miss fortune mystery (ff) - bubba dub dub (7 page)

“Why did we stop?” Not that I was complaining, but I didn’t smell turd yet so I didn’t think we were close to Number Two.

Ida Belle jerked her chin toward the front of the boat. “We’ve got company.”

I shoved to my feet and looked over the bow. A sleek black boat danced on the rippling water at the mouth of the lake, a quarter mile ahead of us. Its bow was facing our way and, standing at the front, holding a pair of binoculars in front of his eyes, was one of the guys we’d seen at
Hebert Swamp City Airboats
. His slicked back white hair glowed like silver under the sizzling Louisiana sun. “Crap,” I muttered.

Gertie straightened beside me, squinting toward the other boat. “Is that Number Two?”

I glanced at Ida Belle and she was shaking her head. “I swear I’m gonna drug you and drag you to the eye doctor myself.”

Gertie gave her friend a disgusted look. “I can see just fine. The sun’s just in my eyes.”

Four heads swiveled to the large, yellow ball hanging in the sky
behind
Gertie. Fortune grinned. “I think we’ve found the problem. Gertie’s eyes appear to be on the back of her head.”

I snorted out a laugh, earning myself a glare from my ballast partner.

A distant rumble had us jerking back to the problem at hand. The sleek black boat was moving forward, tearing toward us across the muddy expanse of water, spitting tan-colored water out behind it.

“Ida Belle!” Fortune warned.

Ida Belle threw the fantail of her scarf over her shoulder. “On it. You two better sit down.”

The airboat lurched forward, flinging Gertie and me to the bottom of the boat before we had time to bend our legs and sit. I grappled for something I could find to hold onto as my cheeks once again tried to grasp my hairline. The boat took to the air as Ida Belle headed straight for the other boat. It appeared we were engaged in another terrifying game of International chicken. I wrapped my arms around the base of Ida Belle’s seat and closed my eyes, wondering whether a prayer was in order. Something scrabbled against my leg and my eyes snapped open. I looked down to find Gertie trying to crawl her way over to me. Her white hair streamed straight back from her face and she looked like the victim of a facelift gone terribly wrong. Her eyes were slits in the air-flattened wings that had once been her cheeks.

I forced my fingers open and tried to reach for her. The wind smacked my hand back and into my own chin, snapping my head up. Claws dug into my calf and I yelped. I reached for Gertie’s hand, which was digging into my flesh in a desperate grip.

A large, black shape slashed past, dousing us in spray.

The boat zigged sideways and Gertie flew out of my range, sliding toward the edge with wide eyes. Reacting on instinct, I released the seat frame and lunged for her. I got two handfuls of flowered cotton but Gertie kept going. Her feet slapped against the muddy water as her arms threatened to come right out of her shirt.

The boat zagged the other way and Gertie flew toward me, landing in a pile of soggy cotton.

My ribs screamed in pain as she hit me, but I wrapped my arms around my ballast partner and held on, praying the boat race would end soon.

Something pinged off the bow of the boat, mere inches from Gertie and me. I barely registered the reality that somebody was firing at us before two more bullets whizzed past. Water geysered up around us as the bullets went wide and long.

“Hang on!” Ida Belle yelled. She shoved the throttle forward and the boat leapt into the air, slamming back down on the water a quarter mile away and surging forward at an even faster rate of speed than before. Grunting with the effort, I bent in the middle and jammed my feet through the seat frame, holding on as well as I could while still clutching Gertie.

We sailed down the Bayou for a few moments without being accosted and then, just as the air turned putrid, Ida Belle eased it down.

“Where’d they go?”

My ears roared from the assault of motor and wind, Fortune’s voice coming to me from the end of a long tunnel.

“Another boat. It might be Carter.”

Gertie started trying to extricate herself from me so I let her go. “If Carter’s on the Bayou, we need to get to the island and hide the boat before he sees us,” she told Ida Belle.

“On it.”

###

My memory of Number Two’s stench was faulty. I must have purged it from my memory banks in self-defense because it was much worse than I’d remembered. Clapping a hand over my nose, I breathed through my mouth as we covered the boat in moss and climbed out onto the shore.

“How do you think those guys found us?” I asked my companions.

