Fortune Hunter (A Miss Fortune Mystery Book 8) (15 page)

She paused, then said, “I understand. Thank you for your help.”

She hung up the phone. “Big shrimp haven’t been running for six months or better. In fact, there’s more of a shortage right now than usual.”

“Why did he lie?” Gertie asked.

“More importantly,” I said, “what is he really doing?”

Gertie bit her lower lip. “I don’t like this at all. Peaches is such a nice girl—a girl with manners and class. If Brandon is up to no good…”

“Whatever he’s doing is making money,” I said, “and since he’s lying to his wife, I’m going to have to vote for the ‘up to no good’ option.”

“I have to agree,” Ida Belle said. “Well, one thing at a time. Let’s worry about Brandon when this situation with Gail and the catfish is resolved.”

She put the car into gear and headed back down the road. Gertie cast a worried glance at me before turning around. I didn’t blame her. I was worried as well. Peaches was a nice girl. She didn’t deserve the kind of problems Brandon might bring down on them.

A minute later, we turned onto an even narrower road and after a half mile or so, pulled up in front of a tiny, run-down house that was completely surrounded by cypress trees.

“I suppose if the walls of the house ever come loose,” I said, “the trees will hold them in place. It’s like the creepy cousin of the Keebler factory.”

“Her son tried to get her to move into an apartment in New Orleans,” Gertie said, “but he could never get her to leave.”

“So he just stopped trying?” I asked.

“Sort of,” Gertie said. “He died.”

“I suppose that gets him a pass,” I said.

“I’ll just run this in so we don’t all get tied up in there,” Gertie said.

“Good,” Ida Belle said, looking relieved.

Gertie climbed out and limped up the stairs and onto the porch. She knocked on the door and someone must have yelled, because a couple seconds later, she pushed the door open and walked inside.

“That woman makes me crazy,” Ida Belle said.

“Which one?” I asked.

“Ha! Both of them, but Mary Esther is the worst. She does nothing but complain. It’s too hot or too cold or the wind’s blowing too much or not enough. That’s probably why God’s let her live this long. He doesn’t want to hear about all the mistakes he made when building heaven.”

I smiled, then remembered Brandon and the smile faded. “What could Brandon be doing out in the swamp that makes money?”

“Poaching is the most likely answer. He has a cover on the bed of his truck, so he could have anything in the back of it.”

“I always thought most people poached for their own benefit—I mean, to stock their own refrigerator.”

“I’d say the majority do,” Ida Belle said, “but there’s a black market for things like alligator, dove, and deer. Some of the butcher shops are less than ethical about things. Not the one in Sinful, mind you. Shorty’s always been aboveboard, but others are less particular about things like the law, especially when it comes to extra dollars in their pocket.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell?”

“Yep. If the police question them, they say they had the meat in the freezer from last season and are bringing out a little at a time so they don’t run out completely.”

“And without a search warrant, the police can’t look at their freezers and see what’s actually there.”

“You got it.”

“Do you really think that’s it?” I asked. Poaching was illegal and very uncool, but in the list of things Brandon could be doing, it was one of the lesser offenses. Other locals hiding out in the swamp had been running drugs, brewing up crystal meth, and arms dealing. A little poaching would probably only get Brandon a slap on the hand if he got caught. A little crystal meth brewing would get him serious time.

The front door popped open and Gertie hobbled back out to the car. “I had to tell her I hurt my ankle and you’re taking me to the hospital,” she said. “Otherwise, I would never have gotten out of there.”

“We should be taking you to the hospital,” Ida Belle said.

“Stop your grousing. Fortune can take a look when we get to her house,” Gertie said. “If she thinks I need to see a doctor, then I will.”

Ida Belle seemed satisfied with that and we headed back to Sinful. Ten minutes later, we pulled into my driveway. As soon as we got inside, I pointed to the recliner and told Gertie to sit, then I opened the shades on the front windows, allowing evening sun to flood the room with light. I raised the footrest on the recliner and proceeded to unwrap the dishrag from Gertie’s ankle.

