by Jana DeLeon
“Come on.” Carter reached over and helped Deputy Breaux off the couch as Myrtle hurried back to the front desk.
“All secure,” she said, and took her seat.
We headed out and waved to Carter as he drove away with Deputy Breaux. We stepped over to Ida Belle’s SUV, but I stopped short in front of the vehicle. I turned and looked at both of them, a million things running through my head but none of them coming together to make a complete picture.
“What’s wrong?” Ida Belle asked. “For someone who caught the bad guy, you don’t look very satisfied.”
“Something about it bothers me,” I said.
“Nothing about it bothers me,” Gertie said. “Well, except Deputy Breaux getting hit in the head, but I’m sure he’ll be fine. Given what we’ve dealt with in the past, this one was easy.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s too easy.”
Ida Belle frowned. “You think we missed something?”
“I do, but I have no idea what,” I said. “It’s just all a little too perfect. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it works. Ricky comes to Sinful looking for a father-son reunion, then he hears Hooch bragging about coming into money at the Swamp Bar.”
Ida Belle nodded. “He tells Hooch he’s his father and Hooch blows him off.”
“So he kills him and tries to steal whatever it was that Hooch was planning on selling,” Gertie said. “Makes sense to me. I mean, in a crazy killer sort of way.”
“But that’s just it,” I said. “He had one fight with Hooch and that was enough to set him off? Doesn’t that seem kinda premature?”
“Unless the fight at the bar wasn’t the first,” Ida Belle said. “He might have approached Hooch at his house before. Maybe the bar fight was just one of a string of them.”
“And his mother died recently,” Gertie said. “That might have been enough to put him over the edge when it came to the circumstances of his birth.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I know. It all works.”
“And yet?” Ida Belle asked.
“I just don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I need to sleep on it. Not like Ricky is going anywhere.”
“Let’s get home and get a shower and some rest,” Ida Belle said. “Things will probably be clearer tomorrow.”
I nodded and headed for my door. As I passed Ricky’s truck I saw a folded sheet of paper hanging out from the door. I pulled it out, figuring I needed to turn it in to Myrtle before it blew away, then I saw a typed name in the corner on the back.
Boone Carre.
I froze.
“What’s wrong?” Gertie asked.
“This has Hooch’s name typed on it,” I said. I opened the letter as Ida Belle hurried over to look.
* * *
Mr. Carre,
I hope this letter finds you well. I know you said at our meeting that you weren’t ready to part with the items I inspected, but I wanted to inform you that I have a customer who will pay top dollar. I estimate the value of the sale would be $800,000-1,000,000. I take a commission of 10% for handling the transaction for you.
Please let me know if you’re interested.
* * *
Ruben Glassier
Glassier Coins and Collectibles
* * *
“Coins?” Ida Belle said. “If he had valuable coins, they weren’t in his house. We searched the entire place.”
“They could be buried somewhere,” Gertie said. “Or stuffed in a wall or a hiding place in the floor. They’ll probably have to tear the whole place down to find them.”
I smiled. “No. They won’t. Remember Gertie, you said there was a plastic container of quarters in Hooch’s nightstand. Why would a man who stores his dirty underwear in his bed go to the trouble of putting quarters in a plastic container?”
Ida Belle’s eyes widened. “We were searching with flashlights and your vision isn’t what it used to be.”
“My vision is just fine,” Gertie said. “What’s lacking is my knowledge of collector coins.”
“Fair enough,” Ida Belle said. “Well, I guess the mystery of what valuables Hooch was hiding is solved.”
“Yeah,” Gertie said, “but how did Ricky get this letter?”
I stared at the letter and frowned. Sure, one question was answered, but this letter created several others. The last three days of activity and conversations rushed through my mind, all of it jumbled together. Until suddenly it wasn’t.
