The Miss Fortune Series: Nearly Departed (Kindle Worlds Novella) (2 page)

“Oh.”

Oh, dear
God, he made Gertie blush.

Ida Belle’s
bottom lip quivered as we made eye contact. She was trying extra hard not to
laugh.

“So…”
Gertie said, forcing a smile. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

Besides
fantasizing having your way with Gertie?
The thought now made
my
bottom lip quiver. I had to think of sad puppies so I wouldn’t burst out
laughing.

“Well, I
got me a job on a Hollywood film crew,” he said proudly. “I’m an assistant. I’m
working on a movie shooting now in Mudbug.”

“Isn’t that
nice,” she said.

“But, I
still think about you,” he said, smiling.

“Oh,”
Gertie said, her body stiffening.

“I was
visiting old friends and saw the flier about your funeral. Nice picture of you,
by the way.”

“Well…
thank you.”

“I got
worried you died. Then I came in here and saw that casket there. Made me so
sad, ’cause you was always my favorite teacher.”

“That’s kind
of you to say, Jo-Jo. Nope, I’m alive. The funeral’s a fake one. I figured, why
have a celebration in my honor that I’m not here to enjoy?”

“Yeah, one
of the workers said it wasn’t real. I was so happy to find that out.” He looked
over at the casket. “Camo. Cool.” His eyes darted around the gym, then down at
the ground. “Um… I have to go now, but, um… if I’m not helping with a scene
tomorrow, I’d love to attend your fake funeral. Maybe say a few words.” He
looked up at her with eager eyes.

“Well, I
certainly hope you’re able to attend.” Gertie nervously ran a hand through her
hair. She did that on occasion when she was lying. It was one of her many
tells
.
“Always a pleasure to see you.” Now both hands were running through her hair.

Jo-Jo
smiled. “You too, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” He beat a hasty retreat from the
gym.

As soon as the
door closed Ida Belle and I let out the snorts of laughter we’d been holding
in. “Gertie has a boyfriend,” I sang.

“Oh now
stop,” Gertie said. “I always felt sorry for Jo-Jo. I swear, if you opened that
boy’s skull you’d find his brain missing and an IOU from God.”

“Wasn’t he
the one who used to leave mirrors on the floor to look up girls’ skirts?” Ida
Belle asked.

Gertie
nodded.

“You mean
Miss Gertie’s skirt,” I said, snorting.

“Oh, I’m sure
he’s changed since then.” Gertie ran her hand through her hair. “Still, if you
see him going for my boobs with his grabby hands while I’m lying in state, you
have my permission to shoot him.”

Great.
First a Yankee hater, now a Grabby Hands. I had a sneaking suspicion that Carter
wasn’t going to get the uneventful funeral he had hoped for.

T-minus five minutes to Gertie’s
fake funeral and the Sinful rec center basketball court resembled a production
on opening night.

Members of
Lady
Lamé and Her Divas from Down Under
, a dozen drag queens dressed in tight,
sequined gowns, huddled against one wall, going over the order of musical
numbers.

Ally ran a
check of the speakers at her sound table set up between the baskets.

Gertie, the
star attraction, leaned against her metal camouflage casket, receiving a
last-minute powdering of her face to remove any glow caused by her
still-breathing status.

“I’m going
to cry,” French Fry said as he stood back to admire his work, pushing back a
few stray hairs from his jet-black bouffant wig. “You look fabulous! You know,
dead trying to look alive is not easy to do if you still have a pulse.”

French Fry
should know. Aside from being one of the Divas, he was one of New Orleans’s top
mortuary makeup artists. He handed Gertie a mirror. She pursed her glossy red lips,
turning her head this way, then that way, then patted at her hair that looked
like a tricked-out Q-tip. “You made me a little over-the-top girlie, didn’t
you?”

“Let your
inner girlie shine, Gertie. All of us have a glamorous side begging to be
released once in a while,” he said, running a hand over his emerald-green gown.
The gown was accented with sparkling sequins that reminded me of a cache of
stolen diamonds I had retrieved from a gunrunner in Somalia.

French Fry
tossed me a look. “Your inner girlie would be screaming to be let out too if
you didn’t have her gagged and hogtied. But if she could talk she’d say,
‘please let French Fry work her magic on our face.’”

“Touch me
and I’ll kill you.”

French Fry
laughed and put his fingers to his lips.

“No, she
really does mean it, French Fry,” Gertie said, shaking her head.

“Oh. In
that case, I’ll make like a salad and toss myself out of her way.”

“Smart
move,” I said as French Fry gathered his makeup kit and sauntered over to the
other Divas assembling next to the stands.  

Gertie
straightened her blouse—cotton, short sleeve, with purple flowers against a
lavender background—the blouse usually reserved for Francine’s Friday night
specials. “Don’t look,” she said, sticking her hand inside her white capri
pants and yanking at her underwear. She caught me gaping at her. “I said,
‘don’t look.’”

