to draw attention to myself. My record…being in the same location…it don’t look good. I promised Whiskey I was going to do everything straight when I got out last time. It’s a promise I intend to keep.”
“Okay,” I said. “As a professional, I observe the rules of client confidentiality. No one will know you’ve hired me unless you tell them.”
Nickel’s relief was apparent. “Thanks. I really appreciate it. Do I sign a contract or something?”
He pulled a wad of hundreds from his pocket. “How much do I give you? I have two thousand here but I can get more.”
We all stared.
“I promise I didn’t take it from the Swamp Bar,” he said, reading our minds. “I sold my Harley.”
“You loved that bike,” Gertie said.
He shrugged. “It’s just a bike. I can get another one. But whoever did this to Molly has to pay.”
“I’ll take a thousand dollars on retainer,” I said. “Let me go print up a contract. It will only take a minute.”
As I headed for my office, warring emotions coursed through me. Excitement over a new case. Sadness that the case involved the death of someone I think I would have really liked if I’d had the opportunity to get to know her. Anger at whoever had taken her away from the people who cared about her. And just a tiny bit of resignation over having to tell Carter that I had an official reason to be in the middle of his investigation.
But of all the things I felt, a desire for justice was at the top of the list.
Nickel signed the contract, collected a receipt for the retainer, and then headed off. I wanted to question him more but Whiskey had called looking for him, so he needed to get back to the bar before his excuses ran out. We promised that if it ever came up, we’d tell Whiskey that Nickel had been out that day looking for Molly same as we were. It was sort of true. He’d been looking to find her killer, anyway, by hiring me.
The back door had barely closed behind him when Gertie threw her hands in the air.
“All that running and sweating and getting burned by metal and Nickel had her name all along,” Gertie said.
“Don’t forget the bear,” Ida Belle said.
“Or the giant rats,” I said. The nutria had still been the worst part of the day as far as I was concerned.
“I think those nutria are going to be the least of your worries,” Ida Belle said.
I blew out a breath. “Yeah, Carter isn’t going to be happy, but it is what it is. We both know that my work might overlap his. As long as I don’t break the law, it’s not his concern.”
“Ha!” Gertie said. “If you didn’t break the law, Carter would hold a mirror in front of your mouth to see if you were still breathing.”
“I attempt to follow the rules,” I said. “Sinful just makes it hard.”
Gertie nodded. “That reasoning has been the primary defense in a lot of court proceedings.”
“How’s it working out for people?” I asked.
“Better than you might think,” Gertie said. “But I don’t know that you’re going to be able to pull off the uneducated fisherman routine as well as others.”
“That might be a stretch,” I agreed and grabbed my cell phone. “Let me try this Angel and see if we can arrange to talk. I figure this is best done in person. I want to get a look at her face and how she acts.”
Ida Belle nodded. “Hard to get a read on people you don’t know over the phone.”
The call went to voice mail, so I left a message. Nickel had said Angel worked as a waitress so there was a good chance she was at work, it being well into dinner. Hopefully, she’d call me back by tomorrow morning and I could line up an interview.
“I just can’t believe how all this turned out,” Gertie said. “Never in a million years would I come up with Nickel and Molly as friends.”
“Me either,” I said. “It does make me wonder about something, though.”
“What’s that?” Ida Belle asked.
“Nickel telling Molly about Dexter hitting on other women,” I said. “I’m sure she knew he wasn’t making it up, so why keep that guy around?”
“No idea,” Ida Belle said.
“Maybe so she could whup up on him in that cage,” Gertie said. “He was mad as heck when we saw him at her house the other day. I bet given an