by Shari Hearn
“Well, you’re right,” Ida Belle said. “Those other people probably would want Cookie charged with assault.”
“I know I would,” Gertie said. “If it was me. Which it wasn’t.”
“Oh, I know it wasn’t you.” Carter stepped forward, inches away from me. He locked eyes with me, his glare so intense I had to look down at his shoes. “Because Fortune gave me her word she would call if anything out of the ordinary happened. And Fortune gave me her word she would stay out of my investigation.”
I looked up at his face, awash in disappointment. And hurt. It was the hurt that made me reach out for his hand.
“Well, I’d best be going,” he said. But he held onto my hand for another few seconds, studying French Fry’s masterpiece. “What are those things hanging off your face?” he asked.
“Fake skin tags.”
He shook his head, released my hand and strode toward his SUV, parked a few houses away. It was dark, but I could still see his disappointed face as he gave one last glance our way before sliding inside his car and slamming the door.
We watched as he sped away.
“Did he really buy our story?” Gertie asked.
“Of course he didn’t buy our story. You okay?” Ida Belle asked me.
“No, I feel like crap.”
“That’s the cabbage soup talking,” Gertie said.
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s guilt.” I walked up the steps to the porch, unlocked my front door, passed through the living room and up the stairs to the bathroom. I knew I could get rid of Cookie from my body, but no amount of hot water could get rid of the image of Carter’s hurt face.
I let Gertie have my bed and Ida Belle the guest room, while I slept on the couch, or at least tried to anyway. My mind kept going round and round in a crazy loop of images and thoughts, starting with a crazy 100-year-old woman beating me with a cane, dissolving to flapping ears, Carter’s hurt face, and a bomber’s blurry face with a huge question mark plastered over it.
* * * * *
A scream jolted me from my half-sleep.
“Gertie!” I yelled, jumping from the sofa.
I grabbed my Glock from the coffee table and dashed up the stairs, running into Ida Belle and Gertie on their way down, both dressed in pajamas and carrying Glocks. Ida Belle sported a head full of curlers.
“Was that you?” I asked Gertie.
“No. We thought it was you.”
Another scream, more like a wail.
“Sounds like a man,” Ida Belle said.
I turned and tore down the stairs. “Sounds like it’s coming from outside in the back.”
I ran to the back door, with Gertie and Ida Belle close behind.
“Oh, shit!” The voice outside sounded in pain. “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!”
I slowly unlocked the door and nodded to Gertie and Ida Belle, then pushed the door open and leapt outside, pointing my Glock at a darkened figure.
“Don’t move!”
It took a few seconds for my eyes to make out that the figure was a man, doubled over, holding one arm in the other.
“I don’t see anyone else,” Gertie said.
Ida Belle flipped on the outside light.
A head of blond hair. His face pointed toward the ground. “Straighten up,” I commanded.
He did, still cradling his left arm that was dripping with blood.
“Jo-Jo?” Gertie said.
“Miss Hebert?” He dropped his jaw. “This is your house?”
“No, it’s mine,” I said, suddenly aware I was wearing sleep shorts and a T-shirt. His eyes skimming my body might have had a hand in my awareness. “Maybe you’d like to explain why you’re standing outside of it at midnight with a bloody hand.”
“He stabbed me.”
“Who stabbed you?”
“The man I caught trying to break in.”
This night just kept getting worse.
* * * * *
An hour later, Jo-Jo sat at my kitchen table, the knife wound on his forearm cleaned and wrapped in a bandage. He was eating a piece of pie left over from Gertie’s funeral after-bash. I had earlier given chase in the direction Jo-Jo said the mystery man ran, but I couldn’t see anyone. I even put on pants and shoes and drove through the neighborhood, but after finding nothing unusual, came home. Gertie and Ida Belle now wore robes.
