Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery, Book 1) (9 page)

BOOK: Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery, Book 1)
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Ida Belle nodded. “All sorts of things rose out of the ground during Edgar. Why, my mother’s coffin popped straight up out of the grave and cruised down Main Street. I always said you couldn’t keep Mother down.”

“And your mother always did love Francine’s pudding.”

I sighed. I was going to need a lot more coffee.

Chapter Seven

“The first thing we need is another suspect,” I said as I poured one more cup of coffee. “Someone that a jury would believe could have killed Harvey. Juries come with their own prejudices, so we should play to them. Pick a man that’s scary looking, slightly odd in behavior, and has more firearms than any one person should need.”
 

Unless they were CIA agents.

Gertie and Ida Belle looked at each other, then back at me.

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“That describes pretty much every able-bodied man in Sinful,” Ida Belle said.

“Seriously?”

“Well,” Gertie said, “except for Carter. He’s got the firearms, but he’s kinda cute, in an aggravating sort of way.”

“The aggravating part, I’ve noticed,” I said. “You lost me on the cute.”

“Give it some time, honey,” Gertie said.

I was just about to tell her I didn’t have that much time when someone knocked on my front door.
 

“Are you expecting anyone?” Gertie asked.

“Who would I be expecting? You’re the only people here that I know except—”

Ida Belle sucked in a breath as I stalked out of the kitchen and to the front door.
 

Deputy LeBlanc stood on my front porch, but rather than wearing his usual semi bored/amused expression, this time he looked angry.

“I need to speak to Gertie and Ida Belle. Are they here?”

I stepped back and waved one hand at the kitchen. This did not look good for the home team.

I hurried behind him as he stomped down the hall and into the kitchen. He stood there in the middle of the room, glaring down at them.

“Where is Marie?”

Their eyes widened.
 

“At home?” Gertie said.

“No. She’s not at home, or I wouldn’t be asking, and no one has seen her since Saturday. Tell me where you’re hiding her now, and I’ll let it all slide.”

“But—” Gertie started to reply, but Ida Belle put a hand across her mouth.

“You have got some nerve,” Ida Belle said, “marching in here and accusing us of such a thing. And even if Marie isn’t at home—even if we knew where she was—explain to me how that’s a crime.”

“You know darn good and well why it’s a crime.”

“Actually,” I said, “unless Marie is under arrest, it’s not a crime to know where she is and not tell you.”

He shot me a dirty look. “This is none of your business.”

And that pissed me all the way off.

“You’re threatening my guests in my house,” I said. “So unless you’re planning on arresting someone, I want you to get out.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” he said. “Whatever these two are up to, you don’t want any part of it.”

“All they’re ‘up to’ is a cup of coffee.” I waved toward the front of the house.

Deputy LeBlanc shot one more look of warning at Gertie and Ida Belle and left, slamming the front door behind him.

“Oh my God—” Gertie started.

“What the hell—” Ida Belle chimed in.

“Hold up!” I interrupted before they got too wound up. “Do those looks of absolute consternation and confusion mean neither of you knew Marie was missing?”

“We had no idea,” Gertie said. “I swear it. I mean, she wasn’t at church on Sunday, but we figured with the bone being found and all, she was just lying low.”

“This is not good,” Ida Belle said.

“No shit, it’s not good,” I agreed. “It makes her look guilty as hell.”

“Well…,” Gertie said.
 

I waved a hand in aggravation. “The fact that she probably
is
guilty is not the point. The point is that it does no good to divert suspicion to someone else if Marie is running around practically waving banners that say ‘I did it.’”

“I agree this is not optimal,” Ida Belle said.

“Not optimal?” I stared. “It’s a friggin’ disaster. Do either of you have any idea where she might have gone?”

They both shook their heads.
 

I felt my exasperation rise and cursed my father for ingraining the coward challenge in my psyche. My helping Ida Belle and Gertie was all his fault, and not at all what I’d signed up for when I agreed to come here. Knitting would have been a breeze compared with this. I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself that they were old and their only life experience was this God-forsaken town. I needed to do the difficult thinking.

“Okay,” I said, “if Marie was in trouble, who would she call?”

“Probably not her daughter,” Gertie said. “She lives out of state and Marie wouldn’t want to worry her. And with her cousin working for the sheriff, well, she could hardly get her involved.”

Ida Belle nodded. “She’s right. Marie doesn’t have much family. The only people she would have called outside of those two is me or Gertie, and you have my word, neither one of us has heard from her since Gertie talked to her on Saturday.”

“Well, it is pointless to continue finding suspects until we locate Marie and get her to stop drawing attention to herself. I can come up with some sort of story for her to tell about her disappearance, but it won’t do any good unless we can get Marie back here to tell it.”

“Harvey had that camp out on Number Two,” Gertie said. “Do you think she went there?”

“Number Two?”

“It’s an island out in the swamp north of here,” Ida Belle said. “It’s called Number Two Island because the whole place has a rather foul smell.”

“And people intentionally go there? Pitch tents there and camp?”

“Not a tent camp,” Ida Belle said. “Camps are buildings—probably closest to a cabin.”
 

“The fishing is great on Number Two,” Gertie said. “Just dab a little Mentholatum in your nostrils and you’re good for several hours.”

“I’ll pass.” In no way, shape, or form did my helping them have to include traipsing around in the swamp on a stinky island that was probably surrounded by my only local predatory equal, the alligator.
 

“You can’t pass,” Gertie said. “Even if we find Marie, we’ll never be able to convince her to return to Sinful unless she meets you. You’re our ace in the hole.”

