Swamp Sniper (5 page)

“I see. So it’s my fault this town is full of bigots and idiots.”

He stared at me for several seconds, his expression a mixture of aggravation and exhaustion. Finally, he sighed and slumped into the chair behind the desk.
 

“You don’t have to tell me about this town’s prejudices. I’m not stupid nor am I deaf and blind. But you unnecessarily aggravate an already-volatile situation simply by your presence.”

“So you’re saying I should spend my entire summer in Sinful locked in my house so that I don’t cause the kindergartners to get restless and create more work for you?”

“No, damn it.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But can’t you exercise a little more discretion? Did you really think it was a good idea to approach that mob when everyone knows you’ve taken up with Ida Belle and Gertie?”

“You forgot the part about my being a Yankee.”

“I thought that part was a given.”

I frowned. “In hindsight, I suppose it was a bad idea.”

“It was a horrible idea. Look, I know you care about Ida Belle and you’re worried about what’s going to happen, but you’re only going to make the situation worse if you incite an already high-strung crowd to another level of stupidity.”

I knew he was right, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up the charge. “Has it ever occurred to you that you incited that crowd by hauling Ida Belle down here for questioning? Couldn’t you have been more discreet?”

“Ha. Yeah, because this town thrives on discretion. Short of interrogating her by text message or sending professional kidnappers to whisk her away to a private island, no way could I question her without everyone in town knowing within minutes. This isn’t the big city, Fortune. Nothing goes unnoticed here.”

“Except murderers.”

His jaw twitched and a dark flush crept up his neck.
 

Okay, so it was a low blow, but I was pissed off.
 

“I know it may seem to a big-city girl,” he said, “that we’re nothing but a bunch of hicks who can’t walk without tripping, but I assure you that no one is going to get away with murder on my watch. Regardless of your confidence in my ability, I promise you, I will do my job.”

Okay, so that made me feel a little guilty.

“I’m not questioning your ability…exactly. But I don’t understand why you hauled Ida Belle in here when you and I both know there’s no way she murdered that man.”

“My personal beliefs have no bearing on the job I have to do. The state prosecutor doesn’t give a damn what I know. He only wants facts to make a case. It’s my job to collect all those facts so that he can make an educated decision about pursuing prosecution, regardless of whom he chooses to indict.”

“Even if those facts point to an innocent person?”

“This job didn’t come with any guarantees that I’d love it. But I promised to uphold the law and that’s what I have to do, with a belief that the system will work properly. I can’t choose to do my job only when it makes me happy. Maybe one day, you’ll understand that.”

His words hit me like a bucket of cold water, completely knocking me off my high horse. How many times had I been schooled not to get personally involved when I was undercover? The reasons were numerous and varied, but all boiled down to the same thing—personal involvement equaled a conflicted assassin, and conflicted could equal hesitation, which could equal death.

In other words—mission failure.

In all my undercover assignments with the CIA, I’d never even been tempted to get personally involved. The people I’d associated with hadn’t merited my interest, but I’d been incognito in Louisiana less than a day before I’d formed alliances with locals. Granted, I didn’t have a target in Sinful, so it was a different sort of undercover than what I was used to, but you boiled it right down to basics, my life would be a lot easier if I’d kept the same standards about personal involvement.
 

For the first time in my life, I’d made real friends and now, everything was complicated. This was exactly what Carter dealt with every day—investigating people he knew, people he had relationships with and probably liked—every time a crime occurred. They couldn’t all be domestic disputes and fishing violations. Sometimes, he’d draw the difficult case. The case that made him take a hard look at people he’d known his entire life and ask himself if all this time he’d been unaware of the monster that dwelled within them.
 

Immediately, I felt guilty for giving him such a hard time since I’d arrived. I’d thought him narrow-minded and rigid, but the reality was, he spent every single day managing a delicate balance between being a Sinful resident and having the rest of the residents under a microscope.
 

Lately, that microscope had been working overtime.

I was trying to formulate a response when Deputy Breaux knocked twice on the door then stuck his head inside.
 

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but Ally called and there’s a bit of trouble over at the café.”

“What kind of trouble?” Carter asked.

“Paulette is there demanding Francine close for the day in her husband’s memory. Francine not only refuses to close, she wants Paulette arrested for dripping on her new entry rug and ruining it. Sheriff Lee’s not making headway with either of them.”

No surprise there. A successful businesswoman like Francine wouldn’t have a bit of use for a piece of fluff like Paulette.

Carter closed his eyes for a second, then rose from his chair and looked down at me. “You’re free to go, but I want you to think about everything I said. You’re already a handy scapegoat for people. Try not to make it any easier on them.”

I gave him a nod as he walked out of the office, then jumped up from my chair and hurried out behind him, pausing by Ida Belle’s chair.

“Let Ms. Morrow out,” Carter instructed Deputy Breaux, “then lock the door behind her and don’t open it for anyone but me or Sheriff Lee.”

Ida Belle tugged on my yoga pants. “Find out what killed Ted,” she whispered.

I glanced at the front door where Carter was still issuing instructions to a confused-looking Deputy Breaux. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Check his office.”

Carter’s office was in the back corner of the building. I knew this because of the small matter of breaking and entering that Ida Belle, Gertie, and I had pulled off a week ago, but I couldn’t see any way to get back there when I was supposed to be leaving the sheriff’s department to go straight home and try to blend into the woodwork.

“Ma’am?” Deputy Breaux stood at the front door, his hand poised on the knob. Carter was nowhere in sight.

