by DeLeon, Jana
I looked out the kitchen window and let out a sigh of relief. The bayou was halfway up the backyard, but it was still a good thirty feet from the house. “We don’t have to build an ark,” I said.
“Good,” Ally replied, “because I don’t build things unless I can use power tools. I put together a bookcase one time with a regular screwdriver and couldn’t use my right arm for two days.”
“Let’s make sure the windows upstairs are intact,” I said. “If so, then I’ll fire up the generator to make sure it works, and I’m good to stay here tonight if you are.”
“I don’t care if the generator doesn’t work. As long as my flashlight works long enough to get me upstairs and into a real bed, I’m all for it. Those pews are not comfortable for sleeping.”
“They’re not all that comfortable for sitting, either,” I said.
“If Pastor Don is preaching, you’re still trying to sleep.”
“Good point.” I stepped onto the upstairs landing. “You take the right and I’ll take the left.”
I headed into my bedroom and gave it a look. The windows looked sound with no leaking, and nothing strange had climbed up the bathroom plumbing. My bathtub was still full of water, so everything was ready for Operation Hurricane Roughing It. I did a quick check of the other bedroom and bath, then headed back downstairs to the kitchen with Ally.
“How long will the stuff stay good in the refrigerator?” I asked.
“In this heat, only a couple of days. You can hook the generator up to it for a couple hours here and there to draw that out. We probably need to eat as much of it as we can. Lucky for our thighs that you’re a minimalist when it comes to domestic pursuits.”
“Or unlucky, depending on how long the power is off.”
“Don’t worry. Every time there’s a bad storm, practically the entire town ends up at Gertie’s house for a barbecue. The woman packs meat away like she’s preparing for the Apocalypse.”
“What happens at the café?” Between Ally, Gertie, and Francine’s Café, I made out pretty well as far as eating went. I didn’t want to imagine a Sinful where all of them were out of food at the same time.
“Francine spent a ton of money on generators, and she gets priority on gas to run them. Even the sheriff’s department gave up a slot to push Francine up the gasoline list.”
“As well they should.” I snagged a couple of sodas from the refrigerator, opening it only a crack and closing it as quickly as possible, then slid them onto the table and took a seat. “I have something I need to tell you.”
Ally frowned and sat across from me. “You never start a conversation like that. It must be bad.”
“It is. Not for me for a change, but it’s about Celia…and Max.”
“Nothing about Aunt Celia and Max could be good.”
“Yeah, but this goes beyond the usual. Max is dead.”
Ally sucked in a breath and her eyes widened. “The storm?”
“I’m afraid not, unless hurricanes can fire shotguns.”
She paled a little. “Oh my God. I never liked him that much and I liked him even less after that scene at the café. I know Celia’s a bitch, but he went out of his way to be cruel. Still, that doesn’t mean I wanted someone to kill him.”
“Of course not. And if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t like the way he handled the café either.”
Ally nodded, then gasped. “It was…Aunt Celia didn’t…”
“No. At least, I don’t think so, and neither do Ida Belle and Gertie, but he was found in her kitchen, and she bought shotgun shells from Walter right after she left the café.”
“Oh no! That’s not good.”
“It may be fine. If time of death was during the storm, then Celia should have been visible to plenty of people over at the church. She’ll have a dozen or more ironclad alibis.”
“And if time of death is sketchy?”
“She’ll have to cross that bridge if it comes, but I wouldn’t worry about it. You know good and well that Carter is not going to focus on the easy answer and ignore all the facts. He’s known Celia all his life. I don’t think he likes her for this.”
Ally bit her lower lip. “I hope not. Aunt Celia and I have our problems, but she’s still family. And even though she can be mean as a snake, I just don’t see her shooting Uncle Max in cold blood.”
“I don’t either, but he was in her house, and that looks odd. Max was inside Celia’s house for a reason. If she didn’t ask him there, then I don’t know why he went. Do you?”
