“Franks was valuable until he became a liability. Like you both are to me now.”
“Where’s our dessert?” Marla squeaked, in an inane attempt to delay the inevitable. “You don’t want to disrupt your schedule.”
“The apricot tart can wait. Killing you will be just as sweet. On your feet.”
Lovelace yanked a gun from under the napkin on his lap and aimed it at her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
“Let’s go outside to the balcony.” Otto’s gaze danced with anticipation, his weapon hand steady.
They preceded him onto the terrace overlooking a mountain view, now shrouded in darkness. The howl of a coyote sounded, making Marla’s gut turn to ice. Where had the kitchen staff gone? Were they watching the scene unfold from within?
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Dalton said, edging toward a shadow between lamp posts. “Someone among your team is stealing ore, but it isn’t you.”
“Franks was getting greedy. He wanted more money, so I figured he was helping himself to enrich the pot. Nobody betrays me. Poor man had an allergy to peanuts. I got rid of him that way. The dose was so high that even his epi-pen wouldn’t work.”
“Sheriff Beresby knows this by now. Your time is up, Lovelace. You’d do yourself a favor to surrender before your Chinese or E.F.A. friends blame you for their shortage. At least you’ll have the chance to live if you’re in jail.”
“You’re lying. With your deputy friend dead, no one knows where you are. Beresby will assume you three got lost in the mine system or had an accident.”
Marla had tucked the dinner knife behind her back when they rose from the table. But she couldn’t rush Otto. He’d shoot them first.
Nonetheless, she noted his mouth tightening and his hand raising a notch. If only she could distract him, Dalton would be able to withdraw the weapon from his boot. They’d worry about the guards later.
She turned sideways as though to present a smaller target and gripped the blade in her sweaty palm. With a whirling motion, she tossed it at Otto.
His startled glance was the moment Dalton needed to whip out his .38 and fire.
Otto staggered backwards, a look of shock on his face. His weapon dropped from his limp grasp and clattered onto the tile floor. Blood blossomed on his sleeve.
Dalton charged forward and punched Otto on the jaw. The big man’s head snapped back at the blow, but he rallied and surged at Dalton like an enraged bull. As the two men struggled, Marla grabbed Otto’s fallen weapon from the ground.
The two guards burst inside the dining room and assessed the scene. As they sprinted her way, Marla aimed and fired through the open patio doors, steadying the weapon as she’d been taught. The kick from the recoil bounced the barrel upward.
She didn’t dare look in Dalton’s corner. Various grunts and thuds told her he wasn’t having an easy time of subduing their host. Her heart pounded in fear for his safety.
One of the guards bent over, moaning at a spreading red stain on his leg. She must have hit him. When the other guy raised his rifle, she held her arm straight, aimed, and fired again with a tighter grip this time. The shot rang in her ears.
“I hear sirens outside, Lovelace. My cousin knows you’re involved. She’ll have notified the sheriff’s office when we didn’t check in. Beresby will be headed this way. Your game is finished.” Dalton’s words were punctuated by his short, labored breaths.
“I won’t be safe, even if locked up,” Otto said, his voice laced with panic. “My friends have ways of getting to me. They’ll say it’s my fault for exposing their role. This has to end now. I will get rid of you and your tiresome wife if it’s the last thing I do.”
Marla froze as one guard still came at them. Blood welled from his shoulder, and he’d cast the rifle aside from his weakened hand. But his other palm gripped a steel blade.
As she stood fixated on the knife, Otto dove under Dalton’s arm and raced toward her in a change of strategy. He knocked Marla’s weapon from her hand before she could blink. Then he aimed a blow at her gut. She ducked to the side.
When he swung at her again, she dodged away at the last minute. She stooped, grabbed his ankles, and yanked them up. He tipped backward.
As she let go, his scream echoed in the night.
She hadn’t realized they were so close to the rail. Empty space greeted her horrified gaze.
