miss fortune mystery (ff) - jewel of the bayou (6 page)

Deputy LeBlanc sighed again. “To be fair, it’s not exactly new to most of the ladies in this town.”

“There you are!” Mrs. Langstrom said, and I turned to see Deacon Ryan coming out of the shadows. He had a sickly smile on his face, and a thimble-like glass held between his thumb and index finger.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Langstrom, but this is the best I could find,” he said, holding out the tiny communion glass of water to her.

“Couldn’t have looked too hard,” she grumbled, “considering how long you took.”

He attempted to improve his smile, but he still seemed a little green around the gills to me.

“Don’t worry about the shots you heard,” I said. “It’s just someone down the street trying to scare away the raccoons.”

“Oh?” he said, but he didn’t look any more settled to me. Maybe it wasn’t the gunfire that had him upset. “I think I’ll go have another look for the necklace.”

“Maybe you should stay close by,” Deputy LeBlanc said. “Don’t want you getting lost in the dark.”

Deacon Ryan looked back toward the edge of the churchyard, but he didn’t try to leave.

“So, Jack,” Deputy LeBlanc said, “why don’t you tell me a little bit more about how you came by this picture?”

“I told you already!” Mrs. Langstrom jumped in. “He’s clearly been planning this for a long time, and he took the picture so that he could move the goods! That’s what they say, isn’t it? Move the goods?”

“Some do. But even if that was the plan, it wouldn’t make much sense for him to show his picture to the authorities right now, would it.”

“I don’t pretend to know the workings of the criminal mind,” she said, darkly, “and I don’t know what sort of shenanigans he’s up to, but you can bet that it’s all part of the plan.”

“Right,” Jack said, ignoring her conspiracy theories like a trooper. “Well, Deputy, since we’re all here, this is as good a time as any.”

“Call me Carter,” Deputy LeBlanc said, and he scrolled down before looking up and handing back the phone.

“I think I see what’s going on here,” he said, and Jack nodded his head.

“I still don’t understand,” I said. “When did you take a picture of Mrs. Langstrom?”

“I didn’t,” Jack said.

“I knew it!” Mrs. Langstrom said. “Cahoots!”

“I didn’t take a picture of Mrs. Langstrom,” Jack said, “but that doesn’t meant that I didn’t have a picture of the necklace.”

Now I was really confused.

“Here,” he said. “Take a look.”

I took the phone, and looked down to see a picture. Well, a picture of a picture. It looked like an old newspaper photo, and it showed a young woman, dressed to the nines in satin and silk, with rigid waves of marcelled hair clinging to her head. And that necklace.

“Still not understanding,” I said, and I gave a jump as the phone was snatched out of my hand.

“Give it to me!” Mrs. Langstrom said, and then she gasped.

“How in the world,” she said, “did you get a picture of my mother!”

Chapter Eight

“Wait. What?” I could hear myself starting to babble.

“I recognized that necklace the moment I saw it,” Jack said, “and I know someone else recognized it, too. Right, Deacon?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean,” Deacon Ryan said.

“Yeah, well, I might be more convinced if I hadn’t just gotten word from Texas that the photo I took of you yesterday is a match.”

“A match for what?” Mrs. Langstrom said.

“Your Deacon is a wanted man,” Jack said. “Jumped bail over a year ago in Texas, and disappeared. I got a lead about a week ago. A woman in New Orleans was talking about some jewels in a place called Sinful, and it sounded like she’d found someone who was willing to see what he could lift. No guarantee that it was Bert, but plastic surgery and a pair of glasses can only hide so much. Isn’t that right, Bert?”

“You’re a cop?” I said.

“No,” Deputy LeBlanc said. “He’s a bounty hunter.”

My eyes got wide, but not as wide as they did a moment later when Deacon Ryan grabbed me from behind and jabbed a gun into my side.

“Hey!” I said.

“It’s not true, none of it!” Deacon Ryan said, although it seemed to me that the gun was undermining his case. “But I do know when it’s time to move along. Now, everyone stay calm. Lindy is going to come along with me, just to make sure everyone stays where they are.”

I twisted, and he poked me again with the gun. Deputy LeBlanc and Jack both seemed ready to pounce, but the last thing I wanted was to be caught in the middle of a gunfight.

“You!” Mrs. Langstrom cried out. “You stole my necklace?”

