I brushed dirt off the flash drive as I went inside. The piece of the puzzle about why Jerry had been in my limo that night had fallen into place. He’d discovered the flash drive was missing, and mistakenly thought he lost it in the limo when he and Joella were riding back there and I bumped them around. He’d come back to look for it and, not wanting to encounter me when he searched, parked some distance away so I wouldn’t hear his car. And someone had followed him.
I still didn’t know who that someone was, or why Jerry was killed, but I was certain whatever was on the flash drive would point an aha! finger at the guilty person.
And whoever had killed Jerry and stolen the computer equipment also knew the flash drive existed and was still looking for it. That was why my house had been broken into and searched. My earrings and my mother’s old watch were just opportunistic thefts. So, DDS Molino, I was right about that!
Now that flash drive with its incriminating information was right here in my hands. Another thought jolted me. Were Elena and Donny after this? Was that what the meeting tomorrow night was really about? And how far would they go to get it?
What to do with it? Get rid of it! I dashed inside. I’d put DDS Molino’s card in my purse after that interview at the station. I found it and dialed his home number. Answering machine. I looked at my watch. No time to take the flash drive to the station and explain everything to someone else. I’d call Molino again when I got home. I hastily stuffed the flash drive under a sofa cushion.
In spite of the excitement, I arrived at Mr. Findley’s house right on time. I was feeling rushed and frazzled, but I had my cap set at a jaunty angle and I’d decided on black heels, which I thought added a touch of sophistication to the uniform. Although I wouldn’t be doing any hiking around the lake in them, of course.
Mr. Findley came out of the house as soon as I pulled into the circular driveway. Under different circumstances I’d have felt odd stepping out to open the door for a man, but the uniform put me in chauffeur mode. I gave it the full treatment.
“Your chariot awaits, sir.” I opened the door with a flourish.
“I really appreciate this, you know.” Mr. Findley paused with one foot inside the limo. He seemed a bit out of breath. “I just did a last-minute change of clothes. Amanda is complaining that I’m acting like a teenager on a first date, but I just don’t know what to expect from this bunch.”
Mr. Findley was now wearing a dark gray suit, pale blue shirt, and burgundy tie.
“You look very nice.”
Although he’d overdone the cologne or aftershave lotion, and he was going to be out of place if everyone else was roughing it in jeans and boots.
“Okay, let’s get this show on the road.” He settled in the rear seat and consulted a scrap of paper. “There’s a two-lane highway going west out of Vigland to a little place called Bogg’s Junction, but we don’t have to go that far. About twenty miles out of town, watch for a gravel road to the right. There should be a sign that says Ryland Road.”
Those directions were easy enough to follow, and traffic on the country road was light. I drove along feeling very chauffeurish, though I wished I could open the window. I wondered if the thickness of bulletproof glass prevented the windows from opening, or if that had been some special requirement of paranoid Uncle Ned.
The temperature wasn’t high, but a faint scent of the cleansers lingered. Along with Mr. Findley’s industrial-strength cologne.
Ryland Road was rough and potholed, with washboard sections that made Secret View Lane look cushiony. The country-side was rough and hilly, some of it logged over but much still heavily forested. Mr. Findley’s face appeared in the space where the partition between us was open.
“When we’re about seven or eight miles out here, it says to watch for a three-way fork in the road. It won’t have a sign, but there’s a big madrone tree with a peculiar gnarled trunk. Take the middle fork. Then it’s several miles up that road.”
I’d showed him how to use the intercom system to talk to me, but apparently he preferred the yell-in-your-ear system.
The road after the forks got worse. In fact, it looked as if the main road had ended at the fork, and these were just seldom-used branches angling off it. The road was dirt, rutted and uneven, barely wide enough for a single vehicle. I thought maybe Mr. Delgrade had been telling the truth: maybe his vacation place was just a shack out here in the boondocks. Slanting evening sunshine hit only the tops of the trees, and below them, everything was in shadows. I didn’t like the way branches and drooping vines brushed and scraped the sides and top of the limo.
