Fire And Lies: The El & Em Detective Series

by Pamela Cowan

  He looked at Beale and said, “Dodge told me he caught Ernesto’s little brother, Miguel, selling at the high school so he shot him. That could have brought some heat, but I heard you took care of it.”

  Beale smiled, showing off perfect dental work, “Yeah, it’s amazing what a little help from Benjamin Franklin and a promise of future leniency can get you. Practically makes you bulletproof, unless you do something stupid or crazy. Setting the warehouse on fire and killing Miguel were both.

  “The way I see it, we only have one option,” said Beale. “Dodge has to go. He’s drawing too much attention. Making too many enemies. The Padillo’s have been around longer than him. They got a big network and they are pissed. It won’t take much for Ernesto to decide to call in some favors and then you know what’s going to happen? A war. A war between the Mexicans and the Indians. Is that what you want? Dead people. A whole new group of people running things? I hear the Hell’s Angels have been making subtle inquiries, checking the power structure, waiting for an opportunity. Dodge and his crazy bullshit are just what they need.”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Jelly, though he already knew the answer.

  “I want you to kill him. Why else would I call you all the way out here? I want you to kill that fucking animal and take his place in the organization. I will deal directly with you, and no one but you, so no bullshit competition from inside your organization. I want a smooth transition and no interruptions.”

  Beale sat back, confident Jelly understood what he was being offered. Reaching down he calmly smoothed the crease in his slacks. “Look, as one businessman to another, last time the town went dry it was bad. I don’t want to do that to our customers. We want to keep things rolling. Keep things smooth.”

  Jelly felt his incisors scrape across his bottom lip and made himself stop. Rose, his wife, said it was his tell when he had a bad poker hand, or bad news to share. This time it was neither of those. This time the hand he was being dealt could be a straight flush. He knew Dodge had been raking in the bucks. He’d bought his tricked-out Camaro with cash. Went to Vegas and Reno whenever the mood hit. Last time he’d dragged Jelly along for company. Top dollar women, top shelf whiskey. Jelly had felt out of place, until he got drunk enough not to care. Then, man oh man.

  He felt his teeth dig into his lip again as he thought of those women, two blondes, both tall and beautiful enough to be models. The kind of women from the magazines he used to hide in the back shed. Of course, he hadn’t slept with either of them. He was married, and Rose would kill him, no joke, but a blow job wasn’t really sex. Damn, that was a good memory.

  With the kind of money Dodge pulled in, why he would take Rose along with him, go to Vegas, hell, go to Hawaii. Fuck the winter. Fuck the snow.

  He’d tuned out a bit but tuned back in when he saw Beale was holding out his hand. Jelly reached for it a little awkwardly and the two men shook.

  Jelly drug his heels through the dirt under the swing, leaving two furrows in the fine dust. He thought about taking another drink of his cousin’s harsh whisky, but the memory of the bad taste kept him from unscrewing the top. The whisky Dodge bought in Vegas that time, now that had been good stuff. Top shelf. Single malt. Expensive though.

  That was the way of it. Everything had a price. Just a matter of deciding if you were willing to pay it, that was all. With a sigh, Jelly got up and headed toward the house. He’d return the bottle, lock up, and head home. He much preferred doing to thinking and he’d done enough thinking.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Monday, September 10

  “The reservation is actually three areas,” Emma explained as she drove. One long section along the Diamond River that’s about three hundred acres. Plus another two sections of timber, about two hundred acres each. The tribal government is in a little town called Muddy Creek. The man we’re driving out there to talk to is Native American, Yaas I think. His name is Dodge Keller. He owns a ranch, or maybe he leases it, I’m not sure about how things work on a reservation.

  “He bought the warehouse in Hollis three years ago but he didn't insure it until about a year before it burned. That seemed a little suspicious to Gwen. Plus, the plans he said he had for it likely never went through. When it burned it was pretty much empty except for a few paint cans, and what not. Basically, wasted space.

