Soldiers of Fortune

Copyright 2015 by Jana DeLeon

Published by Jana DeLeon

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Chapter One

At 7:00 a.m., on a perfectly good Thursday, I stared at the mass of people on Main Street in dismay. The Fourth of July is cause for a big holiday celebration in many places, but when you combine the Fourth with a contested mayoral election, in Sinful, Louisiana, it’s apparently cause for mass chaos. I dodged people shouting, snow cone stands, children screaming, and people hanging streamers until I reached Francine’s Café. I hurried inside, expecting to see a similar scene, but was pleasantly surprised to find the regular early-morning breakfast crowd in their usual seats.

I smiled and headed for my corner table, waving at Ally as I crossed the café. She popped over with coffee a minute later. “Given what I saw outside, I figured this place would be a madhouse.”
 

“So did Francine,” Ally said, “which is why she doubled the prices on everything and has forbidden anyone from only ordering coffee.”

“And she gets away with that?” I definitely appreciated the strategy, but couldn’t fathom her stance not causing a riot.

“Most everyone is scared of Francine,” Ally said. “If she closed up shop, half the people in Sinful wouldn’t have a good meal again. And she gets offers all the time from restaurants in New Orleans. Bakeries would kill for her banana pudding recipe.”

“I bet Celia’s not afraid of her.”

Ally frowned. “You’re right there, and with her being elected mayor, there’s going to be nothing but trouble. Any news on the election recount?”

“Marie has hired an auditing firm out of New Orleans to do the job. It will take several days, though.”

“In several days, Aunt Celia could bring this entire town to the brink of insanity.”

“Given that it’s mostly already there, that’s not exactly a big leap.”

“True, but Celia’s brand of insanity is more…mean than most.”

I nodded. Ally’s aunt was the equivalent to a bipolar cat lady. Lived alone, didn’t like anyone and they didn’t like her, and her mood and allegiance shifted by the minute. Just a couple of weeks ago, I’d saved her life and she actually seemed grateful. One incident with wieners and hound dogs, and she promised to run me out of town. Today she might be knitting blankets for seniors and tomorrow she’d be calling a group of Girl Scouts ugly and fat. I’d given up trying to figure out what made her tick. If Gertie and Ida Belle hadn’t figured it out in fifty-plus years, I certainly wasn’t going to manage it in a month.

“We’ll just hope she’s too busy celebrating to get right down to nasty business,” I said, but I knew it was a wasted sentiment. Celia had probably been up all night plotting ways to make her sworn enemies miserable. The worst part was, in settling her personal scores, she would ruin Sinful.

Ally nodded. “Do you want your usual?”

“No. Just egg whites this morning. I saw a funnel cake vendor out there. I may have to go grazing in the sweets after breakfast.”

“Funnel cake?” Ally sighed. “That’s so unfair. Like testing my own baking isn’t problem enough, now I’ll be out there after my shift’s over, playing cattle like you.”

I grinned as Ally headed back to the kitchen. Staying in shape had been a constant problem since my arrival in Sinful. If it hadn’t been for the shenanigans I got into with Gertie and Ida Belle, I probably would have gained far more than the five pounds I’d already put on. Between Gertie’s dessert gifts, Francine’s fantastic and fattening meals, and Ally currently living with me and creating new bakery items every day, I was probably consuming enough carbs and sugar to induce a diabetic coma in an inert person.

I took a sip of my coffee and looked outside the picture window at the fray. There was no way this day would end without a problem that required law enforcement intervention. The sheer number of Sinful residents celebrating combined with homemade hooch and questionable IQs spelled certain disaster. I hoped Carter didn’t allow himself to be pulled back to the job. Dr. Stewart refused to release him to work for another week, and that was only if he had a clean scan showing no remaining swelling in his brain.

Not that Carter paid a lick of attention to what his doctor said. He’d left the hospital two days before and gone straight into the bayou looking for a gunrunner and murderer. The fact that he saved Ida Belle, Gertie, and an ATF agent was the only thing that kept his mother from yelling at him, but it hadn’t stopped her from calling Dr. Stewart and passing the phone to Carter so that he could yell at him.

Carter had taken the doctor’s orders seriously yesterday and spent most of the day sleeping with me in my hammock, then we had a nice dinner that Ally prepared, and afterward, he actually agreed to go to bed early. He would never admit he wasn’t a hundred percent, but I could tell his strength was waning by evening. I’d had a head injury before, courtesy of a slight miscalculation when I tried to jump from a bridge onto the yacht of an escaping gunrunner. The week I’d been forced to sit around in my condo hadn’t been the most thrilling, but when taking a shower required sitting for twenty minutes to recover, it was hard to argue about the forced time off. Especially when your job included carrying a gun.

I took my time over breakfast, chatting with Ally when she could stop by and getting a couple more chapters done on the thriller I’d started reading the day before. Finally, I paid my bill and walked outside to see what was going on.
 

Main Street was just as crowded as before, but was starting to take on the shape of minimal organization. Streamers and balloons were attached to all the light poles, and stands lined both sides of the street, residents busily putting up their wares. I spotted Ida Belle and Gertie across the street at a booth in front of the General Store and crossed over to where they were unpacking boxes of Sinful Ladies cough syrup.
 

