Forever Road

by Catie Rhodes

  As it sometimes does with me, my anger brought on the worst of girly behaviors. A hateful lump closed my throat. Tears stung my eyes and ran in hot tracks down my cheeks. I clenched my jaw against the sobs that clawed at my throat, begging to be let out.

  “Aw, shit.” The doorman lost his professionalism and sagged. “Don’t start crying. Please.”

  “My cousin was murdered.” Tears blurred my words and my vision. “We just had her memorial service earlier this afternoon.”

  “I knew Rae and liked her.” The doorman’s voice softened. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

  “My friend came here earlier asking about someone who might have been involved.” I swiped at my eyes. “Beaky in there won’t tell me anything.”

  “Beaky?” The doorman jerked a nod at the bar, silently asking if I meant the bartender. When I nodded, he snickered. He covered his mouth at first, but finally threw back his head and bellowed laughter at the dark sky. “You’re related to Rae, all right. I think she called her Big Bird.” He laughed some more and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

  A good sense of humor, a great smile—this guy had it going on. Then why didn’t I come on to him? After such a stressful week, I knew he’d make a great diversion. But I didn’t feel like alley catting around. And it usually gave me such great comfort. Okay. It didn’t. But it made the bad stuff, the loneliness, less intense.

  The door creaked open behind us, and he cut off his laughter. Beaky stuck her head out. “Ain’t she gone yet?”

  He grabbed my arm and dragged me to my Nova.

  “Wait a minute.” I squirmed against him, but it helped almost as much as beating granite with a feather. “You knew Rae, right?”

  He didn’t answer, but pushed me at my old car. I turned and gave him a pleading pout.

  “Get in and get going.” He didn’t look at me. “I can’t afford to lose this job.”

  I sagged and ducked my head to hide my trembling chin. My detective work sucked. I’d never figure out who killed Rae. She would haunt me forever. And I deserved it. She had died a horrific death, and I failed miserably at solving her murder.

  Chase couldn’t depend on me to help him get free of the worst jam of his life. If he went to death row for a murder he didn’t commit, I’d never forgive myself. Frustrated sobs pushed their way up my throat again, and this time I let them come. I hated myself for crying in front of this sexy, terrible man, but that didn’t stop me.

  “All right, all right.” The bouncer stepped closer, patting my back gently with one of his huge hands.

  “Look, it’s just a few questions.” I wiped the tears off my face with my shirtsleeve.

  “You’re determined…Peri Jean, right?” The doorman grinned.

  “How did you know?”

  “Rae talked about you every time she came in here.” The doorman took his attention off me and glanced back toward Long Time Gone. “I have a break coming up. See those woods over there?” He pointed. “There’s a picnic table back there. Meet me there in ten, maybe fifteen, minutes.”

  I moved the Nova to a less visible location and took the sketchbook and a flashlight with me to the clearing in the woods. I sat at the picnic table and waited. And waited. While I waited, I thought about Rae. Everywhere I went, I learned the people she spent time with knew all about me. Judging by their attitudes, they knew good stuff.

  Had Rae’s life screwed her up so much she couldn’t treat people well? Not even those willing to love her? The idea left a lump in my throat. I mourned, not for her death but for her life. Just as I decided to smoke one more cigarette and go home, the bouncer rushed into the clearing.

  “Sorry that took so long.” He flashed his killer smile again, the one that made him look like a really sweet guy who just happened to be a thug. “Fight broke out. By the time I escorted both parties to their vehicles and saw them out of the parking lot…well, you see how long it took.”

  “No problem.” I said this as though I hadn’t been ready to hit the road five minutes earlier. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

  “Wade Hill.” He sat down at the picnic table and glanced at Rae’s sketchbook.

  “I really appreciate you doing this.” I couldn’t help wondering about his motivation. As long as he behaved himself, I guessed it didn’t matter.

  “Rae made me laugh every time she came in. I wish I had known her memorial service was today. I’d have come.”

  My eyes burned with unexpected tears. “So why don’t we start with you telling me what happened with Chase Fischer earlier. I know he was here.”

