Boomer, his right-hand man, answered the phone. I asked to speak to Greg. It took a few minutes before Greg came on the line. When he did, it was about the same time Tim Weber decided to make a lane change, moving one lane over to the right. I waited a few seconds before doing the same.
“Greg, I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Where are you?”
Here goes nothing, I thought, then plunged in feet first. “I’m on 15 heading south, following a friend of Steele’s who may have something to do with his disappearance.” I left out the part about contract killers.
“Tell me where you are exactly, Odelia.” His tone was even but stern.
“I’m on 15 south, almost to Lake Elsinore. I’m following an attorney named Tim Weber who is in a black Mercedes SUV.”
“I’m on my way.”
“No, Greg, it’s not necessary. Besides, it’s rush hour, and I have no idea where my destination is. I’m just playing follow the leader, and Sally’s a few miles behind me.” I terminated the call.
The cell phone immediately vibrated. It was Greg. I ignored it. If I was heading into a black pit of danger, I wasn’t dragging my beloved into it with me. It was bad enough that Sally was on her way.
Tim changed lanes again, and again I followed. There was only one car between us until another car changed lanes, making me two cars behind him. Then, out of nowhere, came a green motorcycle, just like the one I’d seen that day we’d visited Cindy. The motorcycle came up fast on my side and weaved in and out of traffic until it was ahead of Tim. Once there, the driver turned on his turn signal and made a right-hand turn arm gesture. Tim followed the motorcycle onto the exit ramp, and I turned on my blinker to do the same. One of the cars in front of me turned with us. The ramp was for Railroad Canyon Road. At the bottom of the ramp, all of us turned left. Railroad Canyon Road was small, and the intersection consisted only of freeway ramps and a traffic signal.
I texted the info to Sally.
I was thankful for the car in front of me. I was also thankful Sally and I had taken her vehicle the day we went to see Cindy, just in case the motorcycle up ahead was the same one we saw that day. It looked to me like the rider on the bike was escorting Tim somewhere. With the area so sparsely populated, they would notice me for sure, so I tried to stay back as much as possible.
We followed the winding road past a couple of small housing developments until the area seemed almost deserted. The land on either side of the road was green and dense with trees and shrubs. Every now and then a driveway would open up between trees on one side or the other, and I could glimpse a house or other building set back from the road. Occasionally, a vehicle passed coming from the other direction. It occurred to me that if things got ugly, I could be killed and buried here quite easily. I quickly copied Greg with my last message to Sally just in case.
We had only gone a couple of miles when the motorcycle suddenly turned right into a gravel drive with a high, unkempt hedge on either side. Tim followed it. The car between us kept going and so did I, taking note of landmarks so I could find the driveway again. I looked for a place to turn around and found a small intersection about a quarter of a mile down the road. After waiting for an oncoming car to pass, I made a U-turn, but instead of heading back, I pulled the car over into a small turnout and thought about my next move.
Next move—who was I kidding? I didn’t have a next move. I couldn’t very well drive my car up that driveway like I was delivering a neighborhood Welcome Wagon basket. I had no idea what was on the other side of those hedges. I didn’t even know if Steele was there or not. I texted Sally a cryptic message, hoping she understood from the gobbledygook that her destination was about two miles down the road, on the right, behind hedges.
Just as I finished my message to Sally, my phone vibrated. It was Greg again. This time I answered.
“Hi, I’m in a pickle.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” I could hear him, but there was a lot of static.
“I would prefer no shit, sweetheart.”
“Where are you?” he asked again.
I gave him directions, but the static was louder. He responded, but I could hardly hear him. A second later, the call dropped. The reception must be bad out here. I tried calling him back, but the call kept failing. Finally, I sent him a quick text, hoping that might go through better than an actual call. Call Dev was all it said. Almost immediately, my phone vibrated again. This time it was Dev. I looked at my phone’s display. According to it, my message to Greg about calling Dev hadn’t even gone through yet. The man must have ESP.
