Wild Ride

by Nancy Warren

  “Yes?”

  “Well, we may have to consider a rehab clinic. And I doubt she’d go willingly.”

  “Oh, poor Gillian. I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Me, too. But I want you to be prepared,” Eric said. “Well, I guess I should be going.”

  “I’m done here for tonight,” she said in a subdued tone. “I’ll see you out.”

  Duncan gave them time to leave, stopping only to scoop the tapes out of the drawer and pop them in the dark cloth bag he’d brought along. He’d prefer it if he was sliding the Van Gogh into the bag, but the tapes might hold some clues apart from the incredibly boring story of the old guy’s courtship and marriage that had had Alex sniffling.

  He’d have the tapes copied and back in that drawer by tomorrow night.

  Then he realized that the sergeant was probably staking out his place at this very moment, possibly with a search warrant.

  Getting caught with Alex’s tapes was not a smart idea. Reluctantly, he returned them to the drawer exactly as he’d found them. He’d come back when she was at work, and before the addict cousin moved in.

  And now he had a deadline to search this house thoroughly. If the Van Gogh was here, he’d find it.

  He had a week.

  Duncan slipped out of the back door and sprinted for his vehicle so he could confirm that Alex drove straight home. Preferably alone.

  He tried to be philosophical about the fact that she could be having an affair with her cousin’s ex—hell, maybe she was the cause of the split. But when she pulled into her building’s parking lot alone and went up to her apartment, still solo, he let out a huff of relief. It wasn’t that he cared about her morals, he told himself, simply that he didn’t share women. If she was humping the toothpaste ad, he’d have to leave her alone. And that would be a tragedy.

  Having seen Alex safely inside her apartment and the lights on, he sped on over to his place until he hit the Riverside turnoff. Then he drove slowly down the dark, rutted lane to his cottage, not wanting to startle whatever posse the stalwart sergeant had assembled. But he eased all the way up to his parking spot behind his temporary home and still saw no cops.

  He was a little disappointed in Sergeant Tom. He’d expected, from the look of the man, that he’d follow up every lead like an eager bloodhound. Duncan could have brought the tapes with him after all.

  His car door made a loud thunk in the quiet, almost-deserted cottage complex. The owners seemed to be the frugal sort who didn’t see the point in wasting energy burning lights off-season when there were no guests to speak of, so the dark was thick and damp with the smell of freshly rained-on cedar trees. His boots shuffled gravel as he approached his doorway while the river whispered its midnight secrets in the background.

  His key scraped over the lock in the dark and he was just reaching for his penlight when a voice said, “Where’ve you been?”

  “Jesus!” He jumped and only barely hung on to the keys. “You scared the shit out of me.” He turned to glare toward the direction of the voice, which was a few feet from the door and downwind.

  The bright light of a heavy flashlight, the kind that doubles as a billy club, snapped on, half blinding him in the night.

  Duncan managed to get the door open and turn on a couple of his own lights. “You might as well come in,” he said and stomped inside.

  Perkins followed, still holding the flashlight, his gun in easy reach. A second uniform appeared at the doorway.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “We came by earlier with a couple more questions but you were out. We’ve been waiting over an hour.”

  “If I’d known we had a date, I’d have rushed home.”

  “Where were you this evening Mr. Forbes?”

  “I grabbed a bite to eat at the roadhouse just outside town and then I went for a drive. Clears my head.”

  The sergeant gave him an impassive cop’s stare designed to intimidate. They’d check, and find out he’d been at the road-house. He was a stranger in a small town. He was bound to be remembered. “Alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look at the clothes you were wearing this morning?”

  “Why?”

  “The forensics guys want to get a fiber match. Then, if they find a thread, say, on the dead man’s clothing, they can confirm whether or not it came from your clothing. It’s routine.”

  Duncan leaned against the pale green lino counter of his tiny kitchen and then shrugged. Perkins wasn’t much of a liar, but he’d seen worse. He’d already placed himself at the scene, and admitted he touched the body. Was this the best Perkins could do? “Sure. They’re in the bedroom, on the chair.”

  Perkins jerked his head and the young no-name officer trotted off to pick up his dirty clothes.

  “You’ll get these back,” Perkins said when the young fellow jogged out with the clothes already in an evidence bag.

  “Don’t bother returning the shirt. I got red paint all over the sleeve. It’s ruined.”

  Their gazes connected for a split second. Perkins said, “Take those on out to the car—I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Duncan raised his brows a fraction as the sergeant moved into the tiny living area adjacent to the kitchen.

  “You paint?”

  “I dabble.” Following Perkins, he knelt to where he’d stored his painting stuff behind a chair and dragged out his box of brushes and paints and the small oil he’d started the other night. He’d never be a top artist, but the hobby relaxed him and allowed his mind to wander, bringing him some surprising insights.

  He was about to explain to Perkins which colors he’d used on the rather uninspired still life, but he saw the sergeant’s attention had wandered. He was looking at the climbing gear laid over the couch, including the new carabiner and chalk he’d bought yesterday. His harness and ropes were laid out alongside them. “You climb?”

  “Yep. It’s one of the reasons I chose to come here to write my book.”

