Tried & True (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 5)

by Jerusha Jones

  I nodded vigorously. Because I’d already wrapped up all my meetings with criminals, thanks in large part to Clarice’s fabulous organizational skills and Josh’s evasive driving techniques. In spite of the close calls, pieces were dropping into place—jerkily and awkwardly, but so far, successfully.

  oOo

  Judge Trane’s guidelines gave me a bit of a reprieve. The FBI reunited Josh and me with our scant luggage. They’d conveniently packed our belongings for us and checked us out of the fleabag motel. Not that Josh had ever officially checked us in since our payment had been a few twenties under the counter, but the FBI had returned the room keys on our behalf. They dropped us off at one of the safer and cleaner convention hotels downtown.

  Josh had some loose ends to tie up, so he went off on his own for the afternoon. I’m sure he quietly slipped away from whatever FBI tail might have been put on him. Arranging for the continued safe storage of the recordings he’d made the day before was top on his list. He said his buddy would eventually pick up the minivan we’d abandoned, if it was still where we’d left it.

  I cleaned up and took a taxi to Century Hills Memory Care Center, entering by the front door this time and giving my FBI tail an easy job of it. I hadn’t known, the day before, that I would get this gift of an extended visit with my dad. It was as though a wealth of riches had just been dropped in my lap, and I was almost giddy with anticipation.

  Arleta wasn’t on duty, but the charge nurse signed me in and introduced me to the man who would be my personal escort for the duration of my visit—Special Agent Antonio Hackett—while his colleague sat in a boringly unmarked sedan in the parking lot, waiting for me to exit.

  Antonio wasn’t big on smiling, or talking. I had no doubt he’d been informed of my presence in the city this morning and had been forewarned that I was heading his way. But I could still see why Arleta enjoyed his company. It’s just that I was on the receiving end of his very professional demeanor, so I wasn’t going to get a glimpse of his romantic, flirty side that Arleta had gushed about.

  I spent several hours shadowing my dad. We watched a few minutes of a melodramatic soap opera on television, ambled through the halls to the game room and sat at the chess board for another few minutes, wandered more halls nodding to other residents and exchanging brief random comments with them. He intentionally avoided the circle of residents who were disjointedly singing “Fly Me to the Moon” under the direction of a guitar-strumming staff member. Then Dad went through the circuit again. And again. Always clockwise.

  He was so clearly restless and confused, my heart ached for him. I tried to hold his hand, but he shook me off. I tried to bring up things we’d done together in the past, shared memories, but he just stared at me blankly as though wondering why I was flapping my jaws.

  My dad, the man I knew and loved dearly, had shrunk so far inside his own body that I couldn’t reach him. His spirit, his personality, his ready laugh—barred behind an impenetrable shell of confusion. The ties that bind us are so fragile, and I wanted every single one of them back.

  I wondered if my presence was the very thing that was disturbing him, making him uneasy, but the charge nurse murmured encouragement. “It’s all right, honey. Keep trying.”

  Eventually, even Antonio deigned to comment. “Don’t worry, Ms. Ingram,” he whispered. “This is your father’s normal behavior. He keeps himself busy, almost like he’s on patrol.”

  I smiled at his statement. Of course my dad would try to be useful, even when he no longer understood what usefulness was. And I realized that this taciturn special agent knew my dad in his current condition better than I did. I wanted to hug Antonio for this measure of grace—he had no idea just how valuable—he’d given me, but thought that would go over like a ton of bricks. I’d ask Arleta to do it for me—later.

  Instead I leaned in kissed my dad on the cheek. “I have to go,” I whispered.

  “Nora?” he croaked.

  “Yes, Daddy.” I just about lost it, right there. “It’s me.” I peered deeply into his faded eyes, trying so hard to see what might glimmer behind them.

  “Good girl.” Dad patted my arm. “Good girl.” Then he turned and shuffled toward the dining room.

