Read Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery) Online
Authors: Duffy Brown
Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery) (3 page)
“I’m Reagan Summerside,” I said to Dumont, taking advantage of the turmoil and hoping he didn’t remember me from past offenses. “Is Gloria Summerside here?”
“No dogs allowed.” Dumont gulped his coffee and made a face at a baggie of tiny carrots.
“I just want to know if my mamma’s okay? Why was she taken into custody?”
Dumont took another call, cradled the phone against his shoulder, wrote with one hand, and pointed to the door with the other. “You and the pooch outside.”
Summersides sucked at waiting, proven by the fact that three months ago Auntie KiKi got herself locked in a closet and instead of waiting to get rescued crawled through an attic and out onto a fire escape then proceeded to fall off the building. When Dumont hung up the phone that immediately rang again, I pulled the Snickers from Old Yeller and stealthily slid the candy bar across the desk, stopping right next to the carrots. “Why do the police think Gloria Summerside is responsible for Scum . . . Seymour’s heart attack?”
Two officers broke up a fight in the back of the room, a metal chair sailed across the concrete floor, and Dumont ignored it all and the phone. He eyed the prize, fingers inching closer, a droplet of drool at the corner of his mouth. “Suspicious autopsy.”
“And?”
“There was a drinking glass at the crime scene with digitalis-laced honey bourbon. Facebook and tweets from the judge’s campaign this afternoon said the judge was headed over to Seymour’s with the bourbon to make peace and hopefully continue on with a respectable campaign. Then there were online pictures of her punching his lights out. Sorry I missed that. Seymour’s crud.” Dumont snagged the Snickers, ripped the wrapper, and bit, a glazed euphoric expression softening his face, meaning that on a fundamental level Officer Dumont and I were kindred spirits. Then reality returned, and he grabbed the phone and pointed to the door. “No dogs allowed. Out!”
BW and I stood on the sidewalk under a streetlight, BW in his coat, all cozy and warm against the autumn chill and making me wish I’d brought a jacket, and another Snickers would be nice, too. Dumont didn’t say the police had found the tainted bottle of honey bourbon, so right now everything was speculation as far as whether the poison was in the bottle that Mamma brought. Heck, everyone in Savannah knew Seymour fancied honey bourbon. He could be the poster boy for the stuff, and anyone could have poured out a glass of the tainted booze.
According to Boone, Scummy had enemies, and there was a whole roomful of people at Seymour’s headquarters who could have done him in. That these same people were working morning, noon, and night to get him elected was a minor motivation flaw I didn’t want to consider at the moment.
Something else I didn’t want to consider was just how close Auntie KiKi came to drinking that bourbon. Seymour cooties saved the day. Anyone who doesn’t think God works in mysterious ways hasn’t lived in Savannah.
“Heard they picked up Judge Gloria Summerside for questioning in the Kip Seymour case,” a twentysomething guy said as he rushed up. He had a hedge-trimmer haircut and camera with lens attached dangling around his neck. “Is she inside?” Hedge Trimmer hitched his head toward the building. “Did you see her? What do the cops have to say? When are they letting her out? I need pictures and a statement.”
The Kip Seymour case? Statement? Pictures? Why couldn’t it be Kip Seymour done and over with and hallelujah he’s gone? “I haven’t seen Judge Summerside,” I said. “You must have heard wrong.”
Another camera guy pulled up beside him on the sidewalk, a cigarette tucked behind his ear, one dangling from his lips. “I know you. You’re Gloria Summerside’s daughter.”
“I was out for a walk.”
“Sure, and you’re here to contemplate Savannah’s architectural wonder, no doubt. You’re here because the judge is inside.” Savannah’s version of the paparazzi snapped my picture and headed for the door.
After little white dots stopped dancing in front of my eyes, I headed for the parking lot on the back side of the station where Savannah’s finest rode up in their cruisers to deposit Savannah’s not so finest to be locked away. That I knew such things was due to Hollis being accused of murder some months ago. There were times when I wished I’d let his miserable hide rot in jail. ’Course then I’d have lost Cherry House to pay for his attorney fees.