“Are you sure this is the right road?” I asked after a couple of miles. It was beginning to look like not much more than an old logging road. In spite of the deep ruts, none of the tracks appeared recent. The ground was hilly, the dirt road rough bedrock in places but marshy and squishy in others.
“This is what the directions say.”
“Are you okay, Mr. Findley?” I asked after we slogged through a deep mudhole.
“I’m beginning to think I should have worn something other than this suit.”
We’re on a road that could double as a mud-wrestling tank, and Mr. Findley is worried about the correctness of his attire. I should have doubled the hourly price I’d quoted him. How much did a limo wash job cost?
Apparently he was now having doubts of his own, because he finally said, “If we don’t find the cabin in another mile or so, we’ll turn around and go back.”
Maybe we would and maybe we wouldn’t. The limo is not your turn-on-a-dime vehicle, and I hadn’t seen any place yet where I could scrunch it around.
Then I spotted something in the road up ahead. The light was so dim I couldn’t make it out clearly. I braked and switched on the headlights. Two somethings, actually, I realized as they moved closer. Bear? Bigfoot?
No, two human figures. But not human faces . . .
Ski masks, I realized with a jolt. Black ski masks, making the figures look like earless, two-legged snakes.
Not good. Nice, friendly country folk do not go around wearing ski masks. And carrying guns.
“Mr. Findley, l-look!”
His face appeared in the partition. “Oh, no! Who are they? Hunters?”
“I don’t think hunters hunt with handguns or cover their faces with ski masks. I think we’d better get out of here.” I shoved the gear lever into reverse and jammed my foot on the gas, but we were right in the middle of another mudhole, and all my effort did was make the tires spin and spit clods of mud like ol’ Moose digging at warp speed.
“Something’s wrong here,” Mr. Findley said, which struck me as a big understatement—like I smell smoke when your hair is on fire. “I’m calling 911. Stay calm.”
I figured we were in a dead zone for cell phones for sure, but a minute later I heard him talking. He leaned through the opening again.
“They’re sending someone. But it’s probably going to take a while to get anyone way out here. We’ll have to play it by ear until then.”
With two guys with guns approaching, I’d have liked to have something more potent than an ear to rely on. One man was short and stocky, the other taller and scarecrow bony. Along with the ski masks, both were wearing scruffy jeans, dark T-shirts, and gloves.
“Get out!” the short one yelled. He emphasized the command with a wave of the gun at me through the windshield.
I was inclined to stay put. I could lock all the doors from the driver’s seat and we could just sit tight, or maybe I could even prod the limo into action. But before I could find the lock button, Mr. Findley was stepping out. That meant the guys could get in through the back way no matter what I did. Reluctantly I opened my door too. Mr. Findley had his hands up.
“You too,” Short Guy said to me with another jab of the gun.
I slid out of the limo, my high heels squishing into water and mud to my ankles. I put my hands in the air. Not a time to worry about such niceties as drooping trousers, but I had
to wonder how securely I’d fastened that pin.
“Gimme your wallet,” Scarecrow Man said to Mr. Findley.
Mr. Findley pulled the wallet out of his pocket and handed it over. I could see a stash of green bills protruding.
Good! With a haul like that, maybe they’d fade into the woods now. This seemed an unlikely place to wait for a rich victim to show up, but here we were, so maybe they knew what they were doing.
“I’ll . . . uh . . . get my purse,” I said. I made a move toward the open door, but Short Guy targeted me dead center with his gun.
“You don’t do nuthin’ until I tell you to.”
I had a brilliant idea, something to speed up their exit. “You can take the limo too! It’ll take us hours to walk out of here. You can sell it to”—I searched my mind for the right word, something I’d read somewhere—“to one of those chop shops!” An ugly demise for the limo, but better than what could happen here.
Both men stopped what they were doing to look at the vehicle as if they were considering the idea.
“Great condition,” I said. “Low mileage.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Mr. Findley snapped.
His dismissal of my desperate ploy seemed a little harsh, given our circumstances.
