A Murky Murder

by Constance Barker

  “That’s what I was told as well.”

  “Not that there is a lot of fish around that area.” She grinned. “I decided that anyone who was a Zuni fisherman needed a lot of luck, so it had to be powerful.”

  Charli couldn’t help but smile. “I get that.”

  “I thought it would be a nice gift for Carter. He likes to fish.”

  “So an offering to his interests.”

  “Turned out he wasn’t interested. In his opinion, all charms are stupid.” Melly’s smile grew thin. “I’d never known he thought that before. He knew I liked them and had never said a word before that.” She took a breath. “Anyway, I added it to add to my collection of charms. The nice thing about collecting charms is that because they are to attract good luck or ward off evil they aren’t going to hurt anyone or anything. And if they do work, they make your life better.”

  “And now that Carter is gone, you don't really want him to come back, do you?” Charli asked.

  “Why on earth would you say that?”

  “Because you know that he wasn’t planning to drop his girlfriend.”

  “He said...”

  “I’m sure he said what you wanted to hear, but I think you knew he was lying.”

  “How would I...”

  “You put the fetish out at the lake to send him on his way... to keep him fishing.”

  Her face darkened. “I got a call from the bank. They told me we were in financial trouble. It turned out that he was throwing away everything we’d built. He was going to leave me... and with nothing.” Tears streamed down her face. “He even had a buyer for the lot and he intended to leave with all the cash. I deserved better than that.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “He was such a pig at the end. When I told him I knew what he was doing, he said he was going to Mexico with that woman.”

  “So you killed him?”

  She sat upright. “No. Of course not.”

  “But you did leave the fetish at the lake.”

  She nodded. “When he disappeared, I called his girlfriend.” She smiled weakly. “The idiot had it in his contact list on our computer. She didn’t answer so I went to talk to Shorty and Ralph and demanded to know what happened.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They fed me the same bullshit story they gave the police. They had no idea what happened. But they claimed not to know about his girlfriend either.”

  “I think they are hiding a number of facts.”

  She nodded. “There was one thing...they were surprised when I suggested he might’ve taken off and gone to Mexico. Shorty pointed out that he didn’t have his car out there. They’d gone in Ralph’s ratty pickup and Carter didn’t have any way to get to the airport. There’s no cell phone reception where they fish, so he couldn’t even get a cab or Uber to pick him up in the middle of the night.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  Melly smiled. “That’s when I called Elle. I decided that the Lake Woman got him. She lured him to the lake. I don’t know how it works... the legends don’t actually say that she kills them, just that she takes them. When they didn’t find the body, I decided she’d taken him for a fisherman husband.”

  “So what was with the fetish?”

  She sighed. “If she took him, he was going to need all the luck he could get.” Her head shook from side to side. “I imagine that once the honeymoon was over he’d find she wasn’t easy to please. So I went out there and left that for him. Seeing as you found it, I guess he still isn’t ready to accept that it would help him.”

  Listening to the woman, Charli was surprised to realize that regardless of what had happened, what the man had done, his wife still loved him.

  “So what do you do now?”

  “Hope that the insurance company finds a body and pays me off. I’ll have to sell the business but that would keep me out of bankruptcy.” She looked up. “Either way, the first thing I’ll do is put a lucky horseshoe over the door.”

  “Make sure the feet are pointed up,” Charli said.

  “Really? You see them pointing down, usually.”

  “They are supposed to catch luck that falls from the heavens. If the feet point down, it all runs off.”

  “Good to know.”

  “By the way, was Carter a hunter?”

  “Sometimes. That was more Ralph’s thing. They went out together, those three. He’d bring home venison sometimes.”

  “Where did they process the kills?”

  She opened her eyes wide. “I have no idea. Why?”

  “Well, deer have to be skinned and so on and the meat butchered.”

