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

of time before someone killed Harvey—a jilted woman, the jilted woman’s husband, a business owner he’d ruined—Harvey had all enemies and no friends.”
    “That part I get,” I said, “especially after Gertie called him a jackass in church.”
    Ida Belle looked at Gertie. “You said ‘jackass’ in church?” Then she rolled her eyes upward as if looking through the ceiling and directly to Heaven for strength.
    “Anyway,” I continued, “the disorderly part is not killing Harvey but the disposal of his body. With all the swamp surrounding this town and careful planning, a piece of him should never have washed into my backyard.”
    Gertie nodded her approval and looked over at Ida Belle. “See. I told you she had a different way of looking at things.”
    Ida Belle cocked her head to one side and studied me for a bit. “You’re sorta direct, aren’t you?”
    I shrugged because I could be as vague as the next person if the situation merited it. “Maybe.”
    “Ha.” Ida Belle let out a laugh. “I like shrewd. It takes smarts to be good at it.” She looked over at Gertie and nodded. “Good call.”
    “We need your help,” Ida Belle said.
    “It’s a little late to find a better spot to hide the body.”
    “We know we can’t change the past,” Ida Belle said. “What we need is a plan to protect Marie.”
    “Aside from hiring the best attorney possible, I don’t know what anyone can do at this point, especially me. Out of curiosity, has anyone asked Marie if she did it? You did say everyone hated him, so why assume it was her?”
    “I asked her Saturday evening after I left here,” Gertie said, looking slightly ill.
    “And?”
    Gertie sighed. “She didn’t say anything. Her eyes got really big and she sorta squeaked and then ran off inside her house. She hasn’t answered the door or her phone since.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Probably not the actions of an innocent person, but it’s not exactly hard evidence, either.”
    Ida Belle nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. As long as there’s no hard evidence, there’s a chance of beating this. Gertie told me about how you knew all that forensic stuff from reading so much at the library, so we figured we’d ask you to help us come up with something to detract suspicion from Marie.”
    Good Lord. I stretched my mind to all the late-night reruns of Law & Order that I’d watched. Somewhere in there had to be an answer, because it wasn’t going to come from all those books I’d never read.  
    “I guess the most logical thing to do is to find another suspect.”
    Ida Belle nodded. “That creates that unreasonable thing, right?”
    “Reasonable doubt?” I asked.
    “Yes!” Ida Belle looked pleased. “We need you to find us some reasonable doubt.”
    “You want me to investigate people so that I can accuse them of murder? What about your secret knitting club? Surely you cooked up something after banana pudding and before evening service.”
    Gertie shook her head. “Only Ida Belle and I know everything. We’re the only two surviving members left of the original five that founded the society. The original five made all the decisions, and it’s going to stay that way for now. But we can’t investigate the people in Sinful. We have too many preconceived notions about the people here. We need someone from the outside to make the connection, the same way a jury would.”
    “No way. Even if I had the ability to do such a thing, doesn’t it sound rather dangerous to you—getting dirt on people so you can accuse them of murder?”
    Ida Belle raised her eyebrows. “Funny, the last thing I would have pegged you for was a coward.”
    My pulse immediately spiked, and I gripped the coffee mug so tightly the handle snapped and dumped the entire thing on the table. Gertie jumped up to grab a dishrag. Ida Belle just sat there, staring at me across a pool of spilled coffee…challenging me.
    Don’t get involved.  
    Morrow’s voice