Verdicts & Vixens

by Kelly Rey

  "About that." I started the car. "Why are you so sure anyone killed him? Maybe the amplifier did fall on him by accident."

  "I don't think so." Maizy's fingers drummed on her thigh. She sported a summer motif on her nails: green polish with a tiny white daisy on each middle finger. Sometimes Maizy's means of communication were less than socially acceptable. "Virtual Waste plays two sets on Friday nights. I was talking to Tommy between sets when I saw some guy sneaking backstage, toward the dressing room. It was only like ten minutes later that Mike started shouting for help."

  I aimed the Escort back in the direction from which I'd come before realizing I had no idea where my first turn was. How was it possible that every road looked exactly alike? No landmarks or signposts. Just trees, trees, and more trees. And maybe I was wrong, but that lake should be on the other side of the car.

  "Who are Tommy and Mike?" I asked. I should've invested in a GPS.

  "Are you serious?" Maizy asked. "Mike Crescenzo? He's the bass player. All the girls think he's pretty hot, but he's old. He's like 27."

  I shrugged. I thought her Uncle Curt had cornered the market on hotness. All that dark hair and those dark eyes and that innate sense of direction. Very sexy.

  "And Tommy is the bartender," Maizy was saying. "Not that I was drinking, being underage and all. Well, I mean, he offered me a Screaming Mimi—he named that after his wife—but I said no, alcohol kills brain cells, and I have just the right amount."

  Pretty sure I hadn't driven five miles on this same road before. How did anyone find their way around in this godforsaken wilderness? Every tree, every dirt road shooting off into darkness, every unmarked intersection looked exactly alike.

  "You've got a signal on your cell, right?" I asked her. "You called me."

  "I used the phone at the bar." She pulled her phone out of the acres of hoodie and checked the screen. "I got nothing. Why?" Her eyes got wide. "Are you lost? You're lost, aren't you?"

  "I'm not lost," I said. "I'm temporarily misplaced."

  "Dude, it was like two turns," she said. "How could you get misplaced?"

  "Because my initials aren't GPS," I snapped. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

  Maizy looked out the window at unbroken blackness. "No clue," she said.

  "Haven't you been here before?"

  "I've been there before," she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder toward the bar. "Not here. I know. Let's go to Apple Pie Hill, and then we can probably get a cell signal."

  "Great." I nodded. "Where's Apple Pie Hill?"

  "Beats me," Maizy said. "It's supposed to be the highest point in South Jersey. How hard can it be to find?"

  We leaned forward to scope out the horizon. No hills or high points of any kind. Only trees.

  "We must have passed the fork," Maizy said. "You probably didn't see it. I hear cataracts can distort night vision."

  "I don't have cataracts," I snapped. "And I didn't see any fork."

  "My point exactly," Maizy said. "Maybe you should let me drive."

  I glanced at the gas gauge. "I'm getting really low on fuel. Think there's a gas station around here anywhere?"

  "Oh, sure," Maizy said. "Right up there next to the Walmart and the Home Depot."

  I gave her a look. "Not helpful, Maize. We're only in this situation because I was trying to help you out."

  A set of headlights appeared in my rearview mirror.

  "We're not the only survivors," I muttered. "Could do without the high beams, though."

  "Maybe we could flag him down," Maizy said. "Ask him where we are."

  "Are you kidding?" I said. "We're two women in the wilderness in the middle of the night. We're an episode of CSI waiting to happen."

  "Not if we have a rocket launcher," Maizy said.

  My jaw went slack. "Do you have a rocket launcher?"

  "Where would I put it? I'm just saying." She glanced in the side mirror. "He's really moving, isn't he."

  She was right. The car had just about closed the distance between us. The glare from the high beams lit up the Escort's interior brightly enough to read a road map. If I'd had a road map to read. The headlights sat up high, which had to mean either a pickup truck or an SUV. Either way, my car was no match for it.

