Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) (15 page)

CHAPTER 19

Art took the northbound on-ramp while Clarice and I chugged up the southbound entrance to I-5, Bertha’s springs groaning. No question we were an eyesore, and we garnered plenty of irritated glances as drivers slammed on their brakes behind us then sped past as soon as possible.

“Am I supposed to believe those bags are full of wood pellets like the labels say?” Clarice asked.

She was becoming peskier than a four-year-old in the ‘why’ stage. “They’re a free trade product under NAFTA,” I answered.

Clarice snorted. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

Clarice stewed in silence as dusk descended. The pickup was making new noises which put me in a state of high alert. I compulsively checked the mirrors to see if any bags had slipped. If we lost even one, it might trigger an investigation that would be disastrous for Art as well as Clarice and me.

While all the rural parts of the state I’d seen so far were about trees, the Seattle metro area was all about traffic, which backed up fast and for miles. We were bookended in the slow lane — rolling, stopping, rolling, stopping. I read the political smorgasbord of bumper stickers on the car in front of us twenty times. My toes cramped from fluctuating pressure on the clutch and gas pedals.

I fiddled with knobs until the headlamps came on. In the dim glow of the dashboard light, the fuel gauge needle vibrated in the red zone.

“I need an exit with a gas station,” I said. “Soon.”

Clarice peered through the windshield, reading aloud all the signs, relevant or not.

I think I held my breath until the bright Texaco sign came into view. Just as I pulled in next to the pumps, one of my phones rang.

“Art,” Clarice whispered hoarsely. “He got caught.”

“He doesn’t have the incriminating evidence anymore. We do.” I finally found the phone that was lit up. “Besides, wrong phone.”

I plastered a fake smile on my face, even though the caller couldn’t see me and answered. “Hi, Mom.”

Beside me, Clarice snorted, but I refused to look at her.

“It’s your lucky day,” Mom piped.

“I sure hope so.”

“Josh Freeney. He’s your disgraced FBI agent.”

“You’re sure?” I scrambled for some paper and a pencil, but Clarice beat me to it, nudging them into my free hand.

“Of course I am. His wife goes to yoga with my massage therapist’s fiancé’s mother. The poor woman was in tears and couldn’t finish her session. She’s considering divorce.”

At least she knew where her husband was, which was one step ahead of me.

“You’re amazing,” I said.

“Yes, honey. Now for your other request. I couldn’t tell if the florist’s clerk was inherently obstinate or just obtuse. He hemmed and hawed but finally gave me the email address used for your order’s confirmation. What a lovely bouquet,” Mom gushed. “Did you know it cost almost three hundred dollars, not including delivery?”

“The email address?” I tried to keep irritation from creeping into my voice.

“Oh yes.” Mom spelled out the address, and I scribbled it down.

A meaningless combination of letters and numbers, not someone’s personal account. The domain extension was Australian. Email accounts can be forwarded and rerouted endlessly, so I didn’t put too much stock in the location. Probably meant to be a diversion, which also meant I’d be wasting any more time spent trying to track it down.

But the idea reinforced my hope that Skip was still alive. It also escalated the gnawing feeling that he was leaving me alone to clean up his mess while he bailed out. Skip — if it was Skip — was blowing money on roses while I resorted to illegal activity to support myself and the boys’ camp I was placing in danger.

If he was alive — where was he? One hardly sends three-hundred-dollar flower arrangements from a kidnapper’s concrete cell while subsisting on gruel and water.

A knuckle rapped hard on my window, and I jumped.

A haggard, middle-aged man in a khaki uniform stood next to the truck, his badge shiny under the gas station’s florescent lights.

“Uh-oh.” Clarice’s face wrinkled into a ghastly approximation of a smile as she nodded to the officer through the window. “Nora,” she hissed through immobile lips, “do something.”

“Hang on,” I blurted to Mom. I wrestled with the window crank handle until I got it down halfway.

“Evening.” The officer tipped his head. “Where are you ladies headed?”

“Home.” My mouth was still open, although I didn’t know what else to add to that statement without implicating myself, when a tinny voice screeched from the phone in my lap.

It was a good thing we couldn’t make out Mom’s words, although her agitated, high-pitched tone conveyed enough meaning.

“My mother,” I said. “Didn’t want to drive and talk at the same time. Oh, and we need gas.”

Clarice surreptitiously pinched me in the side — hard.

