As if that was original. I’d heard it on the playground as a kid, and from a couple of Nick’s girlfriends, too. I replaced the phone receiver, proud of my restraint, stood up and left.
I was no closer to finding Gillian’s killer than I’d ever been. But I knew this much: Vince Erland was still in the running.
* * *
THE GLOCK AND I headed back north, this time to Scottsdale.
I parked in the lot of an indoor target range, got out my cell phone and called Helen at the convenience store.
“You upset Vince,” she scolded, once she knew I was the one calling.
“Murder investigations are always upsetting,” I said.
“You’re fired,” Helen told me.
I sighed. She could fire me—no great loss, since I wasn’t getting paid—but I wasn’t leaving the case alone until I knew who’d ended Gillian’s life that day after the dance rehearsal class. “A little professional advice?” I ventured.
“What?” Helen snapped.
“Get a divorce,” I answered. And then I hung up.
I did some deep breathing to restore my equilibrium, and then, leaving the Glock in its case under the seat, I went inside the range to ask about shooting lessons. The stakes had gone up; I’d just made another enemy—Vince Erland.
The muffled pop of bullets somewhere out back was clearly audible from the reception area.
A side door opened, and a man came through it.
He was good-looking, dark haired and leanly fit. He wore khakis and a navy blue polo shirt that matched his eyes. I pegged him right away for either a former FBI agent or an ex-cop, which says something for my instincts. Turned out he was both, though I didn’t find that out until later.
“I want to learn to shoot,” I said, and then blushed, because the way he looked at me made me feel strangely self-conscious. I’d had the presence of mind to leave the guesthouse phone in the car this time, but I wished I’d changed out of the pantsuit.
“You came to the right place,” he replied, and even though he ran his gaze over me much as Erland had at the jail, the feeling was remarkably different. It wasn’t attraction, really—I was gone on Tucker, for better or worse—but I knew I could be attracted to this guy if I let my guard down for an instant. “Do you own a firearm?”
I don’t know what made me lie. Maybe it was habit. Maybe it was common sense—if the Glock under my car seat was illegal, I wanted Tucker to be the one to tell me, not some stranger who might feel bound to call the cops first and ask questions later.
“Not yet,” I said. “I thought I should learn how to handle a gun before I bought one.”
“Good thinking.” He smiled. A long counter stood between us. He put out a hand. “Max Summervale,” he said.
“Mojo Sheepshanks,” I replied as we shook.
A charge jolted up my arm.
Max squinted, still grinning. “I’ve seen you somewhere,” he said.
“I was on TV a while back,” I answered, hoping he’d let it go at that.
“You’re an actress?”
“A private detective,” I said after shaking my head once, hoping he wouldn’t ask me to elaborate on how that could get me on the news.
He didn’t. But Max was a long time letting go of my hand, and for some reason, I didn’t pull free. “I’ll need to see some ID,” he told me, “and you’ll have to fill out a form. Just a formality. We have guns and ammo inside, and I’ll be your instructor.”
“Can I shoot today, though?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” Max said. “Provided your background check comes back okay, of course. I’m sure it will.”
I nodded, a little disappointed. It wasn’t as though I had time on my hands; I had detecting to do, and a hot date with Tucker that night. I’d need to keep a finger on the pulse of the Greer situation, Helen Erland had just fired me and Beverly Pennington was expecting me at two the next afternoon.
For a person who wasn’t earning a living, I was pretty busy.
“Okay,” I said. I filled out the form, showed Max my driver’s license and made an appointment for my first shooting lesson at nine o’clock the next morning.
I left the building, got back in my car.
It was too early to bolt for the guesthouse. If I did, I’d end up pacing, waiting for Tucker and, as I said, I had Things To Do. What I didn’t have was a plan—just a sense of restlessness, underlain with a hamster-wheel urgency.
So I went to Bad-Ass Bert’s, steeled myself and let myself into the downstairs bar.
Sawdust floors.
Pool tables.
A dark, silent jukebox.
The hot-dog cooker on top of the makeshift bar. It had been Bert’s pride and joy, that bar. A few barrels, with boards nailed on top, bought at a sale in Tombstone. According to Bert, the likes of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had stood before it, swilling whiskey.
I missed Bert.
Touched the bar stool where Russell the basset hound used to sit. I missed the dog even more than Bert, but I was never going to see either of them again. They were in Witness Protection, along with Bert’s girlfriend, Sheila, after testifying in some drug trial, behind closed doors. The details had never been made public, and while Tucker knew the scoop, thanks to his stint with the DEA, he wasn’t telling.
I looked around the place. I could sell it—the building was old, but the real estate was prime, right on the main street of Cave Creek. To look at the town itself, you’d have thought it was low income, but there were mansions in them there hills.
The thing to do was let the bar go. If I didn’t, the taxes alone would eat me alive, and I knew even less about running a bar than being a private detective, which ought to tell you something.
