miss fortune mystery (ff) - sinful science (hair extensions and homicide 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Case of the Defunct Adjunct

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Text copyright ©2015 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.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  Sinful

  Science

  Frankie Bow

  DEDICATION

  To my patient family and long-suffering friends.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Case of the Defunct Adjunct

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Jana Deleon for writing the Miss Fortune universe and letting us play in it.

  Leslie, Lisette, and Mom: Your feedback and suggestions were perfect and so very much appreciated. I owe you big-time.

  Mike, Maria, and Carina: You are my inspiration.

  Chapter One

  I was on my feet before the echoes of the gunshots had died away. The other customers in Francine’s Diner were still seated, staring through the front windows at the empty street and Walter’s General Store across the way.

  “Stay inside until I signal that it’s safe,” I said to Gertie, my breakfast companion. “Do not come outside. You understand?”

  She swatted my hand away. “Of course I understand, silly. I’m old, not stupid.”

  From the doorway of Francine’s Diner, I was able to get a visual on the situation.

  Ida Belle. I might have known.

  Once upon a time, say a month ago, I would’ve been surprised at the sight of an ancient woman in a turquoise track suit standing on the sidewalk with her hair in rollers, waving a .45 at someone. But that was before I started my undercover assignment in Sinful, Louisiana, population 253, and got to know Gertie and Ida Belle.

  Ida Belle’s apparent target looked shaken, but he stood still, making no attempt to evade Ida Belle.

  Male. Early twenties. Han Chinese ancestry. Five foot nine, one- thirty. Moderate myopia requires vision correction. Minimal threat.

  “Ida Belle!” I heard Gertie cry. I reached across to bar the doorway, but before I could stop her, Gertie had limboed underneath my arm and scampered out.

  I turned around to see the rest of the folks in the diner staring at me. I flashed them my best beauty queen smile and ran out after Gertie. We reached Ida Belle and the kid at the same time.

  “Ida Belle!” Gertie scolded, “Who is this nice young man, and why are you shooting at him? Look at him, he’s as scared as a rabbit. What’s your name, dear?”

  The young man cleared his throat and held his trembling hand out to Gertie.

  “I’m Justin Lao,” he said. “Howzit?”

  “He’s my new roommate.” Ida Belle dropped her Browning M1911 back into her handbag. “I just saved him from a copperhead.”

  She kicked at the ground, launching the lifeless (and now headless) snake into the air. She was playing to the audience. Francine’s customers had all come crowding outside to gawk. They watched the parabolic trajectory of the copperhead’s carcass as it flopped into the tall grass that grew along the side of the road.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked the kid.

  “Nah, nah. I’m good. Little surprised is all.”

  “Well, life in Sinful can be full of surprises,” I said.

  “I never seen a snake before, that’s why, Aunty. Except in movies an' li’ dat.”

  Did that kid just call me Aunty? I had maybe five years on him. He must have been talking to Ida Belle or Gertie. Unless being undercover in Sinful was aging me even faster than I thought. That was a possibility. For a town two hours outside New Orleans and halfway to nowhere, Sinful had a lot going on.

  “Ida Belle,” Gertie said, “why don’t we bring your young friend into Francine’s? He looks like he could use some nice pancakes and a cup of coffee.”

  With the snake-shooting spectacle over, the crowd shuffled back into Francine’s to finish their breakfasts. Ida Belle and Justin followed Gertie and me back to our table. I was happy to see that they hadn’t cleared away my plate during my absence. My pancakes were mostly intact, with just the one bite missing, and the whipped cream melting a little around the edges.

  Francine, the proprietor, came over in person to refill our coffees and take Ida Belle’s and Justin’s breakfast orders. She lingered by our table to find out what all of the commotion had been about. Francine’s kindly but persistent questioning (I could think of some professional interrogators who could learn a thing or two from her technique) got Justin talking. He was a graduate student, he told us, here to do fieldwork for his master’s degree in conservation biology. He’d never been to Louisiana before. In fact, he’d never been out of Hawaii, except for a few trips to Las Vegas with his family. His friends back home were never going to believe he’d had a close encounter with a deadly copperhead his first day out. He wished he’d had the presence of mind to take a picture of it.

  Ida Belle ordered the Big Bubba’s Belly Buster with pancakes, bacon, and sausage. Ida Belle eats like a hummingbird. By which I mean, several times her weight in food daily. I don’t know where she puts it all. She must have some amazing secret workout routine. Since I’d moved to Sinful, I’d been packing on weight as if I was planning to go into hibernation.

  “Saving lives sure does work up an appetite,” Ida Belle announced, as if we were going to forget that she’d just shot a poisonous snake fifteen minutes ago.

  “That sounds good, Aunty, what you got,” Justin said. “The Big Bubba da kine. I’ll have that too. I can get rice instead of potatoes?”

  “I can get you a side of breakfast rice,” Francine offered. “You want some orange juice with that?”

