by Jana DeLeon
“And some just don’t care,” Gertie said. “That’s why you see so many trucks with rusted-out spots on the sides.”
The Jeep dipped into a huge hole that had been hidden by marsh grass and we all flew up and back down onto our seats.
“I’m more worried about a back injury,” Gertie said. “I hope Willie’s house isn’t that far.”
“I hope we don’t need to leave in a hurry,” I said.
“Why would we need to do that?” Gertie asked.
“Because Willie is a convicted felon and he might have tried to kill Hot Rod for a key that unlocks a crypt that even Willie hasn’t identified?” I said. “And if he didn’t try to kill Hot Rod, he probably knows who did, which means he’s still tied to murderers, potentially the Seal brothers. And then there’s the part where it’s the three of us and things just seem to turn out that way.”
“I see your point,” Gertie said. “But I’m going to be optimistic. This time, everything will be fine.”
“Sure,” Ida Belle said. “Willie will probably be on his front porch whittling. He’ll offer us tea and tell us why everyone is after the key and we’ll be on our way. Or maybe he’ll just leave a note pinned to the front porch and we won’t even have to bother with pleasantries.”
“I’ll just settle for no shooting,” I said. “If we could get through one investigation with no shooting, I’d throw a party.”
“I don’t mind the shooting,” Gertie said, “because you and Ida Belle are always the best at it.”
I glanced over at Ida Belle, started to say something, then shook my head.
“I think I see it,” Ida Belle said.
I leaned forward a bit and caught sight of a gray structure just off to the right. The path made a right turn, and I stopped about twenty yards from the house.
“Looks a bit rough,” Gertie said.
That was an understatement. At one time, the place had been painted, probably a bright yellow, but now, tiny remnants of its previous sunshine splendor were dull and clung to splintered, rotting wood. The roof sagged on one side, and we watched as a raccoon crawled through a hole in the roof and strolled up a branch that had settled on the corner of the house. The one window appeared intact. The rest that I could see were covered with plywood.
There was no vehicle out front, which was a good sign, but that didn’t mean Willie wasn’t inside. He could have caught a ride with someone. Or for all we knew, he might have a motorcycle in the living room. It would probably dress the place up.
“I guess the house fell into disrepair while he was in prison,” I said.
“My guess is it would still look the same even if he’d never gone to prison.” Ida Belle looked at the house and frowned. “How do you want to do this?”
I stared at the dilapidated structure for a moment, considering our options, which were severely limited by terrain for both approach and escape. We hadn’t driven all this way to turn around and go back to Sinful, but I wasn’t interested in putting any of us in more danger than was necessary.
“Here’s the plan,” I said finally. “I’m going to turn the Jeep around so that it’s ready to roll. I’m going to go up to the house. Ida Belle, I want you to take the driver’s position in case things go south and we need to make a getaway.”
“What about me?” Gertie asked.
I pulled my backup pistol from my ankle strap. “As much as it pains me to do this, if I have to make a run for it, I need you to cover me.”
Gertie took the pistol with a little more glee than I found comfortable.
“Remember,” I said. “No shooting unless someone is shooting at us.”
Ida Belle nodded. “And for God’s sake, don’t shoot Fortune.”
Gertie gave us a dirty look. “Just take care of your end of things and I’ll take care of mine. He’s probably not in there anyway given that the raccoon was in residence.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really? Says the woman who let an alligator live in her house?”
I backed the Jeep up and got it turned around and ready to roll, then hopped out and let Ida Belle take over the driver’s seat. “Keep it running,” I said. “If everything’s clear, I’ll call you in.”
Ida Belle nodded and I pulled my nine-millimeter out of my waistband and headed for the house, scouting every inch of the surrounding forest as I went and checking the one window that wasn’t boarded up for any sign of shadow movement inside. The regular sounds of birds chirping and wind blowing through the trees were the only things I could pick out, but that didn’t mean Willie wasn’t inside. He could just be sitting there waiting to see what we were doing. That’s what I would do if I were him.
I crept onto the porch, trying to pick my way around the worst of the rotted spots. The boards creaked with every step, and I winced and moved as quickly as possible for the door. I lifted my left hand and knocked, my back against the wall to the side of the door. If Willie was inside and decided I was the enemy, he’d likely open fire through the front door. Standing to the side gave me an opportunity to avoid being shot and get the heck out of there.
If he opened the door and didn’t appear as if he was going to shoot me, I’d hide the nine and launch into our car repair story. It wouldn’t get us what we came for, but it would probably get us out of there without incident. I didn’t hear anything inside, so I knocked again, but the house was silent. I decided to change tactics.
“Mr. LeDoux. My name is Sandy. I got your address from the lady at the convenience store. She said you did repair on old automobiles.”
I waited a bit, but nothing stirred inside. I inched toward the doorframe and slipped my elbow around the edge, then pressed it against the door. The door creaked open a bit and I frowned. Granted, you couldn’t exactly sneak up on the place with a vehicle, but someone could easily hike through the woods and come up on the cabin without Willie knowing. Leaving the front door unlocked was an odd thing for a con to do, especially if he was back in his old line of work.
