Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel

by Lorena McCourtney

  “No, I don’t think so. But thanks.”

  Candy gave Cate the job of chopping green onions and grating cheddar cheese. She waved at a couple of appliances that would probably chop and grate anything up to and including granite blocks, but Cate chose to use the old-fashioned hand method.

  The Persian, silvery-gray, with the trademark flat face of Persians, joined them. Candy said her name was Scheherazade. The cat caged a smidgen of ham out of Candy. Cate expected the cat to turn down her own offering of a bite of cheese, but Scheherazade accepted it with queenly grace.

  Candy laughed. “She may look like royalty, but she’s really a garbage-can alley cat at heart.”

  Candy thawed blueberry muffins from the freezer to accompany the omelet and made a pot of some fragrant tea, deep fuschia colored when she poured it into cups.

  Before eating, Cate took time at the table for a moment of silent thanks. When she opened her eyes, Candy was looking at her curiously.

  “A hotshot private eye is into blessings and prayers?” Candy commented.

  “Believers come in all shapes, sizes, and occupations.”

  Candy didn’t comment further, but her head-tilted expression looked thoughtful.

  “Mmm, what is this?” Cate asked after sipping her cup of tea. She tasted hints of raspberry and blueberries, cherries and grapes, maybe something tropical too. “It’s so good.”

  “It’s a sangria rooibos and hibiscus blend. I buy it online, specially blended for me.”

  “Oh.” Exotic tea. Another subject about which Cate was grossly ignorant. Mitch usually preferred coffee, but even he might like this.

  “But this is the last of it, and I can’t afford to buy any more once this is gone,” Candy added gloomily.

  “I appreciate your making some of it tonight.”

  The omelet was indeed the-way-to-his-heart delicious. Candy seemed to have temporarily put aside her hostility toward Cate for working for Matt Halliday, and their late-supper talk was about cats and tea and the potted plants by the living room window.

  Finally Cate drained the last of her second cup of tea. She stood and picked up her plate. “I’ll help clean up before I go.”

  “You’re driving back to Eugene tonight?”

  Cate made the quick decision that yes, she was driving home. Motels tended to make her uneasy, and it would probably take her as long to find and get settled in one she felt comfortable with as it would to drive home. She could make an early trip back up to Salem in the morning. Octavia would be glad to have her home too. She nodded to answer Candy’s question. “So I’d better get going.”

  “But you still have work to do here, don’t you?”

  “I’ll come back tomorrow and try to find out more about Mace Jackson.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, as if she wasn’t too sure she wanted to do this, Candy finally said, “You could stay here. There’s plenty of room. No need to drive all that way.”

  The invitation surprised Cate. She doubted Candy cared enough about social politeness, at least where Cate was concerned, to make the invitation out of courtesy.

  So her instant question was why? Did Candy have some ulterior motive? As if Candy guessed Cate wasn’t about to jump on this with glee, she grabbed their plates and went to the sink with them. Her booted step had a hint of stomp in it.

  “Look, I’m not inviting you to a BFF slumber party. And I’m not going to sneak in and smother you with a pillow in the night. It’s just a place to stay. You’ll have to make your own breakfast. I don’t do breakfast.”

  Scheherazade took that moment to stroll over and wind herself around Cate’s ankles.

  “See? Even Zadie wants you to stay. If you leave your door open, she’ll probably come sleep with you. She likes to make guests feel welcome.”

  Cate reached down and picked up the silky-haired cat. Who could resist an invitation to a room that included cat company? “Okay, thanks. That’s very nice of you. Both of you,” she added with a snuggle of cat to cheek.

  Cate went out to move her car into the driveway and get her overnight case out of the trunk. Candy showed her to a second-floor bedroom with bath toward the rear of the house. Queen-sized bed with luxurious orchid comforter and enough pillows for her and any number of cats.

  Before she went to bed, she called Mitch and gave him a quick rundown on the evening, ending with, “Tomorrow I’ll talk to some more bicycle shops.”

