by Jana DeLeon
“On the road,” I said. “I heard the sound of footsteps on shell.”
A lot of the roads in Sinful had shells dumped on them from time to time. They made a different sound than gravel, and I was certain I’d heard someone walking on them.
“Stay here,” I said.
I crept out of the trees and hurried down the tree line until I found the road. Then I skirted the edge of it, hiding in the shadows as much as possible and staying in the grass to avoid making a sound on the shells. I could hear someone ahead of me hurrying away. I picked up my pace and stepped on a branch. It snapped with a crack that sounded like a gunshot in the still night air. The footsteps ahead of me took off and I sped up to a run. When I reached the first bend in the road, I saw a shadowy figure jump into a truck about fifty yards ahead. Seconds later, the truck took off, no lights on.
I hurried back to where Ida Belle and Gertie were and told them what I’d seen.
“That’s not Carter’s people,” Gertie said.
“No,” Ida Belle agreed. “Someone else wanted a peek at Hooch’s place. One person or two?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Only one person on the road but there could have been another in the truck. I couldn’t make it out in the dark. You think it was Junior?”
“Maybe,” Ida Belle said. “But why? We’re here looking for some indication of the property Hooch offered up to the Heberts, but Junior wouldn’t know about that. For that matter, neither would Carter. I can’t imagine Hooch wanted the fact that he had something valuable to get around, so he wouldn’t have been blabbing about it.”
“Maybe he let something slip when he was drunk,” I said. “If someone overheard and knew how to contact Margarita or Junior, they might have felt they needed to know.”
“Before or after he was murdered?” Ida Belle said.
“Good question,” I said. “Assuming it happened at all.”
“There’s one way to find out,” Gertie said. “Hooch did all his public drinking at the Swamp Bar.”
“No one at the Swamp Bar is going to talk to us,” I said. “Especially now that Hooch has been murdered. I’m sure it won’t take that little tidbit long to make the rounds. It’s easier to keep underwear on a prostitute than it is to keep a juicy secret in this town.”
“God, isn’t that the truth,” Ida Belle said. “Still, it might be worth a shot, and you know how much I hate the Swamp Bar.”
“Why? You’re not the one constantly humiliated there,” I said.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean the potential isn’t there for it to happen next time,” she said.
“Well, we can hash this out indoors, with AC, and with no mosquitoes,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Ida Belle pulled out her compass, we all clicked on our lights, and we headed into the woods. Since we weren’t worried about being seen this time, we moved at a faster pace and using a broader spread of light. We were two-thirds of the way back to the SUV when a branch cracked.
Everyone froze. The crack had been loud, signaling that the branch wasn’t small. Further signaling that whatever had broken it had some size to it. I didn’t think alligators would be this deep into the woods away from the water, but I wasn’t willing to bet on it. Ida Belle had told me there were feral hogs in the woods, and they were definitely heavy enough to break a good-sized branch. They were also not known for their pleasant temperament. We’d made it this far without having to shoot something, and I was really hoping we wouldn’t have to start.
A second branch broke, this one much closer.
“It’s behind us,” I said. “I mean almost directly.”
“Like it’s following us?” Gertie asked.
I nodded.
“Do you think the guy on the road could have doubled back?” Ida Belle asked.
“Maybe, but he’d have to be a good tracker to pick up our trail, at least in the beginning. I think we should get out of here.”
I didn’t like the circumstances—unknown terrain, unknown assailant or assailants, unknown motivation. Way too many unknowns.
We set out at a slow jog, Ida Belle in the lead. I followed last, listening for any signs of pursuit. Seconds after we began, I heard the steps…heavy crushing steps. But not from two legs. This was definitely four, and something a lot heavier than a human.
“Run!” I yelled as the roar of the bear ripped through the still night air.
Gertie whirled around and aimed her rifle at the sound of the roar, but when she squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. Her eyes widened and I shoved her in the back. “Go!”