Jo-Jo gave us a play-by-play of what happened. He was visiting an old school friend who lived on this street. On his way home he saw a guy in a black hoodie slipping between a couple of houses, one of them being mine. He stopped and parked his car, then snuck around the back and saw the guy messing with the backdoor lock. Jo-Jo then took his knife from his pocket, the one he always carried, and called out to the guy, asking what he was up to. He thought it would scare the guy off, but instead, Hoodie Guy came charging at him. In the scuffle, Jo-Jo dropped his knife and Hoodie Guy tried to stab him in the chest, but Jo-Jo held his arms up to defend himself. Jo-Jo screamed, Hoodie Guy ran off, and would we mind if he had more milk to go with his last two bites of pie?
Gertie went to the refrigerator and came back to the table with a bottle of milk, filling Jo-Jo’s glass.
“Thank you, Miss Hebert. You always were so kind.” He forked another piece of pie and slid it in his mouth.
“Anything else you can remember about this guy?” I asked.
Jo-Jo shrugged. “Nothing more than I told you. He was a little taller than me. Kinda stocky.”
“We should probably call Carter,” Ida Belle said.
I nodded. Ida Belle fished her phone from her robe pocket and brought up his number.
“Oh, wait!” Jo-Jo said. “I remember something else. He had an accent.”
“An accent?” I reached over and snatched Ida Belle’s phone from her hand. She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word.
“Yeah,” Jo-Jo said. He finished off the milk and set the glass on the table. “It wasn’t one I ever heard around here. Kinda sounded like… like… I don’t know… Russian?”
“Russian?” Heat crept over my face. Ahmad was known for using Russian hitmen.
“What is it, Fortune?”
“You know what, Jo-Jo. I think we’ll call the sheriff’s department tomorrow. We’ll tell him all that you said.”
“Okay.” He stared at his empty plate and glass.
“Thank you so much for chasing the guy away, Jo-Jo,” Gertie said.
“Anything for you, Miss Hebert,” he said, smiling.
He continued to sit.
“You should probably be going,” Ida Belle said.
“Oh.” He stood from the table. “Sure. Well, I’m glad I could help out. Do you need me to stand guard out there, in case he comes back?”
“No, we’ll be fine,” I said.
“Sorry about your arm.” Gertie ushered him into the living room, where she then steered him toward the door. “You should see a doctor about it.”
He shrugged. “It’s not that deep. I’ve had worse. Thanks for the bandage.”
Ida Belle opened the door. “When you see your mama next, you tell her we all said ‘hi.’”
“I’ll do that.” Jo-Jo stepped outside and Ida Belle quickly shut the door behind him.
She turned toward me. “A Russian accent? That’s bad, right?”
Gertie placed her hands on her face, her eyes filled with concern. “Are these the people who are looking for you?”
I nodded. “He’s not Russian, but he’s known for using Russians.” I plopped down on the sofa. “It doesn’t make sense. The bomb wasn’t that sophisticated. And it was directed at Gertie, not me.”
Ida Belle sat next to me. “Maybe someone’s trying to throw you off. Or throw off law enforcement. Make it look like a local yahoo going after Gertie, and you get hit in the process.”
Gertie dropped into the chair next to the sofa. “What do we do now?”
“The only thing I can do.”
“And what’s that?”
“Call
my guy at the CIA.”
“You’re going to have to leave, aren’t you?” Gertie asked, her eyes getting teary.
I nodded.
Ida Belle touched my shoulder. “Let’s hold off on calling your guy till morning. There has to be something we can do. Maybe after a little sleep we’ll come up with a different solution.” She stood, looking down at me. “I’ll stay up and keep watch. You can relieve me in a couple of hours, then Gertie will relieve you.”
I agreed. But I knew no amount of sleep would change the situation. Once I made that call to Harrison he would send an extraction team. I would be taken away from the people I now thought of as family.
Tonight could very well be my last night in Sinful, Louisiana.
CHAPTER NINE
Carter’s breath danced across my cheek as he exhaled slowly. The warmth of his body adding to the hot summer breeze that tiptoed across our bodies. Snug in the backyard hammock.
He stared into my eyes. His lips parted.
And then he meowed.
Meowed?
He lifted his head and leaned into me, smearing a sandpaper kiss across my forehead.
