Soldiers of Fortune (22 page)

“But will you really rest well?” I asked, leaning forward to look at them. “I know you guys had your run in Vietnam. We haven’t discussed the details and don’t need to, but I’m sure you did things then that you wouldn’t think of doing as a regular civilian. I made peace a long time ago with what I do. I know it’s for the greater good, and to protect the innocent, even if no one else could understand that. But if we turn the Heberts loose on people…”

The kitchen was so quiet, all I could hear was the clock ticking on the wall. Ida Belle’s and Gertie’s expressions were both contemplative, and I knew they were thinking about their service and trying to put what we were doing now into perspective—weighing their own moral code against the safety of Sinful. It was a difficult thing to do, even when the target in question was clearly the bad guy.

Even when you weren’t the one to pull the trigger.

“I think,” Ida Belle said, finally breaking the silence, “that if it comes down to the Heberts settling the score, I wouldn’t have a problem with it because it would have eventually come around to that regardless of whether we provided them information or not.”

Gertie nodded. “I agree. They were already onto the meth problem because of their hospital snitch. All they had to do was wait for business to start up and go after them then. They have enough ears to the ground that they could have ferreted them out without our help.”

“And the result would have been the same,” I said.

They both nodded.
 

“Okay,” I said. “I can accept that.”

“Good,” Gertie said. “So do you feel better now?”

I did to some degree, but my biggest problem still lurked in the back of my mind, pricking at me like damaged nerves in an old wound.
 

“Carter asked me what my plans were for the end of the summer,” I said.

Gertie’s eyes widened and she looked over at Ida Belle.

“What did you say?” Ida Belle asked.

I shrugged. “What could I say? I don’t know what my plans are. Ahmad is off-grid and there’s still a price on my head. I don’t know what will happen by the end of summer. I don’t know what will happen by the end of next week.”

Gertie gave me a sympathetic look. “It’s a lot for you to deal with. I think sometimes Ida Belle and I get so wrapped up in what’s going on in Sinful that we forget why you’re here in the first place.”

“And that no one else knows the truth,” Ida Belle said. “I mean, we know no one else knows who you really are, but I don’t think we give much thought as to how difficult it must be for you to live a completely duplicitous life.”

I nodded. “With you guys, I get to be myself, but with everyone else I have to live the lie. And it gets harder and harder not to slip.”

“The more comfortable you get with people,” Gertie said, “the harder it is to maintain the facade. I can see that.”

“What did Carter say about your noncommittal answer?” Ida Belle asked.

“He didn’t like it,” I said, “but then I pointed out that he could hardly expect me to change my entire life after being here a month.”

“Which would be a perfectly reasonable statement,” Ida Belle said, “even if you were the real Sandy-Sue.”

“I know,” I said, “and he agreed.”

“So how did you leave things?” Ida Belle asked.

“The same as they were before, I guess. He seems to think that if we’re still together at the end of the summer, the answer will be apparent.”

“But he doesn’t know the truth,” Gertie said.
 

“Exactly.” I slumped back in my chair. “This is the very reason I avoided seeing Carter that way. Sure, I’ve been attracted to him since the beginning, but look at what a mess it is. And continuing on this path until the end of summer is only likely to make things worse.”

“You could always tell him the truth now,” Gertie said.

“No,” I said. “Assuming the truth didn’t make him run for the hills, he’d try to protect me, and that would be worse.”

“She’s right,” Ida Belle said. “He’s already invested in her, and if Carter is anything, he’s the hero type. Despite her real identity, he’d take it as his personal mission to save her.”

I nodded. “And he has no idea what that entails. Even if I tried to describe just how horrible the man is who’s after me, I don’t think there’s good enough words.”

“And if you tried to explain that he needed to stay out of it because he’s not qualified, then you’d insult him.” Gertie sighed. “Being single is so much easier.”

“Men
are
a bit of a handful,” Ida Belle agreed.

“Well, anyway,” I said, “I told you that you wouldn’t have answers because there aren’t any. So that’s what has been on my mind—some of it for a while, but it’s gotten worse the last couple of days.” I gave them both a small smile. “But I do feel better for telling you.”

Gertie reached over and patted my hand. “It always feels better when someone understands that you’re standing in a shit storm holding a broken umbrella.”

That pretty much summed it up.

Chapter Thirteen

I awakened early the next morning, or maybe I just never quite went to sleep. I heard Ally milling around her bedroom around 5:00 a.m. getting ready for work, but I stayed in bed, hoping I could finally get some shut-eye. I finally gave up at seven and made my way down to the kitchen.
 

Ally had been waiting for me the night before, about to explode if I didn’t tell her everything that had happened. Between Gertie and her ride on the alligator and Celia’s flaming car, we spent an hour in the kitchen alternating between laughing and eating cookies. Sometime after midnight, Ally declared that if she didn’t get to bed she’d never make it through work the next day and headed upstairs. I followed shortly after, but even a long, hot shower didn’t bring on the sleep I’d really hoped for.

Quite simply, I had too much on my mind. So much that it raced from one problem to another, in a vicious cycle that had me tossing and turning in between small bouts of sleep with vivid, strange dreams. I awakened feeling more tired than I had when I’d gone to bed, and that was saying a lot given the day I’d had before.

As I scrambled some eggs, I tried to force everything out of my mind except for today’s agenda. If there was one thing I’d learned, trips to the Swamp Bar required all of my concentration if I planned on getting out in decent shape. So far, I hadn’t managed that, but I was determined that this time I was going to walk in and walk out. No running for my life. No wearing trash bags and nothing else. No clinging for life on the back of a motorcycle.
 

I’d just sat down at the table with eggs and toast when my phone went off. I picked it up and saw it was a text from Carter. Looks like everyone was up early.

