Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“He clearly wasn’t expecting all of us,” Katherine supplied. “He looked very uncomfortable when he saw us at the table.”
“He zeroed in on Claudia,” Loretta continued the story. “She was in the kitchen putting the kettle on again.”
“What did he do?” I chirped, my chest feeling tight, even though the women were clearly all safe.
“Well, he came up behind me, got real close, and whispered in my ear. Unfortunately, it wasn’t about how well my house dress shows off my figure. He said that if I wanted to see my granddaughter alive again, I’d better come with him.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Well, my dear, I wasn’t about to let a man threaten me and my family. I grabbed the tea kettle and whacked him in the head with it.”
“He went down,” Loretta continued.
“But then he came up,” Katherine piped in.
“With a gun,” Barbie finished.
My heart tripped into overdrive at just the vision of one of Marco’s men holding a gun, threatening these old ladies. Even if, clearly, they could handle themselves.
There’s a body in the bathtub.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I was about to swing the teapot again…”
“Then I rushed in and shoved him,” Loretta said.
“He flew forward, whacking his head against the edge of the counter,” Katherine supplied.
“Then… lights out,” Barbie said.
“He was bleeding everywhere,” my grandmother said, shaking her head.
“So we wrapped his head in a trash bag,” Barbie went on.
“Was he still alive?”
“Oh, no,” Katherine said, waving off my worries. “We just wanted to contain the mess.”
Contain the mess.
“Yeah, it’s important to keep the crime scene as small as possible,” Barbie added.
Good God.
Who were these women?
“Are you okay here for a minute?” Kylo asked, looking down at me. “I need to go see,” he said, choosing his words carefully, clearly sensing my overwhelm.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I told him. It was only a partial lie. I was, physically, okay. Mentally, though, that was another story entirely.
My grandmother and her friends had killed someone.
Sure, it was in self-defense, but the outcome was someone being dead.
Then, they had calmly and methodically wrapped him up, put him in the tub, and begun the process of erasing the evidence.
“You have no shoes on,” Katherine noticed.
“Your feet are filthy,” Loretta piped in.
“I ran over here when I realized you might be in danger too.”
“Too?” my grandmother said, tone sharp. “What do you mean ‘too?’ Did someone come for you?”
“Yes. The house is completely wrecked. But Ernest and I managed to hide in the crawl space.”
“I once hid in there when my mother-in-law came to visit,” my grandmother admitted. “Your grandfather assumed he missed me heading out to the store.”
“What happened when you came out?”
“Oh, she was long gone. And your grandfather was snoring on the davenport. I got cleaned up and put dinner on before he snorted himself awake.”
“Was she that bad?” I asked. “Your mother-in-law?”
“I named my sharpest cactus after her.”
“Is he…” I started, looking at Kylo when he came into the room once again.
“Gone,” Kylo said. “Marco is gone, Rue.”
“Marco?” I asked, shooting to my feet. “It was Marco?”
“Yeah. Guess he didn’t trust anyone else to do something so important. Look, ladies, I can deal with this body.”
He could?
“You can?” I asked.
“But I need a way to get it out of this room without arousing suspicion.”
“Oh, we had that all worked out,” Barbie said.
“Oh, yeah? What was the plan?”
“Well, there were two options,” Loretta interjected. “One involved a bath for the body and my wheelchair. People get pushed around the building all the time at all hours.”
It didn’t seem like a terrible idea to me.
“And the other one?” Kylo asked.
“We steal one of the laundry carts,” Katherine said.
“That could work,” Kylo decided. “To be fair, they both could. But I like the idea of the body being hidden more.”
“Well, I can go get a cart,” my grandmother volunteered.
“What about the cameras seeing you—no?” I asked when she shook her head.
“Oh, please. This isn’t the first time she stole a laundry cart,” Barbie said, waving off my concerns.
“What? How is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
My grandmother had a whole crazy life I knew nothing about.
“Story for another day, my dear. I have to go steal a cart.”
With that, she and Barbie went into the hall. Katherine and Loretta got back to work on the kitchen, erasing any sign that a man had died there.
“Is it really over?” I asked Kylo.
“I don’t want to promise you that until we look into it more. But having the leader gone definitely gives us at least a window to make sure everyone is safe.”
“Young man, would this safety involve the four of us coming to stay at your clubhouse for a few days?” Loretta asked.
“I, uh, I would have to check with the president about that,” Kylo said, looking relieved that he didn’t have to make that decision.