by Jana DeLeon
“Even if those facts point to an innocent person?”
“This job didn’t come with any guarantees that I’d love it. But I promised to uphold the law and that’s what I have to do, with a belief that the system will work properly. I can’t choose to do my job only when it makes me happy. Maybe one day, you’ll understand that.”
His words hit me like a bucket of cold water, completely knocking me off my high horse. How many times had I been schooled not to get personally involved when I was undercover? The reasons were numerous and varied, but all boiled down to the same thing—personal involvement equaled a conflicted assassin, and conflicted could equal hesitation, which could equal death.
In other words—mission failure.
In all my undercover assignments with the CIA, I’d never even been tempted to get personally involved. The people I’d associated with hadn’t merited my interest, but I’d been incognito in Louisiana less than a day before I’d formed alliances with locals. Granted, I didn’t have a target in Sinful, so it was a different sort of undercover than what I was used to, but you boiled it right down to basics, my life would be a lot easier if I’d kept the same standards about personal involvement.
For the first time in my life, I’d made real friends and now, everything was complicated. This was exactly what Carter dealt with every day—investigating people he knew, people he had relationships with and probably liked—every time a crime occurred. They couldn’t all be domestic disputes and fishing violations. Sometimes, he’d draw the difficult case. The case that made him take a hard look at people he’d known his entire life and ask himself if all this time he’d been unaware of the monster that dwelled within them.
Immediately, I felt guilty for giving him such a hard time since I’d arrived. I’d thought him narrow-minded and rigid, but the reality was, he spent every single day managing a delicate balance between being a Sinful resident and having the rest of the residents under a microscope.
Lately, that microscope had been working overtime.
I was trying to formulate a response when Deputy Breaux knocked twice on the door then stuck his head inside.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but Ally called and there’s a bit of trouble over at the café.”
“What kind of trouble?” Carter asked.
“Paulette is there demanding Francine close for the day in her husband’s memory. Francine not only refuses to close, she wants Paulette arrested for dripping on her new entry rug and ruining it. Sheriff Lee’s not making headway with either of them.”
No surprise there. A successful businesswoman like Francine wouldn’t have a bit of use for a piece of fluff like Paulette.
Carter closed his eyes for a second, then rose from his chair and looked down at me. “You’re free to go, but I want you to think about everything I said. You’re already a handy scapegoat for people. Try not to make it any easier on them.”
I gave him a nod as he walked out of the office, then jumped up from my chair and hurried out behind him, pausing by Ida Belle’s chair.
“Let Ms. Morrow out,” Carter instructed Deputy Breaux, “then lock the door behind her and don’t open it for anyone but me or Sheriff Lee.”
Ida Belle tugged on my yoga pants. “Find out what killed Ted,” she whispered.
I glanced at the front door where Carter was still issuing instructions to a confused-looking Deputy Breaux. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Check his office.”
Carter’s office was in the back corner of the building. I knew this because of the small matter of breaking and entering that Ida Belle, Gertie, and I had pulled off a week ago, but I couldn’t see any way to get back there when I was supposed to be leaving the sheriff’s department to go straight home and try to blend into the woodwork.
“Ma’am?” Deputy Breaux stood at the front door, his hand poised on the knob. Carter was nowhere in sight.
“Uh, I don’t suppose I can use the ladies’ room before I go?” I had zero idea where the restroom was, but I hoped it was somewhere at the back of the building and not upstairs.
Uncertainty washed over Deputy Breaux’s expression. “I don’t know…Deputy LeBlanc said I have to lock the door after you leave. I really need to lock the door.”
“And I really need to go to the ladies’ room. It’s a girl thing.”
“Oh…ummm.” Deputy Breaux’s face grew so red it looked as if it were glowing.
Got him.
“You can lock the door while I’m gone,” I said, “then let me out when I’m done.”
He hesitated a moment, clearly afraid he’d make the wrong call and incur Carter’s wrath.
I moved in for the kill. “It’s this medical thing, you see. The doctor says—”
“That’s okay, ma’am.” He held both his hands up to stop me from continuing, then immediately dropped one back down to grasp the doorknob. “Go ahead and I’ll let you out when you’re done.”
“Thanks.” I gave him my fake grateful smile. “If you could just tell me where it is…”
“Oh, right.” He pointed at the hallway behind him. “Down this hall, then turn right on the back hallway. It’s the second door on the left.”
“Great.” As I hurried away, I looked back at Ida Belle and gave her a wink.
Chapter Four
I hustled past Deputy Breaux and toward the back hallway. I heard the dead bolt on the front door slide into place as I rounded the corner. I shook my head. Deputy Breaux was nothing if not dedicated to following orders.
I opened the bathroom door to check out the lock, then let out a sigh of relief when I saw the very old, very loose locking mechanism. I could jimmy that in half a second with my driver’s license. I stepped inside the bathroom to turn on the water for the sink then locked the door and pulled it closed behind me before hurrying down the hall to the next door on the left—Carter’s office.
