by Amy Vansant
Another ten minutes went by and Charlotte began to worry that Cody lived above his store like Mr. French. They could stake the place all evening, only to watch him jog downstairs and start all over again in the morning.
A clatter made her jump. Crouching lower, she watched as Cody rolled open the garage door at the back of the store. She wanted to text Declan an update, but feared she’d miss something.
Cody disappeared into the dark depths of what appeared to be a storage room and she tapped out a message.
He opened the back garage door.
He’s leaving?
IDK. He went back in. I’ll let you know.
She spotted movement and turned her phone to airplane mode. She couldn’t risk a buzzing phone alerting her suspect.
A large white box wheeled from the garage bay. Once it cleared the door, she could see Cody had what appeared to be a large freezer on a dolly. He rolled it to the parking area behind the store, opened the back of a black Ford pickup truck and, with great effort and grunting, slid the appliance into the bed.
She noted the freezer had a cloth strap around it to keep the lid from falling open.
Or to keep a body from knocking it open.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that the day Frank threatened him with a search warrant, Cody decided to move a freezer under the cover of darkness. Johnnie Walker Cat couldn’t be wrong.
Poor Mr. French had to be in that freezer.
She had a decision to make. Proving Cody had killed Mr. French would be a lot harder without a body.
I can’t let him get away.
Charlotte crept to the thickest bush closest to the truck.
Cody turned to pull down the garage door and she leaned from the bushes, intending to hop into the truck or tap the freezer for signs of life.
With an eloquent economy of movement, Cody flung closed the door and whirled back toward the truck. Charlotte retracted into the bushes and stopped breathing until she heard him enter the Ford.
The truck roared to life and on impulse, she sprinted from her hiding place to grab the back of the vehicle, her feet on the bumper. Staying low and clinging like a refrigerator magnet, she waited until he shifted into drive. Hoping his eyes would be trained on the road like a conscientious driver, she spilled over the hatch and into the bed of the truck. The freezer slid toward her, pinning her to the hatch, as if it had been desperately searching for a cuddle partner for some time.
Charlotte took short, choppy breaths until Cody made a left turn and the freezer slid away, releasing her.
Wedging her leg against the appliance to keep it from sliding, she tapped against the side of it.
“Mr. French? Are you in there?” she called as loud as she dared.
The truck’s engine roared and she realized she couldn’t be sure if Mr. French was calling to her or not.
She knew the rules. If a television mystery show lasted more than a season or two, someone eventually suffocated in a freezer. Just like every long-standing sitcom featured someone giving birth in an elevator.
Television tropes were tropes for a reason.
I have to break the seal.
The truck pulled off the paved road and onto a dirt path. Jostling from wheel well to hatch and back, she opened her lock pick case and retrieved a small knife for sawing at the strap securing the lid.
“I’m coming Mr. French.”
After sawing for what felt like an eternity, and after vowing to buy sharper knives over a dozen times, the strap gave way. Positioning her foot against the lower lip of the seal, she jerked on the lid.
She smelled it before she felt it.
A wave of liquid burst from the freezer like the faltering of a dam, soaking her to the bone with viscous gunk.
Though she couldn’t see well enough to tell color, she knew the liquid could only be one thing.
Blood.
The truck slowed to a halt.
Chapter Twenty
Declan abandoned texting and pressed Charlotte’s saved number on his phone. He didn’t want to compromise her with phone noise, but it had been nearly twenty minutes. The last thing she’d said was that Cody was on the move, and now she wouldn’t answer. He knew she wasn’t one to back down.
What had she’d gotten herself into?
Her voice mail message played.
That’s it.
He didn’t care if he blew the whole operation. He had to check on her.
Declan stepped out of his car and slipped into the alley between the convenience store and the apartment next door. He jogged the length of it and peered around the corner.
Nothing.
He crept a little farther and saw that the store’s garage door was closed.
“Charlotte?” he whispered into the night.
No response.
He moved closer to the bushes where she’d planned to lay in wait.
“Charlotte?”
Silence.
Declan stared at the rolling door at the back of the store. The last thing she’d said was that the door was opening.
What if she’d confronted him and he’d pulled her inside?
He moved to the door and rapped on it with his knuckles.
“Charlotte?”
He thought he heard something and knocked again, louder.
There. A grunting noise echoed from behind the door.
Banging more authoritatively, he heard the moaning grow louder and more consistent.
“Charlotte?”
Another sound. It wasn’t unlike a muffled scream.
She’s definitely trying to respond. He jerked on the door but found it locked. Beside the rolling door was a rickety, standard-issue wooden door. Declan rammed his shoulder into it and felt the frame shudder. He kicked to the right of the knob several times, but the lock held.
It would help to not be wearing flip-flops.
Stupid Florida.
Gritting his teeth, he ran at the door and it cracked. Pounding at the weakened center, he pulled enough splinters away to reach in and unlock the door from the inside.
“Charlotte!”
A moan echoed from the opposite side of the cavernous room behind the rolling door. Declan found and flipped a light switch, but it illuminated outside instead of inside.
