miss fortune mystery (ff) - bayou bubba (8 page)

Ida Belle reached into the bag. “I can see that. Maybe next time you could say it after you swallow or before you take a bite. You sprayed chocolate all over my dash.”

Winking, Gertie held the bag back to me and I extracted a chunk of the fudge for myself. “This smells delicious.”

“Lena makes it herself. Her fudge recipe wins blue ribbons almost every year at the state fair,” Gertie said.

I took a bite and the chocolate creaminess melted over my tongue. Closing my eyes, I moaned in delight. “So good.”

I spotted the sign for
Alligator Bridge
and inspiration struck. “Hey. Would you guys mind if we drove back past
Lena’s
? I’d like to see if we can figure out where Bubba was going on his bike.”

Ida Belle yanked the wheel to the right and, slowing only slightly, swung the truck around, spitting up gravel and dust on the side of the road. The elderly truck teetered on two wheels for a beat, suspension groaning, and then slammed down, tires skidding against the pavement as Ida Belle accelerated to take us back out of town.

I fell sideways on the first jerk of the wheel, hitting the plastic window trim with my uninjured cheek as she whipped us around, and ended up on the floor, legs akimbo.

“You all right back there?”

I gathered myself up and slid back onto the seat, rubbing my cheek. “A little warning would have been nice.”

Ida Belle offered a, “who me?” look in the mirror.

Gertie shook her head. “Ida Belle doesn’t mess around, Felicity. If you ask her to turn around she turns around.” She popped another chunk of fudge into her mouth.

I glared at the back of Gertie’s frizzy, gray head but it did me no good. The two women might as well have been alone in the truck for all the attention they paid me.

We drove past
Lena’s
and Ida Belle slowed. “You watch the right side, Felicity and Gertie will watch the left.”

The road curved away from the bayou a quarter of a mile from Lena’s and wove into a thick forest of cypress trees. It was so dark under the trees I started to wonder if I’d even be able to see the bike or the house it was parked in front of.

A minute later the road turned back toward the water and the trees thinned out on the water side, brightening our path.

My gaze fixed on the tree line on my side, I concentrated on looking for the familiar shape of a bike as we shot past.

Suddenly, Gertie shrieked, “Watch out!”

Ida Belle slammed her foot on the brake and I flew forward, my legs hitting the back of the bench seat and my torso slamming downward.

Pain spiked up my nose as it connected with the seat. I hung there for a minute, butt in the air and little birdies flying around my head. Two pairs of hands grasped my arms and tugged.

“Sorry, Felicity,” Ida Belle said.

“There was a gator crossing the road,” Gertie explained.

I mumbled something unintelligible into the musty smelling seat.

“What was that? Come on, girl, get your face out of the seat.”

I tried to shake my head but it barely moved. I stopped when I realized I was giving myself fabric burn on my most likely broken nose. I was going to look like an alcoholic with Rosacea by the time I got back to Sinful.

Voices danced around my head with the little birdies for a minute and then something that felt like iron clamps grabbed my shoulders and I was flung backward, smacking my head against the back window.

“Ugh!” I groaned, sitting back and closing my eyes so the world would stop spinning. “Just shoot me between the eyes. It would be faster.”

Ida Belle opened the door of the truck. “Toughen up, girl. I see a bicycle.”

My eyes shot open. “A bike? Where?”

CHAPTER TEN

The bike rested against the knobby trunk of a cypress tree. It was yellow, with tires like cross country bikers used, wide with heavy tread. The bike was in decent shape and had a wide, wire basket strapped to the handlebars.

I ran my fingers over the narrow seat, trying to remember if I’d ever seen my father riding a bike.

A car approached slowly on the winding road, veering around the haphazardly parked truck. I glanced toward the dark sedan, the craggy profile of its driver igniting a spark of memory that I couldn’t quite grasp.

“It doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” Gertie whispered.

Ida Belle pushed past her and pounded on the weathered door. “There’s only one way to find out.”

A long moment passed and Ida Belle pounded again, harder the second time. I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turned my head I saw the curtain in one of the front windows of the house drop back into place. “Someone’s in there.”

