Gators and Garters

by Jana DeLeon

  “Told you he wasn’t dead!” one of the guys yelled back into the bar.

  “He’s going to be if he doesn’t pay his tab,” a voice answered.

  “You should have told him to go outside,” one of the guys said. “Now you’re gonna have to pay for the window.”

  “He was insulting my wife,” the guy who’d thrown the other man out the window said. “Things like that don’t wait.”

  The other man waved a hand in dismissal and popped back inside.

  “You still want to do this?” Ida Belle asked, glancing back at her SUV. She was probably mentally calculating what else could get thrown out the window and whether or not it would reach across the street.

  “I think we need to,” I said. “Seems like everyone is good and drunk. Maybe they’ll be happy to talk.”

  “I don’t think they’re all that drunk,” Gertie said. “But I’m still game.”

  “Let me remind everyone that this is the late-afternoon crowd,” Ida Belle said. “They’re supposed to be the calm ones.”

  “Then we’ll make sure we’re gone before the evening crowd starts drifting in,” I said as I headed for the door.

  A man and a woman shuffled up to the broken window and watched as we walked inside. The noise level dropped in half as soon as we crossed the threshold, and everyone in the place turned to stare. I supposed we looked a bit out of place. The average age in the bar was the forty-to-fifty crowd, so I was too young and Ida Belle and Gertie were too old, and we didn’t exactly fit the look of the place, either. And nor, I supposed, did we fit with each other from a stranger’s perspective.

  “I need a beer and to see a man thrown out a window,” Gertie said. “I’m halfway there.”

  Everyone laughed and turned back to what they were doing before. I looked over at Ida Belle, who shrugged.

  “Good call,” I said to Gertie as we made our way to the bar.

  “Drunk people usually like to laugh. And old ladies being tough always amuses them. Look at Betty White. That woman is four thousand and eight years old and still killing it,” Gertie said.

  “I’m just a little surprised that you’d refer to yourself as old,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m not old,” Gertie said. “But they think I am. Trust me, the more years that pass, the younger you realize you are.”

  “That makes absolutely no sense,” Ida Belle said.

  We grabbed seats at the end of the bar where no customers were around. There was a middle-aged woman working one end of the bar and a guy working the end we sat at. He glanced over at us and started our way.

  Fortyish. Six foot two. Two hundred twenty pounds of solid muscle. Short, military-style haircut. No visible tattoos. Slight limp in right leg. Wouldn’t be able to pursue for long in a chase. Could probably take him out by twisting the leg. Threat level currently unknown.

  He studied us for a couple seconds after he walked up. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you ladies don’t exactly look the type for a bar like this.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, neither do you,” I said.

  He smiled. “Well, my uncle opened this hole-in-the-wall thirty years ago. His liver finally called it quits and he left it all to me. It pays the bills.”

  “What branch?” I asked.

  “Marines,” he said. “I’m Glenn. You military?”

  “Fortune Redding. Former Fed.” I pulled out my ID. “Retired from government nonsense and happily on my own.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “What’s a PI want in here? I mean, I’m sure there’s all manner of lawbreakers but not a one of them worth paying a PI to shadow.”

  “I’m looking into the disappearance of Molly Broussard,” I said.

  He frowned. “That. Yeah, that sucks.”

  “Did you know Molly?” I asked.

  “A little bit,” he said. “When I first got out of the Marines, I thought I’d give cage fighting a try. Didn’t have the skill set for much except fighting or shooting. Not a lot of jobs along those lines unless you’re interested in law enforcement, and I’m not. The fighting looked fun and if you were any good, you could make some money at it.”

  “You’ve definitely got the build for it,” Gertie said. “And good-looking guys always get the sponsors.”

  He grinned at her. “You saying I’m good-looking?”

  “I’d say anyone in this bar was good-looking, just for safety reasons,” Gertie said. “But yeah, you could pull off an advertising campaign.”

  He laughed. “What are you, like a relative or something?”

  “Something,” Gertie said. “Ida Belle and I are Fortune’s assistants.”

  “That’s an interesting gig you’ve got going,” he said to me.

  “You have no idea,” I said. “So…Molly?”

  “Right,” he said. “When I first got started someone told me to look Molly up and pay her for a couple lessons. Said she was the best trainer in the business. I was apprehensive, of course. I mean, I’m not a small guy and I’ve had military training. I was wondering how in the world I was supposed to train with a woman. Then I met Molly. She like to have killed me that first session. Boy, she could fight.”

  “So you took lessons from her?” I asked.

  “Only two,” he said. “First time she twisted my leg, I knew it wasn’t going to work. She knew it too. Had said as much during that first session. But in the second, she did a maneuver just hard enough for me to see that if anyone did it for real, I’d be leaving the ring on a stretcher.”

  “Bullet?” I asked.

  He nodded. “They got it out and patched me up. I worked my butt off in rehab and then in the gym, but it was never quite right. Got the honorable discharge and came home, hoping I could figure out what to do with the rest of my life. The military was plan A. I didn’t have a plan B.”

  “That sucks,” I said. “So you didn’t get a chance to know Molly very well with only two sessions.”

