Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel

by Lorena McCourtney

  She pulled out a printed form with information scribbled in the blanks and gave Cate an address on Van Buren. Cate hastily wrote the information in her notebook, thanked the woman, and scurried out before she could start asking questions about Cate’s relationship with Lily.

  The address wasn’t a house, as Cate had assumed from the address number. Four apartments were strung out in a row leading away from the street. Big rhododendron bushes overhung the driveway, and a lake-sized puddle stretched between them. The apartment building wouldn’t qualify as slum-sleazy, but moss greened the roof and plywood patched a hole in a window. But when she slid out of the car, a wonderful sweet-fresh scent of cedar from the big trees looming over the parking area greeted her. She could close her eyes and feel she was miles out in the woods. The scent improved the ambiance of the area considerably.

  The apartments were numbered, but since Cate didn’t know what number she was looking for, that was no help. Lily either hadn’t put the apartment number on the form, or the woman at the convenience store hadn’t noticed it when giving Cate the address. A couple of cars stood along the walkway out front of the building, but no Ford pickup or old bike.

  Cate hesitated, that old warning to kids, “Don’t talk to strangers,” jumping up like a pop-up computer ad in her head. But talking to strangers was exactly what a PI had to do. Cate pumped up her confidence, took a deep breath of the reassuring scent of cedar, and approached the first door.

  A woman a little younger than Cate, in cutoff shorts over dark leggings and a gold hoop in her nose, answered the doorbell. “You come about the TV we’re selling?” she asked hopefully.

  “No. Sorry.” Cate offered names and descriptions of Andy and Lily, but the woman shook her head. She also said she hadn’t seen a motorcycle.

  “It’s a really great TV,” she added, following Cate a few steps onto the walkway. “And we’re only asking a hundred bucks for it.”

  She sounded so wistful that Cate almost wished she needed a TV. But she already had two. Lawyer Ledbetter had been generous in furnishing the house. He’d even inquired if Octavia might want a TV of her own. “If I hear of anyone needing a TV, I’ll send them here,” Cate said.

  The buzz of the bell at the second door brought a middle-aged older woman in a pink robe. A plastic cap covered her head, foamy stuff inside, and a brownish streak dribbled down her cheek. She said some new “kids” had moved into the end apartment, but she didn’t know them. Also hadn’t noticed if they had a motorcycle. A timer dinged behind her, apparently marking some crucial point in the hair-coloring process, and with an apology, she scurried off.

  Yes, time was of the essence. Cate remembered an occasion back in college when some miscalculation had turned her red hair as green as the mossy roof.

  An older man at the third door held a beer can in one hand. His belly sagged like a Tshirted avalanche over his jeans, suggesting beer might be the foundation of his food pyramid. He scowled and told her she shouldn’t go around knocking on strange doors, something bad might happen to her. She asked about the new renters in the apartment next door. He said he didn’t know them.

  “Do they have a motorcycle?” Cate asked. “An old one?”

  “Maybe. Seems like I seen one when they first moved in, but I ain’t seen it since. They got an old Ford pickup.”

  A Ford pickup! “Okay. I’ll contact them later.”

  “You pay attention now, young lady,” he warned with a severe shake of beer can at her. He said “young lady” as if she were a ten-year-old. At some point in life looking younger than she was might be an advantage, but not now. “You shouldn’t go around knocking on strange doors.”

  Actually, she hadn’t knocked on any doors. She’d rung doorbells. But, same difference, as Mitch would no doubt point out.

  “I’m sure that’s good advice,” she said brightly.

  Cate intended to ask Mitch to go with her back to the apartment house where Lily and Andy might be living, but he and Lance were meeting to go over some figures to present to the company interested in buying Computer Solutions Dudes that evening, so she didn’t mention it to him.

  She hesitated about going alone. Maybe not the smartest idea. But if she was going to run Belmont Investigations on her own, she couldn’t scurry to Mitch every time she had misgivings.

