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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 try 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.
“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.”