Soldiers of Fortune (15 page)

“Get going,” she said. “I’m ready to get my ride on.”

I slogged back onto the bank, my tennis shoes now caked in mud, and headed for the boat.

“You’re not wearing those dirty shoes in here,” Ida Belle said. “It would take a sandblaster to get it off this aluminum. You don’t need shoes anyway, and besides, you’re getting tan lines around your ankles. It looks silly.”

I pulled off the tennis shoes and socks, then dragged my hands across the grass to get the mud off them. A final rinse in the bayou and a good bit of it wiped onto my shirt, and I was good as new. I untied the boat from the docking post, shoved it back with one of my bare feet, and hopped inside.

“Ouch!” I yelled as my bare feet landed in the bottom of the hot aluminum hull. I practically ran on my tiptoes to the passenger seat and jumped into it, then gently placed my sore feet on the rubber footrest. It was warm, but it wasn’t going to melt my heels off.

The boat drifted backward and slowly started to turn with the tide, heading up the bayou. The alligator turned with the tide as well until both were more or less facing the same direction. Ida Belle started up the boat and inched forward until the towline was taut. I looked back at Gertie, who gave me a thumbs-up, then clutched the handles.

“She’s good,” I said and turned on the video on my cell phone.

Ida Belle pressed the accelerator down and I wondered if I’d spoken too soon. The towline snapped taut and the alligator dropped down for a split second, then launched out of the water before crashing back down on the surface. Even though she was wearing the mask, I could see Gertie’s eyes widen and I hoped her shoulders could take the strain. She bobbled from side to side for a bit and I thought she was going to pitch off into the bayou, but finally she steadied and let out a hoot. The purple boa trailed behind her like Snoopy’s scarf when he was doing the Red Baron routine on top of his doghouse.

Ida Belle glanced back and grinned. “That woman is never going to grow up. It’s one of the things I love most about her.”

I looked at Gertie, who was yelling like a child on a roller coaster, and had to admit, it did look like fun. Maybe if we had some time left over when she was done, I’d give it a whirl. It couldn’t possibly be any more dangerous than the other things I’d gotten myself into.

“How far are you going to go?” I asked.

“To the end of the bayou,” Ida Belle said. “It will be safer if I make a big sweeping turn in the lake than a tight one in the channel.”

“Sounds good.”

She continued up the bayou toward the lake as Gertie yelled at fisherman and people suntanning as we passed. They all stared at her as if she’d lost her mind, and I could about imagine what kind of spectacle we looked like. Fortunately for Gertie, I was getting it recorded, so she’d get to see herself in all her alligator-riding glory once we got back to my house.

“The lake’s coming up,” Ida Belle said. “Signal to her that I’m going to turn.”

I stopped recording and slipped the cell phone back in my pocket, then stuck my hand in the air and waved it in a circle with one finger extended. Gertie nodded.

“She’s good,” I said as the boat shot out of the end of the channel and into the wide-open waters of the lake. Ida Belle started a big sweeping turn to the right, easing the boat over a little at a time, but careful to stay far enough away from the bank to avoid stumps and sunken wreckage. I saw a couple of boats crossing the lake for the channel and pointed at one. “That’s Carter and Walter.”

Ida Belle nodded. “For men with no fishing gear, they’ve been out here a long time.”

“I wonder if they found anything.”

“Unless they got a tip from a fisherman, I doubt it. We combed that site well. I don’t think there was anything else left to find.”

I watched as Walter guided his boat into the channel, feeling a little guilty about scooping Carter on the evidence run.
 

“Don’t even go there,” Ida Belle said as she slowly turned the boat to the left, making a giant sweeping arc across the lake.

“What?”

“You had no way of knowing that Carter was going to ignore Dr. Stewart’s orders and go searching that site, so don’t go feeling bad because we beat him to the punch.”

“We could have turned the evidence over when we ran into them.”