I held up the phone. “Would you like to tell my mother I’m not in trouble?”

The officer cracked a reluctant grin. “Nope. You have a heavy load here. Good job securing it.”

The tightness in my chest eased. “Thank you.” I tried fluttering my eyelashes.

That made him reach for his gun.

Whew — I exhaled — he was just resting his hands on his hips, arms akimbo.

“You have a brake light out.” He said it wearily, as if it was the fourteenth negligent brake light of his shift, and he wished people would just get it together so he could stop repeating himself.

“Really?” Not exactly a surprise — yet another item in a long list of things wrong with Bertha. I tried to make my face ditzy blank. “Which one?”

“Left. Driver’s side.”

“Thanks for telling me. I’ll get it fixed right away.”

He frowned down Bertha’s entire length, then brought his gaze back to my window. “Drive safe.”

“Yes, sir.” My sincerity was overwhelming. That was exactly what I planned to do.

Why do cops walk so slowly? Clarice and I watched him stroll to his cruiser and lean against the door’s logo, apparently content to take a break while talking on the radio through his open window.

The tinny tirade hadn’t stopped. Clarice reached over and punched the end call button on my phone, and the screen went dark.

“Good grief,” she muttered. “How long was he back there?”

“No idea. I can’t see directly behind us because of the load.”

“Pump the gas. Let’s get out of here.”

I couldn’t have agreed with her more.

oOo

“I hate to tell you this,” I said as we bounced over the rutted track toward the mansion, “but we have to unload the truck tonight. I don’t want to keep Bertha out past her curfew. I expect Walt will need her tomorrow.”

Clarice had latched onto the seat with both hands to avoid levitating. Her technique wasn’t entirely successful. “Next time you go on an adventure—” she paused as her internal organs resettled after a big bump, “remind me not to tag along.”

“Stop complaining,” I said through clenched teeth. “We could have blown a muffler or a drive train or a carburetor or — or worse.” I was actually elated. The mission had been accomplished, and we hadn’t been arrested.

“There’s nothing worse. Besides I’m talking about the fact that my arms and legs are about to fall off from the first loading.”

I’d forgotten about our previous exertion since all my energy had been directed toward fighting Bertha’s tendency to drift for the past several hours. My muscles had morphed into rigid bands, operating of their own accord. Bertha had held together, but I had to admit Clarice was right. I wasn’t sure my body would do the same once I let go of the steering wheel.

“The question is, where to put them?” I couldn’t afford to let my mind be distracted by my body’s condition.

“Not in the kitchen,” Clarice said in a tone that was not to be argued with. “I’m assuming, even if it is just wood pellets, that you don’t want them out in the open?”

“Correct.”

“There’s a coal chute around back, near where Bertha was parked this morning.”

I shot her a surprised glance.

“Although I am not yet older than dirt, I do recognize a coal chute when I see one.”

I dropped Clarice at the kitchen door so she could thread through the mansion’s basement, flipping on light switches along the way, and unlock the door to the room with the coal chute. I drove around and shone Bertha’s weak headlamps at the outside of that same door until it opened. Clarice stood in sight of my side mirror and directed me with sweeping arm gestures as I backed old Bertha as close to the chute as possible.

“Hey,” she said as I climbed out of the pickup, “did you know your left brake light is out?”

Clarice propped the hatch open and retreated to the bottom of the chute. I shoved bags through the opening one at a time. With gravity doing most of the work, the task was appreciably easier than the first time. There was no need to make a tidy stack, so Clarice managed bottlenecks at the downhill end by kicking bags out of the way.

“In spite of our now ample fuel source,” she shouted through the hole, “I’m running on fumes. Breakfast was too long ago. How many more bags?”

“Last one,” I grunted, heaving the bag onto the slide.

My aim must have deteriorated, because the bag shot over the shallow bumper at the edge of the chute and fell to the floor, spilling its contents in a golden stream.

Clarice scowled and bent over, snatching up several of the green packets that had escaped along with the wood pellets. She riffled the edge of one of the packets. “Nora?”

I sighed. “You said you’d find out eventually. Now you know.”

“Undeclared?”

“I’m not in a position to use banking services just now. Art, out of the goodness of his heart, returned a fraction of the donations the foundation deposited in their accounts. And looks like he did it in U.S. currency. God bless that man.”

