Swamp Santa (A Miss Fortune Mystery Book 16)

by Jana DeLeon

  Deputy Breaux pulled a packet out of his pocket and gave Gertie an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Ms. Hebert. But he asked me to swab your hands for residue.”

  I had to laugh. Carter thought he was upping his game but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Gertie and Ida Belle seemed as amused as I was.

  “Go ahead,” Gertie said, and held out her hands. “But I can tell you already that they’re going to test positive. I keep the dynamite right there next to my tissues and cough drops. I have my hands all over that stuff about a hundred times a day.”

  Deputy Breaux’s expression looked like he’d eaten a bad burrito. “You’ve got…in your purse? Right now?”

  “Sure,” Gertie said as she reached into her handbag and pulled out three sticks of dynamite. “Got these cheap. The man’s wife said she was selling them because her husband got out of all that prepping nonsense, but I think she offed him.”

  Some of the color washed out of Deputy Breaux’s face. “Oh God.”

  I felt a little sorry for him. Carter knew good and well that Gertie’s handbag was full of things that the general public and definitely law enforcement didn’t want to know about. Heck, Ida Belle and I refused to search it because it was better on the conscience to suspect rather than actually know. But now Deputy Breaux couldn’t decide what he was supposed to do. He didn’t want to arrest Gertie but he didn’t want to make Carter mad. Since I thought Carter had been a little unfair in putting the deputy in the middle of this, I decided to help him out.

  “Confiscate the dynamite and report back to Carter,” I said. “Trust me, he does not want Gertie sitting in his jail because that’s a set of paperwork that none of you want to answer for if it gets seen up the line.”

  “I’m not giving him my dynamite,” Gertie said.

  “It’s that or he has to arrest you,” I said. “And I really don’t want to give the deputy a heart attack, so don’t make him do that.”

  “This is some of my best stash,” Gertie argued.

  “You got it on sale,” Ida Belle said. “Just give him the darn sticks.”

  “I got it on sale, not free,” Gertie grumbled, but handed the deputy the dynamite.

  Deputy Breaux stared at the sticks in his hand as if they were going to spontaneously ignite. “Are you sure this will work?”

  I nodded. “Look, I know you’ve known him longer, but I know him better, if you get my drift.”

  He blushed again and looked down at the floor.

  “Are you going to test my hands, or what?” Gertie asked.

  “There’s not much point, ma’am,” Deputy Breaux said. “You just handed me dynamite.”

  “Oh,” Gertie said. “I guess you’re right. Okay, then. Are we done?”

  Poor Deputy Breaux looked as frightened as he was confused and I knew he was dreading the conversation he was about to have with Carter. It was unfortunate but couldn’t be helped. If Carter didn’t want to scare his employees, he shouldn’t send them out to do his dirty work.

  “Thanks for stopping by,” I said. “Let us know if we can provide you with any other illegal weapons.”

  He gave me a pained look before heading out the door. Mannie locked it behind him and turned to us with a grin.

  “If you’re done stirring up law enforcement,” he said, “I’m happy to take you back home.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure we haven’t even scratched the surface on stirring up law enforcement,” I said. “But we do need to get back to Sinful. We have work to do.”

  “Talk to Celia’s people.” Gertie sighed. “And I had to give up my dynamite. This day is going downhill fast.”

  Ida Belle patted her back. “Don’t worry. It’s nowhere close to dinnertime. There’s still plenty of opportunity for you to get into trouble.”

  “You think?” Gertie perked up.

  “Oh yeah,” Ida Belle said. “I’m pretty much betting on it.”

  Chapter Eight

  I wanted to talk to the photographer first, but she didn’t answer so we decided to move forward with the inquisition on Celia’s group. I’m pretty sure none of us was looking forward to it.

  “So who do we start with?” I asked. “Beatrice?”