It was already swollen and purple, but not as bad as I’d been expecting. I touched the side with one finger. “Does that hurt?” I asked.

“Some, but not too bad,” Gertie said.

“Will you grab some cough syrup?” I asked Ida Belle. “There’s two bottles in the pantry.”

Sinful Ladies Cough Syrup would stop a cough and cure a host of other things. It was the Sinful Ladies Society’s special brew of moonshine, but as long as it was packaged and sold as an herbal medicine, everyone in Sinful was happy to look the other way…and purchase a bottle or two.

Ida Belle returned with the bottle and handed it to Gertie.

“Take a big swig of that,” I said.

Gertie tossed back a big shot of the moonshine, then handed the bottle back to Ida Belle. “Take that back to the kitchen. If I drink any more, I’ll be asleep in this chair instead of looking at photos.”

“Do you feel it yet?” I asked.

“Got that tingling warm feeling,” Gertie said. “Do your thing.”

I reached over with both hands and began gently pressing on Gertie’s ankle, locating the bones and ensuring they were all where they belonged and weren’t protruding. Gertie grimaced a couple of times, but otherwise, said nothing.

“Well?” she asked when I finished.

“Nothing’s broken,” I said. “It could be a hairline fracture but I think you’d have a harder time walking on it if it was. My best guess is that it’s a sprain.”

Gertie looked up at Ida Belle. “Is that good enough for you?”

Ida Belle nodded. “Let’s get it wrapped up good and get some ice on it for the swelling. You can take an aspirin and I’ll put a pillow under your foot to keep it propped up.”

“But the photos,” Gertie protested.

“I’ll grab my laptop and load them,” I said. “We can go through everything right here in the living room.”

I spent some time getting Gertie’s ankle wrapped well, then Ida Belle propped it up on a pillow and secured the ice pack around it. I snagged my laptop from the kitchen, hooked up the camera, and downloaded the pictures. It took me fifteen minutes to delete all the duplicates and unusable shots, but eventually, I had it down to fifteen good shots that we could review. I perched on one arm of the recliner, Ida Belle on the other, and started the show.

“Here’s the ground,” I said. “From a distance and then close up.”

We all peered at the shot. “If you look here,” I said and pointed to the loose dirt directly in front of the trellis, “you can make out footprints.”

“I see them,” Gertie said, getting excited. “That’s a big foot, isn’t it?”

Ida Belle nodded. “Definitely made by a man.”

“Or Beulah,” I said.

“True,” Ida Belle agreed, “but I don’t like her for this.”

“Me either,” I said and flipped to the next shots. “Here is a shot of the trellis and you can see where it leads from the ground right up to the bedroom window. Here’s a close-up of the bottom part.”

Ida Belle and Gertie leaned in and studied the picture. “Do you see that?” Ida Belle asked and pointed to a section of leaves that were starting to curl on the ends.

Gertie nodded. “That’s where he went up. He damaged some of the vine and it’s dying.”

I took a closer look. “Isn’t that more on the other side?”

“Looks like it,” Gertie said. “Maybe when he came down?”

“But he didn’t come down the trellis,” Ida Belle said. “He ran down the stairs, remember?”

I moved to the next photo, which showed a close-up of the other side of the trellis. “This side looks more curled than the other,” I said, “and it’s already a shade or two lighter.” I frowned and switched back to the close-up of the ground.

“What are you thinking?” Ida Belle asked.

“There are several impressions on the ground,” I said, “but this one appears to be a tiny bit deeper, although it’s hard to tell from this angle.”

“What would that mean?” Gertie asked.

“Either it was made by someone heavier wearing the same brand of shoes, or he made it by jumping off the trellis when he got close to the ground, creating a deeper impression than if he had stepped off.”

“But he didn’t come down that way,” Ida Belle repeated.

“That time,” I said, “but what if that wasn’t his first time up the trellis?”

Gertie’s eyes widened. “You think he was spying on her? A Peeping Tom thing?”

