“That’s bullshit and she knows it,” Ida Belle said. “Everything wrong with Celia’s life is directly tied to Celia’s choices. She just refuses to own up to it.”
“I know that,” Ally said. “But I’m afraid of what she might do.”
“What can she do?” Ida Belle asked. “Fortune hasn’t done anything wrong. And now that Marie is mayor, Celia’s control of the sheriff’s department is over. Unless she goes completely psycho and shoots Fortune or burns her house down, what else does she have left?”
Ally frowned. “I don’t know, but I still worry. She’s always managed to cause trouble. Her entire life is a master’s class in creating chaos and unhappiness. I hope you’re right.”
Ally headed off to get our drinks, and I blew out a breath. Ida Belle looked at me and narrowed her eyes.
“You don’t think that bag of hot air can cause trouble, do you?” Ida Belle asked.
“If I weren’t here pretending to be an entirely different person, I would say absolutely not. I’ve come up against five-year-olds who were smarter and deadlier than Celia. But if she starts looking into Sandy-Sue, I don’t know how well my cover will hold.”
“The CIA put it in place, didn’t they? If they can’t provide a solid cover, then I’m not sure who can.”
“Even the CIA can’t prevent Celia from tracking down colleagues or a neighbor or the guy at the coffee shop around the corner—any of whom might have a picture of Sandy-Sue or whom she might have told she was going to Europe for the summer and not Sinful.”
Ida Belle’s expression shifted slightly, and I could see the glimmer of worry in her eyes, but she was trying not to let it show.
“Well, there’s no point in worrying about it until we need to,” she said. “Even if we tried, there’s no way to predict what Celia might do. She’s always been a loose cannon, and ever since the situations with Pansy and Maxwell, she’s gone even further over into the crazy zone.”
Celia’s husband had disappeared some twenty years ago and had long been presumed dead by everyone. He’d made a miraculous appearance last month and had brought a trail of trouble along with him. His reign of terror was over now, but before it ended, he’d managed to bring to light some things Celia would have rather left in the closet. Celia’s daughter, Pansy, was a whole other can of worms, apparently taking after the man she’d thought was her father in the “bringing trouble with you” game. Both situations had ended badly for Celia’s family.
So yes, Celia had definitely lived through some stress lately, but she’d picked her husband and she’d raised her daughter, and needed to take some responsibility on both counts. Blaming me, when she’d only met me two months before, hardly seemed fair or logical. But then, I was pretty sure Celia had never been accused of being either. I just hoped she kept a bit of a lid on the crazy long enough for my situation with Ahmad to resolve itself.
“Have you heard from Harrison lately?” Ida Belle asked.
“You must have been reading my mind,” I said. “But no. I haven’t heard from him in a while. I need to check in, but I have a feeling I already know what he’s going to say.”
My undercover gig in Sinful was all due to the price on my head by arms dealer Ahmad. Unfortunately, all of the CIA’a attempts to locate Ahmad and put him out of commission had met with failure. They’d come close once in New Orleans, and my boss, Director Morrow, had worried my cover was blown. But Ahmad turned out to be in New Orleans for an entirely different reason, and although the sting to take him down was unsuccessful, my cover remained intact.
“They’ll find him,” Ida Belle said.
“Maybe. He’s a hard man to find even when he’s not hiding. So many layers of protection. Body doubles. He doesn’t take many chances.”
“But he does take them. Sooner or later, he’ll take a chance that winds up on the CIA’s radar. And then all this will be over.”
“I really hope so.” Because if the summer passed without the CIA finding Ahmad, my future looked pretty grim. The real Sandy-Sue was a librarian with the school district. I was expected to be long gone by the time school started. Sticking around would raise more than a couple of eyebrows. Not to mention that the real Sandy-Sue probably wanted to liquidate the house and her aunt’s belongings for the cash.
The bottom line—I couldn’t maintain cover in Sinful forever.
Carter called late that evening, saying he planned on grilling that night and wanted to know if I was interested in a burgers-and-beer celebration. I was definitely up for celebrating the end of the reign of Celia the Antichrist, and I couldn’t think of a time I’d passed on burgers and beer. Besides, I’d spent the afternoon testing moonshine with Ida Belle and Gertie and was already half lit. Food seemed like a good idea, and sitting in a chair doing nothing sounded even better.
But when Carter’s quitting time at the sheriff’s department came and went without so much as text, I knew something was wrong. Had Celia figured out a way to cause trouble already? I sent Carter a text asking him to let me know if we were still on for tonight and watched the phone for a bit, but the text didn’t even show as read. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t looking at his phone.
The whole thing with Celia and her threat had bothered me more than I expected. I’d been used to blowing off her blustering, but for some reason, this time it felt real. I was afraid she’d finally reached that point where she had nothing to lose and was going to launch full force into her attack on me.
Since Carter was MIA and I was starving, I headed into the kitchen to grab a piece of cobbler and my laptop. I sat at the kitchen table and went through my whole secure-access, bouncing-around-servers thing, and then sent an email to Harrison.
To: hotdudeinNE
From: farmgirl433
Things are back to normal here since the storm. Same ole drama, but I don’t expect that to change any time soon. Still, I’m getting kind of tired of dealing with some of the more frustrating people around me, especially one busybody neighbor who is constantly trying to get into my personal business. I might need to get away for a while. Maybe I’ll come visit you if you’re not too busy with work. Is it still hot there?
I hit Send and shoved a huge bite of cobbler in my mouth. My email was cryptic, but I knew Harrison would understand exactly what I was trying to convey. Someone might look closely enough at me to compromise my cover, and I needed an extraction plan in place in case it happened. I figured Harrison and Morrow already had a couple of things in mind, and I was more than certain that I wouldn’t like any of them.