Jana DeLeon - Miss Fortune 05 - Gator Bait

by Jana DeLeon

  “Apparently, everyone puts down the remote and the beer to vote,” I said.

  “Of course,” Ida Belle said. “These men ask to be home specifically at election time. We take voting seriously here in Louisiana.”

  Gertie nodded. “If only our elected officials took it as seriously as the voters do. We tend to elect a bunch of fools.”

  “Everyone does,” I said, “but then my opinion of politicians isn’t all that high.”

  “You’ll have to revise that if Marie is elected mayor,” Gertie pointed out.

  “Goes without saying,” I agreed. I pointed to a large gathering at the end of Main Street opposite the church. “What’s going on down there?”

  Ida Belle rose on her tiptoes to look over the crown and frowned. “Nothing good. I see Celia standing on a park bench. Her mouth is open, which means trouble.”

  “She’s not supposed to be campaigning within six hundred feet of the election place,” Gertie complained. “We should get a tape measure.”

  “Waste of time,” Ida Belle said, “but we should probably go see what she’s up to. We can vote afterward.”

  We headed down the street, threading through the mass of men talking about sports and women pushing strollers and clutching screaming children. Finally, we made it to the end of the street where someone was handing Celia a microphone attached to a small amplifier on the ground next to the bench.

  “Something has got to change,” Celia boomed into the microphone, causing the amplifier to screech.

  “Sorry,” she said, lowering her voice about a hundred decibels. “This was always a safe town filled with good people, and look what has become of it. We’ve had more crime this year than we have my entire lifetime.”

  “Maybe if you were five years old,” Gertie yelled.

  Celia leveled her gaze at Gertie, flinching a bit when she took in Gertie’s outfit. “And what is law enforcement doing to protect us? ‘Nothing’ is the answer.”

  “You’re still alive and mouthing off, aren’t you?” Gertie yelled.

  Celia glared at Gertie, then continued her rant. “Sheriff Lee is so old he falls asleep reading people their rights.”

  “I’ll give her that one,” Gertie grumbled.

  “Deputy Breaux is likable enough. So is Daffy Duck, but I don’t see anyone asking him to join law enforcement.”

  I leaned toward Ida Belle. “I’m confused. Did she just call Deputy Breaux stupid or funny?”

  “I think she was going for stupid,” Ida Belle said.

  “That was rude,” I said. Deputy Breaux wasn’t any Einstein and he wouldn’t make it in law enforcement in a big city for a day, but calling him out as an imbecile in front of the entire town was a special kind of unpleasant. “I hope his mother didn’t hear that.”

  Ida Belle pointed to a horrid-looking woman standing next to the park bench and holding a “Vote for Celia” sign. “That’s his mother.”

  “The one nodding?”

  “Yep.”

  “Jesus.” From now on, I was going to make an effort to be nicer to Deputy Breaux.

  “Right now,” Celia continued, “Deputy LeBlanc is in the hospital, a victim of yet another criminal that he failed to catch.”

  I felt a flush run up my face. “He was shot and almost drowned, and you have the nerve to complain about him, you ungrateful bitch.”

  The crowd went silent.

  Celia locked her gaze on mine. “Maybe if he was concentrating on his job, instead of making time with Yankees, we wouldn’t have any crime in this town. We didn’t before you came.”

  “You can’t blame Fortune for anything going on in this town,” Ida Belle said. “Everything that has happened since she’s arrived started years before she got here.”

  “Maybe so,” Celia said, “but the first thing I plan to do as mayor is clean house at the sheriff’s department. This town needs law enforcement that will keep us safe. Men that criminals fear so much they won’t even try to get away with something in this town.”

  “You mean criminals like your daughter? Or the former mayor?” I asked. “Or were you only referring to criminals not related to you?”

  There was a collective intake of breath and the entire crowd froze, only their eyes moving back and forth between Celia and me. Celia turned white, then whiter, then the blood rushed back into her face and turned her as red as a tomato.