  Beatrice Paulson was a member of Celia’s group, God’s Wives, but she was a double agent, having been turned by Ida Belle years ago. She kept Ida Belle informed of Celia’s shenanigans, at least the ones Celia let on about. I sometimes wondered if Celia suspected Beatrice’s duplicity and intentionally kept her in the dark on most things.

  Ida Belle nodded. “I already sent her a text to say we’d be by. I know for sure she was working the cafeteria, so she’s the best one to begin with. At least she can help flesh out a list.”

  “And we know she didn’t do it,” Gertie said. “It’s good to start with someone who isn’t the killer.”

  “Beatrice could totally kill someone,” I said.

  “No way,” Gertie said. “She removes spiders from her house. Last time she had an ant infestation, she had a conversation with them politely asking them to relocate. There’s no one less likely to be a killer.”

  “Gertie might be right on this one,” Ida Belle said. “She stopped traffic downtown for half an hour last week trying to get a lizard out of the road.”

  “Was she successful?” I asked.

  Ida Belle shook her head. “Sheriff Lee got tired of hearing all the horns honking and went outside and shot it.”

  “How come Carter never tells me these things?” I asked.

  “Probably because he was too mad to talk about it,” Gertie said. “The shot ricocheted off the pavement and took out one of the tires on his truck. I heard a rumor that Carter’s going to slip blanks into Sheriff Lee’s gun as soon as the opportunity presents itself.”

  I nodded. Given that Sheriff Lee was two thousand years old and had the eyesight and hearing to go along with the age, it wasn’t the worst idea.

  “Okay,” I said. “But unless Beatrice cried over the lizard, I’m still keeping her on my list of suspects.”

  “She cried, buried it, and gave a eulogy,” Gertie said. “She even made a casket out of a shoebox and lined it with silk.”

  I stared. “I don’t even know where to go with that.”

  “Straight to a psychiatrist’s office would be a good start,” Ida Belle said.

  “Then let’s go see what crazy has to say,” I said.

  Beatrice was waiting at the front door when we arrived. In order to prep her for the upcoming questions, Ida Belle had already given her a short version of her trip to the ER and why it was necessary. Beatrice looked like she needed a Xanax as she waved us inside and back to the kitchen.

  “I’m having lemonade and whiskey,” she said. “I can offer you that or iced tea…Long Island if you prefer.”

  We all requested lemonade without the addition and Beatrice poured. I noticed her hands shook as she passed the glasses before sitting down.

  “I just can’t believe this,” Beatrice said. “If you’d told me that someday Santa would be murdered right there in front of me, well, I would have called you crazy. Why would someone murder Saint Nick? And at a Christmas event that centers on children? I hope they’re not scarred for life.”

  “I’m pretty sure parents didn’t just blurt out that Santa is dead,” Ida Belle said. “They have, after all, managed to convince them that he was real in the first place.”

  Beatrice looked a bit relieved. “You’re right. I should have thought about that, but I’m so rattled. And then all this with the poison. Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked Ida Belle.

  “I’m fine,” Ida Belle said. “The doctor cleared me and since Fortune, Gertie, Carter, and Walter were all there to hear it, you know I’m not hedging on anything.”

  “It’s a good thing Carter and Walter were there,” Beatrice said. “Because these two would lie through their teeth if you asked them to.”

  “Often and well.”

  “You know it.”

>   Gertie and I both responded at once and Beatrice shook her head.

  “We’re hoping you can help us out,” Ida Belle said. “We want to know who was in the cafeteria when Santa arrived.”

  Beatrice’s eyes widened. “You’re not thinking about trying to find the killer, are you? Oh, I don’t want to be any part of that. If I told you something and then you got hurt, well, I’d never forgive myself.”

  “The thing is,” Ida Belle said. “We suspect that guy attacked Rollie and became the fake Santa because he was looking for someone and didn’t want them to know. What if that person is in danger? What if there are more fake Santas coming after them? We saw Rollie this morning and he was in pretty bad shape. Regardless of how he died, that man was a bad person, and I’m guessing if more come after him, they aren’t going to be any nicer.”