“I’m coming!” he plunged toward the moans, tripping against piles of soft drink flats and boxes of snack chips in the dim illumination provided by the outside lamp. The windows of the rolling door had been largely painted black, with only dots of light shining through.
The pleas emanating from the darkest corner of the room grew more frenzied the closer he drew. As it became harder to see, he reached out, until his groping hand dropped into the lap of the frantic hostage.
Reaching upward, he found a face and peeled what felt like duct tape from the mouth.
“Ow! My mustache!”
Though the voice was high with panic, Declan knew he’d stumbled upon a man, not his damsel in distress. Charlotte sometimes let her legs go for a few days, but she’d never had a mustache.
“Who are you?” asked Declan.
“I’m Robert French. Get me out of here—he’s going to kill me! He’ll kill us both!”
“Who?”
“Cody. The idiot who owns this dirty little hole-in-the-wall.”
“Did you see a girl?”
“What?”
Declan leaned forward and grabbed the hysterical man by his shirt. “Did you see a girl?”
“No. Why? Did he kidnap a girl, too?”
Declan released a sharp, frustrated sigh. “Hold on.”
Eyes adjusting to the dim illumination, Declan located another light switch and flicked it on.
Mr. French sat squiggling in the corner, tied to a chair. His clothing was torn and dirty, and he had small round wounds on his arms.
Charlotte was nowhere to be seen.
Declan retrieved his phone and called Frank as he headed to search the front of the store. He could barely hear with Mr
. French demanding his return to the warehouse.
“It’s midnight. This better be good,” answered Frank.
“It’s Declan. He’s got Charlotte.”
“What? Who?”
Declan paced as he spoke. “We were staking out the convenience store and Cody came out the back and now she’s gone, and Mr. French is tied to a chair in the back of the store.”
Frank started a sentence several times without getting past the first consonant. Finally, Declan heard him sputter a curse beneath his breath. “Stay there. I’m on my way. Don’t move.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Charlotte tried to think about anything other than the stench that clung to every inch of her. Lying in the bed of the truck, the trapped pool of blood sloshed back and forth over her like a putrid tide.
She heard Cody put his truck into park.
There was no time to escape.
Cody exited the cab.
I’m going to barf. I’m definitely going to barf.
Cody’s upper body bobbed along the side of the truck bed, and he hooted as the smell within reached his nostrils. He opened the back gate as gallons of liquid escaped out onto his shoes.
“Son of a—” He raised his chin and his gaze met Charlotte’s. “Who are you?”
Charlotte’s fingers fell upon something wet and meaty. Her struggle to not barf ceased to be a winnable game.
She retched, and Cody leapt back with a yelp of disgust.
Taking the opportunity to escape, she crawled as fast as she could from the back of the truck, dry heaving as she went. Stumbling, she started down the dirt road away from Cody and his Truck of Horrors.
“Hey! Hey!” she heard Cody calling behind her.
She tried to move faster, but had to drop to her knees as nausea again overtook her. The stench of the blood had robbed her of any ability to control her gag reflex.
“Who are you? What were you doing in the back of my truck?” Cody demanded.
Hunched on the ground, Charlotte turned her head to look back at him, her blood-soaked hair flopping across her face. She tried to speak, but found she couldn’t.
Cody stomped his foot. “Were you there when I slid the freezer in? Are you drunk? High?” He took a step towards her and then jerked back. “Oh—” He gagged and stepped backwards and away from her.
Charlotte realized that, covered in blood like a wet rat and lying in the dark, Cody couldn’t recognize her. She curled into a fetal position and nodded.
“Tequila,” she croaked, sliding her knife from her pocket. Pretending to heave, which wasn’t hard, she opened the blade and held it hidden, ready to defend herself. Even not covered in blood and sick to her core, the odds weren’t good that she’d be able to out run Cody. He didn’t look a day over thirty and was built like a whippet.
“The booze isn’t the worst of your problems now, you stupid bitch,” he said, laughing. He found a spot to stand equally far from her and the blood-covered truck.
Charlotte glared at him through her straggly hair, wondering how she could have missed such a prince among men when she was single.
Ah, what could have been.
He put his hands on his hips. “I gotta dump this spoiled meat, go spray out the freezer—and now spray out the damn truck, too, thanks to you. You thank your lucky stars for that stink or I’d teach you a lesson you’d never forget.”
Charlotte nodded.
Charming. Wait—Did he say spoiled meat?
Charlotte’s gaze drifted back to the truck. Was he lying? Or was it really beef and not Mr. French?
“It’s meat?” she echoed.
“Yeah, it’s meat. What the hell else would it be? Damn thing broke with nearly a whole deer my buddy’d given me inside.”
She heaved again.
Cody removed his flannel shirt and tied it over his mouth and nose. By the glow of the truck’s parking lights, she could see his right arm was covered with what looked like thin scratches.
Cat scratches. No wonder the cat hated him and his bell—Johnnie Walker Cat had been there when Cody presumably attacked his owner, and tried to stop him with his two remaining feet.
