Leaving Sinful Page 3

  “In fact, I wouldn’t,” Bucky said. “But now I have to right whatever I did wrong, even though I have no memory of it. I have to make sure that the gold is kept out of the hands of a woman Olive hated.”

  Fighting back tears, she slid the curtain open and left the confessional.

  Chapter Five

  MY NEW FRIENDS, BUCKY and Rosa, took me on a mini-tour of Desert Acres before heading over to the clubhouse for the potluck and candidate debate. So much for staying under the radar.

  Bucky proudly showed off the new shuffleboard courts as if she had constructed them herself. Rosa gave me tips about which swimming pool to avoid. Apparently someone (Bobbie Stout, Bucky revealed under a fake cough) thought it was perfectly fine to pee in the pool.

  “Luckily she’s so lazy she won’t walk to the other end of the complex to use the south pool,” Rosa said. “So the water’s good over there.”

  After a walk-through of the gym, complete with a few more tips (“Whatever you do,” Rosa said, “don’t let that perv Dave Smelter spot you on weights.”), we stepped into the community room, where I was introduced to some of Olive’s closest friends. She must have been a real social butterfly, because it seemed every one of them had a story about Olive dancing, golfing, entertaining, and drinking more than her fair share of margaritas. Some showed me photos they had on their phones of Olive at the local restaurant and watering hole, La Cucaracha.

  One older man grabbed me by the shoulders. “Get Bucky to tell you about the time she and Olive threw Bucky’s mannequin off the roof of Olive’s trailer as Martha was driving past in her golf cart.” He laughed. “Martha just about peed her pants thinking she killed someone.”

  Bucky explained. “He was a present from my son who works as a fashion designer. He comes in handy when I go to Phoenix to visit my grandkids and want to drive in the carpool lanes. But Olive’s the one who thought of using him for that prank. Oh yes, she was always coming up with some scheme against Martha.”

  I sat with Rosa and Bucky and several other men and women of Olive’s metal detecting club, The Desert Detectors, sharing in the bounty of potluck salads, taco bowls, hot wings and Rosa’s world-famous chicken and corn chilaquiles, with several of her homemade salsas.

  A slender woman with dyed jet-black hair sat down at an empty chair next to me. She looked a few years older than Rosa and Bucky, her tanned and leathery skin reflecting time spent out in the desert sun.

  “You must be Delilah,” she said in a husky voice. “I’m Shelby.”

  We shook hands. “Call me Fortune.”

  “Fortune?” she said, drawing her head back. She glanced at several of the women at the table, then back at me. “Do you metal detect as well?”

  Luckily, in one of my assignments in the Middle East, I had posed as a relic hunter, so knew a little about metal detecting. I nodded. “Yeah, of course. We talked about it all the time. In fact, she’s the one who gave me my nickname.” I smiled. “When I was little we’d go out and find valuable coins and stuff. She called me ‘Fortune,’ her little alchemist.”

  I noticed the other people at the table had stopped eating and were focusing their attention on us.

  “And gold?” Shelby asked. “Did you find much gold?”

  I smiled. “Now, when it comes to treasures, a girl likes to keep some things close to her vest.” I grabbed a taco chip and stuffed my mouth full of salsa.

  “Did she tell you about her map?” another woman at the table asked.

  “Lupe,” Bucky admonished, “what kind of question is that to ask?” She looked at me. “This is the matter I told you we’d discuss later. Although, now that Lupe so rudely brought it up...”

  “Olive found an authentic map to the Lost Dutchman Mine,” Lupe offered. “She made a big show of burning it at our weenie roast because she said she found out it was fake.”

  “But some of us think it was real, but that she burned a phony copy just to throw us off the scent,” one woman added, prompting nods and verbal agreement from several more people.

  “She told you about that, right?” a man wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt asked me.

  “Maybe you found it in her trailer,” Lupe said.

  Mr. Wonder Woman T-shirt laughed. “Or are you going to keep that close to your vest?”

