Death Runs in the Family (9 page)

“Show me this piece of paper.” I put out my hand.

He thought for a moment, reached inside his jeans, and hesitated before turning it over to me.

I unfolded the three by five inch lined sheet, torn from a small notepad. On it were written seven names. The top one was Stephen’s. I scanned the rest of the list and found the name Gurn Hanson at the bottom. I fought to keep my cool about the man I loved being on a possible dead man’s list. No small feat for a Latina who wears her emotions on her sleeves. Besides, I had talked to Gurn several hours ago. He was fine.

Ignoring the thudding heart inside my chest, I studied the list. After each name was a date, some past, some future. Then the phrase ‘take out’ and a set of numbers, followed by the letter ‘K.’ The date next to Gurn’s name was the Sunday coming up, seven days. Whatever was going on, we had to stop it by then.

“Whose handwriting is this?” I asked. “Do you recognize it?” Nick shook his head and looked down.

I passed the note to Flint, who studied it, while I turned back to Nick. “What do the numbers mean? The ones followed by the letter ‘K’? Does the ‘K’ mean the length of a race?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know. I wish I did.” His impatience, fear, and frustration rang true. He knew
nada
.

Flint jumped in, saying, “It could be a race. I’ve heard high rollers on the top floor of the Fantasy Lady will literally bet on anything, with the minimum bet being a million dollars. Maybe they’re into foot races now. They’ve sure been into soccer for a long time.”

I absorbed the info and turned back to Nick. “Why did you tell Kelli about me? Why did she show up at my place early this morning?”

Nick’s eyes got huge as he stared at me. I could see the wheels turning inside his head. “I don’t know why she’d come to you. I’ve never said one thing about you to her, ever.” He thought. “Wait a minute, once, when we first got together, she asked me about my ex-wife. I told her you and your family ran a detective agency in the Bay Area, a pretty successful one. Other than that, I’ve never said one word about you to her.”

I crossed one leg over the other and considered this. So either Kelli had made up all the malarkey about Nick thinking I was the most beautiful, wonderful, yada yada in the world, or Nick was lying now. I looked at him. He wasn’t lying. He was too scared. Besides, he’d just admitted he loved her. So it was Kelli. She knew by making it sound like he still had a thing for me, she’d hit me in my ego. Ex-husband still pines for ex-wife and admits it to younger, newer wife.

I’m such an idiot.

“Spaulding and his men are still after you, Nick,” I said, uncrossing my legs and standing. “So they must think you have whatever they say you took from him. Get up and strip.”

“What?”

“I said, get up and take off your clothes. You can have a shower while Flint and I go through your things.”

“Are you crazy?” He looked at both of us. “I’m not going to stand up and take off my clothes just because you say so.”

Flint came closer. “Yes, you are, Nicky Boy, or I’ll take them off for you.”

Nick studied me for a moment, and I glared back. Then he shrugged and pulled the wrinkled and stained polo shirt over his head. His Marine dog tags clinked against themselves, protesting the rough treatment.

“You still wear those things, Nick? After all these years?”

“Never take them off,” he said, throwing the shirt to the floor and unzipping the fly of his jeans. I averted my eyes and looked down at the floor. “What’s the matter, Lee? You’ve seen it all before.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to see it again.” Both Nick and Flint laughed, Flint’s laugh more hardy than the embarrassed chortle Nick gave out. I kept my eyes down but joined in the laughter after a moment. His movements ceased, and there was silence. “Done?”

“Done,” said Flint. “Naked as a jaybird.”

“Can I take that shower now?” Nick asked. “I haven’t had one in four days.”

“And you smell like it, Nicky Boy,” offered Flint. “Sure. Second door on the right; towels in the linen closet. Take the blue ones, those are my guest towels.”

Wordless, Nick strode to the bathroom, my eyes flitting to his backside. I had to admit, he still looked pretty good, although out of condition.

While we listened to the running shower, Flint and I search through his shirt, jeans and boxers. Nothing but $16.51 and a receipt from one of the dives.

“Well, if there’s anything here,” said Flint, “I can’t find it.”

“There has to be something,” I looked at my watch. An hour had passed. Only thirty minutes more until the scheduled arrival of Kelli’s yellow Mercedes and the cats. Nick strode out of the shower, his middle wrapped in a blue towel. The light caught the glint of his dog tags.

“Give me those tags, Nick,” I ordered, reaching out my hand.

“You know, you are nuts.” Nick came to a stop in the center of the room. “I’m not giving you my dog tags. They always stay on me. Always.”

“Are you sure? They’ve
always
been on you?”

