Pecan Pies and Dead Guys by Angie Fox

Author:Angie Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939661548
Publisher: Moose Island Books LLC

Chapter 13

I crouched down and saw the photograph of a familiar face right on top.

It was Marjorie Phillips, my friend from downstairs, the one who had told me about this place. Had she known I’d find this?

She appeared several years younger in the photo. Her hair was shorter, and she wasn’t wearing makeup or jewelry. Gone was the saucy girl from downstairs. She held a white placard with black lettering that read Marjorie Gershowitz. The young Marjorie stared straight into the camera, terrified. It took a moment to hit me, and when it did, I gasped. It was a mug shot from when she had been arrested and booked in Chicago in—I checked the date—1921.

Interesting that a judge in Sugarland would have Marjorie’s Chicago arrest record. I’d have to ask my sister, Melody, to do a library search on her.

I studied the youthful roundness of her cheeks, the fear in her eyes. I hoped she hadn’t done anything too terrible. I could imagine her being a wild child. The first time I’d seen her, she’d been dancing on a table. She had a husband and a lover and seemed to handle both them and the party crowd with ease.

Below Marjorie’s picture, I could make out a faded scrawl.

Bootlegging, resisting arrest, public indecency.

Okay. She liked to flirt with danger. That didn’t seem too bad. Or perhaps I was hanging around Frankie too much.

A handwritten letter was clipped underneath the photo and appeared to tell the same story.

Just last Friday night, Marjorie was seen drinking bootleg gin with not one, but two unsavory gentlemen, one of whom she accompanied home that night.

I sat back on my heels. If this was the situation that Marcus had gotten her out of, it hardly seemed worth marrying him after, even if he was an old friend. Unless he lent her some respectability in the eyes of…who? Family? Society? She didn’t seem to care what people thought.

I coughed a little. The air in the room felt heavy and I had trouble drawing a deep breath.

It still didn’t make sense why Larry would care about any of this, or about Marjorie.

I spotted a photo of a glowering Shane Jordan near my foot. A slight sneer curled his lip. It wasn’t a mug shot, but he certainly hadn’t been happy to have his picture taken. The jaded diamond dealer appeared even sharper when captured on film, like a man made of knives with a skin mask thrown over the top. I shivered and turned my attention to the paper clipped to the photo.

The ink lettering had faded more than the scrawl on Marjorie’s page, but the crowded, stiff handwriting was the same.

Machine Gun Riley…30,000…Square Deal Laundry

O’Flannery Gang…20,000…Happy Housewife Laundry

The South Town Boys…20,000…Sugarland Laundry

That was Frankie’s old gang.

It seemed Shane didn’t just deal in diamonds. According to the judge’s notes, it appeared as if old Shaney had an extensive money-laundering operation going. I mean, that was what they did in the past. Laundromats dealt in cash, and it was the perfect way to turn dirty money clean.

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