Gators and Garters

by Jana DeLeon

  I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text to Gertie, then waited for the diversion to begin. A couple seconds later, I heard a bottle rocket go off and then a second later, it hit Silas’s front door and exploded.

  I heard cursing coming from inside and then Silas ran out onto the porch, his shotgun ready to fire.

  “I know you’re out there,” he yelled. “Get off my property or I’ll start shooting.”

  Another bottle rocket whizzed onto the roof and Silas fired off two shots into the woods. I hoped Ida Belle and Gertie were taking cover. A couple seconds later, more bottle rockets fired from a different location, but Silas didn’t show any sign of leaving his porch. He just kept firing into the woods.

  I sent Gertie another text.

  He has to leave the porch. Draw him away somehow.

  On it.

  Silas paced the front porch twice, glaring into the trees, then leaned against the front wall of the house. I waited, wondering how long it was going to take Gertie to come up with something to budge Silas off the porch and what it was going to be.

  Then the wait was over.

  A giant explosion rocked the clearing, and the outhouse blew straight into the air and into a million pieces. Unfortunately, some of the pieces weren’t wood from the outhouse. Silas threw his arm up in front of his face and ducked, but when the last of the wood hit the porch, he started yelling at the top of his lungs and lumbered down the steps and toward the woods near the site of the explosion.

  “I’m going to kill you when I find you!” he yelled. “And I won’t stop until I do!”

  His limp grew more pronounced as he went, but he showed no sign of stopping. As soon as he hit the trees, I ran for the side of the house and crawled through the missing lattice and under the house. I could hear the sound of the shotgun firing every ten seconds or so and wondered just how many shells Silas was carrying in those overall pockets. I scooted along until I reached the front porch, then looked up to find the newer of the porch floor planks. Then I pulled a spade out of my backpack and just to the side of the planks, I started digging. It didn’t take me long because the grave was shallow.

  I’d found Johnny Broussard.

  I grabbed a bone, just in case anyone in law enforcement decided to drag their feet, and crawled out from under the porch, hoping that Ida Belle and Gertie had made their getaway. As soon as I made it to the trail to the dock, I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text.

  Are you away?

  No. Slight problem. Flat tire.

  Crap! One of those random shotgun blasts must have gotten Ida Belle’s SUV. I said a quick prayer that it was only a tire because if he’d marred her paint, she was going to be contacting the coroner rather than the police.

  Pick up trail middle of backyard. Head for the dock.

  10-4.

  The makeshift path that led back to the main road was at least a quarter mile long. Making it to the boat was a better proposition. Even without knowing the terrain, Ida Belle and Gertie would be able to move faster than Silas. The problem was that no one could outrun a shotgun. Which led to a dilemma. Did I set off after them or wait for them here? I had no way of knowing how deep in the woods they were or how far away, and I didn’t want to take up their time with more messages. When someone was after you with a shotgun, you didn’t ask people to stop and text.

  I spent another couple seconds mulling over the choices, then the universe made up my mind for me. A shotgun blast sounded and splintered the tree right above my head. I hit the ground, crawled behind a large cypress tree, and listened. I could hear someone moving through the brush, but it sounded like slow, deliberate thrashing. That must be Silas. I strained, praying that I’d hear another set of steps, but nothing came. Maybe they’d stopped and were hiding, trying to throw Silas off the scent.

  A couple seconds later, I got my answer. I heard pounding steps and then Ida Belle and Gertie ran right past my hiding space and took off down the trail. I jumped up and headed after them, yelling at them to move it as another shot rang out. For a guy with a disability, Silas was moving pretty quickly. I could only assume anger was fueling him beyond normal capacity.

  The only positive was that the last shot was farther away than the one before so we were making up ground on him. The question was would it be enough ground to get across the open space to the boat and get away. I could return fire but it wasn’t going to look good for the home team—shooting a guy on his own property. And the last thing I wanted to do was give Silas a reason to request any form of leniency.

  We hit the end of the tree line and burst out into the open. Wyatt and Jeb were waving and yelling for us to hurry. I turned on the afterburners and sprinted past Ida Belle and Gertie, in case I needed to provide them cover. When I got to the dock, I hit it with one step then leaped a good ten feet and landed in the bottom of the boat, crouching for stabilization as soon as my feet touched metal.

  I whirled around, ready to do whatever necessary to protect Ida Belle and Gertie, and saw they were about twenty yards behind me. Unfortunately, Silas had just exited the tree line and spotted them. I was still holding the femur in my left hand so I pulled out my pistol with my right and took aim.

  “Wait!” Jeb yelled and brought up an old Coca-Cola bottle full of fireworks.

  He lit up all the fuses, pointed the bottle in Silas’s direction, and a second later, they began to fire off. It was probably only ten or so that he’d managed to shove in the bottle, but it seemed like a hundred as they sizzled and flew. And his aim was great.

  The fireworks began to explode all around Silas but one was a direct hit on his chest that dropped into his overalls. He threw the shotgun and grabbed at the straps on the overalls, but it was too late. The bottle rocket exploded and we heard Silas scream. Ida Belle and Gertie had reached the dock and Ida Belle made the jump into the boat as I yelled for Wyatt to prepare to launch.