  Beatrice’s hands flew over her chest. “Oh Lord! Why is this happening? I know we’ve had some trouble here this year but this town is never going to live down killing Santa, regardless of how shady he was.”

  “It is rather a unique claim to fame,” Gertie said. “I kinda like it.”

  “You would,” Ida Belle said.

  “It lets people know we mean business,” Gertie said. “If Santa isn’t sacred, then all bets are off.”

  “She has a point,” I said. “In a completely illogical, Sinful sort of way.”

  “So that list of people,” Ida Belle said. “I’d really like to put a stop to this before someone offs the Easter Bunny.”

  Beatrice looked horrified but nodded. “Celia was there at first, of course, but she left before Santa arrived as she was part of the performance in the auditorium. She left Dorothy in charge.”

  Dorothy Tillard was Celia’s cousin and right-hand woman. She was lower-key but just as unlikable as Celia. Beatrice named several more women who were members of Celia’s crew, then paused to take another shot of her lemonade whiskey.

  “Outside of Celia’s crew, Zach Vincent was there,” Beatrice continued. “He was doing the heavy lifting for anything we needed repositioned. Megan Prejean was preparing the punch. And of course, the photographer came over from the auditorium and was setting up right before the crowd arrived. Myrna was doing her face painting thing on some of the babies.”

  “Did you see any of them interact with Santa?” I asked.

  “I mean, most everyone spoke,” Beatrice said. “The South lost the war, not our manners. But then, everyone thought he was Rollie.”

  “Did anyone give him something to drink or eat?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Beatrice said. “I got a phone call from Celia shortly after Santa arrived, summoning me to the auditorium.”

  “Crap,” Gertie said. “We’re going to have to talk to that butthead Dorothy.”

  “Can’t the police tell what he ate?” Beatrice asked. “You know, from the autopsy?”

  “Sure,” Ida Belle said. “But they’re not going to share that with us.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.” Beatrice shook her head. “I’m sorry I can’t help more. Maybe if I hadn’t left…”

  “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent this,” Ida Belle said. “So don’t even start down that line of thinking. Someone was determined to make sure that man didn’t find what he was looking for.”

  “But it was so brazen,” Beatrice said. “Right there in front of everybody.”

  “Brazen or desperate,” Ida Belle said.

  I nodded but didn’t say what I was thinking—that desperate probably had nothing to do with it. Beatrice was already so stressed she might pop a vein. But in rethinking everything, Little Hebert’s words kept running through my head.

  Someone had come to the event prepared to poison Cooke.

  Desperate was rarely that prepared.

  Any further investigating had to wait because that night was the annual Christmas sleigh ride, and we all needed to grab some food and shower and change clothes before heading out. I’d inquired about how one actually accomplishes a sleigh ride without snow and found out that it consisted of horses and four-wheelers pulling flatbed trailers stacked with hay down Main Street and around the neighborhood. The combination of horses and four-wheelers didn’t sound like a good one but since this was my first Christmas as a resident, I figured I’d observe before passing judgment.

  Since some of the people we wanted to interview would be at the sleigh ride tonight, we headed back to my house for a quick wrap-up and to lay out how we were going to approach the next round of questioning. But all hope of a relaxed conversation over cookies and iced tea was dashed when I saw Carter’s truck parked at my curb. He was leaned against the fender and I could tell by his expression that it wasn’t going to be a pleasant visit. I grabbed the envelope with the Heberts’ contract and retainer check and began to mentally prepare for the worst.

  Ida Belle pulled into the driveway and as I climbed out, she gave me a wave.

  “I’ll pick you up at six,” she said.

  “You’re not coming in?” I asked.

  “Not on your life,” she said.

  Even Gertie shook her head.

  “Cowards,” I said as I closed the door.

  I looked over at Carter and forced a smile.

  “You coming inside?” I asked. “Or do you want to just shoot me out here and save my heirs the cleanup?”

