Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call

by Rob Cornell

  “Two things. First off, Palmer happens to be Tom’s cousin. Palmer seems more level headed than Tom, but he’s bound to be a little biased. I can’t start throwing murder accusations at his dead cousin when I don’t have a lick of proof. Actually, that’s three things. Lack of proof is number two. Number three is Autumn’s glaring absence of an alibi.”

  Lincoln’s brow creased. He looked from me to Autumn. “I don’t understand. Don’t you have yoga on Saturday nights?”

  Autumn’s shoulders sagged. She covered her face with her hands. The electricity in the room changed, and I realized what storm was coming. All this time, Lincoln had never learned why I was back in Autumn’s life. He didn’t know that Doug had been cheating on Autumn, and he was about to find out.

  “I didn’t go that night,” Autumn said. “Doug and I had an argument.”

  Lincoln’s eyes narrowed and he turned to me as if he thought this was all my fault. I met his gaze, knowing he was about to have his attitude adjusted.

  “I hired Ridley because I thought Doug might be… Ridley took pictures. There’s a woman …”

  Despite her scattered telling, I could tell Lincoln got the gist.

  “The police know this?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  I almost heard the click in his head as he put it together. He turned his attention to Autumn.

  “You weren’t at yoga?”

  “No, Daddy. I was alone… driving. I was upset because we were arguing. I accused him of cheating. I saw the pictures, but I didn’t tell him that. I wanted him to admit it on his own. He wouldn’t. He lied right to my face.”

  Lincoln put a hand to his forehead. His jaw hung slack.

  “I thought… no wonder they suspect you.”

  “When Tom questioned you,” I asked Lincoln, “did you tell them Autumn had a yoga class that night?”

  Lincoln lowered his hand and stared at his palm as if he expected to find something in it. “He seemed upset when I told him. Disappointed even.”

  “He probably checked up on it right after, found out she never showed.”

  Autumn hugged herself. “I can’t believe Tom would… I can’t believe it.”

  “And no one else will either, especially Palmer.”

  Lincoln closed his hand into a fist, his eyes fixated on the hand as the knuckles turned white. His intensity worried me. He looked like he might break down at any minute. But as soon as I thought this, his hand popped open, he dropped it to the couch beside his thigh, and his gaze lifted to me.

  “I know you’re upset with Autumn for lying to you. But she isn’t responsible for this murder. She needs your help.”

  I looked away from his pleading eyes. I had brought him to the cabin so he could take Autumn away, end my involvement, and I could reclaim my life. He had money. He could hire his own private eye, a licensed one, to dig up evidence and put the blame for Doug’s murder on the right person. He didn’t need me. Autumn didn’t need me. And I sure as hell didn’t need either of them. Except …

  Autumn stared at me, waiting for my answer to her father’s question. The rims of her eyes looked red and raw from tears. I saw the fear in those eyes. I also saw a world of memories I still couldn’t shake. I tried to step back, stay objective. How could she have known that keeping secret a few details about her relationships with Tom and Dixie would lead where it had? If I had been in her position, wouldn’t I have wanted to keep those details to myself too? In the end, wasn’t it the effect of her lies that bothered me more than the lies themselves? Was I using her lying as an excuse to shut her out?

  Why would I do that?

  Because what I wanted more than anything was to be with her, and that was unacceptable. I had already stepped into a moral bog by sleeping with her. And the more time I spent with her, the more I wanted her.

  “Please,” Lincoln said. “Help us.”

  But leaving her out in the cold because of my feelings for her was just as selfish as taking her case in the first place for the same reasons. My feelings didn’t matter.

  “Relax,” I said. “I’m still in.”

  Chapter 18

  “What will you do next?” Lincoln asked, leaning back on the sofa, a little more at ease now that I’d agreed to stay on the case.

  “That’s easy,” I said, then had to stop as a yawn forced my mouth open. The muscles in my lower back tensed, awaking the pain nestled there. My vision blurred for a second. It was still early evening, but I needed a bed pronto. “In the morning, I’m going to visit Dixie.”

