Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery (24 page)

“Not really,” she said, with a laugh. She told me anyway.

“As soon as Kate got out of prison, she got in touch with my brother. She didn’t ask if he knew where I was, just sent him money. A lot of money. He used some of it…mostly for my father, but he put the rest of it away for me.”

So that’s why she still considered Kate a friend.

“You stayed in touch with him while you were on the run? Wasn’t that risky?”

“Not really,” she said again. “Another lesson learned from Sherry, the girl I met in New York. I wonder what happened to her.”

In Florida, Caroline had gotten college kids to mail postcards for her when they returned home from spring break. They’d be sent from all over the country, even from the UK, and wouldn’t have a Miami postmark. Eventually, three and a half years after she last saw him, she thought it might be safe and sent her brother an unsigned postcard asking him to meet her at the Delano in South Beach.

“He came to Florida and brought me the money. That’s what I was living on when I met Grant.”

“What did you live on the first three years?”

“Don’t ask.”

Holy cow, and I thought this woman just stayed home and did needlepoint and baked cookies.

“That’s why I don’t think Kate would do anything to harm me. If she didn’t expose me then, why would she do it now?”

“Does that mean you think she’s still alive?” I asked.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I just know she wouldn’t hurt me.”

If Kate was off our list, as Caroline had insisted, she was the only one we’d been able to eliminate so far. Who had hired Countertop Man to track down Caroline? Who had come after me in the parking lot? Who had sent the threatening note with the charm? It was close to midnight and my brain was getting fuzzy, probably from all the poisons coursing through my system from the crap food, which did, as Caroline predicted, go down far too easily.

We still hadn’t heard from Lucy and Grant, and I was getting worried—then I realized it wasn’t likely Lucy would call my cell. She knew how bad I was about remembering to turn it on. She probably would have called on the landline. I checked the cell anyway. There was only one voice mail message. From Roxy Rhodes. Did I know how to reach Grant Sturgis? Kevin Brookfield was close to making an offer on the nursery and she wanted me to see if Grant was still interested. Especially since Kevin and I were friends, too.

“What’s the matter?” Caroline said, looking adorable in her son’s oversized, albeit smelly, hockey shirt. “You look puzzled.”

I was. Why would Roxy think I knew more about Kevin Brookfield than she’d told me? I’d only met him once, that time at the diner when I was planting false lamiums for Babe. We’d barely exchanged words.

Despite the hour, I called Lucy and she picked up on the first ring. After pretending to be Caroline, she and Grant had driven in circles for hours trying to elude the press and had decided to stop for the night. She hadn’t seen anyone at the dumpy motel where they’d pulled in and felt they were in the clear. Lucy sounded exhilarated over her adventure; I doubted Grant Sturgis was having as much fun.

“Can I talk to him?” I said.

“He’s in the shower and I’m waiting for a pizza. That’s the only thing they’ll deliver to this extremely humble establishment.”

There was a bizarre echo on the phone, the repeating sound of traffic and bells, like those on a vehicle that was backing up.

“What’s that noise?” I asked. “Where are you?”

“It’s a dive, but Sturgis got all weepy when he saw the name. Some fleabag called the Hacienda.”

Ten minutes later Lucy and Grant joined us in our room, two doors from their own. After their tearful reunion, I hated to break it to them that if there had been any reporters following them they’d soon be at the Hacienda, but Grant and Lucy were positive they had evaded any cars that might have been on their tail.

“Early on I saw a Civic and an SUV following us—couldn’t tell what make because he was behind the Honda.” Lucy was good with anything that had a label. “Both cars were light colored.”

“Out-of-state plates?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t recognize which state. Remember when each
state had one type of license plate and you could play name-that-state on long driving trips? Now there are three or four to choose from. I’m pretty sure the plate was dark blue and white.”

“Maybe we should leave,” I said.

“C’mon, we lost them. No one’s here. Can’t we at least wait until the pizza comes? It’s Frank Pepe. It’s supposed to be wonderful.” Lucy said. “I had to give my credit card, so I’ve already paid for it. And I haven’t eaten all day.”

We took a vote. If there was no activity outside the hotel in the time that it took the pizza to come, we’d stay. By morning Caroline would have to surface somewhere, and when she did it wouldn’t take long for whoever wanted to find her to find her, but we’d deal with that tomorrow.