  “No, but I liked her,” he said. “When Molly said something, you could take it as the gospel and know that it was meant for your own good. There was nothing self-serving about the way she taught or handed out advice about fighting. She liked to win and she liked to see people she knew win. I really admired her.”

  “Did you know about her past?” Ida Belle asked.

  “More or less,” he said. “It’s common gossip among the fighters. I mean, probably nobody knows the real story except Molly and her dead husband. But I’m usually pretty good at reading people. I figure if Molly killed him then he had it coming.”

  “I like you,” Gertie said. “If I were twenty years younger—”

  “You could still be his mother,” Ida Belle said.

  He grinned. “I have a feeling you’ve left a wake of broken hearts. I don’t think I could have handled you twenty years ago.”

  “You can’t handle her now,” I said.

  He laughed. “So what is it you’re looking for here? I heard about Molly but I can’t tell you anything about her beyond what I just did.”

  “I don’t want to know about Molly so much as I want to know what you can tell me about Dexter Nutters,” I said.

  His smile immediately turned to a frown. “That guy. You look up ‘total loser’ in the dictionary, and I guarantee you there’s a picture of Dexter Nutters next to it. I never understood what Molly saw in him.”

  “That’s a fairly common statement among the people who knew her,” I said. “And having had the displeasure of meeting the man myself, I have to agree. I don’t get it.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “You don’t think he did anything to her, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But my client would like me to find out. It could be that this was just another tragic boat accident.”

  “But it might be something else,” he said.

  He stared at the wall for several seconds, then shook his head. “Man, I just don’t see it. Molly could whup that guy nine ways to Sunday. Nutters couldn’t beat a g
rade-schooler in a fight. How’s he going to beat someone like Molly?”

  “Gun? Poison?” I suggested. “With no body, it’s impossible to say. Did Dexter ever talk about the catering business when he was in the bar?”

  “All the time,” Glenn said. “Give him two shots of whiskey and you couldn’t shut the guy up. Of course, no one believed half of what he was saying. Heck, I only believed he was dating Molly because she came in here once with him.”

  “Molly came to this bar?” Ida Belle asked.

  “Only the one time and only for a minute,” he said. “They were on their way somewhere and Nutters had forgotten his ball cap the night before. That’s the only time I’ve seen her here, though. I imagine Nutters didn’t want his two lives to cross paths.”

  “Two lives?” I asked.

  “Other women,” he said. “He was always hitting on women in the bar. Got clocked by angry boyfriends on a somewhat regular basis.”

  “Men in this bar are sensitive about their women,” I said.

  Glenn looked confused and I pointed to the window.

  “Oh yeah, that,” Glenn said. “That’s just Tank being a fool. He keeps tearing up things over her, I’m going to eventually have a new bar on his dime.”

  “So if he gets that angry, why do people keep insulting his wife?” I asked.

  “You mean, the woman who cleaned out his bank accounts, set his clothes on fire in his truck, and then ran off with his brother?” Glenn asked.

  “Good Lord,” Ida Belle said. “Doesn’t sound like anything people made up could be worse than the truth.”

  He nodded. “But if old Tank admitted that, then he’d have to face the rest of it. Easier to stay drunk, fish, and pay for repairs to my bar.”

  “It’s a good life if you can manage it,” Gertie said. “Unfortunately, those pesky bill things interfere—electricity, rent, food.”

  “Mineral rights,” Glenn said. “He inherited some and a ramshackle set of townhomes a couple blocks from here. Between rent money and the rights, it’s enough to keep him in utilities, food, and beer.”

  “So did Dexter have any luck with the ladies?” I asked.

  “Not that I ever saw,” he said. “Most women had his number right quick but then a couple months ago, he showed up with a younger one.”

  “How young?” Gertie asked.

  “Twenty-one,” he said. “I ID’d her. I don’t want trouble in here.”

  I looked at the broken window again.

  “I don’t want that kind of trouble in here,” he said. “The window is nothing compared to the trouble a young woman with a guy like Nutters could lead to.”

  “How often did he bring her in here?” I asked.

  “Two or three times a week over the last month,” he said. “A little less at first.”

  “And they were definitely in a relationship?” I asked, trying to fathom that there were two women in the world who would give Dexter the time of day.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “It was disgusting. Her sitting there fawning over him like he was the Rock or something.”

  “Was she high?” Gertie asked.

  “Could be,” he said. “She had these beady eyes—like a rat—and they didn’t look right. And she was super skinny—all arms and legs. She had some acne that you usually don’t see by that age as well. If I had to guess, she hit the harder stuff somewhat regularly but hadn’t gotten to that point where she was the walking dead, if you know what I mean.”

  “Probably meth,” Gertie said.

  “Well, that explains why she’s with Dexter,” Ida Belle said. “She wants money for a fix.”

  “That’s the most likely explanation,” he said. “But as long as they don’t bring the stuff in here, I didn’t care what kind of nonsense he got up to.”

  “Didn’t he worry that someone would tell Molly about his new girlfriend?” I asked. “And doing it right in front of you when you’d trained with her? That’s the height of stupid. Not that I’m saying he isn’t that stupid, but you get it.”

