Land seemed aware of it at times and squeezed my hand a few times while keeping a close eye on me. I was more interested in spotting the police officer in the bar, but I saw no one that I could identify as a police officer. I’d half-thought that Detective Danvers might be at the bar, trusting Land’s instincts that Carona was most likely to be here. It would be like him to want to be near the action in case the investigation could be closed tonight.
However, there was no sign of him either. I would have loved the sight of Danvers, who normally wore tailored suits and prepped out clothes for the weekend, in jeans and a t-shirt. It would have been worth it.
Not knowing what to expect or what to do, we found a table and listened to the band. I had joked with Land that I wanted a cosmopolitan, but he brought back an IPA from a local brewery. I was pleased to have something I didn’t usually drink, and we sat together listening to the music.
I felt a tiny amount of guilt, as I’d wanted to prompt some action tonight. I’d texted a message to Jason Voorhees, the man Sabine had found in the online phone book. I told him that we’d be meeting at the Black Cat this evening for Friday the 13th. I figured that most likely the poor slob who had that name got a billion invitations every time the date rolled around, but I felt a certain gut instinct that something was up with this name, considering the clues we’d been given.
I waited for something to happen, and as the night wore on, I grew restless. While I wasn’t a fan of being shot at, action had happened at 101112. People had tried to take Carona hostage, knives had been tossed, and a quick capture of the bad guys had resulted. I still hadn’t heard any more about the two men who had tried to take her. Had they been involved in any way with the warehouse, or were those two things entirely separate?
The band had just finished the second set when a fight broke out by the stage. I forced myself to remain seated, thinking that this was the moment that we’d been waiting for. However, it very quickly was revealed to be a fight between two women, neither of which had the dark hair or build of Carona. I kept a look out for women with her build, thinking that many of her other features could be altered. Land had pointed out that this wasn’t a high-tech operation that allowed her to alter her face. She’d been working at a restaurant to make ends meet, which suggested that she was off the grid for some reason. Any government would have given her an amount of cash to get through the operation.
I watched in silence as a bouncer broke up the melee, and a good number of customers took this as a sign to leave.
Land motioned to me, and we walked just outside the door. The wind had picked up, and it felt as though a storm might be coming on. The air was thick and slightly oppressive, but I waited as Land made a call to Danvers. His face was impassive as he talked to the policeman, but when he hung up, he said, “No dice. Nothing at the casino.”
I knew him well enough to know that his excellent command of English meant that he’d intended the pun, so I elbowed him slightly in the ribs. I’d texted Sabine who had merely sent me a frowny face, and the poor Jason Voorhees, who was probably hiding on this evening, had not responded to my text at all.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next,” Land said to me. “Don’t worry. She’ll do okay. You would be surprised at some of the situations that Carona has worked her way out of over the years. She’s a pro.” I waited for an example, but since this was Land, who rarely spoke about his years with the police or army, just saying that much was a revelation unlike most of his terse comments on the subject.
We trekked out to the far reaches of the parking lot. I kept waiting for someone to follow us out or to send us a signal. I refused to believe that this clue, which made so much sense to me, could be wrong. I doubted that Sabine had missed the mark on this one.
Land opened my car door and walked around to his side. I sat down in the car, waiting for him to start it. He got in, sat down, adjusted the mirror, and said, “Hello, Carona.”
Chapter 7
I swung around rapidly, but a voice at my back said, “Just pretend that I’m not here, and we’ll be fine.” I felt something pressing into my back through the seat, and I prayed that it was just her knee. I hadn’t expected a rendezvous like this. I had expected it to be out in the open, so that we could easily talk. I wanted to hear the stories about Land and Danvers in their younger years.
Land started the car and pulled out of the lot. “I’m going to head in the direction of home,” he said casually. “I want to make sure that no one is following us.”
“I wasn’t followed here, and no people were in the lot when I got in the car,” she said in a terse stern tone.
“Still taking chances, are you?” Land asked, as he took another turn and looked in his rear-view mirror.
“Still playing it safe, Mendoza?” she asked. I was surprised to hear her use his last name. I didn’t know anyone who called him anything other than Land.
“It’s served me well. So what the hell are you doing in Capital City?” he asked as we ran a yellow light. Land kept his eye on the mirrors, but as far as I could see, no one was behind us.
She laughed. “I’m still finding it humorous that you moved here to get away from the espionage business—so it came to you. Big things are happening here,” she said, “like you would not believe.”
Land sighed. “Can you be more specific and less dramatic? We only have so much time to chat. Catching up on old times and telling me things that I already know can wait for when we can have a coffee.”
“Or a hot dog?” she said. Even though the car was dark, I could tell she was smirking, and it annoyed me. While my business might not have the allure or filmmaking potential of a spy on a potentially deadly mission, what I did was important to me and my life.
“You’re wasting time,” Land retorted, not even acknowledging her statement. “How did you know we were here?”
