Soldiers of Fortune (2 page)

Sheriff Lee’s face turned as red as the stripes in his outfit. “The hell you say.”

“You rode a burro on top of a federal agent’s car. The city just received a bill for it. Until which time your mental health can be assessed and proven to be sound, you are no longer in charge of law enforcement in Sinful.”

“And just who is in charge?” Sheriff Lee asked. “Carter’s out on medical leave and Deputy Breaux isn’t qualified by a long shot.” He shot a look at the still-frozen Deputy Breaux. “Sorry, son.”

Celia gave him a smug smile. “In the interim, my cousin Nelson will be filling in.”

Gertie gasped and clutched my arm. I didn’t know who Nelson was, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like him.
 

Sheriff Lee’s jaw began to twitch, and the longer Celia stood there wearing that smug smile, the worse the twitching became. Then, in a move far faster than anything I’d ever seen him do, Sheriff Lee pulled out his pistol and aimed it directly at Celia’s forehead.

Most of the crowd took a step back and several women started to cry.
 

“Don’t do it, Sheriff,” one man said. “She ain’t worth it.”

“She wouldn’t die anyway,” a woman said. “You can’t kill Satan.”

I leaned down to Ida Belle. “Should we do something?” I whispered.

Ida Belle shook her head. “You heard the man. He’s not wearing his glasses.”

Even though it was Celia, and she was our sworn enemy, I couldn’t just stand there and watch the sheriff shoot her. The problem was if I tried to tackle him or threw something at his arm, I ran the risk of his accidentally squeezing the trigger and shooting someone in the crowd. That would be worse than shooting Celia. At least she sorta had it coming.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” Sheriff Lee said, his finger tightening on the trigger.

I gathered myself to spring but it was too late. He pulled the trigger.

A loud
pop
sounded and Celia collapsed into the crowd behind her, taking down five other people and sending her skirt over her head, exposing her big white granny panties.
 

Sheriff Lee began to laugh like a lunatic, and I whipped my head around and saw the “Bang” flag hanging out of his fake pistol. The crowd, finally catching on that Celia hadn’t really been shot, started to chuckle. Deputy Breaux came out of his stupor and fled the scene. Clearly he was smarter than people gave him credit for being.

Gertie shook her head. “She just can’t seem to keep from showing her wares, can she? You’d think after last time, she’d start wearing pants.”

Ida Belle whipped out her cell phone and took a picture of Celia in all her white cotton glory. A couple of Celia’s crew rushed over to help upright the new mayor, who was starting to regain consciousness. A couple seconds later, my phone buzzed and I saw an Instagram notice from HotRodMama.
 

Sinful’s new mayor shows her ass in public.

It was like a sea of white on my screen. I grimaced and turned my phone off. It was bad enough the first time. Now it was immortalized on the Internet. Gertie, who’d been digging in her enormous handbag, finally pulled out her phone and saw the same picture on her screen. She howled with laughter and some other people giggled. I scanned the crowd and realized all of the gigglers were holding their cell phones. Good God.

“Hey,” Gertie said, “the
Times-Picayune
just picked it up. The first official press photo of our new mayor.”

I couldn’t hold in the grin any longer. “I bet you’re proud.”

“I’m something,” Gertie said.

Celia grabbed two of her friends’ arms and practically dragged herself up from the pavement, glaring at a grinning Sheriff Lee. “You’ll pay for that,” she said.

Sheriff Lee responded by turning his burro around until the animal’s butt was smack in front of Celia’s face.
 

“That’s enough, Lee.” The male voice sounded from behind me and I turned to see a man making his way through the crowd.

“Thank God you’re here, Nelson,” Celia said, taking a step back from the burro’s butt. “I want him arrested.”

So this was the new sheriff in town.

Midfifties. Five foot ten. Two hundred fifty pounds. Hadn’t lifted anything heavier than a beer can since he was a teen. Only a threat to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

“Arrest him for what?” Gertie asked.

