I managed to dodge the police and claim my car without them batting an eyelash. They weren't looking for me. Riley had told them he was holed up with one other guy and a woman. Hopefully the police would see Ahmed in drag and assume he was both.
As I drove out of town on the graveled back roads, back toward Who's There, I knew who I was chasing. The ancient house key I'd found with the initial H told me it was Lana and she'd dropped the key to the old Higgins place.
She wasn't after Ahmed. She'd followed me when I took him to the hotel. The phone call about dressing in drag was some kind of twisted joke. Just between you and me, I thought it was a little funny.
After her failed attempt to kill me at the old Higgins place, she'd fled to Des Moines and staked out the hotel, waiting for me to come back. And I'd walked right into it. Sigh. I was definitely getting rusty.
The puzzles of the past week laid out before me as I drove. My former fourth grade teacher, Linda Willard, was a champion puzzle maker and solver. How would she approach the killings of Anna Beth and Annabelle Trident and the crop theft?
I fishtailed through an intersection and slowed down. There was no point killing myself before I got a chance to kill Lana. How did I know where she was going? It was just a hunch, really, but I knew she'd been living somewhere in the area for a while. Somewhere that would be the last place I'd look. Somewhere safe, until I moved in a CIA assassin (okay, we do have assassins, but don't tell anyone).
I'd moved in with Rex before our wedding in January. And since he already had furniture, I didn't need to move anything. Well, that and I knew I could go get anything I wanted by just crossing the street. At the beginning of summer, we started having troop meetings there, but that was easy enough for her to avoid. We never went in the basement. That's where I kept all of my weapons and gadgets, so there was no way they were going down there.
I pulled into my driveway and parked. Hilly's car was once again missing. Across the street was a beat-up pickup truck. That had to be Lana's ride. As I walked up to the door, I noticed it was ajar. I turned and looked across the street, but Rex's car was not in the driveway.
Philby, however, was plastered to the window of our house, meowing animatedly. I couldn't hear it. It looked like the cat had lost her marbles and was yelling at people through the window. Now I understood why she was always staring at my old house with her tail switching violently.
She was warning me that someone else had been in my house. I made a mental note to find what was left of the mobile and give it to her as a reward.
"Merry!" Kelly startled me, and I jumped into a defensive position.
My friend gave me a sarcastic look. "What is going on? I've been trying to call you. I wanted to talk about that job with Riley and…"
I cut her off, quietly explaining what was going on and telling her to call Rex, Riley, and Sheriff Carnack and tell them to come here.
Pulling the .45 from the back of my waistband, I pushed the door open and walked in. There was a lot of activity coming from the basement. I tiptoed across the kitchen floor, dodging all of the creaky boards, and carefully opened the door.
A flash of blonde streaked by below. She didn't see me. My basement was a long room with the stairs at one end. She would be able to see my feet and legs as I came down and would probably shoot at them. I didn't want that to happen because I liked walking upright.
Lying down on the kitchen floor, I hung my head over the stairs and looked around. Lana was in the corner, her back to me, packing up a box. She'd better not be taking some of my gear. I had some real treasures I'd collected over the years that included a hairspray bottle/flamethrower, a mint tin that sprayed knockout gas if you opened it the wrong way, and grenades. Don't ask.
I walked down the steps as quietly as I could, but it wouldn't have mattered if I'd ridden in on a rhinoceros. The woman was screaming at herself and slamming things around. I spotted the package of chloroform wipes. They were a few feet out of my reach. Sneaking up to them, I somehow managed to pull one out without making any noise.
She never knew what hit her.