Running on Empty (28 page)

As AnnaLise followed him, she heard a key clitter and turn the unit's deadbolt lock.

Tucker stealthily slid open the glass patio door in the bedroom and they stepped onto
its deck.

'We're on the second floor,' AnnaLise said.

'Hello? Remember the elevator?' Tucker swung a leg over the railing.

'But I have a bum shoulder. And a file folder.' She held up the latter. What panic
she was feeling was way out of proportion to the situation. So what if James Duende
found them there? She'd tell him that... that she was looking at the apartment, maybe
going to rent it. Sure, she'd...

'Hello? Is someone here?'

Tucker dropped over the deck rail.

'How's it going to look now?' AnnaLise whispered toward the ground. 'The real estate
agent down there and me up here?'

'Real estate agent?' Tucker said, getting to his feet. 'Are you on crack? Jump, and
I'll catch you!' He held out his arms.

'But my shoulder...'

Then she heard a second voice join the first in the condo behind her. 'What's wrong?
Did you hear something?'

Chuck. As in Chief of Police Greystone.

In one impulsive movement, AnnaLise rolled up the folder, stuck it in the waistband
of her pants and, bum wing forgotten, did a one-handed vault over the railing.

'Agghh.'

AnnaLise rolled off Tucker. 'Are you OK?'

He groaned.

'Truly,' she repeated. 'Are you hurt?'

Another groan, but at least this one was closer to a real word.

'I'm really, really sorry,' she said. 'Should I call your father? Or an ambulance?'
Though, come to think of it, either would be impossible. AnnaLise had left her cellphone
charging in Daisy's kitchen.

Happily, it didn't become an issue.

Tucker sat up partially, holding his chest. 'Just... trying... to catch... my breath.
You knocked the... wind out of me.'

'I am so sorry,' AnnaLise said again. 'But I thought you were going to catch me.'

'And I thought you were going to drop straight down like I did, not launch yourself
over the railing like some lunatic gymnastics chick.'

Tucker got to his feet, albeit unsteadily.

AnnaLise stood, too. 'I am so―'

'I know, I know. You're sorry.' He was checking his body parts for injuries. When
he got to the back pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a crumpled packet. 'Here.'

AnnaLise took it and brushed off the dirt. 'Ichiro's letters? Why did you take them?'
Perhaps he intended to learn Japanese quicker than AnnaLise had thought.

'I didn't mean to. I just stuck them in my pocket when I closed the kitchen window.'

'Which reminds me,' AnnaLise said. 'Your Coke is still sitting on the coffee table.'
Probably making a ring, to add insult to injury.

'He'll think the can's been there forever.'

'They. Duende has Chief Greystone with him.'

'Huh.' Tucker rubbed the back of his head, then checked his hand for blood. 'Even
so, my point stands.
They
will assume the Coke belonged to Ichiro.'

'Except that it's cold.'

'Oh.' Tucker was in full, re-trenching denial. 'Well, then, they won't know whose
it is.'

'Unless they do a DNA check.'

His head jerked up. 'You think...'

'No, I don't,' AnnaLise said, letting him off the hook. 'Besides, you have a right
to be there. If anything, it's my blood in the file drawer they'd worry about.'

'If anything,' Tucker echoed.

AnnaLise was looking at the building. The bedroom and therefore the deck off it faced
the lake, just as the big windows in the living room did. That combination had the
added advantage of situating the plumbing in the kitchen and bathroom back-to-back
in the same wall to save contractor and maintenance costs.

All that meant nothing to AnnaLise against the fact that the layout had allowed them
to land on the grassy slope leading to the water.

'Good thing that deck faces the back rather than the building entrance,' she said.

'You're not kidding,' Tucker said. 'If I'd been standing on that unforgiving sidewalk
when you landed on me, they'd be scraping up Tucker Stanton with putty knives.'

AnnaLise ignored his use of third person. 'Did you know Chuck was coming with Duende?'

'Of course not,' Tucker said. 'I didn't even know Duende would be here now. Do you
think I'd have let you into the apartment if I had? Come on, let's get out of here.'

AnnaLise waved for him to stay close to the building's footprint as they circled it,
so neither Chuck Greystone nor James Duende could catch sight of them if either man
happened to look out a window.

'The police chief and the freelancer,' she mulled as they walked. 'Sounds to me like
Duende is interviewing Chuck for his story.'

'He couldn't do it at the station?' Tucker seemed to have lost his taste for investigation.
Falling bodies, even live ones, could to that to a person, AnnaLise supposed.

'Maybe he's one of those "literary" types who need to soak up the atmosphere,' AnnaLise
said.

