Joanna Brady 01 - Desert Heat (v5.0)

by J. A. Jance

  Angie Kellogg had entered the restroom as a distinctively dressed fashion plate. She left twenty minutes later disguised as a dingy young woman who might have been a harried housewife or an impoverished graduate student. With the addition of a large pair of sunglasses, it was possible not even the cab driver who had picked her up would have recognized her, but Angie wasn’t taking any chances.

  She walked back out into the terminal and made her way to the arriving passenger entrance where a driver was loading a stack of luggage into a hotel van. The van said “Spanish Trail.” Angie had no idea where or what the Spanish Trail was, but it was good enough to have a van, and that would take her away from the terminal.

  “Room enough for one more?” she asked the driver. He was probably within months of being the same age as Angie herself, but he seemed much younger.

  “You bet,” he said, smiling and reaching for her bag. “For you we’ve got plenty of room.”

  Angie wasn’t willing to let the beach bag out of her hand. “I’ll carry this,” she said. “It’s not that heavy.”

  She climbed into the van and went all the way to the back where a businessman sat with his briefcase resting on his knees. In the middle seat sat an older couple. The man smiled appreciatively at Angie as she went by, and she returned the smile. When she sat down behind him, though, she saw him jump as his wife elbowed him viciously in the ribs and scolded him in an exaggerated whisper.

  You’re not working now, Angie reminded herself. Lay off. She was out of the life, and she wanted to stay that way.

  As the van made its way through the city, Angie ignored her fellow passengers. Instead, she watched the scenery moving by outside the window, noticing how the desert seemed alive with vivid colors. The shadows on the pavement had hard, clear edges to them, and the silver-blue sky seemed to stretch away into forever. For the first time in her young life Angie Kellogg was free to go and do whatever she wanted.

  The Spanish Trail Inn didn’t offer luxury accommodations, but it was far better than some of the flea traps Angie had frequented in her time. At the front desk there was a bit of a hassle over her renting a room because she carried no ID, but eventually Angie was able to jump that hurdle, registering under her old name—Annie Beason. Desk clerks had never been impervious to her charms, and it pleased her to know they still weren’t. After picking up a newspaper from the stand near the front door, Angie was happy to let the van driver, who doubled as the bellman, carry her suitcase upstairs to her room.

  “Will you be staying long?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Angie returned seriously. “If I like it well enough, I may just stay forever.”

  Alone in the room, Angie closed the curtains, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the bed. Annie Beason. It was strange coming back to that old, nearly forgotten name. Just thinking about it caused a stirring of memory and speculation. What would have happened to Annie Season, if she had stayed in Battle Creek and in school, Angie wondered. By now, she might even have been graduating from college, if she had gone to college, that is. But then again, with her parents, that probably wouldn’t have been possible. According to her father, boys were the ones who needed college. For a man, that was the only sure way out of the blue-collar jungle, but why would a girl need an education?

  Why indeed? There were times, over the years, when Angie Kellogg had imagined what she would do with her life if she ever managed to slip her leash and escape the watchful eyes of her various pimps. Now, though, the issue of starting over in a new life was no longer a matter of idle imagining. Sitting up, Angie switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the newspaper. With the air conditioner turned up full blast, she thumbed through the paper to the help wanted ads.

  Within minutes it was clear that there were hardly any openings for someone with her lack of skills and background. The office jobs all required at least “60 wpm,” and she couldn’t type any wpm. There were jobs for experienced fashion merchandisers. She was experienced in merchandising, all right, but not in the fashion arena. One sounded promising. It called for a motivated self-starter interested in earning up to 40k per year. She was interested in earning that much money, but when she dialed the number listed in the ad, it turned out to be an automobile dealership. She hung up without saying hello. Angie Kellogg didn’t know how to drive.

