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IDA BELLE’S GARAGE was a mess. Car parts, umbrellas, brooms, stacks of old newspaper, and broken glass covered the floor, except for a bare forty inch by forty-eight inch patch on the ground. Where the pallet of Sinful Ladies’ Cough Syrup had sat.
“Can’t we get a light in here?” Fortune asked. The only illumination came from the narrow shafts of sunlight filtering through tiny holes. From Ida Belle’s shotgun, Mary-Alice realized.
“The light bulb was shot out,” came Gertie’s voice from a dark corner of the garage. As her eyes adjusted, Mary-Alice saw that Gertie was standing with her arm around Ida Belle.
“I swear to y’all, he was right there.” Ida Belle pointed to Deputy Breaux's feet. “Right there. I shot Victorin Lowery. I saw him go down.”
Breaux paced around the small space, staring at the floor as if the missing corpse might suddenly turn up.
“Ma’am, are you sure it was Victorin Lowery you saw?” Breaux asked.
“Yes, sir, I surely am,” Ida Belle retorted. “Unless it was his stunt double.”
Breaux scratched his chin.
“You didn’t happen to see Leonie Blanchard around at all, did you?”
“Who?” Fortune asked.
“Victorin’s girlfriend,” Breaux said. “Real pretty, but she likes her drink too. Some folks call her Hollow-Leg Leonie. Her and Victorin got into it at the Swamp Bar yesterday. I had to go down and pull ‘em apart.”
“I remember Miss Leonie Blanchard,” Gertie said. “I had to suspend her several times for smoking in school.”
“I thought you taught third grade,” Fortune said.
“And so I did. Deputy, what were they fighting about?”
“I couldn’t say, Ma’am Dunno. On the way back to the station Leonie was saying something about the Marines. She'd been drinking, though, and wasn’t talking too clear.”
“Deputy,” Ida Belle asked, “are you saying they were both fighting but you only arrested her?”
“She was the one chasing him around the bar, ma’am. He was attempting to flee.”
“Sounds like a typical night at the Swamp Bar,” Gertie said.
Breaux addressed the two women in the corner of the shot-up garage.
“Miss Gertie, you probably ought to take Miss Ida Belle to the doctor now and get her checked out real thorough-like.”
“How dare you, Kyle Breaux.”
Ida Belle stepped out of the shadows, a pink-poncho-draped vision of wrath. Gertie joined her, looking a little worried. “Don’t you go insinuating there’s something wrong with me. I am not crazy. I am telling you, there was a body right—OW!”
Gertie quickly removed her foot from Ida Belle's instep and they glared at each other.
“He means for your shoulder, Ida Belle,” Gertie said sternly. “The deputy’s just trying to help. No need to get yourself all flustered.”
“Yes, excellent advice, Deputy,” Fortune chimed in. “I'll phone for an appointment as soon as we’re done here.”
Breaux departed, leaving the women in Ida Belle's shot-up garage.
Ida Belle opened her mouth to speak.
“We believe you, Ida Belle,” Gertie said quickly. “And we don’t think you’re crazy. So if you were about to fuss at us for thinking you were imagining the whole thing, you can just save your breath.”
“Oh,” Ida Belle rubbed her forehead with her good hand. “Well, I suppose that’s alright, then.”
“Although I’m not sure you had to tell him you shot someone,” Fortune said.
“Well, Fortune, didn’t you just tell him exactly that same thing on the phone, not a few minutes ago? I believe that was our plan.”
“No. I just said you’d been shot. By an intruder.”
Fortune glanced uneasily across the street.
“Don't worry,” Gertie said. “Carter's not at home.”
“Deputy Carter lives across the street?” Mary-Alice asked.
“He certainly does,” Ida Belle said. “That’s why I’m always on my very best behavior.”
“When you’re not brewing moonshine and shooting folks in your garage,” Gertie said.
Mary-Alice followed the women into Ida Belle's house. She had completely forgotten about her romantic dilemma. This day was turning out to be more interesting than any mystery novel. Mary-Alice was glad she’d decided to move to Sinful. She marveled at how the tiny town (population 253) had turned out to be a hundred times more exciting than Mudbug.
