Charlie waited until she'd made a left onto Bourbon before she called Betts.

Betts picked up the phone on the third ring. "Lucky's on the other line, let me conference her in."

Charlie waited on hold for all of four seconds.

"Mama says you're getting some tonight and it's all thanks to her." There was a smile in Lucky's voice. "Spill."

Charlie glanced at the clock. It was nine forty-seven. "It's still early. I guess there's still time, except I'm already on my way home."

"Well that just sucks." Betts had a way with words. "Maybe you should turn around and go back. He's a guy-I'm sure you can convince him to rip off your clothes."

"It's the twenty-first century. Rip his clothes off." Lucky was all about equal rights.

"Or maybe some mutual clothes ripping. I don't mean to be overly politically correct, but you are both very capable of ripping each other's clothes off." Betts was never overly politically correct. That was Charlie's job.

"Are y'all finished?" G.o.d, she loved these ladies.

"I don't know, are you naked yet?" Betts sounded so much like her mother, but she'd have hated for anyone to point that out.

"Nope, I'm wearing my clothes and he's still wearing his-well, as far as I know."

"I'll give you twenty bucks to turn around and go find out." Lucky was completely serious.

"I'll double it. Forty dollars to see if he's still got his clothes on." Betts sounded like she was closing a door.

"Are y'all trying to pay me to have s.e.x?" Charlie shook her head. "That's so wrong."

"No, we're paying you to ogle his naked body. s.e.x should always be free. I'm firm on that." Betts yawned. She had two kids under the age of five. There would be a problem if she ever sounded rested.

"I'd have to disagree. I think hookers work hard for their money. I don't begrudge anyone making an honest living." Lucky thought about that for a second. "I guess it isn't an honest living, but I don't think it's a dishonest living either."

"I think we've strayed off course." It had always been Charlie's job to keep the peace and keep them on track.

"You're right." Betts's yawn turned into a sneeze. "Sorry, allergy season. So, Mama says that he's cute and he's a lawyer. What else do you know about him?"

Apparently Mama hadn't bought the whole contractor thing either.

"His name is Wagner Scott-"

"Wagner Scott? Did you say Wagner Scott?" Lucky's voice was rising, which meant she was getting mad. This couldn't be good.

"Yes, it that bad?" Charlie wanted to know, but then again, she really didn't. She liked spending time with him.

"Yes, he's a fixer. You know, like Ray Donovan, minus the bra.s.s knuckles. Will had to hire him a couple of times to fix some of Ricky's not-so-discreet indiscretions." Lucky's first husband, Ricky Strickland, had been a rock 'n' roll legend. When he'd died, it had seemed to hit the blonde coed population overly hard.

Charlie's heart dropped to her knees. "That sucks."

"Think Jerome hired him to romance you, like that Michael dude?" Lucky said while she typed something.

"I think we should sic Mama and her baseball bat on him. No one messes with a Marilyn." Betts was ready to pick up Ray Donovan's bra.s.s knuckles and bash some heads.

"Look who's being all violent. Stop horning in on my job. Charlie's the voice of reason, you're the heart and soul of the group, and I'm the enforcer. Our roles were defined a long time ago. You're stepping on my toes. I might need to file a grievance with the union." Lucky was dead serious.

"We don't have a union," Betts said.

Lucky stopped typing. "I just might start one so I can file a grievance."

"Go ahead, I'm sure the paperwork is tremendous." Betts knew Lucky hated paperwork.

Lucky typed some more. "I'm doing a background check on Wagner Scott, but there's almost nothing. His brother, Sawyer, on the other hand, looks like he'd be lots of fun."

"I don't think we need a background check." Charlie turned into her driveway and clicked the opener for the wrought-iron gate. She glanced up at the giant, white, well-lit mansion. Yep, it was impressive. "Do we need a background check?"

"Well, it doesn't matter because she's already run one." Betts yawned again. "If he's a fixer and you just happened to run into him today, then chances are he's here to fix you."

There was a long silence while they all digested that piece of information.

"Am I broken?" Charlie didn't feel broken. Her father thought she was broken, but since he really was broken, she didn't think his opinion counted.