I shook my head. “I think it’s far more simple than that. I think he was scouting the area to ensure that when opportunity arose, the situation was conducive to his plan. Basically, he was doing reconnaissance.”

Ida Belle nodded. “So he tested the trellis to make sure it would hold his weight and that there weren’t any weak spots on it.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Gertie’s eyes widened. “But that means he’s been watching her for some time. He knew which window was the master bedroom, and he must have been somewhere nearby waiting for Gail to be at home and go to bed before Nolan.” She shuddered. “That’s creepy.”

“And very premeditated,” I said.

“He certainly won’t be able to claim the ‘fit of passion’ defense,” Ida Belle said.

“How old do you think that first bit of damage to the vines is?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t put it at more than two or three days older at the most,” Gertie said, “or it would be a lot more obvious.”

Ida Belle agreed. “Marie told me Gail was out of town two nights before the murder.”

“Then that’s probably when he did his scouting,” I said. “Less chance of being seen or heard with only Nolan in the house.”

Ida Belle frowned. “This is what I don’t understand. If we assume Gail figured out who the catfish was, why didn’t she go to the police as soon as she got back to Sinful?”

“Maybe she didn’t know for sure,” I said. “It might have only been suspicion at that point. Or maybe she thought she knew but had no proof.”

“And remember,” Gertie said, “if she went to the police, then she’d have to admit that she’d been having an affair.” She sighed. “It’s all so sordid, using people’s emotions to steal from them. Drugs, gunrunning, and the like I kind of understand because for the middleman, it’s impersonal. But what kind of person can do this over and over again?”

“A sociopath,” Ida Belle said. “Someone without a conscience.”

I nodded. “And unfortunately, it’s not as easy to spot them as one might think.”

Ida Belle and Gertie fell silent, and I knew their minds were rolling through the citizens of Sinful, trying to figure out which one of them had been hiding a dark side from the entire town.

“Hey,” I said, “did either of you look at Gail’s Facebook page?”

They both shook their heads.

“It didn’t even occur to me,” Ida Belle said. “Surely she wouldn’t have corresponded openly with the man or even been friends with him.”

“Let’s check,” I said, and brought up Gail’s page. I scrolled down to her wall. Another dead end. She hadn’t posted in six months.

“If she’s never on her page,” I said, “how would she know if someone sent her a private message?”

“If she had notifications set up,” Gertie said, “she would have gotten an email at whatever address she indicated.”

I closed my laptop. “Then I guess that’s how he did it. But we still don’t know why he would have zeroed in on Gail in the first place. The other women were single and a bit older.”

“Maybe because Nolan is disabled?” Ida Belle suggested. “He might have thought she found her life less than what she wanted, which was apparently true.”

“And she ran a charity,” Gertie said, “so he might have figured she’d be a soft touch for cash.”

My cell phone went off and I started, then pulled it from my pocket. It was Carter.

I can be there in 15. Does that work?

“What’s wrong?” Gertie asked. “Your face got that pinched look like when I make you wear that push-up bra.”

I didn’t want to go into it all. Not now. But I didn’t see any way to get them out of my house without telling them the truth.

“I ran into Carter at the shooting range yesterday. He wanted to come by tonight and talk with me.”

Gertie perked up. “Maybe he’s come to his senses.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He said he felt he owed me a better explanation of why he couldn’t be with me.”

Ida Belle scowled. “I agree with that much, but in the big scheme of things, what difference does it make?”

“It doesn’t,” I said.

“But you want to know,” Gertie said.

“Damn it, I do.” I blew out a breath. “Why can’t I just let this go?”

“Because you care for him,” Gertie said simply. “When is he coming over?”

“Fifteen minutes,” I said, “assuming I give him the go-ahead.”

Ida Belle rose from the chair arm. “Do it. Maybe whatever he has to say will help you let go. Maybe it won’t. But he does owe you better than what you got. We’ll get out of here. Call us if you need anything.”

I nodded and replied to his text.

