I stared at the screen and a story about a TV show called Cake Rage. “This is a fiction site.”
He laughed. “That’s just a cover. Trust me. The names have been changed, but nothing on this site is fictional.”
I read the “story,” a short tale about a reality TV show producer named Queeny. She dominated her staff, inserting herself into every facet of their lives and making them crazy. The staff put up with it because the pay was high. “All right, so Queeny is Regina and Cake Rage is Pie Hard. I get that. But do you think the rest is really true? You can’t believe all the Hollywood gossip you hear.”
“It doesn’t sound too off the mark though, does it?” he asked. “Regina lent money to Nigel. Why? What did she get out of it?”
“The pleasure of helping someone out of a rough spot?”
He raised his Bloody Mary in a mock toast. “She gets power. Gifts always come with a catch, even if the giver doesn’t know it.”
I drummed my fingers on the bar. “That’s cynical.”
“And then she gets involved with poor Luther, even setting him up to go into rehab.”
“Luther was lucky to have someone who cared.” What was wrong with helping people? It didn’t hurt me to help Petronella find a psychiatrist to interview or to help Abril hold a poetry slam in Pie Town. Everybody won.
“Regina was a meddler. Little wonder someone bumped her off.”
I furrowed my brow. I wasn’t a meddler. Was I? “Hell.” Of course I was. Only meddlers became amateur criminologists.
We abandoned our drinks and walked from the bar. The sun beat down on our shoulders, and I tugged off my lightweight hoodie.
The parking lot had grown crowded. Cars clustered near the sand. Sunlight glittered off their windshields.
Frank aimed his key fob at the far-off Tesla. It beeped twice.
“Sir?” a male voice called.
We stopped, turned.
A bare-chested teenager in board shorts trotted toward us, his hand extended. “You dropped this.”
Frank’s eyes widened. “My wallet?”
We walked toward him, weaving between a pink Jeep and a Honda.
Frank stretched out his hand. “Thank you, young—”
A boom. A blast of heat that rocked me sideways. I stumbled to the pavement.
My ears rang, the roar mingling with the crash of the waves.
Frank grasped my shoulder. “Valentine! Are you all right?”
I rose on shaky legs.
Frank’s Tesla was a mass of flames, a black column of smoke billowing toward the ocean.
CHAPTER 23
Waves of heat rippled the parking lot. I stared, mute and disbelieving, at the blazing Tesla. The ringing in my ears faded.
A fender clattered to the nearby pavement.
I yelped, jumping sideways against a blue Honda Civic.
“Whoa,” the teenager said, his eyes wide.
“Whoa indeed.” Frank rose and brushed a speck of grime off the sleeve of his tweed blazer.
“Someone blew up your car.” My voice shook.
“Like, whoa,” the teen said.
“Oh,” Frank said, “that’s not my car. Good thing too. I hate dealing with insurance companies.”
“Someone blew up your car,” I repeated. “Blew it up. With a bomb.”
He patted my shoulder. “You’re in shock. Maybe you should sit down. Young man, will you call 911 while I attend to my daughter?”
“Yeah. Cool.” The teenager pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his board shorts and made the call.
Frank sat me against the hood of the Civic.
I hugged my arms, my teeth chattering.
He shrugged out of his blazer and draped it over my shoulders. “Here. You’re all right. No one was hurt.”
“B-b-bomb.” Vaguely, I noticed people pouring from the bar behind us to point and stare.
“Yes.” He took my hands and turned them over. Examining my palms, he brushed dirt and gravel from the skin. “Cars don’t normally explode on their own. Did you know all those movie scenes where the hero shoots a car and it blows up, or the car falls off a cliff and blows up, are completely fake? Some colleagues and I tried to blow up a car by shooting its gas tank, and it just doesn’t work. We couldn’t get the gas to ignite no matter what angle the bullets hit. Now, if you did manage to set the gas tank on fire, it would burn just like that Tesla, but the car wouldn’t actually explode.” He rubbed his chin. “Of course, that car’s an electric. Must be the battery that’s burning so hard.”
A siren wailed in the distance.
“The police are on their way,” the teenager announced.
“Thank you, young man,” Frank said. “And thank you for returning my wallet. Not everyone is so honest. If you hadn’t delayed us, we might have been close enough to the explosion to have gotten hurt.”
Like a mouse mesmerized by a cobra, I stared at the burning car. We might have been inside that car. Someone had wanted us inside that car, and they hadn’t cared who else got hurt in the process.
A car bomb. This wasn’t Afghanistan. It was San Nicholas! “Who uses car bombs?” I shrieked.
“Yes,” Frank said, “it does seem a bit of overkill.”
“Overkill!?” I sputtered. “How can you be so calm about this?”
“What’s done is done.”
“It’s a car bomb!”
“Yes, Val,” he said patiently. “We get that. But you’re alive to shout at me. We’ve survived.”
A squad car screeched to a halt in front of us. Two uniformed officers piled out. Frank motioned to them.
A firetruck wailed into the lot. Men in canvas coats and yellow hats got busy setting up a firehose.
Gordon’s sedan parked on the side of the highway. He leapt from the car and ran to me, his expression taut. “Val! What happened? Are you all right?”
