Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel (12 page)

He grabbed the towel in his teeth and ran away with it. Mitch took after him and enveloped him in a flying tackle. They rolled around in the grass and dirt, Clancy’s tail wagging all the time. Uh-oh, Clancy was getting away again—

Cate dove into the mêlée. And then all three of them were rolling around in the dirt and grass. Dog hair. A flying foot—Mitch’s, not Clancy’s. A floppy ear in Cate’s mouth. A dog footprint on Mitch’s forehead. Whap of dog tail across her leg. Cate clamped an arm across Clancy’s neck. Sloppy dog kiss. Smells of grass and earth and wet dog.

Clancy wiggled away, but then he jumped back on top both of them and everything scrambled together like some new brand of wrestling match. The People vs. Clancy!

The People are winning! Cate has the towel. Mitch has a dog tail. Clancy is down.

No, Clancy is up! Clancy has the towel. Cate has a handful of nothing. Mitch is flat on his back. The People are down.

The People are giggling. Clancy is plopped down, panting. If dogs can grin, that’s what Clancy is doing.

Cate flopped onto her back in the tall grass.
Hey, I’m happy
!
She was here with Mitch and Clancy and the sun was shining and the grass smelled like spring and sunshine.
Thank you, Lord!
She spread her arms and legs and made an angel figure in the grass. Mitch spit out dog hair or dirt. Maybe both. He grinned at her. Clancy offered her the towel.

Mitch staggered to his feet. He offered Cate a hand to help her up. She gave him a foot instead. Clancy jumped up and stuck his nose in her ear. Cate giggled some more. Grass tickled her nose. Mitch scooped her up in his arms. Clancy jumped and danced and barked.

Mitch looked into Cate’s eyes.

Then he dipped his head and kissed her, long and thoroughly. She couldn’t hear Clancy barking now. Cate wrapped her arms around Mitch’s neck and kissed him back.

“I think we lost the battle,” Mitch murmured. “Clancy still isn’t dry, and he has the towel again.”

“Who cares?” Cate stretched up for another kiss.

When Mitch finally set her down, he said, “I believe we’ll have to dry the dog off more often.”

When they got back to town, Cate showed Mitch the restaurant she’d discovered, and they shared a big platter of barbecued ribs. Cate thought he’d take some bones out to Clancy, but Mitch said cooked bones weren’t good for dogs.

“Neither are chocolate, coffee, or macadamia nuts,” he added.

“All of a sudden you’re the big dog expert?”

“You can find anything on the internet.”

Where Mitch had apparently spent a fair amount of time surfing in the dog world. If it weren’t for the fact that he kept asking when Blakely would take his dog back, she might think he was getting attached to the big hairy mutt.

She knew she was.

By that evening, Cate reluctantly decided she’d have to call Matt Halliday first thing Monday morning and tell him she’d reached a dead end on Andy Timmons. Failure rankled her, but she didn’t have any more leads. A call from someone else on Monday morning changed her mind. Maybe she did have a lead.

Cate never answered her cell phone with the Belmont Investigations name, so all she said was, “Hello?”

“I’m looking for Cate Kinkaid?”

“This is Cate.”

“Hi. You talked to us about Lily and her boyfriend? At the RV park?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I happened to run into her later. Well, not exactly
run into
her. I saw her working at the counter in the convenience store behind the station where I gassed up. The baby was asleep, and I didn’t want to leave her alone in the pickup, so I didn’t go inside. Sometimes awful things happen, you know?”

“Right. You shouldn’t leave a baby alone in a car.” Cate asked for the address of the convenience store and jotted it on a scrap of paper. “I really appreciate your calling.”

“I’d rather you didn’t mention to Lily that it was me who told you about her, okay?”

“Okay.”

“My husband wouldn’t want me calling you. He says we should keep our noses out of other people’s business.”

Cate was curious why the woman did call. She didn’t ask, but the woman seemed to feel obliged to offer an explanation.

“I probably wouldn’t of called, but I didn’t like that Andy. Lily acts kind of tough, but she’s okay. Just kind of . . . mixed up.”

Using information acquired from the brother, Cate said, “She went through a divorce a while back.”

