by Jana DeLeon
“No problem,” I said.
Gertie perked up. “We should ask Scooter if he knows what hit Walter…in case there’s a cut anywhere.”
Carter frowned. “I didn’t see any, but you’re right. Even a small infected cut on the head is a bad thing.”
We headed back down the dock where Scooter was unloading the fishing gear from the boat. He looked up as we approached and there was no mistaking his worried expression. “He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Scooter asked.
“I think he’ll be fine,” Gertie said. “Probably just need to take it easy for a couple of days.”
“I hope you’re right. It was just so strange…that explosion coming out of nowhere.”
“We were wondering if you saw what hit Walter? The doctors will want to know.”
Scooter’s eyes widened. “Crap! I completely forgot. I brought it with me, in case you needed it for that police stuff and all.”
He turned around and opened his ice chest and pulled something out, then tossed it on the dock. Gertie shrieked and skipped backward right off the dock and into the bayou. Deputy Breaux whipped around and reached down to help Gertie back onto the pier.
Carter and I leaned over Scooter’s offering, then looked at each other.
“Walter was knocked unconscious by a flying leg?” I asked.
Carter stared. “That’s what it looks like.”
“Is anything ever normal in this town?”
Deputy Breaux stepped up beside me and the blood drained from his face. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.”
Carter reached over and grabbed the leg, lifting it up to his face. He took a sniff, then blanched. The smell wafted my direction and I covered my nose and mouth with my hand. Deputy Breaux covered his nose with his arm and took several steps back.
“It smells like it’s made of stale cat urine,” I said.
Carter tossed the leg back onto the dock and turned his head to take in a breath. “Yeah. Which is even worse news than before.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Do you know what smells like cat urine?” Carter asked.
“Old Miss Johnson’s house,” Deputy Breaux said, “but she’s got about a hundred cats and both of her legs. I saw her earlier downtown.”
Gertie rolled over on the dock and struggled to her feet, sending a spray of water onto us. “Meth labs,” she said.
Deputy Breaux uttered a strangled cry. “No way!”
Carter stared at her. “How do you know that?”
“Wikipedia,” she said. “There’s so much information on the Internet. It’s downright amazing, and somewhat disturbing in a lot of cases.”
“Yes, the Internet is full of things that help criminals,” Carter agreed, “but why were you looking up meth labs? You know what, never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”
I looked down at the leg. “A meth lab? In Sinful?”
Gertie nodded. “And with Nelson as sheriff, they could be selling the stuff on Main Street and he wouldn’t catch them.” She shot me a look and I struggled to keep my expression the same. I knew exactly what she was suggesting—that with Carter out of commission, there was no one left to keep Sinful safe.
I didn’t want to agree with her, but one person very important to me had already been injured. And if he’d been hit by a piece of flying metal instead of a leg, he might be dead. Not to mention that meth was an insidious evil that could ruin a small community like Sinful in a matter of months. When Carter looked away, I gave her a slight nod.
This was a mission for Swamp Team 3.
###
We could hear Walter complaining as soon as we entered the emergency room hallway.
“He sounds fine to me,” Gertie said.
I gave her a nod. From what I could hear, he sounded the way Carter had just days before. It was either a relation thing or a man thing. When we entered the room, Ida Belle was sitting in the corner, shaking her head. Dr. Stewart was standing next to Walter’s bed, looking frustrated. He glanced over when we entered and his frown deepened as he locked his gaze on Carter.
Carter held up both his hands. “Fortune drove. I swear.”
“Uh-huh, and at a highly illegal rate of speed based on how quickly you got here. Which means you were either fully dressed in your bed, or you were out roaming Main Street when you should be resting.”
“Mom drove me to town and I was sitting.”
Dr. Stewart raised one eyebrow. “Really? That’s what you’re going with? Anyway, I assume you’re not here to be readmitted even though it’s probably not a bad idea.”
“Damn doctors,” Walter groused. “Being cooped up in hospitals is what makes people sick.”
