Swamp Sniper (6 page)

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.”

Gertie pushed herself into a sitting position, then paused. “I think we have a problem.”

“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.

My stomach grumbled the whole drive home, and that ham sandwich seemed permanently affixed in my mind, which made sense. After all, I’d been up for hours, doing manual labor, and all I’d had to eat was a couple of eggs. The stress of the morning alone had probably worked those off as I swallowed.
 

When I got home, I headed straight to my bedroom and shed the wet clothes, tossing them across the shower rod to be dealt with later, then toweled off and pulled on shorts and T-shirt. The long, hot shower I’d envisioned before had taken a backseat to my rumbling stomach.

I did pause long enough to wash off the questionable foot with soap and water, but the rest of me was going to wait until after I ate. My stomach rumbled like a jet engine as I hurried back downstairs, and my head started to pound. I needed calories and I needed them fast.
 

I had just polished off the last bite of toast with homemade blackberry jam when I heard a knock at my back door. I’d been researching household poisons while I ate, so I closed the laptop before I jumped up to answer. I flung open the door, expecting to find my friend Ally standing there, and blinked in surprise when I saw Celia Arceneaux on my back porch.

“Can I come in?” Celia asked.

“Of course,” I said and stepped back to allow her inside. “I just made a fresh pot of coffee. Would you like a cup?”

She shook her head. “I just need to say my piece.”

“Okay.” My curiosity piqued a bit because I had zero idea what “piece” Celia thought needed saying, especially to me.

“I heard about everything happening,” Celia said, “including what that silly woman, Paulette, said when they were hauling Ted’s body away.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “I doubt the prosecutor puts much stock in the rantings of hysterical wives, even in Louisiana.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but with the poison being arsenic, it gives a whole different set of things to consider, and none of them good for Ida Belle.”

I stared. “How do you know what killed him? I didn’t think they’d released any information yet?”

“I have my sources, same as the Sinful Ladies. Let’s just say I have a friend of a friend down at the coroner’s office.”

Well, it just figured. I’d spent my entire morning risking my cover, my physical health, my tennis shoes, and my mental stability, and all of my not-so-stealthy ability had been supplanted by another nosy old woman with the right connections.

“Okay, but even if we assume your source is right, why do you think that arsenic specifically implicates Ida Belle?”

“Everyone knows she’s had a gopher problem for years. She insists on growing that damned bamboo in her backyard, and gophers just love that stuff. She’s spent a year or more fighting those critters.”

I blinked, wondering if Celia had been dipping into some Sinful Ladies cough syrup. “What the heck does Ida Belle’s gopher problem have to do with anything?”

Celia sighed. “I forget you’re a Yankee. You probably live in one of those sterile high-rise buildings with fake plants and even faker neighbors. Arsenic is one of the ingredients in gopher poison, and I happen to know Ida Belle has a bag of it because I was at the General Store when she picked up the order.”

My mind flashed back to the bag Carter had removed from Ida Belle’s storage shed and I frowned. Maybe Celia was onto something.

“So anyway,” Celia continued, “I want you to know that I don’t believe for one minute that Ida Belle killed that fool Ted. Ida Belle is a lot of things, but mostly she’s efficient. She’d never waste time and energy killing someone who doesn’t matter one whit in the big scheme of things.”

I stared at her for a moment, marveling over this apparently small-town, Southern method of determining innocence and guilt. Perhaps it was as simple as the good among them all considering “wasting time” a sin.
 

“I agree with you,” I said.

“Good. Then you’ll find the real killer.”

“Me? I’m a librarian,” I said, remembering my cover. I held up my hands. “That’s not something I’m remotely trained for.”

Celia narrowed her eyes at me. “But you caught my Pansy’s killer.”

“A more accurate description is I narrowly escaped being killed myself by Pansy’s killer.”

Celia frowned. “Well, if you want to get picky, I suppose that’s true. But still, you managed to put together more than any of the rest of us would have ever figured out because we were too close to the people involved. Being new in town, you have the advantage of being able to see everyone as a suspect.”

“Like the way everyone in town sees me?”

Celia gave me a rueful smile. “Something like that.”

“Even if we assume what you say is true, I also have the disadvantage that the locals won’t lay their secrets at my footstep. In fact, a lot of them won’t even make eye contact.”

Celia frowned. “True, and everyone knows you’re friends with Ida Belle, so the guilty party certainly won’t be sharing confidences with you any more than they would Gertie.”

“Exactly.”
 

Her eyes widened a bit and I saw her energy level spike. “But I can be your ears.”