by Shari Hearn
“Sometime after we came home from La Cucaracha,” she said, sobbing. “I don’t know when. I don’t even remember doing it. But I must have done it. I killed poor Olive. Oh my God.” She put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from wailing.
“No you didn’t,” Shelby said.
“How... how do you know?” Bucky asked, wiping her face with her sleeve.
“Because Rosa and I were with you all night. We left your house a little after two the next morning. That’s when I saw the shadow moving in Olive’s room, hours after the time she was supposed to have died.”
“What?” Bucky asked.
Rosa nodded. “You were plastered from the drinking game. You passed out in your chair.”
“And what were you two doing while she was passed out?” Ida Belle asked.
Rosa and Shelby shot one another guilty looks.
Bucky noticed. “What? What were you doing?”
“Um...” Shelby said.
Rosa sighed. “We ordered that Fifty Shades movie and watched it on your big screen TV in your bedroom.”
“Actually, we watched it once, then watched it again,” Shelby mumbled.
Bucky gasped. “You ordered that porno film on my cable account? And watched it in my bed?”
“It’s not porno,” Shelby said. “Exactly.”
“Why didn’t you watch it at your house?” Gertie asked.
“We didn’t want the cable people seeing it was us that ordered it,” Rosa said sheepishly.
Bucky wiped the tears and drips from her nose. “Oh, but it was okay if the cable people thought old Bucky was a perv, is that it?”
I held up my hand. “Why did you think you killed Olive, Bucky?”
“Because of the pillowcase and the note.”
She explained that Olive’s monogrammed pillowcase was sitting on the floor next to her feet. A note reading, We will carry what we did to our graves was waiting in her mailbox later that day.
“There wasn’t a pillowcase next to your feet,” Rosa said. “When we left we took your shoes off because we didn’t want your feet to swell. We would have noticed Olive’s pillowcase.”
“Someone must have planted the pillowcase after you two left,” Ida Belle said.
Bucky looked up at us. “Somebody tried to frame me?”
Gertie nodded. “Seems like it.”
“Oh my God,” Bucky said, letting out a breath. “I’ve felt so much guilt over this. I’ve gone to confession twice in the past two days.”
“You’re not Catholic,” Rosa said.
“I’ve been wracked with guilt for a month, now, thinking I killed my best friend. And then we were going to gaslight her niece. I needed to talk to someone about everything. I remembered how you two seem to feel better after going to confession. I thought I might too.”
“Who’s Henry?” I asked Bucky.
“Henry?”
I nodded. “I received an anonymous tip that wherever Henry was, that’s where I’d find Olive’s killer.”
“There’s no Henry here, except... No, it can’t be that Henry.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Maybe it’d be best to show you.”
Chapter Fifteen
IDA BELLE, GERTIE AND I followed Bucky and her crew to the shed in the back of her lot, dodging raindrops from the storm. I noticed there was no lock on the door. We stepped inside, and she pointed her flashlight toward an old sofa in the corner. I drew back with a start when the light landed on a face. It took me a moment to realize the face wasn’t human.
“Henry’s my mannequin,” Bucky said. “Although when he has a wig on him, I call him Henrietta. But he would be the only Henry in the complex.”
“Someone mentioned your mannequin last night at the debate,” I said.
Bucky thought a moment. “That’s right, someone from our detecting club. I told the story of the time we dropped Henry in front of Martha’s cart to make her think she ran over someone.”
“You shushed him. Why?”
Bucky sighed. “Because I’d like to keep Henry a secret. Only people in the club know about him. I prop him up in my recliner sometimes at night when I want to go places I’d rather other people not know about.”
“When she wants to cat around,” Rosa said, smiling.
Bucky shrugged. “That, and sometimes when we all play mahjong over at Lynn’s house and we haven’t invited Stella. Her nightly walking route goes right past my trailer, and if Stella heard about the game and figured she was the only one not invited, she’d be moping around for weeks. Do you think someone took Henry that night?”
“If my source is correct, yes.”
Gertie inspected Henry, lifting a leg to look at the bottom of his pants.
“Bucky, what’s with Henry’s sock?” Shelby asked, pointing to the mannequin’s foot in Gertie’s hand.
Bucky joined Gertie and inspected the yellow sock. “This isn’t Henry’s sock.” She lifted the other foot, covered with a white sock. “This is Henry’s sock. I don’t even own yellow socks.”
“The bottom of the pant leg is ripped,” Gertie said. She pulled the yellow sock off Henry’s foot. “Ah, there’s a gouge, like his foot caught on something and was dragged over it. The original sock was probably torn off.”
“Someone stole Henry, then put him back? Why?” Bucky asked.
“To do the same thing you do with Henry,” I said. “Prop him up in front of a window so it’d look as if someone were home when someone wasn’t.”
Bucky turned to Rosa and Shelby. “Can you imagine someone coming inside my shed and stealing Henry? The world has gone to hell in a ratty old, vomit-filled purse. Have I not said that before?”
“All the time,” Rosa said.
