A Dead Red Cadillac

by Rebecca Dahlke

  Caleb holstered his gun and put a hand on my arm, “Don't go in there, Lalla. Whatever has been done is not going to be pretty.”

  But I had to see and was irresistibly drawn forward. At the edge of the white tile now dotted with splashes of red, two very small hands, the pink tipped nails so lively an hour ago lay folded together in an odd gesture of supplication. I moved closer and let out the breath I was holding. The hands were attached to an even paler, and very dead, Autumn O’Sullivan.

  eighteen

  Caleb and I retreated to the downstairs parking lot to wait for the team of investigators. It didn't take long. We followed what appeared to be half of Modesto and Turlock's Police force, and the Stanislaus County Coroner, back to the apartment where it appeared that they all tried to crowd into the small bathroom. The smell of blood was soon overlaid with more sweat, stale cigarettes and staler cigars.

  I stood close to the door where I could watch the crime scene investigators. The coroner pulled on his latex gloves, and addressing a young assistant holding a recorder close to his face, noted the date, time, location, and began a cryptic dictation: “Deceased stabbed high in thorax area.” Lifting up a hand, and bending a middle finger, he said, “Rigor mortis has not set in, so death was probably within the last half hour, hour tops.”

  He moved over to squat close to her head, and lifting her hair away, pulled out a rag that had lain hidden under the tangled red curls. “Rag is saturated with…,” he brought the gray rag to within an inch of his nose and grimaced. “Chloroform. God, haven't seen anybody use this in eons.”

  As he stood up his knees cracked. “Clothing is intact. No immediate signs of sexual molestation. Les, take a shot from this angle, Danny, hand me that jar, will you?” Then he squatted down again and rested the pink nailed fingers in one hand, examined each. “One nail is broken. Les, look around for a fake nail, then bag her hands.” This was all I could take. I couldn't watch any more. I knew they were going to examine under her nails for evidence that she fought for her life.

  She had been subdued with chloroform and then stabbed. I told the police everything she said. That because they didn't put him in jail he'd find a way to silence her. Now it was too late. He killed her. He followed her here and murdered her. Then why didn't they turn on their heels and run back to their shiny little cars and go arrest him? What were these people waiting for, a sign from God? Hello—I think we just had one.

  Outside, I sat on the concrete stair steps and watched the flow of traffic moving around me in slow motion. CSI folded up shop, leaving the rest to the coroner's crew who unfolded their body bag for the collapsible gurney. Caleb was standing next to me, talking to another police officer, giving yet another version to the story. I pulled on his pant leg and he squatted down next to my perch on the steps.

  “What's going on here?” I asked. “Why aren't the police, the sheriff's department, somebody going there to arrest him?”

  “Garth? There's a twenty-four hour watch on his motor home. That little yellow Pinto of his aunt's hasn't moved from the trailer park.”

  “Oh. But, couldn't he have…?”

  “Nope. Which leaves us with Eddy. Unless you have another suspect?”

  “Oh, no. Not him again, Caleb. Are you sure Garth is there? I mean did the police actually see him in the motor home? Talk to him personally?”

  “They could see him moving around inside. Somebody's talking to him now.”

  “I thought she was close to breaking, that's why I pushed so hard to get her to talk to you. If I had called you in the first place, and you picked her up, she'd be alive right now and maybe confessing her involvement with Garth.”

  “Don't beat yourself up about it, sweetheart. She said no police, right? You did what you thought was right. Too bad she'll never be able to testify.”

  “I still have her recording.”

  “What recording?”

  I patted the little gizmo on my belt. “That was our agreement. No cops, but I could record our conversation at the pancake house. If what she had to say sounded plausible, I'd take it to the police.”

  “Oh yeah? Is it something you can play back in the car?” He was considering the proximity of a certain police detective.

  “It's digital,” I whispered close to his ear. “It'll play anywhere, but your car will be out of earshot.”

  He turned me away from the dark gray body bag being hoisted onto the gurney, and we hustled down the stairs to his car.

