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 his 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 perman
ent 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 Walmart 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.
I nodded, reaching for the bags. “Can you tell me where the Severn farm is?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Sally’s eyes widened. “It’s out on Route 2, a mile or so past the cemetery,” she said. “Nobody lives there now.”
I was still light-headed, and I’d broken out in a cold sweat during my out-of-body experience. Normally I’m a pretty quick thinker, but I couldn’t come up with a single viable excuse for wanting to visit an empty farmhouse.
“Oh,” I said, hoping I looked smarter than I sounded—or felt.
Sally shuddered, as though a veil of cobwebs had just dropped from the ceiling and settled over her. “Somebody ought to burn that place to the ground,” she said. “Nothing left but rats and bad memories. Kids go out there to drink beer and smoke dope. It’s a public menace, that house, practically falling in on itself. Ask me, it would be a good thing if it did.”
There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I was a little off my game. I gripped the counter edge with one hand and leaned against it a little.
“Are you all right?” Sally asked.
“Fine,” I lied. “What happened to Mr. and Mrs. Severn...and their daughter—what was her name?”
“Fred died. Alice moved away after that—married a forest ranger or something. Rick’s been in and out of jail since that accident of his.” Sally narrowed her eyes and peered at me. “What’s your connection to the Severns, anyhow? You’re not a reporter, are you? Or somebody from one of those tabloid TV shows?”
“I knew—Molly. Their older daughter.”
“Well, if you have any idea where she is,” Sally said, “you’d better tell the cops. She’s wanted for attempted murder.”
“I haven’t seen her in a while,” I replied.
Sally looked downright suspicious now. “She ruined a lot of people’s lives, that Molly Stillwell. Fred senior’s, certainly. She poisoned that poor man. Alice all but dried up and blew away, trying to take care of him. And as for Rick and Tessa—”
I grabbed hold of the name. “Tessa. What happened to her?”
“In and out of drug rehab. Married and divorced a couple of times. Last I heard, she was in a mental hospital in Missoula. Slashed her wrists with a broken bottle and almost bled to death. The police found her in an alley.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling numb now, as well as dizzy.
I left, carrying the bags to the car.
Dave was glad to see me, but then, Dave was always glad to see me, which is definitely not the case with everybody.
I stood a moment next to the driver’s door, breathing deeply.
Once I was inside the car, I snatched a pair of pink panties from the stash, jerked off the price tag and, after checking in all directions to make sure I wouldn’t be observed, wriggled into them.
“There,” I told Dave. “That’s better.”
Tucker was due to hit town anytime now, I reminded myself. The panties would be sliding back down around my ankles as soon as we were alone, and as badly as I’d wanted to put them on, I probably wouldn’t protest. In the meantime, though, it was good not to feel naked.
Dave and I headed for the local pancake house, which had outside seating—picnic tables under a dented metal awning. Together we consumed the three-egg special with a short stack and crisp bacon on the side, although Dave’s appetite was a little more delicate than mine, since he’d had kibble back at the motel.
We piled back into the Volvo and drove up and down every street in Shiloh. It didn’t take long, since there weren’t all that many, but I got a good sense of the place.
Next I found Route 2 and followed it for miles, but if the Severn farmhouse was there, I didn’t see it. It could have been at the end of any number of dirt roads, with rusted rural mailboxes teetering at their weedy bases. Sally had mentioned a cemetery, but I couldn’t find that, either.
I didn’t think I’d go down in history as one of the great detectives.
Finally I turned around and headed back toward Shiloh, intending to ask directions—of anybody but Sally Swenson—to the Severn place.
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