Next Last Chance

by Jon A. Hunt

  I wasn’t the bait.

  Rico was.

  “This is Music City, Pennington, not the O.K. Corral. Innocent people will get hurt.”

  His expression didn’t change, what there was of one. “They’re hurt every day these scum are walking free. But maybe there’s your chance to finally make a difference.”

  I ignored the jab and asked how.

  “Nick Jones and Del Darrowby are forward scouts—”

  “Harold Dover’s men.”

  “Yes,” Pennington conceded. “Their job is to monitor the situation till their boss arrives. As far as we know they still think Rico means to shoot you for being a witness at that cemetery.”

  “I never saw him.”

  “They don’t need to know it. And if this stays off the news, what ultimately happens has a better chance of happening away from malls and city parks.”

  “It’d be better if it didn’t happen at all.”

  “It’s going to, regardless.”

  I wasn’t thrilled about my city hosting a gang war. But those gears had been set in motion before me, by a man driven more by personal goals than compassion. I got to my feet.

  “All right, I’ll play along. Conditionally.”

  The black eyes followed me up with a warning.

  “I want to recognize the faces watching me. Nick and Del, I’ve met. But call off the surveillance teams.”

  Pennington’s mouth smiled. Faintly. Without involving the eyes. I didn’t like his smile. “Beggars don’t choose, Mr. Bedlam.”

  “I don’t need to beg.”

  “I’ll assign two agents to you. No one else. Honeywell out in the hall, and Keith.”

  “I don’t think Keith likes me.”

  “I don’t like you either.”

  “What do the Donovans have to do with any of this?”

  I’d hoped to catch him off guard, but Pennington merely flipped open the computer and lost interest. “Get out, Mr. Bedlam, before I find more preferable means of dealing with you.”

  On cue, Andrea Honeywell held the door open. She escorted me to the elevator. She even pressed the down button for me. When the elevator arrived and the door whooshed open, she handed back my .45.

  “Have a good afternoon.” She didn’t sound very sincere.

  “See you ‘round,” I promised and rode to the ground floor. I could get to like Honeywell. Possibly Keith and I might get along okay, too, if we stopped wrestling in hotel lobbies.

  But not Pennington. Rafferty and Smally were right on the money about him.

  The man was an ass.

  Eighteen

  If I had a dime for every straight answer Pennington had given me, the next place I went had better take checks. Rafferty had already guessed Rico and I were both bait. My surprise question about the Donovans had fallen flat as yesterday’s RC Cola. With this kind of success I could hardly wait to see what was in store for me at Hillbriar.

  The winds hadn’t lingered. A bright three-quarters moon hovered over the estate like it had been hired and branches splayed fresh leaves against its glimmer. The intercom gleamed when I leaned from the car window to address it. I smiled for the camera. Waldron answered.

  “Ah. Mr. Bedlam. Missus Sandra’s out in th’ stables. She’s in a bad way, sir.”

  He offered no clarification but made the gates open from wherever on the property he hid. Beckoning warmth spilled from mansion windows atop the hill. Nearly as many lights ran in the adjacent stable house. The limestone-edged drive curved toward it all as grandly as ever. New unstained planks in the fences still gleamed naked in the moonlight, waiting for fresh special-ordered color to arrive. Not just any old fence paint would do.

  The old gardener in khakis worked near the garage where he’d been the first time I saw him. He recognized my car. We traded critical glares then he wandered into the shadows. Maybe he was too deaf to hear the racket coming from the stables across the road.

  Whatever Waldron meant by “a bad way,” nothing good could be happening where the horses were kept. The place was a cacophony of neighs and shouts and crashes. Large shadows interrupted the light in the barred windows. Groomsmen darted in and out with halters or leads or similar tack. I shouldered through a man door. Nobody bothered to say hello.

  All but one of the horses acted out inside their stalls. Guess who was bucking in the aisle and kicking holes in the walls. Whiskey had two ropes around his bulging neck and hellfire in his eyes. The men struggling with the ropes’ ends kept their feet through grim certainty of what awaited anyone who fell under those hooves. Opening the main doors to let the big animal work through his anger issues in the paddock might have been smart, except that Sandra Donovan stood inches from his flailing hooves and raged back at him. She was ripping drunk.

