Shady Shenanigans in Iowa

by Wendy Byrne

  Seconds later, a second woman tumbled inside, and the door slammed closed behind her. Once again I utilized my flashlight app to see. Wearing hip hugger jeans and a rainbow T-shirt, she sprawled on the floor, hitting the wall. Rubbing her head, she glanced at me then at the door. "That went well," she slurred.

  Whether she was drunk or high, I couldn't decide. Right now, I had something more pressing on my mind. I pointed the light toward her face to be sure. Yep.

  Based on the way she was dressed, she had to be my infamous twin. Finally. I had a thing or two to say to her for screwing with my life.

  Instead of apologizing, she gave me a get real look. I spotted a bit of resemblance between us, but it amounted to similar hair color and clothes. Close up she wouldn't have fooled anyone who knew me, but from a distance I could see the similarities.

  "Who are you, and why are you causing trouble for me around town?"

  "You've stolen my husband, and you don't think there's a price to pay?"

  "Your husband? What are you talking about?"

  "Don't lie." She walked toward me and gave me a halfhearted push. "You're cozying up to my daughter too. That takes a lot of nerve."

  I tapped my watch flashlight on and examined her face closely. No, it couldn't be. "Jen?" I still was having a hard time reconciling what the woman had just said. The face looked similar to the pictures I'd seen in Emily's room, but Jen was a blonde. Or at least she had been.

  "Yep, I must be in hell. You're Nate's girlfriend," Jen slurred.

  "Girlfriend? Where on earth did you get that idea?" I held out my hand. "Never mind. You're alive. What happened?" I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the tone of my voice might have betrayed the snark in my question.

  Especially when she rolled her eyes and screwed up her face while rubbing her head. "'Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,' as somebody famous said."

  "It was Mark Twain, and technically he said, 'Reports of my…' Oh never mind. Why did you do it?"

  "Nate's mean to me and is cheating on me with you. I haven't seen my daughter in I don't know how long, but I hear you're buddy-buddy with her."

  I couldn't decide if some of her buzz was dissipating or she was building up steam.

  "Nate and I aren't dating. We're friends."

  "That's not what I hear. I've heard you're a gold digger. So it would make sense that you'd want some of his money." She snickered. "Of course, he didn't tell me he had money when we were married. Things might have been different if he had."

  It was on the tip of my tongue to rip into her, but I kept myself in check instead. "I'm not after Nate or his money. I'm with Gabe, not that it makes any difference right now. If we don't figure out how to get out of here, we're going to die, so let's work together and get this done." It was my version of a pep talk, but it seemed to be lost on her as she stared off into space. "Do you know who the other woman is?" I asked, more to garner her attention than anything else.

  She looked at me like I was crazy. "Mel."

  "Mel? As in Gabe's ex-wife?" Really? Could this situation get any worse? I didn't want to die, but I really didn't want to die with both Mel and Jen. If I were going to have a horrific nightmare, this would have been it.

  "Wow, you're a real genius, aren't you?" She plopped on the floor and put her head between her knees.

  While a part of me wanted to engage in a war of words, it seemed pointless. "Give me your purse."

  "You want my money too? Geez, aren't you something."

  It was my turn to roll my eyes. "No, I'm looking for anything we can use as a weapon or something to get out of here."

  She threw her purse at me. "Have at it. Moochie will probably kill us anyway. She never comes through on her promises."

  "Wait. Is Moochie Purdy? What do you mean about her promises?"

  "I don't know who Purdy is. But Moochie said if I set Nate up, she'd clear up my problem in New York with that dealer."

  "What's his name?"

  "Donny. And he's nobody I want to mess with, so I went along with Moochie's plan to dress like you last night."

  "Wait a minute. Weren't you impersonating me all over the place the last week or so? Dining and dashing in Winterset and running the trails, leaving me notes, and stealing bingo money?"

  "Wasn't me. Had to be somebody else."

  I wasn't sure if she was lying or not, but in the end, it didn't really matter. "What does Moochie look like?"

  She shook her head. "Never saw her. Just talked over the phone."

