Road Trip (Glock Grannies Cozy Mystery Book 6)

by Shannon VanBergen

  They all looked at me, concerned.

  “You’re not going to wear that to Kodiak’s place, are you?” Grandma asked me.

  I looked down at my coral sleeveless shirt. She was right. I wouldn’t want to get it dirty. I looked at their own attire and was surprised that they were all in black. It looked like they were headed to a funeral instead of a show. I told them I’d be right back, and I ran back into my room. What could I wear that I wouldn’t mind getting dirty? I had brought mostly nice clothes since I hadn’t expected to scope out a farm when I packed for the trip. But then I remembered my yellow T-shirt from the zip line place. Perfect! I stuffed it into my purse and rejoined the grannies.

  We sat through another one of Amy’s beautiful performances, and I was anxious when it was over. We needed to get out of there quickly and drive out to meet Hattie and Irene, but first we had to figure out how Amy knew Lou. Grandma, Virginia, and I went to talk to her, while Greta walked over to talk to the band as they packed up for the night.

  Grandma praised Amy for another job well done and then didn’t waste any time asking her about Lou. Amy looked nervous and tried to avoid Grandma’s questions. I heard laughter and looked over at Greta. She was pulling candy bars out of her purse and handing them to the guys. Greta was definitely a giver.

  When we were back in the SUV, Virginia sighed. “Well, that was pointless. She seemed to avoid answering all of our questions about Lou. We didn’t even figure out if she knew him.”

  “Oh, she knew him,” Greta answered. “And if Lou had his way, she would’ve known him even better.”

  We all snapped to attention. “What do you mean?” I asked. “How do you know?”

  Greta smiled. “The drummer sang like a bird. It’s amazing what a little chocolate can do.”

  “What did he tell you?” Grandma asked.

  “He said Amy and the band had a meeting with Lou about a week before he was murdered. Lou had agreed to listen to them and give them some advice or something. He said the whole time, Lou kept staring at Amy, and afterward, he asked her to stick around . . . alone.”

  “And she actually stayed?” I asked.

  “The drummer said he let them sing on Archer’s stage,” Greta continued, “and Amy was enamored as soon as she got up there. They tried to talk her out of staying, but she said there wasn’t any harm in her seeing what he had to say.”

  “What a slimeball,” Virginia said, shaking her head.

  “Yep,” Greta answered. “Amy stayed but told the band later that Lou said he could help her career if she helped him first . . . if you get my drift.”

  “No wonder she acted strange when we brought up his name.” Grandma shook her head. “Poor girl.”

  “Do you think that’s enough of a motive?” I asked. “Or do you think one of her bandmates could’ve killed him? Maybe to get back at him or something?”

  Grandma looked thoughtful. “I don’t think so. She’s trying to rise to the top. Why kill someone who claimed he could get you there? Even if he was a creep, she was able to walk out of there without him getting his hands on her. And as far as a band member, I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “None of this feels right,” Virginia said as she left the parking lot.

  I had to agree. We were missing so many pieces of this puzzle. I felt like we could possibly mark Amy off our long suspect list. But I wasn’t completely ready to do that yet.

  It took twenty minutes to drive to the address Irene had given us, and when we pulled up in front of a big farmhouse, Hattie and Irene were waiting on the front porch.

  We got out of the vehicle, and Grandma looked over at me. “Don’t forget, you need to change.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” I said, pulling the bright yellow shirt from my purse.

  “What is that?” Grandma asked.

  I looked up to see all eyes on me, and they didn’t look happy.

  I held up the shirt. “What’s wrong with it? It’s the only shirt I didn’t mind if it got a little dirty.”

  “We don’t care if it gets dirty!” Irene said with a hiss. “We’re going undercover in the night! You need to wear something dark! You put that on, and you’ll stand out like a beacon!”

  Oh. This whole snooping around thing was still a bit new to me.

  “Here,” Hattie said, fishing around in her purse. “Wear this.”

  She pulled out a one-piece leopard-print bodysuit.

