“My God,” Mrs.Petty breathed. “I mean. There’s no one here.”
“Not entirely true,” I said. We went to the far end of the warehouse, where vast rolling doors were closed snugly against the night, and there, in a frozen goods shipping container the size of a tractor trailer, were Viti, Maurice Petty, and Cammy Montecrist.
Maurice and Cammy sat on the floor back-to-back. They’d been restrained with zip ties, their mouths covered with adhesive tape. Viti stood over them both, holding a silenced pistol down by her side.
Sheryl Petty took in the sight, her eyes widening. “What? My God, what? Cammy?” She rushed over to her sister.
“I thought you’d want Maurice’s lover to suffer as well.”
Maurice sighed through his nose. Cammy’s eyes widened, and she started shaking her head.
Sheryl froze, shocked. Then her eyes went even wider, and glassy, and her face turned very, very red. With a birdlike pounce, she closed the distance on Cammy and began slapping her across the face, hard, repeatedly. One of the blows tore the tape off the corner of Cammy’s mouth and she began cursing.
Viti and I traded a look and walked back to the entrance of the cargo container.
“You bitch!” screamed Sheryl Petty. Then she started slapping Maurice, too. “You bastard!”
Maurice noticed when I took hold of the cargo container door. He screamed through the tape, nodding desperately toward me.
Sheryl whirled around.
“Balanced scales,” I said quietly. “Sheryl, you were siphoning off your husband’s money and you hired a genuine monster”—I put my hand on my chest modestly—“to make him miserable and/or kill him horribly. Maurice, you make a lot of things possible for bad men doing bad things, and you were banging your wife’s sister. And, Cammy, you were conspiring with ghouls tosteal from both of them and planning to leave them high and dry. You’re all…just terrible people.”
All three of them stared at me. Sheryl began to take a step toward the exit of the storage container, but Viti raised her pistol and gave her a flat, emotionless look.
Sheryl froze.
“Your coat. Scarf. Sunglasses. Please,” Viti said in a neutral tone.
Sheryl goggled. Then woodenly removed the mentioned items of clothing. Viti collected them, her eyes cold.
I nodded. “Now. Had Sheryl not hired me, Cammy would have run off with all the money. The ghouls would have killed her, taken the money, blackmailed Maurice, and used him to get at Marcone, and I think you know how that would have ended for you, Maurice.”
“What about me?” Sheryl demanded. “What would they have done to me?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Killed you and eaten you, maybe? If they noticed you at all.”
“Oh,” she said in a much smaller voice.
I gave them all the unsettling smile. “Of course, Sheryl did hire me. So. You’re not going to be killed and eaten by ghouls. Instead, I’m sentencing you to Sartre’s hell.”
“What?” Sheryl demanded. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” I said.
And I shut the shipping container door and locked it.
“How thick is that insulation?” I wondered aloud.
“Eighteen inches,” Viti said promptly. “Can’t you hear them screaming and banging?”
“No,” I said.
“Precisely,” she said.
“You put the supplies in there?”
“There is enough water and enough calories to keep them alive until they reach St. Louis and the container is opened. Assuming they share them rationally.”