  While I wanted to ask more questions, I had to find something to get us out of here first, especially now that I had something to work with. With still only one signal bar and no one pounding down the door to rescue us, I had to believe my SOS hadn't gone through. I needed to be proactive in terms of rescuing myself—and I guess I'd have to bring Jen and Mel along with.

  Seriously? Once I got through this, I deserved a medal.

  "What happened to Mel?" I was both afraid to ask the question and afraid to know the answer since she wasn't moving.

  "Not sure. I think they gave her some of that super fast-acting GHB a chemist developed for them."

  "Who gave it to her?"

  "Didn't see."

  "We've got to get her lucid so we can get out of here. But first things first." I used the flashlight on my watch to investigate the lock. "Are we in a storage facility?" Since I couldn't tell from the inside and I'd never been in one, I needed to get a sense of how difficult it might be to break out.

  "Nope. A good old-fashioned outdoor shed. At least it's clean inside."

  My patience snapped. "How can you tell? It's filled with boxes. I've heard mice running around. And we need to figure a way out of here." Being in someone's backyard had to be preferable to being in one of those row-upon-row storage facilities. Plus, those places had high-tech locks. There was a bright side to all this. "I'm going to find a way out. You try to wake Mel."

  She grunted before stumbling toward Mel, who seemed to be coming around in fits and starts—mostly involving moaning and swearing.

  I concentrated on what I needed to do and pushed the door with my shoulder and felt a slight give in the metal. That could work in our favor if I found something strong enough to help me bend the metal so we could slip through the opening. While Jen was doing a halfway decent attempt at rousing Mel, I rummaged through the boxes. Even if I had no hope of finding a crow bar, there might be something I could use for leverage.

  I riffled through the contents and found them filled with kitchen stuff—pots, pans, dishes, utensils. But as I dug deeper, a layer of foam casing covering the bottom piqued my interest. Curious, I threw everything out of the box and discovered tiny packets of what I assumed to be drugs.

  That explained a whole lot. We needed to get out of this place but still needed something to use as a tool. The pots and pans might help in a pinch, but better yet, inside one of the small boxes was a mallet used to tenderize meat.

  I ran to the door and started pounding on the metal. If I got enough bend in the metal door to produce an opening, this could work. I couldn't have said how long I'd worked at it, only that Jen kept telling me to stop making so much noise. Not for the first time, I couldn't help but wonder how Nate ever fell in love with her. Mel was doing a lot of moaning, so she was halfway to lucid at this point. Things were looking up.

  Finally, there was enough leeway in the door that I plopped onto the floor and pushed with my feet to put my legs into the process. If I could get the opening large enough to fit my head through, my body would follow.

  While it was a tight squeeze, it should work.

  "Jen. Mel. Hurry. We've got to get out of here." I shook Mel awake with marginal success.

  She looked at me like she didn't know who I was before stuttering, "I'm tired," then nodding her head back against her chest.

  "Oh, no you don't." I grasped her elbow and yanked her to a standing position. Then urged a reluctant Jen to join me. For a
moment I contemplated leaving them and getting help. But I couldn't convince myself to agree to that plan. Whoever had put us here could come back any second.

  They both protested, but I forced them to cooperate. I pushed Jen first and linked my hand with hers then grabbed Mel's. I wouldn't let go. Between pushing and pulling, I managed to get all of us through the opening.

  When I sprinted free, still holding on to their hands, and looked around, my heart sank. We were in the middle of nowhere. "Do either of you have any idea where we are?" I wasn't sure I could still pick up enough of a signal this far into the woods.

  "Hmm? I'm tired," Mel said. She had dark circles on top of dark circles under her eyes as she started to slide to the ground.

  "Oh, no you don't," I said again. "We don't have time for drama." I yanked her to a wobbly standing position.

  She raised a finger and pointed toward me. "It's you. How could you take Gabriel away from me, with your questionable fashion choices, hair in a ponytail, and gym shoes?" She pffted. "I don't know what he sees in you."