We all took off at a dead run. I’d read that when you encountered a bear you shouldn’t run, but that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense when you were actually being chased by a bear. Ida Belle and Gertie surprised me by setting a good pace, but we were in the bear’s house and I could tell he was closing in.
“There!” Ida Belle yelled as we burst out of the trees.
We came out of the woods north of where we’d parked, and the SUV was nowhere in sight. But directly ahead was a cabin. Young Huck’s place. Free of the brush, we increased pace and ran for the cabin, all of us yelling as we went. The front porch light on the cabin clicked on and a man stepped onto the porch with a shotgun.
Six foot even. A hundred and sixty pounds. Nothing young about him.
“Who’s there?” he hollered and leveled the shotgun at us.
“It’s Ida Belle and friends! A bear is chasing us!”
Young Huck ran down the steps toward us. “Where?”
“There!” I waved a hand behind me as we ran past Young Huck and into the cabin.
I heard the shotgun blast behind me but I didn’t slow to check. Instead we all sped into the cabin then slid to a stop inside the doorway and looked back. Young Huck’s shot had missed, and the bear was barreling right for him.
“Run!” Ida Belle yelled.
With a surprising amount of agility and speed, Young Huck spun around and ran for the cabin. As soon as he’d crossed the threshold, we slammed the door and threw the dead bolt. But that didn’t deter the bear. He rammed into the door and I saw the doorframe begin to split.
“Upstairs!” Young Huck yelled, and headed for a ladder at the back of the cabin. I was pretty sure I’d seen this scene in at least ten of the horror movies that Gertie had made me watch, and it had never ended well for the people climbing the ladder. Of course, they’d had a two-legged pursuer, not a bear, so unless this was an escaped circus bear that could climb ladders, we would probably be good.
The bear slammed into the door again and the walls of the cabin shook as I scurried up the ladder behind the other three. Okay, maybe we were in trouble if he tore the whole place down. I stepped off the ladder and Young Huck clicked on a lantern. I’d expected to be in an attic, but instead, we were on what appeared to be an observation deck, complete with roof. Or a sniper tower, depending on your perspective. I suspected Young Huck was probably using it for more of the latter than the former.
“What did you do?” Young Huck asked. “Did you startle him?”
“We didn’t do anything,” I said. “We never even saw him until he started chasing us. He’d been following us for a while, though. I heard something behind us but we didn’t realize it was a bear until he roared.”
“No reason for a bear to follow you unless you’ve got something he wants,” Young Huck said. “You bag anything while you were hunting? Smells like someone took a skunk hit. I hope you ain’t thinking of eating that. Even I don’t go for skunk.”
“Gertie got sprayed by a skunk,” Ida Belle said. “It was an accident. And we haven’t bagged anything.”
“Maybe he’s rabid,” Young Huck said.
I looked over at Gertie, who had been suspiciously silent and now wore a guilty look. “What?” I asked her. “You know something. What is it? You wearing bear pheromone perfume or underwear made of rabbit fur?”
She pulled off her backpack and unzipped it.
She reached inside and pulled out a dead possum.
“I thought we might need it for our cover,” Gertie said.
“Your bag is leaking,” Ida Belle said.
“I had ice in it,” Gertie said. “It’s hot as heck out here. Meat would have been spoiled before we could even get it home.”
“It spoiled anyway,” Ida Belle said. “That’s why the bear was chasing us. He probably smelled it from three parishes over.”
The bear took another shot at the door and this time I heard it split from the frame. He was inside!
Young Huck clearly had zero idea what we were talking about, but I don’t think he cared to figure it out. “Throw that thing on the lawn before that bear tears my house down!” he yelled.
Chapter Eighteen
Gertie lifted the possum by the tail and we all ducked, and she swung it around before tossing it off the roof.
“What the hell?” Carter’s voice sounded from below.
We all stared at one another in horror, then leaned over the railing to see Carter standing there with the dead animal draped across his shoulder.
