Blood on the Bayou (10 page)

He’s right. The picture quality is crap and if I weren’t very familiar with the woman in question there’s no way I’d be able to place her.

But, I am familiar. Gut-twistingly familiar. It’s Marcy, my sweet, loving, takes-groceries-to-shut-ins second mama.
She’s
the bitch buying black-market medical supplies, and this investigation just got a hell of a lot more personal.

I
park the Rover behind the bank at the end of Railroad Street and head toward Swallows on foot. Most people in D’Ville walk or bicycle around town, so I probably could have scored a closer parking spot, but I need time to pull myself together. I need to walk, put one foot in front of the other until I talk myself into my lying headspace.

I’ll have to be at the top of my game. Hitch can smell a fib at twenty paces. Just thinking about his narrow, I’m-looking-through-your-skin-and-see-your-filthy-lies look makes me feel vaguely ill. I don’t want to lie. But I can’t tell him about Marcy. I
can’t.
Not until I know for sure what’s going on. She’s like family to me. No matter how bad this looks, I can’t throw her to the FBI wolves until I give her a chance to explain.

Hopefully Lance will convince Jose I’m the woman for the delivery jobs, and I’ll be able to have a long conversation with Marcy. In person. Until then, I’ll stick to my cover story: I talked with Lance, got confirmation on the skimming, but nothing solid. I’ll tell
Hitch I’ll have to go back again and keep trying. He’ll understand.

No he won’t. He’s risking his life and his future. He’s going to be devastated, his investigation will be quagmired, and it’ll be all your fault.

Anxiety prickles along my nerve endings, making me itch.
Shit
. I could really use a beer. Too bad Hitch suggested Swallows for our meeting place again this afternoon. If we were meeting somewhere else I could sneak in for a quick Blue Moon before facing the music. Beer is a well-known lying-effectiveness enhancer. And maybe it would calm me the fuck down. Between the fairy attack and watching Marcy broker a black-market deal, I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin.

And I’m
thirsty,
dammit. Really thirsty. I can just imagine how good that first explosion of cold, carbonated hops will feel as it swishes through my mouth.

Without conscious agreement from my brain, my feet veer sharply to the right, heading for the entrance to the Quik Mart. They have beer. And they sell it by the can—a lot of people around here don’t have enough loose change lying around for a six-pack. I’ll grab a Sapporo, duck into the alley behind the store, and chug some liquid courage before meeting Hitch. As long as I pop a stick of gum after, I should be fine. It’s not like he’s going to get close enough to smell my breath.

The bell above the door tinkles as I shove inside. Even with the window air-conditioner chugging away,
it’s only a few degrees cooler in here than it is out on the sweltering sidewalk. I can tell J.J. isn’t thrilled to be working behind the counter. He greets me with a limp wave and a drowsy “S’up?” as I grab a pack of gum.

“Same old, same old.”

“Hear that,” he mumbles as I head to the coolers at the back of the store. I go straight to the single can beer section, tug open the sticky door, and am about to pluck my beverage of choice from the bottom shelf when I’m attacked.

Tiny arms wrap around my waist and squeeze hard enough that my “Holy shit!” comes out more grunt than scream. I have a full-body startle-spasm and barely resist the instinctive urge to shove my attacker into the CornNuts display. Luckily, I see the carefully plaited braids with their collection of white bows, and pull my hands back to my chest in time.

“Shit, Deedee! You scared the
shit
out of me,” I gasp, forgetting to watch my language. But it’s not like Deedee hasn’t heard me say worse. On several occasions.

Child friendly, I am not.

Deedee tips her head back to give me a crooked grin. “I snuck up on you. Like a spy.”

I take another breath and will my heart to stop racing. “Yes. Just like a spy. But don’t do that again. You almost made me wet my pants.”

She giggles, and I can tell she’s going to pounce me again as soon as she gets the opportunity, on the
off chance that she might make a grown-up wet herself. “Where’s your cat?” she asks, still hugging on me. She’s been clingy lately. Not that I mind. Her small-person hugs are surprisingly nice.

“Gimpy’s at my house.” I tuck a braid behind her ear, and worry about the dark circles under her eyes. “I had work to do today.”

