Swamp Team 3 (A Miss Fortune Mystery)

by DeLeon, Jana

  She gave us all a wave and headed upstairs. Ida Belle got up and stretched. Gertie tried to get up but fell back into the chair.

  “My knees,” she cried. “My back. My ankles.”

  I rose from the couch, already feeling the tightening in my thighs, and extended a hand to help pull Gertie out of the chair. “I prescribe a hot bath for all of us.”

  Ida Belle nodded. “We’re going to really be feeling this tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Gertie complained. “I’m feeling it now.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll be comatose,” Ida Belle said as they walked out the door.

  I closed the door behind them and locked it, thinking about everything that had happened that day and what it all meant. I knew the solution to everything lay somewhere in the jumbled mess of information I had. Sometimes a flicker of a thought would spark in my mind but before I could lock on, it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  I hoped the flicker would be stronger after a good night’s sleep.

  Assuming such a thing could be had in Sinful.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ally was still sleeping when I woke up the next morning. I’d taken a shower and the world’s longest bath the night before, so I pulled on shorts, T-shirt, and tennis shoes and crept out of the house, hoping Ally would get her late-morning sleeping in. She’d managed to hide the dark circles under her eyes for her date the night before, but I knew they were still there. She needed more rest before she hit exhaustion.

  I left her a note and the keys to my Jeep, just in case I got caught up in town and didn’t make it back in time to drive her to work, then headed outside and did some stretches to limber up my legs and back. Surprisingly, my thighs weren’t nearly as tight as I’d expected them to be, so I set off on my jog around the neighborhood and past the park, but my uncontrollable curiosity had me changing my usual path and jogging by Ally’s house.

  The brown sedan was gone and no sign of the FBI remained. I wondered if the agents would be posted at the house again tonight or if they’d finally decided there was nothing in Floyd’s house to return for. Granted, we hadn’t gotten a chance to search upstairs, but it was a long shot we would have found anything useful anyway, especially with the way the FBI had tossed the house.

  I made a wide sweep back around in the other direction, then circled the park and headed toward Main Street. It was almost eight o’clock and my stomach was sending me not-so-subtle reminders that I’d been up for an hour, not to mention exercising, and hadn’t given it any fuel to run on.

  The usual morning crowd was already seated at Francine’s and the smell of homemade biscuits almost had me weeping by the time I took my seat in the corner. An older waitress everyone called Dixie came over to my table with a cup of coffee.

  “Did your exercise this morning, did ya?” she asked, with one of the thickest Southern drawls I’d ever heard.

  “Almost a good hour of it,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Then you must be near starving. What can I get you?”

  “Hmmm,” I said, taking a minute to consider. If I ordered what I really wanted, all that glorious exercise would be wasted, but by the same token, by virtue of all that exercise, if I ate something horrible for breakfast, it would be a wash.

  “I’ll have the chicken-fried steak and eggs,” I said finally.

  “Pancakes?”

  “Not today,” I said. It seemed like a reasonable compromise.

  I settled back with my cup of coffee and glanced around the café. The real estate agent wasn’t anywhere in sight and I wondered if he’d finally given up and headed somewhere else to find property. Sinful seemed like a long shot for commercial properties to begin with, but what did I know?

  By the time Dixie returned with my breakfast, I was so hungry I barely managed to maintain some standards as I dug into the chicken-fried steak. Without pausing, I plowed through the entire plate of steak, eggs, and hash browns, pausing only to sip my coffee and breathe. I’d just polished off the last bite when Carter walked in.

  He zeroed right in on me and strode across the café. “Almost done?” he asked as he stepped up to my table.

  “You saved me from embarrassing myself by licking the plate.”

  He smiled, but I could tell it was forced. Something was wrong. I looked around him. “No FBI tail?”

  He shook his head. “I got a message this morning that they had business elsewhere and would check in with me later. If you’re done, would you mind coming over to the sheriff’s department with me?”

  “You’re not going to put me in jail, are you?”

  “Of course not, but I need to talk to you and I don’t want anyone overhearing.”

  I pulled some money out of my pocket and left it on the table, then followed him out of the café and across the street to the sheriff’s department. I gave Deputy Breaux a nod as we walked by, but instead of turning down the hallway to his office, Carter headed into the room where the back door was located and walked outside.

  I followed him out the back door and down the steps of the small back porch wondering what in the world was going on. He walked around the edge of the porch and pointed at the back wall of the building.

  “See that charred spot on the porch railing?”

  I took another step forward and located the foot-long discolored spot on the weathered wooden railing. “Yeah, but I don’t understand why—”

  It hit me like a freight train and I whipped around to face him.

  “Someone tried to set fire to the sheriff’s department?”

  Carter nodded.

  “But that’s insane!”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”

  I looked back at the porch railing, unable to get control of my shock. “How come it did so little damage?”

  “I was here late last night, working on some paperwork up front with Myrtle. I went back to my office to get some information I needed to finish up a file and heard a noise out back. By the time I got out the back door, the side of the building was in flames. I jumped off the porch, grabbed the water hose, and managed to get it out before it spread to the porch or the siding on the second floor.”

