Swamp Sniper

by Jana DeLeon

  Walter rubbed his forehead and blew out a breath. His eyes misted up a bit and I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be for him to know Ida Belle was struggling and not be able to do a thing about it. I may not be thrilled about the things I’d done the last few days or about the things I was about to do, but at least I didn’t have to sit in my house with my hands tied, waiting for things to happen.

  I reached across the counter and squeezed his hand. “We’re working on things…me and Gertie. I don’t want to tell you about them because that information might put you in a bad position with Carter, and I don’t want that. But I want you to know that I’m doing everything I can.”

  Walter put his other hand over mine and gave me a grateful look. “I know you are. And something tells me it’s all going to turn out all right. I’ve got a good feeling about it, despite the odds being stacked against you.”

  “She’s going to be fine. I promise you.”

  I had no idea what made me say that. Maybe it was because I really liked Walter, and his lifelong devotion to a woman who kept turning down his marriage proposals made me a little emotional and girly. Maybe it’s because he was the kindly older man that I sometimes wished my father had been. Maybe I needed to say the words out loud so that I believed them myself.

  No matter. It worked.

  A slow smile started on Walter’s face and the resolve that I normally saw in him flooded back. “Damn right she’s going to be fine.” He shook his head. “Fortune, you’ve got to be the strangest librarian I’ve ever come across.”

  “Then I guess I’m in the right town.”

  He grinned. “You have a point. Maybe you should consider relocating permanently.”

  I shook my head. “I’m enjoying my stay—sorta—but my life is back north.”

  “So get a new life.” He winked at me. “Maybe one with your breakfast companion.”

  “Oh no. No playing matchmaker. You, of all people, ought to know the pitfalls of love. I’m even more hardheaded than Ida Belle. You and Carter would be two old, lonely men, sitting on the front porch and talking about how things would have been different if you’d only fallen for normal women.”

  He laughed. “Maybe. For someone who came here to settle up an estate, you certainly have proven to be a challenge for some. Still, challenge is what keeps people young. Keeps them alive. You can’t run from commitment forever, Fortune. Sooner or later, it’s going to catch you in one form or another.”

  “It already did,” I said, feeling a bit smug that I had one up on Walter now. “I have adopted a stray cat and need some food for him.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, that’s a big step. What did he do to get your attention?”

  “Made me shoot out two window panes in the guest room. As soon as I get the measurements, I’ll need to see about ordering replacement glass as well.”

  Walter stared at me for a moment, then when he realized I wasn’t joking he started laughing again, but this time, so hard his whole body began to shake. “So what I’m getting from this is that if Carter ever got you mad enough to shoot up your own house, you might keep him.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Walter was nothing if persistent. “You never know.”

  “Well, I got a bag of dry cat food right over here.” He walked over to a shelf near the counter and picked up a bag. “I suggest you start with a small bag first. One, to make sure he likes it, and two, to make sure you like him.”

  “What about canned food? I see those commercials.”

  “I don’t recommend it. Feed ’em the canned food and you’ll be stuck providing it forever. It’s more expensive and doesn’t smell all that great. Do you need a cat box?”

  “I don’t know. What’s a cat box?”

  “A place where a cat does his business. Litter box, I guess it’s called.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Since he’s a tomcat, he’ll probably prefer to go outside.”

  “I prefer that as well.” As someone who avoided domestics like the plague, that cat box thing didn’t sound remotely like something I was interested in. If Gertie hadn’t shown up once a week, insisting on cleaning my house, it would probably resemble my apartment back in DC. Or a military barracks. Same difference.

  “Then I guess this will do it,” he said and put the cat food on the counter. “Is that it?”

  “That will do it for now.”

  He nodded. “I’ll just put it on your tab. You can settle up with me the next time you do a beer run.”

  “Great.”

  He was still smiling as he grabbed his customer charge book, but when he glanced outside, the smile instantly disappeared. “Oh hell.”

  I glanced behind me and saw Paulette and her cousin about to pull open the door to the store. Crap! The last thing I wanted was to be in the middle of another downtown scene like the mob in front of the sheriff’s department two days before.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I jumped off the stool and scurried behind the counter, pushing Walter out of the way as I sank down behind it, out of sight. Walter looked startled when I shoved him, but as soon as I sank down on the floor and put my finger over my lips, he caught onto my plan to save us both some grief.

  He gave me a nod, then looked up and forced a blank expression. “Can I help you, Mrs. Williams?”

  “If there’s a God…has my hair spray come in yet?” Paulette asked.

  “It’s possible. I got a shipment yesterday evening, but I haven’t unpacked it yet.”

  “Well, do you think you can stop reading the paper long enough to do your job?”

  I clenched my fists, ready to jump up and punch her dead in the face. A second later, Walter’s foot connected with my leg and I was certain it wasn’t an accident.

  “Let me go check the back,” Walter said, with a level of politeness I could never have managed.

  “Do you have to be so rude?” Tony asked as soon as Walter entered the back storeroom.

  “I’m so sick of these hicks. If I don’t get out of this town soon, I’m going to lose it.”

