Feeding Gators: Book 1 in the Shiner's Bayou Series

by Gen Anne Griffin

  “I have been,” Cal glowered darkly. Addison ignored him.

  “Will you go or not?”

  “Why can’t you go, again?” Cal didn’t know if he was hoping Addison was right or wrong. A faint flicker of hope had sprung up when Addison said he thought David was lying to them about his relationship with Gracie. It was quickly eclipsed by the realization that if David was lying, the truth was going to be a lot worse than Gracie and David’s newly discovered sex life. Cal tightened his grip on his steering wheel and tried not to think about the silver BMW he’d helped dispose of.

  “Twitchy Eddie would be all over me,” Addison said. “Right now, I don’t think Eddie realizes that Gracie might be involved. On the other and, if I go running off to State?”

  “He’d figure it out,” Cal confirmed. “I got a call from the State University PD too. I didn’t recognize the number, so I sent ‘em straight to voicemail. All it said was they asked me to call them back.”

  “Don’t do it,” Addy said. “Not until after you talk to Gracie. You will go, right?”

  Cal frowned then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll go. April Lynne and Terrell should be able to manage by themselves for a day.”

  “Thank God,” Addison breathed a sigh of relief. “If Gracie will talk to anyone, it’ll be you. Not to mention that I haven’t slept in,” he glanced down at the clock in his dashboard, “something like 26 hours.”

  “What? Why?” Cal asked. He ignored the comment about Gracie talking to him. All they had done in eight months was yell at one another or ignore one another.

  “Danged poaching calls again, the ones that sound like U.F.O. Sightings,” Addison closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. “I don’t even know if I’m gonna bother to drive home, or I’m just gonna sleep here in this parking lot all day. I spent all night chasing ‘brightly colored lights’ around the county.”

  “You’re not going to do either,” Cal said shortly. “I’m fixing to drive up to State and get Gracie to tell me what the hell is going on. The truth this time. You’re going to go back to the Sheriff’s Department and find out what the heck is happening with David.”

  Addison groaned.

  “If there really is something going on with the two of them - and you happen to be right and it’s not sex - then figuring it out is more important than your beauty rest, Malone.”

  “I know, I know.” Addison shook his head and rubbed his eyes, then turned to Cal. “You got ten bucks on you?”

  Cal shrugged, mystified by the change in topic. “Probably, why?”

  “I need a couple of Red Bulls to clear my head,” Addison held out his hand. “I have two dollars in my checking account to last me until Friday.”

  “It’s Wednesday,” Cal pointed out, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. “The county pays for your gas and you live with your Granny. Where did all your money go?”

  “I don’t live with Granny; I live behind her.”

  “You live in her garage.” Cal extracted a twenty dollar bill and dangled it in the window. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and, just in case David didn’t kill that guy, try to find the real murderer while I go to State?”

  Addison snatched the bill out of his hand. “What the hell do you think I’m planning on doing?” he snapped.

  Cal rolled his eyes and then slid his truck back into drive and gunned the motor. “Call me if you find anything out.”

  *

  David was counting tiles on the ceiling of Sheriff Wally Hall’s office when Twitchy Eddie came stumbling into the room, tripping over the metal strip at the bottom of the door and spilling coffee all over the Sheriff’s natural oak desk.

  David watched him as he hurriedly and awkwardly tried to use anything in sight, including his own shirt tails, to sop up the spill.

  What a loser, David thought. Eddie hadn’t really changed much since high school. He was still painfully short; the top of his head was just barely even with David’s shoulder when they were both standing. His arms still seemed miles longer than his legs. Even as he cleaned he was knocking things over with his elbows. His military style buzz cut only made his huge ears stick out further behind his glasses.

  David could still see a big black-and-blue knot on the back of his head from the transmission he’d landed on the night before. He would have felt sorry for the little prick if he hadn’t been trying to send him to jail on a murder rap. He glared at Eddie as he read him his rights and then stared at him.

