Killer in Crinolines (9 page)

I caught sight of Icy Graham across from me and standing next to Pillsbury in the back of the crowd. Icy had on a rumpled brown suit two sizes too small; Pillsbury’s suit was not the one he wore at the wedding when impersonating a bouncer but a suit that cost what I made at the Fox in a month. Okay, two months, but I was trying right hard to drum up business. Why was Icy here? Why did Pillsbury show up? And what in the world was Walker Boone doing here?

Delta and GracieAnn looked almost happy with barely contained smiles. They stood next to Suellen, the waitress, her eyes red, a soggy hankie wadded in her fist. Doreen-the-wedding-planner looked a lot cheerier at Simon’s funeral than she had at his wedding. Waynetta was emaciated, bored, and in a pout like always. With her funeral black hat perched on her head and lower lip sticking out, if she turned sideways, she’d look like a swizzle stick. Reverend Weatherman coaxed the last
Amen
from the congregation. Close friends and relatives put white roses on the casket. There weren’t many roses. When I looked back to where I’d seen Boone before, he was gone.

KiKi and I started for the Beemer, others offering condolences to Vidallia and Waynetta. KiKi whispered, “That was a mighty strange funeral if you ask me. You’d think people would be more distraught with someone so young dead and all.”

“I think it depends who the someone is that happens to be dead.” I cut my eyes to Icy climbing into an old blue Pontiac. “That’s the guy we’re going to see. His market was the last stop I had in the UPS truck before Swamp Adventures with Boone. I have no idea how Icy Graham knows Simon, but he’s here for some good reason.” I glanced around, soaking up the serenity. “To tell you the truth I was hoping for a little more drama at this thing. Elsie and AnnieFritz won best of show hands down.”

I opened the car door and heard shouting by the gravesite. Waynetta shoved the bridesmaid who’d lost her dress at the wedding onto the pricey casket, scattering white roses everywhere and knocking the casket off its brass perch, Simon landing half in, half out of his six-foot hole.

“You’re nothing but a common old two-bit whore,” Waynetta screeched, waving her arms. “You screwed Simon the very day he was to marry me and I know all about it. I saw your bridesmaid dress on the floor of your room and the bowtie on the bed and heard all that commotion coming from inside the closet. I knew what you were up to in there. How stupid do you think I am!”

“Simon was marrying you for your money,” Bridesmaid screeched back, scrambling to her feet. “He sure didn’t love you.”

Vidallia burst into tears, Suellen sobbed, Delta gave the casket a good shove, sending it nose-down into the hole with a solid thud, and GracieAnn pulled a dead-man cookie from her purse and bit off the head. Bridesmaid continued, “He never intended to be faithful to the likes of you, he told me so himself that very day. I was going to be his mistress.”

“He’d tell you anything to get into your pants.” Waynetta yanked off her little black hat and threw it at Bridesmaid. “You and Simon deserve each other. If I had my way you’d be dead too and lying right next to his sorry self in that coffin; it’s what you both deserve.”

KiKi gave me a little poke in the ribs and whispered, “I do declare, you got your wish and then some, honey. This here is drama with a capital
D
, and if I’m not mistaken, we have ourselves another prime murder suspect or two.”

“T
URN
here,” I said to KiKi and pointed at the sign for Lighthouse Road. The Beemer slowed, tires crunching over the gravel leading to the docks.

“I don’t see any big old truck that could have knocked you into the soup,” KiKi said, pulling to a stop by the sun-bleached fish market house. “There’s no one here, not a single car in the lot. Maybe we should forget this. Icy didn’t appear to be all that pleasant, and whatever in the world am I going to talk to the man about anyway to try and keep him occupied?”

“Shrimp.” I got out of the car just as a young woman came around the corner of the building, toddler in her arms.

“Can I help you?” The girl was young, midtwenties, with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

“What a cute little boy,” KiKi said, giving me a
this is what I’m talking about
look. “Children are a true blessing.” Subtlety was not Auntie KiKi’s strong suit.

