Deceived (6 page)

Liz wanted to cuss, too, but instead she held her tongue and looked at the mess she made, and it seemed beautiful to her. Reds and greens and browns, like a finger painting. It was beautiful because she had done it. She had made trouble and stopped stupid Cal’s face from having that stupid smile.

Now, feeling in control with two dead bodies near, Liz’s movements were fast and sure.

Arty’s body lay far enough away that no one could see it or her from the path. The biker had managed to get himself good and dead in an out-of-the-way spot, too. It was to her advantage, if she moved quickly.

She put the four sacks next to each other on the ground. Then she checked the other saddlebag. It was empty.

The dead biker wore a leather jacket. He wasn’t going to miss it. His ashen-faced, blank-eyed stare looked somehow shocked at his own condition.

Liz started working the jacket off the inflexible body. That’s why they call it a
stiff
, she thought. That’s what Arty will be like in a couple of hours.

At that moment a jolt of regret and a little fear zinged through her. The jolt had a voice, and the voice said, Give this up. Don’t do this thing. Go back and call the police and tell them everything that happened. It was an accident, see, and this elaborate plan you’re coming up with has too many holes in it, don’t do this thing . . .

“Shut up,” she said out loud. That surprised her. What did she think she was doing? Responding to some real voice?
No
,
pack it away.
Put aside any idea that you’re guilty here of anything. You are not. You
deserve this.

But Arty didn’t deserve what
he
got. He was a good guy, deep down.
He didn’t know what he was getting when he proposed to you. You
played him
,
offered your body at just the right time
,
withheld it after that
until he was mad to have you.

But Arty had brought this whole thing on himself. He should not have changed. He shouldn’t have traded in what made him a man and a success. People like that didn’t survive in this world. They ended up like this biker — and Arty.

She flipped the biker onto his stomach and got the other sleeve off.

From there it was no problem to pack the sacks in the jacket.

She began to feel better. No voice now, oh, maybe just a whisper, but it was overtaken by a sense of — what was it? — flow. Being carried along on a wave but also causing that wave. Surfing on an ocean of her own making.

Her mind was buzzing and alive.

Wait . . . Fingerprints.

That thought brought her up short. All that
CSI
stuff. She knew what she’d touched. She took some dirt in her hands and spit on it. She had a red bandana in her back pocket. She spread the mud around on the saddlebags, especially the metal parts, and wiped those places down.

Footprints.

It was mostly rock around here, just a little dirt where the body was. No problem there. She used the jewel-stuffed jacket to smooth over the prints her hiking boots made and backed away onto rock again.

She laughed. She was going to get away with it. At least the carrying-off part. That much was a high. The best she’d felt in years.

Control was intoxicating. Bring it on, more and more.

And keep moving.

Because somebody may happen along and spoil everything.

“He did
what
?”

“Keep your eyes on the road, Geena. Last thing I need today is an accident.”

Rocky and Geena were heading into Silver Lake, Geena driving.

“Well then,
tell
me,” Geena said.

“Let’s wait until — ”

“He set your clothes on fire? And you want me to wait? Here’s a red light.”

Geena stopped. The white dome of the Angelus Temple was just to the right. Rocky remembered something about it. Some woman evangelist had set it up in the 1920s, and here it still was.

“Smashed my car window, too,” Rocky said. “I’ll leave it there for Exhibit A.” She’d call in a report later. Now she just wanted to be away from the place, away from the vicinity of Boyd Martin.

The one thing he didn’t get was her kit from the trunk. Her tools of the trade, which included a mini tape recorder, camera, binoculars, lock-pick set, and her nanocam in sunglasses. Her secret weapon. She could do so much with those, and they actually looked good on her.

Also, her laptop from the apartment. With these things, at least, she was still in business.

Geena said nothing. Rocky was looking straight ahead but she could see, from the corner of her eye, the unmistakable dropping of the jaw.

“I don’t
believe
this,” Geena said.

“If you’ll just relax,” Rocky said, “I’ll go over the whole thing in gory detail. Let’s go to Franco’s.” The bar near the freeway.

The light turned green, but Geena didn’t move the car. “What if we go see Swami T instead?”

“If you mention any more swamis, I swear — ”

The angry blare of a car horn cut her off. Geena gunned through the intersection.

Rocky held on for dear life.

Liz thought she must have gone at least a football field away from the dead biker. She came to a grove of knotty oak trees, the kind that used to be all over this end of the valley until they started mowing them down for houses.

But the Packers — what Pack Canyon residents liked to call themselves, Liz found out, and without any apology to Green Bay — put up a major stink when developers started getting too close. They won battle after zoning battle, and Liz could kiss them because this was all land she could use now.

There were lots of places to choose from, including a little creek bed. Here the water trickled by through a long trough of weeds.

No, too mushy. She needed something with more cover.

