Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery) (11 page)
Read Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery) Online
Authors: Duffy Brown
BW and I went around the back of the house, letting ourselves in through the iron-rose gate that had graced the premises since before the Yankees came a callin’. I turned the doorknob to let myself in like I always did, except the door was locked.
“KiKi,” I bellowed like a cranky five-year-old. I added a few knocks to the door for good measure. The only response I got was a big dose of worry sliding down my back. She wasn’t home, and KiKi was looking forward to digging into the Seymour/Dozer/Butler quagmire as much as I was . . . maybe more. So where the heck was she?
I hustled to the garage. No car. “Maybe she had to run an errand,” I explained to BW while trying to convince myself it was true. I know it’s not logical to panic because your auntie isn’t home to serve up a martini, but cutting KiKi out of the action, in this case the Dozer action, had consequences. In my mind I was keeping her safe; in KiKi’s mind it was
So she thinks I’m too old, does she; well, I’ll show her.
I had a bad feeling this was one of those I’ll-show-her situations.
The manila folder! I tore open Old Yeller to find no copies inside. Of course they weren’t inside; that sneaky auntie had distracted me with visions of Mamma doing the display in the bay window and snatched the papers in my time of decorating distress. The missing copies of the articles and the picture of the lumber stamp coupled with Pillsbury’s tales of Butler and the collapsed house told me where KiKi was. Well, I didn’t know exactly where she was, but after letting myself into KiKi’s house and dialing up the Chantilly/Pillsbury duo for the address of the house where the floor collapsed, BW and I were hoofing it toward Blair Street at record speed.
Maybe KiKi had just left, I reassured myself. Maybe she was just poking around the abandoned house and had lost track of time. Maybe she was lying unconscious in a gutter. I walked faster.
Clouds of mist hugged church spires and treetops; a cold damp fog snaked at my ankles, BW looking as if he were walking on little tufts of smoky cotton. It was six and felt like midnight, only a few people out and about, darting to where they needed to be and staying put. Wind whipped through the trees, and I shivered as much from the chill as apprehension. We hung a right onto Heartridge then over to Blair, streetlights dim, few porch lights on, my footsteps and BW’s nails on the sidewalk the only sounds, a boogieman behind every bush. It was a jumpy kind of night.
KiKi’s shiny navy Beemer sat at the curb completely out of place in the land of the dated. A few homes glowed from within, but 214 Blair sat dark and deserted except for one light deep inside, a new ramp for wheelchair access nearly complete. BW and I started up the brick walk to the house, BW giving me the
where the heck are you taking me
look.
“This place is a little creepy; can you butch it up a little?” I said to BW. “It might come in handy.”
I got out my flashlight but didn’t turn it on. I didn’t need the neighbors calling the cops. Two encounters of the criminal kind between Mr. Suit and Ann Taylor would take a lot of explaining, and right now I had a lot more questions than answers. I followed the narrow driveway that circled around to the back, looking in the deserted house windows as I went, no movement anywhere. A wood deck extended from the rear entrance, and something smelled strange, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Where the heck was KiKi?
A ruffling came from the tangle of trees and bushes that butted up against the yard. I shined my light in that direction. KiKi was pushing and fighting her way out of the growth looking like Lindsay Lohan on a bender. “Where in the world have you been?” I fumed.
KiKi opened her purse to two eyes and a meow.
“You have a cat in a Gucci bag?” I put my hand in to pet it, and it hissed. “A mean cat in a Gucci bag.”
KiKi swiped her mangled hair from her dirty face and tried to straighten her torn skirt.
“And you have scratches. That’s bad from a stray. Maybe we should get you to the ER.”
“It’s not from the cat; it’s from climbing the tree. I was thinking of naming him Guilt Trip. I was checking this house just to see if it was tied in any way to the Dozer copies, and the cat was living under the deck, and I scared him, and he ran off, and the dog next door chased him into the woods and up a tree, and all I could hear was this pitiful meow.”
“You really climbed a tree?”
“These things happen.”
“It was that help-others sermon, wasn’t it? Does everyone else get into this much trouble after going to church on Sunday morning?”
“No one’s fed us to the lions yet.”
“It’s not even seven; there’s time.” I put my arm around KiKi. “Let’s get some tea.”
“Forget tea, I have martinis chilling for us in the fridge.”
“Amen.” BW, KiKi, and I followed the flashlight down the drive to the front of the house. “Don’t you smell that?” I asked KiKi.
“All I smell is cat pee in my purse. It costs twelve hundred dollars.”
