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Gordon Pickett was a short man with a bald head and a red face. Colt put him in his midfifties, and his round belly left little question as to what precipitated his heart problem.
“I’m Sheriff Colt Bertrand from Mudbug,” Colt said when he answered the door. “I’m here about your car.”
Pickett’s eyes widened and he pulled open the door and waved them inside. “Mudbug? That’s an hour from here. Did you find it? Is it okay?”
“We did find it, but I’m afraid it’s a total loss.” He explained to Pickett the condition of the car and where it had been found.
Pickett’s face turned several shades darker and Colt wondered if he was going to have another heart attack. “What is wrong with people—stealing a man’s car while he’s in the hospital and then driving it into a bayou? I don’t know what our world is coming to with the way kids are behaving these days.”
“I don’t think it was kids,” Colt said. “The car had been dismantled.”
“Why in the world would someone dismantle my car?”
“I believe your car was stolen by someone running a chop shop.”
Pickett stared back and forth between them without saying a word. Finally, he found his voice again. “Well, I’ll be damned. You say it was completely stripped?”
Colt nodded. “Everything with a hinge, the wheels and tires, and the engine are gone.”
Pickett threw his hands in the air. “Well, what are you going to do? If you’ll give me an address for wherever you’re holding the car, I’ll send someone to tow it here for the insurance adjustor to see.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that right now. The car is evidence in an ongoing investigation.”
“You can’t just keep my car,” Pickett said, sounding agitated. “I’m the victim here. Insurance won’t give me a dime until they see that car.”
“I understand. My deputy is locating a secure facility to store the car as we speak. As soon as I know the location, I’ll give you a call and we can work something out with your insurance agent to get him access.”
“Sometime this afternoon?”
“I doubt I’ll have time to make arrangements for this afternoon. My entire department is busy on a couple of investigations. It might take a couple of days before we can work something out.”
Pickett glared at him a bit. “If that’s the best you can do.”
“It is.” He pulled a business card from his wallet and handed it to Pickett. “Give me a call if you have any more questions. Thank you for your time.”
“Sure,” Pickett said and let them out, slamming the door behind them.
Jadyn glanced back. “I think you pissed him off.”
Colt nodded as they climbed into his truck. “I meant to.”
“Why?”
Colt stared at the house and frowned. “Something about him seemed off.”
“The man did just have a heart attack, or something to that effect.”
“Maybe.” He pulled out his cell phone and called Shirley.
“I need you to run a check on someone for me,” he said. “Name’s Gordon Pickett. If your cousin’s still volunteering at the hospital, ask her if she knows anything about him being brought in last week with heart problems. Then run a general check on the name, and get back to me when you have both. Thanks.”
Jadyn raised her eyebrows. “You think Pickett’s lying about the heart attack?”
“He’s hiding something. He was too nervous…too agitated…but working hard to control both. They just finally got the better of him the more I stalled on the car issue.” He sighed. “Maybe I’m reaching. Maybe this thing with Bart is making me think everyone is a suspect.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
He put the truck in gear and pulled away, unable to shake the feeling that everything was coming to a head. He just hoped when the dust cleared, that the casualties were something everyone could live with.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Starving, now that you mention it.”
“Then let’s make a deal. We’ll stop for lunch and we’re not allowed to say a single word about this case.”
“No argument here. My mind’s on overload.”
“There’s a hole-in-the-wall seafood place close by. How does a shrimp po’boy sound?”
She grinned. “Better than ravioli.”
Ten minutes later, they were seated at a corner table and working their way through a basket of hush puppies.
“These are incredible,” Jadyn said, then popped another hush puppy in her mouth.
Colt nodded. “Just the right amount of jalape?o.”
“And not gummy. If the po’boy is half as good, I may move in here.”
Colt watched her as she dipped another hush puppy in ketchup and smiled. Other women he’d spent time around wouldn’t have set foot in the dilapidated shack, much less complimented the food. Jadyn was different from any woman he’d ever known. She was easy to be around—competent but not demanding—and when they worked together, she was perfectly content to hang back and let him take the lead when it made sense for him to. By the same token, she had no problem stepping up and asserting her authority when it was needed.