  I slid the picture of Chase and me across the table. Wade took it and smiled. “Did you get a tattoo?”

  I took off my jacket and showed him the raven on my arm, thinking it might interest him since he had a raven too. He leaned close and nodded his approval. Again, the light impulse to flirt with this guy, to make something happen fluttered through me. I still didn’t want to enough to do it.

  “Chase came in before the band started. He asked me who Rae came in here with, and I told him what little I know.” Wade lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke away from me. “After, he went up to the bar and talked to…what did you call her? Beaky. She had me throw him out. I escorted him off the premises. That was it.”

  “So who did Rae come in here with?”

  “Rae came to Long Time Gone at least once a week. This older dude would meet her.” Wade chuckled. “Total middle aged dork dressed up like a bad mofo. I mean, straight out of a sixties biker movie. He had this cap…you know the one Marlon Brando wore in The Wild One?”

  “Wait a second. You mean one of those hats where the top sort of folds over onto the bill?”

  Wade nodded. Adrenaline sped into my system. Bless Chase, wherever he was. Wade had actual knowledge of Rae’s Low_Ryder.

  “Rae liked to sketch.” I held up the sketchbook. “I think she may have drawn a picture of this guy. Will you look at it?”

  “Of course.” Wade reached for the sketchbook. I opened it to the correct page and passed it to him along with the flashlight. Wade nodded almost immediately. “This is him. This is the guy.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  Wade’s pulled the sketchbook close to his face and used the flashlight to illuminate the lower portion of the picture.

  “The ring…” Wade squinted as he thought. “The pattern was a spider web with a ruby on it. I remember thinking that kind of ring could tear you up in a fistfight.”

  The thought raised gooseflesh on my arms. That spider ring made the pattern I saw on Rae’s face the day she died. That man in the sketchbook assaulted my cousin. Wade’s voice invaded my thoughts.

  “One evening, this goofball and Rae were in the bar listening to the jukebox and drinking. This woman, older woman, came into the bar like a tornado. The look on their faces was priceless. You ever see that reality show about unfaithful spouses?”

  I nodded.

  “This was like a real-life episode.” Wade stopped talking to laugh. “The older woman must have been the middle-aged dork’s wife or girlfriend. Boy, was she pissed. She jumped on Rae, and those two got into it, hissing and clawing.”

  “Was the woman blonde with lots of tattoos?” I asked around my cigarette. “Leathery skin?”

  “Definitely the rode hard and put up wet type.” Wade wrinkled his nose as he remembered her. “You know her, too?”

  “No, not really. She came by the house wanting me to let her dig through Rae’s things. Gave me a bad feeling.”

  Wade sat up straight and stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. “She what? She came to your house? You didn’t let her in, did you?”

  Wade’s reaction stirred my curiosity. What did he know about Veronica he wasn’t telling me? She scared me more than I cared to admit—at least out loud—the day she showed up at Memaw’s demanding to get into Rae’s trailer. I realized Wade expected me to answer.

  “Not just no, hell no.
”

  “That woman’s trouble.” Wade frowned. “Olivia—Beaky—the bartender who threw you out, knew the old guy and his hag real well. I’d only been here a few weeks when Rae and the woman got into a fight, so—”

  “When was this fight?” I hoped to tie Veronica to Rae’s beating. I wanted a reason to have it in for her.

  “Oh, a month ago...maybe two.”

  So much for that. “Do you know the guy’s name? The guy with the hat?”

  “Nope. He always paid in cash too, so no credit card.” Wade said. “There was one thing. He had this fine old GTO. Late sixties model probably.”

  My knee jerked, colliding with the table’s underside. I let out a grunt of pain and reached down to massage my injury. That GTO. It had to be the same one. The one that chased me the previous night. I first saw it while talking to Chase on the roadside. How many other times had it followed me and I never noticed?

  That GTO belonged to Low_Ryder, and Low_Ryder knew Rae’s bullying friend, Veronica. But I didn’t have all the pieces. I didn’t understand what either of them had to do with blackmail or with the treasure. For all I knew, they were the ones Rae owed money.

