Tortoise Soup (Rachel Porter Mysteries)

by Jessica Speart

  Dee studied it closely. “Sure does to me.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Can’t blame old Annie. Most small miners dream big-time of selling to a company like Golden Shaft. Otherwise their claims ain’t worth dogshit. God knows, prospectors don’t have the money to mine for themselves. But if a mining company buys them out, prospectors are usually cut in on a share of whatever minerals are found on that land.”

  I wondered if selling to Golden Shaft had really been Annie’s dream. There were mining companies that played fast and loose, snatching up claims and patenting land without any plans to ever mine it. The land was bought for close to nothing, then immediately sold to a developer for a small fortune.

  “By the way, do you know anything about helicopters flying around the Golden Shaft at night?” I inquired.

  Dee clearly wasn’t counting calories as she dumped three teaspoons of sugar in her coffee along with a dollop of cream. “Oh, yeah. I hear they’ve been dropping off some equipment at the mine.”

  “At night?” I asked. “Why would they do that?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Dee pulled out an apple pie from the cupboard.

  “Are they government helicopters?” I pressed.

  “Listen, I usually leave the mine at six-thirty and come straight home, before any of that goes on. What do you want to know for?” she asked, slicing off two big hunks.

  I took a bite of the pie. Fortunately it was better than Ruby’s. “A lot of ranchers think government helicopters are flying around, planning some sort of invasion.”

  Dee guffawed. “Yeah. That’s their black ops conspiracy theory. Those jackasses are a bunch of loony tunes any way you slice ’em or dice ’em.”

  She noticed I had cleaned my plate and loaded on another piece of pie before I could refuse.

  “So how did you like sleeping with the enemy the other night?” she asked. “Or ain’t he the enemy no more?”

  “I didn’t sleep with him,” I replied, guilty about the erotic fantasy that even now spun through my mind.

  She gave me a sarcastic look. “All dolled up in that dress? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe what you want,” I answered abruptly.

  Dee shrugged. “Whatever you say—but it might have been better if you had. Seems our foreman found a bunch of tortoises missing from the freezer and is on a rampage. A word to the wise? Keep out of the way till things blow over.” She sipped her coffee. “Of course, if you were to hear of any autopsies verifying that haul paks ran them over, I’d sure like to know.”

  “You’ll be the first,” I promised.

  Harley had exacted his revenge. By the time I got home that night, every muscle in the lower portion of my body was moaning and groaning. I walked up to my front door with all the grace of a broken-down, eighty-year-old wrestler who’d taken on Hulk Hogan, and been whupped.

  Santou was coming in tomorrow. I knew I should spend what was left of the evening cleaning up the debris that littered my house. Instead, I dug out a dirty pot and threw in some oil to pop up a hefty bowl of popcorn.

  Pilot grabbed a rawhide chew toy, joining me in the living room, where I turned on the TV and plunked down on the couch, popcorn bowl firmly in hand. After today’s Dale Evans adventure, I figured I’d earned a few hours of unqualified rest.

  An insistent drumming in the background verified that Lizzie was home and on automatic pilot, her tap shoes pounding to the strains of 42nd Street. I made headway on the popcorn as an old James Bond movie reeled me in, forcing me to deal with the quandary of deciding who I’d rather be: Bond taking on the bad guys or an eternally young blonde who looked good in both a bikini and an evening gown while lolling on the French Riviera.

  I was edging toward the good life as a blonde when Pilot suddenly started to growl, a low, primal rumble that began in his belly and worked its way up to a snarl, threatening to spill into all-out war. I watched in awe as the hair on the back of his neck rose like an unfurling flag. His eyes blazed with a deep reddish glow, reflecting the scarlet gown of the Bond babe, and my arms began to goosebump as I followed Pilot’s eyes to the door.

  I picked up his chew toy and tried to renew his interest, a blatant attempt to calm my own nerves. But Pilot’s eyes remained fixed on the door as his growling escalated, growing more and more intense. Suddenly he broke into an ear-shattering bark, and I jumped, heaving the bowl of popcorn into the air.

