by Jana DeLeon
“You're making a big mistake,” he said. “Whatever these two are up to, you don't want any part of it.”
“All they're 'up to' is a cup of coffee.” I waved toward the front of the house.
Deputy LeBlanc shot one more look of warning at Gertie and Ida Belle and left, slamming the front door behind him.
“Oh my God—” Gertie started.
“What the hell—” Ida Belle chimed in.
“Hold up!” I interrupted before they got too wound up. “Do those looks of absolute consternation and confusion mean neither of you knew Marie was missing?”
“We had no idea,” Gertie said. “I swear it. I mean, she wasn’t at church on Sunday, but we figured with the bone being found and all, she was just lying low.”
“This is not good,” Ida Belle said.
“No shit, it's not good,” I agreed. “It makes her look guilty as hell.”
“Well…,” Gertie said.
I waved a hand in aggravation. “The fact that she probably is guilty is not the point. The point is that it does no good to divert suspicion to someone else if Marie is running around practically waving banners that say ‘I did it.’”
“I agree this is not optimal,” Ida Belle said.
“Not optimal?” I stared. “It's a friggin' disaster. Do either of you have any idea where she might have gone?”
They both shook their heads.
I felt my exasperation rise and cursed my father for ingraining the coward challenge in my psyche. My helping Ida Belle and Gertie was all his fault, and not at all what I'd signed up for when I agreed to come here. Knitting would have been a breeze compared with this. I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself that they were old and their only life experience was this God-forsaken town. I needed to do the difficult thinking.
“Okay,” I said, “if Marie was in trouble, who would she call?”
“Probably not her daughter,” Gertie said. “She lives out of state and Marie wouldn't want to worry her. And with her cousin working for the sheriff, well, she could hardly get her involved.”
Ida Belle nodded. “She's right. Marie doesn’t have much family. The only people she would have called outside of those two is me or Gertie, and you have my word, neither one of us has heard from her since Gertie talked to her on Saturday.”
“Well, it is pointless to continue finding suspects until we locate Marie and get her to stop drawing attention to herself. I can come up with some sort of story for her to tell about her disappearance, but it won't do any good unless we can get Marie back here to tell it.”
“Harvey had that camp out on Number Two,” Gertie said. “Do you think she went there?”
“Number Two?”
“It’s an island out in the swamp north of here,” Ida Belle said. “It's called Number Two Island because the whole place has a rather foul smell.”
“And people intentionally go there? Pitch tents there and camp?”
“Not a tent camp,” Ida Belle said. “Camps are buildings—probably closest to a cabin.”
“The fishing is great on Number Two,” Gertie said. “Just dab a little Mentholatum in your nostrils and you’re good for several hours.”
“I’ll pass.” In no way, shape, or form did my helping them have to include traipsing around in the swamp on a stinky island that was probably surrounded by my only local predatory equal, the alligator.
“You can’t pass,” Gertie said. “Even if we find Marie, we’ll never be able to convince her to return to Sinful unless she meets you. You’re our ace in the hole.”
“That’s interesting, considering I just arrived two days ago. What would you have done to help Marie if I hadn’t come to town?”
“I hear Brazil is nice this time of year,” Gertie said.
I sighed. And it probably didn’t smell like crap.
***
Ida Belle insisted that I had nothing suitable to wear to Number Two and that a trip to the general store was in order. I spent a very scary half mile clutching the back door handle of Gertie’s Cadillac while she herded the monstrous sedan down the center of the street. Other vehicles pulled onto curbs and into driveways to avoid her.
“Damn it, Gertie,” Ida Belle complained from the passenger’s seat. “You’re driving without your glasses again. You’re going to kill someone.”
Like me.
“I’ve got on my glasses,” Gertie said.
“You’ve got on your reading glasses.”
“All I need is reading glasses.”
“That’s not what Dr. Morgan said.”
