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WITH COOKIE AND DELPHINE still at the reception, we had easy access through Delphine’s yard and around the back to Cliff’s fence and then into his house. While Ida Belle and Gertie examined the baseboards along the floor in the kitchen and bedrooms, I took the living room. None of the baseboards there looked disturbed. I had better luck in the bathroom where, in a tight spot behind the toilet, I found a loose section of baseboard, and taped behind it was a key to a padlock. The number 35 was scratched onto it.
“Got it!” I brought the key into the living room and was joined by Gertie and Ida Belle.
Gertie held up another key. “Me too.”
“Me three.” Ida Belle held up one as well.
Ida Belle’s key was identified with the number 33, while Gertie’s was 38.
“Okay, so he has multiple storage units, probably spread out so there will always be one close to where he’s scamming,” Ida Belle said. “But we have no idea which storage facilities these keys belong to.”
Gertie secured her key in a side zipper of her bulging purse. “Well, based on the files we copied, he’s been moving south on the 171, then west off the 10. We’ll just start hitting the storage facilities along those routes and we’re bound to find one of the right ones.”
“That could take a while,” Ida Belle said.
I slipped the key I found into my pocket. “It’s early in the day. If we start now we could check out quite a few.”
The first storage facility was a dead-end. Located a few miles outside of Sinful, it only held twelve units. The second and third facilities were also busts. They were on opposite ends of Mudbug, and, while they both had up to 38 units, Cliff’s keys hadn’t worked in any of them.
Our fourth try yielded a surprise. As we rounded the corner to units 33 through 38, I spotted two men. One of the men was standing, watching over the other man who was kneeling down at the bottom of unit 33, trying to turn a key in the lock securing the sliding door to the floor. The man standing looked to be around 6’1” tall. Both wore camouflage hoodies. I backed up, stopping Ida Belle and Gertie from proceeding and held my finger to my lips, then peeked around the corner. The men had given up and were now walking past unit 34, stopping at 35. The shorter one once again knelt and shoved the key inside the lock.
“Two men are checking out the same numbers we are,” I whispered to Ida Belle and Gertie.
I peeked around again to see the shorter guy bang his fist on the locker door in frustration. He stood and shook his head at the taller man, who then cursed.
The taller man had a tattoo on his hand.
“I think it’s one of the paramedics,” I whispered. “They probably have a set of the same keys we have.”
“Let’s try the last key,” the taller man said to the shorter guy. They passed by 36 and 37 and stopped at number 38.
“They’re at number thirty-eight,” I whispered. “Trying a key in that lock too.”
Gertie craned her neck and peered around me. “Maybe they’re the ones who shot Cliff.”
“Let’s follow them. See what they’re up to,” Ida Belle said.
We quietly crept back to the parking lot but didn’t see another car.
“Crap. I was hoping we could get a photo of—”
But I was interrupted by the sounds of tires on gravel as a late-model Honda Civic tore out of a space between two buildings, sending dust our way as it drove past us and onto the highway. But not before the man on the passenger side turned and gave us one long stare.
“Do you think he recognized us?” Gertie asked.
“Let’s follow them and find out,” Ida Belle said.
We hopped inside Gertie’s car, Ida Belle in the front and me in the back. Gertie peeled out onto the highway, and we spotted the car ahead of us. It slowed down and turned off into a gas station. As we passed, I turned around and looked through the back window.
“They didn’t stop. They’re back on the highway.”
Ida Belle glanced at her side mirror. “And now following us.”
Several minutes later Gertie glanced up at her rearview mirror. “They were keeping the same distance, but now they’re speeding up. They might be making a move to run us off the road. We need to lose them.”
“I wish we were in my Jeep.”
“You don’t think I know how to lose a car that’s tailing me?”
“I’m more concerned about this old Caddy than I am about your abilities.”
Gertie looked back up into the rearview mirror. “That looks like a four-cylinder. Am I right?”
“Yeah. You think you can outrun it?”
“You didn’t just ask me that.”
Ida Belle laughed. “Why do you think she’s kept this hunk-of-junk all these years? The bumper may be tied on with rope and the floor is rusted out in spots, but she’s equipped with a 500 cubic-inch, 375 horsepower engine. It’s all muscle. She made sure this baby can get us out of a pinch.”
Gertie glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Aside from the hunk-of-junk comment, she’s right. And we’ve had many adventures in these back roads, so I know them as well as I know any road in Sinful. Hang on.”
Gertie floored it and seconds later made a hard right onto a dirt road, knocking me down on the bench seat, my head slamming into the door.
“That one was on purpose,” Gertie yelled before letting loose a war whoop. “Next time don’t doubt me.”
I struggled to sit upright as the car sped down the bumpy road.
Ida Belle turned and looked at me. “You should know better than to ride with her without wearing a seatbelt!”
Gertie hit a rut in the road and I bounced up and banged into the ceiling of the car.
“Did we lose him?”
I grabbed onto the front seat and turned my head. In the distance I saw what looked like a car through the dust. “No. I think they’re still behind us! But visibility is bad with all the dust and rocks!”
“If I slow down, can you get a clear shot of their tires?” Gertie yelled.
“I’ll try!”
“I’ll take the passenger side,” Ida Belle shouted, “and you take the driver side.”
I didn’t have much to hold onto, but I managed to roll down the window and stick the upper half of my body out. I saw the car in the distance through the dust and aimed down toward the tires. Ida Belle fired three times. I fired two. The car got smaller and smaller through the dust cloud, meaning at least one of our bullets hit its mark. Gertie increased her speed until she came to a clearing past a grove of trees and slowed to a stop in front of three highway signs nailed to a post. We had the option of proceeding on one of three roads. One road would take us to the main highway. The other would have us circling back to Westlake. The bottom sign pointed left, down a wooded road, toward Mudbug. Gertie swung the Caddy left.
Ida Belle turned around to face me. “There’s no question those guys are the ones who took Cliff. So the next question is, what are they looking for? What did Cliff get himself mixed up in?”
I agreed. “If they were exacting revenge on Cliff because he stole from a woman close to them, I doubt they’d come after the women who were exposing him.”
“Maybe they have something to do with that forger Agent McKenna’s looking for,” Gertie said. “Maybe they thought we might know who took him if we were checking out storage units too.”
Ida Belle took out her phone and called Myrtle at the sheriff’s station, asking her to pass along an “anonymous” tip regarding two men who may have something to do with Cliff’s disappearance. The three of us began tossing out possible theories when in the distance something popped up at the side of the road.
I leaned forward. “Is that an animal?”
And then whatever it was ran across the road in front of us.
“Stop!” Ida Belle screamed.
Gertie slammed on the brakes and the car began swerving back and forth on the gravel road, tossing me from side to side. Finally, the car jerked to a stop. When I pulled myself up from the floor in the backseat, I looked out the front window and saw a man inches away from the bumper of Gertie’s car.
“Cliff?”