"No, you're wonderful." Betts's tone turned mean. "I bet this is Jer-gnome's doing. He really is a p.e.n.i.s wrinkle, though I prefer d.i.c.khead. Sometimes you just can't improve on a cla.s.sic."

"Jer-gnome. I like it." Lucky continued to type.

"Betts got me a garden gnome that looks like Jerome. It's pretty cool." Charlie loved her friends' strange sense of humor.

"I didn't get a Jer-gnome," Lucky said. "I want a Jer-gnome. n.o.body got me a Jer-gnome. Betts, you're in violation of article two, section D, paragraph A of the friend agreement. All gifts must be equal."

"We don't have a friend agreement." Betts laughed. "Besides, I made you that vase in pottery cla.s.s. Don't you remember? I called it d.i.c.ky d.i.c.kland. So named because it looked like a giant-"

"Now we're way off topic." Charlie clicked the opener for her garage and pulled into the first bay.

"Hey, hold up, I just stumbled across a website devoted to women who hate Wagner Scott." Lucky sounded like she'd found the gold at the end of the rainbow.

"I might lose y'all-I'm about to get out of my car, so give me a second while the phone drops." Charlie turned off her car, opened the door, and stepped out. She put the phone to her ear. "I'm on my way inside. Let me get to my office."

She glanced around. Same stuffy old antiques, same creepy paintings of relatives long dead, same house that didn't feel like home. Maybe it was time to make this house her house instead of living in a museum. Maybe start with some new paint. And she could donate some of these paintings to the historical society.

Wouldn't her father love that? He already thought she'd lost her mind. This might push him over the edge into getting her some "professional help."

She flipped on the light to her office and tapped a key on her MacBook so it would come back to life. More portraits of dead people stared down at her. She'd never thought too much about it before, but it seemed like every single person in her family lineage had a portrait of themselves painted and hung in her house.

She pulled up Chrome. "What's the website?"

"Wait, I'm getting my laptop too," Betts said.

"This is both clever and original. It's www.wehatewagnerscott.com." Lucky sighed long and hard. "We're dealing with some Mensa candidates here."

Charlie pulled it up. The homepage featured a hangman cartoon with Wagner's face on it. It said "click here" so she clicked there. A list of women's names came up. At the bottom was an invitation to add your own Wagner Scott story. She counted the women's names. There were twelve of them. Each name seemed to be a link. "It's a list of all of the women he's wronged."

Charlie hated that she'd almost been one of these women. She'd honestly liked him and thought he honestly liked her. At least he'd finally told her the truth when she'd pressed him on it.

She clicked on one of the names in the middle. "I just clicked on Leslie Seever's name. Let's see what he did to her."

The page that came up had a bio pic of Leslie. She was pretty in a homely sort of way. Charlie read out loud: I met Scotty a.k.a. Wagner Scott at the New York City Ballet. I'm a soloist and I thought he was a fan. We seemed to have ballet in common, liked the same music and foods. We went out exclusively for three months. I fell in love. He told me he was in love too. I was happy. We were happy. I thought marriage was next. I know it was fast, but he made me feel like the most special woman in the world. It was all a hoax. He'd been hired by a real estate developer because I'd inherited a small building from my great-aunt. A developer had bought all of the other buildings on the block so he could tear them down to build condos. I was the only holdout. Wagner convinced me to sell. Told me that the money would give us a great start to our new life together. Now I have tons of money but no one to spend it on. What Wagner does is despicable. Ladies, beware.

"Oh my G.o.d." Lucky's voice was strained. "I think we should kill him. Does Mama still have the number of that hired gun who was willing to work for smokes and homemade jelly?"

"Probably." Betts yawned again. It was late for her. "I'm going to turn her onto this website and let her make her own decision."

"Now wait a minute. Before we kill him, we need to find out why he's targeted me." Charlie, unlike all of these other women who hated Wagner, knew that she wasn't different. She wasn't going to be the one who changed Wagner and made an honest man out of him. He'd been hired by someone to romance something out of her, and she wanted to know what that something was.

"It must be Jerome," Betts said with finality. "That's the only thing that makes sense."

"He told me he was in town on behalf of some mysterious investor who wants to buy the Duplantis House." That sounded and felt right. Wagner had genuinely not known who Jerome was.

"Isn't that the creepy house on Bourbon Street?" Lucky yawned too.