“Dev, that you?” The connection was a bit better but still not good.
“Stay put,” he ordered.
“But—” was all I said before the call failed.
Staying put sounded like a grand idea—best I’d had all day, even if it wasn’t my actual idea. But where could I stay put? I couldn’t remain out in the open just a few hundred yards from where Tim turned in, and I wasn’t about to leave without knowing if Steele was there. Maybe I could find a place to park that wasn’t so noticeable. I put the car in gear and drove back the way I had come.
Just past the hidden drive, I spied a run-down shack set back a few yards from the road. It wasn’t much more than a large lean-to, really—one of those small, wooden structures farmers set up to sell their fresh-picked vegetables to passing motorists. This one looked like it hadn’t been used in years. The wood was weathered to various shades of gray, and the roof was half caved-in, with the rest hanging precariously. The ground in front was populated with scrub grass, weeds, and rough gravel.
No one was coming from the other direction. I checked to see if anyone was behind me, but there was not another car in sight. I pulled in and nosed my car around to the back, hoping there was enough clearance to hide it there. There was, but just barely. I turned off the engine and sat there, wondering how long it would take for the cavalry to show up.
I tried calling Sally, but the call kept failing. I tried calling both Greg and Dev, but again the calls failed. The sun was tucking itself in for the night, and soon it would be dark. From what I could see, Railroad Canyon Road didn’t have a streetlight to its name.
After a short potty break between the shack and my car, I decided that staying put was not my strong suit, rationalizing that a lot could happen while I was sitting, twiddling my thumbs in a dark car. If this is where Let Mother Do It had Steele stashed, then Tim’s arrival would sound the alarm, especially after our chat back in his office.
Sorry, Dev, I thought, staying put is not an option.
After giving my nose a good blow, I tucked the cell phone into my pants pocket, locked my tote bag in the trunk, and took a swig of water from the bottle I keep in the car. As a last act, I closed my eyes and said a short prayer that there wouldn’t be any guard dogs across the way.
Poking my head out from behind the lean-to, I saw a pickup truck coming from the direction of the freeway. I pulled my head back and waited for it to pass before venturing out of my hiding spot and dashing across the road. Once on the other side, I disappeared into the protection of the high hedges where Tim and the green motorcycle had turned.
I was wearing the same outfit I’d worn to visit Cindy and was thankful I hadn’t worn a skirt and heels. Still, as I made my way through the brush, my nubby hand-knit sweater wasn’t doing so hot. I kept getting caught on branches like a human Velcro strip and had to keep stopping to pull myself free as I tiptoed from tree to shrub to bush to get closer to the house at the end of the long driveway.
There didn’t appear to be any dogs on the premises, but I spotted Tim’s SUV parked near the front of the house. Toward the back were two other vehicles—a white minivan and a dark green SUV. Next to them was the green motorcycle. The house itself was an old two-story home in need of new paint and some TLC. At the end of the driveway stood a large unattached garage and two smaller buildings—tool or gardening sheds maybe. In spite of sitting back from the road, all the d
rapes appeared closed. Lights were on in several rooms.
As I crept closer to the house, I kept my ears tuned for sounds of conversation and activity, but I heard nothing. Cooking smells drifted to me on the evening breeze. It was a hearty, beefy aroma like a stew or pot roast. It smelled yummy and made my mouth water. Once at the house, I pressed my body against its side and inched my way quietly toward the back where there was brighter light. I stopped under a window that was partially open. From here, the cooking smells were stronger and I could hear water running, making me think I might be under a kitchen window situated over a sink. I could hear voices, too, but not clearly over the splashing of the water. Soon the water stopped, and I strained to make out the conversation.
