Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  A few feet from where Mac was supposed to use a branch to get over the fence I saw why he’d never made it to the pickup. He had the long handle of the shovel safely wrapped in plastic to protect fingerprints, but beside him was the branch on which he was planning to cross the fence. Broken. He was sitting on the ground rubbing his knee, his expression pained.

  “What happened?”

  “Branch broke. I hit my knee on a rock when I fell.”

  Then, to add one more complication, the Porsche zipped around the gift shop and pulled into the carport. Brian got out and immediately spotted us.

  He stalked up to where I stood and Mac sat on opposite sides of the fence. “What’s going on?”

  My mouth, trapped between truth and various unlikely stories, clamped shut. Then Brian spotted the plastic-wrapped shovel.

  “Hey, you found the shovel! I figured we must have dropped it up there somewhere, but I didn’t have time to go after it. But you didn’t have to go to all this trouble to retrieve it. You could have waited until I got home and unlocked the gate.”

  I dodged the real explanation for our retrieving the shovel, which was at odds with his interpretation. He also, fortunately, wasn’t asking for an explanation about why the handle looked as if Mac had tried to bandage it with plastic. “Mac hurt his knee,” I said.

  Mac floundered to his feet, gingerly keeping his weight off the bad knee.

  “Can you walk over to the gate?” Brian asked. “I’ll get it unlocked so you can come out that way.”

  Mac hobbled along the inside of the fence, hibiscus waving like a red flag. Brian had the gate unlocked by the time we got there. He reached for the shovel as soon as Mac stepped through the gate.

  “Thanks.” With a smirk at Mac and a wink to me, he added, “You might check out that rip in your pants before you head to town or anywhere. That’s some pretty flashy underwear you’ve got there.”

  Mac twisted to look at his exposed hibiscus, and Brian jauntily headed toward the carport with the fingerprint-covered shovel. The grand climax to our plans A, B, and B-1.

  “I’ll go get the pickup,” I muttered. Mac, now holding the rip together with one hand, slumped down beside the gate to wait for me.

  Sheila came out of Duke’s trailer just when I reached the corner of the fence. She stopped short, apparently startled to see me. What I wanted to do was ask what she’d been doing at Brian and Kathy’s door, but then I decided, since she hadn’t seen me then, that it might be more prudent not to let her know I’d seen her.

  “Mac hurt his knee. I’m going to get the pickup so I can take him home.”

  I figured that statement raised more questions than it answered . . . how had Mac hurt his knee and why was the pickup hidden around the corner? . . . but Sheila didn’t ask for an explanation. She said, “Duke’s knees are acting up again, so he took a couple of pain pills. He’s sleeping now. I’ve been cleaning the refrigerator.”

  “Good. Tell him we’ll stop by again one of these days.” I hurried off before Sheila could ask questions.

  I retrieved the pickup, helped Mac into the passenger’s side, and we made a hasty exit.

  No shovel. No fingerprints.

  On the bright side, we didn’t have to figure out how to wrap and send a long-handled shovel.

  Chapter 16

  IVY

  Back at the motorhome, Mac changed out of his ripped pants, and we put ice and then antibiotic ointment on his swollen and scraped knee. He didn’t want a doctor, of course. There must be a line in some secret Male Code that says real men don’t see a doctor for anything less than a near-death emergency. Which doesn’t mean they don’t want a fair amount of pampering, of course.

  I fixed his favorite meat loaf for dinner, gave him a couple of ibuprofen and a freshly baked brownie, and he stretched out on the sofa while we watched an old John Wayne movie on DVD. Koop usually curls up on my lap, but tonight he went into Comfort Cat mode and settled down on Mac’s stomach. BoBandy snuggled up to his leg. By morning the swelling had gone down, the sun was out, and he decided he was in good enough shape to wash the pickup. At lunch he came in with the bag of rocks I’d left in the pickup and asked if I wanted to keep them.

  I peered in the plastic bag. Outside of their natural environment, shiny beach rocks tend to dull into a just-another-rock look that makes me wonder why I picked them up. Mac pointed to a larger, darker stone. “That doesn’t look like a beach rock.”