  Emma knew she was over explaining but she didn't know Leo well enough to sit in companionable silence. In fact, there was very little companionable about him.

  Even though she kept her eyes locked on the road ahead, she couldn’t ignore his presence. She certainly couldn’t escape the scent of the expensive cologne he wore.

  Few of the men she'd known growing up bothered with such things. Her father had smelled like cigars with a side of Old Spice aftershave. Her ex-husband usually smelled like cinnamon. He chewed cinnamon gum constantly. This was no chewing gum. This scent was exotic and masculine, and it made her toes tingle. Well, maybe not her toes. Again, a wash of heat rose to her face. She hoped the summer’s worth of tan she’d acquired hid her blushing cheeks.

  “So, my sister says you’re from Cuba. Did you live there long or . . . ?”

  “Just until I was six. My parents separated and my mother moved my brother and me to the states. First we lived in Florida and then, a couple years later, she remarried and we moved to Maryland.”

  “We lived in Maryland for a while, when our dad was stationed there,” Emma offered, though she knew the shared connection was weak at best.

  “Ellen told me,” said Leo. “Sounds like there weren’t many places you didn’t live.”

  “Yeah, dad’s job moved us around a lot.”

  “Hard on kids.”

  “Sometimes. What kind of work did you do in the Army?”

  “Criminal Investigation, same as your sister.”

  “Did you start out as an MP too?”

  “More or less. I started with a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice, then saw a poster and decided to join the army and see the world.”

  “And did you see the world?”

  “Not really, a little bit of Germany and a few places stateside with names that started with Fort.”

  “Must have been interesting, investigating crimes.”

  “Later in my career, I guess. In the beginning, I was in protective services and mostly followed generals around all day.”

  “You mean like a bodyguard?”

  “Exactly like a bodyguard. I spent most of my time stuck in conference rooms or on planes traveling from one boring meeting to another. The posters lied,” he said, and sighed. It was so exaggerated Emma couldn’t help but turn her head to look at him. His obviously phony hang dog expression made her laugh.

  “Yes, I can see you suffered. At least you’re making up for it now. My sister says you travel a lot. I hope it’s not just to go to meetings.”

  “I try,” he said, “and no, no boring meetings. But enough about me. What about you? What made you decide to become a private investigator? You and Ellen both going into law enforcement. Must be a story there. I remember Ellen telling me your dad was in the Army, but not police, right?”

  “Right, no police work, that’s for sure. He was in communications. When he retired, he was working as a public information officer.”

  “I see. I guess I figured maybe it was a family tradition. Dads and uncles all cops or something.”

  “Or moms and aunts?” Emma asked, calling out his sexist remark.

  “Yeah, oh damn, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay.

  “It’s not, but thanks.”

  There were a few moments of silence. Emma slowed to let a lime green mustang roar by then said, “Your question made me think about the whole, following in your family’s footsteps thing. One of my grandfathers was a logger and the other was a baker. Both grandmothers were homemakers, and my mom was a nurse. I guess I followed her example. I went to nursing school.”

  “And found out you didn’t
like it.”

  “No, I just found a guy I liked more. We got married. He was on the long track to becoming a doctor, so we made a deal. I’d drop out of school and work until he was finished with his residency, then I’d go back to school.”

  “I’m guessing it didn’t work out so well.”

  “Good guess.” Emma was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. Usually she tried to hide her feelings about that too recent chapter of her life, the gut stomp of pain that the memory delivered each and every time. It wasn’t bad enough that Mark had cheated on her, but that he’d cheated on her from nearly day one of the six years they were married, and she hadn’t had a clue. The fact that she had been so stupidly blind was almost as devastating as his betrayal.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to say in a calm and unconcerned tone, “I thought he was having an affair, but he told me I was crazy so often I started to believe him. So, to prove to myself I was wrong I decided to follow him. Turned out I wasn’t crazy after all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leo said.