  Chastened by the dawning realization of her limited employment options, Angie retrieved her beach bag from the closet, unloaded the money, and counted it carefully. Considering what she had spent getting here, including the cab fare, plane ticket, and hotel room, she must have started with exactly $50,000. That much money sounded like a nice round figure, and it seemed to be a fairly large sum, but Angie knew it wouldn’t last forever.

  She put the money back in the bag and dug out the notebook. It was soft, made of high-grade, leather cowhide, with Tony’s initials—A V—embossed in gold in the lower right-hand corner. For a moment, she held it close to her face, breathing in the clean leather smell. She would have to make sure that particular item went to the highest possible bidder, whoever that person might be.

  Angie put the notebook safely back in the bag along with the money. It was time to decide what to do. As soon as he realized she was gone, Tony would be out searching for her, and if the cops ever learned of her existence, they would be, too. And both Tony and the cops would be eager to lay hands on the money. The trick now was to find a way to immobilize Tony without getting caught herself. As she sat there thinking about it, Angie realized that there was probably only one person in the world who wanted Tony Vargas caught worse than she did, and that was Joanna Brady.

  She picked up the phone and dialed information. While she waited for someone to answer, she almost hung up. It didn’t seem likely to her that a cop would have his name and telephone number listed with information, but within seconds the mechanically reproduced voice was telling her “The number is…”

  Quickly she jotted it down then dialed it before she lost her courage. A woman answered. “Joanna?” Angie asked tentatively.

  “No. This is her mother. Joanna isn’t here right now. May I take a message?”

  Angie put down the receiver without saying another word. Slightly discouraged, she slipped her shoes back on. Never trusting of hotel housekeeping folks, Angie took the beach bag with her when she went downstairs to have dinner. There in the restaurant, she treated herself royally at her first solitary dinner—prime rib, baked potato, and a wonderful salad. It was early, though, and the friendly waitress had plenty of time for idle chitchat.

  “Here for a visit?” she asked.

  Angie nodded. “My baby sister’s getting married day after tomorrow,” she said.

  “Really. Whereabouts?”

  “Some church up in the foothills,” Angie answered evasively.

  It was growing dark outside by the time Angie was delicately making her way through a fluted glass filled with scrumptious chocolate mousse. Only by accident did she happen to be looking out through the lobby door as Tony Vargas walked past on his way from the front desk heading for her room.

  Angie was thunderstruck and terrified. Obviously, he hadn’t fallen for the airplane ruse. Already he was here, hot on her trail. How had he done it?

  The look on her face must have shown. The waitress hurried to her side. “Are you all right?”

  With trembling hands, Angie groped in her purse for some money. She threw a twenty-dollar bill into the waitress’s hand. “Keep the change,” she stammered. “It’s my boyfriend. He’s come here looking for me. Please don’t tell him which way I went. Is there a back way out of here?”

  The waitress nodded. “Through the kitchen,” she said. “This way.”

  Fourteen

  WHILE ANGIE stumbled past the cooks in the kitchen, Tony Vargas stood outside the door to her hotel room. He had come home to an empty house less than an hour after Angie left there. After storming through the place looking for her, he turned to the hall closet and discovered th
at the money was missing. And the notebook as well.

  That incredible bitch! After everything he had done for her, how could she do such a thing? How could she treat him this way? And whatever made her think she could possibly get away with it?

  Since there was no soft flesh to pummel with his fists, no target present on which to vent his rage, Tony Vargas controlled it. Stifling his anger, he sat down at his desk and calmly made a few phone calls. For someone with his kind of connections, it was surprisingly easy for him to learn that a cab had come to this particular street if not to this exact address much earlier that afternoon. The driver had picked up a fare and had taken her to the airport. Tony went to the airport as well. With little difficulty he learned that a woman matching Angie’s description had purchased a one-way ticket to Denver.

  Denver? Tony Vargas hadn’t made it to the top of his profession by being stupid. As far as he knew, Angie Kellogg had no connections in Denver, none at all, so why would she go there? Further inquiry revealed that she had bolted off the plane moments before its scheduled departure, the tricky little bitch. Vargas congratulated himself on not falling for that old maneuver and busied himself with the hard, shoe-leather work of figuring out where she had gone instead.

