Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery, Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

back door bang behind me.  
    A quick inspection of the rest of the house’s downstairs didn’t reveal a bedroom, so I assumed that meant they were all upstairs. Unless, of course, bedrooms were illegal in Sinful on Saturdays, which was always a possibility. I grabbed the hideous pink luggage and lugged it up the stairs, feeling like I’d been dropped into an alternate universe. I had no idea what I’d expected to find deep in bayou country, but this certainly wasn’t it.
    I hadn’t even been in town one day, and I’d already ruined my shoes, committed two misdemeanor crimes, flashed the deputy, and stumbled upon a potential murder scene. For the first time since I’d left D.C., I was happy that Morrow had insisted on a no-contact rule with him until it was safe to bring me home. If he had any idea that my entrance into Sinful society had been anything other than under the radar, he’d probably fly down here and shoot me himself.
    I left the luggage at the top of the stairs and did a quick reconnaissance of the upstairs rooms. The outside of the back of the house didn’t contain any structures or trees close enough to the house to make a second-floor window exit possible, but it seemed to have no lighting other than the light next to the back door. The front lawn appeared to be well-lit, and the porch roof provided easy access to the upstairs windows.
    I weighed my escape options and finally decided a front-facing room gave me the most flexibility until I could buy some sturdy rope to rappel out of a back window. I knew if Morrow were here he’d be telling me that the likelihood of needing to escape in the middle of the night was slim, but then he’d probably also have told me that inheriting a dog that dug up part of a dead person on my first day in town wasn’t probable, either.
    The master bedroom was on the front of the house, but staying in a dead woman’s room while pretending to be her niece didn’t seem right to me, so I selected the other room. It didn’t have a connecting bathroom, but then, the desert didn’t, either, so traveling to pee was the norm for me. And I had to admit, albeit rather grudgingly, that the other room was rather nice.  
    It had real wood paneling, hand-carved with ornate designs of inset squares. One wall contained a huge picture window complete with cushioned seat and a built-in bookcase, filled with books, took up another entire wall. It was easy to see what Marge had used this room for. I didn’t even like to read, and this room had me ready to select a book and pile up in that window to catch the last of the evening sunlight.
    Of course, given the town and the people I’d met so far, likely Marge had a wall full of Bibles or books on knitting. I took a step closer and studied the titles on a shelf, my eyes widening in surprise: The Study of the Brain, Forensic Investigation Techniques, Eastern Religions, Field Dressing Manual, The Power of Women, A Study of Handguns through the Centuries.      
    I glanced at the other shelves, my eyes lingering only long enough to scan some of the titles, and then blinked in amazement. Not a single work of fiction that I could see, and none of the books were what I expected to find in an old spinster woman’s house.  
    I picked up a framed photo sitting at the back of the desk and took a closer look. It was a stocky woman wearing camo and holding a rifle beside an enormous deer. I assumed it was Marge. I put the picture back and shook my head. Apparently Marge and I had more in common than I’d expected. This entire day had been filled with surprises.
    Unable to stand the itching from the polyester skirt any longer, I shed my wet garments and tossed one of the pink suitcases on the bed. I’d managed to convince them that librarian-beauty queens also had to mow lawns and take out the trash, so a couple pairs of jeans and several T-shirts were tucked in the corner of the suitcase. I tugged at the jeans that wanted to cling to my