More thuds from behind told her Dalton had engaged the guard. A loud crash sounded, followed by sudden silence except for the sound of her heavy breathing.
As she whirled around, her mouth gaped in astonishment. Their server had smashed a pottery vase over the guard’s head. The fellow lay stunned on the ground.
She and Dalton stared at the young man. He grinned at them both and spread his hands.
“They are bad people, keep me and my sister imprisoned here. Now we have chance to be free,” he said in heavily accented English.
The sirens outside grew louder. Dalton took out his cell phone and called the sheriff. In the meantime, she dialed Annie’s number and told her they were safe.
“Luke is on his way here,” Dalton told her after they’d both disconnected. “Pete notified him where we’d gone.”
“Pete is alive?” Her heart leapt with relief.
“He’s just wounded. He played dead until the guards left with us and no one else was around. Then he called for backup.”
“Thank goodness. I hope he’ll be all right.”
Waiting for the authorities on the front stoop, she sagged against a wall. Dalton had dragged the two thugs into the living room with the server’s help to truss them. Her body shook in violent tremors. Had Otto really fallen from the terrace? She supposed they’d find out in the daytime.
She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering as their close call took its toll. Her teeth chattered, and her shoulder ached from firing the gun. Summoning her resolve, she clenched her jaw tight. She only had to maintain composure for a little while yet.
Had Dalton collected his weapon from the patio floor? Probably so. He acted cool and confident when securing their assailants as though this were all in a day’s work for him.
When he’d completed his task, he hustled to her side, concern etched on his face.
“Are you hurt? Tell me you’re okay.” He surveyed her body ostensibly for wounds and then glanced at her face.
“Yes. No. I mean, I’m unharmed but I’m not all right.”
He drew her into his embrace and patted her hair. Her ponytail had come undone, and her hair streamed down to her shoulders.
“You’ll be fine. I’m proud of you, sweetcakes. You held your own in the fight.”
She gave a nervous giggle. “You’d better give me more lessons on the shooting range. You didn’t do so bad yourself.”
The sirens whooped and stopped as vehicles from the sheriff’s department arrived. The cavalry had come. She greeted Luke Beresby with a weak grin.
Bone-deep exhaustion settled over her like a salon drape lined with lead. At Dalton’s urging, she sank onto the living room sofa while he conferred with the sheriff and various other authorities who joined them. She became aware of clocks ticking in the background, a steady sonata that played on despite their master’s absence. Otto Lovelace’s time had run out.
Finally, they were allowed to leave after promising to stop by Beresby’s office another time to sign a formal statement. The lawman assured them Pete would be fine. The deputy had sustained a wound to his shoulder but he’d heal quickly.
Back in the resort room, Marla didn’t feel like talking. She showered, soaking her sore shoulder under the stream of hot water. It reminded her of the steam issuing from Lovelace’s smelting plant that wasn’t really steam at all but pollution. Too weary to think straight, she dried herself, donned her night-wear, and collapsed onto the bed where she fell dead asleep.
In her dreams, Otto Lovelace’s face appeared before her.
With a snarl, he t
hrust a knife at her. She dodged the blow, frantic to find Dalton who wasn’t in her line of sight. What had Otto done to him? The blade descended again. Marla slipped under his arm and came up at his rear. She pounded her fist on Otto’s broad back. A steady throbbing noise pulsed in the background. Machinery from his stamping mill?
The pounding persisted, until the threads of sleep evaporated, and Marla realized somebody was knocking on their resort room door.
Where was Dalton? She gazed with dismay at his empty side of the bed and the rumpled sheet.
“Dalton, are you in the bathroom? Can you see who’s at the door?”
When he didn’t answer, she rolled upright with a groan. Her wrap lay across the foot of the bed. She spied a piece of ivory hotel stationery there and bent to grab it.
I’ve gone into town to see the sheriff and take care of a few things. Didn’t want to wake you. Talk to you later. Love, Dalton.
Oh, gosh. Now what?
“Who is it?” she called on her way to the door while tying the sash around her robe.