“So he could do what? Give it to Nelson? What would that have accomplished?”

“He could have run the finger himself.”

“Sure he could have, and then he’d have been smack in the middle of an investigation that he has no business involving himself in until all that swelling is gone from his brain. Hell, we’re doing him a favor by handling this ourselves.”

Her theory wasn’t without some holes—some of them the kind you could drive a bus through—but I was willing to go along with it, especially if the alternative meant fessing up to Carter that we’d turned evidence of a crime over to a criminal. I wasn’t certain there were enough words in the English language to talk my way out of that one.

“You’re right,” I said, feeling better about the entire situation. “As long as Carter doesn’t have a line on the bad guys, he can’t get himself into a situation that threatens his health.”

Ida Belle grinned. “You’re getting the hang of this.”

We had completed the turn without incident and Ida Belle straightened the boat out and headed back for the channel. Gertie was still hanging in, but her face was starting to show signs of fatigue.
 

“We better get her in before she drops,” I said.

“I’ll take it up a notch,” Ida Belle said. “A bit of an increase won’t make a difference in the pull on her arms, but it will get us back quicker.”

“Sounds good.” I lifted my thumb up in the air several times, indicating we were going to pick up speed. Gertie nodded. “It’s a go.”

Ida Belle pressed the gas pedal down a little harder and we entered the channel. Another couple of minutes and it would all be over but the aspirin and heating pad. The alligator bounced on top of the wake left by the bass boats and I could tell Gertie was straining to hold on. Just a little bit longer.

Then Ida Belle yelled.

I whipped around in time to see hornets buzz by Ida Belle’s face, then circle back. She waved her left arm in the air, trying to get the angry insects to take off, and I started flapping my arms as well. One landed on her right hand and she yelled again, simultaneously shoving the steering rod forward and pressing harder on the accelerator.
 

The airboat made a hard, fast turn and I heard Gertie scream. I clutched the seat and looked back to see the alligator swing around the side of the boat, skipping on top of the water like a stone. When it was parallel to the boat, the towline snapped and it shot off across the lake, right toward Walter’s boat. Gertie let out another shriek as the plastic boa whipped around her head, completely covering her face.
 

Ida Belle let off the gas and the airboat dropped to a crawl as Carter stood up in the bow of Walter’s boat, staring in horror at the oncoming alligator. I yelled at Gertie to let go, but she couldn’t hear me, and she was running blind. Realizing they were about to crash, Carter shouted at Walter to stop just as the alligator ran in front of his boat. Walter cut the engine and swung the boat hard to the right, pitching Carter out into the bayou.
 

The alligator continued to speed across the bayou, then hit the bank and slid right up it and in between two men fishing. Then it hit an ice chest and flipped it over, sending the fish it contained onto the lawn. Gertie finally lost her grip and flew off the gator and right into the pile of flopping fish. The gator came to a stop on top of a fish and started to deflate.

Chapter Nine

Ida Belle punched the accelerator again and drove the airboat right up the bank behind the alligator. We both jumped out and rushed over to Gertie, who was lying immobile in a fish-and-ice pile. The two stunned fishermen inched over and peered down at her.

“I killed her,” Ida Belle wailed.

I dropped down and put my fingers on her neck. “She’s got a pulse.” I unwrapped the boa from her head and yanked off the diving mask, then leaned over and put my ear next to her mouth.

And that’s the moment Gertie decided to regain consciousness…and yell.

I sprang backward, clutching my ear, and sat right on a fish. As quickly as I sat down, I rolled off it and jumped up, my bare feet squishing in the slimy fish-covered grass. Gertie popped up into a sitting position, gazing wildly around, her eyes wide.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You took a side trip into Stumpy Duhon’s backyard,” Ida Belle said.

Gertie frowned and looked around at the fish, then her expression switched from confusion to mad and she glared at Ida Belle. “You tried to kill me.”

