by Jana DeLeon
I pulled my phone out and took a shot before crawling back out and rising up to look at an aggravated Carter.
“What the heck were you doing?”
I leaned close to him and accessed my pictures. “We have a problem.”
Then I showed him the patch of hot-pink cloth with a skeleton hand sticking out of it.
Chapter Three
While Gertie had been off on the wild turkey chase and setting free bulldozers, the kids had managed to wrangle the remaining turkeys into cages. A couple of the local men helped Carter rope off the court to prevent people from getting too close, then he’d headed back to the playground. Obviously, he was hoping to get the crowd dispersed before he attempted to retrieve the body under the concrete.
Gertie had apologized nine ways to Sunday to everyone attending, but no one seemed to be overwrought about the court destruction except Celia. But the first time she went to open her mouth and complain, Sheriff Lee pulled out a pair of handcuffs and dangled them in her face. She’d turned beet red, then huffed off, finally realizing that retreat was sometimes the best option.
Ida Belle had immediately caught on to the fact that something was wrong but had been called off to turkey preparation duty before she could pull me aside. Carter tried to keep his expression blank, but there was no hiding the set of his jaw or his constant glances toward the court as the contestants and spectators wrapped things up and trickled off. Finally, only Ida Belle, Gertie, Walter, Carter, and I remained.
“You might as well spit it out,” Ida Belle said, glancing back and forth between Carter and me. “It’s clear as day that something is horribly wrong, and I don’t think that upended court is what has you two straining for normalcy.”
Gertie and Walter narrowed their eyes and stared at Carter and me, looking almost offended that they hadn’t clued in to the same thing Ida Belle had.
“By God, she’s right,” Gertie said. “You two look practically constipated.”
Walter nodded. “Whatever it is won’t be a secret for long, and it’s possible we can help. Out with it.”
I pulled out my phone and showed them the picture I’d taken under the lifted concrete. They all stared blankly for a moment. Then their eyes started to widen, and Walter gasped.
“Is that…is that a hand?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
“I’ve called for a forensic team and a couple of guys that can help remove the concrete,” Carter said. “Hopefully they can get it up without damaging the body any further, although I have serious doubts on that one. It being buried in concrete didn’t do me any forensic favors.”
“The size looks like a woman’s hand,” I said as I enlarged the image to study it better. “As does the choice of clothing color. Hot pink. And there’s something shiny…hold on. I think it’s a charm bracelet. There’s something dangling. It looks like maybe a skull?”
Gertie sucked in a breath and Ida Belle frowned.
“You know who it is?” Carter asked.
“I can’t be sure, of course,” Gertie said, “but Venus Thibodeaux had a charm bracelet with a skull.”
Ida Belle nodded. “And her preferred color for everything was hot pink.”
Carter frowned. “I thought Venus went back to New Orleans.”
“That’s what her dad said,” Walter confirmed. “Rumor is she took up with some undesirables when she was there before. He figured she’d headed back to it.”
“And maybe she did go back to New Orleans,” Gertie said. “But she’s the only person I can think of that fits those two items. Not saying I’m right…”
“It gives me a place to start with identification once the body is removed,” Carter said. “I’d appreciate you guys keeping this under wraps.”
“We can do that,” Ida Belle said. “But once those contractors catch sight of the body, they’ll be on their phones ten seconds later.”
Carter sighed. “I know. But hopefully none of them will know Venus’s favorite color and jewelry preferences. I don’t want that particular suggestion making it around to her father before I know for sure and get a chance to talk to him myself.”
I shook my head. Most people thought law enforcement in a small town was an easy job, but it came with issues that cops in big cities didn’t deal with. Like a gossip train that moved at the speed of light. Like personally knowing the victims and their families.
Like personally knowing the perps.
And ultimately, the worst of it came down to that. All the trouble Ida Belle, Gertie, and I had managed to stumble onto—or let’s be honest, run toward on purpose—had produced villains that were currently part of or had been part of the Sinful community. It was an added layer of difficulty in delivering bad news and in investigating.
