by Jana DeLeon
“Here’s a theory,” I said. “What if Floyd borrowed money from Big and Little to get out of trouble with someone else?”
Ida Belle frowned. “But it wasn’t enough. Or he got in trouble again and couldn’t borrow more.”
“And that’s who killed him,” Gertie said. “I bet that’s it.”
“It’s just a theory,” I said.
“Yeah,” Ida Belle said, “but it’s a theory that makes sense.”
“So all we have to do is prove we’re right,” Gertie said. “Thank goodness. I thought this was going to be much harder.”
I stared at her. “Just how do you intend to easily prove we’re right?”
“Duh. We’ll ask Big and Little.”
“Have you lost your mind?” I asked.
“Probably,” Ida Belle mumbled under her breath.
“You think,” I continued, “that you can just stroll into their office, or whatever, and ask them if Floyd borrowed money and if so what for?”
“Sure,” Gertie said. “Nothing illegal about that.”
“No, but I’m sure lending money to Floyd was illegal. You think they’re going to come out and admit to being loan sharks?”
Gertie frowned. “I could always ask for a loan. Then their secret would be out and they’d have no reason not to answer my questions.”
I looked at Ida Belle. “Is she for real? I don’t pretend to know anything about how the Mafia works in the states, but I’m not buying that they have this sort of conversation.”
“Normally, I would agree,” Ida Belle said, “but Big and Little have reputations for being eccentric and not too bright. That’s why Sonny has them out in the swamp instead of working New Orleans. There’s a possibility they’d talk to us, especially since Floyd is dead.”
“They’re here in Sinful?” I asked.
“No,” Ida Belle said. “They have an old warehouse off the highway to New Orleans, about twenty miles from Sinful.”
I leaned back in my chair and blew out a breath, my mind racing with all the things that could go wrong with their plan. But on the flip side of the thousand or more things that could go wrong was the possibility that they’d get a solid lead on who killed Floyd, which could let Carter and me both off the hook.
“You don’t think they’re dangerous?” I asked.
Ida Belle shrugged. “They’re not harmless, but I don’t think they’ll shoot us for asking a question. More likely, they’ll tell us they don’t know anything and ask us to leave. Why bring heat down for no reason when a simple ‘I don’t know anything’ will suffice?”
“But if you find out anything,” I said, “you’re going to turn it over to Carter, right?”
“Of course,” Ida Belle said. “If I thought Big and Little would talk to a cop, I’d send him over there now, but I think we all know that’s not likely to happen.”
“No,” I agreed. “It’s probably not.”
I was just about to launch into all the rules they’d have to follow if I were to agree with this very sketchy idea when someone pounded on my front door. I jerked my head in the direction of the living room.
“Are you expecting someone?” Gertie asked.
“No.” I jumped out of my chair. “And I know that knock.”
It was Carter’s angry knock.
Had he bugged my kitchen? Had he changed his mind about talking to the DA and was here to arrest me? I flung the front door open, expecting to see Carter standing there holding handcuffs, but instead, a very agitated Walter had his hand lifted, about to pound on my door again. Apparently, the knocking skill was a family thing.
“Oh, there you are,” he said and hurried inside my house. “Are the other two here?”
“Kitchen,” I said and waved him back.
Ida Belle and Gertie stared as Walter stepped into the room, then they both looked at me. I shrugged and slid into my chair, pointing Walter to the remaining seat.
“I’m glad you’re all here,” he said as he took a seat.
Ida Belle cast a worried look at Gertie. “Shouldn’t you be at the store?”
“Scooter’s watching it for a bit. Not the best idea, I know, so I have to hurry.” Walter pulled a box of chocolates out of his pocket and placed them on the table in front of me. “He said to give you these.”
“You banged on my door to give me chocolates from Scooter?”
“No. When I told Scooter where I was going, he insisted, and it was easier than arguing with him.”
