Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery, Book 1) (6 page)

Five foot two, one-ten, possibly born in the past century, a slight limp on the left side.

We stepped off the sidewalk to cross the street to the Baptist church at the same time the other woman stepped off the curb to cross, presumably, to the Catholic church. As we passed in the middle of the street, she shot an amused smile at Gertie and let her handbag slip just enough from her shoulder so that we could see inside.

Gertie sucked in a breath and the other woman’s smile broadened as she continued her march to the Catholic church.
 

“Like getting to wear pants to church isn’t enough of an advantage,” Gertie said as we entered Sinful Baptist. “Celia Arceneaux’s bought the new Nikes. We’re doomed.”

“Don’t worry. I can take her.”
Blindfolded and crawling.

Gertie slid into the back pew and nodded. “I’ll let you take the outside seat to get a better jump. As soon as the preacher gets to the ‘A’ in ‘Amen’ on the last prayer, you make a break for it.”

She dug in her purse and pulled out a pink bottle labeled “cough syrup.” She chugged back a good bit, then offered it to me.
 

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m good.”

And not likely to drink out of the same bottle as someone who’s sick. Didn’t they teach them anything in Sinful?

I glanced around the church and realized no one else was there yet. A quick glance at my watch let me know we had quite a wait before service began. I yawned and then thought about the reason I wasn’t all that rested—besides the whole church thing.
 

“Hey, Gertie, something strange happened last night.”
 

Gertie patted my leg. “I’m sure it seemed that way, but things in Sinful are never quite normal compared to other places.”

“No, I mean after all that. I went out at midnight to kill a frog that was keeping me awake, and that deputy was hiding in my bushes.”

Gertie frowned but didn’t say a word.

“So I got to thinking, given the alligators and hunting accidents and the fact that all this is below sea level and probably floods in a good hurricane, there’re at least a hundred valid reasons for a human bone to be in that bayou. But I’ve got a deputy hiding in the bushes, and that just doesn’t say accident, flood, or four-legged predator to me.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t.” She didn’t look the least bit happy about it.

“To take that one thought farther, if he thinks a crime has been committed, then that means he must have some guess as to whom that bone belonged.”

“I suppose he might,” Gertie hedged.

I narrowed my eyes at her and summoned up my limited knowledge of biblical rules. “Are you going to continue to lie by omission? We
are
in church.”

Gertie sighed. “I guess not. You’re right that plenty of accidents happen in the swamp. Usually, there’s a bit of something left behind so we know who the unlucky person was. But about five years ago, Harvey Chicoron disappeared without a trace.”

“Did the police look for him?”

Gertie nodded. “And a search party from town combed the swamp. Of course, Carter was still off in the Marine Corps at the time, but he would have heard all about it from his mother. Emmaline has always been a huge gossip.”

My self-preservation radar clicked on. Marine Corps, huh? I was going to have to watch my step around Deputy Charming. He was turning out to be more complicated than he appeared. “So, what did everyone think happened to Harvey?”

“Some thought a gator got him and dragged him under with a death roll, so there was nothing left to find. Some thought he ran off with another woman as there was a sizable sum of money transferred to an offshore account around the time he disappeared. He was always cheating on Marie, so running off with another woman wouldn’t exactly surprise anyone.”

Gertie shook her head. “But mostly, no one cared. Harvey was the meanest, most disagreeable man in Sinful. After the initial surprise at his disappearance wore off, pretty much everyone was just happy he was gone.”

“Even Marie?”

“Oh, especially Marie. Her mother had been a tyrant when she was alive, and then she practically sold Marie into indentured servitude with that jackass the way she pressured her to marry him.”
 

Gertie sighed. “And now I’ve gone and said ‘jackass’ in church. Five years past and that man still brings out the worst in me.”

“I’m sure God knew he was a jackass.”

Gertie nodded. “That is a fact. Poor Marie went from living with her mother to being married to Harvey, who was even worse. After he disappeared, Marie actually had the freedom to think and act as she wanted for the first time in all sixty-nine years of her life.”

“Sounds like it worked out well all the way around, so then why all the worry? What do you think happened to Harvey?”

“Why, Marie killed him, of course.”

Chapter Five

Before I could even fire off the hundred or so questions that had flashed through my mind, the back doors to the church opened wide and a choir entered, singing. Good grief. Sitting here for an hour was probably going to add another couple hundred questions to the list.

The first of which was exactly why did Gertie think her doormat of a friend had killed her husband? And a close second was, why didn’t that thought seem to bother her much? Even the murder of the king of jackasses should have brought a twinge of something—guilt, maybe—to a woman who insisted on being in church every Sunday.

Gertie elbowed me in the ribs and I realized everyone was standing and singing. I sighed and rose along with the rest of the attendees. Civilians were so confusing. The CIA was made up of career agents and ex-military. Everything was structured, and emotion was forbidden during an operation, for good reason. Having a civilian-like emotional moment is exactly what had landed me in church in Sinful, Louisiana, contemplating some doormat of a wife becoming a murderer.
 

CIA agents didn’t share their fears, thoughts or dreams—assuming they even had any—and they didn’t have layers to uncover. If they did, they were so well hidden, they were having a beer with D.B. Cooper. Everything at the CIA was about the work, and while the work itself might be complicated, everything surrounding it was black and white.

Sinful, Louisiana, was so many shades of gray, I was going color-blind.

