Detour

by Kurtz, Sylvie

  I went through the files Mutual had faxed yesterday with Claire in her cubicle that smelled of the toffee she bought by the gross. Matter-of-factly I slipped Sofia’s case into the conversation. “Hey, I have a couple of questions about an old case.”

  Claire turned to her computer, fingers poised over the keys. “Do you have a case number?”

  “No. It’s not one we did. The victim’s husband asked me to take a second look.”

  Claire glared at me over the top of her glasses. “Is he thinking of suing?”

  “No, there’s some problem with the estate and he needs proof the death was accidental.”

  “We can just mail his lawyer a copy of the report.”

  I could imagine the frown on the random lawyer’s face when that report showed up on his desk uninvited. If he called back to ask why Mutual had sent it, I’d lose a boatload of credibility with Claire. “I’ll take it with me.”

  “Are you going to Texas?”

  “Next week.” The prospect loomed bigger with each new lead. As much as I’d wanted to know my ghost’s identity, I had no desire to meet her family. I mean, what could I say? I knew how I’d react if a stranger showed up on my doorstep and claimed to have a piece of my loved one beating in her chest. There was no way my visit wouldn’t open up old wounds and resentment. And I had enough of my own, thank you. If I thought outside the box, maybe there was still a way to avoid a trip to Texas.

  “You know I have to do things by the book, Sierra.”

  Claire had a steel-trap mind and she’d hound me for that lawyer’s name until I came up with one. I’d have to stall. “I know. I’ll e-mail you the firm’s address.”

  I gave Claire the information she needed to locate the file. She typed, then scrolled through the results. Lips pursed, she shook her head. “I don’t see anything that would indicate this was anything but an unfortunate accident.”

  “Why did so many agencies poke their nose into a simple accident?”

  “There were questions because of the air bag, the seat belt and the paint transfer on the bumper.”

  I hitched in a breath as the remembered jar of bumper against bumper in my nightmare jolted through me. “A hit-and-run?”

  “No, no. Probably just some parking lot mishap.”

  I stood behind her and pointed at the screen. “It says here that the air bag didn’t deploy.”

  “Burned-out fuse.”

  “Wouldn’t a warning light have gone off?”

  “Who’s going to bother getting it fixed on a rental? She was on her way back to her hotel near the airport. She had an early flight.”

  “What about the seat belt?” I asked. “It says it was nonoperative.”

  “A toll token got stuck in the mechanism and busted a gear, leaving no tension.”

  Accidentally on purpose? How badly had someone wanted to make sure the car accident was fatal? “What about tire tracks?”

  “None other than hers in the snow.”

  “What about footprints?”

  “Tough to sort them out after the scene was trampled by all the emergency personnel.”

  “So no foul play?”

  Claire clucked. “Just another driver who fell asleep at the wheel.”

  “Alcohol?”

  “Not a drop. No drugs, either, according to the blood tests.” Claire put her computer to sleep. I hoped I could remember all I’d seen until I could write down the information. “Where do you want to go for lunch?”

  “You pick.” I hiked my tote over my shoulder and rose, noting that the final report’s date was barely three months old. The slow wheels of justice might work to my advantage. “What happened to the car?”

  “We totaled it.” Claire grabbed her purse from the bottom desk drawer.

  “Do you know where it went?”

  Claire shrugged as we walked to the elevators. “Rent-a-Ride usually sends their wrecks out for salvage.”

  “Any chance the car’s still on the road?”

  Claire shook her head and pressed the elevator button. “Rent-a-Ride is cheap but they follow the rules.”

  “Which salvage yard do they usually use?”

  Claire frowned. “Um, Shirley’s Auto Salvage in Goffstown.”

  After lunch I made a detour to Goffstown and Shirley’s Auto Salvage. An eight-foot privacy fence guarded the contents of the yard. Finding the rental car would be a crapshoot but I was used to playing long odds. With a window of three months instead of a year, parts could still be available. I took off my navy blazer before leaving Betsy and entered the office in the small building, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

  No Ed-the-Gruff-Mechanic manned the office, instead a pert brunette handled the phone and computer as if she had several extra sets of hands. “I’ll be right with you.”