Carter nodded.
“Is he all right?” Gertie asked.
“He’s going to be fine,” Dr. Stewart said. “There’s no sign of damage other than the knot on his head. The stubbornness was in place before he arrived. Do you know what hit him?”
I glanced at Carter, who hesitated a moment before answering. “Yeah, Scooter thought it would be a good idea to bring it with him.”
“Really?” Dr. Stewart looked a bit surprised. “That’s a lot of thinking for Scooter.”
“Yeah, well, I’m especially glad he had a moment of clarity in this case.”
“Oh? Something wrong?”
Carter nodded. “Very wrong. Walter was hit by a flying leg.”
“What?” Walter sat upright. “Get me out of this hospital right now. I need to go home and shower for the next day or two.”
Dr. Steward frowned. “I guess from one of the moonshiners.”
“I don’t think it was a still that exploded,” Carter said. “The leg smells like cat urine.”
Dr. Stewart’s eyes widened. “A meth lab?”
“That was my guess. I brought the leg with me hoping you could do a test…”
“Yes, of course. It’s not my area of expertise, but I’ll talk to the guys in the lab. I’m sure there’s something they can manage.”
Carter shifted a bit, looking uncomfortable. “Doctor, if you could keep this between us for the time being, I’d appreciate it.”
“I heard about Celia and Nelson,” Dr. Stewart said. “Normally, I wouldn’t be part of hiding evidence, but in this case, it seems the prudent thing to do. Besides, I had this beautiful Cadillac…” He sighed.
Strike five thousand for Nelson and his auto business. I wondered if there was anyone in Sinful over the age of forty that he hadn’t screwed.
“Thanks,” Carter said.
“Don’t mention it,” Dr. Stewart said. “Literally. Don’t mention it.”
Carter nodded. “The leg is in a cooler right outside the door.”
“I’ll take care of it and call you when I have something, but you will turn the evidence over to someone responsible enough to investigate it, even if that means calling in the state police. And you’ll do all of it from the recliner in your living room.”
“Yes, sir,” Carter said, and sighed.
“Well, if you don’t have any other doom and gloom to lay on me,” Dr. Stewart said, “I’m going to grab the leg and head up front to sign release papers for Walter.”
Walter hooted and Dr. Stewart shook his head.
“With the condition,” Dr. Stewart continued, “that you rest for at least forty-eight hours and call me if you have any changes in your condition. In fact, maybe you should stay with Carter for a couple of days. You two can bitch about me and hospitals from your recliners. Don’t make me call Emmaline.”
Carter and Walter shot each other a nervous glance and I held in a laugh. Carter’s mom was beautiful, smart, and kind, but more importantly, a force to be reckoned with when it came to her family. Dr. Stewart pointed a finger at both of them and left the room.
“Busted,” Gertie said, and laughed.
Walter swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Anyone who doesn’t want to see my bare butt will exit now.”
Carter practically ran me
over getting out of the room, and I was close behind. I liked Walter, but I didn’t want to see any of his parts naked except for the socially acceptable ones.
“So are you going to call the state police?” I asked Carter as we all huddled in the hallway. He’d already asked Deputy Breaux to keep the flying meth leg to himself for the time being. Something the good deputy had been visibly relieved to agree to.
“I guess I should,” he said, but I could tell the idea left a bad taste in his mouth.
Ida Belle shook her head. “The state police will never get anywhere with the locals. It takes somebody who knows those people to get to the bottom of this sort of thing.”
“If only Walter had been hit by a flying hand,” I said. “At least then you could have gotten fingerprints.”
Carter stared at me. “You have the oddest trains of thought for a librarian. What the heck do you read while you’re sitting there waiting to check out books for people?”
Crap. “I might read detective books.”
He shook his head. “That explains a lot.” He looked over at Ida Belle and Gertie. “What’s your excuse?”
“I blame television,” Gertie said.
