by Jana DeLeon
Nolan nodded. “I hadn’t realized that kind of thing was going on. I’m afraid I’m not well versed on popular culture. But one night she left her laptop open and I was going to check the weather before going to bed. I saw the messages between the two of them.”
“Was it someone from her past?” Ida Belle asked.
Nolan frowned. “I don’t think so. At least, none of the messages reflected on the past. The man was, uh, a bit younger than Gail, and was in the military, currently serving overseas. So you see why I say it wasn’t a traditional sort of affair. I would have never believed that a person could develop feelings by simply talking online, but apparently I was wrong. The messages were quite explicit about the way they felt.”
“I don’t suppose she sent him money?” Ida Belle asked. “I’ve heard some of these situations are more about getting money out of the deal than having an actual relationship.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Nolan said. “And one of his messages did suggest that she forward funds so that he could visit her on leave, but she replied that she couldn’t work that out because she had a joint bank account with her husband.” Nolan flushed. “He knew she was a married woman. What kind of excuse for a man is he?”
“A sorry one,” Gertie said. “What did he have to say when she couldn’t send the funds?”
“He got a little testy about it,” Nolan said, “but he couldn’t exactly force her. He was an ocean away, and if what you’re saying is true, he probably just moved on to the next target. Or maybe he’s always working several women at one time.”
“I think that’s probably the case,” Ida Belle said. “Was she still corresponding with him up until…”
“I don’t know,” Nolan said, looking miserable. “I think she realized that I might have seen the messages. She changed her password and never left her laptop signed in again.”
“You said you told Carter about it?” Gertie asked.
“Yes. And he took Gail’s laptop,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell him. It’s so embarrassing, but Carter asked me specifically who Gail had been in touch with recently. I didn’t want to lie. I know it’s probably not relevant, but I felt guilty keeping it from him.”
“I think you made the right decision,” I said. “Even if it turns out to be nothing, it’s better that you told him than not doing so and then worrying that you should have.”
“That’s what I thought,” Nolan said.
Ida Belle shook her head. “Well, I am so sorry you had to find that out. It certainly doesn’t help your mind, adding more clutter.”
“No,” Nolan said, looking incredibly sad. “I think, if you guys don’t mind, I’m going to lie down for a bit. I’m sorry about the lunch, Gertie. I promise I’ll eat something when I wake up. Please help yourself to anything you’d like. There’s more food here than I could eat in a month. It will go bad if someone doesn’t eat it.”
“Don’t you worry about lunch,” Gertie said. “Let me help you into the bedroom. You’re exhausted and need to reserve your strength for the things you don’t want help with.”
Nolan nodded and Gertie turned his wheelchair around and limped out of the kitchen. I waited until they had been gone for at least a minute and looked over at Ida Belle.
“I never saw that one coming,” I said. “I figured if she was having an affair, it was with someone in New Orleans.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Ida Belle agreed. “That would have been the most efficient route given that she was there most of the week and Nolan was ensconced in Sinful.”
“Nolan did say she’d been spending nights in New Orleans recently,” I pointed out. “So maybe there was someone else locally.”
Ida Belle frowned. “I don’t know. It’s hard for me to imagine a woman of Gail’s character having one affair, much less two.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I wonder if Gail’s relationship with the catfish continued after Nolan could no longer access her computer. What if the reason she was spending so much time in New Orleans was so she could talk to the other man?”
“The simplest explanation is usually the right one?” I nodded. “It would fit, except for the part where she was murdered.”
“What if Gail found out that he was a fraud and threatened to expose him?”
My eyes widened and I stared at Ida Belle. “Because we think he’s someone living in or with close ties to Sinful.”
Ida Belle nodded. “Which means Gail might have guessed who he really was.”
“Holy crap.”
Chapter 13
By the time Gertie got back from getting Nolan settled, Ida Belle and I were serving the lasagna, meat sauce, and French bread Gertie had heated up. It smelled incredible and I could hardly wait to dig in. Italian food wasn’t standard fare for Sinful, so I was determined not to get my hopes up. Lasagna was one of the few things I missed about DC.
“This looks great,” I said as I sat down with a piled-high plate of pasta.
“It is great,” Gertie said. “The woman who made that is an Italian from New York. She’s been here forty years or better so no one considers her a Yankee anymore, but her mother doesn’t speak a lick of English, only Italian.”
Ida Belle nodded and cut off a bite of the lasagna. “Best Italian food you’ll find in the South, that’s for sure.”
Feeling hopeful, I took a bite and sighed. They were right. It was just as good as anything I’d ever eaten up north and better than most. I followed it up with a bite of crunchy garlic bread and almost felt guilty for enjoying it so much, given the circumstances by which I’d come by the meal.
“She should charge for this,” I said. “I’d pay.”
“A lot of people would,” Gertie said, “and I’ve pointed that out to her, but she has no desire to be a cottage industry. Said she spent enough time at the stove when her kids were little, and now she only does it when the mood strikes her.”
“She has seven kids,” Ida Belle explained.
“Jeez,” I said. “Between cooking, cleaning, and the laundry, she must have never gotten a break unless she was sleeping.”
