Gators and Garters

by Jana DeLeon

  “There was no way we could have made it back to the boat, gotten untied, and gotten away, because the bear was angled so she could have cut us off. So we ran for the driveway and climbed on top of Molly’s van,” I said.

  “It was a good plan until she smelled us,” Ida Belle said. “She rocked the van so hard Gertie fell off. That’s when Fortune jumped off to distract her and yelled at Gertie and me to run for the boat. But no way were we leaving a man in the field.”

  “Of course not,” Carter said, not looking even remotely surprised at anything we’d said.

  “I shot out the windshield,” Ida Belle said. “Then hot-wired the van and we hauled butt down the road where Fortune had taken off with the bear chasing her. We got her into the van, but the bear was so close, she ripped the door right off the back.”

  “You’re lucky she didn’t rip right into you three,” Carter said. “Mother bears are nothing to play around with.”

  “We weren’t playing,” Gertie said. “That much, I can assure you. We were running like it was the Second Coming and spots on the elevator up were limited.”

  “Yeah, this was definitely not on my list of things to do in this lifetime,” I said.

  “Well, for someone who doesn’t want to be chased by man-eaters,” Carter said, “you’ve managed to do it somewhat regularly. And I might also point out that if you weren’t sticking your nose into law enforcement business, you wouldn’t have ever been chased.”

  “I told you—” Ida Belle said.

  He held up his hand to stop her. “I know. Your missing trailer hitch. If you think the DNA in my family lends to gullible and stupid, why are you marrying into it?”

  “One, I’m not planning on procreating, so unless God himself gets other ideas, I don’t have to worry about your family’s faulty DNA,” Ida Belle said. “Two, Walter is gullible but not stupid. That must come from the other side of your family.”

  I watched Carter closely, wondering how he was going to handle this one. In less than two weeks the woman standing there lying to him was going to be his aunt. I was already his girlfriend and Gertie…was Gertie. Convoluted didn’t begin to describe his life at the moment.

  “Hey, at least we didn’t have the rocket launcher,” Gertie said.

  He grimaced and shook his head. “I suppose I can let the grand theft auto go, and I’m not even going to try to convince a jury of trespass. They’ll all see sweet little old ladies. They’ll have no idea of the truth.”

  “Who are you calling old?” Gertie asked.

  “I was thinking ‘sweet’ was the bigger stretch,” I said.

  “I’ll pay to repair the van,” Ida Belle said. “Or make up whatever difference insurance won’t cover. Whatever the person who inherits wants to do. But I’m not sorry I took it and you shouldn’t be either. Fortune is an impressive specimen but she’s no match for a bear. Not with only a nine-millimeter on her.”

  I could tell he was unhappy—because he couldn’t argue or because I’d almost been mauled, I wasn’t sure—but finally, he pulled out his phone.

  “I need to call for a tow,” he said. “I have one spare. Not two.”

  “What do you want us to do with the van?” Ida Belle asked.

  “I’ll ask for two tow trucks,” he said. “It can’t sit in the driveway with no windshield and no door on the back. It’s supposed to rain and her garage is full of junk. It will never fit in there.”

  “We need to get to the boat,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t want to leave it there.”

  “That bear has not gone far,” Carter said. “Not with cubs. Do you really want to roll the dice on that one?”

  “Have you seen the cost of Fortune’s boat?” Ida Belle said. “You really want to leave it at an empty house?”

  He sighed. “Fine. I’ll drive you back to Molly’s and get as close to the dock as possible. If there’s no sign of the bear, then you three haul it to the boat, go home, and never return to her property before there’s more loss than just a van. You can buy a new trailer hitch. Got it?”

  We all nodded. It was safer than talking.

  We piled into the back of the van and took a seat, none of us wanting to ride shotgun with a very irritated Carter, and after he made a couple phone calls, we headed back to Molly’s, stopping only to pick up the discarded door. Carter just shook his head before shoving it into the back of the van with us.

