Free miss fortune mystery (ff) - sinfully delicious by anna snow

Town café owner Francine’s prize winning secret banana pudding recipe has gone missing the week before the town festival. Now, Gertie, Ida Bell, CIA Assassin in hiding Fortune Redding, and hunky Sheriff Carter LeBlanc know they had better solve the mystery of the missing pudding fast, because if they’ve learned anything since Fortune came to town, it was that the simplest of mysteries could end in murder… especially where Francine’s pudding was concerned.

                         Sinfully Delicious
                       By
                Anna Snow
 
 
 
 
               Chapter One
     
     
Ida Bell pressed the sunflower decorated hand towel against Fortune’s nose while I tried my darndest to ignore the spew of obscenities spilling out of Ida Bell’s mouth.
Now, she’s not normally one to curse, but I have to admit, I kind of pushed her to her limits this time.
“Tell me again how this happened, Gertie.” She demanded as she pulled the towel away from Fortune’s nose to reassess the damage.
There was still plenty of blood flowing from her usually perfectly shaped smeller.
“We were watching a Chuck Norris movie and eating some of the cookies that Ally brought over when Fortune said the nunchucks were a weapon she didn’t have much experience with. I was surprised because you know, Fortune has experience with almost every weapon known to man. So, I grabbed mine out of the kitchen drawer to show her my skills.”
“What skills? Are you Jackie Chan now?” Ida Bell demanded, then slapped the towel back on Fortune’s face with a thunk . Fortune hissed in a breath.
“Sorry,” Ida Bell muttered.
“I have skills.”
They both rolled their eyes. This was a common occurrence. Nearly everyone in Sinful thought I was some kind of dolt. The truth was quite the opposite, but they didn’t need to know that. The goofy old lady act allowed me to gather more information than anyone realized. So what if I was a little accident prone, that wasn’t my fault and it had helped us out more in the past than it had hurt us. At least that’s what I thought.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I whipped them around my back but lost my grip and bam! They flew out of my hand and smacked poor Fortune in the face.”
“Where on Earth did you get your old-as-the-ark hands on nunchucks anyways?”
“Walter’s yard sale last weekend.”
Ida Bell’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “ Walter? You mean to tell me that Walter sold them to you? He knows that you’re half blind and the odds of you killing someone or yourself are sky high. What was that old goat thinking? What were you thinking?”
“I’m not blind and I needed a silent weapon to defend myself ever since Carter took my throwing stars and mace away from me. This town’s been crazy since Fortune arrived.”
“Enough,” Fortune growled as she removed the towel, folded it, then replaced it on back her nose. “You can yell at Gertie later. My nose is broken and it needs to be set.”
“Can you go to the hospital? Considering you’re still hiding and all?”
She glared at me again. “Yeah, but I’d rather not so soon after my last visit.”
“Why don’t you just have Gertie smack you in the nose again? Maybe it’ll snap back into place.”
Fortune shook her head and this time I rolled my eyes.
I felt terrible for having hurt the woman who’d become like a daughter to me, but what was done was done and there was no changing it now.
I only hoped that Fortune’s nose didn’t heal with a big lump in the center of it. Not only would I never hear the end of it from Ida Bell, but I’d never forgive myself.
“I’ll call the doctor and see if he’ll make a house call.”
“That new Doctor that just moved to town?” Ida Bell called behind me. “He can’t be more than thirty.”
“He’s still a doctor. Unless you want to take a crack at fixing her face? Besides, Carter seems to like