“It’s Juanita. Please, I need to speak to you, señora.”
Marla surveyed the housekeeper’s chalk white face and disheveled uniform. “You can come in, if you don’t mind the way I look.” She smoothed down her hair, her head still groggy from sleep. “What’s wrong?”
“Jesse didn’t come to work today, and he’s not answering his cell phone. I am worried.”
“Maybe he ran into traffic,” she said, wondering if the wrangler could have been in a road accident. Or worse, if he’d tangled with Otto’s gang.
“You don’t understand. He told me yesterday he almost had the proof he needed to expose whoever was causing problems. I think he found it and got into trouble.”
Marla offered the maid some coffee before pouring herself a cup. Dalton had made a pot before he left. She added cream and sugar, then sipped thoughtfully.
“He could have gotten a late start. Do you think he left his cell phone at the ranch yesterday when he went home? Have you looked down by the corrals?”
“Si, no one there has seen his phone or can tell me anything. I know in my bones something terrible has happened to him.”
“Where does he live?” The scene at Franks’s apartment came to mind. She hoped they wouldn’t find something similar at Jesse’s place.
Her heart skipped a beat. That couldn’t be where Dalton had gone, could it?
“Not far from here. Maybe twenty minutes.”
“My husband probably took our car, so you’d have to drive if I go with you. Can you leave work for that long?”
Juanita’s dark eyes shone in gratitude. “I call now and give excuse. Sorry, I’ll wait outside while you dress.”
Marla gulped down the coffee in between putting on a smidgen of makeup and doing her hair in a quick braid. The longer length had its benefits. After donning jeans and a comfortable top, she grabbed her purse and exited.
Juanita already had her keys in hand. Marla dashed off a quick text message to Dalton before joining her.
Could this be a trap? The unbidden thought rose in her mind. What if Jesse, and not Kevin Franks, was behind the dangerous pranks? Juanita could be working with him. But what would they stand to gain by abducting her? She couldn’t see how anyone would benefit when she and Dalton had exposed the mining operation and defeated its owner. And the housekeeper seemed genuinely distressed, not that Marla hadn’t been fooled before.
Was Otto dead? Is that why Dalton had left early, because the sheriff notified him they’d found the body?
“I’ve texted my husband that I’m going with you,” she told Juanita, who hurried along the path toward the employee parking lot. The cool morning air chilled Marla’s skin but it felt good nonetheless. And as soon as the sun rose, the temperature would heat up.
As a further precaution, she added Juanita’s license plate number to her text messages to Dalton. Why wasn’t he responding?
Her anxiety increased as they sped away. They passed the outskirts of town, veered onto the highway, and got off at the next exit. Juanita drove along an isolated road with nothing on either side except for brown dirt and scraggly shrubbery with an occasional saguaro.
Why would Jesse vanish now? Had Otto’s people gotten to him yesterday after work?
Shortly thereafter, they entered a bumpy gravel drive toward a modest single-story house without much of a yard. The place had an isolated location and a forlorn air.
Noting his car was absent from the driveway, Juanita let them inside his home with a key. Marla gaped at the sophisticated computer equipment that took up the entire living room. What did Jesse do in here? And where was he?
A quick search told them the place was empty. Nor were there any signs of a struggle. Marla concluded that Jesse had driven somewhere with a more important errand in mind than going to work. Could it relate to an item he’d found on his computer? After all, he’d been the one to send Dalton a map of the mining tunnels. What else had he discovered?
She picked up the nearest page on his computer desk and turned to Juanita, who stood by wringing her hands. “These are payroll records from Otto Lovelace’s water bottling plant. Did you know Jesse was hacking into their files?”
The housekeeper’s face drained of color. “I know nothing, señora, except Jesse blew hot and cold for me. I like him, and I did not pry into his affairs.”
Too bad you didn’t. That would have been helpful.
