In case you missed this week’s action on Twitter and Facebook…
After breakfast, Rarick chopped bell peppers and celery, then loaded more gear into the boat, including four white-paper packages, one dripping with blood.
When Bobby Grim got back on the bayou, Rube and the two Leta called Kat and DJ were hanging a raw chicken on a hook, three feet above the water. Neither of the three had seen him before, and if they had, they wouldn’t recognize him now, under the LSU cap and sunglasses he'd bought from Leta.
He cast a line and pretended to fish, wondering if people caught anything without feet or fangs in this stinking muck.
"What's that bag you're pulling out of the chickens before we hang 'em?" DJ asked.
"Livers and gizzards," Kat said, "Yea, I cook sometimes."
Rarick dropped another set of innards in the gallon-sized Mason jar he'd brought along. "I'll freeze these for crawfish bait later."
"What are you looking at, Rube?"
"That fisherman over there. I've never seen him before, and he doesn't have any bait on his line."
Rarick cranked his motor and disappeared around the bend. Grim saw them looking and decided not to follow. Not that it mattered. He couldn't finish the job until Rarick hunted alone.
Leta said the kids would be gone before dark. He hoped that meant on their way back to New Orleans. Bobby headed in, climbed back up to the tree stand and was just dosing when Rarick, Kat, and DJ got back from baiting the traps.
"Okay, I'm getting sick of this little water safari," Kat said. "When do we go to the bank?"
"Be patient. This evening, we've gotta circle around, pop any gators that took our bait, then skin'em up. If I leave the swamp before then, folks will know something’s up. Tomorrow you two will get money and get out of my hair."
"Besides, Kat, I'm starting to like this," DJ said, "Rube, maybe you can let me shoot one of them when we go back?"
Rube Rarick lifted his jar of chicken innards from the boat. "I suppose that's possible." Then he and DJ followed Kat inside.
At the bathroom door, Rarick said, "After we wash up, if you want, ya'll can watch TV, while I'm back there, finishing up the sauce and fixing rice."
"You got cable out here?" Kat said.
"I got better, satellite. So many channels, you won't get through them all before time to get back in the boat."
In the kitchen, Rarick drained blood from the innards jar into a cup, then he placed the jar in the fridge and the cup on the window sill.
"What's behind here?" Rarick turned from his rice to see Kat pointing at the extra room with it's shiny, new padlock.
"Nothing, just storage, paint and such, mostly. I thought you we're watching TV?"
"We can't find the remote." Kat watched Rarick spoon rice into three bowls.
"Look on the mantle, by the mounted squirrel." Rarick turned the knob and lowered the gas flame under the cast-iron pot.
"DJ," Kat yelled into the front room, "it's by that rat with the acorn. Get it, find some kind of movie or something, anything but your frigging rap music or Animal Planet."
After Kat walked back to the front, Rarick took the cup from the sill and poured chicken blood over the rice in the first bowl. With a ladle of red, meaty roux, he covered the blood and rice in the first bowl first, then the rice in the other two. "Okay, ya'll come get your bowls," he said. "when you find out how good eating can be, you'll go home and slap your momma."
DJ and Kat walked in, and Rarick handed Kat the plate of crackers surrounding the tainted bowl. DJ got a regular plate and bowl, leaving the last for Rarick. "Ya'll want wine or tea with yours?"
For those just joining the party, here’s what we’ve been doing: In the tradition of the fast-production pulps of old, we’ve got a wild plot and some zany, but dangerous characters, and through Twitter and Facebook, readers are giving me hints, helping me create a crime fiction short story in posts of less than 140 characters.
Our plot again: When Wild Child Kat LeRouge hooks up with Bad Boy DJ Ponchatoula, they find out the hard way that some New Orleans cab drivers carry guns. Desperate for safer income, Kat decides to blackmail a crooked Louisiana politician—a scheme that brings this modern day Bonnie and Clyde face to face with CIA Black-Ops Baddie Bobby Grim.
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