Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery, Book 1) (14 page)

I had one hand over the top of my head where the extension had torn out, and I could feel blood oozing between my fingers. I hurried away from the park before anyone called the sheriff to report a deranged-looking woman bleeding in a public park.
 

Now that I knew Deputy LeBlanc lived right across the street from Gertie, walking up the block and entering her house by the front door was clearly out. As much as I wanted to avoid scaling another fence, it looked inevitable. I passed Gertie’s street and entered the neighborhood one street over. I was relieved to see that several of the homes didn’t have fences that met on the sides. I would avoid at least one incident of fence jumping.

I picked the one closest to Gertie’s house and hurried down the fence line, darting from one shrub to another in an effort to remain mostly out of sight. When I got to the back of Gertie’s fence, I glanced around to make sure no one was looking, then hopped across her lawn. The back door was open, so I let myself inside her kitchen. I could hear Gertie talking at the front of the house, so I eased down the hall to peek around the corner.
 

She stood in the living room, peeking between the blinds on her front window. “You sound frustrated, Carter,” she said. “You need to work on that attitude if you ever expect to be elected sheriff when Robert E. Lee retires.”

I shook my head in admiration. She still had Deputy LeBlanc on the phone. Gertie had serious skills.
 

As I stepped into the living room, the hardwood floor creaked and Gertie spun around. Her relief was apparent as she broke out into a smile.

“Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry, Carter,” she said. “I’ve just found my glasses in the refrigerator. I guess no one stole them after all.”
 

She ended the call and dropped her cell phone on the couch before rushing over to me. “Are you injured? How badly?”

“I had a hair accident,” I said. “I haven’t had time to check it out.”

“Come into the kitchen and I’ll fix you up. I texted Ida Belle while I had Carter on the phone. She should be here any minute.”

I followed Gertie back into the kitchen and sat in a chair at the end of the breakfast table. Gertie turned on the water in the sink and grabbed a clean dish towel from the drawer.
 

“I’ll let this water warm up a little,” she said. “It will be easier to lift the blood off your hair so I can see what kind of damage you did.”

I still had my hand pressed on my head, but I couldn’t feel blood rushing out any longer. Apparently, the worst was past. Gertie dampened the towel with warm water and was just starting to lift the blood from my scalp when Ida Belle burst through the back door, huffing like a freight train.

“Damn battery is dead on my car. I ran all the way over here from my house.”

Gertie shook her head. “You live a block away.”

“So, what’s your point?”

“You really need to start exercising.”

“I’m seventy-two. How many reasons before I die do you think I’ll need to run?”

I piped up, “Banana pudding, man-eating alligators, texts from Gertie—”

“Fine. What the hell happened to your head?” Ida Belle narrowed her eyes at Gertie. “Did you shoot her?”

I stared at Ida Belle. “Is that a real problem around here?”

Gertie glared. “That thing with the mailman was an accident.”

“Uh-huh. And what about the thing with the dishwasher repairman?”

Gertie grumbled and went back to dabbing at my scalp. “You have a couple of mishaps and everyone’s labeling you.”

A second later, a hunk of my fake hair fell off in her hand and Gertie shrieked, tossing the hair in the air.

For a woman who was already winded, and clearly out of shape, Ida Belle sprang from her chair like a criminal who’d just spotted the police. The blond and somewhat red extension landed in the middle of the table, and Ida Belle leaned forward to see what it was.

“Is that your hair?” She looked over at Gertie, her eyes wide. “You scalped her.”

“She didn’t scalp me,” I said. Best to contain this before it got out of hand. “I scalped myself before I got here.”

Gertie leaned over to inspect my head. “Well, for someone who just lost a wad of hair, you’re certainly not bleeding much. There only a little tear here.”

“That’s because it’s not my real hair. It’s extensions. They were glued to my real hair. I don’t think much of the real stuff came out.”

Ida Belle slipped back into her chair and stared at me, cocking her head to the side. “Why would a former beauty queen have hair so short she needed to glue some in?”

Crap! I had to come up with something plausible fast, or the two nosy Nellies would be suspicious. My mind raced, and then I remembered some woman who’d come into the beauty shop in tears when I was getting the extensions put in.

“There was a horrible accident with hair bleach,” I said. “We had to shave it all off.”

Their eyes widened and Gertie’s mouth formed an O.

Ida Belle nodded. “Tilly Monroe did something similar a couple of years ago. Thought she was going to go from red to blond, but her hair turned green. So she tried to fix it and burnt it all up to her scalp. Had to wear a wig for a year. They only do that fancy glued hair stuff in New Orleans.”

Gertie picked up the extension from the table and held it next to my head. “It doesn’t look like this covers the entire bald spot.”

“No, I lost a piece before this one. That’s why it started bleeding in the first place.”

Ida Belle leaned forward in her chair. “Lost it where?”

“In Deputy LeBlanc’s bushes.”

Chapter Eleven

Gertie and Ida Belle both exploded at once.
 

“What were you doing in his lawn?”

“He’s going to know we’re up to something!”

I held up a hand to stop the outrage. “I didn’t intend to be in his lawn. It was an accident.” Then I explained my attempt to sneak to Gertie’s house, my worry about Deputy LeBlanc watching me, my bright idea about cutting through a lawn, and the comedy of errors that followed.

When I was done, Ida Belle and Gertie looked at each other, their expressions unreadable; then they both started giggling, then laughing. Finally, Gertie sank into the chair next to me with a snort, unable to remain standing, she was laughing so hard.
 

I drummed my fingers on the table and waited for the hilarity to end. Finally, they took a few deep gasping breaths, Ida Belle wiped the tears from her eyes with the bottom of her blouse, and they sat back in their chairs.

