by Meg Cabot
“Nothing, ma’am,” Lippincott said hastily.
“Listen, can you go any faster?” Townsend did not apparently share Ms. Calabrese’s interest in the deputy’s remark. “We’ve got a bunch of people waiting for us back at the hotel, and we’re kind of anxious to—”
“We’ll be there soon,” was Walt’s laconic reply. He had the departmental Trailblazer going thirty, which was plenty fast enough for this snowy road. He could understand the guy’s impatience, though. The accommodations, wherever the two of them had been staying, could not have been of the cushy variety a big movie star like Jack Townsend would be accustomed to. A ranger’s station? Somebody’s hunting cabin? Did they really expect him to believe this crap? But why, he wondered, for the thousandth time, would they make it up? Unless they were involved in whatever hinky stuff had been going on up at the crash site….
“So you took Mr. Kowalski’s gun,” Walt said to the redhead, “and you shot at one of the snowmobilers—”
“What did he mean?” Lou wanted to know. She always went by Lou, never her real name, Walt had been informed by her father—the only person connected to this case so far, with the single exception of Eleanor Townsend, who didn’t seem to be full of shit. Everyone else struck Walt as hinky as that helicopter crash…probably because everyone else involved was one of those Hollywood types.
“He said something about a crispy critter,” Lou went on. “I’m not an idiot, you know. I know what that means. Who’s a crispy critter?”
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” Walt said, coming to his deputy’s rescue. “What he meant to say was, perhaps it was fortunate for Mr. Kowalski that he perished in the he licopter crash, since that way he was not forced to admit failure to his employers.”
There was silence in the Trailblazer for a few seconds. Then Townsend said, “Kowalski didn’t die in the crash.”
Lippincott, who’d lifted his pen to record this, stopped writing, and looked into the backseat.
“Could you repeat that, sir?” he said.
A glance in the rearview mirror proved that Jack Townsend looked angry.
“Kowalski didn’t die in the crash,” he said, again. “He was alive when I pulled him out of it. Unconscious, but alive.”
“Pulled him out of it?” Walt slowed down. He wanted to make sure he had heard correctly. “The chopper?”
“Yeah,” Townsend said. “He was banged up pretty bad, but he was definitely—”
“When we arrived at the scene of the crash site,” Walt said carefully, “we found a body in the aircraft that has since been identified through dental records as belonging to one Samuel Kowalski.”
The redhead sucked in her breath. “Oh my God,” she said, seizing hold of Townsend’s sleeve. “Oh my God, Jack. They killed him. They killed Sam.”
Walt saw Townsend lift his arm and wrap it around Lou. When he spoke, he sounded tired, but firm. “The pilot was alive when we last saw him,” Townsend said. “I’d dragged him a good ten yards from the wreckage. He was breathing fine. He wasn’t burned. Not in any way.”
Suddenly Walt, who hadn’t quite known what to make about the pair’s story of masked gunmen and flight through the arctic wilderness, sat up a little straighter.
“And you say you shot at one of these guys?” he asked Townsend. “One of the ones on the snowmobiles? And hit him?”
“I didn’t,” Townsend said. He met Walt’s gaze in the rearview mirror and nodded towards Lou’s head, which was buried in the front of Townsend’s sweater.
“We didn’t find any signs,” Walt said carefully, “of any bodies, except the pilot’s.”
Lou looked up, her eyes wet.
“That’s impossible,” she said. Her voice was ragged. “The guy slammed into a tree, and his snowmobile—not to mention its driver—blew into a thousand bits. And you’re trying to tell me you didn’t find any signs of that?”
Lippincott cleared his throat uncomfortably. An unmarried rookie, he wasn’t used, as Walt was, to dealing with females.
“Uh,” he said. “Maybe they cleaned up after themselves.”
Walt coughed meaningfully, and Lippincott shut up.
“More likely,” Walt said, “the snow covered up whatever was out there—”
It was Townsend who interrupted in an incredulous voice, “You don’t believe us.”
