Free miss fortune mystery (ff) - bayou bubba by sam cheever Page B

upward from the middle. “I knew you’d lead me to him eventually.”
    “You know this guy, Felly?”
    “Unfortunately we’ve met. Sort of.”
    “Your daughter and her boyfriend are staying at the same motel where I was.”
    “He’s not my boyfriend.”
    “You’re sharing a room.”
    Felonius scalded me with a look, his jaw tightening.
    Ida Belle and Gertie gave me thumbs up. ‘
    “Cal is not my boyfriend!”
    “It’s not important,” Father said. “What is important is that these ladies have nothing to do with this, Rouse.”
    The thug smiled, the gun unwavering. “I’m afraid they’ve made themselves part of it, Chance. And I have to say I’m glad they did. I’d have never found you out here in the swamp.”
    Eyeing the gun the thug from the motel was holding, my father eased himself in front of me. The ladies stepped back.
    “Everybody stop moving!” Rouse yelled.
    Like a bad game of Simon Says we all stopped mid-motion.
    The thug reached for something in his back pocket and came up with a pair of hand cuffs. My gaze slid toward Ida Belle and jerked downward.
    She narrowed her gaze for a moment and then nodded.
    I prayed she’d gotten the message I was trying to send.
    The thug moved closer. “Put your hands behind your back Mr. Chance and turn around.”
    My father widened his arms, shielding me. “No. Let them go, Rouse. This is between me and Nicolai. I don’t want them harmed.”
    Rouse moved closer. “I got my orders, Chance. If you cooperate nobody else needs to get hurt.”
    When Rouse was a foot away I yelled, “Now!”
    Gertie and Ida Belle each grabbed a corner of the aquarium and pulled, knocking it over with a thud.
    The two gators shot out of the thing, hissing angrily, and I hit the nearest chair, squealing as they headed right for me. My father launched himself at the guy with the gun, both of them dancing around the snapping jaws of the gator babies.
    I realized pretty quickly that my father—a man who’d made a killing in the financial world but who couldn’t kill much else outside of a few bugs—didn’t have a chance against the muscular thug.
    So I did the only thing I could think of to do. I grabbed my twenty-pound alligator purse and swung it toward the thug’s head. It landed with a meaty sounding thwuck and he tensed, his eyes rolling back into his head before he toppled to the floor like a giant redwood.
    One of the babies snapped angrily at his arm and missed and then turned and hightailed it out of the cabin just behind its sibling.
    Gertie and Ida Belle came up on either side of me. We all looked down at the unconscious thug.
    “I think you killed him,” Gertie said.
    “Serves him right,” Ida Belle responded.
    “I panicked.” I looked at my dad. “Is he dead?”
    Felonius Chance dropped to one knee and felt the guy’s throat. He frowned and I braced for bad news. A few beats later I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “Well?”
    My dad blew out a frustrated breath, dropping his hand. “How the hell do I know? I can’t feel anything.”
    “He’s dead!” I wailed.
    He lifted his hands, climbing to his feet. “I didn’t say that, Felly. I’ve never been able to feel a pulse, not even on myself. It’s not as easy as they make it look on TV.”
    “His chest is moving,” Gertie observed.
    I pulled air into my lungs. “Oh thank god!”
    “Here, help me get him in a chair,” father said. “We’ll use his cuffs to keep him there.”
    A few minutes and much huffing and puffing later we all took a step back, panting. We’d pulled his arms between the slats in the back of the chair and cuffed them together. Then we’d bound his ankles to the legs of the chair with two of my father’s belts.
    “That should hold him,” father said.
    I pulled out my cell phone. “I’ll call Cal.”
    Felonius placed a hand over my phone, pulling it away from my ear. “No, Felly.”
    “What do you mean, no ? This guy killed Bubba.”
    “And he would have