Celia pointed. “For having that unruly animal in the middle of Main Street.”

“The law says burros are allowed as transportation on the Fourth of July,” Gertie said. “Unless he exchanges that animal for oxen, he’s perfectly within his rights. One would think the mayor would bother to learn the laws.”

“Oxen?” I looked over at Ida Belle.

“Only on Christmas Eve,” Ida Belle said.

“Of course.”

“He created a public disturbance,” Celia said.

Gertie snorted. “So did you. Unless you passed a law that it’s okay to expose yourself on Main Street.”

Celia’s brow creased. A little girl, maybe twelve years old, tugged on her sleeve and lifted her phone to Celia’s face. Celia turned red, then purple, and for a moment, I thought she was going to either cycle through all the colors of the rainbow or her head was going to explode. Finally, she sputtered “Handle this” to Nelson and took off toward the Catholic church.
 

“How many Hail Marys does mooning call for?” Gertie called after her.

Nelson took a step closer to Sheriff Lee. “Get down from that infernal beast and come with me.”

Sheriff Lee backed the burro up into Nelson’s face. “One more word and I give him the signal to relieve himself. He’s been gassy.”

Nelson hopped back, suspiciously eyeing the burro’s hind end. “This isn’t over, Lee.”

“Oh yeah it is. It was over before it ever started.” Sheriff Lee gave the burro a nudge and it stepped backward again, pinning Nelson’s foot underneath its hoof.

Nelson howled in pain and shoved the burro’s rear, trying to force it off his foot. Not a good move when faced with a gassy burro, who took the hands on butt as a signal to eliminate part of his load right on Nelson’s shoes. Apparently, relieving himself made the burro frisky and he kicked up his legs, lifting a good bit of his “relief,” and smacked Nelson right in the center of the chest with both hoofs. Nelson clutched his chest and fell onto the concrete, gasping for air. The former Sheriff Lee and the burro strolled away without so much as a backward glance.
 

“Now do we need the defibrillators?” I asked.

Ida Belle walked over and bent down, placing her fingers on Nelson’s neck. “Get up, you big baby. Your heart’s fine.” She looked over at us. “Funnel cake?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Since everyone had gravitated to the sheriff-and-burro show, the funnel cake trailer was free of patrons. A young woman smiled as we approached. “Ida Belle and Gertie…I haven’t seen you guys for years.”

Thirtyish. Five feet four. Hundred twenty pounds. No apparent disabilities, except for the smile.

“Kayla?” Ida Belle said. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Kayla blushed. “I’ve lost a couple of pounds since high school.”

“You’ve lost more than a couple,” Gertie said. “All you young people are on those fad diets.”

“I went on the college boy diet,” Kayla said. “They didn’t go for chubby girls, so I lost the weight, and had a makeover—new hair, fixed my teeth—you know the drill.”

“Your teeth look great,” Gertie said. “Are those veneers?”

“Some veneers and some crowns. I was wishing I’d taken better care of them when I got the bill.”

“I’m thinking of getting some work done,” Gertie said.

Ida Belle rolled her eyes. “You’ve worn dentures for ten years.”

Kayla laughed. “Anyway, I heavily invested in the whole makeover thing.”

“And did it work?” Ida Belle asked.

“Worked like a charm.” A man’s voice sounds behind them. They turned to look as he stepped by them and jumped over the table and into the booth with Kayla. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Colby, Kayla’s husband.”

Ida Belle and Gertie introduced themselves to Colby and then pointed to me. “Sorry we completely forgot to introduce our friend, Fortune. Her great-aunt was one of our best friends. She’s here this summer settling the estate.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kayla said.
 

“It’s okay,” I replied. “We hadn’t seen each other in quite some time.”
 

Like never.

“You didn’t come back to Sinful just for the celebration, did you?” Gertie asked.

