2 Blood Trail (22 page)

Peter nodded. “Make him feel better.”

“Is this a coded conversation,” Vicki asked of no one in particular, “or can anyone join in?”

“Daniel collects baseball stickers,” Rose translated. Her brow furrowed. “No one’s quite sure why, but he does. If we bring a few packages back, it’ll make up for him not being able to come with us.”

“You two go ahead.” Vicki rummaged in her bag for the car keys. “I’ve got this urge to go back and check the car doors.”

“I locked mine,” Peter told her, paused a moment, and added, “I think.”

“Exactly,” Vicki grunted. “And I don’t want to have to tell Henry that we borrowed his BMW and lost half the pieces.”

Rose waved a hand at the empty street. “But there’s no one around.”

“I have a naturally suspicious nature. Get the stickers. I’ll meet you back here.”

 

What’s the point of new legislation on Sunday openings,
Mark Williams wondered, heading back to the alley where he’d left his jeep,
if the places I need to go are still closed? A truly civilized country wouldn’t try to cramp a man’s style and . . . hello!

He sidestepped quickly behind a huge old maple and with one hand resting lightly on the bark, leaned forward to take another look. It
was
Ms. “No First Name” Nelson. He thought he recognized the walk. Few women covered the ground with that kind of an aggressive stride. In fact. . . .

He frowned, watching her check the car doors, wondering why the body language seemed so familiar.

As she turned away from the car, he ducked back, not wanting to be seen. A number of his most profitable enterprises had begun with him watching and keeping his mouth shut. When he felt enough time had passed, he took another look.

Jesus H. Christ
.
She’s a cop.

For those who took the trouble to learn certain subtle signs, playing spot-the-cop became a game easy to win. Mark Williams had long ago taken the trouble to learn the signs. It never hurt to be prepared and this wasn’t the first time that preparation had paid off.

He came out from behind the tree as she disappeared up a side street at the other end of the parking lot. He couldn’t tell if she was packing heat, but then, she could be packing a cannon in that oversized bag of hers and no one would be the wiser. Thinking furiously, he sauntered slowly across the street. If she could prove the aged uncle had been blowing away the neighbor’s dogs, she didn’t have to bring up the subject of werewolves at all. Uncle Carl would. And Uncle Carl would get locked away in a loonybin. And there would go his own chance to score big.

She was onto something. The pine needles on yesterday’s T-shirt proved she’d found the tree and he’d be willing to bet that that little lost waif routine she’d pulled in the aged uncle’s flower factory was just a ploy to get close.

He laid his hand against the sun-warmed metal of the BMW.

 

She wouldn’t appreciate it. She’d say he was interfering, that she could take care of herself, that he should stop being such a patronizing s.o.b.. Mike Celluci put down the electric razor and glared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

He’d made up his mind. He was going to London. And Vicki Nelson could just fold that into corners and sit on it.

He had no idea what this Henry Fitzroy had gotten her involved with nor did he really care. London, Ontario probably couldn’t come up with something Vicki couldn’t handle—as far as he knew, the city didn’t have nuclear capabilities. Fitzroy himself, however, that was a different matter.

Yanking a clean golf shirt down over his head, Celluci reviewed all he had learned about this historical romance writer.
Historical romances, for God’s sake. What kind of job is that for a man?
He paid his parking tickets on time, he hadn’t fought the speeding ticket he’d received a year ago, and he had no criminal record of any kind. His books sold well, he banked at Canada Trust, he paid his taxes, and his charity of choice appeared to be the Red Cross. Not many people knew him and the night guard at his condo both respected and feared him.

All this was fine as far as it went, but a lot of the paper records that modern man carried around with him from birth, were missing from Mr. Fitzroy’s life. Not the important things, Celluci admitted, shoving his shirttails down behind the waistband of his pants, but enough of the little things that it set off warning bells. He couldn’t dig any deeper, not without having his initial less than ethical investigations come to light, but he could lay his findings before Vicki. She used to be a cop. She’d know what the holes in Fitzroy’s background meant.

