miss fortune mystery (ff) - bayou bubba

by Sam Cheever

  “Not necessarily. This is where the body was found. Walter told me exactly where it was. I’d like to examine the spot.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “Walter said Bubba was seen on Number Two several times by a local alligator hunter named Borne, so they knew he hung out here.”

  I looked out over the muddy water, wondering where I’d heard the name Borne before. Then I remembered. “The woman who made my purse is named Borne. I wonder if there’s a connection.”

  “In a town as small as Sinful? There has to be. I’ll ask Walter about it when we get back.”

  Movement on the bank drew my eye and I watched in horror as a huge gator slithered off the sandy looking soil into the water. “Um, did you bring any kind of weapon?”

  “Just my wits.”

  I frowned. “Nothin’ against your wits but—”

  “There!” He pointed to a spot where the water swelled inward in a small cove. A large cypress tree arched out over the water, its lower branches tangling in a clump of knees. “There’s no boat. I wonder who took it,” Cal mused aloud.

  He poled our boat toward shore and ran the sloped front end onto the tall grass covering the ground along the water. “You wait here until I make sure nothing’s lurking up there.”

  “What if there is? You gonna charm it to death?” I really didn’t want to plunge into that tall grass without knowing what was in it, but I was surprised to discover I didn’t want him to either.

  Cal reached down by his feet, pulling a long, curved blade with a wooden handle out from under his bench. “Walter suggested I bring this scythe. He said the island gets a little wooly this time of year.”

  I watched him step from the boat and start the process of forging a path through the grass. It didn’t take long for me to forget to be worried about him and instead find myself focusing on the delightful play of muscles under his shirt as he swung the scythe.

  The scenery, which was already incredible despite the wooliness, had just gotten a hell of a lot better.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We found Bubba’s camp about a hundred yards from the water. A merry coil of snakes was living under his blanket. Luckily Cal found that little gem instead of me! And the wind and rain had all but battered the ramshackle collection of sticks and cardboard to the ground.

  Bubba’s food stores consisted of badly opened cans of tuna fish and soup, and a plastic container of something that might have been bread before nature started making penicillin out of it.

  Using two fingers to minimize exposure to the nasty yuckies, I plucked a soggy magazine off the crate he’d apparently been using as a table. A naked woman wearing only a Santa hat fell out of the mag and spread herself toward the ground. “Ugh!” I dropped the porn mag, centerfold and all, to the sandy ground. “He lives in a box propped up by sticks but he spends money on porn?”

  Cal shifted a filthy pair of jeans aside with his boot. “And your point would be?”

  “Right.” For a moment there I’d been thinking like a woman. All rational and stuff. “Nothing here but a lot of dirt, germs and things that require eye bleach.”

  Cal picked up the jeans and searched the pockets, coming up with a stick of gum and an inexpensive bottle opener. “That’s not exactly true.” He picked through the fire pit just outside Bubba’s tumble-down hut with a long stick. Something flashed.

  “What was that?” I crouched down beside him, grabbing my own stick. We dug around in the ashes until we saw it. A gold coin, covered in soot but still whole.

  Cal pulled it out of the ash, rubbing it clean with his thumb. He frowned.

  “Why the hell would he try to burn a coin?” I had a sinking feeling, worried that my father’s mind had been fractured in his final days.

  Shoving aside the charred logs, Cal dug into the dirt beneath the fire with his stick and turned up more coins. “He wasn’t trying to burn them. He hid them underneath. Pretty smart actually.”

  Okay, that made me feel better. I straightened, tears suddenly flooding my eyes as I looked around. Such a sad, stinky place to die. Cal gathered the coins and stood, holding them out to me.

  I took them, sniffling. “Thanks.”

  He looked uncomfortable for a moment and then reached out and squeezed my arm. “I don’t think I’ve told you, Felicity. I’m really sorry about your dad.”

