Money To Burn (26 page)

“Bob Dodd,” he barked into the receiver, hoping to impress Fanny. He listened intently and his face changed expression. “Sure, she’s right here.” He held the phone out to me.

I looked at him suspiciously. “Bobby,” I warned him.

“Some guy named Burly for you,” he answered with a shrug.

I grabbed the phone. Burly was breathing heavily on the other end.

“Burly?” I said tentatively. “You okay?”

He cut me off. “Look, Casey, I’m probably overreacting and you’re gonna think I’m just coming up with an excuse to call you, but I’ve been getting weird hang-up calls for the last couple of hours and the electricity just went out in my house and I was thinking that maybe you could stop by and help me look a—”

His words were cut off by a tremendous blast that echoed into the phone. I heard a crash followed by a series of smaller crashes, more heavy breathing and then he was back on the line. “Someone just shot out one of my side windows,” he whispered into the phone. “I’ve got to hang up and call the—”

The line went dead.

“Shit,” I shouted, pounding it with the heel of my palm.

Bobby looked at me, perplexed, and I thrust the phone at him.

“Make it work!” I ordered.

He grabbed it, pressed a few buttons and listened to it. “The phone works fine,” he said. “It ought to. It cost me over—”

“I need a car,” I yelled at the small crowd that had assembled. “Anyone. Give me your car keys. A man’s life is in danger. I have to borrow a car.”

Lydia was staring at me, shocked into stillness.

“That was Tom’s brother,” I said. “I have to have a car.”

“Jake’s keys,” Haydon piped up, tugging on his sister’s elbow.

Lydia’s eyes widened. “That’s right,” she said. She opened her evening bag and dug among its contents, retrieving a small silver key chain. “It’s a red Lamborghini in the far parking lot. He was too drunk to drive it home, so I made him give me his keys. Be careful of the—”

I didn’t wait to hear more. I grabbed the keys from her hand, hitched up my skirt and started running.

Under any other circumstances, driving a Lamborghini race car retooled for road use would have thrilled me. In my present state, I was terrified. The car flew down New Bern Avenue, hitting seventy miles an hour within seconds. But the suspension was iffy and the steering was loose. Keeping her steady was like wrestling Jello. It was either slow down and call for help or speed up and save Burly solo.

I eased off the gas and fumbled for Bobby’s cellular phone. There was way too much shit coming down on my shoulders for me to do this on my own. I stared at the LCD panel, wondering how the hell you got a call to go through. I hate phones when they’re connected to a wall and I really hate them when they’re not. Consequently, I am cell-phone challenged—and I was sorry for it now. Finally, after several false starts, I managed to press enough buttons to bring up a code that indicated all was ready. I dialed Anne Morrow’s phone number at the Raleigh Police Department. I was a little skinny on friends around the RPD and Detective Morrow was my only hope.

Nothing happened. I had failed to satisfy the great cellular gods and my call would not go through. Disgusted, I threw the phone on the seat next to me and veered to the right, where I zoomed up the exit ramp for the Beltline. I punched down the accelerator until I was cruising at a hundred miles an hour. I reached the cutoff for U.S. 1 North within two minutes and squealed around the exit curve to the main drag, where I blew past a procession of cars crawling along at the legal speed limit toward a stop light. A blare of horns sounded behind me as I ran a red light and hit a stretch of empty highway.

Youngsville is about ten miles north of Raleigh, just beyond a stretch of U.S. 1 that was once rural farmland and was now wall-to-wall shopping centers. It wasn’t even midnight, and it was a weekend night, so the road was crowded with people in various states of sobriety. I wove through traffic, honking my horn, jumping the curb, clipping the sides of construction cones and generally creating havoc in my wake. It would only be a matter of minutes before someone with a little more technological sense than I had ratted me out to the cops via car phone. Good. I needed all the help I could get. If that meant pulling into sleepy downtown Youngsville with a screaming squadron of Wake and Franklin County deputies on my ass, so be it.