Sure
.

Then wondered what I’d just opened myself up to.

C
arter pulled
up in my driveway exactly fifteen minutes after his first text. Gertie had insisted I have a shot of cough syrup to steady my nerves, but I didn’t think it had done much good. It confused me how a simple conversation with someone who wasn’t a physical threat had me more nervous than being undercover and talking to a target.

He’s an emotional threat.

I sighed and went to open the door. That was the only threat I wasn’t trained to deal with.

He walked in quietly, almost hesitant, and it hit me that he was nervous too. That was something, at least, and it did make me feel a tiny bit better.

I headed back for the kitchen. I thought whatever he had to say would be easier with a table in between us, and it gave my arms somewhere to rest instead of hanging limp at my sides. Even better would be if I had something to drink, so I went straight for the refrigerator.

“Do you want a beer?” I asked.

“That would be great,” he said, and gave me a grateful look as he took a seat at the table.

I opened two beers and sat across from him. He looked tired and something else, sad maybe? I wondered if that was because of me or because of the case.

“You look beat,” I said, breaking the unbearable silence.

“I am,” he said. “I would never admit this to Mom, but I don’t think I’m a hundred percent.”

“A concussion can take a long time to completely heal. And you haven’t really given it a good rest.”

“I know, but lately, there doesn’t seem to be time for rest. It’s like this entire town has turned upside down.” He looked down at his beer bottle and tapped his finger against it. “This is exactly the sort of thing I was trying to avoid by coming back here…things like this murder.”

I nodded. Carter had told me the reason he came back to Sinful when he left the Marine Corps was because he thought it would be as far removed from the things he’d seen in Iraq as he could get. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working out that way.

“But surely,” I said, “crime happens everywhere.”

“Of course. But crime in Sinful used to be limited to poaching and drunks and the occasional assault charge. Even the deaths were garden-variety—natural causes or accidental drownings and the like.”

“That’s not exactly correct,” I said. “Marie’s husband was murdered years ago. You just didn’t know about it until this summer. And that’s not the only crime that went back in time. Maybe Sinful isn’t as peaceful as you believed.”

He stared at the wall behind me for a bit, then nodded. “That’s probably true, and crime has gotten worse overall everywhere. I guess it was foolish to think it wouldn’t escalate here as well. Still, this situation with Gail is one I didn’t expect. A domestic dispute gone bad, I could see, but this?”

“I think everyone is surprised and shocked. You’re not in the minority.”

“I don’t suppose I am.” He looked directly at me. “Anyway, it looks like my reasons for returning to Sinful have been rendered useless. I’m right in the thick of the kind of tragedies I’d hoped to avoid.”

“A big city would be worse.”

“Yeah, but it probably wouldn’t be personal.”

I nodded, completely understanding his viewpoint. Until I came to Sinful, none of my missions had been personal, which made them easy from a mental standpoint. Get in. Do the job. Get out. But in Sinful, I’d made friends. There were people who mattered, and when they’d been at risk, I had been unprepared for the overwhelming emotions that came over me. I couldn’t imagine how much harder it was for Carter, having known most of the people here all of his life.

“I can appreciate that,” I said. “My work is, well, my work, but the things I’ve gotten mixed up with here were because the people mattered to me. Not because it was the next assignment.”

He gave me a small smile. “You’ve certainly done your share of getting mixed up in things. I think back about how worried I was that you were going to get yourself hurt or killed. I should have been worried about everyone else you came in contact with.”

The smile remained in place so I knew he meant it to be funny and a compliment. But it was still a harsh reminder of the position I’d put him in, and I still felt guilty for all the worry Carter had endured over my safety.

“I’m sorry you worried about me,” I said before I could change my mind. “I mean, I’m not going to say it wasn’t nice to have someone worrying about me—that’s sort of a new thing in my life—but I wish I could have informed you better so that you wouldn’t have worried quite as much.”

