Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel (13 page)

No! She straightened her shoulders. She could do this. Alone. Okay, so it was darkish and kind of creepy here, and her feet felt as if some unknown puddle monster might be nibbling at them in the water. But it was only a few steps to the concrete walkway in front of the apartments. The chatter of a TV came through an open apartment window. A car honked on the street only a block over.

With the parking spaces in front of the apartments filled with cars now, everyone must be home. If she screamed, any number of people would come running.

Another rustle. A moving shadow caught in the corner of her eye. Something touched her back. Her nerves froze. Muscles turned to jelly.

Okay, maybe it was time to scream now—

Except it was really hard to scream with a hand clamped over her mouth.

15

Cate frantically tried to twist her head out of the trap, but the hand tightened and fingers dug deeper around her mouth. Her teeth cut into her stretched lips. Another arm wrapped around her neck, cutting off her air. Panic whipped through her.

She couldn’t talk, couldn’t even gasp for a breath, and only a frantic
glug
gurgled deep in her throat. She squirmed and tried to kick, but all she managed to do was make tidal waves in the puddle. He wrestled her over to the side of the driveway and shoved her into the bushes. Leaves still wet from this morning’s rain smashed into her face and hair. Water spidered down her neck. Panic perspiration ran down her ribs. Glug, glug.

“Who are you?” he demanded. His mouth was so close to her ear she could feel his hot breath. A scent of garlic blasted around to engulf her face. “What do you want? Why are you running all over town asking questions about us?”

She gurgled and glugged some more, and he finally loosened both grips to where she could snatch a breath and gasp something. “Let—me—go!”

She couldn’t see him, but she could tell from the close
ness of his mouth to her ear that he must be no taller than she was. But pit-bull strong. She grabbed at the hand over her mouth. She couldn’t pull it away, but she dug her only two decent-length fingernails deep into the skin.
Gotta grow longer
fingernails
. But even if she had only two fingernails to work with, he yelped with surprise, and the hand let go.

“You do that again and you’re gonna be face down in that puddle,” he threatened.

“Got—to—breathe,” she managed to gasp before the hand closed over her mouth again.
Lord, what do I do now?

He shifted the other arm down to clamp around her waist. “Okay, breathe. But you make one sound, and you’re a dead woman.”

“Andy?” she guessed. “Timmons?”

The question didn’t jolt him with surprise. He obviously already suspected she’d been looking for him and/or Lily. Had he talked to the guy at the trailer park? Or maybe Lily had stopped in at the convenience store? Maybe Beer Can Man had mentioned something.

All Timmons said was a surly, “So?”

“I just need to talk to you for a minute—”

“Who are you? Dirk sent you snooping around to find Lily?”

“Who’s Dirk?”

“You know who Dirk is!”

“No. I was coming to your apartment, but there wasn’t any place to park. So I went back out to the street—”

“I saw you sitting in your car outside our apartment. What’ve you got? Some kind of fancy listening equipment so you could hear everything we said inside the apartment? You just tell Dirk—”

“Fancy listening equipment” might be a great idea, but
Cate didn’t have any. She didn’t even have any
unfancy
listening equipment. Maybe she should discuss that with tech-expert Mitch. Although by now she had a good idea that Dirk must be the ex-husband Lily was afraid of, the “scumbag Admond,” as her brother had referred to him. Okay, give Andy points for being protective of his girlfriend. Take a whole bunch of points away for lousy problem-solving technique.

“I keep telling you, I don’t know Dirk. It’s
you
, not Lily, I’m looking for,” she said.

“Why?”

“It’s about your motorcycle.”

“You from the outfit that manages the apartments? Just because we didn’t mention the bike on that application form—”

“No. It’s about
buying
your motorcycle.”

“You don’t look like no bike buyer.”

Was that an insult? If so, it was the least of Cate’s worries at the moment. “Not me, someone else.”

