The Bogus Biker

by Judy Nickles

  “Oh, he’ll tell his ex-wife and his ex-mistress a lot, won’t he? Especially if they gang up on him.” Shana jumped up. “I’m starving.”

  “Do you want me to call room service?”

  “I want to get out of here and go somewhere that ghoul Sam can’t find us.”

  “I think he could find us anywhere we went.”

  Shana slammed the bathroom door.

  ****

  They ate in the restaurant downstairs and went to lounge by the pool. “I think Sam already knew everything I told him this morning,” Penelope said.

  “Then why did he let you talk for ten minutes?”

  “To find out what I know.”

  “I guess if he’s one of the players in the drug deal, he’d know it all, wouldn’t he?” Shana scanned the empty pool. “I think I’ll go upstairs and put on my swimsuit. How about you?”

  “May as well. It’ll be happy hour down here at five, and that crab dip they had the other night was really good.”

  As they approached the elevator, Penelope had a thought. “I’m going to see if I can find out anything about Sam online.”

  Shana rolled her eyes. “I’d as soon not know, I think, but go ahead. Just clear your history afterwards in case Sam is lurking.”

  Penelope checked first for Eldred Mooney Frish and came up empty. That mug shot was a plant, but why? Bradley had to know I saw it, but he never asked me about anyone except the man who spent the night at the B&B.

  She typed in Sam, Tiny, Tiny Sam, Arkansas drug crimes, before giving up. I don’t even know enough about him to find out anything. The way he questioned Shana before and how he had false IDs for us—all that makes me think he’s legit, but something tells me he’s not. And Shana and I are at his mercy. Even if we tried to get away, he’d find us. And if I call Bradley, I could get him involved in something really dangerous. He’s already involved in the fire at Pembroke Point, and he knows Daddy and I are gone, but who knows what Sam might’ve told him to make it all look on the up and up? Surely he’d have checked up on Sam’s story, but then again…

  “Nothing,” she said to Shana as she let herself into the room with the key. “I’ll go put on my suit.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t exist.” Shana’s voice came through the bathroom door where Penelope was changing. “Maybe he’s just a figment of our imagination. Maybe…”

  “He’s real enough. Real good or real bad is the question.” Penelope came out of the bathroom with a towel slung over her shoulder. “Let’s go float our cares away.”

  “I may drink mine away at Happy Hour.”

  Penelope laughed. “I almost envy you.”

  ****

  They stayed in the pool into the evening and took liberal advantage of the Happy Hour spread set out by the restaurant staff. Saying she had a feeling she’d better stay completely sober and alert, Shana drank one glass of wine and switched to water. Their suits were dry by the time they headed for the elevator.

  “I’m going to the lobby for a paper,” Penelope said stepping off quickly before the door closed. “I’ll be along.”

  The door slid shut before Shana could reply. Penelope wrapped the towel around her waist before she entered the lobby. Purchasing two state newspapers, she started back toward the elevator and ran up against a solid familiar bulk.

  “Hello, Opie,” Travis said softly. His eyes crinkled at the corners the way that had made her heart flutter when she was eighteen.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to track us down.”

  “Us?”

  “I’m with Shana. Sam stashed the two of us like he stashed you.”

  “Who’s Sam?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  “I don’t have a clue. Why are you here with Shana?”

  “I told you—we’re stashed.”

  Travis frowned. “How about a drink while we hash this out?”

  “I can’t go into the restaurant in my swim suit.”

  “Then go change. I’ll wait for you.”

  “What am I supposed to tell Shana?”

  “I’m sorry she’s involved in all this. She was a mistake.”

  Penelope narrowed her eyes. “You’re the one who made a mistake, Travis. More of them than I probably know about. Hitting on Shana in front of your own son was one of the worst.”

  His jaw tightened, then relaxed. “I think we need to talk, Opie. Go get changed and come back down. I’ll meet you at the bar.” He spun around and strode away.

  Shana’s chin dropped when Penelope came in breathing fire and ranting about Travis’s non-existent morals and his arrogance. “Are you going back down to meet him?”

  “You bet I am. I want to know what’s going on. He says he doesn’t know any Sam.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I guess I’ll find out.”

  Five minutes later, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and no makeup, Penelope flounced into the bar and joined Travis at an isolated table behind a post. “If I’m not back in forty-five minutes, Shana’s going to come looking for me.” She patted her purse. “And I brought George with me.”

  “Ah, George. Him I know.”

  “I’ll just bet you do. Now tell me what the heck is going on.”

  Travis ordered another drink and a soda for Penelope. The waiter brought a basket of chips and two bowls of hot sauce. “Opie, I’ve been sitting here going over everything in my mind, but I can’t figure things out.”

  “Start with Danny Holmes.”

  Travis’s tanned face went pale, even in the low lighting. “How did you know about him?”

  “I know he’s your son.” She felt a vague regret for the venom in her voice, but satisfaction at having wounded him took the upper hand.

  Travis sipped his drink. “It’s the damnedest thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Another son or…never mind. Are you dealing drugs?”

  He set his glass down hard on the table. “No!” Then he slumped back in his chair. “I know it looks that way.”

