| |
IT TOOK IDA BELLE ALL of ten minutes to find Cliff Dow’s Sinful address. According to Marie he was just here temporarily, which meant he either was staying at the Sinful Motel or a short-term rental. It turned out that Cliff was renting a small house on Pelican Road owned by Walter, in a month-to-month rental situation.
Ida Belle, Gertie and I sat in my Jeep, parked across the street and down a few lots from Cliff’s tiny house. It was only five in the afternoon, at least three hours of sunlight left in the day. If Cliff was the gold digger we thought him to be, he’d be leaving soon for the senior center’s Bingo & Po’boys event starting at five thirty and ending at eight, which meant we’d have to break in during daylight. Not optimal, but there was a six-foot block fence surrounding the rental’s backyard, so hopefully we could cut through the neighbor’s yard to the alley and slip in through the back gate. That way we’d be shielded from prying eyes while picking the lock to his back door. We could have asked Walter for the key, but if we were caught, we’d want him to have plausible deniability.
Someone’s stomach grumbled.
“Sorry I forgot the snacks at home,” Gertie said. She pulled a large baggie out of her purse. “I do have one of those giant pickles I bought at the general store.”
“You only have one?” Ida Belle asked.
“It’s a big pickle. We can take turns biting into it.”
I held up my hand. “I’ll pass.”
“You have anything else in there?”
Gertie opened her ginormous purse and looked inside. “Sorry. I have a bunch of things to kill you with but nothing else to feed you.”
Ida Belle held out her hand. “I guess I’ll go with the pickle, then.”
Gertie handed the baggie to Ida Belle, who was sitting in the backseat. She bit off a hunk, then handed the baggie back to Gertie, who also bit off a hunk. The smell of vinegar and garlic, coupled with the sounds of teeth on crisp pickle, mingled inside my gut. It wasn’t happy.
“Okay, next stakeout, no giant pickles.”
Gertie leaned in toward me and bit off another hunk, making sure the crunching was extra loud. “Wimp,” she said, her cheeks bulging.
The door to the little house opened and Cliff stepped outside.
Late sixties. Five-foot-ten. Lean. Wearing a crisp pair of khakis, a Hawaiian shirt and a straw fedora on his head. Threat Level: High if you were an old woman desperate for love.
“He’s on the move.”
“And dressed to the nines,” Ida Belle added. She picked up the binoculars and watched him. “It’s a rental car.”
“So, he lives in a temporary house and drives a temporary car,” Gertie said. “Doesn’t seem like he plans on staying long.”
Ida Belle lowered the binoculars. “Probably just long enough to take money from some desperate old lady and run with it.”
We waited until Cliff disappeared around the corner before we got out of my Jeep.
Gertie shook her head. “Uh-oh, we have trouble.”
I followed her gaze and saw Andy the postman several houses away delivering mail.
“Just stay calm,” Ida Belle said. “He’ll think we’re visiting someone else. When he’s a few houses away, we’ll cut through Delphine’s yard and slip around back and go in through the gate.”
I could see the concern begin to spread on Gertie’s face. “That Andy’s such a gossip. All he has to do is blab to the wrong person and Cliff will know we were here. You’d better let me do the talking.”
“That’s what we don’t want,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie folded her arms. “What do you mean by that?”
“Sometimes you tend to overcompensate when we’re caught doing things we shouldn’t be.”
“Overcompensate? I don’t overcompensate.”
“Yes you do,” I said. “Like when we met Big and Little and you got nervous and started quoting Bible scriptures. Just don’t ramble on.”
“What do you mean ramble on? I don’t ramble on. I might talk a little bit, just to seem casual, but I wouldn’t call that rambling. I wouldn’t even call that wordy. I would just call it conversing. Talking. Chatting. Shooting the—”
Ida Belle placed her hand over Gertie’s mouth. “Maybe I should do the talking today.”
Gertie pulled Ida Belle’s hand away from her mouth. “I don’t ramble on.”
