by Kris Bock
The waitress brought the check and Kyle put a twenty on the little tray. I wondered if I should offer to pay half, but he said, “I got it.”
“Thanks. And thanks for letting me talk.” He rose, so I did too. As we walked out I said, “You said the police are keeping an eye on Bain. Do you mean they’re watching him constantly? Or just checking in once in a while?” Were the police spying on us when Bain talked to me and Ricky at the festival? I hadn’t noticed them, but maybe that was the point. I wasn’t sure if it was comforting or creepy to think somebody might have been secretly watching us then.
“I’m not sure. They only said they’re watching him. I assume so he doesn’t try to run.”
That could mean anything. Bain couldn’t have slashed my tires, if he was at the police station, but he could have cut my brake lines if he’d followed me to Kyle’s. That was an unnerving thought. I imagined Bain sneaking around behind me, and the police sneaking around behind him, like some crazy spy movie. It wasn’t as funny as it should have been.
What about the prank phone calls? Had they tapped his phone line? That seemed like something the police would do with a suspect, but didn’t they have to have a warrant for that? I didn’t know much about the rules, or how hard it was to get a warrant, or anything. I’d never much cared before.
Kyle opened the door for me, and I climbed into his truck. It smelled slightly musty, of straw and dirt and old leather from the cracked seats. When Kyle got in, he added a spicy scent, pleasantly male.
He drove me home and I wondered how to say goodnight. What were we, exactly? Friends? Comrades in arms against Bethany’s killer? Was this simply “misery loves company,” or the start of something more?
Or was he trying to get information from me, keep track of me, the way Ricky and I had been investigating him?
That was an uncomfortable thought. I put it aside. I had decided to trust him, which didn’t have to mean complete and total trust, but it did mean I should hope for and expect the best. I liked him more all the time, and I wasn’t going to blow it by acting like my mother and assuming the worst.
He pulled up in front of my house. I debated asking him in, but that meant dealing with Mom, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to add that to the mix yet. “Thanks again,” I said. “I really did enjoy seeing the hawk at work.” I hesitated, then took a chance. “I’d love to do it again sometime.”
I couldn’t see much in the dark interior of the cab, but he was turned toward me and I thought he was smiling. “Any time. You should come out some morning when I take the falcon after pigeons. He hardly ever catches one. Pigeons are really tough prey.”
Who would have guessed? His pigeons must have been a different species from the mourning doves that stood on our birdfeeder trying to figure out how to get down to the opening. Those had not impressed me with their intelligence. “I’d like that.”
“I usually go out at sunrise, around six right now. I know it’s early, especially on the weekends when you could sleep in, but if you want to go out during the week, I could get you back to work in plenty of time.” He leaned closer and spoke in a seductive murmur. “I’d even bring coffee and some of Daniel’s muffins.”
I laughed. “I’d love that.”
“You’ve had a hard few days, so I don’t want to drag you out of bed early, but if you happen to be up some morning, call or text and I’ll pick you up. Or we can meet somewhere after you get your car back.”
“Okay. Thanks again for everything.”
I slipped out of the car and dashed up the front walk. At the door, I waved and went inside. He didn’t pull away until I was closing the door behind me.
Mom glanced up from the couch. “Hey, how was your dinner?”
“Very nice.” I braced for probing questions and critical comments.
“Good, I’m glad.” Mom’s gaze drifted back to the TV. I glanced at the screen and saw famous people dancing. She was a sucker for celebrities and reality talent shows, so the combination was a winner. “Want to join me?” she asked.
“Maybe in a few minutes.”
She nodded, her attention on the TV, and I had to smile. I dropped my purse in my room, remembering with a pang of disappointment that my new quilt and art print were still in the trunk of my car. At least the garage had said they’d have the tires on Mom’s car in the morning and should have my brakes fixed in the afternoon. I needed to give her that update.
First I headed to Ricky’s room, where music was playing from behind his closed door, and knocked. Ten seconds later the door opened a few inches and Ricky peered out. He opened the door wider. “Oh good, it’s you!”
“Who were you expecting?”
Ricky backed into his room and went around his desk. He leaned down to look at the screen. “It’s all right, it’s Audra.” He glanced up at me. “Come in and close the door!”
I did and started around the desk. “Who are you….” I trailed off when I saw the face on the screen. Richard. Ricky’s father.
Chapter 29
“Hi Audra,” Richard said. “Is that really you? I can only see your elbow.”
I noticed the small camera on top of the screen. Ricky was having a video chat with his father.
“Who … how long….” I sat on Ricky’s bed, where I could still see the screen but Richard probably couldn’t get a good look at me gaping at him.
Ricky sat in the desk chair and looked back at me. “Mom doesn’t know, okay?”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I tracked Dad down a few years ago. We try to talk every week when Mom is busy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged and looked away. “I wasn’t sure if you’d tell Mom.”
Richard spoke from the screen. “Audra? Can you come closer so I can see you? I’ve missed you. Ricky tells me all about you, but it’s not the same.”
I shook myself as if coming out of a trance. All this time, I’d been worried about Ricky growing up without a father. And the little brat had taken matters into his own hands and found his. I shot him a glance, half amused and half disbelieving, and he gave me a lopsided grin. I stood and leaned down so I was in the camera’s view.