  “Thanks,” she said, appreciating the note of sincerity she heard in his voice. “It was the reason I became a PI, and I love it, so I guess it wasn’t all bad. Word got around, after I caught him, and a friend told me she suspected her husband was doing the same thing. She wanted me to find out the truth, and I did, her husband was also a cheater.

  “That’s when I realized I had a talent for following people. I could change my appearance, blend in. My friend gave me a portion of her divorce settlement as a gift. After my divorce I took the money and moved to Portland and found a job with an investigative service. They didn’t pay well but I learned a lot. You need twelve months of work experience to become a licensed investigator in Oregon. As soon as I had them, I took the test and got the license. Then I quit the job, moved back to Hollis and hung out my shingle.”

  “And the rest, as they say, is history,” said Leo.

  “I don’t know about history. I’ve barely started,” said Emma. “So far most of my work has been finding biological parents or other relatives. Sometimes I work for child services looking for relatives. Kids age out of the foster care system and with no family they end up homeless a lot of the time.

  “That’s sad.”

  “It is. It’s horrible. But sometimes I get to help people who have been adopted find family.”

  “Doesn’t that ever turn out bad? I mean, do they want to be found? They gave their kid up for a reason.”

  “Yes, but in my vast experience,” she smiled to show she was joking, “I’ve never had a person say they didn’t want to meet their child.”

  “That’s great.”

  Emma nodded. “It really is. “Then there’s the less interesting but steadier work. Fairly often I help people looking for back child support. I also work as a process server for several attorneys, and if the sheriff’s office is busy, they contract with me to serve papers on low risk clients. I haven’t had a surveillance job in a couple of months. Like I said, steady, but not exactly the most exciting work.”

  “But overall, you like it, being a PI.”

  “I do. It’s nice to be the boss,” she said, verbalizing what she’d been thinking just that morning. There was another reason too, but she didn’t share it with him. He might think she was a little strange. One of her favorite parts of the job was the opportunity it gave her to play someone else. To be like an actor and take on a role. She enjoyed the characters she invented so much that she’d even given them names.

  There was Barbie, who had a wig of long, straight blonde hair, spidery fake eyelashes, pink lipstick, and dangling earrings. She wore sweaters, a padded bra, tight pants and platform heels.

  Then there was Eleanor, who was always ready for a gallery opening with an upswept do, a sleeveless, black dress, ballet slippers and a thin silver cord with a huge diamond around her neck. A subtle statement of her wealth and good taste, as well as a tribute to cubic zirconia.

  But Emma’s favorite and most frequent persona was Lucy, the iconic soccer mom. She ran around with her hair in a ponytail or a messy bun, a smudge of eyeliner and some gloss her only makeup. She wore black, stretchy leggings, a reversible hoodie, a reversible cap and black Nikes. She could disappear into the shadows like a cat burglar all in black, or transform into an inconspicuous jogger in white shorts, a tank and running shoes.

  “I wish I was my own boss,” said Leo after a moment. “I know. I know,” he said, forestalling her response. “I do own my own business, but it’s really your sister who runs the place. As you mentioned, I like to travel. I think your sister wants me to stick around more and teach more classes. Women’s self-defense is the big thing right now but I can imagine some student knocking me on my ass. Could I survive such a thing?”

  Emma shot another sideways glance at Leo and said. “Is that a fishing expedition? Do you want me to say that is very unlikely, or should I just mention your big muscles?”

  “Oh, hell no,” he said, sounding truly taken aback. “I’m serious. These things happen. What would become of my machismo if a girl beat me up?”

  “Machismo is dead, my friend,” she joked. “It died in 1920.”

  “How come 1920?”

  “Because at that moment in US history you no longer had to have a penis to vote.”

  There was a moment of silence and then, “But what do you use to mark your ballot?”

  Emma couldn’t suppress a groan. “Oh boy.”