Sandpaper?
“Oh crap. This is a dream, isn’t it?”
He nodded and meowed again.
“You’re Merlin, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
I sighed. And the dream was going so good. “What do you want?”
“I’m hungry,” he said, in Carter’s voice. “And this might be the last morning you feed me.”
“I know, but… Can’t you go outside and eat a mouse or something so I can continue this dream with Carter? It might be the last time we make out.”
He leaned in to kiss me again, only this time he licked my cheek. A big, sandpapery lick.
“Feed me,” he said. “Now.” Then he meowed again.
“Okay, okay, I’m waking up.”
My eyes shot open. I was lying on the sofa, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Merlin sat perched on my chest, staring into my face. His eyes not near as sexy as Carter’s.
Real sleep hadn’t come until about five in the morning, after I handed off my watch shift to Gertie an hour earlier. Most of my dreams from then on consisted of gigantic skin tags, exploding caskets and Russian hitmen. Merlin just had to wake me during my make-out dream with Carter.
I smelled bacon. “Come on, let’s both go get some food,” I said, nudging Merlin off my chest and onto the floor. “Who’s making bacon?” I called out.
Ida Belle popped her head in from the kitchen. “I am. Want some?”
“Sure. Might be my last bacon from Sinful.” I pulled myself up from the sofa and stretched, then shuffled into the kitchen, Merlin running along beside me.
Something struck me as odd. First, Ida Belle was cooking and not Gertie, who wasn’t even in the kitchen. And then there was the white-frosted, two-layer cake that sat on the counter with a small sliver cut out.
“Maybe Merlin and I should skip breakfast and go straight for dessert.” I grabbed Merlin’s bag of kibble and poured a generous amount in his bowl that sat on the floor.
“Ally brought it by,” Ida Belle said. “It’s Celia’s birthday today, so Celia hired her to cater a birthday lunch on the lawn outside City Hall. This was one of her test cakes.”
“Celia’s going to pay her? I hope she has the money deposited in her account before handing the cake over to Celia.”
Mention of Ally made me sad. We had a girls’ night out scheduled for this Saturday. What would I tell her when I canceled? Who was I kidding? I couldn’t tell her a thing. They’d extract me and that was it. I probably wouldn’t even be able to say goodbye. Not even to Carter.
“It’s actually the city of Sinful paying for it,” Ida Belle said. “Celia invited all the business leaders and even persuaded the director of that movie, along with his location scout, to attend. She’s hoping he’ll give Sinful one more chance. She’s calling it the Happy Birthday Mayor Celia, See what Sinful has to offer party.”
“Well, if they want to shoot a film starring a bunch of crazy extras, then they’re in the right place.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s after eleven? I slept that late? Why didn’t anyone wake me?”
“Gertie and I figured you could use the sleep. You didn’t even hear Ally come by with the cake.”
“So where’s Gertie?”
“She forgot to bring along her thyroid medicine and vitamins, so she went home to get them.”
I cast a worried glance at Ida Belle.
“She promised to text when she got there and text every ten minutes until she left.”
“It shouldn’t take her ten minutes to run inside and get her medication and vitamins.”
“She’s got her Glock at the ready.”
“One little old lady and a Glock are no match for a Russian hitman. What if he followed her? He might want to use her to flush me out.”
I grabbed for the keys to my Jeep from the counter.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to get her. You don’t know what these people are capable of.”
Ida Belle touched my shoulder. “Look, I’ve been thinking. None of this is making sense. I just don’t see a Russian hitman fitting into this picture.”
“Jo-Jo said the guy sounded Russian.”
“Jo-Jo once ran his shorts up the flagpole on Main.”
“So?”
“While he was still in them.” Ida Belle took my keys and placed them back on the counter. “My point is, Jo-Jo wouldn’t know a New York accent from a Russian accent.”
“Okay, say this isn’t a hitman out to get me. Someone’s still trying to get at one of us. Gertie shouldn’t be out on her own.”
