,” Edilia said as we approached. “Bea told Theresa to wait until she consulted you, but the deadline was approaching to drop off the money, so she went ahead and called the Sheriff.”
Ida Belle raised her brows. “We’ve been engaged in other... matters today.”
“Word is they’re arresting someone for blackmail,” Midge said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the same guy who tried to blackmail Theresa also murdered Cootie.”
“Any idea who it is?” Gertie asked.
Edilia shook her head. “No. Deputy LeBlanc told Theresa to put the money in the garbage can like the man said and go home while he and Deputy Breaux hid out nearby and waited for the guy to come pick it up. Twenty minutes ago, word went out that Sheriff Lee was riding the perimeter of the park and wouldn’t let anyone in. We left and came over and saw Deputy Breaux speed away in his SUV.”
“Deputy LeBlanc is behind the bathrooms with the perp,” Midge said. Her eyebrows drew together on the word “perp.”
“There’s Deputy LeBlanc!” someone in the crowd called out.
Several people gasped as the “perp” was revealed, led in handcuffs by Carter.
“It’s Bruno Guerin,” a man yelled as the chatter began to build.
“Oh poop,” Edilia said. She reached inside her smock pocket and plucked a five-dollar bill that she slipped inside Midge’s waiting hand.
“I told you it was him,” Midge said. She looked at us. “Edilia said it was Redneck.”
“I was going with the longshot for better odds,” Edilia explained. “Friends of Cootie’s paid two to one.”
“Care to bet who’s the murderer? I’m still going with Bruno,” Midge said.
“Redneck, two-to-one odds,” Edilia answered.
Midge rolled her eyes. “I had his butt thrown in jail that morning.”
Edilia swore. “Bobby, then. Still two-to-one odds.”
As Carter got closer to the edge of the park, people started yelling out questions.
What did he do?
Did he kill Cootie?
Several women began chanting at Bruno, Shame on you!
Sheriff Lee placed his fingers in his mouth and let out a shrieking whistle. “Hush!”
Bruno looked up at the crowd as Carter led him to his SUV.
“I didn’t do anything. I swear! Somebody called me and said there was something of mine in the trashcan at the park. I just came to see what it was. I swear!”
Carter opened the door to his SUV and helped a handcuffed Bruno inside. Just as he shut the door, a woman’s screaming voice yelled, “Wait!”
We turned our collective heads toward the sound of the voice. A woman was pulling herself out of an old Ford.
Midsixties. Rail thin, hair the color of French’s mustard, puffing on a cigarette. Threat Level: Medium.
“Ivy Guerin,” Gertie whispered to me. “Bruno’s wife.”
Ivy slammed her door shut, threw her cigarette down on the ground and stomped on it with her flip-flop. She hurried up the sidewalk toward us, her teased, mustard hair bobbing up and down as one oversprayed unit. “What are you doing with Bruno? And why is Deputy Breaux searching my house?”
Sheriff Lee moved his horse in between Ivy and Carter’s SUV. “Mrs. Guerin, you can follow Deputy LeBlanc down to the station,” he said. “Bruno’s under arrest for suspicion of blackmail. He gave Deputy Breaux permission to search your house.”
“Blackmail?”
Bruno stuck his head out of Carter’s SUV. “I didn’t do it.”
“Oh yes he did,” said another voice, which belonged to a woman in her sixties wearing white crops and white sequined T-shirt, a huge purse slung over her shoulder.
Gertie leaned in again and whispered, “Theresa Comeau.”
Theresa planted herself in front of Ivy Guerin and pointed her finger at her accusingly. “Your husband called me and threatened to take pictures of a nude painting Cootie had done of me in the seventies and put them up all over town unless I paid him three hundred dollars.”
A hush fell over the crowd.
Theresa folded her arms. “I’m not ashamed of posing nude,” she said to the crowd. “I had quite the body in the seventies.”
I noticed several men nodding in agreement.
“But I’ll be damned if I let some man try to blackmail me,” Theresa said.
Ivy Guerin folded her arms. “How do you know it was my husband?”
“Because he came to collect the money.”
“What?” Ivy stepped around Sheriff Lee’s horse and yelled to Bruno. “Are you crazy? That’s it! We’re through! What were you thinking, you moron?”