I nodded and pointed a quivering finger toward the blazing Tesla. For such a small car, it was really going. “It was a bomb.”
He glanced at Frank. “That your car?”
“I was driving it,” he hedged. “But no, it belongs to a, er, friend.”
A pulse beat in Gordon’s jaw. “I’ll need the name of that friend.”
A news van with a radio dish on the top and a five on the side lurched into the parking lot.
Gordon swore. “Wait here.” He strode to the uniformed cops and said something to them.
They nodded and set up a cordon around the car fire.
Gordon returned to us. “Frank. I’d like a word.” He jerked his head toward a far corner of the parking lot.
“Certainly, detective.” Frank followed him.
I gnawed my bottom lip. If the bomb had been planted while we were here, at the beach, Luther could have done it while we were in the bar. And Doran had also been lurking. Anyone could have followed us here.
The blond reporter scrambled from the van. She gestured with her microphone to the burning car. Her companion aimed his camera at the scene, at the firemen dowsing the flames. Tugging down the front of her red blazer, she looked around.
I slouched lower against the Honda, warm against my bare shoulders, and leaned my head against its door. Maybe someone planted the bomb earlier—last night, this morning before Frank stopped by . . . I shuddered. What if it had gone off at my house or near the Goddess Gals? How many people could have been hurt or even killed?
I could have been killed.
My vision narrowed, blackness closing in. I shook my head, trying to clear it. Frank was right. I was alive. Thinking about what might have been was just sending me into a panic.
The teenager came to sit beside me against the car. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You?”
“I’m cool.”
That established, we sat in companionable silence until Gordon and Frank rejoined us. On the surface, Frank was his usual insouciant self, but there seemed a certain hardness behind his Sinatra eyes.
Gordon
’s green eyes burned with fury. “Val, I need to take your statement,” he said in clipped tones. “Alone.”
I followed him to the spot on the pavement where he’d interviewed Frank.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
And I did, including my suspicions of Doran.
“Has Frank said anything to you about problems with his associates?” he asked. “Any trouble?”
“He admitted he worked for the mob, though he claims his method of persuasion is one-hundred percent verbal.”
Gordon pursed his lips.
“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying . . . You think the car bomb was planted by the mob?”
Two more news vans rolled into the beach parking lot. The acrid scent of burning car rolled over me.
“I’m not saying anything. But a car bomb is an extreme measure for your run-of-the-mill murderer.”
A wave of heat rolled through me, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the car, the summer sun, or my own horror. “But that would mean . . . If the mob was involved in the car bomb, could they be responsible for the two murders? But why? Frank works for them.”
Chief Shaw strode toward us. “GC! What have we got?” He stopped short and looked down his long nose at me. “Ah. Ms. Harris. Do I take it this is another pie-related incident?”
The reporters converged on us.
“No. I don’t know,” I said frantically.
“All right,” Shaw said. “GC, take statements. I’ll deal with this mob.” He walked to the press and raised his arms. “The investigation is ongoing, and we have no comment at this time,” he said loudly.
They shouted questions at him.
I turned back to Gordon. “Does this mean you’re back on the case?”
“It means I’m taking statements. Any beat cop can do that.” He nodded to a patrol cop, speaking to the teenager by the Honda. “Shaw knows about your father’s background. You should prepare yourself.”
My hands trembled, and I jammed them in the pockets of my jeans. “For what?”
“A mob enforcer takes over a TV show after the on-site producer is murdered. Then another woman is killed. Then a car bomb—a Vegas mob hallmark—explodes at the beach.”
Frank’s employers are based in Vegas. “But the bomb nearly killed Frank,” I argued. “Why would he set a bomb in his own car?”
“I thought it wasn’t his car.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
“Yeah, and I know something stinks, and the mob’s connected. Shaw isn’t stupid. Neither are you.” He laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, and a shiver rippled through me. “I’m sorry, Val. You didn’t ask for any of this.” His voice was soothing, compassionate, disconcerting.
My eyes stung. I told myself it was from the smoldering car, but I knew better. “Gordon, I’ve known for a long time that my father was . . . not a good person. And even though I want to believe what he told me about being a non-violent enforcer is true, it probably isn’t. And I’m not proud of it, but I’m still holding a grudge over the last twenty-five years. In spite of all that, I can’t see him as a murderer.”
He gazed earnestly into my eyes. “Look, I may not be on the case, but I’ll keep digging.”
My breath hitched. “Thanks,” I said, my voice higher and thinner than I liked.
“No matter what we find out about your father, you’re a good person. Nothing’s changed on that score. No one who knows you will feel any differently.”
“GC?” Shaw jerked his chin toward the bar.
Gordon nodded. “Have you called Charlene?” he asked me.
“Should I?” I asked, surprised.
“Your father’s not going to be able to drive you home, and I’m not sure I can either.”
“Right.” Besides, Charlene would want to hear what had happened from me and not from the Channel Five news.
“Keep your head down.” Gordon waded through the scrum of reporters to the chief.
I pulled out my phone and called Charlene.
“What?” she asked grumpily.
“Something’s happened,” I whispered.