Gertie nodded. “And probably did very little of that.”
I looked over at Ida Belle and she asked Gertie, “Is Nolan asleep?”
“He was starting to doze off when I left. The television is on, so as long as we keep our voices low, he won’t be able to hear us. Fortune can keep an eye down the hallway and let us know if she sees him coming this way.”
“Good,” Ida Belle said and filled Gertie in on our thoughts from earlier. I could tell Gertie hadn’t had time to process the information like we had, but the gravity of the situation hit her before Ida Belle finished with our conclusion.
“The whole thing is so troubling,” Gertie said. “I mean, I always have a problem with truly horrific crimes, but this entire thing has a feeling of…malevolence to it that I haven’t felt before. At least not in Sinful.”
Ida Belle nodded. “I’m not often prone to fanciful thoughts, but I have to agree with you. My mind is usually very logical and structured but now, I have this feeling like a dark cloud is hanging over us. I don’t like it. We’ve seen some pretty bad things recently. For this to bother us this way means something is so very wrong.”
Although I didn’t feel as strongly about the situation as Ida Belle and Gertie, I had to admit that this crime left me feeling more uneasy than I had before. Maybe it was because I’d met Gail and liked her, or because I felt sorry for Nolan, but I didn’t think that was it. Not entirely. It was something else, something elusive and dark.
“So we’re back to figuring out who the catfish was,” Gertie said. “Assuming we think it’s the same man.”
“I think it would be a huge coincidence if it wasn’t,” Ida Belle said.
“But where do we start?” I asked. “And before you answer, consider that this man has already killed once to protect his identity. I don’t think he’d hesitate to kill again.”
“And he’s made a good job of it,” Ida Belle said. “According to Myrtle, no one heard a thing.”
I nodded. “I find that interesting as well. I know Peaches says she sleeps like the dead, but a pistol shot coming from the house directly behind her should have jogged her out of sleep. And Myrtle overheard Carter saying Nolan heard a pop, which doesn’t jibe either.”
“You’re thinking suppressor?” Ida Belle asked.
“Has to be. All those people in all those surrounding houses and no one heard anything? It’s not possible.”
“I agree,” Ida Belle said. “So we have a killer who’s well equipped and prepared. Where do we go from there?”
We all sat in silence for a while, then Gertie perked up. “What about the photos? It may not be anything but it’s something to check.”
“It’s worth a look,” Ida Belle said, “especially after you crippled yourself to get them.”
“And made Peaches mop her bathroom,” I reminded her.
“It was for a good cause,” Gertie said. “Let me go get the camera.”
“No,” I said and jumped up from the table. “You stay put. You’ll be lucky if you’re walking on that ankle at all tomorrow.”
I grabbed Gertie’s purse from the back doorknob where it was hanging and pulled out the camera. I sat down and started scrolling through the photos. The first couple contained only a partial view of the backyard and not even a sliver of the trellis. The next set was taken from the balcony railing and I was relieved to find several well-focused shots of the trellis, in varying degrees of distance.
I scrolled back, then went to stand in between Ida Belle and Gertie to show them the pictures. “These are good shots of the trellis,” I said, “but I don’t see that it tells us anything.”
Ida Belle studied the photos as I flipped through them. “We need a larger screen. Then we might be able to see some detail that we’d otherwise miss.”
I nodded. “There are also some close-ups of the ground below. I think I can make out footprints, but I agree, we need to download these to a computer to get a better look.”
I flipped through a couple more close-ups of the ground, then the next photo was a blurred canvas of blue and white. It took me a minute to figure out what it was, then I realized Gertie still had her finger on the button when she fell. That was a rather confusing picture of the sky. The next was a blur of green with spots of blue and I assumed that one had been taken from her vantage point inside the shrub.
Ida Belle shook her head. “You should have that ankle looked at,” she said.
“Why?” Gertie asked. “Doctors can’t do anything for a sprain. They’ll make me wait forever, charge me a mint, then send me home with instructions to rest.”
“What if it’s fractured?” Ida Belle asked.
“Then they’ll send me home with one of those funky boots to wear and instructions to relax,” Gertie said. “Amounts to the same thing.”
“I’m afraid Gertie’s assessment is correct,” I said. “There’s not much they can do for a sprain or a hairline fracture. And honestly, if it was broken, I don’t think she’d be walking on it at all.”
“You’re probably right,” Ida Belle said. “But one of these days, Gertie’s aversion to medical treatment is going to send her straight to the coroner.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“I wish we could get a peek at Gail’s laptop,” Gertie said.
I shook my head. “Oh, no. That laptop is locked up in the sheriff’s department. We already had an almost-fiasco at the hotel, and if those security cameras hadn’t been broken, we’d all be sitting in a jail cell about now.”
“I didn’t say we should do anything,” Gertie complained. “I was just commenting that it would be nice to see it so we knew what Gail and the catfish were talking about after she changed her password.”
“Well, it’s not going to happen,” Ida Belle said, “so put the thought right out of your mind.”
