by Jon A. Hunt
The girl sighed. “I miss her.”
“Who?” The question barely made it past my teeth.
“Sandra. And Gran. Poor Gran. Want to know a secret?” She asked abruptly.
“You don’t owe me more than you’ve already given.”
“I need to tell someone.”
She might be pulling my leg. How many tidbits would I share to interact with another human after living in a boarded-up death house?
“What’s the secret?” I said.
“He didn’t do it.”
“Who didn’t do what?”
“Hambone. He didn’t kill Gran.”
“You told the police this?”
The lantern cast an exaggerated shadow of Jetta’s shaking head onto the moonshine crates. “Once they knew I hadn’t been there, nobody wanted to hear what I had to say. Daddy forbade me to talk with anyone about it before he sent me away. I don’t know what happened. But old Hambone adored my grandmother more than any of us. He’d have died to save her.”
Hambone hadn’t saved anyone, though he’d certainly died.
“After Gran was….gone, Hillbriar was awful. I ran away from…where I was, and I came back, till Daddy found out. But we didn’t dare use the tunnels so soon after the investigations and Sandra was not the same. Distant. Like Daddy. Mr. Bedlam?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you ever been abandoned?”
Were all her questions barbed? My old man had traded a good family for a career and a bottle. No only the career remained and paid my bills whether I worked or not. I still kept the bottle they’d found in his dead fingers in the cupboard over the refrigerator.
“Yeah,” I said.
The girl drew both knees up and hugged them, a helpless adolescent posture. “I was hurt. I was stupid. I found Ellis. He paid attention to me and I didn’t care about his motives. The pictures were his idea. He….he had a place where he photographed people and they couldn’t tell. I thought I was giving him something special—a gift—when I begged Sandra to meet me there. She only came because she worried about me and I wasn’t even supposed to be home—”
“You’re sober now,” I said.
Wide gray eyes locked onto mine. “I think I am.”
“Then you don’t need to be embarrassed about a clinic.”
“Okay. I was supposed to be at one. Sandra came to talk sense into me. We were together. We missed each other. Ellis took pictures of it all. Now it’s too late to apologize.”
“You haven’t tried.”
“I shouldn’t be here. Daddy lets me hide, but people I thought were friends—worse than Ellis—are looking for me. They’d ruin what I try to fix. If they find out about Sandra and me….”
“How do you know they haven’t already?” Somebody had to ask the question.
“The detective—Mr. DeBreaux—he took Ellis’s film and smashed his camera and made him promise never to mention us or he’d kill him.”
“DeBreaux told you this himself?”
Jetta nodded seriously. “He told me to quit what I was doing, to go back to….to the clinic. What I was into was going to kill me. His exact words. He was really upset. He cried.”
If half of what she said was true it made no sense for Jetta to take literary license with such a small detail. But private eyes aren’t crybabies, especially private eyes who’d previously gigged as undercover cops. Sounding skeptical wasn’t in my best interests, so I charged ahead.
“So why are you here now?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a trespasser.”
“I’m not the only one who can find you. You might want me on your side.”
She pouted. She knew she was cute. “Daddy would’ve put Whiskey down when Mama died, if I hadn’t begged him not to. He didn’t mean to hurt anybody. It was an accident.”
I had doubts. I’d met the horse.
“I came back to be sure Daddy didn’t change his mind.”
“Just for a horse?”
Jetta reddened. “She can’t come down here now. The door’s locked from my side. Someone tried it a couple times. But I don’t want her to know I’m here.”
“Maybe not riding Whiskey at night would be smarter, don’t you think?”
“Shut up, Mr. Bedlam. You obviously haven’t ever loved a horse.”
“All right. Then why bother following me?”
“I want to know.”
“Know what?”
“Whatever it is you find out! Sandra hired you to find who has those pictures, right?”
“Technically, no. Sandra and your Daddy did.”
That dumped the wind from her sails. “I thought….I mean…”
She must have eavesdropped on Sandra and me from inside the stable house. Hillbriar’s little bisexual ghost.
