For a second, he fantasized about packing in Moore and the cats. Start driving. Go wherever they wanted to go, stop when they felt like it. Eat at roadside diners, wear polyester and take lots of snapshots for the folks back home. Then he laughed, scratched at a stiff hair on his cheek. Moore wouldn’t take time for a long weekend at the Jersey shore. She was driven. Just like he used to be.
Burnout, a common affliction among cops, had been lurking just around the corner ever since his step-brother’s death. David Semple—product of his mother and her second husband—had been eight years younger. He was a good-looking, glib weasel who demanded instant gratification any way he could get it. A brat he’d given up on when the kid was still in his teens. When David got caught by the Feds with his hand in the SEC’s cookie jar, he opted for a quick bullet to the brain rather than a long jail sentence.
Mick had spent the last year trying to work through the guilt of not having been a better brother; burnout had been his constant companion. He pictured it looking like the grim reaper dressed in jailin attire, boom box pressed against one ear, bopping along the sidewalk just ahead, giving him the come-closer finger wave. The invitation must be getting through. Here he was trespassing on a scene, which might be related to a crime, without alerting his fellow law-enforcement officers. Not a cooperative, career-enhancing move.
He started searching in the bedroom. Usual stuff: alarm clock by the bed, bottle of pills for allergies, wineglass with a splash of champagne going flat. The bedcovers were thrown back on the side nearest the door. One cordovan-colored loafer stuck out from under the spread. The Johnston & Murphy in his hand had a substantial bottom. He wondered what shoes Madison had been wearing at the time of the attack and how thick the soles had been. He squatted down to locate the mate. He spied it near the head, was reaching for it when a voice hissed in his ear, “Go home.”
He jerked to attention, whipped around.
He was alone in the motor home.
Again he heard the voice. “You’re not needed here. The others will take care of the car. I’ll call you tomorrow, once we’ve had a chance to discuss the situation.”
Mick recognized the husky voice of Elise Carlson, but where the hell was it coming from? He dropped to his hands and knees and rummaged under the discarded bedspread. Between the bed and the nightstand he spotted a white plastic speaker box. As he stretched along the floor, Moore’s voice emanated from it. “Please, let me help prep the car.”
Mick used a dirty sock to slide the box closer. It took him a minute to realize what he was holding. It was one half of a remote baby-monitoring system, the type nervous parents bought at Sears to alert them the second their precious infant woke up. Peyton was using the setup to keep an ear on the paddock from his motor home. He’d cranked up the volume loud enough to disrupt his dreams if someone started pounding on sheet metal. Old PM003 was clever as well as paranoid.
Moore, on the other hand, didn’t sound clever. Even through the tinny speaker, her voice was thick with tears of anger or rejection. Carlson didn’t want her around. After all she’d gone through, the dismissal hurt.
He left the speaker on the floor and stood. If Moore was being sent home in disgrace, he should be a gentleman and escort her, which meant getting back to the pits. He also wanted to locate the other half of the monitoring system. It had to be near the car. Why hadn’t the cops found it? Maybe they had and were keeping it to themselves.
He retraced his steps through the motor home, using his shirt sleeve to wipe prints on anything he might have touched. From the teak table, he picked up a napkin to protect the door latch, then noticed the smudge of lipstick. He dropped it back on the table.
Poking it as if it were a coiled snake, he flipped through a mental list of lipstick wearers. Moore didn’t during the day, but had put something shimmery on her lips last night. Carlson had worn a dramatic red, which might have worn down to resemble the smudge on the napkin. He hadn’t taken a good look at Evans’s date, not from the neck up. Given the rest of the trappings, her lips were undoubtedly well and loudly rouged. Whatever. He wasn’t so jaded that he would intentionally carry off what might become evidence. He snapped a half sheet of Bounty from the holder over the sink to use on the way out.
He was on the second step, with his fingers on the interior latch, when the door swung open.
Unbalanced, he tumbled down the high step and careened into Wayne Evans. His arm flung wide, slapped the crew chief on the side of his head. Evans tottered backwards, landed hard on his tailbone. He squeezed his eyes shut and began swearing.