  The apartment area looked different after dark. Not an improved difference. With those big bushes on either side, she almost missed the driveway when she drove by. She didn’t miss the big puddle between the bushes when she turned in, however. Water surged around her car like a parking lot tsunami. The lights above two of the apartment doors had been turned off or burned out, and the yellowish bulbs that shone dimly above the other two doors failed to illuminate the narrow driving area behind the vehicles filling the parking spaces. A scent of cooking onions from one of the apartments overpowered any scent of cedar now, and dark caves lurked in the shadows beneath the looming trees. An older, light-colored pickup stood in front of the apartment at the far end. A curtain twitched in the window when she stopped behind the pickup.

  Good. Someone was home. She’d just give Halliday the information that Timmons was at this address—

  Reluctant logic interrupted that thought.

  Timmons might be here. Or he might not. Cate had no personal sighting or positive confirmation from other tenants that he was here. Halliday had specifically told her not to contact Timmons, but she needed more concrete information than what she had at this point.

  There was no place to park, but she waited for several minutes behind the pickup, engine running, hoping someone might enter or exit. Nope. Everything was Christmas-story quiet, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

  Okay, she’d park out on the street and walk in. If Timmons answered the door, she should recognize him from Halliday’s description. She’d pretend she’d bumbled into a wrong address, back off, and provide Halliday with the address information. If Lily answered, she’d inquire about Andy. If he came out from another room and confronted her, she’d simply have to tell him Matt Halliday wanted to talk to him about the bike.

  A good plan, she assured herself.

  Right. So why did some old saying about plans suddenly pop into her head? Something about the best laid plans of mice and men …

  Well, she was neither mice nor male, so she should be fine.

  She returned to the street and parked in front of an old SUV. The street at this point was not much better lit than the apartment area, and Cate’s car turned to a dark blob in the shadows of an overhanging tree the moment she walked away from it.

  One foot plunged into the forgotten puddle as soon as she crossed the dark entryway into the apartment area. She stopped short. But by now her foot was already covered, water oozing around her toes, so she grimly decided she may as well keep going. She started to slosh on across the puddle, but something rustled in the oversized bushes.

  She paused, listening, both feet in the puddle now. Was that something … someone … breathing there in the shadows?

  Maybe she should back off and ask Mitch to come with her tomorrow evening. Or she could call him, and after he and Lance were through with their business discussion tonight—

  No! She straightened her shoulders. She could do this. Alone. Okay, so it was darkish and kind of creepy here, and her feet felt as if some unknown puddle monster might be nibbling at them in the water. But it was only a few steps to the concrete walkway in front of the apartments. The chatter of a TV came through an open apartment window. A car honked on the street only a block over.

  With the parking spaces in front of the apartments filled with cars now, everyone must be home. If she screamed, any number of people would come running.

  Another rustle. A moving shadow caught in the corner of her eye. Something touched her back. Her nerves froze. Muscles turned to jelly.

  Okay, maybe it was time to scream now—

  Except it was really hard to scream with a hand clamped over her
mouth.

  15

  Cate frantically tried to twist her head out of the trap, but the hand tightened and fingers dug deeper around her mouth. Her teeth cut into her stretched lips. Another arm wrapped around her neck, cutting off her air. Panic whipped through her.

  She couldn’t talk, couldn’t even gasp for a breath, and only a frantic glug gurgled deep in her throat. She squirmed and tried to kick, but all she managed to do was make tidal waves in the puddle. He wrestled her over to the side of the driveway and shoved her into the bushes. Leaves still wet from this morning’s rain smashed into her face and hair. Water spidered down her neck. Panic perspiration ran down her ribs. Glug, glug.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. His mouth was so close to her ear she could feel his hot breath. A scent of garlic blasted around to engulf her face. “What do you want? Why are you running all over town asking questions about us?”

  She gurgled and glugged some more, and he finally loosened both grips to where she could snatch a breath and gasp something. “Let—me—go!”

