Girls Just Wanna Have Guns (24 page)

“About what time was that?”

“Oh, ’bout 11:30. I know because my show was right about halfway over.”

The coroner had originally placed the murder between 12:00 and 1:00 and now that Benoit had gone frame-by-frame through the DVD the night before with Cam, they knew the time-stamp for the murder was 12:23. Benoit questioned Mrs. Abilene a few more minutes, but if she knew anything else, she wasn’t volunteering it. He thanked her and walked away; he thought about setting up a roadblock and questioning every neighbor as they came home that evening, but he needed to find Bobbie Faye and question her directly. For whatever reason, she’d told Cam she was alone—all night. Now the manager said Bobbie Faye not only hadn’t been alone, she’d left her trailer with two people and Mrs. Oubillard had definitely placed her at the scene. The one immutable fact about Bobbie Faye—which had gotten her ass jammed into a world of hard places over the years—was that she didn’t lie. So how could she be home alone, but not?

So far, all he’d managed to do was prove that she was at the murder scene and could have done it, that there
were no witnesses who’d place her at home during the murder, not to mention he also had the video of a woman who could easily have been Bobbie Faye pulling the trigger.

Some friend he’d turned out to be.

“You remember what I told you, boy,” V’rai said to Trevor as he followed Bobbie Faye to her aunt’s front door while her aunt felt her way back toward the kitchen. When they were alone, Bobbie Faye turned to him, expecting an explanation, but his expression had shuttered to neutral.

“What did she tell you?”

“You know,” he dissembled, “I think the blue works for you.”

“You’ve got a serious death wish, there, Trevor. And you’re avoiding the question.”

“Yes, I am.” He tucked a random stray hair behind her ear and ran his finger across the line of blue running diagonally across her face. “You need to ask me later.”

“Well, sure, but only because I am the master of patience.” Hell, she had the freaking patience of Job and she could wait. She could so
totally
wait and not be the
least
bit curious, and not wonder what lurid secrets her aunt had “foreseen” and then told him about her. Okay, it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to know. Didn’t need to ask. She was completely immune to curiosity. “Was it good or bad?”

“Neither, Obi-Wan. And you can ask me later.”

“Fine.
Be
all Zen. Have you ever noticed all those monks are bald?”

“Nice try, Sundance.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She stepped back from
him and peeked out the sidelight window. “I want to talk to a couple of Marie’s friends—these women are Cajun and very private. Francesca might have been onto something that they would talk to me, but they’re never going to talk in front of this many people. It feels like I’m being followed by a tsunami of morons.”

“I’ll handle that—I’ll have my men slow them down and we’ll lose them. Where to?”

She thought over all of the names she’d seen yesterday on that day planner page of Marie’s—some which she’d cross-referenced when she had all of the papers she’d taken from Marie’s spread out on Nina’s dining room table.

“D’s safe,” she said, and it took Trevor a second to realize what she was referring to.

“The note on the day planner,” he said, and she nodded.

“Maybe she meant the diamonds were safe. And she said ‘check’ next to that—maybe she’d just checked on them, knew they were okay. Two of her friends were listed on the last day’s entry—she could have reached either one of them from here within a few minutes, and I know she was here recently from the condition of the rice hulls. It makes sense to check their homes first, see if there’s a safe.”

“You have a clue which one?”

“Well, she’s good friends with them both—they always came to the Sunday dinners we had here when I was a kid. But Miz Pooks’s house is closer—maybe we should try there first.”

“Pooks?”

“Family nickname. Miz Patricia Burroughs.”

“Sounds good,” he nodded, and he began texting someone instructions.

“So you’re just letting me lead this thing? The entire FBI at your disposal, and I’m the best you can come up with?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“Man, we are well and truly screwed.”

He stepped in front of her so he would be first out of the door, and as he rested his hand on the doorknob, he paused. “As far as your cousins are concerned, until we get rid of them, I’m still forcing you to work for Emile.”

“Right. Badass. Check.”

“Which means I’ll have to get rough with you in front of everyone.”

“Don’t worry,” she said absently, “I’ve had worse.” She glanced at him when he didn’t answer, and he seemed pissed. Badass squared was kinda scary.

“When this is over,” he said, “we’re getting on a mat.”

“Sparring?” He nodded. “Do you have really good health insurance? Because in the Big Book of Stupid Things to Do, sparring with me is entry number two.”