“They are indeed.” The girl cradled the toddler and blew raspberries on his tummy. He giggled and squirmed, his dark eyes laughing, his black curly hair shining in the sunlight. “If you all are looking for shrimp, we’re sold out for today. My father had a funeral and didn’t get a chance to go out in the boat this morning. He gave the crew the day off—too hot on the water to catch much right now anyway, especially midday.

“Funerals are so sad,” I ventured, trying to get some information as to why Icy was out at Bonaventure. “Hope it wasn’t anyone close.”

“Oh, Lordy, no. Just some no-count, troublesome piece of scum I got mixed up with and who we’re all better off without.” The girl kissed the top of the toddler’s head. “Isn’t that right, doodlebug.” The girl looked so serious and protective, cuddling her baby close in spite of the heat. “I think Daddy wanted to make sure the bastard was gone for good and out of our lives. Things will be better now, I’m sure of it,” she said to herself as much as to us. “So much the better. I know that sounds mighty terrible, speaking ill of the dead and all, but this person was the devil incarnate and then some.” She nodded at the market. “I have some nice flounder inside.”

“Flounder,” I repeated tying to digest what I just heard.

“Fresh fish? Isn’t that what you’re looking for?” The girl asked.

“Right,” KiKi said. “Fresh fish, of course. We sort of had out hearts set on the shrimp. We’ll be back tomorrow.” She tugged me toward the car. “Take care of that baby now, you hear.”

“Oh, I will. His granddaddy would skin me alive if I didn’t.”

KiKi and I got in the car and exchanged wide-eyed looks. We waved to the girl and she waved back, her little boy doing the baby bye-bye thing. “Holy Moses and sweet Jesus above,” KiKi whispered as we headed up Lighthouse Road and turned onto a country lane. “Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?”

“That if we gave that baby a goatee and added on thirty years, we’d have Simon Ambrose reincarnated?”

KiKi pulled off onto a sandy shoulder, careful not to do Swamp Adventures part two. “Icy Graham wasn’t into Simon for borrowing money. Icy wanted Simon out of his grandson’s life.”

“That’s what I thought too, but it just doesn’t add up if you think about it. I mean instead of Icy wanting to get rid of Simon, why didn’t the girl blackmail Simon. She could have threatened to tell Waynetta that Simon had a child. Waynetta would have hated that and ditched Simon in a heartbeat. Simon sure didn’t want that to happen. He would have paid her plenty to keep quiet, don’t you think.”

KiKi shook her head. “That’s not the way that little girl thinks. She loves that baby. He’s her whole life and my guess is he’s Icy Graham’s life too. Simon was all about money, anything for a buck, and now Icy Graham and his daughter are glad he’s dead. There was money in this for Simon somehow. He was working an angle.”

“What if Simon the jackass made threats about wanting to claim the child as his own. Maybe he said he wanted the baby and so did Waynetta. Icy and his daughter don’t travel in the same circles as the Waverlys. They don’t know Waynetta like we do, that someone else’s child is the last thing on earth she’d tolerate. Icy paid Simon to stay away from his daughter and grandson. Simon being Simon wanted more money. A man like Icy wasn’t about to have his life ruined by Simon Ambrose, so Icy killed him.” I considered the possibility of what we just put together. “Then again that sounds a little extreme, if you ask me.”

“Oh, honey, I think that’s it,” KiKi said, heading down the road. “It’s not extreme at all. When you’re a mamma or grandparent or auntie, what matters is that child, the love of your life. Icy knew the Waverlys would bring in expensive lawyers and take his grandson away. That’s all he could see and he wasn’t about to take the chance.”

“Icy wanted Simon and Waynetta to go away and it had to happen before the marriage or Waynetta might have a legal claim on Simon’s child.” I looked at KiKi. “It fits. We need to get into Simon’s house and look around. I bet there’s a birth certificate or other papers that connect Simon to Icy or the daughter or baby. I wonder what else that sleaze was up to? If he was willing to go after the mother of his baby, the man has no limits.”

