Francine is more or less Carlotta’s nemesis.
“Still alive, unfortunately for you.” Francine stops in front of us, hands on her hips. “I heard you were slithering around town again.”
I fight the urge to laugh. I’ve always appreciated the zingers Francine slings at Carlotta.
“How are the kids?” Carlotta asks with sass. “All seventeen hundred of them?”
“They’re thriving, thank you,” Francine snaps. “Mabel just gotengaged, Marcus is opening his own business, and little Margot—that’s Melody’s daughter—just won a spelling bee.”
“And the ones in prison?” Carlotta asks.
“Minimum security,” Francine says through gritted teeth. “It hardly counts.”
To be fair, she might have a point.
“What brings you here?” I ask, hoping to defuse whatever this is before Naomi bans us for life. “I didn’t know you were a Daughter.”
“I joined last year,” she says, lifting her chin. “And I’m here to win that Golden Whisk and the hundred-dollar gift card to the Country Pantry. Do you know how much organic flour costs? I’ve got seventeen kids and thirty-two grandchildren to feed. That gift card would change my life.”
Carlotta snorts. “Well, look at this. You even wrestled that gray haystack of yours into a bun. What’d it take—a forklift and a team of angry elves?”
Francine’s eye twitches. “At least I still have hair and not whatever synthetic situation you’ve got going on.”
“This is one hundred percent natural, thank you very much.”
“More like a natural disaster!”
Naomi appears between them like a referee at a boxing match. “Ladies. We’re at a sock hop. Not a cage fight. Separate corners. Now.”
Francine huffs, spins on her heel, and stalks off toward the soda fountain, her giant bun bobbing like a helium balloon trying to escape.
Carlotta grins. “That woman has hated me since 1987.”
“What happened in 1987?” I’m afraid I’m going to regret that I asked.
“I may have accidentally told her husband he had nice hands.”
“That’s it?”
“In front of her. At their anniversary party. While slightly drunk. Andtried to use them.”
“Carlotta.”
“I was being nice! And I had an itch I thought he might be able to help me with.”
Naomi gives us both a look that could peel the wallpaper off the walls. “Behave. Or you’re both out.”
She stalks off, and I’m left standing in the middle of a room full of suspects, witnesses, and one very angry woman with seventeen children, thirty-two grandchildren, and a desperate need for affordable organic flour.
I survey the room until my eyes land on an older redhead with silver streaks running through her French twist. And just like that, my investigation is back on track.
Time to find out if Gigi Wentworth-Crane killed Vivienne to protect her family’s reputation—or if she’s just really, really good at pretending she didn’t.
LOTTIE
The grand ballroom at the Evergreen Manor swirls to life around me as women in poodle skirts do the twist to “Tutti Frutti” while I try to figure out how to casually interrogate a potential murderer without getting tossed out on my ear by Naomi.
It’s par for the course at this point in my life.