“Yeah, and she’s scared of that guy. He knocked her around a few times. I don’t think Andy hits her or anything like that, but it sure looked to me like he was mooching off her. She works so hard, and all he ever seemed to do was watch TV or tinker with that old motorcycle. Although I never did
see it even running. I just thought if you found her . . .” Her voice trailed off as if she wasn’t certain what she’d thought, but she’d like to see something better for Lily. “Well, maybe she’s dumped him by now. I hope so.”

“Thanks again for calling me.”

Cate grabbed a jacket and headed for the convenience store.

14

No one matching Lily’s description was working behind the counter. Cate took a quick tour through the aisles, but all she saw was a young guy stocking a shelf with Froot Loops. The store was busy, and she bought a cappuccino from a machine to sip while waiting for a lull.

When the lull came, she stepped up to the counter. “Hi. I’m looking for Lily Admond. I think she works here?”

“Yeah, but she’s just part-time, on weekends, so she isn’t here today.” The middle-aged woman in jeans and blue sweatshirt busily rearranged a candy display as she spoke. “During the week she works for some house-cleaning outfit.”

“Do you know where she’s living?” Actually, Cate doubted the question would get her anywhere. It wasn’t information an employer was likely to hand out to some stranger. To make the request sound more personal, she added, “She moved out of the RV park where she’s been living, and I’m worried about her.”

Worried
was stretching it, Cate thought guiltily. But that woman from the trailer park had sounded worried. So maybe there was something to worry about.

“She’s had this guy hanging around,” Cate added in a meaningful way.

“Yeah, he’s been in here a couple times. Not someone I’d want hanging around
my
daughter.”

Apparently, if all these non-fans got together, Andy Timmons might qualify as the Guy Most Likely to Be Voted Off the Planet.

A customer stepped up with a six-pack of beer and a sack of taco chips. His impatient look told Cate to buy something or get out of the way. She got out of the way but stepped up again when he was gone.

“I’d really like to find her before Andy talks her into leaving the area or something,” Cate said.

“Lily hasn’t worked here long, but . . .” The woman touched an I’m-thinking finger to her chin. “She must of filled out one of those forms for tax records and stuff when Everett hired her. It might still be here, if Everett hasn’t given it to the bookkeeper yet.” She opened a drawer and shuffled through a clutter of papers. “Hey, yeah, here it is.”

She pulled out a printed form with information scribbled in the blanks and gave Cate an address on Van Buren. Cate hastily wrote the information in her notebook, thanked the woman, and scurried out before she could start asking questions about Cate’s relationship with Lily.

The address wasn’t a house, as Cate had assumed from the address number. Four apartments were strung out in a row leading away from the street. Big rhododendron bushes overhung the driveway, and a lake-sized puddle stretched between them. The apartment building wouldn’t qualify as slum-sleazy, but moss greened the roof and plywood patched a hole in a window. But when she slid out of the car, a wonderful sweet-fresh scent of cedar from the big trees looming
over the parking area greeted her. She could close her eyes and feel she was miles out in the woods. The scent improved the ambiance of the area considerably.

The apartments were numbered, but since Cate didn’t know what number she was looking for, that was no help. Lily either hadn’t put the apartment number on the form, or the woman at the convenience store hadn’t noticed it when giving Cate the address. A couple of cars stood along the walkway out front of the building, but no Ford pickup or old bike.

Cate hesitated, that old warning to kids, “Don’t talk to strangers,” jumping up like a pop-up computer ad in her head. But talking to strangers was exactly what a PI had to do. Cate pumped up her confidence, took a deep breath of the reassuring scent of cedar, and approached the first door.

A woman a little younger than Cate, in cutoff shorts over dark leggings and a gold hoop in her nose, answered the doorbell. “You come about the TV we’re selling?” she asked hopefully.

“No. Sorry.” Cate offered names and descriptions of Andy and Lily, but the woman shook her head. She also said she hadn’t seen a motorcycle.

“It’s a really great TV,” she added, following Cate a few steps onto the walkway. “And we’re only asking a hundred bucks for it.”

She sounded so wistful that Cate almost wished she needed a TV. But she already had two. Lawyer Ledbetter had been generous in furnishing the house. He’d even inquired if Octavia might want a TV of her own. “If I hear of anyone needing a TV, I’ll send them here,” Cate said.