I had to get a message to Mamma. She needed to come out through the back door and avoid the press. I’d already used my Snickers bribe on Dumont and figured the cop manning the rear entrance had little use for a near-empty can of hair spray, a half tube of Pink Blossom lipstick, or a roll of Life Savers that were the only decent things left in Old Yeller worth considering a bribe.
“Yo, woman,” came a voice behind me. “What you doing here at this hour?”
Big Joey was Pillsbury’s bro and grand poobah of the Seventeenth Street gang. We met one hot summer day with me intruding on his turf, giving testimony to the direction my life had taken lately. BW flopped over between two unoccupied cruisers and waited for a belly rub.
“My mamma’s inside,” I explained as Big Joey did the puppy-pat thing. “They’re questioning her about—”
“Seymour getting snuffed. Word is she did the deed. Dropped him a left hook.” Big Joey grinned, his gold tooth catching the streetlight. “Props to Mamma Judge.”
“The press is here. If they get pictures, it could hurt her chances of getting elected.”
Big Joey headed for the station. “A brother got himself incarcerated over an unfortunate error in judgment down at Wet Willies. I’ll inform Mamma.”
I glanced across the parking lot, checking for reporters. “Can you tell her to hurry?”
“Not her choice, babe.”
“Why would you help a judge?”
“Ask Boone.” Whistling, Joey took the walkway and banged on the door. It opened, the backlight silhouetting the two men. They did one of those fancy handshakes. The Seventeenth Street band of brothers weren’t model citizens by any stretch, but they kept guns and dope out of schools and parks and street violence to a minimum, something the cops could never do on their own.
Moths swarmed the dingy light over the back door of the station. I chewed my thumbnail, my stomach doing somersaults. Mamma being hauled in here for questioning would hurt her campaign for sure, and everyone she’d convicted would come out of the woodwork and malign her good reputation. All her hard work and dedication to truth, justice, and the American way would go right down the drain because of Kip Seymour. The man was a true pain in the rump even from the grave.
The door opened, and this time Mamma’s poised silhouette was framed in the doorway. She shook the policeman’s hand and walked toward me.
“How do you know Big Joey?” she asked as I hustled her and BW between cruisers toward Hull Street, high heels and doggy nails clicking on the blacktop.
“I’m on his health insurance plan. We’ve got to get out of here; the reporters are hot on your trail. If they get your picture by the station, they’ll have you tried and convicted before morning.” Voices and footsteps approached from Habersham, and I yanked Mamma and BW down between empty cars in the lot. I made the
shh
sign across my lips at Mamma and fed BW a cherry Life Saver to keep him occupied and not do the pet-me belly flop for our pursuers—worst guard dog east of the Mississippi.
“I don’t see her,” one of the guys huffed, fighting to catch his breath.
“This way,” another added. “She’s here somewhere.”
The reporters ran past us, and I counted to ten then poked my head over the edge of the hood. “We’ll stay in the shadows,” I whispered to Mamma. “Cut across Hall and take the alleyways to my house. There’s no hard evidence linking you to Seymour’s demise, so by tomorrow some other mayhem will have befallen our lovely city and be page one news instead of you.”
I gave Mamma a quick once-over. This was my hazel-eyed brainy parent of perfect hair and suit who spent her days making wise decisions and giving guest lectures at luncheons and graduations. “Are you okay? Being on the lam isn’t a normal kind of night for you.”
“It isn’t for you either.” Mamma chuckled then sobered. “Is it? How do you know about these alleys, and what’s this about Big Joey and insurance?” Her brows knitted together like that time in the third grade when someone who shall remain nameless released the classroom hamster into the wild and played “Born Free” over the PA system.
“I’m pleading the fifth.” I held tight to the leash, took Mamma’s hand, and ran.
