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“DO YOU THINK THEY BOUGHT it?” I asked from the backseat of Gertie’s Cadillac.
Fortune, who was riding shotgun, checked the car’s side mirror. “We’re clear. No one’s following us. Carter will be tied up for a while yet with filing reports, so don’t worry about him. Your boyfriend, however, will hunt us down if he thinks we’re up to something.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gertie said. She swerved wildly to avoid a pothole. “By the time he figures out we lied to him, we’ll have found Ida Belle and Walter.”
From her lips to God’s ears. I, however, didn’t share her confidence that we’d outrun Kase if he decided to come after us. But hopefully he and Carter were still at the station waiting for us to return. They’d had the audacity to question our intentions when we told them we were going to pick up sandwiches and apple pie to bring back to them. At first, it didn’t look like they were buying it, but the thought of Ally’s baking must have tipped the scales in our favor. Their complete lack of trust that we were headed where we said we were would have been downright insulting if they hadn’t been right.
I clung to the seat in front of me. Gertie was tearing up the road as if she knew exactly where she was going. “Where are we going? Back to the Masters home?”
“Nope. Still haven’t heard squat from Bull, which means he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of anyone.”
“What if Bull’s in on it?” I asked.
Gertie slammed on the brakes. New York City cabbies had nothing on this woman. Luckily, I already had a grip on the back of her seat, so the whiplash wasn’t too painful.
She slipped the Caddy into park and twisted around to face me. “What did you just say?”
I’d never seen her so irate. “We don’t know Bull very well. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, you’re the only one who knew him before tonight.” My words sounded more accusatory than I meant them to, but I didn’t think we should eliminate Bull Dozer from suspicion just because Gertie was sweet on him.
Gertie’s eyes narrowed. “Those are fighting words, Miss Prim and Proper.”
“Stop, stop, stop.” Fortune’s words were laced with frustration. “Fighting about a man isn’t going to help Ida Belle, so just can it. Gertie, turn around and drive.”
Once we were back to racing down the dirt road, Gertie spoke again. “Bull’s not our guy.”
Her confident tone implied she had someone else in mind. “So, who is then?” I asked.
“Lenora Masters.”
“What?” I didn’t just hear that.
“She may be right,” Fortune said. “Think about it. Who’s the most unlikely member of the Masters family to be behind something like this?”
I groaned aloud. “Honestly, Fortune. This isn’t a mystery novel. We’re talking about a real murder, not a whodunit with a colorful cast of characters. This is real life, and little old ladies are very often what they appear to be. Quiet. Shy. Retiring, as well as retired.” My gaze flitted to Gertie. “With a few notable exceptions, of course. But my point is that not everyone sees life through the same distorted lens that you apparently do.”
“Holy crap, you’ve done it now, Stephanie.” Gertie shook her head. “Fortune, let it go. Remember that she’s just a wee babe in terms of having seen the world.”
“No, Gertie, don’t sugarcoat this,” I said. “Fortune, I respect that as a librarian you’ve read hundreds of books, but this is reality. Aunt Ida Belle, Walter, and Lenora are in real trouble. Gertie and I need you to stay focused.”
Fortune’s response was a string of unladylike expletives that I wouldn’t repeat even if someone put a gun to my head.
“If you two young’uns don’t stop bickering, I’m going to pull over, let you out, and you can walk back to town.” Gertie hit the accelerator, which catapulted us near into light speed.
“Where are we going?” Fortune asked before I could, but I wanted to know the same thing. Clearly, Gertie had a destination in mind.
“Walter’s fishing cabin.”
Again with a cabin? Was there some unwritten law in Sinful that every crisis required a visit to an isolated cabin? When Boris Sidorov kidnapped me several weeks ago, he’d ordered his henchmen to deliver me to an old hunting cabin where he’d intended to kill me. Luckily, Aunt Ida Belle, Gertie, and Fortune had busted in to save me. Then, just about a week ago, Fortune and I had taken a trip to Number Two and found Boris and one of his thugs hiding in yet another cabin. Fortune had blown out both of Boris’ kneecaps, so that had ended well, at least for us, but now we were going for a threepeat?
“We’re wasting precious time, Gertie,” I said. Not that I had any better idea where we should begin to look, but I just couldn’t buy that they were at Walter’s cabin. “For all we know, they were whisked onto a boat and they’re out in the middle of the bayou somewhere.” I shivered, and not because it was chilly. “Lenora can’t be the one who’s behind this.”
“Why not?” Fortune challenged me. “And don’t give me this ‘old ladies don’t kill’ crap either.”