  A set of car headlights blasted through my front window, framing me in their glare like a deer being jacklighted for the kill. At the same moment, the shrill ring of the phone tore through the room. My heart pounding, I searched for the phone in the blinding light, cursing as I tripped over the popcorn bowl. I picked up the receiver and covered my other ear tightly with my hand.

  “Hello?” I screamed over Pilot’s frenzied barking.

  The same distorted voice I’d heard earlier sliced through the cacophony like a finely honed stiletto. “You’re toast, Porter.”

  The hum of an empty line blended with Pilot’s roar as he began to fling himself against the door.

  And then the pieces fell into place. My heart clenched as if it were pressed between two heavy steel plates, and a cold wave of shock raced through me, throwing every one of my nerves into fast forward.

  Grabbing Pilot by the scruff of the neck, I pulled him away from the door with more force than I ever knew I had, dragging him into the kitchen and out the back, until we were flattened against the chain link fence like two prize specimens about to be mounted. I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him close, burying my face in the warmth of his back. We formed a tight ball of skin and fur as an explosion shook the air, roaring in search of us through the house, burrowing its way under the ground, tracking us to where we were huddled, defenseless, like two sitting ducks with nowhere to fly.

  My ears throbbed from the shock wave of sound. After an endless moment, the roar scaled down to a numbing ringing. A shrill shriek penetrated the hum, and I opened my eyes to see where the sound was coming from.

  Lizzie stood on the other side of the low fence, her face a mask of fear, her mouth wide open to allow for the scream that shook her body. She held a flashlight clenched in her fist as she stared at the bungalow which was emitting smoke like a chimney.

  I wrapped my fingers around the chain link and slowly pulled myself out from under the debris, then staggered toward Lizzie, who burst into tears.

  “I thought you were dead!” she wailed, throwing her arms around me.

  Funny about that. So had I.

  “What the hell happened?” she asked, hysteria tingeing her voice. “Did your oven explode?”

  Black eyeliner and mascara ran down her face, giving her the appearance of a porcelain clown.

  “I think it was something a little more dangerous than the oven, Lizzie,” I replied, looking toward the house.

  Lizzie’s eyes grew wider.

  Grabbing her flashlight, I willed my legs to move, feeling like a marionette cut loose from its strings. I warily approached the bungalow with Pilot close at my heels. Automatically pulling my SIG-Sauer from the back of my pants, I held it tight. It gave me the reassurance I needed to approach the dark doorway that loomed ahead.

  I walked into what had been my kitchen and stopped dead. I no longer had to worry about cleaning up for Santou. What I needed was a new house. Dishes lay broken on the floor, and shards of shattered glass contributed to the obstacle course. But that was nothing compared to what awaited me in the living room. Dirt and debris were now the main decor, having turned my formerly pink carpet to a morose shade of gray. My living room windows no longer existed. All that was left were remnants of the sills.

  I had thought my couch couldn’t be any more ragged. I was wrong. Large mounds of shreds were decorated with sharp pieces of metal where my head had been only minutes before. Clumps of foam rubber stuffing were everywhere, looking like runaway globules of chicken fat. But the pièce de résistance was the TV. It could have passed
as a dead ringer for the ones that Elvis had taken his frustrations out on. Exploded glass lay everywhere. It was at times like this that I was glad I’d never spent money on properly furnishing a place. On the other hand, the Salvation Army was about to have a field day with me now.

  I picked my way through the wreckage. Amazingly, the bedroom had escaped most of the damage, remaining relatively intact. It was nice to know I still had a place to stay.

  I headed out to the front yard to examine the damage from another angle. Stepping over the remains of my front door, I was confronted with what looked like ragged snowflakes lying on the ground—except these flakes had deadly sharp, serrated edges glittering under the open expanse of sky. I took a closer look. The pieces had come from my mailbox. I glanced over to where it had once stood and saw that I wouldn’t be receiving mail anytime soon. The Postal Service was definitely not going to be happy.

  The clash of discordant sirens filled the air, and I watched as a fire engine and police car battled it out to reach the scene first. The Metro car swerved into my driveway and slammed on the brakes in a show of triumph. Unfortunately it was Brady who pulled his carcass out of the car.