“Didn’t she tell you?” Carona said. “Maeve texted me and told me to meet you both here tonight. It was very accommodating of her.”
Land shot a look over at me as if I’d betrayed him. I added up the facts and realized that she had taken the phone number out in the name of Jason Voorhees. I began to think about this. The time needed to obtain a cellphone and have it show up as an active number fell into a category far above days. I wondered how long she had been planning this operation. Had it been weeks or months in advance? How could she have possibly known what would occur and that she would need the fictitious name for communications?
Yet it didn’t make sense to me. If there were really people on her tail, wanting information that she had, then her moves should be played in real time—without planning or deliberation. You had to move fast on your feet, or so it appeared with James Bond. Why had she planned this out so long in advance?
Land was still looking at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking in the dark, so I merely told him the facts. “I texted the number Sabine had located for Jason Voorhees and told him, I mean her, where we’d be. I thought it was an entirely different person, not Carona.”
Having spoken her name, she leaned forward and put a hand on Land’s face. He tensed up, and I could tell that he was getting ready to explode. Land had very clear boundaries, which he’d set very early on in our relationship. There were things I could say and do and many things that were off-limits. Touching without permission would be out of bounds at any time, but especially when I was sitting next to him. He would find that disrespectful. I held on for dear life, because while I didn’t know what he was going to do, I knew it wouldn’t be pleasant.
I didn’t have to wait long. I could tell from the lack of lights in the mirror that no one was behind us, and no one had been behind us for quite some time. Land hit the brakes with all the force he could muster. I jerked forward slightly before snapping back to the seatback.
Carona, however, hit my seat back hard and hit the backseat harder. There was silence from the rear of the car when Land touched the accelerator aga
in.
“She knows that she wasn’t allowed to touch me when we were playacting as married. I wasn’t about to take it now, just because she had her hands free and I didn’t.” He didn’t turn to face me, and I could tell that he was greatly annoyed. I wasn’t sure if it was with me, for not telling him about the text or Carona or a situation where he was being dragged back into a life that he had wanted to leave behind him.
After a few minutes, he reached over and took my hand in his. “I wish you’d told me about the texting thing, but it’s not a big deal. You certainly didn’t know you were telling her where we’d be. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she already knew we’d be at the Black Cat and was just trying to stir up some shit by blaming it on the text.”
“But how—?” I started.
“There’s a mole on the inside of the police department. Has to be. In addition to that, I’m thinking that the other side might have some sort of tracking on the Buick.” He continued to keep his eyes on the road as he caressed my fingers and toyed with the engagement ring.
“You think I’m being followed?” I asked. Part of me was entirely freaked out by the thought of being watched at all times, but I was impressed with myself that someone thought I was worthy of being tailed in this matter. I’d solved a few crimes in Capital City over the years, but I would not have considered myself a person of interest in any manner. I was just someone who could follow patterns and had a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Yeah, I do now. That would explain the shooting at the restaurant after you arrived. The police mole would explain how she knew where to go tonight—I’m betting that she knew long before the text you sent. You had to send it later in the day, which would only give her a few hours to get ready. This has been planned longer—much longer.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought the same thing too. The cellphone number was too long ago. It wouldn’t be listed if it was done in the past two days.”
He nodded, continuing to play with my hand. “The warehouse fire was set-up even before we went there. It was artfully arranged so that we’d be curious to come back again. This is not the spur of the moment operation that we’re being led to believe. This has been a long time in the planning.”
“Do you think that Carona was behind the text to Sabine asking us to go to the warehouse?” I asked. Now that I’d met her, and she’d all but smirked at my career, I wondered if she’d wanted me out of the way as well. Most people knew I had an unstoppable curiosity, so texting that message would have been tempting under other circumstances.
“Honestly, no. She has a purpose for Danvers and me. If I’m grieving, I’d be of no use to her. So I doubt that it’s her.”
I was a bit taken aback that his line of thought had only been concerned with the fact that I’d be missed, rather than an asset to the mission. However, with an unconscious spy in the backseat, I still was in a better position than she was.
“Then there is someone else involved in this plot,” I said. “Someone who wants people who could help Carona out of the way.”
Land nodded. “Yeah, since we don’t know the whole story, it’s hard to know who is on whose side. It’s hard enough when you do know the whole story, but now it’s damned near impossible. The other side has the Croatians who wanted her dead and likely the person who sent you that text. They might be working in league with each other, or they could be working independently of each other to get it.”
“If we knew what ‘it’ was,” I reminded him. I had always thought that Hitchcock’s MacGuffin was a less than subtle ploy, but now I was living proof of its power. There was something that was extremely valuable to a number of people. Land and I had been dragged into a mess where we didn’t know the questions to ask, much less the answers to find. I opted not to mention a MacGuffin since they had roundly disliked my comparison to The 39 Steps.
