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MARGE
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THE SECOND MARGE SAW Gertie pick up the lottery play slip it hit her like a brick. She flew over to Cootie’s house as fast as her ghostly energy would take her and charged through his front door. “Cootie!”
“In here, Marge,” his voice called out from his kitchen, where she found him drinking an imaginary cup of coffee from an imaginary mug that mimicked one of his favorite stripper mugs.
“I did it, Marge,” he said proudly, holding up the mug. “I’m drinking a pretend cup of coffee, just like you said I could. Tastes pretty good, too. I even conjured up a mug to go with it. The gal’s clothes slip off when I imagine the coffee getting really hot. Wanna see?”
“Charming, but no. Look, yesterday you said you and Redneck went to the Mini-Mart for beer and lottery tickets.”
He nodded, bored, then stared at his mug as the woman’s clothes slowly slipped off.
“Pay attention,” Marge said. “This is important. You said something yesterday about starting with the number fifty in your private pick.”
He grinned and recited his numbers: 50-51-59-61-63. “Powerball of five,” he added. “Now, you’re probably wondering why I started at fifty. Good question.”
“Didn’t ask and don’t care. Do you know if you won anything?”
He shrugged. “I never check the numbers. Redneck calls me the next day to let me know what the winning numbers are.”
“And did he call you the next day?”
Cootie thought a moment. “I can’t remember.”
“That’s because you were killed early the next morning while fishing.”
He cocked his head. “What’s this all about, Marge?”
She pulled in a breath and exhaled. “Except for the extra powerball number, you got all five numbers correct in the last draw.”
“What? Are you sure?”
She nodded.
He whistled. “Damn, I got close, didn’t I?”
She shook her head. “Cootie, they still give a prize for picking the other five numbers. A million bucks for last Wednesday’s game.”
Cootie froze. He dropped his imaginary nudie cup. Slowly a smile crept over his face. “I’m rich,” he said softly. Then he yelled, “Marge! I’m rich!”
She shook her head again. “No, Cootie. You’re dead. Whoever has your ticket is rich.”
“Someone stole it?”
“That’s what we need to find out. What happened to your play slip? Or the printed ticket?”
He shrugged. “Normally I put them in my wallet when the cashier at the Mini-Mart hands them back.”
“We need to reenter your memory.”
“I don’t know, Marge, it got me pretty tired yesterday.”
“It’s important.”
He balked, but she finally convinced him to go back to when he and Redneck pulled into the Mini-Mart.
Cootie entered his memory much quicker than yesterday, catching Marge off guard. She leapt into his aura seconds before he disappeared.
She saw things through his eyes now.
Once they pulled into the Mini-Mart, Cootie told Redneck his knee bothered him. Would Redneck mind getting everything? Cootie opened his wallet, pulled out a play slip and thirty-five dollars.
“Twenty for our pool tickets, ten for the beer and two bucks for my personal lottery play,” Cootie said to Marge. “I also asked him to get me a slushee.”
On his return, Redneck held two grocery bags of beer in one arm and Cootie’s drink in the other. He handed Cootie his slushee through the window, then stuck the bags of beer in the back seat. Once inside the car, Redneck reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small stack of lottery tickets. “These are gonna make us all stinking rich, I can feel it.”
Redneck stuck the tickets in the center console near the cup holder. He reached in his pocket again and pulled out Cootie’s folded play slip and the resulting printed lottery ticket. “Here’s your losing ticket.”
Cootie took the pieces of paper and stuck them on the dash.
Once at Cootie’s house, they said their goodbyes and Cootie stepped out of the car.
Without his separate play slip and printed lottery ticket.
“Stop!” Marge said to him.
Once back in the present, they stood for a moment in the middle of his kitchen, speechless.
Marge’s eyes locked into Cootie’s. “You never took your ticket with you. Redneck is now the winner of a million bucks and you’re dead. We call that a motive for murder.”
“No,” Cootie said. “He wouldn’t want me dead. When I told him about my diagnosis, he didn’t take it well. He said the doctors had to be wrong. We were buddies. He’d never kill me.”
“For a million dollars he might.”
Cootie shook his head, not allowing himself to believe it. “Friends don’t do that.” He pulled his brows close together. “Do they?”
“They do if they’re desperate,” Marge said gently. “As long as I’ve known Redneck he always had money problems. And if he knew you were sick anyway he might have thought...”
Cootie’s face fell. “That it didn’t matter.”
Marge began pacing. “Now, if we could just figure out how Bruno Guerin fits into all of this.”
Cootie balled up his fist. “I know how. It’s all starting to make sense now. Remember when I said that Ivy Guerin and I hadn’t dated in years?”
“Yeah.”
“The guy she’s really having an affair with is Redneck. I swore to him I’d never tell a soul. Well, you’re a soul. I just broke my promise.”
Marge’s eyes widened. “Ivy could have given Bruno’s rifle to Redneck to kill you with and a cigarette butt to plant at the scene.”
They raced over to Barb’s house next door, causing her to choke on her toast when the two of them walked through her back door.
“I told you about that!” she screamed.
“We found out who killed Cootie. It was Redneck. He killed him because Cootie won a prize in last Wednesday’s Powerball to the tune of a million bucks. Cootie left his ticket in Redneck’s car.”
Barb placed her fingers in her ears and shook her head. “You lied to me, Marge. You said you’d play checkers, then walked away, just as I was going to win. From now on, you’re dead persona non grata to me.”
“You need to call the sheriff’s department. An innocent man is being framed.”
“On what evidence?” Barb asked. “I’ll look like an idiot if I go to the police and tell them they’re wrong.”
Marge had had it with this woman. “Fine. We’ll do it without you.”
“How, Marge? We can’t call the sheriff,” Cootie said.
“We’ll try to get through to Ida Belle and Gertie somehow. I don’t know how, but at least we’ll give it a try.” She stomped to the door, then stopped and turned back to Barb. “You know why I always win when we compete? Because you play it safe. That checkers game we have going? It’s not going to take me long to whip your butt. How? By cheating?” Marge shook her head. “No. You hug the edges, Barb. You want to control the board? You need to go right out in the middle. That’s what a Sinful Lady does, Barb. We don’t hide on the edges. We get right out there. But you go right ahead. Play it safe. Continue losing.”
Marge pulled her attention back to Cootie. “We have a murderer to catch. Let’s go find some reinforcements.”
Cootie looked at Barb. “You have a gift, Barb. Marge never had it. I never did. But you do. I wish you’d reconsider.”
“Save your breath, Cootie.”
With that, they whisked themselves into the ether to find a headless pirate.