  “It’s the one Brian almost smashed into your toe when we were looking for Duke’s treasure hole. I picked it up because of its unusual shape.”

  I jiggled the sack to change the stone’s position and better show off what looked like Barbra Streisand’s profile along the flat edge.

  “What unusual shape?” Mac asked.

  Mac has many marvelous talents and abilities but seeing the faces I often see in various objects isn’t one of them. Sometimes I find this frustrating, but now that I looked more closely at this bumpy-edged stone, maybe the Streisand resemblance wasn’t all that great. “Never mind. Just toss ’em.”

  Mac grabbed the bag, but then he stopped and looked in it again. “Can they get fingerprints off a rock?”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “Brian had hold of that stone . . .”

  Yes! I’d read that fingerprints weren’t easy to retrieve off rock, but I’d also read about a case in which fingerprints from a rock that had been thrown off a freeway overpass and killed a motorist had been used to identify the perpetrator, so they must be able to do it sometimes. I’d been wearing gloves when I picked up the rock, so mine wouldn’t be there.

  Using a section of the plastic bag so he wouldn’t get his own fingerprints on the rock, Mac withdrew it and set it carefully on the table. The stone was smooth, flat, and greyish. Just another rock. Streisand had disappeared. But if Brian’s fingerprints were on it . . .

  Mac tilted his head as he eyed the stone. “What do you think?”

  I nodded. Worth a try! And easier to mail than a shovel.

  ***

  We packed the stone in a new plastic bag and a square box that had held some pickup part Mac had bought. A rock probably didn’t need padding, but I padded it with crumpled newspaper anyway. I blacked out the printing on the box with a marking pen and got Megalthorpe’s address off his website. We took the package into the Trinidad post office. The clerk inquired about contents, but he didn’t appear startled by my “It’s a rock” answer. Although he did raise his eyebrows when I sent it by express mail, the fastest and most expensive way possible. He said the package needed a return address, so I used the numbers on Sheila’s mailbox. When I asked, I also found that Sandy’s package had arrived at General Delivery. I couldn’t wait to get back to the motorhome to open it, of course, so I tore into it right there in the pickup. We both stared at the contents.

  “They’ll look great on you,” Mac said.

  I’ve seen jeans like this on other women. Ordinary on the front, but with backside pockets glittering with metal studs and glass crystals and metallic embroidery. This design was graceful and swirly, with glittery points around the swirls. I tilted my head to study the design. Surely the swirls and points couldn’t be what they looked like to me . . .

  “I think that’s the style now,” Mac offered. “At least they don’t have ragged holes like I’m always seeing.”

  I have jeans with holes in them, but that’s because they’re worn out, not because they acquired fashionable—and expensive—holes in a jeans factory. Now sunlight struck one of the glass crystals and shot a beam like a laser out the window. I hastily stuffed the jeans back in the tissue paper in which Sandy had wrapped them before some passing motorist became a casualty.

  I appreciated Sandy’s gift, of course. She and her friends probably wear jeans like these. But glitters and twinkles on my backside—? I’ve sometimes wondered if it doesn’t occur to Sandy that her gifts might be a wee bit over-the-top
for an LOL or if she knows and is determined to drag me into twenty-first-century fashion anyway.

  The thong panties she’d once sent were surprisingly comfortable. The toe rings worn with shoes were fine. But neither of those items were openly visible, and the glittery design on these jeans would light up my backside like a Christmas tree. Actually, that’s what the design looked like. A Christmas tree. With an octopus twined around it.

  We didn’t find a place for the baby things in Trinidad, so we drove on down to Eureka and donated them at a Salvation Army store. I also picked up a nice nut chopper at a bargain price.

  Back at the motorhome, Mac’s knee was hurting again so he stretched out on the sofa. I stuffed the jeans in a drawer. I texted PI Megalthorpe to tell him an item with possible fingerprints was on its way, although I still didn’t give him an identifying name for Brian. I also texted Sandy a thank-you for the surprise gift without mentioning how startling a surprise it was. She texted me right back saying she’d been planning to send me something else that was popular now, but Then I saw the jeans and they were so “you.” She also sent a couple of photos of that other current fad. Personally, I think they’re kind of gross, she wrote, but maybe I’ll try them sometime.

