“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.
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“If you knew what Dexter was up to, why not just dump him?”
She thought about this for a bit. “I think because Dexter was going to be the last time a man used me. After everything