Organized crime. The police didn’t run into it often in Canada, but the pattern fit.

Celluci grinned. Vicki would demand an immediate explanation. He hoped he’d be there to hear Fitzroy try and talk his way out of it.

2:15. Family obligations would keep him in Scarborough until five at the earliest and even at that his sisters would squawk. He shuddered. Two hours of eating burned hamburgers, surrounded by a horde of shrieking nieces and nephews, listening to his brothers-in-law discussing the rising crime statistics and criticizing the police; what a way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

 

“Okay, so if the gun part of
Rod and Gun Club
refers to the rifle range and stuff,” Peter, having convinced Rose that he should have a chance to drive, pulled carefully out of the parking lot, “what’s the rod mean?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Vicki admitted, smoothing the directions out on her knee. The napkin had a few grease stains on it, but the map was actually quite legible. “Maybe they teach fly-tying or something.”

“Fly-tying?” Rose repeated.

“That’d take one real small lasso, there, pardner,” Peter added, turning north.

Vicki spent the next few blocks explaining what she knew about tying bits of feathers to hooks. As explanations went, it was sketchy. Neither, when asked, did she have any idea why theoretically mature adults would want to stand thigh deep in an ice cold stream being eaten alive by insects so that they could, if lucky, eat something that didn’t even look like food when cooked but rather stared up at them off the plate in its full fishy entirety. She was, however, willing to allow that it took all types.

Although Peter drove as meticulously as Rose, he was more easily distracted—any number of bright or moving things pulled his attention from the road.

So once again the wer are inside statistical norms,
Vicki thought, squinting through the glare on the windshield,
and we see why teenage girls have fewer accidents than teenage boys.
“Red light, Peter.”

“I see it.”

It took Vicki a moment to realize they weren’t slowing. “Peter. . . .”

His eyes were wide and his canines showed. His right leg pumped desperately at the floor. “The brakes, they aren’t catching.”

“Shit!”

And then they were in the intersection.

Vicki heard the squeal of tires. The world slowed. She turned, could see the truck, too close already to read the license plate, and knew they didn’t have a hope in hell of not being hit. She screamed at Peter to hit the gas and the car lurched forward. The grille of the truck filled the window and then, with an almost delicate precision, it began to push through the rear passenger door. Bits of broken glass danced in the air, refracting the sunlight into a million sharp-edged rainbows.

The world returned to normal speed as the two vehicles spun together across the intersection, tortured metal and rubber shrieking, until the back of the BMW slammed into a light pole and the truck bounced free.

Vicki straightened. Covering her face to protect it had kept her glasses where they belonged. Thankfully, she pushed them up her nose, then reached over and turned off the ignition. For the first sudden instant of silence, her heart was the only sound she could hear, booming in her ears like an entire percussion section, then, from a distance, as though the volume were slowing being turned up, came voices, horns, and, farther away still, sirens. She ignored it all.

Peter had his head down on the steering wheel, pillowed on his folded arms. Vicki unsnapped her seat belt and gripped his shoulder lightly.

“Peter?”

The lower half of his face dripped blood but, as far as she could tell, it came from his nose.

“The brakes,” he panted. “They—they didn’t work.”

“I know.” She tightened her grip slightly. He was beginning to tremble and although he deserved it, although they all deserved it, this was not the time for hysterics. “Are you all right?”

He blinked, glanced down the length of his body, then back at her. “I think so.”

“Good. Take off your seat belt and see if your door will open.” Her tone was an echo of the one Nadine had used that morning and Peter responded to it without questions. Giving thanks for learned behaviors, Vicki pulled herself up on her knees and leaned over into the back to check on Rose.

The rear passenger side door had buckled, but essentially held. The inner covering and twisted pieces of the actual mechanisms it contained spread across three quarters of the seat which now tilted crazily up toward the roof. The rear window had blown out. The side window had blown in. Most of the glass had crumbled into a million tiny pieces, but here and there sizable shards had been driven into the upholstery.