  Gertie took one last step on the dock to jump and tripped, sending her tumbling off the side of the dock and into the water. I looked up and saw Silas bent over, retrieving his shotgun. We had to leave now or get caught in the blast. The boat was floating away from Gertie and she swam toward us. I looked for a rope but couldn’t see anything, then I extended the only thing I had available—the femur.

  Gertie didn’t even blink as she grabbed hold of the bone and I told Wyatt to start going. I tugged her close to the boat and Ida Belle grabbed her shoulders. As Wyatt took off, we pulled her over the side of the boat and she dropped into the bottom. She sat up, sputtering and clutching the bone.

  “Is this what I think it is?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Johnny Broussard.”

  Jeb and Wyatt looked at the femur, dumbstruck.

  “Well, I’ll be danged,” Jeb said.

  Gertie grinned. “Me first.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It only took a favor call-in to the state police from Carter—and a picture of the femur—to get them out to Silas’s house with handcuffs, a warrant, and a forensics crew. Silas, predictably, threatened to shoot anyone who came on his land, but the state police just tagged him with a rubber bullet and that show was over. I made a mental note to add some rubber bullets to my office supplies. It was the perfect solution for disabling someone from a distance without killing them.

  And fireworks, of course.

  Gertie had hooked Jeb up with a supply at the convenience store and he raved about her, me, Ida Belle, and the entire mission to the state police, the forensics team, and Carter, and even called the local preacher. Wyatt, the older of the two brothers and apparently the one that usually kept things in check, didn’t even bother to try to contain Jeb. He was probably too busy grinning. He hadn’t stopped since Gertie had held up that bone.

  The police and forensics team allowed us to stay on-site long enough to see Silas handcuffed and put into the back of a police cruiser. His overalls were completely blown apart at the crotch and he was covered with the remnants from the outhouse explosio
n. That cop was probably going to burn the car when he was out of it. Silas was leaning to one side in the back seat, so I figured at least he was suffering before the real suffering began. The arrest process took long enough for us to hear someone from the forensics team call out that they’d found the body. Like that was a shock. I’d been toting that femur for an hour before they’d shown up. Shortly after that, we were hurried off-site to await questioning.

  We had to call for a tow for Ida Belle’s SUV. The vehicle didn’t hold a spare and the temporary wouldn’t be safe to get us all the way back to Sinful. A flatbed picked it up and it was off to Hot Rod’s shop to await a new tire. Ida Belle, Gertie, and I piled into Carter’s truck and we headed out. Our friends Wyatt and Jeb were already in position in front of the convenience store, and Carter pulled in so we could wait on the state police to take our statements.

  Jeb ran inside for more beer as we climbed out of Carter’s truck and Wyatt practically jumped out of his chair, still smiling. They hauled out more lawn chairs and we all took a seat, everyone talking at once about the adventure.

  “So can you please tell me now how you put this all together?” Ida Belle asked.

  “It was the hangover, I think,” I said.

  Jeb nodded. “This sounds like the start of a really good story.”

  “I had far too many of those gelatin shots,” I said. “When I woke up, I’d been having this strange dream. I was back in the sandbox on a mission. I had to swim across a river full of alligators, then traverse a shack with a rotted floor and the smell of decaying fish permeating the air. I locked on my target but it wasn’t my target. He was wearing something that belonged to my target and I was about to eliminate the wrong guy. Then I woke up and things rushed into my head—Silas making his kids swim the channel with him every day, that woman who fell through the slats on the chair at the bachelorette party last night, Gertie slapping the wrong person on the butt last night because they were wearing the stripper’s cape.”

  The guys all exchanged lifted eyebrows and Gertie smiled.

  “That really was a good time,” she said.

  “And all of that made sense to you somehow?” Wyatt asked.

  “I think I get part of it,” Ida Belle said. “You realized Silas killed Johnny at his house, then drove to the marina and got onto his boat wearing his rain slicker. They were both large men and in the dim light of the oncoming storm, the witness couldn’t see his face and just assumed it was Johnny.”

  “What about the phone call to the tax assessor?” Wyatt asked.

  “He made that call right before he left,” I said. “That way, he’d have proof he was at home and since no one saw his truck on the highway or at the dock, there’s no way he could have followed Johnny or waited for him on the boat beforehand.”

  “So he set up his alibi then left for the dock,” Jeb said.

  “Exactly!” I said. “Then Silas took the boat into the lake and jumped onto shore, walked across that thin stretch that separated the bayou in front of his property from the lake, then swam across.”

  “But what about his back and knees?” Gertie asked. “How could he swim that channel in a storm after doing all that walking?”

  “Because his injury gets worse with walking or standing but swimming doesn’t put any pressure on his spine,” I said. “I’ve seen it a million times, especially with compression injuries from parachuting. He parked close to the dock so he could manage the short walk to the boat without limping. It didn’t matter if he limped after that.”

  “But it still would have been risky swimming the channel in the storm,” Jeb said.