  The tears that had been building behind my lids spilled out and I gave a soft sob, covering my mouth in an attempt to hold back the tsunami of emotions building in my breast. Cal stepped closer and I collapsed against him, the sobs I’d tried to hold back tearing from my throat. He held me for a long moment, until I could get myself under control, and then, clearing his throat, stepped away. “We should get back.”

  I nodded, digging in my purse for a tissue. I started to follow him, my gaze still focused on the inside of my purse, and my foot hit something hard, sending it clattering into a rock. I looked down and saw a clear, plastic bottle. From where I stood I could read the words on the bottle. “Cough syrup.” I picked it up. “Looks like Bubba had a cold.”

  Cal plucked another bottle from the grass and, frowning, another one. “Must have been a bad one.” He held the bottle to his nose and grimaced. “I don’t think it was a cold.”

  Straightening, Cal held the bottle out for me to sniff. The acrid scent of strong booze stung my nostrils. “Ew. What is that?”

  “If I’m not mistaken it’s moonshine.” Cal looked around, finding several more bottles buried in the tall grass. “And it looks like your…” He glanced at me, two lines of worry burrowing down between his midnight brows. “Bubba was buying a lot of it. Which means, we need to find out who in Sinful is selling the stuff. Because they might be able to tell us how he spent his last hours.”

  ###

  Apparently the local hunter Walter had told Cal about was Lena Borne’s brother and he lived with her. Walter gave us directions to Lena’s place south of Sinful about a mile. I thought we were lost for a while. The narrow, winding roads leading us from Sinful to the Borne cabin were more dirt than gravel and made me feel like we’d strayed off into the wilderness and were driving in maddening circles.

  Only one thing kept me from saying something to Cal as he struggled to make sense of Walter’s directions, the winding brown ribbon of the bayou with its twisted skirt of Spanish moss draped cypress, was never far away.

  Homes on stilts dotted the wildly beautiful landscape, some fresh and grand and others looking as if they’d melted into the rough setting and become one with it. When we finally pulled into a rutted mud driveway in front of Lena Borne’s place, I realized she lived in one of the latter.

  A rough sided wood cabin with a rusted tin roof crouched on the shore of the muddy water, surrounded by a thick tangle of cypress which all but obscured the tiny cabin from the road in a silvery frill of Spanish moss.

  When Cal knocked on the door, I looked around the yard to make sure we didn’t have any spiky backed, long-jawed visitors.

  Something slithered along a branch of the bald cypress that overhung the cabin, but I didn’t see any gators lurking in the scrub grass near the house.

  Heavy footsteps sounded on the other side of the door and the solid interior door swung inward, leaving only a flimsy screen door between us and the biggest man I’d ever seen. He peered down at us with one eye, the other hidden behind a black patch like a pirate’s.

  “Lena’s at the shop.” The man’s voice was breathy, the tone located somewhere in the midrange. Much higher than I would have expected for a man. Especially one who could look Sasquatch in the eye. But he spoke in a very cultured way, which was also at odds with the wife beater and jeans covering his tall, meaty form.

  “Lyle Borne?”

  Borne narrowed his one good eye and twitched the toothpick between his lips. “And whom might you be?”

  “I’m Cal Amity and this is Miss Chance.” He paused as if waiting for a reaction to the names. When he didn’t get one he went
on. “Walter over at the General Store gave us your name. We’re looking into the disappearance of Miss Chance’s father.”

  Lyle’s one good eye skimmed my way and assessed me from head to toe, gaining heat.

  I threw up a little in my mouth.

  “He’s not here,” Lyle informed us, closing the door.

  Cal and I shared a surprised glance. “What now?” I asked.

  Another door slammed at the back of the house.

  “Now we go talk to him out back,” Cal responded.

  Lyle Borne was limping toward a rickety looking dock hanging over the water when we rounded the corner.

  “Mr. Borne…”

  The big man stopped and turned. I gasped as I took in his left calf. It was misshapen and scarred. He glanced down and chuckled. “That was just a baby. About six feet long. I surprised him from a nap.” He spoke of the maiming of his person as if it were a fond memory. A lovely trip down memory lane.