“Whatchya doing?” The bright voice was followed by a brighter set of blue eyes popping into the square of light shining through the coal chute door. Eli wedged in beside me and stared down at Clarice.

I didn’t know she could move so fast. Her fists with the money disappeared behind her back and she side-shuffled, trying to block the rest of the spill on the floor from his view.

“Eli.” My reaction was a split-second behind Clarice’s. I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from the chute, too roughly. “What are
you
doing? I thought you were grounded to the bunkhouse.”

“Just one day.” He wriggled out of my grasp, his face pinched.

I straightened and rubbed my forehead. “Boys your age should be in bed by now.”

His shoulders raised in a defensive, apologetic gesture, shrinking his neck as well as his voice. “Dwayne told me to come.”

“You were with Dwayne now, tonight?”

He nodded vigorously. “I took him dinner. I’m supposed to get you.”

My heart started hammering. This did not bode well. “Why?”

“He found another man who’s not supposed to be here.”

“What’s this?” Clarice grunted from the top of the basement stairs. She slammed the door behind her, then reached over and secured the coal chute hatch.

“Right now?” I squeaked.

Eli nodded again. “Dwayne says he can hold the varmint until you get there. What’s a varmint?”

Clarice huffed with impatience. “Who’s Dwayne?”

“Let’s go.” I hustled Eli to the pickup’s driver’s door, picked him up — I was getting good at heaving dead weights around — and thrust him onto the seat. “Scoot over.”

I had Bertha in gear before Clarice made it onto her side of the seat and smacked her door closed.

“Hang on,” I shouted. We didn’t have time for seat belts.

All I could think about was that horrible, rusty old shotgun and what might happen if Dwayne’s shaky finger snagged the trigger. And just how long it would take an ambulance to find us out here in the boonies.

CHAPTER 20

The trail Eli led us down felt like a rabbit hole. At least Bertha sat, still rocking on her springs, out on the gravel road as a marker of where we’d taken off on foot. Clarice and I had a rough time, tripping over unseen roots and rocks and each other in the dark. For a fleeting moment, I was envious of the FBI’s mega lights for nighttime forest exploration.

Eli kept hold of my sleeve and I maintained contact with Clarice, or we would have been lost for good. A faint yellow glow grew in the distance. Eli darted between branches while Clarice and I crashed through the underbrush. In a way, our noisy trampling comforted me. Dwayne would surely hear us coming and maybe resist the urge to do something foolish with that shotgun.

In the light of a hissing propane lantern, its flame curling hungrily around the wick, Dwayne stood stiffly over a crouching boy. They were in what could best be called the portico of a shack — a shack with a tarp, sheets of plywood, and pieces of rickety wood pallets aesthetic.

I bent at an odd angle, clutching my side and gasping, checking over the people in the scene one more time. No one seemed to be in immediate danger.

Dwayne nodded to me, the shotgun balanced in the relaxed hand at his side.

The boy — maybe he was a young man, hard to tell in the dim light — had his arms wrapped around his legs as though his limbs had minds of their own and he was trying to corral them. He twitched uncontrollably. He sure didn’t look like the trusted messenger of an organized crime syndicate. He looked cold.

“Caught him poking around,” Dwayne said. “Had this.” He nudged a black object with his toe. A small handgun.

“Is it real?” I asked.

“Yep. Piddly .22.”

I squatted beside the boy. He blinked fast and flicked his gaze everywhere but at me.

“What’s your name?”

Most people can answer that question in a few seconds. He failed to do so.

I leaned closer, and his breathing, already fast, quickened. His hair was thin and flat, and several painful-looking sores ringed his mouth. And then I knew. He wasn’t a threat in himself, but his behavior could be irrational and unpredictably violent.

“When was your last hit?”

He shrugged.

“Meth?”

Another shrug.

“What were you doing with the gun?”

“Hunting rabbits.” His teeth were broken, and one on the bottom was missing.

Dwayne blew out air in a soft grunt. He wasn’t buying the boy’s story.

“Where’s your family?”

Shrug.

“Are you alone?”

His lips pressed together. I was pretty sure that was a yes.

“Do you have a place to sleep?”

A quick glance over his shoulder, which I took as a negative answer.

“Are you hungry?”

Direct eye contact for a fleeting moment.

I rose to my feet. The look on Clarice’s face told me she knew too. You can’t walk the streets of San Francisco, even as a casual observer, and not know.

