Jana DeLeon - Miss Fortune 06 - Soldiers of Fortune

by Jana DeLeon

  “I wish there were something I could do.” I held my hand in the air to stop Carter from interrupting. “Not about the crime. Just about Ida Belle and Gertie feeling bad about it. They’re not responsible, but I get the impression they feel that they are.”

  “They love this place. I can understand that.” He turned a bit in his chair so that he could face me. “When I left here, I was thrilled and absolutely certain I never wanted to return. Then when I got to Iraq, I couldn’t think of anything but coming home.”

  “You were fighting a war, Carter. It’s not like you were vacationing. Wanting to come home sounds perfectly normal to me.”

  “When I got back stateside, I told myself the same thing. So I headed home for a visit with my mom, then I took off again. For three months, I traveled around the US. Sometimes, I went to visit friends. Other times, I went to a place just because I wanted to see it. One time, I threw darts at a map and the first three places I hit, I went to.”

  I stared at him for a moment, absorbing this information. It was a side of Carter I didn’t know, and it was an interesting thing that he’d done. “I guess nowhere else compared?”

  “No. And I saw some pretty amazing things—beautiful coastlines, majestic mountains, those enormous trees that you can drive a car through—but no matter how great it was, it wasn’t home. So I came back. Sheriff Lee hired me on as a deputy and the rest is really boring history.”

  “Until a month ago.”

  He nodded.

  “I have to ask, does Sinful still look as good now?”

  His brow creased. “It’s still home. I’m not sure what it would take to change that. But I see it differently than I did before. It’s impossible not to.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I knew exactly what he was saying. Every time I was on a mission, I thought about the end, when I’d go home to my quiet, safe apartment and decompress. Where I could relax with Harrison over a beer and a discussion of firearms. It was a pace so slow, sometimes it felt I was going in reverse, and a lot of the time I was bored and itching for that phone call from Morrow that would send me back into the field. But no matter what, I still looked forward to going home.

  Except now, I had another basis for comparison. Living in Sinful had opened my eyes to what being part of a community was about. It had exposed me to true friendships and the sacrifices people were willing to make for them. Bottom line—it had shown me how hollow my life in DC was. When all of this was over and I went back to my old life, things would never be the same.

  There was no way they could be.

  “Have you heard anything from Dr. Stewart?” I asked, feeling the need for a change of subject. The current one was becoming too deep and far too depressing.

  “You mean have I called Dr. Stewart to ask him about the thing I’m not supposed to mention and that you’re not supposed to ask questions about?”

  “Yeah, that would be the one.”

  He shook his head. “You never give up, do you?”

  “In my defense, you never told me I couldn’t ask questions. You told me to stay out of the investigation. Since I’m here with you drinking wine and waiting for explosives in the sky, I’d say I’m definitely meeting that criterion.”

  He raised one eyebrow.

  “C’mon,” I complained. “I’m going to find out one way or another. I’m sure Ida Belle and Gertie know a nurse, volunteer, or janitor who owes them a favor, or have somehow linked their home computers to the hospital’s security feed, or maybe they’ll just dress up like hospital staff, stroll right in, and read the file over a cup of coffee. Bottom line, it’s just a matter of time.”

  Carter sighed. “Given that Gertie was impersonating hospital personnel a week ago, your list is more plausible than one would hope. Yes. Dr. Stewart called right before I left to come over here.”

  “And?”

  “The leg tested positive for meth, both on the skin and in the bloodstream.”

  “Crap. I knew you were right. You’re too good at your job not to be, but I still hoped…”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “I don’t suppose they had any way of identifying who the leg belonged to?”

  “Unfortunately, no. No tattoos, no surgical implements with serial numbers, not even a unique scar.”

  “So you’ve got nothing.”