“G
OOD
God in heaven, who died now?” Auntie KiKi asked as BW and I hustled into her kitchen at seven
A.M.
the next morning. KiKi had on an autumn ensemble of pumpkin-colored housecoat, matching slippers and hair rollers, and a green facial mask, meaning Uncle Putter had already left for his symposium up in Charlotte.
“It’s either that or you’re out of food and hungry for breakfast,” she added. “After yesterday I’m wishing mighty hard for hungry.”
“I can work with hungry.” At the moment my fridge contained BW’s hot dogs for his daily treat and a grocery list for when I paid the water bill and could actually afford groceries. I turned on the kettle, snagged china cups from the cabinet, and put a bowl of apples on the table to give the appearance of a healthy breakfast in case somebody peeked in the window or one of us weakened and gave into a pang of good-nutrition conscience.
KiKi pulled a lemon/blueberry crumb cake from the antique pie safe that in my opinion beat the heck out of any other kind of safe. With Mamma being a single parent, Auntie KiKi and Uncle Putter were more Mamma and Daddy part two. I knew their house as well as the one on York. “Have you checked your tweets this morning?” I asked KiKi.
“Clara Martin didn’t leave Reverend Sweetwater’s house till well after midnight, but we all know the man’s gay as a tree full of monkeys so that puts the kibosh on any hanky-panky going on, and Seymour’s kicking the bucket is still top billing, but that’s about it.” KiKi stopped the knife slicing halfway though the cake, her lips pursing tight, drawing her face up like a shriveled kiwi. “Uh-oh, why are you asking?”
“Detective Ross picked Mamma up for questioning last night. Someone spiked that glass of honey bourbon on Scumbucket’s desk with digitalis, bringing on the heart attack. Everyone and his brother knew Mamma was ticked off at Scumbucket and headed to his place with the liquor bottle to try and smooth things over, and then she decked him on the sidewalk. Someone’s out to frame her.”
“Glory be.” KiKi sank into a chair, the knife still sticking out of the cake. “The old boy went and got himself done in.” We both made the sign of the cross to counteract any feelings of just deserts we might be experiencing. “Where’s Gloria now?”
“At the courthouse doing business as usual as a judge. No one’s found the bottle she brought, so there’s no actual evidence to link her to the murder. Right now everything’s speculative. Mamma said she left the bottle on the desk, but it sure wasn’t there when we showed up.”
I took KiKi’s hand. “You nearly drank from that very same glass. The cootie scare was the only thing between you and being there on a slab right beside Scummy.”
Deep in thought, KiKi finished the slice, put the cake in my cup, then poured tea onto the sugar bowl. “Except there is a mighty big difference between my healthy self and Seymour. My ticker’s fine as can be thanks to the superior Summerside gene pool and eight generations of Southern cholesterol adaptation.”
KiKi tapped her finger against her lips. “Let’s see, how does this go? The digitalis would have caused me problems sure enough, and I would have skedaddled off to the hospital to get checked out, but I could have been treated and been fine as frog’s hair. Seymour had heart problems, and everyone knew about it, one foot on a banana peel so to speak. The alcohol dumped the digitalis in the bottle straight into his bloodstream and stopped his heart like hitting the brakes on a freight train. Bam!” KiKi clapped her hands together like a gunshot, making me and BW jump a foot. “The old coot was dead as a fence post in forty minutes, probably less.”
I stared at KiKi wide-eyed, my heart still pounding. “You’ve been watching
Criminal Minds
again, haven’t you? How do you sleep at night?”
“Forget TV.” KiKi fluffed her rollers know-it-all style. “You can’t be married to a cardiologist for thirty years without picking up a thing or two along the way.”