I heard Tim Weber’s voice above the others—more high pitched than normal, like he was tense and anxious. He was arguing—almost pleading—trying to win a case before a jury not made up of his peers. The other voices weren’t as clear or maybe not as stressed. After listening for another couple of minutes, I determined that the other voices were women, maybe two or three of them. One of the women seemed to be taking the lead. Her voice was a bit deeper than the others, and it didn’t take me long to figure out that it might belong to the older woman I spoke to on the phone. It was very likely that this was Mother herself.
I needed to get closer to hear what they were saying, and I needed to find out where they had stashed Steele. If Steele was dead, I didn’t think Tim Weber would be here in such an agitated state.
I edged closer to the end of the house, where I noticed another window open to the brisk evening air. Looking out past the house, there was just enough light for me to see that beyond the house the property dropped, not abruptly but down a small, steep hill. I was closer now to the garage and the two outbuildings and wondered if Steele was locked up in one of them. I looked all three over for traces of light from under a door crack but saw nothing. I went back to listening and tried to keep my knees from knocking.
The older woman was definitely in charge. In a comforting tone, she was trying to calm Tim down, telling him not to worry, that she would take care of everything.
“Don’t you get it, old woman?” Tim said in a tone of angry frustration. “I don’t want you to take care of anything. I want you to let him go.”
Let him go? I stifled a sigh of relief. Steele must still be alive.
“Now, now, where are your manners? You don’t come into my place of business shooting off your mouth and making demands.” The woman’s tone was still soothing even as she chastised him. “Do I come down to that fancy office of yours and tell you how to be a lawyer?”
“You’ve been paid for a full thirty days,” Tim said. “You can keep the money, just let him go now. You can still make it look like he went on a bender or got in an accident and ended up with amnesia—whatever, just don’t kill him. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Damn right we’re keeping the money,” I heard another female voice say. The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it straight off.
“Calm down now,” Mother chimed in. “The man is just upset because things got out of his control, and he doesn’t like losing control. He’s not used to it.”
“Well, it’s his fault we’re in this mess,” the other woman said. “And yours.”
“My fault?” For the first time, I noticed anger in Mother’s voice. “If you’ll recall, young lady, it wasn’t my idea to do this job. Kidnapping isn’t what we do. We kill and we kill clean, no loose ends. This job has as many loose ends as a fringed shawl.” There was another pause, and I heard the sound of wood scraping on wood, followed by someone walking.
“I wasn’t the one swayed by this man’s money and promise of an easy job,” I heard Mother say from a different direction. “No, it was the rest of you. I told you not to diversify. We had a good thing going. Built up a solid business with more than enough money coming in for all of us. It’ll all be over if we don’t do some mighty fast damage control.”
“It was an easy job,” Tim said. “All you had to do was grab Mike and hold him for four weeks, then release him without his knowing what happened and who did it. How did it get so screwed up?”
“You be still, Mr. Lawyer. Holding people against their will isn’t easy, no matter how much money you throw at the problem.” I could picture Mother scolding Tim Weber. “We only did it because a friend of yours is a good client and referred you. Now I’m regretting that decision every day.”
There was more walking and more scraping on wood; must be a chair moving across the floor. I wanted to stretch up on my tiptoes and see if I could peek over the window ledge, but I didn’t dare.
When Mother spoke again, it was from the other direction. “We should never have taken this job, especially on top of the other one. Now we’re cleaning up our own mess instead of cleaning up other people’s problems.”
“The other job has nothing to do with me or Karen,” I heard Tim say.
“Like hell it doesn’t,” Mother said. “If we hadn’t snagged your annoying friend, the other job would have been done clean and simple, and we would have been back to normal, with a lot of quick cash and time to spend on our other clients.” Mother made some unintelligible sounds of disgust. “We only took your job because your friend asked us to help out. He was so disappointed when someone else beat him to the punch on the Oliver hit, I couldn’t bear to say no. Last time I’ll have a soft heart, I’ll tell you that.”
“Bledsoe is not my friend,” Tim said, almost spitting out the words. “I’ve never even met the guy.”