“He’s only signing the checks,” I said. “Or he was. Sandra got copies of the pictures in the mail. But that isn’t why you tried to come talk with me at my place.”
“No.” Jetta’s voice shook again, like up on the stairs where her grandmother died. Very softly, she said “I want to know who really killed her. Why did the police just stop with Hambone? You’re already snooping around, I thought maybe….”
“Your dad wouldn’t sign a check for that.” Part of me would’ve enjoyed asking him, though, just to see JD’s reaction.
“I hoped you’d do it anyway.” Her gray eyes flashed. “I wouldn’t have gone back to the clinic if Mr. DeBreaux hadn’t talked me into it. He saved me when he could’ve ruined us and gotten paid to do it! You’re a private investigator like him. And your face is kinder.”
No wonder DeBreaux wore those sideburns and that ridiculous mustache. The face of a virgin altar boy must hide beneath all those whiskers. Still, at this point, what did I have to lose?
“All right. But I need to finish what I started first. If those photos go public, practically everyone except Whiskey is going to suffer. In the meantime, you need to stay out of sight.”
Jetta tipped her forehead toward me soberly.
“Stop riding that damned horse.” She opened her mouth to protest. I kept on. “You’ll get caught, or Whiskey will wise up to where you’re sleeping. Then who’ll protect Whiskey?”
Her mouth snapped shut.
“And what do you know about Nolman Endicott?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Some cheap detective tricks are worth what you pay for them. She didn’t know who he was. I pressed the live .38 Special rounds into the two-dollar pistol, spun the jiggly cylinder so the empty chamber aligned with the barrel, and set the weapon on the floor. “If you’re going to use this, next time you need to be closer.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I got up and snicked on my penlight. I didn’t offer her the use of my first name. She was young enough she ought to call me “Mister.”
Twenty-three
Enough signal reached my phone while I was behind the phony shelf-door at the back of the shed for me to check the micro-cameras. The officers loitering purposefully near my car had undoubtedly made regular visits. Someone downtown knew I was the owner. But they didn’t waste calories being excited about it. Tiny wide-angle lenses distorted their heads to cartoon proportions whenever they neared the vehicle.
Since I could do nothing else, I checked for messages. Three missed calls were from Sandra. One looked like a number from Metro’s downtown offices, probably Rafferty. All I recognized of the last was a Washington, DC, area code.
My underfed belly tried tying itself into knots. I had to pee. I considered a retreat into the tunnels to take care of the problem, but that seemed like a stunt a wayward poodle might pull. So I waited. Discomfort kept me from attracting attention snoring. Forty anguished minutes later, the cops slapped a fluorescent sticker on my driver’s side window, slammed their requisite car doors and left. When motor and gravel sounds subsided, I shoved through the hatch and darted around Jetta’s untested hotrod. No one drove by, not while I took care of busin
ess behind the shed, not while I scraped the tow notice off my side glass with a pocketknife. I kept to the posted speed limit on my way to Brentwood in search of cheeseburgers.
I returned Sandra’s call from the road. No answer, no surprise. Dialing the main house produced results: Waldron picked up.
“Missus Sandra went out an hour ago. Said she had some shoppin’ ‘fore Mr. JD comes home, I ‘spect.”
Yeah, I expected she did. “That’s fine, I’ll try again later. Thanks.”
The DC caller hadn’t left a message so I skipped to the downtown number. It belonged to the Metro Police Department, all right.
“Lieutenant Rafferty?”
“Not on this line, sorry. But he’s in the building. May I ask who’s calling?”
“Better not.”
I placed a gluttonous order at the drive-up. Rafferty would have to put up with my chewing. The line went dead and a new call from a similar number rang. He was combatting wiretapping by shuffling extensions. He didn’t soft-start the conversation.
“What have you been doing?”
A paper sack bulging with carbohydrates and saturated fats passed through my side window, so I told him I was eating. Then I’d go home and take a nap. Big plans.
“You in your car?”
“The red one?”
