by Jana DeLeon
“I suppose the first thing we do is dig deeper into Dexter and more importantly, Molly,” I said. “We need to know if there’s family lurking around, waiting on an inheritance. And given that the collective gossips in Sinful haven’t managed to get anything out of her, I have a feeling running down facts on Molly isn’t going to be a simple matter.”
Ida Belle nodded. “We don’t even know for certain that Molly is her real name.”
“What did that document Ally read say?” Gertie asked.
“Miss Molly of Miss Molly’s Catering,” I said. “I looked over her shoulder.”
“Well, that’s no help,” Gertie said. “And is it even legal?”
“If it’s in Molly’s handwriting and she’s known for that name, I would guess it is,” Ida Belle said. “And for all we know, she has a will stashed in a safe-deposit box somewhere that says the same thing.”
“Or had an attorney working on one and drew up that document in case something happened,” Gertie said.
I nodded. “Which begs the question—did something happen?”
“Or did she think something might happen?” Ida Belle asked.
“Let’s start with Molly,” I said and grabbed my laptop.
It didn’t take long to find out that there was very limited information on Molly. The catering business had a website, but everything referenced ‘Miss Molly.’ I couldn’t find a business listing for her name that provided ownership information but for all we knew, the legal name of the business was completely different from the d/b/a. Public records were public but not always easy to find and with only a first name, it was going to be difficult to track anything from the business angle. So I started with her professional fighting name, but none of the articles I found on Molly the Mauler referenced a real name either. After thirty minutes of frustration, I slouched in my chair.
“It’s going to be difficult to get information on a woman when we don’t know her legal name,” I said.
“Try the property,” Ida Belle said. “There has to be a name on the deed.”
“Good idea,” I said and accessed the tax roll. I found the property, no problem, but when I spotted the name, I groaned. “Miss Molly’s Catering.”
“Smart,” Ida Belle said. “More tax benefits that way.”
“Does that mean it’s paid for?”
“No,” Ida Belle said. “The loan could be in the company name and Molly could have cosigned for it.”
“So whoever got the catering business might make off with a nice piece of property,” I said.
“Not necessarily,” Ida Belle said. “The argument could be made that since Molly lived in the house and had a fighting cage, that it was also her personal residence and not solely used for the catering business. Assuming she had a CPA set up her books, my guess is she was paying the catering company rent.”
“So part of the house would go to next of kin along with her boats and money in bank accounts,” I said.
“This blows,” Gertie said. “No way a bank would give us her real name.”
“We might have to wait for the death announcement,” I said. “They’d make her legal name known then.”
“We can’t wait for the funeral announcement,” Gertie said. “If Dexter did it, he’s long gone when he makes bail.”
“Before you even suggest it, Carter is not going to tell us,” I said. “Surely this woman had one close friend who knew her real name…besides that idiot Dexter, because Carter would tell us before that guy would.”
“There is a way to get her real name,” Gertie said. “You can’t put a nickname on your driver’s license.”
“Unless you can pull her license out of your butt, I don’t see how that helps us,” Ida Belle said.
“She was boating, right?” Gertie said. “So she wouldn’t have had her license with her. All we have to do is make a quick trip to her house and check out her license.”
I shook my head. “We are not breaking into a potential crime scene. I’m pretty sure Carter would consider that above and beyond ‘sticking our noses in.’”
“Why not?” Gertie asked. “No one thinks Molly was killed there so technically it would be trespassing, not entering a crime scene. Heck, we don’t even have to wear gloves. Our fingerprints are all over the kitchen from yesterday.”
“And everyone keeps their wallet in the kitchen?” Ida Belle asked.
“Okay, so we bring gloves just in case,” Gertie said.
“What do we bring ‘just in case’ Carter shows up?” I asked. “Because I’m pretty sure anything short of that memory-erase wand thingy that they used in Men in Black isn’t going to pass muster. What you’re suggesting is not trespassing. It’s breaking and entering.”
“We’ve gotten around Carter plenty of times,” Gertie said.
“We got around Carter when I was CIA and he was doing his best to maintain my cover, even when I was making it next to impossible. He’s not going to extend that courtesy to me as a civilian. And having seen me naked will not stop him from arresting me if he has no other choice. Like if a forensic team rolls up on us while we’re digging around in Molly’s house.”
“So I’ll do it,” Gertie said. “Then he can’t put it on you.”
“Sure he can.”
Ida Belle and I both spoke at once.
Gertie sighed. “You were a lot more fun when you were still in the CIA and before you started having slumber parties with Carter. So if you won’t take my advice, then what do you recommend?”
“I’m a private detective, not a magician,” I said.
“Well,” Gertie said, “we could always hang out here and go over my plans for Ida Belle’s bachelorette party. There’s the whole G-string selection process and things like whether or not you like body hair.”
Ida Belle cringed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take a boat ride over toward Molly’s place. Could be there’s a trash can that hasn’t been emptied. I might have lost a trailer hitch off my SUV when we went last time and we could drop by there while looking for Molly to see if it’s lying around.”