Once the choir finished their somewhat off-key song, the preacher started talking and my mind faded away from his voice, thinking about my current situation and wondering exactly how long I’d have to stay in Banana Pudding World. Occasionally, the preacher pounded his hand on the pulpit, breaking me out of my thoughts. Finally, he finished dooming everyone to hell, and everyone rose to sing again.

When the preacher started praying right after the song ended, Gertie leaned over and whispered, “Get ready.”

I pulled my tennis shoes out of my purse and happily pulled off the heels I’d been wearing. Twenty seconds later, I was ready for action.

“We ask these things in Your name,” the preacher said.

“Now,” Gertie whispered.

“A—”

I was out the door before the “men” even dropped. The door to the Catholic church flew open as I dashed out into the street, and Gertie’s nemesis, Celia, barreled outside. The mid-morning sun hit her straight in the eyes, but she never slowed, running blindly down the sidewalk at a clip much faster than I ever would have imagined.

But it was nothing compared with me.

I could hear Gertie cheering behind me as I lifted the skirt of my dress and leapt over a snow cone stand. I slid a foot or so on the dusty sidewalk, then regained my footing just in time to push open the door to Francine’s and bolt inside. Celia huffed in a couple of seconds later and stood there, panting and glaring.
 

A big woman, probably about fifty, with a ton of blond hair piled on top of her head raised one eyebrow. “Looks like somebody done hired a ringer. You ain’t even winded, girl.”

“Not a bit,” I agreed.

Celia narrowed her eyes at me as Gertie came trotting into the restaurant, the smile on her face as wide as the Grand Canyon.
 

“Now,” Gertie said to Celia, “don’t you be giving my friend the stink eye just because you spent all that money on those shoes and you still aren’t getting any pudding.” She turned to the woman with the hair. “Francine, we’ll take a table for eighteen.”

“Right this way, Ms. Gertie,” Francine said and grabbed a stack of menus.
 

I followed Francine and Gertie to a stretch of two long tables placed in front of the plate-glass storefront.
 

“I suppose you’ll all be starting with the pudding?” Francine asked.

Gertie nodded and Francine walked through double doors at the back of the seating area, presumably to serve up eighteen orders of banana pudding.

“We’re eating dessert first?” I asked.

“Of course not. We’re just ordering dessert first so they don’t run out. Francine can only fit about twenty-five in her fridge. Celia’s got fifteen in her crew.”
 

She looked positively giddy delivering that last statement, and I had to wonder what Celia’s crew would have in store for her when they realized the Nikes hadn’t done the job. I was, however, interested in seeing how they determined which crew members got the remaining pudding.

Gertie insisted I take the seat at the head of the table, as the “guest of honor.”
 

“Are sixteen more people really coming?” I asked. I hadn’t seen Gertie talk to anyone at church.

She nodded. “All the Sinful Ladies will be here shortly.”

“Did they skip church?”

Gertie looked horrified. “You can’t skip church and then eat out. Why, the whole town would talk about you for a month.”

“Don’t tell me they’re Catholic.”

“Heavens, no.” Gertie laughed. “The things you come up with. Those of us that don’t sing in the choir have church duties. I was let off duties today as I was bringing a guest.”

I was just about to ask Gertie about her earlier cryptic comment concerning Marie killing her husband when a shadow fell across the table. I looked up into the frowning face of Deputy LeBlanc. One glance at Gertie told me she wasn’t the least bit happy to see him.
 

“Morning, Ms. Gertie,” he said. “How are you today?”

“Fine, thanks,” Gertie replied, but she didn’t meet his eyes and her lips were drawn in a taut line.

He ignored me completely, which was fine by me.

“You were around when Harvey Chicoron disappeared, right?”

“You know I was.”

“They never found any sign of him, right, except for that missing money thing?”

Gertie pursed her lips. “You’re the police. I imagine the reports have all the information you can find, and I’m certain you can read as I taught you all four years of high school.”

“I’ve been through the reports, but I wanted to get the local take on the situation.”

“He’s gone, and no one knows what happened. Not much more to it than that.”

“There’s always more to it than that. When a person disappears, you should really take a closer look at the person. For example, was he well liked?”

“You know good and well he was the orneriest man in town.”

“Hmm. So, no one liked him?”

“You know they didn’t.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Including Marie?”

Gertie huffed. “I expect Marie had her hands full.”

“I don’t want to know what you expect. I want to know if Marie liked her husband.”

There was dead silence for a long time, and I looked back and forth from Gertie to Deputy LeBlanc. The tension was thicker than the banana pudding Francine slid in front of me, and I couldn’t help but notice that as soon as she placed the last bowl on the table, she took off for the kitchen as if there was a fire that needed attending.
 

“I already said no one liked him,” Gertie said finally.

Deputy LeBlanc nodded. “He inherited oil wells from his parents, right? So that means Marie came into quite a comfortable living when he didn’t turn up.”

“I don’t ask people about their finances. It’s rude.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Did she offer the information?”

“No,” Gertie snapped at him. “Marie never told me about her finances. Are you satisfied? Because you’re ruining my Sunday dinner.”

He studied her for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “I’m done for now, but I may be by later after I study those case files again. If I have any more questions, that is.”

He looked over at me and nodded. “Ma’am,” he said and strolled out of the restaurant.

“What the hell was that about?” I asked. “You could have drowned a herd of elephants in the undercurrent between the two of you.”

“He knows I won’t lie on Sunday. I tried to dance around the questions, but he still managed to get some information out of me.”

I nodded, now understanding Gertie’s less-than-direct answers. “So, how much money did Harvey have?”

Gertie cocked her head. “Now, you just heard me say Marie didn’t tell me about her finances.”