The Double-Time Slide: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 2)

by Richard Levesque

  She blinked three times and then looked at me.

  “It was Minnie Flynn,” she said. “She killed Felix Madrigal.”

  I nodded, not sure what to do.

  “Do you need to sit down?” I asked, my eyes shifting from hers to the hole that the bullet had made.

  “No. I need to find Jed and tell him about Minnie and Ginny.”

  “Okay.” I smiled, hoping it would put her at ease. “You found me. It’s Jed.”

  She blinked again, cocked her head a little and then straightened it again. “Jed?” she asked. Then she looked around, her eyes traveling over the ersatz ghost town in the distance before landing on the three men on the ground around us. “What happened?” she asked.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “Are you in any pain?”

  “Pain?” She looked confused for a moment. Then she shook her head. “Why would I be?”

  “No reason,” I said, wondering not for the first time about the mechanism that kept her from understanding her true nature. Whether it was an accident of her programming or something her brain had learned to do as an aspect of her self-preservation, the same narrative that allowed her to disregard the fact that she didn’t need to eat or sleep or use the bathroom was now protecting her from understanding the truth of what had happened after she’d landed the pick-up and found herself in all this violence in the middle of a seemingly peaceful valley. “Elsa’s men…” I ventured. “They got a little rough with you. Maybe…you’re a little in shock.”

  “Yes,” she said. Then she went through the motions of straightening her hair and smoothing her dress, seemingly oblivious to the hole in it and the way the bullet’s path extended into her chest cavity. “That must be it.”

  “Okay,” I said, still a bit nervous that she might begin acting erratically. “If you’re all right, then I’m going to take a minute and take care of these guys.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  Taking a quick glance at the assassins to make sure none of them looked like they were starting to come around, I went to the back of the pick-up truck and started looking for a length of rope amidst all the things Guillermo hauled around or stored in the truck’s bed. Nothing looked immediately useful. Feeling almost completely recovered from the partial zap I’d endured, I climbed over the tailgate, calling out, “Let me know if any of them start coming to, all right?”

  “Yes, Jed. I will,” came the reply.

  In one battered cardboard box, I found a spool of wire and thought it would be poetic justice to bind the Klauses with it, but then I found an old coil of rope beside a toolbox and pulled it free of the pile of engine parts it was half covered with. The ends of the rope were frayed, but the rest felt strong enough.

  “You still okay?” I called out.

  “Yes.”

  I hopped down from the truck’s bed and went to Carmelita, who was standing dangerously close to the man whom Elsa had zapped. Putting a gentle hand on her elbow, I guided her back a few feet and then handed her the gun. “Here,” I said. Then I pointed at the three assassins. “I’ll tie them up. You keep an eye on the ones I haven’t gotten to yet. If they start coming around, let me know, and keep this pointed at them.” When she nodded in response, I added, “But don’t shoot unless I tell you to, okay?”

  “Okay, Jed.” She regarded the gun for a moment and then looked back at the prone men. “Who are they?”

  “They’re Elsa’s boys,” I said, dropping down to start working on the one Elsa had taken out of the game. I turned him onto his stomach and then started hogtieing him. “Do you remember anything from this morning?” I asked as I worked.

  “I remember getting the call from you last night. I couldn’t hear what you were saying, just the static, so I knew it was you. That was after I had called Mr. Beadle, like you said I should. I wasn’t sure why you wanted me to call him instead of the police, though.”

  “It’s complicated,” I said as I used Edward’s pocketknife to slice through the rope and tested the security of my knots. “What happened then?”

  “I figured you were in trouble when I got the call, but I didn’t have a car. I tried Peggy, but she didn’t answer her phone. Then I tried Uncle Guillermo, and he said he’d bring me the truck…which he must have because…” She indicated the truck but looked confused.

  Finished with the first killer, I was moving to one of the ones Carmelita had removed from the action. I had a good guess as to what had happened the night before. Guillermo had arrived at our house in Echo Park, responding to Carmelita’s request to borrow the truck, but he’d probably found that she’d slipped into her torpor state by the time he got there. He’d probably left the keys on the kitchen table and then fallen asleep on the couch. When she’d returned to normal consciousness, Carmelita had found the keys and left the old man there. The time she’d spent in her dormant mode accounted for the gap between her receiving my staticky call and her actual arrival at Gold Rush Gulch.

  Seeing no point in explaining any of this to her, I said, “Don’t let it bother you if you don’t remember. Like I said, these boys got a little rough with you. Sometimes people forget things when they’ve had stuff like that happen. Maybe when we get you home, we’ll get you a nice long nap. Then you’ll feel better.”

  I saw her smile at this as I started hogtieing again. “Do you know how you ended up in the air rather than on the road?” I asked.

  She took a moment before answering. “The truck got a flat tire on Ventura. There’s no spare, or if there is, I couldn’t find it. So…”

  “So, you opted to fly the rest of the way instead.”

  She smiled. “Yes. It’s coming back to me now. It was getting light, but I waited to take off until no one was coming. It went fine at first. I followed the boulevard from above and found Paradise Road. I saw your car parked and I flew down to make sure you weren’t in it. Then I came the rest of the way. Or most of the rest of the way.”

