miss fortune mystery (ff) - hiding in the bayou by riley blake Read Free Book Online Page A

investigation.”
    Carter wanted answers and Ida Belle wasn’t giving them up. All things considered, the good deputy had a better chance of joining the Sinful Ladies Society and bumping Ida Belle off her coveted leadership post.
    “Ida Belle? What do you have to say for yourself?”
    She blinked and her face lit up with one of her notorious ah-ha moments. “Carter, I’m going to ask you this one time.” She hesitated before she continued. “Did you see Peanut shoot and kill Rich?”
    “No.”
    “All right then.” She turned to me. “Let’s go. As of this very moment, Deputy Carter LeBlanc can’t be trusted.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Seven
     
     
    “He knows Peanut is the killer.”
    “How do you know?” I followed Ida Belle inside my temporary residence. She grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and opened the back door. “Go on, Bones. Get out of here for a minute.”
    “Thank you.” I accepted the generous gift of hydration and followed her yet again, this time to the back patio.
    Once there, we each chose a chair. “So why would Carter take me out to the bayou if he already knew who was guilty?”
    “According to Walter, he used this situation to his advantage. He didn’t need you. He took you along and probably considered the excursion as a first date.”
    “He needed me.”
    “If you say so,” Ida Belle said. “He has his shooter—Peanut. Now he wants the men who put her up to it.”
    “What if there isn’t anyone?”
    “You heard enough last night to know that there’s someone .”
    “True, but I think Peanut would’ve killed Rich just because .”
    “Just because?” Ida Belle balked at that. “Fortune, you don’t know anything at all about marriage. A woman or a man can cheat all day but let their other half do the same and it’s a recipe for murder, only in this case? It wasn’t. Those two have been die-hard cheaters since their first date and it never bothered either one of them.”
    “If I wanted you dead, you’d be sixteen feet under with a hundred pounds of cement drying on top of your sorry, cheating, stubborn, dead-beat of a well proportioned tail!”
    “What?” Ida Belle was clearly dumbfounded.
    “That’s what Peanut said when she followed Rich to the yard. I think it was a masked threat. It didn’t mean anything to the audience but Rich seemed to know exactly what she was talking about.”
    “You’re sure about the concrete?”
    “Verbatim.”
    “Well why didn’t you say so?” Ida Bella arched a brow. “Now I know where we can find our co-conspirators or at least a few clues to lead us to them.”
    An hour later, we stood in the middle of a burial ground with shovels in hand. After raiding Marge’s shed for tools, we’d headed out of town. Minutes later, we landed on the earthly version of hell. Staring up at the trashed cars and totaled trucks, I was certain of my fate.
    My body would later be found in a junkyard.
    “I don’t know which is more disturbing.” I stared at the ground. “The fact that we’re about to dig up dead bodies or the fact that these people weren’t buried in a cemetery and you and Gertie knew it all along.”
    “We don’t know anything for sure, Fortune. Gertie never had the stomach for this or we would’ve been digging out here a long time ago. You seemed eager to get to the bottom of this and this place harbors many secrets.”
    “I wouldn’t use eager exactly,” I said, propping up a shovel against Ida Belle’s car while I slipped on a pair of work gloves.
    Director Morrow’s voice of reason provoked me to ask, “Isn’t this illegal?” Before she could answer, I added, “Normal rules and laws don’t typically apply to you and Gertie, but aren’t there a few exceptions?” 
    “If we were