“He must have run back to the basement!” Irene yelled.
“I’ll get him!” Hattie yelled.
Before we could stop her, she had pushed past us and was flying down the stairs. Owen tried to run after her, but he had only made it halfway down the stairs when we heard a scream and terrible thunk followed by silence.
“Got him!” Hattie hollered from the basement.
“You women are going to be the death of me,” Owen mumbled as he made his way down the stairs.
30
“Well, we did it,” Grandma said at her kitchen table later that night. She held up her glass of tea and the rest of us followed suit.
“To the Glock Grannies!” Irene said. “We always get our man!”
We clinked glasses and took a sip of our decaffeinated Darjeeling.
“I feel so bad for Delores,” Greta said. “God bless her heart. But I’m so glad she agreed to get help.”
“And you,” Grandma said looking at Hattie. “I hope you learned your lesson about abusing medications. Twice I’ve seen you try to give some to other people. Can you see now how dangerous that is?”
Hattie laughed and reached in her purse. She pulled out a bag and tossed it on the table. “They aren’t pills, it’s Pez.”
“Pez?” I asked. “Liked the candy?”
“Yep,” Hattie said pulling out a Charlie Brown Pez dispenser from her purse. “There’s something about taking candy out of their little necks that soothes me.” She took one out and popped it in her mouth.
Grandma rolled her eyes.
“I still can’t believe Rusty murdered John,” Grandma said, reaching for the tin of butter cookies in front of her. She dipped her cookie in her tea. “And to play a game like that.”
“Well,” Virginia said grabbing the tin of cookies and pulling them her way. “John always did like games. Maybe he would’ve appreciated it.”
“It’s so weird to see inside the mind of a murderer. What did you guys think when he told Owen that he had been playing Merchants of the Gods with John for months and John had admitted all those things to him – the affairs, selling drugs, scamming poor Jeremy.”
“I thought it was crazy that grown men play video games,” Grandma said. “But I guess John thought he had built up some kind of trust with Rusty.”
Irene scoffed. “He probably thought he could just do whatever he wanted and get away with it. I’m sure he was bragging about his conquests.”
There was a knock at the door and Grandma got up to answer it. It was Owen.
“Good! You’re here!” Irene said to him. “We were just talking about the case. There’s one piece of the puzzle we don’t know about. How exactly did John die?”
Owen stood in the doorway and he looked like he didn’t want to answer the question. “Well, you’ll hear about it eventually, so I guess there’s no harm in telling you.” He walked in and grabbed a cookie from the tin as I got him a folding chair from the hall closet. He sat down and Grandma handed him some tea. I tried not to think about how much I was going to miss this when he was gone.
“Rusty told us John came over to play late one night and was talking about how after they played, he was going to go upstairs and ‘visit’ his mom. Rusty already knew at that point his mom was hooked on pain medication, but he wasn’t sure where she was getting them from. For some reason John felt comfortable confessing things to Rusty so he told him about how he was blackmailing the dentist and getting opioids that he would then sell to a few people. When he told Rusty his mom was one of those people Rusty immediately came up with the plan to kill him. He offered him some alcohol that Rusty had laced with the muscle relaxers and pain medications his mom had upstairs. He passed out pretty quickly and Rusty pulled out his rattlesnake and tried to get him to bite John. When that didn’t work, he used one of his syringes he had for his insulin and just injected him with it.”
“He could’ve just injected him with the insulin,” Greta said. “That would’ve killed him too.”
Owen nodded. “He said he thought about that but then he was afraid the murder would be traced to him. So, he injected him with rattlesnake venom and dumped his body at the park to make it look like John was just walking along and got bit by a snake.”
“That’s just terrible,” Greta said. “The whole thing.”
We sat there drinking our tea and eating butter cookies. I hated those things, honestly. But for some reason I couldn’t stop eating them.
“Well, that’s one mystery solved,” Irene said. “But there’s still one more.”
“What’s that?” We all asked.
Irene looked at Owen. “Are you moving or not?”
He looked at me and I mouthed that I was sorry. He hung his head for a minute then looked up at Irene. “I am not. I found out a little bit ago that I didn’t get the job. They gave it to the other guy. “
The grannies first sighed a sigh of relief then one by one started to comfort him. I sat there feeling just as sad as I would have had he said he was going. Did it matter that he wasn’t going this time? He was obviously looking for a new job and I wasn’t enough to make him stay – not that I wanted him to stay…for me, anyway.
