One Hot Forty-Five

by B. J Daniels

  The air seemed to suddenly fill with the wail of sirens as Dede let out the breath she’d been holding and red and blue lights rotated against the backdrop of the brilliant blue winter sky.

  Before she could move, the SUV’s doors were thrown open and she was hauled out with the others. She was finally untied, only to find herself in the back of a patrol car on her way to jail. Or, worse, back to the mental hospital.

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU didn’t just kill Corbett when you had the chance,” Claude said, sounding disgusted as he bit into a large piece of pizza.

  “Do you have to eat that in here?” Ed demanded.

  “Where would you like me to eat it? Outside?”

  Ed would have preferred that. “You could have eaten before you came by my motel. As for Corbett, we need him alive, remember?”

  Claude chewed for a few moments, then said, “But we don’t even know for sure that Frank left it with the lawyer.”

  “Exactly. So we need to give him the incentive to save himself and Dede. Corbett is more motivated if he thinks someone wants him dead. Get it?”

  Claude looked up, and Ed could tell that he hadn’t been listening. Ed couldn’t hide his disgust and marveled how much he and Claude had changed since high school.

  Ed had grown, matured, was now civilized. Claude, well, Claude had just gotten older. He was still unfocused, immature, impulsive, uncouth and a slob. Nor was he particularly bright.

  Claude would always need someone to look after him. That someone would always be Ed.

  Claude’s cell phone rang. Ed watched him gobble the last of the pizza, then wipe his hands on his jeans before answering it.

  He nodded a few times, grunted, then said, “Got it.” As he snapped the cell phone shut, he said, “They got our girl.”

  LANTRY DROVE HIS TRUCK up to the county road to meet the UPS driver. He had to see for himself what Frank had given him. He prayed it would be proof to clear Dede, to keep them both safe—once he’d turned it over to his brother.

  With relief he saw the UPS truck come barreling up the road.

  “You got something for me?” Lantry asked as the truck came to a stop, half afraid there’d been a mistake. That the boat had been from another client.

  “Sure do,” the man said congenially. “You must be anxious if you are out here waiting for me.”

  “I thought I would save you the drive into the ranch. You’ve got enough bad roads to fight today.”

  The UPS driver began to hum along with the Christmas carol playing on Lantry’s pickup radio. He’d left the truck running, the radio on and the window down a little so he could listen for any word on Dede. So far, nothing.

  The driver got out to help Lantry carry two good-size boxes to the pickup, sliding them into the extended cab behind the seats.

  “Some kind of crazy weather we’re having, huh?” the man said. “I was wondering if I’d even be able to get out here today. Glad to see the road was plowed. Just hope the wind doesn’t kick up and drift it in before I can finish my route.”

  Lantry was distracted by the larger box he knew must hold the boat. “Let’s hope the roads stay open for a while,” he said, thinking about Dede, worrying about where she was and what kind of trouble she might have gotten into.

  The moment the delivery man left, Lantry pulled out his pocket knife to cut open the larger box. The Christmas carol on the radio ended and the announcer came on.

  “The Sheriff’s Department has informed us that all three escapees have been caught.”

  Lantry pocketed the knife and grabbed his cell phone, cursing under his breath. Shane hadn’t called to tell him.

  “I have to see Dede,” he said the moment his brother answered. “You have to hold her there at the jail until I can get the paperwork to stop the mental hospital from—”

  “It’s too late,” Shane broke in. “The van driver already picked them up to take them back to the state mental hospital. Dede will be evaluated to see if she is competent enough to face criminal charges.”

  Lantry cursed. “She was all right, though?” He heard his brother hesitate in answering just a little too long. His heart dropped. “What happened to her?”

  “She’s fine. They had her tied up in the back.”

  Lantry let out a curse. He tried to reassure himself that Dede would be safe—until she reached the hospital. “How long ago did the driver leave?”

  “Look, I don’t know what—”

  “Shane, how long ago did they leave?”

  His brother sighed. “About twenty minutes ago. But Lantry, you have no legal—”

  Lantry hung up. The van driver wouldn’t have that much of a lead, not with the roads being as bad as they were. If Lantry could reach the main road from where he was, he could cut off at least ten minutes, maybe more.

  “ARLENE, YOU COULD HAVE BEEN killed.” Hank Monroe paced her kitchen, his initial fear receding. Now he was just upset. “When I found your note—”

  “I needed to see my daughter. I knew she would come back to the house. I would have told you, but I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

  “Damn right. How could you take a chance like that?”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  He looked at this woman he’d fallen so madly in love with and couldn’t decide whether to kiss her or wring her neck. “What am I going to do with you?”

  She smiled through her tears. “Hold me.”

  He saw then that she was trembling and quickly pulled her into his arms. At least Arlene had called after Violet left. He was thankful for that. Because he would have had heart failure if the sheriff’s department had called first. One of the other escapees, a woman named Dede Chamberlain, had told the deputies that she believed Violet had shot and killed her mother.

  “Violet needs my help, Hank. She came to me because she needs me. You didn’t see her, didn’t hear her—” Her own voice broke.

  “Arlene, she could have shot you instead of shooting up your couch.”