Gertie pursed her lips and slumped back in her chair. I knew if she had her way, we’d be formulating a plan to blow open the back door on the sheriff’s department and make off with the laptop, but no way was I getting dragged into something that crazy. I was already on thin ice with Carter and my boss at the CIA. If I kept drawing attention to myself, Director Morrow would pull me out of Sinful and stick me someplace far worse.
“We’ll think of something,” I said.
But I had no idea what.
* * *
Marie returned at 6:00 p.m. and we briefed her on the meeting with the insurance agent.
“That’s great news!” Marie exclaimed. “I wonder how she managed it? She didn’t think she could.”
“She talked to you about it?” Ida Belle asked.
“Not so much talk as mentioned that she’d inquired about a policy but was a bit shocked at the cost. Being an insulin-dependent diabetic drove the cost up, even though her diabetes has always been controlled.”
“Ah,” Ida Belle said. “I’d forgotten she was diabetic. Yeah, I imagine it took a pretty penny to get that much coverage.”
Marie nodded. “Did you get him to eat anything?”
Gertie nodded. “Lasagna, bread, and half a piece of pie.”
As happy as Marie had been about the money, she seemed even more excited to hear about the food. She thanked us again for helping out, and I hurried Ida Belle and Gertie out of the house as quickly as I could.
Ida Belle drove again, and as soon as we closed the car doors, she turned around and narrowed her eyes at me. “What was that about?” she asked. “You were practically pushing us out the door.”
I felt a flush creep up my neck. “I, uh, didn’t want to see Emmaline.”
I hadn’t seen Carter’s mother since the breakup and wasn’t prepared to answer the questions I was certain she’d have for me. Emmaline was a straightforward, no-nonsense lady, and I liked her a lot. I didn’t like that I had to keep lying to her, and felt even more guilty for putting Carter in a position of having to do so.
“I see,” Ida Belle said. “I guess I can’t blame you. That would be uncomfortable.”
I nodded. To say the very least.
“Do you guys mind if we swing by Mary Esther’s place before we go to Fortune’s?” Gertie asked.
“Swing by?” Ida Belle asked. “She lives a good five miles up the highway.”
“Okay, so we’ll drive there,” Gertie said. “I promised her I’d drop off some knitting plans two days ago and with all that’s going on, I keep forgetting. She’s starting to stalk me on Facebook.”
Ida Belle shook her head and turned the next corner, directing the car to Main Street.
“Who’s Mary Esther?” I asked. That was a name I hadn’t heard before.
“She’s an old widow who lives in one of those old bayou houses,” Gertie said. “Her family was one of the first to settle in Sinful.”
“Her family, my butt,” Ida Belle said. “That woman looks at least two hundred years old. She was probably original to the town.”
“Well, she’s got good eyesight for a two-hundred-year-old woman,” Gertie said. “She still knits and is online.”
“So?” Ida Belle retorted. “You do both of those and your glasses needed updating back when disco was cool.”
I grinned. That argument never got old.
“I’ll have you know,” Gertie said, “that I have an appointment to get that handled.”
Ida Belle and I both stared at her.
“Seriously?” I asked. “You’re going to get new glasses?”
“No,” Gertie said. “I’ve decided I’m too young and hip to wear glasses all the time, plus they get in the way of some of our more active pursuits. I’m going to have LASIK surgery.”
“God save us all,” Ida Belle said. “Don’t they have an age limit on that?”
“They do not,” Gertie retorted. “I’m not diabetic and don’t have cataracts, so I’m well within the scope of qualifying
for surgery.”
“A doctor told you this?” Ida Belle asked.
“Well, not exactly,” Gertie said, “but I looked it up on the Internet.”
“Uh-huh,” Ida Belle said. “Maybe you should wait and see if a real doctor concurs with that idiocy on the Internet before you donate your old glasses.”
Gertie frowned. “Why do you always have to be Debbie Downer?”
Ida Belle shook her head. “I’m Reality Rita.”
“You know,” I said, “LASIK can fix distance vision but you’ll still have to wear reading glasses.”
Gertie waved a hand in dismissal. “I’m not running or getting shot at when reading glasses would be needed.”
I nodded. Seemed like perfectly reasonable criteria to me.
Ida Belle merged onto the highway on the outside of downtown and I watched as the weeds and trees rolled by. A mile or so farther, she turned onto a dirt road and headed into a wooded area of the swamp. As we rounded a corner, she yanked the steering wheel to the side, narrowly missing an oncoming truck that was in the middle of the road.
“Watch where you’re driving!” Gertie yelled, not that it mattered. The truck was long gone.
“I saw that same truck the other day when I went to shoot,” I said. “He wasn’t any better at staying in his lane then, either.”
Ida Belle slowed until the car came to a stop. She looked at Gertie and me. “That truck belongs to Brandon Dugas.”
“Peaches’s husband?” I asked.
Gertie frowned. “Then what is he doing roaming around the back roads of Sinful when he’s supposed to be catching big shrimp?”
“That’s a good question,” Ida Belle said.
“Maybe he’s lying to Peaches,” Gertie said, “and goofing off instead.”
“Then where is the money coming from?” I asked. “That vase that Peaches wanted couldn’t have been cheap, and the stereo and television setup in the game room was top-of-the-line. I know. It’s the only thing I spend money on besides weapons.”