  I nodded, taking in the grease-free interior, the green plant on the corner of the desk and cheery yellow curtains at the window.

  “What can I do for you?” the brunette asked. Her cupid mouth turned up, feathering sunshinelike rays around her eyes.

  “I’m looking for a steering wheel and a front seat for a Taurus. Do you have any in stock?”

  She turned back to her screen. “What year?”

  I pictured the report on Claire’s computer and gave it to her.

  Her fingers zipped over the keyboard. “I have three. My mechanic’s out at lunch right now. You’ll have to wait, unless you want to pull the parts yourself.”

  “I’ll take a look and see if there’s anything that fits.”

  The phone rang and she flapped a hand toward the yard. “Okay, once you pass the gate, count three rows to your right, then go halfway down. They should be sitting right there.”

  “Thanks.”

  The phone’s ringing became insistent, and the cheery lines at her eyes took a sharp upward turn. She waved me away as she answered. “Shirley’s Auto Salvage. How can I help you?”

  Walking through the cemetery of dead cars had a certain sci-fi quality to it. Like dismembered robots, parts stuck out of piles of rusted automobile bodies. The breeze, moaning through the tunnels made by the piles of metal, had an eerie feel. My footsteps fell silently on the dirt roadway carved through the carcasses.

  What was the germ factor in a place like this? I took out the hospital mask I kept in my tote and had it halfway on before I paused. This was crazy. There were no germs waiting to jump me. I took my meds. I boosted my immune system with vitamins. I was safe. I fingered the mask, swallowed hard and stuffed it back in my tote. Things I’d taken for granted before now required careful decisions, but I wasn’t going to turn into an agoraphobic germophobe.

  The pile of Tauruses wasn’t where it should’ve been. I had to hunt down two more aisles before I came across it squashed between two behemoth SUVs. I hadn’t really expected to find Sofia’s car, but when the white Taurus with the crumpled front end caught my sight, recognition punched my gut. The VIN I pictured from Claire’s report confirmed my instinct.

  The doors were missing, as were most of the electronics, but the driver’s seat was still there. So was the steering wheel.

  I extracted an all-purpose tool from my tote and slid onto the dusty seat. The windshield was gone, so I was spared the sight of crazed glass haloed with blood. My overactive imagination still made me think I could smell her blood, though. Then I spotted the dark splotch on the dash. My stomach rolled. Sofia’s. The rusted stains made her death that much more real.

  Shaking my head, I forced myself to look past the blood. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I mean, if the experts had ruled Sofia’s crash an accident, how was I going to prove otherwise? But the investigators didn’t have the advantage of knowing about the black car that had bumped Sofia off the road or about the man who stole her briefcase.

  I pried open the fuse cover and extracted the one that looked blown. I rolled it in the palm of my hand. Replacing a working fuse with a burned one would take the mystery man, what? All of five seconds?
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br />   I slid off the seat and crouched to get a closer look at the cracked plastic insides of the seat belt mechanism. Jamming a token in there would also take only a few seconds. And having some tokens would be perfectly feasible since she’d have to have driven through tolls from the south Nashua office of Allied Defense to the airport. Especially if she came to New Hampshire regularly on business.

  In less than a minute the guy driving the black car could have ensured that both the air bag and the seat belt wouldn’t function. And picking the highway to bump her off the road would ensure a crash at high speed. He’d wanted her briefcase, but he’d also wanted her dead. Why?

  Sofia had asked Wyatt for help, and he’d once worked as a software engineer for Allied Defense. Could he have bumped off his own wife for some sort of profit? No matter how many times I reran the nightmare through my mind, I couldn’t see the assailant’s face.

  Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t notice the fetid scent that pulsed hotly against my nape until a low, tongue-swallowing growl stood the hairs on the back of my neck straight on end. Moving my head in slow motion, I spotted the black jowls of a Bullmastiff vibrating with warning.

  “Good doggie,” I said in a soothing tone. I’d always liked dogs. For all my mother’s neuroses, animals hadn’t been one of them, and I’d grown up in a houseful of strays. Because of the threat of disease animals carried, the comfort of a pet was another thing I’d had to give up. And this beast was huge! “Your mistress said it was okay for me to poke around.”

  He growled again, thick slobber dripping from the sides of his mouth like venom and splattering on the knees of my jeans. That white poison had to teem with a trillion germs.

  Because the doctors had had to cut the nerves from my heart when they’d carved it out and couldn’t reattach them to my new heart, my heart didn’t run on electrical stimulation like everyone else’s; it ran on adrenaline produced by my body. I couldn’t just leap up and run or I risked fainting. My best option was distraction until I could ease into flight.

  After a Doberman had bitten me while I was on surveillance, Leo had run several drills with his Rottweiler on how to handle a future attack. I could do this. I squelched my recently acquired fear of germ-carrying animals and rose slowly from my crouch to face the dog. “Mess with me dog and you will regret it for the rest of your days. Now, go!”

  His fawn coat shook with anticipation, then he lunged at me. Screaming, I deflected his massive front paws with my arms. That knocked him off balance, body-slammed him into my chest and smacked us both to the ground. Instinctively, I curled up and covered my ears with my hands. Being ripped to pieces by 130 pounds of pure mean was no way to go.

  He bounced to his feet and growled again. His yellow teeth were much too close to the exposed skin of my arms. Sticky slobber splotched against my hand. He was not going to bite me. Hard to exude confidence in this position but I gave it a shot. “Go home, dog!”

  He didn’t budge.

  I spotted my tote knocked over on its side and the energy bar I kept there for emergencies. “How hungry are you, Mr. Death Breath? Trust me, I don’t taste good. Not with all those drugs running through my veins.” I inched my hand toward the bar until I reached it. I carefully opened the package and offered him the prize.

  He sniffed the cranberry-and-almond bar, then gobbled it whole. While he chewed, I found my footing and armed myself with a tailpipe. Wielding the tailpipe as a sword, I backed away from him. He went for my tote. Using his teeth, he shook the contents to the ground and glommed onto anything edible—the handful of throat lozenges, the mints from the bank, the pack of gum. His search for food had knocked my forgotten can of pepper spray to my feet. Was it still good after a year-plus of no use? While he chewed the gum, I reached down for the spray, then continued backing away. If he was happy with gum, I didn’t see the point of hurting him.

  I’d gotten far enough away to turn around and get up to speed when he lunged at me again. I whirled, aimed the pepper spray and shot.

  Whining, he fell back and batted at the burn with his paws. I booked it back to the office in record time.

  The brunette took one look at me and said, “Oh, shoot. I forgot about Rufus. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  “No, but he ate my purse and I’d really like to get it back. By the way, I maced him. You might want to get him to a vet.”

  “You hurt my dog!” She raced around her desk and sped outside to Rufus’s rescue. She lifted the whining beast into her arms as if he were a baby. Amazing, considering she couldn’t outweigh the beast by more than twenty pounds. “Oh, my poor little puppy, what did the nasty lady do to you?” She glared at me. “He’s just a big old galoot. He’d never hurt a flea.”

  Could’ve fooled me. “He tried to take a bite out of me.”

  “That’s still no reason to hurt him. Look at him, he’s crying.” She kissed his slobbery snout. His eyes were running from the spray, and it did look as if he were crying.

  I raked the contents of my tote off the ground and stuffed them in what was left of the bag.

  The brunette crooned to the sniveling dog all the way back to the office. She carefully laid him on a beanbag bed in the corner, then grabbed tissues from the holder on her desk and dabbed them at Rufus’s watery eyes.

