I almost pointed out that Birda was making an awful big stink about Ruth but then decided against it.
Roan offered to take me home.
“I thought you could only get here by ATV.”
Roan laughed. “No. I’m pretty sure Ruth and Alice only told you that so you’d ride in the ATV.”
“It figures,” I grumbled.
Seeing as I didn’t want Alice to have to drive the ATV alone through the forest, I declined Roan’s offer and told Alice I’d go with her.
Besides, sitting up front was a thousand times better than sitting in the back.
Alice sat behind the wheel. “Now. How do you start this thing?”
“Scoot over. I’ll do the driving.”Before you get us killed.
Alice did as I said, and I cranked the engine and pumped the gas.
Most everyone had gone by that time, including the moonshine and pork butt men. Too bad, all that searching for the banshee had really worked up my appetite.
I steered us through the forest and managed to only get a branch in Alice’s face once.
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Blissful. I know you didn’t mean it.” She said it so quietly that I knew she was afraid for Ruth.
I reached over and squeezed her knee. “It’s going to be okay. Ruth didn’t strangle Cora.”
“I know that, but Birda made such a big stink about it and then she found that cloth in Cora’s hand.”
“Yeah…yeah.”
It hit me. “I didn’t remember seeing that cloth before. I could be wrong, but it seemed to me that Cora didn’t have anything in her hands.” I tried to remember. “But I can’t be sure.”
Alice perked up. She wagged her finger. “You know that Birda always undresses in her mudroom. Strips completely naked and then goes upstairs to change. At least she does whenever she wears camouflage.”
“I’m afraid to ask how you know this.”
Alice adjusted her glasses. “You don’t think this is the first run-in we’ve had with Birda, do you?”
“But maybe the first one that involved her friend being murdered.”
“Yes, that’s true. But Birda’s been around for years, and that’s the truth about her mudroom. If by chance she planted that strip and she’d been carrying a knife, that’s where it would be. Right there.”
Several scenarios played out in my mind. The first was me catching Birda nude. I wanted to gouge my eyes out at the thought of her withered breasts dangling from her chest.
Oh no. Kill me now.
The second was that Birda would find me and I’d be arrested. Okay. Well, worse things could happen than that. The third was that I plundered the mudroom and discovered a knife.
Looked like number three was the winner.
I gritted my teeth and leaned into the steering wheel. “Tell me where Birda lives.”
After being scratched in the face by about a thousand twigs and branches and wondering if I had enough Polysporin at the house to cover my wounds, we finally reached a small cottage in a quiet neighborhood in Haunted Hollow.
Alice pointed to a side street. “Park over there.”
