Read miss fortune mystery (ff) - bayou bubba for Free Online Page B

Walter’s directions, the winding brown ribbon of the bayou with its twisted skirt of Spanish moss draped cypress, was never far away.
    Homes on stilts dotted the wildly beautiful landscape, some fresh and grand and others looking as if they’d melted into the rough setting and become one with it. When we finally pulled into a rutted mud driveway in front of Lena Borne’s place, I realized she lived in one of the latter.
    A rough sided wood cabin with a rusted tin roof crouched on the shore of the muddy water, surrounded by a thick tangle of cypress which all but obscured the tiny cabin from the road in a silvery frill of Spanish moss.
    When Cal knocked on the door, I looked around the yard to make sure we didn’t have any spiky backed, long-jawed visitors.
    Something slithered along a branch of the bald cypress that overhung the cabin, but I didn’t see any gators lurking in the scrub grass near the house.
    Heavy footsteps sounded on the other side of the door and the solid interior door swung inward, leaving only a flimsy screen door between us and the biggest man I’d ever seen. He peered down at us with one eye, the other hidden behind a black patch like a pirate’s.
    “Lena’s at the shop.” The man’s voice was breathy, the tone located somewhere in the midrange. Much higher than I would have expected for a man. Especially one who could look Sasquatch in the eye. But he spoke in a very cultured way, which was also at odds with the wife beater and jeans covering his tall, meaty form.
    “Lyle Borne?”
    Borne narrowed his one good eye and twitched the toothpick between his lips. “And whom might you be?”
    “I’m Cal Amity and this is Miss Chance.” He paused as if waiting for a reaction to the names. When he didn’t get one he went on. “Walter over at the General Store gave us your name. We’re looking into the disappearance of Miss Chance’s father.”
    Lyle’s one good eye skimmed my way and assessed me from head to toe, gaining heat.
    I threw up a little in my mouth.
    “He’s not here,” Lyle informed us, closing the door.
    Cal and I shared a surprised glance. “What now?” I asked.
    Another door slammed at the back of the house.
    “Now we go talk to him out back,” Cal responded.
    Lyle Borne was limping toward a rickety looking dock hanging over the water when we rounded the corner.
    “Mr. Borne…”
    The big man stopped and turned. I gasped as I took in his left calf. It was misshapen and scarred. He glanced down and chuckled. “That was just a baby. About six feet long. I surprised him from a nap.” He spoke of the maiming of his person as if it were a fond memory. A lovely trip down memory lane.
    Borne reached inside the neckline of his wife beater and pulled out a string bearing several long, curved objects. He tapped one of the smaller ones. “This is all that’s left of the little bugger. Well, this and several pairs of boots.” He tittered like a high school girl at a slumber party.
    Cal showed my father’s picture to Borne. “Have you seen this man before?”
    Borne tucked his ornamental kill record back under his shirt and took the picture from Cal. He stared at it for a minute and then handed it over. “I ran into him on Number Two a month or so ago. He was sitting on a blanket next to a raging fire. Though it was hotter than hell that day. And he was drinking some of Ida Belle’s moonshine.”
    I looked at Cal. “From a cough syrup bottle?”
    Borne glanced at me. “Yes.”
    “We found several empty bottles around his camp on Number Two.”
    Borne nodded.
    “Did you talk to him,” I asked Lyle hopefully.
    His face softened a bit at the hopeful sound in my voice. “No. He liked to keep to himself. Folks around town started calling him Bubba. I guess they thought the name was ironic. You know, because he was so stand-offish. About the furthest thing from a brother there could be.” Borne mused over the thought as if it intrigued him and then shrugged. “Anyway.