“My word,” Ida Belle said, “you have got to have the absolute worst luck in the world. The irony of your mother calling you Fortune is priceless.”

Gertie nodded. “Maybe we should revert to your beauty days and call you Miss Fortune. Get it—misfortune?”

She started howling with laughter all over again. Ida Belle scrunched up her face, clearly trying to hold it in, but finally, a burst of air came barreling out and she started laughing again. I yanked the dish towel from Gertie’s hand and began patting my sore head.

“Go ahead and keep laughing,” I said. “You two will die long before me. I’ll get plenty of peace and quiet then.”

They sobered a bit and reduced their laughter to gasping for air.
 

“You have to admit,” Gertie wheezed, “it is an odd coincidence. What are the odds that the one lawn you pick belonged to Carter?”

“One in forty, given the size of the neighborhood,” I said, not near as convinced of the hilarity as they were. It’s not like I ran across him in Manhattan or something.”

“And he caught you tossing your shoes into the bayou, trying to kill an alligator you thought was a frog, eating Sunday lunch with the Sinful Ladies, and the bone was found in your yard,” Ida Belle pointed out. “That’s a statistical improbability even for a town this size, especially given the amount of time you’ve been here.”

I threw up my hands. “So, what am I supposed to do? You guys got me in the middle of this mess, and now it seems no matter what I do, the spotlight is on me.”

“I am worried about that piece of hair you left behind,” Gertie said. “If Carter finds it, he’ll know for sure it’s yours. Not many platinum blondes around here, and with me keeping him on the phone with all that unnecessary nonsense about my glasses, he probably already suspects something.”

“We have to get that hair back,” I said.

Ida Belle nodded. “You’re right about that. Can’t leave that hair in his bushes. Eventually, he’ll get around to working on his lawn. Carter always works in his lawn when he’s thinking hard on something.”

My mind flashed back to the burgers and the beer. “Please don’t tell me it’s his day off.”

Gertie bit her lower lip and looked at Ida Belle.
 

“I’m afraid so,” Ida Belle said, “and as he won’t have another for ten days, he’ll probably tackle the lawn this afternoon.”

“We’ve got to get him out of the house,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Gertie said. “Carter is pretty strict about his days off. He doesn’t get many.”

“Even if there was a call, the sheriff would take it today,” Ida Belle added.

“There has to be a way to get him out of his house,” I said.

Ida Belle stared at the wall for a moment, then nodded. “There is one way.” She looked at Gertie. “You still got those pictures that we took on your phone last week?”

Gertie smiled. “You’re a genius!” She ran out of the room and returned seconds later with her cell phone. She passed it to Ida Belle, who pushed around on the display for a bit, then smiled.

“Now we wait,” Ida Belle said.

“Wait for what?”

“It won’t take long,” Ida Belle said. “We’ll watch from the living room window. As soon as he leaves, Fortune and I will go retrieve the hair. I’ll be lookout at Carter’s fence, and Gertie can pretend to water her front flower beds and watch the street.”

Ida Belle hurried into the living room, Gertie right on her heels. In case they were right, I trailed behind. I’d just stepped up beside Gertie to peer out a crack in the blinds when Deputy LeBlanc’s front door flew open and he ran out of the house. He had on one tennis shoe and was attempting to pull on the other one while he ran. Finally, he gave up and tossed it in his truck before jumping in and backing out of his driveway, tires screeching.

He barely rounded the corner at the end of the street when Ida Belle yanked open the front door and ran out of the house.
 

“What are you waiting on?” Gertie asked, waving me outside. “Go! Go!”

I ran out the door and across the street with Ida Belle, who slipped behind the hedges lining the front stretch of Deputy LeBlanc’s fence. For an instant, I wondered what had prompted such a rush from the good deputy, but decided I was probably better off not knowing. I eased in the hedge beside Ida Belle and pulled myself up the fence to peer over.
 

“Is the dog there?” Ida Belle asked.

“I don’t see him.”

“Well, hurry up, then. If Gertie sees him coming back, she’ll text me, and then I’ll whistle.”

“Got it,” I said and flipped over the top of the fence and into the backyard.
 

I froze for a couple of seconds and scanned every corner, looking for Rambo dog, but unless he was hiding in the bushes, he wasn’t outside. I ran across the yard to the back fence line where I saw the long blond hair sticking out of the hedge, the platinum strands shining like aluminum in the sunlight. I grabbed the end of it and pulled, but it was caught on the bush.
 

At least that’s what I thought.

I realized how badly I’d calculated when, on the second tug, Rambo dog stuck his head out of the shrub and growled, the other end of the extension clamped in his massive jaws. I dropped the extension as if it were a hot poker and hauled ass across the lawn. Rambo dog launched out of the bushes right behind me.
 

I was fast, but there was no way I could make it to the front fence line without his catching me, so I ran toward the patio and jumped on top of Rambo’s doghouse. He launched his massive frame up the side of the house, and I said a silent prayer of thanks when he slid down the side and sat on the patio, growling.
 

Ida Belle must have heard the racket, because a couple of seconds later, her face, flushed with the effort of climbing, appeared over the front fence.
 

“That is not good,” she said.

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Where’s a cat when you need one,” Ida Belle grumbled. “I’ll go find something to distract him.”

She disappeared back over the hedge. I hoped her idea of a distraction didn’t involve firearms. I couldn’t exactly blame Rambo for defending his property. It was his job, although he was looking less and less scary with that blond tress hanging out of his mouth. I assessed my options for escape, but the doghouse, the grill, and the lawn chair were the only structures in the yard. And no way could I make it to the fence with Rambo’s steely gaze on me.

Then I remembered the burgers.