  He gave her his usual “be careful” admonition, then told her about running with Clancy in the park and having dinner with Lance and Robyn. Yes, they’d heard from the company again after making the counteroffer. The company wanted further details.

  “But it’s looking good. I think they really want Computer Dudes,” Mitch said. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure what time I’ll get back.”

  “I miss you.” Moment of silence. “I’m thinking maybe we should …”

  Cate waited, but whatever Mitch was thinking, he apparently decided he didn’t want to continue with it now.

  Cate continued it after she was snuggled in bed.

  I’m thinking we should get engaged and start planning a big wedding?

  I’m thinking we should elope and have a quick wedding without any fuss?

  Or maybe it was something more prosaic.

  I’m thinking we should take Clancy to the coast some weekend. I’m thinking we should try that new pizza Abby’s is advertising. I’m thinking we should see Johnny Depp’s new movie.

  Or maybe it was, I’m thinking we should recognize this is never going to work with you being a PI, and when the deal on Computer Dudes goes through, we’ll just go our separate ways.

  22

  Cate uneasily drifted off to sleep. Sometime in the night Scheherazade slipped through the door Cate had left cracked open and curled up behind her knees. She was still there in the morning, but she disappeared while Cate was showering. No doubt with a satisfied “my work here is done” swish of tail.

  Candy stood by the counter finishing a cup of black coffee, no food visible, when Cate went down to the kitchen. Scheherazade was washing a hind leg.

  “Coffee’s made.” Candy motioned to a coffeemaker that looked sleek and sophisticated enough to make secret weapons in its spare time. Today Candy wore a peach suit, short skirt, long jacket. No nonsense, but feminine and figure flattering.

  “I have to get going,” she said. “Mark likes to start early, and there’s an important land use bill coming up today. Help yourself to anything in the fridge or pantry. Lock the door when you leave.”

  “Okay. Thanks for everything.”

  “If you decide to spend another night in Salem, you can stay here again.”

  “Thanks, but I’m definitely going home today.”

  “Look, if you hear anything about Kane’s condition, would you give me a call? The ex-wife apparently isn’t entitled to know anything, and Matt sure isn’t going to tell me what’s going on. If Kane’s released from the hospital, I could come down and get him.” She paused and reflected for a moment. “If he needs care, he could stay here for a while.”

  Not if Shirley got to him first, Cate suspected. “Sure, I’ll call.”

  Candy left for work carrying a different Coach bag than the pink one Cate had seen before. She found a granola-type mixture in the pantry, with a label from some health food store, and filled a bowl with the crunchy stuff for breakfast. Upstairs, she made sure the sink was clean. Scheherazade, her hostess duties fulfilled, had gone off to do whatever the schedule of the day was for a Persian princess.

  Cate got a quick listing of more bicycle shops with her phone and headed for the closest one. No information about Mace Jackson there, but a bulletin board held flyers and a list of bicycle events from all around the state. The number and variety surprised Cate. Road races, track races, off-road races. Races for seniors, kids, and everyone in between. Sprints, long-distance races, races on mountain trails. A whole world of events C
ate had never realized existed.

  On to the next shop. There she approached one of the two clerks when he finished with a customer. He was young and lean, with a baseball cap turned backward on shaggy hair. There were racks of sleek biking clothes, but he wore baggy khaki shorts and a black T-shirt with a monster-sized bicycle ridden by a squirrel emblazoned on the front. Hmm. Secret symbolism or just odd taste? He shook his head at the Mace Jackson name and description Cate offered. But he gave her the location of a bigger shop that carried all kinds of bikes and gear and catered to racing enthusiasts, and Cate moved on.

  This place, the Complete Biker, fit its name, Cate decided the moment she walked in.

  More bicycles than she’d ever seen in one place before. She didn’t know a mountain bike from a road race bike, but none of these remotely resembled the $20 secondhand bike she’d ridden as a kid. Some of the prices made her blink. She smiled when she saw the tandem bikes for two people. They looked like fun. Mitch? Maybe. Though he was really fond of his high-powered Purple Rocket. As she was too, she had to admit.