  “Don’t we have more pressing matters than your settling a score?”

  “Maybe. But she’s a loose end. When she finds out her hit didn’t take, she might try again. I’m not much help to Autumn if I’m dead.”

  Autumn picked at her thumbnail, making a clicking sound each time she plucked at it with the nail of her opposite thumb.

  Lincoln asked, “Is Dixie still in Hawthorne then?”

  “Trailer park on the south side. Though the place is nicer than it sounds. She’s got flower beds, and even a couple of those little gnome statues.”

  “She always took good care of her surroundings,” Autumn said, as if talking about an old friend rather than someone who had my bar blown up, and Tom killed in the process.

  “Then it’s settled.” Lincoln interrupted Autumn’s thumbnail whittling by taking her hand. He stood, and Autumn followed suit. “I’ll take Autumn home with me, and you can contact us when you learn more. I’ll tell Charles to let you through the gate without question next time.”

  “Hang on a second.” I rose from the recliner. “Taking her to your place is a bad idea. I didn’t see any, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a police look-out waiting for Autumn to show.”

  “I’m not going to let her stay here in this hole.”

  I felt a little sting to my pride. The cabin wasn’t as bad as he made it out, just a little neglected.

  “It’s worked out fine so far.”

  “If the police still suspect you’re harboring Autumn, they will eventually learn of this place and have it checked.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “I own the Rabson Hotel in downtown Hawthorne. I could easily secure us a suite without suspicion.”

  He owned the Rabson?

  “You’ll need a cover story.”

  “I’ll simply tell them it’s for a business associate. I do it all the time.”

  I didn’t like the idea of moving Autumn into the middle of Hawthorne, but he had a point. The longer Autumn stayed at the cabin, the better the chances Palmer had of finding her. Relocating could buy us some time.

  “Okay, but she sticks here till morning. I’m burnt right now and I want to orchestrate the move myself.”

  “You don’t trust I can manage?”

  “I want to make sure we don’t get caught.”

  Autumn looped an arm around her father’s. “We should stay. Ridley knows what he’s doing.”

  I appreciated her confidence. I only wished I shared it.

  “If the place doesn’t disgust you too much, you’re welcome to stay too,” I said. “There’s another bedroom upstairs.”

  “You take the room upstairs. I’ll take the one down here, next to Autumn’s.”

  I didn’t protest. I could have passed out on the back deck as easily as anywhere. I didn’t even bother putting sheets on the bare mattress. I kicked off my shoes, lay down, and instantly dropped into dreamland.

  Around four in the morning I woke up for no reason, my body as stiff as a corpse. I lay with my eyes closed another fifteen minutes, then got up. My stomach growled at me for neglecting it.

  I woke Lincoln and Autumn by pounding on their bedroom doors, then stepped out onto the back deck and watched the sun rise over the lake while I waited for the two of them to come out. Once everyone was awake, I went over how I wanted this to run, and we headed out.

  Autumn went with Lincoln in his car. I followed in my Civic, giving th
em a good lead, not worried about losing them since we had determined the route we would take to the Rabson before we left. Our path took us into Hawthorne south of the hotel, then we backtracked north, making a few random zags and zigs on the way. I felt a tad paranoid designing such an elaborate journey, but it returned to me a sense of control over events—something I’d lost when the High Note went up.

  Once we arrived at the hotel, I trusted Lincoln to take care of getting Autumn into a room, and I headed down to Sam’s.

  Before approaching the trailer, I pulled my Smith and Wesson out of the glove box and returned it to my belt loop. My stiff muscles protested when I reached behind me, but I didn’t hurt as badly as I thought I would. Actually, I didn’t feel much of anything.

  No one answered my knock at the trailer door.

  “Come on, Sam. I know you work the afternoon shift.”