  “No thanks. Just coffee’s good.”

  I couldn’t afford to give any stranger the benefit of the doubt, not even a harmless-looking graduate student. The notorious arms dealer known as Ahmad had put a ten million dollar price on my head. I’d eliminated Ahmad’s brother during my last field assignment, and it seems he took that kind of personally. If you’ve heard of Ahmad, I don’t have to explain how bad that is. If you haven’t heard of him, consider yourself lucky.

  I watched Francine sashay back to the kitchen, and then smiled innocently at Justin.

  “So why did you come all the way out to Louisiana? Why
not stay in Hawaii?”

  “I wouldn’t mind doing fieldwork in Hawaii,” Gertie said. “I think I’d have one of those big blue drinks with all the fruit and paper umbrellas every day for breakfast.”

  “The oil spill was here, that’s why,” Justin said. “There’s nothing like it anywhere else. You get the volume of oil, yah? Unprecedented. Then get the additional contamination of the dispersant. Other people are researching the mutagenicity and toxicity in the immediate area, but we’re looking at the wider and more long-term effect on meiotic recombination in mammals—”

  “He studies poop,” Ida Belle interrupted. “I already asked him.”

  “He just said he’s studying oil,” Gertie said. “Poop and oil are not the same thing, Ida Belle. Even I know that, and I’m no car expert.”

  “Nah, Aunty Ida Belle’s right,” Justin said. “That’s the method I’m using to track the animals’ DNA. That way I don’t gotta trap ‘em or nothing like that. It’s called fecal analysis. Minimally disruptive to the environment.”

  I felt convinced by this time that Justin was who he said he was--a nice, nerdy grad student who’d had the misfortune to wander into the eye of Hurricane Ida Belle. His distinctive mixture of scientific lingo and island dialect would be hard to fake. I didn’t think that one of Ahmad’s henchmen would be able to pull off such an elaborate—not to mention brainy—cover story.

  Also in Justin’s favor was the fact that Ahmad didn’t have any Hawaii presence. Even Ahmad knew better than to try to muscle in on “The Company.” My FBI pals tell the story of when two Las Vegas thugs were sent over to Hawaii to rough up a local Company leader. The two tough guys were returned from Hawaii to Vegas in a trunk, in little pieces, with a note attached: “Delicious, send more.”

  “The nutria is ideal for my project,” Justin was saying. “It’s plentiful, and the generations are short, can be as short as 3 or 4 months. So evolution can happen real fast, yah? Get almost twenty generations already since the spill.”

  “He’s wasting his time studying swamp rats,” Ida Belle grumbled. “Should be finding a cure for old age.”

  “Swamp rats?” Gertie pressed a dainty hand to her leopard-print blouse. “Oh, we don’t need any more of those, dear. We already have way too many of them.”

  “So how long have you been in Sinful?” I asked.

  “I just picked him up at the bus stop this morning,” Ida Belle said.

  “Ida Belle,” Gertie asked, “why do you need a roommate? If you get lonely, you have the Sinful Ladies’ Society to keep you company.”

  “I’m not lonely, silly. I’m saving up for a new car. I’m getting five hundred a month in rent.”

  “Sure, as long as your renter doesn’t die of snakebite,” Gertie said.

  “Aw, now you got me worried,” Justin said cheerfully.

  “You just had some bad luck this morning,” Ida Belle said. “Most snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them. Copperheads are a little unusual cause they won’t flee like other snakes. They’ll freeze, so sometimes you don’t realize they’re there until you’re right on top of ‘em.”

  “Anything else I gotta know?”

  “Stay out of the bayou,” Gertie said.

  “She means don’t go swimming in the bayou,” Ida Belle added. “Some places you can only get to by boat. Watch out for things that look like logs. If you see a log moving, start running.”

  “Because it’s not really a log,” Gertie explained. “It’s a gator. Logs can’t swim by themselves. Oh, Ida Belle, tell him about the leeches.”

  Ida Belle snorted. “Leeches won’t hurt you. They’ll just suck a little of your blood is all.”

  “Aw man.” Justin picked up a piece of bacon and put it back down again. “I can’t stay away from the water. My plan’s to go along the banks to collect my samples.”

  “Well then at least stay away from Perd’ Espoir. That’s where they say all the—”

  “Hush now,” Ida Belle interrupted Gertie. “You don’t need to fill his head with silly ideas.”

  What was Perd’ Espoir, and why was it such a taboo topic? I’d have to ask Ida Belle and Gertie about it later. On second thought, no. This was one of those buried Sinful secrets that could stay buried, as far as I was concerned. From now on, I would follow Director Morrow’s instructions: Keep a low profile and stay out of trouble.

  I looked up to see a commotion coming toward us. Leading the two-person parade was the six foot two inch Deputy Carter LeBlanc, looking weary and harassed. Behind him, a full foot shorter and ten times meaner, mayor-elect and all-around terrible human being Celia Arceneaux was pushing him ahead of her.