  She shook her head again. “If they didn’t take it to a slaughterhouse, then either at Ralph’s or Shorty’s place. Wherever the beer was, most likely. Hell, maybe they did it at their shop.”

  “Was there a particular time of year that they went out?”

  “I didn’t really pay attention. They were always camping, fishing, or hunting. And I made it clear that if Carter wanted to eat that stuff, whether it was fish or deer, he was going to fix it himself.”

  “And he did?”

  “Yes.” She stopped. “He did bring some home recently.” She wrinkled her forehead, remembering. “It was deer. He made a rather decent stew.”

  Charli stood. “Well, that’s all been very helpful.”

  “It has? I can’t see how.”

  “You’ve helped me understand what was going on. That might lead us to learn what actually happened to your husband.”

  “The Lake Woman happened.”

  Charli decided to put it into terms that would make sense to Melly Block. “If she took him into her world, a spirit world, then he would need to shed his physical body. The insurance company doesn’t care about the Lake Woman, but they need to find the body before the critters make that impossible.”

  “Of course,” she said. “You are a smart cookie. I might take one of your classes one day.”

  “That would be fun,” Charli said, biting her tongue. She wasn’t sure she was up to explaining myths and legends to someone who embraced the occult aspects of it.

  On the other hand, someone who had an Indian woman explaining her dreams to her on a daily basis was hardly one to be critical.

  Just before she left, Charli impulsively turned and faced Melly. “By the way, I didn’t find the fetish out there.” She held it out and put it into Melly’s hand, closing her fingers over it. “The Lake Woman said to give it back to you.”

  As she left, Charli thought that the woman’s look of astonishment was worth every bit of the five dollars the fool thing had cost her.

  Chapter 16

  Pinching the Poachers

  Charli stood in a gray mist that made the world surrounding her glow softly. Trees loomed a short distance away, making sinister shapes. After a moment, she headed down the slippery grass-covered slope, drawn toward the water. She was looking for something, something vague, yet compelling.

  She struggled to ignore the unpleasant dampness of the air on her skin and the way it clung to her, coating her, like sweat, making her skin feel unpleasant, sticky. Her bare arms glistened with it. Moving down the slope she approached a stand of bald cypress trees that straddled the shoreline of the lake, protruding out into the shallow lake. At the edge of the trees, a few feet from the water, she stopped, struck by an odd sense of familiarity, a feeling of apprehension. She was certain that something bad had happened here, by these trees. She’d been there before. What had happened or even when it happened was unclear but standing there, she felt a wrongness welling up in her, growing stronger. For a moment she thought she would vomit. But then the feeling passed.

  She took stock of her gloomy surroundings, trying to remember why she’d come back here if indeed she’d ever been here before.

  A figure stomped out of the trees, breaking into this reverie. Even before she saw her, Charli knew it was the Lake Woman. The green creature, her locks in a disarray, walked
up the hill, coming face-to-face with Charli. They stopped, inches apart, and the green head tilted to one side. Her breath smelled of the fertile earth, the decay of the swamp and as she stared at Charli, her face twisted, her features contorting as if she were in pain. “You again,” she said.

  “Why are we here?” Even to Charli, her question seemed stupid and the answer obvious. Somehow she needed to hear the woman say it.

  But she ignored the question. The green face snarled. “It’s vile what they do. They desecrate this land, kill the animals.”

  “Who?” Charli asked her.

  The Lake Woman pointed up the bank, back in the direction of the campsite that Charli and Elle had used some nights before, the one where Carter Block and his friends had camped. “Those men,” the Lake Woman said, sounding as if her anger was on the edge of boiling over into something.

  “Did you stop them?” Charli asked.

  “They come without caring for what is here. Each year there are more and more of them. I can take one.”

  “And kill him?”

  The face softened, approached a smile. “I made one mine; I can teach one at a time the error of harming the world. I have many husbands now.” She snorted. “Even if the others take heed, there are always more. Too many more.”