“Uh, I don’t suppose I can use the ladies’ room before I go?” I had zero idea where the restroom was, but I hoped it was somewhere at the back of the building and not upstairs.

Uncertainty washed over Deputy Breaux’s expression. “I don’t know…Deputy LeBlanc said I have to lock the door after you leave. I really need to lock the door.”

“And I really need to go to the ladies’ room. It’s a girl thing.”

“Oh…ummm.” Deputy Breaux’s face grew so red it looked as if it were glowing.

Got him.

“You can lock the door while I’m gone,” I said, “then let me out when I’m done.”

He hesitated a moment, clearly afraid he’d make the wrong call and incur Carter’s wrath.

I moved in for the kill. “It’s this medical thing, you see. The doctor says—”

“That’s okay, ma’am.” He held both his hands up to stop me from continuing, then immediately dropped one back down to grasp the doorknob. “Go ahead and I’ll let you out when you’re done.”

“Thanks.” I gave him my fake grateful smile. “If you could just tell me where it is…”

“Oh, right.” He pointed at the hallway behind him. “Down this hall, then turn right on the back hallway. It’s the second door on the left.”

“Great.” As I hurried away, I looked back at Ida Belle and gave her a wink.
 

Chapter Four

I hustled past Deputy Breaux and toward the back hallway. I heard the dead bolt on the front door slide into place as I rounded the corner. I shook my head. Deputy Breaux was nothing if not dedicated to following orders.
 

I opened the bathroom door to check out the lock, then let out a sigh of relief when I saw the very old, very loose locking mechanism. I could jimmy that in half a second with my driver’s license. I stepped inside the bathroom to turn on the water for the sink then locked the door and pulled it closed behind me before hurrying down the hall to the next door on the left—Carter’s office.

The office door was locked but contained the same old, flimsy door lock that the bathroom had. I made quick work of it with my license, then slipped inside, locking the door behind me. I moved immediately to his desk and shuffled through the stack of paper in front of his computer. Bills, insurance policy, receipt for filing cabinet. Crap. I clicked the mouse and the screen popped up to the password entry box. Another dead end.
 

As I turned to look in the waste basket, a sheet of paper on the printer caught my eye. I pulled it off and scanned it, my pulse ticking up a notch with every word.
 

Arsenic!

No wonder they’d figured out cause of death so quickly. Arsenic poisoning wasn’t exactly the easy-to-hide kind of death.
 

“Miss Morrow?” Deputy Breaux’s voice sounded from the hall. “Are you all right?”

Crap!
 

My pulse shot up another notch as I slid the paper back on the printer and tried to come up with a plan. Maybe if I waited long enough he would go away.
 

A second later, he knocked on the bathroom door and called out again. “Miss Morrow?”

I looked around the office, hoping to create a miracle. The bathroom didn’t have a window, so even though I could get out of Carter’s office I had no way of getting back inside the bathroom. Not to mention it wouldn’t take Carter two seconds to figure out what I’d done, especially when he found his office window unlocked.
 

 
I glanced up and that’s when the miracle occurred. The office had one of those acoustic ceilings with those big white tiles. I pulled myself up onto the filing cabinet against the wall Carter’s office shared with the bathroom and slid the tile over, hoping there was a crawl space in between.
 

I blew out a breath of relief when the tile opened up to a two-foot-high area that contained the air-conditioning ductwork. I rose up on my tiptoes and pushed back the corresponding tile on the bathroom side, then stuck my head over the wall.

“I’m fine,” I said, praying it sounded like I was in the bathroom. “I’ll just be another minute.”

“Okay,” he said and I felt some of my tension slip away.

And then, as Ida Belle would say, it all went to hell in a handbasket.

“Deputy Breaux!” Carter’s voice boomed down the hallway. “You’re supposed to be up front with Ida Belle. You couldn’t wait five minutes to pee?”

Holy crap!
 

My body froze in place, in direct opposition to my mind, which wouldn’t stop whirling. This was so not good. The getting arrested and cover blown kind of not good.

“It’s not me,” Deputy Breaux said. “Ms. Morrow had to use the restroom. She’s been in there a while and I came to check on her.”

“And you believed that. I see.” Carter knocked on the bathroom door. “Party’s over.”

I knew before I did it that it was a bad idea, but it was the only one I had.
 

Here goes nothing.
 

I pulled myself up into the crawl space, careful to keep my weight centered on the wall framing. I peered down into the bathroom and smiled when I saw the sink directly below me.
 

“Fortune?” Carter called.

“I’m almost done,” I said. “Just washing up.”

“Go home and shower. I don’t have time to waste.”

Balancing my midsection on the frame, I carefully spun myself around until I could lower my legs down the bathroom wall side. As soon as my toes touched the edge of the sink, I slid the rest of my body out of the ceiling and put both panels back in place.
 

Pleased with my resourcefulness, I brought my feet flat down to rest on the sides of the sink, and that’s when things went horribly wrong. My right foot slid on the sink’s edge as if it were ice. I waved my arms and crouched, trying to regain my balance, but it was too late. I pitched off the side of the sink headed straight for the toilet.

“I’m opening this door.” Carter’s voice boomed from the hallway.

I managed to restrain from yelling or cussing, which was a plus, but it was the only plus to be found. I dragged my hands down the wall as I fell, trying to stay upright. If I hit the toilet on my side, I gave the toilet a slim-to-none chance of remaining attached to the floor. My left leg hit the floor first and I reached for the back of the toilet to balance, but only succeeded in wrenching the lid from the toilet bowl. At the same time, my right foot came crashing down in the toilet and promptly lodged in the drain at the bottom.