  I waited for the twinge of guilt I should have felt, but it never came. The part about Celia’s daughter was a low blow, but I was tired of hearing her vitriol. Carter wasn’t responsible for criminals choosing their way of life, and no law enforcement officer, no matter how scary, was going to turn criminals straight. It was a ludicrous thought and highly insulting to every man and woman who worked to protect the general population.

  Finally Celia gained her voice back and she pointed a finger at me. “When I win this election, I’ll make it my first order of business to find a way to get you out of this town. You may not have committed any of the crimes here, but I know bad luck when I see it. It wasn’t here before you arrived. The solution for returning this town to normal seems clear to me.”

  I stared at her, trying to understand how anyone could be so superstitious and stupid and downright mean, but it escaped me. Even worse, some of the residents were starting to study me as if Celia might be onto something.

  Gertie drew herself up straight and glared at Celia. “Fortune saved your life. If she hadn’t been here, you would have died. That seems awfully lucky on your part, although some of us might have a differing opinion.”

  Ida Belle shook her head at Celia and spun around, grabbing my arm as she went. “Let’s get out of here. This can only get worse, and we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  I hesitated a moment before setting out after her. Finding the man who’d tried to kill Carter definitely took priority over Celia and her nonsense, but I was worried about this election. If Celia was elected and made good on her promise, Carter might be released from the hospital to unemployment. I shuddered to think of what Celia would deem a suitable replacement. I was certain no one else in Sinful was better qualified to manage the town than Carter. And anyone who wasn’t a Sinful resident would be at a gross disadvantage.

  “Where’s Marie?” I asked. “Shouldn’t she be down here duking it out with Celia?”

  Ida Belle shook her head. “Marie would never do something like that. She’d consider it crass.”

  “Well, maybe she needs to consider getting a bit of crass,” Gertie said. “She might need it to beat Celia.”

  I worried that Gertie was right, and Marie’s refusal to fight dirty could result in her losing the election. With Celia in charge of Sinful, all kinds of things would change, and not for the better. Celia just thought things were bad now, but if she fired Carter, I had no doubt things would go from bad to way, way worse.

  Chapter Nine

  Gertie and Ida Belle made quick work of the voting, skirting the locals who tried to hold them up with questions about Carter and Celia and anything else they wanted gossip about. In an attempt to avoid the nosiness, we took the long route to the sheriff’s department, making a beeline for the bayou behind the row of shops on Main Street and working our way back toward the other end of the street where the sheriff’s department was located. We wanted to check with Deputy Breaux about the boat and to see if he’d discovered anything of use.

  When we walked in the sheriff’s department, Myrtle gave us a halfhearted wave before dropping her hand back onto the desk. She looked exhausted.

  Ida Belle frowned. “You look like you’ve been up all night. Where’s your backup?”

  Myrtle nodded. “Sick. And I have been up all night, but I can’t leave Deputy Breaux to handle everything. Between Carter, the Feds, and the election, this town’s a madhouse. You guys been to see Carter?”

  “We went this morning,” Ida Belle said.

  “How’s he doing?” Myrtle asked.

  “Good, considering how t
hings could have gone,” I said.

  “Did he say what happened?”

  Ida Belle shook her head. “The concussion is causing memory loss. It’s probably not permanent, but for now, he’s as much in the dark as the rest of us.”

  “Unless Deputy Breaux has found out anything useful?” I gave Myrtle a hopeful look.

  She shook her head. “Between the election fights he keeps having to break up and those Feds who keep trying to force him to do anything but his job, he’s had his hands full. Even if there was something to be found out, he wouldn’t have had time to listen to it.”

  “Did he send someone to try to recover the department’s boat?” I asked.

  Myrtle frowned. “Oh yeah. That’s the current round of issues. You’re not going to believe—”

  The door to Deputy Breaux’s office flew open and a young woman carrying a baby hurried out, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t hear any more of this,” she said. “If you find a…you know, let me know.”

