by Jana DeLeon
“I find that sort of thing interesting.” The lie rolled easily out of my mouth. “But I guess mostly I was hoping the answer was something else besides Marie. Seems like everyone likes her, and the more I hear about her, the more I like her myself.”
“That’s very true. It’s going to be a sad day if Marie goes away for killing Harvey. Likely, ain’t no one going to be happy about it but Melvin.”
I nodded, and for some reason, my thoughts flashed back to the letters I’d found in Marge’s attic. “Can I ask you something?”
Walter laughed. “You’ve already been asking me something for twenty minutes.”
I smiled. “Okay. Can I ask you something else?”
“As I don’t get much opportunity to talk to young, beautiful women, you can stay here talking as long as you want.”
“There’re a lot of older, single people in this town—Ida Belle and Gertie, Marge, you. What’s the deal? No offense, but you’re in an age group that usually settled down for the whole kids-golden-retriever-and-white-picket-fence thing.”
“Ida Belle, Gertie and your aunt were feminists ahead of their time. Can’t really blame them for wanting more than the role society told them they was supposed to fill. I’m not much for being told what to do, either.”
“Me, either. So, my aunt never had a romance with anyone?”
He frowned and shook his head. “Not that I can recall, although I often wondered if she didn’t meet someone in Vietnam.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When she came back, she had that look sometimes…like she was thinking hard about someone that wasn’t available. I know that feeling.”
“Ida Belle?”
He nodded. “All my life, there’s only been one woman for me. If I can’t have her, then I don’t want any other.”
“Walter, you’re an old romantic!”
He gave me a sheepish smile. “I suppose there’s worse things to be.”
***
Given the size of my breakfast, I probably should have jogged home, but I didn’t have the energy. Instead, I shuffled back to the house, loaded down with bags. Walter had helped me stock up on plenty of easy-to-prepare food and had assured me the battery for the Jeep was on its way. Then he’d given me a free bottle of Sinful Ladies cough syrup and a wink before I’d headed out. I decided Ida Belle could do a whole lot worse than settling down with Walter.
As I walked, my mind ran through everything that had happened since I’d arrived in Sinful. As much as I hadn’t wanted to care, I found myself drawn to the mystery surrounding Harvey Chicoron’s death, everyone’s presumption that Marie was the perpetrator, and the equally consistent belief that Harvey had deserved it and no one wanted Marie to pay.
I almost felt sorry for the prosecuting attorney, but then the attorney part kept getting in the way of complete sympathy after the dealings I’d had with them. Still, they were in for some serious anger issues from the Sinful population when it came trial time. Except for Melvin. That idiot would probably be in court every day holding up a sign that read, MARIE DID IT, if the judge allowed such things.
My search for an alternative suspect was leading nowhere fast. I’d had hopes that talking to Walter might yield another angle, but apparently, the most likely people to have popped off Harvey, besides Marie, were the pastor, the priest, the butcher, Francine, and Walter.
I sighed. The more I learned about Harvey, the more I wondered if everyone’s assumption of Marie’s guilt was a bit of a leap. It seemed that a number of people had very valid reasons for wanting him out of the way.
My imagination was still whirling with all the insane possibilities for a suspect when I looked around and realized I’d walked right past my house. Good grief. I needed some serious work on my focus. Someone could have capped me right there on the sidewalk, and I wouldn’t even have seen them coming.
I trudged up to the house and breathed a sigh of relief when I jiggled the front door and found it locked. At least Sinful hadn’t eaten away all of my survival instincts.
Bones was awake for a change and standing at the back door. I took that to mean it was break time and opened the back door to let him saunter out. As it was a nice day and the kitchen knives were in easy reach, I left the door open so he could come back in whenever he was done with whatever one-hundred-year-old hound dogs did when they weren’t digging up bodies.