Because I got chocolates out of the deal, it sounded like a solid explanation to me. “So what’s up?” I asked as I cracked open the box. Scooter had absolutely no chance with me, but I wasn’t about to let perfectly good chocolates go to waste.
“I heard about Floyd early this morning from a contractor at the café,” Walter said. “I’d…uh…also been working on a radio last night when the channels got crossed and I picked up a radio call about a giant chicken riding a motorcycle.”
I lowered my hand with the chocolate that I’d been about to pop into my mouth. “You old sneak. You’ve got a police scanner and never told us.”
“Anyway,” Walter continued, completely ignoring me, “I figured the three of you were behind the chicken fiasco somehow.” He held up a hand. “I don’t want to know the details. But I don’t think any of you popped Floyd.”
“I’m capable of killing Floyd,” Gertie groused.
“Being capable,” Walter said, “and actually doing it are two different things. We’re all capable, and I’d wager that we’ve all wanted to at some time or another. The difference is, we have the good sense to know better. Anyway, I had a vanity cabinet that had been delivered for the sheriff’s department, so I took it over, hoping to get a word with Carter.”
“Was that cabinet going in the bathroom?” I asked.
Walter nodded. “Carter said to put it on your tab.”
I sighed.
“I hauled the cabinet into the sheriff’s department and put it in that storeroom across from Carter’s office so that I could open it up. I was waiting on Carter to get off the phone but he’d no sooner hung up than two men wearing suits walked into his office and shut the door.”
Gertie’s eyes widened. “It’s the Men in Black. Floyd must have been killed by aliens.”
Walter frowned. “They weren’t black suits. One was gray and the other navy.”
Gertie looked disappointed. “Nothing cool ever happens here.”
We all stared at her for a moment, then turned our attention back to Walter.
“Could you hear what they said?” I asked.
“Not from the storeroom,” Walter said, “but I carried the vanity into the bathroom, and well, I guess I don’t have to tell you that the walls are thin.” He gave me a pointed look.
I threw my hands in the air. “I had gum on my shoe. How come no one believes me?”
Walter raised one eyebrow.
“Whatever,” I said. “Continue.”
“Anyway, I set the vanity against the wall and that’s when I realized I could hear the men talking. It’s not good.”
“No dramatic pauses,” Ida Belle said. “Give us the punch line.”
“They’re Feds.”
Chapter Fifteen
I swallowed the half-eaten chocolate. “What kind of Feds?”
“FBI.”
I relaxed a little. FBI were still mostly human. If he’d said NSA, I would have been a little worried. “Why are they here?”
“They told Carter they’re taking over the investigation of Floyd’s murder. He was instructed to hand over his case files and cease all action on the case.” Walter scowled. “They threatened to throw him in jail if he interferes. What the hell kind of thing is that for one law enforcement officer to say to another? Carter wasn’t being rude.”
“He wouldn’t have to be,” I said. “The Feds think all local cops are territorial, so they go ahead and get that in up front.”
Walter stared at me.
&n
bsp; Crap.
“I live next door to a cop back home,” I said, throwing out the first lie that came to mind. “I’ve heard him complain about that more than once.”
“If he gets talked to like these guys did Carter, I can just imagine,” Walter said. “It’s bad enough to come into a man’s place of work and tell him he can’t do his job, but there’s no cause to make threats on top of it.”
He rose from the table. “Anyway, I don’t know what you three have brewing, and I don’t want to know, but I thought it was important that you knew this right away.”
I jumped up from my seat. “Definitely. We appreciate you coming straight here to tell us.”
Ida Belle and Gertie nodded, both wearing sober expressions. I followed Walter to the door and let him out, then headed back to the kitchen, still processing the latest curveball this situation had thrown us.
“So,” I said as I took my seat. “What do we think?”
“Not good,” Ida Belle said. “If the Feds are here about Floyd then he was into something big. Big enough to kick Carter out of his job.”