I reached open country and knew I was close. I slammed the gas pedal to the floor and the speedometer crept over a hundred. The car actually steadied at a higher speed, the engine in its element. I prayed that no one heading toward me would attempt to pass the car in front of them on the narrow two-lane highway. Cars swept by on the opposite side almost as fast as I spotted their headlights.

My heart was hammering in my chest as I fought to keep calm and wondered how to best approach Burly’s house.

With help, I thought, with help. What was I thinking? I could not do it alone.

I reached the exit for Youngsville and screeched to a halt at a deserted stoplight on S stumping th the edge of town. Two horses stood in the moonlight behind an electric fence, staring at my Lamborghini with impassive eyes. I grabbed the cellular phone and examined every inch of it, finally noticing a set of upper buttons below the LCD display. After a couple of tries, I figured out that you had to press the “Send” button after dialing the number in order to complete the call.

God was in a good mood that night. Detective Anne Morrow was working the late shift and answered her phone with a businesslike, “Yes?”

My story tumbled out in a confused mishmash of details that left her thoroughly confused.

“What?” she said. “Slow down, Casey. Where are you?”

“In Youngsville,” I told her, pulling out onto deserted Main Street and heading toward Burly’s house. I gave her as much of the truth as I could. “One of my clients is pinned up in his rural home with an unknown assailant taking potshots at him. I think it’s the same person who killed Tom Nash and burned down his house a couple of weeks ago in Durham. You familiar with the case?”

“Sure,” Anne said. “Friend of mine in Durham is working it.”

“My client is Nash’s brother,” I lied. “I think he’s in real trouble. I’m on my way now, but…” I stopped, the enormity of Burly’s predicament hitting me.

“But what?” Anne demanded.

“He’s paralyzed from the waist down,” I explained as I neared the dirt turnoff for Burly’s property. “He’s going to have trouble getting away quickly.”

“Oh, shit,” Anne said. “Hang up and get there. Do what you can, but don’t tell anyone I said so. I’ll call the Franklin County sheriff for you. Tell me where the house is.”

I gave her directions and hung up just as I reached the right turn down the rutted lane and nosed the Lamborghini into the thick grove of trees.

“This is insane,” I thought as the sports car bounced and squeaked its way from pothole to pothole. Where was an armored car when you needed one? I was a perfect target for anyone lying in wait.

I was thick into the woods and was forced to slow to a crawl along the dirt lane. The moon hovered behind a cloud and the shadowed branches of the heavy overhanging trees reached down like hands in the dark to stroke the roof of the car as I crawled through the thick growth.

I stopped for a moment, planning to roll down the window so I could listen to the nig Sen Tahht silence outside, hoping to pinpoint where any disturbance—or stalker—might be coming from. The window refused to budge. I tried every button without success and could find no manual override. They were stuck shut. I cursed Jake Talbot’s choice in ostentatious cars as I remembered the litany of problems outlined in the Car & Driver magazine I’d been reading the night before: windows that stick, leaky roofs, poor handling and, worst of all, bat-wing doors that often won’t open. Oh God, it was all I needed, to be stuck in a $320,000 sardine can while Burly lay fifty feet away, just beyond my help.

Unfortunately, I didn’t hear sirens in the distance. Trapped or not, I was the only help he had nearby and I had to get to him—if he was still alive.

I cut the engine about thirty yards from his front yard clearing. The darkness of the woods was comforting, until I realized I’d have to crash through the metal security gates since I needed more room to open the car’s ridiculous bat-wing doors.

I revved the engine, checked my seatbelt and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The car leapt forward and crashed through the aluminum gate with the lingering screech of metal ripping metal. The Lamborghini bounced to a stop in Burly’s front yard and I cut the engine. The silence was profound. I crouched just below the dashboard, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally, I slid the sunroof open and listened as the high chirping of the night peepers resumed after the racket I had made. If there was someone out there in the woods, he had been there for a long time. The night animals were unconcerned.

