Swamp Team 3 (21 page)

As part of my domestic flurry, I’d put on a pot of coffee, but I couldn’t bring myself to drink a cup. Instead, I dumped half a bottle of Sinful Ladies Society cough syrup into a tumbler and took a big gulp. Ida Belle and Gertie took seats at the kitchen table and silently stirred their coffee as I paced the kitchen.

Finally, I blurted out, “Carter knows about last night.”

“How much does he know?” Ida Belle asked.

“Everything,” I said. “Everything relevant, anyway.”

Gertie’s eyes widened. “You told him?”

I nodded.
 

They looked at each other, clearly surprised by my revelation.

“Don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty?” Ida Belle asked.

“Yes…I mean, I didn’t tell him because I felt guilty, but I feel guilty now.” I blew out a breath and lowered myself into the chair. “A contractor found Floyd dead in Ally’s backyard this morning. He was murdered.”

Gertie sucked in a breath and Ida Belle straightened in her chair.

“How was he killed?” Ida Belle asked.

“Someone cracked him over the head with a two-by-four.”

Ida Belle looked a bit relieved. “Well, that could have been anyone.”

“Then he stabbed Floyd with the high heel from my shoe,” I finished.

“Oh.” Ida Belle fell back in her chair, deflated. Gertie’s jaw dropped and she remained frozen in place.

“He didn’t arrest you?” Gertie managed to get out.

“No. He kissed me.”

Ida Belle and Gertie both studied me, as if waiting for the punch line that would never come. If anyone had told me it was possible to feel more miserable than I did right then, I would have called him a liar.

“So,” Ida Belle said finally, “I take it that means he doesn’t think you did it?”

“He knows for certain I didn’t do it,” I said and explained about Floyd’s watch and Carter’s staking out my house. “But he also knows how it would sound to the prosecutor.”

Ida Belle’s expression cleared in understanding. “Especially if the prosecutor found out that Carter asked you out. Jesus, what a mess.”

“I told him to turn all the evidence over to the DA,” I said. “That it was my problem to deal with.”

Gertie sucked in a breath. “And he kissed you?”

I nodded.

Gertie leaned forward. “Was it the Godfather-it-was-nice-knowing-you kind of kiss or the I’ll-never-let-them-hurt-you kind of kiss?”

“The latter.”

Gertie whimpered a bit and covered her chest with one hand. “That’s so romantic.”

“And stupid,” Ida Belle said. “If there’s pictures and video of Fortune at the Swamp Bar floating around, someone else can make the same connection that Carter did.”

“Do you really think so?” Gertie asked. “Swamp Bar regulars aren’t the sort that would associate with Fortune on a normal basis, and she was heavily made up.”

“Floyd recognized her,” Ida Belle pointed out.

I nodded. “Which is exactly why I told him to turn over the evidence.”

“He doesn’t think you’ll get a fair shake,” Ida Belle said, “and he’s probably right. The prosecutor assigned to this area is an incompetent, ladder-climbing idiot of monumental proportions. All he cares about is conviction rate. It doesn’t matter to him whether he’s actually getting crime off the streets. As long as he has a warm body in a cell, it’s another notch in his belt.”

“She’s right,” Gertie said, “and with Carter unaware of your real background and the connections you have to get you out of this, he thinks turning over that evidence would be buying you an express ticket to Angola.”

“That’s what I figured,” I said. “I can’t let him risk his future for me, especially since he doesn’t know the truth.”

Gertie shook her head. “I don’t think you have a choice. The only way around it is to turn yourself in, and that would not only blow your cover, but get you locked up where the man gunning for you could easily have sharpshooters surrounding the place, just waiting to cap you when you leave.”

“I could contact my partner,” I said, “and let him know I needed extraction.”

Gertie’s face fell. “You mean just disappear?”

I nodded. “Then Carter could turn in his evidence and my director could deal with the fallout.”