In the time it took me to pour myself a glass of soda, he’d already shuffled back in and climbed back into his bed in the corner. For one who’d started all this flurry, he didn’t seem to have any problem sleeping. By my estimation, he managed a good twenty-three hours of sleep out of any twenty-four-hour day.
I closed and locked the back door, then tackled the supply bags. It took only a couple of minutes to unpack the groceries; then I wandered around the downstairs of the house for a bit, trying to find something to do. After my fourth pass around the living room, I flopped into a recliner and blew out a breath.
I was bored.
For the first time since I'd arrived in Sinful, I was finally getting a dose of that whole slower-pace thing. Unless you had sleeping habits like Bones, it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I pondered for a moment what it said about me exactly that I'd rather be risking my cover by getting involved in the investigation of a murder committed by a woman I'd never met to a husband that no one liked, than taking a nap.
It took only a minute to decide I wasn't cut out for a slower pace. This bit of excitement was probably the first Sinful had seen since Harvey went missing, so I supposed I ought to be grateful for the timing as it had given me some distraction. Technically, I supposed I should be cataloging the stuff in Marge's house and packing it for sale, but that seemed even more boring than just sitting here.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and checked the display for the tenth time since entering the house. No calls. No messages. Maybe Ida Belle and Gertie were taking a day off. That would be about right—as soon as I got knee-deep in it all, they were taking a step back.
I gazed up at the picture on the fireplace mantel that Gertie had identified as Marge and Marie. They were on Main Street and both smiling. Streamers hung from light posts, so there must have been some sort of celebration going on. The photo next to it was one of Marge with a group of men standing next to a giant dead deer. They were all dressed in camouflage and looked to be having the time of their lives.
The picture reminded me of Marge's military uniforms lumped on the desk upstairs, so I hopped up from the chair and headed to the bedroom. I didn't like those uniforms being rumpled. This was the perfect opportunity to iron them and get them back into the shape they were meant to be in. Ironing wasn’t exactly my favorite thing to do, but it was better than sitting there, and restoring the uniforms to pristine state would provide a certain level of satisfaction that I hadn’t really achieved since landing in Sinful.
I retrieved the ironing board and iron I'd seen in the spare room across from the one I was using, then set up in front of the window in my own room. The light was nice, and it afforded me a great view of the street.
I hunted down starch in the kitchen pantry while the iron was heating up, then picked the first set of pants and jacket off the table and went to work. Normally, you couldn’t find me doing anything domestic, but ironing was different. Growing up with a former military commander as a father tended to lend itself to good grooming. He’d even insisted on ironing sheets and underwear.
Of course, as soon as I left home, I abandoned all that nonsense, but couldn’t give up the ghost on military uniforms. Sometimes something was simply the right thing to do. Armed with my starch and a hot iron, I went to work on the jacket.
When I finished pressing the jacket to within an inch of perfection, I stood there holding it for a moment, thinking it was a real shame to fold such a beautifully ironed garment. Maybe I should hang up the uniforms. A museum or collector might be interested in them. You never knew what people were interested
in having.
I'd used all the hangers in the guest room for my own wardrobe, the vast majority of which I hadn't bothered to wear, so I went in search of more. The closets in the other spare rooms contained only neatly stacked and labeled storage boxes, so I went to dig through the closet in the master bedroom.
It was a large walk-in with clothes rods on each side and shelves above. Marge's clothes were arranged according to type and color. No surprise there after seeing her pantry. A bunch of empty hangers dangled from the rod at the back of the closet, so I snagged a handful of them.
Apparently, my mind overreached my grasp because I lost my grip and they popped out of my hand and onto the closet floor. Sighing, I leaned over to gather up the hangers. I reached for the last one and pulled, but it appeared to be stuck on something. I tugged harder and heard a faint click.
A second later, the back panel of the closet slid back, revealing a wall of weapons that made me gasp.
Holy crap!