  A gaggle of eager faces at my table leaned in to watch and hear my response before Bucky broke the mood with a slap of her hand against the table. “For heaven’s sake. Olive is dead. Let the poor woman rest in peace. And let her niece eat in peace. Olive said the map was fake and grilled it along with her wiener.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as we continued eating. A gray-haired woman stepped up to the microphone at the front of the room where the debate was to be held and spoke. “Hello, I’m Wanda, the moderator for tonight’s debate. We’re going to begin soon. You may continue eating, but please refrain from getting up for beverages. If your beverage needs to be refilled, do that now so you won’t interrupt our candidates. And if you need to use the restroom and find you can’t hold it, see your doctor.” Wanda laughed at her joke, then stopped when she realized she was the only one laughing. “As you know, one of our candidates for president of the resident association, Olive Thompson, passed away a month ago, therefore we will only have two candidates debating tonight, Martha Bodkin and George Boze.”

  “Two nincompoops,” Rosa said in a loud whisper to the table. “Olive would have won.”

  “She probably still will win,” Shelby said. “Even dead Olive has more brain cells than those two put together.”

  “Shelby...” Bucky admonished.

  “She said she was going to drop a July surprise,” Shelby continued. “I think she had photos of Martha and George in bed wearing some leather getup.”

  A man with wire-frame glasses choked on his taco chips. Bucky reached over and slapped him on the back.

  “Easy, Charles,” Bucky said. “I realize Martha and George naked is an image none of us would want to see, but it’s not worth dying over.”

  Charles coughed a few more times, then, once he regained his voice, asked Shelby, “Why would you say that about them?”

  “What do you care?” Shelby asked. “Oh my God, she’s not the mystery woman you’re dating, is she?”

  Rosa shook her head. “It’s that new blue hair on Sunrise Lane. And her hair really is blue. She’s an old hippie or something.”

  He folded his arms. “Maybe I’m not spending time with anyone.”

  Bucky shook her head. “For heaven’s sake, Charles is entitled to some privacy.”

  As the others pressed Charles for more information regarding his love life, Shelby leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear. “Just FYI. Someone killed your aunt. I’m guessing it was someone at this table. Oh, pass the guacamole, would you, sweetie?”

  I passed the bowl to Shelby, who spooned a glop on her chilaquiles. I was about to ask for clarification but was interrupted by a woman with teased brown hair who stopped by my table. I had noticed her earlier walking around, chatting with people.

  Several at my table, Rosa, Bucky and Shelby included, put down their utensils and crossed their arms. This must be Martha.

  “Shelby, dear,” the woman said, disdain dripping from her lips, “I slipped a notice under your door. Your cans are still out front on the curb. This is the second time this month. You know our rules have changed. Cans must now appear on the curb no earlier than six a.m. on trash collection day and must be moved back behind your trailer no later than seven p.m. that night. One more notice and you’ll be fined twenty-five dollars. And I know how tight money is for you.”

  Shelby sat stewing. Martha looked down at me. “You must be Delilah, Olive’s niece. I’m Martha Bodkin. I’m so sorry for your loss. I was looking forward to debating your aunt tonight. She would have made a formidable opponent.”

  Five-foot-five, early seventies. Big hair, pancake makeup, and a huge, white smile with phony written all over it. Threat level:
Medium.

  “The name’s Fortune,” I told her.

  “Cute. Considering Olive was constantly on the search for treasures, double cute.”

  She reached her hand down to shake mine. Her hand was bony and cold. Reminded me a lot of Celia’s, back in Sinful.

  “Candidates, would you please take your positions on the stage,” the debate moderator Wanda said into the microphone.

  “That’s my cue,” Martha said. She looked back down at me. “If there’s anything I can do to hasten the sale of your aunt’s trailer, don’t hesitate to call me. I work part-time in the office and have quite a bit of pull around here.”

  “You’ll find her name on every bathroom wall in town,” Shelby said in a loud whisper, eliciting snickers from the people seated at my table.

  “Get help, Shelby,” Martha said before taking her place on the raised platform stage. For more than an hour she and her crusty opponent, George, traded jabs at one another, Martha accusing George of stealing toilet paper rolls from the public restrooms, and George accusing Martha of almost running him over with her golf cart.