“Sure, I’m su….” Nick stopped talking, and his face reflected an incident. “Except the time a while back when the chain broke, and Kelli offered to fix it for me. She was only gone an hour or so, went to a jewelry store, I think, and she came back with the new chain.”

“How’d they break, Nicky Boy? Were you both in the heat of the moment, and Kelli ripped them off your neck?” Flint stepped forward with an extended hand.

Stunned, Nick took the tags off his neck and dropped them into Flint’s large hand. Meanwhile, I’d pulled my flashlight from my knapsack and crossed over to a reading lamp on an end table, where the two men joined me. I took the tags and began to examine each one.

“What the hell could be on my tags so small I couldn’t see it?”

“We’re going to see.” I flipped the tags over and examined the other side of each. “Here’s something,” I said. “Flint, you got a pair of tweezers?”

“You bet.” He crossed to the kitchen and opened a drawer, bringing out a rolled up black leather pouch. I knew at a glance they were for the fine art of picking a lock but said nothing. He unrolled it and pulled a small pair of tweezers from one of the pockets. He handed them over.

With care, I pried free and lifted the tiny square metal from the tag. “Now I need a magnifying glass.”

“Coming up,” said Flint, returning to the leather kit and pilfering through another pouch.

“What’s that?” asked Nick, leaning in to see what I had trapped on the end of the tweezers.

Flint handed me the round magnifying glass, and I peered through it. “It’s a plastic-coated, miniaturized data chip. Maybe even one of those new ones weighing next to nothing. If I were to release it right now, it probably would hover in the air for a time.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not. Apple, Sony, Toshiba, all the big companies have been working on a ‘lighter than air’ concept for some time now. At least, that’s what Richard tells me. Not only would your phone and laptop weigh literally next to nothing, these chips can hold enough information to fill a library.”

“How would Kelli get something like that, and why would she put it on my dog tags?”

“And an even bigger question,” I said, “is what information is on this chip that’s important enough to engage in such an elaborate subterfuge?”

Chapter Eight

Caught in the Crosshairs

The cellphone rang. It was Richard. I answered it by saying, “Got anything?”

“The carrier is in Primm. You’ve got twenty-five to thirty-five minutes before the car hits Vegas. So you know, I’ve locked onto your cellphone. This way I can tell how far apart you are from the carrier.”

“Thanks. Did you manage to lock on to Kelli’s cellphone?”

“No signal I can find. She probably destroyed it. She’s a pretty smart babe, judging by what’s transpired so far.”

“True. Along those lines, I’ve got a microchip, looks plastic coated, about one-sixteenth of an inch, silver in color with brass lines running through it. Found it attached to one of Nick’s dog tags. I think Kelli put it there.”

Richard let out a low whistle. “Bet it’s important.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Any idea what’s on it?”

“No.”

“Then we’re going to need to scan it. It sounds digital, but I don’t know of any company
out in your neck of the woods with anything like that, except MAPLAB, IDE.”

“What’s that when it’s at home?”

“MAPLAB is self explanatory.”

“Not to me.”

“Never mind, let’s move on to the relevant part. The IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. An integrated toolset for the development of embedded applications employing microchips and microcontrollers.”

“Richard,” I said, dragging out his name in annoyance, “you’re talking in a foreign language again.”

“Lee,” he said, imitating my tone, “they deal with microchip compilations for medical timed-release chips, intelligent power supplies, smart bombs, things like that. Exacting and detailed information stored on the virtual head of a pin. Not too many places can.”

“This
MAPLAB can?”

“Yes, their lab is about fifteen miles outside of Vegas. But it’s top secret. I’m not supposed to know it’s there—nobody is—so we can’t go to them for help. Besides, odds are it’s probably where the chip came from in the first place.”

“If I get this to you, can you extract the info off it?”

“Sure, I’ve got a friend at the Linier Center at Stanford. He’s a proud papa of every scanner known to man. I’ll give him a call. Meanwhile, Tugger’s on the move. What are you going to do?”

“First order of business, get the cats back. We’ll plant ourselves on the outskirts of town, wait for the Mercedes to come by and follow it. You say you’re locked onto my cellphone signal, as well as the cat carrier?”

“You bet.”

“Can you correlate the two signals?”

“Duh.”

“Right, just checking.” I hung up and turned to Flint. “You got any clean clothes for him to wear?” I gestured to Nick. “If not, it’s back into the old ones.”

“My son left some things that might fit. I’ll go get them.” Flint headed for a hall closet and began pulling clothes off a hanger.

“Then, gentlemen, we need to move. They’re on their way.”