Lucy, sans wig, and I went to the front desk when the pizza arrived and we went to her room to let Grant and Caroline have their first private visit in weeks.

And that’s what would have happened if ten minutes later the cops hadn’t burst into both of our rooms.

Props to the desk clerk who I had dismissed as a nerdy loser, so unobservant that he checked in two women as mother and son. When Lucy and Grant arrived, ordered a pizza under a different name than they registered under, and then switched partners with us, the clerk—who probably watched a lot of true crime stories on television—decided I was a madam who’d brought a teenage boy to a motel for an assignation with a man while I ate pizza with the guy’s wife. Lord knows what he thought we were doing. It was the stuff of supermarket tabloids.

Once the cops discovered Caroline was not a young boy but a middle-aged woman dressed as a boy, they reckoned it was simply kinky sex, none of their business, and they left the four of us alone. Hey, if consenting adults wanted to play the housewife and the UPS man or the contessa and the chauffeur, what was it to them? Needless to say, for Grant and Caroline, the moment had been ruined.

Unlike their first blissful stay at the other Hacienda, Caroline and Grant couldn’t leave this one fast enough. The Sturgises declined to spend the night and fled north to a house they sometimes rented in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. It would be shuttered for the season, but they knew where the key was hidden, and they would call the owners in Baltimore as soon as they arrived so the Wellfleet police wouldn’t think they were squatters. Having already had run-ins with police in two states and despite the hockey outfit, Caroline and Grant weren’t looking to score a hat trick. And there was a TJ Maxx nearby, so the next morning Caroline could buy warm clothing and get out of her son’s smelly sports gear. No phone in the house, no cell service, no Internet. It was just what they were looking for.

“There’s a general store fifteen minutes away from the house where I can get a cell signal. I’ll call you from there tomorrow,” Caroline said, rushing to her husband’s car in the dark.

Bone-tired, I suggested to Lucy that we spend the rest of night at
the Hacienda—after all, we had no fewer than two rooms at our disposal and instead of preservative-laden muffins at the free breakfast bar we could have leftover pizza—but she said something about preferring to take the pizza, chug an energy drink, and get on the road, so we left shortly after Caroline and Grant. Lucy insisted on wearing the wig again and readjusted it several times before we were allowed to leave the room. (
Ah yes, room 104, so many fond memories.
) She said the wig was in case anyone was following us, but I think she enjoyed being in disguise. How often do grown-ups get to play dress up?

“It’s one thing to stay in a place like that for a story. Quite another if I have a choice,” she said, giving the room a once-over before we left.

“Later when my brain is functioning properly, I’m going to ask you about that ‘story’ part,” I said. “No, let’s do it now and get it over with. What the hell are you talking about?”

She stalled for a bit, not wanting to risk my disapproval, then blurted it out. After spending all day with Grant, she’d gotten his consent to write about the experience, “I Was a Fugitive,” by Lucy Cavanaugh.

“What about Caroline? Doesn’t she have a say?”

She assured me, as she had probably assured Grant, that it would be tasteful and respectful. I had my doubts whether any story entitled “I Was a Fugitive” could be tasteful and respectful. I wondered which tabloid would be the highest bidder for the classy piece.

In the hour or so it took us to drive home, I brought her up to speed on the note and package that Caroline had received what seemed like days ago but was really only that morning.

“You think it was sent by this guy Eddie?” she said.

That was the obvious assumption. Dead or alive—and I was beginning to suspect that Caroline hadn’t told me everything—if Kate Gustafson was not a suspect, who else even knew about Caroline except Donnelley? Warren? O’Malley had told me that he was in the hospital. Her brother? He was an unlikely candidate for villain. Caroline had
only spoken of him in glowing terms:
my brother
. I realized I didn’t even know his first name and wondered if that was an unconscious habit Caroline had picked up from years on the run. Why would he reveal her identity now after all this time? If he had needed money, Caroline would have simply given it to him as he had given it to her.

“And you think Donnelley is passing himself off as this Kevin Brookfield?” she said.

