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IDA BELLE SLOWED HER pace as she walked down Boyette Street and spotted that familiar gray shotgun house sitting four lots in. Surprised to see what looked like a 1968 Chevy truck sitting in the driveway. She thought her father would never get rid of his old, beat-up ‘51 truck.
Several patches of green grass looked like islands in a sea of light-brown dirt. They never could entice the grass to cover the entire yard. It had always seemed the grass was taunting her, growing beautifully in some areas and dismally in others.
She stopped at the end of the walkway to the front door. A faded hose lay in a tangled mess several feet away from the faucet. She would bet that hose hadn’t felt water travel through it for quite some time.
Gazing at the living-room window, Ida Belle remembered the time she and her mother had decorated it for Christmas. It was a year before her mother had died and the two had labored all weekend putting up paper Santas and fake frost on the windowpanes. Her mother had begged her father to put up a string of Christmas lights. He put it off until it was too late, and Christmas had come and gone. He promised he’d put them up the next year. But by the following July her mother was gone. The lights stayed in the attic as would the paper Santas, garlands and cans of spray flocking. That front window never had another bit of joy applied to it.
But today was a new day, Ida Belle thought to herself, and her life was now hers to make brighter. She had had an important job in the Army. She was valued. And she had friends who were more her family than her blood relations. Someday she’d have her own window and would take out those old decorations and have the most festive living-room window on the block.
She took a breath and placed her foot on the first step of the walkway toward the door. Thirteen steps. Somehow that seemed fitting. It felt weird to knock on the door of the house she grew up in, but to just open the door and walk inside also felt strange. Besides, her father was a good shot, and he didn’t take kindly to strangers just walking in his house. And right now? Ida Belle felt very much like a stranger.
She heard movement inside and felt an urge to turn and run away. But she stayed planted on that spot as the door opened and her father appeared before her.
She was taken aback at how his eyes looked like hers. She always felt she’d taken after her mother. But there was no mistaking those steely blue eyes that softened when he realized it was his daughter at the door.
He pulled in a breath. “Ida Belle,” he said with a slight nod of his head. “I was wondering when you’d be by.”
He’d said, “When you’d be by,” but they both knew it was really, “If you’d be by.”
“I would imagine you have the same schedule at work and will be leaving this afternoon for a three-day shift.”
He nodded at that.
“I see you have a new truck.”
“Yep. Old one finally died.” He looked at the driveway wistfully. “I loved that truck.”
That was actually the first time she’d heard the word “love” come out of his mouth. Fitting it was for a Chevrolet.
After an awkward moment, she heard herself asking, “Want me to make you lunch?” Not that she had any great desire to feed him. To be honest, sitting together in the living room chatting felt foreign to her. Making him lunch or dinner felt more normal. He accepted.
He sat at the kitchen table fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers while she set about making him a bologna sandwich on Wonder Bread with mayo, pickle chips, mustard and ketchup. No leaf of lettuce ever touched his sandwiches. Lettuce was for sissy boys in his estimation.
“So you decided not to reenlist.”
“Yep,” she said, slathering a layer of mayo on the bread.
“You a nurse?”
“Nope. I was a nurse’s aide.”
He nodded.
How she wanted to tell him of her real job in the Army. Daddy, I was a spy. I took on dangerous missions. And I was good at it. Me. Not your son. Your daughter. She slapped several pickle chips onto the bologna.
She sighed. Enough talk of her time in the Army. If she had to lie, why even bother talking about it? “I heard Buster Bussey worked on your crew.”
“Buster.” His tone was one of disdain. “Caused me nothing but trouble.”
Now it was time for the ketchup. Her father liked the ketchup to mustard ratio to be two-to-one in favor of ketchup. If he didn’t see ketchup oozing between the slices of bread, it wasn’t enough. “Is it true what I heard? That Buster takes money to do odd jobs for people? Like busting someone’s nose?”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Just a rumor.”
“Why you asking? You want Buster to take care of someone for you?”
“No, daddy,” said Ida Belle, after turning around and giving him the same steely-eyed glare he was known to give others. “If I wanted a man’s nose broken, I’d save the money and do it myself.”
For a moment, he looked as if he believed her. But then he smirked. At that moment she felt like showing him what she meant, but she refrained and continued. “Any thoughts on the matter? Do you believe that he’s someone you could pay to do some dirty work?”