  “No way,” I said backing up. “There’s no way I’m wearing that. And why do you even have that in your purse?”

  “It’s the darkest thing I have,” Hattie said, smiling. “But it always gets the job done.”

  I threw my arms up, exasperated. There was no way I was squeezing into that thing.

  “Does anyone else have anything Nikki can wear?” Grandma asked.

  Greta looked in her purse and pulled out a sandwich bag with a neatly folded fabric inside. “I always keep an extra pair of underpants in my purse, but that’s all I have.”

  “I have something,” Irene said. “But it’s lace . . .”

  I grabbed the leopard-print bodysuit. “Fine! I’ll go with this!”

  I ducked back into the SUV and closed the door. Once the lights went off inside, I began the arduous task of squeezing into the bodysuit. Hattie was a tiny woman who clearly didn’t have the same penchant for cinnamon rolls that I did. After much tugging and huffing and puffing, the bodysuit was on.

  I stepped out of the van, and the grannies whistled.

  “Oh stop it,” I hissed. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  I looked up and saw a girl, probably eleven or twelve years old, standing on the front porch. I looked over at Irene. “Are you going to introduce us to your friend?”

  Hattie and Irene turned to see who was behind them.

  “Oh shoot,” Irene said. “Just act natural.”

  How natural could I act standing outside in a leopard-print bodysuit?

  The girl came out to greet us. She had her hair pulled up in a bun and wore a long denim dress. “Miss Hattie, Miss Irene, I wondered where you went off to.”

  “We’ll be back in the house soon, dear,” Irene said sweetly. “We just need to talk to our friends for a minute.”

  The girl looked at me, and she blushed. I could tell she had lots of questions, but instead, she just smiled and walked back into the house.

  “Okay,” Irene said to us, “let’s go.”

  “Not so fast,” Grandma said, grabbing Irene’s arm. “We’re not going until you tell us what’s going on with you two. Who lives here and what have you two been up to?”

  Hattie and Irene looked at each other, and both finally sighed.

  “Fine,” Irene said. “The other day when you all abandoned Hattie and me, we went to breakfast at this cute little country restaurant.”

  Hattie interrupted. “They had the best pancakes.”

  “Yes,” Irene agreed. “They were very good. And while we were there, we sat next to these two well-dressed gentlemen. We smiled at them, they smiled at us, and the next thing you know, we were invited back to their house for pie.”

  Hattie winked. “And naturally, we thought pie meant . . .”

  Grandma put her hand up to stop her. “I know what you thought it meant.”

  “Well,” Irene said, “it turns out they actually meant pie. We followed them here and found out they are Mennonites. Samuel is widowed and lives with his daughter and their family.”

  “And Amos is his best friend,” Hattie added. “He’s widowed too. I got excited at first, thinking we could snag ourselves some religious guys, but they have some sort of code they live by.”

  “It’s called morals, Hattie,” Grandma interjected. “It’s what most of us live by.”

  “Well, to be honest, I always thought morals were just skin-deep,” Irene told us. “But these people, they’re the real deal.”

  “We tried to trick them into thinking we were Mennonites too,” H
attie said. “We even wore a little white thing on our heads the next day.”

  “The coffee filters,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Yeah, but they said we didn’t have to wear one. Somehow, they knew right away we weren’t one of them.”

  “Imagine that,” Grandma smirked.

  “After we realized we weren’t going to seduce the men, we thought about leaving. But something strange happened. We started to like it here.”

  “They’re so nice,” Hattie said smiling. “They live such a happy, peaceful life, and we got sucked into it.”

  “Really?” Virginia asked, not convinced.

  “Really,” Irene said. “We’re not saying we’re joining the religion or anything, but something has been missing in our lives, and Hattie and I seemed to have found it here.”

  We were all quiet for a moment. I had never heard Irene talk like that before. When we started this trip, I never thought that Greta and Virginia would go boy crazy, and Hattie and Irene would find God.