  “She and her grandmother used to sit on that couch, Hank. I would see the old woman clutching Violet’s arm and whispering things in her ear. She blames me for not protecting her from her grandmother. I blame myself.”

  “Arlene,” he said, holding her at arm’s length to look into her eyes. “You told me about your mother-in-law. You were as much a victim of that woman as your daughter was.”

  “Still, I should have—”

  “You have to stop this. It isn’t helping Violet. What can I do?”

  “We need to get her help, maybe a private hospital closer to Whitehorse so I can see her more.” Arlene’s eyes filled with tears. “Can we do that?”

  He smiled. “Of course. I will make arrangements right away to have her moved to a private facility.”

  “Do you think they’ll allow that after what she’s done?”

  “I might have to pull a few strings,” Hank said. Maybe all those years with the secret undercover government agency might come in handy after all. They owed him, and he was about to call in one of those favors.

  He cupped her face in his hands. “I love you, Arlene.” He smiled and brushed a rough thumb pad over the tears on her cheek. “I’ve spent my life looking for someone like you. I just don’t want to lose you.”

  “You aren’t going to. A herd of buffalo couldn’t keep me away from the community center Saturday. I can’t wait to be your wife.”

  He kissed her, and she felt that wonderful stirring that she still found a miracle. That she was given a chance of love at this age was beyond remarkable, especially after the mess she’d made of her life. And Violet’s.

  “I love you, Hank Monroe, because you’ve never asked me to be someone I’m not.”

  THE HIGHWAY LOOKED LIKE A deserted wasteland. For miles, all Lantry could see was snow. Drifts had blown in across the road even since the plows had been through. Where there wasn’t snow spines across the pavement, there was black ice.

  The state driver wouldn’t be
able to make good time on the highway, which meant Lantry should be able to catch the van before it reached the mental hospital. That is, if he drove faster than he should.

  He hadn’t seen another vehicle, not another soul, since he’d left Whitehorse. A brisk breeze stirred the top of the drifts, sending snow showering over the pickup.

  The day was clear but cold, the sky a brilliant blue and the sun too low on the horizon to do much more than warm the inside of the truck cab as he drove.

  Anxious and upset with himself for his part in all this, he sped up. The rear tires lost traction, and he felt the pickup shift and slide on the ice. He hit a drift, got the truck under control again and slowed down.

  His cell phone rang. It was his brother Shane. He had ignored the other three attempts Shane had made to reach him, not up for a lecture.

  But worried now that Shane might have some news, he snapped open his phone. “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?” his brother demanded. His tone was officious—the deputy sheriff, not the loving brother.

  “I might have something that proves Dede was telling the truth. I have to get her out of that van so we can figure this out.”

  “You stop that van and you will be obstructing justice.” Shane swore. “Once she’s back at the hospital—”

  “It will be too late. Damn it, Shane, I helped her husband do this to her. Did you check on Frank Chamberlain’s past?”

  “I made a couple of calls. I’m waiting to hear. That’s why I need you to—”

  Lantry cut him off. “I haven’t had a chance to check what Frank left me for safekeeping. But if I’m right, it will prove why he had Dede put in the hospital—and why someone killed him. Not Dede. I have to go.” He disconnected before his brother could argue further.

  As Lantry topped the hill, he saw a vehicle in the ditch ahead. It wasn’t until he drew nearer that he recognized the rig—the state mental-hospital van.

  It sat at an angle in the snow-deep ditch, both front doors ajar. He felt his skin crawl, a sick lump in the pit of his stomach.

  He touched his brakes and rolled to a spot on the highway a dozen yards back from the van. He looked down the long, empty highway and saw nothing but snow and ice.

  Slowly, he climbed out of the pickup, leaving the engine running, and made his way along the edge of the highway as he came alongside the van. The driver was slumped in his seat, his cell phone clutched in his hand, his shoulder holster empty and a pool of frozen blood around him.

  Heart hammering, Lantry stepped off the edge of the plowed highway into the deep snow of the ditch to reach in. No pulse. He peered into the back of the van. Another body lay crumpled on the floor, eyes vacant, clearly dead.

  Not Dede. But for just an instant…

  Lantry tried to catch his breath as he moved along the side of the van and, cupping his hands, looked in the far back. Empty. Dede wasn’t in the van. Neither was the other escapee, Violet Evans.

  What had happened here?

  Had the driver been shot before the van left the road? Or after? Lantry couldn’t tell. But it appeared from the way the bodies lay that the driver and the dead escapee might have gotten into some kind of struggle. The metal mesh gate between the driver and the rear seats was hanging open.

  Lantry cursed under his breath as he studied the footprints in the snow next to the van. His heart pounded. Two people had gotten out of the van alive: Dede and Violet.

  But as he checked the footprints in the snow along the edge of the road, he found only one set.

  He felt his insides buckle as he looked back at the van. The only place he hadn’t looked was the far side of the vehicle. One of the escapees now had the weapon from the driver’s empty holster. Which one?

  And where was the other one?

  Dede was desperate, but still he couldn’t see her killing anyone. Not her ex-husband. Not the driver of the van.