Ida Belle sighed and set her spatula down on the spoon rest. “You know, we’ve faced threats before. I can’t tell you how many times over the years we’ve butted heads with some pretty unsavory characters. Death threats come with the territory.”
I glared at Ida Belle. “This wasn’t a threat. The bomb was attempted murder. And last night some guy was poking around my house at midnight. And he could have sounded Russian.”
Ida Belle’s phone buzzed from inside her pants pocket. She pulled it out and checked it. “Dear Lord.”
“What?” My pulse shot up. I reached for the Jeep keys again.
She held up her hand to calm me. “It’s Gertie. Jo-Jo was walking through the neighborhood and spotted her as she was going inside her house. They’re on their way over here so he can borrow the boat and take a quick ride down the bayou.”
“A boat ride?”
Ida Belle put her phone back in her pocket. “He did help us out last night.”
“So what. He’s still creepy.”
“Oh, come on, you never had a crush on a teacher?”
“Yeah, but I never looked him up as an adult.”
“This is a small town. Former students always drop by to say ‘hi’ to Gertie.”
“Fine.” I plopped down in a chair at the kitchen table. “She can have a little boat ride with him.”
“Well, thank you, Boss of Us.” Ida Belle slapped a couple pieces of bacon on a plate, along with a scoop of scrambled eggs and hash browns, and slammed the plate down on the table in front of me. She yanked out one of the chairs and sat.
I picked up a fork. But I had no appetite. I laid the fork down. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little on edge.”
“Me too,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Me neither. But if Jo-Jo’s right—”
“He’s not.”
“I can’t chance it and risk anyone else getting hurt. I have to call for an extraction, and you know it. The three of us are the best when it comes to the local yahoos. But when it comes to an international arms dealer…”
Ida Belle sighed. She reached over and touched my hand. “Can we at least have one last boat ride together? We’ll take Jo-Jo out, get rid of him, then the three of us will go out for a spin.”
�
��Okay. And then I’ll make the call.”
We heard a knock at the front door.
“It’s me, Gertie.”
Ida Belle and I sprang up and ran into the living room. I flung open the door.
“It’s about time.”
“Who died and made you queen?” Gertie said.
“Not funny, in light of—” I stopped in mid-sentence as Jo-Jo stepped inside.
“Is it okay?” he asked Gertie.
“Of course it’s okay,” she said to him. “You helped us out last night. The least we can do is let you ride the boat before you leave town.”
“I live in Los Angeles now,” Jo-Jo said. “We don’t have a bayou over there. I kinda miss it.”
I knew the feeling. I was going to miss it myself. “I’ll get the keys to the boat.”
The four of us headed out the back door and into the bright sun. Jo-Jo whistled when he spotted it, an airboat that was a gift from a couple of local mobsters we had helped out. “She’s a beaut.” He took his baseball cap, which hung out of his back pocket, and placed it on his head.
I saw it first. Then Ida Belle.
We both stared at his baseball cap—a maroon Sinful Sluggers one to be exact. The same cap the guy sitting on the park bench, the guy we originally suspected of being the bomber, wore.
“Something wrong?” Gertie asked. She followed my gaze to Jo-Jo. Her eyes widened.
“What y’all staring at me for?” Jo-Jo asked.
“Where’d you get the cap, Jo-Jo?” Gertie asked.
“My cap? I played on the Swamp Bar team when I used to live here.” He smiled in a maniacal sort of way. “You probably never went to none of my games, though, did you?”
Gertie shook her head. “Sorry. No I didn’t.”
Quickly his smile morphed to a pout. Like a little kid, he stuck his hands in his pockets. It was then I noticed outlines of something in both pockets. One definitely was a cell phone, the other one a lump of some kind.
His eyes narrowed into slits. “Well, if you had you would have seen I was one of their star catchers.”
I looked over at Ida Belle, moving my hand to my waistband and hoping she understood my unspoken question. I had left my Glock upstairs, not intending to go out anywhere this morning. I was hoping she had hers. But she shook her head. That left Gertie. But her weapons were in her purse.