  “Always,” Charli agreed, somehow certain the Lake Woman was right without having a clear idea of what she meant. But she mentioned the animals. Ranger Tanner had as well. “Which animals are they harming?

  She shook her head and sighed. “The white-tailed deer are the ones suffering now.”

  “Is it poachers?”

  “It is men with guns and traps.” She glanced around her. “I need the fishermen to come here.”

  “Was Carter Block one of the men killing the animals?”

  The green eyes flicked over Charli, suspicious. “I know no names. I know their crimes.”

  “Did you kill a hunter?”

  The woman turned back to face Charli and seemed to smile, showing sharp teeth and black pits for eyes. “I do not kill men. When my husband is gone, another fisherman must do. I call to him and if he responds to my charms, I take him to my world.”

  “But they are not of your world.”

  “And sometimes, often, they are too weak to survive in mine.” She paused. “Did you give the wife her fish charm?”

  “Yes. She was confused.”

  “Tell her to save it for her next husband. She would do well to keep the next one closer to her.”

  Then she was gone.

  Charli blinked in the morning light that came in her window. It was impossible to tell if her dream had just ended and she’d awakened or if she’d slept for a time after, resting in a dreamless state. Not that it mattered... For what it was worth, she recalled the dream perfectly.

  As I was taught, she thought. As I am learning to do.

  She recalled the feelings, every word the Lake Woman spoke, every nuance of each gesture. What it all meant, if anything, was another matter. If her dreams were insights, they were also a pain in the ass.

  She forced herself to get up, to wash, dress, and fix herself some breakfast. She went out to the patio to eat, letting the morning light warm her, seeping into her core. As she ate, her phone rang. Roger Tanner was calling her. “Can you meet me at Dorian’s pawn shop?” He asked. “I’m in town and I have some news.”

  “Of course,” she said. “But why the pawn shop?”

  “Because after you told me you knew him, I gave him a call. I promised I’d keep him informed about the case, and this way I can see both of you at the same time.”

  “When?” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she was angry with herself for sounding so eager. Maybe he would attribute it to her enthusiasm for the case.

  “I’m heading there now,” he said. “Ten minutes or so?”

  “I can do that.”

  She forced herself to eat her breakfast and then to walk the few minutes to the shop. It would be better if she got there last. Better for her pride.

  When she arrived, she recognized Roger’s pickup. The ReelFoot Park decal on the door was a dead giveaway; Roger was inside. Dorian was opening the shop, standing in front, raising the striped awning that protected the items in the window from the afternoon sun.

  “It’s been a busy morning,” Roger told them, smiling.

  “A good busy, I assume,” she said.

  “Pretty much. The FBI arrested Shorty and Ralph early this morning for poaching.”

  “The FBI?”

  “Our investigation resources are limited, and seeing as it is a Federal crime, they assist us in solving them and making the arrests. I didn’t expect much when I found that they’d assigned computer gurus to the case, but apparently, Ralph was dumb enough to be selling deer antlers online. He claimed they found them in the woods. People do, of course, but the FBI got warrants to search their places and the shop they work at. Not only did they have freezers full of venison, they were busy tanning a number of fresh white-tailed deer pelts to fill a long list of standing orders. The FBI will track down the customers and they’ll be fined too.”

  “That sure fit in with our suspicions,” Charli said. “And it’s great. But was Carter Block in on that? Did they kill him because he caught on to what they were doing or over the money?”

  Roger put his thumbs in his belt. “Both dummies got lawyers who won’t let them say a word, but my guess is that Carter was part of that operation. They were too tight for him not to be aware of what was going on.”

  “So they had a falling out?”

  “I’m not a police officer or detective, but neither of them strikes me as a cold-blooded killer. I think they do know what happened to him, though.”

  Dorian shook his head. “What a mess. Without them talking there is no proof he is dead. If they don’t say anything at all, it would be hard to prove they killed him.”