He considered that. Thinking seemed to intensify the garlic breath. It wafted around her like a toxic storm.

“Okay, we’re gonna walk over to the apartment. Nice and easy. And you’re not going to try to run away or make a ruckus. Because of this.”

A gun barrel rammed the middle of her back.

“You can’t shoot me right here!”

“Try me.”

“People will hear. They’ll come running! They’ll call the police.”

“First one comes running, cop or anyone else, gets a bullet in the belly. Just walk toward the apartments. You’re not gonna get hurt, and neither is anyone else, if everything’s like you say and this is just about buying the bike.”

Cate did not comment that this was not a great sales tech
nique. She felt the harder pressure of the gun barrel against her back and started walking. Her feet squished in her wet shoes. Water from the wet bushes trickled from her hair into her eyelashes and dribbled over her lips. She blinked, trying to clear vision that seemed to double everything around her. Double the apartment building. Double the vehicles. Double the dim lights. His wet shoes squished behind her. She wanted to scream like a girl in a horror movie when the bug monster is about to get her.

Instead she yelled inwardly at herself.
No. No screams. Don’t get some innocent bystander killed
.

Past the first apartment door, the second, the third. At the last door, he told her to knock.

She remembered Beer Can Man’s advice: don’t go around knocking on strange doors. At this point, she didn’t seem to have much choice. But she still procrastinated. “There’s a doorbell.”

He jabbed her twice in the back with the gun. “Knock.”

Cate knocked.

A female voice answered warily, “Andy?”

Andy kept the gun in the middle of Cate’s back, but he leaned toward the door. “Everything’s okay, sweetie. Do like I told you. If it’s a knock, not the doorbell, it’s me. Open up.”

The door opened, and a petite blonde stared at her. Duane at the rooming house had been grandfatherly sweet in his assessment of her, the landlady more realistic. Her bleached hair did look stiff enough to withstand anything from a demolition derby to a tornado. But, without makeup, she also looked young and scared and vulnerable.

“What’d you bring her here for?” she demanded. She didn’t
sound
vulnerable. She was holding a big spoon covered with spaghetti sauce across her chest like a shield, paper towel
underneath it to catch the drips. The apartment smelled like Andy’s breath. Maybe someone should tell Lily she should cut back on the garlic in her cooking. “Who is she?”

That was when Cate spotted the motorcycle. Actually, she couldn’t miss it, since it stood in the middle of the living room floor. This was the bike Halliday was so hot to acquire? It looked old and beat up enough to qualify as junkyard sculpture, but the name Indian was written on it in metallic script. This no doubt explained Andy’s worry that she was from the apartment management company. Keeping a bike in the living room was probably universally frowned on by landlords.

Although newspapers were spread on the carpet under it. The feminine touch, perhaps?

Andy shoved Cate inside, locked the door behind her, and stood in front of it to further impede any escape. She turned to look at him. Halliday’s description had been accurate. About 5′5″, 135 pounds, wiry build, but she knew he was much stronger than his size and build suggested. Sharp features, scraggly dark hair. Halliday had been right about the mustache too, oversized and droopy, like the stereotype of a Western movie bandit. All he needed was a belt lined with brass bullets slung low across his skinny hips. Hey, wait a minute—

“You aren’t carrying a gun!”

He cocked his hand and fingers into the shape of a gun. He blew across his forefinger, as if it had just blasted hot lead, sly triumph in his smile.

Some PI you are, Cate Kinkaid. You can’t even
tell a finger jabbed in your back from a real
gun.

Andy folded his fingers back and rubbed the hand where her fingernails had cut crescent imprints in his skin.

Lily stabbed Cate with a gaze. “You can just tell Dirk—”

“Dirk didn’t send her. She said she’s here about the bike.”

Lily threw the spoon at him. It bounced off his wiry chest and splattered an abstract spaghetti-sauce portrait of Andy’s mustache across the carpet. “How do you know Dirk didn’t send her to spy on me? Andy, you’re so gullible. You believe anything anyone tells you.”

