miss fortune mystery (ff) - bayou two
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements
Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Jana DeLeon. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original The Miss Fortune Series remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Jana DeLeon, or their affiliates or licensors.
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BAYOU TWO
Mary Hiker
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
I’ll get this thing zipped if it’s the last thing I ever do.
A pair of navy blue shorts and matching butterfly print top flopped out of my new expandable suitcase as I kneeled on the floor in my bedroom doorway and pushed the top down. My knees already sported rug burns from this wrestling match, but I wouldn’t let that deter me. Nor would I take a single thing out. I fell forward and collapsed on top of the overloaded suitcase, letting my body weight squish the clothes inside as I zipped the bag shut inch-by-inch.
I rolled off the bag and onto the floor, raising my arms while lying on my back, smiling in sweet victory. This was going to be a great vacation. Since it was the end of summer and the schools were back in session, there’d be warm weather and no crowds. Dogs were allowed to run on the beach after the busy season, making this the best time of year for a little get-away with my yellow labrador, Shiner.
My dog rushed over to investigate why I was sprawled out on the floor and poked his wet nose over my head at the exact moment he let go of his slobbery chew bone, dropping it on my face. The feel and smell of squishy wet rawhide caused me to jolt upright and bang my face on the knob of the bedroom door.
“Ouch.” I rubbed my right cheekbone with one hand and patted my dog’s head with the other. “Thanks for the bone, buddy.” It’s not every day you take a doorknob to the eye.
My cell phone blared for attention from the kitchen. “I’m shutting that ringer off,” I muttered to myself as I got to my feet. “No phone calls while I’m on vacation. No texts. No internet.”
Shiner padded behind me, carrying one of his ripped up stuffed toys as I stumbled to the refrigerator and grabbed the icepack I kept in the freezer for emergencies. I could already feel my cheek swelling as I slapped the frozen ice pack on my eye and picked up the phone from the kitchen counter.
“Hello?”
All I heard was a lot of garbled noise and ruckus. I closed my eyes, focusing on the loud voices in the background and recognized the shouts of my long-distance friend with a penchant for mischief, Gertie.
I shook my head. “Oh, please no.”
Finally, a familiar voice spoke into the phone, “Madison, you need to come to Sinful right away.”
“Wha…?” I adjusted the cold pack on my face. “Ida Belle? But… I’m going on vacation.”
“Hold on one minute, I’ve got to get ahold of Gertie.” Ida Belle was breathing heavily into the phone. “She’s out in front of city hall showing her butt – literally.”
“What in the world is going on?”
“Your cousin is getting married in three days.”
“Jayne is getting married? To who?” I frowned, remembering when my cousin and I were stranded in Sinful last summer because our RV broke down. It was quite a chaotic adventure, but we’d survived and continued on our journey to see our granny in Texas. I adjusted the ice pack on my face. “Wait… Jayne’s in Sinful?”
“Actually, she just got put in Sinful lock-up, thanks to Celia.” Ida Belle huffed, her breath causing a crackle of static on the line. “That old bat is trying to stop the wedding and has resorted to dirty play.”
“What the…?”
The noise level rose over the phone as Ida Belle clearly entered the fray.
Gertie shouted in the background. “You can’t lock up a pregnant woman on a Sunday!” There was a garbled response before Gertie screamed, “This is a travesty of jus-!”
The phone went dead in my hand.
Chapter 2
My foot eased off the gas pedal in response to the blue lights flashing at the Sinful town line. Shiner perked up in the back seat when he noticed the change in momentum of my SUV and looked excitedly out the front window.
I squinted, focusing on a uniformed officer standing in the middle of the road behind a rickety wooden barricade made with some old two-by-fours. A stocky but athletic female in her thirties wore a deputy’s uniform. Her dark hair was pulled back so tight it made my head hurt.
The woman held up her hand and motioned for me to stop as the blue lights flashed inside an unmarked black four-door sedan on the side of the road.
Hmm, Sinful must’ve hired a new deputy. I pulled to a stop.
Shiner moved over and stuck his head out the window to greet the officer, but I guided him back inside as I watched her approach my vehicle with an overly confident stride. Her uniform sagged as if she’d recently lost a lot of weight but hadn’t gotten new clothes to fit yet.
At first, I thought she was wearing dark sunglasses, but as the officer reached my vehicle, I realized she wore an extraordinary amount of black eye make-up. It looked to me like I’d just encountered an overgrown raccoon.
“License and registration,” she said without smiling and put an over-sized deputy’s ball cap on her head.
The faint scent of barbeque ribs wafted into my vehicle as she spoke.
I handed over the requested documentation and stifled a grin when I noticed thick sauce covering her chin. I guessed the food containers on her car’s hood were from Francine’s Diner and my stomach growled in anticipation of the lunch I intended to eat in just a few more minutes. I’d skipped breakfast so I could indulge in Francine’s home cooking.
“Have you been in a fight, ma’am?”