“Yes, and
when I hear ‘don’t look,’ I can’t help but look. What are you doing?”

“I think my
underwear shrunk. It keeps sliding up.”

“Maybe it’s
all that sausage you ate yesterday.”

Gertie folded
her arms. “Well, don’t look now, but five weeks of Francine’s breakfasts are
spilling out over the top of your jeans. Nice of you to wear your favorite
T-shirt to my funeral, by the way. Those stains really make it a work of art.”

“You said
it was a casual funeral. Besides, this ordinary T-shirt is in honor of you. I
was wearing it the day you and I climbed up that tree to spy on a real funeral.”

It seemed a
decade ago, but in reality it had been only two short weeks since Gertie and I hid
in a tree to take photos of Ted Williams’s burial in hopes of ferreting out his
killer.

“Oh, that
was fun.”

“You fell
out of the tree and almost broke my neck when you crashed on top of me.”

“Oh…
right.”

“And I was
wearing this T-shirt when you and I snuck behind the Swamp Bar to take
incriminating pictures of Melvin.”

“We had a
blast that night, didn’t we?”

“You sped
away in the boat, knocking me in the bayou and I was caught by Carter wearing
nothing but a plastic trash bag.”

“Oh… right.
You really get yourself in messes, don’t you, Fortune?”

The double
doors opened and Ida Belle stepped inside. Behind her I could see a line of people
melting in the hot sun.

“Hurry up,
we’re gettin’ ripe out here!” one voice called out as Ida Belle closed the doors
behind her.

“The
natives are getting restless,” she said as she hurried over. “The Sinful Ladies
are all lined up. They’ll come in first and pay their respects, then Delphine
and her one-hundred-year-old mama will do a drive-by.”

Gertie
rolled her eyes.

“Well, I
can’t keep them out. You said it was open to the public.”

“Those two
women are the mother and daughter from hell,” Gertie said to me.

Ida Belle
continued the rundown. “Delphine and Cookie will be followed by the Sinful
Splits bowling league. After that, whoever wants to come and gawk at you can.
Fortune, you’ll stand at the head of the casket.”

Gertie
smiled and clapped her hands. “It’s time. Let’s do this.”

Ida Belle
and I helped Gertie up and into her coffin, where she settled in. I then took
my place next to the open lid.

“You
finished her eulogy, didn’t you?” Ida Belle whispered.

I nodded
and flashed her a thumbs-up. Truth was, I hadn’t finished her eulogy. But I was
a trained operative. And if I couldn’t BS my way through a fake funeral, then I
should turn in my CIA card. If they issued them. They didn’t. “Don’t worry,
it’ll be great.”

She blew
out a breath. “Okay, then.” She scurried off toward the doors to let the
grieving masses in. “Hit it, Divas!”

With
Lady
Lamé and Her Divas from Down Under
singing Bette Midler’s
Wind Beneath
My Wings
, Ida Belle tore open the doors. The fifteen women of the Sinful
Ladies Society, all dressed alike in white capris and white T-shirts with “RIP
Gertie” emblazoned across their chests, solemnly marched in and made their way
single-file past Gertie, who was lying with closed, pretend-dead eyes in her
camo casket.

I had to
hand it to the Sinful Ladies, they sure knew how to fake grief. “She looks so
lifelike,” eighty-something Polly Pendergaff said, her bottom lip shaking.

The Sinful
Ladies Society, or SLS, had run Sinful behind the scenes since the sixties. Its
current entrance policy was very strict: a woman had to be over 40, and either
never married or unattached to a man for the past ten years, so their minds wouldn’t
be muddled.

SLS
treasurer Sass Benedict threw her arms up in the air and wailed to the heavens,
“Why? Why? Why?” and then flung herself over the lid opening.

“You’re
blocking my air supply, Sass,” Gertie’s muffled voice called out.

“Hah! I
made you crack,” Sass said as she straightened up, grinning. She glanced toward
the other Sinful Ladies. “I told you I would make her break character. You owe
me a free pedicure, Babs.”

“You’re
evil, Sass Benedict,” Gertie said.

“Hurry up
in there!” someone shouted through the open doors.

“Hold your
horses!” Ida Belle shouted back. “Ladies, pick it up.”

The Sinful
Ladies cried their final goodbyes and marched to their seats in the front row
of the bleachers.

“You and Cookie
are next, Delphine.”

Delphine
and her older-than-the-Big-Bang mother rolled in. Literally. Delphine, who must
have been mid-seventies herself, drove a tricked-out, three-wheel mobility
scooter with a Louisiana flag flying from one of the handle bars and a
Don’t
Tread on Me
flag flying from the other. Her extra-large basket was filled
with a purse, large hand mirror, a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi, and a
Kleenex box. Her mother, Cookie, rode a motorized wheelchair, a cane resting on
her lap. Delphine proceeded toward the casket. Cookie veered off course,
heading toward the Divas, where she stopped a few feet away and stared, her
mouth gaping open.

