“There!” I said and pointed.
Chapter Four
Ida Belle let off the accelerator and Gertie swung her binoculars the direction I’d indicated.
“I don’t see anything,” Gertie said.
“I saw sun reflecting off something,” I said. “Maybe a boat console?”
Ida Belle nodded. “Let me turn around and head back out.”
“Wait a minute,” Gertie said. “It will take longer for you to drive back up this bayou and then down the other than it will for me to walk across this narrow patch of land and see for myself.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “What if there are gators in the marsh?”
“That goes without saying,” Gertie said. “But they usually take off when they hear people coming.”
“‘Usually’ is not always,” I said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Gertie said as she stood and set her binoculars on the bench. “I’ve been traipsing through these bayous since I could walk. A gator hasn’t gotten me yet and one isn’t going to.”
“I’m more afraid you’ll come back with another one in your pants,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie waved a hand in dismissal and stood on the bench. We were only a foot from the bank, and she could easily step off onto it but where Gertie was involved, things rarely went to plan. She was just stepping off when Ida Belle yelled to wait.
But it was too late.
The patch of dirt that looked like land was, in fact, a mat of marsh grass and mud, floating on top of the water. Gertie took one step on it and down she went.
“At least she had the sense to take the binoculars off first,” Ida Belle said as we leaned over the side of the boat. A second later, Gertie’s head broke the surface—the mat of dead marsh grass sitting on it like a hat—and she coughed water everywhere.
“Do you have to hack that up on all of us?” Ida Belle asked.
Gertie grabbed the side of the boat and we hauled her back into it. She slumped in the bottom, still coughing, and Ida Belle banged on her back a couple times until she was breathing normally.
“Do I have your permission to drive around now?” Ida Belle asked. “Maybe we can blow some of those weeds off your head. You look like a rerun of Hee Haw.”
I was waiting for the inevitable finger but all of a sudden, Gertie’s eyes widened and she bolted up like she’d been ejected from her seat, flinging the patch of weeds off her head. She grabbed her T-shirt and started pulling it, yelling at the top of her lungs. Ida Belle appeared as lost as I was, but the one thing I knew was that she wanted that shirt off and T-shirts just didn’t tear in real life like they did for sexy guys in movies. I grabbed the bottom of her shirt and yanked it up over her head, and that’s when I got a firsthand look at the problem.
There was a water moccasin in her bra.
The long venomous snake had gone in between her boobs and was looped around the front of the undergarment, its head forward and hissing at me. It struck out once and I jumped back. Gertie had her hands over her mouth, probably to keep from yelling and drawing its attention her way.
“Unhook her bra!” I yelled at Ida Belle, who was standing behind her.
“It’s a front clasp,” Ida Belle said, sounding a little panicked.
“Cut it!” I said as the snake lunged at me again.
I heard a knife click open and a second later, the bra flipped forward over Gertie’s shoulders. The snake dropped to the bottom of the boat with the bra, and Gertie shifted her hands from her mouth to her chest and jumped up into my chair. The snake fled the bra and slithered into the T-shirt, so I grabbed the whole bundle and tossed it overboard. When I looked up at Gertie, standing in my chair and holding her chest with her hands, I realized we might have a logistical problem.
“I don’t suppose you keep spare shirts on your boat,” Gertie said.
“In hindsight, I probably should,” I said. “What is it with you and snakes this week?”
“Give her your shirt,” Ida Belle said. “You wear a sports bra. That’s more coverage than a bikini top.”
“I’m not wearing a bra at all today,” I said. “It’s too hot for multiple layers, and my T-shirt is the thicker kind.”
“Wait until you have gravity issues,” Gertie said. “You won’t be going without one then.”
“What about your shirt?” I asked Ida Belle.
“My bra is lace,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie stared. “That seems awfully girlie of you.”
Ida Belle shrugged. “Combine too hot with the gravity problem and you get a really thin bra. Seemed more of a practicality, really.”
I picked up the bra from the bottom of the boat. “We can salvage this. Tie it back together.”
Gertie turned her back to us and slipped the bra into place while Ida Belle worked on tying the back into a knot. Gertie grunted as she stretched the fabric to its limit, finally managing to get a small knot. Gertie turned around and we couldn’t help laughing. It was so tight it had her chest not far from her chin.
“Maybe pull it down all over,” I said.
Ida Belle adjusted and Gertie looked down and sighed. “I look like a white trash dirty movie.”
I pulled a life jacket from the storage bench and handed it to her. “Wear this. It covers the important things.”
Ida Belle nodded. “And now that they’re strapped in, that whole gravity thing won’t have parts peeking out the side of that jacket.”
Gertie glared. “You two are enjoying this entirely too much.”
She pulled on the jacket and flopped back down in her seat, waving a hand at us to get going. Ida Belle looked over at me and grinned before she started up the boat and took off. It didn’t take too long to backtrack on the bayou and then traverse the other, and as we approached the bend where I’d seen the boat, Ida Belle slowed. We rounded the corner and she nodded.
“That’s Molly’s boat,” she said.
Since the name on the back read The Mauler I figured that was the case but there was no sign of Molly anywhere. I scanned the bank behind the boat but didn’t see any evidence of human passage.
“It’s not anchored,” Gertie said. “This is bad.”
I nodded, the impact of her words not lost on me. If something had happened—an injury, a mechanical problem—and someone had given Molly a ride, they would have towed her boat. And if that wasn’t possible, she would have secured it. Ida Belle had told me the make and model before we set out, and I’d been in Louisiana long enough to know a boat like that ran upward of sixty grand. No one was going to leave sixty grand floating loose.
“What’s that on the side?” Gertie asked. “Is that blood?”
Gertie had barely finished the sentence before I jumped onto Molly’s boat and hurried to the back edge where the dark stain was. I dipped one finger in it and nodded.
“It’s blood,” I said.
“Jesus!” Gertie said. “We need to dive in. She could be down there somewhere.”
“No,” I said and held up a hand to stop her from leaping into the bayou. “We don’t know for sure the blood belongs to Molly, and even if it is hers, it’s been here a while.”