“But the person who took Henry would have to know that someone would notice the shadow in the window, thus establishing an alibi,” Ida Belle said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“All the volunteer security guards notice,” Shelby said. “Especially if it’s after ten. People tend to go to bed early in the park. And there’s nothing else for those people to see when they’re driving around in their carts all night.”
I nodded. “Martha rattled off every light she saw in every window the night Olive died. And she knows that sometimes Bucky uses Henry when she’s...” I shrugged.
“Messing around with Glen Watson,” Shelby said, finishing my sentence.
Bucky’s face blanched. “Damn! I thought I was fooling the bitch.” Then her face reddened. “No wonder Glen’s wife was prowling around the clubhouse last night. I bet Martha called her. Our society has gotten so mean. I blame that Twitter.”
Rosa put an arm around Bucky. “At least you know you didn’t kill Olive.”
“No, but somebody did,” I said.
We left the Three Amigas and went back to Olive’s trailer to clean up the mess and check for stolen items. Ida Belle and I started with the living room. Gertie took the bedroom.
Not more than thirty seconds later Gertie tore into the living room, fuming. “They rifled through my underwear drawer.” She held up a pair of white bikinis with a partial shoe print on the backside. “They tossed them on the floor and walked all over them. Look at this.”
“You fit in those?” Ida Belle asked.
“Yes, I fit in these. And I have plenty of room to move, thank you very much.”
“Whoever it was must have tracked in some mud,” I said. “It’s a pretty good print.”
Ida Belle glanced at it, her lip quivering. “You want to take them to the police forensics team?”
“No, I’m not taking my panties into the police,” Gertie said. “But certainly we can draw some conclusions about the type of shoe and a size range.”
I tried not to stare but got a good look at it with several quick glances. “Athletic shoe, medium men’s or large women’s. Probably about half of the residents would wear that size.”
Ida Belle held up her hand. Her lip was quivering. “I
know what we’ll do. We’ll be like the prince in Cinderella. We’ll take your pair of panties to every trailer and have people walk on them to find a shoeprint match.”
Gertie balled up the pair of underwear. “Just for that, I’m going to leave your favorite bra in the shape I found it in.” She stormed back to the bedroom while Ida Belle and I continued straightening up the living room.
“You have a favorite bra?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “It fits nice.”
For the first time I saw Ida Belle blush.
“And does Walter like it too?”
And her blush deepened.
The sound of the toilet running in the bathroom took her attention away. “That toilet’s running again. I’d better go jiggle the handle,” Ida Belle said.
“Maybe you’d better. And maybe you’d better go tend to that favorite bra of Walter’s while you’re at it.”
We never made it back to Bucky’s to play poker, but she did bring over one of the pizzas she had ordered as an apology for trying to gaslight us. At least, that’s the reason she gave us. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was still fishing for information on the map.
“No, Bucky, we still haven’t found the map,” I said as I took the pizza box from her.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said before leaving.
Ida Belle, Gertie and I had earlier decided against sharing any information regarding the map with the Three Amigas. They might not have killed Olive, but neither had they earned our trust.
I slapped a slice of pizza on my plate and sat at the kitchen table. “The only thing we know for certain is that whoever broke in tonight isn’t the same person who has the other recipe cards or the green vase.”
Ida Belle brought three beers from the fridge and sat. “Unless they were just trying to scare us off.”
Gertie joined us and inspected the pizza. She frowned. “Black olives? Ick.” She put a slice of pizza on her plate and picked off the black olives. Ida Belle also chose a slice and proceeded to pick off the mushrooms. I watched as they each reached over and forked the other’s discards. They made a good team.
Gertie beheld her reconfigured slice of pizza and smiled. “If you ask me, I think the person who has the maps is just sitting in their trailer waiting for time to pass and memories to fade. We have a few more trailers to go through. Maybe we’ll find who we’re looking for tomorrow.”
I fell asleep thinking about Olive and woke up thinking about her. If we were going to give her justice, I’d have to get more information out of Charles. After a fitful night of sleep, I dragged my body out of bed and followed the smell of morning coffee to the kitchen. Ida Belle and Gertie were seated at the kitchen table as I stumbled in.
“Just what I needed,” I said, grabbing a mug from the cupboard.
They both smiled. Gertie bopped up and down in her chair and had that eager look about her.
“Okay, what’s up?”
Gertie beamed. “The toilet was running again this morning.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee. “And that excites you, why?”
“Because we were tired of jiggling the handle, so we lifted the lid to see if we could fix it,” Ida Belle said.
“Okay.” I took a sip of coffee.
“Guess what we found?” Gertie asked, her eyes lighting up.
“Is it going to be gross?”
“Gross?” Ida Belle asked. “Why would it be gross?”
“Have you never lifted the lid off a toilet tank?” Gertie asked. “It’s not like it’s a portal to the sewer.”
“I can’t say that I make it a habit of lifting toilet lids. Can we just get to the point? I’m still waking up.”
Ida Belle picked up several sheets of paper from the table. “We’ve been operating under the assumption that Olive was killed by someone looking for the map and that whoever killed her found the missing recipe cards, as well as the green vase with the original map hidden inside.”
“That would be a good assumption,” I said.
