miss fortune mystery (ff) - jewel of the bayou (4 page)

“We saw you coming,” Ida Belle said. “Gladys always did like to make an entrance.”

Gertie’s reaction was more along the lines of outrage than welcome.

“Gladys, look what you did to my truck!”

“Oh, give it a rest, Gertie.” Mrs. Langstrom had rolled down her window, and was giving as good as she got. “You know darn well that if you could park a car like a normal person, this would never have happened. Anyway, it’s not like there’s any damage.”

Gertie kicked at her bumper, which looked like it was about to swing loose.

“Well, no real damage,” Mrs. Langstrom amended her statement. “And dollars to doughnuts, it was already in that condition before it ended up where it shouldn’t have been.”

“Dollars is right!” Gertie said. “And I’ll tell you what… If they give me any guff down at the garage when I turn this heap back in, it’s your dollars I’ll be coming for, believe you me.”

Jack was looking on in amazement. “How is that even possible?” he said, and he turned to me. “The slowest car in the country, and it ends up in a fender bender?”

“Just our Sinful ways,” I said, and I tossed my hair before walking over to say hello to Deacon Ryan. He was a step ahead of me, though, and he quickly trotted around to the driver’s side and opened up the door.

“Mrs. Langstrom, so good to see you!” he said. He reached down to grab her hand but she wasn’t having any of it. She shook him off, gave him a glare, and hoisted herself out of the Olds. In the light of the setting sun, it’s true, her bronze polyester glowed and set off her skin amazingly well. But it wasn’t the dress that caught the eye. It was the thing hanging around her neck, set in gaudy gold filigree. A bloodstone the size of a potato.

But it didn’t look like a potato.

His brow furrowed. “That can’t be,” he said. “Is that…”

“Kind of surprises you, doesn’t it?” said Gertie.

Ida Belle gave a short laugh, and turned to Jack. “That damn stone,” she said. “Looks just like a giant…”

“Turd,” Gertie finished her sentence for her.

“Turd,” Ida Belle agreed.

###

“Now, Mrs. Langstrom, this is our photographer, and he’ll be taking your picture today.” As Deacon Ryan introduced her to Jack, the way he hovered over his guest of honor made him seem more like a vulture than anything else, but I suppose there was some sense to that. It’s not every day that a juicy roll of bank notes plops itself down in front of you, just ripe for the taking.

“So you’re the photographer?” she said, and she took a long look at Jack and sized him up. “Not exactly what I expected.”

I’m not sure what she expected, but apparently when she thought ‘photographer’ the image that came to mind was not someone who looked like he belonged in the Special Forces. Jack hadn’t shaved – too focused on photography, probably. It was giving him a particularly rugged look, and I was guessing that when he had run his fingers through his hair few minutes ago, it wasn’t for the first time today. His mussed up hair seemed to fit him better anyway than yesterday’s careful combing had done, and it really set off those remarkable blue eyes. He still was wearing his dark suit, but the way the fabric was stretching tight over his muscles made him seem more ready for a bar fight than a church social.

He looked Mrs. Langstrom straight in the eye.

“I get that a lot,” he said. “Guess you’ll just have to trust me to make the magic happen. Let’s go inside.”

I’d seen him looking at his watch as we pulled up, and I had thought at the time that he must be calculating how slowly we were going. Now I realized that he must have finished up all of the other pictures for the Directory yesterday and today, and Mrs. Langstrom had to be the last name on his list. He’d been waiting for us to arrive, and he probably couldn’t wait to wrap things up and head on out of town.

I don’t know why, but that gave me a sinking feeling. Probably just my good manners making sure that I felt bad about keeping someone waiting, I suppose. Even someone as provoking as Jack.

Apparently Mrs. Langstrom thought he was provocative, too.

“Inside?” she said to him. “Just what kind of photographer do you think you are? We can’t do this inside that old church. That doesn’t make any sense at all. The whole point is for us to take advantage of this lovely golden light.” She waved her hand theatrically toward the west. “It’s the golden hour. The perfect time for pictures.”

“Nope,” Jack said. “Not gonna happen. We’ve got our own light inside, and we’re ready to go.”

“It’s true,” said Deacon Ryan. “You won’t believe how nice you’ll look.”