I nodded. “That’s my take. And it sorta supports our theory that Floyd got mixed up in something and borrowed money from Big and Little.”
“Unless the Feds are after Big and Little,” Gertie pointed out.
“I doubt that’s it,” Ida Belle said. “I mean, I don’t doubt that the Feds have an eye on them, but of all Hebert’s organization, my understanding is that Big and Little are small potatoes.”
“True,” Gertie agreed. “What do you think Carter had in the files he had to turn over?”
“Crime scene details and photos,” I said. “Floyd’s record and maybe information about the fire at Ally’s house.”
“But nothing about you or the Swamp Bar?” Gertie asked.
“He kissed her,” Ida Belle said. “Do you think he’s going to give her up to the first set of buttholes in suits that come along? Give the boy more credit. If anyone is going to take Fortune down, Carter would be the one to do it himself. It would be a matter of honor.”
“I think she’s right,” I said.
Gertie looked back and forth from me to Ida Belle and grinned. “You realize what this means, right?”
Ida Belle smiled and they both looked at me.
“What did I miss?” I asked.
“Floyd’s murder is no longer Carter’s problem,” Gertie said. “That means you wouldn’t be interfering with his investigation if you got involved. You’d be interfering with the Feds.”
“And who cares about that?” Ida Belle said.
A spark of excitement passed through me. “The Feds will keep a close eye on Carter. He won’t be able to do much on the side without them knowing.”
Ida Belle nodded. “And the FBI will be wasting their time here. No outsider is going to step into this town and solve a murder.”
I grinned. “Not without an inside track, anyway.”
“You’re no outsider,” Ida Belle said. “You’ve always been one of us. You just didn’t know it.”
“So the way I see it,” Gertie said, “solving this murder would not only solve Fortune’s problem, but it would also get Carter off the hook. I think it’s our duty as leaders of Sinful to get this situation in hand.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Ida Belle said.
I looked at the two smiling faces and considered the proposal. It was risky. And borderline insane. And if anything went wrong, the best outcome was that I disappeared from Sinful forever. But if we were successful, then everything could go back to the way it was three days ago, when my biggest worry was dinner with a hot deputy.
“I’m in.”
###
“What is that smell?” I asked and wrinkled my nose as I searched the backseat of Gertie’s Cadillac for the origin of the offensive odor.
“Some perm solution spilled back there a couple days ago,” Gertie said. “That’s probably what you smell.”
I had no idea what a perm solution was, but it smelled like death. “Is it safe to have chemicals like that in your car? Shouldn’t we lower the windows or something?”
Ida Belle laughed. “A perm solution is something you put in your hair to make it hold curl. Do you think Gertie’s hair grows like that naturally?”
I stared at Gertie’s hair, horrified. “You put that stench on your hair…intentionally?”
Gertie shot me a dirty look in the rearview mirror. “Just because I don’t want a man underfoot doesn’t mean I want to look like one—like some people. My hair is baby-fine. If I didn’t perm it to get some volume, I’d have a flat, thin layer of white cotton.”
“That’s what I’d go for,” I said. “Flat cotton and a hat. Given that days later, this stuff is making my eyes water, maybe it seeps through the skull and fries the brain. That could explain a few things.”
Ida Belle grinned.
“At least I don’t dress like a hooker,” Gertie said.
“With that thin, flat cotton hair, how could you?” I shot back. “If you teased ‘thin cotton’ it would probably file a complaint about bullying.”
“Keep it up and you’ll walk home.”
“At the moment, I don’t see a downside there. By the way, what’s up with the shirt?”
Gertie, whose usual going-somewhere outfit consisted of stretchy polyester pants and a silky sort of blouse, was decked out this time in jeans and a black T-shirt with silver lettering across it that read “Ask me about the Lord.” It seemed a bit eccentric, even for Gertie.
“We wore these last year when our church group went to New Orleans for the choir competition.”