  But it was after the debate that it got interesting. As I was getting up to leave, I was inundated with people expressing their condolences about Olive. In the crush of strangers, I felt a wad of paper shoved into one of my hands. I had no idea who gave it to me, but I discreetly shoved it into my shorts pocket for later.

  While walking me back to Olive’s trailer, Rosa, Bucky and Shelby gave me the lowdown on the infamous map. Heat lightening in the distance set an eerie tone to the tale. It all started with a storage-unit auction, Bucky said.

  “Our club bid on it and won,” she explained. “Most of the rest of us just got junk from the storage unit, but Olive chose the picnic basket, so she got the map she found inside it.”

  Bucky added that some club members thought the map was to the Lost Dutchman Mine, located in the Superstition Mountains that loomed over the town of Superstition City. Olive, though, took the map to an expert who told her the map was not a genuine Lost Dutchman map.

  “She told everyone it wasn’t real, but that didn’t stop some members of our club from hounding her about it,” Rosa said. “They thought she should share it with them. One day she even came home to find someone had broken into her trailer trying to find it.”

  “Olive couldn’t stand it anymore,” Bucky said. “She felt her life was in danger with that map and wanted to put a stop to it, so she decided to burn it in front of everyone at the next club wiener roast. She tossed it in the flames and we all saw it go up in smoke.” Bucky stopped, looked around and lowered her voice. “Except, the three of us had seen the map she found in the picnic basket, and the map she tossed in the flames wasn’t it.”

  “She was faking everyone out?” I asked.

  Rosa nodded. “When we asked her about it, she said even though it wasn’t a map to the Dutchman’s mine, she just couldn’t bring herself to destroy it. It ‘spoke to her,’ she said.” Rosa laughed. “Olive was sentimental like that. She felt it had been important to someone once, so she couldn’t bear to burn it.” We turned down Roadrunner Lane, Olive’s street.

  “And that’s when all the trouble really started,” Rosa said, stopping, forcing the rest of us to stop with her. The bulb from a nearby lamppost flickered. Startled, she looked up at it, then back at me. “Suddenly everything in Olive’s life started going downhill. Someone almost ran her off the road. She felt she wasn’t alone, even in her own trailer. It was one thing after another up until the night she died.”

  “The night she was murdered, you mean,” Shelby said.

  Bucky drew back in horror. “Would you stop saying that?”

  Rosa looked at Shelby. “For some reason, Bucky’s touchy about that. So ixnay on talk about murder.” Rosa turned toward me. “However she died, it became apparent that Olive did possess the real Lost Dutchman Mine but burned something she dummied up in the fire.”

  “How was that apparent?” I began walking toward Olive’s trailer. The ladies followed.

  “Because the real Lost Dutchman’s map is guarded by Apache spirits,” Rosa said. “All the bad luck was obviously their doing. If Olive had burned the real one, the one she found in the picnic basket, the bad luck would have stopped.”

  “Apache Spirits?” I asked. “As in the Native American Apaches?”

  Rosa nodded. “Legend has it that the Dutchman’s gold originally belonged to the Apaches who discovered it centuries earlier, and that their spirits take revenge on anyone with possession of the map.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Laugh if you want, Fortune,” Rosa said, “but I grew up with this legend. I’m part Apache, and I can tell you that it’s true.”

  Shelby nodded. “Your aunt feared for her life near the end. The night before she was murdered, she had an invasion of scorpions. The Apaches sent those, I just know it.”

  Rosa jabbed her finger at me. “That map was no good. And Olive is living proof of that.” She thought a second. “Dead proof.”

  I looked at Bucky, who seemed the most sensible of the three. “Do you believe this? About the Apaches?”

  “Does it matter what I believe, sweetie? Though, I do have to admit, ever since the first Dutchman’s map was discovered in the late 1800s, many people have died under mysterious circumstances trying to find the treasure. Of course, it could be coincidence.”

  “No coincidence,” Rosa said.

  I unlocked Olive’s door and we stepped inside. The three ladies each held a box of leftovers given to me by Olive’s friends and placed them on the kitchen counter.