Marla studied the copies of company checks made out to Matthew Brigham and signed by Tate Reardon. Why had Rear-don been paying the engineer? Were those bribes for his passing grades on inspections? Brigham, in turn, had handed something to Kevin Franks the day she’d spotted them together. Had that been a payoff as well?
Her gaze fell upon a familiar diagram poking out from another pile of papers. The hairs on her nape rose. That looked similar to the layout of tunnels Jesse had sent Dalton.
It seemed more and more as though Jesse had been investigating the same things, but why?
Finding the man became urgent. He could have placed himself in danger. It was becoming more likely that Otto’s goons had gotten to him yesterday.
Stymied as to what to do next, she’d put down the papers in her hand when Juanita scooped a printout from the floor with a muttered exclamation.
“Look, it is Jesse’s writing on the side.”
Marla peeked over her shoulder. “The narrow gauge depot? What’s that?”
“I have no idea, but maybe it is where we can find him.”
Recollection made Marla wrinkle her brow. Hadn’t Raymond mentioned something about a former railroad line?
She sat at one of the active computer stations and turned on the monitor. A search brought up a local branch of the United Verde and Pacific Line. Built in the late eighteen hundreds, the narrow gauge railroad was abandoned years later when the Craggy Peak mine shut down. In the meantime, it hauled in supplies through Bigrock Canyon.
The trip saved time, but expenses remained high due to the necessity of transferring ore products from the narrow gauge depot to the standard grade line at Jerome Junction.
Nonetheless, building the narrow gauge rail had been a lot less expensive than standard grade. The narrower track required less steel, less wood for crossties, and less cutting and filling to go around sharp curves. Most of the stock consisted of smaller locomotives and rail cars. The line reached an elevation of six thousand feet at the summit, where the depot had existed.
Could that building be intact? Moreover, had Jesse gone there?
“Do you have all-wheel drive?” Marla asked Juanita.
“Si, señora.” Juanita’s eyes filled with worry for her on-again, off-again boyfriend.
What game had Jesse played with her? Why feign interest and then blow cool? Had he befriended her to gain information?
A wave of guilt swept through Marla. Hadn’t she done the same thing? Yet, she genuinely cared about the maid’s feelings and wanted to help
her.
“If your vehicle can manage, this article claims we can drive the old railroad bed up to the depot. It’ll be a scary ride, but it’s doable.”
She tried phoning Dalton on the way, but he still didn’t answer. Should she be concerned for him or annoyed that he was too busy to respond?
Maybe she should call Luke Beresby. He’d be occupied in the aftermath of Otto’s death, assuming they had found a body. But he could always send backup, and he might know where Dalton had gone.
Disappointment sank in as she dialed his number and got voice mail. She didn’t have his business card handy for his office number. Likely the sheriff was out in the field and using his radio for communication. Nonetheless, she left him a message as to her destination.
She supposed it was possible Jesse had experienced an accident along the way and lay injured on the road. Or he might have hurt himself while exploring the dilapidated depot.
They’d find out soon enough.
They bumped and jostled along the hair-raising road that stretched for twenty-five miles with one hundred and fifty curves. She’d printed out the route from the website that described the old narrow gauge line. When the rails were removed, the right-of-way became a forest service road. Had Garrett Long patrolled this section as part of his duty roster?
Spectacular views of red rocks and tree-dotted mountainsides unfolded as they careened around the bends. Marla hardly dared to breathe as they bucked and jolted over the uneven terrain. Dalton would probably enjoy this ride, she thought, gasping as they barely skirted a steep drop at the road’s edge. Her ears popped continuously as they continued to climb. Juanita drove like a mad woman, her face fierce and her hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
“Look, that must be the place.” Marla pointed to a lone wood structure with a brick chimney on the next hilltop.
As they approached, she noted the paint had long faded and roof shingles were missing, but the building had mostly withstood the ravages of time. A black Jeep Cherokee was parked there. Juanita confirmed it belonged to Jesse.
Peril by Ponytail (A Bad Hair Day Mystery) Page 25
