Chapter One
The saleswoman in the bridal shop stood holding the tray of wine she’d been trying to push on us and glancing back and forth between Ida Belle and Gertie. She looked scared. Whether it was for herself, Gertie, or the dress Gertie was clutching, I couldn’t say. I had taken a chair in the corner as soon as we walked in, committed to my vow of staying all the way out of whatever happened.
“Just try it on,” Gertie pleaded. “A couple of seconds is all I ask. If you hate it, you don’t have to wear it.”
“I don’t have to try it on to know that I hate it,” Ida Belle said. “I can tell that just by looking. Probably I didn’t even have to see it.”
“Come on,” Gertie said. “It won’t kill you.”
“Might kill you,” Ida Belle said. “Last time I checked, I could draw faster than you, and if you keep pushing that dress on me, we might see an exhibition.”
I had to laugh, which earned me a dirty look from Gertie and a fearful one from the saleswoman. It wasn’t the first time I’d laughed today and not even close to the first time I’d gotten a dirty look from Gertie, and I predicted that trend would continue until we got past Ida Belle’s wedding and Gertie’s insistence that she do normal bride things.
Like wear a dress.
“I haven’t worn a dress since my father gave me my first gun,” Ida Belle said.
“Did you pull it on your mother?” I asked.
Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. “There was an Easter sermon at church. She had this frilly pink lacy thing that would have itched and made me look ridiculous. She asked for it.”
The saleswoman made a noise that sounded something like ‘eep’ and fled the consultation room. Unfortunately, she took the tray of wine with her.
“You were six years old,” Gertie said. “And pulling a gun on your mother over an Easter dress is the reason the South gets a bad name.”
“The reason?” I asked.
“Well, one of them,” Gertie said. “It’s still the best place in the world but I will admit to a few quirks.”
“A few?” I asked.
The saleswoman chose that moment to ease back in, this time with a tray of sweets. She was going for either alcohol poisoning or diabetic coma.
“You decided to move here,” Gertie said to me. “The quirks must not have been bad enough to scare you away.”
“She was an assassin, for Christ’s sake,” Ida Belle said. “You can’t scare assassins.”
The saleswoman’s eyes widened and the color drained from her face. I jumped up to grab the tray of food before she dropped it but when she saw me hurrying toward her, she threw the tray and ran. It was either catch the tray and hope some goodies remained on it or block for the dress. The goodies ended up claiming the floor mostly, but a few remained on the tray.
“Hey, what’s the ruling on pastries on a wedding dress train?” I asked. “Five seconds, ten?”
“Five,” they both answered at once.
I grabbed a raspberry croissant and hopped back in my chair.
“Just under the wire,” I said and took a big bite.
Gertie shook her head and turned back to Ida Belle. “Well, you can’t scare me, either. Will you at least consider a white pantsuit?”
“You want me to wear white to a crawfish boil?” Ida Belle asked. “Look what happened to that dress from just one pastry. If Fortune hadn’t blocked the rest of them, it would look like a B horror movie prop. And I’m not paying for that, by the way. That saleswoman needs to work on her fortitude. This is Louisiana, not the Hamptons.”
“You’re the one who insisted on crawfish,” Gertie said. “I tried to suggest grilled fish with rice and salad.”
“On what planet is that representative of what I eat?” Ida Belle asked. “Shouldn’t the bride actually like what’s being served at her wedding?”
“I think the bride should and the bridesmaids as well,” I said. “I appreciate the crawfish. And the lack of dresses.”
Gertie gave me a look of dismay. “I should have known you’d take her side. The two of you together might have one drop of estrogen between you.”
“Maybe half a drop,” Ida Belle said. “Estrogen decreases as you age. Besides, grilled fish would be a mess. This wedding is happening in Fortune’s backyard. A couple of tents, some folding chairs and we’re good. You can’t have a formal sit-down dinner in the middle of the summer in a backyard.”
“Finally!” Gertie threw her hands in the air. “You understand the problem.”
“There’s no problem for me,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t want to get dressed in a way I never have before, then sit down to a fancy dinner that wouldn’t be my first choice in some building that would charge too much and insist on throwing flowers everywhere.”
“But this is your wedding,” Gertie said. “It only happens once and quite frankly, as long as you waited to say yes, I’m surprised one of you isn’t already in the grave.”
“Look,” Ida Belle said, “I appreciate that you want to make it special, but Walter wants to marry me, and God knows, he’s had plenty of time to get a fix on who I am. If I put on some fancy gown and have a fancy dinner in a fancy building, then he’s not marrying me at all. That’s me pretending to be someone else.”
“Oh, good point,” I said, storing that one in case I ever took the scary plunge into permanency with Carter.
“Fine,” Gertie said. “Then what do you plan on wearing to be married to the man who has waited patiently for a million years for you to wise up?”
“Don’t worry,” Ida Belle said. “Wedding wardrobe is our next stop.”
Gertie eyed her suspiciously. “Where exactly are we going?”
“Army-Navy store,” Ida Belle said.
The dismayed look on Gertie’s face was so hilarious I snapped a picture of her.
“You’re not wearing camo to your wedding!” Gertie insisted.
“It will be new camo,” Ida Belle said.
I laughed. “Gertie, you haven’t looked this upset since Ida Belle told you Francis couldn’t sing in the church choir.”
“An idea almost as ridiculous as me wearing a wedding dress,” Ida Belle said.
“The choir needs another tenor,” Gertie said. “And Francis loves singing.”
“He also loves talking,” I said. “He’ll hijack the sermon and since he spent half his life with nuns and the other half with criminals, I hesitate to think what kind of trouble that would cause. Maybe you could check with Celia. Francis is Catholic, after all.”
Gertie gave me a dirty look. “I would never allow Francis in the Catholic church, especially as long as Celia’s running the show over there. Any congregation that has Celia in charge of their events doesn’t deserve to have Francis’s talent to entertain them.”
“She called animal control on you again, didn’t she?” Ida Belle asked.
Gertie threw her hands in the air, chunking the dress behind the couch. “All I was doing was walking down Main Street with Francis on my shoulder. It wasn’t like I was going into the café with him or anything. I just wanted to grab some fruit for him at the General Store, and he likes to pick his own.”