  The cruiser door shut out all the street sounds, and I pulled the small voice recorder off my belt. Over pots and pans banging in the background, dead girl's voice came out of the recorder. I shivered and gritted my teeth . We leaned our heads together listening to her words.

  When It was finished, I sat back. “You said you got a print at Patience's house, and she admitted that the pendant was hers, though she didn't know you found it caught in the car door. So, she must have been trying to double-cross Garth, right?”

  “Play that one part back. Yeah, where she talks about hiding in the bushes.”

  I had to dive back into some bushes when I heard the door opening, and I got to tell you, I got the surprise of my life when I seen him carrying this old lady out of the house.

  “Bushes. Lalla, that's the one place I didn't look. Let's get going.”

  “But, you aren't taking me home, are you? Come on, Caleb! Not after I gave you the recording?”

  “Okay, okay You can come with me. I guess you've earned it. Besides, I'll need your help to look in the bushes.”

  “Arm wrestling thorny bushes. Sounds great!” I said, buckling up for the ride. “Glad to see you've finally come to your senses.”

  He grabbed me by the arm, and shaking me for emphasis, said, “My senses have been trained to expect the worst in people. You, on the other hand, jump blindly into dangerous situations with the worst sort of characters. Your body could be lying with Autumn's back there. Did you think about that?” His voice was rising with each tug of my arm. “You scare me, Lalla. I honestly don't know what to do with you! Tie you up? Put you under protective custody till this is all over? Tell me, what am I going to have to do with you to keep you safe?”

  I jerked away from him to hug the door. “You're overreacting, Caleb. If this is the way you're going to behave, I'm going home.” I unbuckled my belt, but I was bluffing. I wanted justice for Autumn as much as he wanted to nail Garth.

  His jaw momentarily ground against the futility of this argument but, then I got a bigger surprise when he unbuckled his seat belt and reached over to pull me against his chest.

  “Okay, it's okay,” he said, rubbing my back and kissing my ear. He'd seen beyond the bluff and bluster, because in the moment it took for him to envelop me in his warm embrace, I was shaking and sobbing. I let out a shuddering breath and put my head in the hollow of his warm neck and let go the tears I had been holding inside run all over his nice clean uniform.

  He murmured against my ear, “I was so scared, so scared. I couldn't bear to lose you, Lalla. Not when I've just found you again.”

  I pulled back, sniffing and finding a tissue, honked a couple of times. Then I peered into the depths of his eyes. “What do you mean, just found me again? I haven't gone anywhere.”

  Still holding onto me, he ran a thumbnail lightly over my chin. “The first time I realized what you meant to me, you were gone to New York. Then, when you came back, I thought we could take our time, get to know each other again. But, before I could say, Hello, Lalla, you married Ricky.”

  “You were already married to Marcy,” I added, hiccoughing.

  His eyes ran over my face and landed on my slightly open mouth. “Yeah, well, if I had to do it all over again…”

  I closed my mouth, then opened it again and said, “I'm not going anyplace, Caleb. And, if you want, we can spend the time to explore more with each other than just being friends. But you have to promise me something first.”

  “I'll consider anything about now.�
��

  “Don't shut me out of this investigation. Wait a minute,” I said, tightening my hold on him as he started to let go. “You said so yourself, I could be in danger. I promise to tell you everything I find out, if you'll keep me in the loop.”

  He eased out of my grasp and looked down his nose at me. “Why?”

  Now, Lalla, tell him now you're worried sick that all of this is going to snake back around to your father. Tell him! But, I didn't—-I couldn't, not yet. Not until I, or someone, found Patience's murderer and cleared my family.

  “Perhaps because my reputation is already ruined? Or because neither Patience nor Autumn deserved to die?”

  “Not because you want to see Garth Thorne proven innocent?”

  “Hell no!” I said, planting a smacking kiss on his mouth. “Are we square now? Can we go?”