I lifted my eyes to the rough, weathered board ceiling. My apartment was up there—nothing special, but mine.
The plain fact was I couldn’t give the place up—not the apartment, not the bar. I couldn’t really explain why, except to say I wasn’t through with it yet. Selling Bad-Ass Bert’s would have been like leaving a theater before I’d seen the end of a movie.
I would get the liquor license transferred from Bert’s name to mine, I decided. Reopen the joint and call it Mojo’s. Run my P.I. business out of the bar.
None of that would be easy to do, I knew, but it made me feel better just to decide. I perched on Russell’s old stool, propped an elbow on top of the bar and imagined myself serving up brewskies to a lot of pool-playing bikers.
It daunted me, but not as much as going back to medical coding and billing, or applying for a receptionist’s job somewhere. I wasn’t making any money as a detective, and my cash stash, though in excess of three hundred thousand dollars and drawing serious interest, could disappear overnight if I had to use it to pay for a criminal defense lawyer for Greer.
I needed an income.
I got out Bert’s phone book and my cell phone and called the State Liquor Board, first thing. For a fee, I could transfer the license and be selling beer, wine and whiskey within ten days. I scribbled down the website address the clerk gave me, where I could download the form.
Buoyed by the unexpected lack of resistance, I called a sign company next. Ordered a blue neon tube spelling Mojo’s in cursive, and read the numbers off my ATM card into the phone.
When that was done, I rooted around in Bert’s cupboards—my cupboards, now—and found a ring binder I’d seen my friend consult many times in the past. It was Bert’s supplier list. I carried that out to the car, tossed it on the passenger seat and relocked the doors.
Then I went up the stairs and let myself into the apartment.
This time I wasn’t scared.
I stripped off the pantsuit, took denim shorts, a bra and a skimpy top—but no underpants—from the dresser in my bedroom, stripp
ed, adjusted the shower spray and stepped over the edge of my old-fashioned bathtub, pulling the curtain firmly. Take note, psychos and serial killers, I thought, Mojo is back.
After the shower I dressed and, feeling refreshed, went into the kitchen and brewed myself a cup of coffee. While the pot was perking away, I called Tucker’s cell from the kitchen.
“Darroch,” he said.
“Check your caller ID once in a while,” I replied. “Ask me where I am.”
“Okay,” Tucker said. “Where are you?”
“My place.”
“And this is supposed to be news?”
“My place,” I repeated. “Soon to be known as Mojo’s.”
“You’re in the apartment? Alone?”
I straightened my spine. “I will be until you get here,” I said, feeling ever so slightly defensive. If Tucker had had his way, I’d live in a steel vault someplace, and wear full body armor. Sans underpants, of course.
“Damn,” he said.
“It’s as safe as anywhere else,” I argued. “The locks have been changed and all unauthorized entrances have been sealed.” I remembered, with a shudder, the way a killer had gotten in, not all that long ago.
“I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this,” Tucker said.
“Nope,” I said.
There was a long pause. Then, “You still want Chinese?”
“I want you,” I said. “The kung pao chicken is a bonus.”
He laughed. It was a weary sound, indicating better than anything he could have said that he knew a lot of things I didn’t, and they weighed on him, but hearing it was good, just the same.
“I’ll be there around five-thirty,” he said. A guarded note came into his voice. “I can call ahead for the takeout, but I have to stop by Allison’s for a few minutes on the way.”
“Something wrong at home?” I asked as casually as I could.
“I don’t know,” Tucker replied. “Allison called a little while ago, and she said it was important.”
I didn’t argue. After all, a lot of guys wouldn’t have mentioned the pit stop at all. Tucker had been straightforward.
I had to trust him—or let him go. And I wasn’t any more ready to let go of Tucker than I was the bar downstairs, or my apartment. The best I could manage at the moment was not to cling like a scared climber on a steep wall of rock.
“See you when you get here,” I said as lightly as I could.
“Moje?”
“What?”
“It’s no big deal, my stopping by Allison’s. She probably just needs a form signed or something.”
“Did I say it was a big deal?” You sleep there. Couldn’t it wait?
“You didn’t have to. I can hear it in your voice.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “Okay,” I said weakly.
We said goodbye, hung up.
I decided to check my collection of Damn Fool’s Guides for one on keeping it together, even though I knew I wouldn’t find it. I settled for Time Management, but it didn’t hold my interest for very long, and I shoved it back onto the shelf with all its companion volumes.
I went into the kitchen. The coffee was still brewing, so I wandered into the living room—and stopped in my tracks because Gillian was sitting on the couch.
“Where have you been?” I mouthed, exaggerating each word.
She watched me the way she might have watched a mime at a street fair or in a park, then leaned forward and wrote in the layer of dust on top of my coffee table.
“MOM.”
I went to the couch, sat down beside her, slipped an arm around her tiny shoulders. She felt cold, but solid, and wiggled free to write another word in the dust.
“DOG.”
At this, she smiled.
