Chapter Twenty-Three
Rue
Wait.
What?
Did I just hear her right?
There was a body in the tub?
As in a dead body?
My head whipped over, looking in toward the kitchen where the strong scent of bleach made my nose burn.
I scanned the floors, but they were scrubbed ruthlessly clean, likely with the bleach combination in the mop bucket.
But when my gaze lifted, there were violent red streaks across the cabinets and sprayed across the refrigerator.
“Grammy, what…”
The words failed me, though.
Blood.
That was blood.
Like she said.
That meant that, yeah, there was probably a body in the tub.
“Well move inside, would you? Can’t let the whole building in on our business,” she demanded, waving until Kylo shook out of his shock, moved us inward, and closed and locked the door.
“Whose body is in the tub?” he asked, making a weird, hysterical laugh escape me.
He went ahead and ignored me as he tucked his gun away and reached for his phone instead.
“Well, I’m afraid I didn’t ask for his name when I clocked him, my dear,” my grandmother said.
I wasn’t sure it was possible for my eyes to go any wider.
On the flip side, Kylo seemed as calm as could be.
“Are we going to move this body, or,” another voice joined our little party, coming down from the short hallway. Then there was Barbie with Loretta in tow, both wearing purple crafting smocks and elbow-high neon pink rubber gloves. “Oh, hello again,” Barbie said to Kylo, smile going flirty.
“Get yourself together, woman,” my grandmother demanded, all business. “You can flirt with someone of an inappropriate age some other time. We need to get that body out of here before the rigor kicks in.”
“Rigor?” I hadn’t even been aware I’d said it out loud until everyone’s gaze slid to me.
“Rigor mortis, my dear,” my grandmother said. “When a body goes stiff.”
“No. No, I know what rigor is. Why… why do you?”
“Oh, sweet girl, this isn’t our first body.”
“It’s not… I think I need to sit down,” I declared, actually feeling like the ground had shifted suddenly off its axis.
Kylo’s arm went quickly around me, hauling me up against him.
“Oh, swoon,” Barbie said.
“Crack a window,” Katherine suggested. “The fumes might be getting to her.”
“Come on, darlin’,” Kylo said, half pulling me over to the dining table and pushing me into a chair. “You’re gonna be alright. Just breathe.”
Fresh, muggy air filled the space as Loretta opened a window. Katherine moved into the kitchen to flick on the exhaust fan.
“My dear, why don’t you get her some cold water out of the refrigerator?”
Kylo gave my shoulder a squeeze before doing what he was told to. Only after I took a careful sip did he turn to look at my grandmother again, but he kept a hand placed on my shoulder.
“Claudia, I’m gonna need you to start at the beginning.”
“Well, we were having our book club,” my grandmother started. “A hot biker romance,” she added, making me squeeze my eyes shut and suppress an embarrassed groan. “And we were just describing our favorite steamy scenes when there was a knock on the door.”
“And there was a man at the door, saying he was looking for Claudia,” Loretta supplied.
“And you let him in?” I asked.
“Well, how were we supposed to know he wasn’t one of her gentleman callers?” Barbie asked.
I bit back the urge to ask her how many men around my age she was sleeping with. First, because ew to that mental image. Second, because, well… there was a dead man in the bathtub. The sex stuff could wait.
“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.
Mentally, the image of these women all parked around the pool as the men took turns putting on shirtless shows popped into my head, entertaining me until my grandmother was back, a giant cleaning cart in her arms.
“It won’t fit inside?” I asked.
“They don’t want us stealing them,” my grandmother said.
“But the girls and I can create a wall with our bodies as your gentleman here gets the body inside and some laundry on top. Then, we will take it from there. You need to tell your friends to meet us with a wheelbarrow out the side door. From there, they can take the path straight back to the garden shed and circle around to the other side of the fence. The cameras can’t see over there. ”
Kylo shot me a shocked look, but nodded at my grandmother. “Great plan. Let me just relay that to my club.”
With that, he walked down the hall to the bathroom, emerging a few moments later.
“Let’s do this.”
Then I sat, too stunned to do anything but watch as the women removed their smocks and gloves, placing them in the sink with hot water and bleach, then moving out into the hall to stand around and “talk” while Kylo grabbed Marco’s body, wrapped in blankets (I think to keep me from having to look at it), then dumped it into the laundry cart.
“Ladies, can you take it down to the laundry?”
“That’s the plan,” my grandmother agreed.
“After that, I am going to need all of you to go back to your apartments and pack an overnight bag. After that, as a group, exit the building. Dixon and Caymen will be waiting for you on the path. Come with them across the street for the night.”