by Jana DeLeon
“Venus went out of her way to cause problems,” Ida Belle said. “Problems at school, with Percy’s clients, with local business, with boys…if there was some way to twist somebody into a knot, she seemed to revel in how much turmoil she could cause. It was a game to her. I guess as she got older, she realized the Sinful pond was too small and moved on to a bigger set of fish.”
“Percy didn’t try to find her?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” Gertie said. “To be honest, I think he was relieved.”
I nodded. As horrible as it sounded, I sort of understood. “Then if she left and never came back, why would she show up dead under a basketball court?”
Ida Belle narrowed her eyes at me. “Oh, she came back.”
“When?” I asked.
“This past spring,” Ida Belle said. “Waltzed into town like she owned the place. Drove right to her father’s house and let herself in—he’d never changed the locks. Had already unpacked her suitcases and was watching television and drinking his beer by the time he got home from work.”
I stared. “Wow. That is some serious cojones.”
Gertie nodded. “Venus never did anything without flair.”
“What did Percy do?” I asked.
“He called Sheriff Lee and had her arrested for trespassing,” Ida Belle said.
“I did not see that one coming,” I said.
“Neither did Venus,” Gertie said. “And she raised holy hell down at the sheriff’s department. Managed to rip apart the mattress in her cell and threw the stuffing everywhere. When no one responded, she started screaming at the top of her lungs and told the two other guys in jail that they should sue for having to listen to her.”
“I can’t imagine Carter fell for that one,” I said.
“He didn’t,” Ida Belle said. “At least, not in the way she hoped. Instead of letting her loose, he let the other two guys go. Couple of drunks who’d been fighting at the Swamp Bar, so nothing that would come back on him, but it eliminated the leverage Venus thought she had.”
“She didn’t stop the noise, though,” Gertie said. “She started singing loud then. Myrtle said you could hear her all the way to the front desk. She stuffed cotton in her ears when she came on shift and told Carter to go on home. The phone lights up when it rings, so no worries there.”
“And did Percy follow through with pressing charges?” I asked.
Ida Belle shook her head. “Carter convinced him to go talk with Venus the next day. After Percy had a chance to wrap his mind around things. I don’t know what all was said, but he finally agreed to let her move back in with him until she figured out what she was doing next.”
“That worked out about as well as you could expect,” Gertie said. “She was supposed to get a job or enroll in school—those were the options Percy gave her. She asked around a couple places about employment, but everyone in Sinful knew better than to take on Venus. And Lord knows, the girl was never suited for school, so that was never a real option. Ultimately, she ended up doing what we all figured she would.”
“Causing trouble? Undesirable man?” I guessed.
“She managed both at the same place,” Ida Belle said. “Took a job waitressing at the Swamp Bar and started dating Whiskey.”
I frowned. “Seriously? He’s got at least ten years on her.”
“Closer to fifteen,” Ida Belle said. “But Whiskey came along with a job that offered a place for her to get into trouble and he paid her to do it on top of it. Bar fights soared as soon as she started working there. My guess is she flirted with men to get into their pockets and then incited them to fight over her. I’m sure it amused her.”
“How could one girl cause so much trouble?” I asked.
“The thing we never covered was that Venus was gorgeous,” Gertie said. “‘Could have been on a magazine cover’ gorgeous. She had those tall, thin, runway model looks but with her mother’s chest size. High cheekbones, big blue eyes, puffy lips, blond hair, dark tan, and she knew how to work every inch of it.”
“So I assume she was popular with the boys but not the girls,” I said.
“Got that right,” Gertie said. “She managed what she considered a friendship with two girls back in high school. One was a troublemaker but not up to Venus’s level. She needed Venus to help her take things up a notch. The other was what we’d call a wilting flower back in my day.”
“Why in the world would someone like that want to hang out with Venus?” I asked.
“Because Venus paid attention to her when no one else did,” Gertie said. “It was definitely for Venus’s benefit. She used the girl for doing her homework and to bum money off of her, but Venus also stopped the other girls from picking on her.”
“So this girl felt beholden,” I said, still trying to understand teen angst. My own teen years were a blur of forgotten memories. Sometimes one broke through and I saw things clearly, but so far, it seemed to be one big dull nonevent. I supposed I should consider myself lucky to have never drawn the attention of one of the warring factions of girl groups.
“I’m sure feeling beholden was part of it,” Gertie said. “But beyond that, I think she looked up to Venus. She wanted that strength for herself.”
I sighed. “That’s all sorta sad. So back to present day—how did Venus get from raising hell at the Swamp Bar to being dumped into a construction site?”
“That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Ida Belle said. “Venus took off again shortly before you arrived. Percy said he came home one day and her car and all her stuff were gone. He got a text from her saying she was going back to New Orleans.”
“You think he’s telling the truth?” I asked.
