Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

stirred up. If he hadn’t ended up under one of the plants himself, I’d think he had an ulterior motive. You’re quite sure there is another body? Couldn’t it have been Reggie that Boudreaux saw?”

Luci noticed that Gracie moved, not above the ground, but not really on it either, while Luci had to be careful for the pitfalls of uneven terrain that the fitful glow of flashlight failed to fully illuminate. The moist night was marginally cooler than the day, and the rich smell of earth and flower heavily scented the motionless watchful air.

It’s lucky I have no imagination and a working knowledge of the ghostly, Luci told herself wryly, or this feeling I’m being watched might make me uneasy.

“Boudreaux saw this body before Reggie was supposed to have gone to Cleveland.” Luci stepped off the path and shone her light against a line of flowering bushes. “I think this is the spot. Apparently Miss Hermi wanted to break up the block of color or something.”

She got on her knees and shone the light into the leafy interior of one of the bushes.

“Does the ground look disturbed?” Gracie asked, kneeling beside Luci.

“This is a reclaimed swamp. It probably didn’t look disturbed two days after these bushes were transplanted.” She leaned back with a sigh, giving Gracie a speculative look as she pondered the right approach for her proposition.

“So? Do you dig now?” Gracie seemed to grow still. “You don’t have a shovel. Why don’t you have a shovel?” A pause. Then it came. “Why did you invite me along on this little excavation?”

Carefully not looking at Gracie, Luci said, trying to sound casual, “I thought you might be more help than the aunts?”

“Surely Boudreaux would have been a better choice to dig up the garden?”

“I wasn’t...actually...planning on...digging up...anything. Disturbing the scene of a crime is a criminal offense, you know.”

“How were you planning—” Gracie stopped abruptly. Then, “No. No way. I am not sticking my head into the middle of a corpse—no matter how phantasmal I may be. I already did that once today and it was not fun. Why don’t you just have Mickey and Delaney take care of it?”

“There probably isn’t a corpse at all. Boudreaux was drunk when he saw this supposed body,” Luci coaxed. “I didn’t want to bother them until I was sure.”

“Bother me, please,” Mickey’s voice said out of the darkness just before a bright light flashed in Luci’s eyes.

Luci looked at Gracie.

“We’re busted,” Gracie said.

“You don’t have to sound so relieved,” Luci said. “No one’s gonna strip-search you.”

Gracie’s smile was edged with wicked. “You wish.”

20

Artie, disguised as the blind man again, tapped his way down the street past the Seymour house. The dark glasses that covered his eyes allowed him to see one elegantly shod foot in front of the other as he walked. His new shoes, brown for once, needed to be monitored for shine and that something extra that he didn’t have a name for but involved how the shoes looked with the rest of him. He still wasn’t sure brown was his shoe color, but he’d been caught by the pair. Well and truly caught. It was more than the detailing, though it was very nice. A sweep of leather at the heel, the smooth expanse of brown across the toes. The place to tuck a dollar...

He sighed. And the color had intrigued him, he had to admit. He wasn’t sure what Helen would think of them. She’d advised against brown the last time they’d shopped together, but that had been an inferior brown. This one had just a touch of red to it. Ripe and rich, it had been irresistible in artificial light. Now, he was pleased to note, the sun had found richer, deeper browns in the leather. Surely Helen would be as enchanted as he was by the pair.

They also served another purpose. They took his mind off what was happening on the other side of the Seymour’s fence where what looked like an army of cops was digging.

What were they looking for? And even more important, had they found his money? There’d been no mention of it in the newspaper story, though the article hadn’t been without its worrisome side. Like the fact that the guy he’d shoved up the chimney was Dante’s man. Still got cold chills thinking about that close call.

If they hadn’t found the money, how was he going to get it past the police and Dante, who had a couple of guys watching the house right across the street from the police? Just when he thought it couldn’t get messed up anymore than it already was—

Damn Unabelle. Why did she have to pick right now to get married? Two weeks and he would have been free and clear with more than enough money to keep him and Helen in hog heaven for as long as he lived.

And damn Cloris for being related to Dante. He’d never have gone near her if he’d known! Bad luck the bastard happened to live in New Orleans, too. And Harriet. How the hell had she found him? Too bad she’d been so unexpectedly competent.

At least the old ladies were expectedly incompetent. They hadn’t blinked when they saw Harriet confront him at the party, even though they thought he was dead. Weird, but who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth when he needed one?

Could that be turned to his favor? Because what he really needed was a plan that brought the money to him.

He realized something was dulling the leather of one shoe. He picked up the pace, rounded the corner out of sight of the watchers, then bent down and rubbed a bit of dust from the toe of one shoe. Someone hit him from behind. He felt his face hit the pavement before his brain registered it coming.

Busted, he thought. Then the something started licking his ear.

Gracie put aside her book and stood up, drifting to