Swamp Sniper (27 page)

Ida Belle and Gertie were standing—Gertie on one leg with Ida Belle holding her upright. A bullet tore through the fence and whizzed by my ear, so I shoved my arm under Gertie’s shoulder and ran. I had my doubts that Ida Belle could keep my pace, but either I was moving slower than normal or gunfire prompted a whole other level of ability in her as it did in me.
 

Either way, we ran through a vacant lot to the next block, then turned and started across front lawns, putting as much distance as we could between us and Lyle. We made it a block before slowing to a stop. We sat Gertie on a boulder in a flower bed and Ida Belle and I leaned over, both panting.
 

“It’s a good five blocks to my house,” Ida Belle wheezed.
 

“I can go get my Jeep and come back to pick you up.”

Ida Belle shook her head and pulled out her cell phone. “It would take too long, and Lyle might come looking for us. Besides, as soon as someone reports shots fired to Carter—and you know someone will—he’ll come looking for you.”

Crap.
 

Ida Belle lifted the cell phone to her ear. “Marie, we need you to come pick us up right now. We’re in Stumpy Pitre’s lawn on the side of the house with the boulder. Don’t even take the time to dress—just haul ass.”

She disconnected and slipped the phone back in her pants pocket.
 

“Do you think Marie will move that quickly?” I asked, still deliberating hauling it to Ida Belle’s for my Jeep.

“Oh yeah,” Ida Belle said confidently. “Marie panics and worries, but she’s also not much of a thinker. When you tell her to do something right now, she launches into response without even thinking. Probably dangerous for her, but it’s come in handy for Gertie and me.”

I understood the concept, kinda. Soldiers were trained to react rather than to question, but I wasn’t convinced that a bit-past-middle-age woman who rarely left Louisiana was the best candidate for that sort of conditioning. As it turned out, my limited faith in Marie’s abilities was unfounded.

Barely a minute had passed when Marie screeched to a stop in her car. Ida Belle and I got Gertie into the front seat before jumping into the back. Marie took off like a NASCAR driver and didn’t bother slowing for stop signs or corners. I clutched the door handle and looked over at Ida Belle, who winked.

At the speed she raced up Ida Belle’s driveway, I was afraid Marie would launch her car straight through Ida Belle’s garage door, but she slammed on the brakes and the car slid to a stop just inches before the door. Ida Belle and I jumped out and grabbed Gertie out of the passenger’s seat, then hauled her around the car. We’d barely cleared the taillights when Ida Belle gave Marie a wave. She threw the car in reverse, flew out of the driveway, and disappeared around the block as quickly as she’d arrived.

“She’s good,” I said as we hauled Gertie into the house and sat her in the recliner.
 

Ida Belle nodded. “Told you. Granted, when the adrenaline stops about ten minutes from now, she’ll be so stressed she’ll knit an entire blanket and probably bake at least two pies before calming down. But I could use a new blanket and Marie’s work is the best, so it all works out.”

“I could use pie,” Gertie piped up as Ida Belle untied her tennis shoe and began to ease it off her foot.

“You could use a walker,” I said. “What is up with you and all the tripping? Maybe that foot is worse than you thought. You should have it checked out.”

“I didn’t trip,” Gertie said, somewhat indignant.
 

“Then what the hell did this?” Ida Belle said and pointed to her ankle.

It was already swollen to double normal size and by tomorrow morning, I had no doubt it would be black and purple. “Is it broken?” I asked.

Ida Belle pressed gently on the sides and shook her head. “Can’t tell for sure, but I think it’s only sprained. Still, she should have an X-ray tomorrow.”

Gertie leaned forward to study her ankle and sighed. “That’s my driving foot.”

“The only thing you need to be driving is one of those motorized wheelchairs,” Ida Belle said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Have you seen how fast some of them go?”