Both ladies had small children. She shouldn't keep them up. "Yes and I should go."

"Not before we resolve the Wagner Case." Betts yawned yet another time.

"The Wagner Case-it sounds like something off of crime TV." Lucky yawned again. It seemed that they were pa.s.sing yawns back and forth.

"I want to find out why I was targeted." Charlie wouldn't let herself get hurt. It was as simple as that.

"I don't think that's a good idea." Betts was, and always would be, the mother hen. Heck, she'd had to raise her own mother.

"Me either," Lucky chimed in. She was turning out to be a mother hen herself when it came to her three stepdaughters. "You could get hurt, and then we really would have to kill Wagner. Come to think of it, I don't think a hit man who gets paid in cigarettes and jelly is a good idea. I'm going to find a real one. Any ideas on how and where to find a hit man?"

The scariest part was that she was completely serious.

"Tell you what. Let's back-burner the whole hit-man idea until I find out why Wagner is here and what he wants. You two know me. I don't fall in love. Yes, he's charming, and yes, I enjoy spending time with him, but when it comes down to it, I'm going to do what my head tells me and not what my heart does. That's just how I am. That's just how I'm wired." She was always head first.

"I know you think you can handle him, but it's our job to worry about you." Betts was in full-on mom mode. "Can't help it. It's just the way it is."

"Yeah, I love you, but I think you're in over your head with this one." Lucky had the gruffest exterior but the tenderest heart. She'd give Charlie the clothes off her back.

"Trust me, I'm going in with my eyes wide open. I love that both of you are worried about me, but I can do this. I'm pretty sure Jerome didn't hire him, so if not him, then who?" She needed to find out, and that was all there was to it.

"Okay, but just know, we're ready with the hit man when you need us." Lucky yawned again. "Holy c.r.a.p, it's after ten. I need to get to bed. I'm coordinating the PTA Teacher Appreciation Breakfast in the morning."

Charlie smiled at the thought. All Lucky had ever wanted was to be a mom, but cancer had robbed her of the ability to have children. She'd found her family anyway. "That's lovely."

"I know." There was a lot of smugness in those two words.

"I hope you're not doing a champagne breakfast." Betts was still in mom mode.

"I thought about it, but it turns out the school board frowns on their teachers being drunk at work. Judgmental b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. When did teachers stop drinking on the job? Remember Sister Agnes-Mary? She was bombed every day, all day long." Lucky had grown up with an alcoholic father, so she knew what she was talking about.

"That's why world history was so much fun." Charlie laughed.

"Keep us posted. We're always a phone call away," Betts said through a yawn. "Don't get hurt. Like Mama says-Lucky and I can't rock prison-jumpsuit orange."

"I'll be fine. I work with politicians all day. Trust me, I can handle one little fixer. I'm not a rookie, this isn't my first rodeo, I've been down this road before-"

"Stop. All of these metaphors are giving me motion sickness," Lucky said. "Love you, kiddo."

"Me too," Betts said.

"Love y'all back. Sleep tight. Bye." Charlie hung up.

If Wagner thought he could romance her and get away with it, he had another thing coming.

Chapter 8.

The next morning, Wagner propped his small YETI cooler on the corner of Alicia Arneau's desk. He knew her name was Alicia Arneau because it was written on the large bra.s.s nameplate next to his cooler. "I'd like to see Ms. Guidry."

"Do you have an appointment?" Alicia was all self-importance.

"No, I'm a personal friend." h.e.l.l, he'd spent most of the night and all of this morning thinking about Charlie. But she'd left before giving him her home address. It would be very strange-and creepy-for him to show up at her house.

Technically, he was still working for Jerome. But that ended today. After he talked Charlie into lunch and then dropped her back at her office, he was heading over to Jerome's and formally quitting. He'd never quit a job before, but he couldn't do this anymore.

"I'm sorry. She's very busy today." Alicia looked down her nose at Wagner and then glanced at her computer screen. "She might have something open for next week. May I ask what this is regarding?"

He nodded toward the YETI. "These chocolate s...o...b..a.l.l.s aren't going to last until next week." He'd stood in line for over an hour to get them, and no one was standing between him and watching the bliss on Charlie's face as she ate one.