“I’m just nosy,” Ida Belle said. “And I don’t like living with criminals. The regular drunk-and-disorderlies and poachers are one thing, but I don’t want Sinful to become the meth lab capital of the swamp.”
Carter narrowed his eyes and looked at the three of us. “You three are to stay out of this, understand? I may not be able to arrest you, but if I catch you looking into this, I swear to God, I’ll call Celia and tell her to have Nelson put you all in jail.”
I glanced at Ida Belle and Gertie. I had no doubt Carter would make good on his threat if he thought it would keep us out of trouble. I had even less doubt that Celia would jump at the chance to put us all behind bars.
“I mean it,” he said. “Just days ago, you were seconds away from being shot. If I hadn’t shown up when I did…”
“Hey, leave me out of it,” I said. “I was at home taking a nap, remember?”
Ida Belle and Gertie shot me dirty looks, and it was all I could do to hold in a smile. The truth was, I’d been right in the thick with them up until the firing squad part. I’d managed to slink away before being discovered and avoid any uncomfortable scrutiny from Carter about why librarians would go after arms dealers. The whole thing was ironic, really, considering an arms dealer was the entire reason I was hiding out in Sinful pretending to be someone else.
“Yes,” Carter said. “That’s what you keep saying, but what I’ve never gotten a good answer for is why you weren’t there when you’ve been in the fat middle of everything the other two have been into since you arrived.”
“We didn’t tell her,” Gertie said.
“Why not?” Carter asked.
“On account of you two dating and we were afraid it might lower her chances of getting lucky if you were mad,” Gertie said. “I vaguely remember getting lucky. Now I’m too old for anything but a vicarious thrill, so I was protecting my interests.”
I coughed to keep from laughing. The look on Carter’s face was priceless, and I’d be willing to bet that he’d never venture down that line of questioning again.
“Yes, well,” Ida Belle said, “all talk of luck aside, we’ve got a real dilemma on our hands. Carter is benched and Deputy Breaux is a nice boy but not capable of handling anything of this magnitude. The state police wouldn’t be any better. Not with only a flying leg to go on.”
“I can do some checking,” Carter said.
“From your recliner?” Gertie asked.
“If that’s the way it has to be, then yeah.”
He said it casually, but I could see the wheels turning. Carter had a plan, but he wasn’t about to share it with us. If ever there was a time I wished I had those feminine wiles that Gertie was always talking about, it was now. Unfortunately, so far, my way to Carter’s heart had been trying not to give him reasons to arrest me. Even if I knew how to turn on the charm, if I did it now, he’d have Dr. Stewart checking me out for brain damage.
“Then I guess that’s that,” I said.
Feminine wiles might be off the table, but spying wasn’t. And at that, I was a master.
Chapter Three
After we got Walter ensconced in his recliner for the afternoon, the rest of us headed back to the festival. Gertie and Ida Belle needed to check on the Sinful Ladies booth to make sure they weren’t running low on product, and I had promised Carter I’d let him show me the joys that were Sinful’s Fourth of July celebration.
I had to work a bit to appear relaxed at the festival, but I didn’t want Carter to get the idea that my mind was firmly locked on the explosion. It was somewhat interesting since I could tell he was making a show for me, but clearly, his mind was also on Sinful’s current criminal trend. We both pretended to care about really bad singing at the talent show and blue ribbons on candied yams, and a pig beauty pageant—which was actually quite entertaining since the pigs got loose—but neither of us was really engaged. I just hoped my acting was better than his, or that he was too distracted to notice how bad it was.
By late afternoon, I could tell his energy was beginning to wane and commented that I needed to head home and feed the cat, and could use a shower. It was, after all, Louisiana in July. We could easily see the fireworks from my backyard, so he could get some rest, then head over to my house at dark. He looked a bit relieved, and I held in a smile as he headed off with Emmaline, who’d shown up an hour or so earlier. Men.
“I’m glad you finally told him you were going home,” Gertie said. “He’d have stayed here until his heart gave out before he admitted he was tired.”