“Did you get many takers?” I asked.
Gertie sighed. “No, there was a Star Wars convention the same weekend. Everyone kept asking us which Sith we were beholden to.”
I grinned. “And you thought Big and Little might go for the Star Wars Sith Lord fan club look?”
“No, I just thought appearing as a little old church lady might make me look less threatening. And it is the Heberts. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take God with us on the trip. Just in case.”
My grin disappeared as I considered the reality of what we were doing—walking into a Mafia-run business to ask questions about one of their customers who had been murdered. When I laid it all out like that in one sentence, it didn’t seem nearly as innocuous as it had felt back at my house. I’d gone for a sundress and lip gloss, thinking I’d go for the youthful, innocent look. If that didn’t work, I hoped Gertie and her T-shirt were enough to sway Big and Little into the “they’re probably harmless” camp.
“There’s the turnoff.” Ida Belle pointed to a dirt path to the left that veered off into the marsh.
“Why are these places always stuck at the end of one-lane trails through the marsh?” Gertie complained. “The options for escape are seriously limited. It’s like nature claustrophobia.”
Given my recent dash from the Swamp Bar, I understood exactly what she was saying. On the other hand, if we had to make a run for it, away from the Mafia, in Gertie’s Cadillac, that escape was over before it started.
“Everything will be fine as long as we remain calm and cool,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie nodded, but I could already see the tension in her shoulders and neck. Calm and cool were not a normal part of Gertie’s day.
“Just let Ida Belle and me do all the talking,” I said. Silence was probably Gertie’s best bet.
Gertie turned a corner and pulled to a stop in front of a warehouse. “Well, this is it.”
I clapped her on the shoulder. “Stop worrying. Just stand there looking like the church lady and you’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse,” Gertie said.
I had no idea what a church mouse was or exactly how quiet they were, but I took that to mean Gertie would refrain from talking, which was a good thing. She tended to ramble when she got flustered.
“Promise?” Ida Belle asked.
“I’m
taking a vow of silence,” Gertie assured her. “You two can handle all the talking.”
Ida Belle seemed satisfied, so we climbed out of the car and headed to the warehouse. I knocked on the door and waited, but no one answered. I tried the handle and found that the door was unlocked, so I pulled it open and peered inside.
The interior of the warehouse surprised me. I’d expected to find something that resembled regular warehouse storage, with a vaulted ceiling and rows of shelving, but in this case, the interior had been remodeled to resemble a high-end office building. Marble floors spanned a lobby area, complete with reception desk.
I looked back at Ida Belle and Gertie and shrugged before stepping inside, figuring I might find a call button on the receptionists desk. I walked over to the desk, Ida Belle and Gertie following silently behind me, and scanned the surface for a button or telephone. Nothing. Not even a sticky pad or pen.
“Hello?” I called out. I pointed to the catwalk above us that ran the length of the building. “I bet those doors lead to offices.”
“We can’t just go roaming around a Mafia den,” Gertie whispered.
“Well, we have to find someone to help us. Standing here isn’t solving anything.”
“Can I help you?” A deep, booming voice sounded to our right. We whirled around and saw a beefy guy coming toward us.
Midthirties, six foot four, two hundred forty pounds of pure muscle. Deadly as hell.
He had the body of a professional wrestler and the face of a serial killer, but instead of leather, studs, or torn jeans, he dressed in a black silk suit that probably cost as much as I made in a year. He stepped in front of us and we all stared.
One glance at Gertie and I could see she was frozen in place. Even Ida Belle seemed less confident with the mountain of man standing only inches from us. If any talking was going to happen, it looked like it was up to me.
“I asked how I can help you,” the man repeated.
My mind screamed at me to make up a “sorry, wrong place” excuse and get out of the building as quickly as possible, but then we’d be right back to Carter’s job risk and my imminent departure from Sinful.
“We’d like to see Big and Little Hebert,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.