“It was an accident,” Ida Belle said. “A bunch of hornets flew at me and one stung my hand. Can you move? Is anything broken?”

“Hornets? You expect me to believe that nonsense?”

Ida Belle thrust her hand in Gertie’s face. A huge red bump was already forming on the back of it. “Look. There’s a stinger hole right in the middle.”

Gertie leaned forward and made a show of inspecting the hand. “Doesn’t look like a hornet sting.”

“Oh hell,” I said. “Put your hand down. You know she can’t see that bump, much less the stinger hole.”

“I see the bump,” Gertie said.

“Then you’re going to have to trust that it was a hornet,” I said. “I saw them myself.”

Gertie gave Ida Belle a begrudging nod. “I guess I can see where that might cause a problem, especially as that is your driving hand. Okay, I forgive you.”

“About time, you old coot,” Ida Belle said. “Now, can you move?”

“I think so.” Gertie put her hands on the ground and tried to push herself up, but her arms buckled. “I think it took the last of my muscles to ride that baby up the lawn.”

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Ida Belle said to the two men. “Help a lady up.”

The two men hurried over and each put a hand under Gertie’s arm and lifted her to an upright position. “How’s your legs?” one of the men asked.

“They feel like I’ve been riding a horse for a week,” Gertie said, “but I think they’ll keep me upright.”

The two men removed their hands, still standing close in case she had overestimated the leg thing. She wobbled for a couple of seconds, but ultimately stabilized.

“What the heck were you thinking?” Carter’s voice sounded behind us.
 

I turned to see him dripping wet and stomping up the bank. Walter was a couple steps behind him, laughing so hard he was stumbling as he walked.

“Here we go again,” I said.

Ida Belle put up a hand to stop Carter before he got started. “I got attacked by hornets. One stung my driving hand and I accidentally sent the airboat into a hard turn, slinging the alligator float around the boat. The towline broke and Gertie took a ride into Stumpy’s backyard, where she collided with his ice chest of fish. Nothing is broken and the fish are probably still good to eat.”

The guy Ida Belle had indicated as Stumpy looked around and nodded. “Looks fine to me. Was gonna have to clean them anyway.”

Carter stared at us in disbelief. “You have no business doing things like this.”

Gertie put her hands on her hips. “Like you have no business pretending to fish when we all know you conned Walter into helping you work? Last I checked only one of us was under doctor’s orders to stay inside and rest, and it wasn’t me.”

“Actually, two of them are under doctor’s orders,” I said.

Carter shot me a dirty look. “You’re not helping.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” I said. “At least, I wasn’t trying to help you.”

“Why the hell not?” he demanded.

“Because you’re being rude,” I said. “You’re implying that Gertie is too old to be having fun, and that’s wrong. If Gertie wants to dress like a hooker and ride an alligator float down the bayou when she’s a hundred and two, she should do it.”

“Darn straight!” Gertie said. “Would you prefer I sit in a chair and wait to die?”

“That’s not… I didn’t…” Carter stammered, looking more than a little uncomfortable.
 

Carter glanced back at Walter. “You wanna jump in this?”

“No way,” Walter said. “You’re on your own.”

“Smart man,” Stumpy said, and gave Walter an approving nod.

Carter looked back at Gertie. “I just mean that it’s dangerous and you could have been hurt.”

“Well, of course I could have been hurt,” Gertie said. “Bernadine Stansbury broke her ankle getting off the toilet yesterday. Do you want me to stop using the toilet?”
 

Ida Belle nodded. “And last week, Archie Bradford fell in the shower and broke his hip.”

“Yeah,” Gertie said. “Should I stop showering as well?”

“I…uh.” Carter threw his hands in the air. “I quit. Ride flying alligators down the bayou towed by an insane woman with a penchant for fast engines and questionable driving. Live it up.”

“That’s what I was doing,” Gertie said. “Hey, Stumpy, how about you give us a couple of those trout? You can’t eat them all anyway.”