  “Depends,” he said as he walked toward me. “Who are your heirs?”

  “Some of them just drove off,” I said.

  “Inside,” he said, and headed for the front door. I sighed. I should have known my last case was a fluke. Carter and I hadn’t been at odds on that one. I had a feeling that was going to be the exception and not the rule.

  I walked inside and went straight for the kitchen. If I was going to have a fight, I was at least doing it with a beer and cookies. I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and waved it at Carter, who shook his head. Still on duty, I thought. I took out a bottled water for him and sat the drinks on the table before flopping into a seat. Carter was watching me but so far, hadn’t said a word. I hoped he wasn’t playing the quiet game with me. I was former CIA. We could remain silent longer than dead people.

  “Are you really working for the Heberts?” he said finally.

  “They hired me to investigate something for them, yes.”

  “And just why would they need your help? The Heberts know more about what goes on in this neck of the woods than Ida Belle. Maybe even Jesus.”

  “They don’t know about the thing they hired me for.”

  “And just what would that be?”

  I sighed. “You know I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s the identity of dead Santa? Oh wait. You can’t tell me that, right?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Sure it is. You have the whole ‘open investigation’ issue. I have the ‘client confidentiality’ issue. Different titles on our business card, but same restrictions on our work.”

  “You have a contract with them?”

  I opened the envelope I’d tossed on the table and waved the check in front of him.

  He took a look at the note and the amount and shook his head. “Ten thousand dollars? Jesus H. Christ. What do they want you to do? Find D.B. Cooper?”

  “I was CIA. I already know what happened to D.B. Cooper.”

  He stared and I could tell he was trying to decide if I was telling the truth or simply trying to distract him. I wasn’t about to let on which.

  “I know Mannie called the impound lot to get information on the vehicle,” he said.

  “Oh? That’s interesting.”

  “It was probably interesting hours ago when he gave you the information.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “What do you want from me? You knew this was how it was going to be. That our work might cross sometimes. It’s Sinful, not Chicago. There’s not enough things going on for us to stay out of each other’s
sandbox.”

  “There is an enormous difference between us crossing paths and you working for the Heberts—known criminals—on a murder investigation.”

  “Look. You and I are never going to agree on the Heberts, but you can’t deny that without their help, I would never have taken down Ahmad. And Mannie saved your life. I get that you don’t approve of their family business. Neither do I. But I still like them. And if they need my help on something, then I’m not going to turn them down.”

  Carter ran one hand through his hair. The Heberts probably represented one of the biggest conflicts in his life. As a lawman, he couldn’t condone their business practices, but as my man he couldn’t deny that they played a huge part in my being able to quit the CIA and stay in Sinful. It was a real love-hate sort of thing. I imagined Mannie was even worse. Carter owed his life to him and while I knew he was grateful, he probably spent a lot of time wondering when that debt might be called and for what reason.

  “You know how much I appreciate everything the Heberts and Mannie did for you,” he said. “And for me. But this is a particularly callous murder. And if the Heberts are involved, then it bothers me all that much more.”

  “I understand. But the Heberts aren’t involved in any way that’s suspect.”

  “Then why hire you? Why give you a huge retainer?”

  “To cover their butts.”

  He frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “Here’s how it played out. Ida Belle was pissed off about having to spend the night in the ER and wanted answers. I don’t blame her. So as you know, we went looking for Santa’s car but you beat us to the punch. Ida Belle knew the Heberts owned the impound lot, so we figured we’d ask for a favor.”

  “And they agreed. Just like that.”

  I nodded. “I know you think they’re the bad guys, but there’s lines they don’t cross. And they have huge problems with sketchy stuff happening where they live.”

  “Unless, of course, they’re the ones doing the sketchy stuff.”

  “Naturally. But they aren’t murderers and they would never do anything that could damage children. They’re big on family. And given what Santa did to Rollie, they’d already made up their minds on the sketchy part.”