by Shari Hearn
Now there was just one thing left for Bucky to do—take another trip to Our Lady of the Desert Catholic Church. Her stomach needed to unload.
She knelt before the small screen. “Forgive me, Father because I’m going to do a load of sinning tonight.”
He sighed. “How long since your last confession?”
“Yesterday. It’s me, the Methodist.”
He sighed again. “Perhaps you’re not aware of this, but when Catholics confess, we confess to sins we’ve already committed. Not those we plan on committing. If you plan on committing more sins, you can always stop yourself from committing them, which is what I’d recommend.”
“I’ll take your recommendation under advisement, however, I’m pretty sure I’m still going to commit them,” she said. “You see, the bimbo now has reinforcements. One of them even announced to the world last night that she found the map. We need to nip this in the bud. And that might involve a little explosion. So forgive me for that.”
“I would like you to pray on this one,” he said. “It’s not too late to reconsider your actions.”
“It’s not a big explosion, Father,” Bucky said, “just enough to scare them. Now, about the sin that I mentioned before I dashed off suddenly yesterday. The one about me killing Olive. There’s a new wrinkle there, and I thought I’d update you on it, just as a courtesy to you.
“Turns out someone may have substituted Olive’s melatonin with a strong sleeping pill. Here’s the thing. I remember I did that once with Olive several years back. We all wanted to surprise her on her birthday with a brand-new, flat-screen TV, so I ground up one of my sleeping pills and put it in her melatonin capsule so she’d be asleep while Shelby and I set everything up. Never did it again. At least, that I can remember.
“I’m not saying it couldn’t have been me this time, especially since I had a lot of tequila shots that night. Tequila affects me in weird ways.” She winced. “Oh, I guess public drunkenness would be a past sin, wouldn’t it? Well, then, Father, forgive me for I got pretty sloshed that night. And I may have then gone over to Olive’s house and switched her capsule of melatonin.”
She thought a moment. “Although, when you think about it, how did I switch them if she was standing right there?” Her face fell. “Unless she stepped out of the room and I did it.” But then she added, “BUT... if I was drunk, would I really have the presence of mind to put sleeping meds in her melatonin, wait until she was asleep, use a pillow to finish her off, then take the pillowcase back to my place and not remember a thing? Does that even make sense?”
No response from the priest.
“Oh come on,” she said, “you must have some opinion on the matter.”
“My opinion is that you might consider going to the police with your questions.”
“The police?” she cried. “Now that’s just silly.” She stood. “You should forgive yourself for doling out such crazy advice.”
She got up and stormed out of the confessional, clenching at her stomach.
FORTUNE AND HER FRIENDS arrived promptly at five. The monsoonal winds had just started to kick up outside and Bucky ushered the three into her trailer, quickly shutting the door before the dust could collect in her living room.
“Welcome to an Arizona dust storm,” Bucky said.
“It’s a good thing I covered this,” Gertie said, handing Bucky a platter topped with foil. “I whipped up some appetizers.”
“You didn’t have to do that.” Bucky lifted the foil off the platter of chicken flautas. They looked an awful lot like the flautas Olive used to make.
“They’re flautas,” Gertie said, making Rosa wince with her pronunciation. “Rolled up tacos.”
“Well, that was very kind of you to make them.”
“Oh, I just found a recipe and thought I’d contribute something.”
Bucky noticed the side-glance Gertie tossed toward Fortune and Ida Belle. What was up with that? she wondered.
Fortune held up a six-pack of beer. “I brought beer.”
Ida Belle held up two other small bottles with a clear liquid inside. “I brought cough medicine.”
“Cough medicine?” Shelby asked. “I don’t hear anyone coughing.”
Ida Belle chuckled. “You will after you’ve had some.”
Rosa took the bottles and shrugged. “Well, okay. I guess it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
Bucky directed the ladies toward the card table she had set up earlier in the living room.
“Where can I stash my purse?” Gertie asked, holding up her monstrous white bag.
Bucky pointed toward a chair by the door. “Right there will be fine.”