“But you’d be gone, maybe forever.” Tears began to form in Gertie’s eyes.

“If Carter is caught withholding this evidence,” I said, “he could lose far more than his job. He could go to prison himself for conspiracy.”

Ida Belle leaned forward in her chair. “Never the best option for a cop.”

Gertie clasped her hands together, her distress clear. “There has to be another way.”

“There is,” Ida Belle said.

Both Gertie and I turned to stare at her.
 

“Really?” I said. “Because I haven’t thought of anything.”

She gave us a single nod. “We could find the killer.”

I shook my head. “I promised Carter I would stay out of his investigation. He’s stuck his neck out enough already. Our investigating always seems to come back in our faces, and his.”

“But we’ve always caught the bad guy,” Gertie said.

“And almost gotten killed in the process,” I said.
 

“So we’ll be more careful,” Gertie said.
 

“There’s no careful way to go after a killer,” I said.

“She’s right,” Ida Belle agreed. “By default, any movement toward a killer comes with heavy risk, and I understand completely why Fortune doesn’t want to compromise her promise to Carter.” She looked directly at me. “But despite all that, I’m not ready for you to leave Sinful.”

“I don’t want to leave,” I said, “but it’s not fair for me to let Carter jeopardize his job when I’m not being honest with him.”

“Then you won’t be involved,” Ida Belle said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Gertie and I will do all the investigating. You won’t have anything to do with it. Gertie and I acting like fools is commonplace. Carter won’t take any flak over us.”

“No. It’s too risky. And besides, we have no leads.”

Gertie perked up. “Billy said that weird guy you talked to in the bar was looking for Floyd, didn’t he?”

“That’s right,” Ida Belle said. “And that guy could have taken the shoe.”

“But we have no idea who he is,” I argued. “We have my description and a first name from a highly unreliable source. Where would we even start? And don’t you dare say we should go back to the Swamp Bar and ask.”

“No,” Ida Belle agreed. “I think we should steer clear of the Swamp Bar for a while.”

“If by ‘a while’ you mean until Christ returns, then yeah.”

Ida Belle shook her head. “So back to the guy in the bar. According to Billy, the guy said Floyd was going to have big problems, right?”

“He said that Floyd was going to have big problems, or little problems.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Gertie said. “A problem is either big or little. It’s not both.”

Ida Belle jumped up from her chair. “Unless the problem
is
big and little.”

Gertie sucked in a breath. “Big and Little Hebert.”

“Their names are Big and Little?” I asked. “What are they—a circus act?”

“Oh, they’re an act all right,” Gertie said, “but not the entertainment type. They’re a father and son act who work for Sonny Hebert.”

“Who’s Sonny Hebert?” I asked.

“He’s a mob boss out of New Orleans and third cousins, or some other relation, to Big and Little,” Ida Belle said. “The Feds finally busted him on something a year or so ago, but I think he only got a couple years.”

“What do Big and Little do for Sonny? Hit men?”

Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. “Nothing like that. As far as I’ve heard, they don’t handle any of the strong-arm stuff. Just things like loan-sharking, illegal gambling, that sort of thing.”

“So Floyd could have owed them money,” I said.

“Sure,” Ida Belle said, “but in my experience, bookies didn’t kill people who owed them money. That’s a surefire way to never get paid.”

I nodded. My knowledge of the U.S. Mafia was mostly limited to the movies Gertie had me watch, but what Ida Belle said made sense. Dead men couldn’t pay bills, and bookies weren’t the kind of business that put a lien against an estate.

“Here’s a theory,” I said. “What if Floyd borrowed money from Big and Little to get out of trouble with someone else?”

Ida Belle frowned. “But it wasn’t enough. Or he got in trouble again and couldn’t borrow more.”

“And that’s who killed him,” Gertie said. “I bet that’s it.”

“It’s just a theory,” I said.

“Yeah,” Ida Belle said, “but it’s a theory that makes sense.”