Mick hung on to the pull bar, balanced, then jumped down and offered him a hand. Evans scrambled to his feet on his own, stiff-armed him in the chest. Knocked him into the side of the motor home, cracking his skull against the side extension. Evans slammed into him again. “Nothing but trouble. You and that bitch. What the frig are you doing here?”
It might have been smacking the back of his head, or his old friend burnout giving him the shove, but he figured it was Evans’s calling Moore a bitch that made him see red. For the first time in years, he let loose.
The first punch landed in Evans’s gut: beefy but not running to flab. Pain flickered in his knuckles as he swung again. The second shot caught Evans on the left cheekbone and snapped his head back. He stumbled, smacked down hard on his ass. Again. Yelped loud enough to bring the bacon cooker running, which was too bad—he was just warming up. The fry cook screamed, “I’m calling the police.”
Bouncing like a contender in a title match, Mick searched for a way past him. The chef brandished a long fork, poked at his midsection. Mick stopped prancing and shook his sore hand. Reached into his pocket with the other one and extracted his metro badge. He flashed it at the short order cook. “Shoo. Go on. Your bacon’s burning.”
Fork at half-mast, the chef backed away, mumbling about NASCAR having classier fans.
Mick stood over Evans, straddling his legs. “Browning gave me a key. I was searching for evidence that someone was inside last night with your boss. What are you after?”
Evans glared, rolled onto his right hip. Reached for a hand up. His heft threatened to unbalance them both as he struggled to standing. Once upright, he poked at his cheek with his fingertips. “What’d you find?”
“Lipstick on a napkin and half of a sound monitoring device. You know anything about that?”
Evans did and admitted it. Claimed he spotted the receiver once the medics cleared out. Dead center under the Lotus, back near the engine. Not easily seen, but it would pick up conversations or activity around the car. “Peyton’s more paranoid than he has reason to be.”
“You know who’s contributing to his paranoia?”
Evans moved his jaw from side to side. “Nope. Why should I?”
“You have access to the pits, and the tools. I saw you getting cosy with Whitten. Your boss is a pain to work for. Maybe you figure a little bad luck for him will translate into good luck for you.”
“I wouldn’t damage the Lotus. Or the Arrows. Jerk that took the potshot at the team must have stripped those bolts and cut the brake line. Sure as hell wasn’t me.” He was sufficiently indignant to be believable, more concerned about the car than the driver. Drivers were a dime a dozen. The Lotus 49C was one of a kind.
Mick flexed his knuckles. “What about Whitten? Maybe he wouldn’t shed tears over the Lotus, or over Peyton. Would he be likely to up the pressure that way?”
“Who knows what the rich consider sport? I wouldn’t have thought it. Wouldn’t be cricket, or some such shit.”
Twenty-two
Rebecca walked back to the house with Hagan. They were side by side, not quite touching. He was keeping his hands in his pockets on a day when she could use one to hold. So far his conversation hadn’t offered much comfort either. She squeezed her arms around her ribs. “Elise can’t seriously think I had anything to do with what happened to Peyton, can she?”
“Not if she’s rational. Maybe it�
�s not about you, Moore. Maybe she wants to be the queen bee in the hive. She just shelled out big bucks for the privilege.”
“Male drones only?” She looked around for a boulder to kick. Something sizeable that would fight back.
Hagan prodded her to keep moving. “Or maybe the crew isn’t keen about an investigative reporter snooping around. One of them could have demanded that you be sent home. They know about your nosy talent?”
“Naturally.” She punted a pine cone into the gutter.
During her first week at Indy, Ian had been embarrassingly vocal about her investigative past. Over beers, he’d regaled the crew with an embellished version of her going undercover in a nightclub to stop the senseless killing of young dancers only months after she’d battled a deranged maniac who’d murdered a man in her shop.
“So, if one of the crew was sabotaging the team, he might use the assault as an opportunity to get rid of you—an unwanted outsider, a snoop.”
