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IT TOOK IDA BELLE ONE phone call to former Sinful Slider Ginny Nickerson and within 10 minutes of our arrival back from Mudbug, seven former Sliders showed up at Gertie’s door for an emergency meeting. Tilma may have been a mayor’s wife back in Mudbug, but Ida Belle was the grande dame of what the younger residents of Sinful called, “The Geritol Mafia.” When she called a meeting, you were there, no questions asked. I was staying for the free lunch.
I recognized most of the women. Midge and Babs were Sinful Ladies. Some of the others I’d met when I was with Gertie or Ida Belle. Edilia Cheval was a stylist and nail gal at the Sinful Cuts, a beauty salon. As one of the few African American stylists around, she wasn’t wanting for clients, but I could tell she was dying to get hold of my hands and paint one of her signature designs on my nails. Martha Germain was a well-known gator hunter. Both appeared in pretty good shape. Opal looked as if she were enjoying about eight hours of television a day. Kitty probably spent a few hours perched in front of her computer or TV screen as well and wore a peculiar frozen grin on her face.
“What’s Kitty smiling at?” I asked Gertie as I helped her bring out a tray of sandwich wraps, plates and utensils from the kitchen.
“She can’t help it. It’s her latest facelift. She’s trying to erase the last thirty years.”
“She needs a bigger eraser.”
“Poor thing. She has work done every few years. I think if they pull her face back one more time her eyeballs are going to cross in the back of her head.”
The original Sinful Sliders’ team had consisted of 12 skaters, five of whom skated simultaneously. One woman had moved from Sinful to Florida. Two women had died within the past several years. Marge, a founding member of the Sinful Ladies Society and my pretend great-aunt, was one of them.
They began their meeting with a minute of silence for Marge and the other deceased team member, Wilma. I glanced over at Ida Belle and Gertie. A tear trickled down Gertie’s face. Ida Belle clenched her jaw. I didn’t know about their relationship with Wilma, but I knew that they both loved Marge deeply. Losing her several months ago had been devastating.
Marge’s death was the reason that I had met my two elderly partners in crime. Many times during the past six weeks I’d felt guilty for pretending to be Marge’s grandniece, living in her house, using her car, shooting her guns, but Gertie said she would have gotten a kick out of it.
“Are you kidding?” she’d said when I first expressed my guilt about it. “You’re a CIA assassin hiding out from a Middle East arms dealer who has a hit out on you. We don’t get many of those in Sinful. She’s probably in Heaven right now kicking herself for dying so early and missing all the fun.”
The minute was up. Gertie wiped the tears from her face as Ida Belle began.
“Was Ginny able to catch you up to speed about why I called this meeting?”
The women nodded.
“Tilma Canac, aka Queenie de Nile of the Mudbuggers, has pushed the bounds of common decency,” Ida Belle said.
“She won’t let us buy any more Pelican Lite Beer in Mudbug,” Gertie added, prompting a few murmurs of displeasure.
Ida Belle nodded. “She did this because we humiliated Bunny and Sadie at the roller rink last week.”
Gertie flicked her hand and made the sound of a cracking whip.
“Did you remind her that they cheated that last match in eighty-two?” Kitty asked, grinning widely.
Ida Belle nodded. “We did. So a challenge was presented. A rematch, to decide once and for all which team deserves the right to call themselves the Champions of Eighty-Two. And if we win, we get to buy whatever beer we want in Mudbug. On behalf of the Sinful Sliders, I accepted the challenge.”
Opal straightened the floral hair clip in her perfectly coifed, teased white hair, then raised her hand.
“Opal?”
Opal pulled herself up from the middle of Gertie’s sofa. “I’m not sure whether you realize this, Ida Belle, but we’ve aged since the championship of eighty-two. I can barely keep my balance in yoga class, much less get back on skates and throw my body in front of another gal to keep her from scoring.”
Kitty raised her hand. “What Opal said.”
“You won’t have to do any throwing of your bodies,” Gertie said. “You’re all Olympic athletes compared to them. If Tilma adds another spare tire to her body, she could double for the Michelin Man.”