“Why would he lie?” Gertie asked.
Ida Belle shook her head. “Because someone buried Venus in that construction site before they poured the concrete.”
Chapter Four
It was getting toward 9:00 p.m. when Ida Belle and Gertie finally called it quits and headed home for their bedtime routine. I’d gotten a brief text from Carter a couple hours before saying not to wait up. I wondered if Carter had found something that gave him positive ID, but no way was I asking. One of the first things I’d figured out about Carter was that he was more forthcoming with information if he thought I wasn’t interested. If I played my cards right, he might just give up something when I saw him again, especially since I had no reason to get in his way on this one.
I will be the first to admit that my curiosity had been piqued. Why wouldn’t it be? A troubled girl who left town, then came back, then supposedly left again, but might have turned up dead instead. And after everything Ida Belle and Gertie had told me about Venus, if that body turned out to be hers, I wanted to know how things had gone down. Not because I had any ties to her, and Ida Belle and Gertie had no personal emotional trauma over the situation, but the fact still remained that someone had put a body in that hole and covered her with dirt, knowing that a court would be poured over it.
And that person was likely a Sinful resident.
That’s when the lines of civilian life and law enforcement started to blur for them and for me. Until the body was identified, we didn’t know it was Venus. But even if it wasn’t Venus, it was someone with a connection to Sinful. Granted, until we knew cause of death, we couldn’t even be certain the person in the concrete was murdered. It might have been an accident and then someone panicked and covered it up. But if that body did turn out to be Venus, then the cover-up was fairly elaborate. The missing clothes and car and the text were indications of an elaborate scheme to ensure that no one thought twice about Venus being gone.
If someone had gone to that much trouble, they had a lot to lose.
I shook my head and blew out a breath. I was letting my imagination run wild with me. The reality was, regardless of what interesting stories my creativity could spin, all the speculation was useless until we knew who the body was and whether or not it was murder. All I really knew for certain was
that I was clearly bored and needed to find more ways to occupy my mind until I got some clients.
I was just headed upstairs to shower when there was a knock at my front door. I skipped over to it, recognizing the strength and cadence of the rap, and let Carter in. I’d given him a key but he had told me straight out that no way was he letting himself into my house unannounced unless he was sure I wasn’t home. He wasn’t interested in acquiring any more bullet holes in his body. I was fairly certain I wouldn’t just open fire without looking first, but I wasn’t ready to fault his prudence on the matter.
“I have some roast beef left over,” I said. “You want a sandwich?”
He leaned over to give me a quick kiss and nodded. “That would be great. I haven’t had anything since lunch.”
We headed to the kitchen and I pointed to a chair as I grabbed him a beer from the refrigerator. I passed it to him, then pulled out the roast beef and some bread and started making him up a sandwich.
“Was it hard to get the body out of the concrete?” I asked as I assembled.
“It took some maneuvering. Had to make sure that piece was really secure before we started lifting. I didn’t want it falling back.”
I nodded. The crime scene had already been compromised enough by the pouring of the cement and when the bulldozer lifted up the hunk. Carter was doing everything possible to preserve any evidence that might be available.
I slid the sandwich onto the table and took a seat across from him. “Was the forensic team able to extract the body?”
He took a bite of the sandwich and nodded. “There was enough dirt separating the body from the concrete so most of it wasn’t encased. The concrete guys had to cut around some of it and they collected all the concrete around the body in case there was anything to find.”
“Makes sense.”
“What’s the local gossip?”
“Ida Belle got the call around seven. A nephew of one of the Sinful Ladies was one of the contractors who helped lift the concrete. He didn’t give much in the way of details. Just told her that he’d helped pull a body out from under the court. A couple of other calls came in after that. Word was filtering around, all originating with the construction guys.”
“I figured as much,” Carter said. “I asked them not to mention anything, of course, but I knew it was going to happen anyway. Any speculation yet?”
“If there is, it didn’t make it to Ida Belle. But then, I’m guessing construction workers probably wouldn’t clue in on the bracelet or the hot-pink clothes and be able to make a logical guess like Gertie did.”
“Good. I don’t want word getting back to Percy before I know for sure. And if it turns out it’s Venus, that’s not the sort of thing a parent should hear via the local Sinful talk.”
“Do you think Gertie’s right?”
“I’m sure she’s right about Venus having a bracelet like that and the hot-pink thing. She’s always noticed those sorts of things, and she doesn’t forget much when it comes to other people, often to their dismay.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Forensics could see enough after the extraction to give me an estimate of height and said the body was female and adult but young. That’s not official, of course, since none of them are doctors, but they’ve seen enough bodies to know that much. Since there’s no one else who fits all that criteria and also disappeared from Sinful around the time that court was poured, then I’m inclined to believe Gertie got it right.”