  “The controls started acting up again?” I asked. The second assassin was almost fully bound now, but he was starting to stir a little, so I moved a bit faster.

  “Yes. I was afraid I was going to hit that airship.”

  “I think they thought you were going to hit it, too.”

  “And then the controls started responding again, or partly. It wouldn’t let me descend anymore, so I kept flying around the airship to see if they would help me. I wanted them to throw me a rope or something that I could toss down and see if I could get the people on the ground to pull me down with. I didn’t know it was Elsa and these…men down here.”

  “You probably upset the airship pilot a little,” I said after I cut the rope and stood up. “He was going to make an illegal landing and then run these creeps down to Mexico. If it wasn’t out of fear that you were going to crash into him, then it was the fact there was now a witness to his landing that scared him off. You stopped them from getting away.”

  “I did?” She smiled.

  “Absolutely.” I went to the third man, who was also starting to regain consciousness. “Can you come over here and keep the gun trained on this one in case he starts giving me trouble?”

  She did as I’d asked.

  The assassin tried rolling away from me, but I grabbed his arm and bent it hard in the wrong direction. “Hold still,” I said. “Or I’ll break the arm and my friend here’ll put a bullet in it for punctuation.”

  He didn’t stop struggling right away, so I pulled on his wrist a bit more, and that inspired a reasonable amount of docility.

  Carmelita kept the gun trained on him and said, “I had to shut off the flight controls a few times like I did the other night. It didn’t work at first, but finally it did. And then…after I landed, I don’t remember anything.”

  “Well,” I said as I worked on the knots. “It’s just as well. Some things are best forgotten.”

  When I had the last man tied, I went around to check the knots on the first two. Satisfied that they weren�
��t going anywhere, I said, “We need to leave them here for a little bit while I go call the cavalry.”

  Carmelita looked confused at this, so I added, “O’Neal. The police.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Right.”

  “You’re coming with me,” I said.

  She nodded. “These three are all right being left?”

  I scanned the ground. All three of the Klauses were conscious now, and though they remained silent they were clearly pulling at the ropes that bound them. I didn’t like the idea of leaving them alone here in case one of them did get free and then helped his other selves. But I liked the idea of leaving Carmelita to watch over them even less. Sending her back to civilization to try reaching O’Neal was also not guaranteed to yield the results I wanted. So, I checked the ropes one more time and said, “They’re not going anywhere. Let’s go.”

  We started back toward the buildings, and as we walked I thought about the way I wanted the rest of the morning to go.

  “How are we going to get back to the city?” Carmelita asked.

  I held up Edward’s keys. “We’re borrowing a car,” I said.

  “Whose?”

  “Not important,” I said. Then, my wheels still turning, I said, “Hang on a second.”

  I left her there at the edge of Gold Rush Gulch and jogged back to the line of oak trees. It took another minute for me to find Guillermo’s flight pack, but once I grabbed it, I turned and jogged back toward Carmelita with the apparatus in my hands. She had returned to the pick-up truck in my absence, apparently to retrieve her purse. I found her looking inside it when I got back.

  “What’s that?” she asked, indicating the flight pack.

  “I’ll explain later. It’s another one of Guillermo’s toys. I’d rather the cops not get a look at it, and I don’t want to leave it unattended out here.”

  I led her the rest of the way to the fancy little car that belonged to Cosmo Beadle and opened the passenger door for her. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  I went around to the back of the car and couldn’t help craning my neck to catch a glimpse of Edward’s body lying just past the door of the cabin where I’d been held all night. I felt terrible about what had happened to him and hated leaving his body there, undignified in the way it had fallen, but I also didn’t want Carmelita finding out that her misunderstanding of my instructions had helped bring about Edward’s violent end.

  It took a moment to figure out the hidden button that opened the trunk of the car, but once I had that done, I laid the flight pack gently inside before joining Carmelita.

  The car started right away, its engine purring. I put it in gear and drove the rest of the way down the narrow street between the old buildings; then I turned and took it around the back of Gold Rush Gulch, where Elsa had parked her car earlier. Moments later, I was back on the dirt path that would turn into Paradise Road again.

  “You said you saw my car over the hill?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Carmelita said. She had a faraway look in her eyes, as though she was trying to process everything that had happened in the last twelve hours and wasn’t getting very far.

  I decided the best thing for her would be if I gave her something else to think about.

  “I’m going to drop you off there,” I said. “You drive my car out of here and then take it back home. No, forget that. Go to Guillermo’s, okay?”

  “Why?”

  Trying not to look at the black hole in her chest, I said, “It’s just better with Elsa still on the loose. She broke into our place once, and I don’t want her doing it again when you’re there alone. Guillermo will want to know what happened up here. Tell him as best as you can remember and I’ll fill in the rest for him as soon as I can. I expect I’ll be tied up all morning with the police. Maybe longer. Call Peggy and tell her what’s going on and she should just go home if there’s nothing else happening at the office. We’ll get this all tied up in a day or two. Understand?”

