Cash & Carry (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 4)

by Jerusha Jones

  I hurriedly dodged through the parking lot, trying to remember if I’d parked Lentil on the far side of an Interstate Distributor semi or a Schneider semi. Orange—it had been a big orange rig. Of course, numerous trucks had both come and gone since I’d arrived, and it was as though the puzzle in the parking lot had been rearranged.

  There she was. I climbed into the cab and thought about ripping the wire off. But I would have to take off my shirt again, and that seemed too much hassle, especially in a truck stop parking lot when Lentil didn’t have tinted windows. I just wanted to go home. Matt and Violet could retrieve their equipment later.

  Besides, they were plenty busy at the moment. Maybe.

  I finally put a finger on how I was feeling—deflated. I hadn’t worked the conversation around to Angelica’s illegal activities well enough or long enough. Other than her possession of the bracelet, I doubted the FBI had cause to detain her at the airport. I’d been desperately hoping she’d just spill the beans about everything. Terribly naive of me.

  Of course, Angelica was smooth, and I should have expected that. What an utter flop.

  I put Lentil in gear and puttered slowly through the semitruck obstacle course to the exit. Saturday morning on the freeway was actually pleasant—on this particular stretch of freeway that was far from major metropolitan areas, anyway. The other drivers were intent upon getting to their destinations as quickly as possible. I stuck to the right lane, behind the rear pilot car for a long-load flatbed semi that was carrying the blades for a wind turbine and in front of a sawdust hauler. Moseying along, enjoying the scenery. The Columbia River looked calm, mellow, slow. But looks can be deceiving.

  I turned on my blinker, properly signaling for the Woodland exit, and chuckled to myself. I drove like an old farmer in an old pickup. Just chugging along. Gone were the days of dodging crazy traffic at breakneck speed. I definitely liked this more relaxed pace.

  One of the phones in my bag rang. I fished it out and saw Matt’s name on the caller ID. I pulled to a stop at the county road that went straight through town and carefully checked both directions. No cops to nab me for driving while talking on a cell phone. I answered after I turned left.

  “We have a problem,” Matt said. “Look in your rearview mirror.”

  “So?” I glanced up. The big grille of a hefty sedan filled my mirror.

  “She just dropped in behind you. She’s been following you the whole way, one car back from that sawdust hauler. You didn’t notice?”

  This time I stared into the mirror as I slowed for a red light at one of Woodland’s few traffic-controlled intersections. “Are you sure? I thought she was going to Portland, to the airport.”

  “So did we. Taking the Woodland exit right behind you proved otherwise. You’re going to have to hold her off until we can scramble some units to you. Above all else, don’t go to Mayfield. She may be armed.”

  “Wha—” I gulped and tried again. “Where are you?”

  “We had to go past, to the next exit. Otherwise she would have realized we were tailing her while she’s tailing you. Stay on the phone with me. We’ll circle back to you.”

  I rolled forward with the green light and peered into the mirror again. The glare made it hard to see, but I was fairly certain the driver behind me had a ponytail.

  Angelica didn’t get her hands dirty, didn’t sully her image of poise and glossy-coated steely command. That’s where men like Sam Tibbetts came in—the man who had threatened my dad—to act as leg-breakers, enforcers. Sure, she must have a whole army of thugs at her beck and call. Why didn’t she just send one of them after me if she was having second thoughts about our transaction?

  Was it because I was a woman too? Maybe she thought she could take me on. The parking lot at the truck stop would have been a better place to do it. Unless—

  Unless she had realized, belatedly, that she recognized me. I glanced in the rearview mirror again, but this time at myself. Did I look too much like the former me? Like the happy woman who’d attended the San Francisco Opera opening night with Skip last fall? Maybe Sidonie had been too successful at cleaning me up.

  “Do you still have the microphone on?” Matt’s voice blared in my ear.

  I punched the speaker button and dropped the phone on the seat. I needed both of my hands for acting natural, steering carefully and keeping to the speed limit in town. “Yeah. Forgot to turn it off,” I shouted.