  “Carter!” I exclaimed when they reached our table. “You’re supposed to be home recovering. What are you doing in uniform?”

  I hoped my protective feelings toward Deputy Sheriff Carter LeBlanc weren’t too obvious. Against all of my training and better judgment, I’d done the one thing an undercover operative is never supposed to do: I’d gotten romantically involved. Things hadn’t progressed very far yet. Just a couple of dates, an innocent kiss, and me saving his life once or twice. On the plus side, Carter was handsome, goodhearted, and apparently attracted to me. On the minus side, I was living in Sinful under someone else’s identity, so our entire relationship was founded on a lie.

  “It seems there’s been a disturbance nearby,” Celia sniffed, “and Deputy LeBlanc is assisting me in restoring order. Well. I see we have a newcomer here. I am Celia Arceneaux, the mayor of this municipality.”

  “Self-proclaimed mayor, you mean,” Ida Belle muttered.

  “Mayor-elect,” Celia conceded. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Justin.”

  Justin wiped his hands on a napkin and proffered a handshake. Celia took his hand with her fingertips, as if it were something she’d just fished out of the toilet.

  “I have a report of someone discharging a firearm,” Carter sighed. “Was that you, son?”

  “It was me.” Ida Belle thumped her chest with a wizened fist. “I saved his life.”

  “She killed a copperhead,” Gertie chimed in excitedly. “Shot the head clean off and then kicked it into the bushes. Justin is from Hawaii. They don’t have snakes there. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Hawaii!” Celia exclaimed. “Really, Ida Belle. First off, I don’t believe you have the correct permits to start taking in lodgers. And secondly, a foreigner of all things?”

  “Ladies,” Deputy Carter intervened. “And gentleman. Let’s all try to keep things civil here. Celia, I mean Mayor-elect Arceneaux, has been under some pressure with the festival coming up, and she feels that at this time, keeping order is of paramount—”

  “I’ve been working myself to the bone,” proclaimed the comfortably plump mayor-elect.

  Ida Belle opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a little yelp of pain. Gertie must have kicked her under the table.

  “Ally’s been working hard on her nutria pie,” I said, trying to establish some friendly common ground. Ally was Celia’s niece, and my roommate. I wasn’t fond of Celia Arceneaux, but unlike Ida Belle, I didn’t see the point of provoking her.

  “Ally’s been experimenting with fresh tabasco peppers,” I continued. “She says the nutria meat has a really gamy flavor.”

  “Nutria pie?” Justin wrinkled his nose. “You eat ‘em?”

  “What’d you think we did at the swamp rat festival?” Ida Belle snorted. “Put ‘em in a beauty contest? And yes Celia, I just called it the Swamp Rat Festival, like it’s always been called.”

  “It’s the Annual Sinful Nutria Jamboree. The citizens of Sinful, Louisiana, do not eat swamp rat.”

  “Fancy name’s not gonna make it taste any better, Celia.”

  “Listen.” Deputy Carter LeBlanc’s patience was depleted. “All of you. Please listen to me. Don’t shoot anything unless you absolutely have to. And try to stay on the road and out
of the woods.”

  “Stay out of the woods?” Justin said.

  “How come?” Ida Belle demanded.

  Carter sighed.

  “Someone found LeRoy Thibodeaux this morning.”

  “Thibodeaux?” Gertie exclaimed. “Why, he and Thelma were right in the middle of that messy divorce.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “Well Justin’s not in the middle of a custody battle with Thelma Thibodeaux,” Ida Belle said, “so I don’t think he has anything to worry about.”

  Celia glared at Ida Belle. “It wasn’t poor Thelma that killed him. How could you, Ida Belle?”

  “Well who did then?” Gertie asked.

  “It wasn’t a ‘who’,” Carter said. “Looks like it was an animal attack. The M.E. thinks it was a big cat. Probably a cougar.”

  “Cougars!” Gertie tapped the back of Justin’s hand excitedly. “Add that to your list.”

  “I didn’t know there were cougars in Louisiana.” I’d read the official Louisiana state website, the USGS information, and even the Wikipedia page. According to the internet, Louisiana had man-eating alligators, venomous snakes, and leech-infested swamps with quicksand that could suck you under in a minute, but not cougars.

  “Not supposed to be,” Justin said. “But you get climate change an’ da kine, you get all kine animals migrating out where they didn’t use to be. Like now, you get polar bears an’ grizzly bears hooking up and having babies. They call ‘em Pizzlies.”

  “If I were a bear,” Gertie said, “I wouldn’t want to be called a Pizzly. It doesn’t sound very nice.”

  “Well this thing caught Thibodeaux completely unaware,” Carter said. “He didn’t know what hit him, which was fortunate. He had no sign of defensive wounds on his hands, and his shotgun hadn’t been fired. The animal wasn’t even wounded as far as we can tell, so it’s still out there. You’ll need to exercise extreme caution until someone catches this thing. I mean it. All of you.”