  “You wouldn’t dare—” she screamed “—not you! You never change your mind!”

  Still no one noticed me. They were enthralled by their staggering mistress arguing with her enraged prize jumper. Her flimsy lace nightgown made her doubly hard to ignore. The irony of my reason for being at Hillbriar, when everyone in the stable could see those same lace-swaddled curves for free, didn’t escape me. At least there wasn’t enough light to see the tattoo.

  Whiskey brought his hooves down with a shocking boom, not hollow-sounding like when he’d charged me by the guest house, an impact that rattled feed buckets and crossbars along the stalls beside us. The woman in lace stumbled. I needed to be seen. Immediately.

  “Hey!” I yelled, loud as I could.

  Funny thing was, it worked.

  All eyes were on me. Sandra’s. Even Whiskey’s. I hadn’t been expected.

  I spoke as I approached. Somebody told me once you should talk to horses. Low, soothing words. I wasn’t sure what a maniac like Whiskey considered soothing.

  “Listen, you big ornery shit! Maybe you’d have more friends if you held your temper…”

  My feet kept going till a half-naked drunk woman wrapped her arms around my legs. She felt hot enough to burn. The horse’s breath escaped his flared nostrils in explosive bursts.

  “I could’ve shot you, you know.”

  Whiskey thumped a back hoof against the red rubber floor and snorted. His tail whipped like the loose end of a tornado. The arms around my knees vibrated with Sandra’s sobbing.

  “Hurry up and open those doors.” I maintained my stern tone for Whiskey’s benefit but locked eyes with a groomsman. He nodded and backed out of my peripheral vision.

  “We aren’t so different, you and I.”

  Oddly, there no direct challenge gleamed in the gelding’s brown eyes. He was a damned sight more perceptive than most gave him credit for. We were both frustrated and angry. I just wasn’t large enough to kick down fences to show it.

  One of the men got beside him. He clutched a sturdy knife and slowly reached for the rope around the horse’s throat. I reminded myself I wasn’t finished with my monologue.

  “I wish you could talk. I bet you’ve got stories to tell! I’d listen.”

  Then the broad double doors clicked and separated in the middle and flew open to the night. The knife arched through the ropes, which fell away in pieces so the horse could whirl unrestrained. He whinnied once and was gone. Hoof beats hammered into the unseen distance.

  I laid a hand in Sandra’s tangled auburn hair. She held tightly to me as if I was the only buoy in a wide empty sea. Maybe I was.

  “All right, why don’t you go round up that horse properly?”

  Seconds after I said it, Sandra and the rest of the horses and I had the building to ourselves. I lifted her by the inside of an elbow. She tipped against my chest and the nightgown fluttered open whether I’d wanted it to or not. Her hair had a primal wildness and her smooth warm curves were tempting in the extreme. She murmured my name. But she reeked of alcohol, single malt Scotch by the smell. Too much of even the good stuff still just stinks. I reached around her to catch the gown’s hem and tugged it closed again at her belly.
/>   “Want to talk about it?” I said.

  She wouldn’t look at me, just shook her head weakly. “Not here.”

  I gathered her up and turned toward the door I’d used earlier. Waldron held it open and tilted his leathery forehead. Empathy showed in his demeanor. He’d seen rich people at their worst and knew they were as human as everyone else.

  We crossed the drive in the moonlight. Out of the corner of an eye I sensed a man-sized shadow leading a horse-sized shadow into the stables. Whiskey hadn’t taken long to simmer down. Waldron opened the mansion’s ponderous front doors and hesitated.

  “Either come in with us so folks don’t talk,” I said, “or I leave her on the front steps.”

  He smirked and followed me in.