  Borne reached inside the neckline of his wife beater and pulled out a string bearing several long, curved objects. He tapped one of the smaller ones. “This is all that’s left of the little bugger. Well, this and several pairs of boots.” He tittered like a high school girl at a slumber party.

  Cal showed my father’s picture to Borne. “Have you seen this man before?”

  Borne tucked his ornamental kill record back under his shirt and took the picture from Cal. He stared at it for a minute and then handed it over. “I ran into him on Number Two a month or so ago. He was sitting on a blanket next to a raging fire. Though it was hotter than hell that day. And he was drinking some of Ida Belle’s moonshine.”

  I looked at Cal. “From a cough syrup bottle?”

  Borne glanced at me. “Yes.”

  “We found several empty bottles around his camp on Number Two.”

  Borne nodded.

  “Did you talk to him,” I asked Lyle hopefully.

  His face softened a bit at the hopeful sound in my voice. “No. He liked to keep to himself. Folks around town started calling him Bubba. I guess they thought the name was ironic. You know, because he was so stand-offish. About the furthest thing from a brother there could be.” Borne mused over the thought as if it intrigued him and then shrugged. “Anyway. I’m off to do some fishing. You folks know the way out.”

  But Cal didn’t seem to hear the dismissal. He was walking toward the dock, where two aluminum boats bounced gently against the thick wooden posts. One boat had a motor and one didn’t.

  He walked to the end of the short pier and crouched down, examining the back of the boat without the motor.

  “Hey. What the hell?” Borne said. He limped quickly toward Cal.

  Cal stood up, his face stony. “Where did you get this boat?”

  “That’s none of your damn business,” Borne growled.

  Cal nodded. “Technically that’s correct. However, if I call the sheriff and tell him you have possession of a boat with the hull identification number of a murder victim’s missing boat, it’s gonna be everybody’s business real quick.”

  I was impressed. My PI was a hard ass. But just in case, I looked around for a rock or something to beat Borne senseless with when he went after Cal.

  Amazingly, the big man deflated at Cal’s tone. When he spoke, his voice had gained a pleading note. “Look. He didn’t need it anymore. He was dead. I thought I’d sell it on eBay and make a little money to help Lena pay the bills.”

  “You saw the body and you didn’t tell anybody?”

  Borne grimaced, shrugging. “When you say it like that it sounds so bad. He was just a homeless guy. I figured the bayou would take care of him the way the bayou does. No harm, no foul.”

  That was it. Something clicked inside me and I stalked over, poking my finger into Lyle Borne’s fleshy chest. “No harm, no foul? Are you flippin’ kidding me? That homeless person was my father you dimwitted fat ass. He had people who loved him…who were worried about him. You had no right…” My voice broke and I had to stop. I covered my mouth with a trembling hand and turned away. “I’ll be in the car, Cal.” I didn’t look back. Didn’t even hear the rest of the conversation between the two men. There was an angry roaring in my brain and heat burned my cheeks.

  I was pissed. So incredibly pissed. More pissed than I’d ever been.

  My cell phone rang and I thought about ignoring it. Especially since I didn’t recognize the number showing on the display.

  I reached the Jeep and realized I was too mad to sit down, so I started to pace. Eventually my cell stopped ringing. I paced back and forth between the house and the car. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Raised male voices brought me out of my anger fugue and I thought about Cal. Wondering if he was safe.

  My cell rang again. I swore, hitting Reply. “What is it?”

  Silence pulsed for a beat and then. “Felicity?”

  I blinked. Stars burst before my eyes and my legs turned to water. I dropped to the bottom step leading up to Lena Borne’s porch. “Daddy?”

  “Honey, you need to leave Sinful. Get as far away from here as you can. It’s not safe here.”

  “But I—“

  “Just leave, Felly. Don’t argue. Take your PI and go. And don’t try to find me again.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  I stared numbly through the windshield, dazed. “I’m sure. I recognized his voice. And he called me Felly. He’s called me that since I was eight. Nobody else has ever called me that.”

