Chapter 3
The drive back to downtown Sinful wasn’t a long one, but I’m pretty sure Ida Belle made it in about half the time she should have.
We left Hot Rod’s at the same time, but when I reached the highway, she was already a speck in the distance.
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure which was more frightening—that Hot Rod thought he could build a Back to the Future time-jumping car or Ida Belle’s “That’s awesome” when he’d delivered that statement.
I didn’t see Ida Belle parked anywhere downtown and figured she must have taken her Batmobile directly home to hide it in her garage. I pulled into a spot in front of the General Store, figuring now was as good a time as any to pick up some supplies.
The store was empty, and Walter was in his usual spot behind the counter, doing his usual thing, reading the newspaper. He looked up and smiled when I walked in. “I’ve been wondering when you’d be in,” he said. “I figured you had to be running low on microwave dinners.”
Walter was the owner of the store and Carter’s uncle. He was also a confirmed bachelor who’d been in love with Ida Belle since the crib. Apparently, if he couldn’t marry her, he wasn’t interested in anyone else. I had yet to figure out what was keeping Ida Belle from saying yes.
“You know me,” I said. “Why learn to cook when the hard part is already done for you?”
Walter made a face. “Because those things taste like crap?”
“Hey, you’re the one selling them.”
“Who am I to tell people what to eat? You want easy, go for it. You want to eat something worthwhile, you let me know. Grilling isn’t that hard. I got a couple of seasoning tricks that will make anything taste great.”
“It’s too hot to grill, unless you do it at two a.m. Then the mosquitoes will carry you off.”
The summer, which had started off hot, had gotten to the hot and miserable stage. With the high humidity, you could break a sweat simply looking out a window, and with no breeze, the mosquitoes had moved from annoying into hostile takeover.
“That’s true enough,” he said. “That’s why I built one of those outdoor kitchens last year and screened it in.
Still no AC, but I’ve got a swamp cooler out there that makes it tolerable long enough to cook.
Does a decent job keeping the mosquitoes away as well.
Haven’t found a screen yet that those suckers can’t get through. ”
“Or material, for that matter. I had one pierce straight through denim the other day. Are you guys feeding them steroids or something?”
“There’s a good movie idea. One of those government experiments.” He waved a hand at the stool on the other side of the counter. “Have a seat and chat with me for a bit, if you’ve got the time, that is. It’s cool enough in here and I haven’t had a chance to talk to you for a while.”
While Walter’s statement sounded innocuous, what it translated to is ‘I haven’t had an opportunity to quiz you on Carter lately.’
During the last bit of criminal activity I’d gotten in the middle of, Walter had finally let me know the secret he’d been keeping since the day I arrived—that he knew I wasn’t Sandy-Sue Morrow.
He said he had a good guess why I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t, but he didn’t want to know anything about it.
It was smart, really. He was safer not knowing about me.
As of right now, only Ida Belle, Gertie, and Carter knew the truth.
Walter had surmised that the reason Carter dumped me was because I hadn’t volunteered that truth from the beginning, and the truth about me was something Carter couldn’t live with.
Walter had gotten it all right. Carter had been more than upset about my lies to him, but at the time, he’d been even more adamant that he didn’t want what I did for a living to be part of his life.
He’d already had one devastating experience with a woman he loved and the job she did. He wasn’t looking for a second.
I couldn’t blame him for the way he’d reacted. I was busy questioning everything about the choices I’d made for my life. Who was I to come down on anyone else who did?
I slipped onto the stool and looked Walter directly in the eyes. “Go ahead and get it over with.”
“What?” He feigned confusion.
“Don’t give me that crap. You want to know about me and Carter.”
“Well, I might have been night fishing a couple days ago and noticed him leaving your house at an hour that wouldn’t have been considered proper calling time, by Sinful law anyway.”
“There’s a proper calling time law? Why does that not surprise me?”
Sinful had all sorts of ridiculous laws on the books. I was convinced the founding fathers of the town were drunk the entire time they penned them. Or even worse, they wrote them as a lark and no one had gotten the joke.
“Well, no one really enforces it,” Walter said, “but after dark, unmarried women are supposed to have another woman present if they’re entertaining a man.”
