“Thank you. I really appreciate that. Jesus. I can’t believe… You’ll let me know as soon as you know something, right?”
“You’ll be the first person I call, but it’s more likely you’ll hear from Nickel first. So same goes.”
I looked over at Ida Belle and Gertie, who were clearly just as shocked and confused as I was. The wheels had officially come off the bus.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I called Harrison and told him about Nickel’s arrest. He put out some feelers and discovered that Hermes had found a body in the swamp early this morning—like at dawn early. That in itself sounded suspicious enough, but the deputy who filled him in said Hermes had claimed he was going out to track where the girl came from. All of which left me even more confused. Maybe I’d underestimated Hermes’s ability. Maybe he actually did have some skills and had managed to find Nickel’s camp and pin it as her hideaway, even without the benefit of the shoe or a prize bloodhound.
But no way in hell had a body been there when we were, because Rambo would have clued in on that before anything else. Ida Belle had been training him as a cadaver dog, and he’d taken to the smells of human decomposition with zero training. Even more impressive, he ignored other decomp, like birds, animals, and fish, and went straight for the human every time. Scooter had produced some impressive puppies, although I was a little worried about what might happen if we just turned Rambo loose in the swamps. It might send Carter’s caseload through the roof.
Assuming he still has a caseload when he gets back.
I shook my head, not wanting to think about that. As soon as we hit Sinful, we headed to my house to wait. At the moment, the situation with Nickel was critical and I figured as soon as he was allowed to make a call, Whiskey would call me. It only took an hour. Nickel was no fool. He knew better than to talk without a lawyer and most certainly knew the law better than Hermes did.
“He’s asked for a lawyer and refuses to speak,” Whiskey said. “They haven’t told him anything except a body was found at his camp.”
“No time of death? No ID?”
“Nada.”
“So they arrested him for owning the property that a body happened to wash up on? No inquiries into motive or opportunity? Good Lord, we’re all potentially doomed.”
“Yeah, but the bigger problem is Hermes got a warrant and they’re sending a forensic team to search his camp. They’re going to find evidence the girl was there. Like you said, you couldn’t do a real clean on it. If they tie him up in all of this—with his record—I just don’t see him getting a fair shake.”
“I agree. But I need you to worry about your dad and your business and let me handle the legal end of things. I’ll call my attorney right now, and trust me, he’s the best you can get anywhere in the US. Hermes won’t know what hit him.”
“Thank you. It helps knowing you’re backing him. And tell Ida Belle and Gertie thanks for me. Two of the Sinful Ladies showed up at dad’s thirty minutes ago, fixed him breakfast, and now they’re cleaning the house and doing laundry. He says they’ve promised him they’ll play poker as soon as they’re done. I can’t tell you how much it means to know someone’s there with him.”
“What did you tell him about Nickel?”
“I said he went to Baton Rouge for some sort of certification. Pop doesn’t know any better, and I can extend the requirements for that as I need to.”
“Sounds good. I’ll let you know as soon as the attorney speaks to him.”
I immediately dialed a fan from my CIA days—retired federal prosecutor Alexander Framingham III., aka the Grim Reaper. There wasn’t an attorney in the country who signed up to sit on the opposite side of Alexander unless he wanted to be made a fool. The man was the quickest I’d ever seen to process things, and his ability to turn people inside out was amazing to watch. He’d retired to New Orleans but still took on cases that interested him. He’d represented me once before—well, for the minimal amount of time it took him to get charges dropped—and I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to dive in if I asked.
He answered on the first ring. I gave him a rundown of the situation, starting from finding the girl, then explained a bit more about Carter’s absence and the issues with Hermes and his reputation.
“Okay,” he said when I finished. “I started driving that way as soon as you said you needed an attorney in Sinful. Give me an hour and meet me at the sheriff’s department.”
“Hermes isn’t going to let me anywhere near Nickel. He probably won’t even let me in the front door.”
“He will if you’re my consultant.”
“I have no problem with that, but can I ask why you want me there?”
“I figured you’d want to see me take this idiot down.”
He disconnected and I looked at Ida Belle and Gertie and smiled. “I love him.”
Gertie nodded. “If he wasn’t so scary, I would have totally made a pass at him. All those smarts and so hot.”
“I hate to be the one agreeing with Gertie, especially about men,” Ida Belle said, “but I don’t hate looking at him. I just like his acerbic wit even more.”
“Smart is sexy,” Gertie said. “Well, we have an hour to wait. Is there anything else we can do? I hate just sitting here.”
“Me too,” I said. “But I have to admit, I don’t know which direction to go at the moment. We have a lot of information that doesn’t fit together in any way I can see.”
“I wish the girl could remember,” Ida Belle said. “I have a feeling that what’s buried in her mind is the key to all of this.”
“Definitely,” I said. “And I have to tell you, this new body worries me a lot. Who does it belong to? We all know it wasn’t anywhere near that camp when we were there, so when did it turn up and why?”
“Maybe it was an accident and Hermes is just using it to hassle Nickel and get access to his camp to pin things on him,” Gertie suggested.
“I can absolutely see Hermes pulling something like that, but since he’s already yelling homicide, when that body just came out of the water, then death must have been something super obvious, like a gunshot wound.”
“Maybe he was looking for the girl,” Ida Belle said.
“But how did he die and where was he the night the girl was found? Or the day we were at Nickel’s camp?”
“Assuming he didn’t kill himself, which is a safe bet at this point, that means he wasn’t alone,” Ida Belle said. “So maybe two different men—different sides? Same side and a fallout?”
“Exactly. We need more information.”
“Maybe we’ll be able to ascertain more when the identity is released.”
“Assuming they can identify him.”
“You don’t think the girl killed him, do you?” Gertie asked.
“I don’t think so. I mean, if she did, then where’s his body been this whole time?”
But I wasn’t thrilled with the thought, and it was one that had already crossed my mind.
“Maybe he was injured and left,” Gertie said. “He could have died farther up the bayou and fallen in, then drifted down to the dock.”