“I’m not shooting anyone over potato salad,” I said. “Maybe over cake.”
Ida Belle nodded. “Anyway, Miss Molly is one of Sinful’s more colorful residents.”
“How come I’ve never heard of her?” I asked. “I thought I’d cornered the market on anyone who could provide great food. Why have you been holding out?”
“She just got out of jail a couple weeks ago,” Ida Belle said.
I raised one eyebrow. “Jail?”
“Oh yeah,” Gertie said. “There was this situation with twice-baked potatoes at a wake.”
She stopped talking, as if that was all she needed to say. “Seriously? You’re going to hold out on me after that statement?” I asked.
“Oh, sorry,” Gertie said. “Sometimes it feels like you’ve been here forever, so I forget that you don’t know about Miss Molly or her dark side.”
“A caterer with a dark side,” I said. “Only in Sinful. What did she do? Poison someone with the potatoes?”
“God no!” Ida Belle said. “Miss Molly would never compromise her food. If she had that big a problem with you, she’d just break your neck like she did her husband’s. That’s how she learned to cook—in prison.”
Gertie nodded. “Miss Molly always loved food but when she got to prison, she found out everything was cheap and tasteless. She begged for kitchen duty until they gave in, and she managed to work wonders with very little. Even the guards started eating there.”
“The warden was so impressed, he gave her run of the kitchen and an improved budget,” Ida Belle said. “So inmates got some of the best food they’d ever had in their lives. When she got paroled, she worked for a caterer in New Orleans for a while to learn the business end of things. Then she turned all that skill and knowledge into a business and Miss Molly’s Catering was born.”
“What did she do before catering?” I asked.
“Cage fighting,” Gertie said. “She was Molly the Mauler. Had an excellent record.”
“A cage fighter from Sinful?” Even for the town that invented crazy, that one sounded strange.
“She isn’t an original local,” Ida Belle said. “She’s from New Orleans, best anyone knows. That’s where she was living when she was a fighter, anyway. Had a great-uncle or a fifth cousin or something that used to live here so she knew of the area from when she was a kid. Thought a change of pace would be good when she got out and didn’t think she had the looks to compete with the caterers in NOLA.”
I stared. “Best anyone knows? How is it possible that the woman has lived here for more than a day and the local gossip contingent hasn’t hounded her for every detail of her life since she emerged from the birth canal?”
“Easy,” Ida Belle said. “They’re scared of her, and she has a reputation for being rather a hothead.”
“Which is exactly what got her into trouble over the twice-baked potatoes,” Gertie said.
“Did someone sneak seconds without permission?” I asked.
“Worse,” Gertie said. “They salted them without tasting.”
“Molly dived over that table like she was in the Olympics and tackled the offender like she was back in the cage,” Ida Belle said. “The over-salter was unconscious before she ever hit the floor.”
“Given Molly’s prior conviction,” Gertie said, “we were afraid she’d go away for longer than a year, but the judge took pity on her.”
“Over salt?” I asked. Clearly I didn’t have as good a handle on this whole Louisiana thing as I’d thought.
Ida Belle grinned. “The salt offender was Celia.”
“Oh no,” I said, and started laughing. “But wait, this was at a wake, you said. What about the family of the deceased? Weren’t they mad?”
Gertie shook her head. “They didn’t think the potatoes needed salt either.”
“Well, Miss Molly sounds like the perfect person to cater your shindig, then,” I said. “At least she won’t be traumatized by random gunshots, fights over the cake, or a certain alligator who shows up when he smells food.”
“Oh no!” Gertie said. “What am I going to do about Godzilla? Gator tail is one of Miss Molly’s most requested appetizers.”
“She’s not going to shoot him and fire up the grill with Carter standing right there,” Ida Belle said, but she didn’t look completely convinced.
“Don’t worry,” I told Gertie. “She won’t get a shot off before I do.”
Gertie looked relieved. “It’s really nice to have friends who can handle all these domestic issues.”
I shook my head. Only in Sinful were a begging alligator and a murdering cage fighter considered domestic issues.