Forgot I have MRI repeat at hospital this morning. See you this afternoon.

I felt some of the tension ease out of my neck. That solved one of the morning’s problems. With Ally at work and Carter at the hospital, we were clear for our Swamp Bar excursion. With any luck, we could collect the information we needed and get back home before anyone was the wiser.

And I was going to keep telling myself that.

The festivities at the Swamp Bar were supposed to kick off around eleven, so Gertie and Ida Belle planned to be at my house at nine-thirty for Gertie and me to get in costume. I still had no idea what Gertie thought our costumes should consist of, and was more than a bit worried at the prospect, but she’d assured me I wouldn’t have to wear anything that exposed body parts I wanted covered or made it impossible to run. That should have made me feel better, but I was afraid that in that description, too much leeway existed that I just didn’t have the imagination to come up with. Gertie, on the other hand, was 90 percent imagination, 5 percent reality, and 5 percent alien.

I polished off my breakfast and opened my laptop to see if Harrison had sent me an email. I didn’t expect anything so soon, and if anything big had happened, he would have risked a text, but I couldn’t help myself from checking. I was a little disappointed when I saw the empty in-box, but then shifted to work mode and decided to do an Internet search on Dewey.
 

The search brought up several hits, all of them but one news reports listing recent arrests in which Dewey was listed. All of the news articles matched items listed on the information I’d gotten from Little Hebert. The last hit was a short blurb about the carnival and had a pic of Dewey and two other workers standing in front of a Ferris wheel. His name was listed in the photo caption. The names of the other two men didn’t match any of those listed on the information from Little.

Nothing.

I did another search, this time on the known associates. Rip Salazar didn’t produce any results, but that wasn’t surprising. I figured Rip was a nickname and not a legal one. I found one listing for Conrad Fredericks and it was an obituary. Thirty-two years old, former employee of the same carnival Dewey had worked for, and died of a drug overdose. Sounded like our guy. The obituary was dated a year before. One name off our suspect list.

A search on Lynne Fontenot produced so many results that I couldn’t sort them out. I read through the first twenty or so, but couldn’t find enough details to tie any of the search results to Dewey. The name was too common. Maybe not anywhere else in the world, but in Louisiana, it was the equivalent of Mary Smith. I typed in the last name—the subject of today’s adventure—and a couple hits popped up. The first was a warrant listing and Benedict’s name was on it for outstanding speeding tickets. The second hit was an article from a New Orleans newspaper talking about arrests made in a bar fight. Benedict was one of the participants.
 

Sounded like a really great dude. I couldn’t wait to spend lunch with him.

I closed the laptop and headed upstairs. First, I was taking a cold shower to try to wake up. Then I was going to pick out jeans, a tank top, and tennis shoes. That was as bar-slutty as I was getting for a lunch event. And despite my commitment to strolling in and out, it never hurt to wear something I could sprint in.
 

Whatever Gertie had in mind, she could keep it to herself.

###

I opened my front door and blinked, then rubbed my eyes.

“Don’t bother,” Ida Belle said. “It’s not going to get any better.”

Gertie stood on my porch next to Ida Belle and if I hadn’t been a trained operative, and expecting her, I wouldn’t have recognized her at all. She’d matched my outfit of jeans and tank top, but that’s where the similarity ended. Her bright pink tank was covered with a black leather vest. Her jeans sported black leather riding chaps. Around her neck was a black leather collar with silver studs. Her hair was tied up in a red bandanna and she wore huge polarized sunglasses accessorized with purple lipstick.
 

And that wasn’t even the scary part.
 

Up and down both of her arms and peeking out of the tank and vest were tattoos. Tons of tattoos. Swirls of red, green, blue, black, and yellow surrounded her arms all the way from shoulder to wrist. The end of a bunch of red roses came out of her tank and splayed across her chest like someone had fired a paint gun at her.
 

“What the hell?” I asked and waved her inside before someone saw her and started a turf war.

“Looks good, right?” Gertie said, grinning as she pulled off her sunglasses.

I cringed at the dark black eyeliner and bright blue eye shadow she wore. I knew next to nothing about fashion, but I’d always heard black matched everything. Whoever said it was wrong. Nothing on Gertie fit. It was like those tests you did when you were a kid—you were shown a bunch of objects and had to pick the one that didn’t belong. In Gertie’s case, the correct answer would have been “all of the above.”

“I don’t know where to start,” I said.

“No place to finish either,” Ida Belle said. “It’s probably best to skip starting altogether.”

“Like you don’t wear leather,” Gertie said.

“I wear motorcycle gear, oddly enough, when I’m riding my motorcycle,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t wear it as a fashion statement.”

“You two are such stick-in-the-muds,” Gertie said. “This is the perfect disguise for the Swamp Bar. No one will recognize me, and I should fit right in.”

It was more than a little over the top, and fantastically disturbing, but I had to admit she had a point. Definitely, no one would recognize her, and the look was one I’d seen sported by men and women at the Swamp Bar. Not the makeup part on the men, but leather and tattoos were popular.

Gertie lifted her handbag. “I brought stuff to fix you up.” She opened the handbag and pulled out sheets of temporary tattoos, a blue bandanna, and black leather gloves with no fingers. “I didn’t figure you for the vest and chaps type. Besides, you’ll get more from the men if they can see your cleavage, and I didn’t want the competition with the chaps. I’m betting everyone there takes one look at this leather-bound heinie and thinks, ‘I hope I look that good when I’m her age.’”

Ida Belle shook her head. “People will take one look at you and hope they make it to your age.”

“Say what you want,” Gertie said, “but that Kim Kardashian doesn’t have anything on these cheeks.”