Louisiana Longshot (A Miss Fortune Mystery, Book 1) by Jana DeLeon

scary half mile clutching the back door handle of Gertie’s Cadillac while she herded the monstrous sedan down the center of the street. Other vehicles pulled onto curbs and into driveways to avoid her.  
    “Damn it, Gertie,” Ida Belle complained from the passenger’s seat. “You’re driving without your glasses again. You’re going to kill someone.”
    Like me.
    “I’ve got on my glasses,” Gertie said.
    “You’ve got on your reading glasses.”
    “All I need is reading glasses.”
    “That’s not what Dr. Morgan said.”
    Gertie frowned. “What the heck does he know? I changed the man’s diapers, and now he’s telling me I have old eyes. Well, I’m not having any of it. My eyes were perfectly fine for reading until he convinced me to wear reading glasses. Now I can’t even read the label on canned goods without having these things on.”
    Ida Belle looked back at me and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it—the glasses are making your vision worse.”
    Finally, we pulled up at the curb of the general store, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I strolled inside. I hoped Gertie wasn’t doing the boat driving, too. An older, stocky man at a counter at the back of the store greeted me as I walked inside.
    “Welcome,” he said. “You must be Marge’s niece. I’m Walter and this is my store.”
    Six foot one. Two hundred fifty-six pounds. Good vision but high cholesterol.
    “Nice to meet you, Walter,” I said.
    He nodded. “I’ve been putting together some supplies for you.”
    I looked back at Gertie and Ida Belle, who shook their heads.  
    “What kind of supplies?”
    He pulled a pair of silencing headphones from beneath the cabinet and set them on the counter. “Had to dig through storage to find these. Not much call for silencing with Sinful hunters, but I had one pair anyway. They’re a little dusty, but good quality.”
    He bent over and picked up a cardboard box and set it on the counter. “That should be everything you need for today.”
    I peered in the box and saw hip waders, work gloves, camouflage pants and T-shirt, rope, a hunting knife, and a rifle.  
    I looked up at him. “I like you.”
    Walter laughed and shot a look at Ida Belle. “If only all females were so easy to please.”
    Ida Belle marched up to the counter and glared at Walter. “I demand to know who gave you information on this young woman.”
    I looked at Walter, who winked at me. “My guess,” I said, “is he’s been talking to Deputy LeBlanc.”
    “Yep,” Walter said. “Came in here yesterday laughing over your issue with the frogs, but he wasn’t laughing today. Came in here mad as heck over Marie being missing.”
    “Saw that myself this morning,” I said.
    “Well, I figured since Marie is missing and Ida Belle and Gertie was at your house darned near before coffee time that they was roping you into helping them with some nonsense. Since Harvey had that camp over on Number Two, I figured that’s where they’d want you to go look with them.”
    He pulled a tab from the cash register drawer and handed it to Ida Belle. “I put everything but the headphones on your tab as I figure that stuff is for Sinful Ladies’ business. I gassed up my boat and docked it around back. Put a tank of gas on your tab as well.”  
    He handed a second tab to me. “That’s for the headphones. Just sign and we can settle up later when you come back for more supplies. You’ll want to get out to Number Two before the breeze picks up. I’m throwing in some Mentholatum for free, just ’cause I feel sorry for you.”
    I put the headphones in the box with the rest of the supplies. “I feel sorry for me, too.”
    I followed Ida Belle and Gertie out the back entrance of the store and down to the boat dock.
    “Darn man has always had a smart mouth on him,” Ida Belle complained.
    “Well, you have turned down his marriage proposals for over forty years,” Gertie said. “He was bound to get testy about it