  It took several hours, but his careful search paid off when he talked to a cab driver who had seen someone who looked like Angie—girls that good-looking were few and far between—get into the Spanish Trail’s hotel van.

  He tapped lightly on the door to her room, hoping she wouldn’t be smart enough to look through the peephole before opening it up, but there was no answer, no sound from inside. He knocked again, impatiently this time. He wanted to get to her and teach her a lesson she’d never forget, not necessarily here where other people might listen to the noises and object, but back home where there would be no interruptions.

  When there was still no answer to his third knock, he shouldered his way inside. The room was empty. The light was on. The bed had been rumpled but not slept in. A newspaper lay in a heap beside the bed, but Angie wasn’t there, and neither was his money.

  Frustrated, he stood in the middle of the room and turned in a complete circle. The desk lamp was switched on. He went over and looked down at the stack of message paper. Sure enough, the faint impression of the number written on the missing top sheet was still visible to the naked eye. Gleefully, he pocketed the paper and rushed from the room. Moving at a fast jog, he headed back downstairs.

  Through luck, determination, and perseverance, he had come this close to catching her. He wasn’t about to give up now. And even if she escaped for the time being, he had that piece of paper in his pocket. He was almost sure that would at least give him a clue about where she was really going.

  As Angie Kellogg darted through the steamy kitchen, she knew her life hung in the balance. She emerged in the poorly lit back parking lot next to a fetid dumpster. At best, she had only a few minutes’ lead. She was lucky someone hadn’t sent him directly into the dining room after her. Once he located her room, it wouldn’t take him long to guess that she hadn’t left the hotel and was down eating dinner. After that it would be only a matter of minutes before he traced her to and through the restaurant. The waitress might not tell him, but someone else would.

  Angie searched the parking lot for some avenue of escape. Seeing none, she pounded her way around to the front of the building. The Spanish Trail sat on one side of the T at the end of South Fourth Avenue. It faced a short frontage road bordering the freeway. I-10’s northbound lanes lay beyond a chain-link fence and down a steep embankment. Two blocks to the north was South Sixth and an overpass that would take her over the freeway. Angie ran that way.

  She started across Fourth. Checking traffic as she ran, she noticed a noisily idling eighteen-wheeler parked along the street half a block or so back. In the dim glow of a street light she caught sight of a man out checking one of his tires. With one last panic-stricken glance back over her shoulder toward the hotel and without breaking her stride, Angie turned in that direction. She reached the truck just as he started to swing himself up into the open door of the cab.

  “Please, mister,” she shouted over the truck engine’s uncompromising roar. “Give me a lift. My boyfriend’s back there. If he catches me, he’ll kill me.”

  Maybe the trucker believed her, maybe he didn’t. After so many years on the road, one line sounds about as good as another, but for a change, the woman doing the asking was a real looker, and Dayton Smith didn’t mind the company. “Sure, lady. Climb in. Which way are you going?”

  Without answering, Angie Kellogg scrambled into the cab in front of him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said gasping for breath. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Moving slowly and with maddening deliberation, the driver climbed up into the cab beside her, switched on the lights, released the emergency brake, and eased the truck into gear. Angie watched out the window until the truck’s blue, United Van Lines trailer completely obscured her view of the hotel.

  “Do you see anybody back there?” she asked, as the truck rounded the corner.

  “Not so far,” the driver returned.

  In a moment, Angie, too, could see back to the hotel’s well-lit entrance. No one appeared there before the truck slid out of view completely at the next intersection. “I think we made it,” she breathed in relief, settling back into the truck.

  The driver looked at Angie appreciatively in the glow of the streetlights as they waited for the light to change and allow them onto the South Sixth overpass. “You were kidding, right?”

  “About what?”

  “About him killing you. I mean, people say that all the time, but it’s usually a joke.”