  He swaggered over to me, both thumbs stuck in his waistband. A toothpick was lodged in his teeth. Flicking it with his tongue, he took a gander at the house and then eyeballed me.

  “What the hell happened here?” he asked, digging out a sliver of food from between his teeth. He removed the toothpick and examined his new-found treasure before swallowing the evidence.

  “It seems someone took a dislike to my house,” I answered.

  I looked at his receding hairline and wondered how long it would be before Brady rushed off to the nearest Hair Club.

  He stared at me suspiciously. “Who the hell have you been pissing off lately, Porter?”

  “You mean, besides you?” I asked, watching as he dug around for more tidbits from dinner.

  Lizzie appeared on the scene, picking her way through the rubble. For the first time, I noticed that she was dressed in a teensy turquoise satin outfit with a flared skirt. The net petticoat just barely covered her rear end. Her black patent leather tap shoes caught the moon, reflecting two pools of light. She must have been rehearsing a number for the one-woman show she swore she was putting together. Either that, or she was even stranger than I had imagined.

  But the outfit worked wonders on Brady. He stared at her with the rapture of a man totally bedazzled. In return, Lizzie gave him all the attention she might lavish on a squashed bug.

  I allowed a decent interval of time to pass before I dragged his attention back to the matter at hand.

  “Brady—my house? Remember? There’s been an explosion?”

  He wrenched his eyes away from Lizzie and finally noticed the silver fragments scattered about my lawn.

  “What’s this?” he asked, picking up a piece.

  “It used to be my mailbox. Maybe we should consider that the bomb was planted there,” I suggested.

  “What bomb is that, Porter?” Brady snarled, annoyed that I had disturbed his mating dance.

  “You know. The one that just blew up the front of my house.” I was at least equally annoyed.

  “Don’t jump to any hasty conclusions. I’m the officer on the scene. I’ll check this out and decide what took place here,” Brady intoned with all the authority he could muster. He bestowed a manly smile on Lizzie, who continued to ignore him.

  “Then you might not want to contaminate the evidence by picking it up with your bare hands, Brady,” I suggested. Flirtation be damned—someone had just tried to kill me. “I think Lanahan should be called in on this. Don’t you want him to check for gunpowder residue on some of these pieces?” I asked.

  Brady glared at me. “I already thought of that.”

  “So you’ve already called him?” I persisted.

  “No, but I’m about to! Jesus, let me handle this, will you? Or are you a cop now as well?” Brady shoved past me. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a real ball-buster, Porter?”

  “Never heard that one before,” I retorted as he stomped back to his car.

  Firemen were parading in and out of my house in search of a fire when I heard a loud crash. I whirled around to see my neighbor Roy Jenkins stumbling down his front steps, an AK-47 swinging in his hands. He lurched over to where Lizzie and I stood, and stared in silent tribute at the blown-out windows of my bungalow.

  “Shit, Porter. You have a party and forget to invite me?” A gooey red liquid that could have been either blood or tomato sauce ran in thick streaks down his beard and onto a dingy white tee shirt. “I told you I’d do bodyguard duty, babe. You should have taken me up on it.”

  Lizzie and I drew back as his breath slithered over, wrapping around us in a death grip of pizza and booze.

  “What a choice,” Lizzie commented. “Terrorists or Roy.”

  She was right; it was a real toss up.

  He suddenly began to weave back and forth, as if being pushed and pulled by unseen hands. “I don’t feel so good,” he muttered.

  As we watched, Roy slowly crumpled to the ground and curled up, his AK-47 cradled in his arms.

  “Would you believe he started out studying for his Ph.D. in engineering when he first moved here?” Lizzie shook her head sadly. “A living example of one man’s evolution from a nerd to a turd.”

  Roy let out a belch as he rolled onto his back.

  Lanahan must have been close by. He made it to my house in under three minutes.

  “Lovely place you have here, Porter,” Lanahan said with a grin. Stepping over Roy’s inert form, he tiptoed around the wreckage. After pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he began to bag and tag the evidence. “I see you’re managing to stay as popular as ever. Any idea who did this?”