  Deputy Breaux stood in the doorway to his office, a stricken look on his face. “I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

  “It’s not your fault,” the woman said. “I appreciate your efforts. I just have to get home. Tommy needs his nap.”

  As if on cue, the little boy’s face contorted, his giant blue eyes almost squeezed shut, and he let out a wail that practically shook the walls. I cringed and forced myself not to put my hands over my ears. The woman hurried past us, giving Ida Belle and Gertie a nod as she rushed out of the sheriff’s department.

  “What’s wrong with Laurel?” Gertie asked.

  Deputy Breaux sighed. “She’s upset.”

  “Doesn’t take a detective to figure that one out,” Ida Belle said. “What did you say to upset her?”

  “Wasn’t so much what I said as what the shrimpers found when they went to pull up the sheriff’s boat.”

  “Are you going to tell us?” Ida Belle asked, her impatience evident, “or do I have to pull it out of you one sentence at a time?”

  Deputy Breaux’s brow creased and I could tell he was trying to decide if he should tell Ida Belle what she wanted to know or if he wasn’t supposed to tell. Finally, he must have decided that whatever he knew wasn’t confidential, or he was more scared of Ida Belle than the rules. Either way, he started talking.

  “The shrimpers took a couple of roughnecks with them to help with the boat. One of them is certified to dive and had all the equipment and stuff. They lucked out because the place where the boat sank wasn’t one of the deepest parts of the lake, and he found the boat right where your coordinates said it would be…”

  “But?” Ida Belle prompted.

  “But there was more wreckage down there.”

  Gertie shrugged. “There’s probably a hundred or more boats at the bottom of that lake.”

  “It was The Calypso,” Deputy Breaux said.

  Ida Belle’s eyes widened and Gertie sucked in a breath.

  “I get the feeling I missed something important,” I said.

  Ida Belle nodded. “The Calypso is…was Hank Eaton’s shrimp boat.”

  “Laurel Eaton’s husband,” Gertie said.

  “Oh! The woman who just left?” I asked.

  They nodded.

  “I take it he didn’t make it off the boat?”

  “When he didn’t come in from shrimping one evening,” Ida Belle said, “we all assumed that was the case.”

  “But it’s still a shock when you find out for sure,” Gertie said. “Kinda like losing them all over again. And Laurel so young and that baby with so many problems.”

  “The baby has problems?” I asked.

  “So sad,” Gertie said. “He was born with something wrong with his heart. Hank didn’t have medical insurance on them, and I heard through the grapevine that the medical costs ate up what little life insurance he had pretty quick-like.”

  Ida Belle sighed. “Laurel’s an aide at the hospital. She had to drop out of college and couldn’t finish her nursing degree. They don’t pay much, but they let her off whenever she needs it to see the specialists in New Orleans.”

  “People seem to disappear around here,” I said. “More than other places, I mean.”

  “It’s bayou country, so not exactly surprising,” Ida Belle said. “Men have dangerous jobs in unpredictable terrain.”

  “Besides,” Gertie threw in, “Malaysia lost an entire plane, so we’re not doing bad.”

  “Did he normally shrimp in the lake?” I asked.

  “Sometimes shrimpers push through the lake,” Ida Belle said. “The catch is smaller than the deeper waters, but the day Hank went missing, a big storm blew in. My guess is the storm carried his boat into the lake.”

  Gertie nodded. “He could have fallen off the boat before it got to the lake, or hit his head and gone down with the boat like Carter did. Lots of things can go wrong when you’re caught on the water in a storm like that one.”

  After my trip to the bottom of the lake to rescue Carter, I couldn’t think of a worse way to die than drowning. I felt sorry for Hank and his wife. The mental image of what must have happened to him would probably be rolling through her mind for a long time to come.

  “You said they found the sheriff’s boat, right?” I asked. “Were they able to get it up from the bottom of the lake?”

  Deputy Breaux nodded. “Took some doing, but they were able to get it up and attach it to some big blocks of Styrofoam, then drain it enough to tow it in.”

  “Can we see it?” Fortune asked.