  “Pretty awful, huh?”

  “We should probably find something on the radio.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Monday, September 10

  To reach the address listed on the policy for Dodge Keller they left the highway and drove through Muddy Creek. Leo looked around and said, “This town is so small, I bet their zip code is a fraction. This town is so small, they’d have to widen the roads to paint traffic lines.” He paused a moment, then said, “This town is so small, I bet the local Motel 6 sleeps six.”

  Emma shook her head. “Behave,” she told him, though she couldn’t help but smile.

  Once through town the road climbed, becoming a narrow lane with forest on the driver’s side, a sheer cliff on the passenger side. Emma’s mouth went dry and the Jeep’s engine grumbled as they climbed steadily up the mountain. Emma drove around a wide curve and as they left the canyon behind, she took a deep breath of relief. The land leveled out and she caught glimpses of wide grassy meadows behind the trees lining the road.

  After about a mile, Emma spotted the road sign she was looking for and turned off the main road onto a single lane of asphalt marred with potholes. A short distance later the asphalt was replaced by smoother gravel. A fence of barbed wire strands strung between metal posts ran along the right side of the road for a good half mile, and though the road ended at a wide parking area between a large barn and a small house, Emma noticed that the fence continued.

  They pulled up to the house and parked beside a newer Camaro, as sleek and black as obsidian. Even the wheels were black. It was so dark and modern that it made a strange contrast to the house, a one story ranch that, over many long years, had rooms added on until it was large and sprawling, with multiple roof lines. The siding was natural cedar, gray with time and weather.

  There was also a covered wood deck and a neatly edged flower bed with rows of Iris, their flowers long gone, their long green leaves like blades stuck in the ground.

  On the wall between the front door and a picture window someone had hung a trio of the biggest woven baskets Emma had ever seen. Long feathers had been tied to their edges and they lifted and fluttered at the slightest breeze.

  Emma was surprised that the house appeared so well maintained. Based on what Gwen had said about the man, she’d expected less care and more chaos.

  When they got out of the car, Emma pressed her fists into her lower back and stretched. She saw Leo rolling his shoulders. They were both stiff from the long drive.

  The presence of a bat
tered truck near the barn and the car near the house made her think someone was home. She waited a moment. In these rural areas the sound of a strange car usually brought people out to see who’d arrived long before you reached the door. No one appeared.

  They walked toward the house and Leo moved past her and climbed the two steps to reach the deck first. It immediately infuriated her, until she recalled he’d been a bodyguard. Putting himself in the way of potential danger was probably second nature. There was no slight intended.

  When she reached the doorway, just a step behind, she heard the buzz of flies and caught the smell of decomposition. She exchanged glances with Leo and they both drew their weapons. The door was slightly ajar, Leo used the toe of his boot to nudge it further open. Emma looked past him to peer into the dimly lit room. Before she could make out the shapes, Leo pushed past her and gestured for her to wait. Reluctantly, she did.

  After he cleared the house he called to her. Stepping inside, the first thing she noticed was a man’s body lying face up on the floor, only there was no face.

  Near the body was a dining room table. On it, a tablecloth had been pulled askew, but most remained on the table, held there by the weight of two rifles and a hand gun. Two more guns lay on the floor near the body and had obviously fallen from the table. Under the table she saw a tin which held soiled bits of cloth and with the smell of blood and urine there was another, more familiar smell. Gun cleaning solution. The dead man she suspected was Dodge Keller, had been cleaning his guns when he’d been shot. There was a sort of morbid irony in that.

  Leo had holstered his gun and now she put hers away then took a closer look at the body. The man had worn cowboy boots, jeans and a torn gray t-shirt. Emma swallowed but her throat was dry. She realized she was concentrating too hard on how the room looked, what the man wore. It was a defense mechanism, for she’d seen what the black flies were feasting on, and she couldn’t let herself focus on that.