“Oh no!” she said.
And then there was an explosion.
Chapter Fourteen
We all ducked as dirt and the contents of Gertie’s purse blew past us and then a shower began. A glittery pink shower raining down on us.
“What the heck?” Ida Belle said and started brushing off the glitter as it coated her arms.
“Ooops,” Gertie said. “I might have forgotten to take that five-pound bag of glitter out of my purse.”
“Who the heck needs five pounds of pink glitter?” Ida Belle asked.
“Strippers,” Gertie said. “There’s this online group—”
“No!” Ida Belle said and glared. “It’s bad enough we’ll go to the grave wearing this crap because glitter never comes off. Never. But I am not listening to your reasons for buying it.”
“You asked,” Gertie said.
“Guys, we need to have this conversation some other time,” I said. “Because there are probably ten people calling the sheriff’s department right now, starting with Tiffany.”
“But the skunk,” Gertie said.
“We’ll have to risk it,” I said. “We can’t afford to take the long way.”
I scrambled over the bank, then grabbed the equipment from Ida Belle and helped her and Gertie up. Gertie hurried over to her purse’s final resting place and scowled at the ground.
“Bear trap,” she said. “Lucky none of us stepped in it.”
I glanced back and saw the back door to Gil’s house opening.
“Go! Now!” I said and took off.
I could hear Ida Belle and Gertie behind me and dialed up the speed. When I got to the SUV, I didn’t even bother putting the equipment in the back. I just jumped in the passenger’s seat and yelled for them to hurry. A couple seconds later, Ida Belle had us turned around and hauling butt down the trail.
“I bet she was calling the cops,” Gertie said.
“You think?” Ida Belle said. “I mean, there was only an explosion practically in her backyard.”
“That was a fluke,” Gertie said.
“Your flukes are going to get us killed someday!” Ida Belle ranted.
“Which fluke of yours caused the explosion?” I asked. “You didn’t have anything lit in there.”
“The only thing I can think of is that the bear trap pulled the plug on the grenade when it snapped shut,” Gertie said.
Ida Belle whipped her head around to glare at Gertie for a second. “Grenade? Seriously? I suppose you just had it tossed in there next to a meatball sandwich?”
“Tuna salad, actually,” Gertie said. “But no, it was in a separate pocket so the pin couldn’t accidentally get pulled.”
“Glad that one worked out for you,” I said.
“You idiot,” Ida Belle said. “That skunk was after the tuna. He probably smelled it from a parish away.”
“It was a really good sandwich,” Gertie said wistfully.
I brushed my face and glitter fell into my lap.
“Don’t move,” Ida Belle said. “And definitely don’t shake. My poor vehicle is going to look like a club—and not the kind I’d frequent.”
“Maybe you can talk to Hot Rod about installing a pole in the back seat,” I said.
“This is not my fault,” Gertie said. “Well, not totally my fault. What the heck was that skunk doing out this time of day?”
“I’ll bet it was the one Judith threw in the maze,” Ida Belle said. “He has to establish a new territory and den. But the identity of the skunk aside, we have a huge problem. I’m certain Carter got a call about the explosion and he’s going to think of us first. All he has to do is take one look at the explosion site and see it’s decorated with pink fairy dust and he’ll be on us like stink on crap.”
“We can’t go to any of our houses,” I said. “He’ll check them first if we don’t answer our phones. But we have to get this glitter off.”
“Not to mention that if we go home, we’ll create a trail leading him straight for us,” Ida Belle said. “I say we take the back roads to the highway. Then head up the road to the hotel and get a room. Shower this crap off and shake the crap out of our clothes, vacuum my car, and pray. A lot.”
“I have a lint roller in my—” Gertie started. “Never mind.”
“We’ll stop at the dollar store on the way and get some lint rollers or duct tape,” Ida Belle said.
“How are we supposed to fix our hair without rollers?” Gertie asked.
“Add ball caps to the dollar store list,” Ida Belle said.
“And a purse for me,” Gertie said.
“What the heck are you going to put in it?” Ida Belle said. “You don’t even have an ID on you.”
“I have a small revolver and a can of Mace in my bra,” Gertie said.
“Stuffing things under your cleavage is why you have a rash,” Ida Belle said. “All that rubbing is bad for your skin.”
Gertie shrugged. “Either the revolver and Mace rub or my boobs rub. At least with the first option, the girls are propped up a bit.”
Ida Belle shook her head and looked upward but I was fairly certain she wasn’t going to get any divine intervention on this one.
“What about the audio?” Gertie asked. “Did the equipment get damaged when we fell over that embankment?”
“This is military grade used in a war zone,” I said. “I don’t think a little drop is going to affect it. Let me queue it up. It was a phone conversation, so only one side.”
I passed the microphone to Gertie, then popped open the case containing the audio equipment, plugged it into Ida Belle’s car stereo, and hit Play. A few seconds later, Tiffany’s voice sounded over the speakers. When it was over, I clicked off the audio equipment and looked at them.
“Well?” I asked.
Ida Belle blew out a breath. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
I nodded. “So let’s start at the beginning. Tiffany has already found a place to live in New Orleans. Now since I doubt seriously she ran out to look at apartments the day after Gil was killed, that means she was already in the process beforehand.”
“Which means she was leaving Gil,” Gertie said.
“And she had some money stashed somewhere,” Ida Belle said. “So she’s been planning this for some time.”
“If Gil gave her money to spend on the regular, it would be easy to put together a decent stash after seven years,” Gertie said.
Ida Belle nodded. “And assuming Gil had a prenuptial, my guess is that secret stash would be all she’d get to leave with, hence the comment about not needing a car.”
“Okay,” I said. “Next question, do we think she was talking to Liam?”
Ida Belle shrugged. “I wish we could have heard the other side of the conversation. It might be Liam but a couple things don’t suit. Like her saying she didn’t want to send the cops sniffing around whoever she was talking to.”
“Ah,” I said, “but her exact words were she didn’t want to cause them to ‘focus’ on this person, which might mean they’re already looking at this person, just not hard.”