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked, already knowing the answer, but unable to keep myself from asking the question. I was one of those people who took action to fix things. That wasn’t likely to change even when I knew I had nothing to contribute to the situation.
Carter shook his head. “No. This is all on me and the forensics team. Once I get a positive ID, I’d appreciate hearing any gossip that might have passed your way, but that’s it.”
His directive was clear. If Ida Belle and Gertie had any suspicions, they needed to give them up. They did not need to enroll me in launching our own investigation. And I was okay with that. No one I cared about was at risk of being inserted into the middle of a murder investigation, and no one had hired me to poke my nose into it. But I’d be willing to bet that Gertie was already mentally packing her purse with detective supplies. Whatever that entailed.
“I don’t know how long this will take,” Carter said to me. “I’ll call you later if I think I can swing by tonight, but don’t go to any trouble with dinner.”
Ida Belle raised an eyebrow.
“He means don’t heat up one of those frozen casseroles that Gertie gave me,” I said.
“Ah,” Ida Belle said. “Well, give us a call if you need us. We’ll be at Fortune’s for a bit planning Thanksgiving dishes.”
I managed to keep a straight face, as did Gertie, but we both knew that as soon as we sat down at the kitchen table, we’d be discussing nothing else but the body under the basketball court. At least, I hoped that’s what we’d be talking about. I didn’t have much to contribute to a discussion on cooking, and creamed corn wasn’t nearly as interesting as crime.
Gertie cast a glance at the woods and sighed. “I almost had one this year.”
I patted her back. “Look at it this way—you lost the turkey but exposed a murder.”
Gertie perked up. “You always know the right thing to say.”
Carter shook his head and walked away. Walter watched him for a moment, then looked back at us.
“You three be careful,” he said.
I slid into a chair at my kitchen table and grabbed a chocolate chip cookie from the plate in the center of the table.
“Spill,” I said.
Gertie’s lips quivered. “Well, I thought I’d make a nice chicken dressing and some deviled eggs.”
“Don’t give me that crap,” I said. “You’ve had the Thanksgiving menu planned for the last forty years.”
“Maybe longer,” Ida Belle said.
“So out with it,” I said. “You think the hand belonged to this Venus Thibodeaux.”
“I do,” Gertie said.
“Any relation to Myrtle?” I asked. Myrtle Thibodeaux was one of Ida Belle and Gertie’s closest friends and a dispatcher at the sheriff’s department.
“Not that I know of,” Ida Belle said. “There’s a million Thibodeaux in Louisiana. Same as Hebert.”
I nodded. “So what do you know about her?”
“The problem isn’t what we know,” Gertie said. “It’s where to start.”
Ida Belle nodded. “Venus was one of Sinful’s more…uh, colorful teens.”
“That’s saying a lot,” I said. Sinful seemed to produce f
ar more than its share of colorful individuals. If Venus was topping a list, then she had really worked overtime. “Do I need to break out more cookies?”
“We might still be here for breakfast,” Ida Belle said.
“Then give me the highlights,” I said.
“That’s still going to take us back a ways,” Gertie said. “Because to get a handle on Venus, you have to know about Starlight.”
I stared. “Starlight?”
“What could loosely be called her mother,” Ida Belle said.
“Starlight and Venus,” I said. “I’m sensing a disturbance in the force already. I was hoping Venus was a nickname.”
“Venus is her given name,” Ida Belle said. “Starlight is from New Orleans, so I can’t speak with conviction about her parents and their potentially fanciful naming conventions. But I’m going to hazard a guess that Starlight is not written anywhere on her birth certificate.”
“Stage name?” I asked.
“If you consider seedy bars, casinos, and street corners in New Orleans the stage, then sure,” Gertie said.
“Starlight was a prostitute?” I asked.
“She was a hustler,” Ida Belle said. “But her hustling extended in several directions. She’d been busted for petty theft, extortion, pickpocketing, and soliciting. At least, that’s what a friend who clerked in the New Orleans Police Department told us.”