I grabbed Ida Belle’s arm. “We have to go back to Hooch’s place. Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I have to give Ida Belle and Gertie credit. They were both clearly confused, but my urgency must have convinced them that I was serious. Everyone hurried into the SUV and Ida Belle took off.
“Why do we need to go to Hooch’s place again?” Gertie asked. “Ricky’s locked up and Carter called the state police when we left Hooch’s place. They said they’d send someone out there as soon as they could.”
“If I’m right,” I said, “it might not be soon enough.”
“Tell us what you’re thinking,” Ida Belle said.
“I’m not sure Ricky killed Hooch,” I said.
“Why not?” Gertie said. “I know he said he didn’t do it but the guilty always say that.”
“This letter, old habits, unpaid debts, and lies about dating, to name a few,” I said. “And when Ricky said he didn’t kill Hooch, I sorta believed him.”
“I’m so confused,” Gertie said.
“And I’m not completely convinced either,” I said. “But there’s too many things that don’t fit for me and only one way I can put them together. How do you think Ricky got this letter?”
“From Hooch’s place?” Gertie said.
“But it wasn’t there when we searched the house,” I said.
“Maybe Ricky was there before us,” Gertie said, “and took the letter.”
“But didn’t take the coins?” Ida Belle said. “They were right there in the nightstand. I suppose he could have taken it off of Hooch at the Swamp Bar, or from his vehicle, if Hooch had it in there.”
“Or he could have stolen it from the motel this morning,” I said.
Gertie’s eyes widened. “From Margarita and Junior? You think Ricky broke into the motel? But there was stuff missing from a bunch of rooms.”
“Minor stuff,” I said. “If you want to make the burglary of one place or item look like something else, what do you do?”
Ida Belle nodded. “You steal things from other rooms. But why would Margarita and Junior have the letter?”
“I’m not sure about that part,” I said. “Not completely. But if I’m right, and they know about the coins—”
“Then they have to take them before the appraiser finds them tomorrow,” Gertie interrupted.
“And you think Margarita and Junior killed Hooch?” Ida Belle asked.
I shook my head. “Maybe not. Maybe they just got hold of the letter somehow and wanted to collect the coins before they’re confiscated to settle Hooch’s debts. But this letter is dated a month ago. If Ricky took it from their motel room then they probably knew about the money before Hooch died.”
“The hotshot driver,” Gertie said. “The one who used to date Margarita. My plumber said his route came through here some. He probably stopped in at the Swamp Bar. If he overheard Hooch talking, he might have felt obligated to get word to her about the potential windfall, especially if he knew about the back child support Hooch owed her.”
I nodded. “Maybe, but it still doesn’t explain how they got the letter. That’s the thing I can’t work out.”
Ida Belle nodded. “Because if they were in Hooch’s house, they would have taken the coins along with it, same as Ricky.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Where do you want me to go?” Ida Belle said. “Young Huck’s place and we hike?”
“No. Head toward Hooch’s,” I said. “You can park in the same place Ricky did, just pull farther in. I don’t think anyone will be able to see the
SUV but it will still be fairly close.”
Ida Belle nodded and continued past the road to Young Huck’s place, then turned on the road to Hooch’s.
“They were expecting to get access to the house right away,” Gertie said. “Then Carter made it a crime scene, and the DA ordered the appraisal. Do you think they knew about the coins before they came here?”
“I think so,” I said. “I don’t have any evidence, though. It’s just a hunch. For that matter, all of this conjecture is.”
Gertie frowned. “We should probably call Carter, right? Get him back over to Hooch’s place?”
I shook my head. “Because I have a hunch? He’s taking Deputy Breaux to the hospital. I could be completely wrong about all of this. If he detours back to Hooch’s and nothing happens, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Pride is both a wonderful and a dangerous thing,” Ida Belle said.
“It is,” I said. “And if you two don’t want to be involved, I wouldn’t blame you. I don’t have anything concrete to offer you.”
“A hunch is good enough for me,” Gertie said.