Pistols, rifles, semi-automatic, full automatic, knives, swords, grenades…I felt my heart pounding, and I got a bit short of breath. What a beautiful, beautiful collection. I ran my fingers reverently over a grenade launcher I’d been coveting for months. Marge had seriously good taste.
Clearly Deputy LeBlanc didn't know anything about Marge's hidden stash. He'd removed a bunch of hunting rifles and a pistol and left all the good stuff behind.
I pulled an assault rifle from the wall and inspected it. It was in perfect operating condition. What the hell had Marge done in the military to warrant this level of interest in weapons? I knew she was a hunter, but this was hardly the type of gun one used to bag a deer.
I put the rifle back on its hanger and reached for an excellent nine millimeter. The clip was full and it was a beauty. Certainly, Marge wouldn’t mind my borrowing her gun while I was visiting. I stuck it in my waistband, then squatted to feel the panel where the hanger was lodged. Sure enough, there was a little switch under the edge of the baseboard. I moved the hanger out of the way and pressed the switch. The panel slid silently back in place.
Whatever she was up to, apparently Marge felt it necessary to keep her collection under wraps. I couldn't imagine something like this remaining a secret for long if someone among the general Sinful populace knew about it. And if it hadn't been a secret, Deputy LeBlanc would definitely have removed all the guns from the house after she died.
I smiled as I walked back to my bedroom with a handful of hangers, the pistol tucked nicely at my waist. I heard a boat cruising down the bayou behind the house and two birds land on a tree outside—all without casting a glance out a window. Amazing how one good pistol made all the difference in a person. I was starting to feel normal again.
What Deputy LeBlanc didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Chapter Sixteen
After ironing all the uniforms, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon drooling over Marge’s weapon collection and then took a nice, long nap before slumping onto the couch and cruising through hours of bad television. No one called, banged on the door, or dug up bones in my yard, and I was really starting to long for some excitement.
I almost wept with relief when my cell phone rang at nine p.m., and I saw Gertie’s name on the display.
“I got a line on Melvin,” Gertie said. “We’ll pick you up in five.”
She hung up before I could do anything rational like ask where we were going, or even smarter, refuse to go.
I jumped up from the couch and ran upstairs for my shoes. Who was I kidding? Like it or not, the situation intrigued me, and at the moment, I was more afraid of being bored to death than discovered by a Middle Eastern hit squad. Besides, it would give me great pleasure to find Marie before Deputy LeBlanc and come up with a viable alternative to Harvey’s murderer.
As I came down the stairs and back into the living room, I saw headlights flash across the front window and heard a car pull into the drive. I knew immediately that the low purr was not Gertie’s ancient Cadillac. I stepped outside and stopped short at the sight of the black, sexy Corvette idling in my driveway.
The passenger window went down and Gertie waved her arm at me. “Hurry up, already.”
I locked the door and hurried over to the car as Gertie climbed out and motioned me into what was supposed to be the backseat. I stuck one foot inside the car and twisted my body into a pretzel, then glided onto the backseat and unraveled. Gertie simply turned with her butt over the passenger’s seat and dropped.
Ida Belle frowned. “You need to work out. Your knees wouldn’t be in such bad shape if you’d exercise a bit.”
“My knees wouldn’t need to exercise if you’d get a car suitable for a woman your age. Damn thing sits nearly on the ground.”
“This car is smoking hot,” I said. “I would never have figured you for a Corvette woman.”
“There’re a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Ida Belle said, “but I’m about to tell you a couple of them. First off, this is my garage car, meaning I don’t take it out very often, and I let people ride in it even less often than that. I have a truck I use for everyday stuff, but it’s in the shop at the moment since I made the mistake of letting someone borrow it.”
Gertie pretended to study her seat belt.
Ida Belle continued. “And since Gertie turned her Cadillac into a swimming pool and now it stinks to high heaven, I had no choice but to use my baby as this is an emergency.”
She turned and pointed her finger at me, then Gertie, glaring at both of us. “But if either of you so much as puts a scratch or dent on this car, I will shoot you and leave the body for the gators.”