“You’re selling your moonshine right here on Main Street?” I asked.

Legally speaking, Sinful was dry, meaning no bars and no sale of alcohol, which meant the men in town either risked their wives’ wrath by going to drink at the Swamp Bar or they brewed their own. The female residents of Sinful elected the less strenuous option of purchasing Sinful Ladies cough syrup, which would indeed cure the worst of coughs, but mostly by scaring bacteria right out of your body.
 

“Walter sells it at the store,” Ida Belle said. “What’s the difference?”

“Celia is mayor,” I said.

Gertie frowned. “Don’t remind me. I sat up all night with some of the ladies, alternating burning candles and praying and burning pictures of Celia and drinking. I have the worst hangover ever.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t burn your house down,” Ida Belle said. “The lot of you have no business combining alcohol and fire. It’s like daring the universe to do something.”

“You mean like selling hooch on Main Street when Celia is mayor?”

Ida Belle gave me a dirty look. “It is not the same thing. I like Gertie and wouldn’t want to see her go up in flames. Celia, on the other hand…”

I grinned. “Apparently, making Celia mad is what I live for, so pass me a crate.”

Ida Belle slid a crate to me and I hefted it onto the table and started unpacking the wares. “Hey, this is a new one.” I held up a bottle labeled “Sinful Ladies Atomic Blast Cough Syrup.” The tagline read, “When regular cough syrup just won’t do.”

“That one’s one-ninety proof,” Ida Belle said.

“Jeez Louise, are people supposed to drink it or use it to strip paint?”

“I’ve used it for both,” Gertie said, “and to remove some rust off my barbecue grill.”

“That one is best added to a cup of coffee,” Ida Belle said. “A very large cup of coffee if you plan on walking the rest of the day.”

No doubt. I put the bottle on the table, reminding myself to stick to regular only. I was sorta attached to my liver. I finished unpacking that crate and was about to ask for another when I heard a commotion behind me.

I turned around in time to see Sheriff Lee ride into the center of Main Street on his burro.
 
But instead of his normal slacks and button-up shirt with the sheriff’s department logo, he was decked out in a sequined Uncle Sam costume, complete with top hat. Holy crap, maybe a swig of the hard stuff wasn’t such a bad idea.

“Oh, look,” Gertie said. “There’s Sheriff Lee in his Fourth of July outfit.”

“He has a special outfit for the Fourth of July?” I asked.

“He has a special outfit for all holidays,” Gertie said. “You should see his costume for the May Day festival.”

“I’m afraid to ask,” I said.

Ida Belle nodded. “Smart woman. May Day has its roots in fertility rites.”

Residents crowded around sheriff and burro, some posing their kids in front of him to get pictures. “Looks like the crowd likes it,” I said, reminding myself that there was no accounting for taste in Sinful, Louisiana.
 

Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. “Those idiots eat it up. They’ll take any opportunity to take another picture of ‘Little Tommy and Mary’ and post them on Instagram. The whole thing is a snooze fest.”

“What do you know about Instagram?” I asked. I’d only learned about it the week before when Ally was taking pictures of her latest baking to post to her account. She’d insisted on setting me up an account because she’d be moving back to her own house soon and she didn’t want me to miss out on any of her new stuff. My thighs were certain I needed to miss out on her new stuff, but my taste buds overruled them and told her to go ahead, with the caveat that if she posted anything I couldn’t live without, she had to bring one over. She’d agreed, set up the account TroubleMagnet, and gotten me some friends or whatever. I had yet to post a picture.

What the hell. Maybe I should start.
 

I pulled out my cell phone, zoomed in on Sheriff Uncle Sam Lee, and snapped a pic, then posted it to my account. There you go—one thing accomplished today. I could officially spend the rest of the day goofing off.

I slipped the phone back into my pocket and turned around, only to collide with Deputy Breaux. The young deputy was nice, but also inexperienced and mostly afraid of his own shadow. With Carter officially on medical leave, he was probably about due for a nervous breakdown. Sheriff Lee didn’t exactly set the world on fire with his law enforcement prowess—or at least, hadn’t in the last hundred years or so—and without Carter on duty, that left Deputy Breaux to handle Sinful. It was a losing proposition right out of the gate.

“I’m sorry, Fortune,” Deputy Breaux said. “I’ve got to get to the sheriff before she does.”

“Before who does?” I asked, but Deputy Breaux had already taken off across the street.
 

My question was answered when Celia Arceneaux stepped into the street and marched straight up to Sheriff Lee. Deputy Breaux froze, his panic so apparent that I elbowed Gertie and asked, “Do you have defibrillators handy?”

“Why?” Gertie straightened up and looked across Main Street. “Oh. That doesn’t look good.”

“We better go see what it’s about,” Ida Belle said.

We hurried across the street right as Celia stepped up to the burro and handed Sheriff Lee a piece of paper.

“What the heck, woman,” Sheriff Lee said. “You know I can’t read this without my glasses on.”

Celia pulled herself up straight and glared. “Don’t call me ‘woman.’”

“Why not? That’s what you are. It would be downright silly to call you ‘man.’ Not to mention incorrect.”

Celia snatched the paper from him. “It says… Oh, never mind.” She shoved the paper back at him. “It says you’ve been relieved as sheriff due to mental incompetency.”