“Thank God Mannie cleared that hedge the last time,” Gertie said. “It would have taken you forever to wax the scratches out of the paint.”
“As opposed to how long it’s going to take to get the stench and stain of an entire dumpster off of it?” Ida Belle complained.
Gertie waved a hand in dismissal. “Drama.”
“I’ve got your drama,” Ida Belle said.
“Can we please just get out of here and hose down this vehicle before Carter gets here?” I asked. “He’s going to take one look at this setup and I’m going to be the first phone call he makes.”
“There are other reasons for dumpsters exploding that don’t involve me,” Gertie said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“An asteroid,” Gertie suggested.
“Because asteroids are more common than your purse disasters?” Ida Belle said. “Might as well go with alien invasion or a Marvel comic book setup.”
“Well, there is a guy in a cape back in the motel,” I said.
They both stared.
“Well, right now, he’s wrapped up like a burrito,” I said. “Or at least he was when I left, and I seriously doubt Dexter is going to help him with that, so he’s probably going to be like that for a while. At least as long as it takes him to chew through that mask I shoved in his mouth and call for help.”
“Maybe you’d better fill us in,” Gertie said. “I have a feeling we’re going to need to know what we’re denying.”
I started with my explanation about Naked Dude, and before I could even get to the part where Dexter burst through the door, they were both laughing so hard they were crying.
“Oh my God,” Gertie said. “You know Carter will take this call because there was an explosion. When he finds that guy trussed up and rolled, he’s going to lose it.”
“Not as much as when he unrolls the guy and sees what he’s wearing,” Ida Belle said.
“Or not wearing,” Gertie said.
“I’m beginning to wonder if the sheriff’s department should have to offer hazard pay for seeing naked people,” I said.
“The taxpayers couldn’t afford it,” Gertie said. “Do you know how many random naked people they run across in a year? And trust me, it’s never the people you want to see naked.”
“I don’t want to see any of them naked,” Ida Belle said.
“What about Walter?” Gertie asked.
“He’s not random,” Ida Belle said. “But I still wouldn’t want a random sighting. I like to be aware that nakedness is coming.”
“So if you popped over to the store one night after hours, and Walter was doing inventory in the nude, that wouldn’t get you all excited?” Gertie asked.
“Why in the world would the man do inventory in the nude?” Ida Belle asked. “Where would he keep his highlighter?”
“If I could just continue,” I said before any discussion could ensue about highlighter placement.
I finished telling them what I’d overheard.
“So it sounds like our theory was right,” Gertie said. “Marissa was on hand to do the job just as soon as the right opportunity presented itself.”
“But what is all that about Dexter signing things and the phone conversation that Marissa was apparently privy to?” Ida Belle asked.
I shook my head. I was as confused as they were by that part of the investigation. Everyone who knew Molly well said there was absolutely no way she’d leave her business to Dexter and I believed them. But Dexter seemed to be under a completely different impression and for whatever reason, I felt he was actually being honest about that. So either he misinterpreted something really, really badly that Molly had said and made up the document part to placate his girlfriend, or Molly’s best friends didn’t know her as well as they thought they did. And if Marissa had actually overheard a conversation about that very thing, and the discussion was in Dexter’s favor, then that muddied the waters even more. But then with Marissa being a user, she might have been easy to fool.
On the surface, it looked as if we’d found our answer to whether or not Molly’s disappearance was an accident, and it appeared as if we’d found our culprits. But nothing rang completely true for me. There was too much muddying the waters, as people liked to say here in Sinful.
Ida Belle took a hard left, and I was so deep in thought I almost banged my head on the window. Gertie wasn’t so lucky. I heard her slam into the door, then start cussing Ida Belle.
“What the heck was that for?” Gertie said.
“Car wash,” Ida Belle said as she pulled up to an older man with a clipboard who was giving the SUV a disapproving stare.
“Darn kids,” Ida Belle said when she rolled down the window. “Threw a bag of trash off the overpass and onto my vehicle.”
The disapproving stare disappeared and he shook his head. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with kids these days.”
“Their parents?” I suggested.
“You’d be right on that one,” he said and stuck a ticket in her window. “No charge. Just pull up until that light turns red and we’ll do the rest.”
“So what do we do now?” Gertie asked. “Are you going to tell Carter about Dexter’s girlfriend and the longbow thing? I don’t guess you can talk about the conversation you overheard at the motel as you sorta broke in on that naked guy and tied him up.”
“Not to mention you blew the motel dumpster sky-high with your bag of things nightmares are made of,” Ida Belle said to Gertie.
“You have a rocket launcher and he got over it,” Gertie said.
“Because without it, Fortune would have died,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie waved a hand in dismissal. “Details.”
“At least it was trash this time and not the vending machines,” I said. “Although I’m guessing that clerk is never going to give me information again. I kinda promised him I’d leave the premises. He didn’t want trouble.”
“Then he shouldn’t be working there,” Gertie said. “Everything about that place is trouble. We’re just shining a light on it.”
“You set off a bomb on it,” Ida Belle said. “Twice.”
“Details,” Gertie said again.
“And this time it would have blown us to bits if Fortune hadn’t thrown it out of the car,” Ida Belle said. “And so help me God, if you say ‘details’ I’m going to shoot you right here in this car wash and pitch you out into those jets where all the forensic evidence will be washed away.”
The giant turbines cranked up the wind on the SUV and I was happy to see that the trash seemed to have washed off. Hopefully, there wasn’t anything that would mar the paint, or Gertie was never going to get to ride in Ida Belle’s vehicle again.
“What happened?” I asked Gertie.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Something must have been hot enough to set off one of those bottle rockets, which sparked the dynamite.”
“Something?” Ida Belle asked. “You mean something like you dropping a lit bottle rocket into your purse?”