Gertie frowned. “What the heck does he know? I changed the man’s diapers, and now he’s telling me I have old eyes. Well, I’m not having any of it. My eyes were perfectly fine for reading until he convinced me to wear reading glasses. Now I can’t even read the label on canned goods without having these things on.”
Ida Belle looked back at me and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it—the glasses are making your vision worse.”
Finally, we pulled up at the curb of the general store, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I strolled inside. I hoped Gertie wasn’t doing the boat driving, too. An older, stocky man at a counter at the back of the store greeted me as I walked inside.
“Welcome,” he said. “You must be Marge’s niece. I’m Walter and this is my store.”
Six foot one. Two hundred fifty-six pounds. Good vision but high cholesterol.
“Nice to meet you, Walter,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ve been putting together some supplies for you.”
I looked back at Gertie and Ida Belle, who shook their heads.
“What kind of supplies?”
He pulled a pair of silencing headphones from beneath the cabinet and set them on the counter. “Had to dig through storage to find these. Not much call for silencing with Sinful hunters, but I had one pair anyway. They’re a little dusty, but good quality.”
He bent over and picked up a cardboard box and set it on the counter. “That should be everything you need for today.”
I peered in the box and saw hip waders, work gloves, camouflage pants and T-shirt, rope, a hunting knife, and a rifle.
I looked up at him. “I like you.”
Walter laughed and shot a look at Ida Belle. “If only all females were so easy to please.”
Ida Belle marched up to the counter and glared at Walter. “I demand to know who gave you information on this young woman.”
I looked at Walter, who winked at me. “My guess,” I said, “is he’s been talking to Deputy LeBlanc.”
“Yep,” Walter said. “Came in here yesterday laughing over your issue with the frogs, but he wasn’t laughing today. Came in here mad as heck over Marie being missing.”
“Saw that myself this morning,” I said.
“Well, I figured since Marie is missing and Ida Belle and Gertie was at your house darned near before coffee time that they was roping you into helping them with some nonsense. Since Harvey had that camp over on Number Two, I figured that’s where they’d want you to go look with them.”
He pulled a tab from the cash register drawer and handed it to Ida Belle. “I put everything but the headphones on your tab as I figure that stuff is for Sinful Ladies’ business. I gassed up my boat and docked it around back. Put a tank of gas on your tab as well.”
He handed a second tab to me. “That’s for the headphones. Just sign and we can settle up later when you come back for more supplies. You’ll want to get out to Number Two before the breeze picks up. I’m throwing in some Mentholatum for free, just ’cause I feel sorry for you.”
I put the headphones in the box with the rest of the supplies. “I feel sorry for me, too.”
I followed Ida Belle and Gertie out the back entrance of the store and down to the boat dock.
“Darn man has always had a smart mouth on him,” Ida Belle complained.
“Well, you have turned down his marriage proposals for over forty years,” Gertie
said. “He was bound to get testy about it sooner or later.”
Forty years! I didn't have that kind of interest or dedication to anything.
“Walter knows good and well I'm not about to have a man around twenty-four/seven trying to tell me what to do. If he hasn't processed 'no' in forty years, then it's his own fault.”
I eyeballed the tiny scrap of floating aluminum and hoped like hell there were life vests available. “Um, who exactly is driving the boat?”
“I am,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie started to protest, and Ida Belle held a hand up to stop her.
“Don’t even go there,” Ida Belle said. “When you bring your glasses, I’ll consider riding with you again, but not a minute before.”
Gertie crossed her arms over her chest. “Then I guess you’ll be walking to the meeting tonight.”
“Me and my corns will manage the two blocks just fine.” Ida Belle looked over at me. “That equipment isn’t doing you any good in the box. Go back in the store and change clothes. And get a move on. The bouquet of Number Two tends to rise with the temperature.”
Great.
I trudged back to the store wondering what in the world I’d done to deserve all this. Then I remembered that I’d killed the brother of an arms dealer with a stiletto and everything made sense again. If this was the way karmic justice worked, I was going to make darn sure I didn’t kill the wrong person in the future.