Maybe Lily was wishing she’d dumped Andy, as she’d told the woman at the RV park she was going to do?

“And you’re both dripping muddy water all over the carpet.” Lily grabbed sheets of newspaper from the sofa and stuffed them under Andy’s feet. Cate obligingly lifted one foot at a time so Lily could do the same with her.

“I vacuumed in here just yesterday,” Lily fretted.

“Sorry,” Cate said. She didn’t point out that Lily had herself sabotaged the vacuuming job with her addition of spaghetti sauce to the carpet.

“Maybe she’s an undercover cop,” Andy suggested. He took a protective stance in front of the bike.

An undercover cop. Cate felt mildly flattered.

Lily turned to him again. “Why would she be an undercover cop? Are the cops after you for something I don’t know about? You been dealing pot or meth again?” she added darkly.

“No! I told you, I’m not into that stuff anymore.” Andy moved away from the bike, expression wary, as if he feared she might produce more throwing artillery and he didn’t want the bike in her line of fire. With a cagey look at Cate, he added, “Not that I ever was.”

“I really am here about your selling the bike,” Cate interrupted. “A, um, business associate is interested in buying it. He wanted me to locate you so he could contact you. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

Lily planted her hands on her hips. “Oh yeah? Who is this ‘business associate’?”

The time for confidentiality was past. Lily might indeed have additional and more lethal artillery. Or Timmons might come up with a real gun. Halliday would just have to live with the fact that Andy knew he was interested enough in the bike to send someone looking.

“His name is Matt Halliday, from H&B Vintage Auto Restorations out on Maxwell. Actually, you offered to sell the bike to him awhile back.” Cate lifted wet eyebrows at Andy. “Remember? He wasn’t interested then, but he is now.”

“Who are you?”

Cate sometimes wished she had a better imagination, but the only name that came to mind was her own. “Cate Kinkaid.”

“You work for H&B?” Andy asked.

“No. I’m in a business that, um, sometimes finds people for other people.” Cate started to pull out a Belmont Investigations card, but she felt a sudden reluctance to provide him with any further way to connect with her.

“He
paid
you to find me?” Andy said.

“That’s my job.” She shoved the card deeper in her pocket.

Halliday had said Andy had nervous eyes, and Cate saw them in 3-D action now. Eyes that flicked from door to her to bike to Lily, with a long stop at the end to squint into space while he thought about something. Probably not quantum physics.

“How much?” he demanded.

“How much will he pay for the bike? I don’t—”

“How much did he pay you to find me?”

“I haven’t calculated the bill yet.”

“You sure you don’t owe this guy money or something, and that’s why he sent her looking for you?” Lily demanded with a hands-on-hips glare at Andy.

Cate didn’t wait for Andy to try to soothe Lily with assurances about his credit rating. “So I’ll just be running along now,” she said brightly, as if this had been a pleasant social visit. “I’ll tell him you’re living here, and he can contact you.”

“Well, I dunno,” Andy said. Cate could almost see dollar signs playing tag in his head, and he sounded cagey, as if he figured that now he could afford to play hard to get with the bike. “If it’s the stuffed shirt I talked to at H&B, he wasn’t all that nice to me.”

“Nice, nasty, who cares?” Lily threw up her hands in exasperation. “Sell the bike. I’m tired of it sitting in our living room like a big ugly pet we have to pamper.” To Cate she added, “He acts like I should bow down every time I pass by it.”

“Why
do
you keep it in the living room?” Cate asked Andy.

Andy frowned, as if this were an irrelevant question. “It’s a valuable old bike, a real classic.” Andy moved a few steps to rub a smudge on a fender. Which seemed like an exercise in futility given all the dents and rusty spots elsewhere on the bike. “Very hard to find a ’48 Indian these days. I’m not leaving it out where someone can steal or vandalize it.”