  There was no sign of the bear at Molly’s house, or the nutria, which ranked only slightly below the bear in my book. I had Carter stop in the driveway so I could retrieve my cell phone, which incredibly didn’t have a scratch on it, then he drove the van across the backyard as far as possible with the sketchy terrain and got us about thirty yards from the dock. The boat was still there—thank God—so we climbed out of the van and all checked our weapons while Carter frowned.

  “Be sure to tell that idiot boyfriend of Molly’s about the bear,” Ida Belle said. “Unless he’s the one who killed her. Then maybe don’t tell him anything at all.”

  “That would be a really good outcome,” Gertie said.

  “Just go home,” Carter said. “This town has had more than its share of death. We don’t need any more. Not even the stupid bear.”

  “Maybe the nutria,” I said.

  “They are a nuisance,” Gertie agreed as we started walking off.

  We were all on alert as we went but the walk to the dock was uneventful. We loaded up and I released the lines from the dock, and we were off. I glanced back to see Carter looking at us and frowning. I wasn’t sure whether the frown was all on our account or a combination of a lot of things. Either way, I’d probably get an earful tonight over dinner. Or maybe after dinner. Carter said being angry interfered with his polite enjoyment of food, and he was grilling steaks tonight.

  The wind from the boat ride felt good on my hot skin and I wondered if some of it was singed from being on top of the van. When Ida Belle slowed in a particularly narrow part of the bayou, Gertie leaned over the side and flung water back on us and herself. It helped take some of the heat off.

  As we exited the bayou into the lake, I saw the two boats that had been dragging the night before. They looked like they were pulling the nets in.

  “Looks like they’re quitting,” Gertie said.

  Ida Belle nodded, her expression one of disappointment and resignation.

  We’d lost operatives overseas. Men and women who’d simply vanished. I knew what it was like to come home with an empty seat on the transport and always felt a pain in my heart for the family that was going to get the awful news and the agent who had to deliver it. I’d been on the receiving end of that conversation once before. Twice now, I suppose.

  I wondered who Carter had to deliver the news to and for just a moment, I was back on that transport plane with an empty seat.

  Chapter Nine

  When we pulled up to my backyard, I was surprised to find we had a visitor. Nickel was sitting in a chair pushed far up under the tree and drinking a beer. Ida Belle drove the boat onto the bank and we got out, pulled it up a little more, and I tied it off to its post.

  “Please tell me you did not break into the house of the deputy’s girlfriend to acquire some beer,” Ida Belle said. “Especially since you own a bar.”

  “Heck no,” Nickel said. “I told you I was done with all the illegal stuff. My brother’s been pulling the weight for long enough. Probably time I stopped being a screwup and gave him a hand. I snagged this from the bar before I left. Thought if I had to wait, I’d get thirsty.”

  I supposed taking the beer from your own bar was far better than stealing it from me, but I still wondered if Nickel was capable of getting it together. He seemed to have a lapse in logic when it came to right and wrong.

  “And why are you hanging out in my backyard, drinking stolen beer from the Swamp Bar?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Can’t steal from yourself, can you?”

  “The IRS thinks so,” I said.

  He
gave me a confused look so I waved a hand in dismissal. “Doesn’t matter. Look, we’re more than exhausted. We’ve been out looking for Molly—with no success—and have been chased by a million nutria and an angry mama bear. Carter caught us stealing a van, and we sort of caused him to wreck his truck.”

  “The bear did that, actually,” Gertie said.

  “I don’t think he sees it that way,” I said.

  Nickel’s eyes widened. “You stole a van? That’s hard-core. Carter must really like you if he let you go.”

  “We didn’t steal it really,” I said. “Just borrowed it to get away from the bear. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is it’s been a long day. We’re tired and chastised and in desperate need of a shower, and probably rethinking some of our decisions. So if you could just get on with your business or better yet, come back another time, that would be awesome.”

  “No can do on the reschedule,” he said. “This is urgent. Why do you think I was ready to sit here until you got back?”

  “Whiskey has my phone number,” I said. “You could have called.”

