Soldiers of Fortune (21 page)

“Who has food?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

“I’ve got pot roast and brownies,” Gertie said.

“You win,” I said and jumped into the Jeep.

The crowd that had formed at the park was slowly making its way back home, most of them walking down the middle of the street rather than on the sidewalk. I weaved around them and made the couple blocks’ drive to Gertie’s house. As I parked at the curb, I heard my phone signal a text and pulled it out to look. It was from Ally.

Which one of you burned the park down?

I smiled.
 

Guess.

Gertie?

Actually, the park burning was an accident, but Gertie did take out Celia’s car.

OMG Tell me!

We’re stopping off at Gertie’s house for a bit. Will fill you in when I get home.

“What’s the matter?” Gertie asked. “Does Carter miss you already?”

“That was Ally wanting to know which one of us burned the park down.”

“What did you tell her?” Gertie asked.

“I told her it was you, of course.”
 

“Keep talking that way,” Gertie said, “and I won’t feed you.”

“Yes, you will, because you want to know what the fingerprint search turned up as much as I do.”

Ida Belle waved her hand at us. “Why don’t both of you stop yapping and get inside.”

We headed straight for the kitchen and Gertie pulled a stewpot out of her refrigerator and stuck it on the stove. “This will take about five minutes, but it doesn’t taste the same if I use the microwave.” She grabbed three beers from the refrigerator and slid them onto the table before taking a seat across from Ida Belle and me.

I pulled the papers from my pocket and started to read. “Dewey Parnell. Thirty-one years old. Lists his address as New Orleans.”

Ida Belle and Gertie looked at each other.

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Ida Belle said. “Dewey was a real problem child. Before he even started school, he threw a rock through every window of the schoolhouse. Two weeks after he started kindergarten, his teacher filed for short-term disability, claiming severe mental anguish…and she got it.”

Gertie nodded. “Week three, he used a pocketknife to shave three students’ heads during nap time. The substitute teacher needed counseling.”

“And an attorney,” Ida Belle threw in. “By the time he hit first grade, the parish had had enough of Dewey and he was expelled when he duct-taped a student to his desk and set his tennis shoes on fire.”

“That’s about the same time he was asked to leave the Catholic church for peeing in the holy water. His mother finally admitted there might be something wrong with him, and got him a shrink. He worked with Dewey for a couple of years, and Dewey finally returned to school in the third grade. His mother had kept him up by homeschooling him.

“And he was better?” I asked.

“Well,” Gertie said, “‘better’ is a relative term. I suppose most of us thought he had improved over how he used to be, but he was still light years away from where he needed to be. But at that point, he’d learn to pretend just enough to keep from getting kicked out.”

“If he wasn’t cured, why didn’t he keep seeing the shrink?” I asked.

“The shrink had a heart attack,” Ida Belle said.

“Of course he did,” I said. “What kind of trouble did this guy cause in high school—terrorist threats, drowning puppies?”

“No, that was the odd thing,” Gertie said. “It was like one day, someone let the air out of him. He wasn’t a different person, per se, it was more like he wasn’t any person at all.”

Ida Belle nodded. “He just went through the motions, graduated, then disappeared. I asked his mother about him once and she avoided the question. I figured he’d come to no good.”

“Too bad he didn’t have the big showdown moment in New Orleans instead of bringing it back here,” I said.

“Well,” Gertie said, “we figured from the beginning that someone from Sinful was involved. Maybe with Dewey dead, they’ll relocate.”

“Unless there was more than one from Sinful,” I said.
 

“Any employment history?” Ida Belle asked.

“Dishwasher at a couple of restaurants, bartender, most recently employed with one of those traveling carnivals.”

“A carny?” Gertie asked. “Now there’s a good fit.”

“Let’s see what else is here.” I scanned the papers. “Looks like a laundry list of arrests, mostly for stupid stuff—petty theft, pickpocketing, drug possession, but nothing about distribution.”

“If he’s the cooker, he wouldn’t be distributing,” Ida Belle said. “Whoever is in charge always keeps the cooker separate from the distributors. Otherwise, the distributors would cut out the middleman.”

“Did Little know anything about Dewey?” Gertie asked.

“Not according to Vapor,” I said.

“Vapor?” Ida Belle asked.

“Apparently, that’s his nickname due to his ability to disappear. Since he managed to get out of my sight in about two seconds, it seems pretty accurate.”

“Did he say anything else?” Ida Belle asked.

“Only that the Heberts didn’t have information on the cooker or any known associates.”

“Do you think they’re telling the truth?” Gertie asked.

I shrugged. “Hard to say, but I’m going to guess they are. If the trace had produced the answer they wanted, why would they give me the information?”

“True,” Ida Belle said. “Who are the known associates?”

I looked back at the papers. “Known associates include Rip Salazar, Conrad Fredericks, Lynne Fontenot, and Benedict Granger.”
 

Ida Belle and Gertie both perked up. “You recognize any of those?”

“Benedict Granger is from Sinful,” Gertie said. “Still lives here.”

“Really?” I said. “I didn’t see that one coming. Benedict is sorta an odd name for these parts, isn’t it?”

Ida Belle rolled her eyes. “His mother was stuck on the whole British thing. Even flew a British flag outside of her house.”

“South of the Mason-Dixon line?” I asked. “Did she have a death wish?”

“People kept shooting holes in the flags,” Gertie said. “After she went through ten or so, she gave up.”

“And he still lives here?” I asked.

“Yeah. He’s not exactly a model citizen,” Ida Belle said. “He works as a roughneck, but I think he only does jobs long enough to accumulate drinking money. From what I hear, he spends more time in the Swamp Bar than he does on an oil rig.”