  She wandered on to the clothing section. Socks, dozens of different kinds. Arm covers, pads for knees, shins, and elbows, giving a hint that bicycle riding might have some rough edges. Gloves, both whole hand and fingerless.

  Cate hadn’t identified herself as a PI in the other bicycle shops, but here she handed a business card to the young woman who came over with a usual, “May I help you?”

  The woman looked at both sides of the card as if she thought the back side might have explanatory information. “You’re not law enforcement?”

  “No, I’m working on a private investigation. I’m trying to find someone who knows a guy named Mace Jackson.”

  “We have a customer database, but I don’t think we can give out information from it.”

  “I don’t know that he’s a customer. I do know he placed second in a bicycle race here in Salem a couple months ago, a fifty miler. I was hoping someone might know local bicycle racers and remember him.”

  “That would probably have been the Winter Fun Run. I wasn’t in that one.” She smiled. “Actually, I was in the hospital having a baby.”

  “A baby two months ago?” The woman’s midsection, a sliver of skin visible between short top and slim jeans, looked racehorse hard and lean. No post-baby fat here.

  “I’ll be racing again by next month.” Definitely a poster girl for the benefits of bicycle racing. “But, you know, I think Mark rode in that race.” She spotted a guy over in the bicycle section and waved him over. “Hey, you rode in the Winter Fun Run, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Young guy. Also lean and hard. This was definitely a no-fat zone. “If you call coming in nineteenth being in it. I might as well have ridden my little brother’s tricycle that day.”

  Cate again offered Mace Jackson’s name, again got a negative shake of head. She added the description.

  “Hey, yeah, I do remember that dude! Everyone else was wearing gloves that day. It was, like, arctic cold. But not him. Proving how tough he was, I guess. And I sure noticed those knuckles.”

  The woman clerk zeroed in on something else in how Cate had described the man. “He was about forty … ?”

  “He’s dead. He tried to rob a business and shot a man in Eugene not long ago, and he was then shot and killed by the business owner. Now there has been a threat against that businessman. I need to find out more about Mace Jackson.”

  The male clerk shook his head. “None of the guys I ride with knew him. He didn’t have much of a bike, and I figured he was no competition. But he rode like he was on a two-wheeled tank and didn’t care if he mowed you down with it. We were calling him Knuckles.” He gave a wry smile. “Not to his face, of course. He looked like he wouldn’t mind giving you a noseful of those knuckles.”

  Odd that the kind of guy Mace Jackson seemed to be had acquired an interest in bicycle racing. The well-rounded killer? Maybe he was a secret ballet aficionado too. “You never saw him at any other races?”

  “No, but he was in here not too long ago. I wouldn’t have recognized or remembered him, except for those skulls. He was looking at racing bikes. He said he wanted the best on the market. I remember thinking he wasn’t happy with wherever he placed in the Winter Run.”

  Cate nodded. “Did he buy a bicycle?” she asked, hopefully thinking she might be able to pry an address out of the database.

  “No. He seemed really interested in our highest-priced racing bike and wrote down the brand and model. I figured he didn’t have the money, but he said our prices were too high. Although he had one of our coupons from the newspaper and bought something. Socks, I think.”

  A bargain-shopping, coupon-clipping killer. While Cate was still digesting that, the clerk added a zinger.

  “He said he could get a better deal on a racing bike down in Eugene.”

  “We can beat anyone’s price.” The woman sounded indignant.

  Cate had assumed Mace Jackson had gone to Eugene specifically to rob and/or kill Kane Blakely. But if he’d instead gone there to buy a racing bicycle, how had he come to park his old bicycle at H&B and burst in with a gun? Even if he’d decided he needed a quick source of money to buy a bike, how did he know a significant amount of cash would be available at H&B that night?

  “I haven’t been able to find that he owned a vehicle,” Cate said. “Would he ride whatever bike he owned all the way down there?”