  For what seemed like an eternity, the two of them just sat there and glared at one another. Then Eddie’s right eye began to twitch and Eddie cursed under his breath.

  “I hate you,” he muttered sulkily, and punctuating the words with a sigh.

  “It’s mutual,” David replied, flexing his muscles and wondering how long it was going to take for Eddie to tip his hand and let him know exactly how much he knew about Austin’s murder.

  Gracie hadn’t called him, so he assumed they hadn’t made the link between State University’s missing person and their own newly dead corpse.

  How the hell had Eddie found that damned body?

  David would have bet his life; hell, in a matter of speaking he had bet his life or at the very least bet his freedom, that the body was gone for good. Now here he was, arrested and waiting on charges.

  Addison had told him to ask for a lawyer, but David wanted to know what they had. Information was a two-way street. If he couldn’t talk to Eddie, then chances were Eddie wouldn’t speak to him.

  He sat in the cushy leather office chair and waited for Eddie to speak. Eddie kept flipping through the files he’d brought in with him. He doesn’t have anything, David decided. His gut instincts were normally pretty good.

  Finally Eddie spoke. “I bet you never expected us to find him, did you?” he asked.

  David tried to keep his face blank. No, he hadn’t, but he wasn’t dumb enough to fall for that little trap.

  “You know I sent your truck to the lab. They’re processing it right now. Rush order. They’re going to find all that blood in the bed no matter how well you washed it. You just can’t wash away that kind of blood.”

  David frowned. He hated the idea of anyone else going through his truck. Not because he thought they would find evidence of any wrong doing in it, but because it was his and he didn’t like people touching his things. Furthermore, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why Eddie wanted his truck. Gracie’s boyfriend had never been anywhere near David’s truck. Eddie was bluffing big time on that one. He glared at Eddie and was vaguely amused to see the deputy’s eye twitch. Every time it did that, Eddie’s face turned a deeper shade of red. Currently he was pleasantly pink, but David had the feeling he would be crimson before the interview was over.

  “You know that don’t you? You know you can’t get away with stabbing someone fifty-seven times without leaving behind a ton of evidence?”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” David asked sharply. He hadn’t stabbed anyone. Chopped into chunks with a hacksaw was a far more accurate description.

  “What am I talking about?” The question seemed to enrage Eddie, who twitched again, turned another shade of pink, and promptly had a full-blown hissy fit. “I’m talking about Jarvis Marquette. You might remember him as the guy you stabbed fifty-seven times and then wrapped in a tarp and dumped out of the back of your Toyota in Johnson’s back pasture! That’s what the hell I’m talking about. An innocent man killed for what? Because he was homeless? Is that why you killed him?” Eddie sucked in a deep breath of air, turned an even brighter shade of red, and kept yelling. “Did you get a kick out of it? Did you enjoy it when the handle of the knife snapped off in his body? You’re a sadistic son of a bitch. We probably wouldn’t have caught you except your stupid buddy Addison tried to trick me and got my cruiser stuck out there the same night you decided to ditch your body. That’s why you’re sitting here right now, because I saw what you did.”

  Holy shit, they had
the wrong body. David stared at Eddie in total shock.

  David had to be sure, but he felt like the weight of a brand new BMW sedan had been lifted off of his chest. He reached across the table and snatched the file out of Eddie’s quivering hands, flipping it open.

  “Hey!” Eddie exclaimed. “You can’t do that!” He tried to snatch the folder back but David stretched out and held it out of his reach.

  A handful of pictures fell out. Gracie had killed a preppy fraternity boy. Eddie’s body was a scruffy old man. David couldn’t help it; he started laughing as relief flooded his chest. Eddie stared at him like he was the devil incarnate as he let the pictures fall onto the desk.

  “I want my lawyer,” David said.

  Eddie glared at him, twitching. “You what?”

  “I want my lawyer,” David repeated, a grin on his face. He hadn’t had anything to do with this murder. He had nothing to hide. Eddie’s case was dissolving into thin air.