“We need Walt,” I said. “Dwayne, if it’s all right?” It was his house, after all, the secrecy of which he’d guarded carefully.

Dwayne nodded.

Eli’s huge eyes turned to me, studying my face, as though seeking the assurance of a responsible party. I expected, with his background, he may have seen something like this before. As much as I hated the idea of using an eight-year-old as a messenger in the dark, in the woods, with unknown crazies roaming about, Eli had proven his adeptness at the task. “Please?” I whispered.

He disappeared from the circle of light cast by the propane lamp.

“Dwayne, this is my good friend, Clarice Wheaton.”

They exchanged stiff nods. We were a taciturn bunch.

“Um, Clarice, would you take custody of the handgun? Dwayne, do you have a couple spare blankets?”

“Inside.” Dwayne shuffled a few steps sideways to give Clarice room to pick up the gun while still keeping his stern gaze fixed on the intruder.

The door to Dwayne’s shack was open a few inches. I pushed on the flimsy wood and ducked inside. The house was a clump of small rooms cobbled together, but with distinct functions. The first room was a combination sitting and cooking space. Beyond that was a closet-sized addition with a cot and a few pegs on the walls.

Another room looked like storage with a jumble of empty crates, tubing and metal tubs. Vats — that would be the correct term. I wasn’t an expert on hooch-making, but they sure looked like moonshine supplies. I suppose if you’re drinking straight alcohol then sanitation isn’t an issue.

Dwayne — all two times I’d seen him — had never appeared intoxicated. Shaky, yes, but I attributed that to old age. He was entirely lucid.

I slipped into the bedroom. I doubted the boy would mind, but the rumpled blankets on the cot didn’t smell as though they’d been washed in a while. I knelt and peered under the cot in case Dwayne had a stash of spare bedding. He didn’t seem to have spare much of anything, but it was worth a look.

I pulled out a bulging rucksack and opened the flap. For the second time today, I was staring at bundles of cash.

How long had it been since I’d slept? I wiped my eyes and pinched a packet of the money. It was real. But old, grungy bills, exactly the wadded up then flattened notes you’d expect to pass from one hillbilly hand to another — not like the crisp, fresh cotton/linen paper from the bank packs that Clarice had whipped behind her back earlier.

I replaced the money, cinched the bag even tighter and shoved it under the cot until it bumped the outer wall. Was distilling really that lucrative? And yet Dwayne stole potatoes from growing boys. I’d have to talk to him about his operating procedures — later.

I scooped the bedding off the cot and hurried outside. The boy was rocking now, unsteady on his heels, still hunkered on the mud-caked wood planks. I knelt beside him and draped the blankets over his shoulders. His next several hours would be horrible.

I knew better than to touch him, but I sat close to him with my back against the front of Dwayne’s shack and my legs outstretched. The boy needed to know that I wouldn’t desert him, that help was coming, that he’d get through the night.

Dwayne relaxed his stance and stuffed the shotgun in the crook of his elbow. The barrel ended up aimed at the roof over my head, but at least his finger was nowhere near the trigger. Clarice tipped up a chunk of split wood and slowly lowered herself onto the impromptu seat with a groan.

About ten million snatches of thoughts raced through my mind, but the only one that stuck and repeated was that I could have skipped the trip to Bellingham and just asked Dwayne for a loan — if I’d known. Of course, it would have had to be on generous terms because without the trip to Bellingham I’d never have been able to repay him.

It seemed like forever — I might have dozed — and my toes grew numb inside my boots. The boy beside me kept up his interminable rocking.

“I’m Nora,” I finally said, my voice echoing in the silence. Maybe he’d trust me with his name if he knew mine.

But his eyes were blank and distant.

“And I’m Santa Claus,” Clarice muttered.

Dwayne chuckled. “You’d need my beard for that.”

“No question you have a magnificent specimen,” Clarice retorted, “but I’ll pass.” She seemed about to topple off her stump seat. She had to be exhausted beyond consciousness — I knew I was.

“You still wearing the whistle?” Dwayne asked.

I placed my hand over the bump hanging below my collarbone. “Yes.”

Dwayne nodded. “Good idea.”

Eli arrived with Walt in tow. I exhaled — I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath with shallow pants until my lungs let go. Walt would know what to do.

He strode up to Dwayne, his hand outstretched. “Heard you found him.”