  Perkins nodded to the bag with the logo of the Swiftcurrent

  Outdoors Store on it and sent him one of his trademark impassive glances. “I’ll take you up when I get a day off. Show you the best spots to climb around here.”

  It sounded more like a command than an invitation. “That’s great. But I can hire a guide. Don’t want to take you away from the investigation.”

  “You’ve been very cooperative. It’s the least I can do for a new climber in town. I’ll give you a call when I get a day off. If you’re any good, I’ll introduce you to some of the other climbers in the area. We have an informal network. You can usually send out an email and confirm somebody to climb with, sometimes within minutes.”

  Smooth, Duncan thought as he saw the sergeant off the premises. Very smooth. Wasn’t that something to look forward to? Rock climbing with the man who wanted to jail him for murder.

  “Hey,” he said when Perkins took the first step out into the dark night. “Off the record? We’re on the same side.”

  There was a pause and he heard stones rub together as the heavy boots turned on the gravel. “Off the record? You mess with Alexandra Forrest and I’ll break your balls.”

  8

  The next morning, Duncan was leaning against his car which was parked right outside Alex’s apartment building when she walked out the door. It was a sunny, crisp day and he was pleased to see he’d guessed right by waiting at the front entrance to her apartment building. She was walking to work.

  He allowed himself a moment simply to enjoy the sight of her in low-slung black pants that hugged all the places he wanted to, high-heeled boots, and a black jacket with a bright red scarf at the neck. Then she spotted him and he instantly donned a mask of righteous indignation, crossed his arms, and straightened.

  She hesitated before letting her apartment door swing shut behind her, as though debating whether to turn tail and bolt.

  A slight flush mounted her cheeks. He wasn’t certain whe
ther it was because she was recalling the way they’d steamed up the windows of her car last time they’d been together, or because she was worried she’d been swapping spit with a murderer.

  “It was paint,” he told her, striding forward. Better get her last objection overruled first.

  “I beg your pardon?” She gave him that snotty, frigid tone she’d first used on him.

  “Thanks for running to the cops, telling them I’m a murderer, but it was paint you saw on my shirt. Not blood.”

  She didn’t bother to deny the charge, but he saw some of the stiffness leave her shoulders. “Paint. What were you painting?”

  “I’m an art historian. What do you think I was painting? The side of a barn? Pictures. I paint pictures.”

  The quick flash of relief he saw in her eyes made him glad he’d followed his instincts and confronted her with the truth. She turned him on with her cold, bitchy routine, but she turned him on a hell of a lot more when she was warm and willing.

  “Bloodstains,” he explained, “would be brown, not red. Air oxidizes the blood so it turns from red to brown. Dudley Do-Right won’t be able to arrest me quite yet.”

  “I did what I thought was right,” she said, still as high and

  mighty.

  “Did it occur to you to mention the matter to me rather than the cops?”

  She laughed suddenly. “Like a movie-of-the-week character. A stranger comes to town the day of a murder. A girl, seeing a suspicious red stain on the stranger’s arm, asks him where he got it. Poor dame never makes it past the first commercial.”

  She was right, of course, and mostly his big performance was to let her know he’d been checked out by Swiftcurrent’s finest, and so far exonerated.

  He let himself enjoy the sparkle in her eyes, the color being

  whipped into her face by the crisp autumn breeze, and the red, red lips that kissed as though she’d been practicing for centuries.

  Her color grew deeper. “I’m going to kill Tom. How could he—”

  “He didn’t. But who else would have noticed except you? I never went anywhere that day but with you. If any of the cops had seen red on my sleeve, they’d have have confronted me at the time.”

  “Oh.”

  “So,” he said, shifting closer, “do you want to come and see them sometime?”

  “What?”

  “My paintings.”

  She laughed for the second time. This time she was a lot warmer about it. “Does that line ever work?”

  “You’d be surprised. Think about it.” He leaned forward and tucked the red woolen scarf fluttering at her throat more firmly under the lapel, taking his time about it and running his index finger down the line of her throat so she shivered.

  “Can I walk you to work?” he asked.

  “No. How did you find out where I live?”

  “You’re in the phone book. Want a ride?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, see you at the library.”

  She glanced at her watch. “It won’t be open for half an hour.”

  He knew that, like he knew he’d be there when the doors opened. He didn’t want Alex alone in the library where she’d stumbled over a corpse forty-eight hours ago. It was bound to be tough on her emotionally, but worse, he had an uneasy feeling that she could be in danger.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll stop at Elda’s for coffee and

  get started on the Hilary Mantel novel. It’s a thick one and I need to have it read by tomorrow night.”

  She’d taken a step away from him; now she swung around so sharply her red scarf floated free again. “Are you thinking about coming to the Thursday night book club at the library?”

  “That’s right. I met a couple of the women yesterday. Mrs. Markle and I forget the other one’s name. Her sister, I think.”

  “Bernice Johnson,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “That’s right. They made the book club sound so good I decided to join. It’s always good to stay on top of current literary trends.”

  “Mrs. Markle thought Life of Pi was a recipe book,” she informed him.

  He laughed. “Imagine.”