  Rosa put her hand on my shoulder. “This is important. If you find anything that looks like a map, you have to let us know. Olive was not the first person in possession of that map whose life ended tragically. The same thing could happen to you.”

  I smiled. “Thanks for the warning, but I think I can handle myself pretty well.”

  Shelby rolled her eyes. “That’s what everyone thinks. You can’t fight unseen forces from the beyond.”

  Rosa shook her head. “Actually, that’s not true. There is the cleansing ceremony. I heard about it from one of my Apache relatives after Olive died. Too late to save her, unfortunately. It involves a ceremony where the map is burned. Now, Olive burned a map, but since it was a dummy map, that probably just made the Apaches mad. She needed to burn the real map, and any copies of the map she made. And there’s a chant you have to say with it. An apology to all the dead Apaches who were responsible for guarding the gold.”

  “Tell you what,” Bucky said, “just to make you feel safer, if you find any maps, or... if she sent one to you, bring them to us and Rosa will perform the ceremony.”

  They said goodnight and headed for the front door.

  After stepping outside, Rosa turned and said, “You listen to us, Delilah. You don’t want your nickname, Fortune, to become Misfortune, do you? And it will if you are in possession of that map and don’t get rid of it properly. What good is having a map to riches if it kills you?”

  “We’ll come by in the morning and see how you’re doing,” Bucky said. She clasped my wrist. “I’ll say a special prayer for you tonight before I go to sleep.”

  Once they left, I pulled the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and unfolded it. In block letters it read: “MIDNIGHT. SHUFFLEBOARD COURTS. WE NEED TO TALK.”

  As if this night weren’t strange enough.

  Chapter Six

  Bucky

  FORTUNE CLOSED THE door and Bucky, Shelby and Rosa scampered away from Olive’s mobile home.

  “Do you think she bought it?” Rosa asked.

  Bucky nodded. “Oh yeah. She’s an actress. They all believe in the hookie dookie over there in Hollywood. Give ‘em a legend involving Native Americans and you’ll have ‘em eating out of your hand. Plus, this one just doesn’t seem that bright to me.”

  Shelby nodded. She looked at Rosa. “Good move stopping under the flickering st
reetlamp. It jumped around like it was haunted.”

  Rosa smiled. “Good thing the incompetent maintenance crew at this place hasn’t gotten around to fixing it yet.”

  Shelby turned to Bucky. “I like how you came across as a touch skeptical.”

  She smiled. “Well, I thought Fortune might get suspicious if we all came on strong about the Apache legend. Although I think we can cool it about Olive being murdered.”

  “Why? I think she was,” Shelby said.

  Bucky got that sinking feeling in her stomach again.

  “Someone was in her trailer that night,” Shelby insisted, “and I keep wondering who it was.”

  Dear God, don’t let it be me, Bucky thought, the image of Olive’s pillowcase prominent in her memory.

  Rosa sighed. “We’ll probably never know.”

  Bucky clutched at her stomach, hoping that Rosa was right.

  Chapter Seven

  AS THE NOTE INSTRUCTED, I stood on the darkened shuffleboard court, a handgun in the waistband of my shorts just in case.

  Moments later I heard movement from the edge of the court, between two bushes. Shuffling feet and something striking the ground, a cane, perhaps.

  And another sound. A deep breath. Then: “Don’t come any closer.”

  I almost laughed. Sounded like Alvin, the cartoon chipmunk. Someone was using a helium balloon to disguise their voice, though I was pretty sure it was a man.

  Dressed in baggy jeans and sweatshirt, wearing a clown mask and holding a helium balloon, he stepped out of the shadows. Though he was disguised, I assessed him. Five-foot-six, roughly 140 to 170 pounds, a pair of Vans on his feet: white background, covered with an unidentified pattern. Threat-level: Medium.

  “I have to warn you,” I said. “I’m armed, I’m fast and I’m good, so I wouldn’t try anything.”

  “Try anything?” Alvin said, alarmed. “I’m not the one who would try anything.” Alvin took another hit of helium. “I’m here to warn you. Olive was a friend of mine. Someone killed her to get her map. I’m here to warn you to be careful.”