“I just know Victorin Lowery was in my garage, and I am perfectly sure that I shot him.” Ida Belle said as the women took their seats around the kitchen table. Ida Belle pointed to her shoulder, the bandage lumpy under the pink poncho. “And what about this? A hallucination certainly didn’t shoot back at me, now did it?”
“Could there have been another shooter?” Fortune asked. “Someone behind him?”
Ida Belle shrugged with her good shoulder.
“I don’t know what’s going on. There wasn’t a drop of blood on the floor when we came back. It’s like I was shooting at a ghost.”
“You left the garage unattended,” Fortune said. “Someone could’ve come through the side door, dragged the body out, and cleaned up the blood when you came to see us.”
“Can’t the police tell if there was blood, even after someone tried to clean it up? I’ve heard that’s possible.” Mary-Alice didn’t say she’d read it in one of her murder mysteries. But she thought she remembered the police detective in the story using something called Luminol.
Gertie brightened.
“Ida Belle,” she asked, “where’s your LBD kit?”
“LBD?” Mary-Alice asked.
“Latent Blood Detection,” Fortune explained.
“I know where it is, but I won’t be able to get it down by myself. Gertie, would you please come help me?”
Mary-Alice and Fortune remained at Ida Belle’s kitchen table. Mary-Alice tried to think of something to talk about.
“Now, Fortune, I hear you're a school librarian,” Mary-Alice said, finally. “It must be lovely, being surrounded by books all day.”
“Books? Sure, I’m up to my ears in books.” Fortune made a brief attempt at a smile.
“Do you ever get a chance to read any grown-up books at work? Like mysteries and thrillers? Or is it all Peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies?”
Fortune gave a guilty start.
“Peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies? Why would you say that?”
Mary-Alice did not know that “Flopsy Bunnies” was the CIA code name for a rogue brigade of the PKK. Nor did she know that Fortune had personally dispatched the Flopsy Bunnies’ leader (code name “Peter Rabbit”) at a Turkish seaside resort.
It had been one of Fortune’s easiest assignments. Now, after a few weeks undercover in Sinful, Fortune doubted she could repeat the performance. She had friends, people she cared about: Deputy Sheriff Carter LeBlanc, Gertie and Ida Belle, even mousy little Mary-Alice with her exasperating optimism. It would be difficult now, to take a human life. Not impossible, of course, but a lot harder than it used to be.
“Do you suppose it would ever be possible for me to get a job like that,” Mary-Alice was saying, “at my age?”
“You? Oh, you mean being a librarian. No, I don’t think a librarian career is for you, Mary-Alice. I think you’d be bored by all the paperwork.”
The conversation was cut off by a crash, followed by Gertie’s cry of “Found it!”
Gertie and Ida Belle came back into Ida Belle’s kitchen, both wearing dark goggles. Gertie carried a box with rubber gloves flopped over the side, and Ida Belle held a lantern with a purple-tinted bulb.
“These are for you.” Gertie set the box down and pulled out a handful of gloves and goggles. “We don’t have masks, so just try to breathe shallow.”
“Come on, you two,” Ida Belle said. “We need as many eyes on this as we can get. Gertie forgot her glasses again, and she’s as blind as a bat without ‘em.”
“Ida Belle, darlin’,” Gertie made a rude gesture with both hands at Ida Belle’s back. “How many fingers would you say I’m holding up?”
Mary-Alice’s white capri pants glowed in the blacklight, as did the lace trim on Fortune’s blouse, and Gertie’s cottony-white hair. But the garage floor was stubbornly dark. There were no glowing stains to indicate the presence of blood.
“Maybe someone cleaned up the blood with bleach,” Mary-Alice suggested.
“If someone cleaned blood stains with chlorine bleach, the LBD kit would still detect something,” Fortune said. “And there would be a bleach smell. If they used oxygen bleach, on the other hand, the LBD kit wouldn’t catch it, but there still would be visible staining. We have neither.”
“Might as well go back inside, then,” Ida Belle sighed. “My goodness. Maybe I really did imagine the whole thing.”