“I don’t have it,” he said. “Wish I did, but I don’t. You’ll have to ask one of your pals where they took it. It sure isn’t where I left it.”

As he spoke, he started to walk backward toward the cars, pulling me along with him and keeping his eyes on Jack and Deputy LeBlanc.

“Stay cool,” he said. “Everyone stay calm.”

He was keeping his eye in the wrong spot, though, if he was worried about who had the ability to keep cool.

Mrs. Langstrom definitely was not cool.

As we slowly walked backward past her chair, she quietly stretched out her leg and placed her foot in our path. Deacon Ryan, so intent on watching the men, didn’t notice and, just as he reached her, the sound of another shotgun blast in the distance tore through the night once more. With a shout, he turned and tripped backward, throwing his hands up to catch himself and letting me loose. I didn’t wait to see how he landed. I dashed toward Jack, who caught me in those brawny arms, and Deputy LeBlanc pulled his own gun and covered Deacon Ryan where he lay sprawled on the ground.

“Mess with me, will you?” said Mrs. Langstrom. “Not likely!”

She sat triumphant on her throne, and smirked as she looked down on him.

“Take him away, Carter. Take him away!”

“First things first,” Jack said. He held me close in his left arm, and began to unbutton his shirt with his right.

I found myself breathing heavily, and not just because of my recent escape.

“Just what do you think you’re doing, young man?” Mrs. Langstrom said.

“Well, here in Louisiana, a bounty hunter needs to wear some sort of identifying uniform, Mrs. Langstrom. At least, if an arrest is in the works.”

Jack shrugged his dress shirt off his shoulders, and pulled it off like some sort of superhero. A superhero who was still holding me tight. He had a t-shirt underneath, stretched tight across his broad chest, and ‘Bail Recovery Agent’ was written across it in wide black lettering.

“Deputy LeBlanc,” he said, “I need to get this man back to Texas.” My adrenaline rush got the better of me, and without thinking I pulled his head down to mine. I guess I meant to give him a thank-you kiss, but it only took a moment for Jack to get over his surprise and to move right past thank-you into you’re-welcome. His soft lips contrasted with the rough of his stubble, and he grasped me in his arm and held me tight for just a moment more before letting me go. I opened my eyes, and saw him reaching into his camera bag to pull out a pair of handcuffs. Without saying another word, he strode over to Deacon Ryan, jerked him up, and hauled him off to the truck that he had used to haul his gear into town.

“Wait!” I called out. “So you’re not a photographer after all?”

Of course he wasn’t really a photographer. I realized it as soon as I said it. The confusion with the cords, the time it took to get things set up, the fact that he had put the chair and the backdrop in the shade. Everything he had done had pointed to the fact that he didn’t really know what he was doing.

I hoped that the Baptists wouldn’t be too disappointed with the way their portraits turned out.

“No,” Deputy LeBlanc replied to my question. “I don’t think he’s photographer. Just a man with a plan to get into town to take as many pictures of suspects as he could, without giving away the game.”

As he spoke, I heard the roar of an engine and the grinding of gears, and I saw Gertie’s headlights cutting through the dark. A few moments later the pickup pulled up with a screech, and the doors flew open and Gertie and Ida Belle pulled themselves out.

“Like a bat out of hell,” Ida Belle was saying as she slammed her door shut. “It’s a wonder you didn’t total this one, too.”

“It’s a wonder I didn’t whap that Oldsmobile in the rear, just out of spite. That’s the wonder,” Gertie replied. “Just goes to show you what a good Christian I am, even on Mondays,” she said with just the slightest trace of smugness in her voice.

“That’s right,” Ida Belle said. “You’re just too good to be true.”

As they walked over to where we were gathered Mrs. Langstrom, they seemed to sense the change in the air.

“Good grief,” Ida Belle said. “We weren’t gone that long. Gladys didn’t convince you to arrest one of these poor souls, did she, Carter?”

“No,” Deputy LeBlanc said. “Nothing like that.”

“Well, don’t you want to hear about Adele and her lawnmower?” Gertie said.

“We have more important things to think about,” Mrs. Langstrom said. “Much more important than what that woman’s been up to. Now, if she had taken a shot at one of you, that might have been something worth telling.”

“Oh, is that right?” said Ida Belle. “Well, just for your information…”

“Something worth telling, like the fact that Deacon Ryan is a thief. And almost a murderer!” Mrs. Langstrom talked right over Ida Belle as if she weren’t there, and when Ida Belle and Gertie heard what she said, they both stared at her as if she had finally lost her mind.

