Snow on the Bayou: A Tante Lulu Adventure Read Free Page B

angst. Should she or shouldn’t she?
    After waving good-bye to Belle, she headed down Chartres Street, swinging her tote bag beside her. She had so much to be thankful for, even without a baby.
    Life was good. Sometimes a little lonely, but good.

Chapter Two
    A Cajun hurricane hits the California coast…
    H oly moly! I ain’t seen so many hard man-tushies since you and me went ta that Chippendale show at the Moose Club in Baton Rouge. Remember that guy with the mustache who pulled you up onta the stage ta dirty dance with him? Whoo-ee!”
    “Tante Lulu! Shhhh!” Charmaine LeDeux-Lanier cautioned her great-aunt, peering right and left to make sure they weren’t overheard. “And just for the record, that was fifteen years ago, long before I was married. I don’t do things like that anymore.”
    Tante Lulu snorted her opinion. “Was that before or after you decided ta be a born-again virgin?”
    Charmaine loved the old lady dearly, but after twelve hours in various airports, confined in an airplane, and then a taxi with her, she was pretty close to wringing a scrawny, ninety-something-year-old neck. It was hard to know the exact age of the dear old bat since she keptchanging her birth date, and the original records had mysteriously disappeared from the parish courthouse. Really, Tante Lulu would tax the patience of a saint, no matter her age.
    Biting her tongue, Charmaine gave a “Whatever!” toss of her long black hair over her shoulder; it was a trick she’d learned years ago when she was Miss Louisiana, more years ago than she cared to admit. A woman could do or say just about anything, especially to a man, if she learned the hair toss trick. Her husband, Raoul Lanier—Rusty—for example, was always susceptible. Unfortunately, it didn’t faze Tante Lulu.
    They were standing inside a big, black-tarp-covered, chain-link fence in Coronado, California, looking over an asphalt area that resembled a penitentiary yard surrounded by a quadrangle of low buildings, including the Navy SEALs special forces building, where they had a scheduled meeting with the big kahuna. In the old days, before 9/11, visitors to Coronado could walk up to the fence and watch the SEALs exercise or run on the beach. Not anymore. Security was way too tight. Terrorists would love to get a bead on one of these superheroes.
    But she and Tante Lulu had been given clearance to enter the compound. On the concrete in front of them, scantily clad, sweating men were engaged in all kinds of tortuous exercises with logs, climbing nets, ropes, and tires. In the distance could be seen huge gray Navy warships in the waters near the Naval Amphibious Base at the other end of Coronado. In another direction was the red-tiled roof of the famous Hotel del Coronado, where movies had been filmed and the rich and famous dined; she’d promised Tante Lulu dinner there later.
    On yet another side, beyond the buildings, was the icyblue Pacific Ocean, which shimmered under a blistering sun, almost as pretty as the bayou on a summer morning. That was where their attention had been riveted for the past ten minutes, watching about four dozen men wearing nothing but shorts and boots running along the beach.
    And yes, all of their tushies were fine.
    With effort, Charmaine did her best to stop complaining for about the fiftieth time over playing shotgun to the Cajun loony bird. You could say it was another Tante Lulu Great Adventure, and really, her heart was in the right place, bizarre as her schemes often were. In this case, she was bound and determined to bring a lapsed Cajun back to the bosom of his family. Justin LeBlanc didn’t stand a chance.
    But why did I have to be the one to choose the unlucky straw when it came to picking who would accompany the old lady on this hare-brained trip?
Charmaine suspected that one of her LeDeux half brothers had fixed the straws. They were devious that way.
    “You’re always shushin’ me,” Tante Lulu complained. Apparently