Ida Belle nodded. “Palmer is the reason a lot of people started locking their doors. His visit was the longest month of the year for everyone. The town considered taking up a collection to send his father somewhere on vacation with him for that time.”
“Sounds like it would have been money well spent,” I said.
“It would have been,” Gertie said. “But his father nixed the idea, claiming there was no way he was spending a month locked up in a hotel with ‘that kid.’”
“His own kid?” I asked.
“Some speculation says that’s why he left Palmer’s mother,” Ida Belle said. “She wasn’t ‘into’ discipline and he was tired of fighting her over Palmer’s bad behavior.”
“Not to mention her own,” Gertie said.
“There were rumors,” Ida Belle agreed. “She liked the booze before she was legal age to drink it, and I think she spent more time in NOLA bars than with her husband and son.”
“Until recently,” Gertie said.
“What happened recently?” I asked.
“Marie ran into her at a charity event over in NOLA,” Ida Belle said. “She didn’t even recognize her. Said she’d gotten religion and turned her life around. Took an accounting job with a Baptist church and was busy pushing Jesus on anyone who would listen.”
“It’s a shame it didn’t happen sooner,” I said. “Maybe Palmer wouldn’t be such a douche.”
Gertie nodded. “By the time Palmer hit his teen years, he barely spent a week a year here. The For Sale sign went up on his father’s house his senior year. Rumor is his father had been trying to negotiate an oil job in Venezuela for a while.”
“Probably trying for a viable excuse to not spend time with his son,” Ida Belle said.
“Well, apparently, Palmer hasn’t improved any as an adult,” I said. “Can you believe he hit on me right in front of Carter?”
“Yes.”
They both answered at once.
“All talk of Palmer’s huge personality issues aside,” Ida Belle said, “the bigger problem is that he’s not capable of investigating who drank the last can of soda in his own refrigerator. And I guarantee you he lives alone.”
“Carter asked us to investigate,” I said.
“Like you weren’t already,” Gertie said. “You’ve been on the case ever since you saw Emmaline lying there.”
I nodded. “True. But you see the big advantage here, right? Carter won’t try to prevent us from knowing police business. I know Palmer will be unwilling to let him in on anything, but since it’s his mother we’re talking about, he can’t necessarily keep him completely in the dark, can he?”
“Sure he can,” Ida Belle said. “He’ll just say that revealing confidential information at this point could jeopardize the investigation, and Carter will have to lump it.”
“That blows,” Gertie said.
“Furthermore,” Ida Belle said, “under normal circumstances, having Carter on our side would be a boon to our investigation because we would be able to tap him for information that he has easy access to and we often struggle to get. But in this case, he won’t be able to so much as breathe a word about this case or Palmer will have him up on charges.”
Gertie sighed. “So no backgrounds. No license plate or driver’s license searches. No ME report. Heck, this is business as usual except the guy we have to avoid this time is an idiot and Fortune’s not dating him. Those are really our only advantages.”
I sighed. “I guess I had hoped that he wouldn’t be so obsessed with getting Carter in trouble and might actually be interested in finding the murderer.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Ida Belle said. “But you can bet the first thing he’s going to do isn’t get the ME report or talk to the forensics team. He’s going to run a background on you.”
Gertie frowned. “He knows you were CIA. When he finds out you’re a PI, you’ll be on his watch list right next to Carter.”
“Fortunately for us, PIs don’t have to follow the same rules,” I said. “And we might not have access to information through usual channels, but we have our own. And my guess is they’ll be the first to volunteer to help with the investigation.”
Ida Belle nodded. “You’re thinking about the Heberts.”
My cell phone rang and I looked at the number and smiled. “Speak of the devil.”
“Do they have this place bugged?” Gertie asked.
I shook my head. “I sweep it weekly.”
Gertie shot me a look of dismay.
I answered the phone and Mannie said a quick hello.
“The Heberts heard what happened to Emmaline and want to know how she is,” Mannie said.
I filled him in on what we knew and he was silent for a couple seconds.
“That’s not good,” he said finally. “If she saw who did this…”
“I know,” I said. “Carter will have someone watching her round the clock. Probably himself more often than not. Especially since he’s not allowed on the case.”
“Yes. The Heberts have heard about the unfortunate choice of detective as well. We’ve all assumed you’ll be taking the lead since Carter can’t do so without risking his job. The Heberts would like you to know that they and their resources are at your disposal.”
“I really appreciate it. And I have a feeling those resources will be requested at some point. We’re just starting to put everything together now to figure out where to start.”
“Call any time, day or night, and we will accommodate whatever you need.”
I disconnected and told Ida Belle and Gertie what Mannie had said.
Gertie cocked her head to one side. “Do you ever wonder if you called and said you needed someone killed, that they might accommodate that as well?”
“I’m sort of afraid to go there,” I said.
“For Fortune they would,” Ida Belle said. “In a New York minute. They trust her. She would never ask for such a thing unless the world was a better place if the person on the receiving end was gone.”
“You realize that’s not a short list,” Gertie said.
“Definitely not,” I said. “But they also know I would never ask for something like that. I’ll defend myself or others in a second, but as a civilian now, I prefer to work within the confines of the legal system.”
Gertie stared.
“Okay, maybe loosely, but sort of within,” I said. “Besides, if I thought the only option was eliminating someone, I’d do that myself.”
“Always the best course of action,” Ida Belle said. “Unless you need an alibi.”
“So where do we start?” Gertie asked.
I grabbed my laptop to take some notes. “I think we need to start with the murder victim and make the assumption that Emmaline was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“That makes sense, given that St. Ives was stabbed and Emmaline wasn’t,” Ida Belle said. “But then, wouldn’t that mean that Emmaline didn’t actually see the killer? If she had, wouldn’t he have stabbed her as well?”