  “Silas has swum that channel a million times,” I said. “And remember, there were two life jackets missing from the boat. He threw one in and used the other for his swim. It wasn’t like this was a timed event. He could take all the time he needed to get back home. No one was going to come looking for Johnny at his house. They were going to go to the marina first, then launch a search on the water.”

  “So how did you know the body was under the porch?” Gertie asked.

  “Because there were slats on the porch that were newer than the rest,” I said. “Silas didn’t repair anything. He turned a shed into an outhouse rather than repair his plumbing. So why would he spend money on his porch? My guess is he called Johnny to his house, then hit him up for money, like he always did. Johnny refused and they argued. Silas probably shot him as he was leaving. Johnny died right there on that porch and since there was no way Silas could move the body, he cut the slats on the porch and let the body drop below. Then he dug a shallow grave and repaired the porch.”

  “And since everyone thought Johnny had died on the water, no one ever looked closely at Silas’s house,” Ida Belle said.

  Carter sighed. “Diabolical. How could someone do that to their own kid?”

  “Silas never cared about anyone but himself,” Wyatt said. “Anyone around him for five minutes knew that much. But murder takes things to a whole other level.”

  “What do you think’s going to happen to him?” Jeb asked.

  “I think he’s going to die in prison,” Carter said.

  “Does this change anything about Molly’s murder?” Gertie asked.

  Carter frowned. “I don’t know. The fact that Molly died in a similar fashion is going to be great fodder for the defense, especially with their father being Johnny’s killer. And we already know he had motive and opportunity. It might be enough for reasonable doubt.”

  “Do you think Silas killed Molly and it wasn’t Dexter and Marissa?” Ida Belle asked.

  Carter shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

  “Which means a jury won’t, either,” I said.

  It was a long, exhausting, but exciting day. The state police had finally shown up at the convenience store to take our preliminary statements, but I had a feeling they were going to need a much more in-depth and less excitable version of the events than what they got. Wyatt and Jeb made the entire thing sound like The A-Team and were still in the stratosphere with excitement when we finally got cut loose by the cops.

  Once we got back to Sinful, I called Nickel and Angel and gave them the news. They were both overwhelmed with gratitude and both cried, although Nickel swore if I told anyone, he’d figure out a way to kill me. Neither of them seemed surprised that Silas had done the deed, but they were both shocked at how calculated he’d been with the cover-up and impressed that I’d worked out something that no one else had even considered a crime.

  Unfortunately, none of it brought Molly back, and she would have been the person who wanted to hear that Johnny’s death would be vindicated the most.

  Carter dropped me off at home and had to head to the office to call the DA since I’d essentially just thrown a giant monkey wrench in his case against Dexter and Marissa. I didn’t envy him that phone call. After my calls to Nickel and Angel, I’d taken a shower until the hot water ran out, then eaten most of the leftovers in my fridge while watching a marathon of Justified. Sometime that evening, I fell asleep in my recliner. I awoke there the next morning with a crick in my neck and an angry cat glaring at me from the armrest.

  I glanced at my watch. 8:00 a.m. I’d been in that recliner for twelve hours!

  I rose and stretched, feeling every muscle in my body strain to loosen after being in the same position for so long, then trudged into the kitchen to feed Merlin and make coffee—in that order. I’d barely flopped down to my first cup when my phone rang.

  “She’s alive!” Gertie yelled as soon as I answered.

  “Can we talk about whatever this is after I’ve had coffee?” I asked.

  “Molly is alive!” Gertie shouted.

  I dropped my cup and it broke on the tile floor, slinging coffee every direction.

  “What?” I asked, certain that I’d heard wrong.

  “Molly is alive,” Gertie said. “She’s in the hospital. Ida Belle and I are on our way to pick you up. Put some coffee in a thermos.” />
  She disconnected and I stared at the coffee running over my kitchen floor for about two seconds before launching into action. I flew upstairs and threw on street clothes, then ran back downstairs and dumped the rest of the coffee into a thermos. The floor would have to wait as I could hear Ida Belle’s SUV pulling into my drive. I dashed out and jumped in, taking note of the excited expressions and flushed cheeks my two friends wore.

  “Fill me in,” I said as we took off.

  “According to our hospital contact,” Ida Belle said, “early this morning, Molly walked into the emergency room. She said she’d fallen off her boat and was rescued by a Creole man who lived deep in the swamp. She said she vaguely remembered being pulled onto his boat and him pouring chicken stock down her throat.”

  “She didn’t even know what day it was,” Gertie said. “She said she woke up early this morning, before daylight, in a cabin in the middle of the swamp. The man realized she was awake and told her he’d take her to the hospital. He drove her to the hospital and let her out on the road in front of it, saying he didn’t want to see ‘no people.’”

  “Is she all right?” I asked.

  “She has a lump on her head and some bruises that are already healing but good Lord, those could have been from her fighting that day as much as having an accident,” Ida Belle said.

  “Did she say what happened?” I asked.

  They both shook their heads.

  “She claims she doesn’t remember,” Gertie said. “Said she remembers taking the boat out and calling Angel, but then the next thing she was really aware of was waking up in the man’s cabin.”