Fortune Hunter

by Jana DeLeon

  “It’s evil,” Gertie said.

  “Oh, no doubt,” Ida Belle said. “But all the trouble they went to…I guess I’ll never understand why people don’t just get a job.”

  “Sociopaths aren’t burdened with a conscience,” I said. “And most jobs don’t pay a half mil a year. Two years with Gail and a million-dollar payout, plus what he made catfishing the locals.”

  Gertie sighed. “I understand it in theory, but I’ll never be able to grasp it emotionally. So much pain inflicted and without a care for anyone who was hurt in the process.”

  “None of us can ever understand it,” Ida Belle said. “We’re simply not made that way.”

  “I just wish there was some way we could have saved her,” I said.

  “Me too,” Gertie said, “but at least there won’t be a next victim.”

  “The other good news,” Ida Belle said, “is that Brandon isn’t the killer. I guess it wasn’t his flashlight we saw in the bedroom.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It had to have been Nolan. Remember, when he answered the door he was out of breath. He said he’d been in the bathroom, but I bet it was from running downstairs to get into the chair and answer the door.”

  “I wonder what he was doing in there,” Gertie said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe retrieving something he thought would incriminate him or something he had stored in there that he forgot to take beforehand. He told me he had cameras in the house. Maybe he was checking the footage to see what the cops did when they worked the room. We may never know.”

  Ida Belle frowned. “So why was Brandon walking around his house with a flashlight?”

  “Poor Brandon,” Gertie said. “We practically accused him of murder.”

  “Well, he still has to answer for something,” I said. “Maybe once this settles down we can figure out what.”

  “No leaving us behind this time,” Ida Belle said.

  I looked down at the floor, then back at the two of them. “The truth is, I think I needed to do something on my own. In the past, I’ve always had a partner or a team to support me. I think I wanted to see if I could go it alone. You know, just in case I have to.”

  Gertie smiled. “You’ll never be alone, Fortune. Not as long as we’re alive.”

  Ida Belle shook her head. “Way to scare the girl.”

  * * *

  The next day, Sinful was buzzing with the news, and a second wave of shock passed over the town as they reveled in Carter’s exposure and takedown of the most diabolical criminal Sinful had ever seen. Francine’s Café had people waiting outside on the sidewalk and residents were packed shoulder to shoulder in the General Store. Main Street was so crowded with people trying to get the news that Carter finally closed the street down to through traffic.

  I chose to remain out of the fray. It wasn’t a difficult decision. Crowds of people weren’t the kind of frays that I took interest in. Gertie and Ida Belle, on the other hand, were down in the thick of it along with Marie, everyone exclaiming over how lucky they were that Nolan hadn’t killed them as well. Clearly, the general population didn’t understand the mechanics of the professional criminal.

  I spent my morning updating a disbelieving Harrison on my latest brush with death and figuring out how to work the gas grill, in case I decided to splurge and cook a burger. I was just about to grab a book and climb into my hammock when my phone sent me a signal that the GPS tracker on Brandon’s truck had activated. I picked up my phone and checked. Sure enough, the dot was moving on the screen. I had no idea what had caused the tracker to fail the day before, but it appeared to be working fine now.

  I grabbed my keys and dashed out to my Jeep. Brandon was our only unresolved item, and I really felt like starting tomorrow with a clean slate. I dialed Ida Belle’s number as I drove.

  “Meet me at the far end of Main Street,” I said when she answered. “Brandon is on the move.”

  They were waiting for me about a block from Main Street at the intersection where the downtown traffic was being rerouted. Ida Belle helped boost Gertie into the passenger seat, then climbed in the back. They both looked excited and confused. I handed Ida Belle my phone and told her to navigate.

  “You put a tracker on his truck?” Ida Belle asked. “That’s what you were doing that night at his house.”

  “Is there anything else you haven’t told us?” Gertie asked.

