“Get on with it!” another man shouted. “I’m holding a live bass and it’s not going to keep in this heat.”
Given that his skin was almost glowing white, I didn’t think it was possible, but Wilkinson scanned the crowd and appeared to pale a little. He’d probably finally clued in to the array of firearms.
“Uh, okay,” Wilkinson stammered. “Our findings show that the winner of the mayoral election is Marie Chicoron.”
A huge cheer went up in the crowd, so loud that I couldn’t even hear when he said Marie’s last name. Gertie screamed and hugged me so hard I would probably bruise. Ida Belle was grinning so big, I was afraid her face might break, as it rarely worked out that hard. Almost everyone was cheering and bouncing and hugging.
And then Celia walked up to Marie and started yelling.
“Who did you pay off?” Celia yelled. “No way you beat me.”
“Look around,” Ida Belle said. “No one wants you.”
“There’s plenty of people that want me,” Celia said. “This is all some setup job. I know how you operate, Ida Belle, and you’ve gotten a million times worse since the Yankee whore showed up. Don’t think you’re fooling anyone.”
“Why am I always the whore?” I asked Gertie.
Gertie shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess. I never get to be the whore.”
“This isn’t the end,” Celia said. “I’m going to crawl up your butts with a microscope.”
“Are you going to buy me dinner first?” I asked. “Because even whores have standards.”
Celia’s face turned red and I swear, for a moment, I thought she was going to attempt to hit me. But then she must have had a burst of reality check, and she just glared. “There’s something off about you,” Celia said to me. “I’ve known it from the beginning and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Nothing bad ever happened in this town until you showed up.”
“That’s enough,” Carter said. “The auditors have completed their job. Marie is the new mayor of Sinful. I want everyone to clear out of here and go on with your lives. Including you, Celia.”
“I want another audit!” Celia yelled at Carter. “And this time, I want a firm from another state. One that can’t be bought.”
“If you want to contest the audit,” Carter said, “you need to file the appropriate paperwork, but in the meantime, I need to collect the keys to government buildings that are in your possession.”
If Celia had been capable of it, I swear her head would have spun around on her neck just like in The Exorcist. She sputtered several times, then pulled a set of keys out of her purse. I was waiting for her to fling them in Carter’s face, but then Celia did something entirely unexpected.
She took off running.
Shoving people to the side, Celia bolted away from the crowd and in between the buildings, screaming that she would throw the keys in the bayou before she turned them over to lying, cheating trash. Everyone was so stunned that it took at least a couple seconds before anyone reacted.
Then the chase was on.
Gertie was the closest of our group to the edge of the crowd so she got out first, but Ida Belle and I were close behind. The guy with the fish was the farthest out, as the crowd had forced him to stand some ways back before the announcement came. He was lumbering toward Celia at a pace much faster than I would have given him credit for, especially as he was still clutching the rod and the fish.
I passed Gertie as we rounded the building and saw Celia about thirty feet ahead, not too far from the bayou. She flung her arm back, the keys still clutched in her hand, and I knew she was about to throw them.
“Hell, no!” the guy with the fish yelled, and then tossed the enormous bass at Celia, as though he were skipping stones on the water.
The fish hit the ground before it reached her but slid under her foot as she raced forward. Her leg shot out from under her and she fell backward, flinging the keys up in the air. I dodged to the right and snagged the keys. Gertie did not have time to put on the brakes and ran right over Celia, treading in the middle of her chest before falling forward onto the fish.
Gertie’s weight on the slimy fish didn’t slow it down one bit. It continued its forward progress down the bank and deposited both of them in the water. As Gertie struggled to stand up, the guy with the rod started reeling the fish back in. When Gertie came dripping wet up the bank, Celia sat up and pointed a finger at her.
“I want her arrested for assault,” Celia said.
Carter, who was standing in between Celia and the bank, raised his eyebrows. I could tell he was struggling not to smile.
“She ruined my dress,” Celia continued to rant, “and probably broke a rib.”
“I wish I’d broken a rib,” Gertie said. “Then you wouldn’t be able to gasbag around town the way you do. The fact that your mouth is open is a sure sign nothing is bruised.”
“Except maybe her ego,” Ida Belle said.
“Nice,” I said.
“Then arrest that man for assaulting me with a fish,” Celia said. “He made me fall. I could have been seriously injured.”
“We’re not that lucky,” the fish dude said. “And besides, it wasn’t intentional. I dropped the fish while I was running.”
Carter looked around at the crowd that had gathered. “Did anyone see this man throw the fish?”
The entire crowd took on innocent expressions with lots of head shaking. Carter looked over at me, Gertie, and Ida Belle, and we shrugged.
“Did you see him throw the fish?” Carter asked Celia.
“Of course I didn’t see him throw the fish,” Celia said. “He was behind me. But it couldn’t have gotten under my feet unless he threw it.”
“Or he dropped it while running and kicked it under you,” Ida Belle said. “Not like you were breaking any land speed records there. A slimy fish could easily outrun you.”
“I believe you wanted these.” I turned to Carter and handed him the keys, then looked down at Celia. “You should really consider a better wardrobe. That dress is coming apart and your forty-year-old bra is showing.”
Celia looked down at the white bra peeking out of her torn dress and shrieked. She jumped up from the ground, clutching her chest as if she were having a heart attack, and glared at me.
“This is war,” she said to Ida Belle.
Ida Belle smiled. “Bring it on.”
Chapter Two
After the bowling-with-fish excitement, Gertie headed home for a shower and change of clothes, and Ida Belle and I decided that all the running and sarcasm had made us hungry. We walked over to the café, where Ally managed to squeeze us into our regular table at the back of the restaurant.
“I heard Aunt Celia got attacked with a fish,” Ally said.
“Yeah,” Ida Belle said, “but her legs and mouth continued working, so we’re still not safe.”
Ally shook her head. “She’s not going to let this go. I heard her talking on the sidewalk yesterday to one of her minions. She’s really lost it, blaming Fortune for everything that has gone wrong with her life lately.”