“You look great!” Richard said. “And hey, congratulations on the new job. Ricky’s been telling me about this murder. Audra, I don’t like it.”
“I’m not so crazy about it myself.” It was strange seeing him again after ten years. He looked older, a little heavier, his hair going gray. I remembered what Mom said about Richard having an affair. Did Ricky know? Had Richard explained why he’d left without trying to get shared custody, or even visitation rights?
“I want you two to be careful. I wish you’d drop this whole investigation.”
I stiffened. He might be Ricky’s father. He might even be right about the investigation. But that didn’t mean he could scold me after ignoring me for ten years. “We’re not the ones causing trouble.”
He frowned. “I know I don’t have the right—I can’t make you—look, please careful. For your own sake.”
“I’m always careful.” If he’d stuck around, he would know that. I put a hand on Ricky’s shoulder. “And I’ll look after my brother, too.”
He gazed at me, sadness in his eyes. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hit him, or hug him, or both.
“I hope we can talk again,” he said. “Ricky knows how to reach me.”
Yes, Ricky did. It was selfish of me to feel hurt. Richard wasn’t my father. And I had never bothered to track him down, had never even considered it. I pushed down the feelings and said goodbye with as much of a smile as I could manage. As Ricky said his goodbyes, I sat back on the bed and rubbed my stomach, right below the rib cage, where it ached.
Ricky turned toward me. “Audra? Is it okay?”
I forced the smile back on my face. “I’m glad you found him. I’m glad you two have a relationship.”
“We wanted to tell you. But you know you’re not good at keeping se
crets from Mom, and if she found out….”
I stared at him. “I can’t believe you hid this from her! For years?”
“I think I was eight when I found his address online. It took a while to get to video chats.”
I started to laugh. “Come here.” I pulled him into a hug, and if a few tears mixed in with the laughter, who cared?
Eventually I told him about the hawk hunting trip, the slashed tires, and everything I’d learned from Kyle. When I told Ricky that I’d admitted we were spying on Kyle’s family, he rolled his eyes. “See, I said you couldn’t keep a secret.”
“Yeah, well. It’s done now, and I feel better. But I won’t tell Mom about Richard. That’s between the three of you.” I studied him, seeing a lot of his father in his face. “Is that why you wanted your own computer so badly for your tenth birthday?”
“Yeah, before that I sent him messages from the library computers, and sometimes he called me, but I couldn’t call him because Mom would see it on the bill.”
“You haven’t seen him in person?”
He shook his head. “He’s in Denver. But now that you know, maybe we could meet him in Albuquerque sometime? He said he’d come down.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I rubbed my hands over my face, suddenly weak with exhaustion. I needed an early night and preferably no nightmares. “I’m going to bed. Update our notes, will you?”
“So we’re not going to stop investigating?”
I glanced up at his grin. He might have his father now, but I could still be the cool sister. Besides, I was pretty sure he’d keep going without me. “We’ve hardly done a thing, and someone’s attacked two of our cars. So long as we’re careful and smart, I don’t see how we can make things worse. But I want you to keep it to online research. I don’t want anyone else knowing what we’re doing, so no following people or anything like that.”
“Okay.” He said it too easily. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he went on innocently, “I can tell you what I found out about the Bains.”
I sat back on the bed with a sigh. “All right.”
He looked down at some papers on his desk. “Lia Bain is eighteen years old. Her parents weren’t married. She lives with her mother and three younger kids. She’s the only one with the last name Bain.” He looked up at me. “That makes the others half-siblings, right, like us?”
I nodded. And she was the oldest. I didn’t really want to have anything in common with Lia Bain. One difference, though—she knew her father. Given what I’d heard about him, I didn’t think that made her luckier.
“She doesn’t do very well in school,” Ricky went on. “And she’s kind of a troublemaker. She got suspended for fighting once.”
“You got all this online?”
Ricky hesitated. “Mostly. You should see some of her profile pictures. They’re kind of … um … Mom would say she doesn’t respect herself.” He looked away, blushing.
“I’ll bet. What do you mean about mostly online?”
“You know my friend Josh? No, I guess you haven’t met him ‘cause we’ve only been hanging out this year. Anyway, his mom is kind of a gossip, so I heard some stuff there.”
That wasn’t so bad. I’d been prodding Eslinda for gossip, too. So long as the gossips didn’t gossip about us gossiping about—I was too tired to think about it. “Okay, so Lia is an apple that didn’t fall far from the tree. So what?”
“So she’s Thomas Bain’s alibi. Which means that he’s her alibi, too, if they’re claiming they were together the weekend she disappeared. You said you didn’t think she could carry Bethany’s body alone. But what if they did it together?”
I trembled, suddenly queasy. A father-daughter murder team? The image of Bethany in the ditch flashed through my mind, and I had to close my eyes for a second. Surely no father would drag a daughter into something like that. But what did I know about fathers? And what if it was the other way around—what if Lia had killed Bethany, maybe by accident, and her father had helped cover it up?
Surely not. And yet….