“I appreciate the apology, but honestly, I don’t think it would have mattered if I’d known, not if I’d already developed feelings for you. In fact, I worry about you more now that I know why you’re here and the risks you’re willing to take because of who you are.”

I frowned. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but perhaps he was right. An amateur poking their nose into police business could get caught in the cross fire, but after so many years with the CIA, the very nature of my existence was risky. Ahmad was the biggest threat, but I’d made more than one enemy.

“That’s part of what I wanted to explain,” he said. “I’ve never told anyone what I’m about to share with you, not even my mother, so I’d appreciate it if you kept it between the two of us.”

“Of course,” I said, a bit surprised by his admission. What in the world could be so horrible that he hadn’t shared it with a single other person until now?

“You know I served in Iraq with the Marine Corps,” he said. “What you don’t know is that I was Force Recon.”

My eyes widened a little. I figured Carter had done his time in a special unit—he had the demeanor of someone with advanced training and experience—but Force Recon was an elite group of reconnaissance marines. In short, they were the most badass of the badasses. The few times I’d worked with a unit, I’d been blown away by their efficiency and reaction time.

“Wow,” I said. “That explains why you desperately needed some downtime after you got out.”

He nodded. “I saw my share of things, that’s for sure. But the one that did me in happened right before my time was up. It’s the main reason I didn’t reenlist.”

He looked down at the table, took a deep breath, then blew it out. “We were on a joint mission with three Mossad agents. I can’t tell you the details, of course, but we’d been working with them for six months collecting intelligence for a strike. One of the agents was a young woman—your age and just as deadly.”

He looked back up when he delivered the last sentence and without even hearing the rest of the story, I knew where it was going. He’d fallen for the woman. I could see it all in his sad and wistful expression. And she’d died. I was sure of it.

“You fell in love with her,” I said simply.

“Yes, maybe. Given the emotional high of our situation, it’s hard for me to know for sure, but I cared for her. I cared for her more than I ever had anyone else before.”

“What happened? If you can say.”

“Something went wrong, as they do sometimes with that type of work. You can gather mountains of intelligence, but that one tiny thing you don’t know could be the thing that makes everything fall apart.”

I nodded. I had firsthand knowledge of that.

“She died,” I said.

Carter nodded, clearly miserable. “And there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Even worse, we had to leave her there or we would all have died with her and the mission would have been a complete failure.”

My stomach rolled and my breath caught in my throat. It was a soldier’s worst nightmare…to leave a member of their unit behind. Losing a member was bad enough, and almost always left the others with horrible guilt, even when there was nothing they could have done to change things. But in Carter’s case, all that was amplified by his feelings for the woman. It was a million times more devastating. A million times more painful. And in that instant, I understood why he couldn’t have a relationship with me. He couldn’t take that loss again. And someone like me had a high risk of repeating the very horror he’d been trying to avoid. Every day, he’d be looking over
my
shoulder, worried that someone was gunning for me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I won’t say I understand how you feel because I don’t. I’ve never lost anyone under those circumstances, not anyone I had deep feelings for. And I understand why you can’t be involved with me. I don’t blame you. If I were in your place, I wouldn’t want to either.”

“But that’s the problem. I know I don’t want the things you bring into my life, but it doesn’t stop me from still wanting you. I just don’t see any way to resolve it…”

“As long as I’m still with the CIA,” I finished.

He nodded. “And you’re sure that’s where you want to be?”

The tiny bit of hopefulness in his voice almost did me in. But how could I answer? Right now, I was uncertain of almost every aspect of my life from my past to my future. I was drowning and in desperate need of a life preserver.

“That answer used to be easy,” I said finally, “but now, I’m not so sure. I’ve spent all my time and energy dedicated to my job without ever asking myself why. It wasn’t until I came here that I even realized I should be.”

“Harrison told me your mother died when you were young. Maybe if she hadn’t, you would have had more than one path to consider.”

I nodded, just now realizing that although Carter knew who and what I was, the only things he knew about my past were what Harrison had told him.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “My mother was nothing like my father. Looking back, I have no idea why they ever got together, and if she’d lived, I wonder if she would have stayed with him for the long term.”