I nodded. “I know. And it wasn’t exactly a lie. I could definitely use that shower.”
Gertie pulled at her top, which was sticking to her chest. “Got that right.”
“What time does Ally get off work?” Ida Belle asked.
“She’s already off,” I said, “but she’s selling pies at the café booth until eight.”
“Good,” Ida Belle said. “Let’s all head home for a refresher, then meet at Fortune’s house…say in an hour. That will give us some time to talk things over before Carter gets there.”
“Sounds good,” I said and headed through the crowd. I’d been concentrating so much on appearing normal that I’d forced myself to avoid thinking of the current problem at hand. Once I got into assignment mode, I tended to blank out on everything that wasn’t about the job. But as I was Carter-free on the walk home, I had the opportunity to let all the facts roll around.
It wasn’t a very long roll.
What we knew wouldn’t fill a Post-it note. Something exploded. We suspected it was a meth lab, and there was no history of meth problems in Sinful. Heck, that didn’t even get me half a block. Given my short-lived history with the town, I wasn’t going to be able to offer much in the way of ideas, so I had to hope that Ida Belle and Gertie had some. More importantly, that they were viable.
A long, cool shower was great for my sweaty body, but didn’t provide any mental illumination, so I figured a beer and some of Ally’s chocolate chip cookies were in order. I sat the plate of cookies on the kitchen table and plopped down in front of my laptop. I hadn’t heard from Harrison since last weekend, when he’d let me know that Director Morrow had been struck by a hit-and-run driver. Harrison’s message implied that Morrow was okay, but also that the attack had been deliberate. Since they’d lost eyes on Ahmad a week or so before, I didn’t blame Harrison for not putting Morrow’s incident down to coincidence.
I went through the process of rerouting my log-in so that no one could trace anything I did back to Louisiana, and opened up the fake email account Harrison had set up for me before I left DC. My pulse ticked up a notch when I saw a message.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I knew you’d be worrying, so I wanted to give you an update o
n Dad. The doctor says his foot will heal up nicely and no additional surgery is required. The swelling in his head is going down, and he’s not having headaches as often. Apparently, he saw the car just before it jumped the curb and managed to leap out of the way, leaving only his foot and head to take the brunt of it. He’s lucky as the car was traveling well above the speed limit. The police got security footage from the bank across the street, and I’ve got to tell you, it made my heart jump when I saw just what a close call it was. Unfortunately, the car was reported stolen the day before, so we’ll probably never know who the driver was. Obviously a criminal, so for all we know, he could have been fleeing the scene of another crime. That seems to be the police take on the matter.
In other news, the cool weather still eludes us. The weather people keep teasing us with promises of a drop soon, but so far, nothing has panned out. How are things down on the farm?
I slumped back in my chair and blew out a breath. Harrison’s message would seem normal enough to anyone else, but I knew exactly what he was trying to convey. The attack on Morrow was intentional, and he was lucky to have escaped with his life. He might not be so lucky the next time. And with the car being stolen, there was nothing to go on. Which meant Morrow and Harrison would need eyes in the back of their heads until this whole ordeal with Ahmad was over.
Even worse, they still hadn’t found any sign of Ahmad. In the five years the CIA had been tracking him, they’d never lost sight of him for more than a couple of days. Either he’d gone deep underground or someone in his organization had taken him out. But if the second had happened, the CIA would have seen movement from the new ruling party. I shook my head. The far more likely scenario was that Ahmad had intentionally disappeared. But for what purpose? Was killing me really that important to him, or was he off pursuing a new business interest?
I drummed my fingers on the table and sat upright when a thought occurred to me. What if he’d gone underground for plastic surgery? That had happened once with a drug dealer in Colombia. He’d dropped off the map for weeks, then a new face appeared at the compound, giving orders like a general. Whoever had done the work had made such a difference in his appearance that none of us noticed the similarities until an operative who did clay sculpture of human heads as a hobby pointed out the bone structure. The facial recognition software verified her observation, and we were still able to get our man.