  Nickel stared down at the ground. “I don’t want him to know about this.”

  “Uh-oh,” Gertie said.

  “No,” Nickel protested. “It’s nothing like that. I would never ask you to do something wrong. I’m respectable now.”

  We all gave him the I-don’t-buy-it-for-a-second look.

  “Respectable for Sinful?” he suggested.

  Still silence.

  “Respectable for the Swamp Bar?” he tried.

  It was an acceptable compromise so we all nodded.

  “I want to hire you,” he said. “You know, to do that investigating thing.”

  I blinked and stared. I hadn’t even been able to imagine a reason that Nickel would need to speak to me and now that he’d delivered his kill shot, I was more than a little surprised. If I’d had the energy to speculate, that one wouldn’t have even made the list.

  “What do you want me to investigate?” I asked.

  He glanced around, looking a little nervous. “Can we go inside? It’s hot as heck out here and if anyone sees me talking to you, they’ll start spreading the word.”

  “You’ve been sitting in my backyard drinking beer,” I said. “It only takes one person to see you and talk. Ronald has probably already got a picture of you taped to his wall as a potential threat. But we can agree on the need for air-conditioning.”

  “And aloe vera,” Gertie said. “Or we’re going to be spotted up our arms for this wedding.”

  We shuffled into the kitchen and I grabbed some cold waters for all of us. Gertie headed for the medical supplies and came back with the aloe vera. I took a huge gulp of the water, giving myself a tiny bit of brain freeze, then looked at Nickel.

  “So tell me about this case,” I said.

  “It’s about Molly,” he said. “I want to know who killed her.”

  Because I was former CIA, I could manage to avoid registering surprise in even the most questionable of circumstances, but so far, nothing about Nickel’s visit had been remotely in the realm of normal. I was trying to imagine how he had managed a personal interest in Molly that had him sitting in my backyard all afternoon with stolen beer but couldn’t even come up with a decent guess. I figured we’d get around to it eventually, so I moved forward with the business part of the discussion. My curiosity could wait.

  “Molly? The caterer?” I asked, just to make sure we were both thinking of the same person.

  “I don’t know any other Molly around here,” he said.

  “I don’t suppose you know her real name, do you?” I asked.

  He gave me a confused look. “’Course I do. Mary Olivia Broussard.”

  “Molly for short,” I said and looked over at Ida Belle and Gertie, who were shaking their heads. We’d just risked our lives, destroyed a perfectly good van, and angered a bear and more importantly, Carter, and all the while, Nickel had been sitting in my backyard with the very information we’d gone looking for.

  “We don’t know for sure that she was murdered,” I said. “It could have been an accident.”

  “Bullsh—crap,” he said. “Molly was no fool. No way she’d manage to get in a bind like that on her boat. You met her, right? Did she look like a woman who couldn’t take care of herself?”

  “She struck me as quite capable,” I said. “But everyone can make a mistake, and sometimes those mistakes are fatal.”

  He shook his head. “Not Molly. Not on a boat. You have to understand, her brother Johnny drowned. Got caught out in a storm and just like that, he was gone. Being as Johnny was a commercial shrimper and pretty much wrote the book on boats, it was a big shock. And since Molly and Johnny was thick as thieves, him dying broke her up something awful, especially as it happened while she was in the joint. They wouldn’t even let her out to attend his funeral. So when I say Molly was careful on boats, I mean careful like a surgeon or a pilot.”

  I glanced over at Ida Belle and Gertie, who looked as convinced by Nickel’s words as I was. All three of us had problems imagining the obviously capable Molly getting caught unaware on the bayou, and given what Nickel had said, I was doubling down on that. The situation was growing stinkier by the second.

  “How do you know all of this?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Gertie said. “We didn’t think Molly knew people in Sinful until she moved here, and she darn sure didn’t go out of her way to hand out anything personal.”

  “I was good friends with Johnny,” Nickel said. “Back during one of my stints in jail in NOLA, I bunked with him. Now, I see how you’re looking and I don’t want you thinking bad about the man. The truth was, Johnny was probably the only guy I ever met in the joint that didn’t belong there.”