Gertie eyed the window. “You’d probably fit through there, Felicity. Ida Belle and I could heft you up…”

I shook my head. “I’m still concussed from the drive over. I’m not letting you two throw me through a window.”

Ida Belle murmured something that sounded a lot like “wimp” and Gertie giggled.

“What did you call me?”

“I called you a wimp. Deal with it.”

I was saved from my impulse to batter an old lady when the door opened and a man stepped out.

I sucked in a gasp.

“Hi, honey.”

I was rooted to the spot, shocked beyond words. I’d come to the cabin hoping to find my father, but after all the months of wondering and worrying… I swallowed hard, tears filling my eyes. “Daddy.”

He opened his arms and I ran into them, burying my face in his flannel shirt as he squeezed me tight. “I missed you, honey.”

I sniffled, scrubbing my eyes. “I thought you were dead.”

“I know. I’m really sorry about that...” He stiffened at the sound of a car coming up the road. “Let’s get inside. It’s not safe out here.”

My father ushered me and then the ladies inside the dark cabin. It smelled musty and was sweltering despite the heavy tree cover.

I quickly realized both the heat and the smell were due to the fact that he had all the windows closed and covered.

Ida Belle turned to him, hands on hips. “What the hell have you been up to, Bubba? You scared your poor girl half to death.”

“And you got that homeless guy killed,” Gertie added.

Felonius Chance eyed the two women, a perplexed look on his handsome face, then turned to me. “Felicity, would you like to introduce me to your friends?”

“I think we’re way beyond pleasantries,” Ida Belle said.

I nodded. “I have to agree with Ida Belle. What have you gotten mixed up in? Why are you here? And who killed poor Bubba?”

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Felicity.”

I expelled air. “These are my friends, Ida Belle and Gertie. Ladies, this is my father, Felonius Chance.”

“Nice to meet you ladies.” He offered them his hand but Ida Belle just glared. Gertie gave in and shook it. 

“Shall we sit?”

“No, dad. We shall not sit. I need some answers!”

“You’re right. I owe you that. First of all, let me just say that I disappeared because I was trying to keep you safe. I figured if I wasn’t in Indy they’d leave you and Breze alone.”

Ida Belle looked at me.

“Breze’s my evil stepmother, a.k.a. trophy wife number three.”

“Ah.” Ida Belle nodded in understanding.

He frowned. “I’d hoped with me gone you two would have found a way to get along.”

“Nope. So go on. Why did you leave Indy?”

My father walked across the house, heading for a short line of cabinets that probably represented the kitchen. Though there wasn’t much to it. I followed, not wanting to let him out of my sight.

He took a kettle off the stove and filled it with water. “I can’t tell you why I left.” He glanced my way as I bristled. “Believe me, it’s better if you don’t know, Felly.”

“You have gators!”

Gertie stood a few feet away, bent over a long, glass aquarium on the floor. I walked over and looked down and, sure enough, two baby alligators snapped and slithered inside the glass. They were about three feet long snout to tip of tail, like mini shoe-encased death.

“Ish!”

He turned the flame up under the kettle and joined us at the aquarium. “I found them in the yard when they were just a few inches long. I couldn’t resist taking them in. Their mother had been hit on the road.”

I shared a look with Ida Belle. “Yeah, I think we almost ran over one of their relatives a minute ago.”

Father nodded. The kettle started to whistle and he moved back into the kitchen, gathering cups and spoons, creamer and sugar. I frowned when he reached for a bag of cookies.

“Dad, this isn’t a tea party. You still haven’t explained what’s going on.”

“If he’s smart he won’t say anything.”

We all jumped and turned toward the strange, new voice.

As soon as I saw him, the memory I’d been trying to glom onto outside fell into place. “You!”

The thug from the
Backwater
glanced my way, one eyebrow cranking upward from the middle. “I knew you’d lead me to him eventually.”

“You know this guy, Felly?”

“Unfortunately we’ve met. Sort of.”

“Your daughter and her boyfriend are staying at the same motel where I was.”

“He’s
not
my boyfriend.”

“You’re sharing a room.”

Felonius scalded me with a look, his jaw tightening.

Ida Belle and Gertie gave me thumbs up. ‘

“Cal is
not
my boyfriend!”