  “No.”

  “Jesus,” Ida Belle said, “this is no time to start playing the confidential card. We just came from voting and Celia’s standing at the end of Main Street telling everyone how incompetent this department is and how she’s going to replace every one of you as soon as she’s elected. Trust me, you need all the help you can get right now.”

  Deputy Breaux’s face contorted with frustration as Ida Belle relayed Celia’s words. “I’m not saying no because I have some illusions about solving this myself or anything. Those damned Feds showed up when they pulled up to the dock with the boat. They said the boat was evidence in their case and they were taking it.”

  Gertie mumbled a couple of curse words I recognized and a couple more I didn’t.

  Deputy Breaux gave her an appreciative look. “I felt the same way, ma’am. I tried to tell them that Walter had a place for it in his garage where it would be safe and they could look it over, but they refused.”

  Ida Belle sighed. “That would have been perfect. At least we could have gotten access on the sly.”

  “And I’m sure that’s exactly what they figured,” I said. Especially now that they knew Walter was Carter’s uncle. “Did you see anything useful on the boat before they hauled it away?”

  “What looked like a bullet hole in the side,” Deputy Breaux said, “but they wouldn’t let me close enough to check it out. I asked the men who brought it in about them, but all they said was it looked like gunshots. No idea what caliber, if it was even gunshots.”

  “I don’t suppose you know where they were taking the boat?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I overheard that one in charge on the phone. He was talking to someone at Southwest Storage.”

  Gertie perked up. “That’s off the highway going toward New Orleans, right?”

  “Yeah,” Deputy Breaux said, “but what does it matter? If they won’t let me inspect the department’s boat at our own dock, they’re not going to let me look at it somewhere else.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t—” Gertie started and Ida Belle jabbed her in the ribs.

  “The whole thing was weird, really,” Deputy Breaux said. “After you called and asked about the boat, the only people I talked to were the shrimpers and the roughnecks they had helping. I asked them all to keep it quiet, and I don’t have any reason to believe they didn’t.” He frowned. “But they’d no sooner docked when those Feds showed up. Like someone had alerted them, but I have no idea who it co
uld have been.”

  “That is weird,” Ida Belle agreed. “I can’t imagine a Sinful resident who would willingly go into cahoots with the Feds, especially when things involved a local.”

  “Celia would,” I said.

  Everyone stared at me, their dismay apparent, then everyone spoke at once.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Figures.”

  “That woman is a disease.”

  Gertie covered her mouth with her hand. “Did I say that out loud?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but it wasn’t as bad as what I was thinking.”

  Deputy Breaux’s expression shifted from aggravation to worry. “Does the doctor think Carter’s memory will come back soon?”

  “He has no way of knowing,” I said. “Hopefully, it will start coming back the more the swelling goes down, but there’s always a slim chance he never remembers.”

  “That would be bad,” Deputy Breaux said. “I know Sheriff Lee is supposed to be in charge, but everyone knows Carter is running the department. If Celia got him fired, she wouldn’t have to bother doing the paperwork on me. I’d resign before I’d work for anyone she picked out.”

  “Of course you would,” Gertie agreed.

  I gave him an approving nod. Perhaps Deputy Breaux wasn’t quite as foolish as he appeared to be. “Let’s just hope Carter remembers soon and the whole mess is wrapped up.”

  “And that Celia isn’t elected mayor,” Gertie said.

  We exchanged looks, but apparently no one wanted to verbalize their thoughts on Celia in charge of Sinful. I had a feeling that only Celia’s cronies would fare well if she took over, and even then, only if she felt like it. Everyone else’s life as they knew it would be changed forever, especially mine. If Celia got control, I had no doubt she’d make good on her promise to run me out of town. I couldn’t risk my cover over the ravings of a crazy woman. If Celia came after me, I’d have to request extraction.

  Which meant leaving Sinful—and Carter—for good.

  “So what’s the deal with the storage facility?” I asked after we exited the sheriff’s department. “I figure you two know where it is, right?”