  She couldn’t see him, but she could tell from the closeness of his mouth to her ear that he must be no taller than she was. But pit-bull strong. She grabbed at the hand over her mouth. She couldn’t pull it away, but she dug her only two decent-length fingernails deep into the skin. Gotta grow longer fingernails. But even if she had only two fingernails to work with, he yelped with surprise, and the hand let go.

  “You do that again and you’re gonna be face down in that puddle,” he threatened.

  “Got—to—breathe,” she managed to gasp before the hand closed over her mouth again. Lord, what do I do now?

  He shifted the other arm down to clamp around her waist. “Okay, breathe. But you make one sound, and you’re a dead woman.”

  “Andy?” she guessed. “Timmons?”

  The question didn’t jolt him with surprise. He obviously already suspected she’d been looking for him and/or Lily. Had he talked to the guy at the trailer park? Or maybe Lily had stopped in at the convenience store? Maybe Beer Can Man had mentioned something.

  All Timmons said was a surly, “So?”

  “I just need to talk to you for a minute—”

  “Who are you? Dirk sent you snooping around to find Lily?”

  “Who’s Dirk?”

  “You know who Dirk is!”

  “No. I was coming to your apartment, but there wasn’t any place to park. So I went back out to the street—”

  “I saw you sitting in your car outside our apartment. What’ve you got? Some kind of fancy listening equipment so you could hear everything we said inside the apartment? You just tell Dirk—”

  “Fancy listening equipment” might be a great idea, but Cate didn’t have any. She didn’t even have any unfancy listening equipment. Maybe she should discuss that with tech-expert Mitch. Although by now she had a good idea that Dirk must be the ex-husband Lily was afraid of, the “scumbag Admond,” as her brother had referred to him. Okay, give Andy points for being protective of his girlfriend. Take a whole bunch of points away for lousy problem-solving technique.

  “I keep telling you, I don’t know Dirk. It’s you, not Lily, I’m looking for,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s about your motorcycle.”

  “You from the outfit that manages the apartments? Just because we didn’t mention the bike on that application form—”

  “No. It’s about buying your motorcycle.”

  “You don’t look like no bike buyer.”

  Was that an insult? If so, it was the least of Cate’s worries at the moment. “Not me, someone else.”

  He considered that. Thinking seemed to intensify the garlic breath. It wafted around her like a toxic storm.

  “Okay, we’re gonna walk over to the apartment. Nice and easy. And you’re not going to try to run away or make a ruckus. Because of this.”

  A gun barrel rammed the middle of her back.

  “You can’t shoot me right here!”

  “Try me.”

  “People will hear. They’ll come running! They’ll call the police.”

  “First one comes running, cop or anyone else, gets a bullet in the belly. Just walk toward the apartments. You’re not gonna get hurt, and neither is anyone else, if everything’s like you say and this is just about buying the bike.”

  Cate did not comment that this was not a great sales technique. She felt the harder pressure of the gun barrel against her back and started walking. Her feet squished in her wet shoes. Water from the wet bushes trickled from her hair into her eyelashes and dribbled over her lips. She blinked, trying to clear vision that seemed to double everything around her. Double the apartment building. Double the vehicles. Double the dim lights. His wet shoes squished behind her. She wanted to scream like a girl in a horror movie when the bug monster is about to get her.

  Instead she yelled inwardly at herself. No. No screams. Don’t get some innocent bystander killed.

  Past the first apartment door, the second, the third. At the last door, he told her to knock.

  She remembered Beer Can Man’s advice: don’t go around knocking on strange doors. At this point, she didn’t seem to have much choice. But she still procrastinated. “There’s a doorbell.”

  He jabbed her twice in the back with the gun. “Knock.”

  Cate knocked.

  A female voice answered warily, “Andy?”

  Andy kept the gun in the middle of Cate’s back, but he leaned toward the door. “Everything’s okay, sweetie. Do like I told you. If it’s a knock, not the doorbell, it’s me. Open up.”

