Final Ride

by Nic Saint

  She tapped her phone, which was placed in its holder. “I’m going to make him confess. And I’m going to record him doing it.”

  “And how are you going to make him confess?”

  She wiggled her cleavage. “Trust me, darling. It’s not that hard.”

  Chapter 34

  We arrived at a nice little white stucco house in a residential neighborhood and Charlene slammed on the brakes, causing the car to fishtail and my head almost hit the windshield before I was yanked back by the seatbelt.

  “Let’s do this,” Charlene said decidedly.

  She flipped down the visor, checked her look in the mirror, pushed up her boobs, and got out.

  Forgoing all of those things, I swallowed down a bout of nausea brought on by my grandmother’s driving style, and staggered from the vehicle.

  She was already marching towards the house, balancing on ridiculously high heels. How she managed to drive in those, I did not know. Then again, ‘driving’ was probably not the right word for the kind of thing she did to cars.

  “Shouldn’t we discuss strategy first?” I asked, trying to keep up with her.

  “I’ll take care of strategy,” she said. “You make sure you get every word on tape—or whatever it is they put inside those smartphones these days.”

  “Memory,” I said, but she wasn’t listening, already gearing up for her performance. She pressed her finger on the bell and plastered a winning smile on her face, her plump lips giving her a clownish aspect.

  The door opened and Leo appeared, dressed in cargo pants and khaki shirt, most of it untucked. He was also unshaven and looked disheveled. When he saw the two of us on his doorstep, he groaned and made to close the door.

  “Leo, darling!” Charlene caroled loudly, and barged into the house, pushing the former security guard out of the way. “So great to see you!”

  “Hello, Leo,” I said, a little more subdued as I followed my grandmother in. Leo, seeing no other alternative, closed the door and trailed us into the living room.

  “Such a nice place you’ve got here!” Charlene gushed. “I love your style!”

  There wasn’t a lot of style on display, though. The place was a dump, beer cans and fast-food wrappers spread out across the coffee table, the TV blaring away in one corner of the room, and papers covering every available surface.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Leo frostily, crossing his arms.

  Charlene swiped her hand across the couch, dumping several copies of The Sapsucker Times to the floor, and lowered herself like a monarch on a throne.

  “I was so worried about you, Leo, darling,” said Charlene. “And so was Mia. Isn’t that right, honey?”

  I gave Leo a penetrating look. “I saw you having lunch with Phoenix yesterday. At Delroy’s Deli.”

  Charlene uttered a sound of annoyance. This obviously was not the strategy she had sanctioned. What she had had in mind, exactly, was beyond me. Did she think she would take Leo into the bedroom while I waited patiently in the living room? I wouldn’t have put it past her.

  Leo looked deeply disturbed by the allegation. “Oh, crap,” he muttered.

  “What were you two discussing? You seemed pretty chummy to me.”

  He sighed, and dropped down onto the other couch, on top of a pizza box.

  “Look, it’s pretty clear to me the only person invested enough to destroy Charleneland is Phoenix. So I decided to give her a call and feel her out.”

  “Feel her out?” asked Charlene. “Feel her up, you mean.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I told her that you had fired me and I offered her my services. Made it sound as if you had accused me of being behind the incidents yesterday, and that I was extremely disappointed and disgruntled.”

  “I don’t blame you, Leo, darling,” said Charlene. “If I was in love with a person all these years and they shamelessly ignored you, I’d be disgruntled, too. But that’s all in the past now.” She fixed him with an intense look, then pointed from herself to Leo. “I see you. Yes, Leo. I see you, you lovely man.”

  “Oh, for God’s sakes,” I said. “How did Phoenix react?”

  Leo, who’d been staring at Charlene, snapped out of it. “She said there was no way she would ever hire me. Called me tainted goods. Made it pretty obvious that she didn’t believe a word I said.”