Bledsoe! Tom Bledsoe had ordered a hit on Donny? Someone else had beat him to the punch? And it was Tommy who had referred Tim to Mother for the kidnapping? But who ordered the misfired hit on Cindy? Was Johnette still my top suspect in the Oliver matter? My mind was spinning faster than a Tilt-A-Whirl.
“Don’t forget, Mother,” the young woman said. “We were also promised a lot more work in the future. That’s really why you agreed to go along with us on this.”
There followed a long patch of silence.
Who was ordering the future work? Tom Bledsoe? Was he the good client Mother referred to? Had he ordered more killings than just possibly his wife’s? He’d told me on the phone that he would consider a hit on Donny to be money well spent. What other “investments” did he plan on making—or had he made—and how did Karen figure into the mix? Question marks were floating around in my head like a moveable wallpaper pattern.
Finally Mother spoke. “Yes, that’s true. We were promised a lot more work in return for the favor—enough work to keep us in business a long time.”
There was another pause. I was going nuts under the window. I wanted Mother and the others to just spit it out, to tell me everything and hurry up about it.
“But now I’m thinking this Steele guy has to go. Too much heat coming down on everyone because of him. Too many people interested in finding him, like that damn Olivia or Ophelia or something.”
“Odelia,” the other woman corrected. “Her name is Odelia Grey.”
“Whatever her name is, she isn’t going to give up until she finds him. She already knows that Let Mother Do It is linked somehow to this guy, and someone in the shadows has been asking questions about us. We hear she’s connected on both sides of the law.”
At first surprised that she knew about Willie’s inquiries, I quickly realized that if he had his informants in the criminal world, Mother would, too. It would be part of the day-to-day survival.
“And she’s smart,” the younger woman added. “Very smart and determined.”
Hiding under the window, I didn’t know whether to feel complimented or not, but I certainly felt frightened right down to my toenails, especially since the younger woman spoke like she knew me.
“Why don’t we simply take her out?” another female voice asked. She had a slight accent—East Coast maybe. “It’d be easy enough. Just like the Poppin woman.”
“You mean the
Poppin woman’s botched job.” It was the young woman again, her voice laced with accusation.
“Hey, she turned at the last minute, and I didn’t get a chance to pop her again.”
“The Poppin woman?” It was Tim. “You were behind the shooting of that elderly woman last night?”
Mother laughed. “That elderly woman was a client, just like you, Mr. Weber. And just like you, she was having a bad case of buyer’s remorse. Killing her was part of that damage control I was talking about—or should I say trying to kill her.”
The third woman spoke up, anger in her voice. “I told you I’d take care of it. Trust me, the old gal won’t ever come out of that coma.”
Oh my gawd! Carolyn Poppin was the money behind the hit on Donny. Cindy Oliver’s own sweet, kind mother. Suddenly I felt dizzy and chilled. Carolyn Poppin should have been baking brownies for her granddaughters, not looking for contract killers, no matter how mean and ugly her son-in-law was.
Then another horrible thought hit me, and if it hadn’t hit Tim by now, it should have. Mother was doing damage control, taking care of clients with buyer’s remorse. She said it herself. Something told me that Tim Weber’s life expectancy now could be measured in minutes, not years, months, or even days.
“I say we kill both lawyers and this Odelia woman.” It was the screw-up killer. “That should clean up this mess once and for all.”
I’m pretty sure from my past studies of Shakespeare that when the Bard penned the words kill all the lawyers, he didn’t include paralegals.
But then, it could have been in a footnote.
While I tried my best not to retch from nerves, Tim Weber got his exercise doing a lot of backpedaling.
“There’s no need to take that attitude,” I heard him say. “I came down here to try to resolve these issues.”
“Which we wouldn’t have if you hadn’t asked us to kidnap your friend,” Mother reminded him. “If we had been hired to kill him outright, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. You’d be a satisfied customer and we wouldn’t be trying to cover our tracks.”
Thugs and Kisses Page 23