I wasn’t sure what I thought anymore. Brookfield was one of the few newcomers in town. Newcomers were always suspect. I’d been there myself. “That’s what I think today. Last week I thought it was a guy who turned out to be a priest.” I told Lucy about my trip to Mossdale’s stables and my chat with Father Ellis Damon.

“Ellis Damon? E.D.? Same initials?” she said, turning in the passenger seat to face me. “Isn’t that what people do when they make up fake names? Use the same initials as their real ones?”

“E.D. also stands for erectile dysfunction. Do you think Bob Dole was involved? For pete’s sake, Lucy, the guy was a priest.”

“Oh, and I’m a natural blond? You can buy
gladiator
outfits online. How hard can it be to get one of those little white collars? I think I have one from a silk jacket I bought in Chinatown.”

“If he’d been Eddie Donnelley,” I said, “Caroline would have recognized him when she saw him at Mossdale’s that first day. He couldn’t have changed that much in twenty years. She recognized Jeff Warren right away, but she didn’t even mention the man at the stables. I think she just saw judgment day coming toward her. She was already spooked by the traffic ticket and the fear that her personal information was being fed into a law enforcement computer system. All Father Damon had to do was say ‘good morning, my child’ and she’d have freaked. Poor guy. I think her reaction caused him to question his calling.”

Lucy fell silent. Neither of us had seen any pictures of Donnelley
online, and now that Caroline was hurtling toward Cape Cod, the one person who could give us a description was temporarily unavailable. Correction, the one woman. There was always Jeff Warren. And once he got out of the hospital I might ask him. Maybe I could try him anyway. Plenty of people who’d had car accidents could still talk on the phone. I asked Lucy to get my cell from my backpack. Dead.

“This is aggressively antisocial behavior,” Lucy said, shaking the phone at me. “You do realize that.”

“Chill out.” I plugged the cell into the car’s cigarette lighter to recharge it and heard the snippet of classical music that told me I had a message. It was the one from Roxy I hadn’t deleted. I’d forgotten about it.

“Listen to this.” I replayed the message for Lucy.

“What the hell does that mean? Have you spoken to her?” Lucy asked.

I shook my head. “No idea. Just picked it up a few hours ago. I don’t think even Roxy stays in the office that late. We’ll see her tomorrow.”

Warren’s number was in saved contacts, and I scrolled through to find it. I autodialed but was kicked into voice mail. Now I started to wonder where McGinley was. Was he back in Michigan, having made his report? Or was he still in Connecticut waiting to finish the job he’d been sent here to do? Or was he—long shot here—really crashing at his friend’s place so that they could get an early start hauling those countertops?

I checked the rearview mirror obsessively.

Lucy noticed. “I’m not the nervous type,” she said, “but you’re making me jumpy. No one is following us. Why would they? Let’s just get back to your place.”

We pulled into my driveway at around 3:15. We should have been
tired, but we’d both gotten our second winds, or maybe it was nervous energy, and instead of collapsing in bed, we decided to pull an all-nighter just like in the old days.

“What’s the flashing light—radon levels reaching red alert?”

“Pay no attention. Something to do with the alarm system. I haven’t been able to clear it since it went off, and I’m afraid to touch any more buttons for fear it’ll go off again. I found out I’m going to be fined a hundred bucks for having a false alarm that the Springfield police had to respond to and I don’t want it to happen again.”

“Ouch. Can’t you get your cop friend to fix it? Like a ticket?”

Did everyone know how to do that except me?

“I’ll get around to reading the manual one of these days when I have some time, like in December.” I dumped my things on the sofa and headed into the kitchen.

“Let me try.” She pushed the reset button and I held my hands over my ears, gearing up for the sirens, but they didn’t go off and surprisingly the flashing red lights disappeared.

“Excellent.”

We sat on the living room floor with our reheated pizza and I powered on the laptop to google images of Eddie Donnelley. Like Warren, it was a relatively common name and until we added the state and the crime we got nowhere. Even then all we got was a grainy black-and-white mug shot from twenty-five years ago that had been reproduced many times, and had only been resurrected because of Caroline’s recent arrest. It could have been any dark-haired male with a long face and brown eyes. The aviator glasses, long hair, and beard didn’t help, I guess. When you’re a drug dealer or undercover cop, it’s an asset to be able to change your looks quickly. Enlarging it only further distorted the image.