Lousiana Hotshot

contemporary, perhaps something the woman had whipped up herself, but the style was kind of a Gay Nineties variation, happily absent the bustle. With it, she wore a close-fitting hat of exquisite feathers in rusts and browns and gold, plucked from pheasants, probably.
    The outfit was nothing you could miss, but on this woman, once you saw it, it was a picture you’d never forget. She had masses of tumbling flame-colored curls trailing halfway down her back, a prominent hawky nose, and about a hundred and fifty pounds over the limit. She was one of those fat women who had perfect, tint-tipped hands and moved like a wood nymph. But she wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t only the nose that kept her from it. She had slightly scarred skin and a perennially wary look; her eyes moved too fast, scanned too much. Already, Talba felt like a shoplifter.
    The thing to do was disarm her.
    She stuck out her hand. “Millie? Talba Wallis. I’m
such
a fan of yours. One day I’m gonna get my mama one of your hats. I know she’d just love one.”
    “Your
mama?”
The woman turned her eyebrow into an arch that could have held up a bridge.
    Talba could have bitten her tongue. “Well, she’s a church lady. Before today, I would have said I don’t go anywhere good enough for them, but then I didn’t know I was going to be going to a funeral, did you? That was a shocker, wasn’t it? Rhonda, I mean.”
    Millie’s wariness crystallized into action. Evidently, the thing she feared had come to pass, and it was Talba herself. She was probably about five-seven and wore three-inch heels, so that, with the hair and hat, she was a good six feet, and she drew herself to full advantage. The suit, as if not already wide enough just to go around her, was equipped with shoulder pads. She thrust her arm out to full length and brandished a needle-sharp, blood-red nail. “If you’re a friend of T and T’s, you can just get out of here.”
    Talba wasn’t sure what she was hearing. “TNT? The explosive?” She was too baffled even to get out of the way.
    Millie stepped forward, the point of the nail a hair from slicing Talba’s nose. Her voice was low and commanding. “I said get out of here.”
    Talba felt her face start to lose composure. Bafflement was starting to give way to alarm. She stepped backward, stumbling in the process, and said, more or less to the floor, “I don’t think I’m who you think I am. I’m an investigator looking into Rhonda’s death.”
    “You’re what?” Now she seemed as bewildered as Talba. “You’re a cop?”
    “Not exactly.”
Not at all, actually.
“I work for a man named Eddie Valentino. To tell you the truth, I never even heard of Rhonda Bergeron until three days ago. I wouldn’t know she worked here if it hadn’t been for that smarmy preacher.”
    Unexpectedly, Millie barked out a laugh. “Oh, God. Didn’t he make you feel like taking a bath?”
    Talba rolled her eyes. “I suppose that’s one way of saying good-bye.” She looked full into Millie’s face and saw that her eyes were some kind of blue-green mixture made up to match her outfit. The liner was smeared in the heat. “Who did you think I was?” she asked.
    Millie’s cheeks flushed. “Nobody. I just got mixed up for a minute.”
    Talba was starting to get the hang of this, and she liked where it was heading: Millie had evidently come to a conclusion based on color. She said, “Look. Let me be honest with you. I’m looking for a black man in his twenties who may have committed a crime. I know he knew Rhonda, but I don’t know his name. Is TNT black, by any chance?”
    Millie gasped. “You really don’t know them, do you?”
    Talba was silent, allowed her head to move only slightly.
    Millie said, “What crime?”
    Again, Talba was silent, though now she was buying time, trying to figure out what to say. She wasn’t sure what the detectives’ code was.
    Again, Millie leaped to conclusions. “Murder, right? You think he killed Rhonda. The family hired you, right? Oh, shit, I knew it! I told Danielle, ‘this is no accident. You don’t mess with those kind of people.’”
    Bingo,
Talba thought.
Drugs. Isn’t it always?
    The woman kept on talking.
“Goddam,
I felt guilty when that asshole was talking today, knowing all the while it happened right in my shop. She’d never have gotten mixed up with that asshole if it hadn’t been for me.” Her face crumpled and tears rolled. She pulled a tissue out of her