“Before we call it a night,” Virginia said. “I think we have one more thing to discuss.” We all looked around confused. What else could there be?
“Geraldine,” Virginia said softly. “I looked him up. I have his address.”
Grandma’s face went white. Oh yeah, I had forgotten she promised to share her story with me. She looked at Owen and he stood up. “I can see you ladies have something important to discuss so I’ll head out.” He looked at me. “I’ll see you around, okay?” I nodded and watched him leave, my heart feeling like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“You don’t have to talk about this if you’re not ready,” Greta said to Grandma, bringing the conversation back to her.
“I’m ready,” Grandma said softly. “It needs to come out eventually.”
Since I was the only one who didn’t know the story Grandma turned to tell me. “When I was younger, much younger, I married the love of my life.” She smiled and closed her eyes and I imagined that she was picturing that moment. “He was handsome and witty. And those eyes. They could see right in here.” She pointed to her heart. “He was my everything.” She swallowed hard and picked up her teacup and gave it a swirl. “But his parents were completely against us being married. We had run away in the middle of the night and gotten married behind their backs.”
“You eloped?” I asked.
Grandma smiled. “We did. It was the most exciting thing I had ever done. I thought when we got back his parents would just accept it and we’d all move on. But that’s not what happened.”
Grandma sniffed and took a deep breath. “They told him that if he didn’t divorce me and get the marriage annulled, they wouldn’t pass the family business down to him.”
“What?” I asked shocked. “He didn’t do it, did he?”
“It was a different time,” Greta said softly. “Parents had more say, more power than they do now.”
“So, he divorced you? But why? Why didn’t they like you?”
Grandma sighed. “I wasn’t good enough for their son. They were wealthy, I wasn’t. They owned the largest shoe store in the Midwest and my daddy was a farmer. My mother made our clothes and our food and they thought all of that, all of us, were beneath them. So, he left me. I was pregnant at the time, but didn’t know it. The divorce and annulment went through quickly, thanks to their money and connections, and that was it.”
“Did you ever see him again?” I asked.
“No. I wrote to him, but my letters always came back to me, they all said return to sender in his mother’s handwriting. I spent the next few years trying to be an actress or a singer, someone famous. I knew that if I could just land a part in some tv show or movie I would suddenly be good enough to win him back.”
“But God had a different plan, didn’t he Geraldine,�
�� Greta said smiling. “You met Glenn who became your agent and then your husband and then you got to be famous in Europe!”
“Yes, and I had a wonderful life,” Grandma said smiling. “But I’ve always wondered what happened to him. And I guess I’ve always harbored feelings for him. And part of those feelings turned into a disdain for anyone who found true love and got to keep it. And I’m so sorry for that.”
The grannies all comforted her and told her she didn’t need to apologize.
“Well,” Virginia said holding up a piece of paper. “Do you want to know where he lives?”
Grandma took a deep breath. “I do.”
Virginia slid the paper to Grandma, but she didn’t look at it. “What do I do after I look at this?” she asked quietly.
“I say we pay him a visit and let him see what he missed out on!” Irene said, slapping her hand on the table.
“Oh, how fun!” Hattie said. “That’s just what we need! A road trip!”
“What do you say Geraldine?” Irene asked. “Do you feel strong enough to go meet the man that let go of you all those years ago?”
Grandma stared at the blank side of the paper for a moment then she sat up straight. “You know what? I do! I’m ready to get some closer!” She flipped the paper over and read it. “Looks like we’re headed to Branson!”
Thank You
Thanks for reading Crack the Code. I have a lot of fun writing the Glock Grannies books and I hope you have fun reading them!
The next book in the series is called Road Trip. Nikki and the Grannies go on vacation, well a vacation with a mission, but find that they can’t escape mystery and intrigue. Keep an eye out for it on Amazon.
In the mean time, check out all my books on Amazon.
amazon.com/Shannon-VanBergen/e/B06XK7X6H8
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Crack the Code (Glock Grannies Cozy Mystery Book 5) Page 14
