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WHILE CARTER WAS QUESTIONING Adam Sampson, the ladies drove out to visit Harriet’s mother. The rains had moved on, but a downed tree blocked the potholed road. After being detoured around miles of even smaller back roads, the ladies finally pulled up in front of a modest gated community.
The guard at the gate was young and earnest, and took his duties seriously. He did not lift the gate to let the Jeep drive in. Instead, he told them to wait and went back into the guard house.
“Mrs. Hamilton says she’s not expecting anyone,” he said when he came out. “And she doesn’t know any Mary-Alice or Gertie. Sorry about that, ladies. Can’t let you in.”
“Can you call her back and put her on speakerphone?” Fortune pleaded. “It’s about her daughter Harriet.”
He nodded, disappeared into the guard house, and came back out holding up a walkie-talkie.
“Do you know where she is?” A woman’s voice squawked. “Where’s Harriet?”
Mary-Alice opened the back door and carefully stepped down onto the asphalt.
“Evening, ma’am,” Mary-Alice said into the device. “I’m Mary-Alice Arceneaux, from Sinful. You might recall I telephoned earlier. We still haven’t gotten in contact with Miss Harriet, and we were just hoping she was safe. May I speak to her?”
“She’s not here.”
Mary-Alice looked at Fortune for guidance.
“Leave a message,” Fortune whispered. The guard tried to strike a balance between looking alert and also not appearing to eavesdrop.
“We understand,” Mary-Alice said into the walkie-talkie. “If you do happen to see her, please tell her that the sheriff wants to talk to her.”
“Her disappearing makes her look guilty,” Fortune cut in. “It’s in her best interest to cooperate with the sheriff’s office. You don’t know our sheriff’s office, but they’re awfully suspicious. If you could tell Harriet to call Deputy Sheriff Carter LeBlanc when she gets a chance—”
“You don’t understand.” The panic in the woman’s voice cut through the walkie-talkie static. “She’s really not here. I have no idea where she is. I’ve already called the Sinful sheriff’s office, but they don’t know anything either. Are you really her friends? Do you really want to help her?”
“Of course,” Mary-Alice said.
“Then y’all turn around right now and go find that Florentin Menard.”
“The bookkeeper?”
“That fat little weasel knows where she is. Beat the truth out of him if you have to. If I still had both my feet I’d drive down to Sinful and do it myself.”
The ladies didn’t get back to Sinful until after midnight. They met the next morning at Francine’s to strategize and caffeinate. Gertie was the last to arrive.
“I’m too tired to be hungry,” Gertie plunked down into the booth and plucked a strip of bacon from Ida Belle’s plate. “Seems like it took even longer to drive back than it did to get there.”
“We’re all tired.” Ida Belle moved her plate out of Gertie’s reach. “But Francine’s coffee can wake the dead, and that’s we need right now. We have to be alert. Harriet is missing, which either means she’s guilty of murder, or she’s in danger.”
“The further along we get on this, the more puzzled I am," Mary-Alice broke off a chunk of biscuit and slathered it with butter. She was as exhausted as everyone else, but that was no reason to turn her nose up at Francine’s steaming, flaky biscuits.
“Gertie’s gun being found at the murder scene has definitely complicated things,” Fortune remarked. “Gertie, when did it go missing?”
“I think it got away from me when my bag broke in Deale’s office.”
“That’s what you get for being such a tightwad,” Ida Belle remarked. “When was the last time you got yourself a new bag? Sometime during the Carter Administration?”
“I’ll have you know that Carter was a lot more understanding about it than you’re being, Ida Belle. He told me it was the kind of accident that could happen to anyone and I shouldn’t trouble myself about it.”
“He did not!” Ida Belle retorted.
“Okay, he said he didn’t understand why those kinds of accidents kept happening to us, but he admitted I couldn’t have known Deale was going to get himself shot. Same thing.”
“I hope he keeps being that understanding if your gun turns out to be the murder weapon,” Fortune observed grimly.
“I keep wondering why the murderer put so much effort into arranging Mr. Deale’s body just so,” Mary-Alice said. “If a person had a difference of opinion with Mr. Deale, it would’ve been easy enough to walk right into his office and shoot him dead. But the murderer shot Deale in Harriet’s apartment—I mean to say, Deputy Sheriff Carter certainly seems to think that’s what happened, and they did find bloodstains. Then he dragged the poor man all the way downstairs and laid him out in front of the store with one of Harriet’s nighties wrapped around him. Whatever was he thinking?”
“Two things,” Fortune said. “One, those kinds of details point to a really personal motive. Shooting Deale in the office would’ve been too ordinary. It wouldn’t have satisfied this killer. And two, we don’t know that the person who killed him was the same one who dragged him down the stairs.”
“And three,” Ida Belle added, “Deale’s office would’ve had witnesses. Menard worked there, and the receptionist.”
“That receptionist would’ve probably offered the murderer a high-five and a nice cup of coffee afterward,” Gertie pointed out. “But you all are bringing up some interesting—hey, isn’t that the boy?”