“Now,” Walt said. Fortunately, he was beginning to see glimpses of the Anchorage city lights ahead of them. This ride wasn’t going to last much longer.
This case, however. This case he had a feeling was going to last a long, long time. Just what he needed. Like it wasn’t enough he had to deal with all those tree-huggers who’d come out of the woods on account of that damned movie. Now he supposedly had some kind of team of hired assassins to track down, if these two were telling the truth.
“Nobody said they don’t believe you,” Walt said, in what he hoped was a reasonable voice. Too bad, he was thinking, they couldn’t call in the FBI. How he would have liked to hand this one over to the feds, let them deal with it. All he wanted to do was get home and take a bath. Maybe put some of that Aveeno the girls used in the water, to help with his dry skin. That’s what he needed. A hot bath, some Aveeno, and maybe one of those fancy cigars Mitch had passed out when Shirl had her last baby….
Walt saw Townsend nudge the girl. “Show them,” he said.
And the redhead nodded and dug into the pockets of her parka….
“Hey!” Walt cried, nearly losing control of the wheel, he was so surprised. Well, who wouldn’t have been? It wasn’t every day he got a pair of revolvers pointed at him. In fact, he’d gone twenty years on the force without ever having to draw his own weapon.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Lippincott yelled when he saw the guns. He dug frantically for his own sidearm, crying, “Now, ma’am, let’s talk about this. Believe me, you don’t want to shoot us—”
“Don’t worry,” Lou said drily. “The safeties are on. I’m just trying to show you that we’re telling the truth. We took this .38 off the pilot—the man you say burned up in the crash—and the .44’s from the guy who tried to attack us in the ranger’s station. Go ahead and take them. Maybe you can trace the serial numbers and find out who they really belong to.”
Walt managed, with difficulty, to get control of the wheel—and his rapidly beating heart. “Deputy Lippincott,” he said. “Would you please relieve Ms. Calabrese of those firearms?”
Lippincott gingerly took each gun from Lou’s hands, then placed them carefully in the Trailblazer’s glove compartment.
“Now,” Townsend wanted to know, “do you believe us?”
What could Walt say except, “Yes”?
But that wasn’t exactly true, of course. And it certainly didn’t mean that what they’d been saying made any more sense than before.
“And you say you have no idea,” Walt asked Townsend, “why someone might want you dead?”
“None at all,” Townsend replied. Then, with a sideways glance at Lou, he added, “I’m certainly no angel, but I’ve never—to my knowledge—done anything that’d make anybody mad enough to want to off me. Mess up my hotel suite, maybe, but not, you know, shoot me.”
“Who messed up your hotel suite?” Walt wanted to know. “There may be a connection—”
“There isn’t,” Townsend said, flatly. “Believe me.”
“You never know.” Walt gripped the steering wheel more tightly now that he saw the silhouette of the Anchorage Four Seasons, one of the tallest buildings on its block, looming before them. “Mr. Townsend, I’m going to suggest that you have twenty-four-hour protection until you leave the state—”
“No way,” Townsend interrupted.
“Mr. Townsend,” Walt said in his most reasonable tone, the one he used when any of his daughters took it into her head to wear Lycra. “Several attempts on your life have been made—”
“Sure,” Townsend replied. “Out there. Not here.”
“Not yet,” Lou Calabrese remi
nded him.
Townsend, Walt saw through the rearview mirror, glanced down at her. She was gazing up at him earnestly.
“Jack,” she said. “Please listen to the sheriff. He knows what he’s talking about. Whoever is behind all this, he could just as easily be in Anchorage as in Myra. And until we figure out who he is, you’re a walking target—”
“Lou.” Townsend had lowered his voice to an angry whisper, but Walt heard it easily enough anyway. “I don’t want to have a cop following me everywhere I go.”
“You’d prefer to have a bullet in your skull?” Lou wanted to know.
Townsend didn’t say anything. Now they were swinging into the circular driveway to the Four Seasons. In the rearview mirror, Walt saw Lou Calabrese sit up a little straighter when she saw the crowds of protesters standing along West Third.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “They’re still out there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Walt said cheerfully. “And they’re still plenty mad about that mine shaft Mr. Lord’s planning to blow up.”