  “Good. Our receiving team’s out of range, but they’re hustling to catch up. Don’t stop. Don’t go home. Just meander. Try to stay in Woodland.”

  Except there isn’t much to Woodland. Angelica was no dummy. If I started driving up and down residential streets, she’d immediately know I’d spotted her. Both of our vehicles were big enough to do some serious damage—to each other, to other people, to buildings—if things got out of hand. I let Matt talk away, giving instructions as his car’s engine whined in the background.

  But I wasn’t listening.

  Because Angelica wasn’t trying to hide. She was riding my bumper, hard. Where was a sheriff’s deputy when I needed one to hand out a tailgating ticket?

  I had one advantage. I’d lived in May County for a few months now. I knew more about the backroads than either Angelica or Matt did. Which wasn’t to say I knew a lot.

  Maybe she just had to pee—or needed gas—or a fast food fix in private with no witnesses to her French fry obsession. Maybe there was some innocuous reason for Angelica to take the Woodland exit right behind me. But we’d already passed all the opportunities for those simple indulgences.

  There was one way to find out what her intentions were.

  After the last intersection, I sped up. And I mean a lot. Floored it.

  Lentil’s engine ratcheted up to a lovely roar, and she shot ahead. This kind of rush could sure get addicting. But one glance in the mirror revealed that Angelica’s car had beefy horsepower too.

  We hurtled down the county road, trees whinging by in my peripheral vision while I focused on the dashed yellow line. This would really not be a good time for an elk or deer to take a stroll across the two-lane road. Or for a slowpoke car to pop up in front of me.

  That thought made me ease off the pedal just a bit. But Angelica didn’t, and in my side mirror, I saw the big front grille of her car ease to the left, into the oncoming lane, up beside my rear bumper.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” I gritted through clenched teeth and let Lentil drift too. Nose to tail. I didn’t want her parallel to me.

  It was incredibly reckless, but if I kept her busy driving then she wouldn’t have time to pull out a gun and start shooting, right? Surely she wasn’t as ambidextrous as all that.

  Wait. She’d flown here. She couldn’t have a gun unless she’d picked one up from an accomplice after landing in Portland. Was it a risk I was willing to take? What did Matt know that I didn’t? Or was he just professionally and reasonably suspicious?

  That’s when I decided.

  Of course, I had previously notified my lawyer of the developments in my case. It was time for an update.

  I slowed so I could free one hand from the steering wheel. But I had to swerve a lot to keep Angelica behind me. Our bumpers were going to trade paint at some point. Good thing mine was already rusty.

  I grabbed another phone from my bag and punched a speed dial number.

  “Hello, darling.” Loretta sounded as breathless as I felt. “I was just going to call you. I have a question about this lace knitting pattern. Should I pass the first stitch as if to knit or as if to purl when doing an SSK decrease?”

  “Car chase. Angelica Temple. I’m coming in hot,” I yelled over the noise of Lentil’s big knobby tires whapping on the pavement. I jerked the steering wheel again and the back end careened into a little loose gravel. With any luck, maybe I could crack Angelica’s windshield. “Can you be ready with your rifle? And Tarq too?” Forget the knitting needles. I needed serious armament.

  Loretta is reportedly quite
the markswoman. I’d never actually seen her shoot, but when we’d shaken down my Numero Dos, Viktor Lutsenko, she handled her lookout role and the accompanying rifle with confident ease.

  There was just the barest hint of a pause, then Loretta said, “In our meadow?”

  But I couldn’t answer because I had to turn. Lentil’s tires chattered as I tugged on the steering wheel. The phone went flying. In fact, everything in the cab except me spun across the seat and crashed against the passenger door. I was barely hanging on by my seatbelt and fingernails. All my stuff clattered onto the floor.

  Gus’s service station and the general store were blurs as I squealed ninety degrees and whipped past them, heading deeper into the forest on a road that county crews had not bothered to paint with outside lane lines, probably figuring that drivers would realize they’d left the paved surface when they hit the trees. I felt as though I’d just completed three back-to-back runs on the sickening teacup ride at Disneyland.