“Wiseass. It’s been parked all night out by Radnor Lake and you weren’t in it. Someone called 9-1-1 about gunshots in the area, too, but TBI cut in and overruled dispatch. I’d never heard of them doing that. What gives?”
“I found something,” I said with a mouth full of fries.
“Uh-huh. This line’s as secure as I’m going to find. Spill.”
A professionally uninteresting four-door shushed into a slot two near mine. I turned the stereo on and rolled up the window. John Fogerty wondered if I’d ever seen the rain. He couldn’t have been paying much attention to the forecasts. Having thus established the mood, I informed my friend I’d been to Hillbriar and no one had been shot.
“Clients?”
“Not today.”
“How did you get in? Pennington’s people have the place buttoned up. I’m not allowed to move officers closer than that dirt road where you parked, and JD isn’t even home.”
“His daughter is.”
“You’re shitting me. I thought she’d be in rehab till Hell froze over.”
“Guess again. She says she’s keeping an eye on a favorite horse.”
“People just tell you things?”
“I’m very charming. But how ‘bout we discuss it when I don’t have chaperones?”
Nobody had gotten out of the uninteresting four-door.
“Fair,” Rafferty allowed, “but before you go, I’ve got a little tidbit for you. Smally found your friend’s favorite watering hole.”
“Which friend? DeBr—”
“Ssh! What’s wrong with you? Been out all night or something?”
“Yeah. No one’s sorrier about that than me.”
The Lieutenant made his trademark noise, neither chuckle nor snarl. “Get some sleep. You probably look worse than you sound. Your….friend….will be doing the same. Sleeps off his Tuesday binges every Wednesday.”
“Right. Later.” I ended the call.
Sleep sounded like a great idea. I drove home while my eyes still functioned. Fogerty kept asking me about the rain. By the look of the sky, he’d have his answer soon.
The condo garage seemed smaller than usual. I figured out how to park in it anyway and went in via the elevator lobby for a change. Oops. Most residents were out making or spending money, or there’d have been complaints to management about sketchy characters downstairs.
“Long night, Mr. Bedlam?” Del leaned against a wall and examined his neatly clipped fingernails. The odd flaxen hair hung limply to his half-lidded eyes. He didn’t need to look at me to know exactly where I stood.
I muttered something noncommittal and kept walking. The security cameras ran twenty-four-seven. What were either of them going to do? Del’s hotheaded sidekick popped out of a chair and got in front of me. We stopped inches apart.
“You always such an ass when people ask you questions?”
“Leave me alone. I’m tired of you two.”
Nick had no intention of leaving me be. His nose was still bent out of shape. He reached out and bounced a squat forefinger off my sternum. Once. Twice. Not three times, because that’s when I grabbed it and broke it with a satisfying crackle. The security cameras probably didn’t catch that. They’d definitely record him slugging me.
He didn’t. He wanted to. Now wasn’t the time. His pork shoulder of a face paled and he stepped out of my path like I’d asked in the first place.
I was useless to them dead.
Door locked, keys and hat on the counter, shoes off, holster on the coffee table, me snoring on the living room sofa till tomorrow morning: it was an excellent plan. I made good progress, too, till someone knocked around ten-thirty.
The transition to waking came easily. My subconscious knew better than to expect a full night’s rest. Mr. Fogerty’s rain spotted the windows, wriggling drops of neon borrowed from the streets nineteen floors down. No wind disturbed the beads, which drowsily raced each other earthward. Not a storm, just umbrella weather. I reached for the Smith & Wesson.
I listened. The only sounds were rain tapping glass and the whir of air-conditioning.
Funny, how daunting your own closed front door can be.
I rolled off the couch and padded to the kitchen in my socks. For caution’s sake I eased a drawer open and groped for a table knife. Holding it alongside the peephole let me get an idea who was out there before I planted myself right behind the door like a big dumb target. Just one person reflected off the knife blade, distinctly female. I decided to chance an eye at the hole. She wore a beige overcoat that looked darker than it probably was—the corridor was disorientingly bright compared to my unlit kitchen—and a gray scarf over her hair. She was drenched. She twisted toward the elevators every few seconds to see if she’d been followed. Odds were she had. Even through a tiny fish-eye lens I had no trouble recognizing Sandra Donovan. I tucked the automatic into my waistband and undid the deadbolt.