“A vivid dream would be good enough for you,” Ida Belle said. “But I’m with Gertie on this one. If you think there’s smoke, then I’m ready to fight fires.”
She pulled the SUV into the spot where Ricky’s truck was parked before and inched it forward and around a set of dense bushes.
“Perfect,” I said as I climbed out. “No one will see it if they’re driving by.”
“There’s enough moonlight to forgo flashlights,” Gertie said.
I nodded. “We should walk along the edge of the road. That way, if we hear anyone coming, we can hide.” I stopped walking and looked at them. “I’m apologizing ahead of time, in case I’m wrong about everything and wasting your time.”
Gertie waved a hand in dismissal. “What the hell else did we have to do? Sleep’s overrated.”
Ida Belle grinned. “Let’s go put out a fire.”
We headed toward Hooch’s place, and I wondered with every step if I was completely off on everything and this was a huge waste of time that would only result in more mosquito bites, but there was no way I could go home and pretend I was okay with the way everything was.
When we reached the end of the road, we stopped and peered around a set of dense shrubs. We hadn’t seen another vehicle along the way, and there were none in front of Hooch’s place. I didn’t see any signs of life. No lights. No sounds that indicated people were present.
“Looks clear,” Ida Belle whispered.
I nodded. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe all this planning for my future as a PI had caused me to make inaccurate leaps. Maybe I needed more sleep. Or maybe I was better at a career that allowed me to confront the bad guys after others identified and vetted them.
“Might as well wait a bit,” Gertie said. “At least until the state police show up.”
“I agree,” Ida Belle said. “Carter specifically asked for two cops. Even if Margarita and Junior want to collect the coins, they won’t take on two cops. I don’t mean to disparage the boy, but Deputy Breaux was a much easier target.”
“Then we wait,” I said, not sure whether to be pleased that my friends wanted to stay or worried that they were humoring me. I finally settled on pleased. Either option meant they cared about me enough to endure sleeplessness and the world’s largest mosquitoes. You couldn’t say that about just anybody.
Every second felt like a minute. Every minute felt like an hour. And as the minutes ticked by, I became more convinced that I’d been wrong. That Ricky had gotten the letter from Hooch’s truck or boat and killed him after Hooch had denied being his father. And I’d created some elaborate plot in my mind just because of a few things that didn’t make sense. Okay, maybe more than a few. But at the base of it, it was entirely plausible that Ricky had done it. All of it.
And then I heard the sound of an engine approaching. A marine engine.
I grabbed Ida Belle’s arm and she nodded. We listened, waiting to see if the boat passed or stopped. I knew that some people fished at night because different kinds of fish were active, and some ran their crab pots at night because it was cooler, so this might be nothing more than locals doing their thing. I’m pretty sure I was holding my breath as the engine quietly ran toward us. When it cut out behind Hooch’s house, I wanted to shout.
The state police wouldn’t arrive by boat and I couldn’t think of any reason why someone would stop by Hooch’s house in the middle of the night, so that left only one option. Now I just had to see if I had the right people. We hurried just inside the tree line around the side of the house, moving as silently as possible. I stopped when we had a view of the bayou and pointed to the bass boat tied to the dock.
I spotted two silhouettes moving up the path toward the house.
Then the clouds cleared and Margarita and Junior came into view.
Gertie grabbed my arm and squeezed and Ida Belle took a quick snapshot with her phone. I’ll admit to feeling a rush over my hunch being right, but now we had a problem.
“What do we do?” Gertie whispered.
“We wait,” Ida Belle said. “At least until after they break into the house and get the coins. Maybe we’ll luck out and the state police will show up and nab them.”
“How’s that lucky?” Gertie asked. “I want credit for this takedown.”
“You have been watching too many cop shows,” Ida Belle said.
Margarita and Junior walked up the porch and Junior made quick work of the lock. They slipped inside and I saw the occasional beam of a flashlight through the side window.