“So all we have to do is prove we’re right,” Gertie said. “Thank goodness. I thought this was going to be much harder.”

I stared at her. “Just how do you intend to easily prove we’re right?”

“Duh. We’ll ask Big and Little.”

“Have you lost your mind?” I asked.

“Probably,” Ida Belle mumbled under her breath.

“You think,” I continued, “that you can just stroll into their office, or whatever, and ask them if Floyd borrowed money and if so what for?”

“Sure,” Gertie said. “Nothing illegal about that.”

“No, but I’m sure lending money to Floyd was illegal. You think they’re going to come out and admit to being loan sharks?”

Gertie frowned. “I could always ask for a loan. Then their secret would be out and they’d have no reason not to answer my questions.”

I looked at Ida Belle. “Is she for real? I don’t pretend to know anything about how the Mafia works in the states, but I’m not buying that they have this sort of conversation.”

“Normally, I would agree,” Ida Belle said, “but Big and Little have reputations for being eccentric and not too bright. That’s why Sonny has them out in the swamp instead of working New Orleans. There’s a possibility they’d talk to us, especially since Floyd is dead.”

“They’re here in Sinful?” I asked.

“No,” Ida Belle said. “They have an old warehouse off the highway to New Orleans, about twenty miles from Sinful.”

I leaned back in my chair and blew out a breath, my mind racing with all the things that could go wrong with their plan. But on the flip side of the thousand or more things that could go wrong was the possibility that they’d get a solid lead on who killed Floyd, which could let Carter and me both off the hook.

“You don’t think they’re dangerous?” I asked.

Ida Belle shrugged. “They’re not harmless, but I don’t think they’ll shoot us for asking a question. More likely, they’ll tell us they don’t know anything and ask us to leave. Why bring heat down for no reason when a simple ‘I don’t know anything’ will suffice?”

“But if you find out anything,” I said, “you’re going to turn it over to Carter, right?”

“Of course,” Ida Belle said. “If I thought Big and Little would talk to a cop, I’d send him over there now, but I think we all know that’s not likely to happen.”

“No,” I agreed. “It’s probably not.”

I was just about to launch into all the rules they’d have to follow if I were to agree with this very sketchy idea when someone pounded on my front door. I jerked my head in the direction of the living room.

“Are you expecting someone?” Gertie asked.

“No.” I jumped out of my chair. “And I know that knock.”

It was Carter’s angry knock.

Had he bugged my kitchen? Had he changed his mind about talking to the DA and was here to arrest me? I flung the front door open, expecting to see Carter standing there holding handcuffs, but instead, a very agitated Walter had his hand lifted, about to pound on my door again. Apparently, the knocking skill was a family thing.

“Oh, there you are,” he said and hurried inside my house. “Are the other two here?”

“Kitchen,” I said and waved him back.
 

Ida Belle and Gertie stared as Walter stepped into the room, then they both looked at me. I shrugged and slid into my chair, pointing Walter to the remaining seat.

“I’m glad you’re all here,” he said as he took a seat.

Ida Belle cast a worried look at Gertie. “Shouldn’t you be at the store?”

“Scooter’s watching it for a bit. Not the best idea, I know, so I have to hurry.” Walter pulled a box of chocolates out of his pocket and placed them on the table in front of me. “He said to give you these.”

“You banged on my door to give me chocolates from Scooter?”

“No. When I told Scooter where I was going, he insisted, and it was easier than arguing with him.”

Because I got chocolates out of the deal, it sounded like a solid explanation to me. “So what’s up?” I asked as I cracked open the box. Scooter had absolutely no chance with me, but I wasn’t about to let perfectly good chocolates go to waste.

“I heard about Floyd early this morning from a contractor at the café,” Walter said. “I’d…uh…also been working on a radio last night when the channels got crossed and I picked up a radio call about a giant chicken riding a motorcycle.”