Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel (26 page)

28

The minutes dragged by. Five minutes. Cate nursed the coffee carefully. She didn’t want to ask for a refill. Eight. Mitch would surely pay for the coffee when he showed up. Eleven minutes. At least the restaurant was smoke free. She didn’t have her little notebook to make notes in, but she found a pen in her pocket and jotted down a rough record of the day on a couple of paper napkins. Where
was
Mitch?

Okay, she was being overly impatient. He needed time to find Zig. Make biker small talk. Work up to what Zig knew about Mace Jackson and Andy Timmons.

Sixteen minutes.

Maybe he’d decided to sit there, sip his 7UP, and enjoy the music for a while. Let her stew in her incompetence. How
could
she have walked off and left purse and ID on the counter?

Seventeen minutes.

Hey, there he was coming through the door! Cate rose in her seat and waved at him, and he turned her direction. He seemed a little unsteady on his feet as he wobbled down the aisle between booths. Did he actually
drink
something?

He slid into the booth across from her, reached for her cup
of coffee, and took a big slurp. “Caffeine,” he muttered. He had a hand plastered to the side of his head. He worked his jaw back and forth.

She sniffed, catching both the smell of smoke from the bar plus another less identifiable scent. “What is that smell?”

“Beer.”

“Beer?”

“I got slugged on the side of the head with a beer bottle. It wasn’t empty.”

She could see the dark splotch on his clothes now. She looked closer at his face. Not wobbly from drink. Wobbly from a hit on the head. The point of his jaw was already swelling.

“Oh, Mitch, I’m sorry! What happened?”

He took another sip of the coffee, then fished a chunk of ice out of her water glass and rubbed it over the swelling joint.

“I went up to the bar. They didn’t have 7UP, but I got a Sprite. I asked about Zig. The guy said he’d only been working there a couple weeks and didn’t know any Zig. He pointed to some guys sitting over at a table and said maybe they knew him. I took my Sprite and went over there. There were eight guys at the table. They all looked like your description of Zig,” he added, sounding as morose as she’d been feeling.

“And they hit you with a beer bottle?”

“No, they were okay guys. Friendly. They dragged up another chair and made room for me to sit at the table with them.”

“Did they ask why you wanted to find Zig?”

“Yeah. I said he was a friend of a friend, and they seemed okay with that. They just talked back and forth—shouted, actually. You couldn’t really talk in there. Anyway, they shouted about who Zig was and was I sure it wasn’t Zack instead
of Zig, and someone asked, what was his ride, and I didn’t know.”

“So then they hit you with a beer bottle?”

“No. Then one of them said something about, hey, wasn’t he that guy had the old Moto Guzzi—”

“What’s a Moto Guzzi?”

“Disease? Pizza? But probably it’s some brand of bike I never heard of.”

“And then they hit you with a beer bottle?”

“No. Then someone suggested maybe that red-haired Rita from Springfield was Zig’s old girlfriend and somebody else said wasn’t that her sitting up there on a bar stool. So I went over to talk to Rita on a bar stool. I asked her if she knew someone named Zig.” He paused and dipped into the glass for more ice. “And
then
I got slugged with a beer bottle.”

“Rita hit you?”

“No, some guy I hadn’t even seen walked up behind me and yelled something about, hey, stay away from her, and then he whacked me alongside the head.” Mitch ran a finger over his teeth as if making sure they were all still attached.

“He thought you were trying to pick her up?”

“That was my general impression. He didn’t want me talking to her anyway.”

Cate was fairly clear on the biblical instructions about getting hit. If someone struck you on the right cheek, you should turn the other cheek to him also. Did that apply to a whack with a beer bottle in a biker bar?

“So what did you do?”

“I didn’t have a chance to do anything. I was still wiping beer out of my eyes when some other guy slammed a fist in the jaw of the guy who hit me. Then Rita clobbered that guy with a big black purse the size of a suitcase. Somebody
shoved her off the bar stool and she bumped into me, but I guess she thought I bumped her and she whacked me with the purse too.” He felt the back of his head and then his nose. “I crashed into the floor, and somebody stepped on my hand.”

Cate looked at his hand. It didn’t have an actual imprint of a boot heel on it, but a couple of knuckles were scraped raw.

“Did they call the police?”

“I don’t know. Chairs and bottles were flying and a table went down on top of me. I crawled out from under it and then through a whole forest of legs and feet. When I finally had a chance to stand up, it looked like half the bar was in a big brawl.”

“What about Rita?”

“Last I saw, she was swinging that purse like she intended to mow ’em all down. The music was still playing. And people who weren’t fighting were dancing like nothing was happening.”

Was there a designated musical accompaniment for a biker brawl?

“I’m going to have to sit here for a few minutes before I get on the bike again.” Mitch shook his head as if trying to dislodge the lingering cobwebs.

“I’m sorry about . . . everything.” Cate had never had any big desire to learn to operate the Purple Rocket herself, but now she wished she could do it. Then she could help Mitch out to the bike and they could just disappear into the night.

“And I didn’t even find out anything about Zig,” Mitch added glumly. “I guess coming down here wasn’t such a helpful idea after all.”

“It was a great idea.” But sometimes even the best of ideas didn’t work out. That was PI work.

Cate dipped another napkin in the ice water and carefully
cleaned around the raw spots on Mitch’s hand. The lump on his jaw was getting bigger and his nose redder. He was using his other hand to prop up his head now.