  *

  The door to Gracie’s dorm room opened just when Cal was deciding to give up and wait in the lounge until Gracie got back from class. Cal found himself looking down at a short, dark-haired girl wearing what appeared to be a very tight black sequined cocktail dress in the middle of the afternoon.

  “Hi, is Gracie here?” Cal leaned easily against the doorframe and did his best to smile down at the girl who had to be Gracie’s roommate.

  “Are you her Dad or something?” She put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. At first glance, Cal thought she had two black eyes, but then he realized she was wearing multiple layers of very heavy, dark eye make-up. Her lips were painted a shade of burgundy that was so dark, it looked black.

  Cal felt his own smile fade. He didn’t look old enough to be mistaken for Gracie’s Dad. He didn’t look 18, but he damn sure didn’t look any older than 30. “No.” He didn’t elaborate.

  “You’re not her boyfriend. Him, I remember.” She licked her swollen lips. “He’s sexy. You’re not.”

  “Where is Gracie?” Cal crossed his arms over his broad chest, knowing the girl had to be talking about David when she said Gracie’s boyfriend was sexy. He wasn’t in the mood to hear how sexy David was. He’d spent the three hour drive from Shiner’s Bayou to the University trying to figure out how Gracie and David’s secret romance was related to the BMW they had buried in the swamp and the murder David was currently being interrogated about by the Coastal County Sheriff’s Department.

  Cal could kick himself for being so gullible. David knew exactly what buttons to push to keep him from thinking clearly. With a murder investigation in full force it was obvious to him that his best friend had used his emotions to play his ass like a fiddle.

  “You aren’t much fun, are you?” The girl ran her hands over her mostly exposed and very pushed-up breasts.

  Cal frowned at her. “No fun whatsoever,” he confirmed.

  “She’s at class. You can wait for her in the lobby.” The girl gestured towards a room with a couch that was across the hall.

  “I was thinking I’d just wait for Gracie in her room,” Cal said.

  “And I’m thinking not.” The roommate shook her head at him. “You’re not interesting enough for me to want to spend the next half hour alone with. Besides, it’s starting to look like your girl is a murderer, and I’m not about to ruin my reputation by hanging around with a murderer’s friends.”

  “Murderer?” Cal focused on the only word that mattered.

  The dark-haired girl hiked one over-plucked eyebrow at Cal. “Murderer. Last Friday, Gracie went out on a date with one of the most desirable guys on campus. No one has seen or heard from him since. She says he left her on the side of the road, but I don’t believe a word out of her mouth. The police have been questioning her. I’m hoping they arrest her soon. I can’t wait to have the room back to myself.”

  “Arrest Gracie?” Cal had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that had everything to do with the shiny BMW he’d helped David destroy. . “You really think she had something to do with this guy disappearing?”

  “She was the last one to see him alive,” the girl said with a shrug. “If I were you, I’d be real careful about being alone with Gracie.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Cal didn’t know what to say.

  “You should. Now leave. Your cologne is giving me a headache.” She started to slam the door in Cal’s face. He blocked it with his boot.

  “One more question,” he said as she glared at him.

  “What?”

  “What class is Gracie in right now?”

  “Now?” The girl shrugged her shoulders as she took one step backwards into the room and glanced at something written on a whiteboard that was hanging on the wall. “Alegbra.”

  “Where’s the classroom at?” Cal asked.

  “Math and Sciences Building. I couldn’t tell you the room, but it’s that big brick building back towards the main entrance. Laverne Math and Sciences Hall. You can’t miss the sign.” She made a huffy noise. “You really can leave now.”

  “Consider me gone,” Cal moved his boot out of the doorway. Gracie’s roommate immediately slammed the door shut. It made a resounding thud as it closed.

  *

  Gracie was making a genuine effort to find out how the Hell x could ever equal y when Cal’s Chevy pulled up directly in front of the main entrance to the Math and Science Hall. She leaned closer to the window, certain she had to be mistaken. Or hallucinating.

