by Jana DeLeon
“Then why do you have them?” Ida Belle asked.
“Walter slipped them in my food order,” I said. “I think he worries about my diet.”
Gertie stuck the peas on her chair and wriggled up her dress, exposing her bright pink underwear with turkeys on them. Then she flopped down on the peas.
“That was wholly unnecessary,” Ida Belle said. “I’ve seen more of your bare body in the past few weeks than I have of my own. Why didn’t you go upstairs and change? Not like we don’t keep spare clothes here.”
“Too much effort,” Gertie said. “And I don’t think this dress is coming off without scissors and some assistance.”
Ida Belle cringed.
“Bare bodies and cold peas aside,” I said, “let me tell you the latest.”
I filled them in on my conversation with Carter. When I was finished, they both stared at me, not saying a word.
“Well?” I asked.
They both shook their heads.
“I’ve got nothing,” Gertie said.
“As much as I hate to admit it,” Ida Belle said, “I don’t have a clue either. That doesn’t make any sense. If Venus had some sort of evidence about the gang’s illegal business, then that’s even more reason why Catfish wouldn’t have sent her luggage over the embankment with the car.”
“We’re missing something,” I said. “Carter can probably gather enough evidence to push Catfish to the top contender in the murder suspect pool, which definitely helps strengthen Whiskey’s defense, but it doesn’t eliminate him from contention.”
“We need to solve this,” Ida Belle said. “It’s the only way to ensure Whiskey is off the hook for this permanently.”
“Great idea,” Gertie said. “So how do we do it? Because we have a lot of clues that don’t fit together right. We all agree that there’s no good reason for Venus’s suitcase to be in the trunk of the car. Catfish might be an arch criminal, but no way he sneaked into Percy’s house and packed those bags without waking him, so it had to be done the next day.”
I frowned. The luggage-car disposal thing had always been a huge sticking point for me. The timing simply didn’t make sense, and I couldn’t imagine Catfish taking the risks required to have the two things line up the way they did.
“What if Catfish isn’t the one who packed the luggage or sent the car over that cliff?” I asked.
“You’re thinking it was Starlight?” Ida Belle said. “I don’t get how it would be any easier for her than it would for Catfish. You saw the way Percy reacted to her showing up at his doorstep. There’s no way he’d allow her in his house, much less let her pack up Venus’s things and haul them out.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Starlight or Catfish,” I said. “Maybe we’re making this too complicated. Maybe the simplest explanation is the right one.”
They both stared at me for a moment, then Ida Belle’s eyes widened. “You’re thinking Percy?”
“He would have the easiest time getting the luggage out of the house,” I said. “And it was his claim that Venus sent him a text saying she’d left. Did anyone actually see it?”
“But why would Percy kill his own daughter?” Gertie asked. “I know there’s no love lost between them but he could have just kicked her out.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just throwing a scenario out there that fits the facts better. Since she was sleeping with husbands and demanding payment to keep her mouth shut about it, Venus obviously had no problem with blackmail. Maybe while she was living there, she found out something about Percy that he didn’t want to be public knowledge.”
“Like what?” Gertie asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Maybe he visits prostitutes or cheats on his taxes. Maybe he’s really a serial killer. My point is, we don’t really know people like we think we do.”
Ida Belle nodded. “And if Percy had a weakness, Venus would have tried to exploit it for her own gain.”
“So how do we figure out if that’s what happened?” Gertie asked. “It’s not like Percy is going to offer up his secrets, especially if it was big enough that he killed his own daughter over it.”
“Maybe it was someone else completely,” Ida Belle said. “Bart Lagasse is still in the running as far as I’m concerned. I know he seemed all nice tonight handling Jeff, but I think he was more interested in getting Jeff to stop talking about Venus’s murder than worried about his safety.”
“And he was outside with Venus after Whiskey fired her,” Gertie said. “And Misty can’t recall if he came back in the bar.”
I nodded. “There’s Dean Allard, too. He had a lot of reasons to hate Venus and claims he can’t remember the night she was killed.” I told them what I’d overheard Allard say in the bar about his night with Venus.
“I don’t like Allard and would love to go with him, but he can’t be our guy,” Ida Belle said. “I had Myrtle do a check for me on our local suspects and she texted me tonight to say that Allard was in jail the night Venus was killed.”
“And he doesn’t remember?” I asked. “That’s a serious drinking problem.”
Ida Belle nodded. “Doesn’t remember sleeping with Venus. Doesn’t remember being in jail. He really needs to lay off the whiskey. Apparently his body keeps going long after his mind checks out.”
“Well, crap,” Gertie said.
“Don’t be disappointed,” I said. “This just helps narrow down our list. Then we don’t waste time investigating someone who isn’t the killer.”
“For all we know, it could be someone we didn’t even have on our list,” Gertie said.
“Let’s not go there just yet,” Ida Belle said. “We have enough to contend with already. I got another bit of information from Myrtle, but I don’t think it helps us any. She overheard Carter on the phone saying that Venus was killed by a blow to the back of the head. Given the lack of tissue, the ME can’t say what it was, but I don’t think it matters. Tire iron, bat…something hard enough to crack a skull.”
