Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery) Read Free

she’d come to her senses and avoided the face-to-face with Scumbucket. He wasn’t about to give up his ad no matter what she said. The house was a small cottage on West York and easy walking distance to the courthouse for Mamma’s daily commute. It had a white picket fence I’d painted more times than I wanted to remember and a perfect Southern garden. It was built for Revolutionary War major Charles Odingsells, the three musket balls still embedded in the ceiling proving the point.
    When Mamma didn’t answer, I continued on to Scumbucket’s campaign headquarters, the gnawing in my gut over her going alone getting worse with every step. Mamma wasn’t the type to be pushed around. Mamma pushed back.
    Afternoon sun sliced through the live oaks draped with Spanish moss in Chippewa Square where James Oglethorpe stood watch over his fair city and—Holy mother of God save us all, was that Mamma yelling at Scumbucket on the sidewalk in front of his campaign headquarters!
    “And don’t call me girlie,” Mamma barked as I ran up beside her. Then right out there in the open air for the whole world to see, text, and Twitter, Guillotine Gloria socked Kip Seymour in the jaw, sending him stumbling backward to land on his two-ham butt.
    “Mamma! That was not a good idea!”
    “Well, it sure enough felt good,” she giggled, and from the twinkle in her eyes she meant every word.
    “You’ll be sorry,” Scumbucket bellowed, waving his fist as I propelled Mamma down Bull Street away from poised iPhones snapping away. “I’m filing assault charges.”
    “And you’ll look like a big namby-pamby bozo if you do for letting some skinny-butt woman get the drop on you,” Mamma shot back over her shoulder.
    Oh sweet Jesus, things were not improving! I hustled us to the next block where I spied an old white Caddy rumbling my way, pink plastic tulips taped to the antenna and a WWJD sticker on the bumper. I’d know that car anywhere and flagged down Elsie Abbott. Elsie and her sister AnnieFritz lived next door to me. I ran the Prissy Fox consignment shop and sold clothes; the sisters were professional mourners and ground zero for Gossips-R-Us. Guess who had the most likes on Facebook. I shoved Mamma in the backseat. “Take her to my place,” I said to Elsie. “Don’t let the press anywhere near her.”
    “But I was just starting to have fun,” Mamma insisted, her head poking out the window.
    “What’s going on?” Elsie asked, clutching her phone, all of Savannah on speed dial. For sure this was not my first choice in stealthy getaway cars, because there’d be nothing stealthy about it. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I had to get Mamma out of there right this minute.
    “I’ll fill you in later,” I said to Elsie. She nodded and sped off, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust and with the realization that this was God getting even for all the angst I’d caused the woman who single-handedly raised me after daddy went boar hunting with the good-old-boys and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that guns and Johnny Walker Red were indeed a bad mix.
    I walked back and stood across the street, staring at the headquarters, everyone having gone back inside. I should do something, but what? I tried to come up with a scenario that painted Scumbucket as the bad guy in all this as a navy Beemer squealed up to the curb.
    “Oh, honey,” KiKi gasped after powering down the window. “Tell me your mamma didn’t for real deck Seymour?”
    “Flatted him like a fried egg in the skillet.” I took shotgun.
    “Why do I keep missing all the good stuff,” KiKi huffed then added, “But as much as the woman deserves a medal for the deed, you know full well Scumbucket’s going to sue her panties off and make a big deal out of this. We need to convince him somehow that would be a bad idea, that it’s better to keep this altercation on the down low. Where is your mamma now?”
    “Sent her to my place with Elsie Abbott.”
    “Holy Saint