  “All right,” Grandma finally said, “let’s get this over with. Let’s find the pony and get a hair sample, and then we’ll leave you two with your new friends.”

  Hattie and Irene led us around the side of the house and through a gate that opened into the backyard.

  “We need to hurry,” Irene whispered. “We told Samuel and Amos we were coming outside to talk to you. If they get antsy, they’ll come looking for us.”

  We tried to walk a little faster, but the only light we had was from the moon, so we were extra cautious as we made our way through their yard. Crickets chirped around us, and the air smelled like freshly mowed grass. The slight breeze rustled through the trees at the back of their property, and it reminded me so much of our farm in Illinois, I almost cried. Suddenly, I was homesick.

  Greta let out a cry, and I turned to see what was wrong. A goat was nibbling on her shirt.

  “Shoo!” she yelled, and instantly, the goat fell over onto its side.

  “You killed it!” Hattie cried. “You killed the goat of a Mennonite!”

  “It’s not dead,” Irene said. “It’s one of those fainting goats little Emily was talking about.”

  The animal was stiff as a board for about ten seconds before it popped back up like nothing had happened. It skipped away, and Greta put her hand over her heart. “My stars, that thing scared me half to death.”

  We continued on through the field, staying close to the fence that separated the Mennonite’s property from Kodiak’s.

  “We noticed a gate out here yesterday,” Irene said. “It’s over here somewhere.”

  We scanned the fence until we found the gate. Looking over into Kodiak’s property, we could see a large barn. We paused for a minute and looked around. Everything was quiet.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Grandma whispered.

  We made our way to the barn, and we could hear animals inside. We slipped in, and Grandma used the flashlight from her phone to light up the area. There was a cage along the left side of the barn, and two bright, beady eyes peeked out at us. A racoon stood on its hindlegs, holding onto the bars of its cage like a prisoner. It chattered at us, and Irene told it to be quiet. It got back down on all fours and crawled to the corner of its cage and started to eat something from a bowl, no longer interested in us.

  Bales of hay lined the other side of the barn, and when Grandma shined her light on them, I noticed something right away.

  “Wait,” I whispered. “Shine your light over there again.”

  Grandma did, and I ran over and picked up a scarf that was draped across one of the bales. It was black with silver sequins sewn around the edges.

  “That looks like the scarf Madison Paige wore during her performance,” Greta said.

  Grandma took it and looked it over. “What’s it doing here?”

  Hattie grabbed it and wrapped it around her neck. “The sequins are scratchy. How does she wear this thing?”

  “Let’s put it back,” Grandma said. “We don’t want to leave any trace that we were here. I don’t see the pony, so it must be outside.”

  Hattie took off the scarf, and Grandma carefully put it back in its original position on the hay. As we walked out of the barn, Hattie looked over at the Mennonite farmhouse. It looked like every light was on, and it gave off a welcoming glow.

  “I can’t wait to get back there,” said Hattie. “Did you know that they sing every evening, and then they have dessert? I bet they can make a good peach cobbler. Irene, remind me to ask them when we get back.”

  Just then, we heard a loud neigh come from the other side of the barn. We looked at each other, knowing we found our target.

  We crept around the barn and saw the pony surrounded by a fence. We tried to open the gate, but it was locked.

  “Climb in there,” Grandma said, handing me a pair of scissors. “Cut a little off his tail.”

  “Don’t let him kick you in the face,” Hattie warned. “That happened to my cousin Steve, and he was cross-eyed for the rest of his life!”

  Great. One more thing to worry about.

  With a boost from Virginia, I went over the fence and made my way to the pony, who was standing at the back. I noticed he wasn’t alone. There were two darker ponies and a few chickens loitering in the back with him.

  I made my way toward them, scissors ready. Then I heard a noise that nearly stopped my heart. Was that a man talking?

  “Get down!” Grandma whispered. “He’s coming!”

  Get down? Get down where? I ran to the back and tried to hide between the ponies. A very curious chicken came over and pecked me on the head. I heard the grannies take off running, but I couldn’t tell where they went.

