Authors: Jana DeLeon
I wanted to lean across the table and choke him with my napkin, but the last thing I needed was people gossiping about Carter and me and the relationship we did
not
have.
“I don’t really care what you
or
Carter do,” I said. “I’m not a breakfast prize.”
He grinned. “Fair enough. So what brings you out this early?”
“I’m a morning person.”
“Me, too. I usually jog but I wasn’t feeling it this morning. Maybe I’ll do a late-night run.”
I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation, and small talk about mundane things was so not my strength, so we settled into an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Ally saved me by shoving a plate of food in front of me and taking Bobby’s order.
“Go ahead,” he said and motioned to my plate.
I reached for the salt and pepper and held in a sigh. Like I was going to wait. My table manners didn’t extend to people who invited themselves to a meal. I spent a bit concentrating on seasoning my eggs and spreading homemade jam on my toast, then dug in.
“I hear you’re Marge Boudreaux’s niece,” Bobby said, clearly not wanting to let the conversation die a polite death.
I took a bite of toast and nodded.
“You just here for the summer?” he asked.
“I’ll leave as soon as the estate is settled,” I replied.
“Hopefully, it won’t be much of a trial. Some of the seniors in Sinful belong on an episode of
Hoarders
, but Marge didn’t seem the type.”
“She wasn’t,” I agreed. “Her house is very functional and has few dust collectors. It will probably take longest to catalog her books. That’s where I started.”
“That makes sense, you being a librarian and all.”
I stared at him. “You checking up on me?”
“Just curious. A beautiful woman with your attitude doesn’t exactly fit in Sinful. It made me wonder why you were here, so I asked.”
“Well, now you know.”
“So I can leave you alone?”
I sat my fork down and sighed. “What do you want, Bobby? I’m not interested in dating. Not you, Carter, or any other overly alpha male in this town who thinks this little woman needs rescuing. When I’m done with the legal requirements for my aunt’s estate, I’m going home, which is north. Everything here is temporary and relationships shouldn’t be.”
He gave me a nod. “Fair enough. But you can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Fine. You tried. It didn’t work. Anything beyond now is stalking.”
He rose from the table. “Then I guess I’ll take my breakfast to go.”
He gave me a smile and a wink as he sauntered across the café toward the kitchen and I held in a sigh. Guys like Bobby never, ever believed that women weren’t dying to be with him. I don’t know why I wasted valuable energy spelling it out. With any luck, Bobby would decide what he wanted to be “if” he ever grew up and head right back out of Sinful as quickly as he blew in, just like Carter predicted.
In the meantime, I supposed I would have to start considering breakfast at home if I planned on enjoying the meal in peace.
As soon as I saw Walter’s truck pass by the café, I wrapped up breakfast and hurried across the street. The store wouldn’t be open this early, but I wanted to speak to Walter without the fear of interruption. I knocked on the front door and saw Walter’s eyes widen when he saw me standing there. He hurried to the door to unlock it and let me in.
“Did your uh…plan work?” he asked, trying to avoid any mention of the illegal activities he figured we were up to.
“I hope so. That’s why I’m here.”
“Sure. Take a seat. What do you need? Do you want coffee?”
He was so nervous it made my heart clench a bit. If something bad happened to Ida Belle, Walter would never be the same. “I just had breakfast, so I’m good. What I need is information.”
“Okay.”
“I need to know if Lyle Cox ever bought gopher poison from your store. Do you remember if he did?”
His eyes widened and he stared at me for several seconds with an expectant look, then as more time passed, his face fell and he shook his head. “I can’t ever remember him ordering it, and it’s not something I keep in stock.”
My heart dropped into my feet. Had last night been a waste of time and a perfectly good ankle? Were we all so desperate for the answer that we were pinning our hopes on a ridiculous long shot?
“But let me check,” he said and pulled a book out from under the counter. “This is my special orders book.”
“You keep a record of all the special orders?”
He nodded. “Only way to keep up with what’s come in and who’s picked up their items. I know I should have it all on a computer, but I just don’t feel energetic enough to learn.”
I took a peek at the book, making note of the cramped handwriting that filled each row. This could take hours. “Do you have more order books?” I asked. “I can start looking through them if you show me what to look for.”
Walter nodded and pulled a stack of ten books from under the counter. I felt my anticipation drop a bit.
“These are for the past two years,” he said. “I have more in the back.”
He opened a book and turned it my direction. “You just want to look for a note in the last column. That’s where I record the order of all hazardous items.”
My mood improved tenfold. Scanning the last column wouldn’t take long at all, even with ten books. I opened to the first page and traced down the last column with my finger, then repeated the process over and over again, until I’d finished reviewing three books. Walter did the same—both of us tracing invisible lines down the book in studied silence.
On the fifth book, I found a note for gopher poison and my pulse ticked up. I traced my finger over to the left to see the name.
Ida Belle.
Damn it. All I’d found was more evidence to incriminate her. Disgusted, I flipped the page and continued on, trying not to let my diminishing hope vanish into nothing.
“Here!” Walter yelled, startling me so badly, I almost fell off the stool.
“What?” I asked as I raced around the counter to look at the book.
He pointed to the entry for gopher poison, then slid his finger over to the left.
Lyle Cox.
Gotcha.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“It wasn’t me that placed the order,” Walter said. “I was visiting my cousin in Omaha that week. My buddy Jerry was watching the store for me.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’d know Jerry’s lousy handwriting anywhere. Is this enough to clear Ida Belle?”