  I’d surprised Angelica with the turn, but she’d recovered quickly. Her big car loomed in the mirror once again. By now, she had to know I was leading her somewhere. She’d probably already lost her bearings.

  This was a huge risk on her part, unless she was certain I’d be a pushover. Why? What was compelling her to keep this up?

  Maybe she was afraid of being lost. I knew for a fact that even the most up-to-date GPS programs did not have many of May County’s backroads on their maps. Even if she had a GPS unit in her rental car, it would just show that she was driving in a sea of undeveloped green.

  I tore down the road, slowing when I had to for the hard curves. Lentil’s brakes were making clunky sounds, and the temperature gauge for the radiator was in the red zone. But Angelica would not let up.

  If I had been driving the old, wheezy Lentil, I would have been in a pickle. But this was the new, improved, muscle-bound Lentil, courtesy of Gus. She was performing admirably, all things considered. I stomped on the accelerator again to give the brakes a break. All that airflow up under the hood had to be good, right?

  I had the switchblade in my tote bag. Walt had returned it, thoroughly cleaned and restored to its vicious shininess. Well, not in the bag anymore. It was rolling around somewhere on the floorboards now.

  I’d left the handgun Josh had given me at home. Because I didn’t have a concealed weapon permit for it, because I didn’t really know how to use it, because I’d been going to meet the FBI in a very public place. All those factors had made the idea of stashing it in my bag seem ill-advised. Now I regretted being so sensible.

  Three blue reflectors on a tree stump. I spun the wheel hard and plowed into the ditch and up over the rise that constituted Tarq’s driveway. For the barest instant, Lentil floundered, then she was up and away, charging over the meadow.

  Tarq’s cabin was tucked back against the trees, and it looked deserted. Which was normal. And I hoped Angelica would assume the same.

  She’d almost spun out, but she was a vexingly superb driver and within seconds was right behind me again. I veered off the rutted track into what looked like a sweet field of hip-high grass, bulrushes, and cattails.

  All that foliage hid exactly what I was looking for—a marshy mud pit. The home of great blue herons, security-conscious American bitterns, and lesser sandhill cranes. Gus had once told me that Tarq’s property was, in his opinion, the best viewing site for freshwater wading birds in the whole state. And I was about to disturb their habitat. At least the birds weren’t nesting right now. I hoped they would forgive me.

  I slowed the tiniest bit to encourage Angelica to shove her grille up against my license plate, then I led her into the swamp.

  And Lentil did her thing. Frankly, it was awesome.

  The tires churned and flung mud behind in such vast quantities that the splatters merged until the understated navy blue paint on Angelica’s car was completely coated. I only had a sliding sort of control over Lentil’s trajectory, and we wallowed for a rumbling minute before the wheels hit firmer ground. My pickup bounded up over a berm, and I steered her around at an angle to the disabled Chrysler. I caught my breath for a moment, then slid out of the cab and peered over the hood from behind the protection of Lentil’s pinging engine block.

  There are some things rental cars just aren’t prepared for, and Tarq’s front yard is one of them. I could almost hear the mud happily burbling up around the axles and oil pan as Angelica’s heavy car slowly settled into its permanent resting place. The daytime running lamps flickered and died.

  CHAPTER 23

  But the ire of the woman inside hadn’t subsided one bit. Angelica thrust her door open and pulled herself to standing on the running board while clutching the mud-slicked roof. “Nora. Ingram. Sheldon. You—” she screamed, shaking her fist in the air, “Sheldon.” She spat the last word out again like it was a curse and an accusation all rolled into one. An angry flush engulfed her from her collar to the roots of her hair.

  Great. So Angelica knew all my names, including my married surname.

  The name I shared with Loretta, who was running low across the meadow with the rifle held diagonally across her chest.

  Angelica slipped off the running board—not entirely intentionally, I thought. Her head disappeared behind the Chrysler’s door for a moment, then she sprang back up and started wading toward me.