  Waldron locked the doors and tapped a touchpad on the wall. The grand foyer’s lights dimmed till the staircases’ beveled glass panels were just visible; with the moon like it was, anyone outside wouldn’t easily see us. Sandra clung to me the way a badly frightened child might. The only interruptions of apparent emptiness as we ascended the stairs were vertical glints of guitar strings from invisible walls. A flicker at the top through Sandra’s open bedroom doors came from the fireplace. I set her on her bed, which hadn’t been slept in. An impressively dusty bottle sparkled on the immense hearth. It wasn’t quite half empty.

  “You can….you can go now, Waldron,” Sandra murmured.

  The old caretaker—Sandra’s as much as Hillbriar’s—waggled his caterpillar brows.

  “I’ll be good,” I promised. Sandra was in no shape to throw herself at me.

  Waldron backed through the doors into darkness. He left them open.

  I sat on the hearth. Ten of me could have sat there with elbow room. I sniffed the bottle and replaced the cork. Sandra looked up at me. Her green eyes showed fierce as ever, though now they were swollen and red around the lids. The inner curves of both breasts showed bronze in the firelight where her gown had fallen open again. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  “Someone…rode Whiskey again. His stall was open…” Her eyes strayed to the bottle beside me. She hadn’t found strength there. “…and he was out. And this came.”

  She dug beneath her pillow. When she turned again another manila envelope shook in her hands. She flung it across the room and buried her face in the bedding, her fists balled but unmoving, her shoulders rising and falling sharply. I crossed the room and brought the covers up over her. The safest approach seemed to be a motherly one.

  “How can I do it, Tyler?” Her voice was muffled but I didn’t want to turn her over, not while she smelled like a Scottish distillery. “How can I go? Where? Where?”

  “Why would you need to?”

  Rage or terror or something similar overwhelmed her again. She blindly snatched my hand and crushed it against her heated wet cheek.

  I let her cry. A hickory log flared belatedly on the grate and bathed the room in wavering yellow. When I caught myself enjoying the feel of her hair I stopped smoothing it from her face and just watched her instead. Sleep erased most of the emotion and Sandra’s features were peaceful. The covers moved over her curves a little too rapidly, her breathing was still driven by internal demons, but she’d drifted into calmer seas. I admired the exquisite jawline that Michelangelo couldn’t have improved—

  —and saw that someone had tried to improve it anyway.

  A hairline scar, too fine and faint to be discovered under makeup or sunshine, stole along the underside of her chin. Even a lover could have overlooked it. But my job was studying people when they weren’t watching. I traced the scar with a fingertip.

  She whimpered. “Can’t make me….I’ll hide. I’ll hide…”

  If she was awake her eyes didn’t show it. I leaned closer, whiskey breath and all.

  “Won’t find me….can’t find…just like old Noah…”

  She giggled girlishly. Then the words were gone, displaced by soft feverish breathing.

  The reviled envelope waited on the floor near the hearth. I picked it up and studied the familiar childish printing. It had a bit of weight from another box key. She’d torn it open on the short side. I stuffed the envelope into my shirt. I took the bottle with me downstairs.

  Waldron propped up a granite counter in the kitchen downstairs. He had just the light on under the gourmet range hood. I plunked the bottle onto the counter.

  “‘ave a nip, Mr. Bedlam?”

  “I’ve seen what the stuff does.”

  He hefted the bottle and read the label I’d hitherto ignored. “1939 Macallan.”

  Sandra would have a five-thousand dollar hangover tomorrow.

  “Maybe a glass,” I said.

  The cupboard was high enough the old man needed to stretch, but nobody ever waited on Waldron. He placed a pair of crystal tumblers on the granite and poured two fingers into each. I paid proper respect to the aroma this time and found it far more pleasant in quiet, sober company. I asked Waldron what he had on his mind.

  He tilted his grizzled head and finished contemplating his first sip before responding. “I am not a reg’lar thinkin’ man, Mr. Bedlam.”

  “Just standing around waiting to offer me a slug of your employer’s best whiskey?”

  The canyon creases beside his eyes deepened, if that was possible. “That’s jus’ it. ‘39 is very good. But Mr. JD keeps it next to the ‘26. Funny, Missus Sandra’d take this ‘n.”

  How much more fantastic would an extra thirteen years in a barrel might make a liquor? I let Waldron continue while he had a head of steam going.

