Swamp Sniper

by Jana DeLeon

  “What about an affair?” I asked. “You said he was a letch. Maybe there’s a woman in Sinful who didn’t want to avoid him. Someone with a jealous husband.”

  Walter frowned. “I guess anything’s possible, but I’d have no idea who it could be. I’ve never seen him talking to anyone in particular and certainly not carrying on in a way that I would suspect an affair.”

  Gertie sighed. “This is a pointless line of questioning. Walter would have to see Ted in bed with another woman to know he was having an affair. Men have blinders on when it comes to that sort of thing.”

  “Really?” I asked. My experience with men had mostly been limited to other CIA operatives. Being observant tended to keep you alive, so I was unaware of this pedestrian male blind spot.

  “Maybe,” Walter said, looking a bit indignant, “it’s that women are underhanded and sneaky and men don’t want to believe the worst about them.”

  Gertie waved a hand in dismissal. “Keep telling yourself that. Angelina Jolie could be a known archcriminal and men would still line up to have sex with her.”

  “Hmmm,” Walter said, apparently lacking a good argument.

  “Sex with Angelina Jolie aside,” I said, “can you think of anything at all that Ted might have done to make someone angry enough to kill him?”

  “I wish I could,” Walter said, “but I haven’t seen or heard anything that would make me think someone was gunning for him. If one of the men around here was out for Ted, either he was damned quiet about it or it’s so recent the rumor mill hasn’t gotten it around.”

  “Have you had any interaction with him recently?” I asked.

  “Sure. He’s been to see Scooter the last two weeks for repairs. That man really shouldn’t own anything with a motor.” Walter looked a little sheepish. “Well, I guess he doesn’t anymore. That was awfully rude of me.”

  “You forgot,” I said. “What kind of repairs?”

  “Brake problems on his truck—nothing out of the ordinary. His boat motor was a different story. Damn thing melted—bad wiring, probably. Scooter said it wasn’t worth repairing, so he had to buy a new one.”

  “And he seemed normal when he was here for those repairs?” I asked.

  Walter nodded. “He was talking a blue streak about some show on cable. I pretty much tune him out once he gets going, but he seemed same as always to me.”

  “Maybe we’re thinking about this the wrong way,” Gertie said. “We’re assuming someone was trying to kill Ted because of something he did, but maybe Paulette was the one having an affair.”

  I frowned. “You think a jealous lover killed Ted so he could have Paulette to himself?”

  Walter grimaced. “If that’s the case, he’ll get off on an insanity plea. No one in their right mind would want that woman.”

  “I agree,” Gertie said, “but most men aren’t as discerning as you are, Walter.”

  “You did say Paulette spent most of her time in New Orleans,” I said.

  Gertie brightened. “That’s right. Claimed she was at spas, but that would give her all the opportunity in the world to cat around.”

  I nodded. “And Ted or anyone else in Sinful wouldn’t have been the wiser.”

  “Great,” Gertie said. “So all we need to do is verify what Paulette does when she’s in New Orleans.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” I asked. “She’s not likely to take a spa trip given that her husband was just murdered.”

  Gertie scrunched her brow in concentration. “We need receipts. Then we could figure out where she was and maybe figure out a way to question staff.”

  I shook my head. “No way,” I said, knowing already where she was going. “We’re not breaking into Ted’s house. Might as well wave a banner that says ‘Arrest me. I did it.’”

  Walter nodded. “Carter would put you under the jail.”

  “Well then, I’m out of ideas,” Gertie said. “You got any better idea?”

  “Just because I don’t have a better idea,” I said, “doesn’t mean this is a good one.”

  “But it’s the only one.”

  I stared out the storeroom window at the bayou, frantically seeking any alternative to Gertie’s suicidal suggestion.

  “You’re thinking about doing it,” Walter said. “I can’t believe it. You’re as crazy as the other two.”