  “Then change my mind.”

  He appeared to consider his words. “I didn’t know about Danny until Mother died. Uncle Travis did though.”

  “Is that what you argued about at her funeral?”

  “Part of it. He thought I should man up and take financial responsibility for the kid.”

  “Well, he was your kid.”

  “I wasn’t so sure then, and I’m still not, but for the sake of argument…”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s say you could’ve spawned a whole tribe.” Her voice quivered with suppressed rage. She knew she’d hit a nerve, but he didn’t react.

  “You’re better than that, Opie,” he said after a moment.

  “It’s the truth.” She refused to waver from his withering stare.

  He looked away first. “All right.”

  “Well, go on.”

  “I didn’t hear anymore about him—the boy—until Uncle Travis died last year. Then his partner Ames Harrow contacted me and told me the guy was trying to contest Uncle Travis’s will. He wanted me to sign an affidavit that Lawrence—or Danny or whatever he called himself—was my son, not my uncle’s. I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t be sure, and because…”

  “Because you were hanging on to Pembroke Point for Bradley.”

  Travis nodded. “He’s my son. I love him.”

  “I know you do. You love him, but you don’t understand him.”

  “I guess I don’t. I always thought he’d be there to run Pembroke Point when I’m gone. I was going to teach him everything I know.”

  “So what happened when you wouldn’t sign the affidavit?”

  “Ames didn’t like it, but he didn’t pressure me. He insisted on a DNA test, but Danny refused it, and the judge threw out his claims.”

  “You know he was the other body in the gin.”

  “I saw him go in there, and I knew he didn’t
get out, but I’m not responsible for that. Or for Roger Sitton.”

  “How did they get there?”

  “Roger had gotten wind of the deal and…”

  “Back up. You said you weren’t dealing drugs the way I was thinking about them. Explain it to me.”

  “After Uncle Travis died, it took a couple of months for Danny to get in touch with me. He thought he had a family connection to Uncle Travis because he’d helped support him.”

  “Was your uncle dealing drugs?”

  “And guns.”

  “Why did he help support Danny?”

  “Mother knew what he was doing. I don’t think she’d have turned in her own brother, but they weren’t close, and he couldn’t be sure. So she more or less bought his help for Danny with the promise of her silence. She knew I wouldn’t do it, and the mother was going to smear the family for money.”

  “Who was the mother?”

  Travis shrugged. “That’s not important. Nobody you’d know.”

  “Do you know?”

  “Don’t turn the screws, Opie. Of course, I know. Anyway, according to Ames, Mother persuaded Uncle Travis to give the woman a set amount every month until the boy turned eighteen, in return for signing some sort of legal papers that would’ve gotten her indicted for extortion if she’d ever tried to get more.”

  “Smart thinking.”

  “When Uncle Travis died and left everything to charity…”

  “To atone for past sins, right?”

  Travis gave her a look of pure disgust. “When he left everything to charity, Danny put the bite on me. I told him he wasn’t going to get one red cent. He threatened to take me to court, and I told him to go ahead. Then I thought about Brad and what it would do to him to be dragged through a trial, so I asked Danny how much he’d settle for.”

  “Half a million?”

  “Good lord, no! I don’t have that kind of money, at least not cash on hand. I offered him two hundred thousand if he’d agree to sign a waiver that he wouldn’t contest my will when the time came. But he wanted more. He wanted to use the landing at Pembroke Point for a drug shipment. He said it would be a one-time thing, and he’d make enough on that, plus the money I gave him, to disappear for good.”

  “So that’s why there was half a million dollars in your safe.”

  Travis leaned across the table. “You went into my safe?”

  “When I thought you were one of those bodies in the gin, I felt like I had to get what would go to Bradley. I knew the house had probably been searched, and it had. It was a mess.”

  “Damn.”

  “I wanted to be sure your will left everything to our son. I took the money, too, because I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Hidden.”

  “At the B&B?”

  “Yes, but Bradley will know where to find it if…”

  An expression of pain passed across Travis’s face. “It was government money, I guess. Somehow they—FBI, DEA, I don’t know—got wind of my connection to Danny and the fact I was going to pay him off and let him use the landing in the bayou. Somebody contacted me and asked if I’d take part in a sting.”

  “And you said yes.”

  “I’d have sold my soul to get rid of any threat to Brad.”

  Penelope bit back the words that came to mind and waited for him to go on.

  “Some guy named Bart set up the whole thing.”

  “Bart—six-foot something, gray hair, Yankee accent?”

  “That’s him. How…?”

  “How did you know he wasn’t a dealer himself? Did he show you some official ID?”

  “No, but I was running out of time. The cotton money hadn’t come in, and I put most of my profits in trust for Brad, so I couldn’t cash them out. Not in time anyway. That’s part of the reason I told Danny he could go ahead with what he wanted to do. But I knew if I helped Danny and got caught, I’d go down, too. So when Bart offered me the chance to do the thing and get off scot-free, I agreed. Bart told me there wouldn’t be a bust until Danny was away from the Point—away from Amaryllis. The fire wasn’t supposed to happen.” He ran his fingers through his hair which, Penelope noticed for the first time, was streaked through with gray. “I’ve got insurance on the gin, but until it’s rebuilt, I’ll have to use another place, and that’ll be expensive.”

