Quite the Catch by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy Page A

and
picked up her grandfather’s old Zebco rod and reel.
    Tina
made no effort to be quiet or to blend into the surroundings. She whistled an
old tune as she shuffled toward the river bank, doing her best imitation of an
old man’s paddle-footed gait. With her shoulders humped, she hoped they’d take
her for what she pretended to be, a senior citizen casting a line in the water.
In high school, she’d been part of several drama productions, and in college
she had a supporting lead role, so she called on whatever acting skills she
might possess. Although she kept her head down and did her best to appear to be
staring out over the river, Tina cut her eyes to the right to watch the men. Maybe
they weren’t the same ones but her suspicion increased as she eavesdropped on
their conversation without remorse.
    “Look
what I found,” one of them called as he lifted a filthy, weather-faded shirt
from the weeds. “You think it’s his?”
    “Shit
if I know,” his friend replied. “I don’t really remember what the son of a
bitch wore. I want him, not his fuckin’ clothes.”
    The
third man spoke up. “He’s dead, got to be. That shot nailed him and the fall
should’ve killed him anyway. I won’t be happy until we turn up his dead body,
though. Then we can be sure.”
    “Yeah,
Curley, that’d be best. Lonnie’s gettin ’ antsy
hanging around camp but now he’s afraid to split in case he gets caught.”
    “He’d
better stay put. If the marshal’s dead, then no one will know about our camp. If
he’ll hold out another week or so, then he can go and no one will be the
wiser.”
    The
one who had found the shirt walked downstream and plucked something else from
the edge of the river. “Here’s a shoe. I bet it’s his. Where else would it come
from?”
    Curley
snorted. “River’s running high, you idiots, so it could be from any damn place.
Maybe it’s his and maybe it ain’t . Keep searching. I
want his fuckin’ body.”
    “Probably
still in the river,” one of the other men said. “They’ll pull a floater out
somewhere downstream and it’ll be him.”
    “And
he’ll have no identification,” Curley retorted. “So it’ll take awhile for the authorities to figure out who he was. That’s
good for us and for Lonnie.”
    “We ain’t doing much good here so let’s move on,” the
second man said. “Besides, we’ve got company.”
    Tina
watched as the trio turned to stare at her. She reeled in her line and cast it
again, the way she’d watched Gramps do many times. Her focus remained on the
water.
    “Just
some old fart,” Curley said. “Benson, you’re fuckin’ paranoid. He must be deaf
as a board anyway ‘ cause he hasn’t even noticed us.”
    “He
might.”
    “ Naw , I doubt it. He’s out fishing, probably to get away
from his woman. Let’s get the hell out of here, though, before he does catch
on.”
    “If
he notices, I’ll just shoot the poor old bastard,” Benson said. “Then he won’t
blab about us or the way we were going over everything lookin ’
for something.”
    Curley
punched Benson with enough force to put him on the ground. “Fuck no! That’s the
surefire way to draw more heat. The fucking cop’s dead. Kill someone else and
Lonnie may not be able to get away after all. And if he’s caught now, we’re all
in a shitting mess together because we helped him.”
    “Aided
and abetted,” the third man said.
    “Shut
up, Jim,” Curley said. “Let’s go.”
    The
men piled into the old trucks and peeled out, spraying gravel across the lot. Tina
held her breath until they traveled down the road far enough that she could no
longer hear the engines. When she exhaled, her legs shook, aftereffect of the
close encounter with the wicked men. She had no doubt they were the same who
were helping the fugitive Joshua had been tracking, or
the ones who’d pursued him. If they’d realized she was a woman, not an old man,
she could have been in trouble. Her purse, with the pistol,