* * * *

Flint said it was best to stay on the side of I-215 before the first exit into Las Vegas, called South Point. New buildings, dotted here and there, fed warm light into an otherwise dark and cold landscape. Cars zoomed by, many going over the allotted seventy m.p.h.

The waiting was excruciating, worse than at the airport. I don’t wait well. I tend to go the worst-case scenario as the seconds tick by. I gnawed on nails, which only the day before had been groomed by a woman who devotes her life to the condition of your cuticle. What my hands looked like now would send her to the nearest bar.

Behind the wheel, Flint’s eyes were closed, and it looked like he was asleep, but I knew better. In the passenger’s seat, Nick fidgeted so much, the car actually rocked back and forth from his movements. I wanted to smack him, but I’d already done that several times before. Don’t want to develop bad habits.

My phone rang. In my excitement to answer it, I nearly dropped the damned thing. I flipped it open but didn’t have a chance to say a word.

“It’s there,” Richard said. Your two signals are almost one.”

Anxious, I looked out the window at the cars whizzing by. “I don’t see a yellow—”

“Hey, look,” interjected Nick, pointing at a passing late model station wagon. “That BMW station wagon. It looks like…it is. It’s Eddie’s car.”

“Who’s that?” Flint asked.

“Eddie Crackmeir, Kelli’s uncle,” Nick replied.

“Let’s go!” I slapped the back of Flint’s car seat. Flint peeled out into the nearest lane and fell two cars behind the wagon.

“Okay, I see everybody’s on the move, Lee,” said Richard.

“Richard, I know you’re doing a lot, but do you think you could check on a Nevada plate?” I read the plate as we followed behind, darting in and out of traffic. “One, seven, four, P for Peter, A for Alpha, G for George.”

“Got it. I’ll have Andy run it.”

“Is he there? It’s almost ten p.m.” Andy was one of two of Richard’s assistants. A real whiz kid, if ever there was one.

“Everybody’s here. You think I could do all this by myself? Victoria’s even brought us sandwiches. This might be an all-nighter.”

“In that case, run a check on an Eddie Crackmeir; don’t know how it’s spelled. He might be driving the car.” I hung up.

“Jesus, he’s passing everybody,” Flint said, as he watched the wagon weave in and out of traffic. “He has to be going ninety-miles an hour.”

“Don’t lose him, Flint,” I said.

“You’re paying my speeding ticket, right?” Flint laughed. “Whoa,” he said, making a hard right off the I-215.

Nick and I grabbed onto anything we could to stay upright.

“We’re going to Tropicana Road. Odds are we’re heading to the Fantasy Lady.”

“Don’t let him see you, Flint. Not yet. Not until we get the cats.”

“Cats?” bellowed Nick. “You’re doing all this for some stupid cats?”

“Shut up!” Flint and I said in unison.

Both cars stopped at a red light on busy Las Vegas Boulevard, the wagon one car ahead of us. “Duck down, Nick,” I said, pushing his head down from behind. “I don’t want them to see you.” I lowered my head, too, just in case.

We started moving again, but I kept my head down the entire way until I felt us turn left and slow down. “Where are we, Flint?”

“Parking lot of the Fantasy Lady. I’m staying pretty far behind, but I can still see them with the lot lights. They’re pulling into a farther away section. There are two people in the car, a man and a blonde woman.”

“That’s Kelli,” was Nick’s husky reply.

“They’ve parked about as far away from the casino as they can get. They’re in the shadows, but they’re getting out. Now they’re in more light. She’s little but a looker,” Flint remarked.

“Never mind,” I said. “Honest to God, you men.”

“Where are they going?” asked Nick’s muffled voice. I could tell he was still hunched over.

“Heading for the casino.”

I sat up and studied the tall hotel/gambling casino standing erect behind the parking lot, while Flint’s car crawled in. The facade of the Fantasy Lady wore a brightly lit, fifteen to twenty-story tall art deco woman, her curvaceous body outlined in shades of pink lights. A slightly darker pink color, representing fabric, was wrapped around her nude body in strategic places. Arms extended over her head, she stretched, fingertips lightly touching a large, blinking red poker chip. A little garish for my tastes, but Vegas has never been known for its subtleties. Kelli and her uncle disappeared inside the casino doors.

“Now’s our chance.” I opened the car door and got out, running ahead to the five-door BMW station wagon. Flint kept pace, driving his car behind me. In this area of the parking lot, there were only a few light poles scattered here and there. Diffused, stark lighting created eerie, flat shadows without depth, reminding me of pictures I’ve seen of the moon. In some ways, I would have preferred total darkness. I squinted and studied my surroundings while I jogged to the wagon, which looked like a big, black blob. And try saying that three times fast.