  I tried to shoo away the aggressive chicken, but for some reason, it was fascinated with my hair. I heard the barn door open, and then the voice of a woman filled the air.

  “I’m pretty sure I left it in here.” It was Madison’s voice. “There it is. I’ll just run in and grab it.”

  “Be careful,” I heard Kodiak say to her. “I get some wild animals out here occasionally. Coyotes, bobcats . . . leopards.”

  I heard her laugh. “Leopards? I don’t think they live in Missouri.”

  “You’d be surprised what shows up on my ranch.”

  Had I just been caught?

  “Got it,” Madison said when she came out of the barn. She laughed. “No leopards in there, thankfully!”

  Through the pony’s legs, I could see Kodiak standing by the gate, looking toward me. I held my breath, trying to stay as still as possible and hoping that the pony in front of me wouldn’t move.

  “That’s good,” he answered her. “For some reason they seem to like the ponies.”

  Shoot. I had definitely been caught.

  They walked back up toward his house, and I stayed low until I heard the grannie’s voices. I quickly snipped a few hairs from the pony’s tail and got out of the pen as fast as I could.

  “He caught me,” I said as I handed the hair to Greta, and she slipped it into a sandwich bag and threw it into her purse.

  “There’s no way he could’ve seen you,” Irene said. “Unless . . .”

  We looked around and there, on the corner of the barn, was a camera. Hattie waved at it and blew it a kiss.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Grandma said.

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I took off running with the grannies following right behind me. I made it to the gate and burst onto the Mennonite’s property, scaring four goats who fell over immediately.

  I fell down next to them, completely out of breath. I might have been dressed like a leopard, but I definitely couldn’t run like one.

  “Can you imagine living like that?” Hattie asked. “Falling over and being paralyzed every time you got scared. And apparently it’s contagious.” She turned to look at Grandma. “How long do you think Nikki will be like that?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Grandma said, reaching down and taking my arm
. She pulled me up. “You can catch your breath in the vehicle.”

  We made it to the SUV and said goodbye to Hattie and Irene. They went inside the farmhouse for some wholesome late-night singing while I picked straw out of my hair from the back seat. As we drove down the country road, headed toward town, my phone buzzed next to me. I picked it up. It was a text from Kodiak. I thought my heart was going to thump out of my chest as I read it. “I’ll see you at the diner. We need to talk.”

  Yep, definitely busted.

  16

  “I can’t believe Hattie and Irene tried to seduce Mennonites,” Grandma said on the way to the diner.

  She pulled out her phone and brought up the picture of the horsehair that Archer Nash had sent her the day before. Greta handed her the bag of pony hair to see if it was a match.

  Grandma Dean looked them over, then looked up at us, shaking her head. “I don’t think it’s the same. It looks like the pony hair is darker. What do you think?”

  She handed them both to Greta, and Greta agreed.

  I had my mind on other things. I didn’t tell Grandma Dean that Kodiak had texted me and would be joining us that evening at the diner. By the time we got there, Willie, Billie, and Archer Nash were already sitting at their table in the back. To my dismay, Roxy was there too. Archer said something to her, and she threw her head back in laughter. She looked over at us then leaned in closer to Archer.

  “She’s way too young for him,” Virginia scowled.

  “He’s a big boy,” Grandma said calmly. “He can be with whoever he wants to be with.”

  “What if he wants to be with you?” I questioned.

  Grandma ignored me and walked to the table, full of grace as usual. As we sat down, an awkwardness came over all of us, except for Greta and Willie.

  Virginia leaned over to me and whispered. “Can you believe those two? Canoodling like that while we’re trying to find Lou’s killer.” She looked over at Billie, and I could tell she didn’t know if she could trust him or not. But even so, I could see she wanted to canoodle too.

  A few minutes later Kodiak walked in and held the door open for Casius, who came in next on crutches. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him. He was dressed in his magician’s outfit, cape and all. But that’s not what made me chuckle. Even his crutches and cast were black.