Free Swamp Team 3 by Jana DeLeon

so hard she had to put down her beer.  
    “I can’t believe you tried to pass the whole thing off as beading a shirt,” Ally said. “And are you sure it was a bobcat?”
    I stood up and showed her what was left of my tee. “Something far larger than Merlin did this, and it was definitely in the cat family.”
    “It was a bobcat,” Ida Belle said. “There’s plenty of them in the swamps, but this is the only one I know of living in the suburbs. You didn’t know Floyd had a bobcat?”
    Ally frowned. “I try to avoid anything and everything to do with Floyd.”
    “Has he given you trouble?” I asked.
    “Floyd is nothing but trouble.” She shook her head. “He and Mama had a running feud over property lines at the back. Floyd swears that the fence between our lots is thirty feet over into his property. They went to court about it a couple years before Mama got sick. He still contends that the courts only sided with Mama because he was a criminal.”
    “And did they?” I asked.
    “No. Anyone who’s seen the original surveys and plats can tell straight off that the fence is fine.”
    “Thirty feet is an awful lot to claim as a mistake,” I said.
    Ally nodded. “There was a method to his madness. Both properties are narrower up front but branch out as you move toward the rear.”
    “Like a trapezoid?” I asked.
    “Exactly. But Mama’s trapezoid runs right into an inlet of Sinful Bayou. Floyd wanted that inlet in his property line so he could build a boat shed and dock his boat there. To irk him even further, Mama put up a ten-foot board fence across the back of the property. It didn’t even have a gate on the back end.”
    “So as far as Floyd was concerned, she was wasting the space.”
    Ally nodded.  
    “But there’s an iron fence there now.”
    “Yeah, the wooden one took a beating in Hurricane Katrina. Some of the men from church managed to keep it propped up while Mama was sick, but after she moved to the facility in New Orleans, I used some of the insurance money to replace it. The whole thing was one good gust of wind away from being in the bayou, and I would have been responsible for cleanup. I figured a fence with a view increased property value.”
    “Have you had any problems with Floyd?” I asked.
    Ally frowned. “He called the cops once when he thought I was playing my music too loud in the backyard. I was gardening. Carter told me to turn it down a bit, and I’ve worn earbuds ever since.”
    “So no score to settle?”
    Ally’s eyes widened. “By burning down my house? I can’t imagine—I mean, if he was still mad over the property line, wouldn’t he have done that before Mama left?”
    “It does seem a bit of a stretch,” Gertie said.
    “It may if he were a normal person,” I said, “but this is a guy who lives with an attack bobcat.” I’d known my share of psychos. Logical thinking didn’t enter into their decisions if they had an emotional investment in whatever act of terror they decided to engage in.
    “She’s got a point,” Ida Belle said. “Even though we can’t come up with a clear motive, we should still see if he had opportunity.” She looked at Ally. “I don’t suppose you know whether or not he was home when the fire started?”
    Ally shook her head. “The firemen said they knocked but he never answered. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t home, though. It would be just like him to be inside ignoring the entire scene.”
    “So we’re back to the Swamp Bar,” I said. “Oh, goody.”
    “What are you bitching about?” Gertie asked. “The last time I was there, I got shot at.”
    “You stole a boat,” I said. “The last time I was there, I almost drowned, and Carter caught me wearing a garbage bag and little else.”
    Ally’s eyes widened. “Holy crap, you never told me that. Why have you been holding out on the good stuff?”
    “Because vast humiliation is not something I relish sharing.”
    “You should if it’s funny,” Ally said. “If