Scarecrow Man looked back at the wallet in his hand and started flipping through it. But he was having a hard time keeping his gun targeted on Mr. Findley and managing the wallet too. He dropped the wallet. Right in the muddy rut.
Mr. Findley exploded. “You stupid idiot!” He fished the wallet out of the dirty water and shook it under Scarecrow Man’s nose. “Can’t you do anything right?”
My jaw dropped. “Wh-what’s going on?” I was shaking in my snappy uniform, but Mr. Findley was just flicking a speck of mud off the gray suit.
“Okay, let’s get this over with,” he said. “I don’t know how soon the cops may get here.”
“Get w-what over with?”
“I’m sorry this turned out to be necessary, Mrs. McConnell, but that’s the way it is. I figure you were just biding your time before you hit me up like Jerry did.”
“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I said. Short Guy waved his gun at me again, and I noticed a watch on his wrist. A Rolex.
Connections here, obviously. But it was like trying to thread a needle in a dark room. I just couldn’t see what went where.
“There isn’t any meeting, is there?” I said to him. “You staged all this.”
“Of course there’s a meeting. It just isn’t here.” He smiled and touched a finger to his jaw. “Oh, dear. I must have misunderstood the directions, and we wound up way out here in the middle of nowhere. And then a couple of ruffians attacked us and demanded money. They shot you when you resisted giving up your purse.” He gave me a how’s-that-for-a-story lift of eyebrows.
Me, I was hung up on two words back there: shot you. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt frozen. “But, Mr. Findley, there really isn’t any need to, uh, dispose of me. Honestly, Jerry never told me anything. I figured he was killed because of something to do with that weird Twenty-first Minutemen group he set up a Web site for. Or maybe an old girlfriend.”
Mr. Findley looked at me, double lines crunched between his eyebrows. “Well, that may be, in which case this unpleasant episode may have been unnecessary. But unfortunately, you do know something now, don’t you?”
Yeah, I did. I still didn’t know why Jerry was killed, but I knew Mr. Findley was behind it.
“Maybe we ought to, you know, give you a little flesh wound or something,” Short-Guy-with-Rolex suggested to Mr. Findley. He fingered the gun like a kid eager to start playing a video game. “Make the whole thing look authentic when the cops get here. Like you tried to protect her or something.”
“Her body and the fact that I was robbed will be sufficient to show that we were attacked by ruthless killers who stole my wallet. Don’t start trying to improve on the plan,” Mr. Findley snapped. “And if you use any of the credit cards in that wallet, you’re dead too.”
I wasn’t worried about Mr. Findley’s credit cards or the life expectancy of these two guys. I was stuck again, this time on her body. Which was my body. Sometimes, like bear traps, words just snap and grab you.
“We’re wasting time here,” Mr. Findley said impatiently. He handed his wallet back to Scarecrow Man. “You’ve got to be long gone when the cops get here. Do it.”
Short Guy gave me a sideways glance. “We killed the guy at the limo for you.”
Surprisingly, in spite of that admission and his eagerness to give Mr. Findley a flesh wound, I sensed Short Guy was a little squeamish about shooting me.
“And a sloppy job you did of it. If you’d done her”—Mr. Findley jerked his head at me—“we wouldn’t be having this complication now.”
I felt a peculiar moment of relief. Jerry had turned out to be a sleazy guy, but at least he hadn’t clobbered me. These guys had done it.
“You’re so good at all this, you do this one,” Scarecrow Man challenged. He held the gun out to Mr. Findley. “Or come up with a whole lot bigger payoff.”
Okay, maybe squeamishness gave him too much credit. What he really wanted was a pay hike. Killers probably didn’t get retirement benefits. If the money was good enough, I was dead meat.
“You’re the ones who broke into my house, aren’t you?” I said, trying to buy some time. “You stole my diamond earrings. And my mother’s watch.”
“Not one of our more upscale jobs,” Scarecrow Man muttered. “I’ve seen better stuff at a yard sale. How about it, Emeril?” he added. “You gonna up the ante?”