Jerking the freezer from the truck bed, Cody dumped it into the grass before sliding it back into place.
He pulled the shirt from his face and pointed at her as he headed for the driver’s side.
“You stay away from my truck from now on, y’hear? Or that won’t be deer blood on you next time—it’ll be yours.”
A moment later he was gone.
Charlotte pulled her phone from her pocket and called Declan.
He groaned with relief. “Charlotte, where are you?”
“I have no idea, but I’m covered in deer blood. At least, I hope I am and he wasn’t lying.”
“What? You had us worried sick.”
“Us?”
“Frank is here. I went looking for you and found Mr. French tied up in the back of the store.”
“He’s alive? Ooh—I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that. I thought I was covered in French dip.”
“What?”
“Bad joke. Nevermind.”
“Charlotte, where are you?”
“I really don’t know. Some dirt road.”
“How is that possible? Did he grab you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I hid in the back of his truck and he drove to the middle of nowhere to dump a freezer full of spoiled meat. I thought he had Mr. French in the freezer.”
“Are you safe now?”
“Yes. He left. Found me covered in spilled freezer blood and ran away as fast as possible.”
“He left you—” Declan paused. “Ah. French dip. I get it now. That’s disgusting.”
“The deer dip isn’t exactly Chanel Number Five either. Is Frank still there?”
“Yes, he’s standing right here. They took Mr. French away. He was covered in cigarette burns. Cody tortured him until he agreed to sell him his store. Made him sign papers and said he was going to kill him.”
“Yikes. I guess that makes sense. Cody’s angling for a Seven-Eleven franchise and he needs a better location. French’s store would be perfect.
“Heck of a way to get a space.”
As they spoke, Charlotte crawled to her feet and made her way down the dirt road. She noticed a small pond and found herself transfixed by it.
“Charlotte? Are you still there?” asked Declan.
“Oh. Sorry. Yes. I’m trying to decide whether I’d rather continue to smell like death or be eaten by an alligator.”
“Don’t do anything stupid. I’m on my way to my car.”
“Wait—give your phone to Frank. I have to tell him something.”
She heard Declan sharing a synopsis of her situation before Frank’s gruff baritone drowned all else. “Frank here. Little lady, you and I are going to have to have a serious talk about making smart decisions.”
Charlotte chuckled. “I’m not in a position to disagree. But Frank, listen, I keep wondering why Cody would decide to house clean in the middle of the night. I think he’s headed back to put Mr. French, dead or alive, in the freezer, and get him out of there before you show up with a warrant. You can grab him if you don’t spook him.”
It was silent while Frank processed the information. A moment later he began barking orders at the other policemen to clear the area. Declan’s voice returned.
“What did you tell him?” he asked.
“I think Cody’s on his way back to put Mr. French in his empty freezer.”
Declan sighed and she heard his car door close.
“I’m tracking your phone, hang up before it dies. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Then you and I are going to have a talk, too.”
She smiled, happy that he cared. “Have I been bad? Are you going to spank me?” She’d barely spoken the words before she felt her face grow warm with a flush of embarrassment.
His voice fell soft. “It’s not funny, Char. I was really scared.”
&n
bsp; “I’m sorry. I really am.” She paused, and then couldn’t help herself. “I know that was cheeky of me to say.”
He snorted a laugh. “You’re hopeless. Hang up. I love you.”
“Fine. I love you, too.”
She disconnected and continued down the road. After four steps, she stopped.
Wait. Did he just say I love you?
Did I?
She grinned until she tasted blood and then spat and heaved. She gave up trying to make progress towards nowhere and sat in the dirt.
Declan found Mr. French, Frank will catch Cody, Johnnie Walker Cat solved the case—and I’ll never be able to eat venison again.
Her phone dinged and she looked at it to find a text from Seamus. He’d completed his sweep of her house and found no bugs. That was something at least.
Though if he had found listening devices, she would have known who was in her house and why. As it was, the flashing elbow remained a mystery.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Abby bounded down the hallway to greet Charlotte and Declan as they entered her house. Rounding the corner, the dog screeched to a halt as the aroma of Charlotte’s blood bath filled her flaring nostrils.
She’d done her best to towel off the worst of the mess before getting into Declan’s car, but trying to sneak deer blood past a dog’s nose was like trying to tiptoe on creaky floors past a bat.
Abby ignored Declan and slammed her nose into Mommy, sniffing with the intensity of a car vacuum. She found the mother lode of yumminess on Charlotte’s shorts and began trying to eat them.
“Oh, Abby. Get away. That’s disgusting.” She looked at Declan. “I need to—”
“Get a shower. Yes. This I know. I’ll be outside burning my passenger seat.”
Charlotte scooted to her room, Abby scrabbling tight on her heels.
She couldn’t remember a time a shower felt so good, and as a bonus, it gave her an excuse to use her unwanted collection of fragrant soaps. Retirement community people were always pushing perfumy toiletries on each other, no matter what the occasion. Birthday? Lily-of-the-valley soap. Christmas? Pine-scented bath gel. President’s Day? Enjoy a lavender loofa.