Ally slowly shook her head. “Aunt Celia got rid of everything that belonged to him. I helped her haul a bunch of his clothes to one of those mission churches out in the swamp. She sold his guns and all of his fishing tackle. His boat was the only thing of value that she hung on to, but someone stole it and sank it.”
I nodded. I was well aware of the stealing and sinking of Max’s boat, as I’d been on board when both happened. “But you said she never used it. I wonder why she kept it?”
“Ha. She said if he ever showed up again, she was going to set it on fire. She always complained about the amount of time he spent on the boat.”
“I’m going to hazard a guess that it wasn’t because he loved the boat, or he would have come back for it a long time ago.”
“Of course not,” Ally said. “He was just using it to get away from Aunt Celia.”
“And once he left town, he didn’t need it any longer. Still though. It had to have been worth a good bit of money. You have to wonder what he’s been doing all this time.”
“If we knew that, we might be able to figure out who wanted to kill him.”
I shook my head. “I’m not figuring anything out. Carter has read me the riot act more than once over getting involved in police stuff, and besides, the last place I need to insert myself is anywhere Celia is. She’s just looking for a reason to send me to jail.”
That’s what I said, anyway, but I knew that as soon as I got a chance, I’d be poking not just my nose but my entire body into the middle of that mess. I had no particular reason why. Not yet. But so far, my visit to Sinful had been predictable in only one area—if there was a crime committed, I was right in the fat middle of it.
Chapter Six
Once the house had received the go-ahead for rough living quarters, I headed back into town and picked up Merlin. When I opened the cat carrier on the kitchen floor, he stalked out and stared at me before demanding to be let out the back door. If looks could kill, he would have melted me on the spot. I had a tiny bit of concern about sleeping that night. He’d pulled a drive-by on my forehead once, and those razor-sharp claws had drawn blood.
Ally and I had just popped the top off of a couple bottles of beer when I heard a knock at my front door. It was pushing toward evening and I’d already talked to Carter, who had put himself back on duty and was planning on staying at the sheriff’s department that night just in case anyone was stranded and managed to get an emergency call out.
I swung the door open and was surprised to see Gertie and Ida Belle standing there. “We thought we’d have a slumber party,” Gertie said as I waved them inside.
“Really?” Nothing about her tone said lighthearted fun.
Ally walked into the living room and gave them a wave.
“My generator is on the blink,” Ida Belle said. “I figured since yours was working, it was a better idea to bring my gas over here and pour it into one that wasn’t going to crap out in the middle of the night.”
“And I wasn’t about to sit home all by myself and let you guys have all the fun,” Gertie said.
“Cool,” I said, although I didn’t buy it for a minute. Nothing ever crapped out on Ida Belle. As soon as that storm started forming, she’d probably gone outside, fired up that generator, then done a complete clean and lube or whatever the heck you did to make sure they ran properly.
Fortunately, Ally wasn’t nearly as suspicious as I was. “That’s a great idea,” she said. “We were j
ust about to have a beer and leftover German chocolate cake if you’re interested. We’re waiting until it cools off a bit more, then we’re going to fire up the grill.”
“Thank God,” Gertie said and trailed off down the hall after Ally. “I have at least fifty pounds of hamburger meat in the trunk of my car.”
“What’s really going on?” I asked as soon as they were out of earshot.
Ida Belle gave me an innocent look. “What do you mean?”
“Your generator probably runs better than Junior’s stock car.”
“Nice NASCAR reference. You’re really catching on to this Southern thing. And you’re right. My generator is top notch, but your situation warranted company.”
“How’s that?”
“We didn’t want you here alone with the possibility of Ahmad breathing down your neck. You need backup, and unfortunately, not only is Ally not in on the real situation, she wouldn’t be good backup even if she was. In fact, she makes the situation even more volatile by her presence alone.”