My pupils dilated gradually and I began to make out objects where rough shapes had been: the darkened house, the surrounding hen huts, Burly’s van parked beneath the pecan tree, a mound of broken pottery.

There was a lump to one side of the front door and I realized with a pang that it was Zee Zee. From the way his body twisted to one side, head flopped over his stomach, I knew the old hound dog had to be dead. That frosted me big time. I was pretty sure Burly loved that dog more than he cared for most people. Hell, the poor old pooch probably had no teeth left and was too old to be any real danger, unless the killer accidentally tripped over him in the dark. Why go and kill him? Just meanness, I figured, pure meanness. I could feel the rage rising in my gut, overwhelming caution.

Funny how anger can make you both foolish and brave. I ripped the skintight dress I was wearing even further up the side, extending the slit all the way up to my waist until I felt less like a sausage trapped in its casing. I stuck the cellular phone into the back of my industrial strength control-top thigh-cuts and slipped my Colt .25 under the tight elastic waistband near the slit, where I could get to it easily. I tucked an extra clip of ammunition between my pantyhose and underwear, then pressed the button to open the bat-wing doors so I could shoot me a dog killer.

The doors wouldn’t budge.

Frustrated, I beat the dashboard with the heel of my hand. Only a jerk like Jake Talbot would drive a piece of shit like this. What was I going to do? I examined the sun roof. I might be able to wiggle out of it but, while I was, I’d be perched on top of the damn car like a mechanical duck in a shooting gallery. Not that I had a choice. I stuck my head out like a prairie dog peeking out of its hole and looked around. All quiet on the western front. I wiggled my shoulders through and prayed my big butt would not choose this time to be a problem. It was like working the cork out of a bottle of wine, but I did manage to claw my way onto the roof without getting a hideful of buckshot. I slid down the front windshield to the hood and dropped to safety between the car and the house.

Ducking low, I crab-walked toward the front stoop and stopped to check on Zee Zee. I ran my hand over his body to be sure he was gone. He had fur like velveteen, cold velveteen. Poor Zee Zee was dead all right and had been for a while. He’d done his best to protect his master, sounding the alarm and standing guard on the front stoop. But he’d died in the line of duty. Sounder would have been proud.

I tensed. It was suddenly quiet. Way, way too quiet. No crickets. No tree frogs. No owls. Nothing but the sound of my heart hammering in my ears.

“Now!” I thought to myself as I threw my body against the front door, hitting it with my shoulder. The air around me exploded as a shot boomed in the clearing and I was showered with shards from the door’s stained glass window above. Someone had opened fire from the edge of the woods. I hit the door again with my shoulder and this time the lock tore away from the frame. I rolled forward as the thin wood cracked beneath my weight and I landed hard in the tiled front hallway of the house.

“It’s me! It’s me!” I said quickly. “It’s Casey. Don’t shoot.”

The sound of a gun hammer cocking in the darkness was not reassuring.

“I’m over here,” Burly called out. “On the floor. My wheelchair is between us, so be careful. I had to hit the ground when the first round of gunshot broke out the west windows. I think he was out front and then went around back. I can’t figure out what he’s doing, why he’s walking around the house.”

The night wind shifted, sending a gust through one of the broken windows. I sniffed the air. “I know what he’s doing,” I said grimly as the tang of kerosene filled my nostrils. “We have to get out of here now.”

Count on me to state the obvious. But how exactly could we get out of there? I wasn’t about to sling Burly over my shoulder and make an end run for the car. No way I could shimmy up the hood and dunk him through the sunroof without both of us getting killed.

“Can you drive right now?” I asked. “Do you have the keys?” I knew his van had hand controls and wasn’t Sls what sure I’d be able to figure them out quickly enough. Burly would have to drive.

“Sure,” he promised. “If you can get me to my van, I can get us out of here.”

A new gun blast boomed through the house. Wood splintered on the wall behind me. It was followed by another explosion, and a stack of clay pots to my right shattered in a noisy burst.