  “It was a white male, thirties to forties, approximately five foot ten to six foot two and fairly lean.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

  “No, it doesn’t. And that’s assuming he was a Sinful resident, which is something we can’t be certain about. With the oil field work and all the construction after the hurricanes, plenty of people have come and gone around here. Any one of them could have scouted out a place for their operation and come back much later to fire it up.”

  “It would be nice if it turned out to be a stranger. Or mostly one. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. Well, we can hope.”

  The words said one thing, but the tone of his voice said another. Whether it was instinct or a hunch or whatever mojo made Carter good at his job, he already knew that the problem was homegrown. Which meant I was going to be forced to hang out with teens and probably steal a boat, but in the big scheme of things, those weren’t the worst things I’d done since I’d arrived in Sinful.

  A loud whistling sound disrupted my thinking and I looked up to see the first of the fireworks explode across the night sky. Carter reached over and took my hand in his, giving me a smile. I took a drink of my wine and relaxed. Tonight was all about enjoying the splendor of things that blew up.

  Tomorrow I’d concentrate on the darker side of things going boom.

  Chapter Four

  I had just changed into my sleeping tee and pulled on shorts when I heard the front door open. I headed downstairs for my late-night snack and found Ally in the kitchen, dumping her purse on the table.

  “You stayed out late,” I said. The fireworks show had ended around an hour before. Right about that time, the breeze stopped and the mosquitoes moved in for the kill. I invited Carter in but he declined, saying he needed to get some rest as he was on Walter duty tomorrow, per Emmaline. I guessed she figured having them in one place would make it easier to keep both of them from overexertion. I wished her all the luck in the world on that one.

  I could tell Carter was tired, but the wistful expression he wore when I dropped him off in front of his house made me wonder if the real reason he left was because he knew Ally would be home soon and didn’t want to tempt either of us into a compromising position. It was just as well. I knew I wanted Carter, but I still wasn’t sold on it being a good idea. And even though I was rarely embarrassed, the thought of Ally sleeping across the hall with Carter and me only two walls away made me kinda squeamish. Since Emmaline had moved into Carter’s spare room until Dr. Stewart gave him clearance, his house was even worse on the “hell no” scale.

  “I was talking with a couple of the vendors after the show,” Ally said. “I went to school with some of them, and people from other towns stopped by to comment on the festival and mostly on Francine’s pies. Then the mosquitoes moved in and everyone cleared out.” She began to yawn and threw her hand over her mouth. “I swear, I had all this energy just a little while ago, and now I’m about to fall asleep standing here.”

  I took a closer look at her. Her eyes were half closed and she was swaying slightly in place. “You’ve had a long day. Do you work tomorrow?”

  “No. Francine changed the schedule to give me the day off since I worked at the café this morning and the pie booth at the festival.”

  “That’s good. Maybe you can sleep in.”

  Ally smiled. “I always try to, but it never works. I finally accepted that I’m one of those awful morning people. But I do think I’m going to head up now. I hope I can stay awake long enough to shower the street dust off of me. See you tomorrow.”

  “Good night,” I said and watched her trudge out of the kitchen a
nd down the hallway. As I opened the refrigerator, I heard a crash in the living room and rushed down the hallway. Ally and one of the decorative tables in the living room had apparently had a run-in. The lamp was the big loser. Ally was struggling to get up from the floor and I grabbed her hand just before she got a fistful of drapes. As I hauled her to her feet, her knees started to buckle.

  “Are you drunk?” I asked, trying to lock in on a logical explanation for her collapse. One that didn’t involve anything serious.

  “Someone sneaked champagne to the festival, but I only had one glass,” she said, her voice slurred.

  “That must have been one helluva glass. Let’s get you into bed.”

  I half carried her up the stairs and let her drop onto the bed, then I swung her legs over onto the mattress and pulled off her tennis shoes. She was already snoring when I pulled the blanket over her. I shook my head and headed out of the room. Ally had always been a lightweight when it came to drinking, but this seemed extreme after only a glass.