“You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t necessarily help, but it’s nice to know anyway. And it does support our theory of this being an unplanned kill.”
“Which leaves Percy in the running,” Gertie said. “Assuming he has something to hide.”
“Percy was never completely out of the running,” I said. “At least not in my mind. But I’ll admit that Starlight and Catfish looked better for it.” I sighed. “Maybe we’re overthinking it. Maybe Catfish is the one who killed Venus and he sent her luggage over the cliff in that car figuring if he hadn’t found what he was looking for, it would be destroyed by the water if he’d missed it.”
“Then why are they here now?” Gertie said.
“Because they didn’t find what they were looking for?” Ida Belle suggested. “Now that Venus’s body surfaced, the cops will be taking a hard look at everything, unlike before when people just thought she’d left on her own accord.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And they couldn’t have taken their time packing up Venus’s things. They had to hurry. Maybe they concentrated only on her room. But if Venus had evidence, she might have hidden it somewhere else in the house.”
Gertie’s eyes widened. “Which means if Percy didn’t kill Venus, he could be in danger.”
Ida Belle gave me a worried look. “I know we can’t give him details, but we need to warn him.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” I said.
“Let’s drive over, at least,” Ida Belle said. “If lights are on, we’ll knock. If not, we’ll wait until tomorrow.”
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” I said.
“Cool!” Gertie said and jumped up. “Can I bring the peas?”
Chapter Twenty
It took a bit of effort to cut Gertie’s dress off. That leather was really thick. Then once she had changed into clothes that weren’t ripped or cutting off her blood flow, we headed out to Percy’s house. The lasagna was long forgotten on the counter. It was close to 3:00 a.m. and the e
ntire town was asleep. Aside from streetlights, only the rare lamplight shone through cracks of blinds. When we turned onto Percy’s street, it was completely dark.
“Looks like everyone’s out for the night,” Gertie said.
“I’m just going to pull up in front of the house,” Ida Belle said. “He might have a light on somewhere.”
She parked at the curb and all three of us stared at the house as if willing a light to come on. Unfortunately, given our luck, it would probably be in another house, and they’d be calling the sheriff’s department to report a suspicious vehicle parked outside their home in the middle of the night. We waited a good ten minutes, but nothing stirred.
“Looks quiet,” Ida Belle said. “I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
She put the SUV in gear and was just pulling away when I grabbed her arm.
“Wait!” I said. “I saw something inside.”
She slammed on the brakes. “A light?”
I nodded. “But small.”
“A lamp?” Gertie asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “There!”
I pointed to a window on the far-right side of the house. “Did you see that?”
“Barely, and then it was gone,” Ida Belle said.
I nodded. “Flashlight. And given that there’s no power outage, I can’t see any reason for Percy to be prowling around his own house with a flashlight.”
“We have to get in there!” Gertie said. “If Percy wakes up, Catfish might kill him.”
“If we rush inside a sleeping man’s house, he might kill us,” Ida Belle said.
“She’s right,” I said. “And since there are no other cars parked on the street, that means Catfish came through the woods. Starlight or another member of his crew could be on lookout in the back. We can’t assume whoever is in there is alone.”
“So what do we do?” Gertie asked.
“First, I call Carter,” I said and dialed. He sounded half asleep when he answered but as soon as I explained the situation, he came alive cursing.
“Do not go into that house,” he said. “I’m on my way!”
“Are you going into the house?” Gertie asked.
“Of course,” I said. “But you two need to wait here. I need a sharpshooter and someone with a cell phone watching my back.”
“I have dynamite,” Gertie said. “Although I’m not sure of the application in this case.”
“Maybe later,” I said.
I pulled out my nine-millimeter and headed for the front door. Percy couldn’t have good locks or someone wouldn’t already be in his house. Then I drew up short. He’d never changed the locks. Ida Belle and Gertie had said when Percy came home from work, Venus had moved in because she still had a key. Jeez Louise. That explained how Starlight and Catfish had such easy access. Starlight probably still had her key or she’d copied Venus’s back when she was running with the gang, figuring you never know when things might come in handy. Typical criminal mind-set.
I’d noticed when we visited Percy before that the back door had an interior dead bolt on it. But the front door only had one of those silly chains that didn’t provide any protection at all but gave people a false sense of security. I was going to hazard a guess that Percy didn’t bother to use the chain, which meant whoever was in the house had probably gotten there through the woods but had likely entered through the front door. I was willing to bet it was still unlocked.
I inched onto the porch, pausing every time the boards creaked, and put my hand on the doorknob. It turned easily and I pushed the door open and slipped inside. The room was pitch-black, so I gave my eyes a couple seconds to adjust. Since I’d been there before, I remembered the layout, at least to the main rooms, but the bedrooms were a different story. When I could see a dim outline of the objects in the room, I crept to the hallway and listened. I could hear rustling in one of the rooms on the right side.
The light had been in the last room on the front, so I eased down the hallway, pausing at the first room to listen. It was quiet but I could still hear the faint sound of cloth rubbing together. A single person was walking in the last bedroom. I moved close to the wall and inched toward the bedroom door, pistol in the ready position, even though I knew I couldn’t fire it. Technically, at the moment I was just as big a criminal as whoever was in the bedroom.
