The trailer park was alive with noise at this time of the night. Dogs barking, the occasional burst of laughter from the trailer next-door, and the constant background noise of a TV from across the dirt road. Evening had just set in, and our targets had yet to arrive home.
Which suited us just fine of course.
My night vision contact lenses adjusted to the quickening darkness with ease, keeping the rusted blue trailer clear. Gamma had positioned herself in the bushes, but spoke clearly through my earpiece.
“I have the FlyBoy in the air above you, watching the road,” she said, quietly. “No sign of the target yet.”
“Copy, Big G. Moving in for data collection.” I slinked toward the side of the trailer, my body armor breathable, flexible, and impenetrable. I loved the feeling of being in this gear. Being active sure beat dusting around the inn and waiting for something to happen.
“Chaplin,” my grandmother said, using my code name, “I’ve got eyes on an entry point on top of the trailer. Sun roof. It’s open.”
“Copy that.” I removed two suction cups from my utility belt and attached them to my gloves. With much less dexterity than my grandmother, I climbed the side of the trailer, using my arm strength to pull me up. Once on top of it, I removed the suction cups and perched like an over-sized black cat.
The coast was clear. For now.
I breached the sun roof and dropped into the interior of the trailer, silently. The space was cluttered and smelled of sweat and cookies, oddly enough. The combination was stomach-turning.
“What do you see?” Gamma asked.
“Clutter. Somebody needs to read a Marie Kondo book.”
“Ooh, I love her.”
“Me too,” I said. “And nothing about this trailer is bringing me joy.” I moved through it, prepared to check cupboards and hack into a laptop if I had to. Turned out that wasn’t necessary. “Imbeciles,” I muttered.
“What is it, Charlotte?”
“They’ve left a portion of Bijon’s recipe book out on the counter.” I removed a button camera from my pocket and took several images of the pages that had been torn free. “Why? Just to frame Norman?”
“Probably. They’re sloppy.”
“I want answers.”
“You’ll get them, Chaplin. Target is on the main road. You have three minutes to hide. I’ll be joining you.”
“Copy that, Big G.” I searched for a hiding spot, my breathing calm, heart rate even. It was strange, but whenever I was in my spy gear, working with my grandmother, nothing could unsettle me. But when I was in the inn…
A matter for a different time.
I opened the sliding door of the bathroom and entered, closing it carefully behind me. The space was cramped, but there was a shower with a shower curtain.
I left the sliding door open a crack.
The crunch of tires on dirt came seconds after I’d hidden myself. A car door slammed then another.
“—panic,” Colton said, in that snappy tone I’d heard at the Hungry Steer, the first time we’d met in person.
“I’m not panicking,” Brian whined. “I’m just saying, don’t you think it’s kind of weird she didn’t show up?”
“It’s better this way. She’s just some maid. She probably doesn’t know anything.”
“Shush! Somebody might hear you.”
“Who? That old bat next-door?” Colton snorted. The trailer’s door slapped open and heavy footsteps entered. Lights switched on in the main section of the trailer, and I kept back, listening as the pair moved around inside.
“I still don’t like it, man. I don’t like that we got that call so soon after that woman kicked the bucket.”
“I’m moving to the roof, Chaplin. Maintain your position,” Gamma said, in my earpiece.
“Copy,” I breathed.
“Kicked the bucket?” Colton laughed. “You’ve got to upgrade your vocabulary, Brian, if you want the money, we’ve got a couple more people to take care of.”
“Huh? You can’t be serious. More? I didn’t sign up for this, Colt. You told me you needed help and there would be a payday, not that I’d wind up just… murdering—”
“Shut up!” he hissed. “Don’t say that word.”
“Oh, now we can’t talk about it?”
“We can talk about it. But don’t say that word,” Colton hissed.
A silence followed. Shuffling. Footsteps. “What do you want to do about these recipes?” Brian asked. “If somebody finds them, we’ll get in trouble.”
“I’ll keep them for the next contest I enter,” Colton replied. “In the next town.”
“I don’t want to do this again.”
“Yeah, you don’t say, but you didn’t really think five grand would get us far, did you?” Colton asked, laughing. “Listen, you want to survive? Stick with me, kid, and we’ll go far.”
“You mean on a killing spree? We didn’t have to kill that first lady. She didn’t do anything.”
“She should’ve given me that recipe book when I asked for it,” Colton replied. “She made a mockery of me when she gave me the wrong book. Thought she was making a big joke, didn’t she?”
“Maybe it was a mistake.”
“Oh come on. Brenda stole the recipe book. She had to die,” Colton snapped.
“But we never found the recipe book there. Bijon had it in the coffee shop. So maybe Brenda didn’t steal it and—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
I tried piecing together what the two goons had said. They’d killed Brenda because she’d given Colton the wrong recipe book. Clearly, Colton had asked her for the recipe book and Brenda, who hadn’t stolen anything, had mistakenly given him a random recipe book, likely from the library.
And Colton had taken offense to that.
They saw Bijon in the coffee shop with the recipe book. Likely, they either stole it from her there or ripped the pages out when she wasn’t looking.
It was probably as close as I’d get to the truth without questioning the suspects myself. Which brought me to the next phase of the operation.
“I’m on the roof, Chaplin,” my grandmother said. “But we’ve got a problem.”
“We’ve got two of them to deal with down here.”
“This is a unique problem. Unique to our circumstance. Two patrol cars are headed down the dirt road, their lights flashing. I believe Detective Goode might be driving one of them.”
So, Goode had figured it out without my help this time. Though, technically Kayla had given them information after we’d detained her.
“Abort the mission, Chaplin. I’m leaving the roof.” My grandmother, who had been as silent as a cat up until this point, ran across the roof, feet thumping heavily.
“What the heck?” Brian cried.
Police lights flashed outside.
The bathroom didn’t have a big enough window for me to squeeze through. I was a sitting duck here.
“The cops!” Colton yelled.
Quickly, I detached the scrambler from my utility belt and hit the EMP button. The pulse took out the lights in the camper and fried my connection to my grandmother, but it would have to do. I rolled the bathroom door open and stepped out into the camper.
“The lights!” Brian shouted.
“Who’s that? There’s someone in here!”
I ignored the murderers and sprinted into the kitchenette. I jumped onto the nearest counter, then grabbed the lip of the sun roof and hauled myself out and on top of the trailer, lying low. I rolled off the side of the vehicle and dropped down behind it, hidden from Goode and the cops.
“This is the police,” a man shouted. “Come out with your hands up.”
Yeah, I didn’t want to be here for this. Goode had caught up with Brian and Colton, and the murderers would be caught and locked up for good. It wasn’t as clean as the last mystery we’d solved, but we’d helped. Whether the detective liked that or not.
I darted into the bushes and ran for it, my arms pumping back and forth. Gamma emerged beside me, and we ran together, keeping an even pace until we finally reached the SUV.
Once inside, we put on our seatbelts, and my grandmother started the car.
“Charlotte, I believe we’ll be receiving another visit from your beloved Detective Goode, shortly.”
“He’s not my beloved,” I replied.
“I was being sarcastic.”
I cleared my throat, a blush creeping toward my cheeks. “I know.”
“Of course you did.” She patted my leg and winked.