“Okay, all talk of floozies aside, we can’t do this,” I said. “Carter would arrest us all if he found out, and you know what that would do to my cover. Morrow would yank me out of here so fast, I’d get whiplash.”
“Then what else are we supposed to do?” Gertie asked. “You can’t get anything from Carter. Myrtle can’t get into his files. Unless Hot Rod wakes up and has something to help, we’re stuck with nothing.”
Ida Belle’s phone rang, and she looked at the display. “It’s my hospital source.”
She answered the phone and Gertie and I both leaned across the table, eagerly listening to the one-sided conversation. If you could call single-word responses a conversation.
“Thanks,” Ida Belle said after about a minute. “If you get anything else, call me right away.”
She put the phone down, and I could tell that whatever she’d heard wasn’t good. “The niece checked in. Hot Rod had a decent bout of consciousness. He told the nurse I was in danger and started yelling for the cops. Before the officer standing guard could get a statement, Hot Rod went into cardiac arrest.”
Gertie’s hands flew over her mouth.
“Oh no!” I cried.
“They got him stabilized,” Ida Belle said, “but there’s no way to know when he’ll regain consciousness again.” She sighed. “Or even if he will. I don’t want to sound all doom and gloom, but I’m afraid it’s serious for our friend.”
“And serious for you,” Gertie said. “Whatever Hot Rod is worried about was enough to send him into heart attack zone, and with his family history…”
I didn’t want to agree with Gertie, because agreeing left me only one option, and that was breaking and entering into what could turn out to be the scene of a capital murder. But if Ida Belle was in jeopardy, we needed to know why, and the answer was probably somewhere in Hot Rod’s shop. Maybe it was as simple as him remembering something he had left undone on her SUV. Something he thought might cause a wreck. If so, then he’d have a note in those files Ida Belle insisted he kept.
Whatever it was, it probably had nothing to do with why someone had attacked Hot Rod.
At least, that’s what I was going to keep telling myself.
Even though I didn’t believe it for a minute.
Chapter Four
“How come I never get to drive?” Gertie groused as I tossed a backpack of breaking-and-entering supplies into the bottom of my airboat.
Ida Belle stared. “You’re seriously asking that question? How many boats have you sunk this year? Because any number over zero is too many.”
I’d only arrived at Sinful at the beginning of the summer, but based on my limited exposure to Gertie and boating, I was betting that number hovered somewhere over five and maybe below ten. But then, I was probably being optimistic.
“Ida Belle drives the boat,” I said. “She’s the best driver. And before you ask, you can’t sit in the other chair. That chair is for lookout and I have perfect vision.”
Gertie threw her hands in the air, stepped into the boat, then flopped down on the bottom in front of the bench. “Perfect driving, perfect vision. You two are always cramping my style with all your rules.”
“Limiting one’s chance of death is not cramping your style,” Ida Belle said. “It’s keeping us all available for future projects.”
“You’re a perfect cook,” I said.
“I suppose that’s something,” Gertie said, slightly mollified.
“What’s the Carter update?” Ida Belle asked.
I shook my head. “He just texted me a good morning and thanks for the sandwich last night. He didn’t give me any other clues.”
Ida Belle frowned. “He didn’t tell Myrtle where he was going either. Just checked in with the office and headed back out.”
“You need to put that ‘find iPhone’ thing on his phone,” Gertie said. “That way, we’d always know where he was.”
“Yeah, because he wouldn’t notice that,” I said. “And because that tracking thing always works so well in the swamp.”
“Maybe we should GPS his truck,” Ida Belle said. “Anyway, it’s something to consider for later on.”
I stared. “You two know that private detectives don’t have the legal right to break and enter and stalk law enforcement officers, right?”
“Veronica Mars does it all the time,” Gertie said.
“That’s a television show,” I said, “and she’s a minor. She won’t go to prison.”
Gertie shrugged. “There’s a downside to everything.”
I shook my head and untied the boat from the bank. As long as I was in a relationship with Carter, Ida Belle and Gertie were never going to take my being arrested seriously. But Carter couldn’t protect me from everything. If the Feds were involved, then I was open game. In fact, being involved with a law enforcement officer would make me an even juicier target.
Not that I was some sort of stickler for the law. CIA assassins didn’t exactly care what laws they were breaking when they were on a mission, especially since we usually weren’t citizens of the countries we were operating within. Our jobs were all about the success of the mission and not so much about how we accomplished it. But if I was going to make a go at honest civilian employment, then the legal system was something I needed to start taking a bit more seriously.
After we found out why Ida Belle was in danger, of course. Because my friend’s safety trumped laws.
Ida Belle climbed into the driver’s seat, and I pushed the boat from the bank and jumped inside. My butt had barely graced the seat when Ida Belle took off like a shot. I clutched the armrests as if my life depended on it, and that wasn’t too far from the truth. I loved the airboat more than I’d ever thought I’d be devoted to a piece of machinery, and I knew that Ida Belle was a top-notch driver, but there was still that inkling of what-if every time I climbed into the passenger’s seat.
But given my personality, that was also part of the attraction.
The ride took about twenty minutes and probably should have taken thirty. Ida Belle had utilized a shortcut for airboats that shaved off some time, meaning, she’d skipped the boat over a patch of land to cut the distance. Given the height Gertie flew up from the bottom of the boat, and the dirty look she gave Ida Belle after we landed back in the water, I guessed we probably wouldn’t hear any complaining about having to sit in the bottom again, because if Gertie had been on the bench, she would be sitting on that patch of land.
Ida Belle cut the engine as we approached a long stretch of bank lined with cypress trees. We’d gone under the highway at some point in the blurred ride, so I figured we must have reached our destination. Ida Belle scanned the bank and looked down at Gertie.
“What do you think?” Ida Belle asked.
Gertie nodded. “I think this is about right.”