She stopped walking. “But why would one of them torture Peyton?”
“What, he’s too nice a guy?”
“Far from it. He’s whimsical and controlling.”
“Right. Too arrogant to cave in to petty intimidation, which is why the first incidents didn’t cause him to pack his Gucci loafers and leave.” Hagan snapped off a strand of yellowed grass growing beside the road, stuck it in his mouth. “How will he react to being tortured?”
She harvested a blade for herself, wound it around her finger as she started down the road. “He won’t back down. He has a damn-the-torpedoes drive, a recklessness that says he’s out to prove something to someone. But he’s sly. The type who feigns giving in, then circles around to pounce from an unguarded vantage. Or gets someone else to poke at the fallen hive.”
“Manipulative.”
“Wouldn’t you say so? The only reason he hired me was to goad the guys into working harder so they’re not outperformed by a woman.”
Hagan reached out and cupped her face. She thought he was going to kiss her. He tipped her chin up and whispered. “Wrong. He hired you for your PR value. Sexy mechanic. You’re front-page material. A looker, even in coveralls.”
He let go of her to pitch away the soggy stem of grass, but she caught the grin on his face. The first time they’d locked horns, she’d been wearing denim coveralls, steel-toed boots and had grease smeared on her cheek. Maurice, the shop cat, had refereed the match stretched out on the table between them. Obvious Hagan remembered the scene.
She ripped the grass from her finger. “More like a convenient scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.”
“It’s beginning to look that way. You want the low-down on your pals? I got the fingerprint results back from Zimmer.”
Hagan started before she could nod. It was no surprise that Tom had a real last name and a record for minor drug offenses. The sweet smell of marijuana clung to the mats in his hair. Like Hagan, though, she’d expected Chet Davis to have a record. His reserve and monosyllabic conversations reminded her of Frank, who claimed that doing hard-time made a man quiet and wary. Wayne Evans’s record for fighting explained something that had bothered her from day one. He was demanding and argumentative, but an excellent crew chief, good enough to be working for a major series. A police record would explain why he wasn’t.
Evans was the most obvious person to be behind the car incidents. He had unrestricted access to the pits. He had the mechanical knowledge and the tools. He could have filed the wheel bolts, cut the brake line, and added water to the gas.
He was also the only member of the crew to have been away from the pit area when the shot was fired. He’d refused to say where he’d been or what he’d been up to. Presumably, he knew which end of a rifle to point since he’d bragged about going skeet shooting with Peyton during a junket in Florida. When Peyton had been tortured, Evans claimed he was with his bouncy blond friend. Maybe not. If she’d passed out, he could have left without her realizing it.
“Why would Evans attack the team?”
“He’s not my first choice.” Hagan stopped to lean against the bridge embankment to watch something below in the ravine. Over his shoulder, he admitted to exchanging words with Evans in the RV lot. The crew chief had hotly denied damaging the cars. Hagan believed him. “He’s up to something, though. He and Whitten were plotting at the track, making eye contact at the party. Would Evans have allowed Whitten to sabotage the team, hoping to rattle Browning so the team would pull out?”
“What would Evans get out of it?”
“Besides money? Ingratiate himself with a more profitable team, hoping to be hired on? Or maybe it’s retaliation. Get back at your boss for low pay or a strangling contract.”
It was an idea worth contemplating. Ian claimed that Evans was locked into a five-year contract with Peyton. He could want out, especially if Whitten made him a better offer. Peyton was too much of a prick to let him go easily. But if the team went under, Evans could walk away with no ramifications, no fines, lawyers or name-calling. He would be free to join Whitten or anyone else.
Hagan was still gazing at the creek. “What about Browning?”
She bit at her lip to keep from snapping, What about him? Ian’s laid-back manner and his dry sense of humor were engaging. And he was a damn good driver. She didn’t want him to be involved.
Could she swear that he wasn’t? “Ian couldn’t have fired the gun, Hagan. He wouldn’t have filed the wheel bolts or cut the brake line: personally too risky. It’s possible that he went to the track with Peyton last night and tortured him before arriving at the house. Maybe he barged in on us to establish an alibi. But is it really likely?”
