Dead on the Bayou. June Shaw

a loud huff and reached for Dave’s arm. Would he cuff him?

      “No, look.” My words got their attention, although Wilet hardly glanced at the floor where I indicated. “Is that a key?”

      The metal tip was barely visible beneath the edge of the wood that had slipped down. Wilet went there and pulled the object, a key, out from under the wood. He tried it in the back door.

      The key fit.

      Instead of thanking me, he stepped into my space. “How did you know this was here? It was so hard to see, you must have known about it.”

      I shook my head, protests slamming through my mind.

      Eve stepped closer. “She notices details, Detective. My sister used to work for years at Fancy Ladies”—which he would know was the only nearby upscale clothing store for women—“and she fitted women for their undergarments.”

      When Wilet’s eyes blanked, I continued the story. “So I learned to notice things, like I could tell in an instant if a woman was a double D or E, and I knew about panties or not and—”

      His raised hand told me to stop. He held up the key. “And this?”

      “I was born dyslexic, sir, so I might not always get numbers or words I read pronounced right, but I do know how to spot something others might miss. I saw that wood stacked yesterday. I didn’t look at it when I came inside today, but I just spotted the top piece out of place. That led me to wonder why, and I checked out the space below it.” I spread my hands as though a jack-in-the-box would jump out. “There was a key.”

      “You said nobody else had one,” Wilet told Dave.

      “No one does. Yesterday I wanted to give Sunny the extra one.”

      That comment drew an unpleasant face from Eve. Her eyes went hard toward me.

      Dave reached into a pocket of his slacks. He drew out a key ring that held a number of different sized keys, flipped through them, and pulled one up. “This is the one I used to get in here today through the front door. Sunny and I walked out of here through the carport.”

      “And we sure didn’t knock down any wood,” I said.

      Dave tilted his head toward the key Wilet held. “The one I took off the ring and tried to give her must have slipped down without me noticing.”

      “You would have been pretty distracted when you left not to have noticed,” Wilet said.

      I recalled the moments Dave and I shared before I left. Was it only yesterday?

      Dave swung his gaze toward me, making me think he also recalled our time on the driveway.

      Eve kept her lips tight. Her eyes didn’t soften.

      “Okay, I’ll need to check out your story more,” Wilet told Dave. “You can drive yourself to my office and wait for me to finish up here.”

      “I certainly will.”

      “You know where my office is?”

      “I’ve seen it.”

      “I’ll get you two to come by to answer more later, maybe tomorrow.”

      Eve and I had gone to his office more than once. We both nodded.

      The tensed muscles in Dave’s face relaxed. “Thank you so much, Sunny,” Dave said once the detective went inside. From his body’s shift toward me, I thought he might give me a kiss, albeit a light one. Then his eyes shifted toward Eve just like mine did. He stayed where he was.

      All sorts of emergency vehicles were parked on the road in front of Dave’s place and beyond. Seeing them pulled my thoughts back to Mrs. Wilburn, now the dead person inside.

      Neither Eve nor I spoke when we climbed into my truck, and while I drove. I didn’t want to think about what I discovered in that bag and tried to focus on the slim road. I steered us back toward her house, shaking in my shoulders intensifying when I needed to turn down her street. My jaw grew rigid when I rolled past Mrs. Wilburn’s house.

      Only after I’d parked in Eve’s driveway did I let out a breath it felt I’d held since we left the crime scene. That term slid into my mind like poured concrete.

      A hand gripped mine. I tightened my fingers around Eve’s and stared at her frightened eyes that balled up like blue marbles, knowing they reflected mine. The truck’s cabin felt like a space I didn’t dare say anything in now that we were so close to her dead neighbor’s house. Both of us turned toward it. Although it was late afternoon, the days were so long it was easy to see no one was in the yard.

      Eve opened her door and stepped out. I did the same, and we shut our doors without slamming them. I looked next door toward the first window in front that Mrs. Wilburn had so often stared out of, seeming to watch everything Eve did. The curtains hung straight. Not even a slit opened between them. Her pale face—the small dark eyes weren’t staring out at us.

      Eve unlocked her door, and we stepped inside.

      “I miss seeing her there,” I said.

      “Me, too.”

      “She should be watching you, spying on you.”

      Eve was nodding. “And Royce should be standing right behind her, watching over her shoulder.”

      “Of course.” I was also nodding and squeezing her hands. “Oh, my God, he probably doesn’t know.”

      “His mother won’t be coming home,” Eve said as though I had left off the end of my sentence. “Sunny, can you imagine that? A boy learning his mother was murdered?” Tears sprang to her eyes, and I figured she was imagining her own new grandson losing his mother, Eve’s daughter.

      “But if anyone wanted to kill her, why would she end up in that little camp Dave’s bought, of all places?”

      “Yes. Who would have connected her and him together?”

      My twin’s eyes went blank, and I knew she was thinking, like I was, especially when she blinked twice, her present state seeming to register when she stared at me. “The link between those two is us.”

      I grabbed her hands. “And Dave. But he couldn’t have done it.”

      “Absolutely not.” Her gaze shifted aside and then back at me with a different solemn expression. “Why did he want to give you a key to his place?”

      “Oh, just so you and I could go in and look things over while he was at work.”

      “Oh.” Her shoulders lowered as she relaxed.

      “Maybe we can do some digging around and find out more about why Mrs. Wilburn would have been dead in his camp.” I gripped my purse tighter. “I don’t want to be around here when the police arrive to tell Royce.”

      “I don’t either.”

      “Let’s go somewhere so we can think.”

      She shook her head. “I’m going to the gym to work this body out so I don’t need to think.”

      “Good idea.” I gave her neck a quick hug and walked out. Taking a breath, I glanced toward Mrs. Wilburn’s. A squad car pulled up and parked out front. I drove off in the opposite way, not wanting to see her son’s face when he opened the front door and found officers who would tell him somebody murdered his mother.

      A murdered mother. A need struck to visit mine. I would stay around Mom and spend as much time as I could appreciating all of our time together. Another benefit to that plan—she had many cronies who heard lots of gossip about what went on in town. Maybe one of them would help us connect the dots from Eve’s neighbor to our mutual love interest.

      Chapter 4

      Sugar Ledge Manor welcomed me as it would everyone who drove up. The crepe myrtles lent clouds of soft pink, and numerous