  “I do,” he said. “But I never told Nutters I knew Molly and that night when they came in, I was in the back getting more vodka when one of the servers asked where Nutters’s hat was. They were on their way out by the time I got back to the counter.”

  “So you didn’t see each other at all,” Ida Belle said.

  He shook his head. “And despite how it looks this second, I don’t talk much about myself here. And I avoided all conversation with Nutters.”

  “So Dexter didn’t know that you and Molly had met,” I said.

  “He didn’t even know I’d tried cage fighting,” Glenn said. “No one does. I get a lot of guys in here who’ve tried the ring or are still in it. Kind of a watering hole. You run a place like this, you don’t want this lot to figure out all they have to do to get the best of you is whack you in the knee with a pool cue.”

  “Good point,” I said. “So when Dexter talked about the catering business, what did he say?”

  “He talked about how Molly had made him a partner and the business was going to be worth a fortune when they decided to cash out,” he said. “Nobody much believed him. Nutters couldn’t tell the difference between carbonated water and champagne. There’s no way he could produce quality food. What kind of catering was it, anyway?”

  “Higher-end type stuff,” Ida Belle said. “Crab cakes and dips, lobster rolls and salad, and the most amazing brisket. She did a lot of events.”

  “Did you know her?” he asked.

  Ida Belle nodded. “She was supposed to cater my wedding next weekend. Gertie and I are some of the first people who met her when she came to Sinful.”

  “Ah man, I’m really sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize you guys knew her personally.”

  “Thank you,” Ida Belle said. “But I’m afraid none of us knew her as well as we would have liked. Molly was a very private person.”

  “I suppose someone with her past would be,” he said. “So is Nutters trying to lay some claim to the business or something? Is that what started all this?”

  “He seems to be under the impression that he was a partner and due the business if something happened to Molly,” I said. “But a legal document he found when he broke into Molly’s safe seems to indicate otherwise. Let’s just say Dexter wasn’t happy with Molly’s choice and showed up at the woman’s house threatening her. The woman named in the document only knew Molly professionally and just barely. She has zero idea why Molly would name her and since she’s one of my best friends, I know she’s telling the truth. Basically, the whole thing is both a mess and a mystery.”

  He shook his head. “Sounds like it. I don’t envy you trying to sort it all out.”

  “Do you remember the last time he was in here?” I asked.

  “Last week sometime,” he said. “Can’t remember the exact day but not the weekend. Maybe Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “Was he alone?” I asked.

  “No. He had his side piece with him.”

  “So Dexter must have still been using his apartment even though he stopped paying rent,” I said.

  “Hard to pay rent when you don’t work.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us about Dexter that might help us get a feel for him?” I asked.

  “Honestly, it sounds like you already know everything there is to know,” Glenn said. “Nutters wasn’t that deep. What you knew and what I told you is probably all there is to it. He didn’t have the smarts to be more.”

  “Do you think he could have planned to kill her and make it look like an accident?” Gertie asked.

  “Honestly? No,” he said. “Now, could he have gotten mad enough and done something stupid, then tried to cover it up? Sure. And would he have the balls to try to stake a claim on the business? Absolutely. Money was always Dexter’s prime motivator. At least, that’s how it looked to me.”

  “Except with the new girlfriend, who probably doesn’t have any,” Gertie said.

&nb
sp; “Maybe he met the female version of himself,” Glenn said.

  I nodded. “But he’d need his own money to keep her. I don’t suppose you remember her name, do you?”

  He smiled. “Actually, I do.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I climbed into Ida Belle’s SUV, somewhat pleased that we’d made it out of The Bar without incident. It was both surprising and shocking. Usually places like The Bar combined with people like Gertie led only to trouble. The fact that Ida Belle didn’t even wait for us to put on our seat belts before hauling it out of there told me she was looking to make sure it stayed that way.

  “Home?” she asked as she headed toward the highway.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. Let’s head back out toward Silas’s place.”

  “You know I’m not one to back off from danger,” Gertie said, “but do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I have to agree,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t think you’re going to get any more out of him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about revisiting Silas,” I said. “I thought we’d make a stop at the gas station and see if those two guys sitting out front saw Silas leave Monday afternoon. I figure they sit out there a lot, waiting for something to talk about.”

  Ida Belle nodded. “That’s a good idea. It won’t tell us everything, but if those guys saw Silas leave and return, it might give us a window that he could have used to take Molly out.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Then our last stop is the exit to Molly’s house. When we went to drop off Ida Belle’s catering money, I noticed two boys in a tree house right at the exit. I assume they live in the house across the street.”

  “Oh!” Gertie’s eyes widened. “They have a clear view of the road. They’d see every car that passed.”

  “If they were outside at the time our killer turned in,” Ida Belle said. “And if they are the kind of boys who notice cars.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s a long shot but it’s easy to ask and won’t take much time. I figure it can’t hurt.”

  I pulled out my cell phone and did a quick internet search on Marissa Perkins, Dexter’s side piece. I wasn’t expecting to find anything unless it was a short mention about an arrest, but that wasn’t even what popped up on my screen.