“It’s not important,” Father said. “What
is
important is that these ladies have nothing to do with this, Rouse.”

The thug smiled, the gun unwavering. “I’m afraid they’ve made themselves part of it, Chance. And I have to say I’m glad they did. I’d have never found you out here in the swamp.”

Eyeing the gun the thug from the motel was holding, my father eased himself in front of me. The ladies stepped back.

“Everybody stop moving!” Rouse yelled.

Like a bad game of
Simon Says
we all stopped mid-motion.

The thug reached for something in his back pocket and came up with a pair of hand cuffs. My gaze slid toward Ida Belle and jerked downward.

She narrowed her gaze for a moment and then nodded.

I prayed she’d gotten the message I was trying to send.

The thug moved closer. “Put your hands behind your back Mr. Chance and turn around.”

My father widened his arms, shielding me. “No. Let them go, Rouse. This is between me and Nicolai. I don’t want them harmed.”

Rouse moved closer. “I got my orders, Chance. If you cooperate nobody else needs to get hurt.”

When Rouse was a foot away I yelled, “Now!”

Gertie and Ida Belle each grabbed a corner of the aquarium and pulled, knocking it over with a thud.

The two gators shot out of the thing, hissing angrily, and I hit the nearest chair, squealing as they headed right for me. My father launched himself at the guy with the gun, both of them dancing around the snapping jaws of the gator babies.

I realized pretty quickly that my father—a man who’d made a killing in the financial world but who couldn’t kill much else outside of a few bugs—didn’t have a chance against the muscular thug.

So I did the only thing I could think of to do. I grabbed my twenty-pound alligator purse and swung it toward the thug’s head. It landed with a meaty sounding thwuck and he tensed, his eyes rolling back into his head before he toppled to the floor like a giant redwood.

One of the babies snapped angrily at his arm and missed and then turned and hightailed it out of the cabin just behind its sibling.

Gertie and Ida Belle came up on either side of me. We all looked down at the unconscious thug.

“I think you killed him,” Gertie said.

“Serves him right,” Ida Belle responded.

“I panicked.” I looked at my dad. “Is he dead?”

Felonius Chance dropped to one knee and felt the guy’s throat. He frowned and I braced for bad news. A few beats later I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “Well?”

My dad blew out a frustrated breath, dropping his hand. “How the hell do I know? I can’t feel anything.”

“He’s dead!” I wailed.

He lifted his hands, climbing to his feet. “I didn’t say that, Felly. I’ve never been able to feel a pulse, not even on myself. It’s not as easy as they make it look on TV.”

“His chest is moving,” Gertie observed.

I pulled air into my lungs. “Oh thank god!”

“Here, help me get him in a chair,” father said. “We’ll use his cuffs to keep him there.”

A few minutes and much huffing and puffing later we all took a step back, panting. We’d pulled his arms between the slats in the back of the chair and cuffed them together. Then we’d bound his ankles to the legs of the chair with two of my father’s belts.

“That should hold him,” father said.

I pulled out my cell phone. “I’ll call Cal.”

Felonius placed a hand over my phone, pulling it away from my ear. “No, Felly.”

“What do you mean,
no
? This guy killed Bubba.”

“And he would have killed me too.”

“But we got him,” I argued.

“Yes. But he’s just one small cog in a huge, dangerous machine. Once his bosses find out where he is they’ll come to Sinful looking for me.”

“Then we’ll give you a head start,” Ida Belle said. “Get your stuff together and hit the road.”

My father held my gaze for a long moment, his dark blue eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, honey. I wish it could be different.”

I sniffled. “Okay. Yeah. Ida Belle’s right. Go get lost again. But let me know how you’re doing okay?”

He nodded.

The thug groaned.

“He’s coming to.” Gertie reached for my purse. “Give me that thing. I’ll do it this time.”

I jerked my purse away from her. “We’re not hitting him again. He’s tied up, he can’t do anything.”

“Keep an eye on him and hit him again if he tries anything. I’ll be right back.” Father left the room, going through a door that I suspected led to a bedroom.

Rouse’s head snapped up and fire lit his gaze. “Let me go. You bitches are making a horrible mistake.”