She looked up when the door of the restaurant flew open and a woman strode in. Uh-oh. A woman with red hair and eyeliner that swooped into dark wings at the outer corners of her eyes. And a big black purse with metallic studs and fringe. With the strut of a one-woman parade, she headed for a booth beyond Cate and Mitch but stopped short when she spotted Mitch. She was short and a little chubby, young enough that the guard guy would have checked her ID, but not as young as Cate had thought at first glance.

The woman leaned over to look closer at Mitch. Cate half rose in her seat, feeling protective. Mitch was in no condition to be on the receiving end of another slugger swing with the purse.

Instead, with what sounded like real concern, the woman said, “Hey, you okay? I wondered what happened to you.” Only then did she seem to notice Mitch wasn’t alone. Her blue eyes gave Cate a frosty inspection. Cate had the impression the woman would rather have found Mitch sans probable girlfriend.

Cate half-expected a surly grunt from Mitch.
Yeah, sure. I’m great. I always sit
around holding my head in my hands as if it’
s a soggy squash about to fall off the vine.

But Mitch was nicer than that. “I’m fine.” Although he did glance warily toward the door as if expecting a beer-bottle-wielding biker boyfriend might be following her.

“Did I hit you? I didn’t mean to. It was kind of dark in there.”

Mitch waved a dismissive hand. Well, actually it was just a fingertip wave, as if his joints weren’t all that well connected at the moment.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with that idiot Maxie. It’s not as if I
belong
to him or something. None of his business who I talk to.”

Mitch apparently wasn’t going to ask the question, but Cate, with her own wary glance at the door, did. “Where is Maxie now?”

“I told him to get lost. Go back to whatever rock he crawled out from under. Dumb creep.”

Hopefully that meant Maxie wasn’t out there recruiting reinforcements with beer bottles to launch a full-scale assault in the restaurant.

“Have the police arrived?” Cate asked, also hopefully.

Rita gave her one of those what-planet-are-you-from looks that she seemed to get a lot lately. “Why would they call the police? It was just a little fight. Not like it was a riot or something.”

Cate hadn’t been aware of a rating system in biker bar brawling. Learn something every day.

“Oh. Well, that’s, um, good, then,” she said. Then, uneasily wondering about the dismissed “dumb creep” and where this left Rita, Cate asked, “Did you and Maxie come here together?”

“Yeah, we rode down from Springfield together.”

Cate considered that statement with concern. They couldn’t just leave Rita stranded here. But three on a bike wouldn’t work. Rita wasn’t as hairy as Clancy and she had fewer legs, but she was, well, bigger-bottomed.

“Do you have any way to get back to Springfield?” Maybe they could go home, get the SUV, and return for Rita.

“Sure. Not a problem. I came on my own bike—’05 Harley,” she said, with obvious pride.

The woman didn’t make any move to leave, and finally Cate asked, “Would you like to sit down?”

“Sure. I’m Rita.”

“Cate.” She pointed across the table. “He’s Mitch.”

“Hi, Cate and Mitch.” Rita slid into the booth beside Cate and set the impressive purse on the seat between them. “You asked me about somebody, didn’t you?” she said to Mitch. “Before crazy Maxie bashed you.”

“We’re trying to locate a guy named Zig,” Cate said, since Mitch was concentrating on working his jaw back and forth again.

Rita shook her head. “I don’t know any Zig.”

Cate offered the description Lily had given her.

Rita shook her head again. “Sounds like at least ten guys I know. Where you guys from?”

“Eugene,” Cate said.

“If you ever need a good manicure or hand massage or pedicure, I’m at Heavenly Hair and Hands.” A glance at Cate’s fingernails suggested Cate had better sign up for a full treatment. As soon as possible.

Rita’s own nails were quite spectacular. Long and purple, with a different flower painted on each one. Except one of those flowers looked ominously close to a sprig of something illegal.

“I’ll remember that,” Cate said. “Heavenly Hair and Hands.”

As far as Cate could tell, the conversation had now covered all possible connections between them. However, since Rita didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to toss out a couple other names.

“How about Mace Jackson? Do you know him? Big guy, ponytail, skulls tattooed on his knuckles.”
Dead
, although she didn’t add that.

Skull-decorated knuckles didn’t faze Rita. “I know a guy
with a skull on the back of his bald head, but no knuckle skulls.”

“Andy Timmons? Have you heard of him?”

Another negative shake of head. That seemed to cover any possible mutual acquaintances they might have. Cate thought of one more.

“Kane Blakely?”

“Nope. Who are all these guys anyway? I’m here most Saturday nights and I don’t know any of them.”

“Oh, they’re just guys. I don’t know that they ever come here. Actually, the skulls-on-knuckles guy was more into bicycles than motorcycles, I think. Andy Timmons has an old Indian bike he’s trying to sell.”

“Yeah? Hey, I maybe met him. This friend of mine was into old bikes. Bought ’em to fix up and sell over the internet. Got some crazy prices for them. I went with him a while back to see this old Indian bike he’d heard some guy had. Skinny little guy. With an oversized mustache. And ego.”

“That could be him.”

“Those old Indians are worth a bundle, but this guy wanted about double what the bike was worth, Tuffy said.”

“Maybe that’s why he hasn’t sold the bike yet. Although I heard he’s about to make a deal. Does your friend Tuffy know Andy well?”

“I remember him saying even if the guy came down on his price, he wouldn’t invest a nickel in it without making sure it wasn’t stolen.”

“Andy seems to have something of a reputation problem that way. Although I’ve heard that someone checked on the bike, and it wasn’t stolen,” she added.