by Shari Hearn
“It was real,” Charles said. “I got a look at it. The miner who had the storage unit was an expert on the Lost Dutchman Mine.”
“Do you know how many people have failed trying to find that lost gold?” she said. “Don’t be stupid, honey.”
“Then why did you go in the trailer with me and try to find it? Why would you kill her if you didn’t believe she had an authentic map?” Tears streamed down his face. “Why did you do it?”
“Because Olive had evidence Martha was stealing money from the trailer park association,” I said. “Big money. She was going to reveal it at the candidate debate.”
Martha’s eyes widened. “What evidence?”
“Financial records. But you already guessed Olive took them, didn’t you? You mentioned to me that your trailer had been broken into once. You heard the rumor that Olive was going to reveal something at the debate and decided to stop her. You lucked out when Olive found a map that everyone wanted to have. No one would suspect you, because they’d assume it had to do with the map and her club. In fact, you took the pillowcase from Olive’s pillow and snuck inside while Bucky was passed out and dropped it at her feet, then sent her a note to make her believe she did it.”
“Martha,” Charles said, “this is wrong.”
“Charles, honey, I’m going to need you to be quiet for a little bit while we figure out what to do with her.”
“What to do with her?” Charles was shaking.
“What happened?” I asked her. “Did the police spoil your plan to blame Bucky because they were too incompetent to investigate?”
She sighed and shook her head. “As long as Bucky believed she killed Olive, that was good enough for me.” She looked at Charles. “Here’s what we’ll say. She barged in here and threatened us. Came at me with a knife. It will be self-defense.”
“Martha, no.” Charles started moving toward her.
“Charles,” Martha said. “Sit down.”
He stood between us.
“Charles, you don’t have to do this,” I said.
“No, I do. Olive was my friend.”
Martha laughed. “You were trying to steal from her.”
“But I would never hurt her. And I won’t let you hurt her niece.”
“Being a hero doesn’t suit you, Charles. Go sit down.”
But he didn’t.
“Really, Charles,” I said. “I appreciate the gesture. But you don’t want to accidentally get shot.”
“Listen to her, sweetie,” Martha said. But he didn’t move. She directed her next words to me. “Your buffoonish friends. Where are they?”
“Well, when we didn’t find you at your trailer, we decided to come over here. I’d heard people joke about Charles dating some secret woman the other night at the debate. And I had a hunch Charles was intimate with the killer, that’s why he was so conflicted. So, while I came in the front, they came in the back.”
“You’re bluffing,” she said.
This should have been the time both Ida Belle and Gertie stepped up behind her and demanded she drop her weapon.
However, no Ida Belle and Gertie appeared.
“Charles. Move. Now.” She commanded.
“No. You’ll have to shoot me to get to her.”
She sighed. “Have it your way.”
She pointed the weapon at him. I dove headfirst into Charles, knocking him away from her. At the same time, Ida Belle came at Martha from behind and clocked her on the back of her head with the butt of her gun. Martha hit the floor and Gertie rushed to her side and grabbed the pistol resting in her hand.
I pulled myself off Charles and looked up at them. “Took you two long enough.”
Ida Belle glared at Gertie. “Maybe if she would clean her purse out now and again, she wouldn’t be spending so much time searching for things.”
“Next time, you take charge of the lock pick set,” Gertie said, cuffing Martha’s wrists.
I helped Charles up. He held out his hands. “I guess you’ll have to cuff me as well. I deserve it.”
“You tried to steal from a friend,” I said to him. “You’ll have to live with that. But you were willing to take a bullet for me, so you can put your hands down.”
Tears spilled from his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
We carried Martha into Charles’ bedroom and cuffed her to the bedpost.
“Not that we don’t trust you, Charles,” I said to him before leaving his place, “but we’re keeping the key to the cuffs.”
He nodded, dropped down into a chair next to the bed, and buried his face in his hands.
Our last order of business was rounding up Bucky, Rosa and Shelby in front of Olive’s trailer. We explained Martha’s role in Olive’s death and handed over the evidence that Olive had taped underneath her toilet tank lid.
“Holy crap,” Shelby said.
“Thank you so much for finding Olive’s killer,” Bucky said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I’ll be honest. I don’t think your aunt liked you much, Delilah. But, today, I think she’d be mighty proud of you.”
Rosa dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. “What about the map? Did Martha steal that too?”
I pulled the recipe card from my pocket and held it up. “According to her diary, Olive copied the map on the backs of some recipe cards. She planned on having you all find them in a treasure hunt.”
Bucky snatched it out of my hand and examined it. “This is it. There’s Weaver’s Needle. This is a segment of the map.”
Rosa and Shelby crowded around her and looked at the card.
“Where’s the rest?” Shelby asked.
“Unfortunately, it’s the only card we could find,” I said. “It slipped between the cupboard and the refrigerator. Someone must have taken the other cards.”
Bucky looked at the recipe side of the card. She was beaming. “And I know exactly where they are. This is a card from Olive’s Southwest recipe collection. She always said she was going to split up that collection into thirds and give them to us in her will. We told her we didn’t want them, but she said she was going to give them to us anyway. That’s probably why she copied our maps on the cards for the treasure hunt, as a joke. We’ve had them for a month and didn’t even know.” Bucky pumped her fist in the air. “I didn’t even want that stupid collection, but I couldn’t very well throw them away. I haven’t even looked at any of the cards yet.”
Rosa jumped up and down. “Me either. Mine are sitting on my kitchen counter.”