“Won’t believe it? Darn tootin’ I won’t believe it!”

“The artificial light is more dependable, too,” he went on. “More consistent.”

“More consistent that he last golden rays of the sun? Nonsense! Or do you think that this ruffian you’ve hired is better than all the great artists of the Renaissance, the Dutch masters, the…”

Ida Belle hooted. “Go on, Gladys. Tell us all about your childhood!”

“Why, you…” Mrs. Langstrom turned to Ida Belle, quick as a snake, but there was no way that a founding member of the Sinful Ladies Society was about to be cowed.

“Now, Gladys, you just calm down. Photography has come a long way since you first had your tintype took. Why, they don’t need to wait for the sunlight to shine on a silver plate any more, and…”

Mrs. Langstrom nearly hissed out her response.

“That’s rich, hearing you talk about the old days. I’m surprised you don’t think that it takes a chisel and a slab of rock to make a decent picture.”

“Well, you’ve got the rock covered, that’s for sure,” Ida Belle said, and Gertie took advantage of the moment to attempt to smooth things over. After all, if Mrs. Langstrom got too riled up to sit for her portrait, she might be too riled up to do her part for the church.

“You two shush,” she said. “You’re both too old to go on like this. Both of you!” she reiterated as she saw Ida Belle open her mouth for another retort. “Now, let’s get this show on the road. Jack, I’m sure you won’t mind setting up your equipment out here in order to take the picture. It’s been such a beautiful afternoon, and it does seem like it would be a pity not to use the light.”

Jack seemed ready to argue, but I could have warned him that poking at Mrs. Langstrom would just make her more set in her ways.

“Nope. It’ll be a lot easier if we all just move inside,” he said.

“Easy!” said Mrs. Langstrom. “Is that the way you do things? Take the easy road?”

“No, ma’am, I take the right road.”

“Well, anyone can see that the right road leads right out here, so I suggest that you get a move on before we lose all of this gorgeous light.”

“Hold on…”

“No holding on!” she said. “If we don’t do this now, then I suppose we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow evening.”

“Now, now,” the Deacon Ryan said. “I’m sure we don’t need to do anything as drastic as that. Especially after all the trouble you’ve taken to get here today, Mrs. Langstrom.”

Jack sighed, looked at his watch again, and then looked at me. “I get the feeling I’m outnumbered,” he said, and I nodded.

“Fine,” he said. “You want to help me move a few things out here? We might as well get this over with.”

“Oh, now I’m helpful?” I said.

“I never said you weren’t helpful. I said you were
too
helpful.”

“Whatever,” I said, but I smiled, and there might have been the hint of a smile beneath that stubble of his, too.

Gertie seemed to notice as well. “They’re not all idiots,” she said cryptically as I followed Jack to the church door.

Chapter Six

We barely had set foot inside when I heard a yelp and then a shout from Gertie.

“Lindy! Get back here!”

I ran outside and found Mrs. Langstrom with her arms waving wildly, Ida Belle tugging on her from behind, and Gertie with her hands tangled up in her hair.

“It’s that dratted necklace,” Gertie shouted. “It’s caught in her hair!”

Mrs. Langstrom was shouting, too. “Let go! Let go, you crazy woman! You’ll pull my hair out by the roots!”

I was too familiar with the techniques that Mrs. Langstrom used to make her hair achieve it’s impressive height and color to believe that it could ever be pulled out by the roots, but that just led to bigger problems, which is probably why she was starting to dance around like she was on a hot plate as she tried to extricate herself from the chain around her neck.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” Gertie cried out, and with a tug she pulled the chain from what was rapidly becoming a rat’s nest.

“Drat it, woman,” Mrs. Langstrom cried out. “Look what you’ve done!”

“Saved the day, that’s what I’ve done,” said Gertie, and I saw Ida Belle roll her eyes at that.

“Oh, now, Mrs. Langstrom,” I said, “we can get you fixed right up.”

“Enough!” she shouted, and she stamped her foot on the ground. “I can fix myself up just fine, thank you very much. I’m not so old that I can’t remember where the Ladies is located.”

That was the first I’d ever heard of Mrs. Langstrom not needing any help, which made me think that the scheme might be working after all. She wasn’t the frail, needy woman I’d been taking care of, that’s for sure.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to miss this,” Ida Belle said, and Gertie nodded.