She was thinking of her own bare bones, fact-driven articles. The couple of times
she'd tried to add a 'what if', 'why not', or 'how come' to the Who, What, When, Where,
Why and How of news-reporting, she'd been shot down.

Ahh, but cheer up. Writing Dickens Hart memoirs would no doubt allow all sorts of
license, literary — and literal — included.

Tucker decided Torch needed his attention, though AnnaLise had a feeling it was his
own injuries he'd be nursing.

She thanked him again and resisted the impulse to apologize yet again. As Tucker got
gingerly into his jeep and drove away, she worked her own shoulder up and down.

'Huh?' she said. 'Feels better.' Earth — or Tucker Stanton — as chiropractor.

Need to visit the doctor's office empirically eliminated, AnnaLise walked to her Spyder,
parked at the far end of the building. Glancing back, she saw Chuck exit the main
entrance. She ducked around the corner, but he'd turned the other way, toward his
patrol car.

AnnaLise waited until Chuck pulled out and then climbed into hers.

So James Duende was a writer. AnnaLise should have guessed it by all the red Flair
marks he'd made on the newspaper that morning she'd seen him at Mama's. AnnaLise did
the same thing when she read papers and magazines, underlining or circling story ideas
and other items of interest in red, which didn't obscure the black type beneath it
but would remind the 'Flairer' to clip.

It also explained his hanging out in the restaurant to listen. Again, looking for
ideas, rumors — maybe even something that would help him land the job of writing Hart's
memoir.

But Hart had given the job to AnnaLise, instead of this supposedly big-time 'ghost'.
Why?

There was the local angle, of course. As her new employer had said, AnnaLise was familiar
with the people and places of Sutherton. She could bring a sense of heart and depth
to the story that an outsider never could.

And Dickens Hart, despite everything negative you could say about him, was an intelligent,
successful businessman. People like that had an eye for spotting untapped, but applicable
talent.

Hart said he'd read her stuff and been impressed. Was AnnaLise, despite not having
the opportunity to flex her 'literary' muscles, truly that good? Or did Hart believe
that AnnaLise would be more malleable than a seasoned professional? More willing to
show her hometown — and, in Hart's mind, that hometown's hero — in a good light. And,
perhaps in the process, bury the skeletons he wanted to keep hidden.

If so, he was a bad judge of character. That should have become eminently clear to
Hart when AnnaLise laid down her conditions of her employment.

So, again, why? Unless... unless AnnaLise had
underpriced herself, despite her attempt to achieve just the diametric opposite.

Now that would
really
suck. She sat back in the Spyder's driver seat, the wind taken out of her sails as
thoroughly as she'd full-body Heimliched it out of poor Tucker Stanton's lungs.

How much money did someone like James Duende get for a book?

AnnaLise didn't know, though she'd once met a writer at a cocktail party who claimed
she made 'half a mill a book' to ghost the novels of a
New York Times
best-selling romance writer.

'But, shh — ' manicured finger to Botoxed lips — 'don't tell anyone.'

Five hundred thousand dollars? And AnnaLise had settled for — hell, herself requested
— a measly...

AnnaLise stopped. Talk about looking a gift-horse in the mouth, as Mama would no doubt
say. The Hart project would allow AnnaLise to try something she'd never done and,
if she proved good enough at it, maybe someday command that magnitude of fee.

AnnaLise started the car, still scolding herself. As she went to put the car into
reverse, though, she paused.

Five hundred thousand dollars for just one romance novel? If true, then what the hell
did the Kitty Kelleys of the world make? And even if James Duende wasn't in that pantheon,
he certainly could make at least as much off Dickens Hart as the egomaniac proved
himself willing to pay a young, untried journalist.

Giving Duende reason to curry favor with said 'egomaniac' and motive to put the person
threatening that paycheck — our aforementioned 'young journalist' — out of commission.
Like by a heavy garage door rendering her unable to type.

Suddenly, Chuck's flip comment about the shooter at Dickens Hart's mansion not being
'worth a damn' didn't seem so far off the mark.

Though the same couldn't be said for Duende, if he indeed had been aiming for AnnaLise
and nearly killed his prospective patron by mistake.

AnnaLise assumed she'd find Bobby Bradenham in the mayor's office. A blessing, since
questioning him at home about his father in front of his mother was not high on the
reporter's wish list.

As she drove to Town Hall, AnnaLise shelved the possibility that Duende had targeted
her, both by bullet and garage door. Why?

Because that still left two other victims, both of them dead. What possible motive
— rival 'ghost' or not — could James Duende have had for killing Ichiro Katou and
Rance Smoaks?

AnnaLise pulled into the town hall lot, shared by Sutherton's police department. Presumably
Chuck's patrol car was one of the two parked there, not a problem now that AnnaLise
could no longer be caught bleeding on files or jumping from decks.