to do, I suppose.”
Ida Belle glanced at me and I gave her a nod.
“Well, we’re going to get out of your hair,” Ida Belle said and we all rose. “Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.”
“Thanks,” Tiffany said. “I really appreciate the offer and the food. Gertie’s casseroles are legendary in Sinful. It will be nice to finally have one.”
She walked us to the door and we headed out and climbed into the SUV. I glanced back at the house and saw the blinds in the front window snap shut.
“That was awkward,” I said as we drove away.
“Incredibly,” Gertie agreed. “That girl acts like she’s fifteen, not twenty-five.”
“She didn’t seem very upset,” I said.
“Not upset at all,” Ida Belle said.
“I got the impression she married Gil for the money,” I said. “Is that the local take?”
“There was talk,” Gertie said, “that her family situation wasn’t all that grand. Mind you, I don’t have a reliable source for that and was never curious enough to ask, but the general consensus was she married Gil to get away from her stepfather.”
Ida Belle frowned. “It wouldn’t be the first time a young woman married an older man to escape an abusive situation.”
“No,” I agreed. “But it gives her motive. Now that the money is hers, she’s free to have a relationship with whomever she wants.”
“Including making another run at Liam,” Gertie said.
“That definitely occurred to me,” I said. “But where I get stumped is the body in the park. That girl is small and doesn’t spend any time in the gym. No way she could have gotten Gil’s body on that horse. And anyway, what point would it serve? The carjacking case will go cold quickly with no leads, and insurance and the estate will settle up. This whole Headless Horseman thing could delay all of that.”
“That’s a good point,” Ida Belle said. “And really the crux of the matter. I think if we knew why someone put Gil up on that horse we’d have the whole thing solved.”
Gertie sighed. “Have you ever noticed that we’re always chasing down the why? It’s exhausting. I’d like to have just one case where someone is killed, we know why, and it’s a matter of tracking down the killer.”
“That wouldn’t be much of an investigation,” I said. “When would we run from bears, or have car chases, or get shot at, or knock butthead cops into porta-johns?”
Gertie brightened. “That’s true. I would definitely miss the action. I mean, things have picked up a bit on the personal end since I started dating Jeb but there’s no way his bad hips could offer up the workout I get when we’re on a case. Or the creativity, for that matter. I was thinking about buying a book—”
“Nope!” Ida Belle held up a hand. “We had an agreement.”
“That was only for the first date,” Gertie said. “And I still haven’t talked about it, except for the ending up in the hospital part.”
“That’s not how I remember the agreement,” Ida Belle said. “Sexy-time talk is banned. We are not those kind of girlfriends.”
Gertie sighed. “But that means Fortune will never tell us about Carter.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you those kinds of details about Carter even before Ida Belle brought down the ban hammer,” I said.
“You guys are no fun,” Gertie said.
“Well, you’ll never really know that, will you?” Ida Belle said.
“Tease,” Gertie said.
“I can tell you some good gossip on the personal side of my life, though,” I said. “Assuming you still want to know why Emmaline and Carlos are no longer dating.”
“Why?”
“Heck yeah!”
They both responded at once.
I laughed. “You two want to bet on it?”
Ida Belle shook her head. “We’d both be betting on it being Carter.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” I said. “But apparently, it was both more mundane and yet more interesting than Carter putting the strong-arm on the man. You remember I told you about those paintings I saw when I went through Emmaline’s house after the break-in?”
“Yeah,” Gertie said. “You thought they were really good.”
I nodded. “I don’t know crap about art but they looked awesome to me. Well, apparently, they were really good. So good that a gallery in New Orleans is going to put on a show for Emmaline.”
“Wow!”
“That’s incredible!”
“It is,” I agreed. “Emmaline told me that before she met Carter’s dad, she was going to be an artist, but then she got married and put all that aside. So when she took the class and met