“Sundance, the day you hurt me is the day I deserve it.”

“Geez, you’re cocky, you know that?”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

He looped his free arm around her and pulled her tight to kiss her temple, then whispered, “Oh, I definitely would. What’s entry number one?”

She started to retort
dating me
, but something outside the window caught her eye and she realized it was movement . . . out on the front lawn.

“Sonofabitch. It’s the press.”

The oppressive heat hit them first as Trevor opened the door. The everpresent dust from the silos mixed with the heavy, humid air, and it was like slogging through mud as they pushed outside toward the bright red car. Damn, the press was going to be able to follow that car. Bobbie Faye barely had time to register her cousins and the men on the motorcycles who’d helped Trevor on the bridge yesterday as they all moved toward them expectantly, when something buzzed by overhead and clanked into a nearby old metal tub filled with droopy roses. Two more pops and the two driver’s side tires of the GTO deflated. Trevor pushed Bobbie Faye behind a bay window protrusion—which, unfortunately, blocked them from returning to the front door.
Everyone in the front yard—the cousins, the two “motorcycle” agents who’d been with Trevor, and the press—all dropped to the ground and scrambled for cover.

Cam reviewed the jeweler murder file. There had to be something in there, some lead he could follow, that would point to the actual murderer and why that person would want to frame Bobbie Faye. He knew that Salvadore ran an upscale place, which was ironic in that Lake Charles wasn’t exactly what anyone would consider an upscale town. Hardworking, blue collar, industrial. The store, however, was a part of a larger chain of stores in the southeast—and Salvadore’s expansion was picture perfect: never a hint of scandal, never failed an IRS audit, never had any customers who didn’t appear to be the blandest, most law-abiding citizens of the state.

He had to be crooked as sin.

Cam flipped through the thick file to the printed database of all of Sal’s customers and contacts from the last ten years. The list had been compiled from Sal’s sales records, mailing list, personal itemized phone bills, and files. Hundreds of names. Needle in a fucking haystack.

Was it a coincidence a jeweler was murdered and then four days later, several people showed up to pressure Bobbie Faye into finding missing diamonds? Yeah, right. And he held the deed on Tiger Stadium and would sell it for a buck. Was there someone she’d pissed off (well, that would cover at least half of the city, that wasn’t helpful) . . . someone she’d done some real damage to, who might want serious revenge? Serious . . . damage . . . made him think of Marie’s destroyed house and the rumor that Bobbie Faye had been seen riding away from it. On instinct, he flipped through to the D’s and saw “Despre, Marie” as one of Sal’s clients. Great. The jeweler was dead and Bobbie Faye was after diamonds and then she destroyed one of the jeweler’s biggest client’s home. Throw in the hair at the scene, the video, the shirt, the bracelet and
Jesus Christ
she’d be in prison for the rest of her life. And that was without the casings
in evidence (which were still shoved in his pocket). His gut turned to acid and he cradled his head. She never, ever made things easy. Why in the hell couldn’t the woman just make things easy?

“Cam,” Jason shouted from the door, and he looked up, surprised Jason was in the room. He hadn’t heard him enter. “I said there was shooting at Old Man Landry’s mill.”

“Someone’s finally taking shots at the old crank—why am I not surprised?”

“Bobbie Faye’s been sighted there.”

“Sonofabitch.” He jumped up from the desk, nearly knocking the file back over. “Get—”

“Already got it—chopper’s ready to go.”

Cam barreled out of the room, slamming into Winna in her pretty pink sundress. He caught her before she hit the floor.

“Winna? I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry. Everything okay?”

“Oh! Um, no, no worries. We were just going to have lunch.”

Shit. He felt like an ass. He hadn’t even remembered setting the lunch date. “I’ll call you later,” he said, and she smiled and waved at him just before he ran outside.

“Anyone hurt?” he asked Jason, who jogged alongside him, and Cam was thankful yet again that the governor felt so anti-Bobbie Faye, he’d personally pushed through a brand-new sleek Bell 207 for the State Police Troop D.

“Dunno. One of the neighboring farms called it in—said there’s press camped out in front of Landry’s Mill and that they heard shots and everyone flattened to the ground.”

Trevor had his SIG out; he pulled Bobbie Faye behind him, stepping between her and the sniper while she fumbled in her purse for Maimee’s almost-forgotten Glock. As she pushed her cell phone out of the way, it rang and she noticed the caller ID.