“How long do you think it will take for the medical examiner to make a positive ID?”
“I left him a message with the information Gertie provided. There’s only one dentist in town. But it will all have to wait until Monday. The body’s been in that cement for months. No reason for the ME to rush in on a Sunday for this one. I imagine he’ll get the records first thing Monday morning and assuming it goes the way I figure, I’ll be talking to Percy shortly after.”
“I wonder how he’s going to take it.” At his curious look, I waved my hand in dismissal. “Gertie and Ida Belle filled me in on the Venus gossip.”
Carter nodded. “She was a handful, that’s for sure. Percy never really stood a chance with Starlight, and Venus was her mother made over, except a bit more clever.”
“Which only made her more trouble.”
“I’m afraid so. She managed to cause trouble with more than one couple in Sinful when she targeted boyfriends. Stuck around long enough to get money out of them, then moved on to the next target while the boys were left behind with no money and angry girlfriends. The population of young women in Sinful probably heaved a collective sigh of relief when Venus left.”
“And probably started making voodoo dolls when she returned.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they did.”
“So what you’re saying is that you’ll have no shortage of suspects if this turns out to be murder.”
“I don’t know. I’m sure there’s plenty of people who won’t shed a tear at her passing, but it’s hard for me to imagine someone killing her years after the fact over teenage silliness.”
“Someone put her in the ground. Knowing that concrete would be poured.”
He sighed. “Yeah. But that doesn’t automatically imply a local. I have no reason to believe that Venus cleaned up her act in New Orleans. And her return here was abrupt and completely unexpected. Makes me think she was running from something.”
“You think someone could have followed her here to take care of some unfinished business in New Orleans?”
“Sure. Why not? The construction on the school grounds was readily visible. Even someone passing through would have seen it.”
“Then wouldn’t someone have seen when the body was buried?”
“Not at night. The playground doesn’t have any lights at all, so it would have been pitch-black after dark. And even if someone saw headlights, sometimes teens park there to make out.”
I nodded. “I guess the biggest challenge with cases like this is that a lot of enemies means a long list of suspects.”
“Yeah, it does.”
He sounded tired when he said it and he looked as tired as he sounded. I knew his exhaustion went deeper than just this case. I knew Carter had made the decision to return to Sinful and become a deputy partly because of all the things he’d seen and done while serving in the Marine Corps. He wanted to get away from those things and had thought Sinful was the place to do it.
Unfortunately, even Sinful had caught up with the criminal times.
“Did you ever think that maybe it’s always been this way?” I asked. “I mean, allowing for the era.”
He stared at me for several seconds then finally nodded, and I knew he understood what I was asking.
“Yeah, I think maybe it was,” he said. “Allowing for the times, as you said.”
“So basically, the crimes have grown in scope and severity as society has declined, but the number of people who chose that life over the other remains the same.”
“I believe so.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, but I keep reminding myself that there are just as many good people as there were before. And we’re doing everything we can to level the playing field.”
“The other team is playing dirty.”
“They always have.”
Loud, unusual noise woke me the next morning and I bolted out of bed, trying to focus on the source. It sounded like barking dogs and since I didn’t own one dog, much less a pack of them, I was confused. I was also still half asleep. I finally located the culprit of the barking and grabbed my cell phone, already guessing that Gertie had changed my ringtone to play a joke on me. The chuckling I heard when I answered confirmed it.
“I will get you back,” I said. “And what the heck is so important at…” I checked my phone. “Good grief. It’s eight o’clock. Church doesn’t start until eleven.”
“I was hoping you were lounging in bed with sexy man-candy,” Gertie said. “But I saw
Carter’s truck at the sheriff’s department when I picked up some muffins from the café, so my fantasies for you were dashed.”
I perked up. “You have muffins?”
Gertie sighed. “The fact that you’re more excited by muffins than the sexy man-candy fantasy means we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
“The man-candy part of my life is in place. My breakfast is not. Can I assume you’re headed my way with those muffins?”
“Nope. You’re heading my way. I have a surprise for you and Ida Belle at my house. It arrived by special delivery first thing this morning.”
“It’s first thing this morning right now.”
“For you, maybe, but for the delivery guy, 7:00 a.m. was first thing. He’d been driving all night. So get your butt over here as soon as possible. I can’t wait!”
The call disconnected and I stared at my phone, frowning. A special delivery at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday? Gertie sounding as though she’d just won the lottery? Something that we needed to go to her house to see?
All of that sounded like trouble.
A minute later, my phone rang again. Ida Belle.
“I’ll pick you up in two minutes,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t know what the heck that woman is up to now but it can’t be good.”
The call dropped and I hurried to pull on clothes and shoes and rush downstairs. Ida Belle was already screeching to a stop in my driveway when I reached the front door. I paused only long enough to lock the door behind me, then practically ran to her SUV.