Intelligent, hardworking, no outrageous ego, easygoing personality, and drop-dead gorgeous. Jadyn St. James might be the most perfect woman in the world.
What are you waiting for?
He took a drink of his soda. The last time he’d asked himself that question, he had all kinds of valid reasons to hold position, but damn if he couldn’t recall a single one of them now.
“So,” she said, “tell me something about Colt Bertrand that no one in Mudbug knows.”
“Me? I’m an open book.”
She shook her head. “No one is an open book.”
He hesitated, trying to come up with a good response. People in Mudbug definitely didn’t know his thoughts about Jadyn, but no way was he bringing that up. He had to stretch his mind a bit, but finally he thought of something he didn’t think any of the locals knew.
“I like to bowl,” he said.
“Bowl? As in lanes and pins and funky shoes?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why bowling?”
He shrugged. “I sorta fell into it. I lived in a condominium when I worked in New Orleans and a group of widowers also lived in the building. They were big bowlers and were always asking me to join them. One night I did, and I decided I liked it.”
She tilted her head to the side and studied him. “What do you like about it?”
“I don’t know. I think because it requires enough concentration that you can’t let your mind wander or you don’t do well, but at the same time, it’s great for decompression.”
“I can see that.”
“So what about you? What’s your guilty sport addiction?—and no saying yoga.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yoga is cliché although I have taken classes. My favorite thing, although I don’t compete, is horseback riding.”
“I suppose that qualifies as a sport. Did you have horses growing up?”
“God no. Mother was allergic, or so she said, and no way would she allow me to be involved in something that might make me sweat or smell. Mother had very definite opinions on how ladies should act.”
“You and your mother don’t seem to have anything in common.”
A light blush crept up Jadyn’s neck and Colt knew he’d touched a sore spot.
“We are about as different as any two people can be,” Jadyn said. “I started disappointing my mother when I wasn’t born on her due date and it’s been downhill ever since.”
“That sucks.” Colt couldn’t even imagine growing up with parents who didn’t support and love their children. It was so different from what he’d had and his heart ached for Jadyn, who deserved so much better.
“It does indeed.”
“But now you’re here and have Mildred and Maryse and a host of others. They look like family to me.”
She smiled. “They are the best thing about coming here. I mean, I love the job and the opportunities it gives me, but the relationships I have with Mildred and Maryse were not something I ever expected.”
“You’ve found your place. Sometimes we have to search a while to find it. And sometimes we have to wander a while to realize we’d been there all along.”
“I can’t imagine you anywhere but Mudbug.”
“I can’t either. Even with all the recent trouble, I know it’s where I belong.” He took a drink of soda. “So, where did you learn to ride?”
Jadyn seemed a bit relieved at his change of subject. “I had a high school friend with horses. I used to sneak over to his house on my mom’s spa day. That way I had time to ride, then shower and primp before I went back home. In college I volunteered with an organization that teaches the disabled how to ride horses. The amount of joy they get out of the animals is incredible.”
She worked with the disabled. She just surpassed perfect and is headed for sainthood.
“A couple months ago, I saw a special on equine therapy on television and was impressed,” he said. “Do you miss it?”
She nodded. “Every day, but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now—moving here, making friends, learning a new job—it’s all kept me busy, especially as the job has turned out to be a bit more than I’d bargained for.”
“I’m sure it will settle down soon. Mudbug is more often quiet than rowdy.”
“I hate to sound ungrateful, but I’ll be glad to see the quiet side. Maybe if I get my own place with some land…who knows?”
Colt nodded. Jadyn on horseback was a vision he wouldn’t mind seeing.
The waitress interrupted, delivering their sandwiches, but before he could dive in, his cell phone rang. It was Shirley.
“What do you have for me?” he answered.
“My cousin says Mr. Pickett was admitted last week suffering from a mild heart attack. He was unconscious the first time she saw him and seemed a bit out of it the time after, rambling about fishing and hunting with his cousin. They held him several days for testing but he improved, so they sent him home.”