“Crap.” Ida Belle was right. Even if Ally knew the truth, she wasn’t trained to handle Ahmad and his men. Quite frankly, neither were Ida Belle and Gertie, but they were light years ahead of my friend, who knew more about baking than shooting.
“I don’t really think anything will happen,” Ida Belle said. “But I wouldn’t feel right knowing you two were here alone.”
“Maybe we should move to your house. If Ahmad is looking for the new person in town as a means to locate me, then this is the first house they’d check.”
“Not necessarily. If strangers start asking about new arrivals in town, Sinful people won’t think of you right off the bat. They all think you’re Marge’s niece, not someone new. And besides, the description wouldn’t match at all.”
“Maybe not the shaved head, but tall, fit, age-appropriate, and mouth all fit.”
Ida Belle frowned. “True.”
“It’s too late to do something tonight. The plan is already in place. We’ll stay here tonight and reassess in the morning. Hopefully, Harrison will have some more information soon. He’s supposed to text as soon as he knows anything, then I can call when I’m clear to.”
Ida Belle started to say something, but stopped when Gertie and Ally came back into the living room.
“Gertie says she has enough ground meat in her car to feed half of Sinful,” Ally said. “We’re going to haul it out and make hamburgers tonight, and I’ll mix up some for meat loaf. It’s good for us that Fortune doesn’t keep much in her refrigerator besides beer. With Ida Belle’s gas, we should be able to keep it fresh for several days.”
“I guess the upside is that I won’t need my iron pill,” Ida Belle said. “At least this time it’s beef. Last time, Gertie had more chicken than KFC. I couldn’t eat chicken or eggs for almost a year.”
Ally grinned and headed outside. Gertie lagged behind. “Did you tell her the plan?” Gertie asked.
“I hadn’t gotten that far yet,” Ida Belle said.
The word “plan” had taken on a whole new connotation since I’d met Gertie and Ida Belle, usually an illegal one. “What plan?”
“Well, first, we figured we’d cook up the burgers and you could take some to the sheriff’s department for Carter and work your feminine wiles on him to get the scoop on Max,” Gertie said.
“Then I reminded Gertie,” Ida Belle said, “that she’d just put you and ‘feminine wiles’ in the same sentence.”
“Right,” Gertie said, “but as Carter is a man, I figured you could distract him simply by standing there.”
“Given that he’s a man,” I said, “isn’t he just as likely to be distracted by the burger?”
Ida Belle looked over at Gertie, who threw her hands in the air. “I know. I know. You already said that. But if Fortune is there, then it’s double the distraction, and last time I checked, a hamburger couldn’t talk someone into staying put if we need it.”
“Why, exactly, do we need Carter to stay put?” I asked.
“So that Ida Belle and I can read Carter’s notes on Max, of course.”
I shook my head. “I’m flattered by your faith in me, but even if I was standing in Carter’s office, wearing hamburgers like a bikini, I don’t think he’d miss you two going through his paperwork.”
Gertie perked up. “A bikini burger. I could work with that.”
Ida Belle glanced at Gertie, her expression a mixture of “what the heck” and “Good God, woman.”
“Actually,” Ida Belle said, “Carter will probably be up front since it’s only him and Deputy Breaux on duty. Marie is staying at the church again tonight with some people whose houses aren’t habitable. She’ll let us know when Deputy Breaux goes out for a patrol, and then we’ll swoop in. Then you only have to keep Carter up front eating while we visit Carter’s office by way of the ladies’ room excuse.”
I’d visited Carter’s office by way of the ladies’ room once and lost a perfectly good pair of tennis shoes in the process. “And what if his notes are up front with him?”
“Then you’ll have to get him back into his office somehow,” Gertie said.
“And I’m supposed to do that how?”
“That hamburger bikini idea had some merit,” Gertie said.
Ida Belle waved a hand at her. “If the notes are up front, then one of us will create a distraction that gets him away from the front and you can read the notes.”
“This is the weakest plan ever,” I said. “And that’s saying a lot.”