“We’ll come along with you, Gladys. You’ve had enough trouble for now.”

“No thanks to you!” she replied, but she didn’t try to stop the two of them as they walked with her to the church.  She paused before they reached the door, and she turned to me and held out her hand.

“Here, Lindy,” she said. “You hold onto this while I get ready. I’m not about to let either of these two near it.”

“Wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole,” Ida Belle said.

“And you won’t have the chance,” retorted Mrs. Langstrom as I took the necklace from her. It truly was an astonishingly ugly piece. Ugly as sin, however much Mrs. Langstrom might believe it should be the pride of Sinful.

Jack had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and was hauling equipment outside while the hairdo hullabaloo was going down. I can’t say that I blamed him for keeping a low profile, but the tattoos that had been exposed were doing their best to do the opposite. I bit my lower lip as I checked out his forearms. He was on his way to a full sleeve on at least one arm, which might raise his profile, at least among the Sinful Baptist crowd. I looked around for Deacon Ryan, and didn’t see him anywhere. Maybe he was taking the whole low profile thing even further than Jack.

“So,” I said, “do you still need a hand?”

“Why not,” Jack said. “Let’s drag some stuff around. Should be fun. Stick some lights in the grass, hang a sheet behind a chair. You know, make everybody happy.”

“Maybe it’s just me, but it’s almost like the one person who might not be happy would be you.”

“Really? What makes you think that?” he said and he tossed an extension cord my way.

“Just a guess.”

He gave me a look. “Listen, I can’t help what all you crazy people in Sinful want to do. You want me to go outside to take a picture for the Church Directory? No problem. I can do it, but it’s going to look a hell of a lot like the picture we would have taken inside.”

I laughed. “You’re going along with it, and in my book, that makes you just as crazy as everyone else. You’re in Sinful now, buddy. No fair trying to set yourself apart.”

“That how it works? You show up in town one day, and the next thing you know you’re just one of the crowd?”

“Just one of the crowd?”

“Well, not everybody is just one of the crowd,” he said. “Sometimes people stand out.”

He looked at me.

“And sometimes you’ve got to grab hold of someone, and drag them out of the crowd,” he said.

I looked around for something to do before I started to blush for no reason.

“I think maybe we should move the chair so it can catch the last of the sun,” I said, and I headed over to where it had been set down.

Jack had decided to put the chair and the backdrop under the shade of some ancient oaks at the side of the church yard, which made no sense at all. I knew that, even with the artificial lighting that Deacon Ryan was selling so hard, Mrs. Langstrom would never go along with a portrait that didn’t at least try to take advantage of her precious golden light. It would make everything easier if we put the whole operation along the side of the church where the final rays of the setting sun were, in fact, lighting things with a golden glow. Jack headed back inside to grab more equipment, and I went over to start lugging the chair into the light.

No sooner had I gotten situated and grabbed the back of the chair with both hands – and “chair” doesn’t do justice to that massive piece of furniture; it had been situated back behind the pulpit for dignitaries to sit on, and it really was more of a throne – than Jack reappeared at the church door and gave me a shout.

“Hey, you wanna give me a hand with this?”

“Right now?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’m busy!” I shouted back, and dragged the chair a few feet through the grass.

“Ah, come on!” he yelled. “It looks like you have a job for two. Let’s get this lighting together, and then I’ll give you a hand.”

“Ooof,” I said in my most ladylike way as I dropped the chair back down onto the grass. “Fine! I’m coming!”

Not that I really minded, but I didn’t want him to get any ideas about whether or not I could pull my weight. So to speak.

Either the lighting equipment was fiddly, or Jack was extremely meticulous, but it took a while to sort out the cables and to get everything working. It took almost as long, in fact, as it took Mrs. Langstrom to get her hair back into a state that she could live with. Jack and I were just finishing up when I saw Deacon Ryan approaching from wherever he had been, and we heard the three ladies coming back out the door.

“No, it does not,” Gertie was saying. “If ‘natural’ is what you were going for, then you need to think long and hard about who you’re giving your money to.”

“Gertie, the day I take fashion advice from you is the day…”