KiKi bit at her bottom lip. “But what if Icy did indeed kill Simon?”

“We give him a medal and bring in a marching band?”

“We can’t put a grandfather in jail for protecting his daughter and grandson. And if we don’t, Chantilly could go to prison . . . or worse.” KiKi shook her head. “We need to get into Simon’s place soon. We’ll bring vodka, lots of vodka to numb the ickiness of touching things Simon-ized.”

“Tomorrow we’ll go,” I lied in agreement. I couldn’t involve my dear aunt in B and E, vodka or not. “But right now I’ve got to get home and get Chantilly to Bonaventure. There was talk of making use of her daddy’s shotgun, and I don’t want her taking aim at me for not keeping my promise.”

• • •

“I don’t believe this,” Chantilly whined, the two of us standing in front of Bonaventure Cemetery, the massive wrought-iron gates padlocked together. I stepped closer and read the little plaque dangling from the chain. “Summer hours. The place closes early in August.”

“Since when do dead people get summer hours? They’re dead. They have no hours. This is crazy.” Chantilly grabbed the gates and gave a hard shake that did no good at all except to make a lot of racket. “I knew we should have come earlier.” Chantilly stepped back, parking her hands on her hip, staring at the high stone wall surrounding the place.

“I had customers,” I offered in my own defense. “It’s real-estate tax month
.” And Hollis is ready to pounce,
I added to myself. “I couldn’t shoo out potential sales.”

“They didn’t even buy anything, and I need to see Simon now. He might still think I’m sweet on him, and I need to set the record straight.”

“He’s dead, honey. What more do you want?”

I got the beady-eyed stare. “You promised.”

I switched the heavy picnic basket holding KiKi’s donated bottle of champagne to my other hand and hitched Old Yeller up on my shoulder. “All right, all right. We’ll sneak in. I know a way, but first off we need to park the car out of sight so no one knows we’re breaking into a cemetery. Not as uncommon as one might think.”

“You really sneaked into Bonaventure?” Chantilly said, brows raised after we found a spot for the Jeep on a side street. “You’re the goody-two-shoes judge’s daughter.”

“I was desperate. Come on, we got to get a move on, it’s getting late.” We hoofed it to the rock wall surrounding the cemetery, then followed the sidewalk beside it to the river. The walk ended and we stepped into the grass, heading for the sandy riverbank under a line of birch trees. I pointed to a break in the wall where the water came in. “The river’s low in late summer. We’ll go around the end and get in that way. Sometimes in the spring you have to swim.”

Chantilly grabbed the strap of my purse, eyes huge, feet planted firmly in the dirt. “There’re water moccasins in that there river.”

I was tired and cranky and out of patience, moccasins or not. “Do you want to see Simon?”

“What had you so desperate to swim with snakes? It must have been a doozy of a reason.”

We were never getting to Simon at this rate. “I wanted a date for junior prom. If I didn’t come up with one Auntie KiKi was going to fix me up with the kid who cut her grass. He was two years younger and kept his clipped fingernails in a mayonnaise jar. I saw it with my own two eyes. Now let’s get going.”

Chantilly grinned as I pulled her along. “You devil. You sneaked in to see Marguerite.”

“Cost me fifty bucks, forty for Marguerite and ten to the kid who told me how to get in here.”

“I heard the going rate was a hundred. So who did Marguerite fix you with for a measly forty bucks?”

I took a deep breath. “Sugar-Ray Dunlap.” I kicked off my flip-flops, offered up a quick prayer for no snakes, then stepped into the river, the cool water swirling around my ankles. I could hear Chantilly breathing hard behind me. “Simon’s grave isn’t far,” I said to keep our minds off snakes. I threw in the events of Waynetta, Bridesmaid, and the casket for added distraction.