“The only thing you’ve ever lost off that SUV is Gertie,” I said. “The items you’ve put on that vehicle would be afraid to fall off.”
Ida Belle shrugged. “Well, you think about it while I use the restroom.”
She said ‘restroom,’ but I heard the front door open. I motioned to Gertie and we headed to the living room and looked out the window as Ida Belle removed her trailer hitch and tossed it in my flower bed.
“I’m charging you for those flowers if they die,” I called out the door.
“Since I’m the one who put them in, I don’t figure you have a leg to stand on there,” Ida Belle said as she walked back inside. “So, trash?”
I blew out a breath. Walking onto Molly’s property, even tying off at her dock, was trespassing. But that wasn’t nearly as bad as breaking and entering. It would be better, of course, if it was trash day and we could haul the trash to the road and if we got caught, swear that we’d found it there, where it was fair game. But trash pickup wasn’t for two more days, and we had a limited amount of jail time to get the goods on Dexter, assuming he had done anything besides make up a stupid lie and yell at Ally’s front door.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll take the boat out under the auspice of searching for Molly some more. And it only makes sense that we’d comb the bayous around Molly’s house as that’s where her boat was found and where she would have tried to get back to had she gotten disoriented and separated from her boat. But if there is any sign of law enforcement, we’re not setting foot on that dock.”
“Fair enough,” Gertie said. “But do you think Carter will even send forensics to process the house? I mean, it’s unlikely anything happened there and even if it did, Dexter had all night to get rid of the evidence.”
“Now there’s a question I wish I had an answer to,” I said. “Why wasn’t Dexter out searching last night with the rest of us?”
“Beca
use he was too busy figuring out how to blowtorch a safe?” Gertie asked.
“I’m sure that’s the real answer,” Ida Belle said. “But you’re right. Molly had another boat. Why wasn’t he using it?”
Ida Belle pulled out her cell phone and called Myrtle, one of their good friends and also the night dispatcher at the sheriff’s department. She woke her up from her normal sleeping time but Myrtle had the answer. It just wasn’t a good one.
“Dexter would like us all to believe that he doesn’t know how to drive a boat,” Ida Belle said after she hung up.
“So he could have ridden with someone else,” Gertie said.
“Apparently, he would also like us to believe he can’t swim and is therefore scared of the water,” Ida Belle said. “That part I might actually believe.”
Gertie let out a string of complaints with a few choice words and I nodded.
“Isn’t it like a Louisiana law or something that you learn how to swim and drive a boat before you can walk?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” Ida Belle said. “But then we don’t know where Dexter is from. I’m not saying I buy his reasons, but I suppose Carter couldn’t force him onto a boat to help if he didn’t want to go.”
“I bet I could have,” Gertie said.
“I wonder if Dexter lived with Molly?” I asked.
Ida Belle shrugged. “I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend until we saw him at her house and she said as much. Molly didn’t exactly run in the same circles as we do.”
“I’d bet Molly didn’t run in any circles except her fighting ones,” Gertie said.
“Well, Nickel knew about Dexter,” I said. “So some people in Sinful have more information on Molly than we do. I just don’t know how reliable thirdhand information from the Swamp Bar clientele would be.”
“But I bet it would be interesting,” Gertie said, looking hopeful. “At least we should talk to Nickel again.”
“We’ll worry about that once we get past this trash heist,” I said.
“Then let’s get to digging,” Gertie said and hurried toward the back door.
Ida Belle shook her head. “She is entirely too happy for someone who is about to head out in ninety-five-degree heat to dig through garbage. The garbage of a caterer, I might add. You do the math on that one.”
I groaned. I hadn’t yet considered that any paperwork in the trash would be covered with remnants of Molly’s catering jobs.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she has one of those things where you turn dead stuff into fertilizer,” I said.
“A compost pile?” Ida Belle asked. “Did Molly look like someone who gardens?”
“Herbs?” I asked.
“Keep wishing,” Ida Belle said. “And grab some extra gloves and the raincoats from the garage. I have a feeling this one is going to be a mess.”
“When is it not?”
It was officially only ninety-three degrees but felt like 10,002. Even with the air current flowing across my body from Ida Belle pushing the boat at least one mile per hour beyond its capacity, sweat was still dripping down my body in a matter of minutes. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. On the upside, I’d probably sweated out all the calories I’d eaten at Ally’s house.
It didn’t take long to get to the channel that led to Molly’s house. Because it was a lot narrower than the one behind my house, Ida Belle had to slow to merely warp speed, and I mourned the loss of the additional airflow. When we stopped completely, I was going to be tempted to jump in the bayou, gators and all. The only thing stopping me was that I already knew the bayou was going to feel like a warm bath, so without the airflow, being wet wouldn’t help matters.
Ida Belle let me know when we were closing in on Molly’s dock, and Gertie handed me my binoculars so I could scan for potential problems. There was a big clump of cypress trees directly behind the house, but I could still see some of the purple shining through. Fortunately, I had a reasonably clear view of the driveway and the only vehicle I saw was Molly’s van.
“Looks clear,” I said.
Gertie clapped her hands, entirely too happy about our upcoming task.
