Sauntering up to Bull, she leaned an arm on the counter and offered him a small smirk.
Up close, there was no denying she was real pretty.
Until she opened her mouth.
And there they were, broken, jagged teeth that had been rotted away by years of poor oral hygiene and meth abuse.
She was a Swamper.
Despite her bad teeth, she still oozed sex. The body language. The slow blink of seductive eyes. The lick of her tongue across plump lips. She gave Animal an interested smirk before turning to Bull.
“My name is Vicki-Marie. I’m Snake’s sister.”
Bull nodded but said nothing.
“My brother is a stubborn mule. Too damn stubborn for his own good. He don’t want to back down in front of you on account of your past. But I don’t have no problem with the Kings.” She winked at Animal and kept her lusty, hooded eyes on him as she added, “I’m all about keeping things real friendly.”
While she and Animal made eyes at each other, Bull remained focused.
“You want to tell us what you know?” he said. “What you think it is that your brother didn’t tell us.”
Vicki-Marie dragged her eyes away from Animal long enough to answer.
“Your Vander Quinn got herself into financial trouble with Laurent on account of her not paying for her product.” Vicki-Marie was careful with the words she used. Product was code for meth. She was only going to give us enough to get us off the Swampers backs and wasn’t going to incriminate herself or any of her family in the process. “She gave him her car as a down payment on her debt, which he in turn sold to my brother. That was why you saw her car there. It was paid for fair and square.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Bull asked.
“It’s true. They brought it to Snake and offered him a good price.”
“Now why on Earth would Laurent do that?”
“Said he needed the money.”
“After he killed Vander Quinn?”
“You misunderstand me, Bull.” She said his name so seductively even I felt it hit my cock. “She was with him.”
You could feel the realization settle over all of us at the same time.
“She came with him to sell her car to your brother?” I asked, surprised.
She nodded. “Wanted to sell it real quick too. Didn’t say why.”
“Now why would Vander come with Laurent to sell the Mustang to Snake? The car she’d just given him?” Ruger asked.
I had a feeling I knew why. It was slowly starting to piece together.
She shrugged like she couldn’t care less.
“You know the sheriff’s department is looking for that car, and it’s only a matter of time before they find out it’s there,” Bull said.
Vicki-Marie looked at him suspiciously. “Oh really? And how so?”
“A bright red limited edition mustang rolling into town?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “You don’t think someone noticed it?”
She leaned her elbows further back on the bar. The move pushed her boobs out, and Animal’s eyes almost fell out of his head.
“Probably,” she said. “But by the time I get back, that pony will already be in pieces and sold.”
That didn’t surprise me.
“This guy Laurent, is he the murdering type?” Ruger asked.
Vicki-Marie fixed him with her own raised eyebrow. “Oh, honey, in the swamplands, you do what you gotta do to survive. Probably everybody got a bit of murder in them.”
“So where do we find this Laurent?” Bull asked.
“Oh, you won’t find him now. Let’s just say, when you piss off the wrong people, you get up close and personal with the gators.”
“You say it like you know someone was out to make him disappear,” Ruger said.
She shrugged. “Let’s just say he’s been acting shady lately. Hadn’t been around as much. He was one of Snake’s best salesmen, and then all of a sudden he wasn’t as available.”
Salesmen was another one of those carefully chosen words.
“Did your brother think he was selling someone else’s product in town?” I asked.
Drug kingpins and dealers were territorial. You didn’t peddle anything in town that was direct competition to their product. If Laurent had gotten entrepreneurial and started selling the competition’s product, it would be a good reason for Snake to feed him to the gators.
And if Vander was witness to any of this, it was no surprise she ended up dead in the river.
CASSIDY
Chance gave me explicit instructions to not leave the clubhouse. But the idea of retrieving my necklace from the cabin chipped away at me until I was completely convinced it was the right thing to do. If I took his truck, I could be there and back before he was any the wiser. And like Cade had suggested, maybe the home invasion had nothing to do with Barrett and everything to do with the cannabis fields. That would mean I wasn’t in any danger at all, which meant my little excursion out to the river was hardly dangerous.