Free Lethal Bayou Beauty by Jana DeLeon Page B

for a meet with this regular. If he doesn’t turn out to be capable of what we want, the only thing we’ve lost is time and a tank of gas.”
    “All right,” I said and rose from the table. “Then I guess we’re going to see if The Sorcerer can work some magic. I’ll go upstairs and become a girl. You two figure out how we’re going to get to Mudbug, since Gertie wrecked her car and I refuse to ride in the Corvette with all Ida Belle’s rules.”
    Gertie jumped up, looking perky. “I got an idea about that while we were jogging over.”
    Ida Belle rose from her seat, looking as skeptical as I felt, but it was their job to work it out. “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes. How long will it take for you to fix the car?”
    “Oh, only five minutes or so,” Gertie said, “but it will take me the other ten, at least, to jog back to my house.”
    “You have got to start working out,” Ida Belle said as they headed down the hall.
    “I work out.”
    “Knitting is not a workout.”
     

Chapter Seven
     
    I was still grinning when I ran upstairs to change. The front door banged shut as I flipped through the sparse selection of girl clothes hanging in my closet. Finally, I pulled a white sundress with pink roses on it out of the closet. It looked like the item least likely for me to wear either as myself or as my prior undercover persona.
    My hair was in reasonably good shape, so I pulled it back in a ponytail as Ida Belle had suggested and plugged in the curling iron. While I was waiting on the curling iron to heat up, I put on some moisturizer and a bit of lip gloss. Despite my considerable dexterity under normal circumstances—normal for me, anyway—I still hadn’t mastered putting on the eye stuff without poking myself in the eye, so I left it off.  
    I flipped the ends of my ponytail around the curling iron, making sure I didn’t leave it on long enough to burn the hair off. Who knew those things got that hot? I took one final look in the mirror before slipping on some pink sandals, then snagged a pistol from Marge’s secret stash, careful to avert my eyes from the full-length mirror in her bedroom. I was afraid my appearance would nauseate me, and I really needed to eat breakfast. When you agreed to escapades with Ida Belle and Gertie, you never knew what you might get. It was always best to maintain your energy level at its peak.
    I was just finishing scrambled eggs when I heard Gertie’s Cadillac pull in my drive. At least, the engine sounded like Gertie’s Cadillac, but an odd clinking sound accompanied it now that I hadn’t heard before. I tossed my dishes in the sink, grabbed my purse, and headed out the door.
    Then stopped and stared.
    One glance was all I needed to put the clinking sound into perspective. The front bumper, which previously could have charitably been referred to as mildly serviceable, was now a rolling eyesore. It was mangled and dented and popped forward on each end of the car. Bright pink and green duct tape held the whole thing in place. All hope that we could make this trip unobserved went straight out the window.
    “Stop gawking and get in,” Ida Belle yelled from the passenger’s window.
    Despite the hundreds of really good reasons this was a bad idea, I walked down the sidewalk and hopped in the car. Gertie took off down the street, the bumper flapping in the wind.
    “Wouldn’t it have been better to pull the bumper off?” I asked.
    “It’s wedged stuck in the middle,” Ida Belle explained. “I couldn’t pull it out and Gertie couldn’t find her crowbar.”
    “At least I got the squirrel out of the grill,” Gertie said.
    Ida Belle nodded. “Dinner at my house tonight.”
    I grimaced. It was definitely a Hungry Man night for me.
    The drive to Mudbug seemed to comprise one long stretch of the same piece of marsh, but we passed the time by speculating on the Pansy situation and Ida Belle and Gertie arguing over the last season of American Idol . Since I’d been