  She quickly ran through a laundry list of details. Eighteen-year old-truck, check. Four-wheel drive, check. Oversize tires, check. Shiner’s Bayou Hunting Club decals on the windows, check. A massive dent in the passenger side door from where Gracie had accidentally backed across a telephone pole, check. Definitely Cal’s truck. No mistaking it.

  Gracie stood up and grabbed her backpack without even thinking about it.

  “Miss Malone?” The professor stopped speaking and stared at her.

  “I have to go,” Gracie said, glancing back down at the parking area below. Cal’s truck was definitely still sitting there. “Sorry.”

  “Miss Malone, you can’t just get up and walk out of a lecture anytime you feel like it. You are disrupting our class and being very disrespectful of both myself and your peers.”

  “Sorry.” The apology sounded as hollow as it was. Gracie didn’t care. She began walking towards the door of the classroom. It was all she could do not to break into a run as she headed out the classroom door and down the stairs.

  *

  “Y’all making any progress on saving your buddy’s ass?” Officer Richard Perkins asked Addison and Alex as he lumbered into the Sheriff’s Department five minutes after his afternoon shift was supposed to have started. He jerked his thumb towards the sheriff’s private office where David was still stewing and awaiting a lawyer that might or might not show up before they were legally required to charge him or release him.

  Addison shook his head and Alex sighed.

  “We’ve both read everything in the danged file three times, and we still don’t have the slightest idea why Jarvis Marquette came to Shiner’s Bayou or how he had ended up dead,” Alex complained. He was standing in the middle of the room wearing a pair of too-long plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt that said ‘Coastal County Fish and Game’ on it in bold red letters.

  “You planning on working all night?” Perkins eyed Alex scornfully.

  “If that’s what it takes,” Alex replied briskly, then sighed. “My one and only uniform has about ten pounds of mud caked on right now.”

  “What did you go and do that for?” Perkins snorted and reached across the desk to snatch a potato chip out of the open bag Addison had been snacking from.

  “Re-investigating the crime scene.” Addison had been reading for so long his eyes were blurring. He leaned back in the desk chair and buried his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes. “We figured since Twitchy Eddie was the only person who’s even seen the place where the body was d
umped, maybe we should go have a look for ourselves.”

  Perkins snorted, clearly amused. “You’re about four days too late for getting any usable evidence,” he informed them. “This ain’t the movies. Even if you did go out there and discover the killer had been dumb enough to leave his driver’s license, Social Security card and license plate behind, a half decent lawyer would throw it out as evidence. There’s too much of a time lag between now and when the body was found.”

  Alex sighed. “You’re probably right.”

  “Probably?” Perkins laughed cruelly and shook his head “Ain’t no ‘probably’ about it. It’s the law. Not that you two dumbasses know anything about the law.”

  “Hey,” Addison bristled and Alex’s eyes widened.

  “Shut-up, Cowboy. Everybody in the county knows that all you’re good at is chasing tail and that only reason you’re even the game warden is that Uncle Wally owed a favor to his sister,” Perkins stared Addison down. “Fortunately for you, son, being the game warden doesn’t require any sense or talent. You just have to drive around with a damn spotlight, and you catch 95 percent of your criminals red-handed by pure luck. The other five percent just require a little bit of smooth talking, which is what a pretty boy like you is good at anyway.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Addison snarled. He’d been awake for too many hours to deal with this garbage. Even if some of it might have been true.

  “This ain’t called for,” Alex said, gamely stepping between Addison and Perkins. Perkins laughed in his face.

  “You might as well just turn in your temporary badge and leave, pajama boy. If the Sheriff weren’t sleeping with your Momma you wouldn’t even be here right now,” Perkins said scornfully.

  “I passed my tests,” Alex said angrily.

  “Sure you did,” Perkins rolled his eyes and crunched down on another handful of potato chips. “You’re incompetent just the same. Sheriff Wally Hall won’t hire anyone competent. He wants this department to be a one man show, and he’s the man running the show. He ain’t going to bring in anyone who could threaten him so he slaps badges on lazy, good for nothing good ole boys like yourselves.”