“Thief? And murderer?” Gertie finally said.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Langstrom said. “It turns out that he came to town to steal my jewels! And Ida Belle said they weren’t worth anything. Well, somebody thought they were worth something! And while he was trying to escape, he nearly murdered poor Lindy!”

She seemed extremely proud to have been the near victim of a robbery, I thought. And then I realized that she really had been robbed. After all, the necklace had disappeared, and it seemed all too likely that Deacon Ryan, or Bert, or whatever his name was, had snatched it from the chair where I had left it, and had hidden it away.

“Thief? And murderer?”

“That’s what I said, and if you need to get your hearing checked out, Gertie, I wouldn’t wait too long. No time to waste, when you’re so close to the grave.”

Jack had finished tying Deacon Ryan to a tripod in the truck, or whatever he had done to keep the man restrained, and he walked up to us with a grin on his face.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Ida Belle, and she slapped Jack on the back. “Welcome to Sinful, Jack. With a little luck, you’ll be as crazy as the rest of us before you know it.”

“Is this true, Carter?” asked Gertie.

“True enough,” he said.

“And I’ll have you know,” said Mrs. Langstrom, “that it’s all due to mother’s necklace. If I hadn’t been wearing it, that awful man never would have tried to steal it, and he might still be on the loose and making his plans to sneak into my house and take all of the rest of my jewelry, too.”

She gave a deep sigh, and held her hand to her heart.

“But, of course, he did steal it, and no doubt has hidden it away, and now it’s gone forever,” she said. “Gone! Gone with the…”

“Oh, stop it,” Ida Belle said. “You love the drama, even if it’s all about a real estate developer who’s actually a thief, which, to be honest, isn’t much of a surprise, but there’s no sense in you losing what’s left of your mind over that old necklace.”

She reached into her pocket, and tossed something at Mrs. Langstrom.

“Here,” she said. “Take it.”

Mrs. Langstrom clutched at the bundle as it fell into her lap, and cried out. “My necklace!”

“That’s right,” Ida Belle said, and she began to chuckle. “When we pulled up to Adele’s place, we found her standing in the yard hooting and hollering. You probably heard her all the way over here, if you weren’t too busy hogtieing thieves.”

Gertie picked up the story.

“Adele waved that shotgun around in the air, and started yammering on about how the raccoons were after her lawnmower again. Well, we’d heard that one before, and it didn’t look like the lawnmower or anything else was in any danger from raccoons. The only thing in danger was us.”

“But the next thing you know,” Ida Belle said, “we saw a raccoon running across the edge of the lawn. Adele lowered her shotgun, pumped it, and let the birdshot fly. That darn raccoon took off into the night so fast, I thought she might have a chance at scaring it to death even if she hadn’t hit it.”

She started to laugh. “It took off and looked like it lost its, well, excuse my French, lost its stuff. Looked like it left a little pile right there on the lawn! Anyway, it turns out it was just that old thing.”

“My necklace!”

“Yep. And no worse for wear, despite the raccoons hauling it down the block. I told ya. The wildlife around these parts is something to watch out for. Must have snuck it off from wherever Deacon Ryan had hidden it. Must have happened right about the time you were firing Lindy because you thought she had stolen it.”

Mrs. Langstrom had the grace to look slightly ashamed of herself. “Lindy, I’ve made my share of mistakes in life.”

“I’ll say,” Ida Belle muttered.

“But I won’t make one more if I can help it. Come back. You’re re-hired, if you’ll take the job.”

“I appreciate it, I really do,” I said. “But if I’ve figured anything out over the past few days, it’s that I need a little more excitement in my life.”

“Offer still stands,” Jack said. “I’ve seen what you can do with a hymnal.”

“Tempting,” I said, “but I don’t know.”

“Lindy, if you decide to work with this man…” Mrs. Langstrom said. “Well, if you do, maybe you can let me make things up to you by giving you a job. No, not to catch a criminal!” she said, noticing Gertie and Ida Belle’s look of skepticism. “No. A missing person. Lindy, I’d like to find my daughter.”

Gertie nodded at that, and even Ida Belle looked intrigued.

“You’d have to get in with the Delcroix clan,” Ida Belle said, “and if there ever were a family of snakes, that’s the one.”