  “Did you see the arsonist?”

  “No. I assume he took off when he heard me coming.”

  I studied the building again. “You said the side of the building was in flames…you mean the brick?” The entire first floor of the sheriff’s department was constructed from brick. The second-floor siding and the tiny porch were the only things constructed with wood.

  “Yeah. Stupid, right? It’s like he threw the gasoline on the wall and lit it up, but why would you do that if you want to burn a building down?”

  I shook my head. “You’d think he would have tossed the gasoline on the porch, not the wall above it.” I stared at the wall and frowned. It was so illogical that it seemed pointless. Only an idiot would think he could burn brick.

  And then a thought flickered in the back of my mind, but this time, I latched onto it. At first, it seemed weak and stupid, but as the seconds ticked by it made more sense. An idiot. The gasoline splashed too high. I turned to Carter and said, “I know who the arsonist is.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head. “Remember you told me about the guy who burned his house down with his grill? Who was that?”

  “Billy Vincent.”

  My pulse quickened. “Buckshot Billy. He wasn’t trying to soak the brick. He was trying to splash the gas on the porch but he has horrible aim. The night I went to the Swamp Bar, he hit me right in the face with an entire bucket of water. The bartender got onto him for aiming too high, which was apparently his norm. Just like here.”

  Carter stared at me, clearly uncertain what to think. “You’re saying Billy is the arsonist.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why burn down Ally’s house? Why the sheriff’s department?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet it’s not as rand
om as it seems. Billy doesn’t strike me as someone who makes his own decisions. Someone is pulling the strings.”

  Carter shook his head. “That’s some thin evidence.”

  “I don’t think it matters. My guess is if you question Billy, he’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  Carter stared at the back of the building once more, then looked back at me. “Then I guess we better go talk to Billy.”

  ###

  Carter made a couple of phone calls and found out that Billy had been living in his camp since the unfortunate incident with his house, so we headed to the dock for a ten-minute ride up the bayou to Billy’s camp. A ragged-looking flat-bottom boat was tied to a post in front of what could only charitably be called a shack.

  I tapped Carter on the shoulder and pointed to the porch. A plastic bucket and a gas can sat next to the steps. As soon as the thought had hit me, I’d known I was right about Billy being the arsonist, but I was happy to see confirmation staring at us before we even docked.

  Carter looked down at the bucket and gas can as we walked up the porch steps and shook his head. He knocked on a piece of plywood serving as a door and we heard movement inside. Several seconds later, the door swung open and a blurry-eyed Billy stared out at us.

  “What’s up?” He blinked a couple of times then stared at me. “Hey, you’re Best Boobs.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m so glad you recognized me.”

  Carter looked over at me, his expression grim. If Billy was sitting in jail, there was a much bigger chance he might tell someone about Floyd chasing me out of the Swamp Bar, and all within hearing distance of the FBI.

  “I need to talk to you,” Carter said. “In an official capacity.”

  Billy gave him a blank stare.

  “He means he’s going to ask you questions as a deputy,” I explained, “which means you need to tell the truth.”

  Billy’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah, of course!”

  Carter pointed to the bucket and gasoline can. “Tell me about the fires you’ve been starting.”

  I don’t know what I expected. Maybe for him to dash out the back door and us to pursue him into the swamp. Maybe for him to simply deny everything. Maybe for him to make up some ridiculous story that only a five-year-old would find plausible.

  But he did the one thing I would never, ever have guessed.

  He smiled. “What do you want to know?”

  Carter blinked. “So you admit to starting the fires?”

  “Sure. That’s my new job. Came at just the right time, too. I need a new boat and truck, but the check from the insurance company isn’t going to be enough for both.”

  “You mean the insurance money you’ll collect for your house fire?” Carter asked.

  Billy nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t worth a whole lot. It was old and small, and that guy from the insurance company said it was in a state of dis…disre…”

  “Disrepair?” I offered.

  “Yeah, that’s it!”

  No surprise there. If his camp and boat were any indication of his maintenance standards, the house was probably falling in around him.

  “You said setting the fires was your new job,” Carter continued. “Did someone pay you to set the fires?”

  Billy looked confused. “It ain’t really a job if you don’t get paid.”

  “Who paid you to set fire to Ally’s house?” Carter asked.

  Billy stared down at the ground and shuffled his feet. “That one was an accident. I thought I read the address right, but I messed up the numbers like I sometimes do.”

  My pulse quickened as everything fell into place—the unprofessional nature of the fire, Floyd’s alibi, and the home insurance policy he’d had out on his kitchen counter. “You were supposed to set Floyd’s house on fire, not Ally’s.”

  Billy looked up at us, wearing a sheepish expression. “Yeah. Floyd insisted it had to be done that night but he was going to settle up some outstanding tickets in New Orleans and figured he’d get tossed in the clink, so he asked me to do it.”

  Carter narrowed his eyes at Billy. “He just walked up to you and asked you to set his house on fire?”