“We should disable their boat,” Gertie said.
I frowned. In theory, it wasn’t a bad idea. It left them stranded in the middle of the marsh, and if anyone was capable of disabling a boat it was Gertie. But if they looked out a back window and saw her, it was also risky.
“A five-year-old could make a shot from the house to the dock,” Ida Belle said.
“But it would definitely be to our advantage to leave them on foot.”
“Then we’ll cover her,” I said. “We’ll move as close to the dock as we can get without exposing ourselves, then Gertie will make a run for it as soon as the next cloud cover happens.”
“You want Gertie running on the dock with no light?” Ida Belle asked.
“Worse case, she falls in and is out of the line of fire,” I said.
“I’m not going to fall in,” Gertie said. “I can walk a straight line and once I’m in the boat, I’ll be low enough that they can’t see me from the house.”
“Let’s go,” I said, and we hurried along the tree line, then crept in the brush until we were a couple feet from the dock. We waited a few minutes and finally, the moon began to slip behind a thick set of storm clouds.
“Now,” I said, and Gertie took off down the dock. Ida Belle and I had our pistols out, ready to draw fire off of Gertie if necessary. About ten seconds later, the moon began to peek out again. I glanced over at the dock and breathed a sigh of relief as Gertie slipped down into the boat. Halfway there.
Then I saw Margarita and Junior coming around the corner of the house.
I grabbed Ida Belle’s arm and pointed. Gertie was trapped. And I could clearly see a pistol in Margarita’s hand. We couldn’t let them get to the dock, but we couldn’t exactly shoot them, either. This civilian crime-fighting business was a lot harder than my CIA missions. So many restrictions. Mainly, not being able to shoot the bad guys.
But were they the bad guys? I still didn’t know for sure if they’d killed Hooch. What if they were just trying to collect the coins before the appraiser confiscated them?
Ida Belle lifted her pistol and for a second, I thought she was going to forgo all the rules and just take them out right there, but instead, she fired a round into the giant rainwater reservoir behind Hooch’s house. The sound of the bullet tearing through the metal had both of them ducking and then the water began to pour out of the
hole, dousing them.
“State police,” Ida Belle yelled, forcing her voice lower than usual. “Drop your weapons and put your hands over your head.”
Without even a moment of hesitation, Margarita lifted her arm and fired. The bullet whizzed right over our heads and into the bayou. I knew she couldn’t see us, but she had taken a shot in the general direction of Ida Belle’s voice and it had been dangerously close. Any doubts I had about Margarita and Junior being killers fled completely from my mind. She’d just fired on who she believed was the state police.
As she fired a second shot, Junior whirled around and took off running for the front of the house. Margarita followed right behind him. Ida Belle and I sprang up and took off after them. I knew they couldn’t outrun me on the road, but if they got into the woods, it gave them an opportunity to get away or ambush us. I preferred not to engage in a game of cat and mouse in terrain that I was unfamiliar with.
I heard Gertie’s footsteps on the dock and knew she was moving in behind us. Then I heard a giant splash and mentally ticked one off the backup list. We rounded the corner of the house and I spotted them headed directly for the woods on the far side of the house. If they made it to the tree line, everything was going to be so much harder.
And that’s when the bear arrived.
Chapter Twenty-Six
He must have been lurking just inside the tree line, and when he heard the commotion, decided to come out and take a look. He took two steps out of the woods, spotted Margarita and Junior barreling toward him, then rose up on his hind legs and roared. Margarita slid to a stop, almost falling. Junior changed direction and took off down the road, leaving Margarita behind. So much for family loyalty.
Margarita scrambled to get her balance, then took off after Junior. Ida Belle fired a warning shot at the bear, who retreated back to the woods, then we set out after them. I could see them ahead of us, rounding a bend in the road, when I heard the unmistakable sound of pursuit. It wasn’t Gertie. It was something much larger and on four legs.