The buzz of the bell at the second door brought a middle-aged older woman in a pink robe. A plastic cap covered her head, foamy stuff inside, and a brownish streak dribbled down
her cheek. She said some new “kids” had moved into the end apartment, but she didn’t know them. Also hadn’t noticed if they had a motorcycle. A timer dinged behind her, apparently marking some crucial point in the hair-coloring process, and with an apology, she scurried off.

Yes, time was of the essence. Cate remembered an occasion back in college when some miscalculation had turned her red hair as green as the mossy roof.

An older man at the third door held a beer can in one hand. His belly sagged like a T-shirted avalanche over his jeans, suggesting beer might be the foundation of his food pyramid. He scowled and told her she shouldn’t go around knocking on strange doors, something bad might happen to her. She asked about the new renters in the apartment next door. He said he didn’t know them.

“Do they have a motorcycle?” Cate asked. “An old one?”

“Maybe. Seems like I seen one when they first moved in, but I ain’t seen it since. They got an old Ford pickup.”

A Ford pickup! “Okay. I’ll contact them later.”

“You pay attention now, young lady,” he warned with a severe shake of beer can at her. He said “young lady” as if she were a ten-year-old. At some point in life looking younger than she was might be an advantage, but not now. “You shouldn’t go around knocking on strange doors.”

Actually, she hadn’t knocked on any doors. She’d rung doorbells. But, same difference, as Mitch would no doubt point out.

“I’m sure that’s good advice,” she said brightly.

Cate intended to ask Mitch to go with her back to the apartment house where Lily and Andy might be living, but
he and Lance were meeting to go over some figures to present to the company interested in buying Computer Solutions Dudes that evening, so she didn’t mention it to him.

She hesitated about going alone. Maybe not the smartest idea. But if she was going to run Belmont Investigations on her own, she couldn’t scurry to Mitch every time she had misgivings.

The apartment area looked different after dark. Not an improved difference. With those big bushes on either side, she almost missed the driveway when she drove by. She didn’t miss the big puddle between the bushes when she turned in, however. Water surged around her car like a parking lot tsunami. The lights above two of the apartment doors had been turned off or burned out, and the yellowish bulbs that shone dimly above the other two doors failed to illuminate the narrow driving area behind the vehicles filling the parking spaces. A scent of cooking onions from one of the apartments overpowered any scent of cedar now, and dark caves lurked in the shadows beneath the looming trees. An older, light-colored pickup stood in front of the apartment at the far end. A curtain twitched in the window when she stopped behind the pickup.

Good. Someone was home. She’d just give Halliday the information that Timmons was at this address—

Reluctant logic interrupted that thought.

Timmons
might
be here. Or he might not. Cate had no personal sighting or positive confirmation from other tenants that he was here. Halliday had specifically told her not to contact Timmons, but she needed more concrete information than what she had at this point.

There was no place to park, but she waited for several minutes behind the pickup, engine running, hoping someone might enter or exit. Nope. Everything was Christmas-story quiet, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Okay, she’d park out on the street and walk in. If Timmons answered the door, she should recognize him from Halliday’s description. She’d pretend she’d bumbled into a wrong address, back off, and provide Halliday with the address information. If Lily answered, she’d inquire about Andy. If he came out from another room and confronted her, she’d simply have to tell him Matt Halliday wanted to talk to him about the bike.

A good plan, she assured herself.

Right. So why did some old saying about plans suddenly pop into her head? Something about the best laid plans of mice and men . . .

Well, she was neither mice nor male, so she should be fine.

She returned to the street and parked in front of an old SUV. The street at this point was not much better lit than the apartment area, and Cate’s car turned to a dark blob in the shadows of an overhanging tree the moment she walked away from it.

One foot plunged into the forgotten puddle as soon as she crossed the dark entryway into the apartment area. She stopped short. But by now her foot was already covered, water oozing around her toes, so she grimly decided she may as well keep going. She started to slosh on across the puddle, but something rustled in the oversized bushes.

She paused, listening, both feet in the puddle now. Was that something . . . someone . . . breathing there in the shadows?

Maybe she should back off and ask Mitch to come with her tomorrow evening. Or she could call him, and after he and Lance were through with their business discussion tonight—