“This time,” Carter said, “she managed to step in flaming cow poop and set her robe on fire.”
“What in the world would she do that for?” I asked. “Can’t she find something to watch on television like the rest of us?”
His lips quivered and I could tell he was trying not to smile. “Someone—not Celia—put the cow poop in her backyard and lit it on fire.”
“And she’s blaming us,” Ida Belle said. “Guess that means she didn’t burn her lips off. What a shame.”
“She doesn’t burn,” Gertie said. “You know, hell and demons and all.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know what to tell you, except that I don’t play with poop…cow or otherwise. And it sounds like Celia shouldn’t either. I can’t imagine her neighbors were happy seeing her out in her yard without a robe on. God only knows what she sleeps in.”
“So you’ve been here the entire night?” Carter asked.
I knew right away he’d already talked to Deputy Breaux, but if he wanted to continue this ridiculous dance of lies, I was game.
“We were at a toga party earlier.”
“And where was this toga party held?” Carter asked. “I’d like to check your alibi.”
“You’re looking at my alibi,” I said. “It was a large party of three at Gertie’s house.”
“I see,” he said, “and when you left Gertie’s house, you drove the long way around to get home, with your headlights off, and ran a stop sign because you had a bathroom emergency. Even though you’d just left a house with two perfectly good bathrooms.”
“Some people just can’t hold their sweet tea,” Gertie said.
“So if I checked around,” Carter said, “I wouldn’t find a container with poop remnants, would I?”
“Nope.” Because I’d tossed the entire bucket, poo and all, into the bayou, much to Gertie’s dismay.
“Do we have to keep this up much longer?” Ida Belle asked. “Because I’m a little tired. We didn’t get much sleep last night what with Fortune out taking on the ATF and all.”
The smile that had been hovering on Carter’s lips finally broke through. “I just wanted to see how far you would take it,” he said.
“As far as required,” Gertie said. “And for a lot longer than you can hold out for. What do you think we are, amateurs?”
“I thought nothing of the kind,” he said. “Well, since you all have an alibi, I guess my work here is done.”
“We always happy to help,” I said, and followed him to the door.
He walked onto the porch, then turned around and looked at me, his expression now serious. “I’ll be making periodic passes by throughout the night. If anything even feels off, call me.”
I nodded.
“I mean it,” he said. “No more taking down strange men lurking around your lawn. You might run up against someone more capable than the ATF.”
I shrugged. “They’d have to be more capable than me before it would matter.”
“Humor me.”
“Just this once?”
He sighed. “Please?”
“Fine, I’ll call if I hear or see anything nefarious. I’m not going to say out of the ordinary because that would be pretty much everything in this town.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
He turned around and headed for his truck. I watched him for a couple seconds, then closed the door. When I turned around, Gertie and Ida Belle were both grinning at me.
“Let’s talk about the poop stomping one more time,” Gertie said.
I smiled. “Maybe just once more.”
An hour and a half later, I’d paced the living room so many times that I worried I would wear out the soles on my tennis shoes. It was ten minutes past midnight and my phone had remained agonizingly quiet the entire night. Was this how it was going to be? I spent every night pacing until someone showed up to steal the SUV? I might make it a couple days, but if they hadn’t shown up by the third night, I was going to consider advertising the vehicle in every auto sales paper I could find.
“If you don’t sit down,” Ida Belle said, “you’re going to start a fire on those hardwood floors through friction alone.”
“You’re one to talk,” I said. “You only stopped an hour ago.”
“I didn’t even start,” Gertie said. “I got tired just watching the two of you.”
I flopped into the recliner and sighed, something else I’d done more times than I could count in the past hour and a half.
“This waiting is killing me,” I said.
Gertie nodded. “If we have to do this every night for a week, you’re going to have to refinish the floor.”
“If we have to do this every night for a week,” Ida Belle said, “I’m hitting the hard stuff.”
Gertie shook her head. “You two just need to look at the positive side of things. We have a plan to catch the car thieves and people to help with it—qualified people. The SUV is tucked safely in Ida Belle’s garage and Carter doesn’t suspect a thing. And if that’s not enough for you, Celia stomped right into flaming cow crap and set her robe on fire.”
I smiled. “The foot in flaming cow crap thing was really funny.”
“So was the look on Deputy Breaux’s face when he pulled us over,” Ida Belle said.
“Okay, so the night wasn’t entirely bad,” I said, “but the cow crap was a onetime gig, so if we’re sitting here tomorrow, we won’t have a recent memory to laugh over.”
“I’ll still be laughing about the cow crap tomorrow night,” Gertie said.
“Okay,” I agreed. “I can probably get another night out of it, especially since everyone in town will be talking about it tomorrow, but if we move on to night three, something’s going to have to give.”
“Oh, oh!” Gertie said, and bounced in her chair. “We should pull a drive-by and use water guns to spray her porch with fox urine.”
I looked over at Ida Belle. “Should I even ask?”
“Ten times worse than cat pee,” Ida Belle said. “She’d have to burn the house down.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll keep that one in reserve.”
I was just about to suggest another round of chocolate chip cookies when my phone signaled a text coming in.
SUV is on the move. Head out.
My pulse began to race just as it did every time I was closing in on a target. I looked over at Ida Belle’s and Gertie’s expectant faces and smiled.
“It’s on,” I said.
Chapter Twenty
Ida Belle and Gertie jumped up from their seats, and I could tell they were as excited as I was. Everything about our escape route was already planned and we’d gone through the steps a million times. I grabbed the getaway car keys that I’d found that afternoon, somewhat disturbingly, on my kitchen table, along with a description of the car. It was parked in the location I’d specified to Little when we’d talked earlier, which was four houses down from mine and in front of a panel van that was always parked at the curb.
Ida Belle ran upstairs and a couple seconds later yelled down. “Street’s clear.”
We’d been watching all night as Carter made sweeps around the neighborhood. He must have been making regular stops at his house because we only saw him every thirty minutes, but it was like clockwork. Which was a really good thing given what we needed to do.