“Well, that’s it, then. Don’t you see?” I said, jumping up suddenly happy as a pig in mud. “Mamma’s innocent. Where the dickens would she get digitalis? She’s a judge for crying out loud, not a doctor or a pharmacist. You don’t just buy digitalis over the counter like bubble gum. Maybe someone who had access to Seymour’s medication did the deed. Why did Ross go after Mamma at all? It makes no sense. Ross is on a witch hunt.”
KiKi pulled me back down onto the chair and nodded out the bay window. “What do you see?”
“Grass.”
“Oh for pity’s sake, look a little harder.”
“Sky, clouds, walkway, birdbath, garden maintained by delish Italian gardener with a great butt that every woman in Savannah wants to sink her teeth into.”
KiKi gave me a long slow stare. “Where in the world did the gardener come from?”
“I have no idea.” Actually I did, but I wasn’t about to fess up about my sexless life in front of my dear, sweet auntie.
“Every single garden in Savannah is just like mine except for the delish gardener part,” KiKi went on. “Why my oleander bush alone could wipe out all of Savannah.”
“It’s nothing but a bush.”
“That’s what you think. Nearly ever part is poisonous. If you even drink the water oleander flowers sit in, you’re off to that great garden in the sky. If you mash up foxglove leaves, you have digitalis. The garden club did a program called Pretty Poisonous Posies last spring, and I couldn’t eat anything green for a week. My guess is when the police crime lab autopsied Scumbucket the overdose of digitalis popped up, and the honey bourbon was the last thing he had to drink. Anyone wanting to get rid of the Scumbucket had the perfect opportunity with Gloria heading over to his place with a bottle of hooch. Scumbucket was high profile, and anyone who watches TV these days knows there’d be an autopsy. The killer pops in and poisons Seymour easy as can be, and Gloria Summerside winds up suspect number one.”
“Mamma and Scumbucket argued, took it out onto the sidewalk, someone dumped in the digitalis, poured the drink, took the bottle, and left. How would they know Scumbucket would leave with Mamma?”
“It was a good possibility no matter how the meeting went that Seymour would leave his office sooner or later. He had stuff to do. Anyone with a button and a smile could mosey in just like we did.”
“Boone said Seymour had enemies. My guess is one of them did him in.”
“Oh, honey, your mamma has enemies, too, and their mean-looking ornery pictures once graced the walls of our local post office. They have families who aren’t fond of your mamma one little bit. Framing her for murder would be sweet revenge indeed for the whole bunch. Either way, when the police find that bourbon bottle hidden somewhere, but not too well hidden, Gloria’s goose is cooked. Her fingerprints will be all over it. The route from her campaign headquarters to Seymour’s takes her right past her own house with foxglove foliage aplenty. Doesn’t take much to mash up a few deadly leaves and be on her merry way. She has motive, means, and opportunity.”
“But so far it’s all circumstantial. There’s no smoking gun or in this case bourbon bottle.” I glanced at the clock trying to think of a good escape plan. I had an idea and didn’t want KiKi in on it. “I’ve got to get the Fox ready, and you better get that green stuff off your face before it sticks permanent like. Don’t you have some dance lessons this morning? I bet you have classes booked up all day with the Christmas cotillion right around the corner.”
“Uh-oh. You’re babbling and you’re flipping your hair. You always flip your hair when you’re into something you shouldn’t be. Signing that prenup with Hollis nearly made you bald.”
I grabbed a chunk of cake and stuffed it in my mouth to prevent more babbling and hurried out the door. The problem with family is they know all your quirks and you can’t get away with squat. Whoever killed Scumbucket ditched the bottle somewhere it could be found like in Dumpsters, trashcans, black plastic bags with smelly God knows what inside.
This was not the first dead-body event KiKi and I had encountered. Lately the two of us had an abundance of dead-body juju. I tried my darndest to keep dear auntie out of harm’s way and spare her angst. Gross black bags and Dumpsters fell in the angst category. That KiKi got trapped on a rooftop and leaped from a fire escape meant I failed miserably in the harm’s way category.