Carter came over to her. “You can ask him at the station. I checked Mrs. Comeau’s phone. It was Bruno’s number. And the painting is in his trunk. With jagged edges, as if it were cut from a frame.”
“What? How’d he get it?” Ivy asked.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Of course, I knew the answer to that question. He cut it out of the frame, knocked me out and made off with it. I looked over at Bruno, who gazed helplessly out the window.
“I’ll answer whatever questions you have,” Ivy said, “but I don’t know shit. I just got back from my sister’s house in New Orleans last night. I didn’t even know Cootie was dead.” She lowered her voice and looked at Carter. “Bruno didn’t have anything to do with that, did he? He was awfully mad at Cootie before I left.”
Carter reached out and touched her shoulder. “Why don’t you meet us at the station and we’ll talk about it?”
Ivy turned and stormed back to her car.
“All right, listen up!” Sheriff Lee shouted from atop his horse. “This carnival ride is over. Go home.”
“You heard the sheriff,” Carter said.
The crowd began to disperse. Theresa approached Carter. “Can I have the painting back? I looked pretty hot back in the seventies.”
Carter shook his head. “Right now, it’s evidence of a crime. We’ll need to talk with you further, though, so you should head on over to the station yourself.”
Carter waited until Theresa and all the other onlookers had dispersed before turning to us.
Gertie held up her hand. “Don’t say it. We’re leaving.”
“Not so fast. I have a favor to ask of you and Ida Belle.” He leaned into us and lowered his voice. “We opened Bruno’s trunk and found two more of Cootie’s canvases. They were nudes.” Carter sighed and chewed on his bottom lip. “We’re assuming these paintings are of some of the older gals in town. Since you two...” Carter searched for the right words.
“Are old?” Ida Belle said.
“You said it, I didn’t,” said Carter. “We figured you two would know all the women in town and what they looked like younger. We’d ask Myrtle, but we’ve given her the afternoon off and would hate to call her back in.”
Gertie folded her arms. “And then what? Those women will have to go in court and testify they sat nude for Cootie?”
“We’re hoping Bruno confesses and it’ll never go to court. Theresa Comeau might be thrilled to have her painting shown, but we’d rather not involve another woman. Who knows, maybe the other two paintings will sprout legs and walk out of the station.”
Ida Belle nodded. “I’ve heard that can happen with paintings.”
“I’ll have Sheriff Lee leave them in the supply room.” Carter turned back toward his SUV. “Walk with me?” he said to me.
“Sure.”
We took a few steps before he stopped and said, “I know I shouldn’t ask this but... is this what’s been upsetting my Aunt Jo? That a painting of her will surface?”
I opened my mouth to feign ignorance, but he held up his hand. “Whatever she did in her past doesn’t matter. She should trust that her sister, brother and nephew don’t care about her past. And she should trust that I would never let her get railroaded.”
I nodded.
He placed his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t have to tell you three to keep out of the murder investigation, do I?”
“Only if you want to insult me.”
“I just know how you three sometimes find yourselves in the eye of the shitstorm.”
“Correction, the eye finds us.”
“Whatever. Just, this once, if it comes heading your way, take shelter and call me so I can do my job.”
We approached Carter’s SUV. Bruno stuck out his head and nodded to me. “You’re Marge Boudreaux’s great-niece.” I nodded. He stuck his handcuffed hands out the window. “I’d shake your hand, but Deputy LeBlanc is under the mistaken impression that I’m a criminal.”
“The cuffs are standard procedure,” Carter said.
“Standard procedure for a criminal. Which I’m not.”
Carter gave my shoulder a squeeze and walked around to the driver’s side of his SUV. “Let’s get you to the station.”
Ida Belle and Gertie walked up as Carter drove away.
“Did you have to hold yourself back from belting him one?” Gertie asked.
“Not really. Bruno looked right at me, talked to me. Yet there was no recognition that I was the one he knocked unconscious. Not even a facial twitch.”
“You’re thinking he wasn’t the one at Cootie’s studio,” Ida Belle said.
I nodded. “He’s either being framed, or he has an accomplice.”