The office door was locked but contained the same old, flimsy door lock that the bathroom had. I made quick work of it with my license, then slipped inside, locking the door behind me. I moved immediately to his desk and shuffled through the stack of paper in front of his computer. Bills, insurance policy, receipt for filing cabinet. Crap. I clicked the mouse and the screen popped up to the password entry box. Another dead end.
As I turned to look in the waste basket, a sheet of paper on the printer caught my eye. I pulled it off and scanned it, my pulse ticking up a notch with every word.
Arsenic!
No wonder they’d figured out cause of death so quickly. Arsenic poisoning wasn’t exactly the easy-to-hide kind of death.
“Miss Morrow?” Deputy Breaux’s voice sounded from the hall. “Are you all right?”
Crap!
My pulse shot up another notch as I slid the paper back on the printer and tried to come up with a plan. Maybe if I waited long enough he would go away.
A second later, he knocked on the bathroom door and called out again. “Miss Morrow?”
I looked around the office, hoping to create a miracle. The bathroom didn’t have a window, so even though I could get out of Carter’s office I had no way of getting back inside the bathroom. Not to mention it wouldn’t take Carter two seconds to figure out what I’d done, especially when he found his office window unlocked.
I glanced up and that’s when the miracle occurred. The office had one of those acoustic ceilings with those big white tiles. I pulled myself up onto the filing cabinet against the wall Carter’s office shared with the bathroom and slid the tile over, hoping there was a crawl space in between.
I blew out a breath of relief when the tile opened up to a two-foot-high area that contained the air-conditioning ductwork. I rose up on my tiptoes and pushed back the corresponding tile on the bathroom side, then stuck my head over the wall.
“I’m fine,” I said, praying it sounded like I was in the bathroom. “I’ll just be another minute.”
“Okay,” he said and I felt some of my ten
sion slip away.
And then, as Ida Belle would say, it all went to hell in a handbasket.
“Deputy Breaux!” Carter’s voice boomed down the hallway. “You’re supposed to be up front with Ida Belle. You couldn’t wait five minutes to pee?”
Holy crap!
My body froze in place, in direct opposition to my mind, which wouldn’t stop whirling. This was so not good. The getting arrested and cover blown kind of not good.
“It’s not me,” Deputy Breaux said. “Ms. Morrow had to use the restroom. She’s been in there a while and I came to check on her.”
“And you believed that. I see.” Carter knocked on the bathroom door. “Party’s over.”
I knew before I did it that it was a bad idea, but it was the only one I had.
Here goes nothing.
I pulled myself up into the crawl space, careful to keep my weight centered on the wall framing. I peered down into the bathroom and smiled when I saw the sink directly below me.
“Fortune?” Carter called.
“I’m almost done,” I said. “Just washing up.”
“Go home and shower. I don’t have time to waste.”
Balancing my midsection on the frame, I carefully spun myself around until I could lower my legs down the bathroom wall side. As soon as my toes touched the edge of the sink, I slid the rest of my body out of the ceiling and put both panels back in place.
Pleased with my resourcefulness, I brought my feet flat down to rest on the sides of the sink, and that’s when things went horribly wrong. My right foot slid on the sink’s edge as if it were ice. I waved my arms and crouched, trying to regain my balance, but it was too late. I pitched off the side of the sink headed straight for the toilet.
“I’m opening this door.” Carter’s voice boomed from the hallway.
I managed to restrain from yelling or cussing, which was a plus, but it was the only plus to be found. I dragged my hands down the wall as I fell, trying to stay upright. If I hit the toilet on my side, I gave the toilet a slim-to-none chance of remaining attached to the floor. My left leg hit the floor first and I reached for the back of the toilet to balance, but only succeeded in wrenching the lid from the toilet bowl. At the same time, my right foot came crashing down in the toilet and promptly lodged in the drain at the bottom.
Water splashed up toward my face and I held the lid up to block the spray. A split second later, I heard the lock on the bathroom lock click and the door flew open.
If I wasn’t certain I was about to be arrested, I would have laughed. The look on Carter’s face was priceless—a mixture of confusion, incredulity, and when the exact location of my foot registered, a little bit of disgust.
“What in God’s name are you doing? No, wait. I don’t think I want to know.”
It wouldn’t have passed muster on a CSI episode, but I tossed out the first thing I could come up with. “I stepped on gum outside and was trying to clean it off my shoe.”
He blinked. “And you thought the toilet was a good option?”
“I didn’t think I could get my foot all the way up in the sink.”
“Why didn’t you take the shoe off—no, never mind. I don’t even want to know. Just get your foot out of my toilet and go home.”
“I can’t. I lost my balance and now my foot’s stuck.”
Carter closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his hand. I wondered if he was counting to ten or weighing the potential cost of shooting me where I stood.
“That’s why I’m holding the lid,” I said, deciding I may as well invest everything in my ridiculous cover-up. “I was trying to fix it.”
He opened his eyes. “You can’t fix a stuck foot with the—you know what, it doesn’t matter. Put the lid down.”
I placed the lid on the toilet bowl and awaited further instruction.
“Untie your shoe,” he said.
I blanched. “You want me to stick my hands in the toilet water?”
“Well, I’m sure as hell not going to do it. You already thought it was a good place for your foot. It’s not a huge stretch.”