We crossed the deserted street to the Beemer, the fog giving the streetlights a soft golden haze. “You sure you want to keep that cat?” I asked.
“He’s hungry.”
“Twelve hundred dollars?”
“And sixty-three cents.”
“That’s a lot of dance classes. Next Sunday we should sleep in. For now you stay here while I go find us a box. Cat pee in the Beemer may not go over too well with Uncle Putter. He wasn’t there for the sermon.”
I handed KiKi BW’s leash and started back across Blair, looking at the deserted house, trying to pinpoint that weird smell and—
Kaboom!
Fireballs blasted out the doors, windows, and roof. Bricks, wood, and God knows what else flew into the air; the impact slammed me backward, yellow flames and heat singing my skin as I landed hard on my butt, rattling the fillings in my teeth. Gasping for a breath, I glanced at KiKi to see if she was okay; the blaze reflected off her face, her eyes huge against the dark night. Two more pairs of eyes stared from under the Beemer . . . and three cars down a red ’57 Chevy convertible sat at the curb.
Boone! What the heck? Pillsbury must have told him KiKi and I were here, and he feared for the neighborhood! But where was he now? This was my fault. If I wasn’t here and KiKi wasn’t here, Boone wouldn’t be here . . . somewhere. God knows where! That cat wasn’t the only one tagged Guilt Trip tonight. I cut my eyes back to the fire, orange and yellow flames devouring what was left of the walls, roof, and porch. I pushed myself up, then stumbled my way toward the blazing house.
The inferno lit up the night with thick black smoke billowing out every opening. I dodged a burning door in the middle of the street, jumped over a chunk of table, and prayed I didn’t come across body parts. Oh, God, please no body parts. “Boone!”
My voice sounded muffled in my own head, the blast knocking out my hearing along with everything else. Flaming debris littered the sidewalk and the neighbors’ yards. My jacket caught on fire till I smashed it out with the flat of my hand. “Boone!”
A wall of flames from a chunk of blown-out house blocked the driveway, keeping me from the backyard. Was Boone trapped there? Fire scorched pristine white clapboard, the flames coming closer and closer. Good Lord, a chunk of wall was falling right at me!
I screamed and was suddenly airborne, landing spread-eagle on my back in the grass, staring up at sparks soaring into the sky. Walker Boone landed on top of me, all hundred-and-whatever superb pounds squashing me into the ground. Fire crashed down next to us, shaking the ground, with flames and heat everywhere. I could feel Boone’s heart pounding against my chest, his hot breath on my right ear, his rough stubble on my cheek, my hips firm against his . . . oh boy.
It had been a long, long, over two-years-long, time since I’d been in this particular position, and never in a million years did I ever think it would be with Walker Boone!
B
OONE
pushed himself up, grabbed my arm, and propelled me through the flames to the sidewalk.
“What the hell are you doing?” Boone whispered. I was 100 percent sure it wasn’t a whisper at all, but my nonworking ears made it sound that way. It was probably more like a million-decibel roar. I tried to tell Boone I couldn’t hear, but the man was on such a rant I decided against pushing the point. Least this way he could get it all out of his system and I didn’t have to listen to it, or at least I listened at a decreased volume.
“I was looking for you,” I explained when I could finally squeeze in a word.
Boone said something, but it was lost in the blast of sirens from fire engines, two police cruisers, and two ambulances outfitted with enough strobe lights to be seen from outer space. Firefighters stretched hoses and hooked them up to hydrants, and a cop made his way over to Boone to ask if anyone was in the house.
Everyone knew Boone with him having one foot in the law enforcement camp, one foot in the hood from days of yore, and his behind in half the female beds in the city . . . or so the kudzu vine reported. I took the opportunity to back away into the night, fading into the crowd of neighbors pouring out of houses and gathering in the street.
“We should get out of here now while everyone’s busy,” I said to KiKi as I pulled up beside her, BW wiggling out from under the car. “We’ll have to get the Beemer later. It’s hemmed in by all this equipment.”
“Was that Boone I saw you with?” KiKi asked. “He saved your sweet Southern behind when that there wall collapsed. Maybe you should bake him a cake, or buying him a cake might be better.”
“Hey, I can cook.”
“Of course you can, dear.” She held up Old Yeller. “That explosion blew it right off your arm, not a scratch on it. We should tell the army about this here purse.”
I straightened KiKi’s hair to calm down the
finger in the socket
look she had going on. “We just act normal, like we belong to the neighborhood,” I said. “We don’t need the police asking why we were at the house.” I took in KiKi’s tree-climbing attire and looked down at my ripped denim jacket, filthy khakis, glued-together shoes caked with soot and burned, and spotted Mr. Suit getting out of a cruiser.