  Antonio called a taxi for me and saw me out. He even flicked a wave in acknowledgment to the FBI driver waiting in the parking lot, as though he was handing off responsibility for me like a baton in a relay race.

  I slouched low in the taxi’s backseat, wanting the illusion of privacy, and pulled out my one and only phone. That was probably why I’d felt like I was traveling light—I’d left all my other phones in Clarice’s care.

  She answered on the first ring. “Well?”

  The taxi driver cranked up the volume on his stereo, releasing a barrage of mind-numbing rap music which he punctuated with chin juts while gunning through the quiet neighborhood.

  “Good,” I replied, bracing one hand against the door to keep from sliding off the seat. “Pretty good.”

  “What is that racket?” she hollered.

  The driver was slapping his hands on the steering wheel, his entire body thumping in rhythm with the lyric bursts coming through the speakers. I reached through the opening in the safety partition and tapped him on the shoulder, aware that all my actions were being recorded by the camera blinking at me from above the rearview mirror.

  No response.

  “Hey,” I yelled, and earned a quick glance in the mirror. I made a pinching motion with my thumb and forefinger, and he dialed down the volume a notch.

  I cinched the seatbelt as tight as it would go and returned the phone to my ear. “Taxi,” I wheezed. “Sorry.”

  “Everything on schedule?” Clarice asked.

  “As well as can be expected.” I told her, in short, rushed sentences, about the morning’s surprise meeting with Judge Trane and the fact that everything was in a holding pattern awaiting her decision.

  “She’ll be a good one to have in your corner,” Clarice barked. “I’ll do some checking on her past judgments. Get you some more ammunition if she comes back with questions.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered. My head was starting to throb in time with the reverberating music—if you could even call it music. More like some angry dude shouting epithets. The whole car was bouncing.

  “Call Walt,” Clarice hollered. “He’s driving me crazy, calls every couple hours wanting to know how you are.”

  “Tell Emmie I love her,” I shouted. But my phone’s screen was dark. I didn’t know if Clarice had hung up on me or if I’d accidentally bumped the wrong button. Or if the rap music was creating so much hash that the signal had spontaneously disconnected, probably as a protective measure.

  I peered through the windows, fore and aft. We were stuck on the freeway, every lane jammed to a standstill. Welcome to San Francisco. The driver had been making excellent time—until now.

  I undid my seatbelt, pitched forward and stretched my arm through the opening. I could barely brush the radio controls with my fingers, but not enough to turn the volume knob. So I screamed in the driver’s ear, “Do you want me to get out and walk?” Wouldn’t my FBI tail have a field day with that one? Try following a woman wandering on foot between lanes of backed up traffic on I-280.

  The driver gave me a surly glare but did reach over and click off the radio. Wasn’t blaring music at painful decibel levels a recognized torture mechanism? This guy was so not getting a tip.

  “Thank you,” I murmured while trying to gracefully retract my upper half into the passenger portion of the vehicle. “I’m going to be making some phone calls,” I said in an attempt at conciliation, “but I will try to keep my personal business to myself if you will. Don’t you have earbuds or something?”

  I only got a grunt in response. But the driver in the car next to us gave me a thumbs up—apparently he’d witnessed the whole confrontation—and I smiled back, shaking my head. How I longed for the peace and quiet and long stretches of empty, tree-lined road
in May County.

  So I slid the divider in the safety partition closed and called Walt. He also answered immediately.

  “Nora.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement, as though he wanted confirmation that I was alive and breathing on the other end of the line. His voice felt like home, and I instantly relaxed.

  “Hey,” I said quietly.

  “How can I help?”

  “I’m waiting. There’s nothing to do at the moment. You already do so much for me.”

  “I hate this inactivity. It’s an appalling idea, but I’d actually prefer hacking our way out of a storeroom again than this waiting around, hoping to hear from you.” His breathing was even, steady—and so very comforting.

  I wanted to ask him to chuckle, since I love to hear that sound, but it didn’t seem like an appropriate request at the moment. “Tell me about the boys. Are the donkeys settling in okay?” I asked instead.