“He’s home all by himself? With no one to watch him?”

“He’s a big boy. He’ll be fine.”

“You know,” Deedee says, propping her fists at her waist and throwing out a hip. “I know a few things about cats.”

“You do?”

“They’ve got six cats at Sweet Haven. They live in the barn with Mrs. Malky’s goats. I go out and pet ’em all the time, and I only got bit twice and it didn’t bleed very much and I didn’t even cry for more than a minute.”

“Wow.” Only Deedee would think that story was something to brag about. “You’re such a little weirdo.”

She grins. “Just like you.”

“No. You’re a much cuter weirdo.”

“You’re cute, too.
I
like you,” she says, with such a sweet blinky look that I see her coming a mile away.

Still, I say, “I like you, too.”

“Then why don’t you take me home with you?” She drops the sugary act with a stomp of her foot. “I can help you out. I can watch Gimpy while you’re at work and when school starts I’ll do all my homework
by myself without asking for help. I’m smart. I can do it by myself.”

“Deedee—”

“And I can cook for you, too,” she hurries on. “I know how to make Macaroni and Cheese in the microwave. And hot dogs. And bologna and cheese sandwiches. Those are really good. If you heat ’em up just a little the bologna gets all puffy around the edges like a spaceship.”

“That sounds awesome.”

“It is. All you need is bologna and you can get it right here at the Quik Mart! We could go make spaceship sandwiches right now!”

“Listen, Dee. I want to have you over for spaceship sandwiches, and I promise we’ll do that soon,” I say, summoning up my firmest big-person voice. “But you can’t come live with me.”

“Why not?” Her face scrunches, but thankfully she looks more angry than sad. If she starts crying the way she did the last time we had this conversation, I might have to chug my Sapporo right here in front of the cooler. “You took Gimpy home for keeps. Why not me?”

“You’re not a stray cat. You’re a kid, and you need things I can’t give you.”

“No, I don’t. I’m low maintenance. Mrs. Malky said so.”

Speaking of Mrs. Malky . . .

“Does Mrs. Malky know you’re here? When I was at Sweet Haven, you had to be at least twelve to get an afternoon pass.”

“I don’t need a pass.” She crosses her arms and lifts her stubborn chin. “Mrs. Malky’s always off doing her goat business. I climb the gate whenever I want.”

“Deedee Jones! You can’t do that. You have to follow the rules.” Said the woman who has broken most of the rules and several federal laws in the past two months alone.

“I don’t want to follow the rules. I hate it there,” she says, tears pooling in her big brown eyes. My hands ball into fists, fighting the urge to reach for liquid relief. “All the kids are mean to me. They make fun of my dresses and one of the girls peed on the fancy satin Mama got me for Christmas last year. Mrs. Klein helped me wash it, but I swear it still smells like pee and I hate Tonya Trace for putting her pee on my dress and I want to kill her every time I see her stupid skinny face!”

“Well, sh—Sorry,” I correct at the last minute. “I’m really sorry, Dee.” Sweet Haven hasn’t changed much, then. I should have known better than to think that it had. I should have guessed the other girls would be jealous of Deedee’s nice things. Before her death, her mama worked for the richest family in Donaldsonville. They paid her well and she spent half her salary dressing up her baby girl. She loved Deedee so much.

And now she’s dead, and Deedee is learning what it’s like to be a kid that nobody treasures.

“Take me home, Miss Annabelle. Please.” Deedee leans her forehead into my stomach, all the fight going
out of her in a rush of breath. I put my arm around her thinner-than-they-used-to-be shoulders, feel her exhaustion and desperation seep into my skin, and for a second I think about it.

Maybe it could work. Maybe Deedee and Gimpy and I could be a team.

Maybe even a family.

And then I look over her shoulder at the cooler door. It’s still open, ready for me to snag that two o’clock beer I was planning to chug in the alley before I lie to my ex-boyfriend about a murder investigation I’ve somehow become a part of and then go looking for an invisible man—who is no doubt a killer himself—to ask him why a fairy army is determined to get me out of town. Or kill me if they get another chance.

I can’t be there for Deedee. I can’t handle my own life, let alone take responsibility for hers.