“Run!” I screamed.
Carter stared up at us, but his confusion only lasted long enough for the bear to catch the scent of decaying possum and come barreling out of the cabin. Carter took one look at the charging beast, grabbed the possum, and threw it as hard as he could into the woods. Then he set out running for the cabin. The bear hesitated for a second, then launched into the woods after his dinner.
A couple seconds later, Carter stepped off the ladder and onto the deck. His shirt was wet where the possum had draped across it and I imagined the smell wasn’t all that grand either, but since I was standing next to Gertie, I wouldn’t know. The skunk was beating out the dead possum in the odor wars.
“What the hell is going on here?” Carter asked. “I’m on my way to do a drive-by on Hooch’s place and I hear gunfire. Then I find you people feeding bears.”
“We were hunting possum,” Ida Belle said. “We wanted to teach Fortune some local stuff.”
“Hunting on private property?” Carter asked.
“I have a standing agreement with Young Huck that I can hunt his land,” Ida Belle said.
“That’s true enough,” Young Huck said. “Never said anything about staking out my roof though.”
“We’ll renegotiate our terms next week,” Ida Belle said.
“So you were teaching Fortune how locals hunt,” Carter said. He picked up Ida Belle’s rifle and checked it, then repeated the process with mine and Gertie’s.
“These rifles aren’t even loaded,” he said.
“I never intended to shoot a possum,” I said. “I don’t like their beady eyes.”
“Don’t look at me,” Ida Belle said. “The taste is awful. I just use it to push brush out of the way. Gertie’s the big hunter in the group.”
“What?” Gertie said, looking confused. “I loaded my rifle. I swear I did.”
“I figured it might be safer for her to load when she needed to shoot,” Ida Belle said.
“You unloaded my rifle?” Gertie asked. “No wonder I couldn’t shoot the bear.”
“Thank God I unloaded your rifle,” Ida Belle said. “All you would have done is pissed the bear off and he would have eaten Young Huck’s house trying to get at you.”
“So let me get this straight,” Carter said. “You decided to teach Fortune about hunting, with unloaded rifles, and in the middle of the night.”
“Best time to hunt possum,” Gertie said. “You know that.”
“Yes. I also know you’re supposed to do it with a dog,” Carter said.
“We have Bones with us,” Gertie said.
Carter glanced around. “Did the bear eat him?”
“Do you really think we’d let the bear eat Bones?” Ida Belle asked. “He was getting tired, so we headed back to the SUV. We’d gotten him in the back when the bear charged us. We were standing in the middle of the road and the bear ran between us and the SUV. So we hauled butt to Young Huck’s house yelling for help.”
I nodded, marveling a little at Ida Belle’s lying skill set. I was good but I could definitely learn a thing or two from this woman. “Young Huck must have heard us, and he ran out with his shotgun and fired at the bear.”
“Dead people could have heard you,” Young Huck said.
“Anyway,” Ida Belle said, “the bear didn’t slow. Not even a little bit. Then we all ran inside and when the bear started tearing down the door, we climbed up here. We speculated about why the bear was chasing us and that’s when we remembered that Gertie was still wearing her backpack with the possum in it. So we had her toss it before the bear tore the house down. That’s when you arrived.”
Carter narrowed his eyes. “If you two had no intention of shooting anything and Gertie’s rifle wasn’t loaded, who killed the possum in Gertie’s backpack?”
“I hit it with my truck on the way here,” Ida Belle said. “Gertie didn’t want it to go to waste and she had ice packs in her backpack, so…”
“So now, we’re all up to speed,” I said. “Can we go home now? Because hunting sucks.”
Carter stared at us for several seconds. I’m sure he knew it wasn’t the whole truth and probably guessed that we’d been snooping at Hooch’s place, or attempted to. But unless he decided to track our footsteps and the bear tracks, there was no way he could prove we were lying. I was going to hazard a guess that he didn’t really want to know. Because if he knew for sure that we’d been on Hooch’s property, then he’d have to do something about it.