  And Walt did chuckle. “Those things are eating machines. Well, all the males on the property are, but it’s possible we’ll end up spending more on donkey chow than on food for the boys. You sure they aren’t going to grow anymore?”

  “I was promised they’re miniature and supposed to stay that way,” I replied.

  “Latrelle asked if we can get a mare and breed mules.” There was a slight sense of chagrin in Walt’s tone. Latrelle was ten years old and one of the most recent arrivals at the boys’ camp. He was either more worldly-wise than the other young boys or he’d been doing some self-directed biology research.

  I grimaced and was glad that I hadn’t been present for that awkward conversation. It sure hadn’t taken the boys long to start thinking about procreation. “And in your great wisdom, you answered that question how?”

  “I announced that we would be having a movie night with pizza and popcorn.”

  A wealth of distractions. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Did it work?”

  “For now.”

  I kept Walt talking, nudging him when he fell silent. He’s not the talkative sort, but his soothing presence and the everydayness of the things he had to relate were balm to my soul. I hadn’t realized how homesick I was until I heard the deep timbre of his voice, the way he calmly and patiently—and humbly, although he didn’t realize it—dealt with the care of twenty-two formerly-abandoned boys.

  When Walt and I finally hung up, traffic had started moving again. I had one more call to make—the one I’d been subconsciously procrastinating on because I expected it to involve bad news. Which was in no way fair, since I wasn’t the one who was suffering.

  “Hi, darling,” Loretta answered. “How are you?”

  I should have been the one to ask that question. For being such a fragile woman, my mother-in-law has Amazonian strength. “Just dandy,” I said. “Really. How are you and Tarq?”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. “I made the call to the hospice service. It’s time. The nurse will come out Monday and get us set up on the program.”

  I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the side window. “Does he know you called?”

  “No. He’s hardly been awake today, but he’s moaning in his sleep, restless. Nora—” Loretta choked back a sob. “I haven’t done this before.”

  “None of us have,” I whimpered through tears. “I’m stuck here until the judge makes a decision. How long—?” I couldn’t finish. How could she possibly estimate the expiration date on Tarq’s life? Every moment was precious.

  Loretta sniffed mightily and forced a hint of cheerfulness into her voice. “The hospice nurse will be a big help. We’ll get him started on a morphine drip. He’s refused a feeding tube—in his health care directive—you know…” Her words dwindled into quiet sobbing.

  I groaned. I needed to be there. I glanced up to find the driver staring at me in the rearview mirror. No doubt he was questioning the prudence of picking up such an emotionally unstable fare. I wiped my wet cheeks with the back of my free hand.

  “Ask Etherea,” I whispered to Loretta, “if you need help over the weekend.” The general store proprietress was a capable, unflappable woman, and she’d kept her cool while riding with me on a frantic race to the hospital with a bleeding, gunshot man in my pickup bed. “And Gus,” I added. “You’re surrounded by friends.”

  I could barely hear her muffled response. “I know that, silly. You just get this Judge What’s-her-name to do the right thing.” Ever the scrapper, my mother-in-law.

  The taxi wheeled into the semicircular drive at the hotel’s entrance and squeaked to a stop. I slid the partition open, tossed more than enough cash onto the front seat, and darted out of the vehicle and through the revolving glass door to the lobby, exchanging one form of imprisonment for the next.

  CHAPTER 15

  Josh offered me some semblance of freedom in the form of an excursion. He knocked on my door and handed me a snug leather jacket that matched the one he was wearing.

  “What have you been up to?”

  He grinned down at me. “Come see.”

  He led me to the stairwell. We jogged down several flights, ducked into the quiet, carpeted hall of a guest floor and around the corner to a service room that held the big laundry and cleaning carts the housekeeping staff used. From there, we plummeted to the basement in a service elevator.