“Wow. An insurance company,” she muttered, and ignored the continued ringing as another hailstorm of bullets thudded into the roofline above them.

“How many does that make?” Trevor asked as he assessed the sniper’s position.

She knew he was using distraction to keep her from panicking, but
damn
. She glared at him. This was another annoying example of him knowing something because her phones had been tapped. She certainly hadn’t told him about the grant application. Or the insurance rejections. He was still scanning for the sniper, but he managed to also be aware she was glaring at him. He looked amused.

“Fine,” she conceded. “It’s a tough sell. But there’ve only been twenty-five rejections.”

“Because ‘only’ fits into that sentence so well. I’m surprised they call at all.”

“I don’t mind when they shriek when they find out who I am; I just hate it when they start crying and babbling about a suicide hotline number.” More shots knocked off rust from a nearby mailbox, and Trevor nodded toward the silos.

Still conversational, as if they weren’t pinned down by a freakin’ psycho sniper, he asked, “How many companies do you have left?”

“Two. Somebody in this state is bound to be crazier than me.”

“I think we may need to work on that pitch a little.”

Wild shots pinged off trees in the yard and clanged against a dusty aluminum flagpole near the front door, where the faded American flag hung limp in the windless morning. Bobbie Faye eyed the cousins: Donny looked torn between hiding every shred of his ass behind rusted lawn furniture and wanting to look heroic for the press cameras out beyond the driveway—he stepped out and immediately dove for cover again when a shot pinged against the birdhouse near his head. Mitch had hidden himself really well behind a big three-hundred-gallon metal tank V’rai had installed many hurricanes ago.

“Mitch,” Bobbie Faye yelled, “could you get away from the propane?”

“You want me to shoot somebody?”

“No,” she said, as matter-of-fact as she could. “I thought it would be better for you to not blow up today.”

“Okay.”

Kit scurried over to him and then led Mitch back to her hidey spot behind a big oak tree. Only Francesca remained in her original location, sitting up, frantically checking her nails and then looking over at where Bobbie Faye was half-hidden behind Trevor.

“Bobbie Faye, you look different somehow.” Francesca frowned, puzzled. She flinched as a bullet hit the roof above Bobbie Faye’s head. “See,” she said, pulling out a compact mirror to check her makeup, “you have to come with us. If you just stayed with us, nobody would be shooting at you. We’d protect you and then you could find the diamonds.”

What did she mean, nobody would be shooting at her?
Everyone was always shooting at her.

Did Francesca know the shooter?

A bullet pierced the compact mirror, a shot that had come over Francesca’s shoulder and this time from a different silo, and Francesca flopped on the ground. “Shit!”

Simultaneous in Bobbie Faye’s mind was
Francesca cursed!
and
Another sniper?
Trevor backed her up and she realized he was trying to reach the carport on the side of the house so they could slip away from the sniper’s line of sight.

“Is that just more of Uncle Etienne’s family?” Francesca asked Bobbie Faye as another bullet hit a bush she was scrambling toward.

“Franny, we have really got to define how family is supposed to function for you.”

From:
Simone

To:
JT

They’re pinned down. Sniper . . . maybe two. Trying to move in closer without blowing cover.

From:
JT

To:
Simone

I hate my job.

Trevor and Bobbie Faye eased to the only escape route: the carport. They moved quickly in unison until the moment Bobbie Faye felt the barrel of a gun at the base of her skull.

“Move and I’ll kill her,” a man said, and a hand reached around Bobbie Faye, taking Maimee’s Glock.

Trevor glanced over his shoulder, past Bobbie Faye to the man she couldn’t yet see. With his right hand hidden from the gunman, Trevor hooked two fingers in the waistband of her jeans, as if he was about to yank her out of the way. But he couldn’t spin and fire faster than the guy could pull his own trigger, and as soon as she moved, the gunman would have a dead drop on Trevor. She was too aware, with her left hand on his waist, that he wasn’t wearing body armor. Bobbie Faye saw him eye one of his cohort FBI guys, who was peering from behind a tree, but frankly, there was no way the guy would get a shot until Bobbie Faye was completely out of the way, and that extra second would cost Trevor his life. She felt his fingers tense. It was an insane strategy for a stupid bunch of diamonds, no matter how valuable they were.