I nodded and wisely kept my mouth shut. As I’d recently been made aware of Ida Belle’s shooting acumen, I figured it was best to treat the car like fine china.
Gertie nodded, but as soon as Ida Belle turned around, she looked back at me and rolled her eyes.
“So, I take it you heard from Myrtle?” I asked, as Ida Belle pulled out of the driveway and drove toward Main Street.
“Yep,” Gertie said. “She gave us the names of Melvin’s cellmates while he was inside. He had three different ones, but two were still there with him when Harvey disappeared.”
“And the third?”
“Killed in a car wreck the day after he was paroled.”
“And I take it that Harvey was still alive and kicking then?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Another dead end. I glanced out the window and realized we’d driven right through downtown Sinful and were now on a lonely stretch of highway in the middle of the marsh. “So, then, where are we going?”
“Ida Belle figured that since Melvin showed up to serve you papers,” Gertie said, “he was itching to get his hands on the money. He must have had everything ready to go if Harvey’s body was discovered. No way Melvin got anything done that fast or without help. He’s just not that smart.”
Ida Belle nodded. “So I figured if we could find him associating with some nefarious character that was available to kill Harvey back then, we’d have our suspect.”
I groaned. “Please don’t tell me we’re on our way to some place with an abundance of nefarious characters.”
Gertie clapped her hands. “We’re going to the Swamp Bar. I’ve never been.”
Oh no. “The place where you sent Deputy LeBlanc running off to yesterday?”
“One and the same.” Gertie gave me an approving look. “I’m glad you wore black. I didn’t think to mention it.”
“They have a dress code?”
“No. We can’t actually go in the bar. Too many of the regulars don’t like Ida Belle.”
“Should I even ask why?”
Ida Belle shrugged. “It’s just some nonsense over the shooting competition at the annual fair.”
Gertie nodded. “The nonsense part being that Ida Belle whups their butts every year.”
“Of course she does,” I muttered. “So, if we can’t go inside, what’s the plan?
”
“We’re going to park at the end of the parking lot, where it’s easiest to make a getaway, and then peek in the windows.” Gertie almost squealed. “And I can get some pictures with my phone. Those phone pictures have been right handy.”
“This is exciting to you?” I asked. “Sneaking around in a swamp to spy on nefarious characters? I’ve got to tell you, I tried that whole sneaking around thing in the suburbs, and it didn’t work out so well, especially for Deputy LeBlanc’s hamburgers. I’m pretty sure sneaking in the swamp is an even worse idea.”
“You worry a lot, dear,” Gertie said. “It’s really not good for your health.”
I sighed. Of all the things I’d done in my life, worrying was the least of the things I’d done to affect my health.
“The most important thing to remember,” Ida Belle said, “is to remove your shoes before getting back in the car. I’ve tucked some trash bags in the trunk.”
Unbelievable. With everything they had planned, Ida Belle’s biggest worry was getting the car dirty. I was more concerned that something besides our shoes would get shoved into those trash bags and thrown in the trunk at the end of the night.
My unrest increased tenfold as Ida Belle turned off the paved highway and onto a road comprised entirely of dirt and shells that seemed to lead directly into the heart of the swamp. She decreased her speed to barely above an idle, and I could hear the shells crunching under the tires. I hoped to God that if we ran into trouble, Ida Belle cared more about saving our butts than saving her paint job.
The further we progressed, the narrower the road became, or maybe it was just that the brush got thicker and closer to the road. Either way, combined with the pitch-black sky and complete lack of light except for the headlights of the car, it gave me a feeling of claustrophobia and being lost in a vast desert all at the same time. Normally, such things wouldn’t bother me. I’d dismiss feelings as counterproductive to the mission and move on, but ever since I’d arrived in Louisiana, I’d felt off balance. Oddly enough, foreign countries felt more familiar than this stretch of the U.S.