Shelby cocked her head. “Whoa, where’d you get that thing, Big Ass Purses R Us?”
Gertie dropped the monstrous thing on the chair. “Well, a lady never knows what she’ll need at any given time.”
Bucky half expected the chair to crash under the weight of it. She forced a smile. “You may be right. One never knows when a spare kitchen sink is needed.” She guided Gertie toward a chair next to Ida Belle. “You ladies play much poker?”
“A little,” Ida Belle said.
Rosa smiled and caught Bucky’s eye.
“Well,” Bucky said, “we’ll go easy on you then.” She chuckled. “We can all snack and play at the same time, can’t we?”
Bucky couldn’t stop grinning. This was going to be too easy, she thought. It was obvious these ladies hadn’t been around the block much. Ida Belle brought cough syrup to a poker game, for goodness’ sake. Who does that? Though when she ate the delicious flautas that Gertie had made, it almost made her feel a little guilty they were going to humiliate these women in poker. Almost. The Three Amigas needed to show these women they were in control and whipping the newcomers’ butts at poker would do just that. Then, later, when Fortune, Gertie and Ida Belle’s morale was in the toilet, Rosa would open a pack of medicine cards and read the ladies’ futures. Rosa hadn’t a clue how to use them; they were a gift from Rosa’s new-age sister and normally sat on Rosa’s bookshelf gathering dust. But Rosa was good at theatrics, and Bucky was confident she could scare the pants off these three, enough to make them hand over the map.
Bucky took the deck of playing cards and placed it in the shuffler. Let the psychological warfare begin.
“You use a shuffler?” Gertie asked, wrinkling her nose. “I like to shuffle the old-fashioned way. Do you mind?”
Bucky shrugged and handed the cards to Gertie, who took the pack in one hand and proceeded to do a one-handed shuffle while staring at Bucky. “Why waste battery power when the human hand is so much more efficient?”
She fanned the cards with her thumb. “And entertaining,” Gertie said, spinning two cards on the middle finger of each hand. “How would you like me to shuffle? Rifle, classic table, long, weave?”
“Uh...” Bucky felt like a deer in headlights. She had no idea there were other ways to shuffle other than just put the cards in her shuffler and let it work its magic.
Gertie placed the deck in her left hand, while pulling the cards upward into an archway with her right hand, defying gravity.
“Stop showing off,” Ida Belle said. “Just shuffle the cards.”
Shelby’s mouth dropped as her eyes tried to follow the blur of Gertie’s hands mixing up the two halves of the deck.
“Studies show seven shuffles will do it,” Gertie said, stopping. “What are we playing?”
“Um...” Bucky stammered, “we were thinking stud poker. But if that’s too advanced for you...”
Ida Belle laughed. “What kind? Seven-card, High Chicago, Low Chicago, Oxford, Follow the Queen, Guts—”
Shelby interrupted her. “Just regular seven-card.”
“Can do.”
Ida Belle pulled out a wad of bills from her purse. Rosa’s eyes widened. She shook her head. “We don’t play with real money. We use chips.”
“Oh my goodness,” Bucky said. “I almost forgot the chips. Can’t play p
oker without the chips.” Bucky got up from the table and retrieved a small leather case from a shelf. She opened it, revealing rows of colored poker chips. “White chips are a penny, red chips a dime and blue chips are a quarter.”
Ida Belle and Gertie looked at one another and burst out laughing. “A penny?” Ida Belle asked. “The last time I played penny-ante I was still wearing diapers.”
Bucky closed the case. “You know what? Maybe we can play poker after the pizza gets here.”
Rosa nodded. “Bucky’s right. Why don’t we get to know one another a little better first?”
“I know,” Shelby said. “Why don’t you get out your medicine cards, Rosa?” She looked at Fortune, Ida Belle and Gertie. “Rosa can tell your future.”
“Is that a fact?” Fortune asked.
Bucky nodded. “Oh yes. Big time.”
“Well, I don’t mean to brag,” Rosa said, “but I am pretty good. And I just happen to have my medicine cards right here.”