We walked toward Cliff’s house. Andy had just delivered mail to Cliff’s neighbor and waved as we approached him.
“Hello, ladies,” Andy said, flashing us a big smile. “What brings you to this side of Sinful?”
Ida Belle opened her mouth to speak, but Gertie beat her to it. “What do you mean by that, Andy?”
“Just meant I haven’t seen you before on this street,” he said.
Ida Belle stepped between Andy and Gertie. “Just visiting a Sinful Lady.”
“Oh yeah?” he said.
Gertie popped her head around Ida Belle and looked at Andy. “Yes, Andy, is that all right with you? Babs Babineaux. She lives on the next block, but we parked here because Ida Belle needed to get some exercise, so we’re walking around the block. To Babs’s house. On the next block. I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it.”
“I wasn’t making a big deal out of it,” Andy said. “I was just making conversation.”
“Well next time don’t make it sound like such an accusation,” Gertie said. Ida Belle tried to elbow Gertie out of the way, but Gertie popped her head back and shot Andy a dirty look. “Honestly, you made it sound like we’re here to commit a crime or something, when all we’re doing is visiting poor Babs Babineaux on the other block, who’s suffering from a gastric... thing.”
“Dear Lord,” Ida Belle said under her breath.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” he said.
“I forgive you,” Gertie said, grinning. “That’s what Jesus would want.”
Fearing Gertie was going to start quoting Bible scriptures, I grabbed onto her shoulders and scooted her away from Andy. “Nice talking to you, Andy.”
He waved to us as he hurried to the next house.
Ida Belle spun around and glared at Gertie. “Gastric thing?”
“I didn’t see you coming up with anything.”
Ida Belle shook her head. “I wouldn’t have had to come up with an ailment if you had let me do the talking from the beginning.”
“Always a critic,” Gertie said under her breath.
When Andy disappeared behind a row of hedges to deliver mail, Ida Belle signaled Gertie and me to follow her through Delphine and Cookie’s yard.
“Hopefully Cookie is busy watching TV,” Ida Belle whispered. Cookie is Delphine’s mother, a real terror in her motorized wheelchair. I had had a run-in with her when she discovered me undercover impersonating her at the Swamp Bar just last week. She may have been pushing a hundred, but her caning arm was in fine shape, and I still had the remnants of bruises to prove it.
Gertie nodded. “If Cookie decides to come out for a smoke and finds us cutting through her yard, it’s each lady for herself.”
Since I was the youngest and fastest runner, it was decided that I would scout ahead to make sure Cookie wasn’t outside. I tiptoed past Delphine’s van in the driveway, which was plastered with bumper stickers proclaiming her love for anything from yard sales to bingo games to fried chicken. I heard Cookie inside yelling at a game show on TV, so I turned back and signaled for Gertie and Ida Belle, giving them the all-clear. They padded over to me and we made a run for it toward the alley. Luckily the gate to Cliff’s backyard wasn’t locked, so we entered and rushed to the sliding-glass patio door.
Gertie pulled a lock pick set from her purse and handed it to me. In less than 30 seconds the door popped open and we stepped inside Cliff’s kitchen, which looked like it hadn’t been used much. The counters were empty, and there were several to-go boxes from Francine’s in the garbage.
Ida Belle went on ahead to the living room. “No real furniture,” she called out.
Gertie and I joined her. A folding chair and a card table were the only indicators that someone actually lived here.
“He’s not hiding anything in here,” Gertie said. “But I’ll check all the kitchen cabinets for the jewelry box if you two want to check the bedroom.”
A cot, three-piece set of luggage, laptop and camp chair were arranged haphazardly in the bedroom.
“I’ll check his luggage. You check the closet,” I said to Ida Belle.
I put on a pair of latex gloves, opened his largest suitcase and found it empty. I glanced over as Ida Belle opened the closet door and noticed shirts, shorts and pants hung neatly in a row, many of them covered in dry cleaners’ plastic.