I looked down into the toilet bowl and grimaced. The water looked clean enough, but something about deliberately shoving my hands in a toilet bowl didn’t seem right at all.
“I don’t have all day,” Carter said. “Either you untie your shoe and pull your foot out or I leave you here and call a plumber.”
I weighed my options. “A plumber sounds good.”
“Sure. Of course, Sinful only has one plumber and he’s offshore fishing until next week. It will be an inconvenience to the office staff having the only toilet in the building out of service, but we can always use the restroom at Francine’s or the General Store. You, however, might find the circumstances harder to manage.”
“Fine.” I took a deep breath and shoved my hands in the toilet bowl, scrambling to undo the laces as quickly as possible. As soon as the laces were loosened, I yanked my hands out of the water and gave my leg a good jerk.
My foot slid out of the tennis shoe far easier than I’d expected and I tumbled backward into a storage cabinet, bringing the entire thing crashing down on top of me. I flailed around a bit in a stack of broken pressboard, toilet paper rolls, and cans of room deodorizer before Carter grabbed my shoulder and hauled me to my feet.
He pointed at the shoe, still lodged in the toilet, then at the door. I assumed at this point he was so angry he’d decided to stop speaking. I was probably better off.
I plucked my shoe out of the toilet and gave him an apologetic look before dashing out of the bathroom and down the hall past a stunned Deputy Breaux. In the front office, I waved my dripping wet shoe at Ida Belle before unlocking the front door. She raised one eyebrow before lifting a hand to wave.
Then I stepped out onto the sidewalk, placing my bare foot square into wet gum.
Karma is a real bitch.
###
As I approached my Jeep, I tossed the wet shoe into the backseat and heard a muffled cry. I peered over the side and saw a still-damp Gertie huddled on the back floorboard.
“What in the world are you doing?” I asked.
“I wasn’t going to just leave you here,” she said. “Although if I’d known it was going to take this long, me and my bad hip would have reconsidered our options. Can we get out of here before someone sees me?”
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said as I hopped into the Jeep and started it up. “My house or yours?”
“Mine. I need to get out of these wet clothes before I become one big wrinkle.”
“Got it,” I said as I pulled off down Main Street.
“What’s with the shoe?”
“I had a little bit of trouble with the sheriff’s toilet.” I told her the whole sordid mess as I drove.
Gertie’s jaw dropped when I told her about the arsenic, but when I moved onto my creative escape from Carter’s office, she started giggling. By the time we arrived at her house, she was collapsed in a lump of wailing hysteria.
I parked in her driveway and looked back at her. “Do I need to get you oxygen?”
She fanned her face, still gasping for air. “One minute… I can’t believe… Oh my God…”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
“You’re such a dichotomy—easily the most resourceful person I’ve ever met but with the absolute worst luck. It’s a wonder you’ve ever made it back from a mission.”
I frowned, trying not to recall the reason I’d been shipped off to Sinful in the first place. “My training didn’t cover Sinful, Louisiana.”
Gertie nodded. “A perfectly valid argument. In a lot of ways, I found navigating Vietnam easier than living here.”
Sinful, Louisiana, or this country’s most ill-conducted conflict. Yep, I could see her point.
“All my bad luck aside, I did manage to find out what killed Ted. Now, I want nothing more than to go home, soak my tennis shoes in bleach, and stand in the shower until the hot water runs out.”
“What now?”
“My legs are asleep.” She stretched out her arms. “You’re going to have to help me out.”
Sighing, I grabbed her arms and pulled her up to the edge of the Jeep, then dangled her over the side. “If I pull you out, can you stand?”
“I think so, as long as I can lean on you. I’m getting dizzy though.”
I slid my arms underneath her shoulders and pulled her over the side of the Jeep, expecting her to gain a little balance when her feet hit the ground. That didn’t happen. Instead, her feet hit the lawn and her legs collapsed as if made of rubber.
She didn’t weigh much to speak of, but the bulk was a problem. I tightened my grip and shuffled one foot back, trying to prevent her from crashing onto the lawn, but my shoed foot caught on something and sent us both sprawling backward. When we hit the ground, the sprinkler head my shoe had caught on snapped.
A second later, the sprinkler turned on and water gushed out of the pipe like Old Faithful, drenching both of us. I bolted up and dragged Gertie out of the gusher and onto her front porch where I collapsed in a heap, leaning against her door.
Gertie looked over at me, her silver hair plastered to her head, her makeup now resting on the collar of her dress, and started giggling again.
“What in the world are you laughing for?” I asked, certain she’d lost her mind.
“I was just thinking,” she said in between chortling, “that we both wanted to go home and shower, but technically, we’ve been showering all day.”
I squeezed a gallon of water from my ponytail and stared at my bare foot.
If this day got any more ridiculous, I was going to blow my cover and turn myself over to the terrorists. I couldn’t help but think it would be easier.
Chapter Five
I managed to get Gertie into a kitchen chair and placed her cell phone in easy reach. If circulation didn’t return to her legs in fifteen minutes or so, she was supposed to call 911. Apparently, the morning’s activities hadn’t spoiled her appetite, because she had me fix her a ham sandwich before leaving.