  Someone’s yippy little dog burst into a barking frenzy in a neighboring yard. The sky was overcast, and I could smell the threat of rain. I went to step into the flower bed to the door’s right so I could peek through the window, but stopped. Several flowers were mashed into the soil, a few stray petals plastered to the ground. Next to the flower bed one of the garden gnomes lay on his back, the side of his grinning face peppered with dirt.

  The back of my neck tingled.

  I scanned the street, saw a few empty cars, some litter caught against a drainage vent. Nothing suspicious. Could be Sam or his girlfriend left the trailer in a hurry, cut through the flower bed and knocked over the gnome. Could have been a careless solicitor. But it could have been someone else peering through the window like I had intended.

  I decided to trust my instincts and pulled my gun. I kept the revolver down at my side and tried the door. The knob turned; the door swung open.

  “Sam?” I shouted into the trailer.

  Silence.

  I crept over the threshold, raising my gun, eyes tracking every shadow inside. The trailer didn’t offer much living space. The door entered directly into the living room. To the right was a small kitchen with bay windows facing the street. An entrance to a hallway on the left gave access to the back of the trailer that probably housed a bathroom and one small bedroom.

  The living room appeared well kept, though the carpet by the couch had a number of burns as if from dropped cigarettes. An overflowing ashtray on the coffee table confirmed that suspicion. The only light came from the bay windows in the kitchen, and what little seeped through the closed Venetian blinds in the living room. The closed blinds seemed weird. The way the trailer was aligned, the sun, rising or setting, would never shine directly through the windows. If you weren’t trying to keep light out by closing the blinds, it usually meant you didn’t want anyone else to see in.

  But maybe Sam and his girlfriend liked the dark.

  I slunk toward the hall leading into the back, my gun barrel pointing the way. When I reached the hall I found the bathroom on my left, the door wide open so I could see it was empty. At the end of the short hall another doorway lead to what I assumed was the bedroom. The door stood open five inches or so and I could see the foot of a twin bed through the gap. I also saw a pair of bare feet from the ankle down. They were slender feet, and looked like they belonged to a woman. I wondered if they belonged to Sam.

  “Sam?” I called.

  The feet did not move.

  I listened for any sound—breathing, the shifting of clothes or bed sheets—but only heard the neighbor’s yapping dog.

  The floor creaked under my feet when I closed in on the bedroom door. I toed the door open, letting my gun drop slightly, thinking I wouldn’t need it. I stepped into the doorway. I didn’t even have a chance to turn my head when I felt the metallic double “O” of a shotgun barrel press against my cheek.

  I froze.

  The feet belonged to Sam’s girlfriend, who lay on her back in her underwear, her throat split open and gaping, blood pooling around her shoulders on the mattress. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, her arms relaxed at her sides, all making it look like she had been killed in her sleep.

  “You brought this.” Sam pushed the shotgun barrel harder into my face until it pressed against my jawbone. “You came here, and this followed you.”

  “Hold on a sec,” I said. “Let me drop my gun and we’ll—”

  “I don’t give a God damn about your gun,” he shouted. His voice buzzed against the bedroom’s close walls. “Your head will be chunks before you can even turn it on me.”

  “Calm down.”

  His hand snapped out, yanked my gun away. A second later the shotgun barrel left my cheek, and Sam clocked me in the head with the butt.

  I staggered, the room spinning. The wall to my right was only a few steps away, and I slammed into it, used it for support to stay on my feet. I blinked my vision back in time to see Sam come at me again, this time planting the butt of the gun into my gut. I doubled over and dropped to my knees, breathless.

  While I tried to cough some air into my lungs, I felt the barrel touch the crown of my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, my mind too rattled to flash my life before my eyes.

  “I knew the second you mentioned that bitch’s name, trouble was on the way.”

  “And killing me is the answer?”

  “Why not? I come home, find my girl …” Sam growled, probably to cover up his crying. “You think they’ll ask twice who did it? Me, they’ll say. Samirah did it. Dixie did it. ‘Cause Dixie never went away. Dixie was just hiding. You probably think the same thing.”

