Free The Miss Fortune Series: Nearly Departed (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Shari Hearn

“What are you doing here?”
    I scrunched
my face. “What?”
    “He asked
what you’re doing here, Cookie,” Ida Belle screamed.
    “None of
your business,” I said to him.
    “Delphine’s
a little under the weather,” Gertie said. “So we offered to keep her mother
company for the day.”
    “Really?
That’s… unusual for you, isn’t it?”
    “Are you
saying we’re not kind enough people to want to lend a hand to Sinful’s elders?”
Ida Belle asked, playing up her indignation by placing her hand on her hip.
    “No, it’s
just… What with all you’ve been through with the funeral… And I’ve never seen
you take an interest in Cookie.”
    “Your
zipper’s down!” I screamed.
    Carter
looked down.
    “Ha-ha,
made you look,” I said, pulling my head down into my shoulders.
    Ida Belle
walked around the van and opened the side passenger door. “We should get her
back to Delphine’s house.”
    “O-kay,”
Carter said, still confused. “Well, you have a nice rest of the evening, Miss Cookie.”
    He headed
toward my front door.
    “She’s not
home,” Gertie said. “We brought Cookie over to see if Fortune could recommend
some books to her, being a librarian and all. But she wasn’t home.”
    “Yeah,” Ida
Belle said, coming back around and grabbing my chair. “Then I remembered she
was going out with Ally tonight. I think a late movie or something.”
    “Huh. Well,
okay. I was just checking on you three. When I didn’t find you at your houses I
thought I’d try Fortune’s.”
    “You know,
you don’t have to check up on us so much,” Ida Belle said. “I bet whoever
rigged the casket is long gone by now.”
    “But it is
sweet of you,” Gertie said, reaching her hand out to pat Carter’s shoulder.
“We’re so lucky to have you around, aren’t we, Ida Belle?”
    “Yeah,
lucky.”
    “Where’s a
puppy?” I screamed.
    “No, we
said we’re lucky!” Gertie yelled.
    “Lucky?” I
screamed. “I haven’t been lucky since that sailor in seventy-five! Oh, jeeze, who
just cut one?”
    “Was that
my radio?” Carter asked. “I have to go.” He turned and sprinted for his car,
yelling back over his shoulder to call him if we noticed anything out of the
ordinary. He burned rubber before his door had fully slammed shut.
    Once he squealed
around the corner at the end of the block we sprung into action. Using the
van’s lift, my chair and I were hoisted up and secured inside. Ida Belle hopped
into the driver’s seat and Gertie slid into the passenger side.
    “Time for
Mission Next-to-Impossible,” Gertie said, flashing me a thumbs-up as Ida Belle
peeled away from the curb.
    The drive
to the Swamp Bar lasted about thirty minutes, the last ten minutes of it on a
bumpy dirt road that I would never recommend to anyone who had eaten four bowls
of cabbage soup.
    If the
parking lot was any indication, the Swamp Bar was already packed.
    “I wish I
could go in and watch Fortune work,” Gertie said, as she and Ida Belle lowered
me from the van to the ground. “I remember the first time I dressed as a little
old lady on a sting. Do you remember, Ida Belle?”
    “How could
I forget? We found ourselves in the middle of a riot.”
    “We were
investigating a crooked Bingo game down at the senior center,” Gertie explained.
“Well, old Barbara Cook accused old Edna Fusilier of stealing her lucky dauber.
So Edna grabbed a dauber off the table and started daubing Barbara’s face with
it.”
    Ida Belle
laughed. “Then old One Leg Parsons took his prosthetic leg off and bashed
Barbara on that hump she had on the back of her neck. Sheriff Lee had to call
in reinforcements to get it under control.”
    Gertie
shivered. “I still can’t go to a Bingo game without having flashbacks.” She
pulled her gaze at me. “Don’t worry, Fortune, I don’t think anyone in there’s
packing a dauber.”
    “Lucky me,”
I said. “You brought a thermos of coffee, right?”
    Ida Belle
nodded.
    “And a
backup