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
The concern in her voice broke the dam inside me, and tears leaked from my eyes. I turned away from the crowds and pressed a hand to my face. “There was a car bomb. No one was hurt, but Frank’s car was blown up.” I forced my breathing to steady.
“Where are you?”
“In the parking lot of Sam’s Crab Shack.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Are you alone?”
I laughed hollowly. “No, the police and fire are here, and a Huns-invading-Rome-sized horde of reporters.”
“How’d they get there so fast? Never mind. Make my ETA five minutes.” She hung up.
The reporter and her cameraman broke from the group and trotted to me.
“Ms. Harris,” the blond reporter asked, “was your car targeted in the bombing?” She jammed the microphone in front of my chin.
“No,” I said, truthfully. The Tesla had been my father’s. Sort of.
“Where were you when the bomb went off?”
“In the parking lot.” Unnerved, I scanned it now. The fire was out, and firemen poked through the ruin of the Tesla. Nearby Highway One was jammed with rubberneckers. With a sinking heart, I realized Charlene’s five-minute estimate was way off. There was no way she’d be able to speed through this traffic. At the parking lot entrance, a uniformed policeman set orange cones, blocking anyone from getting inside.
“So you were nearby when the bombing occurred,” the reporter said. “Do you believe this is connected to the Pie Hard murders?”
At least they weren’t calling it the Pie Town murders. “I’m letting the police do the investigating.” That was a flat-out lie. I didn’t know for sure who the target of the bomb was—me or Frank or both of us. The blast had shaken me like nothing else had, and the only defense I could see was to catch the killer before he struck again.
Unless this really was a mafia hit.
I shivered and tugged Frank’s blazer tighter around me. What could I do against the mob?
CHAPTER 24
Monday night, a thick fog settled on the coast. I spent the evening at Charlene’s, watching Stargate reruns, drinking her root beer and Kahlúa concoction, and mulling over the case. We didn’t reach any new conclusions, but she lifted me from my doldrums.
The next morning, I drove to town at my usual ungodly hour, down gloomy streets slick with fog, past darkened Victorians and salt box houses.
Abril waited outside the alley door, her slim shoulders hunched beneath a colorful poncho. She straightened off the brick wall as I parked the van and stepped out.
“I heard about the car bomb yesterday,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“No one was hurt,” I hedged, because I wasn’t all right. A bad night’s sleep had taken the edge off my fear, but anxiety still pricked the edges of my awareness.
“But your bones could have been ripped cruelly—”
“Yes, I know.” I jammed the key in the lock and opened the heavy door. “We were lucky.”
“At least Pie Hard is done with us.” She followed me inside. “Hopefully they’ll take their troubles with them.”
If the police would let the crew leave. “Today’s specials are on the counter.” I nodded toward the recipes in their plastic sheaths laid out beside the sink. “I need to check on something, but I’ll be right back to help you.” Leaving Abril in the gleaming kitchen, I checked Pie Town’s doors, windows, closets, because—paranoid! But I couldn’t find any obvious signs of illicit entry. So I returned to the kitchen and got to work.
The alley door slammed open, and my shoulders hunched.
Charlene, in a mustard yellow tunic and leggings, strode into the kitchen.
I relaxed. “Hi!”
She eyed me. “You okay? You seem jumpy.”
“What? No. I’m fine.”
She nodded. “You will b
e,” she said, gruff. Charlene disappeared into the flour-work room.
Soon Petronella joined us, her motorcycle boots clomping through the kitchen. The normalcy of the morning soothed my shaken nerves, and sweet and savory scents filled the kitchen.
I set out the coffee urn and turned the sign in the window to OPEN.
Tally Wally and his friend Graham took their places at the counter. A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead. Normal, everything was normal.
Thirty minutes later, I peeked out the window to the dining area. Tally Wally and Graham still sat at the counter and sipped coffee, but the room was otherwise empty.
I frowned. A group of retirees was usually here by now, pushing the center tables together for their Tuesday morning coffee klatch.
Shrugging, I got back to baking, one ear cocked to listen for the bell over the door.
It didn’t ring.
Okay, Tuesdays were usually slow, so it probably didn’t mean anything. But when no one showed up by ten and Tally Wally and Graham were still at the counter, I emerged from the kitchen.
“What are you two still doing here?” I asked the older men.
Graham ran a hand over his balding head. “You want us to go?”
“No, I’m just surprised. You’re usually gone by seven.”
“We’re sticking around to see what happens next.” Tally Wally rubbed his drink-reddened nose.
My stomach bottomed. “Next?”
Wally shifted on the pink Naugahyde barstool and glanced at his friend.
“What do you think is going to happen next?” I asked slowly.
“You know,” Wally said. “In case any suspicious characters come in carrying any suspicious packages that tick suspiciously.”
“You can’t keep your eye on everything.” Graham folded his arms over his broad stomach.
“Suspicious . . . You mean a bomb?”
“If you see something, say something,” Wally said. “That’s my motto.”
“Did Homeland Security steal it from you?” Graham asked caustically.
I stared around the otherwise empty restaurant. “You don’t think people are staying away because of the car bomb yesterday?”
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