“And you made me miss out on all that today,” Chantilly said when we got to the other side of the wall. “I should have been there.”

“Along with the police in riot gear.”

“There is that.”

Now I understood why there was a procession to bury the dead—a crowd made a cemetery a whole lot less creepy. Two lone souls on a deserted gravel road with an overcast sky was not a procession or a crowd.

“You know,” Chantilly said, edging close to me, or maybe it was me edging close to her. “Did you ever think that Waynetta killed Simon? She had a mighty good motive if she knew he was doing the slippery-slide with Bridesmaid on her wedding day in the closet. Maybe Waynetta took Bridesmaid’s dress when she saw it on the floor, then stabbed Simon to frame Bridesmaid. Do them both in at once, so to speak.”

I nodded up ahead to the grave freshly covered with a mound of dirt, a backhoe parked off to the side. “There’s your boy. You dance, and I’ll pop the champagne. Make it quick; I think a storm’s rolling in off the ocean.”

I braced for a deluge of grief. Chantilly wanted to take her time, savor the moment, dance her heart out. She cut her eyes side-to-side looking around and said, “I sort of thought this would be more fun.” She shivered then baby-stepped her way to Simon’s grave. She paused, then touched the tip of her toe to the fresh dirt and shivered again.

I sat on the edge of a tombstone that declared Mildred Snyder was indeed beloved, missed, a devoted wife and mother, and a member of the Savannah Garden Club. Chantilly did some wild gyrations that made me want to give her a few complimentary lessons with Auntie KiKi. I twisted the wire cage off the top of the champagne bottle, pried up the cork, and—

“This here ain’t no dance club and hoochy-coochy bar,” a voice said behind me, making me jump, scream, pop champagne, fall backward over Mildred, and instantly turn forty all in two seconds flat. I looked up at a guy right out of the grave complete with a shovel in his left hand. I figured he was about two hundred years old, shirt and pants ripped and muddy, face and hair caked with dust and sand.

“Help?” I stammered, Chantilly running over to assess the damage.

“I’m the caretaker, grave digger, and whatever else needs doing around here. What’s wrong with you people? Doesn’t anyone know how to read these days? We’re closed up and what’s with all the interest in that there grave over yonder anyway?” Graveyard guy pointed his shovel to Simon then peered down his nose at me. “You don’t have a dead chicken or cat in that there basket do you? Folks are always hauling in dead chickens and cats. Do you know what it’s like to clean up—”

“No!” My heart ricocheted around in my chest like a BB in a box. “I have no idea what it’s like.” And I didn’t want a blow-by-blow description.

“Even found a human toe once,” Graveyard guy went on undaunted. “I don’t mind a little chicken blood now and then as long as they keep it off the tombstones so it doesn’t leave a stain. Blood stains something awful and is the dickens to get out. People got to do what they got to do, but we have to keep things clean and not be dripping—”

“What kind of interest in that new grave are we talking about?” I asked, forcing my brain to work and forget about big toes, dead animals, and bloodstains.

“Well now, another gal was here earlier crying something awful. Felt right bad for her at first, but then she got all mad and cursed like a sailor. Haven’t heard the likes of it since my navy days. I take it that there is that Simon’s grave. She sure did call him a bunch of unflattering names. A bit later a man came along and spit on the grave.”

“What did they look like?”

“Just saw them from behind. Got another grave to dig before noon tomorrow over yonder.” Graveyard guy pointed through the trees. “It’s August, people are dropping like files. To escape the heat is my guess.” He nodded back to Simon. “Love and hate, that’s what makes the world go round, but you need to be doing it when the place is open, not now. I’m going off to eat some supper. You can get out through my caretaker shack by the front. I’ll be back to lock up and I best not find you here, if you get my meaning. It’s fixin’ to rain. You don’t want to be locked up in here at night in the rain. Gets kind of peculiar if you don’t mind me saying so.”