  Her mini tirade must have exhausted her, as her eyes closed and I needed to prop her up once again. This had to be how a mom felt trying to corral twins. I wasn't sure who was going to make a run for it—or, in this case, decide to have a sit-in.

  "I need to get somewhere with enough signal strength to set off the SOS." I stopped as I heard a rumble of tires in close proximity. "All right you two, we need to move and cut through the trees. There's got to be a road close by."

  Jen was doing much better than Mel, who seemed to be perpetually stuck in la la land. Once she came around, I planned on giving her a piece of mind. For now, I'd do what I could.

  "Mel, who's that creepy dude with the dark hair and the scar?" Jen seemed to perk up as she asked the question.

  There was only one creepy dude with dark hair and a scar who I knew about, and that was Charlie Evans. I could only hope that Mel was lucid enough to respond.

  Mel glanced at Jen as if she'd just seen her for the first time. "Jen, you're…" She closed her eyes and swayed. "Alive or I'm dead." She giggled, proving once again they'd definitely drugged her. I liked this Mel a whole lot more than the other Mel.

  "Ladies, let's have the reunion later. We need to skedaddle…" Geez, I was channeling the Qs. "Move before someone catches up with us."

  "I thought…Charlie…I thought he was the one, but then…" Mel said as she began to walk.

  "Wait. Are you saying he's involved in this?" My stomach did a quiver as I waited for her answer.

  Before she could respond, a shotgun went off nearby. I jumped. The others emitted echoing squeals. "Move. Now." I could only hope I was leading the two of them in the right direction.

  We surged uphill with as much bravado and speed as I could manage. I kept getting pulled back by their lagging pace. Then Jen fell, and it was a snowball effect as she knocked over Mel. I helped them up, and we kept moving through the trees. When I glanced at my watch and noticed it had two bars, I set off another SOS signal and kept moving. "Do either of you know how to send a text on an iWatch?" I could only hope they were lucid enough to respond.

  "Sure." Jen grabbed my arm and switched something. "Pick your contact and type in here."

  "Thanks." I sent a text to Gabe. "Help. Sent out SOS. Don't know where we are. Get Nate to track my phone."

  We spilled out from the trees onto a small road that looked familiar, but there were hundreds of roads that looked the same in Iowa. A truck sounded in the distance. I wanted to flag them down, but something inside told me to be cautious. Jen and Mel perked up.

  "We might live after all," Jen said.

  "I don't like it. The shotgun stopped firing about five minutes ago. It could be because they figured out where we were headed. It might be them." I pulled them back into the woods. Mel complied, but Jen sprinted toward the road.

  Figured that she picked now to get a burst of energy.

  "Mel. Stay here." I cautioned her with my finger. "I need to get Jen." I could only hope she listened as I took off running.

  It didn't take me long to catch up and grab Jen. She fought me, but I wrapped my arms around her, trapping both her arms and her body simultaneously. Truck sounds inched closer. They had to be close. The resultant panic set in.

  "Please Jen. I've sent an SOS on my phone and texted Gabe. We need to lie low until we know it's real help."

  Despite her reticence, I dragged her toward where Mel was cowering beneath one of the trees. I pushed her down because—well, I was sick and tired of being a babysitter for these two.

  Rather than a truck, it was a van with the word Purdy's stenciled across the side that slowly made its way along the road. Jen started to get up on all fours, but I pulled her down, practically smothering her in the process. My sense of danger that had become nearly as accurate as Cleo's over the last couple months barked at me to be cautious.

  Wait. A. Minute.

  Did this prove definitively Purdy was Moochie? Or were we that close to the bar?

  "Put your heads down." My words were wasted on Mel, as she'd passed out again. That worked for me—one less child to corral. I settled my body crisscross on top of Jen and put my hand over her mouth for good measure. The van drove by, slowly inching up my worry quotient even more than I could have imagined. My speculation had to be true.

  My watch buzzed with a text from Gabe. "I've got your signal. Nate and I are close. Come out so we can see you."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Nate brought Mel and Jen to the hospital while I rode in the truck with Gabe after the ER doctor discharged me. I related my suspicions to him on the way home. Based on his expression, he thought the drugs they'd injected me with had made me crazy. And maybe they had.

