Gator Bait (25 page)

“Yeah,” I said, “except for the part where we need Riker to arrest Hank.”

“And Riker doesn’t even know he’s looking for Hank,” Gertie said, “much less where to look.”

“And we’re right back around to how to get Riker to find Hank without alerting Lucas that he’s onto them,” Ida Belle said. “Even if we could convince Riker that Hank was their man, he’s not equipped to locate someone in these bayous.”

“You think Hank is hiding somewhere nearby?” I asked.

“Not permanently,” Ida Belle said. “It’s too risky given that everyone in Sinful knows him, but I bet he has a sort of safe house to use if things get hairy. A problem could be as simple as a storm blowing in that prevents him from heading back out right after a drop.”

“Or as serious as a deputy seeing a dead man,” I said.
 

Ida Belle nodded. “You said yourself that the supplier would clean up this mess, so I figure Hank won’t leave until he thinks he’s no longer in danger of being fired, so to speak, by the supplier.”

“This whole thing is making my head hurt,” Gertie said.

“Then let me sum it up for you,” Ida Belle said. “We need to find Hank’s hideout and get that idiot Riker over there to arrest him before the supplier gets word of the problems here and comes to clean house.”

“My head hurts worse now,” Gertie said.

“Mine too,” I agreed.
 

“But at least we have a plan,” Ida Belle said. “Sort of.”

“A sort of plan is what we live for,” Gertie said.

“Does anyone have a sort of boat?” I asked. “Because the last time I checked, none of us had wings.”

“We could borrow Walter’s,” Gertie said.

Ida Belle shook her head. “Not this time. Hank knows Walter’s boat.”

At first, I didn’t get her comment but suddenly, it made sense. “And Walter is Carter’s uncle. If Hank saw the boat, he’d automatically assume Walter was looking for him. So what now? Ally has a boat, but it’s a small one and wouldn’t provide much protection.”

“No, we need something larger and with a cabin,” Ida Belle said. “Fortune can stay out of sight, but use a scope to search the banks. You and I will don stupid floppy hats decorated with lures and blend with the other fishermen.”

“That sounds great,” I said, “but unless cabin cruisers are sitting around for rent, I don’t see how that helps us.”

“I might know where one is just sitting around,” Ida Belle said.

By the glint in her eyes, I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer to the next question, even before I asked it. “And where might this boat be sitting around?”

“The dock behind the butcher shop.”

“You want to steal the butcher’s boat?” I asked. I’d been in the butcher shop. The knives in that place were scary, and the butcher wasn’t any better.

“It’s not his boat,” Ida Belle said. “He’s leasing it from the owner until he can put together the money to buy it.”

I frowned. So far, it didn’t sound so bad. “Can he lend us the boat if he’s only leasing it?”

“Of course not,” Ida Belle said. “And the owner would never lend it to us. We’ll have to steal it.”

Okay. It was getting worse.
 

“Who’s the owner?” I asked.

“Celia.”

I blinked. “Celia Arceneaux? Your sworn enemy?”

Ida Belle grinned.

“Surely there’s another boat with a cabin in Sinful,” I said.

“Only shrimp boats,” Ida Belle said. “Celia’s departed husband owned the only cabin cruiser used for fishing in Sinful. Everyone else uses a regular bass boat.”

Gertie chuckled. “I still remember the day he drove into town towing that boat. Celia had forbidden him to purchase it, but then his uncle died and left him some money. He went straight from the estate attorney’s office to the boat shop. Celia stopped him in the middle of Main Street and yelled at him for twenty minutes before Sheriff Lee managed to drag her out of the road.”

Ida Belle laughed. “Ally said Celia made him sleep in the boat for a month.”

“Probably the best month of his life since marrying Celia,” Gertie said.

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “All we need to do is load up on weapons, binoculars, scopes, and fishing gear, then head downtown and in broad daylight, steal a boat from a dock just a couple of buildings down from the sheriff’s department.”

“It’s not like Deputy Breaux can chase us,” Gertie said. “The sheriff department’s boat is in Big and Little’s storage facility.”

“And we can put all the weapons and gear in your backyard and pick it up on our way out,” Ida Belle said.

If it had been about anyone but Carter, I would have said no, a million times no. But it
was
Carter, and it was life or death. And beyond that was my own vested interest. The last thing I needed was a Middle Eastern arms supplier sending cleaners to Sinful. One chance crossing of paths and I would be dead before I could even request extraction.

“Fine. Great,” I said. “We’ll steal a boat.”

After all, it had been at least twelve hours since I’d broken the law.

Chapter Sixteen

“Hurry up.” Ida Belle looked back at a lagging Gertie. “We’re burning daylight.”

Since we were going to take the stolen boat to pick up our equipment, we’d decided to leave the cars at home and walk to the dock. That way, one of our vehicles wouldn’t be parked on Main Street all day, potentially causing questions. Gertie had fallen behind a half block into the walk and Ida Belle had been razzing her for it ever since.

“I’m tired,” Gertie said. “It’s been a long week.”

“It’s only Tuesday,” Ida Belle said.

“All the more reason to be complaining about being tired, then,” Gertie said. “Imagine how I’ll feel if I make it until Friday.”

“What are you bitching about? Tired? At least you got to sleep all night,” Ida Belle said.
 

“With a blow-up doll on a prison cot. Hardly the Ritz.”

I grinned. “Wonder how many angry wives have heard that one before?”

When we got to downtown, we skirted the side of the flower shop and headed behind the row of shops that ran along the bayou. Toward the end of the row was the butcher shop dock, complete with Celia’s cabin cruiser. “Nice,” I said as I took in the good-sized vessel.

“I heard it even has a toilet,” Gertie said.

“You should use it,” I said. “Just to spite Celia.”