“True,” Ida Belle admitted, then looked at Gertie. “As soon as this is healed, you have got to start doing yoga with me. You may have moments of brilliance, but overall, your flexibility and balance have gone to hell in a handbasket.”

Gertie crossed her arms in front of her chest. “It’s not that bad.”

I stared. “Seriously? You’ve injured that same foot three times this week alone.”

Ida Belle shook her head. “Yes, it’s that bad, and furthermore, we’re too old to risk these kind of injuries. It’s going to take you ten times longer to recover than it did when we were serving in Vietnam. I hate it as much as you do, but the reality is we’re not in any shape to keep up with Fortune and we never will be again.”

Gertie sighed. “I’m not sure we ever were in any shape to keep up with Fortune, although she appears to have lost some of her garments in this exchange.”

Ida Belle looked down at my foot where Gertie pointed and raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t even notice. I’m losing my touch.”

“The dog was hungry,” I explained. “It was either the shoe or my foot. When Lyle started shooting, the shoe seemed the better option.”

Suddenly, it registered that Lyle had my shoe, and no doubt some nosy neighbor had already called in the shots fired. I groaned. “When Lyle gives that shoe to Carter, he’s going to know it’s mine. I was wearing them this morning because I jogged to the café.”

“More than one person can have the same tennis shoe,” Gertie argued.

“Yeah, but my DNA is in this one,” I said.

Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. “Carter’s not going to do a DNA test on a tennis shoe on a trespassing charge. Besides, Lyle’s not going to give him the shoe in the first place, or he’ll have to admit he was the one shooting.”

“Those big holes in his fence are sorta a dead giveaway,” I pointed out.

Gertie relaxed a bit. “Carter can’t prove it happened tonight, and Ida Belle’s right. Lyle avoids the cops like the plague. I guess thanks to Ted we know why.”

Everything Ida Belle said made sense, so I relaxed a little. Unless Lyle had seen me jogging and normally spent time memorizing ladies’ tennis shoes, he wouldn’t be able to place the shoe. I threw a log in Ida Belle’s fireplace and fired it up to burn the incriminating remaining shoe before taking a seat on the brick hearth. Sinful was hell on clothing.

“I’m going to get some ice for that ankle,” Ida Belle said and headed to the kitchen. A minute later, she was back with a dishrag full of ice that she tied in a knot and put on Gertie’s ankle. “Why in the world did you scream, anyway? It was just a chicken snake.”

“I don’t care if it was a two-turtledoves snake,” Gertie said. “I don’t like snakes to begin with and I certainly don’t like them attacking me from rafters.”

“I know it’s a totally girly standpoint,” I said, “and likely to lower my stock considerably, but I gotta say I’m with Gertie on this one. I may not have screamed, but I’d probably still be running.”

Ida Belle shook her head and sat on the end of the coffee table. “That snake was no risk, especially compared to that dog or Lyle shooting. And when did Lyle get a dog?”

Gertie shook her head. “No idea.”

“No matter,” Ida Belle continued. “My point still is, all the screaming precipitated the running, which led to the tripping, which results in this.” She pointed to Gertie’s ankle.
 

“I didn’t trip!” Gertie insisted again.

“I saw you fall,” I said. “And I didn’t push you.”

Gertie rolled her eyes. “I never said anyone pushed me. I just said I didn’t trip. The ground swallowed up my foot.”

“Lord, help us,” Ida Belle said, looking upward, then looked back down at Gertie. “Stepping in a hole and falling
is
tripping.”

“But that’s just it,” Gertie said. “The hole wasn’t there when I stepped on it. It’s like the ground started disappearing below me and it closed in on my foot. Like it was being pulled down by Mother Earth herself.”

Ida Belle’s eyes widened and she jumped up. I thought it was a bit of an overreaction to Gertie’s dramatic portrayal of clumsiness, but emotions were high, so I figured I’d give her a pass.

“That’s it!” Ida Belle said and clapped.