I stared at my brother. “I want you to stay away from them.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it. If you see them, run the other direction. Go someplace safe or call the police.”
“Now you sound like Mom.”
“Ricky!”
“Okay, okay, I’m kidding.” He sat at his desk. “I guess I’ll poke around online some more, since that’s all I’m allowed to do.”
I gazed at the back of his head. Seeing his father for four years without telling Mom or me proved that he got away with a lot more than he was “allowed” to do. And he was hitting that age where rebellion was its own reward.
I stood and put my hands on his shoulders. “Remember how horrible it was when the car was out of control yesterday? Someone doesn’t like us. Or me, anyway, but that puts you in danger as well. I want you to be safe. Please promise me that you’ll be safe.”
He twisted his head to look up at me. “Yeah, okay. Don’t worry. I’m not stupid.”
I squeezed his shoulders. “No, you’re definitely not.” Maybe too smart for his own good, though. “I love you, kid.”
He looked embarrassed but mumbled, “Love you too.”
I headed for my room. I definitely needed a good night’s sleep. Maybe if I woke early enough I could call Kyle. Was it too soon? It was probably too soon. But I remembered the beauty and thrill of the hawk soaring toward us, and the comfort of Kyle’s arm around my shoulders. Maybe I needed moments like those even more than I needed a good sleep.
When I entered my room, my phone was ringing. The number was blocked. I watched it go to voicemail. When I finally got up the nerve to check the message, the voice was low and unfamiliar. “You’ll pay for what you did. I swear you’ll pay.”
Chapter 30
I got through the night with the help of Mom’s sleeping pills, but I did not wake early enough to call Kyle. The day passed in a blur of work, retrieving cars, reviewing the articles on Bethany when I had a few minutes free, and looking over my shoulder. Jay seemed to be keeping a low profile, which suited me fine. Mr. Preppard glared when I passed him in the hall, but he didn’t start anything.
At home, it was my turn to make dinner. While we ate, Mom finally got around to prying into my sort-of-date with Kyle, but she kept her advice to a manageable level. In fact, she said, “He sounds like a decent man,” which was about the best compliment she’d ever give a man.
I gave a weak laugh. “He’s darn near perfect. It’s intimidating.”
She studied me for a minute. I braced for the lecture about how no man could be trusted. Finally she said, “No man is perfect. No woman either. But don’t sell yourself short. If he’s a good man, you’re worthy of him, and he’d be a fool not to realize that.”
I stared while she dug back into her chicken, ignoring the fact it was dry from overcooking. Maybe we really would be able to develop a new relationship.
After dinner we left Mom watching TV, and I dragged Ricky back to his bedroom. “We need to do something,” I said. “I’m going crazy waiting and not knowing what the police are doing and wondering if someone’s watching me and—” I decided not to go into detail about what might happen if Bethany’s murderer decided to take revenge on me for finding the body.
“Do you have any ideas?” Ricky asked.
I sat on his bed. “One thing came to me when I was reviewing the news articles. The police have been looking for Bethany’s car ever since she was reported missing. They haven’t found it.”
“You think it will help solve the crime?” Ricky asked. “If the murderer used it to move her body, maybe he left something behind! A clue, like a hair or some blood.”
I made a face. “Right. I don’t know if the police are still looking for it, since she’s been found. I guess they must be, but now they know she’s not with her car, so maybe they’re not worrying about it. The question is, if they haven’t found her car, how could we?”
; Ricky squinted in concentration. “What would the police have done? They must have put out an alert.”
“Probably. But that would mostly work if the car got left someplace where it would be towed or ticketed. Maybe a police officer would notice it driving down the street, but it was a white Toyota Corolla, not exactly something that would stand out in a crowd. Since obviously Bethany didn’t leave town in it, the car could still be around somewhere.”
“It’s not near the resort, is it?”
“No. I looked around the parking lot when I left today, but it’s not there. It’s possible the police found it, towed it, and didn’t let the paper report it. But surely one of the employees would have noticed, and I haven’t heard any rumors about that.”
“Okay,” Ricky said. “She didn’t leave her car anywhere obvious, like her house or where she worked, or the police would have found it.”
“Either she left her car someplace else, or someone moved it afterward. If the police haven’t found the car yet, maybe the murderer hid it somewhere. But where?”
The door opened and Mom came in. “What are you two doing?”
Ricky and I exchanged a guilty glance as I tried to think of an excuse. But did we really have to keep this a secret? We weren’t doing anything except thinking. And Mom, who usually assumed the worst about people, might have insight into sneaky behavior. “We’re trying to figure out where someone might hide a car.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Any particular car?”
“Bethany Moore’s car, which is missing. We wonder if the murderer might have hidden it someplace, either to hide evidence or to make it look like Bethany left town.”
Mom sat beside me on the bed. “That makes sense. He might have hidden it in a remote corner, pushed it into a ravine in the mountains, or drove it down some wash outside of town. That’s hard to track. Have you checked Google maps?”
I glanced at Ricky’s computer, where the screensaver was a mesmerizing kaleidoscope. “They’re not updated that often, are they? Even if you could identify a car from the air like that, I don’t think you’re seeing what’s out there right now.”
