Lethal Bayou Beauty

by Jana DeLeon

  Ida Belle and Gertie roped me in to helping them find Marie and clear her name, and almost got themselves killed and me exposed in the process. Once the real killers were revealed, Marie’s name was cleared, and since Bones knew Marie and loved her, I let her take the old hound to live with her.

  “Did he walk all the way over here from your house?” I asked as Bones shuffled down the hall and into the kitchen. He sat in front of the cabinet that contained dog treats and I poured him a couple on the floor as Marie greeted Ida Belle and Gertie.

  “He’s been quite perky lately,” Marie said. “I’ve had to fence my petunias to keep him from digging.”

  A trickle of fear ran through me. “There’s not…under the petunias…”

  Marie laughed. “No. I’m quite certain the petunias are not hiding any body parts. I made the bed myself last year and pulled out about three feet of topsoil.”

  I nodded, but still wasn’t convinced. When I buried someone, I always went deeper than three feet, and Bones got his name and reputation from being able to find bones several feet under dirt and even water. But as long as the fence was keeping Bones at bay, I wasn’t saying a word. The last thing Sinful needed was another questionable corpse.

  “Do you want some coffee?” I asked Marie as she took a seat at the table.

  “No, thank you. I can’t stay for long.”

  I nodded. “It’s probably a good idea for you to avoid us for a while.”

  Marie brightened. “So you are investigating?” She clapped her hands. “When I heard the whole story down at Francine’s, I just knew you wouldn’t let this town railroad Fortune like they tried to do me. That’s why I’m here.”

  She reached inside the front of her ruffled blouse and pulled out a large envelope, folded in half. “Best I can figure, this was delivered to my house over a week ago. With everything that was going on then, I hadn’t taken the time to go through the mail until today, and I found this.”

  She pushed the envelope across the table to Ida Belle. Ida Belle looked down at the mailing address and her eyes widened.

  “This is from Pansy to Celia,” Ida Belle said.

  “Why would Celia’s mail come to your house?” I asked.

  Ida Belle snorted. “Because Postman Bob is a drunk and Marie lives next door to Celia.”

  Gertie frowned at Ida Belle. “It’s not really polite to call him a drunk when you’re his supplier. Postman Bob is our biggest customer for cough syrup,” Gertie explained.

  “Should we open it?” I asked. “It is a federal offense to open someone else’s mail.”

  Ida Belle ripped open the envelope and pulled out some papers. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about than the feds.”

  “Well, what is it?” Gertie said, leaning across the table to look at the papers.

  “It’s a note from Pansy,” Ida Belle said.

  Mom,

  Here is the paperwork we talked about. I have to turn it in two weeks from now or the whole deal will be void. I’ve talked to an attorney, but I have to give him five thousand in retainer before he’ll even start working on my case.

  I know you don’t have much, but I don’t have anyone else to ask.

  Pansy

  Ida Belle flipped the note over and looked at the attached paperwork. “It’s an IRS agreement for paying back taxes. Holy crap, Pansy owes the IRS over eighty thousand dollars for federal taxes and more for self-employment.”

  “Has she never paid in her life?” I asked.

  Ida Belle shook her head. “It’s all for one year—two years ago.”

  “How much do you have to make to mount up eighty grand in taxes in a single year?” I asked.

  “A little under two hundred thousand,” Marie said, “depending on her allowed deductions.”

  We all stared at Marie.

  “What?” she asked. “I like numbers. I filed all Harvey’s business returns as well as our personal.”

  “I’m storing that away for future reference,” Ida Belle said. “It’s certain to come in handy at some point.”

  “Okay,” I said, “so what was she doing to generate that kind of income in a single year? I don’t believe for a minute that making corporate videos about sexual harassment and computer security pays that kind of cash.”

  “I agree, it seems highly unlikely,” Ida Belle said.

  “Can I see?” Marie asked.

  Ida Belle handed her the IRS forms. As she scanned them, a blush started at the base of her neck and crept up her face. Finally, she covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s all self-employment income that she owes the taxes for. See here?” She showed us a six-digit number on one of the forms. “This is the business code for ‘All other personal services.’”

  “That doesn’t sound like acting,” I said.

  “No, the description the IRS included is ‘sale of leisure services.’”

  “Whoot!” Ida Belle said and slammed a hand on the table. “Pansy was a prostitute.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Is that true?”

  Marie nodded. “It’s definitely possible. The IRS doesn’t have a code specific for prostitution, but this is one of the recommended ways of reporting such income.”

  Just when I thought I’d heard everything. “There are recommended tax procedures for prostitutes?”

  “Sure,” Marie said. “How else could the IRS get them for tax evasion? I mean, your average streetwalker probably earns well beneath the poverty level, so they wouldn’t be worth pursuing even for the self-employment portion. But a high-class call girl can make more than a corporate executive.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Marie. “Who are you again? And how do you know so much about prostitutes?”

  Marie laughed nervously. “I read a lot of sociology studies…and watch television shows about that sort of thing.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, Marie’s somewhat questionable knowledge of the world of prostitution aside,” I said, “would Pansy be considered ‘high class’?”

