Swamp Team 3 (7 page)

“What?” Gertie asked. “You said it was probably someone we already knew. He has to live somewhere, doesn’t he?”

I frowned. “That sounds too easy.”

“But it would be clever,” Ida Belle said, “or plain stupid.”

“Who lives next door to Ally?”

“Floyd Guidry,” Ida Belle said and frowned. “Gertie may be onto something.”

“I take it this Floyd is a problem?” I asked.

Gertie nodded. “You best believe it. The first time Floyd was arrested he was still in kindergarten.”

I stared. “Then shouldn’t he be rotting in prison by now?”

Ida Belle frowned. “He got smarter. Skirts on just this side of the law, based on what you can see. But who knows what else he’s got going on.”

“He’s mean as a snake, too,” Gertie said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Ally had problems with him.”

“But Carter asked her,” I said, “and she couldn’t think of anyone.”

“Maybe he didn’t come to mind because it’s the norm,” Gertie suggested.

“Well, no use speculating about it,” I said. “Let’s get going on this and we’ll ask Ally about him when we get back to my house.”

We cut through the swamp toward the back of Ally’s house. About fifteen minutes in, I caught a flicker of color through the trees and figured we were getting close. Then I heard the sound of water.

“Is that the bayou?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ida Belle said. “It runs right behind Ally’s house.”

Gertie came to a dead stop and put her hands on her hips. “You’re right. What the heck are we doing tromping through the swamp when we could have taken a boat?”

Ida Belle lifted one eyebrow. “Really? What boat, exactly, do you suggest we take—mine, which is still in the shop having the hull repaired, or yours, which was pulled from the bottom of the bayou two days ago and may never run again?”

Since both situations lay primarily at Gertie’s feet, I figured I’d keep my mouth shut on this one. Gertie frowned, then huffed, and I thought she was going to argue, but she must have thought better of it.

“Whatever,” she said and waved a hand in dismissal as she stomped off toward Ally’s house.

We fell in step behind her. The closer we came to the neighborhood, the more building detail I could see, which didn’t make much sense at the height I was looking. What I expected to see was a fence. When we got about twenty feet away, I realized what the problem was.

“Ally has a wrought iron fence,” I said. “The only place to hide is behind her shed, and he’d have to get there first without being seen.”

Ida Belle frowned. “It used to be wood.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked.

“Until yesterday, it’s probably been a year or more since I’ve been inside the house. Ally’s mother isn’t exactly a likable person, so no one really wanted to see her when she was well. When she got sick, she refused to let anyone inside the house except Ally.”

“Who she treated like a slave,” Gertie threw in.

Ida Belle nodded. “I have no idea when she made the change to the fence, but we know for sure it was before the arson. So we take this into account and move forward.”

“Why are there only two houses here in this stretch?” I asked. “I thought Ally’s house was part of the neighborhood.” It had been almost dark when I’d arrived at Ally’s house the night before with Carter. The streetlights had provided most of the visibility, and that wasn’t stellar. I’d seen tall hedges and the tree line nearby, but had been too distracted to realize there weren’t more houses in this row besides Ally’s and Floyd’s.
 

“She’s in the neighborhood,” Ida Belle said, “but the way the bayou snakes around, you couldn’t put houses on either side of Ally and Floyd’s places. The ground was too unstable. A builder tried once, but the foundation cracked to pieces within a week.”

I peered into the swamp in both directions but couldn’t see anything but green and brown. “How far away are their next-door neighbors?”

“About fifty yards in either direction,” Ida Belle said.

“So Ally and Floyd are isolated.”

Ida Belle nodded. “On the sides, they are, but there are houses across the street.”

Right. I remembered that the neighbor who’d reported the fire lived across the street. I studied the property line of the two homes. “I suppose the arsonist could have hidden behind Floyd’s fence, but with the placement of that tree, his view of the kitchen window wouldn’t be very clear.”

“We’ve already decided he was either clever or stupid,” Gertie said. “If we’re going to assume it’s a Sinful resident, I say we move forward with the stupid idea and look for clues behind Floyd’s fence and Ally’s shed.”

I nodded. “Then let’s spread out along Floyd’s fence line and look for bare areas on the ground where we may be able to spot a footprint.”

We separated, and with a distance of roughly thirty feet between us, moved toward Floyd’s fence, canvassing the ground as we progressed. When we reached the back of the fence, I looked over to my left at Ida Belle and Gertie, and they both shook their heads.

They headed over and Ida Belle shook her head.

“Not even a smudge in the mud,” she said, “much less a cigarette or matchbook or any of the things you see on television.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know why I hoped something might be easy.”

“No matter,” Ida Belle said. “This is still what police look at first, so if we want to conduct a real investigation, we have to do the things they will do.”

Gertie nodded and leaned back against Floyd’s dilapidated fence. I saw the fence panel wobble, but before I could say a word, the entire section went crashing down into Floyd’s yard, carrying Gertie with it.

Ida Belle and I rushed over to help Gertie up. As we reached down to lift her from the mangled mess, I heard a banging noise at Floyd’s house. I looked up to see a beefy man with a bald head, wearing sweats and a white muscle shirt, stomp out the back door.

“What the hell are you doing on my property?” he yelled.
 

He reached back inside the house and pulled out a shotgun. I yanked Gertie up from the ground. “Time to jet.”

We dashed around the back of the fence, out of Floyd’s line of sight, and kept running along the length of it, hoping we’d lose him in the swamp.

“I’m sick of you lurking around my property. And you’re going to pay for that fence!” Floyd yelled. “Get ’em, Shorty!”

