Iced Chiffon by Duffy Brown Page B

on the dining-room table next to a display of costume jewelry. Elsie put down three mugs of coffee and wandered into my kitchen for plates. I knew their kitchen, and they knew mine. KiKi wasn’t the only one who had pulled me out of the depths of divorce hell.
    Elsie said, “Well now, sweet pea, we’ll tell you what we were doing up at the wee hours after you tell us why that handsome son–of–a–gun Boone was here. Something like that we just can’t walk away from. It wouldn’t be neighborly.”
    I swiped a pecan from the cake. I didn’t want to have this conversation, knowing anything I said would be held against me in the court of gossip, but there was cake, jam, and coffee to consider. “Boone thinks Hollis didn’t kill Janelle, that someone had reason to frame him, and I could be in danger since I’m Hollis’s ex.”
    Elsie cut a slab of cake and passed it to me, then cut sections for herself and AnnieFritz. “Took a mighty long time for Mr. Boone to get out that little bit of information.”
    AnnieFritz parked her ample girth on an antique chair that creaked under her weight. She exchanged knowinglooks with Elsie. They were bookend sisters, being more alike then different. One taught religion over at Saint Peter the Apostle, the other at Notre Dame Academy. All that talk about sex, guilt, and keeping things covered and zipped had more influence on the sisters than their horny middle-school students, and neither married. They were great neighbors, true friends, and reliable gossips. What they said could pretty much be taken as gospel. I pulled out a chair.
    “So,” Elsie started, “maybe you should be paying attention to what Walker Boone is telling you. Last night at the Holstead viewing, some of that Seventeenth Street gang showed up. Seems Jerome Holstead has gone over to the dark side, but even the dark side shows up to pay respects when a daddy is laid to rest. They were all downright polite, nice as can be to everyone there.”
    As they cased out the late-model cars in the parking lot
and sized up the jewelry
, I added to myself. AnnieFritz took a nibble of cake and said, “I got to talking to Big Joey right there by the open casket. I said that no man should have to wear a pink paisley tie, even when dead and gone, and Big Joey agreed wholeheartedly. Then I said how sad it was that Janelle and now Mr. Holstead both passed right sudden like. Big Joey said Janelle’s demise was not unfortunate one bit, and she had it coming, and good riddance to her.”
    The cake suddenly tasted like glue. “You were chatting it up with members of the hood?”
    AnnieFritz took a sip of coffee. “He didn’t wear any hood, honey, but he did have a nice tattoo on his forearm—a heart with ‘Mother F’ inside. I couldn’t see the whole name of his mamma because his shirt covered it, but isn’t that the sweetest thing? I figured anyone who thought that much ofhis mother had to be a fine person, no matter what anyone said.”
    I considered the “Mother F” reference. Probably his mother’s name did not begin with
F
, but I decided to keep this to myself. If AnnieFritz hit it off with Big Joey, who was I to interfere?
    Elsie sliced more cake. “Do you think the Seventeenth Street gang knows who did in Janelle? With a comment like that, it sounds like they sure know something. Up until last night, Sister and I were convinced Hollis was guilty as sin, but this got us to thinking that the boys—that’s what they call themselves,
the boys
—might know who did the deed. It would be god awful if Hollis was convicted of a crime he didn’t do, no matter how much we’d like to see the scallywag rot in jail for how he treated you.”
    I wanted leads to the killer, but did it have to be this sort of lead? Poking around Urston’s house and Raylene’s garden was child’s play compared to “the boys,” but if the boys thought Cupcake had it coming, then they knew why. I took a gulp of coffee to wash down the cake