“Seriously? When were these laws written—the Jurassic Era? And did no one stop to think that both women could be there for the same guy?”
Walter took on a pained look. “I’m guessing no one had that in mind at the time.”
“Well, to answer your question, I was totally breaking the law the other night. Carter was indeed in my house after dark, and I did not have a single chaperone in sight. Except the cat, but I doubt he counts.”
“The cat’s male, right?”
I nodded.
“Then he doesn’t count.”
I stared. “So if he were female, he would have filled the chaperone slot? Please tell me you’re joking.”
Walter smiled. “How do you think the whole cat lady thing got started, anyway?”
I shook my head. No matter how long I’d been here, things never ceased to boggle my mind. Other countries with completely different languages were less confusing.
“So I guess you guys came to some sort of truce?” Walter asked.
“Some sort of. Carter decided to give some things a pass and I decided to give some things up. We haven’t really met in the middle, but we’ve agreed to try to find it.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I think you’re good for him, and I guess it’s no secret that I like having you around. If I’d ever had a daughter, I would have wanted her to be just like you.”
A blush crept up my neck and onto my face. My own father had spent my childhood pawning me off on other people or appearing annoyed at having to spend any time parenting. I was still getting used to people actually wanting me around.
“I would have driven you to drink,” I said.
“Certainly, but as I was already a solid beer drinker, you couldn’t have done much damage. Probably would have livened things up here, though.”
“It has been plenty lively since I got here. In fact, I think the town is overdue for a little boredom.”
“That’s true enough. Things have been quiet the last few days, but I expect feelings will get all up in the air as soon as the election results are announced.”
“Any word on that?” I knew what Ida Belle had told me that morning, but sometimes other people had different connections that gave them different inside information.
“One of my regulars has a niece who works in housekeeping at the hotel the auditors are holed up in. She said they started packing up that conference room they’re using yesterday.”
I perked up. That was good news. Or bad news if the recount favored Celia, but I was betting that it wouldn’t.
I didn’t know how she’d managed to alter the votes, but I had every confidence that she had.
Celia would do anything to get an advantage over Ida Belle and Gertie, and as mayor, she had a ton of them.
“That’s good,” I said. “At least I hope it’s good.”
“You and me both. If Celia remains mayor, she’ll destroy this town out of sheer spite.”
“I don’t get her. She seems to have a decent life here. I mean, I know her husband was a tool and her daughter was a sleaze and a blackmailer who got herself murdered, but Celia was a miserable piece of work long before any of that, right?”
Walter nodded. “She’s been a miserable piece of work since birth. I remember one of the nursery workers at the Catholic church quitting over Celia. In fact, if I remember correctly, her mother had a difficult pregnancy, so it probably goes back to the womb.”
“Well, only two things are certain in that case—she’s never going to change, and anyone in her sights will always be watching their back.”
The door to the storeroom flew open and Carter walked up behind the counter.
He looked angry, and I immediately ran through my every waking moment since I’d seen him last, trying to figure out if it was something I’d done.
Walter took one look at him and apparently came to the same conclusion that I had.
“You look mad enough to spit,” Walter said. “What’s up?”
“Alligator poaching,” Carter said, each word laced with venom.
Walter frowned. “That’s nothing new. We’ve always had some poaching around here.”
“Locals wanting alligator meat for a party, sure,” Carter said, “or pros looking to make a quick buck, but this doesn’t fit either scenario.”
“Why not?” I asked. Poaching was a criminal activity I’d never been exposed to, but if I was even thinking of considering detective work in the South, I figured it was a good idea to understand the crime and the mind-set of the criminal.
“Locals take a single gator or two for whatever event they’ve got cooking,” Walter said. “Usually a decent size, and they skin them in the bayou so the skin can’t be found on their property. Unless someone at their party reports them, you usually don’t know about it.”
“Or unless you’re invited to the party,” Carter said.
Walter laughed. “Yeah, that wasn’t Woody’s finest hour, inviting you to a party serving illegally gotten gator.”
“Maybe if he hadn’t been wearing the head as a hat, I wouldn’t have caught on,” Carter said.
I grimaced and made a mental note to avoid Woody, especially if he was serving up food or fashion advice. “And what about outsiders doing it for money?” I asked.