“Changing room is on the left,” Walter called out, not even looking up from his newspaper as I walked inside the store.
I located the changing room and pulled on the camouflage pants, T-shirt and hip waders, then turned to look at myself in the mirror. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d seen in my life. The hip waders bloused out like a clown suit, complete with camo suspenders. All I needed was a litter of Chihuahuas to carry around in there and I’d be ready for a second career option.
I walked out of the dressing room and up to the counter. Walter lowered his paper and gave me the once-over, then shook his head.
“Is this really the best thing to wear into the swamp?” I asked. “Can’t I just wear jeans and rubber boots?”
“Some places in the swamp is like quicksand. Looks like ground—then you step on it and sink a good three feet in the mud. If you was to wear the boots, you wouldn’t make it ten feet before one was stuck in a mud pit and long gone. For you to lose them waders, you’d have to step in something up to your waist.”
“I’m not going to need to run or anything, am I? Because these things really restrict movement.”
Walter’s brow scrunched together for a couple of seconds, then he shook his head. “I suppose a rogue gator is always a possibility. But given as how I already heard about your sprint to Francine’s yesterday, I’m betting money you’ll be faster than Ida Belle or Gertie. A gator can’t eat all of you, so from your perspective, running’s not really a worry.”
I stared at him, certain he was joking, but he merely lifted his paper and went back to reading the cartoons. Jeez. And I thought I was ruthless. Maybe he was angrier over Ida Belle turning down those marriage proposals than she imagined.
I hefted my supply box up on the counter. “Can I leave everything I don’t need right now and pick it up when we get back?”
“Sure. I’ll just put it behind the counter.”
“I don’t suppose you have some mirrored sunglasses, do you?”
“Yep. Most people going on the water prefer polarized, though.”
“I’m not planning on spending much time on the water, so mirrored are fine.” And allowed you to closely watch other people without them realizing what you were doing.
Walter rummaged through a drawer behind the counter and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. I stuck them on top of my head, then dug through the box, stuffing things I thought I might need into the camo pants pockets. I started to load the rifle, then stopped.
“I really appreciate you including a rifle in my gear,” I said, “but if I have to fire while running, a handgun would work better.”
Walter lowered his paper and stared at me, raising one eyebrow. “You been watching them cop shows on television?”
“Maybe?” I replied, hoping it would cover my faux pas of asking for weaponry that a librarian probably shouldn’t have the ability to use.
He narrowed his eyes at me, and I worried for a moment that I’d taken things too far.
“What’s a pretty young thing like you know about shooting a handgun?”
“Pretty young things who live in big cities can’t shop after dark without protection.”
He stared a couple of seconds longer, and I kept my gaze steady. Finally, he sighed and pulled a pistol from underneath the counter.
“I have to run a background check on you to sell you a pistol,” he said. “There’s no way I can get that check done in the next ten minutes, so seeing as you’re Marge’s family, I’m going to loan you my gun. But if you lose it, or shoot anything but a gator with it, I’m going to swear you stole it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said as I put the rifle back in my supplies box and took the pistol from him. “I take it you know this Number Two?”
“Yep. Got a fishing camp out there.”
“Is there anything in particular I should watch out for?”
He snorted. “Yeah. You’re riding in the boat with ’em.”
I shoved the pistol in my camo pants and left the store before I changed my mind. I was way too close to agreeing with him.
Ida Belle was perched at the back of a tiny aluminum boat next to an outboard motor. Gertie sat on a bench in the middle, wearing a life vest and squinting at me as I approached the bank.
“Couldn’t we borrow a bigger boat?” I asked.
“A bigger boat won’t fit down the channel,” Ida Belle said.
“Are you sure this thing’s safe?”
Ida Belle waved a hand in exasperation. “Just get in and sit down up front. Unless you plan on dancing in here, the thing’s fine. And push me away from the bank, will you?”