“Okay,” Colt said. So far, the facts lined up with Dee’s and Pickett’s stories. “What about the background check?”
“That’s where things got interesting. Our friend Mr. Pickett is no stranger to the police. All of the things he’s been arrested for have been linked back to several of the connected families in New Orleans, but they’ve never been able to make any of the more serious charges stick.”
“A hired gun?” Colt said.
“That’s what it sounds like. And with those people as clients, it’s no wonder he had a heart attack.”
“True. Thanks for the information.”
“There is one more thing. I thought the name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I called my aunt. You know she remembers everything.”
“Yes.” Shirley’s aunt was well known for her long and unforgiving memory.
“Well, she said that Mr. Pickett has a second cousin from Mudbug.”
“Who?”
“Buddy Anderson,” she said. “There’s someone at the door. I’ve got to run.”
Colt dropped his phone on the table. Buddy Anderson—Bart’s dad.
“What’s wrong?” Jadyn asked.
He filled her in on the conversation, his lunch long forgotten.
“Wow,” Jadyn said when he finished. “Okay, it all has to fit together somehow, but how?”
Colt stared out the window for a moment, tapping his fingers on the tabletop as an insanely wild and highly improbable scenario came to him.
“What about this?” he said. “What if Pickett was doing a job for one of the families, carrying this merchandise that the kidnappers are looking for?”
“So it was hidden somewhere in his car and he was waiting to make the drop when he had a heart attack?”
“Exactly.”
She shook her head. “Talk about bad timing.”
“It gets better.
“Bart passes the diner every day that he goes to work in New Orleans. What if he saw the car sitting there, not moving, and decided to take it for his little side job?”
Jadyn whistled. “Pickett calls from the hospital during one of his bouts of consciousness, and the family sends someone else to retrieve the car.”
“But Bart had already taken it.”
He nodded. “Then Raissa and Zach leave the diner in a Cadillac like Pickett’s.
“So they see them leave the diner and decide to follow them, hanging back a bit because the bikers left right after Raissa and Zach.
“Then they come up on Zach and Raissa with the flat and steal the car.” He frowned. “But that still doesn’t explain why they kidnapped Raissa.”
“Because they couldn’t find the merchandise,” Jadyn said. “Since Pickett was a hired hand, the family probably didn’t know where he stashed goods for transport either. Since Raissa and Zach were FBI, they probably thought they’d confiscated the car as part of a bust and knew exactly what it contained.
“Except,” Jadyn continued, “why didn’t they just ask Pickett where he’d stashed the goods?”
Colt straightened in his seat. “What if he couldn’t remember?”
Jadyn’s eyes widened. “Because of the heart attack! He’s in and out of consciousness, so the hospital won’t let anyone in but family. Shirley’s cousin said he was rambling, so when they do manage to get a hold of him, the information he gave them was probably confusing and sketchy.”
Colt nodded. “When they can’t find the merchandise in the car, they dump it, thinking Raissa and Zach already removed it. But they hold on to Raissa, thinking she’ll eventually give them the goods. Since Pickett was rambling in the hospital about his fishing time with Bart’s dad, he could have told them about the camp without even realizing it.”
“Since they have no idea if Pickett will recover, they take advantage of the camp information and hold Raissa hostage to find out where she’s stashed the merchandise, probably hoping she hasn’t turned it over to the FBI yet. Raissa can’t give them the information because she doesn’t have it, so the whole thing stalls.” Jadyn blew out a breath and flopped back in her seat. “Wow. That’s thin.”
“Paper thin. But it fits.” He leaned forward. “Think about it—Pickett got really agitated when I told him the car had been torn down. He asked specifically what was removed, then immediately tried to arrange to have the car towed to his house.”
Jadyn sat back upright. “Because based on what’s remaining, he knows the merchandise is still on the car!”
“You know what this means?”
“Yeah. It means if you’re not totally off your rocker, we can find the merchandise and set a trap for Pickett.”
Colt smiled. “I suggest we get these sandwiches to go and head to Marty’s garage. If we can find what all these people are looking for, then we’ll know whether I’m crazy or not.”