“Yep.” Dwayne pumped Walt’s hand.

“Poaching?”

“Claims so. I have my doubts.”

Walt came and knelt in front of the boy and me. His left hand landed on my knee with a gentle squeeze. “Nora.” His gaze was questioning, but I just shook my head.

“Help me get him up.”

The boy weighed next to nothing and was as wobbly as a newborn colt. I supported him with an arm around his middle while Walt gripped his shoulders with both hands.

The timbre of Walt’s voice changed, became compelling. “Have any on you?”

The boy shook his head.

“I’m going to check your pockets.” Walt didn’t wait for the boy’s permission and frisked him thoroughly. When he was satisfied the boy was telling the truth — at least about current drug possession — he straightened. “Fair enough. You can stay with us tonight. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning.”

I leaned close to Walt and whispered, “Thank you. I know this wasn’t your first choice of things to do tonight. Wasn’t mine either.” I pulled the keys out of my pocket and pressed them into his hand. “Take Bertha.”  He didn’t exhibit even the slightest twitch at the fact that I’d named his truck. “I have Skip’s clothes. They’ll be too big, but they’re something.”

“In the morning.” Walt’s lips curved into a faint, sad smile. “I guess we have a lot to talk about.”

I returned Dwayne’s blankets, and we trooped through the woods to the potholed track. The man and men-to-be climbed into Bertha for the drive to safety and warm beds. Clarice and I turned the other direction and prepared our minds for a moonlit trudge.

“If I may ask again, who, exactly, is Dwayne?” Clarice said, her breath rising in steam puffs timed with her footfalls.

“Mayfield’s resident hermit and purveyor of fine spirits. Oh, and he has a sack of money under his cot.”

“You mean like our sacks of money?” Clarice snorted. “Isn’t that just dandy — sacks of money for everyone.” After a few minutes, she added, “Maybe
he’s
Santa Claus. Do you think we’re ever going to wake up from this dream?”

“I sure hope so.”

My phone rang. I should say one of my phones rang. I had to set my bag in the middle of the road and paw through it to find the correct culprit. Which reminded me that I still needed to text Art. I slung the bag back over my shoulder, answered the ringing phone and started a text on the phone dedicated to Art.

“Heard you had a visitor,” Matt said.

“Mmhmm.” I thumbed buttons.
Safely home &—

“Any more excitement today?” Matt asked.

“Nope,” I lied. It wasn’t the kind of excitement he needed to know about.

—unpacked.

I tripped over a rock and nearly went sprawling. Clarice wrenched my arm to keep me from having a technological disaster on the gravel.

I rehitched my purse and tuned back in to the phone where Matt was saying, “What was that?” with a panicked edge to his voice.

“Just me being clumsy.”

Clarice pulled the texting phone from my grasp and hit send.

“Tell him thank you,” I whispered to her, stabbing a forefinger at the phone in her hand.

“What for?” Matt asked.

“Oh, uh, sending Violet and the team. Any results?”

“Not yet on your visitor. DNA results take several days even if they’re rushed. However, we do know who the fingers belonged to.”

“Past tense.” I glanced at Clarice, but she was keying furiously, carrying on a text conversation with Art.

“Yeah. The rest of him washed up near the San Leandro Marina early this morning.”

I froze in my tracks. Clarice maintained momentum for a few steps then turned back, her face freakishly underlit by the phone’s screen.

“His name?”

“Alejandro Vicente Rojas. A capo of sorts in the main San Francisco area drug distribution ring. Sinaloa connections. He was known to function as the banker or bookkeeper for the group.”

“And he was killed for his error in judgment in trusting my husband.”

“That’d be my guess too.”

“How many fingers was he missing?”

“Just the two.”

“Dead before or after the fingers were removed?”

“The ME hasn’t had a chance to make that determination yet.”

“He’s not on the list of unreimbursed clients.”

“What list?”

I scowled. Had he forgotten Skip’s journal? I wasn’t in the mood to remind him. “What about Leroy?”

“Full of bluster, but deflated fast. He claims he knew something fishy was going on, maybe even participated in some of it, but has no familiarity with the bones of the operation. We’ve tried scaring it out of him in every legal way possible. I’m beginning to think he’s one of the few people on the planet who actually does know less than he thinks he does. And he’s lawyered up, so we’re finished with him for now.”