Some of the protesters shook their fists angrily at the Trailblazer, though they could have no idea that the passengers within it were in any way connected to the film. Many of them held signs with messages like “Save the Mine” and “Protect the Arctic Fox” and, most notably, “Take Your Toys Back to Tinseltown.” A film crew from one of the entertainment news shows was interviewing a particularly hairy protester as they drove by, clearly getting the real scoop about the threatened mine from an actual mountain man.
“It could be one of them,” Lou said from the backseat. “Any one of them.”
Jack made a contemptuous noise, halfway between a laugh and a snort.
“Those weren’t environmentalists out there on those snowmobiles, Lou,” he said. “Believe me.”
She glanced at him. And in that glance, even though he only saw its reflection in the rearview mirror, Walt saw fire.
“You’re getting police protection,” Lou said in a hard voice. “And that’s the end of it.”
And, to Walt’s surprise, it was. Townsend didn’t say another word about it.
Walt didn’t blame him. If it was between a band of shooters and Lou Calabrese, he’d put his money on the redhead any day.
24
“Lou!” shrieked the reporter from “Extra.” “What was it like to be stranded for three days in the woods with America’s hottest hunk, Jack Townsend?”
“Lou!” screamed the Us Weekly journalist. “Did Jack Townsend confide his feelings to you about Greta Woolston’s elopement with Bruno di Blase?”
“Lou!” A representative from Greenpeace waved a sign that said “Hollywood Doesn’t Care.” “How can you justify the slaughter of hundreds of innocent woodland creatures for the sake of a film that glorifies violence?”
“Ms. Calabrese,” a teenage girl wailed, trying to thrust something in Lou’s hand. “Can you get Jack Townsend my phone number? Please! I want to have his baby!”
“Okay, Dad,” Lou said, as her father pulled her from the throng of reporters into the safety of the hotel elevator. “That is the last time we are going out to eat, understand? From now on, it’s room service only.”
Frank Calabrese pounded the button to their floor and said, “Honey, you don’t understand. I ate that hotel food last night, and let me tell you, I was up swilling Mylanta until—”
“Fine,” Lou said as the elevator doors slid shut, mercifully cutting off all the shouting from the lobby. “We’ll order pizza. Whatever. I just can’t go through that lobby again. I can’t take it, on top of everything else.”
“Now, honey,” her father said. “I told you. Jack is going to be fine. Sheriff O’Malley’s arranged for round-the-clock protection for him, courtesy of the Anchorage PD. If anybody is trying to kill Jack, those boys in blue won’t—”
“If?” Lou could hardly believe her ears. “Oh, great. You don’t believe us, either?”
“I didn’t say that.” Frank watched the numbers above the doors light up as they rode. “Of course I believe you. We all do. I’m just saying, you shouldn’t worry about him so much. He’s a grown man, and besides, he’s got Anchorage’s finest looking out for him.”
Lou didn’t say anything about her lack of faith in Anchorage’s finest. She knew they were doing their best. Besides, there was no point in starting an argument with her father at this point. After all, they’d managed to share a nice, cordial meal at Shandy’s Shrimp Shack—a guy in hotel security had told her father it was the best place to eat in the city. Frank had wanted to have a quiet meal with her after all the hoopla surrounding her and Jack’s homecoming. Exiting Sheriff O’Malley’s Trailblazer, Lou and Jack had walked unsuspectingly into a party Vicky Lord had arranged, with “welcome home” balloons and a buffet spread and every single person remotely associated with the film in attendance.
Including Lou’s father, and Jack’s mother.
All Lou had wanted to do was slip into her own room, take a shower, and go to bed. But she hadn’t been able to. Oh, she’d managed to squeeze in the shower before dinner. But there’d been no nap. Instead, she’d worried.
First about Jack. Someone had tried, several times, to kill him, and they still had no clue who it might have been, or if he’d try to do it again. Sure, Sheriff O’Malley had the .44, and would try to trace its owner. And maybe he’d succeed.