I moved over and pressed my elbow harder against the door and opened it enough to see inside. The front room was kitchen and living room. It looked more abandoned than occupied, but a stack of beer cans and a new pack of smokes on the end table indicated that Willie had been around at some point, raccoon or no. There was an opening on the back wall of the living room that I assumed led to the bedrooms.
I slipped across the living room, thankful for the hideous worn rug that masked the worst of my passage, and peered into the opening that led to a hallway that ran the width of the cabin. I counted three doors and decided it was probably two bedrooms and a bathroom. I crept down the hallway and poked my head into the first bedroom. It was tiny and had probably been Willie’s when he was a child. It had since been turned into a sewing room. The only furniture was a sewing desk along the back wall and a table along the front wall, piled high with old fabric.
The next room was the bathroom, with crumbling tile and rusted fixtures. I lifted my pistol into ready position as I inched toward the last door. When I reached the doorway, I paused and listened, but the only thing I heard was the steady buzz of insects. I had a good idea what I was about to discover, but I went through the motions anyway. I whirled around the opening, gun leveled, and cursed when I got a good look at the inside of the room. The smell had been a dead giveaway, so to speak.
Chapter Thirteen
Willie LeDoux, or at least I assumed it was him, wasn’t going to threaten anybody. A single bullet hole through the center of his forehead had cemented that fact. He was sitting partially upright in the bed, leaned back against the headboard and slumped to the side. His eyes were wide open, and I figured he knew the bullet was coming before it was fired. I turned around and headed back outside to the Jeep.
“It’s clear,” I said, and motioned to Gertie. “Give me the pistol.”
She grumbled a bit but passed the weapon back to me and I secured it on my ankle. I opened the glove compartment and grabbed latex gloves.
&n
bsp; “Put these on. We can’t afford to leave fingerprints.”
Ida Belle and Gertie climbed out of the Jeep and pulled on the gloves as we walked.
“You think Willie is going to lift fingerprints and come after us?” Gertie joked.
“Willie’s not going after anyone,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“What?”
“No!”
They both spoke at once.
“Single bullet through the forehead,” I said. “In bed. He was probably asleep when the shooter sneaked up on him. Looks like he woke up in time to die.”
“We should do something,” Gertie said.
“Like what?” I asked. “It’s a little too late for CPR and since Willie can’t talk, we need to go through his stuff and see if we can figure out what that key unlocks. He’s not going to get any deader. An anonymous phone call to the police once we’re long gone from here is the best idea. It’s bad enough that we were at the convenience store asking for directions to his house.”
“She’s right,” Ida Belle said. “Once the police know, it won’t take a minute for the news to sweep through the entire town. The woman at the convenience store will tell them about us and they’ll be knocking on your door in Sinful.”
Gertie’s eyes widened. “They’ll think I killed him. Oh my God! I can’t go to prison. They won’t even allow me knitting needles.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Ida Belle said. “You’re not going to prison. When the cops come, you tell them we knocked on the door, no one answered, and you left. There’s not a shred of evidence to indicate you did anything unless you go leaving some in that relic. Just be glad Fortune didn’t talk to the woman at the store along with us.”
“She’s right,” I said. “Besides, he’s been dead for at least a day, probably more. It would hardly make sense for you to kill him, then come back later and ask for directions to his house.”
“Okay,” Gertie said, somewhat mollified. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Then let’s get in there and try to find something and get out before we do get caught,” I said. “And be careful. It’s a minefield of broken crap that can gouge skin. The last thing we need is someone bleeding.”
I walked in the front door and waved my hands. “Gertie, take the kitchen. Ida Belle, you get the living room. I’ll cover the bedroom with the dead guy.”
Gertie looked relieved and headed off to the kitchen. I went into the bedroom and started tossing the room while reminding myself to breathe with my mouth. There was a single nightstand but it didn’t have a drawer, and the top contained only a lamp and an ashtray. The dresser drawers had women’s underwear in them, which I assumed had belonged to his mother. Or maybe Willie had been into the freaky stuff. If so, that secret could be between him and the coroner.
The closet contained mostly women’s clothes shoved to the side. A couple pairs of men’s blue jeans and some ragged T-shirts hung in the center. A pair of worn-out boots was in the bottom. The top shelf contained only bed linens and a worn pair of women’s slippers. I felt the back of the closet wall for a secret hiding place, and checked the floorboards as well, but the room appeared clean. The last thing I had to do was a sweep in between the mattress and the box springs. I held my breath and passed my arm between the two layers, then hurried to the other side and did it again.
Nothing.
The room was clean. Aside from a couple items of clothes and the ashtray, there was no sign that Willie even lived here. I went into the bathroom and found a half-used package of antacids and a bar of soap. A shelf above the toilet contained two rolls of toilet paper and a stack of car magazines. I shook the magazines, to make sure nothing was hidden between the pages, then headed into the sewing room and gave it a once-over, but it yielded nothing but dusty old fabric.
Disappointed that I had nothing to show for my effort, I headed back into the front room.
“Anything?” I asked.