“It’s not enough to clear her, but if Lyle still has some of this poison, it’s enough to create reasonable doubt.” It was a whole hell of a lot more than that, but I wasn’t about to tell Walter about the blackmail end of things. The fewer people who knew, the better.
“Why didn’t I think of this before?” Walter asked. “I’m so stupid. Here I was with the answer and it took you to point it out.”
“We don’t know how much it answers yet,” I said, not wanting Walter to get his hopes too high. This entire mess was still a bit of a stretch to pitch to law enforcement.
“Should I take this to Carter?” Walter asked, his excitement clearly not abating.
“Actually, do you mind if I do instead? There’s something else I need to tell him…something I don’t want you implicated in.”
He smiled. “I trusted you before and you came up with this. You seem like a pretty good bet, so I’m going to trust you again.”
He picked the book up and handed it to me. “Let me know what Carter says and if me or Jerry need to do anything. I’m sure Jerry will be happy to verify his handwriting.”
“Thanks, Walter. I’m going to call Carter now and see if he can meet me at the sheriff’s office.”
“You don’t have to. I saw his boat parked at the dock when I came in the door.”
“Great!” I grabbed the book from the counter and hurried out the store. With any luck, Carter and the dispatcher would be the only people in the office. Less chance of being interrupted that way.
After our last interaction, I knew he wasn’t going to be happy to see me. And he was going to be downright angry after I told him what we’d done the night before.
But none of that mattered. All that mattered was keeping Ida Belle out of jail.
###
“You what?” Carter jumped up from his desk, glaring down at me, his face growing red. “Do you realize you could have been shot? I counted three big holes in the back of Lyle’s fence, all made with a .45-caliber pistol. If just one shot had connected—”
“Sinful would have been attending another funeral,” I interrupted his rant. “I know, and it was stupid. Can we agree on that part and move on to what’s important?”
He threw his hands in the air and flopped back down in his chair. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
“So after we got back to Ida Belle’s, she was griping at Gertie for tripping.”
“Like that’s the worst thing you did,” Carter muttered.
“And Gertie kept insisting she didn’t trip,” I said, completely ignoring his comment. “Then when she described how the ground sucked her foot in, Ida Belle knew she’d stepped in a gopher hole.”
I opened the book and pushed it across the desk to Carter. “So I talked to Walter this morning, and here’s the record where Lyle bought the same poison Ida Belle had.”
Carter leaned forward and studied the entry, then looked at me. “So I’m to believe that out of all the people in Sinful, you just happened to pick the one other person who bought gopher poison and broke in his shed looking for it?”
“Not exactly.”
“Uh-huh.”
I’d known this question was coming, so we’d brainstormed a lie last night. I only hoped it was good enough to pass muster.
“We heard through the grapevine that Lyle and Ted got into it a couple of weeks ago.”
“What grapevine, exactly?”
I shook my head. “When Ida Belle tried to narrow it down, it just ran in a circle—Sue heard it from Mary who heard it from Jane who heard it from Sue. She couldn’t find the original source, but everyone appeared to agree on the content.”
“And that’s it? Ted and Lyle got into a fight, like human beings tend to do a lot of times, and the three of you leaped right to murder?”
“Not exactly. See, whoever heard the fight said Lyle told Ted he was going to the police himself. So we figured whatever they fought about was something illegal.”
“So an undocumented source might have heard Ted and Lyle argue about a crime one of them might be committing with a threat to possibly talk to the police?”
I nodded.
“And that was good enough for you to risk being shot?”
I shrugged. “When you put it like that, it sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t just
sound
stupid.”
“But we didn’t have anything else to go on, and we know it will be harder to clear Ida Belle once the prosecutor sets his sights on her. So we rolled the dice. Yes, it was stupid. And clearly, it was an absurd long shot.” I tapped Walter’s order book. “But you can’t argue with the results.”
Carter leaned back in his chair and blew out a breath.
“Look,” I continued. “I know you’re mad at me…disappointed, whatever. And I don’t blame you. But none of this is about me or you, for that matter. It’s only about Ida Belle. And if I have to piss off the pope to clear her name, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Carter stared at me for several seconds, then the edges of his lips turned up a tiny bit. “I wouldn’t give the pope two minutes with you before he prayed for God to take him home.”
“So is this enough to get a search warrant?”
Carter nodded. “I think so, and I’m sure Judge Aubry will as well, especially as he keeps putting Lyle in jail and they keep letting him out early. Besides which, he wasn’t thrilled about the search warrant he issued for Ida Belle’s house, but it’s still his job.”
“I know. Just like it’s yours to arrest her if you get that call.”
“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” he said but I saw the worry flicker across his face before he masked it. Carter knew better than anyone that he was on borrowed time. “How is Gertie’s ankle?”
“Pretty swollen last night and I bet it’s black and blue this morning—probably a good match for her eye. Marie is going to take her to the hospital for an X-ray of her foot and head. We figured it better if Ida Belle stuck around…”
As he opened his mouth to reply, his phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and froze. When he answered, his voice was stiff and professional.
“Yes, sir,” Carter said. “Are you sure? I have some new information to give you…no, I understand. No, sir. I have no problem doing my job. I’ll inform you when she’s in custody.”
My heart sank into my feet as the last words left his lips. Carter slammed the phone down so hard it made me jump. He bolted up from his chair and cursed.