He nodded. “I saw one of my men giving Buster a few bills. The next day a snake appeared in another man’s locker.”
“Poisonous?”
Her father nodded again. “I heard if you want Buster to do damage on someone it’ll cost you at least a hundred. If you want him to lie for you, much cheaper. A twenty.”
“Lie? Like be your alibi? Lie about what he might have seen outside of Wade Guillory’s rental house the night he was murdered?”
Her father frowned. “I haven’t heard that. Why do you care?”
“Because the sheriff is looking at Louanne Boudreaux for the crime based on what Buster saw. When Gertie talked to Buster, she had the impression he wasn’t telling the truth. And I’d like to know whether someone paid Buster to kill Wade Guillory or paid him to lie about what he saw. Besides, I’m bored after leaving the Army and want to add a little excitement to my life.”
Ida Belle delighted in seeing the expression on her father’s face. One of utter bewilderment that his daughter thought such things.
“Why was Gertie talking to Buster?”
“Because we’re trying to get to the truth.”
“Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Like what? Fix your lunch?”
“I’ve heard Big Eddie’s son is taken with you.”
“So? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’m sure he doesn’t want his future wife getting involved with this type of thing.”
Ida Belle could feel her face heating up. She tried not to appear too angry. She still needed further information from her father.
“Number one,” she said calmly, applying half as much mustard to the bread as she had ketchup, “just because Walter is ‘taken’ with me, doesn’t mean I’m automatically going to marry him. Number two, let’s say I did get involved with Walter. He would have absolutely zero input on what I do with my life.” Her father started to speak, but she raised her hand and continued, relishing in the confusion that flashed in his eyes that his daughter would tell him to hush. “Now, if I wanted to procure the services of Buster, how would I go about that?”
He glared at her for a moment and shook his head. “Are you trying to trap him?”
“That would be my plan.”
“That’s nuts.”
“How would I do that? Call him?”
Her father laughed. “He’d never talk about business with someone he doesn’t know over the phone. He’d want to see you in person. You’d have to go to the Swamp Bar and wait for him to arrive. Buster’s a regular. I’m sure he has a favorite table he works from.”
“Thank you.” She wrapped his sandwich in plastic wrap. “If you don’t mind, I’d like that watercolor in the living room. The one of the barn.”
He shrugged. “Take it. It was just one your mom painted. Not like it’s a Van Gogh or something.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Mom was a wonderful artist.”
“What?” he asked again, the look of bewilderment returning to his face.
“I said, Mom was a wonderful artist. She could have really excelled had she gone to art school.”
“She had no time to go to art school,” her father said.
“I’m just saying, she would have been good at it. She would have been happy as an artist.”
“She was happy being a wife and mother. What got you thinking about that?”
“She could have been both. A wife, a mother. And an artist.”
He stared at her and shook his head. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take the painting now.”
“Fine, I guess.”
Ida Belle washed her hands then walked into the living room and gently removed the painting from the wall. Her father followed her in.
“You should be getting ready for your shift,” Ida Belle said. “I’d better go.”
“There are a few more like that in the attic.”
“I’ll come by for them when I have a car.”
She walked toward the door.
“Ida Belle,” he said.
She froze. Oh, dear Lord, he wasn’t going to suddenly become mushy, was he? Certainly, he wasn’t going to hug her. He wasn’t a hugging type of man. She wasn’t a hugging type of woman.
“I almost forgot. Your Great-Aunt Mabel died.”
Ida Belle turned toward him. “Great-Aunt Mabel? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Her Great-Aunt Mabel had been her mother’s aunt. Ida Belle didn’t know her well. After her mother passed, her father hadn’t made any effort to make sure Ida Belle maintained a connection to her mother’s relatives.
Her father grabbed an envelope off of a side table and handed it to her. “This is from an attorney. I think she left you something.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t look at it. I remember the old gal said something about you liking a tea set she had. Maybe that’s it.”
Ida Belle shook her head. When on Earth had she ever liked a tea set? She did have a vague recollection of once visiting her Great-Aunt Mabel’s huge Victorian on Elm. The woman had never married and had no clue how to relate to children, so she’d awkwardly asked if Ida Belle would like to “play tea party,” to which Ida Belle had replied, “I’d rather poke my eyes out.”
She opened the envelope and read the letter from her great-aunt’s attorney asking her to contact him. She folded the paper up and stuck it back in the envelope and dropped it in her purse.
The tea set would have to wait. There was a murder to solve.