“We weren’t right behind her,” Gertie said. “In fact, we didn’t even see her going in, so she must have lollygagged around in there.”
Judith nodded. “She was in there a long time.”
“Probably making notes on everything that was done wrong,” Ida Belle said. “Celia files a list of complaints with the mayor every year after the festival.”
“Well, then it serves her right, now doesn’t it?” Judith said.
“I really like you,” I said.
Lunch was a good time, chatting with the Sinful Ladies, especially the recounting of the skunk escapade. And the banana pudding seemed particularly excellent. But maybe I was just in a good mood since I’d actually gotten decent sleep the night before and the dead person wasn’t someone I knew or liked. In fact, it seemed from the chatter that a lot of people weren’t particularly fond of him. Marrying his son’s girlfriend seemed to have put off the majority of the women in the town, anyway.
“Do you think we can catch the horse breeder today?” I asked.
“River Hayes rarely leaves her ranch unless she’s showing or selling a horse,” Ida Belle said. “The bigger question is whether or not she’ll talk to us. She’s a huge introvert approaching recluse. I expect she’ll go full-on prepper when she retires and we’ll never see her again.”
“Great,” I said. “She’s not going to shoot at us when we pull up in her driveway, is she?”
“It’s possible,” Ida Belle said.
“Probably not on a Sunday, though,” Gertie said. “She is Southern.”
I shook my head. “There is a lot to unpack south of the Mason-Dixon. Well, let’s give it a whirl. I’m not going to say a ‘shot’ because that might be too accurate.”
We were headed up the highway when I got a text from Mannie letting me know he’d emailed the police report from Gil’s carjacking. I accessed the file and scanned it.
“Well, the police report on the carjacking doesn’t have anything worth noting,” I said. “Like Tiffany said, the security cameras for the theater were broken and there weren’t any witnesses, as Gil was the last to leave. There are no residential buildings that look into the parking lot. Just a bunch of businesses and warehouses that would have been closed already.”
“Who found him?” Gertie asked.
“A taxi driver who was new to the area and got off in the wrong district,” I said. “Noticed a heap in the parking lot as he drove by and stopped to see what it was.”
“Probably wishes he’d kept driving,” Gertie said.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But he’s definitely in the clear. Had fares all night. Doesn’t seem to be much else.”
“We figured it would be unremarkable,” Ida Belle said. “If the cops sniffed anything off about it, they would have come down on Tiffany like a pack of wolves.”
“That still doesn’t mean it wasn’t intentional,” Gertie said.
“Oh, I’m not saying that,” Ida Belle said. “I’m just saying that if it was intentional, whoever did it was prepared and waiting for the opportune moment. No one could know for certain that Gil would be in the parking lot alone, so that meant waiting for the right moment at the right location.”
“But even if they waited for the perfect moment,” Gertie said, “they couldn’t have known the security cameras were broken.”
“Which is why they were probably wearing a hoodie and mask and parked blocks away in a busy area,” Ida Belle said. “Remember, Tiffany told us that was the only figure caught on nearby cameras.”
I nodded. “And an empty parking lot with no occupied buildings at night meant that if it hadn’t been for our lost taxi driver, no one would have found him until the next day. If this was a setup, someone really patient and clever pulled it off.”
“Well, I suppose there was no hurry if it was Tiffany and Liam, right?” Gertie asked. “I mean, there was no ticking time clock on it.”
“There was no time clock as long as Gil intended to remain married to Tiffany,” I said. “But I assume he was smart enough to insist on a prenuptial, especially given the circumstances. So what if their marriage was on the rocks? What if the urgency was because of something Gil was up to?”
“You think Gil was sniffing around other fence posts?” Ida Belle asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “You said he was full of personality and acting mattered to him more than anything else. So what if he joined up with this NOLA group and found someone who was a better fit than someone with no interest in acting and who wanted to stay hidden in her house.”
Ida Belle nodded. “I like it.”
“Me too, except for the part where Liam is involved,” Gertie said. “But it has intrigue and drama and a solid motive if we can prove Gil had his eye on another woman.”
“That shouldn’t be overly difficult to ascertain,” Ida Belle said. “We’ll just head to New Orleans tomorrow and have a word with this acting troupe. You and I can spot a floozy at a hundred paces and Fortune knows a liar before they even speak. If Gil was looking to change up his romantic situation, we’ll know.”
“But it wouldn’t give us proof against Tiffany,” Gertie said.
“No,” I agreed. “That might be harder to come by. But if she and Liam colluded on this, or even if she hired someone to take care of it for her, she’ll slip eventually. Most criminals do, and Tiffany doesn’t strike me as sociopathic. A conscience changes everything.”
Gertie sighed. “I’ve got no particular loyalty to Tiffany, especially after how she treated Liam. But I like Liam. I really hope he’s not involved.”
I nodded. I understood her sentiment. Liam was the wronged party and no one wanted to slide him from victim to perp status. I didn’t either, truth be told. He’d seemed like a nice guy. But if that nice guy had colluded with his former girlfriend to kill his father, then I was going to take him down.
Ida Belle turned off the highway and we headed down a gravel road. A heavy group of trees lined the access road, but after about twenty feet, the woods turned into open pasture with nice pipe fencing. Several horses grazed in the field and even though I knew very little about horses, I suspected they were well bred. They had that muscled and shiny look that you saw with horses on television.
We turned off the gravel road onto another gravel road and then had to stop at a huge iron gate. There was an intercom on a post, so Ida Belle lowered her window and pressed the button.
“Yeah?” A woman’s voice came over the intercom.
“River? This is Ida Belle and Gertie and a friend. We’d like a couple minutes of your time if we could have it. We won’t be long.”
“What about?” River asked.
“A horse,” Ida Belle said.
Hey, it wasn’t a lie. And besides, only Gertie had a rule about not lying on Sunday. I’d never heard Ida Belle make that sort of claim.
The intercom went silent and a couple seconds later, the gate started to swing open. Ida Belle pulled through and we followed the winding drive until it finally ended at a ranch-style house with a huge barn. I could see a bayou in the distance and more horses in paddocks around the barn. As we climbed out of the SUV, a woman walked out of the barn.