“Information,” Land said. “It’s always information. Spies live on the idea that knowledge is power. If the Croatians had wanted her dead, they would have shot first. Instead they wanted her alive, which means that they need what she knows. So she’s playing it close to the chest and hiding so that people can’t torture her to find out what information she has.”
“So if we know the possible groups working against her, who is for her? Besides us, I mean.”
“That’s the hard part; I don’t know. Sabine is, that’s for sure, but other than that, everyone is a suspect.”
I reached over and gave Land a peck on the check. Given his training and work, it would be hard to trust anyone, and yet he’d given me star billing on who he could trust with his life. That was an honor nearly as important as our impending wedding vows.
Land pulled into my apartment complex, found an open spot and backed his sports car into a spot, presumably to get Carona into the apartment easier.
However, he made no move to get her out of the car when he closed the door to the vehicle. He clicked his fob and the car locked. “That should keep her for a few,” Land explained. “I want to make a phone call or two without her around.”
I nodded. We got settled in the apartment. I put on some coffee—the blend that Land made for the food trucks. He went into the other room and made his calls. I had wanted to listen on speaker, but he’d explained that these were the types of people who would hang up if they suspected other unidentified people might be listening into the call. So he had meant spies.
He came back out in a few minutes and nodded. “Carona was working on an incident where a Baltic ambassador was attacked and nearly killed in Nice. He survived, no thanks to her, and now the man is coming to Capital City as a goodwill gesture. My contact thinks that she is still working on the same issue, but with a new development. She took the defeat and the near-death of her subject pretty hard.”
“Wow,” I said for lack of a better word. “So can we do anything to make sure that this ambassador leaves Capital City safely?”
Land shook his head. “Not really. First, you and I don’t have any standing with the government, so we’re not going to see him unless we get stuck in a traffic jam while they’re blocking traffic for his motorcade to pass.”
“But Danvers—” I began, and then I stopped. “You didn’t mention Danvers earlier as someone you could trust.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve told you time and again not to trust that man. If he thought it would benefit him or his career, he’d do just about anything in his power. I could easily see him putting someone in jeopardy and thinking that he could save the person, just to look like a hero. That would add to his personal resume.”
I had to admit that in the times we’d worked with Danvers he had, in almost every case, taken the credit for the solution to the mystery. I wasn’t looking to get famous, but it did rankle at times to hear him boast about his abilities—especially when we both knew who had solved our previous cases.
Even so, I wasn’t sure that I was ready to write him off as a source or an associate in this matter. He had come through a few times and really helped out. Then, of course, there was still the unfinished business with Sabine that he needed to deal with.
I thought about calling Sabine, but it was late, and I knew that she’d be in touch the following day. She would want to hear what happened, and at least I could share the evening’s events with her.
Land took a couple of pain relievers out of a bottle in the bathroom and got a bottle of water. He opened the door to the apartment building with me following after him at a quick pace.
We got to the car and stopped in our tracks. Two neat bullet holes punctured the rear window of the sports car, and Carona was nowhere in sight. I knew from previous experience that there was no room in the back seat to maneuver. She would have been a fish in a barrel to someone wanting to do away with her.
Land didn’t seem fazed by the incident. He took the two pain relievers himself and sent them down his throat with a drink of water. “Well, that solves what to do about
Carona,” he said walking back inside the building.
The next two days trundled along without incident. Land pretended that nothing untoward had happened, and I prepared for the wedding as best as I could as my mind kept crawling back to the sports car and Carona.
Of course, the police had been to the apartment on more than one occasion. Land had called them as soon as we realized that Carona had disappeared. They’d confiscated Land’s car and towed it to the crime lab. So Land spent much of the weekend with me, having Danvers and Sabine both move boxes for him into my—and would soon be our—apartment. The duo planned their trips to the apartment to minimize the time they spent in the same place at the same time.
Land had another errand to complete. While I was working on payroll and taxes for the period when we would be gone, he went out to look at my car. The Buick sat in its assigned parking place outside of my apartment building. The complex was big on giving one spot per apartment and forcing the rest of the world to squeeze into ten additional spots per building. So I could see Land as he walked around the car and moved under it as well.
I went back to work and ignored his activities until he returned to the apartment. Sabine had just left for another carload of boxes from Land’s apartment, and just the two of us were there.
He held up a small device. “There was a tracking device on your car,” he said.
“Any ideas who could have put it there?” I asked. As Land had pointed out, the device explained how people kept showing up where I was. The gunmen at 101112 had known where to come presumably through the same logic. Or, perhaps they had seen my conversation with Carona that morning and put a device on my car, though I wasn’t sure how since the Buick had been in the secured lot while I had the food truck.
“I would guess the Croatians, but given that they’re in jail, and Carona is still missing, I’m not as sure as I was before. I’m wondering if there could be a connection to the police mole.”
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 117