Ally banged into the screen door and Gertie hurried over to open it. “Sorry about that,” she said to Ally. “We got caught up talking about ground beef recipes.”
Ally raised an eyebrow, while clutching at least fifteen packs of ground meat. “Fortune was discussing recipes?”
“She was discussing what she’d like to eat,” Gertie said.
Ally grinned. “That I can believe.” She headed down the hall.
“We’ll work on the finer details,” Gertie said, “but that’s the basic plan. We better go get that meat before it spoils.”
She didn’t have to ask me twice. Gertie’s car was one of our main means of transportation when we were investigating…yeah, that’s it. “Investigating” sounded a lot better than “breaking the law.” Anyway, given her refusal to buy new glasses and a host of other issues, I didn’t want her driving my Jeep, and the three of us couldn’t fit on Ida Belle’s motorcycle. So the Caddy was often our only choice, and if it smelled like a ten-day-old crime scene, I was going to start walking.
We headed outside and I stopped short at the trunk of the Cadillac. Gertie hadn’t been kidding. The entire thing was stuffed with packages of ground meat. I picked up one of the packages and looked at the handwritten label.
“Did you run over a brontosaurus?” I asked, remembering a previous unfortunate cow incident that I’d heard about.
“No, smarty,” Gertie said. “If you must know, a friend of mine retired from farming and liquidated everything before he moved to a condo in Florida.”
I shook my head. “If we manage to eat all of this, I could take the starring role in the next Iron Man film. I probably won’t even need a costume.”
“If we eat all this,” Ida Belle said, “the only role we’ll be starring in is the toilet paper one.”
I grabbed an armful of packages and headed for the house. According to Marie, quite a few people couldn’t return home yet and roads weren’t clear enough to leave town. A batch of hamburgers delivered to the churches would probably be a welcome sight. I just hoped Walter had some buns left in the store.
I dumped the load on the kitchen table next to the stack that Ally had carried in. She had already taken the three big mixing bowls out of the cabinets and was gathering the seasoning.
“I figured we could take some of this to the churches once they’re cooked,” I said.
“That’s a great idea,” Ally said. “Sandwiches can get old.”
“I need t
o call Walter and see if he has any buns left.”
“I’ve got buns,” Gertie said as she lurched into the kitchen with an armful of meat.
Ida Belle stepped in behind her. “She’s referring to the kind you eat. Not the kind you sit on.”
Gertie gave her the finger, and the packages of meat exploded from her grasp and scattered across the kitchen floor.
Ida Belle shook her head. “Why didn’t you just stick out your tongue? We really have to work on your efficiency skills.”
“I’m retired,” Gertie said as she picked up the meat. “How efficient do I need to be?”
“How many buns do you have?” I asked, interrupting their argument.
“A bunch,” Gertie said. “I had Walter order them in when I saw the storm coming.”
Ida Belle dumped her meat on the counter and turned to stare at Gertie. “Is that what’s in those giant trash bags in your backseat? What if that storm had turned and headed to Florida?”
“Then I would have hosted a party at the park,” Gertie said. “Like people here would turn down free food.”
“Is there more meat?” I asked.
Ida Belle nodded. “I’m pretty sure there’s a black hole in the bottom of Gertie’s trunk and meat is coming through it from another planet. We’ve hardly made a dent.”
I was just about to head out for another load when I got a text message. It was Harrison.
Call me as soon as you are able. Have information.
I glanced over at Ida Belle and inclined my head toward Ally. Ida Belle gave me a slight nod, and I headed outside to call Harrison. Cell phone service wasn’t all that strong, but the call went through.
“Is the storm over?” Harrison asked.
“Yes, but there’s no power and some of the homes are damaged.”
“Can you get out of town?”
I clenched the phone. Harrison was careful, which is why I liked partnering with him. He didn’t have the kind of showboat tendencies that got agents killed, but he wasn’t an alarmist.
