“I don’t think they’re all that drunk,” Gertie said. “But I’m still game.”
“Let me remind everyone that this is the late-afternoon crowd,” Ida Belle said. “They’re supposed to be the calm ones.”
“Then we’ll make sure we’re gone before the evening crowd starts drifting in,” I said as I headed for the door.
A man and a woman shuffled up to the broken window and watched as we walked inside. The noise level dropped in half as soon as we crossed the threshold, and everyone in the place turned to stare. I supposed we looked a bit out of place. The average age in the bar was the forty-to-fifty crowd, so I was too young and Ida Belle and Gertie were too old, and we didn’t exactly fit the look of the place, either. And nor, I supposed, did we fit with each other from a stranger’s perspective.
“I need a beer and to see a man thrown out a window,” Gertie said. “I’m halfway there.”
Everyone laughed and turned back to what they were doing before. I looked over at Ida Belle, who shrugged.
“Good call,” I said to Gertie as we made our way to the bar.
“Drunk people usually like to laugh. And old ladies being tough always amuses them. Look at Betty White. That woman is four thousand and eight years old and still killing it,” Gertie said.
“I’m just a little surprised that you’d refer to yourself as old,” I said.
“Oh, I’m not old,” Gertie said. “But they think I am. Trust me, the more years that pass, the younger you realize you are.”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” Ida Belle said.
We grabbed seats at the end of the bar where no customers were around. There was a middle-aged woman working one end of the bar and a guy working the end we sat at. He glanced over at us and started our way.
Fortyish. Six foot two. Two hundred twenty pounds of solid muscle. Short, military-style haircut. No visible tattoos. Slight limp in right leg. Wouldn’t be able to pursue for long in a chase. Could probably take him out by twisting the leg. Threat level currently unknown.
He studied us for a couple seconds after he walked up. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you ladies don’t exactly look the type for a bar like this.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, neither do you,” I said.
He smiled. “Well, my uncle opened this hole-in-the-wall thirty years ago. His liver finally called it quits and he left it all to me. It pays the bills.”
“What branch?” I asked.
“Marines,” he said. “I’m Glenn. You military?”
“Fortune Redding. Former Fed.” I pulled out my ID. “Retired from government nonsense and happily on my own.”
He raised one eyebrow. “What’s a PI want in here? I mean, I’m sure there’s all manner of lawbreakers but not a one of them worth paying a PI to shadow.”
“I’m looking into the disappearance of Molly Broussard,” I said.
He frowned. “That. Yeah, that sucks.”
“Did you know Molly?” I asked.
“A little bit,” he said. “When I first got out of the Marines, I thought I’d give cage fighting a try. Didn’t have the skill set for much except fighting or shooting. Not a lot of jobs along those lines unless you’re interested in law enforcement, and I’m not. The fighting looked fun and if you were any good, you could make some money at it.”
“You’ve definitely got the build for it,” Gertie said. “And good-looking guys always get the sponsors.”
He grinned at her. “You saying I’m good-looking?”
“I’d say anyone in this bar was good-looking, just for safety reasons,” Gertie said. “But yeah, you could pull off an advertising campaign.”
He laughed. “What are you, like a relative or something?”
“Something,” Gertie said. “Ida Belle and I are Fortune’s assistants.”
“That’s an interesting gig you’ve got going,” he said to me.
“You have no idea,” I said. “So…Molly?”
“Right,” he said. “When I first got started someone told me to look Molly up and pay her for a couple lessons. Said she was the best trainer in the business. I was apprehensive, of course. I mean, I’m not a small guy and I’ve had military training. I was wondering how in the world I was supposed to train with a woman. Then I met Molly. She like to have killed me that first session. Boy, she could fight.”
“So you took lessons from her?” I asked.
“Only two,” he said. “First time she twisted my leg, I knew it wasn’t going to work. She knew it too. Had said as much during that first session. But in the second, she did a maneuver just hard enough for me to see that if anyone did it for real, I’d be leaving the ring on a stretcher.”
“Bullet?” I asked.
He nodded. “They got it out and patched me up. I worked my butt off in rehab and then in the gym, but it was never quite right. Got the honorable discharge and came home, hoping I could figure out what to do with the rest of my life. The military was plan A. I didn’t have a plan B.”
“That sucks,” I said. “So you didn’t get a chance to know Molly very well with only two sessions.”
“No, but I liked her,” he said. “When Molly said something, you could take it as the gospel and know that it was meant for your own good. There was nothing self-serving about the way she taught or handed out advice about fighting. She liked to win and she liked to see people she knew win. I really admired her.”
“Did you know about her past?” Ida Belle asked.
“More or less,” he said. “It’s common gossip among the fighters. I mean, probably nobody knows the real story except Molly and her dead husband. But I’m usually pretty good at reading people. I figure if Molly killed him then he had it coming.”
“I like you,” Gertie said. “If I were twenty years younger—”
“You could still be his mother,” Ida Belle said.
He grinned. “I have a feeling you’ve left a wake of broken hearts. I don’t think I could have handled you twenty years ago.”
“You can’t handle her now,” I said.
He laughed. “So what is it you’re looking for here? I heard about Molly but I can’t tell you anything about her beyond what I just did.”
“I don’t want to know about Molly so much as I want to know what you can tell me about Dexter Nutters,” I said.
His smile immediately turned to a frown. “That guy. You look up ‘total loser’ in the dictionary, and I guarantee you there’s a picture of Dexter Nutters next to it. I never understood what Molly saw in him.”
“That’s a fairly common statement among the people who knew her,” I said. “And having had the displeasure of meeting the man myself, I have to agree. I don’t get it.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You don’t think he did anything to her, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But my client would like me to find out. It could be that this was just another tragic boat accident.”
“But it might be something else,” he said.