  Hairy fingernails. The girls were using snippets of fake fur glued to fake fingernails, and one girl had even managed to use bits of her own hair. The photo showed her hairy-fingernailed hand alongside her hair. A matching ensemble.

  Hairy fingernails vs. glittery jeans? You made the right choice, Sandy.

  I can always wear the jeans on some dark and moonless night.

  ***

  On Saturday Mac’s knee was better, and we spent time wandering around McKinleyville. We weren’t exactly looking for Renée’s ex, but this was where Ron Sweeney had thought Ric Echol was staying. We saw lots of motorcycles, but none that matched the photo of the Harley Screamin’ Eagle that Mac had found on the internet. We did see the town’s 160-foot totem pole in a shopping center, watched people flying enormous kites on Clam Beach, and ate great clam chowder and cornbread at a café with an oversized balloon of a laughing crab near the front door. When we got home, Sheila was just changing the sign on her garage sale from Open to Closed.

  She wasn’t at church the next morning, where we heard a rousing version of “When the Saints Come Marching In.” The pastor preached on Psalm 46:1, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble,” which is a glorious truth that I’ve experienced over and over in my life.

  Sheila was unloading items from her SUV when we got home. A small microwave, a ruffled lamp, and several cardboard boxes of stuff. She’d apparently been making the rounds of other yard sales to resupply inventory for her own. We waved but didn’t stop.

  After lunch we decided to drive out to the cove and see if the crime scene tape was still up at Kate’s Kabins, but along the way we spotted Duke sitting in his tree chair and turned off to say hi. Which reminded me I wanted to check on the internet for the availability of a special gift I’d like to give him before we, hopefully soon, took off for our delayed honeymoon in Arizona. Duke was wearing slacks and a sports coat today, more dressy than his usual old work pants.

  “Going somewhere?” Mac asked.

  “Sheila said she didn’t feel like opening up her yard sale this afternoon, so we’re going down to Eureka for pizza. Might even take in a movie.”

  “How’re the knees doing?”

  “Doin’ fine. Sheila’s pills really kill the pain.”

  I hated to say anything if the pills were really helping him, but— “Doctors usually say we shouldn’t take pills prescribed for someone else.” And what did Sheila have that required strong pain pills?

  “Yeah. Right.” Duke snorted his disapproval. “They want you to come in and pay big bucks for an office call. Say, I’ve been going through some old photos to see if I had anything that might be useful when you’re writing about treasure and stagecoach robberies.” He stood up and grabbed his walker. “Come on inside and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

  “I’ll wait out here,” I said. “I’ve been wanting a chance to try out the chair.”

  Mac and Duke went inside the trailer, and I sat in the padded tree chair. It had a nice, springy feel. I thought it liked being sat on. I looked across to Brian and Kathy’s place. Brian usually parked the Porsche in the carport, but it was out in the parking lot today. Maybe it had gotten a few specks of dust and he was planning another wax and polish job? It was some distance from Kathy’s car, as if Brian didn’t want his glossy pet infected with something the old Honda might have.

  I was looking at the cars and idly wondering if Kathy ever resented the difference between the classy Porsche and her own modest vehicle when—

  What happened first? The flash? The boom of explosion? The flying car parts?

  The flash blinded me, and all I saw for a moment was a sunburst of blazing light. I covered my ears and jumped out of the chair. Something thudded to the ground in front of me. I blinked several times before I could see that the thudding something was a piece of car. Red. More car parts fell, hitting the parking lot like metallic rain. Mac ran down the ramp from the trailer, Duke and his walker skidding behind him. The boom of the explosion echoed in my ears. The door to Brian and Kathy’s place flew open and Brian stood in the doorway as if blasted into immobility. Mac grabbed me around the shoulders and dragged me back just as something crashed into a nearby tree. An SUV came out of nowhere, and Sheila jumped out.