“What he doesn’t spend on furniture he spends on expensive clothes and dry cleaning,” Ida Belle said.
“Of course. He wants to look spiffy for the ladies.” I then opened the medium piece of luggage. It was filled with file folders and maps, and a nice little surprise.
“And we’ve struck gold,” I said to Ida Belle. “Driver’s licenses. Six of them. All with Cliff in different disguises and all with different names.”
Ida Belle came over and checked them out. She blew out a breath. “This guy’s slick.”
I picked up one of the file folders. On the front, in black marker, was scribbled, “Mudbug.” It contained several sheets of paper, each page offering a woman’s photo, along with her name, address, phone number and several lines of information about her. Several of the sheets were check marked, again in black marker.
“Looks like he’s been researching women.”
I noticed a man’s name written at the top of each page in ink. All of the pages in the Mudbug file had the same man’s name, Charles Westin. I looked back at the driver’s licenses and located one matching the name.
I held up the file and driver’s license. “This is the alias he gave the women in Mudbug.”
“I would imagine you’d have to be pretty organized to keep all these names and women straight.” Ida Belle picked up another file folder. “Sinful” was written on the front of it. She opened it and pulled out two sheets of paper, then held one of them out to me. It contained information on Marie.
“This is Marie’s latest profile photo on her Facebook page,” Ida Belle said. “That’s probably where he’s coming up with women to target. He searches for women in a city before visiting and becomes friends with them and learns information about them. All he has to do is just friend one woman and then search her friend list and request more friends. If a woman sees that he has several mutual friends, then she’s more likely to accept his request.”
Gertie walked into the room. “I checked all the cabinets and even opened the refrigerator and the oven and couldn’t find Marie’s jewelry box. Any luck here?”
I nodded. “We found several driver’s licenses with aliases, and file folders filled with women’s information. And we found out how he finds women to target.”
Ida Belle held up the sheet of Marie’s information. “He starts friending women on Facebook. Then when he shows up in that town he knows what each woman likes and dislikes. It makes it easier to strike up a conversation with them.”
Gertie grabbed the sheet of paper from Ida Belle’s hand. “How could Marie be that stupid to friend some guy on Facebook she didn’t even know?”
Ida Belle held up the other sheet of paper. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
Gertie’s jaw dropped as she stared at the sheet of paper with her name and picture on it.
“It says here that you’re Baptist and a former teacher, like to watch old episodes of Burn Notice and Justified and that your favorite foods are fried oysters and shrimp. Oh, and you don’t ‘get’ cats.”
Gertie snatched the sheet from Ida Belle and read the intel Cliff had gleaned from her Facebook page. “Spinster?”
I looked over Gertie’s shoulder. In the margin, Cliff had written that he approached Gertie at the general store but disqualified her because of the old Cadillac. Actually, he used the word junker.
“Junker?” Gertie said. “That Cadillac can outmaneuver and outmuscle most any new car on the road today. I knew when I saw that man in the general store that he was not to be trusted.”
“Then why did you friend him on Facebook to begin with?” Ida Belle asked.
“I didn’t friend anyone named Cliff Dow,” Gertie said.
I held up another file folder. This one was labeled “Facebook.”
“He created alias accounts. Anybody in here look familiar?”
I handed the file folder to Gertie and she scanned several of the pages before stopping at one of them. She blew out a breath. “This one. A gal from Georgia. She asked me to be her friend two weeks ago. I saw she was a mutual friend to Bea, Clara and Marie, so I figured I’d go ahead and accept.” Gertie scrunched up her face. “I can’t believe I fell for it.” She dug her phone out of her purse, brought up her Facebook page and held it out to us. “We had a long conversation about movies. No wonder when I first met Cliff he brought up a couple of my favorites. He already knew I liked them.”
“Marie’s jewelry box isn’t hidden in the closet,” Ida Belle said. “I bet he already took it somewhere and pawned it. Especially since Marie accused him of taking it. He wouldn’t want to leave it here.”