  I poked Josh in the ribs. “Do you have blueprints for this place? I sure wouldn’t have wanted to play hide and seek with you as a kid.”

  “That’s not the half of it.” Josh emitted a gleeful chuckle and nodded toward a shiny Kawasaki motorcycle parked next to a row of pylon barriers protecting the employee entrance from either bad drivers or runaway garbage trucks. “The pillion seat’s not the most comfy thing in the world, but we’ll be fast and nimble.”

  “From your impound buddy?” I grumbled. The seat he’d pointed out looked very much like the narrow top rail of a fence. The sort of thing once doesn’t straddle without bruises to show for it later—bruises in really awkward locations. Goody.

  “Nope. Different buddy. And he’ll be mad if I scratch it, so be careful.”

  “I’m glad we’re in your old stomping grounds,” I admitted. “You have a network like—” Except I’d run out of ideas of what to compare Josh’s resourcefulness to, but I splayed my fingers to show him all those useful social connections. He was doing exactly what I’d encouraged Loretta to do—tap into the neighborhood supply chain, whether it be for physical or emotional support.

  He gave me a helmet which had a tinted face shield. Anonymity too. He’d thought of everything.

  Josh fired up the bike and helped me climb on behind him. I gave my zippered jacket pocket one last pat to make sure my phone was still safely tucked inside. The volume was set to the loudest level plus vibrate so I wouldn’t miss the judge should she call.

  Then we took off with a lurch, and I needed my hands for hanging on. Thanks to the rock-hard rear seat, I was riding a little higher than Josh. He was slanted forward to control the bike in much the same way a jockey perches on a racing saddle. So I had an amazing view. San Francisco can be very pretty at night.

  As far as I could tell, we’d evaded our set of FBI tails, but we were headed to a location where an entire FBI team was camped out. Turbo-Tidy Clean’s two-timing corporate sleazebag lawyer, Freddy Blandings, lived in an elite neighborhood on the side of a steep hill. It was a development of oversized houses on minuscule lots with narrow strips of haiku lawns marking each little fiefdom.

  I’d expected Blandings to have a gate—any highfalutin lawyer worth his salt who doesn’t live in downtown San Francisco will have a gate stretched across his driveway. It’s a status thing. And I had warned Ebersole and Butch as much.

  What I hadn’t expected was that Blandings might be having a party. And a fancy one at that, complete with valet parking. Which meant the gates at both ends of the semicircular drive were wide open.

  Josh slowly wove the motorcycle around and through the lineup of Mercedes, Lexuses, BMWs, and one
Maserati waiting to enter Blandings’ square patch of property and disgorge their passengers. I had no idea where along the crowded street the valets-for-hire were squirreling away the luxury vehicles, and was very glad it was not my problem to solve. I also didn’t see a good place for Blandings’ FBI surveillance team to hide, unless they’d signed a short-term lease on an empty house nearby. I hoped we were slipping as easily under their noses as we were through the backed-up cars.

  After we cleared the traffic, Josh wound higher up the hill along the curving switchbacks until he found an empty lot with a “For Sale” sign planted at the curb. At the far edge of the property, from under a scraggly pine tree, we had a good bird’s-eye view of the hustle and bustle at the Blandings homestead. I should have packed buttered popcorn and Junior Mints.

  “I didn’t bring binoculars,” Josh muttered.

  In the faint light rising from the neighborhood below us, I could see the scowl on his face. “One tiny thing you couldn’t predict.” I squeezed his arm. “It’s okay. I can squint.”

  From the shimmering bright colors on the women who sashayed up the front steps to Blandings’ house escorted by dark-clad men, it was safe to assume the bash was formal. Evening gowns and black tie. I started getting nervous jitters in my stomach.

  I’d wanted the Mongrels to send a message for me—something Freddy Blandings couldn’t possibly misinterpret. But I hadn’t wanted to humiliate him publicly or embarrass him in front of his peers. I needed his unknowing cooperation. I definitely did not want him to bolt or completely shut down in fear.