  What if you’re wrong about that?

  He shook his head. It had to have been Violet. Which meant…

  His blood pumping wildly, he bounded down into the deep snow of the ditch and around the front of the van, expecting to find Dede lying dead in the snow.

  He rounded the open passenger-side door of the van and stopped. No body. No blood trail in the snow.

  The rush of relief forced him to bend down, hands on his knees, until his head quit spinning. This was his fault. If he’d only believed Dede. If he’d gained her trust she would never have left the farmhouse this morning.

  If he hadn’t been so damned cynical when it came to marriage, divorce—hell, women. She’d been right about that, too.

  What now? Dede was gone. Out there somewhere. And with at least one killer on the loose.

  He lifted his head, saw the lone set of footprints in the snow. He let his gaze follow the path the person had taken and realized that one of the passengers from the van had gone down the road. The other had climbed over the nearly buried barbed-wire fence and crossed the pasture.

  He blinked. Why would…? He saw them. Horses in the distance. Dede was headed for the hills on horseback. Again.

  VIOLET EVANS FELT LIKE A NEW person as she walked down the highway. Killing her dead grandmother had finally freed her and apparently changed her luck because, unless she was seeing things, there was a car coming up the highway. It was the first vehicle she’d seen on this deserted highway since she’d started walking a good half hour ago. The car slowed.

  As the car came to a stop just feet from her, the passenger-side window whirred down. She stepped over and leaned in.

  Violet had walked a good five miles down the road before a car had even come along on the snow-covered highway. By then she was freezing. Her hands and feet ached, and the air coming from inside the car felt so wonderfully warm that even if this guy was a serial killer, she was getting in.

  “Need a lift?” the man asked unnecessarily.

  Violet gave him her best smile. She knew she was no beauty. Far from it. She’d been told, though, that she was almost pretty when she smiled. The person who told her that had probably lied, but right now she would do just about anything for a ride.

  “Car went off the road,” she said, wondering if he’d seen the van back up the highway. Not likely. He must have come from the west and only connected with Highway 191 about a mile back.

  Otherwise he would have seen the van, and if he’d stopped to check, he would have found the bodies and he would be hightailing it for the cops—not stopping to pick up a hitchhiker.

  “The roads are terrible,” he agreed. “Where are you headed?”

  Mexico, she thought. She’d had a year of Spanish in high school, and she figured she could pick up the language easy enough as smart as she was.

  “What about your mother’s wedding?”

  She flinched at the sound of her grandmother’s voice beside her, mortified to realize even emptying her gun into the woman hadn’t exorcized her.

  “Stay out of this, you old bat,” she said in her mind. Still, this car proved that her luck had changed and Grandma would just have to get used to the new Violet.

  “Billings,” Violet said to the driver of the car. She’d noticed the plates on the man’s car. They began with a three, which indicated the Billings area, a couple of hours to the south.

  “Well, that seems to be the direction I’m headed,” the man said. “Hop in.”

  Violet didn’t wait for him to ask twice. She opened the door and got in, closing the door quickly. “It’s cold out there.” She whirred up her window and rubbed her hands together, glancing in the side mirror. No cars coming up the road.

  She was anxious to get going, but he made no move to get the car rolling again.

  “You sure you don’t want to go back to Whitehorse?” the man asked. “It’s closer.”

  “No, I already made arrangements to get my car towed and my boyfriend is waiting for me down in Billings.” She reached for her seat belt, thinking that must be what he was waiting for.

&n
bsp; For the first time, she gave him a good look. Definitely not a local. He had a Southern accent and looked like someone passing through. Neatly dressed, he was short but solid, like someone who worked out and kept in good shape.

  She recalled the plate number on the car and realized it must be a rental.

  What in blazes was he doing on the Hi-Line, that no-man’s part of Montana, in the dead of winter? Not that she cared enough to ask.

  Slowly, too slowly, the man finally shifted the car into gear and started down the snow-packed highway.

  Violet let out a sigh of relief and settled back for the ride, thinking about a new life in Mexico.

  “You never finish anything you start,” her grandmother said from the backseat. “You’ve always been like that. Make a mess of things and then leave it for someone else to clean up.”

  Violet hated the truth in her grandmother’s words. She had made a mess of this. She hadn’t exorcised the old crone, hadn’t solved anything with her mother—who was still getting married—and now she was all alone and on the run.

  “So you’re just going to let your mother get married?”

  Yeah, Violet thought. She was. She thought of her mother. Arlene had changed. Violet wanted to change, too.

  Some days she didn’t want to punish her mother, didn’t have the energy. And wasn’t it enough that her mother wouldn’t have another sleep-filled night as long as her criminally insane daughter was on the loose? Wasn’t that punishment enough?

  “You just want to go to Mexico,” Grandma said. “Stop making excuses.”

  “Well, one way or another, you’re not going with me,” she said under her breath.

  “Sorry, did you say something?” the man asked. He was studying her. She prayed he wouldn’t make her get out. Her hands and feet were only just starting to warm up. She couldn’t face being out there in the cold again.

  “Your accent. I was just trying to place it. Where in the south are you from?” Could the man drive any slower?