  “I think that just means she uses a hotel for business and isn’t a crack addict,” Gertie said.

  “Actually,” Marie said, “it refers to the clientele.”

  “So men who pay a lot of money for sex are high class?” Gertie shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right, either.”

  Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. “All social commentary aside, the fact remains that Pansy was likely doing something questionable for money, owed the IRS a ton for it, and wanted to see an attorney about it.”

  “She probably wanted to contest the amount,” Marie said. “People in the sex trade don’t exactly issue invoices or keep accounting records, so the IRS would have imputed her income based on her lifestyle.”

  “What’s imputed?” I asked.

  “Made an educated guess based on her house, car, spending habits…that sort of thing.”

  “So Pansy was living the high life in LA and got pinched for it by the IRS,” I summarized. “This is highly entertaining, but is it relevant?”

  “It could be,” Ida Belle said and leaned across the table. “We all know Pansy has a habit of going after men who are already taken. What if she slept with them, then blackmailed them to keep quiet about it?”

  “Pansy always did take the easy way out,” Gertie said. “It would be just like her to figure out a way to get paid long after services were rendered.”

  I sighed. “We really need to find out what Pansy was up to in California.”

  “At least now we have an address,” Ida Belle pointed out. “We can start there.”

  “I’ll grab my laptop,” I said and jumped up from the table.

  Marie rose with me. “I’m going to head back. Carter’s got the state police guarding Celia’s house and I don’t want anyone to catch on that I was meeting with you guys.”

  Ida Belle nodded. “That’s smart. You keep an eye out from your house and let us know if you see anything that mig
ht help. And thanks for the paperwork.”

  “And the tax knowledge,” I said as I followed her and Bones to the front door. “You’re amazing, Marie. You should think about opening your own tax service.”

  She blushed and gave me a shy smile. “No one’s ever given me such compliments before. Thank you.” She leaned over to kiss my cheek, then hurried out of the house, urging Bones to pick up his pace.

  I watched her walk away before hurrying upstairs, thinking about how Marie and I had more in common than I’d originally thought.

  ###

  It was close to midnight before I crawled into bed. I’d been running on sugar, coffee, adrenaline, and sheer stubbornness for almost three days straight, but I needed to get some sleep if I was going to remain at optimum performance, something I would really need tomorrow night. Unless Carter decided to pull another all-nighter, we were going to break into the sheriff’s department and find out what was in Pansy’s file.

  The documents Marie had delivered added new theories to what might have happened to Pansy, but didn’t offer anything concrete. What we really needed to make that angle work was a list of her customers, but I had no idea how to get one. We’d easily located the condo she’d lived in—a rental that ran almost seven thousand a month—but a quick search of public records showed she’d been evicted just before arriving in Sinful.

  Either her customer list had run low or the one or more who’d been picking up the tab had cut her off. My guess was an angry wife or two was involved. It wasn’t much but at least it gave us the real reason Pansy had run home to her mother. Gertie was going to call the landlord on Monday, pretending to be a bill collector, and see if she could get anything out of him.

  It was beyond tempting to have Harrison use the agency’s many resources to get to the bottom of Pansy’s California past, but no way could he get the information he wanted without throwing “CIA” into the requests, and that was sure to get back to Carter as he conducted his own investigation. If Carter found out the CIA was investigating Pansy, he was certain to ask why. That “why” would likely go straight to Director Morrow, who would pull me out of Sinful so fast it would seem as if a hurricane had blown through.

  I looked over at the noise-canceling headphones on my nightstand, deliberating whether or not to put them on. Despite all claims that living closer to nature was supposed to be peaceful and good for the soul, I found that the strange noises of the bayou creatures kept me up most of the night. Especially the frogs. The frogs in Sinful sounded like they were attempting opera every night—in Italian. I hated opera. I didn’t know any Italians, so the jury was still out on that one.

  I sighed and turned off the lamp. It probably wasn’t a good idea to put on the headphones considering a murderer was running loose. What if it had nothing to do with Pansy and was just some crazy who hated beauty queens? I would totally understand the sentiment, but given that I was posing as an ex-beauty queen, that put me next in line.

  I flopped back on my pillows and closed my eyes, surprised that all I could hear was the gentle flow of the bayou.

  Croak.

  I sighed and pulled the pillow over my head. Maybe I should consider getting a dog while I was here. I’d had Bones, but he was almost deaf and couldn’t even make it up the stairs to warn me of an intruder, much less take one down.

  Then I heard the sound of an outboard motor coming down the bayou. It was moving slowly, barely above an idle, but the low rumble carried across the water and into my sensitive ears. At first, I thought nothing of it. Ida Belle had already told me that the middle of the night was often the best time to fish, but when the motor shut off right in front of my house, I sat up, listening for the sound of a restart.

  Several seconds of silence passed. Complete silence, as even the frogs had ceased their performance. I jumped out of bed and hurried to the bedroom across the hall to peer out the window into the backyard.