Gertie shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they heard Bubba lived on the island and were just checking it out themselves.”

I thought about that possibility for a minute. It made a certain twisted kind of sense. “Somebody must have told them then.”

Ida Belle and Fortune shared a look. “That did look like one of Walter’s rental boats,” Ida Belle admitted.

Fortune nodded. “We’ll talk to Walter when we get back. Maybe he knows where they’re staying and what they’re up to.”

“You mean aside from trying to kill us?” Gertie grumbled.

Guilt sizzled in my belly like acid. I knew it was my fault my friends were in trouble. If the Russian mafia wasn’t looking for my father by following me around, none of them would have recently been almost killed in two high speed games of chicken.

“Where to?” Fortune asked, interrupting my guilty thoughts. I made a mental note to apologize to them later and then, as soon as I got the chance, slip away and call Cal. At least he was used to putting himself in danger and was getting paid handsomely for it. I knew I’d never forgive myself if one of my three companions was hurt or worse because of me. Feeling slightly better, I scanned the island, looking for a landmark I recognized. “I guess we’ll start at Bubba’s spot. That’s the only place Cal and I visited last time.”

“Was that where you found the cough syrup bottles?” Ida Belle asked. “Because don’t forget that was the clue he gave you.”

“We found several bottles there. We can always spread out and look for the still if Bubba’s hidey hole doesn’t pan out.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Fortune agreed. “Lead on.”

I started off through the tall grass, peering at the ground as I went. Too late, I remembered the wild and wooly nature of the island and my bare toes in my flip flops felt outrageously overexposed. I wished I’d thought to bring Cal’s wonderful scythe along.

And the wonderful Cal to swing it for me. I smiled at the memory of that delicious treat.

So distracted was I by the thought that I banged my foot on a large, rusted object mostly hidden in the weeds. I squealed as I fell forward, smacking my long-suffering middle on the bottom of the thing.

I lay there groaning for a minute before the weeds swished apart behind me and I felt the stares of my three companions beating down on me.

“Need some help?” Ida Belle asked.

Shoving upward, I sucked in a breath as the bruise over my ribs pulled. “I’m good. I was just looking for clues around this big metal thing.”

I could almost hear them grinning behind me.

“Find anything?” Fortune’s voice warbled suspiciously.

“Nope.” I jumped to my feet. “All clear on the ground on the other side.”

Gertie stepped past me, circling the metal monstrosity. “Maybe next time you could just walk around and look down.”

I glared at her retreating back. “See if I let you use me for an anchor on the way back.”

A suspicious snort sounded from her direction. I plunged after her, metaphorically licking the wounds to my pride.

An hour later the sun was beating mercilessly down on our heads and we hadn’t found a single clue. We’d torn Bubba’s campsite apart and my arms were covered in ash up to my elbows from digging in the campfire. Cal and I had found several gold coins hidden in the dirt under the fire the last time we’d visited Number Two and it seemed like a logical spot to look.

But our search had turned up nothing.

Fortune and Gertie had gone looking for the still which had made the moonshine that had once filled the cough syrup bottles we’d found, but after scouring the small island they hadn’t found it.

“Maybe Lyle got rid of it after you found out about it,” Gertie offered.

“Or moved it,” Ida Belle added. “He knew we weren’t too happy about the competition.”

The Sinful Ladies Society sold their own moonshine in cough syrup bottles. In fact they’d invented the useful ruse that allowed Sinful residents to imbibe to their hearts content in a dry town. Lyle Borne had benefited from that ruse by creating his own faux cough syrup to sell.

But my discovery of the plastic bottles at Bubba’s spot on Number Two had blown the lid off Lyle’s copycat operation.

It made sense that he might move the still, just to make sure the geriatric mafia didn’t get their hands on it. “Maybe.” I stood looking around Bubba’s sad little spot in hell. Though it had been only ten days since I was last there, the ramshackle mess of sticks and cardboard that had been Bayou Bubba’s last known residence was even more beaten down by nature than before.

Even the family of snakes that had made a nest under his blanket had found better accommodations. It was even more depressing than the last time I’d been there. “I guess I was wrong about the island being the next clue.”

