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

of the local law enforcement. Not to mention the sheriff’s horse was hardly the optimum choice for a hot pursuit. It looked as old as he was.
    Morrow had thought he was doing me a favor sending me to Louisiana, but instead, I was right back in hostile territory, but without the benefit of any training or experience in my environment. As soon as I finished that shower, it was time to break out my laptop and do some reading on Louisiana.  
    It was stranger than any foreign country I’d ever been in.

Chapter Four

    It was a ten-minute struggle to cut off most of the length of the fake nails, but I wasn’t even going to bother trying typing with those daggers on my fingertips. Who knew acrylic was so hard? It was a fact I stored for future reference. The ability to construct weapons on my body parts might come in handy at some point.
    By the time I closed the laptop at midnight, I was more confused than ever. The stories and supposed facts I’d read about Louisiana were wide and varied. The people who lived here couldn’t agree on anything—language, how to fish, how to cook—even their legal system wasn’t in line with the rest of the United States’.
    Apparently, I was just going to have to wing it. The odds of Marge’s property becoming a second potential crime scene were unlikely, so I could probably fly below radar from here on out.
    I turned off the television on the dresser that had been blaring a late-night marathon of some reality show and crawled into bed. I let out a sigh as my body collapsed on the cushy foam mattress. I’d barely closed my eyes when I popped back upright.
    Croak.
    What the hell? I reached for my weapon on the nightstand and then cussed when I realized I didn’t have a weapon. Sandy-Sue Morrow did not have a license for a handgun and therefore could not check one in airline baggage, much to Director Morrow’s delight.
    Croak.
    I dropped out of bed and crawled over to the window, then slid up the side of the wall and pulled the drapes to the side just enough for me to see outside. The front of the house looked clear, but I knew I wasn’t imaging the noise.  
    Croak.
    I whirled around. The noise was coming from the backyard. Where the bayou was. I relaxed a bit and walked into the room across the hall. I peered out the window, but the light above the back door didn’t do much to illuminate the backyard.  
    Croak.
    Jesus, it was getting louder!  
    I replayed the past four hours of Internet research in my mind. Frogs. That had to be it. How in the world did people sleep with all that racket?  
    Croak.
    That did it. I’d seen a shed behind the house during my dog-crime-scene adventure. Surely it contained something that would kill one noisy frog.
    The thick, hot, humid air hit me as soon as I stepped out the back door, and I paused for a moment. A wad of toilet paper in my ears would probably work nicely and wouldn’t make me sweat.
    Croak.
    Nope. I wasn’t about to live with that for weeks or months on end, and besides, if I couldn’t hear the frog, then I couldn’t hear intruders, either. Not an option for the supremely suspicious. I sighed and headed across the lawn to the shed, happy to discover it wasn’t locked. I opened the door and peered into the darkness, wishing I’d thought to look for a flashlight in the kitchen. A dim ray of moonlight crept inside, and I finally made out a set of tools hanging on the back wall of the shed. The middle one was a shovel.  
    Worked for me.  
    I crept across the backyard toward the bayou, scanning the gently flowing water for my prey.  
    Croak.
    To the left—near the hedge.  
    As quietly as possible, I traversed the lawn, careful not to step into the bayou water and create a splash. A dark cloud passed over the moon, reducing visibility to almost nothing, and I paused for a moment, hoping the tiny bit of light returned soon. A couple of seconds later, the dim glow of moonlight slid over the water, and I located two humps about two