Crap! I had no idea what a “Shorty” was but I already knew I wasn’t going to like it. Visions of my past run-in with Carter’s rottweiler, Tiny, flashed through my head. This was so not good. We had zero chances of outrunning a dog.

And in an instant, our odds got even lower.

A roar, not associated with any dog I am familiar with, echoed through the swamp. I looked up just as a large gold animal launched off the fence directly at me.
 

“A lion!” Gertie screamed and took off into the swamp faster than I’d ever seen her move before.

The flying cat hit me directly in the shoulder and I stumbled backward. It wasn’t a lion—it was way too small—but I had a feeling the claws sticking out of the paw raised in front of me were about to make Merlin’s seem like a gentle back rub. He growled again and swiped at me, but I jumped back in time to avoid his onboard razors, my T-shirt catching the worst of the damage.

Ida Belle yelled at the cat and swung at him with a big stick. The cat backed up and growled again, and for a moment, I thought he would pounce on Ida Belle, but in one fluid movement he whirled around and leaped back over the fence into Floyd’s yard.

“Let’s go!” Ida Belle said and we hauled butt in the direction Gertie had fled.
 

Minutes later, we burst out of the swamp and into a vacant lot. A rusty green sedan slid to a stop at the curb, and I saw Gertie frantically gesturing from the driver’s seat.
 

“Hurry up! I bet anything Floyd called the police,” she yelled as we ran for the car and jumped inside.

Ida Belle jumped into the passenger’s seat and I dove for the back, not even getting the door shut before Gertie took off from the corner like a NASCAR driver. I grabbed the front seat and pulled myself up, so many questions running through my mind, I wasn’t sure where to start.

“Did you steal this car?” I asked, deciding to go with the worst illegal thing we might have just done.

“Of course not,” Gertie said. “This is Maisey Jackson’s car. She always leaves the keys under the floor mat.”

“So that people will take her car?”

“Well, not exactly. Mostly it’s so that she can always find them. Maisey’s mind isn’t what it used to be.”

I lowered my head, out of view of pedestrians. “You stole the car.”

Chapter Six

Gertie yanked the wheel to the right and I lost my grip and fell across the backseat.
 

“She’s in the hospital,” Gertie said. “She’ll never know.”

I pulled myself up again just in time for Gertie to slam on the brakes. I hit the back of the seat and my breath rushed out of me in a whoosh.

“You should wear a seat belt,” Ida Belle said as she opened her door and jumped out. “Get a move on, will you?”

I climbed out of the car as Gertie ran around from the driver’s side and they both took off running across lawns. A glance told me we were a couple houses down from mine, so I set out after them. We barely got the front door closed before Carter’s truck pulled down the street and stopped at the curb in front of my house.

“Uh-oh,” Gertie said as she peeked out the front window. “He looks pissed.”

“He can’t prove anything,” Ida Belle said.

“Look at my shirt,” I said. “It’s sorta a giveaway.” The bottom half of my T-shirt hung in ribbons.

“He’s coming up the walkway,” Gertie said, her voice going up an octave.

 
Ida Belle reached over and yanked Gertie’s necklace from around her neck, then dumped the beads off the string and into a glass bowl.
 

“Hey!” Gertie whirled around but Ida Belle stopped her with a single hand in the air, then plopped down on the couch and waved at me.
 

“Stand in front of me,” Ida Belle said. “Gertie, get the door.”

Gertie looked as confused as I felt, but I hurried over to stand in front of Ida Belle, wondering how she was going to pull this one out of her butt. As Carter started banging on the front door, Ida Belle grabbed a piece of my torn T-shirt and began winding it around into a tight strand.

Gertie looked back at us, clearly unsure this was a good route.

“Answer it,” Ida Belle hissed as she reached for a bead.

Gertie opened the door and Carter stepped inside. Even a blind person couldn’t have mistaken his anger. You could practically feel it. Gertie slipped around him and hurried over to the couch to sit next to Ida Belle.

He pointed a finger at me. “I told you to stay out of my investigation, and you didn’t even wait an hour before trying to access a crime scene.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ida Belle said. “We’ve been here with Fortune for the past hour or so.”

Carter snorted. “Oh, I’m sure you were with Fortune, but I don’t believe for a moment you were in this house the entire time.”

“Why would you think we were anywhere else?” Ida Belle asked.

“Because Floyd Guidry called and reported trespassers at his house who he described as a young one and two old crows.”

“That’s rather a rude description,” Gertie said. “You should talk to Floyd about manners.”

“Lack of manners isn’t against the law,” Carter said. “Tearing down a man’s fence and trespassing on his property is.”

“You know darn good and well,” Ida Belle said, “that if we’d been on Floyd’s property, he would have shot us.” She threaded a bead through the twisted strand of my T-shirt and pushed it up.

“According to Floyd, he didn’t have to. He sent his pet bobcat out to defend his property line.”

I frowned. A bobcat sounded much less intimidating than what had attacked my shirt. “Bobcat?” I said. “What’s a bobcat?”
 

Gertie perked up. “It’s when a tiger and a house cat mate.”

“Is that even possible?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Ida Belle said.

“It is too,” Gertie argued. “A housecat couldn’t carry cubs that large, but as long as the mating is a female tiger and a male house cat, it would work.”

“Doesn’t seem all that satisfying for the tigress,” Ida Belle said.

“Enough!” Carter yelled. “Bobcats are their own wild species and not a result of some porno interspecies mating, especially not with domesticated animals.”

“Is it even legal to own one?” I asked.

“That’s not the point,” Carter said, his face starting to redden.

“It might be,” I said. “You were ready to arrest me last night when you thought I’d thrown a house cat on you. Seems to me that siccing a wild animal on people ought to carry a stiffer penalty.”