Which made keeping him in the dark a favor to him. At least, that’s the way I was looking at it.
“Huck?” Carter asked. “Your door is pretty mangled. Do you want some help getting it back up?”
“No, thanks,” Young Huck said. “I’ve got some plywood next to the porch. I’ll just nail it shut and use the back door until I can get it looked at.”
“Get any supplies you need from Walter,” Ida Belle said, “and tell him to put it on my bill.”
Young Huck gave her an appreciative nod.
“Then if there’s no other dead animals to be tossed at charging bears,” Carter said, “I’d like to move this party back to Sinful where we can all get a shower and some sleep for what is left of the rest of the night.”
“Great,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t suppose you’d do me a favor?”
“I’m not really in a favorable mood,” Carter said. “What is it?”
“Could you give Gertie a ride back in the bed of your truck? She got sprayed by a skunk just before the bear started chasing us.”
Carter shook his head. “You guys are 0 for 2 with the wildlife. Maybe you should take up indoor hobbies that don’t include firearms or explosives.”
“The bear was indoors,” Gertie pointed out.
“Fine,” Carter said. “I’ll take Gertie home in my truck.” He pointed his finger at Ida Belle. “You will drop Fortune off at her house and proceed directly to your own. All three of you will lock the doors behind you and you will not emerge until at least an hour after daylight. I need sleep. I have a murderer to catch. And the three of you are costing me sleep, energy, and brainpower.”
“I bet you’re okay staying up all hours of the night with one of us for other reasons,” Gertie said, and gave Carter a wink.
“All right,” I said. “Hunt’s over. Let’s go home. And no more hunting for me. Unless mosquitoes become extinct. I’ll probably look like I have the measles on my face tomorrow.”
Carter gave me one last lingering look, and I figured there were about a million things he’d like to say to me, and most of them not positive. Whatever. With me staying in Sinful, he had a lifetime to chew me out. As long as I didn’t have to sleep on that cot in jail again tonight, I was perfectly happy to go home and come up with fifty excuses to never leave my house after dark again. At least, not until it was so
cold there were no mosquitoes. Assuming such a thing happened at all. More likely, the mosquitoes in Louisiana had evolved to some status that allowed them to move about more like zombies. You probably couldn’t really kill them without cutting their heads off.
“Let’s go,” he said to Gertie and pointed to his truck.
“I don’t want to ride in the bed of the truck,” Gertie groused as they started walking. “This road is horrible. I’ll have bruises all over my butt tomorrow.”
“There’s a couple of life jackets back there,” Carter said. “You can sit on them, and maybe use the bouncing time to rethink the choices you make and the company you keep.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” Gertie asked. “I keep the best company in this town.”
“And yet,” Carter said, “you always appear to come out on the short end of things when the three of you get together.”
“That’s because I’m a warrior,” Gertie said. “You know, charge first, ask questions later.”
“How’d that warrior thing work out with the skunk and the bear?” Carter asked.
Ida Belle looked over at Young Huck. “I’m really sorry about your house. Take a good look around tomorrow and give me a list of anything else that was damaged. I’m happy to take care of it all. You might want to look out for that bear, too. Once he’s found a meal…”
Young Huck nodded. “I have my ways of dealing with a lazy bear.”
“Hey,” I said, “out of curiosity, why did you build a deck on top of your house? I don’t see you as the type of guy who likes to spend time gazing at the sunset.”
Young Huck grinned. “Ain’t interested in no sunsets, that’s for sure. But you gotta have high ground when hurricanes come.”
I stared. “But that’s like twelve feet, and a good surge would knock the whole structure down. You see how the bear shook it.”
“Been living in that house for sixty-two years,” he said. “Ain’t left for a storm yet and ain’t planning to. If God wants to take me, then he’s welcome to it. I just hope he’s got enough beer stocked. The ice chest up there only holds a twelve-pack.”