  “I usually tie him up before I let anyone go in there,” she said in a crisp tone. “Did you find what you needed?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take the steering wheel and the seat belt mechanism from the front driver’s seat.” My sister-in-law’s cousin was a mechanic. I’d have him take a look.

  “George should be here soon.” The brunette poured water onto a fresh batch of tissues and ministered to Rufus’s eyes. “He’ll pry them out for you. I’ll print out an invoice for the parts.”

  “Great.” Noticing the crusted slobber on my hands, I reached into my tote, brought out the sample-size bottle of antibacterial soap and slathered the gel up and down my arms. It would have to do until I could get into a soapy shower.

  Once I had the parts stowed in Betsy’s back, I aimed for home. No two ways about it. My snooping so far had raised more questions than it had answered.

  There was only so much I could learn from a distance. As much as I hated to, it was time to make arrangements to meet the ghost on her own grounds.

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday, April 19

  Ten Oaks. The thought whispered through my brain as the tiny speck of a town appeared on the flat horizon. An unexpected rush of homecoming set my heart thumping hard. Instinctively I let go of the gas pedal, and my foot hovered over the brake. I probably should’ve stayed home. Van would definitely have a cow when he found out I’d left town.

  In theory I could have gotten someone else to investigate. I knew detectives all over the country, thanks to a female-P.I. online network I belonged to. A few even owed me favors.

  My foot jittered on the pedal, urging me to press ahead. You can’t quit now, a hollow awareness soughed inside my skull.

  Yeah, I know. Hearing voices was a bad sign. And thinking I heard her voice echo in my brain was freakier even than having her materialize in my bedroom.

  But what choice did I have? No one was going to believe a ghost had sent me on this case. And without bringing up the ghost, what proof did I have that Sofia was murdered?

  Perspiring even though the air conditioner was on max, I took the next exit without even consulting the map on the seat beside me. I drove through a sleepy town of red brick buildings that seemed oddly familiar. The feeling increased tenfold a quarter mile later when I spied a cluster of ranch buildings perched on top of a hill that overlooked acres of white fence.

  The Quarter Past Ten Ranch.

  Home. Tears smarted my eyes. Giddiness and grief tore through me like a summer storm. I pulled the rental over to the shoulder of the road and fought the gut-wrenching sob caught in my chest. Where was this coming from? I never cried—not even when the doctors had told me I could die without a transplant.r />
  Was that it? Were these more of Sofia’s feelings?

  “You’re freaking me out, Sofia.” My grip tightened on the steering wheel, and I stared at the ranch buildings shimmering like a mirage in the sun. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”

  People are dying.

  Great, now my delusion was answering me. “Then how about a little help. Do you know who killed you?”

  No.

  “That figures. Why should you make this easy for me? How about a list of suspects, then? Some evidence?”

  Dead silence.

  “Let’s just get one thing straight. If I’m going to investigate, then I’m running the show.”

  If there was such a thing as a mental shrug, I felt one nudge my brain.

  How was that for crazy—extracting promises from a ghost?

  Reluctantly, I pulled back onto the road and turned into the drive.

  Tina had her foal, Sofia squealed as I drove past a field where foals practiced using their gangly legs. On the other side of the road, cows chewed their cud in the glare of the early afternoon sun.

  “What no comments about the cows?” I mocked her.

  Cows are business. Horses are pleasure.

  Once I would have agreed with her. As a teenager I’d loved riding. Galloping full speed across a field and jumping over logs had been a total rush. Now I was sweating bullets imagining all the germs that teemed in the manure pile and in the three barns behind the big stone house. Uneasy, I glanced east and found Fort Worth’s skyline under a cloud of haze. At least medical help was close by.

  Those P.I. instincts I’d spent years honing screamed to stay away. Far away. That nothing good could come from raising ghost bones.

  Stay, Sofia’s voice insisted, prodding like a finger into the tissues of my brain.

  “Since when are you such a coward?” I asked myself, ignoring Sofia’s voice. “Investigating is what you do. You’re good at it.”