  “I think that’s it,” I said, then remembered that I’d never told them about my conversation with Carter and his reasons why he couldn’t be with me. I made a quick decision to let my original answer stand. I wasn’t sure yet what I thought about that conversation. I definitely wasn’t ready to discuss it with anyone else.

  A couple miles up the highway, Ida Belle directed me onto a narrow dirt road that led straight into the swamp. No more than a half mile in, cypress trees closed in around us, blocking out a majority of the sunlight.

  “Do you know where this goes?” I asked as I slowed for a set of deep holes.

  “Yeah,” Ida Belle said and grabbed the roll bar to brace herself as the Jeep bounced. “There was an old fishing pier back here. But it collapsed years ago.”

  “Let me know when we get close to the end of the road,” I said. “I don’t want him to see us coming.”

  Ida Belle pointed to a rotted tree up ahead. “Park somewhere near that fallen tree. The road turns left and dead-ends where the pier used to be about fifty yards ahead.”

  The fallen tree was located in a small clearing, so I pulled off the dirt path and parked next to it. I looked over at Gertie. “Can you make a fifty-yard walk?”

  “Heck yeah,” she said. “If we need to run, I might be in trouble.”

  “I think being armed preempts having to run,” I said. “I assume we’re all packing.”

  Ida Belle patted her waist. Gertie hefted her purse up in the air. I noticed it took both hands to manage it.

  Ida Belle shook her head. “Gertie’s probably carrying enough to arm a small country.”

  “Then we’re good,” I said.

  We climbed out of the Jeep and started down the road. My cell phone showed the dot flashing in one spot, directly ahead. Gertie was limping a bit, so Ida Belle and I put her in between us and bolstered her up a bit on our shoulders to increase pace. Otherwise, Brandon would have been filing for Social Security by the time we got there.

  We got to the last bend in the road and stopped. I peered through the brush and could see Brandon sitting in the cab of his truck, windows rolled down. He was looking down and I could see the top ridge of a laptop just over the doorframe.

  “What’s the plan?” Gertie asked.

  “Simple,” I said. “We walk up to the truck and ask him what he’s doing.”

  Ida Belle nodded. “Why the hell not.”

  I put my hand at my back, ready to draw if needed, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be necessary. Brandon was so engrossed with whatever he was doing that he didn’t even hear us approach. It wasn’t until we stepped up to the window that I realized he had earbuds in and was listening to music.

  “Hi, Brandon,” Ida Belle called out.

  “Holy shit!” He jumped and yanked the earbuds out as his head swiveled around to face us. “You scared the crap out of me. What are you doing?”

  “We were about to ask you the same thing,” I said. I held out my hand. “I’m Fortune, by the way. We haven’t met, but I know your wife.”

  As soon as I said the word “wife,” Brandon’s expression shifted from slightly shocked to slightly afraid.

  “Here’s the thing,” Ida Belle said. “We know you told Peaches that big shrimp were running and that’s where you’re making all the money you’re spending. But we also know that’s a lie, and we’ve seen you landlocked at least three times in the last several days rather than on your boat where you belong.”

  “Peaches is a nice girl and doesn’t need trouble,” Gertie said. “So whatever you’re up to, you need to get it
straightened out and be the husband and father those two deserve. You can’t do that in jail.”

  Brandon’s eyes widened. “I…I’m not doing anything illegal. I swear.”

  “Then what are you doing?” Ida Belle asked.

  Brandon’s eyes dropped down and a flush crept up his face. “I’m writing books.”

  I looked over at Ida Belle and Gertie, no idea what to say. If he’d said he was designing women’s undergarments, I don’t think I could have been more surprised.

  “Come again?” Ida Belle said.

  “Books,” he repeated. “I read every chance I get. Always have. Miss Gertie knows that. I always had a book under my school desk, trying to read in class. Well, one night I was surfing the net and I saw this article about a lady who wrote some stories and published them herself. She bought a new car and remodeled her whole house. I figured what the heck. I love a good pirate story and can’t ever find one, so I wrote my own and published it.”