She grinned at both of us. I just stared, not understanding why Gertie’s tripping was so exciting all of a sudden. Gertie frowned and stared at Ida Belle for several seconds, then sucked in a breath.
 

“A gopher hole,” Gertie said. “I stepped in a gopher hole.”

Ida Belle grinned. “We got him.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

I woke up bright and early the next morning, eager to get started on my tasks for the day, and that was a welcome change. We’d spent hours the night before tossing around ideas of how to get Carter to investigate Lyle, while trying to avoid implicating ourselves in anything, when finally my muddled mind had cleared and the answer seemed so obvious.

Walter.
 

First, I’d head to Francine’s for breakfast and any gossip Ally had that might prove useful. Then as soon as Walter’s shop opened, I’d be inside, asking him to check his records and see if Lyle had ever ordered gopher poison. We all knew there was a chance he hadn’t gotten poison through Walter, but for whatever reason, we all chose to believe that this was going to be the answer—the thing that created reasonable doubt for Ida Belle.

Francine’s was only half-f, but then, I was early compared to most of the retirees who wandered in later in the morning. Ally gave me a wave as soon as I walked in and motioned to my usual two-top in the corner. I was pleased to see that none of the other patrons were seated close by. That gave Ally an opportunity to spill without being overheard.

She delivered the breakfast to a table across the café, then poured a cup of coffee and hurried over to my table. “I was hoping you’d come in,” she said as she put the cup down and pulled out her pad, so that it looked like she was taking my order.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Aunt Celia called me last night and said Paulette left for New Jersey last night.”

“What? That’s rather abrupt since her husband’s barely in the ground.”

Ally nodded. “Aunt Celia thought it was crass, but then everything about Paulette was, so I don’t know why people thought she’d be any different over this.”

“But Celia’s sure she’s gone?”

“Yep. She dropped by late yesterday evening to take a potpie and some coffee cake, and her cousin Tony answered the door. He said Paulette needed to get away from all of this for a bit. She was able to catch a flight last night, so she packed a bag and hauled butt.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t Tony go?”

“Celia asked that too, but he said there was only one seat left. He said he’d be leaving as soon as he could catch a flight today. Paulette will be back later to settle up things in the house.”

“I assume Carter knows she left,” I said, rolling this information around in my mind.

Ally’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even think of that. I thought only suspects couldn’t leave.”

“Usually, but with the break-in at her house and then the church, I figure Carter probably would prefer her to stick around, especially since her house won’t be occupied after Tony leaves, but everything’s still inside.”

“You think someone will break in again?”

“If you were the thief and you didn’t get what you were looking for the first time, then you found out the house was empty, would you break in again?”

Ally blew out a breath. “I guess so. God, what a complicated mess. That woman has been a pain in the butt since her arrival in Sinful. She could have stayed another week—getting served fantastic food by all the locals, I might add—and let Carter do his job. But no, leave it to Paulette to make everything harder.”

I smiled. “Why Ally, are you talking bad about a poor widow?”

Ally rolled her eyes. “If I thought for one moment Paulette gave a hoot about anyone but herself, I might feel a twinge of guilt. But since I’m certain Paulette only cares about the size of a man’s wallet, then I’m not inclined to extend any sympathy.”

I grinned, then looked over as the bells jangled above the café door. I barely held my smile in place as Bobby walked in. Ally glanced at the door, then back at me and frowned.
 

“He’s such a flirt,” she said. “And twenty bucks says he’s going to head over here as soon as I walk away, so let me put in your order so you can get out.”

I nodded. “The special, over easy.”

“Got it,” Ally said and hurried off to the kitchen.

Bobby, true to Ally’s word, scanned the café, locked in on me, and ambled over, a big smile on his face. “Are you expecting Carter again this morning, or can I have this seat?” he asked.

“I’m not expecting anyone,” I said. “But sometimes, people turn up.”

“So what you’re saying is if Carter turns up, you want me to make myself scarce?”