“You had her checked out?” I asked.
Ida Belle nodded. “As you can imagine with just that little bit of information, Starlight didn’t exactly fit in Sinful. After she arrived, Gertie and I thought it might be prudent to get the skinny on our newest resident.”
“Basically, she looked like trouble,” Gertie said. “And she was.”
“So why did she come to Sinful?” I asked. “There’s only so many people to hustle around here before everyone is talking about it down at the café or in church. It doesn’t seem like much of a career move.”
“Definitely not,” Gertie said. “The simple answer is a man brought her here.”
“Is it someone I know?” I asked, running down a mental list of which men would be foolish enough to think someone like Starlight was a catch and actually bring her home to Mom. Turns out the list was rather long.
“Percy Thibodeaux,” Ida Belle said. “You would probably recognize him if you saw him but he’s not much of one for talking. He’s a welder. His handiwork can be found on most every commercial shrimp and fishing boat in Sinful.”
“He’s a heck of a welder,” Gertie said. “Took after his daddy on that one.”
“But not in the picking women department,” Ida Belle said. “Percy is a hard-core introvert. Would probably happily convert to hermit if he didn’t need to work.”
Gertie nodded. “You know how some kids are different and get picked on in school? Percy was so quiet he was practically invisible. I’ll bet some kids he went to school with don’t even know who he is.”
“That’s quite an accomplishment in a place as nosy as Sinful,” I said.
“And unfortunately, it proved to be his undoing,” Gertie said. “If you don’t spend time around people, you don’t get to know how they think. And Percy definitely wasn’t ready when Hurricane Starlight hit him.”
“How did they meet?” I asked, completely intrigued by the relationship between a hermit and a sorta hooker.
“New Orleans had a huge bridge repair project and needed the best welders they could find,” Ida Belle said. “A former Sinful local worked for the city and threw Percy’s name out. The city contacted him and offered him a ton of money for a couple months’ work, so he packed a bag and headed out.”
“This is when things fall to rumor,” Gertie said. “But the story goes that some of the guys Percy worked with convinced him to hit the casino with them one night and Starlight was there working the crowd. With money in his pocket and ‘naive’ practically tattooed on his forehead, Starlight probably zeroed in on him as if he were lit up in neon.”
“By the time the job was done and Percy was due to return to Sinful, he was hooked,” Ida Belle said. “So he asked her to marry him.”
I shook my head. “Okay. All of that makes sense up until the point where she must have said yes. Why in the world would she marry a mark and head to Sinful?”
Ida Belle shrugged. “No one knows for sure. I suppose Percy might have eventually figured it out or Starlight threw it in his face at some point, but if he knows, he’s never said. She wasn’t wanted for anything at the time, so the hiding-out theory doesn’t really work. At least not in regard to law enforcement.”
“I always wondered if maybe she was trying to do the normal thing,” Gertie said. “Maybe she took a look at Percy and thought, ‘Here’s a decent guy with a good job, and maybe I should give the whole happy housewife thing a try.’”
“I take it her attempt at domestic bliss was a failure,” I said.
“On all fronts,” Gertie said. “It was clear from the start that Starlight was no June Cleaver. Her clothes were too tight and her makeup too thick, and she had a habit of making most everything she said somewhat vulgar. But she did appear to be making an attempt at the whole ‘dog and white picket fence’ thing. Albeit half-heartedly.”
“That’s true enough,” Ida Belle agreed. “She settled in, for what it was worth, for about a year before she came up pregnant with Venus. And I think that’s when all her pretending ran out of juice.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t just fix that situation,” I said. “I can’t imagine the type of person you described wanting a child.”
“Oh, no way she wanted a baby,” Gertie said. “But one of the Sinful Ladies was a nurse at the clinic where Starlight went when she wasn’t feeling up to snuff. Turns out she’d never been regular in a female sort of way, so by the time she headed to the doctor, she was already six months along.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “And she had no clue?”
