She was still sitting upright and smiled at me when I walked inside.
“I thought you might be back,” she said.
“There’s a couple things I thought you might be able to clear up,” I said. “And I figured you might not like them to be general knowledge, although I have a feeling you didn’t manage all of this alone.”
She cocked her head to one side. “And just what is it you think I managed?”
“Oh, I don’t know—setting up your boyfriend and his side piece to be arrested for murder, for starters, but I don’t think that was the main purpose. I think the real reason you faked your own death was to get someone to look into Johnny’s death again because you always believed that your father was responsible. You just couldn’t figure out how he did it and you knew the police wouldn’t look into it again. Not without a reason. And since they couldn’t be depended on to make the connection between your disappearance and Johnny’s, you hedged your bets and had Nickel hire me.”
“Whiskey told Nickel that if you had a 10,000-piece puzzle missing a single piece, you’d turn the world upside down to find it.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or a character flaw, but it’s probably accurate. Silas didn’t have anything to do with taking out that insurance policy, did he?”
Molly put on a blank face and remained silent.
“You see, the interesting thing is that the agent identified the woman who took out the policy as you and he had a valid driver’s license,” I said. “We figured it was manufactured or stolen and that Silas had hired someone to play your role. It was a good assumption and exactly the one you were hoping we’d make, which is why the signature on that policy was so far off from your own. It needed to look like a legitimate attempt at fraud.”
“I couldn’t have taken out that policy. When that document was being signed, I was catering a party in Mudbug.”
“I’m sure you were. But Angel wasn’t. She’s almost as tall as you with similar features, and when the policy was taken out, she was pregnant. She told us she gained weight all over and was still working on losing it. With baggy clothes and a fake hairpiece, that ancient and half-blind insurance agent would have sworn he was looking at you.”
Molly remained silent.
“It’s a big risk, you know. The cops will pursue that angle as part of their murder conviction—to try to prove that Silas was successful once so he was going to try again. They’ll run those documents. If Angel’s fingerprints are on file for any reason…”
Molly finally broke her impassive expression and smiled.
“She was careful not to touch anything except the pen, and she took it with her when she left,” she said.
“Then you called him from a burner phone and told him to meet you at your house about the policy. That way he was on-site when you disappeared, giving him motive and opportunity to cash in again. And with the back taxes owed and the bookies sniffing around, motive was increasing in urgency every day.”
“So what do you plan to do with all this knowledge?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
Her eyes widened. “Why not?”
“Because the only law broken was the fraud with the insurance policy and with no fingerprints, no one will ever prove who set that up.”
“And if there had been fingerprints?”
“I still wouldn’t have said anything.”
“I figured you to be one for justice.”
“I am, and Johnny finally got some. I don’t blame you for what you did. In fact, I admire your cleverness. It was well planned. The biggest gamble you took was in counting on me to dig in and figure it all out.”
“I did my asking around,” Molly said. “Whiskey isn’t the only person who speaks highly of you. Back when I first started cage fighting, Big Hebert helped me out with some funds to get started.”
“Big Hebert?”
“He’s some sort of fifth cousin three times removed or whatever. You know how Louisiana families are.”
“So much about this is making more sense. I suppose it was Nickel who gave you a ride out of the bayou that day and stashed you somewhere—their camp, maybe?”
Molly frowned. “My one regret about all of this is that we lied to you. But I didn’t see any other way. I didn’t think the cops would dig deep enough, but everyone who knew you said you would.”
“Then why didn’t you just ask me to look into Johnny’s death?”
“Because you would have gotten the same information the cops did and said there wasn’t anything else. And I wouldn’t have blamed you. But with me missing in the same way and Silas looking to cash in again, I figured you’d keep digging longer than the evidence called for. And I needed someone really smart because none of us could figure out how he did it even though we were all certain he did.”
I thought about it for a bit. Was she right? Would I have done my due diligence and dismissed the claims like everyone else? If Molly hadn’t disappeared and set up that fake life insurance cash-in for Silas, would I have focused my laser attention on him as a murderer? Would I have questioned Johnny’s death, or would I have assumed that three grieving people couldn’t cope with the truth?
I wasn’t sure.
And if I wasn’t sure then there’s no way Molly could have been. For all her manipulating and lying, she’d come up with the one way to get me to literally dig out the truth. And I didn’t blame her for that.
“How did you know?” Molly asked.
“Small things. Things that gave me that feeling that something wasn’t on the up and up.”
“Like what?”
“When we talked to Angel, she would refer to you in present tense, then past tense. It’s not uncommon with a recent death, but it makes more sense when you put it in the context of you still being alive. Then there was a statement Ida Belle made about unless you can pull one of those Jesus tricks like my dad. He has a thing for rising from the dead. And there was a statement that Angel made—that she wasn’t interested in justice. She was interested in retribution. And the thing that never fit at all was your father’s insistence that you had taken out the policy and called for him to meet you. It was no more outlandish than Dexter’s insistence that you were going to leave him your business. And yet both of them said those things with a ring of truth in their statements.”
Molly smiled. “You know, I feel sorry for any criminal that thinks he’s going to set up shop under your radar. This town is a much safer place with you on the job.”
“You did lead Dexter on, didn’t you?”
“Of course. Even had him sign a fake document that I burned afterward. That idiot had always cheated on me, but when he hooked up with Marissa, he crossed a huge line. She kept bugging him to get money from me and then started asking if he got everything if I died. She fed him the idea of cashing in if I bought it, so I started stringing him along by making him think there was something in it for him if I died.”
“And how did you know all of that?”
She shrugged. “A friend overheard them talking and let me know.”
“Uh-huh. This friend wouldn’t be a regular at The Bar, would he?” I asked, remembering that Glenn had said a lot of current and former cage fighters frequented the joint.