“Then let’s get this over with,” Ida Belle said.
I tied off the boat, wondering just what lengths Ida Belle would go to in order to avoid discussing her upcoming bachelorette party. Not that I blamed her. Gertie had insisted it had to happen, and in theory, I kind of agreed with her. After all the time Ida Belle had waited to say yes to Walter, a party was probably in order. But we were both worried about what shenanigans Gertie would come up with. Mind you, I wasn’t worried enough to get involved in the planning, because that way led to fear and ultimately blame. At least this way, I’d only have to live through one night of whatever Gertie had cooked up instead of anticipating the potential horror for weeks on end until finally culminating in what was certain to be a disaster in one way or another.
We climbed out of the boat and headed toward the house, eyes trained on the road to watch for approaching law enforcement. But so far, everything seemed quiet. When we reached the house, we stopped at the edge, scanning the area for trash cans.
“Surely she doesn’t set everything out in bags, right?” I asked.
“No way,” Ida Belle said. “No one wants to clean up that mess and the wildlife around here wouldn’t waste two seconds tearing into a stack of bags. Besides, it’s not allowed. No one wants the trash blowing into the marshes and bayous. We have enough pollution without adding unnecessarily to it.”
“Then where might she keep her cans until trash day?” I asked. “You think she keeps them in the garage?”
“Lord no!” Gertie said. “The heat inside is worse than outside. The smell alone would kill half the parish. But she’s probably got them tucked against a solid structure, as far from the house as she can get them.”
“And upwind from southern breezes,” Ida Belle said.
We looked around and I pointed to the lean-to storage attached to the far side of the garage.
“Maybe on the other side of that?” I asked.
“Probably,” Ida Belle said. “Looks like it has the best access from the back door as well.”
We tromped to the other end of the house and around the back side of the lean-to and sure enough, that’s where Molly kept her cans. At least, I assumed that here was where Molly expected them to be, but there were no cans in sight. Instead, shredded black plastic bags mixed with paper, plastic, and rotting food were strewn all over the ground and into the woods.
I involuntarily reached up to squeeze my nose and switched to mouth breathing.
Then something rattled inside the lean-to and I pulled out my gun just as a raccoon shot out and ran between my legs and into the woods. I jumped back from the lean-to, in case he was partying with friends, and Ida Belle and Gertie laughed.
“Sure, you can laugh,” I said. “You never shot a hole in your roof over one of those things.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Ida Belle said. “Not for all of us, anyway.”
“How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a ghost in my attic?” Gertie said. “And I was shooting rock salt because that’s what those paranormal hunters do on television. It didn’t leave a hole in my roof. Not exactly.”
“Why on earth would you assume you had a ghost in your attic instead of one of the many critters around here that seem to crave air-conditioning and a fully stocked pantry?” I asked.
“I was being optimistic,” Gertie said. “Having a ghost would be a lot more interesting than a raccoon. Everyone gets raccoons in their attic at some point, but no one in Sinful has had a ghost.”
“Maybe because they don’t exist,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie started to argue, so I held up a hand. “I think this discussion needs to wait until we’re not in the middle of trespassing on what could be a crime scene. Where are the cans? Did raccoons do this?”
“No way,” Ida Belle said. “They have been known to get a can flipped ove
r and they can work off a lid, but they don’t have any use for carrying them off. They just shop on the spot.”
“So did someone beat us to the trash-digging games?” I asked.
“Most likely, it was a bear,” Ida Belle said.
I cast a worried glance at the woods. We’d had a run-in with a bear during an investigation and it hadn’t ended well for us, a man’s house, or the bear. I wasn’t anxious to visit with one again.
“So did they pull the lid off and get on top of the cans so they could roll away?” I asked, still trying to understand why the cans were nowhere in sight.
“This is Sinful, not a circus,” Ida Belle said. “Well, maybe that sentence could be restated to more accurately reflect things. This isn’t an official circus with tickets, and tents, and roasted peanuts.”
Gertie nodded. “Smart bears have learned that people will come out and run them off, so they’ll roll a can into the woods. The lid usually pops off as they’re going, and this mess is the fallout after all the other critters come out and take advantage of the situation.”
“But the bear is gone with his spoils, right?” I asked.
“Probably,” Ida Belle said. “Maybe.”
“Probably-maybe is not the answer I was looking for,” I said.
Ida Belle shrugged. “Bears are unpredictable.”
“At least we don’t have to tear into all the bags,” Gertie said. “And everything is kind of sorted. I mean, what’s left. If we don’t find anything in this mess, I suppose we can try tracking the cans into the woods.”
“No!”
Ida Belle and I responded at once.
“I am not running from a bear today,” I said. “Or any day, if I can help it. I did that once and it wasn’t any fun. Besides, I just ran from an alligator, so I’ve gotten in all my fleeing-dangerous-man-eaters steps for the week.”
“You know,” Gertie said, “they should make a special Louisiana Fitbit edition that tracked that stuff. You should get double or triple steps when fleeing for your life.”
“If that were the case, we’d have racked up enough steps for two lifetimes,” I said.
