“So that’s what the hell’s been smelling it up back there. I thought Leland had been eating tacos again.”
That was Joey. How the hell had I not heard him and Sam come in?
Leland glared at him. “Dead people don’t smell like—”
“Shut up.” I yelled. Everyone stopped speaking instantly and looked at me. “Sam and Joey, close things down up here. Leland, come with me. We’re going to take a look.”
Leland glanced toward the door. “I… um… I don’t know if I can—”
“You’ll manage. Let’s go.”
Leland hadn’t been kidding when he said the body had been there a while. When I opened the trunk, the smell was overpowering. I had to turn away and gather myself. Leland ran back outside to be sick. I probably shouldn’t have forced him to come back.
When I’d composed myself, I turned back to the contents of the trunk and froze. The hat on the corpse’s head belonged to my brother. It was one my grandmother had bought for him at Jazz Fest.
The body looked too muscular to be Travis, but I hadn’t seen him in years. Bile rose in my throat as I forced myself to turn the body over.
“Oh, thank God!”
“What?” Leland called as he rushed back inside.
“I thought…” I couldn’t even say it. “It’s not who I thought it was.” I did know the man, though. It was Rob Dumaine. A long time ago we’d been close friends, then he’d betrayed me. He must have betrayed someone else too because the bullet wounds in his forehead and chest let me know he hadn’t died of natural causes. I grabbed the hat off his head and slammed the trunk.
Leland jumped. “Sorry… uh… I… Should I go?”
“Yes, go on home. Have a drink or several. I’m sure you need it.”
He glanced toward the car, then back at me. “Don’t you need some help… uh… dealing with this?”
“I’ll handle it.” I might be willing to believe Marley didn’t know about the note, but the body? The fucking asshole had set me up. I had no doubt whoever had sent the threat wanted to escalate things by making me the number one suspect in Rob’s murder. He’d visited me at the shop about a month ago, and I’d threatened him in front of plenty of witnesses.
Whomever it was, I’d make them pay. I really didn’t need this shit right now—as if anyone ever needed a murder rap. I’d finally gotten my—mostly legal—business going solidly after my stint in prison. I’d even made a few connections while I was in there. The only good thing that had come from being locked up.
I liked my job. Working on cars was soothing to me. Sure, sometimes I was involved in what was basically stealing from the rich to sell to the also rich, but I was okay with that. I was careful, though. I never intended to set foot in prison again, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to let some asshole try to pin a murder on me.
I shoved Travis’s hat in a plastic bag and stuck it under the sink in the bathroom. No one would look in there, and I’d grab it as soon as I was back that night. I knew I should just get rid of it along with the car and the body, but I wanted to figure out why he’d been wearing my brother’s hat. Had it been done on purpose to scare me? Was it a coincidence? Had Rob ended up with it after he’d dumped my brother once he was no longer useful?
I headed back to the office. Leland and Joey were gone, but Sam was there waiting for me.
“I want details.”
I’d known she would. “It’s Rob.”
Her eyes went huge. “Oh fuck.”
“Yeah, but I’m going to take care of it.”
“I can help you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to involve you anymore than you have to be.”
She scowled. “I know how stubborn you are, so I won’t offer again, but I hope you know you can call on me.”
“I do. Thank you.”
She held my gaze. “Be careful. I mean it.”
“Always.”
She headed out the door. I waited until her car pulled out of the lot before going out to close the front gate and secure it.
Then I called one of the few other people I trusted implicitly. Ambrose was Corbin and Remington’s cousin, but he didn’t regularly take part in the family business. We’d gotten to know each other as kids because he liked to exasperate his twin brother, Dax, by spending lots of time with their uncle, who was known to all of us out in the bayou as Crazy Etienne.
We remained close in our teens, then Ambrose joined the army right out of high school, impressed the hell out of his commander, and served on a special forces team for eight years. I don’t know what happened to him in those years, but ever since he’d returned home, he’d hid out in the bayou in Etienne’s old shack, rarely talking to anyone other than Dax.