“Carter needs to know about this guy,” I said.
Ida Belle shook her head. “Marie didn’t want to get the law involved.”
“Someone has to stop him from conning women and stealing from them,” Gertie said. “If not Carter, then it has to be us.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re getting that pendant back for Marie. We can discuss how we want to deal with this guy later. Right now we need to take photos of these pages and driver’s licenses.”
Ida Belle nodded. “He probably conned a lot of these women from other towns. And I’d bet most of them were too embarrassed to go to the police.”
“We need to help these other women,” Gertie said. “And then we need to teach this guy a lesson.”
We each took several folders and photographed the sheets of paper inside them, as well as the driver’s licenses, and then put them back where we found them. Then we checked to make sure that Marie’s jewelry box wasn’t hidden in the bathroom or any other closets.
We retraced our steps, leaving through the kitchen door that led to the backyard and ending up in the alley via the back gate. We were so busy brainstorming ways to expose Cliff Dow for the gold digger he was that we forgot all about avoiding Cookie while cutting through her lawn. That is, until we heard the crunching of leaves and the motorized whir of her wheelchair behind us.
“Get off my lawn!”
We whipped around to find the just-shy-of-a-hundred-year-old woman seated in her wheelchair, holding what looked like a paintball gun.
Gertie held up her hands. “Now, Cookie, no need to get violent. We were just checking up on Babs. Poor thing had gastric... something surgery. Personally, I think she’s been eating too many pork rinds. She must go through a bag a day.”
Ida Belle held her hand over Gertie’s mouth. “But wouldn’t you know it, we parked on the wrong street. We didn’t think you’d mind if we cut through your beautiful lawn. I see your geraniums are coming along just fine. You’ll have to give me your secret someday.”
“I’ll give you a secret,” Cookie said, obviously wearing her hearing aid. “Walter had a sale on white paintballs. Makes you look like you’re covered in bird crap. I hear they sting like hell on impact. You feeling lucky?”
She held up the gun and began firing a stream of paintballs at us. She was right. They did sting.
“Run!” Gertie screamed.
Cookie continued firing at us until we made it to the street.
“I’m calling the cops,” Cookie yelled.
We hauled butt to my Jeep, our bodies covered with white splats. My house was only a few blocks away. Depending on how quickly Cookie was able to call the sheriff’s department, we had five minutes, maybe ten tops, to hose the paint off before Carter, Sinful’s hottest and finest, was sure to show up at my door.
We swerved around the corner to my street and there, sitting in front of my house, was Carter’s truck.
“How is that possible?” I asked.
We parked in the driveway and hopped out of the Jeep. Carter was relaxing on the porch swing and got up when he saw us approaching. He sauntered down the steps from the porch, carrying a small paper sack and barely able to contain a grin.
“I forgot to leave the extra washers that came with the new spigot,” he said, holding up the little bag. “And then wouldn’t you know it, but I got a call that there were some prowlers over at Cookie’s house.”
“Then shouldn’t you be at Cookie’s house subduing the prowlers?” I asked.
“I would, but she said they got away. But not before she shot them up with paint. Two old ladies and a younger gal.”
“We’ll certainly be on the lookout for them,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie nodded. “Hmm hmm. Right after we wash this bird doo off us.”
Carter massaged his temple. “Bird doo? That’s what you’re going with? You expect me to believe that’s bird doo all over you?”
“We were lying in the grass watching the clouds,” I said.
“When a flock of birds decided to take a poop break over us,” Gertie added.
Carter looked at Ida Belle.
“I hear this type of thing is happening more with global warming,” she said. “The birds can’t help themselves. They’re birds.”
Carter rubbed his chin. “I find it puzzling that you would be cutting across Delphine and Cookie’s lawn.”
“Hypothetically,” Gertie said, “if we were in Cookie’s neighborhood, and not watching clouds and getting bombarded with bird crap, I guess it could be possible that we would have cut across Cookie’s lawn after leaving Babs’s house.”