I looked at the wobbly piece of tin and hesitated, then chastised myself. I’d seen plenty of boat launches on movies. I could handle this.
I untied the boat from a giant post, then pushed the front of the boat just a bit with my foot. The mud it was resting in must have been slick because the boat launched backward. Panicked, I leapt from the bank onto the flat shelf on the front of the boat, waders and all, and froze in a judo fighting stance.
Gertie clapped, grinning from ear to ear. “That was amazing. I figured you were going to flip over into the bayou, and then we’d have to fish you out and buy you new waders.”
Great. Twenty-five years of martial arts training had managed to entertain Mother Time in the bayou. My father would be proud.
“I thought the waders were waterproof,” I said. “Why would you have to replace them if I fell in?”
“They’re watertight,” Ida Belle said. “So as soon as you get in water over the waistline, they’ll fill up and you’ll sink like a stone. If that happens, you have to shed those waders and let them go. Then you’ll have to buy another set.”
“That happen a lot?”
“Probably more than you want to know about.”
“Hmmmm.”
“Are you going to sit down?” Ida Belle asked. “Or am I supposed to drive down the bayou with you up there looking like a Jackie Chan hood ornament.”
I hopped down into the boat and sat on the bench at the front. It was a good thing I did. Next thing I knew, Ida Belle twisted the throttle on the boat motor and it launched a good two inches out of the water and ten feet forward in less than a second. If my feet hadn’t been firmly planted on the bottom of the boat, I would have been face-first in the aluminum.
Gertie, however, did not fare as well. She flipped over backward off the bench, still clutching the shotgun, and shot out the lights on Walter’s pier. I looked back at the store to find Walter standing at the back door, sha
king his head.
“I’m putting that on your tab,” he yelled as Ida Belle powered the boat away from the store.
I hoped Ida Belle had rich parents or had retired from a lucrative career. Otherwise, she might have to take Walter up on his proposal in order to clear her tab.
I rose and staggered the couple of steps to the bench to take the shotgun from Gertie, then helped her back onto the bench. “I’ll just hold on to this,” I said, nodding at the shotgun.
“It had already been pumped.” Gertie said and frowned at Ida Belle. “Who leaves their shotgun pumped?”
“I do,” Ida Belle said. “I sprained my wrist last week, and it’s delayed my response time.”
Gertie’s frown cleared. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
I was beginning to see the validity in Walter’s warning.
“So, how far is it to Number Two?”
“Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes with the bayou this smooth,” Ida Belle said as the boat slammed over a wave, jarring my teeth.
“And Harvey’s camp is on the bank?” Please. Please. Please.
“Not right now. The tide’s out, so the water level will be too low to pull all the way up to his pier. We’ll have about a quarter-mile walk to get around to it.”
I didn’t even bother to hold in the sigh. It felt like an entire day had already passed, and yet we still had to walk in sludge, find Marie, convince her to return to Sinful, drag her back if she didn’t want to go, come up with a reasonable explanation for her disappearance to Number Two, and find someone else to blame for Harvey’s death.
I’d disabled a nuclear warhead with less effort.
Chapter Eight
I smelled Number Two before I saw it. I'd like to say that's because I was facing backward in the boat, but the reality is, the aroma of N2 wafted across my nose before we'd even rounded the narrow channel to get a clear view.
I blanched and saw Gertie pull the Mentholatum from her pocket. I remembered Walter had given me some and pulled the container from one of my camo pants pockets. I swiped my finger in the gel and dabbed a bit in my nostrils, then inhaled a little.
And almost passed out.
Ida Belle rounded a corner, and I turned around to see what in the world could create such a stench. I was appalled to see an island of mud and cypress trees about a hundred yards away across a small lake, filled with stumps. There wasn't a breath of air, which meant that stench was literally permeating over a hundred yards away from the source. Ida Belle cut the boat speed down to almost nothing and began to weave in and out of the stumps.