  “This is no joke,” Angie answered. “I mean it. He really would kill me.”

  “Well,” the driver said with a shake of his head. “Seems to me, that would be a real shame. My name’s Dayton Smith, by the way, and as of right now, we’re headed toward El Paso.”

  As he spoke, the light changed and the truck slid into motion. A few moments later, they were heading down a southbound on ramp.

  Angie tried to look, but she couldn’t see in the mirror herself. “Is there anybody back there?” she asked nervously.

  The driver shook his head. “Nope. Not a soul. Is that all right with you?”

  “Is what all right with me?”

  “El Paso. You still didn’t say where you’re going.”

  “El Paso’s fine. As long as Tony’s not around, one place is as good as another.”

  “That’s his name, Tony?”

  Angie nodded.

  “What’d you do that got him so pissed off?”

  “I ran away,” she answered. “I knew that when he came home, he was going to beat me up, so I ran away.”

  “Did he do that often? Beat you up, I mean.”

  “Pretty often.”

  The truck driver squirmed in his seat as though the very idea made him uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Startled by the tone of his voice, Angie Kellogg looked at the pudgy, balding man with some surprise. It sounded for all the world as though he meant it. He looked as though he meant it as well.

  “Me too,” she agreed. “I’m real sorry.”

  They had driven only a few miles when Dayton Smith turned on his directional signal and started down an exit. There were lights on one side of the freeway, but none on the other. Except for the area right at the exit, they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Angie’s apprehensions rose. She was a city girl, a born street fighter, but alone in the desert, she would be no match for this heavyset man if he ever set out to harm her. Once the truck stopped, if he came after her, she’d have to run like hell.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” the driver said apologetically. “This is a truck stop. It’s called the Triple T, and it’s the last decent place for a long ways. I usually stop here for a slice of deep-dish apple pie and to get my thermos filled. Care for a cup of coffee?�
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  Weak with relief, Angie Kellogg burst out laughing. “I’d love a cup of coffee.”

  When she climbed down from the cab, the desert air was chilly on her bare arms. She shivered and Dayton Smith noticed. “Don’t you have a jacket or sweater?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I left all my clothes back at the hotel.”

  Smith climbed back into the cab, rummaged behind the seat, and emerged holding a blue nylon jacket with the United Van Lines logo and Dayton Smith’s name emblazoned on the front.

  “Here,” he said, “put this on. It may be five sizes too big, but it’ll be warm.”

  Inside the truck stop, they were ushered into the front section reserved for professional drivers. Several of the other truckers seemed to recognize Dayton Smith. Seeing Angie with him, they greeted him with knowing winks and conspiratorial nods, all of which made Dayton blush to the roots of his receding hair-line.

  “Where are you going, really?” he asked.

  Angie had been thinking about the map she had looked at in her room hours earlier. The vague outlines of a plan were beginning to take shape in her head.

  “How far is Bisbee from here?”

  Smith shrugged his shoulders. “A hundred miles, give or take. What’s in Bisbee?”

  The waitress brought coffee. Dayton and Angie sat for a few moments, studying each other across the counter top. For her part, Angie was evaluating Dayton Smith according to the only scale she knew—the scale of how to get men to do what she wanted. There was money in her bag, but she never even considered offering to pay him with that. Angie was accustomed to dealing with the world with only one form of currency—her body. Old habits are hard to break.

  She figured Dayton Smith would be easy pickings. Men like him were usually duck soup in the hands of a real professional. They usually wanted whores to do the things their uptight wives at home wouldn’t agree to on a bet, and Angie Kellogg didn’t mind kinky up to a point. She knew instinctively, that there was no way Dayton Smith would be as physically mean to her as Tony Vargas had been, but there was always a certain risk with straitlaced, upright men. They could be unpredictable at times. More than one prostitute had had her brains bashed in by fine, upstanding men caught in the throes of unreasoning remorse after happily screwing their brains out.