  “I hope Elle learns something in Mexico,” Charli said. “With luck, Carter is in some beach bar having margaritas with his girlfriend. No law was broken.”

  “That would be a good outcome,” Dorian said, “but it doesn’t resolve the disconnects.”

  “What do you mean?” Roger asked.

  “Well, if I was going to disappear to Mexico with someone... why didn’t he simply say he was going hunting, pick up his girlfriend and go? Why would he bother to stage a disappearance that left doubt about what happened to him?”

  Charli thought she knew. “He might’ve felt bad about taking off with all the money and wanted his wife to collect on his insurance. If the seven-year rule didn’t occur to him, it would be a way to salve his conscience.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Dorian said. “He was being pretty thorough, even methodical about cashing in his assets. You guys said that he was selling cars off at a loss and even negotiating to sell his business property. That last bit is interesting. Why would he suddenly jump the gun if he could squeeze more money out of the property?”

  “I agree,” Roger Tanner said. “If you assume the poaching was part of that attempt to build up his escape fund, wouldn’t he also want to wait until they sold those pelts and get his share?”

  “He might’ve told the guys to send him his share.”

  “That’s possible, but if I were doing it...”

  “You wouldn’t duck out on everyone,” Charli said. “You are aren’t that kind of man.” She caught the smile that lit up his face and bit her tongue. She hadn’t intended to let him or anyone else know that she thought too much about him that highly.

  Dorian laughed. “Still, the ranger’s logic is right. Doesn’t seem like Carter Block did things halfway, and he was close to having everything in place. Suddenly taking off doesn’t seem in character. Unless, of course, his wife caught on.”

  “Which she did.” Charli told them about the bank calling her. “But still, I don’t think she killed him, and I’ll admit that the talk about him going to Mexico came as a surprise to his poacher buddies.�
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  Dorian scowled. “That takes us back to the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?” Charli asked.

  “Well, if his buddies didn’t kill him over some dispute, and they were the only poachers out there, and if a panther didn’t get him, and if he didn’t go to Mexico, then there is only one answer left.”

  Charli grimaced. “The Lake Woman got him, as she said.”

  Dorian nodded. “Right.”

  Roger Tanner blinked. “You talked to her? The Lake Woman?”

  Charli cringed. “A couple of times... just in my dreams. And she doesn’t say a lot.” She felt the urge to tell him everything, but she didn’t know if her dream stuff wouldn’t scare Roger off.

  Dorian grabbed Roger’s arm. “The kid has a Shaman grandmother who is teaching her about spirit-guided dreaming.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Really?” Charli asked. “Just ‘oh,’?”

  “I wondered. You are connected to the myths. It shows in your eyes when you talk about them.”

  “That’s what I said,” Dorian said.

  “Fine.” Happily, Roger wasn’t running out the door. “I saw her again. In my dream last night. She said she took one man but there were too many to stop.”

  “She took him?” Roger asked.

  “Because they were killing the animals.”

  Roger Tanner chuckled. “So the Lake Woman is helping us do our job? I don’t remember the legend portraying her as a conservationist.”

  “It does fit one version of the legend,” Dorian said. “It’s beginning to sound like elements of the two major versions are true.”

  Charli laughed. “Besides, do the legends mention that she’s green?”

  “None I know of,” Dorian said.

  “Well, the green lady, who really needs a perm, said that to stop the defilers of her land, she takes them as a husband and teaches them why it is wrong.” She held up her hands. “So far she’s been as truthful as anyone else involved has been.”

  “Well, I hope you two are wrong. It might wrap up your case, but if she gets really ambitious, I sure can’t see that helping tourism much.” He grinned. “I have to think about my career too.” Then he checked his watch. “And that means getting back to work. I have forms to fill out for the FBI. Do you know how many forms they have that need filling out? It’s insane.” He started toward the door and then stopped. “If your friend Elle finds out anything in Mexico, would you let me know? I do want to stay on top of this.”