  Flames roared around what was left of the topless, sideless vehicle. The engine lay on its side a few feet away. Tires blazed, and one blew out with a bang. Then another explosion. The gas tank? More flying car parts. Black smoke. A throat-choking, nose-burning smell.

  For a few moments we were a frozen tableau, and then everyone moved at once. Brian jumped out of the doorway and ran toward his blazing Porsche, arms outstretched as if to embrace its melting frame. He was yelling—or groaning, some kind of anguished noise. Kathy came out with a cell phone to her ear, apparently calling for help. Sheila stepped out from behind her SUV. Duke said, “Holy cow!”—an expression I haven’t heard in some time.

  “What happened?” Sheila asked. She, in her plaid cape and perky purple hat, didn’t look nearly as shaken as I felt.

  “I was sitting here looking at the car and it blew up! Foom!” I threw my arms in the air. “Just like that, it just . . . blew up! Like a bomb hit it. If Brian had been in it, he’d have been blown up too!”

  Brian circled the engine and the largest piece of flaming vehicle remaining. Smaller, scattered car parts littered the parking lot. That acrid scent of burning plastic and rubber smoked the air. I coughed when the shifting wind blew a cloud of dark smoke our direction.

  Sheila waved smoke away from her face. “Of course he wasn’t in it.”

  In the distance I could already hear a siren. The rural fire station wasn’t far away. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you see what’s going on here? What Brian’s doing?”

  All I saw was a mangled, blazing car, smoking car parts scattered like bits of a metallic barbecue, and Brian standing there with an incredulous, disbelieving look on his face. He was apparently too shocked or dazed to realize he was standing dangerously close to the burning car. Didn’t he feel the heat of the flames? If another tire blew—

  Mac ran out and pulled Brian away just as another tire did blow. Car parts embedded the wall beside Kathy and Brian’s door like some haphazard attempt at street art sculpture.

  Feeling dazed myself, I repeated the question to Sheila. “What do you mean?”

  “They must be close to arresting him for Renée’s murder. He’s getting desperate. So now he blows up the car to make it look as if someone tried to kill him too.” She sounded exasperated with my denseness, as if anyone should see the obvious. “A diversionary tactic. Don’t you see?”

  I hadn’t had much time to think, and the explosion
still plugged my ears, but this thought wasn’t even lurking on some distant mental horizon. Brian blowing up his own beloved Porsche? Surely not.

  And yet, if he wanted to divert attention from his own guilt, make it look as if whoever killed Renée was after him too . . .

  “But Brian was careful not to actually get himself hurt or killed, of course.” Sheila thrust her arms through openings in the cape and crossed them over her chest. She leaned back against the front of her SUV. “Just watch his act when the authorities get here.”

  “How would he do it?” I asked. “I mean, the car was just sitting there all by itself. No one was even around it. I was looking right at it.”

  “I don’t know.” She uncrossed her arms and her narrowed eyes studied Brian. “I don’t know anything about explosions. A remote control device of some kind? You can just bet your booties he did it somehow!”

  I don’t know anything about explosives either, but I have had a smidgen of scary experience. Several years ago, back in Missouri, someone planned to blow up my old Thunderbird by rigging dynamite under the car. It was supposed to go off and blow both me and the Thunderbird to smithereens when I turned on the ignition. What saved me was that the car wouldn’t start that morning. Luck some people said; the good Lord looking out for me, I figured.

  But that must not be how this explosion was set to go off because Brian had to have started the car before he backed the Porsche out of the carport. Why didn’t it blow up then, with him in it? That’s assuming someone else had rigged the explosion and was trying to kill him, not what Sheila was suggesting. Could someone else have set off the explosion using some kind of timer or remote control device?

  From how far away did remote control devices work? No one in the immediate area had jumped out of a tree and raced off when the explosion blew. Or at least I hadn’t seen anyone. A timer, a ticking clock sort of thing? That was hardly practical. How to know when to set it for? If that was the system that had been used with the intent to kill Brian, it hadn’t worked, obviously. Brian was still here.