  I knew she’d been working a lot and worrying over her house construction. Sometimes I heard her moving around her bedroom in the middle of the night, so I knew her sleep wasn’t all that great. Neither was mine, for that matter, since her restlessness always had me leaping out of bed and scrambling for my gun. Secretly, I was proud of myself for not having accidentally shot anything in one of my recent midnight grabs. I hadn’t always been so lucky since I’d arrived in Sinful.

  I tromped back to the kitchen and grabbed my usual bedtime snack of chocolate milk and cookies, then headed back upstairs to my bedroom, ready to crawl into bed myself. I was halfway through a thriller novel and it was a doozy. With any luck, I could get in a couple more chapters before my eyes started drooping.

  I put the chocolate milk and cookies on the nightstand next to the book, turned on the lamp, and turned off the bedroom lights. Then I pulled off my shorts, propped the pillows up and slid into bed. Merlin hopped up next to me and curled himself into a tight, purring ball. I leaned back against the pillows for a bit, sighing as the cool sheets made my whole body tingle. I hadn’t realized how tired I was until I’d gotten into bed.

  Two chapters.

  I opened my eyes and reached for the book and a cookie. The private investigator heroine had just chased a killer into a dark alleyway and was now sneaking among the Dumpsters and crates, ready to fire if necessary. I could easily picture the dim light from the yellow bulb at the top of the building and the chill she felt from the drizzling rain. As she inched closer to a Dumpster at the end of the alley, I clenched the pages. Just a couple more steps and she’d be there, looking behind the Dumpster.

  I turned the page, ready for the big showdown…and heard a noise downstairs.

  I froze. Merlin’s head flew up and his ears went back. Damn it. That meant I hadn’t imagined it. I dropped the book and slid out of bed, lifting my pistol from the nightstand as I went. I crept out of the bedroom and across the hall. Ally was still in the same position I’d left her in and I could hear her softly snoring. I reached for the door to close it, then hesitated. Sometimes, it squeaked. Best to leave it alone.

  I looked over the stair railing into the living room. A sliver of light crept into the room from the hallway to the kitchen. I frowned, fairly certain I’d turned off all the kitchen lights. I held position for several seconds, listening for any sign of movement. I was just about to chalk it all up to something shifting in the refrigerator or falling in the pantry when I heard the sound of a chair sliding across the kitchen floor. A couple seconds later, I heard someone opening the refrigerator.

  What the hell? What kind of intruder broke in to raid your food supply?

  I considered my options. Conventional wisdom said I should call the police, and if Carter were at full capacity, I might have actually considered doing so. But with the options for response being Deputy Breaux or even worse, Nelson, I wasn’t convinced that calling the police would result in anything more effective than crawling in bed and letting him eat me out of house and home would accomplish.

  I sighed. Regardless of the current lack of ability of law enforcement, I needed to try harder to stay off the radar, especially as long as Celia was running the show. She’d take any opportunity to make an example of me. I headed back into my bedroom to make the call, but my cell phone wasn’t on my nightstand. Then I recalled seeing it on the kitchen counter as I’d poured my glass of milk…sitting right next to Ally’s purse, which contained her cell phone. Great. The first time I’d actually intended to do the normal-person responsible thing, and the phones were right next to the bad guys.

  Right next to the remainder of the chocolate chip cookies.

  I gripped my gun, my resolve firm. No way was someone getting away with the last of my cookies, but I couldn’t possibly catch the intruder if I used the stairs. They made too much noise. Before I could change my mind, I made my way over to my bedroom window and lifted it up. I eased over the ledge and onto the porch roof, then hurried to the edge of the porch and jumped off the side, rolling as I hit the ground. Dried leaves and twigs from the shrubs bordering the front of the house dug into my bare feet, but I didn’t give them more than a second’s thought as I set out around the side of the house for the back. I would be able to see inside the kitchen from the window. If I could manage to get up the steps without alerting the intruder to my presence, my plan was to burst in through the back door and take him by surprise.