  I leaned in the window and looked at the laptop screen. “So, Captain Cavendish, are these pirate stories making you money?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking a bit surprised by the pronouncement. “At first I thought it was a fluke, but I’ve published three of them now and I’m making twice what I did shrimping.”

  “So you’ve been sneaking around in your truck to write pirate stories,” Gertie said. “Unbelievable. Why didn’t you just write them on your boat? Then no one would have suspected you of doing something nefarious with all this strange sneaking around.”

  “I can’t work on the boat,” he said, looking a bit sheepish. “It makes me sick to my stomach. Can’t read there, either.”

  Ida Belle shook her head. “Of all the strange things we’ve heard this week, this one is right there at the top of the list, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “You have to tell Peaches,” Gertie said. “Before someone else notices your odd daytime behavior. If they mention it to her instead of checking with you like we did…”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brandon said. “I could see where that would be a real problem. I wasn’t trying to keep it from her necessarily. It’s just that it was sorta embarrassing. I mean, I’m a guy’s guy—fishing, hunting. You know. And I didn’t really figure people would keep buying the stories.”

  “Surprise!” I said, tickled that the explanation had turned out to be a pleasant one. “You’re an author. Tell your wife and go celebrate.”

  He broke out in a slow smile. “I think I’ll do just that. Thanks for not ratting me out.”

  I looked at Ida Belle and Gertie and grinned. “Looks like our work here is done.”

  Chapter 19

  I didn’t see Carter until late that night, but that was fine by me. If I’d seen him any sooner, I would have expected it to be with a set of handcuffs or even worse, that plane ticket to Idaho that I was so afraid of. It was just after 11:00 p.m. when I heard the knock on my front door. I’d been attempting a redo on the Jurassic Park marathon and got up to answer the door, no doubt at all who it was.

  “Are you here to arrest me?” I asked.

  “Do you have beer and something to eat that Ally made?” he asked.

  “I think I can accommodate you.”

  “Then I’ll leave the handcuffs in my truck.”

  I stepped back and let him in, then trailed behind him to the kitchen. He pulled two beers out of the refrigerator while I unwrapped a plate of cookies and sat them on the table. We both sat and he took a big bite out of a cookie, then a long drink of beer. He slumped back in his chair and looked at me.

  “New Orleans police have Francesca in custody,” he said.

  “That makes me happy,” I said.

  “I thought it might.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I think it’s time we talk turkey. What put you onto Nolan?”

  I told him everything I’d explained to Gertie and Ida Belle the night before. He listened without interrupting but occasionally nodded. When I finished, he shook his head.

  “I hate to say this,” he said, “because the last thing I want to do is encourage you, but that’s a damned fine piece of deduction.”

  I felt my face warm with his compliment. “Maybe I just got lucky.”

  “No. Everything you laid out was based on either instinct or logic. That’s the basis of solid police work and how some of the biggest cases get cracked. But I won’t disagree that you’re lucky to be alive.”

  I cocked my head to the side and studied him for a moment. “You don’t seem surprised by anything I said. You didn’t that night, either.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “I suspected, but I didn’t have enough proof to take it to the DA.”

  “What put you onto Nolan?”

  “Like you, I had a feeling that something didn’t add up, more than the obvious. Nolan said he heard a scream, then a shot, implying that Gail saw the man shooting her, but Gail’s eyes were closed as if in a deep sleep. I know eyes can close after death, regardless of what position they were in when it occurred, but in my experience, that’s rarely the case with violent death. It didn’t feel right.”

  I nodded. That had been my experience as well.

  “I asked them to screen for drugs in the autopsy,” he continued. “She had a large dose of Ambien in her system. I couldn’t find where Gail had ever been prescribed the drug. But Nolan had.”