Gertie shook her head. “A bunch of chipped dishes, some holey dish rags, and two cans of beans. All that’s in the refrigerator is beer.”
Ida Belle looked up from the coffee table, where she was flipping through more car magazines. “No television,” she said. “He must have spent all his time reading.”
I nodded. “There’s a stack in the bathroom too.”
“You didn’t find anything?” Gertie asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “You can barely tell he lived here.”
“It is rather sparse,” Ida Belle said, and lifted another magazine. She flipped through the pages and a sheet of paper fell out. I picked it up and opened it.
“It’s a flyer for an auto auction,” I said. “And look! There’s your SUV.”
Ida Belle stepped closer to me and eyed the flyer. “Yep, that’s mine all right. I’d recognize that custom grille anywhere.”
“The car lot must have put it up for auction. That’s probably how Hot Rod acquired it.”
“There are four other black SUVs on the flyer,” Ida Belle said. “Hot Rod might have picked up more than one at the auction.”
I nodded. “Willie didn’t have this stuffed in a magazine for no reason. All he had to do was find out who bought the vehicles and he’d know where to find them. He might have even been at the auction when they were bought.”
Ida Belle frowned. “But if Willie is the one who attacked Hot Rod, then who killed Willie? The Seal brothers? It had to be more than just Willie stealing the SUVs from Hot Rod’s place. Why kill Willie when they didn’t find the key?”
I shook my head. There were a couple of things I was pretty sure about, but a whole lot I needed to dwell on for a while and not while standing in the middle of a crime scene. There were a ton of moving parts and right now, some of them appeared to be floating around with no pieces fitting together. Those that did fit, didn’t get me any closer to the answers I needed.
“Let’s finish up and get out of here,” I said. “I’m getting a really bad feeling about all of this. I don’t want whoever shot Willie to come back to search the place like we did.”
Gertie’s eyes widened. “Why would they come back? Surely they searched the place before.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “This place would look completely different if it had been searched, especially by amateurs who weren’t concerned about covering their tracks.”
“And the Seal brothers would fit that bill,” Ida Belle said, “but it wouldn’t explain why they killed Willie.”
“Could be a bunch of things,” I said. “Maybe they had a falling-out over something. They got the information on the location of the SUV out of him and they didn’t need him for anything else. Or maybe it was someone else entirely. Willie’s not exactly a corporate banker. There’s no telling who else might have it in for him.”
Gertie took the auction flyer from me, folded it, and stuffed it in her bra.
“That’s evidence,” Ida Belle said.
“And?” Gertie asked. “What are the local cops going to do with it? They won’t be able to connect it to anything, and that’s if they bother to spend much time investigating the murder of a career criminal at all.”
“She’s right,” I said. “Whatever Willie knew or didn’t know might have been worth killing him over, but the police wouldn’t know the significance of the flyer. Honestly, it doesn’t tell us anything either except how Willie located the SUVs.”
I looked over at Gertie, then back at Ida Belle. “Besides, she’s not going to give it up voluntarily, and I refuse to take it from her given the current positioning.”
Ida Belle shook her head. “Let’s flip through the rest of those magazines just to make sure there’s nothing else that Gertie can use to stuff her bra, then we’ll trek back to Sinful.”
“I’m going to check outside,” Gertie said. “Take a lap around the house in case there’s an outbuilding or somewhere else he might have hidden something.”
“Good idea,” I said.
Gertie headed outside, and I
da Belle and I flipped through the remainder of the magazines one at a time, but there were no more hidden papers inside.
“I guess that’s it,” Ida Belle said. “It seems rather underwhelming considering a man was killed.”
I nodded. “I’m afraid that what we need to know might have only been in Willie’s head.”
“Which means figuring it out the hard way,” Ida Belle said.
She sounded so defeated that it made me sad. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have some ideas.”
“Really?”
I opened my mouth to reassure her that I wasn’t going to stop until we had answers when I heard Gertie scream. I pulled out my gun and bolted for the porch. Ida Belle was right behind me. I practically jumped from the front door to the ground and as I landed, Gertie came running around the side of the house, screaming bloody murder and waving her hands in the air.
“What the hell?” Ida Belle slid to a stop beside me as I tried to figure out what the heck was going on.
“Bees,” Gertie yelled as she sped by about twenty feet in front of us. “The bees are after me.”
It was hard to see anything with Gertie flailing about, but I finally caught sight of tiny black flecks zooming around her and said a silent prayer of thanks that I’d taken my backup pistol from her earlier.
Ida Belle ran for the corner of the house and shouted, “There’s a water hose.”
“Run this way!” I yelled at Gertie, who was off in the other direction.
She made a spinning turn, which her injured knees were probably going to complain about later on, then came running back toward me. I sprinted for the end of the house, where Ida Belle was standing in position with the hose.
“The hose!” I yelled, and stopped next to Ida Belle, figuring standing behind the wall of water was the safest place to hide when those bees got doused.
Gertie ran our way and when she was about ten feet away, Ida Belle opened the hose on her. Gertie fell onto the ground and flopped around like a fish for a bit while Ida Belle drenched her with the hose.
