“What the heck are you going to put in it?” Ida Belle said. “You don’t even have an ID on you.”
“I have a small revolver and a can of Mace in my bra,” Gertie said.
“Stuffing things under your cleavage is why you have a rash,” Ida Belle said. “All that rubbing is bad for your skin.”
Gertie shrugged. “Either the revolver and Mace rub or my boobs rub. At least with the first option, the girls are propped up a bit.”
Ida Belle shook her head and looked upward but I was fairly certain she wasn’t going to get any divine intervention on this one.
“What about the audio?” Gertie asked. “Did the equipment get damaged when we fell over that embankment?”
“This is military grade used in a war zone,” I said. “I don’t think a little drop is going to affect it. Let me queue it up. It was a phone conversation, so only one side.”
I passed the microphone to Gertie, then popped open the case containing the audio equipment, plugged it into Ida Belle’s car stereo, and hit Play. A few seconds later, Tiffany’s voice sounded over the speakers. When it was over, I clicked off the audio equipment and looked at them.
“Well?” I asked.
Ida Belle blew out a breath. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
I nodded. “So let’s start at the beginning. Tiffany has already found a place to live in New Orleans. Now since I doubt seriously she ran out to look at apartments the day after Gil was killed, that means she was already in the process beforehand.”
“Which means she was leaving Gil,” Gertie said.
“And she had some money stashed somewhere,” Ida Belle said. “So she’s been planning this for some time.”
“If Gil gave her money to spend on the regular, it would be easy to put together a decent stash after seven years,” Gertie said.
Ida Belle nodded. “And assuming Gil had a prenuptial, my guess is that secret stash would be all she’d get to leave with, hence the comment about not needing a car.”
“Okay,” I said. “Next question, do we think she was talking to Liam?”
Ida Belle shrugged. “I wish we could have heard the other side of the conversation. It might be Liam but a couple things don’t suit. Like her saying she didn’t want to send the cops sniffing around whoever she was talking to.”
“Ah,” I said, “but her exact words were she didn’t want to cause them to ‘focus’ on this person, which might mean they’re already looking at this person, just not hard.”
“But aren’t they looking hard at Liam?” Gertie asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s Casey’s investigation now and she has to revisit some of the ground Carter already covered so she can get her own read on things, so maybe she hasn’t gotten to Liam yet, especially as she probably doesn’t know about the will change yet.”
“Okay, so if it’s not Liam, then we could have a mystery man on our hands,” Gertie said. “A new boyfriend is a good reason to get rid of an old husband.”
“And a really common one,” Ida Belle said. “All I can say on that is if it’s not Liam she was talking to then I think it’s someone from out of town. I don’t think she’d risk an affair in Sinful.”
“I don’t think she could get away with having an affair in Sinful,” I said.
“Things develop online all the time with young people,” Gertie said. “Especially on social media.”
I nodded. “So next topic—who is the woman Tiffany won’t talk to?”
“Given what we know, the only person I could think of is her mother,” Gertie said.
“Maybe so,” Ida Belle said. “I guess the cops didn’t search her house this morning or she would have said so, right?”
“Casey has to get a warrant first,” I said. “I’m guessing she’s collecting enough information to get one pushed through and will be back for that search when she does.”
“A questionable alibi isn’t enough,” Gertie said, “but the inheritance combined with Tiffany gearing up to leave might be.”
Ida Belle nodded. “That goes double if Fortune’s theory about Gil sniffing around another woman turns out to be true.”
“Well, Tiffany confirmed that she married Gil for the money,” Gertie said. “But it sounds like she regrets it. I can’t imagine being married to him was a picnic.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” I agreed. “But the question is how badly did she want a do-over? And does her do-over include Liam or someone else?”