  “That bitch!” Charlene exploded. “Tainted goods my ass!” With age-defying alacrity, she rose from the couch and stalked over to Leo, then promptly sat down on his knee, slinging her arms around his neck. “Oh, Leo, darling. This is all my fault. I should never have ignored you all these years. Can you forgive me?”

  “I…”

  He would probably have said more, but she proceeded to bury his face between her breasts, and the man suddenly lapsed into silence.

  Well, I had to hand it to her. Her technique was flawless.

  Chapter 35

  Karin Rugg was seated on the bed, folding some laundry. Usually she entrusted this to their housekeeper but now, with the state the park was in, she’d dismissed the woman and had decided to dedicate today to cleaning up around the house. It was the only way she knew how to occupy her mind.

  It was the first time since the park had opened that Charleneland was shut down, and the silence and the lack of people milling around was unnerving.

  The house where the Ruggs lived was located on the edge of the park. It looked like an outsized Swiss chalet, and most people thought it was a hotel, as the Sapsucker Lodge had been built according to the same blueprints. But since a sign on the door indicated this place was accessible to authorized personnel only, it rarely happened that a tourist wandered into the parlor.

  Though at one time an entire group of Chinese tourists had actually shown up in the kitchen, taking pictures of their housekeeper as if she was a star. They obviously thought it was one of the many attractions the park boasted.

  Karin absentmindedly folded another of her husband’s shirts, then broke down, tears flowing down her face. This wasn’t happening. Not to them.

  She looked up when Clive entered the room and swiped at her teary face, turning it away from her husband of thirty years.

  Without a word, he took a seat next to her on the bed and enveloped her in his arms, placing a comforting kiss on the top of her head. “We’ll get through this,” he promised her. “And we’ll be stronger and better for it.”

  “I don’t know, Clive,” she said. “I have a feeling this just might break us.”

  “No, it won’t. This family can’t be broken. Not as long as we stand together and believe in the project we built.”

  She shook her head, reveling in the warmth of her husband’s embrace but not sharing his confidence. “I don’t know. Maybe this is a sign that we should finally retire? Charlene is getting on in age and—”

  ”Don’t let her hear you say that,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Charlene is going to keep going till the day she drops dead on stage, which is probably twenty or thirty years from now. She might even outlive us both.”

  She smiled through her tears. “You’re probably right. But what about the girls? Is this the future we want for them? To spend their lives at this park?”

  “They want this, Karin. We talked about this. You can’t drag them away from Charleneland. It’s their business as much as ours. And their future.”

  She looked up, and when she caught his steady gaze, she saw how confident he was. How sure that they were going to get through this. She needed that strength right now, because she wasn’t feeling it. “All right,” she said finally, a feeble smile breaking through the clouds. “All right.”

  Just then, there was a rustling sound behind them. They both looked up in alarm. Had the saboteur gotten inside? Was he blowing the house up next?

  “Stay here,” said Clive, jumping up and moving to the door.

  But she wasn’t staying put. This was her house. No one was going to mess with the place where she’d raised her family. And as
Clive moved along the corridor in the direction of the sound, she followed close behind him.

  They paused in front of Marisa’s room, their footfall muffled by the thick-pile corridor carpet, and listened intently. There was someone in the room!

  They shared a quick look, and then Clive placed his hand on the doorknob and pushed inside.

  A startled Kevin Woods jumped up from the bed, where he’d positioned himself, a flower between his teeth, a laurel wreath in his hair.

  As usual, he was buck naked.

  “Kevin,” Clive groaned. “You have got to stop doing this, kid!”

  “I—I—I thought Marisa—”

  “Marisa is at the office,” said Karin, relieved it wasn’t an intruder.

  “I know. We—she texted me just now. Said she was coming home—” A crimson blush spread across his handsome features, and he was covering his privates with Marisa’s pillow. “I’m so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Rugg. I’m—”

  “Yoo-hoo!” a voice sounded from the staircase. “Honey, I’m home!”