“Besides,” Ida Belle added, “we’ll get in a few practice sessions at the skating rink.”
Edilia popped a potato chip in her mouth. “Is Bunny LeBeau going to be competing?”
Ida Belle smiled. “Oh yeah.”
“Then count me in. You heard what she did to my grandson, Andre, didn’t you?”
Gertie shook her head. “No. What?”
“Got him fired over at the Mudbug Auto Shop about a month ago.”
Gertie placed her hand over her mouth. Several women gasped in surprise.
“She falsely accused him of stealing some fishing gear out of her car,” Edilia said. “He hasn’t been able to find a job since. He’s been saving his money so he could go to law school, and now he might have to wait a year.”
Midge reached over and stroked Edilia’s arm. “Oh honey.”
“Why didn’t you let us know, Edilia?” Ida Belle asked. “We would have gotten the SLS involved in fund-raising.”
“He’s too proud to take money he doesn’t earn,” she said. “But I’d like to see Bunny’s face when we whip their butts.”
Babs raised her hand. “One little complication.” She held up her cell phone. “Tilma just posted a picture of their team on my Facebook page.” She looked up at Ida Belle. “Did you two say we could bring in one outside player?”
Ida Belle nodded. “It was the only way she’d agree. Said one of her gals has hip surgery scheduled and wouldn’t be available. I think she’s going to ask Frannie Anderson who leads tai chi classes at their senior center. She does everything in slow motion, so I wouldn’t worry.”
“She didn’t pick Frannie,” Babs said. “She picked a young ringer.”
The women whipped out their phones and one by one gasped as they checked out Babs’s page.
Gertie looked at her phone screen and cringed. “All Beef Patty.”
“She looks like she could lift a truck,” Martha said.
I went over and looked at Gertie’s phone. There, standing in the middle of a group of seven senior Mudbuggers, was a tough-looking blonde woman who indeed looked like she could lift a truck. She worked out. A lot.
“How can we possibly compete against her?” Babs asked.
“We’d need a young ringer ourselves,” Edilia said, sadness dominating her face. “And that, we don’t have.” She sighed and sunk into the chair. “I really wanted to let Bunny have it.”
Don’t volunteer. You’re shaky on skates.
I could practice.
Don’t do it.
Her grandson was falsely accused, and he’s paying the price. Just like I’m paying the price for the hit on me.
Edilia’s deep sigh cut straight through to my heart.
Don’t volunteer.
“I’ll be your ringer.”
Edilia sat straight up in the chair. “Are you serious?”
“Can you skate?” Opal asked.
Gertie clapped. “She’s shaky, but we could help her practice on the rec center basketball court.”
“I don’t know,” Martha said. “Frankly, I’m not convinced the Yankee can pull it off.”
“Martha!” Edilia said.
Normally I let the word “Yankee” roll right over me. But there was something about the way Martha said it that made my face burn.
“This Yankee has special talents,” I said. Well, okay, so my special talents were sharpshooting and slipping poison into foreign assassins’ food. But I was also trained in hand-to-hand combat by the best special ops trainers in the country. In fact, I was top of my class in Chinese Kickboxing, Krav Maga and Melee Weaponry—hand-to-hand combat with whatever is handy. Fun stuff like swords, spears, axes, clubs, hammers, and maces. If I couldn’t prevail against a big-boned gal named All-Beef Patty, I should beat myself silly with one of my melee weapons.
The women cheered and surrounded me, some giving me granny-hugs, others reaching up and tousling my hair.
Edilia clasped my hands in hers. “Thank you.”
“We need to round up a pair of skates for you,” Ida Belle said.
“And give her a name,” Midge added.
Gertie clapped again. “We’ll hold a contest and a naming ceremony. Like we did in the old days.”
Ida Belle stood before me. “Are you sure you’re up for this? You’ll have to practice non-stop until the championship bout.”
“I’m my father’s daughter,” I told Ida Belle.
She nodded, understanding the implication, since we had twin fathers separated by decades. We were both disappointments to them, which only made us determined to excel at everything we did.
“Congratulations,” Ida Belle said, “you’re officially a Sinful Slider.”