  “It’s just another couple of days. Once the funeral is over, we’ll make arrangements and get you back to New Jersey.”

  “Oh, and that’s nothing to worry about.”

  “What’s to worry?”

  “How I’m going to live, for one thing. I’m not one of those ball-breaking career women. God made me to look pretty surrounded by expensive fabrics. At least Ted understood that about me.”

  I cringed. A certain group of men might be attracted to Paulette, but I doubted any of them would find her pretty. And if any of the fabric I’d seen in her house was expensive, then I’d just stick to cheap cotton because wow, talk about ugly.

  “Judy is opening a boutique. Only designer label. Maybe you can work there until you find a new situation.”

  “You want me to stand around taking shit off bitches buying clothes I ought to be buying for myself?”

  “It is what it is, Paulette. Until you can find another man, you still gotta eat.”

  “Whatever.”

  I shook my head. That Paulette was a piece of work, thinking she was entitled to a life she hadn’t lifted a finger to earn. But then, Ted hadn’t exactly earned his money in any respectable or laborious way, so I probably shouldn’t have any expectation that she’d think she should actually work like normal folk.

  “I don’t suppose that cop found out anything about those guys who broke in?” Tony asked.

  “Please. You think this bunch of hicks can solve a crime? He hasn’t found out who killed Ted and it’s been days.”

  “What do you think those guys were looking for? Was…er…Ted doing business here?”

  “Probably. He had money sometimes. I never asked where it came from. I didn’t care as long as I got my share and got the hell out of this town for a while.”

  “Do you think—”

  “Got it.” Walter walked out of the storeroom holding up a bottle of hair spray.

  “At
least I can look presentable at the funeral,” Paulette said. “Put it on my tab.”

  Her high heels started clicking on the hardwood floor before Walter even answered. I waited until the bells over the front door jangled, then popped up from behind the counter.

  “What a bitch!” I said and repeated what I’d heard, leaving off the part about Ted’s local business venture.

  Walter shook his head. “I never understood what Ted saw in that woman. She’s the kind that will bleed you dry until you’re nothing but a chalk line on the floor.”

  “Looks like someone beat her to it.”

  ###

  “I can’t quite reach it,” Gertie said.

  I put my hand under her rear and shoved it upward into the tree. We’d been at this for thirty minutes already and it was going about as well as I’d expected it to go. The back side of the cemetery was surrounded by swamp and skirted by the bayou. With all the water, no vehicles could get back there, so we’d borrowed Ida Belle’s recently repaired boat and tied it off to some cypress stumps.

  According to Ida Belle, it should have been a two-minute trek from our docking point to the cemetery, but Gertie, who was still fuddled from her head cracking the night before and sporting a black eye a prizefighter would have been proud of, started us off in the wrong direction. Ten minutes later, we finally arrived at the back edge of the cemetery and started scouting for a good tree, which turned out to be harder than I’d thought it would be.

  If we picked a tree at the front of the tree line, we risked being seen by a funeral attendee, and that was not an option. So we had to search for a tree along the second row that had enough coverage to camouflage us but also offered a clear, if narrow, view to the burial site. We’d finally found the perfect location, but getting Gertie into it had proved to be more of a challenge than finding it in the first place.

  All the trees at the edge of the swamp were old and thick, the lowest branches a good ten feet off the ground. The height posed no problem for me, but Gertie had a history of being vertically challenged, and now was no exception.

  She clutched the lowest limb on the tree as though the drop was a hundred feet straight into hell and kicked her feet, scrambling up my back and the top of my head until she was finally lying across the tree limb.

  “Do you need to take a break?” I asked as she leaned over the branch, huffing like an asthmatic.

  “Why do you always think I can’t handle things?”

  “Maybe because of the tennis shoe tread on top of my head?”

  She shot me a dirty look, then climbed into a standing position and started pulling herself up onto the next branch. I watched for several seconds, ready to break her fall, but she managed to get onto the branch and into a sitting position.

  “They’re starting to arrive,” she said. “Hurry up!”

  I positioned the backpack over my shoulders and jumped up to grab hold of the lowest branch. In one fluid movement, I pulled myself on top of the branch and immediately sprang up onto a branch next to Gertie.

  “Show-off,” she said as I straddled the branch and pulled the backpack in front of me.

  I grinned as I pulled out two sets of binoculars and handed one to her. “Look for the four people on our suspect list first and point them out to me,” I reminded her. “I may not be able to pick them out in a crowd from just the photos.”

  She nodded and put the binoculars to her eyes, wobbling a bit as she leaned forward to see between the branches. I said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t fall, at least not before we got what we came for. I lifted my own binoculars in time to see Father Michael leading the group of pallbearers to the grave site. Directly behind them were Paulette and Tony.

  Tony wore a shiny black suit that looked like something out of The Sopranos. Paulette was wearing black, but it was too tight, too low-cut, too glittery, and too youthful to be appropriate on any level.

  “At least she wore black,” Gertie said with a sigh.

  I smiled. Great minds.