  And then Marisa came bursting through the door. She took in the astonishing scene: her dad, arms crossed and a look of exasperation on his face, her mother who barely managed to hide a smile, and Kevin, looking startled and deeply embarrassed. She groaned. “Kevin—not again!”

  Chapter 36

  The old man was becoming a nuisance. Following him around all morning, it was obvious that of all the Ruggs, Clive Rugg was most likely to hit on the truth. The Saboteur watched as Clive left the house where the Ruggs lived.

  He knew he had little to fear from the Rugg sisters. Mia was chasing her own tail figuring out who killed the kid. Marisa seemed more focused on her love life, and Maya had always been an airhead bimbo. Like her grandmother.

  Charlene had no idea what was going on, and neither had Karin Rugg.

  No, if anyone discovered what was still in store for the park, it was Clive. And he couldn’t have that, could he? The pièce de résistance was still coming, and no one, especially some old-timer with ticker issues, was going to stop him from accomplishing his objective. He’d come too far to turn back now.

  He followed Clive at a safe distance. There were still plenty of people milling around the park, in spite of the fact that it was now closed for business, so it wasn’t hard to keep track of the old man. When he saw where he was headed, The Saboteur heaved a sigh of relief. For a moment there he thought Clive was on to him. But apparently he’d overestimated the guy.

  The Ruggs were completely clueless. And that’s exactly how he wanted it.

  Clive made his way from the house to Pirate Lair. He’d already gone over the accident with both the Sapsucker fire chief and the fire marshal, but he wanted to take in the scene one more time, hoping to shed some light on the identity of the person or persons responsible for the horrendous collapse.

  Both men had assured him that it was akin to a miracle that no one had been hurt in the destruction of the stands. Things could have been much, much worse. As it was, the area was still pretty much a disaster zone.

  He arrived at the Pirate Lair entrance, the Scarlet Lagoon where the two ships had lain at anchor. They were still partially submerged in the shallow waters of the lagoon, the Red Sparrow after the hydraulics that kept it upright had been taken out in the targeted blast, and the HMS Scarborough on its side, its mighty main mast snapped like a twig when it hit the Port Charles quay.

  It broke Clive’s heart to see the devastation wrought to one of the main attractions of the park, and one that was very close to his own heart.

  Even as a boy he’d loved to play pirate, and when he’d had the chance to develop Port Charles and Pirate Lair, it had appealed to the little boy inside him. The kid who loved to chase his friends around the neighborhood, donning an eyepatch, a pirate’s hat, and brandishing a plastic saber.

  He sank down on the low wall that divided this part of the park from the rest. The stands were completely wrecked, and would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. It wasn’t a biggie. But the ships had sustained serious damage and would take months to be restored to their former glory. Worse, the hit Charleneland’s reputation had sustained might never be repaired.

  What parent would sit down with their kids on these stands again, after they’d crashed to earth so spectacularly?

  Video footage of the incident had appeared on YouTube overnight, and networks nationwide had picked up coverage of the terrible events. And as he held his head in his hands, contemplating what it would take to undo the damage that was done, he wondered if his wife didn’t have a point. Maybe it was easier and more reasonable to cut their losses and declare defeat. Close down the park and accept that whoever was behind this had won.

  But then the stubborn streak in Clive Rugg reared its head, and so did his anger. His jaw worked at the thought of this faceless individual destroying his family’s livelihood—their legacy. No way were they going to be bested. Not as long as he had a single breath left in his body to fight his way out of this.

  He dropped down from the low wall and made his way to the part of the stands where the fire marshal had determined the charge had been placed. He had to climb over splintered beams, crushed plastic seats and collapsed concrete girders to get there, but when he was finally underneath the dangling rows, only held up by a stubborn piece of steel-enforced concrete, he crouched down to inspect the blackened hole the explosion had struck.