  "Purdy is the age of the Qs. Can you picture them running a drug empire?" He glanced at me.

  "Men older than she have run the Mafia for years. And I know it doesn't make sense, but all the pieces fit together. Sort of." Something seemed off—more so than usual. I felt her guilt so strongly but wasn't sure how or if I could prove it. And, more importantly, I still wasn't 100 percent sure my brains weren't a little scrambled.

  "But you didn't actually see Moochie."

  "I saw Purdy—I think—and she was the woman who had a massage at Gail's at one o'clock, which makes her Moochie."

  He shook his head. "I'm not getting this."

  I chewed my lip as I struggled to communicate my thoughts. Everything was so jumbled in my head I couldn't think straight. "Bottom line is the three of us ended up in the same storage shed. That's definitely not a coincidence. I still say Charlie Evans is involved somehow. Mel babbled something about Charlie being the one but then something happened. She was too out of it to articulate any further. To me that means he's got to be involved."

  "Don't get me wrong. I can't stand Charlie Evans because of what he did to Nate, but he's a straight arrow. No way is he involved in a drug cartel of some kind."

  "I know you're not buying that Purdy is behind this drug thing, but she has to have a partner. If it's not Charlie, it's got to be somebody else."

  "It's not Charlie. I'm sure of that." He shook his head. "The good news is that Jen's alive, so that gets Nate off the hook." I wasn't sure why he was downplaying everything and could only hope he wasn't doing it to protect me.

  "I guess Charlie had no choice but to change his mind when the dead Jen came back to life." Or he's up to his eyeballs in this as well. I chewed my lip. "I really need to talk to Nate and get his input." I think that might have hurt Gabe's feelings, based on the look he gave me. Fueled by adrenaline, I wouldn't back down. "Why would somebody make a deal with Jen to set up Nate unless they had a vendetta against him? That's got to be a part of this, which is why I think Charlie's involved."

  "How about Jen? Could she have somehow masterminded all this?"

  "She doesn't have it in her to pull this off. But somebody is pulling Moochie's strings. If we figure out who Moochie is, we'll have a
better read on our culprit." I shook my head. "Nate told me he'd been investigating an uptick in drug trafficking in the area right before all this happened. That's got to be related. Plus, that shed they kept us in had drugs in it, and we spotted Purdy's van driving nearby, so it circles back to either Purdy or somebody who works for her."

  "He didn't mention anything to me about drug activity in the area."

  "I think he was keeping it on the down low for the time being until he was sure he had something concrete. Which is why I know Jen is a piece to the puzzle but she's not a main component. She said Moochie forced her into this charade under the pretense that her debt to drug dealer Donny would be forgiven. Problem is, she never met Moochie in person."

  "Donny? I don't suppose she mentioned a last name or where he's from?"

  "Nope. She was pretty vague on that other than a New York connection. Any thoughts about what Mel said about Charlie? I'm asking you to keep an open mind about his potential culpability. Granted she was pretty out of it at the time, but he did go hard after Nate despite little evidence."

  He shook his head. "She talked to me about Charlie cheating on her, but that's all I know about her troubles with him."

  "If that's true, why did she get caught up and thrown into the shed with Jen and me? Why was he masquerading as a bum in Iowa City? She had to have seen something or know something."

  "She mentioned that he'd been doing some undercover work, which I found a little odd considering his personality." He shrugged. "I'm not sure how she got caught up in this. My guess is wrong place, wrong time."

  Since we were having a conversation, I figured I'd slip in more questions I needed answers to. "Speaking of Mel, I don't understand why she's in Iowa to begin with. Doesn't she still live in New York?"

  "She met Charlie at a charity event in New York. She's the type that jumps in with both feet, so it doesn't surprise me she arranged to come here on business."

  "Does her business somehow involve you?" I held up my hand to ward off his protests. "Because it seems that you're spending an awful lot of time MIA lately." The analogy of striking while the iron was hot came to mind. I didn't want to continue down this road with Gabe unless he fessed up to his secret life.