“Maybe your father was referring to Bubba’s boat. He would have had to have one if he lived out here,” Fortune offered.

Suddenly realizing what a dolt I was, I smacked myself on the forehead. “Of course! Lyle!”

Ida Belle frowned. “What about him?”

I started toward the boat we’d stashed at the shoreline. “He took Bubba’s boat. That’s probably where father stashed his next clue.”

I just prayed Lyle hadn’t already gotten rid of it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Maybe I should wait in the car,” I suggested.

Ida Belle slanted me a look. “Why would you want to do that? This is your scavenger hunt, not ours.”

I gnawed a fingernail. “Yeah, but the last time I was here I got his sister arrested. I’m sure Lyle isn’t going to be happy to see me.”

Gertie shrugged. “As far as he knows, Carter arrested her. You were nice to her and bought a bunch of stuff in her shop. You should be okay. Besides, you’re the only one who’ll recognize the clue, if there even is one, in the boat.”

I sighed.

Fortune clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll protect you if he gets hostile.”

From her confident manner, I could only assume she’d never met Lyle Borne.

I trudged up the rutted mud driveway, shoving moss aside as I approached the tiny cabin that seemed to have melted into the Bayou and become just another jutting root, like the cypress knees that turned the geography bumpy all along the Bayou.

The cabin had rough wood siding and a rusted tin roof, and it was close enough to the muddy ribbon of the Bayou that I figured a good rain would bring the snakes and gators right up to the back door.

I knocked timidly a few times and then got shouldered aside as Ida Belle gave the door a couple of whacks that shook rust from the roof down on our heads.

I brushed at the rust on my face. “I don’t think he’s here.”

Fortune wandered around the corner of the house and, a few seconds later, stuck her head back around. “Back here.”

Lyle was sitting in a lawn chair with a stone in one hand and a massive knife with huge teeth in the other. As we came around the corner of his house he scanned us a lazy look with his one good eye, the other hidden behind a black patch so he looked like a pirate. He didn’t seem surprised to see us.

Eying the knife, I stopped far enough away that he’d have to stand up and make a move if he was going to use the blade on me. Fortune stopped a few feet away from me, her gaze speculative. As always, I got the impression she was sizing Lyle up and, judging by the way her muscles tightened and her gaze sharpened, I figured she’d realized what I had when I’d first clapped eyes on him.

Lyle Borne was one of the biggest men I’d ever met. Despite having recently met Big Hebert and his newly incarcerated employee, Mannie, who was no doubt currently wishing for soap-on-a-rope in the Sinful jail shower, I still thought Lyle Borne was enormous.

As I had the thought, Lyle’s single-eyed gaze settled on me and his lips curled just a little with distaste. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here.”

Fortune blinked at the sound of Lyle’s voice, which was breathy and much higher than you’d expect for a man of his size. I’d had the same reaction when I’d first met him.

“I…”

Fortune stepped forward. “Nice knife. You hunt gators?”

I felt my eyes go wide. I knew Fortune was a recent transplant to Sinful and that she’d been a librarian up north somewhere before coming to the wild and wooly south, so I was surprised she’d figured that out so fast.

“I am. How’d ya guess?”

She shrugged. “I saw that knife at Walter’s. It was with the hunting stuff.” She pointed to his disfigured left calf, a memento of a gator he surprised in the brush. “A guy in
Francine’s Diner
had a scar like that. He told me it was from a gator. I just put two and two together.”

He jerked his head toward the gator hide hanging from the flag pole on the end of his dock. “That probably gave you a clue too, huh?” His grin was sly and a little bit mean.

Fortune eyed him for a moment, her jaw tight as he lifted the big knife and slowly ran the edge over the rock a few times. He might have just been sharpening the knife, but it sure looked to me like he was threatening her with it. Judging by the way Fortune held herself, I figured it looked that way to her too.

As panic blossomed in my belly, I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. “I want to search Bubba’s boat.”

Lyle snorted as if he thought I was joking. When I just stared at him, his broad, red-hued face tightened. “Get off my property.”

Gertie started digging in her purse. I did a mental inventory of the stuff she had in there, trying to remember if there was anything that might work against Lyle. I was pretty sure nothing short of an elephant gun would stop him.