  I smiled. If he only knew. “Since Paulette is Catholic, won’t she go to church for something? If the house is empty…”

  “Okay,” Walter said, “this is where I take my leave so if Carter ever asks me, I don’t know a damned thing. Call me if you need anything…of the legal variety.”

  Gertie waited for Walter to leave the storeroom before replying. “They sometimes do a prayer vigil right after the death. I figure Ted will be sent back east for burial, so there’s a good chance Father Michael will do some sort of service tomorrow.”

  I nodded. “We’ll break into the house then.”

  “And we have the added advantage of a good portion of Sinful being at the service. Most of those hypocrites don’t step into church unless it’s a wedding or a funeral, but it’s less chance of being seen by one of the neighbors.”

  “Then it’s a plan. Let’s get the heck out of here before someone sees us and we cause trouble for Walter.”

  Gertie nodded and we headed out the back door and down to the dock. I untied the boat as Gertie fired up the motor, already dreaming of the hot shower I still hadn’t managed. I pushed the boat away from the dock and jumped in it.

  “Slower this time,” I admonished Gertie, who rolled her eyes then twisted the throttle so hard the boat practically leaped out of the water.

  Even worse, she was headed directly at another boat that was moving down the bayou.

  “Look out!” I yelled.

  Gertie yanked the motor to the side and the boat swerved, missing the other boat by an inch but throwing a wave of water over it. I looked over in time to see the shocked driver hold one arm up to protect his face from the sheet of water, then he dropped his arm and his gaze locked directly on me.

  Crap. It was bitch-slap guy from this morning’s mob.

  I looked back at Gertie, who had slowed down to wipe the water from her eyes. “Remember when I said you needed to drive slower?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Forget everything I said.”

  She squinted at me, looking completely confused. “What—”

  Bitch-slap guy’s eyes widened. “Yankee, murdering bitch!”

  Gertie looked back. “Oh no!” She twisted the throttle on the motor again.

  The boat jumped forward once more and I braced my feet against the bottom of the hull to maintain my balance. A second later, Bitch-slap cranked the motor on his boat and came after us.

  Gertie glanced back. “Looks like we got ourselves a boat chase!”

  Oh goody.

  I grimaced as the boat slammed down over the ripples the wind made on the surface of the bayou. The ride to the General Store hadn’t seemed near as rough. I glanced back at Bitch-slap and felt my pulse tick up a notch when I saw he was gaining on us.

  “Can you go faster?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding me? I’m already going so fast I’m getting younger. Besides, my motor is maxed out.”

  I scanned the bank as it rushed by, trying to gauge how close we were to the dock. I thought we were close, but I wasn’t sure. And at the rate he was gaining on us, we weren’t going to make it to the boat launch, much less out of the water, before he caught up with us.

  When I heard the first ping, I thought we’d hit something on the bayou, like a soda can, but then something tore through my sleeve and grazed the side of my arm. I peered around Gertie for a better look at Bitch-slap just in time to see him lower a pistol directly at my head.

  I dove for the bottom of the boat. “He’s shooting at us!”

  Another ping echoed beside me.

  “It’s just a pellet gun,” Gertie said. “It stings but it can�
�t kill you. Just don’t give him an eye to aim at.”

  “I don’t want to give him anything to aim at. If he gets any closer, those pellets are going to do more than sting.”

  I scanned the bottom of the boat, looking for something I could use as a weapon. The anchor looked promising, but the rope attached to it looked too weak to allow me to catapult it. Instead, I grabbed an oar.

  “When I yell,” I said to Gertie, “I want you to cut the engine and swerve to the left about a foot.”

  “Okay,” Gertie said.

  No pause. No questions. Not even so much as the lift an eyebrow. I wasn’t sure whether to be overwhelmed by her confidence in me or frightened.

  I pushed myself up into a crouching position behind the middle bench and peered around Gertie. Bitch-slap was only about ten feet behind her. When he reached five feet, it was time to launch.

  Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five…

  “Now!” I screamed as loud as I could.

  Gertie cut the engine completely and the boat slammed down onto the bayou as if someone had hit the brakes. As a startled Bitch-slap blew by us, I jumped up and whacked him with the oar, sending him careening backward.

  He yelled as he fell, clutching the motor handle with a death grip to keep from launching into the bayou, and pulled the entire thing around as he fell back on the bench. The boat shot off to the right and ran straight up the bank and onto the road that ran parallel to the bayou.

  Where it promptly crashed into the side of Carter’s truck.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, dropping down to the bottom of the boat again.

  And that’s when I realized the bottom of the boat was filling with water.

  “I think maybe my repair failed,” Gertie said. “I probably should have put that patch on with something stronger than duct tape.”

  I peered over the side of the boat in time to see Carter jump out of his truck and start yelling at Bitch-slap.

  “The dock’s just over there,” Gertie said. “We’ll have to swim for it.” She bailed over the side of the boat and started swimming for the shore.

  Seeing no better alternative, I popped up from the bottom of the boat and dove in beside her. I swam underwater as long as I could to avoid identification by the good deputy, hoping I swam in the direction of the bank. When I finally had to pop up for air, I was pleasantly surprised to see the boat launch less than twenty yards away.

  I looked around for Gertie and was surprised to see her only a couple of feet behind me, executing a perfect crawl. I launched into my own Michael Phelps routine and practically ran up the launch as soon as my feet hit solid ground. I didn’t even look back as I dashed for my Jeep.

  I threw it in reverse and peeled backward toward the boat launch, making it to the edge of the bayou just as Gertie crawled up the ramp. She clutched at the bumper of the Jeep to pull herself upright, then dashed to passenger’s seat and fell inside.

  As I took off, I glanced across the bayou and saw Carter standing at the edge of the opposite bank, shaking his head at me. I pressed my foot down on the accelerator, determined to go straight home and lock myself in my house, just as Carter had suggested I do earlier. At least for the rest of the night.

  As I pulled onto the street, I looked over at Gertie, who sighed.

  “Just like I told you,” she said. “You never know when someone may start shooting.”

  Chapter Eight

  I dropped Gertie off at her house and made her promise to go inside and stay there until tomorrow morning. I didn’t even want her walking out the front door to check the mail. I was beginning to wonder if Carter wasn’t onto something with that whole hibernation theory of his.

  The trip to see Walter hadn’t provided any information to speak of. Even worse, it had sparked more ridiculous ideas with Gertie, and then I’d gone right along and agreed with them. I shook my head as I pulled into my garage. I’d been running from fire to fire since I’d arrived in Sinful, and most days it felt like I was trying to put them out with a teaspoon of water.

  As soon as this crisis with Ida Belle was over, I would seriously rethink how I handled the rest of my stay in Sinful.

  I stood under the shower spray until I used every ounce of hot water in the house, and scrubbed my entire body with exfoliating gel and a loofah. I’d thought that kind of thing too girly, but my dip in Sinful Bayou had changed my mind. Losing a layer of skin may be the only thing that made me feel like the crud was off of me.

  Unfortunately, even a thousand gallons of hot water and a pound of sandpaper gel hadn’t eliminated the sewer smell of bayou mud, so I threw on shorts and a T-shirt and ran downstairs to stick my nose in a can of coffee grounds.

  The grounds did the trick and made me want a cup of coffee, so I brewed up a pot and deliberated between a handful of Gertie’s chocolate chunk cookies or a slice of Ally’s latest creation, a chocolate pecan pie. I finally decided that since the day had been doubly hard, I was twice as deserving of dessert and served up both before pouring myself a cup of coffee and placing my sugary buffet on the kitchen table.

  I’d taken one heavenly bite out of the first cookie when my doorbell rang. I looked over at my pistol on the kitchen counter and seriously considered threatening whoever was at the door so that they’d leave and never come back.

