Swamp Santa by Jana DeLeon

Author:Jana DeLeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J&R Publishing

I’d reached the seventh level of exhaustion by the time I arrived home. Ida Belle had made Walter open the General Store and lend her plastic to line her SUV seats before she’d allow Gertie and me to sit in it. The entire process had added another thirty minutes to a day that already seemed like it would never end, but she said she wasn’t about to smell wet hay and fish for the next two weeks. I probably could have walked home in less time, but I figured I’d already had more than enough exercise for one day.

I trudged into my house, planning on heading straight upstairs and into the shower, when I heard noise in my kitchen. It sounded like a radio or television playing, except that I didn’t have either in that room. I pulled my nine out and shook it since it still had a little water in it, then crept down the hall. When I reached the end of the hall, I sprang around the door, gun leveled.

Mannie looked up at me and smiled.

He was sitting at my kitchen table, a beer in front of him, and grinning from ear to ear as he stared at his cell phone.

“That’s a great move,” he said. “You could stunt double in Westerns.”

I groaned. “How do you find those things so quickly?”

“I have alerts set for anything referencing Sinful, Louisiana. When I first set it up, I didn’t include the state. That was a mistake.”

I grimaced, not even wanting to think about what a term like “sinful” might turn up on the internet. I pulled the chair across from him out and slumped down into it.

“You’re really going to have to start knocking on the front door like other people,” I said. “What if Carter had been with me?”

“Then I would have left and you’d have never known I was here.”

“But you were watching the video when I came in. I could hear the noise. Carter would have heard it too.”

“Except that Carter is back at the sheriff’s department babysitting a juvenile delinquent who is probably aspiring to be Gertie .”

I shook my head. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

“Maybe.”

“I suppose there’s video of the dynamite explosion as well?”

He nodded. “And Gertie’s fight with the fish in her shirt. I’m going to be honest with you—she’s the only person I’ve ever met who terrifies me just a little.”

“Yeah. I get that.”

“Is she what happened to your Christmas tree? It looks a little rough.”

“That was a joint effort between Gertie and my cat.”

“That’s why I don’t have pets.”

“Even if I didn’t have the cat, I’d still have Gertie.”

“That’s why I don’t have friends.”

“Touché. So anyway, I assume you’re here for a reason and not because you had the overwhelming desire to have a late-night beer with a woman who smells like bass and bayou mud. Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I’m really dying for a shower.”

“Of course. After you left the Heberts’ office, I decided to run down some associates of Cooke’s.

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