But if I could get the jump on them then the pistol should be enough to keep them in place until Carter got there. Assuming the person in the bedroom was the only one in the house. I hadn’t heard any indication that anyone else was there, but I couldn’t be sure. The one thing I couldn’t risk was Percy waking up. That could set off a chain reaction where no one came out the winner.
I stopped at the door and listened, trying to pinpoint where in the room the person was. It sounded as if the noise was coming from the exterior wall on the front of the house. Mentally calculating the risks, I decided to go with the plan that would likely eliminate the option of flight. I reached around the wall with my left hand and located the light switch. Then I flipped the switch on, whirled around the corner, and leveled my pistol at a very surprised Starlight.
“Put your hands up and don’t even think about taking a single step,” I said.
She held one arm in front of her face, blinking in the bright light.
“You were here the other day with the old ladies,” she said. “You’re not a cop.”
“Do you think that gives me more or less reason to shoot you?”
She hesitated for a second, clearly not expecting the question. Then she let out a yell.
“Police!”
I heard a crash from the bedroom across the hall and someone bolted down the hallway. Crap! There had been two of them. When I turned to look at the hallway, Starlight launched at me. Fortunately, hand-to-hand combat was not her strength.
I dodged to the left and gave her a shove as she tried to grab me. Her foot caught one of the bedposts and she went tumbling headfirst into the dresser. I heard the thud as her head connected with the hard wood, then she slumped onto the floor, not moving. I paused only long enough to check her pulse, then took off down the hall. The front door was standing open so I ran out and saw Ida Belle sprinting for the side of the house.
I ran past her and saw the man ahead of me about to enter the backyard. When he reached the edge of the house, a large object struck him directly in the face, and I heard Gertie let out a battle cry. He yelled, then stumbled and fell. I jumped on him, trying to get control of his arms, but he was twisting around like a snake and he was strong. Finally, I managed to grab his arm and flipped over, twisting it backward. As I looked up at Gertie’s enormous handbag, I realized what had connected with his face.
“Arm bar!” Gertie hollered. “Better tap out before she breaks it.”
“Police,” Carter said, stepping up to me as I held the cursing man in place. “You should probably listen. I’ve seen her do worse.”
The man stopped struggling, any hope of getting away dashed by the two people standing above him with guns trained on him, one holding a stick of dynamite, and me about to break his arm. Not surprisingly, his gaze lingered the longest on the dynamite.
Carter holstered his gun and leaned over to cuff him. “Catfish, I presume?”
The man flashed an angry look at Carter but didn’t say anything.
“Starlight’s in the back bedroom,” I said as I hopped up. “She knocked herself out.”
“I’ll get her,” Ida Belle said and headed off.
Carter pulled Catfish to his feet and looked at me. “She knocked herself out?”
I put my hands up. “I swear. She rushed me and I just dodged her. Well, maybe I gave her a little shove.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you not to go into the house?”
“Yes, but I was worried about Percy. Oh my God! Where is Percy?”
Gertie and I took off running for the house and met an upset Ida Belle at the front door.
“I
found Percy tied up in his bedroom,” Ida Belle said. “Those fools had his mouth taped and part of his nose. It’s a wonder he didn’t suffocate.”
“But he’s okay?” I asked as Carter hurried up, dragging an angry Catfish along.
“He’s fine,” Ida Belle said. “Just mad as a hornet.”
“Got that right!” Percy said as he walked into the living room. I could see red marks on his face from where the tape had been, and it made me want to turn around and punch Catfish dead in the face. Then I figured, what the heck?
I whirled around and clocked him so hard in the jaw that he fell to his knees.
Gertie hooted and Ida Belle grinned.
“What the hell?” Catfish yelled.
I gave a stunned Carter my best innocent look. “I thought he was trying to escape.”
“Bull—”
Carter yanked Catfish back up before he could continue. “If you try to escape again,” he said, “I’m going to let you just so I can watch her come after you.”
“You people are crazy,” Catfish said. “You can’t do this. You’re the law.”
“I’m not the law,” I said. “I operate under a completely different set of rules.”
“Really?” Carter asked. “What are those?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure them out,” I said. “Where’s Starlight?”
“She was starting to come around, so I tied her up with a lamp cord,” Ida Belle said.
“For future reference,” Gertie said, “I have fuzzy handcuffs.”
We all stared.
“Someone needs to explain to me what’s going on,” Percy demanded.
“I wish we knew,” I said. “They were searching your house for something that Venus might have hidden inside.” I looked at Catfish. “You want to tell us what you were trying to find?”
He glared at me but didn’t utter a word.
“Any idea where Venus might have stashed something?” I asked.
Percy shook his head, clearly angry. “I got no idea what the girl was up to and I don’t care to know. If she hid something in the house, I don’t know what it is or where it is. But feel free to look yourself. I’d prefer to have it out of here, especially if it means more of Starlight’s friends are going to pay me a visit in the middle of the night.”