Mr. Findley didn’t appear pleased at what he apparently considered overfamiliarity. He looked as if he were about to stomp the guy’s bones into the mud, but finally he said, “Okay, give me the gloves and the gun. I’ll do it. No, the gloves first, stupid.”
While they were fumbling with gloves and gun, I saw a narrow window of opportunity. I jumped into the limo, slammed the door, and punched the lock button as if I were running for my life. Which I was. I turned the key, shoved the gearshift into drive, and rammed the gas pedal to the floor. The tires spun uselessly again. No, no, no! Down, down we went . . . another minute and the limo’d be buried to the hubcaps.
You watching this, God? Help!
The spinning tires suddenly grabbed hold, and the limo shot forward. We roared up the steep hill on the other side of the mudhole, around a bend, down the other side and through more muddy ruts. Branches whapped the windshield like the arms of a green octopus. I automatically ducked.
Where was I going? What did it matter? Anywhere was better than where I’d been. The road must come out some-where. Maybe the forks joined back in here, or maybe the road went on through to Bogg’s Junction.
An opening in the trees up ahead. I careened into it and braked. An old log landing, where logs had once been gathered for loading onto trucks, now a gathering spot for drinkers and shooters. Blackened chunks of wood, remains of an old campfire, jumbled within a circle of rocks. Beer cans and bottles, scattered and broken. A weathered target punctured with bullet holes. Several piles of dumped yard rubbish and old boards.
I scanned the forested edge of the rough circle of clearing, then frantically scanned it again. My heart plummeted like an anchor plunging to the bottom of Vigland Bay. Only one road led into the clearing, the one I was on. No other road led out of it.
Trapped.
For a moment I speculated hopefully on how the two men had arrived. On foot, from what I’d seen, but they must have a vehicle stashed close by, and a planned escape route. Was there another road nearby? Could I crash the limo through to it?
Not likely, since I had no idea where the road might be.
I could get out and make a run for it on foot. Maybe hide out in the woods until the cops arrived.
If Mr. Findley had even called the cops . . .
Yes, I decided, he’d called them. They were a crucial element of his pl
an. They were supposed to arrive to find me dead, Mr. Findley robbed and terrified. With no reason for any of it ever to be connected to Jerry’s murder.
Of course, there was the flash drive hidden back in my sofa. Maybe it would eventually be found and the information retrieved. I still didn’t know what could be on it to incriminate Mr. Findley, but justice might catch up with these guys someday.
Long after I was dead.
Mr. Findley and his goons would probably be here in another minute. Now what? Cower inside the limo? They could shoot the door locks open.
Only one way out, I realized. Back the way I’d come. I swallowed and eased the limo into a turn while dodging the piles of trash. This was no time to get stuck or puncture a tire. I had a straight shot at the old road now.
Cousin Larry said the limo’s windows were bulletproof.
Were they?
36
Old logging debris crunched under the tires. A beer bottle popped. A deep rut threw the limo sideways and almost yanked the steering wheel out of my sweaty hands. I let go of the wheel one hand at a time and swiped each palm across the uniform so I could get a better grip.
Here we go, God. You with me?
I locked my hands on the wheel and roared full blast into the green tunnel of the narrow road. An octopus branch whammed the windshield. Caught vines dangled down a side window. I spotted shadowy figures in the road ahead. Guns pointing at me. No turning back now. I stomped down on the gas pedal as if I were trying to annihilate an oversized cockroach.
The first bullet didn’t hit the limo. I saw it take off a tree limb alongside the road. Good! Maybe they were all really lousy shots, the kind of guys who never could win teddy bears for their girlfriends at carnivals.
But the next one was a bull’s-eye. Wham! It smashed dead-on into the windshield in front of my face. I automatically ducked behind the steering wheel. Matt was right. Bullets didn’t bounce off like Ping-Pong balls. The driver’s side of the windshield blossomed into a crisscrossed tangle that looked like splintered ice. But the maze of cracks held. No bullet blasted through!
Your Chariot Awaits Page 25