A triangular blade about eight inches long trembled just above Rose’s fetal curl, its point buried deep in the door lining. Glass glittered in her pale hair like ice in a snow field and her arms and legs were covered with a number of superficial cuts.

Vicki reached over and yanked the glass dagger free. A 1976 BMW didn’t have plastic-coated safety glass.

“Rose?”

She slowly uncurled. “Is it over?”

“It’s over.”

“Am I alive?”

“You’re alive.” Although she wouldn’t have been had she been sitting on the other side of the car.

“Peter. . . .”

“Is fine.”

“I want to howl.”

“Later,” Vicki promised. “Right now, unlock your door so Peter can get it open.”

While Peter helped his sister from the back, Vicki clambered over the gearshift and out the driver’s door, dragging her bag behind her, and throwing it up on her shoulder the moment she was clear, its familiar weight a reassurance in the chaos. A small crowd had gathered and more cars were stopping. One of them, she was pleased to note, belonged to the London Police and other sirens could be heard coming closer.

With the twins comforting each other and essentially unharmed, Vicki made her way around the car to check on the driver of the truck. Blood ran down one side of his face from a cut over his left eye and the right side of his neck was marked by a angry red friction burn from the shoulder strap of his seat belt.

“Jesus Christ, lady,” he moaned as she stopped beside him. “Just look at my truck.” Although the massive bumper had absorbed most of the impact, the grille had been driven back into the radiator. “Man, I didn’t even have fifty klicks on this things yet. My wife is going to have my ass.” He reached down and lightly touched the one whole headlight. “Quartz-halogen. Seventy-nine bucks a pop.”

“Is everyone all right here?”

Vicki knew what she’d see before she turned; she’d used that exact tone too many times herself. The London police constable was an older man, gray hair, regulation mustache, regulation neutral expression. His younger partner was with the twins, and the two uniforms from the second car were taking charge of traffic and crowd control. She could hear Peter beginning to babble about the brake failure and decided to let him be for the moment. A little bit of hysteria would only help convince the police they were telling the truth. People who were too calm were often perceived as having something to hide.

“As far as I can tell,” she said, “we’re all fine.”

His brows rose. “And you are?”

“Oh. Sorry. Vicki Nelson. I was a detective with the Metro Toronto Police until my eyes went.” It didn’t even hurt to say it anymore. Maybe she was in shock. “I was in the BMW.” She dug out her ID and passed it over.

“You were driving?”

“No, Peter was.”

“It’s your car?”

“No, a friend’s. He lent it to us for the day. When Peter tried to stop for the light, the brakes had gone. We couldn’t stop.” She waved a hand at the truck. “He didn’t have a chance of missing us.”

“Right out in front of me,” the driver of the truck agreed, swiping at the blood on his cheek. “Not even fifty klicks on this baby. And the whole front end’ll have to be repainted.” He sighed deeply, his belly rising and falling. “The wife is going to have my ass.”

“They were working earlier?”

“We stopped just down the road without any . . .” The world slid a little sideways. “. . . trouble.”

“I think you’d better sit down.” The constable’s hand was around her elbow.

“I’m fine,” Vicki protested.

He smiled slightly. “You’ve got a purple lump the size of a goose egg on your temple. Offhand, I’d say you’re not quite fine.”

She touched her temple lightly and brilliant white stars shot inward from her fingertips. All of a sudden, it hurt. A lot. Her whole body hurt. And she had no memory of how or when it had happened. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” she muttered, letting the constable lead her to the side of the road.

“Tell me about it.” He lowered her gently to the curb. “You just sit there for a minute. We’ll have the ambulance people take a look at you.”

Everything appeared to be about six inches beside where it should be. “I think,” she said slowly. “That might not be a bad idea. The ownership, insurance, everything, is in the glove compartment.”