But what if he didn’t? And what if despite the extra security the hotel had arranged, and the police escort Jack was to have everywhere he went, something happened—something like what had happened to poor Sam?
“Lou?”
She glanced up from her shoes to see her father peering down at her.
“You all right, honey?” he wanted to know.
She shook herself. “Yes,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. I’m sorry. I was just…I was just thinking….”
…about America’s hottest hunk. Oh, God! How pathetic was she? This was what came from falling in love with actors. Why hadn’t she taken her own advice? Was she a masochist? This was the other thing she was worried about: Jack’s invitation to come live with him…
…and the fact that she was so sorely tempted to accept it.
Then the elevator doors slid open, and Lou’s face went up flames. Because standing there on the eighth floor—her floor, not Jack’s, because Jack had moved up to the tenth floor after Melanie had trashed his suite on the eighth—was none other than America’s hottest hunk himself…and his mother.
“Why, Frank,” Eleanor Townsend said, in tones, if Lou was not mistaken, of delight. “And Lou. How lovely to see you. We just stopped by your room, Lou, to see if you and your father would be interested in coming to dinner with us, but you weren’t there. But here you are! How wonderful to catch you.”
“We just ate,” Lou said quickly, hoping neither Jack nor his mother would notice the blush that was turning her entire head, she was sure, beet red.
Her father was more gracious.
“What a shame,” he said, in a voice Lou had only heard him use once before—and that had been up in the Lords’ suite, when she and Jack had first arrived. Her father had introduced her to Jack’s mother in that same too-hearty tone…a tone that had caused Lou and Jack to exchange nervous glances, especially since it seemed to induce in Eleanor Townsend a high-pitched giggle that was clearly unfamiliar to her son.
“That buffet up in the Lords’ suite earlier this evening was nice and all,” Frank went on jovially, “but a man can’t survive on crudités alone, can he, Jack?”
“No, he can’t,” Jack said with a smile. “That’s too bad. It would have been so nice if you could have joined us—”
“Oh, yes,” Eleanor said eagerly. “Even if only for a cup of coffee—”
“We’d love to,” Frank said, losing his grip on the elevator door, which he’d been holding open for Jack’s mother. “Wouldn’t we, Lou?”
But Lou had noticed something. And that was that Jack and his mother were standing
alone in the eighth-floor hallway—all alone. Suddenly, she forgot she was blushing and didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
“Where’s the police officer?” Lou demanded, turning an accusing gaze on Jack. “The one who’s supposed to be keeping an eye on you?”
Jack grinned at her, those electric blue eyes of his full of something Lou couldn’t quite put a name to—had never been able to put a name to.
“I gave Officer Juarez the night off,” he said.
“Jack.” Lou felt as if her head might explode. She really did. “The whole point of having police protection is that they’ve got to be around at all times. You can’t give them the night off. What if somebody tries to attack you here in the hotel?”
“We’re just going downstairs to the hotel restaurant,” Jack said.
“What, there’s a no-shooting policy in the hotel restaurant? No shoes, no shirt, no silencer, no service?”
Jack gave his mother and Lou’s father a salty smile. It was only then that Lou noticed that the two of them were staring at her. Well, at her and Jack.
“Why don’t you two,” Jack said, “go on ahead. I’m not really all that hungry.”
Eleanor looked startled. “Oh, but Frank already ate—” she fluttered.
“Always room for more,” Frank said, jovially. “Haven’t had dessert yet, either.”
Lou could not believe what she was hearing. Her father was offering to dine with Jack’s mother in a place he’d complained had given him heartburn. And he was going to risk going back through that throng of reporters in the lobby to do it! What was happening here? Was this just parental bonding between two people whose children had been through an ordeal together? Or was it—God forbid—something more?
“See you later, you two,” Frank said, as he guided—hustled might have been the more accurate word— Eleanor into the elevator. “Jack, listen to Lou. She knows what she’s talking about. And don’t wait up!”
The elevator doors closed on Eleanor Townsend’s giggle. Giggle! The woman had giggled!