“That’s interesting, considering I just arrived two days ago. What would you have done to help Marie if I hadn’t come to town?”

“I hear Brazil is nice this time of year,” Gertie said.

I sighed. And it probably didn’t smell like crap.

###

Ida Belle insisted that I had nothing suitable to wear to Number Two and that a trip to the general store was in order. I spent a very scary half mile clutching the back door handle of Gertie’s Cadillac while she herded the monstrous sedan down the center of the street. Other vehicles pulled onto curbs and into driveways to avoid her.
 

“Damn it, Gertie,” Ida Belle complained from the passenger’s seat. “You’re driving without your glasses again. You’re going to kill someone.”

Like me.

“I’ve got on my glasses,” Gertie said.

“You’ve got on your reading glasses.”

“All I need is reading glasses.”

“That’s not what Dr. Morgan said.”

Gertie frowned. “What the heck does he know? I changed the man’s diapers, and now he’s telling me I have old eyes. Well, I’m not having any of it. My eyes were perfectly fine for reading until he convinced me to wear reading glasses. Now I can’t even read the label on canned goods without having these things on.”

Ida Belle looked back at me and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it—the
glasses
are making your vision worse.”

Finally, we pulled up at the curb of the general store, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I strolled inside. I hoped Gertie wasn’t doing the boat driving, too. An older, stocky man at a counter at the back of the store greeted me as I walked inside.

“Welcome,” he said. “You must be Marge’s niece. I’m Walter and this is my store.”

Six foot one. Two hundred fifty-six pounds. Good vision but high cholesterol.

“Nice to meet you, Walter,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ve been putting together some supplies for you.”

I looked back at Gertie and Ida Belle, who shook their heads.
 

“What kind of supplies?”

He pulled a pair of silencing headphones from beneath the cabinet and set them on the counter. “Had to dig through storage to find these. Not much call for silencing with Sinful hunters, but I had one pair anyway. They’re a little dusty, but good quality.”

He bent over and picked up a cardboard box and set it on the counter. “That should be everything you need for today.”

I peered in the box and saw hip waders, work gloves, camouflage pants and T-shirt, rope, a hunting knife, and a rifle.
 

I looked up at him. “I like you.”

Walter laughed and shot a look at Ida Belle. “If only all females were so easy to please.”

Ida Belle marched up to the counter and glared at Walter. “I demand to know who gave you information on this young woman.”

I looked at Walter, who winked at me. “My guess,” I said, “is he’s been talking to Deputy LeBlanc.”

“Yep,” Walter said. “Came in here yesterday laughing over your issue with the frogs, but he wasn’t laughing today. Came in here mad as heck over Marie being missing.”

“Saw that myself this morning,” I said.

“Well, I figured since Marie is missing and Ida Belle and Gertie was at your house darned near before coffee time that they was roping you into helping them with some nonsense. Since Harvey had that camp over on Number Two, I figured that’s where they’d want you to go look with them.”

He pulled a tab from the cash register drawer and handed it to Ida Belle. “I put everything but the headphones on your tab as I figure that stuff is for Sinful Ladies’ business. I gassed up my boat and docked it around back. Put a tank of gas on your tab as well.”
 

He handed a second tab to me. “That’s for the headphones. Just sign and we can settle up later when you come back for more supplies. You’ll want to get out to Number Two before the breeze picks up. I’m throwing in some Mentholatum for free, just ’cause I feel sorry for you.”

I put the headphones in the box with the rest of the supplies. “I feel sorry for me, too.”

I followed Ida Belle and Gertie out the back entrance of the store and down to the boat dock.

“Darn man has always had a smart mouth on him,” Ida Belle complained.

“Well, you
have
turned down his marriage proposals for over forty years,” Gertie said. “He was bound to get testy about it sooner or later.”

Forty years! I didn’t have that kind of interest or dedication to anything.
 

“Walter knows good and well I’m not about to have a man around twenty-four/seven trying to tell me what to do. If he hasn’t processed ‘no’ in forty years, then it’s his own fault.”

I eyeballed the tiny scrap of floating aluminum and hoped like hell there were life vests available. “Um, who exactly is driving the boat?”

“I am,” Ida Belle said.
 

Gertie started to protest, and Ida Belle held a hand up to stop her.
 

“Don’t even go there,” Ida Belle said. “When you bring your glasses, I’ll consider riding with you again, but not a minute before.”

Gertie crossed her arms over her chest. “Then I guess you’ll be walking to the meeting tonight.”

“Me and my corns will manage the two blocks just fine.” Ida Belle looked over at me. “That equipment isn’t doing you any good in the box. Go back in the store and change clothes. And get a move on. The bouquet of Number Two tends to rise with the temperature.”

Great.

I trudged back to the store wondering what in the world I’d done to deserve all this. Then I remembered that I’d killed the brother of an arms dealer with a stiletto and everything made sense again. If this was the way karmic justice worked, I was going to make darn sure I didn’t kill the wrong person in the future.

“Changing room is on the left,” Walter called out, not even looking up from his newspaper as I walked inside the store.

I located the changing room and pulled on the camouflage pants, T-shirt and hip waders, then turned to look at myself in the mirror. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d seen in my life. The hip waders bloused out like a clown suit, complete with camo suspenders. All I needed was a litter of Chihuahuas to carry around in there and I’d be ready for a second career option.

I walked out of the dressing room and up to the counter. Walter lowered his paper and gave me the once-over, then shook his head.
 

BOOK: Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery, Book 1)
2.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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