Maybe she’d have to dig a hole.

Just get this over with.
Somebody was going to find Arty, and she’d have to cook up some story about why she wasn’t with him. Shouldn’t be too hard, but who needed the trouble?

Trouble is for losers, her mother had told her. Trouble was something you didn’t need to keep. There was always a way out of trouble, and money was usually the quickest way. If you had plenty of it, you might not be able to keep trouble from kicking you, but you could make sure the foot didn’t stay in where the sun don’t shine.

Speaking of where the sun don’t shine, there it was. The spot. An actual hole in the hill. More of a bowl-shaped impression, like a dent on a car door.

But it was almost the exact size of the bundle she held, and there was plenty of dry stuff to put over it.

The location was perfect, too. This was not a place people would come by casually. It was not on any trail and there was nothing to draw foot traffic. She didn’t even give it a second thought. This was the spot.

In ten minutes the stuff was hidden. She took a step back and made sure she could identify the place. Like in that movie with Morgan Freeman, where he gets out of prison and finds a rock the other prisoner had put money under.

Then it was time to move to the next part of the whole plan. It was unfolding to her, step by step.

The muted light of Franco’s Bar & Grill was just what Rocky needed. No one could see her face clearly when the lights were low.

In the booth, Geena said, “You really do need to see Swami T.”

“Oh please,” Rocky said.

“Really.”

“Is Swami T any relation to Mr. T?”

“Now you’re being silly.”

“I think it’s silly to pay a guy two hundred bucks to listen to him talk like Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.”

“Who?”

“You know, the guy that owns the Quickie Mart on
The Simpsons.”

“You are so Western. So either-or.
Resistant.
That’s the word.”

“Geena, the guy is bilking you and everybody else. He’s sitting around in a lotus position, spouting clichés the way Paris Hilton spews text messages. You really believe what some twenty-year-old says about the universe?”

“He was enlightened from a very young age.”

“That claptrap on his website? Who verifies those things?”

“You have to have faith. If you want to be enlightened you — ”

“Babe, my ex-boyfriend smashed my car and set fire to my clothes. I got enough enlightenment to last me a long time. I see things. Maybe that’s my problem.”

A young server, a model boy wanting Hollywood stardom, came to the table. He smiled perfectly white piano keys at them and asked what they’d like to drink.

Rocky watched Geena flash her pearlies right back at him. Never one to turn away from a flirtatious smile, Geena. Got her into a boatload of trouble that she never seemed to learn from. Not even Swami T could educate her. Fat lot of good he must be. If there was a swami union, Rocky would report him.

Geena ordered a microbrew of some kind. Rocky opened her mouth with the word
Cuervo
poised on her tongue. She rolled it around a second, then thought of Boyd and his alcohol-stale breath and swollen eyes.

“A 7UP,” Rocky said.

Model boy said he’d be right back.

“We’ll be right here,” Geena said.

“Smooth,” Rocky said. “You learn that from Swami Whatsisname?”

“You need some of his wisdom now,” Geena said.

Rocky looked at her and wondered how they’d become such good friends in the first place. Geena Melinda Carter, blond and blue-eyed, as if yanked from the beach at Santa Monica. In fact, she was from Providence, Rhode Island.

And Roxanne Julie Towne, red of hair, much to her mother’s chagrin. Mom loved Julie Christie in
Doctor Zhivago
and gave her daughter that middle name probably in the hopes that her hair would become golden. In fact, it was like bricks. So was her personality, Rocky was often told.

Another thing: Julie Christie never had the left side of her face mauled by a dog. Never had deep blue scars embedded in her skin. Never drew the stares of little kids wondering why half her face looked stapled.

“Thing is,” Rocky said, “I would love it if one of these guys just once had the bead on something, you know?”

“But you’ve got to give it a chance. You never do.”

“How much of a chance?”

The server came back with the beer and 7UP on a round tray. He placed a couple of square white napkins on the table, then the drinks on the napkins. “Can I bring you anything off the menu?” he said.

“Are you on the menu?” Geena said.

The Ken doll-look-alike blinked. “Not at the moment. Can I tell you about our specials?”

“That’s okay,” Geena said. “You can come back later.”

The server smiled weakly, then walked away.

“Gay,” Geena said. “Wouldn’t you know it? Aren’t there any straight guys left in this stupid town?”

“I know of one,” Rocky said. “One I’d like to forget.” She took a sip of her bubbly. “Now good, old reliable 7UP. You know what you’re going to get. With men it’s a crapshoot. You don’t know what you’re getting with men or swamis named T or even Jesus Christ himself.”

“I like Jesus,” Geena said.

“Yeah, you and my brother both.”

“Arty? I thought he was all skeptical.”

Rocky knocked back more sugar water, then said, “He was. He got religion. Spun his head right around.”