  “I’m sorry about the gin. And about Roger.”

  “Roger was a small-time dealer. I knew about it and warned him he was going to get busted, but he just laughed at me. You know Roger.”

  “Well, I knew Roger.”

  “He got wind of what was going on—not the sting, of course—and he wanted a piece of it. I told him no. But the night of the fire, he came back again and tried to strong-arm me. I’d been turning over crates to various people who’d been coming to the landing in small craft every night for a couple of weeks. They’d give me the money, and I’d put it in the safe. Danny was supposed to come for it the night of the fire.”

  “Did he come?”

  “Oh, he came, and I couldn’t wait to get the money out of the safe and be done with him. But that’s when he put the screws to me about more shipments from the landing. Before I could say anything, Shana came in and said Roger was sitting outside in his car. That’s when Danny said, ‘He’s waiting for me’ and walked out.”

  “So they knew each other?”

  “Apparently. They walked off down toward the gin, I followed them just to keep my ears open. That’s when I realized things were happening before they were supposed to. A whole army came out of the woods. Assault weapons, flak jackets, the whole bit.”

  “But Bart said nothing would happen on your property. Were they good guys or bad guys?”

  “That’s what I had to find out, so I ducked out of the gin the back way. That’s when I saw Shana come flying out of the house heading for the woods, and I saw someone on her tail. I figured I could cut her off, and we’d hide out in the cellar of the old cabin, but someone grabbed me and put something over my face, and I went out like a light.”

  “So who set the fire?”

  “I don’t know. It couldn’t have been an accident, because I’d finished ginning and cleaned it out like I always did. Anyway, I woke up in some derelict hotel in Little Rock with a suitcase full of clothes, five thousand dollars in cash, the key to a rental car, and a note telling me to lay low up here in Eureka Springs until I was contacted.”

  “Bart?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know him as Sam, but that’s another story for another time. He brought Shana to me, stashed Daddy I don’t know where, and sent us up here, too.”

  “What a mess.”

  “A real mess.” Penelope straightened in her chair. “I don’t think you could’ve done anything but what you did, Travis. You protected Bradley, and that’s all that’s important.”

  “I hope he’ll know the truth someday. I don’t want him to think his old man was a drug dealer as well as a…” He closed his lips. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, Opie, and I can’t even tell you why. The two I most regret is what I did to you and Brad and now to Shana.”

  “She’s young. She’ll bounce back.”

  “I hope so.”

  “So do you have any idea why we’re all put away for safe-keeping like eggs in a carton?”

  “The only thing I can figure is, Danny was just a small cog in a big wheel, and the others want their money. They’ll go after anybody they think can help them get it. You, Shana, me, even Jake.”

  “Bradley?” Penelope’s heart began to pound.

  “I think he’s safe enough, being a cop and all.”

  “Do you think it was really a sting? This Bart or Sam or whoever he is could still be one of the bad guys, couldn’t he?”

  “To have access to false IDs and all, he’d have to be a Fed or pretty high up in some cartel with connections, I think.”

  “Do you think we’re just sitting ducks for him?�
�

  Travis reached across the table and took her hand. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure something out.”

  “What about Daddy? I don’t even know where he is.” Her voice broke, and tears stung her eyes.

  “He’ll be okay.”

  “Maybe he’s already dead.” Tears spilled down Penelope’s cheeks.

  Travis squeezed her hands. “Stop it, Opie, you’re stronger than that. You’ve got to believe it’ll all work out.”

  “But how?”

  “Let’s go upstairs to your room and fill Shana in on all this. I think she deserves to know—and to know I did try to go after her that night. I’m not a total cad.”

  “We both know that, Travis.”

  “Let’s go upstairs, talk this thing out again, and decide what to do. There’s got to be something.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “What could’ve exploded in the gin?” Penelope asked once they were in the elevator.

  “A lot of things. Lint for one. But I told you’d I’d just finished cleaning—or having the ginners do it. There’s always some around though, so if a spark hit it just right, it could’ve gone up, but maybe not exactly like it did. The fertilizer shed is another story. Ammonium nitrate is a component of fertilizer that’s also used in explosives.”

  “You said the men coming out of the woods were geared up for battle.”

  “Not exactly, but…”

  “Grenades. A grenade tossed in the gin, and one in the shed...and those go with weapons and uniforms.”

  Travis grinned. “You’re getting into this, aren’t you?”

  “I got into it against my will, and now I just want out. But a law enforcement person isn’t going to toss a grenade—is he?”

  “Surely not into a building he knows is occupied. That’s murder.”

  “And you said Bart—or Sam—promised the take-down wasn’t going to be on your property, so…”

  Travis staggered against the side of the elevator as the full impact of her words hit him. “My God!”

  “Don’t be profane.” The words came automatically.

  “Those sorry scumbags were part of the whole deal. Danny bragged about how the bunch he was with ran big-time guns and…they were double-crossing him! And I was supposed to be in the gin, too. We were both set up, and Roger…I don’t know the connection between Danny and him, but they took him out, too.”