  I scanned the rest of the attendees, spotting Celia and Ally, followed by Marie and some of the other Sinful Ladies who were brave enough to venture out and pay their respects. Walter and a couple of the old fishermen trailed behind the women, my “friend” Bobby walking just to the side of them. The rest of the crowd moved forward among the people I knew, but I didn’t know any of them by name. Carter was the last in the line of attendees, and I had to admit he looked sharp in a black suit and gray shirt.

  Paulette and Tony took seats in front of the coffin along with a couple of the more elderly attendees. The rest of the crowd dispersed in a circle around the grave site, Father Michael standing in the middle next to the coffin.

  “There,” Gertie said. “On the right in blue jeans and a Dale Earnhardt T-shirt. That’s Toby, the boat thief. The guy next to him wearing the bowling shirt is Blaine, the alligator poacher.”

  I scanned to the right and grimaced. “I thought for a second you were joking about the clothes.”

  “I wish. Unfortunately, that’s probably the best shirts they own. The two unfortunate women off to the left are their wives. Since they arrived separately from their husbands and are dressed appropriately, I’m guessing they prefer not to be seen with them.”

  “Wouldn’t a divorce be easier?” I asked.

  “How would I know? I never made the mistake of getting married.”

  Touché. “Do you see the other two?”

  “The adulterer Shelly is standing in the middle, wearing the dress that’s baby-poop green.”

  “Baby poop is green?” I shook my head, wondering again why anyone wanted kids. I scanned to the middle and found a woman wearing a hideous green dress. I recognized the hooked nose and mole on her forehead from the blackmail picture.

  “What about Lyle, our dope retailer?” I asked.

  “Give me a minute…yep, he’s three down from baby poop wearing a blue suit from the 1940s. Probably belonged to his dad. God rest his soul.”

  I located the ancient blue suit. “Got him. Great.” I let the binoculars hang around my neck and pulled two small video cameras from the backpack, happy with the way things were going so far. We could see all of the suspects’ faces and since they were grouped in pairs, we could easily capture them on video.

  I handed Gertie one of the cameras. “You take baby poop and old suit. I’ll get tacky and tackier. How long will this part last?”

  “Fifteen minutes. Maybe less. Father Michael is less inclined to get long-winded during summer burials because of the heat and all.”

  “Gotcha.” I lifted my camera and started filming the two idiots in T-shirts, closely watching their expressions as Father Michael did his number, waving his Bible in the air. “I wonder if Ted had gas during the ceremony?”

  “Well, he was certainly full of it, so it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “See anything interesting?”

  “Mostly everyone looks bored. If you’d heard one of Father Michael’s graveside services, you’d understand.”

  I focused on my two targets again, but had to agree with Gertie—all I saw was boredom. “I hope Father Michael is wearing something itchy and this is over soon.”

  “We should have thought to rub poison ivy in his underwear.”

  I glanced over at Gertie, then back to my guys. I wasn’t even going to ask why that particular idea was right at the forefront of her mind, and was certain I never wanted to know how she would have accessed Father Michael’s underwear drawer.

  It took another eight minutes of talking and Bible-waving before Father Michael wrapped things up. He motioned to Paulette and Tony, who stood as the casket was lowered into the grave, then each tossed a handful of dirt on it. Paulette covered her face with a Kleenex and leaned against Tony, who put his arm around her as they walked away. Some of the other fifty or so attendees followed Tony and Paulette. Others lined up single file to get their handful of dirt.

  Lyle was one of the first to throw the dirt and ma
ke his exit. Shelly was toward the end of the line, and I saw her glance around before leaning over to toss the dirt. It seemed a bit odd and I hoped I’d be able to zoom in on it with the camera footage and get a better look. Toby and Blaine, whose wives had long since tossed the dirt and fled the cemetery, were the last to go but instead of trailing off after the rest of the crowd, they stood back, chatting as the gravediggers came over to start filling the hole.

  “Keep filming Toby and Blaine,” I told Gertie as I reached for my backpack. I slipped my video camera back inside and drew out my binoculars, hoping to get a closer look at the two guys.

  “Why are they standing around in the cemetery talking?” Gertie asked. “It’s morbid. They should go to a bar or something.”

  “They’re already dressed for it,” I agreed.

  I shifted the backpack back over my shoulder and lifted the binoculars, taking a second to lock on to my two suspects. They were still standing in the same place chatting and showed no signs of leaving.

  I reached for the focus and twisted it a bit to sharpen my view. I had just gotten it perfect when I heard a gunshot. A split second later, the branch above me splintered.

  Chapter Twenty

  Immediately, I tucked in behind the trunk and ducked. “What the hell!”

  Gertie had flattened herself on the branch, her legs and arms dangling on each side, one hand still gripping the video camera. “You never know—”

  “When someone might start shooting. I know. But why are they shooting at us?”

  A second shot rang out, but this one farther away, and a flock of gray birds flew out of the tree, some of them headed straight for us. I ducked as two of the birds zoomed by but Gertie wasn’t as fortunate. One of them smacked her right on the head and sent her tumbling backward off the branch.

  I lunged for her, but couldn’t reach her in time. Gertie’s body went into survival mode and her legs locked around the tree, preventing her from falling, but leaving her dangling like a bat, the video camera still clutched in her hand with a death grip.