As I neared the vehicle, I heard two different but equally pitiful meows coming from inside. The louder, scared, but belligerent one was Tugger’s. The smaller, sad cry came from Baba. My heart did a flip-flop.

In a fury, I tried the doors of the wagon—locked—then I pulled my flashlight from my knapsack, along with the Glock. Seeing the windows had been left open a crack for air, I put my mouth to the back passenger window and yelled inside.

“Tugger, Baba. It’s me!” I swung the light into the back of the wagon and saw the cats were loose. Loose and on the surface of it, okay. Relief swept over me. Hearing me, they both hopped into the backseat following my voice, with renewed vigor to their cries.

“Hi, babies! Don’t worry. I’m getting you out now.”

I heard Nick come up behind me. “Lee? What are you doing?”

“Here,” I said, shoving the flashlight in his hand. “Keep the light focused on the lock of this door.” I rooted through my knapsack and found the sixteen-piece car unlock set I’d brought with me—$99.50 on sale.

Flint crept over, scaring me half to death, and whispered in my ear. “I’ll watch and make sure no one is coming. I’m right behind their car, and the motor is idling. Let me know if you need any help.”

I nodded and felt rather than heard him go away. I chose one of the pieces in the set, maneuvered the slender metal with the curved edge through the crack in the window, and down toward the lock. I was glad I’d paid attention when this exercise was being taught in a class I took on suspect apprehension. I got an ‘A’ by opening a car door in record time and hoped the knack hadn’t left me. Within seconds, I heard a click, and the door was unlocked.

I swung it open, leaned down, and Tugger rushed into my arms, caterwauling at the top of his lungs. He groped his way up to my shoulder and neck and clung on for dear life.

Little Baba hesitated for a moment, but when I reached out to her, she leapt up on my other shoulder, meowing piteously. I wrapped my arms around the both of them, half sobbing, half whispering comforting words, and stood up. Glock in one hand, knapsack dangling from the other, and draped in cats, I did a slow pivot and checked out the surroundings.
Nada.

Nearer the casino, rows and rows of empty cars sat. The parking lot was deserted, except for two tipsy women near the more lit entrance, laughing and calling each other names in Pig Latin, while trying to open a car door.

“Flint! Where are you?” I whispered hoarsely.

“Over here. The other side of the car. It looks good. Nobody’s coming that I can see. Those two gals over there are three sheets to the wind. I don’t think they can see the car keys in their hands.”

“Good. Nick, open up the back door of the wagon, grab the cat carrier, and anything else in there. I’ve unlocked the car.”

“What? You’re kidding.” Nick hesitated.

“Nick, just do it and don’t make me shoot you,” I growled. “I’m up to here with you and your nonsense.”

“Okay, okay.” He swung the fifth door open in the back of the wagon and flashed the light inside. “Oh for Christ’s sake, that stupid fish is in here.”

“Lady Gaga? Put her in the car, too.”

Nick picked up the small tank and carried it to the waiting car, grousing all the way.

Flint swept in, picked up the carrier and litter pan. “There’s water and a food dish in here, you want them? And some fish food. It looks like a pet shop back here.”

“Grab it all, and let’s get going.” The cats wouldn’t let go of me, and I wouldn’t let go of them, but somehow I reached inside and relocked the driver’s side of the car, the one controlling the locking system, so once Flint closed the fifth door, the wagon would relock itself.

Flint threw out the water in the dish but managed everything else, shut the door, and went toward the trunk of his car. I followed slowly, still clutching the clinging but otherwise quiet Tugger and Baba.

I got in the back seat next to Lady Gaga’s tank. While juggling the cats, I shoved the Glock back into my knapsack, dropped it to the floor, and tried to control my sniffling. After all, I’m a trained investigator. It wouldn’t do to be bawling outright. But I was so relieved and happy the cats were well and safe, I almost didn’t care. I struggled to find the cellphone in my pocket with both arms full, but I wanted to give Richard a fast call. He answered on the first ring.

“I’ve got them. They’re fine. Tugger and Baba are fine. You did a good job, Richard.”

Richard let out pent up air. “I’ll let everybody know on this end, including Mom. I’ve got some news for you about Vicky, but it can wait.”

Barely listening, I continued. “Let Tío know right away, too, Richard, we’re all fine. He worries so.”

“Will do. Still checking on the license plate.” He disconnected without saying any more.

Flint got into the car, shut his door, and flipped on the inside, overhead light. Nick was already sitting in the passenger’s seat, hunched over and silent. Possibly my threat of shooting him had shocked him. It had shocked me, too, but a girl can only take so much before she gets a little testy.