  “And when we chose The Lovely Bones, I’m almost certain I heard her and Bernice discussing soup stock.”

  He was still chuckling when he got in his beige rental car and headed for Elda’s.

  The first day the library opened after the dead body was discovered was an unusually busy one.

  Alex would love to think it was the thrill of reading and joy of knowledge acquired through books that had drawn the crowd, but she knew it was ghoulish curiosity.

  Well, she figured, every disaster contained the seeds of opportunity, and she marched forward with a bright smile on her face.

  “Mrs. Bates,” she said to an older woman standing gossiping in the architecture section. “It’s so nice to see you back. I’ve got a new Irish novel I think you’d enjoy reading.”

  “Well . . I –”

  “And we’d better check and see that your library card hasn’t expired. Now that we’ve gone to computer, the old cards don’t all work.” Swiftcurrent’s library circulation system had been computerized in the mid-80s, but she made it sound like last month.

  Once she’d released Mrs. Bates, now clutching a shiny new library card and two novels Alex judged would appeal to her, she searched out a new victim.

  “Well, Al Garfield, I didn’t know you were a bibliophile,” she said to the fresh-faced garage mechanic who’d removed his baseball cap, presumably out of respect for the recently deceased.

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m a Christian.”

  A snort of ill-suppressed amusement had her glaring over her shoulder only to find Duncan Forbes ostensibly searching for a book but obviously eavesdropping, his eyes twinkling as he glanced her way. And what on earth was he doing back here, hanging around with the other ghouls near the site where they’d found the body, she wondered, even as she struggled not to twinkle back.

  She returned her attention to Al Garfield. “Let’s get you set up with a library card. I don’t believe you have one.” In fact, if he’d ever set foot in her library before this morning, he’d done it while she was on her lunch hour.

  “I don’t know, Ms. Forrest.”

  “It won’t cost you a thing and you’d be amazed at the resources here. There are magazines, DVDs you can borrow, and, of course, books.”

  “Oh, well. DVDs?”

  “Of course,” she replied, thinking she’d grab patrons any way she could. DVDs were a start, and if she had her way the young man filling out his library card application would be reading entire novels by summer—Hemingway and Faulkner by this time next year.

  They didn’t realize it but the nosy, the curious, and the gossip mongers helped her get through a day she’d dreaded. While the stacks were crowded, while she was culling through them like a border collie rounding up stray sheep, looking for new patrons and pressing books and magazines on those who visited rarely, she was able to take her mind off the last day she’d been here.

  Even if the barely suppressed carnival atmosphere and the constant whispering irritated her librarian’s sensibilities, she made the best of her opportunities with guys like Al who’d normally eat live cockroaches before they’d visit a public library.

  She was reminded forcibly of the tragedy, however, when she spotted Tom wandering around the stacks in his uniform. For a blank second she wondered if he’d come in search of a book, when she realized he was on duty. He wasn’t looking at the books, but at the people.

  A shiver ran down her spine as she realized he was doing the equivalent of showing up at the murder victim’s funeral and scanning the mourners—hoping the killer had shown up.

  He didn’t speak to her, beyond a quick “Hi” in passing, but she saw him glance at Duncan, who was reading his book club novel in one of the easy chairs near the library’s main entrance. He took a step in that direction, then seemed to change his mi
nd.

  She invited him into her office and immediately asked, “Have you got any leads on who killed that man?”

  He shook his head. “I sent the victim’s photo out. We ran the fingerprints through the AFIS database and immediately found a match, and a criminal record. His name was Jerzy Plotnik. Name mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “He was a minor criminal. A bit of drug dealing, some theft, hung on the fringes of organized crime. He roughed a few people up. He was from L.A. That’s all we have.”

  “No suspects?”

  She saw him glance toward where Duncan still sat, but shook his head. “No.” He dropped his voice so low she could barely hear him. “That was paint on his shirt, not blood.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. I’m sure the killing was a random bad guys killing bad guys thing and the killers are long gone.”

  “I hope so.” But he glanced through her window to the busy library. “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary today?”

  “It’s busier than usual, but that’s all.”

  Tom nodded. “Keep your eyes open and call me if you see or hear anything unusual.”

  “Of course.” And she’d never been so glad the police were so close. She worked through the busy morning, spending most of her time out front helping Myrna at the crowded circulation desk.

  Duncan Forbes glanced at his watch and left around a quarter to one. A little while later, Eric strode into the library and right up to her. “How are you doing the first day back?”

  “Crazy busy.” She smiled and came around front and a couple of steps away from the desk to talk to him for a minute. Her neck felt tight, her feet hurt, and she was hungry. Normally, she took her lunch around noon but it was too busy to leave. “How’s the store doing?”

  “I’m busy filling internet orders today, then tomorrow I’ve got to go out of town for a couple of days and look at an estate.”

  She nodded. Estates were a big source of the store’s inventory.

  “How about lunch today? To take your mind off things?” he asked.

  “I can’t, sorry. I’m swamped, Myrna’s swamped. I even called Jeanine to come in early. But she’s a volunteer. It depends on whether her husband gets home in time to watch the kids.”