The two women grabbed each other and jumped up and down, screaming with joy. Shelby, on the other hand, stood frozen, a sick look on her face.
Bucky stopped jumping and looked at Shelby with concern. “What’s wrong with you? We already have the maps.”
“Uh... well,” she said.
“What? What’s wrong?” Rosa asked.
“Well, you know, when Delilah’s mom called about Olive’s will, she said we got the Southwest collection, and that Olive’s old family recipes were to be put in Olive’s casket and buried with her.”
“So?” Rosa said. “The recipe card with the map on the back is part of her Southwest collection. That’s the one we got. What’s the problem?”
“I kinda wanted her grandma’s old German recipes. I didn’t think then it mattered. I mean, we didn’t even want the Southwest recipe cards. Who needs ten ways to make guacamole when we could have Olive’s Schnitzel recipes, right?”
“What are you saying?” Bucky asked, her face losing color.
Shelby chewed her lip some more. “I switched them. We got Olive’s old family recipe cards and the Southwest collection got tossed in her coffin.”
Bucky gasped.
Rosa slugged Shelby. “You idiot!” She cursed her in Spanish. “You traded the Lost Dutchman Mine for Schnitzel?”
“I didn’t know!” Shelby cried.
Ida Belle held up her hand. “Hold on, hold on. All is not lost. Do any of you know what happened to a green vase that was in Olive’s hous
e? According to her diary, Olive hid the map she found in the picnic basket inside an ugly green vase that Bucky hated.”
“The green vase?” Bucky asked. Excitement filled her face once again. “Yes, yes. That was also in her will! She gave it to me and I gave it to Rosa because it was ugly and I hated it.” She turned to Rosa. “Remember? You put it in your laundry room.”
“We have the map!” Shelby shouted, jumping up and down.
Except, Rosa didn’t look as thrilled as Bucky and Shelby.
“Why aren’t you excited?” Bucky asked.
“Um...,” Rosa said, “I may have given the vase away.”
Shelby slugged Rosa. “You idiot!”
Gertie leaned into me and whispered, “Maybe this is a good time for us to leave.”
While the Three Amigas screamed, cried and yelled at each other, Ida Belle and Gertie got in their car and I got in mine and we drove off. We turned in our rental cars in Phoenix, took a shuttle up north to Flagstaff, and boarded a train bound for Louisiana.
Back home.
We settled in to our sleeper compartment. Carter and I sent one another sweet (okay, maybe a little racy) texts, Ida Belle read, and Gertie gazed out the train window, watching the scenery pass by. Before turning in for the night, we shared a little nightcap of Sinful Ladies Society cough syrup.
“To returning home,” I said, holding up my bottle.
“To returning home,” they both said, tapping their bottles to mine.
Gertie sighed. “I wonder what happened to that vase.”
OH NO, THE STORY’S NOT OVER YET. TURN THE PAGE...
Chapter Seventeen
Bucky
BUCKY SLIPPED INSIDE the confessional and knelt before the screen. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. Will sin. I will sin.”
Father Carson sighed.
“Yep, it’s me, the Methodist. Turns out I’m not a killer after all. The real killer is now going to rot in prison. And that bimbo niece of Olive’s? She wasn’t even her real niece. The real one came hours after the fake one left. But the fake one turned out to be a real godsend, what with bringing Olive’s murderer to justice, so if you had anything to do with that, thank you.”
“I heard Preacher Bill is back from his vacation,” he said.
“Yes, that’s the word in the pews.” Bucky chuckled.
Father Carson sighed again. “You’re here to confess?”
“Yes. To a sin I’m committing at this very moment.”
“And what would that be?”
“Well, here’s the thing, Father. It turns out that Olive made maps for us of the Lost Dutchman Mine before she died. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the cards the maps were drawn on were tossed in her casket. Now, that poses a problem for us.”
“Go on.”
“I would think that grave robbing would be a pretty big sin.”
“You haven’t robbed a grave, have you?”
“No. That would be icky. Turns out, there’s an easier solution. But it does involve distracting someone while two other someones steal a vase from another someone’s office. An ugly vase, I might add. Now, compared to robbing a grave, I’d say taking an ugly vase from someone’s office, that was given away accidentally I might add, is pretty minor. Don’t you think?”
“Perhaps this is something you’d like to discuss with Preacher Bill.”
“No, not really. Hold on, would you?” Bucky pulled the curtain back and watched as Rosa and Shelby stepped out of the hallway leading to Father Carson’s office, carrying the ugliest green vase that had ever been created. Shelby gave Bucky a thumbs-up. Bucky released the curtain and turned her attention back to the screen.
“I think our time is up, Father. Thank you for listening to me these past few days. You’ve been a big help to my mental state. Almost makes me want to become Catholic.”
“There is nothing wrong with being a Methodist,” he said.
“You take care, Father.”
THE END
WANT TO READ MORE OF my stories in the Miss Fortune World? Visit my website at sharihearn.com to learn more.
Author Bio
SHARI HEARN WROTE HER first story when she was 4, a bunch of squiggly lines, a stick figure and a door, and the only two words she was able to write: THE END. After learning how to spell more words, she took the next logical step and moved to Los Angeles, working on various sitcoms as both a writer and producer, as well as writing screenplays and pilots.
She’s now crossing over into novel writing, sharpening her mystery-writing chops with 11 short stories and novellas in the world of Miss Fortune fan fiction.
She is currently working on more stories for the Miss Fortune World, as well as an original cozy mystery series to be published in early 2019.
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