“Mama!” Delphine
stopped her scooter and zipped it around to face Cookie. “You’re going the
wrong way! She’s over here!” Delphine zoomed over in her scooter and grabbed at
her mother’s arm. “This way, Mama! This way!”

Apparently Cookie
was hard of hearing, because every word out of Delphine’s mouth sounded as if a
megaphone had been implanted in her voice box. It took a bit of maneuvering,
but Delphine managed to align her scooter with Cookie’s wheelchair and point
her mother in the right direction.

The Divas
had finished with Bette’s song and were about to start another number when Cookie
shouted, “Are those men or women?”

“Men, Mama!”

“Those
dresses are tight. Where do they stick their manly parts?”

“You’d be
surprised,” French Fry shouted back.

“French
Fry, that’s nasty,” Diva Sugah Pops said, giggling, before Lady Lamé held up
his hands and signaled the Divas to begin a solemn arrangement of
Like a
Virgin
.

Delphine
and Cookie finally parked themselves in front of Gertie’s casket. Delphine
whipped out the mirror from her basket and handed it to me. “Let us get a look
at her.”

I
positioned the mirror over Gertie’s face so her image could be seen from Delphine
and Cookie’s positions in their chairs.

“Is she finally
dead?” Cookie asked.

“No, Mama.”

“What?”

“I said,
no, Mama. She’s still alive!”

“That
blouse makes her look fat.”

Gertie held
up her middle finger.

“Did she
give me the bird?”

I quickly
handed the mirror back to Delphine.

“Let’s go,
Mama!”

Before
turning around to leave, Cookie held out her cane and slammed it against the
casket. “Go to hell, Gertie!”

It took
another twenty minutes before the rest of the mourners were allowed to pass by
Gertie and take their seats. I noticed that neither Yankee Hater nor Grabby
Hands were in the audience. Maybe Carter’s wish for an uneventful funeral would
come true after all.

When the
Divas were finished with their final number, a rousing rendition of
I Am
Woman
, Lady Lamé approached me, speaking into his microphone to the crowd. “On
behalf of the Divas, I want to welcome you to the tenth annual funeral of
Gertie Hebert, a woman we’ve all come to know and love. And I also want to
remind you all that the Divas will be performing at Booty Shakers in New
Orleans next Saturday night at nine p.m. Well drinks half off. And be sure to
order a bucket of Shorty’s hush puppy balls. The yummiest balls this girl has
ever tasted. And now, I’m turning the microphone over to… what’s your name,
darlin’?”

Lady stuck
the microphone in my face. “Uh… Sandy-Sue, but everyone calls me Fortune.”

“I don’t
blame them, honey. And now, here’s Fortune to give the eulogy.” Lady handed me
the microphone.

I cleared
my throat. Amplified, it sounded like a lawn mower running over gravel,
prompting a round of boos and groans from the audience. I lowered the mic
several inches from my mouth.

“Thank you,
Lady. Well… those hush puppy balls do sound tasty. High praise, indeed, huh,
folks?” The mourners in the stands stared back at me.

“Um… I, um…
met Gertie when I first came to Sinful five weeks ago,” I said softly.

“Louder!”
one man in the back shouted.

“What can
you say about this fine lady?” I said loudly, gesturing toward Gertie in the
casket. I was struck by how small she looked lying in that big coffin with her
teased-up white hair, and her favorite dinner-out blouse, and the pin she had
made up to resemble a bottle of Sinful Ladies cough syrup that everyone in this
dry town of Sinful knew was illegal hooch.

The truth
was, what I wanted to say, I couldn’t. What could I say about a woman whom I
trusted with my best-kept secret? A woman I’d come to know as family? She, Ida
Belle, Ally and Carter were really the only family I had. Sad, considering I’d
only known them for five weeks. And I knew by the end of summer I would have to
leave Sinful. Return to my old life. A life where nothing was ever personal,
and I never attached myself to anyone. Because it made things easier, vital really,
to doing my job.

“Is she
saying anything?” Cookie asked loudly.

“No, Mama,
not yet!”

“Does she
think we all have bladders the size of swimming pools?”

My mouth
was inches from the mic, but no words came out. Every time I thought about what
I’d really like to say, a lump crept up in my throat. I looked back down at
Gertie. Another image popped in my head. Not of an older woman, but a younger
one. One who had a whole life ahead of her.

My mom.

Suddenly I became
a little girl again, watching as they closed the casket lid on my mother. I
remembered it well. As they lowered my mother’s coffin into the ground, I had started
to cry. My father pinched his fingers into my upper arm and said, “Be strong.
You’re my little soldier now.” And I was. And I’d been strong all these years. Because
being strong was how I survived.

“Just say
something,” Gertie whispered.