  Whoever had done this had known where to put the charge so it would wreak the most damage. So it had to be someone familiar with the blueprints of the structure, and both ships. Someone who knew Charleneland through and through. Someone like Leo, still the most likely suspect in his book.

  And as he stared down at a Barbie doll someone had dropped, wondering whether to raze this entire area to the ground and create a new attraction in its stead, suddenly the hairs at the back of his neck stood up, and he had the distinct sensation of being watched.

  He glanced around, but as far as he could tell he was all alone out here. Then the thought occurred to him that he was an easy target. A well-placed small charge could easily collapse the rest of the stands—bring them down on top of him.

  The thought suddenly had him scrambling from the pit where he stood, and clambering over the wreckage, back to the surface. And as he stood on the ruins of one of Charleneland’s most prestigious attractions, he glanced around, scanning three-hundred-and-sixty degrees in every direction.

  Apart from a couple of Mia’s security people, he saw no one.

  But he knew that the saboteur was watching him.

  He could feel it in his bones.

  Chapter 37

  I was back in my office. As I suspected, the visit to Leo had been a bust.

  It was hard to trust a man who’d deserted us in our darkest hour.

  Was he telling the truth when he said the only reason he’d quit and gotten in touch with Phoenix was to elicit a confession? Or was Leo the saboteur?

  Dylan and Catina had trawled through every bit of footage leading up to the sabotage, and had found nothing that could lead to the identity of the culprit. Neither had they been able to figure out how this person had disabled our security system for the hour needed to do their dirty work.

  More and more I was starting to lean towards the theory that the murder of Steve Geyser and the destruction of Pirate Lair and the Body Wrench were part of the same ploy to destroy the park.

  My phone chimed and I picked it up without checking the display.

  “Hey, Mia. Blane. I’ve been doing some checking and both Scott Davies and David Foster have alibis for two nights ago. Davies was enjoying an all-nighter at the Leaky Cistern, apparently his favorite haunt, and Foster’s sister swears he was home—if he would have left she would have heard, as she’s a light sleeper and so is her husband. What’s more, the husband got up at three thirty in the morning and saw his brother-in-law wander into the bathroom.”

  “What about your mobster friend?”


  “Still checking into Alfie. But I don’t think he’s our guy.”

  “You trust him?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Blane, if he really killed Steve, do you think he’d tell you?”

  “Yes, he would.”

  I kinda had my doubts, but I trusted Blane, so that left Alfie out of the picture. At least for now.

  “How are things at your end?”

  I told him about my trip to Leo with Charlene, and how I wasn’t sure either way. “Leo could be involved or he couldn’t. It’s impossible to tell.”

  “You’ve known the man for years, Mia. Do you think he’s lying?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Blane. I think you should pay him a visit.” I hesitated. “Maybe bring him in for questioning. At this point he’s our most likely suspect.”

  “You’re right. I’ll make the arrest this afternoon.” He sighed. “I hate this.”

  “Not as much as I hate it.” My phone beeped, and I saw that it was Marisa. “I have to go, Blane. Talk to you later.” The moment I disconnected, Marisa’s anxious voice sounded. “You’ve got to see this, Mia. Switch to WHS3.com. Other networks are already picking up the story.”

  “What story?”

  “It’s bad, Mia. Real bad.”

  My heart pounding, I typed WHS and the browser put in the rest. WHS3 is our local news network. One I watch all the time. Like all of Sapsucker.

  I clicked enter and saw that the front page was dedicated to Charleneland.

  ’BREAKING NEWS’ flashed at the top of the screen.

  ‘Whistleblower reveals culture of criminal negligence, flouting safety measures, corporate greed at popular amusement park Charleneland led to death of one and endangerment of hundreds.’

  I closed my eyes. “This can’t be happening,” I breathed.

  “It is,” said Marisa, sounding subdued. She paused, then added haltingly, “This will kill us, Mia. This will end Charleneland.”