I sighed. “And we’re back to the Swamp Bar. You know, Gertie, if you wanted to do the whole town a favor, the next time you’re in pyromaniac mode, why don’t you pay them a visit?”

“I’m not even going to be offended at that statement,” Gertie said, “because you’ve got a good point.”

“That matchbook Gertie found at the lab site seems to fit with this Benedict character,” I said.

“You know what this means?” Ida Belle said.

I flopped back in my chair. “That we have to go to the Swamp Bar and see if we catch this Benedict doing something suspicious.” I pointed a finger at them. “But I’m not dressing like a hooker again, and I’m definitely not doing a wet T-shirt contest.”

“Oh!” Gertie sat upright. “I just remembered. At the festival yesterday, some of the usual Swamp Bar crew were talking about a crawfish boil that the bar was hosting tomorrow. It starts at noon.”

“That might not be too bad,” Ida Belle said. “And all of the regulars will come out for a free meal.”

“Do we really want to see the Swamp Bar in daylight?” I asked. “Because it looks pretty seedy in dim light.”

“The regulars probably look even worse,” Gertie said.

“Something else to look forward to,” I said. “It’s one thing for me to dress like a hoochie and show up there after dark and sit in the dim light of that bar, but if the three of us show up in broad daylight, won’t it look strange? I mean, I can’t imagine those people would volunteer information to any of us.”

“That is a problem,” Ida Belle agreed.
 

“Sure,” Gertie said, “the way we look now it wouldn’t work, but we can rough it up.”

Ida Belle and I stared at her.

“Okay,” she said, “so maybe it would be easier if all three of us didn’t go.”

“I’m really tired of being the token bar slut,” I said.
 

“I’ll go with you,” Gertie said. “Ida Belle can drive us over in the airboat. That way, if we need a quick escape, we have one.”

I wasn’t convinced that Gertie could pull off Swamp Bar attire and even less excited about the prospect of needing to get away quickly, but I knew I was the best option for getting information. Unfortunately, the men at the Swamp Bar seemed to respond to my bar slut persona. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or dismayed.

“Hey,” I said, “if the guy lives here, why don’t we just watch his house?”

“Last I heard,” Ida Belle said, “he lived on his boat.”

I stared. “Seriously? That must be some boat.”

“No. It’s complete crap,” Ida Belle said, “but when you don’t pay your rent or utilities, you run short on options. I doubt anyone in Sinful will do business with him.”

“Great,” I said. “So when he’s not drinking, or working a couple of days to pay for the next round, he’s floating in a drunken stupor around the bayous of Sinful.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Ida Belle said.
 

“Well, he’s perfect for a middleman,” I said. “No one’s going to question him lounging around in the bayou all day when he lives there.” I sighed. “Okay, so Gertie and I will go to this crawfish boil—but I’m not eating anything—and we watch for this Benedict and see if he appears in cahoots with anyone else, right?”

Ida Belle nodded.

“That doesn’t sound like we’re doing much,” I said.

“I know,” Ida Belle agreed, “but that’s what we have to work with.”

“At least the kids were clean,” Gertie said as she rose from the table and started serving up the stew.

“That part is encouraging,” Ida Belle said. “It would be nice to put a stop to this before it ever gets started.”

I nodded, also happy that it appeared the meth hadn’t made its way to the teen market, but my conscience was weighing heavily on me. So many lies. Even though the current ones were by omission, that didn’t make me feel any better.

“What’s wrong?” Gertie asked as she put a bowl of stew in front of me.

“Nothing,” I said. “Everything.”

“There’s a bit of a gap between those two words,” Ida Belle said.

“You want to tell us about it?” Gertie asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And no.”
 

“Well, at least you’re consistent,” Ida Belle said, and smiled.

Gertie placed two more bowls of stew onto the table and slid into her seat. “Eat, and talk. You’ll feel better after you do both.”

I took a bite of the stew and I had to admit, I did feel a little better. It had a rich, slightly spicy broth with chunks of beef, potatoes, and carrots and went perfectly with my beer. “The stew is great, but I don’t think talking can fix anything.”

“We may not have a solution for whatever is bothering you,” Ida Belle said, “but Gertie’s right that sometimes just talking about it brings some level of peace.”

I took another bite and nodded. “Okay. It’s getting harder to lie to everyone. And I know that sounds incredibly stupid, especially to you guys since you know who and what I really am. I mean, my entire career hinges on my ability to lie often and well and without conscience.”

“Certainly,” Ida Belle agreed, “but those lies aren’t told to people you care about.”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

“Is there any lie in particular that’s bothering you at the moment?” Gertie asked.

“It’s a bunch of them,” I said. “Take tomorrow for example. I’m pretty sure Ally is working at the café, so I don’t have to make an excuse to get off without her to do this Swamp Bar thing, but I will probably have to come up with some excuse to avoid Carter.”

Ida Belle nodded. “Our side projects were a lot easier when he was working.”

“And there’s the whole finger thing,” I said. “What if we don’t come up with something? How long do we wait before we turn the evidence over to the cops? Two days? Until Carter goes back to work?”

Gertie and Ida Belle frowned.
 

“I’m embarrassed to say,” Ida Belle said, “that I hadn’t gotten that far in my thinking, but you’re right. Due to Nelson’s incompetence, law enforcement is unaware of the presence of the meth lab. And no one but us and the Heberts know the identity of the cooker. If Carter gets back to work, we have to tell him about the print.”

“How do you think that’s going to go over?” I asked.

“Like a turd in a punch bowl,” Gertie said. “Jesus, we’ve made a mess of this.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Ida Belle said. “If we can run down the rest of Dewey’s partners, then the easy answer is we turn it all over to the Heberts and rest well in the knowledge that it won’t be a problem going forward. Then no one has to know anything beyond what they know now.”