“We need to get out of here now; that guy with the cops is bad news. I met up with him at Dozer’s.”
KiKi pointed to her purse. “We can’t leave without my cat.”
“He’s not your cat.”
That got me the
sad auntie
look, which is the one thing even worse than the
ticked off auntie
look. “If I hadn’t climbed that tree,” KiKi said with a hitch in her voice, “I might have been in that house. God works in mysterious ways. He sent us to church.”
“Meaning you were supposed to follow the cat?”
“Meaning I’m supposed to give him a home.”
There was no arguing with the God theory. I took off what was left of my jacket and shimmied under the Beemer, dragging my jacket with me. I reassured myself this would just take a minute and that I really didn’t hate confined spaces as much as I thought I did.
Rocks, leaves, and other street flotsam ground into my elbows and forearms. I knocked my head on the undercarriage and came face-to-whiskers with the cat from hell. “You should know it’s been a bad day and I’m not in a good mood and I hate, hate, hate being under here.”
He hissed. I hissed back, flipped my jacket over his head, and tied the arms together, making for a bag full of snarling, screeching, scratching feline. I started to back out and caught sight of shoes, not black police uniform shoes or firefighter boots, but Sperry Top-Sider loafers from the Macy’s catalog, the obvious choice of young, obnoxious up-and-coming Southern detectives everywhere.
I curled my feet under the car to stay hidden, beads of sweat slithering down my back. I had no idea what Suit said to KiKi but trusted the queen of half truths and story spinning to save the day and somehow explain away her appearance, a BMW on this street, and a cat howling his head off under the car, and that she’d do it fast. The Top-Siders walked away, and I forced myself to count to ten then shimmied out dragging Hellion with me. I peeked over the car hood to make sure Suit wasn’t hanging around and caught site of Boone still chatting with the cops, his hand tucked behind his back and favoring one leg. Neighbors crowded closer, a WSAV news van with enough antennae to reach Mars pulling up.
“I told that detective I was out for a walk looking for my cat,” KiKi said, a bit of my hearing returning. She held out her arms. “I sure look the part, don’t you think? Now where is my little precious?”
I didn’t think KiKi was referring to me, so I dumped Hellion in her purse and shook my jacket to dislodge any cat vermin lurking inside. I took BW’s leash, and the four of us headed off. The street was congested with onlookers, and more were coming by the minute, all of them far more interested in a good old house explosion than two grungy women walking a dog and a meowing purse.
Twenty minutes later I had KiKi settled in her favorite chair with a martini and Hellion sequestered in the garage with a blanket, water in a china bowl, and fried chicken deboned and diced into bite-size pieces. Saving KiKi had perks. I promised KiKi we’d pack the little bundle of joy off to the vet tomorrow to get rid of the ticks and fleas before granting permanent inside residency.
“How are you going to explain this cat to Uncle Putter?” I asked KiKi before heading out the door to reclaim the Beemer.
KiKi took a contemplative sip of martini and munched an Oreo, the perfect combination to chase away the woes of the day. “The way this here house operates is that Putter lives in the world of
Golf Digest
, where are my clubs, when’s dinner, and I have surgery at ten. With a little luck he’ll think we’ve had a cat all along. It’s either that, or I’ll tell him he’s the one who brought the cat home and it must have slipped his mind.”
“Think it’ll work?”
“It’s how I got the Gucci.” She nibbled her bottom lip and gave me a hard look. “Honey, when you pick up the car, it might be a right fine idea to avoid the cops; you sort of look like a witness to the occurrence. They could be wondering why you were there.”
“The clothes are a dead giveaway, huh?”
“That and you don’t have eyebrows.”
BW and I headed off to get the car. I burrowed into my shredded jacket wondering if I could duct tape the thing back together. I was a great believer in the wonders of duct tape. The closer we got to Blair Street, the slower BW walked. He came to a dead standstill right in the middle of the sidewalk, staring straight ahead at the bank of strobe lights. “Bad memories? I’m with you on that one.”
More than likely the Beemer was still hemmed in by emergency equipment, blown-up houses being a big deal and all. As much as I wanted to get KiKi’s nice car back in her driveway tonight, it wasn’t going to happen right now. Instead of heading for home, my guilty conscience got the best of me, and I headed in the other direction and turned onto East Charlton. BW perked right up, his head held higher now and tail wagging.