  “Sure. Why not? I’ve been in a couple of hundred-miler races.”

  This would explain how Mace Jackson was managing to get by without a driver’s license. She still didn’t know what ID he’d had on him that the police used to identify him, but she’d looked on the internet again and was reasonably certain he didn’t have a driver’s license. Had his driving privileges been revoked? But in that case, surely she’d have run across that information. Unless his legal name was something other than Mace. Or he’d lost the driver’s license in another state. Maybe he was even wanted somewhere else? A good reason for keeping a low profile by using bicycle transportation? The police had surely taken his fingerprints. Had they turned up a different name for him? If so, they conveniently hadn’t shared that information publicly.

  “Did he have friends in that Winter Run race? Like a group riding together, or someone he seemed to be buddies with?”

  “I think he was pretty much a loner. When he was in here, I didn’t mention the race and that I remembered him from it.”

  “Was there a registration sign-up for the race?”

  “Yeah, sure, there always is.”

  “Maybe someone I could contact who’d know more about him?”

  The two clerks discussed it for several minutes and finally settled on a name: Danielle Stevens. Some other people had probably helped, but Danielle had been running things that day. She probably had a list of entrants somewhere, to be used for notification of new events.

  Great! “Where do I find Danielle?”

  Somewhere between Oregon and Florida. On a bicycle. Danielle and her new husband were on their honeymoon. With backpacks filled with lists of old entrants in Eugene bicycle races? Not likely.

  Sometimes Cate wondered if this was how a rat stuck in a maze felt. Running full speed, looking for openings and more often smacking into blank walls.

  Cate spent a couple more hours in Salem, but all she accomplished was buying a couple of DVDs at a store having a sale next to another bicycle shop that had gone out of business.

  Cate got home by midafternoon, feeling as if she’d been away much longer than overnight. She found Octavia snoozing on a high perch out in her playroom. The cat looked down on Cate with one of her blue-eyed, “do I know you?” stares, cat punishment for abandonment. But when Cate coaxed, she finally deigned to come down and snuggle a bit.

  Cate called Mitch to let him know she was home, and he picked her up at 6:00 to go out for the Wednesday night special on spaghetti and meatballs at an Italian restaurant they liked. In the SUV, Clancy
’s wagging tail and slobbery tongue gave her VIP welcome.

  “Hey, he has a different collar.”

  “Yeah, I don’t like that studded one. It has too much of a my-dog-can-whup-your-dog look.”

  “It was kind of macho,” Cate agreed. This leather collar was big and masculine looking, definitely not lap-dog style, but gentlemanly masculine.

  The spaghetti and meatballs were spicy delicious, and the garlic bread buttery soft. Cate told Mitch what she’d learned in Salem about Kane Blakely and gambling, and Mace Jackson and bicycles. She did not tell him about Seth Erickson’s dinner and movie invitation. Since the Computer Dudes deal seemed to be rolling toward completion, she was ever more uncertain about her relationship with Mitch. But she would not go the cheap route of trying to make him jealous.

  Back home, Cate asked if Mitch and Clancy would like to come in and watch one of the new DVDs she’d picked up in Salem. There was the usual confrontation between Octavia and Clancy before they could start watching the movie, although this seemed more like a formality than passion-felt hostility. Cate had just opened the DVD carton when a frantic banging on the door stopped her. She peeked through the peephole first and then yanked the door open.

  “Shirley! What—”

  “I just came from the hospital. Kane is dead.”

  “Oh, Shirley, I’m so sorry.” Cate pulled the woman inside. Uneasily she had to ask, “A normal death? Or … ?”

  “He never came out of the coma. No one did anything to him. He just died. His son was there.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cate repeated, feeling that helplessness that death so often brings. “Did you talk to the son?”

  “I just happened to run into him out in the parking lot. I asked him how Kane was doing, and he said he’d been in there ‘finalizing things.’ So I asked what that meant, and he told me Kane died this morning.”