“I get to tell this part,” Gertie said, grabbing the papers from Ida Belle’s hand. “Maybe she wasn’t killed for the maps. These were wrapped up in plastic and secured with duct tape to the inside of the lid.”
“They’re financial records,” Ida Belle added. “Some of them are from the trailer park’s records, and some of them are bank statements from a certain resident.”
Gertie held up the papers for me to examine, holding her thumb over the name of the “certain resident.”
“It appears someone was stealing money from the trailer park,” Ida Belle said. “And Olive had the evidence.”
“Do you want to take a guess whom that someone is?” Gertie asked.
“No,” I said. I moved her thumb away, revealing the name. “Hot damn.”
Gertie pointed to a line in one of the statements and was about to explain what the numbers meant when a phone sitting on the counter buzzed.
“Is that yours?” Gertie asked.
I nodded. “It’s the one Harrison gave me. Nobody should be calling me.” I looked at the screen. It was Harrison’s number.
“Hello.”
“Don’t be mad,” he said.
I sighed. “You found out I was right.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I never had to leave Sinful.”
“Uh-huh.”
I sighed again. My best put-upon sigh.
“Hi, Harrison,” Gertie said, waving at the phone.
“Is that one of the old ladies from Sinful?” he asked.
“Yep. The other one’s sitting right next to her.”
Ida Belle waved as well. “Morning, Harrison.”
First, he cursed. After calming down, he said, “Director Morrow is going to freak.”
“Then don’t tell him. I used an anonymous Facebook account. Nothing was compromised. Oh by the way, your mother’s second cousin Olive may have been murdered.”
Gertie leaned into the phone. “And we’re about to solve it.”
“No you’re not,” Harrison said. “You need to get out of there. Just before calling you with this update, I got an alert. The real Delilah Garrity must have changed her mind about coming in the fall. She has a flight in an hour. You have to leave. Now.”
I hung up. “We need to go. The real Delilah Garrity is on her way.”
“What?” Gertie said. “We can’t see this through to the end?”
I shrugged. “We can give all this information to the Three Amigas.”
Ida Belle folded her arms. “You mean Moe, Larry and Curly? They’ll screw it up. Olive deserves better.”
I stretched my neck, trying to release the tension. “We can’t very well go to the police. That would open up a can of worms. The real Delilah will be here in a couple of hours.”
Gertie jumped up from the table. “Then, what are we waiting for?”
Chapter Sixteen
I KNOCKED ON CHARLES’ door. The front curtains parted slightly, and an eye peeked out at me. Seconds later the door opened quietly, and he stepped outside, dressed in shorts and T-shirt.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“I have some questions to ask you, Charles.”
“You have no right to come to my house.”
“You’re the one who originally approached me. And I don’t have much time left. Where was Henry when Olive died?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have an idea. You’re just afraid to find out. And I think I know why. You were friends with Olive. But you’re in love with someone else. And you want to know if the woman you’re in love with is a killer, only you’re afraid to find out.”
He looked at the ground. “I saw someone take Henry from Bucky’s shed,” he whispered. “But that’s it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“But later you saw the silhouette on the curtain. Only you recognized it, because you’d seen that same silh
ouette on Bucky’s curtains. And the next day when you heard Olive had died, you wondered why the woman you love had a mannequin sitting in for her during the hours of Olive’s death.”
The door opened. Martha stood there wearing a robe. Charles froze.
Martha smiled. “Well, for heaven’s sake, Charles, don’t be rude. Ask the girl in.”
Go, he mouthed to me.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said.
Charles exhaled. “No, really. You should just go.”
“Come inside, both of you,” Martha said in a commanding voice.
Charles’ shoulders slumped. He stepped inside and I followed.
Martha held a pistol.
Charles’ jaw dropped. “Martha, put that down.”
“I don’t trust her. And you shouldn’t either.”
I smiled. “And here I thought you were the love-‘em-and- skip-the-breakfast type of gal.”
She shrugged. “I like how he fixes my eggs. Now, let’s continue the conversation you and Charles were having.”
“You stole Henry,” I said. “You propped him up in your chair and went to Olive’s trailer and killed her while Charles was patrolling. Then you went on your shift as usual at midnight to two and went back to Olive’s house when it was over and searched her house.”
Charles looked at her. “Is that true? Tell me that’s not true.”
Martha was silent.
“Did you tell her about the map, Charles?” I asked.
“Yes. She had access to all the keys. She gave me Olive’s and we went looking for the map a week before she died,” he said, staring at the ground. “I’m not proud of that.” He looked up at me. “But Olive wasn’t equipped to find a treasure like that. I’ve been on explorations before in the Superstitions. I know those mountains. I would have shared with Olive, but she lied and said the map was phony and burned some copy in the fire. Martha and I went through her place and couldn’t find it. I thought that was the end of it.” He looked at Martha. “But that’s all I wanted to do, get the map. I didn’t want you to kill Olive to get it.”
“I don’t think she was looking for the map,” I said to him. “Were you, Martha?”
She sighed. “All I had to do was hear Lost Dutchman Mine map and I knew it was ridiculous.”