“No,” I said, confused. “Why?”
“You’ve got a black eye, ma’am.”
I looked at my face in the rear view mirror and winced. The area around my eye was turning all shades of purple. That doorknob had really done a job on my appearance.
“No, just an accident.” I didn’t think telling her that Shiner gave me a shiner would go over too well. She didn’t seem to have a sense of humor.
“So, I take it you drove all the way out here from North Carolina.” The deputy stared at my license for a little too long before raising her raccoon eyes to mine. “What’s your business here today?”
I frowned. “I’m here for a wedding.”
“You might as well forget about that.” The deputy glared at me. “This road is closed until next Friday, and it’s the only way in or out of Sinful.”
I gave the woman a blank stare. Sinful was a unique place, but I c
ouldn’t imagine they’d have a reason to put it on lockdown. My imagination ran wild, worried about what Gertie and Jayne might’ve done to cause law enforcement to erect blockades to the town.
The loud honk of a car horn broke the awkward silence as a familiar Jeep crashed into the makeshift barricade, scattering the wooden planks to the ground. Before I could react, an old friend stuck her head out of the passenger window, wisps of white hair blowing in the slight breeze.
“You have two seconds to get out of here before I call Carter LeBlanc and report this.” Ida Belle raised a single finger in the air. “One…”
The woman threw my driver’s license through the window as a gust of wind blew off her over-sized ball cap. She turned and stomped back to the black car, grabbed her plate of ribs off the hood, and slid into the driver’s seat.
“And you better take that uniform back to wherever you stole it.” Ida Belle shouted behind her.
The “officer” punched the interior blue strobe light with a closed fist, knocking it off the car’s dashboard with a single blow, then hit the gas. The old tires squealed as she did a U-turn and sped into Sinful.
I stepped out of my vehicle, grinned and raised my hands in the air as Shiner bounded out behind me. The two ladies inside the Jeep shook their heads and laughed.
“What was that all about?” I asked as I walked up to greet them. “That deputy was trying to keep me out of town.”
“Welcome back to Sinful.” Ida Belle got out of the Jeep, lifting her sunglasses to take a good look at my bruised eye and chuckled. “That’s no deputy.”
Fortune jumped out of the driver’s seat, gave me a high-five, and reached for a splintered two-by-four. “That’s the infamous Annie Lou Claiborne, the ex-girlfriend of your soon-to-be cousin-in-law, Jimmy.”
“And bordering on a Grade A-1 nutcase,” Ida Belle muttered as she picked up the ball cap and gave it a quick inspection. “This is one of the old deputy ball caps. They switched uniforms two years ago.”
“She sure had me fooled.”
“Don’t feel bad. Ole Annie Lou’s been messing with everybody’s head. She came back after two years to rekindle a romance with Jimmy.” Fortune threw the wood to the side of the road.
“Thanks to an invitation from Celia,” Ida Belle finished for her, her face squinting up in a tight grimace.
I tried desperately to mentally connect all the dots. “So, I take it my cousin is marrying Jimmy.” I remembered back to one of Jayne’s escapades from earlier in the summer. “The same Jimmy she met when he came to her rescue after she got accidentally drunk on Sinful Ladies cough medicine and tried to wrestle an alligator?”
Ida Belle nodded. “One and the same.”
“Annie Lou’s mother is one of Celia’s GWs and is desperate to marry off her crazy daughter.” Fortune rested her hands on her hips. “Annie Lou is about to turn thirty-two.”
“What’s a GW?”
“Celia’s hoity-toity ladies church based group she calls the God’s Wives.” Ida Belle pretended to gag. “I’ve always said ‘Got No Lives’ is a lot more accurate.”
“Not to be mean, but I imagine the depth of Annie Lou’s dating pool is on the low-side.” Fortune chuckled.
“I can see why,” I said, glancing back at the demolished barricade.
Fortune’s eyes followed mine. “The GWs believe Jimmy is their best candidate for Annie Lou.”
“He’s the only one who ever dated that loony-tune.” Ida Belle choked. “And that was way back in high school.”
Fortune pulled out the keys to her Jeep. “To give the GW’s plan a chance to work, Celia has vowed to stop Jimmy and Jayne’s wedding.”
I sighed. A shotgun wedding and a disgruntled ex-girlfriend. What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 3
“Mmm. I’ve been dreaming of this for the last five-hundred miles,” I said as I inhaled the rich smell of home style cooking and stuffed a forkful of chicken fried steak in my mouth. Francine’s Diner had the best food west of the Smoky Mountains.
Fortune adjusted her pony tail and dug into her own plate of food. “No one can cook like Francine.”
Ida Belle sat with us at the diner but had no time to eat, her thumbs flying across her phone as text after text rolled in.
I frowned. “Did I hear right on the phone that my cousin is pregnant?”
“She’s been nauseous every morning and is eating pickles by the gallon,” Ida Belle said. “That’s my diagnosis.”