Rosa reached for her purse and pulled out a deck of cards decorated with animals and Native American symbols, held together with a ribbon. “My mother’s side is full-blooded Apache. I’m proud to say I come from a long line of Apache medicine men and women.” She placed the deck in the palm of her hand and lifted it up toward the ceiling. “These cards have been handed down from my grandmother to my mother, then to me. Before this, my ancestors would make their cards with tree bark from sacred trees.”
Bucky had to keep herself from smiling. What a crock. Rosa was Mexican on her father’s side and Irish/Italian on her mother’s side. She always made the most interesting spaghetti sauce.
Rosa handed the deck to Gertie. “Since you seem to be a whiz at shuffling, why don’t you give this deck a good mixing?”
Gertie showed off with a round of one-handed shuffling before fanning the cards from one hand to another. After Rosa cut the deck, she handed them back to Gertie and instructed her to place seven cards face down on the table.
Rosa closed her eyes. “I call on the blood of my ancestors to course through me tonight. Running Bear. Little White Dove. Squanto.”
Bucky cleared her throat, her way of saying, don’t overdo it.
Rosa shook. “I feel them. Did anyone else just get a chill?”
“I did,” Shelby said. “And when I get chilled I have to go to the bathroom.” She stood. “I’ll be right back.”
She tossed Bucky a glance before leaving the trailer. That too was part of the plan.
“She’s going to tinkle outside?” asked Gertie, her nose wrinkling in disgust.
“She has a thing against going in other people’s bathrooms,” Bucky explained. “Odd, but that’s Shelby.”
In reality, Shelby was going to go set off a cherry bomb outside of Olive’s trailer. Bucky hoped the small explosion, coupled with the warning from the medicine cards, would be enough to put the fear in these women.
“I don’t have inhibitions,” Fortune said, standing. “May I use your bathroom?”
Bucky nodded. “Down the hall to the left.”
“Go ahead and continue with Gertie’s reading,” Fortune said, making her way down the hallway.
Rosa nodded and turned the first card over. She threw her hands in the air. “Oh, that doesn’t look good.” Then another. “Yikes.” Then another. “Oh dear, that’s even worse. This may take a while. The Apaches are so not happy.”
Chapter Fourteen
WHILE THE OTHERS WERE focused on medicine cards, I was searching Bucky’s medicine cabinet. This would be the fourth cabinet I examined today, having taken advantage of the afternoon movie at the clubhouse to break into several trailers with Gertie and Ida Belle. We’d scored on the sleep meds, finding a prescription made out to a member of the Desert Detectors. But, out of the three trailers we had searched earlier, we were unable to locate any recipe cards or green glass vases.
Now it was Bucky’s turn to be searched. On the bottom shelf of her medicine cabinet I found a bottle of Ambien. That answered one of my questions. I hadn’t noticed a green glass vase in the living room, so I left the bathroom and padded down the hallway and checked out the two bedrooms and their closets. No green vase or recipe cards.
I slipped out the back door in the utility room. The wind was howling, and I had to shield my eyes from the blowing dust. Fat raindrops began dropping as I tiptoed along the side of the mobile home. My aim was to quickly check Rosa’s trailer, but something caught my eye across the street that made me stop in my tracks.
It was Shelby, crouched along the side of Olive’s trailer, just below the master-bedroom window. I came up quietly behind her, my gun in hand, and noticed that she had assembled a crudely made cherry bomb. Beside it was a smoke grenade. She had chosen a spot next to a garden wall and under an overhang that would protect the fuses from the wind and drops of rain. She was seconds away from lighting the fuse when I asked, calmly, “Can I help you?”
She looked up, terror in her eyes. The flaming match slipped out of her fingers and landed next to the fuse. She screamed and swatted the flame out with her hand.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She stammered, her eyes crossed as she focused on my gun. I moved it closer to her face for emphasis.
“Oh dear God, don’t kill me!” she said. “It’s just a harmless little cherry bomb.”
“I’m not going to kill you. Get up.”
She pulled herself up and wiped at the grit on her knees. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before trying to set off an explosive under my window.”