“She’d been on birth control because of the regularity problems so I guess it never occurred to her,” Gertie said. “She’d been feeling a bit sick to her stomach for some time, but she assumed it was a flu bug that she couldn’t kick.”
“We figured it was more likely a hangover she couldn’t kick,” Ida Belle said.
“True,” Gertie said. “But this was one of those rare times we were wrong. Well, partly. I’m sure the drinking didn’t help matters, but it was a particularly bad year for flu in Sinful. You know how it goes. You think you’re feeling better so you move on. But in Starlight’s case, it kept coming back, so finally she broke down and saw the doctor.”
“So how did Percy take it?” I asked.
Gertie frowned. “I think by that time, the rose-colored glasses had slipped completely off, and Percy realized what a mistake he’d made. Rumor was he’d gone to New Orleans to see a divorce attorney just a couple weeks before, but I don’t know that for a fact.”
I whistled. “And then he finds out he’s going to be a parent.”
“With Starlight,” Ida Belle said. “The man looked sicker than Starlight, truth be told. The fishermen said he barely spoke when he came to work on the boats. Mostly just nodded or grunted.”
“Then Starlight kept getting sicker,” Gertie said. “And next thing you know, Percy whisked her off to New Orleans to see some specialists. Percy never talks about it and Starlight wasn’t exactly one for hobnobbing with the locals, so all we know is she was hospitalized for the rest of her pregnancy.”
“That sounds serious,” I said.
Ida Belle nodded. “It’s not usually done unless both the baby and the mother are in danger, so Starlight must have been in a bad way.”
“Given the way she’d lived up until then, there’s no telling what that baby had been exposed to,” Gertie said. “Percy took up work in New Orleans and got a place to stay there, and that’s where they remained until a good while after Venus was born. She was still tiny when they came back to Sinful a month later, so my guess is the baby
had to stay in the hospital a while.”
“They didn’t say?” I asked.
“No,” Gertie said. “Percy was never one for talking anyway, especially about personal business. And after she had Venus, Starlight became as close-lipped as Percy.”
“We had a baby shower and all,” Ida Belle said. “Like we would for any resident, but it was clear from the beginning that Starlight had no interest in the baby. As much as she could pawn her off on one of the church ladies, she did.”
“In Starlight’s defense, Venus was a difficult baby,” Gertie said. “Always sickly. I figured the doctors probably got the dates wrong and she was born a bit premature.”
“Why did Starlight pawn her off?” I asked. “Sinful isn’t exactly a mecca of entertainment.” I paused and sighed as I considered Starlight’s past and the local options. “The Swamp Bar.”
Ida Belle nodded. “Percy tried to reel her in, but once Starlight got two feet planted firmly back into her old life, there was no chaining her to a baby that cried more than not and all the domestics that came along with taking care of a household. One day when Venus was about three months old, Percy came home and realized that Starlight had cleared out. Took all her things and every stitch of money in their bank account and disappeared.”
“Word got around that she’d headed straight to New Orleans,” Gertie said. “Back to the same thing as before. Percy got an attorney who managed to track her down and get a divorce finalized. Not only did she not want custody of Venus, she signed over all parental rights as long as Percy would forgo child support.”
“That’s seriously cold,” I said. “So Venus never knew her mother?”
“I’m not sure about that,” Ida Belle said. “Certainly Starlight had nothing to do with raising her daughter and we never saw her in Sinful again after she left. But Venus ran off to New Orleans about four years ago, the second after she turned eighteen. I’ve always suspected she tracked down Starlight.”
“Looking for a mother-daughter reunion?” I asked.
“Something like that, I suppose,” Gertie said. “The truth is, Venus was always a hundred percent Starlight and none of Percy. She was trouble from the time she could walk. I’ll give Percy credit for trying as best he could for a good many years, but after a while, I think he gave up as well. Teachers spent a countless number of hours trying to get her on the right path. I was still substitute teaching back then and beat my head against that wall for a solid year. There was simply no getting through to her. Maybe none of us were qualified to help. Or maybe DNA won out. I honestly don’t know.”