  “Girl, you gotta go to the police with all this.” Wade’s brow furrowed into sexy lines that made him look fierce. I liked it. He leaned in close. “These people aren’t anybody you want to fool with. I knew Rae was in over her head.”

  “So you wouldn’t mind telling the police what you told me?”

  Wade glanced back toward the bar and sighed. “Look. I need this job. If you can keep me out of it, that would help. If not, can you call me and let me go see them? Maybe Olivia won’t find out that way.”

  I wondered how I’d get Dean Turgeau to believe me without Wade backing me up, but I agreed anyway. I programmed Wade’s number into my cellphone.

  “I’ve got to get back to work.” Wade stood and seemed to mentally refocus. Gone was the nice guy who acted concerned for me and who had liked Rae. In his place stood a bruiser, a guy you didn’t want to piss off. He strode out of the clearing but turned back grinning. “Call me if you ever want to go motorcycle riding.”

  The normal me would have left planning how many days to wait before I called him. This new me, the one I didn’t understand, just thought about how I had nothing solid to tell Dean Turgeau. I wanted to call him and gloat anyway. While he focused on finding Chase, I had uncovered some clues about Rae’s final months. That would wipe the smug smirk off his face.

  Turning into Memaw’s driveway, a black GTO blew around me and nearly deafened me with its loud pipes. My car radio came on and scanned through the stations by itself. It stopped on “Low Rider” playing on a snowy station.

  Cold fear stole through me, robbing me of my breath. When I finally did exhale a shuddering sigh, it came out in a stream of vapor. I got out of the car and ran to the house.

  I tried to call Chase repeatedly to find out what happened to him. Each time, my call went straight to voice mail. I prayed—the first time in years—for his safe return and wondered if I was too late.

  15

  My little investigation had run itself out. Dean Turgeau hadn’t deigned to speak to me since Rae’s memorial service. His silence pissed me off, and my Texas-sized pride prohibited me from calling him.

  I tried calling Dara Wyler, Rae’s stripper BFF, but she didn’t bother to return my calls. She might have picked up on the fact that I wanted to wring her neck in the messages I left. Hannah Kessler was the only stone left unturned from the papers I found in the barn. I wanted to talk to Hannah almost as much as I wanted to eat dirt, especially after she rescued me from Sheriff Joey. I wanted to continue to ignore Hannah. Really, I did. But the only other thing I had to do—worry about Chase—threatened my sanity.

  The best way to avoid thinking about something unpleasant was to focus on something even worse. With that in mind, I talked myself into going to see Hannah. What was the worst she could do? Start a local talk show blabbing about how weird I was? Tell her fat-assed uncle, Sheriff Joey, I had been mean to her and get him to bust me? On the drive to the museum, I kept myself busy with worst-case scenarios involving Hannah Kessler.

  Despite my resolve, I sat in front of the museum in my car for another fifteen minutes. A group of blue-haired ladies exited the museum babbling excitedly. When they caught sight of me sitting in the car chain-smoking, they stopped talking and hotfooted it down Houston Street and away from me. That inspired me to get out of the car. From my vantage point, I could see into the museum. Hannah stood at a window watching me.

  Now or never. I walked up the steps leading to the museum with my head down. Hannah met me at the door minus her brilliant smile. She nibbled on the corner of one perfectly painted lip and wrung her hands.

  “Do you mind if I come in?” My stomach curled into the fetal position, and my heart tried to beat its way out of my chest.

  “Of course.” She stood aside, still unsmiling. “It’s a public place.”

  That didn’t sound too promising, but I deserved it. She’d made numerous efforts to reconnect with me. I’d rebuffed them all. To put the turd in the punchbowl, I blew her off after she rescued me from her awful uncle. I stepped inside the museum and took a deep breath. The musty smell of old building tickled my allergies. I turned away from Hannah, clapped my hand to my face, and sneezed.

  Hannah stood stock still, watching me. I no longer knew her well enough to read her expression. I plunged headlong into the speech I prepared on the drive over.