  “So why was he there?” I asked.

  “He wrote a hot check,” Nickel said. “Had an old buddy of his that he went into the shrimping business with. The loser wiped out the account, but Johnny didn’t know when he paid the bills, and his buddy was long gone. The mayor was on a big push to crack down on hot checks at the time, so Johnny got a couple months in the joint in addition to a fine. They was making examples or something. Anyway, we got on real good and after I got out, I looked him up and we hung out mostly every week until I moved back to Sinful. He was the best guy I ever met. Well, him and Whiskey.”

  Most people around Sinful wouldn’t put Whiskey onto a best-guy list but I knew a thing or two about the Swamp Bar owner that a lot of residents probably didn’t. And I agreed with Nickel. Whiskey was a good guy. If Nickel put Johnny on the same level, then that was probably saying a lot because men like Nickel didn’t just hand out compliments, especially about other men.

  “Besides,” Nickel continued, “even if something happened, Molly has a CB radio on her boat. Angel said her cell phone was cutting out.”

  “Who is Angel?” I asked, assuming she was the party on the other end of the call when Molly had made her cryptic statement about someone bringing about her death.

  “Angel and Molly have been friends since they was kids,” he said. “Angel had been dating Johnny pretty serious when he died. Her and Johnny was going to get married but was waiting on Molly to get out. Guess maybe you shouldn’t wait on important things, right? Might not get another chance.”

  “That’s really sad,” Gertie said. “For everyone.”

  Nickel nodded. “And now Angel has to have another funeral with an empty casket. Seems like a lot for one person.”

  “What about Molly’s parents?” Ida Belle asked.

  “Her mom split when the kids was little,” Nickel said. “They never mentioned her and if someone asked, they didn’t really answer. I figured it was old wounds and I never got into it. Their dad is still alive, far as I know. I always got the impression he’s a mean old cuss although ain’t no one ever come right out and said so. It was more about what they didn’t say, you know? He lives somewhere outside of NOLA. I only ever saw him once and that was at Jo
hnny’s funeral. Didn’t shed so much as a tear and that ain’t right. A real man shouldn’t have no problem crying over the death of his only son.”

  “No. He shouldn’t,” Gertie said and patted Nickel’s arm.

  “Do you happen to know anything about Molly’s will?” I asked.

  Nickel shook his head. “Can’t see Molly discussing that with someone like me. Whiskey maybe. He’s got the head for business but they weren’t on that kind of speaking terms. Why?”

  “Because her crazy boyfriend showed up at Ally’s house today threatening her,” I said. “He’s under the impression that Molly left Ally her catering business and apparently, he thought it should be coming to him.”

  Nickel’s eyes widened. “Was Ally hurt?”

  “No,” I said. “He scared her more than anything. Carter locked him up but you know that won’t stick for long.”

  Nickel scratched his head. “Molly’s said before as how she thought Ally was the most talented baker she’d ever come across, which ain’t no secret around here. And I know Molly’s catering business was real important to her. I suppose if she was gonna do up everything legal and all, it would make sense she’d want it going to someone who could do it justice.”

  “You said Dexter was hitting on women at the Swamp Bar,” I said, “but that you didn’t think anyone had told Molly because they’d be afraid to. Did that include you?”

  Nickel sighed. “I guess I kinda hedged on that one earlier. Yeah, I told her. I figured she’d go crazy on him but the next week, I stopped by her house with a bottle of specialty whiskey she’d asked us to get for her and that loser was still there. I didn’t bother saying anything after that. Molly knew I wouldn’t lie. Not to her, anyway. So if she decided it wasn’t a problem, wasn’t nothing I could do about it.”

  “Will Angel be willing to talk to us?” I asked. Maybe Molly’s best friend could shed some light on things that Nickel couldn’t.

  “’Course!” Nickel said. “I talked to her about you before I came over here and she was all for it. Does that mean you’ll do it? You’ll figure out who killed Molly?”