Gertie pulled a roll of toilet paper out of her purse. “Ahead of you on that one.”

“Crap,” Ida Belle said and pulled up short.

“I don’t have to yet,” Gertie said.

“What’s wrong?” I followed her gaze down the bayou to the activity at the back of the butcher’s shop. “He’s cooking?”

“Hogs,” Ida Belle said. “Not everyone has a spit big enough for a whole one, so they pay him to cook it for them. It’s a long, boring job, so he usually waits until he has two or three on order then does them all the same day.”

“So you’re saying he’s going to be out back, twenty yards from the boat we need to steal, all day long.”

“He will unless we figure out a way to get rid of him.”

“I have an idea,” Gertie said.

Ida Belle and I both gave her a skeptical look.

“No, seriously,” she said. “Remember those dogs that ran over me and Celia on Sunday? They belong to the guy renting the old Cooper place.”

“That place right past Main Street that looks like half of it is caved in?” I asked.

“That’s the place. If those dogs were to get loose, with all those smelly hogs cooking…”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Since I’m the quickest, I’ll let the dogs out. Can you hot-wire the boat?”

Ida Belle nodded. “Gertie and I will head down the bank toward the dock. As soon as the dogs cause a commotion, we’ll board the boat and get it running.”

“If you find an opening to get the boat away from the dock without the butcher noticing, don’t wait for me,” I said. “Take it. I can sprint back to my house and you can pick me up there.”

 
I took off down the bayou, doing my daily jogger imitation, and gave the butcher a wave as I passed. He was struggling to lift an enormous side of meat wrapped in plastic wrap onto a folding table and barely noticed me. All the better.

The old Cooper place was about fifty yards from the butcher shop, set back into the swamp a good twenty yards in. The swamp allowed good coverage for my approach, and I was happy to see that the carport was empty. Hopefully, that meant the renter was away. As I approached the backyard, the dogs hurried to the back fence, barking their greeting.
 

“Hey, fellows,” I said, looking over the fence.
 

The two hounds looked up at me and wagged their tails. At least they weren’t scary, like Tiny. These two were younger versions of Bones, the ancient hound I’d inherited and who had unearthed the bone of a murder victim before I’d even had a chance to unpack. Bones was living out the rest of his sleeping days with Marie, who’d loved him since he was a puppy.

“You guys want some excellent dinner?” I asked. “I know a great place…more meat than you can eat.”

They both barked and wagged harder. I took that to mean they were up for the challenge. “Okay. Let’s go.” I opened the gate and took off running back through the swamp toward the butcher shop. I stopped at the edge of the swamp, but the hounds didn’t even notice. They’d already locked onto the smell of the cooking pig and leaped out of the tree line in a dead run at a glorious dinner.

The butcher looked up from the spit when he heard the dogs barking and his eyes widened when he saw them bearing down on him at full speed. He stepped in front of the spit, waving his arms to stop them from attacking his cooking pig. While his back was turned, Ida Belle and Gertie ran down the dock for the boat.

And one of them made it.

Ida Belle sprinted to the end of the dock and leaped into the boat as though she’d been running hurdles for a living. Gertie sprinted, sort of, almost all the way down the dock before her giant purse gained too much momentum and swung up, smacking her directly in the face. She pitched forward and her purse flew off her arm and right into the back of Ida Belle’s head. The weight of the purse sent Ida Belle sprawling to the bottom of the boat deck as Gertie lost her footing and tipped off into the bayou.

I heard the giant splash all the way over where I was hiding and swung my head back toward the fray at the butcher shop to see if he had seen the dock drama. Fortunately, the dogs had his complete attention. The smart hounds had given up on the spit and went for the side of hog on the folding table. One of them was on each side of the table, clenching a wad of the Saran wrap in their jaws and pulling it like they were engaged in an Olympic-sized tug-of-war contest.
 

The butcher alternated yelling and spraying the dogs with the water hose, but they weren’t even remotely fazed. I heard the boat fire up and looked over to see a dripping wet Gertie drop over the side and crash onto the bottom of the boat. Then the butcher let up a huge yell and I turned back to see the hounds pull the pig completely off the table and race off down the back of the shops, each of them clutching the pig in its mouth. All the racket had Walter hurrying out the back of the General Store, some patrons close on his heels.
 

The last one out the door was Celia Arceneaux.

She was also the only one who lacked the good sense to stay close to the building and out of the way. Holy crap! It was like watching a train wreck. She pushed past Walter and the other patrons, and I could see her mouth wide open, yelling as usual. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it didn’t matter. With Celia it was always the same sort of thing.

Her second step out from the pack landed her smack in between the running dogs. And they weren’t the least bit interested in stopping. The side of pig hit her at full speed, flipping her legs completely out from under her. Her pink skirt flew up to her waist and she crashed down onto the ground, her giant white underwear shining like a full moon over the bayou.

As the patrons rushed to help Celia up, Ida Belle took off in the boat, ducked low behind the driver’s column and speeding past the fray. Walter watched the boat as it passed and shook his head. I figured I had been standing there long enough and set off for the front of the building and sprinted down Main Street for my house. I could hear Celia’s wailing and ranting two blocks away.

I made the run in five minutes flat. Gertie was tossing the last of the fishing equipment into the boat when I ran into my backyard and leaped inside. “Get down,” Ida Belle said.

I ducked through the cabin door and sat on the floor just inside. Gertie climbed back into the boat and Ida Belle set off at a good pace down the bayou toward the lake, which is where we agreed was the best place to start our search. My cell phone beeped and I pulled it out, then noticed Ida Belle and Gertie were both doing the same. It was a message from Walter to all three of us.

You just stole your new mayor’s boat.

Crap.

We all started talking at once.