  “Thank you for singing at Rae’s memorial service. I should have thanked you that day. Would have been better than talking to my mother. And thanks for saving my bacon at the sheriff’s office that day…again.” The words felt bigger than my mouth. They were that hard to get out. Could I be this petty?

  “You’re welcome.” Hannah still wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Your singing and guitar playing impressed me.” The words came easier. Hannah nodded her thanks.

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  Hannah said nothing. A clock ticked somewhere in the silent building’s depths. When the wind kicked up outside, the old place groaned and creaked.

  “All right.” Hannah raised her chin as though going into battle.

  “I found these in Rae’s things.” I took my copy of Rae’s papers out of my bag with shaking hands. “Do you know what she was looking for? Or could tell me what you two discussed?”

  Hannah took the paper and looked at it, frowning. Finally, she met my eyes. Her brow was drawn, crumpling her light eyebrows into squiggles.

  I braced myself for her to shout at me to get out of her place of business, readying myself for an onslaught of caustic words.

  “I’ve been trying to talk to you since Rae’s murder.” She shook the papers at me. “About this.”

  That knocked the wind out of me. Of all the things I expected, this wasn’t it. If only I’d known. “I apologize for my rudeness.”

  Hannah wrinkled her nose and bared her teeth. “Don’t be so fucking formal.”

  She laughed at the look on my face. Unable to help myself, I laughed with her.

  “I was just about to close. Come up to my apartment. Your friend, Chase—“ She studied me, probably to gauge whether mentioning him upset me. “Chase designed it and did the construction himself. It’s gorgeous.”

  Hannah turned the sign on the door to “Closed.” We trooped up four flights of stairs to the former attic, now her apartment.

  We sat at a mosaic-topped bar on retro bar stools with glittery red vinyl seat coverings. Hannah used an elaborate machine, which probably cost more than I made in a month, to fix us white chocolate mochas. She set my drink in front of me and pushed a plate of biscotti toward me.

  “I do know how to make biscotti,” she said, “but these are from Lulu’s Espresso Meltdown.”

  “She’s got good stuff in there.” I took a sip of my mocha and made a sound of appreciation. Small talk isn’t my specialty. Espec
ially not with someone I considered my archenemy for twenty years. I needed information from Hannah, but I wanted to keep the door to my life closed to her.

  Hiring Rainey Bruce to rescue me from Sheriff Joey hadn’t won my trust. I didn’t think she had an ulterior motive exactly, but it didn’t add up. After she and her mother moved to Houston, Hannah came back here every summer to visit her Uncle Joey and Aunt Carly Holze—two people who hated me with a passion. I passed within five feet of her numerous times during those visits, and she never made eye contact.

  What I was and could do made people uncomfortable. I figured Hannah shared their discomfort. It hurt and made me even more of an outsider. But I accepted it. After her divorce and all those years of ignoring me, she acted as though she could just throw open her arms and I’d run into them. I didn’t work that way and, therefore, didn’t know what to say to her.

  After a few moments silence, she sighed and sat on the barstool next to me.

  “This whole thing is so crazy. I’ve been trying to talk to you for so long…” She took a big slug of her mocha and swallowed hard. “You coming in here out of the blue caught me off guard. Since Rae’s death, I’ve questioned my part in it all. I’m glad you found those pages I copied for Rae. Otherwise, I don’t think you’d have ever given me a chance to get it off my chest.”

  Anxiety sizzling in my veins, I squirmed on the barstool. So much for wanting to cut to the chase.

  Hannah studied the pages I’d handed her downstairs for a moment, frowning at the practice blackmail note.

  “About four months ago, Rae came to the museum asking if any records existed from the Mace estate auction back in 1906.” Hannah set the pages down on the mosaic countertop and pushed them away. “I looked around and found a ledger where every item and its selling price were catalogued. I copied the pages and gave them to her and figured that would be the end of it.”

  During this recitation, Hannah looked everywhere in the room but at me and swallowed often. I leaned forward, impatient to hear what she had to say.