  The door opened, and a petite blonde stared at her. Duane at the rooming house had been grandfatherly sweet in his assessment of her, the landlady more realistic. Her bleached hair did look stiff enough to withstand anything from a demolition derby to a tornado. But, without makeup, she also looked young and scared and vulnerable.

  “What’d you bring her here for?” she demanded. She didn’t sound vulnerable. She was holding a big spoon covered with spaghetti sauce across her chest like a shield, paper towel underneath it to catch the drips. The apartment smelled like Andy’s breath. Maybe someone should tell Lily she should cut back on the garlic in her cooking. “Who is she?”

  That was when Cate spotted the motorcycle. Actually, she couldn’t miss it, since it stood in the middle of the living room floor. This was the bike Halliday was so hot to acquire? It looked old and beat up enough to qualify as junkyard sculpture, but the name Indian was written on it in metallic script. This no doubt explained Andy’s worry that she was from the apartment management company. Keeping a bike in the living room was probably universally frowned on by landlords.

  Although newspapers were spread on the carpet under it. The feminine touch, perhaps?

  Andy shoved Cate inside, locked the door behind her, and stood in front of it to further impede any escape. She turned to look at him. Halliday’s description had been accurate. About 5′5″, 135 pounds, wiry build, but she knew he was much stronger than his size and build suggested. Sharp features, scraggly dark hair. Halliday had been right about the mustache too, oversized and droopy, like the stereotype of a Western movie bandit. All he needed was a belt lined with brass bullets slung low across his skinny hips. Hey, wait a minute—

  “You aren’t carrying a gun!”

  He cocked his hand and fingers into the shape of a gun. He blew across his forefinger, as if it had just blasted hot lead, sly triumph in his smile.

  Some PI you are, Cate Kinkaid. You can’t even tell a finger jabbed in your back from a real gun.

  Andy folded his fingers back and rubbed the hand where her fingernails had cut crescent imprints in his skin.

  Lily stabbed Cate with a gaze. “You can just tell Dirk—”

  “Dirk didn’t send her. She said she’s here about the bike.”

  Lily threw the spoon at him. It bounced off his wiry chest and splattered an abstract spaghetti-sauce portrait of Andy’s mustache acro
ss the carpet. “How do you know Dirk didn’t send her to spy on me? Andy, you’re so gullible. You believe anything anyone tells you.”

  Maybe Lily was wishing she’d dumped Andy, as she’d told the woman at the RV park she was going to do?

  “And you’re both dripping muddy water all over the carpet.” Lily grabbed sheets of newspaper from the sofa and stuffed them under Andy’s feet. Cate obligingly lifted one foot at a time so Lily could do the same with her.

  “I vacuumed in here just yesterday,” Lily fretted.

  “Sorry,” Cate said. She didn’t point out that Lily had herself sabotaged the vacuuming job with her addition of spaghetti sauce to the carpet.

  “Maybe she’s an undercover cop,” Andy suggested. He took a protective stance in front of the bike.

  An undercover cop. Cate felt mildly flattered.

  Lily turned to him again. “Why would she be an undercover cop? Are the cops after you for something I don’t know about? You been dealing pot or meth again?” she added darkly.

  “No! I told you, I’m not into that stuff anymore.” Andy moved away from the bike, expression wary, as if he feared she might produce more throwing artillery and he didn’t want the bike in her line of fire. With a cagey look at Cate, he added, “Not that I ever was.”

  “I really am here about your selling the bike,” Cate interrupted. “A, um, business associate is interested in buying it. He wanted me to locate you so he could contact you. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  Lily planted her hands on her hips. “Oh yeah? Who is this ‘business associate’?”

  The time for confidentiality was past. Lily might indeed have additional and more lethal artillery. Or Timmons might come up with a real gun. Halliday would just have to live with the fact that Andy knew he was interested enough in the bike to send someone looking.

  “His name is Matt Halliday, from H&B Vintage Auto Restorations out on Maxwell. Actually, you offered to sell the bike to him awhile back.” Cate lifted wet eyebrows at Andy. “Remember? He wasn’t interested then, but he is now.”