  Her upper body was stomping, but her lower half wasn’t fully cooperating. It’s difficult to maintain an irritated, arrogant gait when you’re knee-deep in mud. She swung her arms, mimicking ineffectual underwater aerobics movements.

  Loretta had drawn up beside me, breathing heavily, but she still held the rifle poised in a safe ready position.

  Angelica didn’t seem to have a weapon, so I decided to extend some courtesy while she struggled to gain purchase. “You try anything funny,” I shouted, “and Loretta here will put a hole in you. I should probably introduce the two of you while we’re at it,” I added. “This is Skip’s mother.”

  Yet another Sheldon, and this one armed. The information had the desired effect.

  Angelica’s face went white under the mud streaks, and she stumbled to her knees, wrists plunging into the thick slurry.

  It took me a full minute to realize she was crying now. And whimpering. Muffled words which sounded strangely like, “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” I muttered. “Don’t be such a girl.” I started forward, but was stopped by a firm hand on my shoulder.

  “Allow me,” Tarq wheezed. “I’m dressed for the occasion.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that he’d joined our little border guard group. Apparently a well-dressed woman thrashing in a mud pit is quite a captivating sight. It was certainly my first time witnessing such a scene. He handed his shotgun to me and lumbered into the marsh, his baggy jeans tucked into his rubber boots.

  Tarq hoisted Angelica up with an arm around her waist and dragged her onto firm ground, demonstrating unexpected strength given his cancer-wasted condition. It seemed a shot of adrenaline was coursing through his system too.

  “Come on,” Loretta said politely, turning on her heel, “we’ll hose you off.” As though it was a service she was accustomed to offering to all her guests.

  We trudged to the cabin. Angelica’s ponytail dribbled down her back, and she clung to Tarq as though she was a wobbly toddler in need of assurance about putting one foot in front of the other.

  Loretta had been serious about the hosing. And the water came from the spigot on the back of the cabin—in other words, an ice cold gusher. Angelica’s vocal cords seemed so constricted that she couldn’t scream, although she tried. She was blue now, her teeth chattering audibly.

  Then Loretta threw a scratchy old wool blanket around Angelica’s shoulders and helped her up the steps into the kitchen.

  It took three cups of coffee and a big bowl of homemade minestrone soup before Angelica became coherent.

  “So now,” Tarq started in a mislead
ingly gentle fashion, “that was rather dramatic out there. What’s gotten into you, girl?”

  I leaned back in my chair and watched Angelica closely. It was refreshing to have Tarq’s well-honed, double-edged attorney’s focus directed at someone else for a change.

  “I recognized her,” Angelica whispered, gesturing at me with her spoon. “The little scar on her lip, the way she carries herself. I remembered her—Nora—with Skip. And then I knew it was a setup. Please don’t kill me,” she sniveled.

  As though my mother-in-law would feed the obnoxious people we planned on whacking. I’d lost all patience with Angelica’s manipulative groveling. “We’re not in the habit of murdering people,” I announced. “But I would be ecstatic to see you in jail.”

  “Yes, you do,” Angelica retorted. “Or you hire others to do it.”

  Tarq’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “First Skip disappears. Everybody’s desperate to get into contact with him. I mean, after all, the money’s gone, right? Everything my—” Angelica hesitated, resurrecting some of her original gumption while selecting the right relationship word, “my boss, Martin Zimmermann, had entrusted to Skip’s care for investment purposes.”

  “Money laundering,” I interrupted. “Let’s call it what it is.”

  Angelica eyed me and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. “Then we—I mean Martin—opens up communication with the other bosses—something we—I mean he—rarely does because it’s just not good for business, usually. But they have to talk to each other, to develop a strategy, because we’re all out huge sums of money. And then we hear that Solano’s found you.” Angelica pointed a delicate finger in my direction again. “And then he disappears too. Everyone knows Skip is out there somewhere, and that he put a hit on Solano to protect you. So the consensus is that all the mob bosses want to find you because you’re the key to the money, but they’re afraid to really come after you because Skip’s like this lurking bomb waiting to knock them off. We don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, but he seems to be able to track our movements.”