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

damp skin, then pulled on the shirt and reached for the tennis shoes and socks.  
    Two minutes later, I was beginning to feel almost normal.
    A knock sounded on the back door, and a second later, I heard Gertie calling for me. I gathered the wet clothes from the floor and tossed them into the hallway bathroom on my way downstairs. They needed to dry before I could burn them.
    Gertie was standing in the kitchen next to Deputy Charming and not looking the least bit pleased. “I tried to tell him to come back later,” she said as I entered the kitchen. “A few minutes is hardly enough time for a young lady to make herself presentable.”
    “That’s okay,” I said. “I’m not convinced he’s worth getting presentable for.”
    Gertie gave me an approving nod. Deputy Charming was not as amused.
    “The personal assessments of criminals rarely interest me,” he said, “but I need to ask you a couple of questions before I leave.”
    I could have argued over the criminal comment, but that would have only kept him in the kitchen longer. “Go ahead,” I said. This couldn’t possibly take very long as I didn’t have anything to tell.
    “Did you notice anything odd today?” he asked.
    I stared. “Are you kidding? Try everything I’ve seen since I stepped off the bus. You’re going to have to be a lot more specific than that.”
    He sighed. “Since you arrived at the house.”
    “That really doesn’t narrow it down much. But I’ll give it a shot and say no because everything I saw that looked odd is apparently business as usual here.”
    “So you didn’t see anyone else along the bayou when you and Gertie went outside?”
    Gertie frowned. “I already told you no one was there. I’m old, not blind.”
    “No one was outside,” I confirmed.
    “How can you be sure?” he continued to prod. “They may have been hiding.”
    “Then we wouldn’t have seen them, now, would we? But the answer is still no.”
    “You’re sure?” He looked a bit skeptical.
    “Look—I have a sixth sense about these things. I can’t stand being watched. If someone was out there, I would have known.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “Seems odd that a beauty queen wouldn’t like being watched.”
    “That was a long time ago. I was in a different place in my life.” The understatement of the century.
    “Guess that Miss Congeniality title went into the past along with the crown,” he said.  
    “You have no idea. Are we done here? I need a shower and to unpack.”
    “I’m done for now, but I’ll need to know if you’re planning on leaving town.”
    I threw my arms up in the air. “What in the world for? If you knew a single thing about forensics, you’d know that bone has been in the bayou for a while. The only way to get that smooth edging is by the constant flow of running water over time. I hardly sneaked out here years ago, killed a man, and put him in the bayou only to return years later and direct a two-hundred-year-old hound dog to dig up the bone and implicate me.”
    Gertie stared at me, and I could see the wheels in her mind working. Crap. I’d gone too far with my assessment.  
    “That’s an awful lot of forensic knowledge for a librarian,” Deputy Charming said.
    Likely, it wouldn’t be a good idea to share that I came about that particular bit of information when I’d stumbled on a mass grave in a river in the Congo and received a rudimentary education from a local scientist.
    Librarian. You’re a librarian!
    “You’ve probably heard of books,” I said. “They tend to collect in libraries. I read. You should try it sometime.” I looked over at Gertie. “Thank you for the welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear a hot shower calling.”
    I stalked out of the kitchen, not even bothering to take a look back. What the hell was wrong with that man? Was he really so incompetent that he couldn’t tell that bone was old? Good Lord, you could literally get away with murder in this town based on the ability