  The light from the back porch barely reached halfway across the yard, leaving only patchy moonlight to illuminate the bayou. Dark clouds rolled across the sky, blocking out the sliver of light that had been there before, casting the bank into pitch black. I scanned the edge of the bayou, trying to make out any movement in the inky dark. At first, I saw nothing, then at the end of the yard where a row of enormous bushes that Gertie had called azalea stood, I saw the flicker of a tiny light.

  Someone was hiding in my bushes with a penlight.

  Chapter Nine

  I grabbed my nine millimeter and hurried downstairs and out the front door. Staying close to the side of the house, I crept around to the back and peered into the darkness, trying to locate another flicker from the penlight. To normal people, the wait would have seemed like a long time, but my body automatically shifted into professional mode. My breathing slowed, my senses sharpened, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and time seemed to stop.

  The hunt always felt the same.

  The faint rustle of leaves tickled my eardrum and I immediately locked into the location where the noise had originated. A second later, the penlight flashed against the ground before disappearing again in the brush. They were working their way up the side of my lawn, staying just inside the edge of the bushes to do it.

  I slipped away from the wall of the house and moved silently across the back lawn, careful to remain hidden in the shadows. I was only five feet away from the figure when they turned off the light and stepped out of the bushes.

  It would have been so simple to take them out right then—in fact, it would have been so easy, it seemed unfair. Certainly, no one had a valid reason for sneaking up on my house in the dead of night, but on the flip side of things, the last thing I needed was another body to add to the count. And if I killed them, then I had no chance of finding out what they were up to.

  Plan of action decided, I took two silent steps behind them and placed my nine at the back of their head.

  “Move and I’ll blow you away,” I whispered.

  “Fortune?” a panicked, female voice responded.

  “Ally?” I dropped my gun and spun her around to be sure. She stared back at me, her eyes round as saucers.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked. “I could have shot you.”

  Her body slumped and for a moment, I thought she would pass out. Instead, she bent over and took in a huge breath, then slowly blew it out. When she rose back up, she seemed a little steadier.

  “Can we get inside?” she asked. “I don’t want anyone to see me.”

  “Yeah, I sorta got that part given that it’s past midnight and you didn’t ring the doorbell,” I said and motioned her to the back door. “I came out the front door. Wait here until I turn off the porch light, then come in the back door.”

  I hurried around to the front door, scanning my neighbors’ houses as I slipped inside. No blinds snapped back into place, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching. If Ally didn’t want to be seen, then this was the smartest route to take. If my neighbors wanted to think I was some strange woman who stalked around at midnight wearing boxers, then they were welcome to those opinions.

  Of course, wearing boxers outside at midnight was probably illegal in Sinful, but that was something I’d deal with if the time came.

  I flipped off the back porch light and unlocked the door. A couple of seconds later, Ally crept inside. As soon as the door was closed, I flipped on the kitchen light. She lifted her hand over her head, blocking her eyes from the bright light and blinking to clear her vision. My vision took about a second to adjust, and I guided her to a chair at the breakfast table.

  “Do you want something to drink—coffee, maybe?” I couldn’t imagine what had sent Ally creeping through my hedges at midnight, but I imagined it was something more important than a simple conversation could handle. Otherwise, she would have just called.

  She looked up at me, still blinking. “Coffee would be great. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for a while—like maybe a week. You scared any thought of rest co
mpletely out of me. Good God, Fortune, where did you learn to sneak up on people like that? I never heard a thing and I’m a decent hunter.”

  I shrugged, trying to play down my skill set. “It’s the single-woman-living-in-the-city curse. For a long time, I was afraid to leave my apartment after dark, but winters up north are long and don’t provide a lot of light. I realized I was missing out on a good portion of my life, so I took those classes—you know, self-defense and stuff.”

  Ally shook her head, clearly impressed. “I took a class when I lived in New Orleans—same reason except for the cold part—but they never taught us anything like you’re capable of.”

  “We had a retired Special Forces guy teaching our class. He probably went a little overboard for the average civilian, but I found his instruction so fascinating that I took private lessons for a couple of years. It was something to do.”

  That part, at least, wasn’t completely a lie. Much of my training had been at the hand of one of the best Special Forces officers the military had ever seen. And I had taken the lessons off of company time and payroll. But he wasn’t retired. He was still active.

  Boy, was he active.

  Training and other things that I’d participated in with Army Ranger Sullivan were some of my fondest rookie memories. I’d found someone with the same interests, the same career objectives, and who had no desire for a picket fence, golden retriever sort of life. Unfortunately, he’d been sent on a mission six months after we met. It was his last.

  He was the first person I’d grieved for since my mother. I hadn’t been in love with him—we hadn’t known each long enough for something that serious—but I think I could have gotten there. Maybe. I don’t know.

  And I never would.

  I pushed thoughts of Sullivan aside and focused on the current situation as I took a seat across from Ally. The color was returning to her face, but she still looked worried. I assumed the worry was in place before I scared her half to death.