“But he didn’t have a long term either.”

“No. He was killed on a mission when I was fifteen.”

“What happened to you after? Did you go to family?”

I shook my head. “Both sets of grandparents died when I was a baby and my parents were only children. I think I have some distant cousins, but I’ve never met them. You can’t exactly drop a teenager in on strangers. That’s not a good situation for anyone.”

“Foster care?”

“God no! Morrow made sure I avoided that horror. My father had made provisions that Morrow be in charge of my care in the event that something happened to him. Morrow is the closest thing to family that I’ve got. He and his wife took me in until I finished high school, which I managed to do a year sooner than scheduled, so I was only with them a little over a year. I had insurance money from both parents, so college wasn’t an economic issue. I graduated and went straight to the CIA.”

Carter shook his head. “Wow. That’s a whole lot for you to handle at such a young age. So you went from living with your father, who was CIA agent extraordinaire, to living with his boss, who has his own reputation for his accomplishments back in the day. It’s no wonder you had a one-track mind. You’d never known anything else.”

“That’s true, but it’s the easy way out as far as explanations go.” I leaned across the table and looked him directly in the eyes. “See, if it was just a matter of doing things because of other people, I could walk away without a qualm, but the truth is that what I do is part of me. Coming to Sinful has taught me so many things about myself, but one of the big ones is that what I do is part of who I am. If it wasn’t, I would never have let Gertie and Ida Belle involve me in things I should have kept well out of.”

I could tell he wasn’t overly happy with what I said, but at the same time, he understood it. After all, he hadn’t returned to Sinful and taken up shrimping. He’d gone into law enforcement. I truly believed that some people are called to that type of work and are unable to do anything else.

“So you’ve made up your mind,” he said. “When Ahmad is out of play, you’ll return to DC and the CIA?”

I sighed. “If only it were that simple, but I don’t think it would be. Being here has changed me…not in a bad way for me, personally, but probably not in a good way for my future with the agency. I’ve been thinking about that day ever since I arrived here and my thinking from that first day when you caught me throwing my shoes into the bayou is not at all the same as my thinking now.”

Carter nodded. “You can never go home again.”

“That’s exactly it. I’m starting to see my previous life as very narrow, and I think going back and attempting to slip into my old life would be impossible. In order to do my job well, nothing can be even remotely as important as the job. Now that I’ve met people I care for, and experienced actually having a life outside of my work, I don’t think I want to let that go. Not completely.”

“But you don’t want to let the work go completely, either.”

“I don’t think I can. I think what I have to do is create a new life that gives me both options. Neither at one hundred percent, but neither at zero.”

He was quiet for several seconds, studying me, and I could tell he wanted to ask something but wasn’t sure about it. Finally, he asked, “So you’ve never had anyone you cared about enough to make you question things before now?”

“No.” And that was the God’s honest truth.

“What about Harrison?”

“It never once crossed my mind. Don’t get me wrong—I like Harrison and I have huge respect for him. But I don’t think either of us has ever viewed the other outside of our abilities and our obligation to keep each other safe. I guess if I thought hard about it, I’d have to admit that I do care about him, but it’s not something I think about because it might interfere with my work.”

“And you think Harrison feels the same way?”

“I’d bet money on it. Harrison is a great partner and a damned fine agent. I wouldn’t trust my life to anyone else at the agency, but that’s where it begins and ends. Besides, Harrison has a girl that he’s been seeing casually. In fact, I just spoke with him about it. When all this is over, he’s leaving the agency. Apparently, my crisis has made him question things as well.”

“Well, I would tell you police work has fewer risks, but lately, it doesn’t seem that way. And then there’s the personal element if you set up shop where you know everyone.” He shook his head. “This murder has really hit me hard. Gail Bishop is one of the nicest women I’ve ever known, and she made a real difference with her work. It’s a huge loss for Sinful, New Orleans, and so many people who will never be helped because she’s no longer here.”