  The second buzz was more insistent and I rose from the chair with a sigh, but refused to put down the cookie. I shoved the pistol in a kitchen drawer before stalking to the living room. I threw open the front door, then froze when I saw Carter standing there.

  “Please tell me you have more of those cookies,” he said.

  “Maybe?” I said. He didn’t look angry or aggrieved so I wasn’t sure of his angle.

  “I don’t suppose I could have one?”

  I stepped back and waved him inside, then followed him back to the kitchen. Might as well find out what he was up to.

  “Coffee?” I asked.

  “That would be great,” he said and slid into a chair at the kitchen table. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s been a long day.”

  “Ha. Yeah, that’s sorta an understatement.” I placed the coffee and a plate of cookies on the table in front of him and slid back into my seat.

  “I should probably go ahead and get this out of the way,” he said. “I’m not here to arrest you.”

  I swallowed a huge bite of pie. “About time, especially as I haven’t done anything.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, if I wanted to be a pain, I suppose I could haul you in for assaulting Shorty Johnson with an oar.”

  “Since he was shooting at us, I would just claim self-defense and make you look like a woman-hater.”

  Carter dropped his cookie and stared. “Shooting at you?”

  “It was a pellet pistol. But those things sting and it ruined a perfectly good T-shirt of mine. Besides, people shooting anything at me tends to piss me off.”

  He laughed. “I’ll bet. Since Shorty neglected to inform me of the shooting part of the event, I guess I’ll let you off.”

  “So let me get this straight—you knew I assaulted Shorty with an oar but didn’t know it was because he was shooting at us. Yet the first thing you said when you walked into my house was that you weren’t going to arrest me. Why the heck not?”

  He shrugged. “Knowing Shorty, I guess I figured he’d done something to deserve it, which turned out to be accurate. Besides, he trashed the side of my truck and since he doesn’t have any insurance on that boat or is probably broke, I’m either going to have to pay for it myself or file on my own insurance and watch my rates go up.”

  “Sounds very reasonable…and very boring.” I took a sip of coffee. “If you didn’t come to arrest me, are you planning on telling me why you are here?”

  He smiled. “Maybe I’m just here for the cookies.”

  “Oh, that’s a story I could definitely buy except that you didn’t know I had cookies until I answered the door.”

  “I’m a pretty goo
d detective. Are you sure I didn’t know?”

  “Unless you broke into my house, I’m sure.”

  He laughed. “No, I’ll leave all the breaking and entering to you and the Trouble Twosome.”

  “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m sure.” He took a drink of coffee and stared out the window for several seconds. Finally, he turned his gaze back to me. “Look, the reason I came is to ask you for a favor.”

  “Really? Of all the things I imagined, that one was nowhere on my list. What in the world can I do for Sinful’s finest?”

  “You can keep an eye on Ida Belle for me—make sure she’s never alone and do your best to keep her from interacting with the general population.”

  I frowned. “You want to tell me why you’re asking me to babysit a woman old enough to be my grandmother?”

  “As you witnessed this morning, emotions are running high, and a lot of people aren’t making good decisions. Ida Belle is an easy scapegoat for fools and Sinful has more than its share of those.”

  He glanced out the window again and blew out a breath, then looked back at me.

  “This isn’t easy for me to admit, but I’m worried about the way things are going in this town. I know I gave you a hard time this morning, but I don’t think you have anything to do with this mess, or any of the others. You just seem to have the incredibly bad luck of stepping in the middle of it.”

  I heard the part about my bad luck and Carter not thinking I had anything to do with Sinful’s troubles, and normally, I would have taken a second or two to gloat. But instead, my entire focus was on his first sentence and the tone of his voice when he’d delivered it. It was surprising enough for Carter to admit he was worried, but it wasn’t just worry I heard in his voice. It was also fear.

  “It’s just weird timing,” I said. “All of it hitting at once. I know it’s a lot on you, but it’s not like any of the murders are related.”