“Maybe,” I said, thinking of Vince Erland, the promise he’d made to this little girl, one he’d never intended to keep. The chances were good he’d done a lot worse, too.
She smiled more broadly. “DOG,” she wrote again, this time with a confident flourish.
I thought about Justin and Pepper, and wondered if the dog and the boy had crossed over yet. As if in answer to the thought, Justin appeared, alone.
I started. You don’t get used to things like that.
“Still here,” I said, on a long breath.
Justin nodded. “Pepper’s gone, though.”
Tears filled my eyes. “When?”
“About an hour ago,” Justin said.
“I thought you were going with him.”
“I can’t. You need me.” He nodded toward Gillian. “And so does the kid.” He paused, looked around. “Different place. What happened to the fancy guesthouse with the plasma TV?”
“I’m sort of in between,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Justin replied.
“You should have gone with Pepper,” I said, though the truth was, I was glad he’d be around for a little while longer, although if he and Gillian were still hanging out when Tucker showed up, it would put a serious crimp in our plans to swing naked from the chandeliers.
Not that I had an actual chandelier. Apartments over shit-hole biker bars don’t usually come with that kind of extra.
“He’s okay,” Justin assured me. Then, in apparent anticipation of my next question, he added, “Mom is, too.”
Turning his attention to Gillian, he began to sign.
She beamed at him, happier than I’d ever seen her, and signed back.
“We’re going to Burger King,” Justin explained when the conversation was over.
“Why?” I asked. “You can’t eat, can you?”
“Happy memories,” Justin said. “And I like the way it smells.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Besides, you’re expecting company, aren’t you?”
I blushed, profoundly uncomfortable with the amount of information Justin was privy to concerning my personal life.
He grinned, apparently reading my mind. Which was even more disturbing than his knowing so much about my plans for the evening. “It shows in your aura,” he said confidentially. “No visuals, or anything like that. Just a strong glow.”
“If you’re spying on me, Justin—”
“I’m not spying,” he insisted. “I told you, it’s the aura.”
“It had better be,” I warned, though he must have known there would be nothing I could do about it if he was lying.
He signed to Gillian.
Gillian signed back.
And they both vanished.
I was a little jangled by the whole appearance/disappearance thing. Some of my earlier confidence ebbed away.
I put on some flip-flops—I’d been barefoot since my shower—and went down to the Volvo. Got my new used Glock out from under the front seat and carried it upstairs practically at arm’s length, half afraid I’d make some wrong move and it would go off in the case.
The coffee was ready when I got back.
I set the gun case in the middle of my kitchen table and stared at it for a while. When it didn’t explode, I figured it was safe to keep it in the apartment until morning, when I would motor over to the indoor target range and become a sharpshooter.
My computer beckoned, and I spent some time downloading the application to transfer Bert’s liquor license into my name. After that, I switched on the TV. When in doubt, do something constructive.
The early news was on, and I was noticeably absent.
It was all good.
I’d just switched to a rerun of Judge Judy, and was already half dozing, when a really weird thing happened.
I mean really weird.
Judge Judy did a fade-out. I yawned, expecting a commercial, and stretched out on the couch with a contented little sigh.
In the next moment I was sitting bolt upright, staring aghast at my rent-to-own TV.
On the screen I saw Gillian, in living color, dressed for the recital rehearsal, still wearing both dance slippers. There was no sound.
Gillian smiled up at someone off camera, nodded and extended her hand.
I shot to my feet, electrified. I knew I was seeing the child just before she was murdered—her death might have been minutes away. An instinct compelled me to examine the back of the TV for an extra wire, check the DVD player for a disc, but an even stronger one kept me riveted to the screen, even though I was terrified of what I might see.
Had the killer had an accomplice?
What kind of sicko would take pictures...
Bile scalded the back of my throat.
Gillian was walking beside someone, along a familiar sidewalk, one hand upraised, no doubt clasped in the killer’s, signing cheerfully with the other. I stared hard, but I couldn’t see any detail of the other person—not an arm or a leg or even a hand.
There was a clue here, I knew that subliminally, but I was so riveted, so horrified, that I couldn’t catch hold of it. I wanted to turn away before I saw something I would never get out of my mind, but doing that would have amounted to betraying Gillian.
Tears stung my eyes.
My stomach roiled.
I watched, mute, as Gillian walked between two buildings, then over dry ground littered with old beer bottles and rusted things, smiling, curious.
Trusting.
Then the screen suddenly went blank again, and Judge Judy was back, with her lace-collared judicial robe and her attitude. I stood there, blinking, paralyzed.
What the hell had just happened?
Who had held the video camera?
A couple of minutes must have passed before I could move. I went to the TV, looked for a wire at the back. Nothing. Same with the DVD player—there was an old copy of Smokey and the Bandit in the disc holder.
I straightened, shivering.
Looked around. Somebody had piped the clip in, somehow, from somewhere. They’d wanted me to see it.
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