  “I understand,” she said.

  The road was winding into the hills now, oak trees and dense brush on either side of the dirt track. Cosmo’s car handled beautifully on the turns, but I took it slow regardless, not wanting to make a mistake and end up walking out of the hills with another explanation I’d have to feed O’Neal.

  “Earlier, you said something about Minnie Flynn,” I said. “Do you remember what it was?”

  A new light came into her eyes then. “Yes! Minnie Flynn killed Felix Madrigal.”

  I nodded. “You sound pretty certain of that.”

  “I am.”

  “How?”

  She turned her face toward me and smiled. “You remember I saw Ginny going to the Califia motel? And then I tailed her sister to the airship station, but I thought it was Ginny?”

  “Yes.”

  “I went back to the motel. I showed the desk clerk the picture of Ginny that Mullen Peale gave us. And I also showed him the picture of Felix Madrigal from the newspaper.”

  She sounded exceedingly proud of herself.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Well…nothing at first.”

  I glanced over and saw her smile had faded.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Eventually, he told me that Ginny has been checking into the hotel every Friday afternoon for the last couple of months—including during the time we’ve been tailing her. So that tells us it was really Minnie…unless we were tailing Minnie, of course, in which case it was Ginny. But…regardless, one of them has been going there every Friday, and most times the clerk saw a man parking and going into the same room. He said it was Felix.”

  I nodded. “That’s great work, Carmelita,” I said. “But…you started off by saying ‘eventually.’ What happened in between the clerk saying nothing at first and the ‘eventually’?”

  “Well…I’ve been paying attention to how you work, Jed. So, I offered him some money.”

  “You bribed him?” I said, trying not to sound angry and probably failing.

  “Only a little.”

  “How much?”

  “Just twenty dollars.”

  I tightened my lips. “That’s a huge amount of money, Carmelita,” I said.

  “I know. I’m sorry. You can take it out of my pay if you want.”

  I nodded. “All right. Maybe I will. Did he say anything else?”

  “Only that on this past Friday, Ginny—or I suppose it was Minnie—showed up and then left right away. Felix never showed up. And then late at night—or more like early in the morning—she came back. He never saw Felix.”

  “So, what does all this tell you?” I asked.

  “Well…it tells me that while we were tailing Ginny the last few weeks, it was really Minnie who was carrying on with Felix. And sometime Friday night or Saturday morning, they met at Ginny’s house instead of at the Califia. And then she killed him.”

  “But why?”

  “That part I don’t know for sure, but Peggy did say that it looked like Mullen was moving offices when she tried to collect from him. What if he’s gotten a promotion? What if he and Ginny both got a promotion as a direct result of Felix’s death?”

  I nodded at this. “Maybe. But would that really be motivation to commit murder? And conspiracy on top of that?”

  “It could be,” Carmelita said. “Don’t people kill for a lot less sometimes?”

  “I suppose.”

  We had crested a hilltop while we talked, and now the fancy sportscar was winding down the hill, following the gravel road toward a grove of oaks and a broad expanse of fields beyond that. In the distance, I could see buildings clustered along a road where more than a few cars drove in a straight line into the distance. I headed toward the oak trees, where I knew my car was parked.

  “I need you to keep quiet about this while I give it some more thought,” I said, slowing the car as it neared the oaks. “Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes, Jed.
”

  I stopped the car and got out. Carmelita followed me out and stood beside the car while I got the flight pack. Opening the trunk of my car, I put the flight pack back in the spot where I usually stored it. Then I handed her the keys.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’ll get a tow to come and get Guillermo’s truck.”

  “You don’t want to fly it home?”

  I scoffed at this. “After all the trouble it’s brought us the last two times it’s been in the air, I’m not getting behind the wheel of that thing again unless I know all four tires are staying on the ground. Guillermo’s got more work to do, if you ask me.”

  “That makes sense. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you, so we can take your car together after the tow truck comes?”

  This would have been a more convenient option than the one I had suggested, and I had already thought about it. I didn’t like the idea, though, as it would mean keeping Carmelita around while O’Neal came to deal with the assassins, and I didn’t really want Carmelita’s and O’Neal’s paths crossing until everything about Mercy’s murder was put to bed and Carmelita was completely in the clear. If O’Neal saw the bullet hole in Carmelita’s chest, it was going to open the door to more questions than I wanted to answer.

  “That is a good idea,” I said, “but I don’t want to inconvenience you. I’d rather you go on without me. I’ll find a payphone and call O’Neal to come out here and collect those three guys we left tied up. Dealing with her is going to take some time, so I might not be back to Guillermo’s until late afternoon. We’ll connect then.”

  “And then we can go see Mullen Peale?”

  I smiled at her eagerness. “I don’t know. It’s going to be a long day. I’m not sure I can stomach dealing with him on top of everything else.”

  She looked disappointed at this. “Have you made up your mind yet?”

  “About?”

  “Whether I’ll be getting my raise.”

  I let out a long breath. “Why don’t I get back to you after we’ve talked to Mullen? How’s that sound?”