  He smiled and touched my cheek. Then he said, “What's black and white and red all over?”

  “Caleb Stone, this is no time for riddles!”

  He laughed, and started the car. “I'm sorry. It just popped into my head, Lalla. And when you played that recording, I remembered. If it's still there.”

  “What…where are we going?” I said, buckling up before he thought to remind me.

  “To Patience's house,” he said, as we swept north onto the freeway.

  I knew better than to ask any more questions, but I was pleased when he sneaked a glance at me every once in awhile, the corner of his mouth tilted up with what could only be described as secret happy thoughts.

  We would need to work out the parameters, make sure we didn't completely destroy our friendship, in case this romance thing didn't pan out. Was he the ying to my yang, and I'd just never let myself go that far to consider it? That he was jealous of Garth was evident. For that matter, could I also describe the queasy feeling I got when I saw Darlene lusting after Caleb? Oh yeah, I am well experienced with that virus, and should have been able to diagnose it sooner, except that I'd been too dumb to see it for what it was—jealousy.

  He pulled into Patience's driveway and explained. “We were searching the yard for footprints and the paper guy drove by and tossed the damn thing at us. It landed at my feet and I picked it up thinking she wasn't going to need this anymore.”

  “So, why is Sunday's newspaper important?”

  “Not Sunday's, Friday's, and if we can find it, I'll tell you why it's important.”

  The bushes in question were a spiny, densely packed growth of dusty green leaves in a riot of colorful red and pink flowers. Requiring little water in the summer valley heat, their blossoms attracted aphids and dust. In the stifling heat, I stumbled through the dense growth, kicking up dust mixed with the sweat that pasted my face a muddy brown. I could barely move without raking my face with another aphid-infested branch, so using my hands to push through the bushes, I toed at the dirt around the roots with my shoe. I felt like one of my resident quail, raising more dust than reward—and to think, an hour ago anything besides watching a body of a young woman being loaded onto a gurney sounded like a good idea. Then something solid shifted under my shoe. It was a dusty, faded, still tightly wrapped and rubber banded newspaper.

  I held up the folded paper and edged out of the thorny bushes. “Now tell me what it means,” I said, handing it to him.

  He shook the paper and rolled off the rubber band. The chewed end of a stubby cigar fell at his feet. He leaned over and picked it up. Holding it by two fingers, he said, “We picked up all the papers from last week until someone finally called the paper and told them not to deliver any more. Know anyone who smokes cigars?”

  I knew a couple of old fishing buddies who did, but decided to leave that for some other time. “Garth smokes cigarettes, or at least he did the first time I met him. I haven't seen him smoke since then. One of the detectives? The coroner? They all smelled like either cigarette or cigar smoke.” I wasn't about to add that my father was likely to smoke the occasional cigar.

  “No one on the case would be so careless around a crime scene.”

  “It could have been the paper guy. It's in the country, so who's to care if he throws his butts out the window with the paper. So, what's so special about this paper delivery?”

  “This newspaper is what wasn't here last Saturday because Garth ran over it with his motor home. His tire tracks are on the paper. See? He picked it up, threw it into the bushes either going in or out of his aunt's house—Friday, not Sunday morning like he told us.”

  “So the timing is right to put him here on Friday, and with Autumn's testimony, you're going to arrest him?”

  He put his arm around me and led me back to the car. Opening the door, he said, “Sit inside and I'll turn on the A/C.”

  I did as I was told and waited till he turned the A/C up to max. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a folded hanky. “You've got dust on your face.” He tilted up my chin, licked a corner of the hanky and gently wiped at the grime. “We were talking about it, Detective Rodney and I, when you interrupted, and since you had that recording of Autumn, we might be able to use it in court. The problem is Garth has an alibi. I think we got him for killing his aunt, and, it's likely Autumn was in on it, but the only one left with cause to get Autumn is Eddy McBride.”

  “Not Eddy again! Didn't we already agree Eddy was innocent?

  “We agreed he's innocent of killing his wife.”