  “Mr. JD brought the ‘39 Macallan home same day he brought Missus Katherine. Showed me himself. The Macallan’s what she ‘ad the day Whiskey throwed her.”

  “Tabloids said she drank.”

  He shushed me with a sly sparkle in those well-used eyes. “Jus’ the one time.”

  “It only takes once, just like with a car.”

  “Mebbe. Mebbe. But a car don’t care what you been drinkin’.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “That devil horse hates booze. Makes him crazy, did ever since he was foaled. Mebbe Missus Sandra didn’t know, if Mr. JD didn’t say so to her. But the first Missus Donovan knew.”

  “How could she, if she tried to ride him drunk?”

  “Whiskey was her daddy’s horse ‘fore Mr. JD bought him.”

  My final swallow of sizzled its way to my stomach, smooth as oiled silk, firewater all the same. I sort of wanted to run out to the stables and blow in the gelding’s face, but he didn’t like me that much sober. The empty glass wobbled slightly on the counter after I let go.

  “Could you try and keep her out of this till somebody knows why she’s so upset?”

  “I’ll keep hold of it awhile.”

  That was what Waldron did. He watched over Hillbriar’s wealthy lunatics.

  “Good night, Waldron,” I said.

  “Good night, Mr. Bedlam.”

  The three-quarters moon rode higher than when I’d carried Sandra inside. Its thin silvery glow left indistinct shadows under fence rails and glittered off the bronze foals under their fountain. I had a hard time imagining Whiskey ever being playful like that.

  My attention traveled past the fountain to the stable house, captured by a slow, deliberate, heavy pounding sound. A horse calmly tested the sides of its stall with a hoof. There was no rustling or other monkey business, just evenly spaced kicks.

  Thump. Searching for a weakness.

  What kind of woman committed suicide by horse? None of the Donovan women had been normal. Not for the first or the last time, I stared up at the dark windows of the old house where Muriel Donovan had died. One of the windows no longer had its blind drawn.

  Thump.

  I hefted my car keys and headed gratefully toward my Dodge. After dark, I preferred even Mount Olivet to Hillbriar.

  Thump.

  “Ornery old shit,” I muttered.

  Nineteen

  Driving was a c
hallenge, what with expensive whiskey on my breath and competing voices in my head.

  That devil horse hates booze.

  The intersection at Franklin Pike hadn’t been deemed important enough for its own light, not even with the Donovans living up the road. I waited for a break to make my left turn.

  I’ll hide. Just like old Noah.

  A flatbed swung out from another side road to my right. The driver never glanced back at interrupted vehicles that honked and blazed outraged high beams. Allred Towing & Auto Body showed in block letters on the truck’s door. The diminutive blue convertible strapped to the flatbed looked new except for a nasty scrape down the side and a crushed left rear fender.

  Whiskey was her daddy’s horse ‘fore Mr. JD bought him.

  I changed my mind and lurched onto Franklin Pike. Southward, not northward. I threw the Dodge up the side road the wrecker had just quit. I’d seen that convertible before.

  This way was so much less important than the last, nobody’d bothered to pave it. I eased off the gas till the gravel under my tires popped with maddening deliberateness. I had no idea what might be important, only that I didn’t want to overlook it. It looked to be an old access road to Radnor Lake, which lay behind Hillbriar. I flipped the headlights off experimentally. After my eyes adapted, a coarse surface illuminated in zebra patterns by broken moonlight reached into the trees. Double-wide tire tracks marred the stripes. I continued till I found a place to turn the car around. Once the Dodge pointed back downhill, I shut the engine off, and the penlight from the glove box and I took a stroll. Voices in my head kept me company.

  Funny, Missus Sandra’d take this ‘n….

  Except for pebbles grinding underfoot, the only other noises had existed since the first sunset: breezes rustling, tentative crickets, bullfrogs. My alarm had a sleep setting called “forest” that wasn’t much different. Why would a wrecking service be fetching little roadsters from here?

  Nobody knows a damned thing, Mr. Bedlam. You least of all.