“Lenora would hardly have killed her own step-child,” I shot back. “Think about it, Fortune. Someone shot that man straight in the chest and they were aiming to kill. Hardly the work of a mother figure.”
“Prisons are full of women who’ve killed their children, Stephanie. Give me a real reason that Lenora isn’t the one behind all of this.”
“Why on earth would she get involved with drug trafficking? She has a lovely home—”
“Which could have been provided for with drug money,” Fortune interrupted me. “You’ve got to admit that she’s erratic and displays some bizarre behavior at times.”
True, but I could well say that about most of the people in Sinful. Lenora Masters wasn’t any crazier than anyone else who called this town home.
“Hush up, now, both of you.” Gertie slowed the car and turned off the lights. “We’re almost there.” The Cadillac rolled to a stop and Gertie cut the engine. She turned to look at us. “I know Lenora’s going to kill Walter and frame Ida Belle for murder unless we stop her.”
***
WITH GERTIE IN THE lead, Fortune and I crept along behind her as we approached the cabin. I didn’t see a car, but it could well be hidden. A small golden light glowed through the closed curtains.
“Wait,” I hissed. I grabbed hold of Gertie’s elbow so that she’d stop walking. “What if we’re interrupting?”
“That’s the whole point, kiddo. We want to get to Lenora before she kills Walter.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” I leaned in and lowered my voice. “What if Walter and Aunt Ida Belle are here in a—” how to put this delicately? “—romantic capacity?”
Both Fortune and Gertie stared at me for a full minute before they rolled their eyes in perfect synchronicity. Fortune shook her head. “Trust me, that isn’t what’s going on in there, Stephanie. At this point we’re just going to have to trust Gertie’s intuition. She’s known Lenora far longer than we have.”
Frustration welled up within me. I was certain that they were barking up the wrong tree. But how to convince them? “I’m one hundred percent sure that Lenora is as innocent in all of this as Aunt Ida Belle is. I’m so sure that I’d bet my pearls that Gertie’s wrong.”
Instead of answering me, Fortune cupped her hands together and put them in front of her mouth. She let out an ear-splitting imitation of an owl.
“Good thinking,” Gertie whispered. “You finish that up and I’ll sneak around front.”
I watched her go with more than a little trepidation. “Finish what up?”
Fortune changed the position of her hands and emitted another unearthly sound.
“Finish what up?” I asked again. “Fortune, what are you doing?”
She dropped her hands. “Sending a signal to Ida Belle that the cavalry’s here. Let me finish.”
I waited while she repeated the owl sound and then added another bird call. What was this? Some sort of avian Morse code?
“Okay, let’s go,” Fortune said when she was finished.
“Wait, I don’t know what we’re doing,” I protested. My heart was hammering in my chest. “What’s the plan?”
Fortune met my eye. “Look, Stephanie, maybe you should wait in the car.” She held up a hand when I started to object. “That way you can call for help if something goes wrong.”
“Something? Try everything’s going wrong.” I heard the high-pitched squeal that my voice had morphed into but Fortune’s calm unnerved me. Wait in the car? What was I? A Labrador? “I think we should call for help now.”
“Good idea.” Fortune glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the Cadillac. “Head over to the car, call for help, and then give us five to seven minutes to wrap this up. That’s all the time we’ll need.”
Before I could object, she sprinted toward the cabin. I confess that I uttered a most unladylike curse, however if any situation ever called for blue language, I believed this was it. The only reasonable course of action was to call for help. I jogged back to the car where I’d left my cell phone, hoping against hope that I could get some sort of signal this far out of town.
Which, of course, I couldn’t. I shook my phone, held it up above my head, turned it to the left and to the right, and then did the whole hokey-pokey reception dance, but nothing brought forth a single bar. Disgusted, I tossed the phone back into the Cadillac.
I took a dozen steps toward the cabin before I froze. Behind me, no more than twenty feet at most, was the unmistakable sound of a gigantic creature crunching through the underbrush. I squeezed my eyes shut. I issued a silent prayer that it would turn around and run the other way. Fast. But instead, the sounds came closer. For the first time ever, I wished I were packing more than just lipstick and a tissue in my handbag. “Go away,” I cried. Although I heard the anguish in my voice, I doubted that whatever manner of beast this was would care about my fear. I buried my face in my hands and waited for it to pounce.
The pounce came, but it was in the form of two large arms wrapping themselves around my waist. I let out a whoosh of pent up oxygen that I’d been saving for my last scream on earth when I recognized the scent of Kase’s cologne.
He pulled me back close against his chest. “Unless Ally has opened a bakery here in the woods, you’ve got some serious explaining to do.”