I wondered if that was why the wedding was scheduled so soon. “Where is she?”
“She’s with Gertie and your granny down at the courthouse.” Ida looked up from her flood of texts for a brief instant. “Granny has to register before officiating the wedding.”
I spewed out my diet cola and grabbed a napkin to cover my mouth.
“People get certified as a minister over the Internet these days.” Fortune tossed me some extra napkins and slapped some butter on another homemade roll.
“Never in my life would I have pictured Granny as a minister.”
“I just hope the church doesn’t burn down.” Ida Belle rolled her eyes. “Gertie’s in charge of lighting the ceremonial wedding candle.”
“Wait until you see Gertie. She’s gone crazy since she was chosen as Maid of Honor.” Fortune laughed. “She wants to impress The Tornado so bad it’s killing her.”
“Gertie always did idolize The Tornado,” Ida Belle said as she stopped texting for a split second and looked up. “With good reason.”
“Who’s The Tornado?” I wondered aloud, almost afraid to ask.
“Your granny!” They replied in unison and I just stared at them.
“Granny got the nick-name because she tends to leave a wide swath of destruction in her path if you get her riled up,” Ida Belle explained, giving me a saucy wink. “I was proud to serve with her. She’s a legitimate war hero.”
The whole war hero image bewildered me. “Granny always baked us chocolate chip cookies and took us window shopping at the mall when I was a kid.”
Ida Belle chuckled. “She’s a master of disguise.”
“Speaking of disguises…” Fortune cracked a smile and pointed a chicken bone at me. “I wonder what hilarious wedding outfit Gertie has in store for you.”
I frowned in confusion.
“Bridesmaid outfits.” Ida Belle let out a snicker.
“Bridesmaid?” I dropped my fork on the plate as a shudder pounded through me.
“Didn’t you read the invitation?” Fortune dropped the bone on her plate and laughed. “You’re listed as a bridesmaid.”
I shook my head and remembered the pile of unopened mail stacked on my kitchen table. “Who in the world just lists someone on a wedding invitation as a bridesmaid?”
“Your cousin.” Both women thought that was hilarious.
I blew out a breath. Why should this surprise me? Jayne did most everything in a unique way.
Ida Belle’s phone buzzed once again, but this time, her mouth dropped as she read the message. “Saddle up ladies, we’ve got a problem.”
I stuffed the rest of my mashed potatoes in my mouth and tossed a tip on the table.
“One of our Ladies Society members just took a call down at the sheriff’s office.” Ida Belle left her plate almost untouched. “Celia’s staging a protest down at the Clerk of Court and her minions have blocked the entrance into the building. They’re trying to stop The Tornado from registering with the parish. If they succeed, your granny won’t be able to officiate the wedding.”
Ida Belle shot out of her seat, and we followed her to the door.
My heart raced as I caught up to the older woman. “We better get over there before Granny gets hurt.”
Ida Belle swung around and looked me straight in the eye. “We better get over there before your granny puts them all in the hospital.”
Fortune let out a whoop as she ran in front of us and out the door. “That’s my kind of woman!”
&nb
sp; “The Tornado is a master in martial arts and can shoot the stem off an apple at a hundred yards,” Ida Belle said in a hushed voice, keeping eye contact with me as we moved through the door. “And rude people, like Celia, have a tendency to set off her temper.”
Chapter 4
I gripped the front of my seat and hung onto my dog as Fortune’s Jeep swerved around a protestor and screeched to a stop in front of the clerk’s office building. There was a small crowd of Celia’s GW group holding signs that read, “KEEP FAKE MINISTERS OUT of SINFUL.”
A few husbands joined arms and formed a human blockade in front of the door under the watchful eyes of their wives. Celia riled up the crowd by shouting, “Keep Sinful sanctified!”
I looked up the sidewalk and did a double-take when I saw a look on my Granny’s face that I’d never seen before. It was the look of a warrior. The little elderly lady marched up the sidewalk wearing camo sweatpants, a drab green t-shirt, and her senior aerobics tennis shoes. Granny carried a wooden cane over her head like a spear and was headed directly for the crowd.
Gertie stepped in right behind her, wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with “Maid of Honor” splashed across her chest in neon pink. She hoisted up the waistband on her stretchy pants as she followed behind Granny stride-for-stride.
My cousin, Jayne, wore a gold sash over a bright pink shirt that read “Bride.” She carried a pickle jar and skipped behind the two with glee. Her shoulder length brown hair bounced with each step, reminding me of a fourth grader playing hop-scotch.
Ida Belle frowned. “This crowd doesn’t know who they’re messing with,” she said as she jumped out of the Jeep.
“I’ve never seen Granny with a cane before.” I got out and made a move to run and help her.
“That’s not a cane.” Ida Belle reached out and stopped me. “It’s a deadly weapon.”
My Granny, aka The Tornado, gripped the ends of the cane and moved her arms out in front of her as she approached the crowd. She jabbed her way through the throng of women and easily made her way up to the door.