“Uh-huh. Or maybe you were checking on Sinful’s newest male resident. The one who could have been the reason for Marie crying in Francine’s earlier today. The one Marie met at bingo a few days ago.”
“Unbelievable,” I said. “How could you possibly know all that?”
“Did your mom go to the beauty parlor today?” Ida Belle asked.
Carter nodded.
Gertie rolled her eyes. “The same day as Myra DeVol. Myra always gets her hair done this time of the month and would probably have been sitting next to your mom, who prefers to sit at the hair dryer next to the table of magazines. And Myra is in the same afternoon book club as Sally Fortier, who makes it her business to know everything about everyone. I hate those kinds of people.”
“It’s not my business to know what went on between Cliff Dow and Marie,” Carter said. “Unless he hurt her. Then I’d like to know so that I could deal with it. But since Marie hasn’t filed any police report, I have to assume it’s nothing illegal. However, breaking into Mr. Dow’s house is illegal, and that is my business.”
Carter raised his eyebrows at me.
“If we find anyone breaking into Mr. Dow’s house, we’ll be sure to alert you.”
Of all the things I’ve regretted since staying in Sinful, lying to Carter topped the list. I thought I was through lying to him after I revealed to him who I really was. Old habits die hard I guess.
He handed me the little bag of washers. “Until Cliff Dow does something wrong, you need to give him the benefit of the doubt and leave him alone. And if he does do something wrong, I need to know about it because, despite what you three think, I am the law in this town. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to Cookie’s to take a report.”
As Carter walked toward his truck, Gertie called after him, “While you’re at it, you might want to apprehend the bird that assaulted me. Two legs, two wings and a beak. You can’t miss it.”
He shook his head, got in his truck and peeled away.
“Is it me, or does Carter seem less bothered by our shenanigans since discovering our secret pasts?” Ida Belle asked.
“Cliff’s a stranger in town and getting attention from all the old ladies. I’m sure Carter has a good idea what Cliff’s up to. Are you sure you can’t get Marie to change her mind and tell him?”
“When we get Marie’s jewelry box back with the letter intact, we’ll find a way to make Carter find all the incriminating evidence inside Cliff’s house,” Gertie said. “She doesn’t want anyone else reading Marge’s letter and I don’t blame her. Marge was a private person.”
We agreed to reconvene later that night after we showered and rid ourselves of the paint. Luckily it was water-based and came off fairly easily. I had an hour to spare so I cracked open a beer and started examining the photos I had taken of Cliff’s files. We would need to interview some of the women Cliff had connected with in nearby towns, so we could get a better idea of the gold digger we were dealing with. I had just opened another beer when my partners-in-crime arrived.
Gertie and Ida Belle were smiling when I opened the front door, Gertie’s face looking like the cat that swallowed a canary.
“Good news?”
“We tracked Marie’s jewelry box to a pawn shop in Westlake,” Ida Belle said. “We’re picking it up tomorrow.”
I held the door open for them as they stepped inside and plopped down on the sofa.
“I bet Marie’s relieved to hear that.”
Gertie bounced on the cushions. She either had to go to the bathroom or there was more.
Ida Belle placed her hand on Gertie’s shoulder to stop her movement. “We discussed some of our options of how best to handle Cliff while we were driving over here.”
Gertie snickered and bounced some more. “Guess what we’re going to do?” Her eyes were growing wider.
I shrugged. “Have Carter pay him a visit?”
“Nope. Think bigger.”
“Get Big and Little to lean on him?” Big and Little had helped us in a couple of our investigations and even gave me an airboat to use while I stayed in Sinful. They’d been good to us, but I wouldn’t want to get on their bad side.
“That’s a good idea,” Ida Belle said. “But we’re thinking something even bigger. It’s time for the scammer to become the scammee.”
“Give up?” Gertie asked, her face beaming as she hopped on the sofa.
I nodded, dreading what she was going to say next.
“I’m going to marry him!”