Page 43 of Rowe

“Y'all looking for trouble.”

“We're looking for her.”

“Same thing, depending who finds who first.” She walked away before they could ask anything else.

Word of the alligator reached the other teams and was immediately exaggerated. Within an hour, Alphonse was twelve feet long. By lunch, there were three alligators. By nightfall, one man claimed a whole road had moved because it was actually an alligator.

The humiliations accumulated.

One team spent half a day searching an abandoned clinic only to discover it had been a veterinarian's office. Another interrogated a shrimp-boat captain who answered every question with a question until the men forgot what they had asked.

Three vehicles became trapped behind a tractor towing a carnival ride shaped like a purple dragon. One man lost a shoe in mud. Another lost a handgun over the side of a pirogue and was informed by the boatman that the catfish were now armed.

Still, amid the foolishness, there were signs someone was managing the chaos.

A pair of men reached a crossroads minutes after receiving directions from a store owner. There, a fresh handwritten sign pointed BELLE FLEUR left. They turned left and drove twenty-one miles before the pavement ended at a field of sunflowers.

When they returned, the sign was gone.

Another team found Mara's photograph pinned to a cypress tree with a fishing hook. On the back, someone had written three words.

WRONG WAY, BOYS.

Victor studied a phone image of the message until his face went white around the mouth.

“They're playing with us.” Emilio said nothing. Victor jabbed at the photograph. “She has help.”

That much was undeniable. Whether Mara herself was arranging the misdirection or people were protecting her without being asked, Victor could no longer tell. The uncertainty bothered him more than open resistance. An enemy in front of him could be threatened. An enemy hidden in forty kitchens and a hundred family connections could not.

He ordered the men to stop asking politely. The order made matters worse.

At a marina, two Rossi men tried to intimidate an old boat mechanic named Boudreaux, who responded by turning on an air compressor so he could not hear them. When they unplugged it, he started a pressure washer. When they shut off the water, he climbed onto a shrimp boat and began its engine.

Finally, they shouted over the diesel noise.

“WHERE IS BELLE FLEUR MEDICAL CENTER?” Boudreaux cupped a hand to his ear.

“WHAT?”

“BELLE FLEUR!”

“BEAUTIFUL FLOWER? THANK YOU!”

“MEDICAL CENTER!”

“I'M FEELING FINE!”

One Rossi man climbed aboard. Boudreaux immediately backed the boat away from the dock. The man jumped for land, missed, and landed waist-deep in water. Boudreaux waved cheerfully.

At a church supper, another group tried stronger methods and discovered forty-seven grandmothers could form a defensive perimeter faster than trained security. Nobody touched the Rossi men. Nobody had to. They were surrounded by casserole dishes, folding chairs, hard eyes, and questions about whether their mothers had raised them correctly. A tiny woman with a wooden spoon pointed at the door.

“Out.”

Five armed men went out. In the parking lot, one whispered that they should return. Nobody moved. Inside, applause broke out.

The search entered its third day with Victor barely sleeping.

He had maps spread across the counting room. Red pins marked sightings that had proved false. Yellow pins marked roads that did not go where locals claimed. Blue pins marked places with the words Belle Fleur in their names, including the beauty and taxidermy shop, a nursery, a wedding venue, a crawfish farm, a laundromat, and a miniature horse named Belle Fleur who belonged to a seven-year-old girl.