Hagan didn’t respond, which was just as well. If pressed, she would have admitted that Ian had a callous streak. It was easy to imagine him sitting cross-legged, one side of his mouth turned up, listening to Wagner as he calmly pulled the wings off flies. Or jolted Peyton repeatedly with the battery charger on boost.
Squelching that depressing thought she turned the discussion to suspects outside the team: Derek Whitten, the rival; Brian Franks, the agitated investment counselor; Elise Carlson, Peyton’s new partner.
Carlson seemed the least likely since she had a financial stake in Peyton’s success. It appeared that they’d met for the first time at the party. Before that, she was unknown to the race community. Plus, she’d only arrived in town yesterday from out of the country.
Franks also was a recent arrival and an outsider who wouldn’t have had free access to the pits. The only tool he’d be comfortable with was a retractable pencil, and then, only if it had an eraser.
That left Whitten as the most likely candidate. He could have strolled in and out of their pit area without attracting attention, and he had a motive of sorts, even if it was only to best Peyton.
Hagan said he’d nose around. He winced as he shoved his hands back into his pockets. Served him right. She’d noticed the swollen knuckles and assumed that he and Evans had done more than talk. Why wouldn’t he admit it? She turned to face him, walking backwards.
“I keep stumbling over motive. Torturing Peyton, leaving him alive and strapped into the race car overnight wouldn’t ensure that the team would pull out of the race. He’s the money man, a figurehead. With or without him, Ian will race and the crew will work the pits. Particularly now, with a new owner at the helm.”
“Carlson know anything about running a race team?”
She shrugged. “Probably as much as Peyton. Maybe more. She knows a lot about everything. Like how to reach his father in South Carolina. She’s already phoned with the news of the assault. Who knew he had a father, much less how to get in touch with him?”
Hagan swore. “Hayes did.” He raised a protective hand. “Don’t scream, Moore, I forgot to tell you he called. It wasn’t intentional.”
That stopped her. “Hagan, in the past two days, you’ve neglected to tell me that you’d spotted Jasmine at the track, and that you met Elise Carlson. Now you’ve forgotten t
o tell me that Hayes called. Anything else slipped your mind? Like how you damaged your hand.”
He flexed his fingers. “Ran into a door?”
“Named Evans?”
He opened his mouth with a comeback then shut it again.
“Fine.” She turned and headed back to the house at a jog.
Hagan caught up as they neared Patricia Street, tugged at her arm to make her slow down. He tried to pacify her by recounting the gist of Hayes’s phone call. Claimed that most of it had been biographical background on Peyton Madison II, the family patriarch. Not much on Peyton junior. Hayes had e-mailed some business articles and a list of suggested reading directly to her computer. From his back pocket he extracted a sheet of paper, handed it to her still folded. Smoothed open, it was a bad copy of a black-and-white photograph. Peyton Madison II and family, circa mid-seventies.
They entered the house through the patio. She asked Hagan to make coffee before he put ice on his knuckles.
In the bedroom, she fired up the ThinkPad, studied the photograph while she waited for it to load. Peyton Madison II did not look like a fun person to live with. Only the edges of his thin-lipped mouth turned up; his eyes were so cold they were opaque. When the computer completed its ritual, she slid the picture aside and called up Peter’s e-mail. As she expected, Hayes had been a busy boy.
She skimmed through the articles. On the father there were excerpts from write-ups spanning three decades that had appeared in Forbes, Economist, US News and World Report. The elder Madison had been the kind of success story those magazines craved. Starting out, he’d worked for a chemical manufacturer headquartered in South America. When still a young man, he’d acquired the rights to a handful of patents and moved to the States to begin his own firm. Ten years later, he was on the Fortune 500 list.
By contrast, Peyton the third worked at making a name for himself in racing and a fortune at the betting tables. Per the automotive rags, he hadn’t yet succeeded in either venture.
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