I was interrupted by the sound of a bang coming from the back of the house. It sounded as though the back door was being knocked around by the wind, which meant the door had been left open. And I clearly remembered locking that door before leaving.
“It wouldn’t have hurt anything,” Shelby said.
“Shhh!” I said to her, holding my finger to my lips. I padded around the back of Olive’s house. The door stood wide open, dancing around in the wind.
“What is it?” Shelby whispered.
“Did you go inside?”
“No. No, I swear.”
“Did you hear anything while you were out here?”
She shook her head.
“Go get Gertie and Ida Belle. Tell them we might have an uninvited guest.”
She rushed away as I slipped inside the doorway and into the back utility room. I stood in silence and listened. The only sound was the wind. I padded to the doorway leading into the hallway and poked my head out. More silence.
The trailer felt empty but violated. A scan of the bedrooms revealed someone had been here. Our suitcases rested on the floor, opened. Our clothing had been pulled from the closets and piled on the beds. Drawers from nightstands hung open.
The living room had been tossed. Cushions from the sofa and chairs littered the floor.
Though I didn’t hear anything, I had the sudden feeling I wasn’t alone in the trailer. I trained my weapon on the hallway. “Is that you, Ida Belle? Gertie?”
“It’s us,” Ida Belle called from the utility room.
She and Gertie joined me in the living room, their guns drawn and their eyes sweeping the mess.
“Nobody stuck around?” Gertie asked.
I shook my head.
“Is it okay to come in?” It was Bucky.
“All clear.”
Bucky, Rosa and Shelby cautiously approached the living room. Bucky surveyed the scene and held her hand over her mouth. Then spotted our weapons. “Oh my God.”
“Ladies,” I said, “it’s time we talked.”
The Three Amigas hunched together on the sofa while Gertie sat on the edge of the recliner, training her gun on them. Ida Belle paced. I straddled the coffee table facing them.
“I told you I didn’t do this,” Shelby said. She turned and glared at Bucky. “I told you they weren’t wusses. I said, ‘Let me bring my gun, just in case they tr
y something.’ You said, ‘Nah, they’re wusses.’”
“Shut up, Shelby,” Rosa said.
Gertie stared at Bucky. “So you decided to distract us with some hokey spiritual card reading while Shelby came over and tossed the place, is that it?”
Bucky sat still, shaking. Finally, she spoke. “No. Yes, the reading was hokey.” She looked at Rosa. “No offense, honey, but Running Bear and Little White Dove? Squanto? Squanto was an Indian in the Pilgrim days. He wasn’t even Apache. I gave you a list of real Apache names.”
“I forgot them,” Rosa said. “That was all I could think of.”
Bucky looked back at Gertie. “We just wanted to make you think the map would bring you bad luck. And that cherry bomb wouldn’t have damaged anything. Look, you may not believe me, but Olive promised us that map. We’re treasure hunters. It’s what we’ve all dreamed of, coming into a map like that.”
“So much so that you’d kill Olive for it?” I asked. “Maybe you didn’t want to split it four ways.”
Rosa gasped. “What?”
Shelby’s eyes widened. “Kill her?”
Bucky held her hand on her knee to stop her leg from shaking.
I leaned into Bucky. “I found Ambien in your bathroom cupboard, Bucky.”
“She’s always had Ambien in her bathroom cupboard,” Shelby said. “Doesn’t mean she came over and spiked Olive’s melatonin.”
Ida Belle stopped pacing and pointed to Bucky. “Gertie could have crashed that cart and injured herself last night.”
“That’s not her fault,” Rosa said. “Maybe Gertie shouldn’t have taken Olive’s pills, especially since Olive wasn’t here to ask if she could have it.”
“You’re strangely quiet,” I said to Bucky.
Tears suddenly poured from her eyes. “I killed her,” she said quietly.
“What?” Rosa asked, drawing away from her.
“I killed her. My best friend.” Bucky was gasping for a breath between the sobs. “I went to her house that night and put the Ambien in her melatonin and then put a pillow over her face and watched her die.”
“When?” Shelby asked.