This was one of our favorite walks, with live oaks so big they formed a canopy of green across the entire street and roots so strong and old they pushed up brick sidewalks making them uneven, memorable, Savannah. The houses here dated back to the 1850s and weren’t just places to live, they were members of the family, the guardians keeping those inside safe and warm and protected, and they had done it oh so beautifully for all these many years.
We passed Troup Square, and BW got his usual drink from the doggie fountain there, then Lafayette Square and Madison Square with the illuminated statue of Sergeant William Jasper, noted soldier of the Siege of Savannah right in the middle. The trivia I knew as a Southern history major was frightening. Across the street stood the home of Walker Boone, and BW pulled me in that direction with all his might.
Since Boone could have gotten turned into pixie dust tonight because of me, I owed him an explanation. Besides, if I didn’t come to him now, he’d come to me tomorrow, and I didn’t want that hanging over my head all night. There was also the niggling fact that Boone didn’t look so good when talking to the police, and his jumping on top of me had a lot to do with saving me from a wall of fire and nothing to do with his hormones.
Boone’s house was a pristine Federalist that did Savannah proud but was pretty much unfurnished just like Mercedes said. I had made a beer run to his fridge once and got a firsthand look. I took the steps to the raised entrance and rapped the brass pineapple doorknocker, the knocker of all Southern homes worth two hoots. No answer. I tried again with the same result.
I started to leave, tugged on the leash for BW to come along, but he didn’t budge. Poor doggie was fast asleep, sprawled out across Boone’s welcome mat, snoring like an oncoming freight train. Not having the heart to get him up after the night from the damned, I sat on the porch beside him, gazing across to the lovely lit square. I snuggled up close to keep warm, tension fading away, a bit of peace at last.
“Drink this.”
I was jostled awake, a cup of something hot and steamy shoved into my hand.
“Maybe it’ll make your eyebrows grow back.”
I blinked a few times, trying to figure out where the heck I was. “KiKi?”
“Not exactly,” Boone said, dropping down beside me. He opened a white pastry bag, pulled out a sprinkle doughnut, tore off a piece, my mouth watering in anticipation, and fed it to BW.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “You look like something the cat dragged in.” He gave a sniff. “And you smell like it, too.”
I grabbed a handful of jacket and took a whiff. Maybe Febreze and duct tape. I sipped some coffee to get my brain working and clear away the fog. “I didn’t have anything to do with that house blowing up. I think there might have been a gas leak inside.”
“Along with a hefty dousing of gasoline.”
I stopped the coffee halfway to my mouth. “This was on purpose?”
“Neighbors said there was a light on inside the house. Remove the glass from the bulb, turn on the gas, and the exposed filament is the perfect igniter.”
Boone pulled another doughnut from the bag and took a big bite. “What did you find at Dozer’s that connects to the house on Blair?” he asked around the crumbs. “You were at both places when you had no business being at either, and I don’t believe in coincidence.”
Boone had a cut across his forehead, and both hands were blistered and scraped raw. I didn’t know what part was from just being near the blast and what part was from that blazing wall and Boone being between it and me. Either way he was at that house because KiKi and I were there. I owed him. I hated when that happened. “How about I buy you a new jacket and we call the night even.”
“How about you tell me why I almost got blown to hell and back.”
“What if I bake you a cake?”
“I’ve already had one near-death experience.” The little lines at Boone’s eyes crinkled with a laugh, and I socked his arm. Love didn’t make the world go round, guilt did.
“I’m not all that sure what’s going on,” I said to Boone.
“But you have a hunch.”
“Yeah, I have a hunch.” I settled back against the door and grabbed a chunk of doughnut. I took a bite, trying to put the pieces together. “Seymour was underbidding Dozer on contracts, and yet Seymour lived large, handing in low bids and still making money. The question is how, and I think Dozer wondered the same thing. In Dozer’s office I found newspaper clippings of buildings with structural problems all from Seymour projects. Then today Pillsbury came to the Fox with Chantilly and said something about a friend who repaired a house with bad wood he bought from Butler Haber and the house falling apart. That makes two building problems in two days. I don’t believe in coincidence either.”
Boone licked icing and sprinkles off his thumb, his forehead furrowed in thought. “And Seymour’s dead, and now this house is suddenly blasted off the face of the earth. Nothing’s going to put that house back together, and dead men don’t talk. Another two for two. Someone’s trying real hard to hide something.”
I split a piece of doughnut with BW. “Dozer had a picture of lumber with the Haber Lumber stamp tucked in with the newspaper clippings. My guess is Haber was selling inferior lumber to Seymour at cheap prices so he could turn in low bids. Haber marked it good grade, but it wasn’t. Now that things are falling apart, Seymour must have suspected what Haber did.”