  “He drugged her. But without being able to prove that, it looks suspicious but not enough so to get a court order for a camera.”

  “Not to mention I didn’t have a motive, until you told me about the insurance policy.”

  “Francesca will probably spend the rest of her life cursing that assistant for being so efficient.”

  Carter nodded. “If her assistant hadn’t made that phone call that Ida Belle answered, we might have never known about the policy.”

  “I assume Nolan Bishop wasn’t his real name. Have you figured anything out yet? Or can’t you say.”

  He laughed. “Like you care whether or not I’m supposed to tell you. If you thought you could get away with it, you’d break into the sheriff’s department to read my case file.”

  I didn’t bother to argue.

  “Today, I managed to track him back to his last mark, but I’m sure the more I dig, the more layers I’ll uncover.”

  “And?”

  “The man we know as Nolan Bishop was the personal assistant to an invalid named Nolan Bishop, except that man was legit. The real Nolan Bishop’s wife died, leaving him with a hefty insurance policy, all aboveboard, and he took on our Nolan as a personal assistant. When the real Nolan died of heart failure, he left everything to our guy.”

  “No autopsy?”

  Carter shook his head. “The real Nolan Bishop was a very sick man with a bad heart. He had no living relatives, and since he was at home alone when he died, no one suspected foul play.”

  “But you do.”

  “I’d bet my deputy’s badge on it, but since the real Bishop didn’t have family waiting in the wings, it doesn’t matter now. Still, I sent everything I had on our case to the police in California. If anything, maybe they can learn from it. God knows I just got an expedited education in the long con.”

  “The whole thing is rather sobering. I mean, I deal with people who run entire criminal organizations based on secrecy and lies but this was so…”

  “Personal?”

  “Yeah. It makes it harder to process.”

  Carter nodded.

  “So our Nolan stole the man’s identity and disability,” I said. “Then he moved across the country where no one was likely to recognize the name and set up shop. It is all rather convenient.”

  “And since he observed the real Nolan collect a huge insurance policy, no questions asked, he knew what his next scam would be.”

  “It’s still mind-boggling that someone would go to that length—play that kind of role—for so long.”

  “If I had to guess, I think he enjoyed the a
ttention, and he didn’t have to be in character all the time. Gail worked long hours in New Orleans. Nolan worked from home so no one bothered him during the day. He was free to pull the shades and live as an able-bodied person with no one the wiser.”

  “Did he create fake messages from the catfish on Gail’s Facebook account?”

  Carter nodded. “There was an exchange that night. He probably did it after Gail passed out from the Ambien. It was short, but enough to give us the idea that Nolan wanted us to have.”

  I looked down at the table, feeling a bit guilty about everything. “What did you say in your report…about shooting Nolan?”

  “I said that someone had been in the house the night before and I was keeping an eye on it—all of which is true, by the way.”

  “So you were already there when I climbed in the window?”

  “Across the street behind the bushes. I left my truck at the sheriff’s department as a decoy. Apparently it worked since you showed up.” He grinned.

  “Your impressive forethought aside, what made you think Nolan would return to the house that night? He’d been there all day.”

  “An old-fashioned hunch? I honestly don’t know that I thought Nolan would return so much as I just had this feeling that I ought to keep watch for a while. Then you came along and things got interesting.”

  Interesting was one way to describe it. Deadly was another. “I keep waiting for you to yell at me,” I said.

  “Would it do any good? If you don’t know how close you came to dying, then nothing I can say will convince you of it.”

  I sighed. “I know. If you hadn’t been watching, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Then instead of yelling at you, I’m going to ask you a favor.”

  I frowned. “What favor?”

  “The next time you have a hunch about something that doesn’t look right, tell me.”

  “I figured you’d think I was crazy.”

  “So? Even if I think what you suggest is crazy, it doesn’t mean I’d ignore it. I have too much respect for your ability to dismiss your concerns. If you think something is off, then it probably is.”