  “Nah, it wasn’t exactly like that. We was shooting the shit over at the Swamp Bar. Floyd was saying as how he needed to get a hold of a lot of money fast. He tried to sell his house sometime back to a weird guy with a funny accent, but the guy said it wouldn’t work unless both houses were for sale.”

  “Was the weird guy a real estate agent?” I asked, figuring I already knew the answer. Aside from me, there was only one other person in Sinful that the locals would deem having a “funny accent.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s what he said. Agent, or something like that.”

  “Floyd needed money?” Carter prompted.

  Billy nodded. “So I told him about how I was getting a big check because I’d burned my house down.”

  “And Floyd offered to pay you to burn his house down?”

  “Yep. On account of him maybe being in jail.”

  I glanced at Carter. Maybe, my butt. Floyd made sure he had an airtight alibi for when the fire occurred. It just hadn’t gone exactly as he’d planned.

  “What happened when he found out you set the wrong house on fire?” I asked.

  “He was so mad. I thought he was going to throttle me right there. Said that was his last chance to get the money or they was going to kill him. Then he said because I was stupid, he was going to have to make a deal with the devil to get out of this mess.”

  Carter and I looked at each other. “The FBI,” we both said.

  It made perfect sense. Whoever Floyd owed had decided to either cut their losses or make an example of him, just as Ida Belle had suggested. The FBI had probably been trying to make a case against whomever he owed and offered him a deal to get out of the trouble.

  “So the guys Floyd owed must have found out about his deal with the FBI,” I said.

  Carter nodded. “I said from the beginning that I thought they already knew who killed him. I guess I was right.” Carter looked back at Billy. “What about the sheriff’s department? Why that building?”

  “That weird guy was in the bar when Floyd yelled at me about getting the houses wrong. He said he knew a guy who wanted to buy the sheriff’s building, and that if you had the money to move into the old firehouse, everyone would be happy.”

  “He paid you to start the fire?” Carter asked.

  “Not exactly. I mean, he said if something happened to make you move, then he could buy the building, and if that happened, there was something in it for me.”

  I glanced at Carter, and could see he was thinking what I was. I had no doubt the real estate agent was behind Billy’s fire-starting project, but it would be hard to make a case against him since no money had exchanged hands.

  “Who the hell is this guy?” Carter asked.

  “He’s a real estate agent,” I said. “I talked to him in town one day and got a strange vibe from him, so I looked him up. He specializes in commercial properties. Ally said he tried to buy her house after her mother moved, but Ally wasn’t interested in selling.”

  “I don’t get it,” Carter said. “Why that house?”

  “I didn’t get it at first, but I think I have an idea. Billy said Floyd tried to sell his house, but the guy wanted both of them. Then he figured if he could get you to move out, he’d buy the sheriff’s department building. I think he wanted the building for the same reason you won’t move—access to the bayou.”

  “You think his client wants water access?”

  I nodded. “His list of clients was mostly importers. Sinful Bayou does eventually run into the Gulf, right?”

  Carter’s expression cleared. “And a location in Sinful is a lot cheaper than a location in New Orleans.”

  “Exactly. I offered him Marge’s house and he said he needed something more remote but specified that it still had to have city services. The sheriff’s department building sits a bit away
from everything on Main Street, so it would be perfect.”

  “Unbelievable,” Carter said.

  I nodded. “Everything makes sense now. Except…”

  “The creeper,” Carter finished. He looked at Billy. “Have you been sneaking around Ms. uh, Boobs’s house late at night?”

  Billy’s eyes widened. “No. I don’t even know her real name, much less where she lives. Besides, I wouldn’t spy on a lady. My momma raised me better than that.”

  “See,” I said. “A man with standards.”

  Carter sighed. “I appreciate you being honest with us, Billy, but I’m going to have to take you down to the sheriff’s department and book you.”

  “What? Why? I ain’t done nothing wrong!” Billy’s shock was completely genuine.

  “You just admitted to setting two buildings on fire,” Carter said.

  “But I set my own house on fire and the insurance company said as long as I paid my premiums, I’d still get the check. I thought it was okay.”

  Carter closed his eyes and I wondered if he was weighing the option of arresting Billy against the option of shooting him in case a woman ever wanted to have his children and continue the bloodline.

  “You didn’t burn down your own house on purpose,” Carter explained. “That’s why you weren’t in trouble. But it’s illegal to burn down a building on purpose. That’s arson.”

  “But Floyd didn’t say nothing about no arson.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t,” Carter said, “but that doesn’t change the facts. I have to arrest you. You can call a lawyer down at the sheriff’s department, or I’ll get the public defender’s office to send someone.”

  A totally defeated Billy trudged out of the shack and down the porch steps. Carter grabbed the bucket and gasoline tank and we headed after him.

  “All of this,” Carter said, “because Floyd was a good-for-nothing petty criminal and Billy’s an idiot.”

  “Not all of it,” I said. “Billy’s not the creeper, and I think the creeper is a bigger problem than we originally thought.”