  Cal’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m pleased for your sake that he’s alive.” He glanced my way. “But it sounds like he’s in danger.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s why he ran away to South bum-truck. He must have been running from someone.”

  “That would explain why he created a body double.”

  I frowned. “Huh?”

  “Bubba. Obviously your father was paying him in gold and sending him into town to manage his business for him.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.” I thought about it for a while. “So all we need to do is figure out which activities were Bubba’s and which were my father’s.”

  “Unfortunately that’s not all we have to do. We also need to figure out who killed Bubba.”

  “Right.” The knot in my stomach that had loosened a bit when I’d heard my father’s voice tightened again. “We need to find him.”

  “I agree, but first I think we need to talk to the sheriff. Maybe he has some ideas who killed Bubba.”

  I pulled a piece of string from my beaded alligator purse. “It looks to me like Lyle Borne killed him.”

  “We don’t have motive.”

  I shrugged. “He took the boat.”

  “That boat’s worth maybe a hundred dollars on eBay.” Cal shook his head. “No. Rough around the edges or not, Lyle Borne isn’t stupid. If he killed Bubba, there had to be a good reason.”

  “I don’t know, I think it’s pretty stupid to bring a murder victim’s boat home and park it at your dock.”

  Cal grimaced. “Yeah. There is that. I’m sure he never thought anybody would come all the way out there and find it. But the fact that he had it actually argues against Lyle being the murderer. If it had been him he wouldn’t have done anything to point suspicion his way.”

  “Maybe not, but Bubba was holding a gator tooth in one hand. Lyle wears that necklace with his trophies.”

  “I agree we need to look at him. First we’ll talk to the sheriff and then I’ll try to verify his alibi for the time Bubba was killed.”

  “What was his alibi?”

  Cal slid me a look. “He wouldn’t say. I’m going to have to find that out.”

  “Maybe I should take Ida Belle up on that visit to Lena.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  ###

  I was pretty sure Sheriff Robert E. Lee was the original. Horse and all. Maybe somebody had put him into one of those cryogenic mac
hines and kept him frozen for a hundred and forty some years before releasing him in Sinful, Louisiana.

  The ancient sheriff sat astride his swaybacked old nag, whose gray-brown sides heaved just from the effort of walking down three blocks of Main Street.

  The nag’s bulging brown eyes were lidded as the sheriff looked down at us, its hay-bellied form weaving slightly as it drowsed.

  I had a terrible urge to prop it up.

  “You didn’t find anything at all in the vicinity of the body?” Cal asked the sheriff. “No idea what could have been used to bash his head in like that?”

  Sheriff Lee’s jaw folded up into his cheeks as he gummed his response. “I couldn’t tell ya, son. My deputy processed the scene and he’s in Mudbug for a seminar this week. Sorry.”

  “Did he fill out a report?”

  Sheriff Lee hocked a lugey and launched it to the ground on the other side of his half dead horse. I closed my eyes, praying for a merciful end to the interview.

  “S’pose he did. Carter keeps everything close though.”

  I could tell that even the intrepid Cal was losing patience. “Can I get access to the report?”

  The sheriff leaned forward, resting an age-speckled forearm across the saddle. The leather creaked ominously. “You got a license, boy?”

  Cal’s sexy jaw tightened but he pulled his laminated PI’s license out and showed it to the sheriff.

  For the third time since we’d stopped him on the street.

  Apparently the ancient lawman had the memory retention of an undersized flea.

  The sheriff peered down at the license and straightened, launching another lugey into the street.

  If lugeys were bullets Sheriff Robert E. Lee would be Clint Eastwood.

  When the sheriff continued to stare at Cal he finally lost it. “Sheriff Lee?!”

  The man blinked. “Yeah?”

  “Can I see the report on the murdered homeless guy?”

  The sheriff frowned. “Keep it down, boy. There’s no cause to upset the tender sensibilities of the people of Sinful.” He shook his head. “Take it up with my deputy when he gets back in town.” He doffed his cowboy hat. “Enjoy this fine day, folks.”