Tucker sighed and shook his head. “All right,” he said. “I’ll call Chelsea and see if she can stay with the kids, and I’ll sleep at your place.”
“No,” I said. Daisy and Danny were upset enough, with Gillian dead, Allison away from home and their grandfather having surgery in the morning. Daisy was afraid of monsters—unless her daddy was close by. A teenage babysitter wasn’t going to keep the bogeymen at bay. “I’ll be perfectly all right.” I leaned down, patted Dave on top of the head. “You’ll protect me, won’t you, boy?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TUCKER WALKED DAVE AND ME to the car once I’d finished my supper and helped him clean up the mess. He needn’t have worried about me being alone in the apartment, although I didn’t tell him that, because I wasn’t going to the apartment, except to pick up the Glock, my phone charger, the bag of kibble and a couple of plastic bowls Dave could eat and drink from.
I was headed to Shiloh, Montana—with one stop before I hit the highway.
I drove straight to Beverly Pennington’s condo and, even though it was late and the windows were all dark, I punched her doorbell at least a dozen times. When that didn’t raise her, I pounded on the door itself, fit to shake that brass six loose from its shiny screws.
“She’s not home,” a voice said behind me.
I turned and found myself almost nose-to-nose with the dead security guard I’d let sit in my car during the last visit.
“Where’d she go?” I asked.
The ghost shrugged. “Left here in a hurry, with a couple of suitcases. That’s all I know.”
“Thanks,” I said. I can’t say I was surprised that Beverly had decamped. She’d probably given me the newspaper articles to spite Greer and then realized that possession of them implicated her in the blackmail scheme. And if she knew about the scheme, then she was part of it.
But maybe she’d simply been called away on some emergency, though that seemed unlikely. Estrangement or none, I didn’t think she’d skip town with her son’s funeral on the agenda.
I’d make some calls during the long drive to Montana, I decided. Stop at a couple of libraries or Internet cafés along the way, to stretch my legs—and find out whatever I could about Beverly Pennington.
I shifted my focus to the task immediately at hand.
Like most dogs, Dave loved a road trip. He made good company as we cruised north through the night. We got all the way to Kingman before we had to stop and spring for a bargain motel room, which was all my strained budget would allow.
The next morning we got up early, shared a drive-through breakfast and rolled on.
Montana is a long, loooong way from Arizona.
I had to backtrack a couple of times before I finally resorted to buying a map at a service station and figuring out a route.
Standing beside the car, I tried to summon Gillian, but she didn’t appear.
I tried Justin. No luck there, either.
Fretful, I put a call through to Helen Erland at the convenience store in Cave Creek, fully expecting a rebuff, since she’d already fired me. Instead, she was cheerfully weepy; according to Vince’s public defender, the county’s case wouldn’t hold water. Vince was coming home.
I had mixed feelings about that, to say the least.
I wasn’t sure Vince was Gillian’s killer. I was sure that he was a scumbag.
“Vince is going to help Chelsea pick out a new car,” Helen said out of the blue. Maybe she was trying to convince me that he was a great guy, always ready to help a neighbor. More likely, she was just prattling, high on the news of his impending return to their double-wide castle, and didn’t give a rat’s ass what I thought. “She’s been saving every penny she earns, and Vince wants to make sure she gets a good deal.”
I said nothing.
“Well, thanks anyway,” Helen said. I heard the write-off in her voice as she added a stiff goodbye. Chattiness aside, she had zero confidence in my abilities as a private detective, and I had only slightly more.
Maybe Tucker was right. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to fight crime. And from the sound of things, the real money was in babysitting, anyhow.
It would be good, I thought, to have some time alone, with just Dave for company. No distractions.
Libraries proved to be few and far between on the road less traveled.
And there were no Internet cafés, either.
My cell phone began to ring around 10:00 a.m.—I wasn’t in the mood to talk, since I knew who was calling. After that it went off at fifteen-minute intervals, as irritating as a smoke alarm in need of a new battery.
Since I still had a temple-pounder from the knock-down, drag-out with Tiffany the day before, and I was unsettled by the Helen Erland interlude, despite efforts to put her out of my mind, I began to feel downright grouchy. I finally fished the damn thing out from under Dave and scrolled through the message list.
Tucker, Tucker and Tucker again.
I thumbed the off button.
He’d know by now that I wasn’t at the apartment in Cave Creek, but on my way to Shiloh. And he would be seriously pissed off. But there wouldn’t be much he could do about it, besides rag on me via satellite, which I had just taken the obvious step to prevent.
I drove on.
And on.
Dave and I pulled into a rest stop someplace in Utah.
He peed.
I peed.
I tried to call Jolie, to ask her to check Beverly Pennington out online, but I got her voice mail. No doubt she was on a crime scene someplace.
We drove on.
And on.
I fixed my thoughts on priority number one: finding Greer.
Dave and I ate lunch on the road, sharing pepperoni sticks I bought at another gas station.
By midafternoon I was missing Tucker and still a long way from Montana.
I switched on my cell phone and listened to roughly nineteen messages, all from him. It was like watching a whole season of some TV series you’ve already seen.