“Sort of,” Kayla said and waved a hand at the trailer. “This is our business. We travel around to different events, selling funnel cake and snow cones.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” I said. The whole idea of moving to a different place every week and dealing with random people all day was enough to make me itch.
 

“It is,” Kayla agreed, “but it’s fun, too. Colby and I both love to travel, and the business does quite well. We have a motor home that we can pull the trailer with, so we’re always at home, so to speak. Lots of times there’s days in between events, so one of us drives our truck and we check out the local sights.”

“Speaking of running the business,” Colby said. “I forgot the extra paper plates in the truck. I’m going to run get them.”

“Okay,” Kayla said and flashed her million-dollar smile at him.

“He’s a real cutie,” Gertie said. “Weren’t you dating one of those twins in high school?”

Kayla rolled her eyes. “Doug. I actually married him my freshman year of college. Lasted a whole month before I caught him sleeping with my chemistry lab partner.”

Gertie shook her head. “Well, looks like you got a good one now.”

“The best,” Kayla agreed.

“How’s your mother?” Ida Belle asked. “I haven’t seen her around in a while.”

“She’s good,” Kayla said. “Goes to visit her sister in Denver a lot. She likes the cooler temperature. I get back here for short visits as often as I can, but it’s hard when we’re booked solid. But enough of my rattling. What can I get you?”

“Three funnel cakes,” Gertie said.
 

Kayla sprinkled powdered sugar on the fresh cakes that Colby had just removed from the fryer and placed them on the table in front of us. “That will be fifteen dollars.”

“No wonder they can take time off,” Ida Belle grumbled.
 

“I got it,” I said and passed her a twenty. She gave me my change and we gathered our dessert and headed back to the Sinful Ladies booth. “Do you have to man the booth all day?”

“Heavens no,” Gertie said. “We just set it up and then the other ladies take it from there. They have a schedule so that everyone has plenty of time to enjoy the festivities.”

Sure enough, two of the Sinful Ladies were already at the booth finishing up the unpacking. They looked up as we approached.
 

“We heard Celia made a fool of herself,” the first lady said.

“Heard it and saw it,” the second one said and made a face as though she’d stepped in dog poo.

“It was hilarious,” Gertie said. “And then the burro crapped on Nelson’s shoes and kicked him.”

Both ladies giggled, then they sobered. “We also heard Sheriff Lee has been benched,” the first one said. “Nelson can’t take care of a cactus, much less this town.”

“Technically, Sheriff Lee can’t either,” Ida Belle said. “But we all keep voting for him because we know that means Carter will be taking care of things.”

“I wish Carter would run for sheriff,” Gertie said.

“He’s always said he wouldn’t until Sheriff Lee retires or dies,” Ida Belle said.

“If Sheriff Lee hasn’t died by now, I don’t think he’s going to,” I said.

Ida Belle nodded. “It might all be a moot point now. If Celia makes this mental issue stick, then Carter is going to have to step up in the next election. Bad enough we’d be stuck with Nelson for the time being.”

“Did someone say my name?” Carter’s voice sounded behind us.

Chapter Two

I turned around and he winked. I couldn’t help but smile. “You look better today.”

“I feel better. It was probably all that rest I got yesterday.” He nodded at the ladies, then sobered. “I heard about Sheriff Lee.”

“That’s just what we were talking about,” I said. “What does that mean for you?”

“Nothing yet, but there’s no love lost between Nelson and me. If Celia manages to make this mental competency thing stick, I might be looking for another job.”

“You really think he’d fire you?” I asked. “You’re the only one who knows anything.”

“I think he’d fire me in a heartbeat, but before he got the opportunity, I’d walk. No way in hell would I work for a sleazeball like Nelson.”

“In case you missed the implication,” Gertie said to me, “Nelson isn’t exactly popular.”

“So what’s the deal with him?” I asked. “I’ve never heard you mention him before.”

“We believe that saying his name is like summoning a demon,” Gertie said.