The cops would be looking for the liquor bottle, and they’d be doing it early before trash pickup. I didn’t have much time to find that bottle! I gave BW a quick potty break, did the scoop thing, dropped the baggie in the trash, and stopped dead in my tracks. The heavens parted, a bright light shown down, and a choir of celestial angels sang the “Hallelujah Chorus.” There, right in my very own garbage can, was a half-empty bottle of honey bourbon. I’m not one of those who believe God controls every little detail of our lives, but once in a while, the Big Guy above reaches down and saves the day.
I snagged a piece of paper towel from the garbage and plucked out the bottle. All I had to do was wipe it clean of fingerprints and throw it in the river for good measure and—
“Well, well what do we have there?” came Detective Ross’s voice behind me.
My heart stopped dead. “Honey bourbon,” I said. “I love the stuff.” I faced Ross and two cops. “Need to get to an AA meeting.” I was in babbling mode again and had no cake to save me.
“I’ll take that bottle.”
“Not without a search warrant you won’t.” KiKi had her cardio hubby, and I had my legal-eagle Mamma.
Ross reached in her purse that probably weighed as much as she did, pulled out a paper with the Chatham County seal on top,
Warrant
in the middle, and my address below signed by Judge Crooksy. Crooksy never did like Mamma. Ross snagged the bottle out of my hand and dropped it in a big plastic baggie. Her face morphed into a frown. “You should know that I hate doing this; I truly do. Your mamma is a fine judge and would be a terrific alderman. I get why she knocked off Seymour. If dirty politics were an Olympic event, he’d win the gold. Your mamma should have hidden the bottle in a better place, is all.”
“See, that’s just it,” I said, trying to reason with Ross. “Don’t you think it’s a little odd that a criminal judge would make a stupid mistake like hiding damning evidence in such an obvious place as her daughter’s garbage can? After all her years on the bench she’d know how to commit a perfect crime, right? This bottle was planted by the real killer; you’ve got to see that. Besides, Mamma would never toss glass into the garbage. She recycles!”
“Maybe she thought Seymour’s death would be attributed to an accidental overdose of his heart medication and wouldn’t go any further than that. Maybe she intended to come get the bottle later today. Maybe she thought the trash collectors would be here by now. And maybe you’re right as rain. It’s up to the DA and lawyers to prove what’s what and sort out the facts. I’m just doing my job.”
“But you’re wrong.”
Ross and cohorts drove off with the damning bottle, and KiKi hurried across her perfect Kentucky bluegrass and onto my Georgia weed grass. She was barefoot, orange hair rollers still in place, red dancing skirt swirling around her knees, and a blotch of green still clinging to the tip of her nose. “Why was Ross here? I saw her out the bedroom window. I do declare the woman’s like the plague. Having her around wreaks havoc and mayhem on us all.”
“There was a honey bourbon bottle in my garbage of all places, and my guess is it’s the one Mamma brought to Scumbucket’s place. Now Ross is off to match fingerprints, and then she’ll arrest Mamma.”
KiKi plopped right down on the grass, red skirt billowing up, giving her a stuffed-tomato appearance. “Oh, honey. Jail’s a mighty bad place if you’re a cop; it’s got to be even worse if you’re a criminal judge.”
My mouth went dry. I hadn’t even thought of that. Mamma’s situation had just gone from bad to disastrous. I hauled KiKi to her feet. “You get to Mamma and protect her somehow till I get there. I’m going to see a man about life insurance. Hurry.”
I locked BW inside then hoofed it down Gwinnett. Ross was gonna do what she had to do, and I had to get Mamma help from someone experienced with the inner workings of jail. My knowledge about the place came from watching
Law and Order
when I had a TV and playing Monopoly when I was a kid.
Without wheels I was on first-name basis with the drivers of the Savannah mass-transit system known as Old Gray. I stood in the street and waved my arms over my head. The bus growled to a halt, double doors folded back, and a woman resembling Ice Cube—the younger years, minus the facial hair—peered down at me.