The last episode summed it all up. And there was even a cliff-hanger.
“Mojo,” Tucker said, probably with his teeth clamped together, from the sound of his voice, “call me. If you don’t, I swear to God I’ll put an APB out on you and you’ll end up cooling your heels in some shit-heel jail until I feel like bailing you out!”
“He can’t do that,” I told Dave. “This is America.”
Dave looked unconvinced. His floppy ear perked a little; he was listening hard. Trying to puzzle out the human drama.
“Can he?” I asked.
I kid you not. At exactly that moment a siren sounded behind me.
“Shit,” I said, glancing in the rearview mirror.
I had the Glock under my front seat. It was harmless, but the state patrolman cruising behind me with the light bar on top of his car flashing bad news probably wouldn’t see it that way. I didn’t have a permit, and that would be the least of my problems if the gun turned out to be illegal.
Trying to outrun the guy would not be smart, but I briefly considered it anyway. I hadn’t had that much sleep, remember.
I pulled over, rolled down my window and sat up straight in the seat, smiling winsomely.
The stater whipped in behind me, got out of his car and ambled my way.
I had my this-is-America speech all ready, just in case Tucker had followed through on his threat to have me busted and held on some trumped-up charge.
“License and registration, please,” the patrolman said. He was young, square jawed and good-looking. “Proof of insurance, too.”
I got out the necessary cards and papers, which were in the console between the front seats. “Was I speeding?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he examined my driver’s license, registration and insurance card, each in their turn, then studied my face.
“Call Tucker,” he said.
I stared at him, openmouthed.
He grinned, tugged genially at the brim of hi
s spiffy round stater hat. “If you don’t,” he said, “I’ll have to ask you about the Glock you’re probably carrying under the front seat. And I don’t want to do that, because it will mean hours and hours of paperwork.”
“This is America,” I said.
“Last time I looked,” the stater agreed affably. And then he just stood there, waiting.
“Can you do this?” I asked, already fumbling for my phone.
“Evidently so,” he answered.
I speed-dialed Tucker.
“Hello,” he said, and he sounded smug.
I blushed furiously. “Do all you guys know each other?” I demanded in a hissing whisper.
The stater grinned, handed back my license, registration and insurance card, tugged at his hat brim again and walked away.
Tucker chuckled. “It’s a brotherhood,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Somewhere in Utah,” I replied, softening a little. Pissed off as I was, I was glad to hear his voice, too. “Were you really going to have me arrested?”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”
“I’m not coming back to Arizona until I’ve talked to Greer,” I said. “In person.”
He sighed. “How do you know she’s in Shiloh, Moje?” he asked.
“I just do.”
“Carmen’s been found.”
I was still sitting alongside the road, and it was a good thing. I was so startled that I might have piled right into the ditch if I’d been on the move. “Is she—?”
“No,” Tucker said. “Carmen’s fine. She’s been hiding out with a shirttail relative in Phoenix, scared out of her mind.”
“Did she say anything about Greer? About what happened—?”
In my mind’s eye I saw Jack Pennington’s corpse sprawled on the entryway floor.
“She’s not talking,” Tucker answered.
“What do you mean, she’s not talking? She must have seen something—”
“I mean she’s not talking. As in, she’s practically catatonic.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “What now?”
“We wait,” Tucker said.
I absorbed that, trembling a little, thinking of what Carmen must be going through, but desperately glad she was alive. Dave was so worried that he whimpered and perched his front feet on the console so he could lick my face. Either that, or he’d just developed a taste for concealer.
“Mojo?” Tucker said when I didn’t speak.
“I’m here,” I said weakly.
“Come home. Allison will be back tomorrow—her dad came through surgery just fine. If you still want to, we’ll fly up to Montana together and turn the place upside down looking for your sister.”
The stater whizzed by me, tooting his horn in jaunty farewell. We’re a brotherhood, the sound seemed to say. Don’t screw with us.
“I am not turning around now, after coming all this way.” Tears of frustration trickled down my cheeks, and I didn’t bother to wipe them away. “You can have me arrested. You can do anything you want. But one way or another, Tucker Darroch, I am going to find Greer.”
“Easy,” he said. “I’m on your side, remember?”
“Then why don’t you act like it?” I scrubbed at one cheek with the back of my hand, and Dave took care of the other.
“Moje, this is how a person-on-your-side acts. God knows what you could be walking into up there, armed with nothing but moxie and a Glock you don’t know how to use. Let me help you.”
“You can help me by not engaging in police harassment!”
“All right, all right. It was a little heavy-handed, siccing the state patrol on you, I’ll admit that, but I was frantic, Moje. Come home. I promise, we’ll fly up to Montana as soon as Allison gets back to take care of the kids.”
“No.”
Tucker thrust out a sigh. I knew, without seeing him, that he’d shoved a hand through his hair just then. I knew his jaw would be tight and his eyes narrowed. “Please.” He ground out the word. “Cut over to Vegas and win a little money on the slots or something. I’ll meet you there.”
“Meet me in Montana if you want to.” I sniffled. “I’ll be in Shiloh.”
“Moje.”