  “That was my question, Lanahan.” Brady walked up beside us. “I’m still waiting to hear the answer.”

  “My list keeps growing,” I informed them.

  Brady snorted. “Why don’t I find that difficult to believe? Look around, Porter. You’ve made someone seriously angry. If I were you, I’d work hard on narrowing that list down mighty fast. After all, you don’t want to put your neighbors, like this pretty little lady, in jeopardy, now, do you?”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes as Brady puffed out his chest, pretending to survey the scene. He finally noticed Roy on the ground, snoring away in ignorant bliss.

  “Friend of yours, Porter?” he smirked.

  I was tempted to pick up Jenkins’s AK-47, but held myself back. There had been more than enough excitement for one night.

  Brady sauntered over to Lanahan, stepping on evidence along the way. “What have you got so far, big guy?”

  He bent down as Lanahan stood up, nearly knocking them both over.

  “Man, I hate these late nights,” Lanahan yawned. “Vigilantes can be so inconsiderate.”

  “Did you find anything?” Lizzie asked anxiously, wrapping her arms around her bare shoulders.

  Brady noticed she had begun to shiver and diligently ran to his patrol car to fetch his jacket.

  Lanahan stretched, glanced over at Lizzie, took in her outfit, and smiled. “Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers. Am I correct?”

  Lizzie looked at him in amazement. “Hey! I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah. People are always bowled over that a guy who spends his time with dead bodies would know about anything else,” Lanahan joked.

  Enough was enough, already. I felt as if I was going to have to wriggle into one of Lizzie’s outfits just to get this investigation off the ground.

  “Has any evidence turned up in the rubble so far?” I asked.

  Lanahan smoothly clicked into his crime scene mode. “Plenty of it.”

  He held up a baggie containing metal pieces that glimmered under the near-perfect moon. “Seems someone planted a pipe bomb in your mailbox, lit the fuse, and whammo! You’re left with one hell of a mess.”

  Brady’s car radio crackled off in the distance a
s the fire engine pulled away, having decided there was little risk of my bungalow spontaneously combusting.

  Lanahan was right about the mess. My front yard resembled a battlefield. There was a war going on—one that had begun to focus on me.

  I felt a heavy weight along my leg. Pilot leaned against me, wondering why we were up so late past his bedtime. I wondered where we were going to bunk down for the night.

  Fortunately Lizzie came to the rescue. “Why don’t you grab whatever clothes you can and bring them over to my place? You’re moving in with me.” She put her arm around me, and my body relaxed, the adrenaline draining away as if a plug had been pulled. I was tired, though I fought hard not to admit it. Somebody had me dead-on as a target, and I couldn’t afford to let my guard down.

  “Hey, Porter—you’re quite a gal. Seems you landed a doubleheader tonight,” Brady announced as he pulled the AK-47 out of Roy’s arms. Then he gently laid his jacket across Lizzie’s shoulders.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. Fatigue had now settled in like an occupying army. My eyelids felt as if they had ten-pound sandbags weighing them down.

  “A call just came over the radio. Apparently your office got hit as well.” Brady’s hand lingered on Lizzie’s shoulder. She moved away so his fingers rested on nothing but air.

  My first thought was of Sam. He would probably kill me before another bomb could do me in. He had warned me that the last thing he wanted was any kind of trouble, with his retirement inching closer by the day. I had the sneaking suspicion that this would surpass even his worst expectations.

  I worked my way through the rubble and back into my house. Quickly packing a suitcase, I also grabbed the duffel bag containing Annie’s letters, along with the quit claim deed. Then I headed over to Lizzie’s.

  A convertible couch was already unfolded and dressed with cool, fresh sheets when I got there. They beckoned seductively and I gladly gave in. I tried my best to convince myself that sleep was just a nod away, but my fears overwhelmed my fatigue. I squeezed my eyes tight, hoping to block out the explosion that had begun a strobe flash in my brain, and breathed deeply as my fingers slowly curled up, hibernating in the palm of my hands. But my nails dug too deep, leaving crescent trails of terror. Hard as I tried, there was no escaping it. My demons had come to taunt me again.