“I’ll come visit you tomorrow,” I whisper. “I promise.”

She sighs. Doesn’t move her forehead from my stomach. Sighs again. “Okay.”

“I’ll bring you anything you want to eat, too,” I say, even though I feel lousy about bribing her to accept her shitty lot in life with junk food. “How about a cheeseburger and fries from Swallows?”

She stands up, expression brighter than it was before. “How about a dozen buffalo wings with extra spicy sauce and blue cheese on the side and a triple order of celery?”

“We’ll make it three dozen wings and six orders of
celery and we’ll both pig out until we’re sick.” I reach out and close the cooler door. There’s no time for a beer now. Which is probably a good thing. Probably. “But I’ve got to run. You go sneak back into Sweet Haven and follow the rules and I’ll call for a visitor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon.”

“You could call now.” She digs in her dress pocket. “I’ve still got minutes on the phone you gave me.”

“I’ve got a business meeting in like two minutes,” I say, edging toward the front of the store. “I’ll call as soon as I get home. Okay?”

“Okay.” She stands still, watching me go.

I think about ordering her out the door in front of me and watching until I see she’s headed back in the right direction, but that would be acting like I have authority over her behavior. Like a guardian or a foster parent or a fully functional adult. Which I obviously am not.

So I just give one last wave, toss J.J. a couple of dollars for the gum, and hurry out into the glaring sun. It is hellishly hot. Again. It feels like this stupid summer is never going to end. By the time I reach the entrance to the back alley behind Swallows, my armpits are fighting through their protective deodorant shield and sweat pools between my bra-free breasts. It’s too hot to be outside unless you’re submerged in water. Or naked.

Naked
. Holy. Christ.

Not fifteen feet away, outside the back entrance to Swallows, my ex-boyfriend is pulling his faded red
T-shirt over his head, revealing ebony skin and his ruthlessly chiseled eight-pack. (Cane has a habit of taking things to extremes, and his body is no exception.) I freeze at the end of the alley and step quickly to the side, pressing myself into the shadows behind the big blue recycling bins. I don’t want to see Cane right now. I’m on my way to meet Hitch, and I know that won’t go over well. I wouldn’t want to see him if he were alone, and I especially don’t want to interrupt him while he’s stripping down with another woman.

I watch Theresa Swallows—owner of Swallows and a woman I consider one of my closest friends—pull off her gray and white Swallows T-shirt, revealing a black string bikini top that leaves
nothing
to the imagination. Theresa is five feet two in heels and probably doesn’t weigh much more than my cat. She’s a cute-as-a-button Latina who gets mistaken for her twelve-year-old daughter’s sister all the time. With her tan skin and walnut brown eyes, I’ve always considered Theresa pretty, but never sexy.

But then, I’ve never seen her in nothing but a string bikini and a pair of ripped-up short shorts, either. Theresa may be petite, but she’s
nicely
proportioned. I’m a straight woman with pretty close to zero interest in women sexually, and
I
can’t stop looking.

So I shouldn’t be surprised that Cane can’t keep his eyes off her fingers as she rearranges the itty-bitty triangles to make sure they’re covering her not nearly so itty-bitty boobs. Men like boobs. Men
will
look at
boobs—even if they’re in love with another woman, as Cane still professes to be in love with me.

If this were the community pool and Cane and Theresa happened to cross paths while they both happened to be scantily clad and Cane happened to ogle Theresa’s chest and Theresa happened to reach a flirty finger out to poke Cane’s stomach, I might not be bothered by what I was seeing.

But this is
not
the community pool. This is a back alley and I can’t imagine any innocent reason for the pair of them to be getting seminaked together. Yeah, it’s hot. But it’s cool inside in the air-conditioning. They could be in there, cool and
fully clothed
. Instead, they’re throwing their discarded shirts over their arms and moving closer. Theresa’s head tilts back to gaze into the much taller Cane’s face, and Cane smiles that smile that makes his eyes crinkle and his teeth flash and pulls women’s lips to his mouth like a sex-powered tractor beam. I watch Theresa give Cane’s stomach a second finger poke and Cane run his hand over his shaved head the way he does when he’s thinking naughty things, and I’m really glad I didn’t chug that Sapporo.