  “Right. So what would be his motive for killing Autumn?”

  “Eddy was following the money, remember? It led to Autumn, didn't it?”

  “But Autumn was jilting Garth for the money.” I groaned. “How could Eddy possibly know about all that? Not Eddy. He couldn't have done it.”

  He shrugged. “I guess we'll find out when we pick him up.”

  Defeated, I said, “Do you really think he'll show up at the funeral?”

  “If he does, we'll find him.”

  “If you're sure that he'll be there, you'd better look for him in hat and heels.” Then I told him everything I knew about Eddy and his cross-dressing tendencies. He nodded, thanked me politely and then silently drove me back to my truck at the pancake house and dropped me off.

  Before I got out, I said, “I told you I'd tell you everything, and then when I do, you give me the silent treatment? If that's your way of saying thank you, Caleb Stone, you can just forget about anything else between us!” then I exited his patrol car and flounced back to mine.

  Across the road, yellow crime scene tape fluttered at the second story balcony—mute testimony that someone was a liar.

  nineteen

  Back at the ranch, I told my dad I was home and that another woman had been killed. He shook his head sadly and offered to hire me a lawyer.

  “I'm not a suspect this time, Noah, and I'm too tired to eat, so I think I'll just go on up to bed.”

  But, I didn't sleep much. And when I did, my dreams were weirder than Brad showing up in women's clothes. I woke up at the sound of my alarm. It was three a.m. I stumbled into clothes, gulped down a cup of coffee and shoved myself out the door for the long day of work.

  When a hint of sun tracing the eastern Sierras, the pilots take off. Unable to see over the nose of tail dragging Ag-CATs, pilots gauge the distance by aiming the aircraft down the middle until, with that innate sense of timing pilots and gun-slingers share, adjust throttle, stick and rudder. The wheels let go of the earth beneath and they're free.

  Over the roar of the last plane, I went back into the office with a vague sense of depression. Was it because I wasn't part of them anymore? My license is current and my leg was better than I let on. So, why wasn't I ‘back in the saddle’ as my dad liked to call it? Probably because I still carried the acute memory of helplessness as I plowed through twenty acres of tomatoes. No, I didn't think I was ready yet. Besides, there hadn't been any time, what with people dropping dead every few days.

  When I returned to the house and my late breakfast, Noah was already at the table, fork poised over his plate, the mo
rning newspaper in his other hand. He tapped the photo on the front page. “You're in the funny papers again, Missy. So, what do you know about this young woman killed yesterday. She from around here?”

  I looked over his shoulder at what was obviously a driver's photo from her license, the long curls, wide set and innocent round eyes. “I'm sorry to say, yesterday was our one and only meeting.”

  “Huh. Alexandra Graham, also known as Autumn O’Sullivan. She puts me in mind of someone. Seems to me, I ought to know her,” he said, laying down the paper again to pick up his fork. “Caleb said it could've been you as well as this poor girl in the photo. Why can't you leave it to the police, Lalla?”

  “Believe it or not I was minding my own business when she called asking for help. She had some evidence that Garth killed his aunt, and I thought if I could ensure her safety she would let me call Caleb.”

  But, Noah wasn't interested in murder suspects. “Well, if I'm not going to see grandchildren in my lifetime, I think the least you could do is outlive me.”

  “Is that why you're selling off my inheritance in bits and pieces, because there are no grandchildren?” His look said I'd struck pay dirt. “And here I thought you were selling off your land because you didn't want to deal with the paperwork. How can I run a crop-dusting business, if we're getting pushed out by developers!”

  “You don't get it, do you, Lalla? I don't need someone to run the office, I can do that myself if I have to. But, couldn't pass the physical if I wanted to, and if you won't, can't or don't, so this year's profits may not be enough to keep us afloat for next year.”

  “You mean we'll go under unless I'm flying again? Fine, fine. I'll get the cast off Monday, and put myself back into rotation. Will that be enough to keep you from selling off the rest of the farm?”