The corridor wall lights exaggerated her green eyes, which widened upon identifying my face. Then she came through the opening so abruptly she was in my arms without my having considered whether I wanted her there. The table knife jangled on the floor tiles.
“Don’t just stand there!” she hissed.
My left arm had to stretch over her shoulder to shut the door and reengage the deadbolt. Sandra remained smashed against me. She shivered and her breath came in shallow gasps. Moisture from her raincoat seeped into my shirt. Sensations of cool rainwater, a soft heated body, the scent of honeysuckle, all threatened to derail me. The unyielding presence of machined metal against my hip brought back to a real world where people wanted me dead.
“You fired me, didn’t you?”
She only crushed in tighter.
“Sandra, you shouldn’t be here.”
Her voice was muffled by my shoulder. Honestly I didn’t mind. “Where else can I go?”
“You’ve still got Hillbriar. For a while.”
“I can’t leave, Tyler. Not now! Not with those awful men in the lobby—”
I’d have preferred not to tense up like I did but there’s no helping reflexes. I had reasons enough to despise those men in the lobby. “Did they touch you?”
Sandra wept soundlessly. I could only tell from how she trembled; my shirt was already damp. But she moved her head negatively. Nick and Del had just scared the hell out of her like they did everyone. I wished I could better console her, wished I didn’t know so much, wished I hadn’t spoken with two of her lovers and that they weren’t father and daughter. If those transgressions only made her cheap, pushing her away would be easier. But women like Sandra Donovan are always worth more than the persons they touch.
“I’ll drive you home,
” I said. “JD’s on his way.”
“No! I can’t be there.”
“How could it be worse than him finding you here? You said yourself you’ve got better places to hide.”
Small, hot palms pressed against my chest. In the liquid glimmer from the windows I watched her terror give way to something altogether different. The scarf had fallen away and her wet tresses caught what little light existed and seemed to glow. I ought to come clean while doing so held any merit.
“I know about the tunnels. And Jetta.”
Sandra’s voice sounded a thousand miles off. “And the rest…?”
“She told me enough.”
Copies of the neon droplets appeared on those exquisite cheeks. Her fingers curved into the fabric of my shirt. I felt self-conscious for having worn the thing non-stop for twenty hours.
“How is she?”
“Hard to say. Bitter, maybe.”
“There’s so much—so much more to the story,” she whispered. Even her breath tasted of honeysuckle, a great improvement over vintage Scotch.
“There always is,” I said, meaning to sound tough and remote. I was neither. I was exhausted and much too near. I was an idiot for answering the door.
She hauled herself by my dirty shirtfront up to my mouth. Or she dragged me down to hers. It didn’t matter. Our kiss proved every bit as ravenous as the last and twice as desperate. Neither of us had much left to lose.
Twenty-four
Alarm clocks chirruped across the city. Their owners staggered into showers, rummaged for coffee filters, swore at the traffic they’d helped create. If this routine included a stop at a post office, clerks and sorters were there to help. Except Nolman Endicott. He’d only shown up at the Ezell Pike facility to withdraw another wad of JD’s cash from a box that wasn’t his, and he’d find the box empty because JD’s wife and I were still asleep on my living room sofa.
Which of us was the bad guy now?
Midmorning hadn’t done better than a pale imitation of evening’s gloom. Rain still slithered in rivulets down the windows. All color had retreated inside my condo, to the wood floors where my crumpled shirt and blue jeans, Sandra’s silk dress and lace brassiere lay. My automatic rested atop a final scrap of intimate lace on the coffee table, muzzle facing the entry door, a metal guard dog with a deadly bark. I stared drowsily at it. Hard-earned sleep had followed undeserved satisfaction and I’d accepted both with a certainty I’d be looked after. Not by Smith & Wesson. Guns are just tools we use when we must look after ourselves.