“It’s the best offer you’re going to get, bucko. If you weren’t such a good lover, I’d tell you to take a permanent hike right about now.”
He chuckled again. The sound was raspy, reminding me of the way his face felt against mine—and other parts of my anatomy—when he’d been too busy chasing bad guys to shave for a day or two. “Okay,” he said. “You win.”
I blinked. “I do?”
“Yes. Go to Shiloh. And try to keep a low profile until I get there. One catch, though. If you don’t check in with me every few hours, I’m going to get worried. And when I get worried, I do drastic things.”
“Like?”
“Like having you busted, for real.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You know I would.”
“I’ll dump you if you do.”
“No, you won’t.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You said it yourself. I’m too good a lover to throw over. If we were together right now, I’d go down on you and prove my point.”
Heat surged through me. My nipples hardened, and I got damp. “I don’t have time for phone sex,” I said.
He laughed. “I’ll be in Shiloh sometime tomorrow. Plan on a wild ride, cowgirl—no phone required.”
I groaned.
Tucker laughed again. “Are you sure you don’t have time for a little phone sex?” he teased in a low drawl.
At least, I think he was teasing. I didn’t risk finding out. “I’ll call you in four hours,” I said. Then I hung up, drew a couple of deep breaths, squirmed on the car seat and got back on the highway.
He didn’t call me again.
Good thing. If he had, I probably would have pulled over and stuck both feet against the dashboard while he talked me through two or three noisy climaxes.
Talk about your roadside attraction. See the Amazing Orgasmic Woman, three miles ahead.
IT TOOK DAVE AND ME another fourteen hours to reach Shiloh, and by the time we pulled into town and checked in to the Lakeside Motel, we were too pooped to look for anybody. I did manage to ask the desk clerk if she’d seen a woman matching Greer’s description—blond, slender, cast on her left arm—and she said no.
I figured she was probably lying—Shiloh is the sort of place where everybody knows everybody else—but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Dave had kibble for supper.
I had a chocolate bar scrounged from the glove compartment of my car.
Once I’d dined, I showered, tossed back the covers on the rent-a-bed and crashed.
It wasn’t until the next morning, when I wanted to dress, that I realized I hadn’t packed my usual trash-bag suitcase before leaving the apartment in Cave Creek. I was going to have to make do with the sundress and bra I’d been wearing for two days already, at least until I could scope out the local shopping opportunities. I chucked the panties, and not just because I knew Tucker was on his way.
One cannot fight crime in dirty underwear. It’s too distracting.
So after Dave lifted his leg next to one of the picnic tables down by the lake and pooped for an encore, we got into the Volvo to cruise. No Wal-Mart and no Target, but there was a place called Nellie’s Boutique. Nellie’s, a small, narrow storefront that ran deep—all the way back to the alley behind it, as I soon learned—was caught in a time warp, circa 1955. The abandoned movie theater next door only added to the spooky nostalgia.
“Stay here,” I told Dave as I got out of the car. As if he was going to crank up the engine and go joyriding or something. I dumped a bottle of water into one of the bowls I’d brought along, so he was good to go, for hydration purposes anyway. And he probably would go if I didn’t get my butt back there pretty quickly and walk him again.
I’d
parked across the street from Nellie’s, leaving a window cracked so Dave could breathe, and as I was crossing, I had a totally weird experience—one I could not have predicted, even after making the acquaintance of several dead people and zooming out of my body that day at the shooting range.
For half a heartbeat, maybe less than that, I was back in that same darkened room, but this time there was an image on the screen instead of the spinning spiral. One small, pink ballet slipper, lying forlornly on the ground.
I knew it belonged to Gillian.
In the next moment I slammed back into my body.
I was standing in the middle of the street, with one hand over my mouth.
The honking of a car horn jarred me out of my stupor.
I turned, heart pounding, and waved apologetically to the driver of a muddy pickup truck. The guy behind the wheel, sporting a straw cowboy hat, smiled and raised an index finger in acknowledgment.
I hurried on, heading for Nellie’s.
What had just happened here? Had my brain short-circuited, or was it residual fatigue, or the fact that I needed breakfast almost as much as I needed a fresh supply of underwear?
Maybe what I really needed was psychotropic medication.
I was understandably shaken, and there would be no making sense of the astral-projection thing until I’d had coffee and protein. I couldn’t think straight without breakfast—or without panties.
A little bell jingled over the door as I entered Nellie’s.
I made quick work of shopping, selecting two bras, three pairs of nylon panties and several cotton sundresses. A heavy woman with dyed red hair and makeup that looked thick enough to be peeled off her face in a single pull greeted me with a suspicious smile.
“Are you Nellie?” I asked as I forked over my ATM card to pay for the new wardrobe.
“Nellie’s been dead for twenty years,” she said. “I’m Sally Swenson.” She bagged my purchases and handed back my ATM card, after studying my name on the front of it.
It was all I could do not to shinny into a pair of those new panties right there in front of the sales counter, I felt that vulnerable.
“You just passing through Shiloh, Mojo?” Sally inquired. Her tone when she said “Mojo,” indicated that she considered it strange, but she didn’t seem unfriendly—just curious.
Deadly Deceptions Page 21