  I tried to look up, but he pushed the gun harder against the top of my head, keeping me in a position that looked like I was bowing to him. I held my hands out. I couldn’t get any more non-threatening.

  “I don’t know what happened here. I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Maybe not directly. But you brought it, like bad luck. I don’t stand a chance now. You know what will happen to me if I go back inside, with the changes I’ve made? Depends where they decide to throw me. Birth certificate still says I’m a woman. You think bitches can’t be nasty, you never spent time locked up with them. Guys’ll be no different. They’ll turn me back into a bitch faster than any surgery.”

  My thoughts split in two directions, one track trying to figure out what to say to keep me alive, the other working out how Sam’s girlfriend fit into all this. I had a hard time believing her murder was a coincidence. Sam was right. I had somehow led a killer to his home, but I’d be damned if I could figure out the who, how, and why of it.

  “You kill me now, it’ll only make things worse.”

  “How the fuck can it get any worse?”

  He swung the barrel, slicing me across the scalp. I toppled onto my side. Warm pain spread over the top of my head. I knew the barrel had cut me, knew even before I touched my scalp that my fingers would come away with blood on them.

  “Then just kill me already,” I shouted. “Only do it right this time.”

  Sam kicked me onto my back and aimed the shotgun at my chest. “Trust me, Brone. You die when I want you to die.”

  “Tell that to Tom when you see him in hell. Your little booby-trap took him instead of me.”

  Sam’s brow furrowed.

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “The explosion you had set up. You didn’t do it yourself, maybe that’s why it failed.”

  “I didn’t set anything up. I don’t know anything about any explosion, or that bitch Autumn’s husband, or anything.” Spittle misted down from Sam’s lips onto my face. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

  He stumbled backward and sat on the foot of the bed. He absently rested one hand on his girlfriend’s ankle while he held the shotgun in his other hand with the barrel hanging between his knees.

  I spotted my gun on the floor around the corner of the bed, too far out of reach even with Sam’s aim lowered.

  “You’re telling me you had nothing to do with the explosion at the High Note?”


  “What the hell is the High Note?”

  “It’s my parents’ …”

  I had assumed he knew about the karaoke bar. Most people who knew me also knew the High Note. But Sam didn’t really know me even when he’d been Dixie. And the only thing Dixie knew about me was that I could unhook a bra with one hand.

  Sam massaged his girlfriend’s foot, not looking at what he was doing, probably not even aware he was doing it. He stared at me, head titled, face wet with tears.

  “I finally found out who I was.”

  He stood, set the shotgun down on the bed, and retrieved my gun from the floor. He wiped his nose with the back of his gun hand.

  “I gotta go, Ridley Brone. My life is over.”

  He put my gun to his head.

  I sat up, throwing a hand out toward him. Blood from my scalp covered my splayed fingers.

  “Wait! No.”

  He nodded toward the bed.

  “My life is right there. If she’s gone, I’m gone.”

  “Listen to me. I’m not sure what’s going on yet, but it has to be connected to what I’m involved with. Give me time, I can help you.”

  “Why would you help me?”

  “Killing yourself is no better than killing me.”

  Sam shook his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing more tears down his cheeks.

  “I was never going to kill you. That’s not my way anymore. But no one believes that. And when they see my girl, all they’re going to see here,” he thumped his chest with his fist, “is Dixie.”

  I got up on my knees, hand still out in front of me. I kept seeing Doug hanging limp across the coffee table, the hole in his back, the string of saliva off his lip. I saw Tom’s charred clothes, the raw pink patches of flesh, the flap of hair still stuck to his head and fluttering in the wind. I saw, right in front of me, Sam’s girlfriend with her throat cut open. Then my mind leapt into the future. I saw the side of Sam’s head blow out, saw his body tip toward the bed, saw him draped across his girlfriend’s body, and his head leaking into the sheets.

  I wasn’t sure I could handle another death.