  When I reached the corner of the house, I peered around, looking for any sign of movement in the backyard. Moonlight provided decent illumination from the house all the way to the bayou, but the backyard and the waterfront were clear. Whoever it was hadn’t arrived by boat, or hadn’t docked behind my house. I slipped around the corner and skirted the back of the house behind the shrubs until I reached the kitchen window. I peered over the edge and held in a curse when I saw that the blinds were drawn.

  I never closed the blinds.

  I dropped back down and considered my options. I could knock on a neighbor’s door and ask to use their phone, but then I’d have to explain how I got out of my house without the intruder hearing me and why I was prancing around my lawn in a T-shirt and underwear, packing a nine-millimeter. The T-shirt was long enough to cover my rear, but just barely, and more than likely, it was illegal to be outside without pants on Thursday nights. I couldn’t believe I’d left the house without putting my shorts back on. This whole domestic living thing had completely ruined me.

  I tapped my fingers on my pistol and considered my other limited options. I could jog to Gertie’s, but then I risked being seen jogging in a T-shirt and underwear and packing a nine-millimeter, not to mention, the intruder might leave before I could get to Gertie’s and get the police to my house. And that would still leave me explaining my state of undress and gun-toting to law enforcement and anyone else who happened to see me half streaking down the block. Besides, I couldn’t leave Ally inside unprotected.

  Crap.

  Seemed as if only one option was available, and that was bursting into the kitchen with no knowledge of what awaited me on the other side of the door. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t done it before, and to people who were likely far more dangerous than the refrigerator raider. But then, crazy people were unpredictable, and breaking into someone’s house to eat was decidedly crazy. Mind made up, I crept out of the bushes and up the back steps. I expected to find the back door jimmied, but neither the lock nor the door appeared damaged at all.

  How the heck had he gotten inside?

  I placed my shoulder against the door, then took a step back and leaped as hard as I could against it.

  Sorta.

  At least, it would have been against the door if someone hadn’t opened it at the exact time I launched.

  I flew into the kitchen, my bare feet not even connecting with the tile floor before I went sprawling down on it. I gripped my gun with both hands to avoid dropping it, rolled over to get my feet underneath me, and leap
ed up ready to fire. And found myself looking directly at Big and Little Hebert. I glanced over at the door and saw Mannie standing there still holding the knob.

  Big, who was sitting across two of my kitchen chairs, lifted a chocolate chip cookie and took a bite. “You have an interesting way of welcoming guests into your home.”

  I lowered my gun and stared. “Have you lost your mind? You broke into my house, and for the record, this is exactly the way I deal with intruders.”

  Big looked over at Little, who smiled. “Interesting,” Big said. “You have some odd habits for a librarian, Ms. Morrow. I find you fascinating.”

  Little nodded. “She’s quite muscular as well. Hauling books around must be great for the physique.”

  Crap!

  As I dashed to the laundry room, I heard Mannie chuckling behind me. I yanked on a pair of shorts, then stalked back to the kitchen and glared at the three of them. “How did you get in here?”

  Mannie looked amused. “Are you kidding me? I could have picked that lock when I was three. You should get a dead bolt.”

  “It’s at the top of my list,” I said. “What are you doing in my house? You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

  “We can see that now,” Big said. “We thought taking your roommate out of the equation meant you’d be easier to handle, but we didn’t count on this much vigor and stealth, even though we’ve seen some of your work.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What did you do to Ally? Oh my God. I have to call the paramedics!”

  “Your friend is fine,” Big said. “She simply had a long day that ended with a lovely glass of champagne laced with a bit of a sleeping pill. She’ll wake up in the morning feeling more rested than she has in ages.”

  I closed my eyes and clutched the top of my head. This had to be a dream, because none of it made a lick of sense. But when I lowered my hands and opened my eyes, they were all still there. “You drugged Ally? What in the world for?”