  I was getting a bad feeling, maybe thanks to all those old Movies of the Week I'd watched featuring women in jeopardy making inexplicably poor decisions, like pulling over on a desolate road in the middle of the night.

  "Lock your door," I told her. I waited until I heard the click of the lock before I slid over toward the tree line, giving the truck ample space to pass. Because of the high beams, I couldn't tell what make it was or see who was driving it. But I could tell it had no intention of passing, because a second later it nudged up against my bumper and pushed. The Escort lurched sickeningly.

  "Hey!" Maizy twisted to look behind us. "What's he doing?"

  I had both hands on the wheel, fighting to stay on the pavement. "I think he's trying to run us off the road. Can you see who's driving?"

  She tried to shield her eyes against the high beams. "It's too bright. Or too dark. Anyway, I can't tell."

  Thump.

  The Escort's front right tire veered into dirt shoulder and skidded along for a foot or two before I pulled it back onto the pavement.

  "That cuts it," Maizy said. "First Nicky D, now this. I've had it." Clutching her cell phone, she unbuckled her seat belt, rolled down her window, and pushed herself up so she was sitting on the passenger door, half inside the car and half outside.

  "What are you doing!" I yelled at her. "You're going to get killed!"

  "I'm filming this moron," she yelled back. "Just keep us on the road!"

  Thump. Swerve. Straighten. Maizy kicked me in the shoulder.

  "Hold it steady!" she yelled. "I can't get a clean shot!"

  "Get back in here, and put your seat belt on!" I yelled back. I sounded panicked even to my own ears. I was panicked. The Escort wasn't exactly an impenetrable fortress. It wouldn't take too many hits before it disintegrated into a pile of metal chips and tattered upholstery. At least I didn't have enough gas in the tank to explode into a fireball. So we had that going for us.

  "I'm gonna put this on YouTube, you doofus!" she shouted at the maniac behind us.

  "Don't—" I began, but before I could say anything else, it abruptly dropped off our bumper, veered sharply to our left, cut its headlights, and rocketed past us, its deafening horn blasting through the darkness. It was a pickup. I stared after it, trying to commit details to memory. Panic kept me from perceiving the make, but it had two or four doors and a short or maybe long bed and was some shade of blue. Maybe dark green. Or red. At that point I didn't know if it had four tires.

  Seconds later, the pickup I'd committed to memory disappeared into the night.

  Maizy dropped back into her seat. Her windblown cheeks were pink. Her poofy blue hair was unchanged. "That was pretty smart," she said. "I couldn't read the plates in the dark, and I didn't get a look at the driver. He was up too high. I bet the state police would like to have a word with him. It's illegal to leave the scene of an accident."

  "That was no accident," I muttered.

  "Agreed," Maizy said. "I just didn't want you to fry your wires. Now hit it. We need to get a partial plate, at least. I want to know who that goober is."

  "I don't care who it is," I said. "Probably someone from the bar trying to get some kicks by terrorizing two helpless women."

  Maizy rolled up her window. "First," she said, "Virtual Waste fans are not homicidal maniacs. Generally speaking. And second, we are not helpless women. I've got the video to prove it." She shoved her cell phone back into a pocket. "And third, where's your sense of adventure? Live a little. What's the worst that could happen?"

  "We could catch him," I said. Immediately I realized what a ridiculous idea that was. I couldn't catch a tumbleweed in my glorified go-kart. I could barely top sixty without fear of shaking the engine loose.

>   "Yeah," Maizy said, "and what if we could? It'd be radical, right? I bet he dented your bumper. Even worse than normal, I mean. That thing was huge."

  I frowned. That hadn't occurred to me.

  "And if he bent the frame," Maizy said, "your car is toast. You know what that means."

  "It means I want to know who totaled my car," I growled, stomping on the gas. The Escort coughed once, bucked, and died. We coasted to the side of the road and looked at each other.

  The chase was over. We were out of gas.

  A PLAYBOY IN PERIL

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