Tinkerbell on Walkabout (3 page)

“You’d worry? Really?”

He looks up and meets my eyes. “Yeah, I’d worry. Bob’s a
good guy.”

“For a ‘coon?’”

He has the scruples to blush. “Bob’s a good guy,” he
repeats.

“Yeah, he is. I’ll come by later. See what he found.”

Later turns out to be a day trip to Tahoe later, and it’s
a rainy but balmy Thursday afternoon when July and I drop by Wray’s Wrecks
before driving down to Sacramento for a prenuptial hunt for household goods.

Perry’s alone in the small office. He looks like a man who
hasn’t slept for a week, which is odd considering I saw him only two days ago.
The purple smudges under his eyes clash badly with his sallow skin, and he’s
sporting a retro Don Johnson look.

“You look like crap,” I observe.

He doesn’t react.

“Bob around?”

He drops his gaze to the desktop. “No. I haven’t seen him
since I left work Monday. I’m really worried.” He comes to his feet as if an
angst bomb has just gone off nearby, and hovers behind the desk. “Bob doesn’t
do stuff like this. He doesn’t just take off.”

I’m
suddenly a bit angsty myself, but I try not to echo Perry’s fidgeting. “Maybe
he took some time off and forgot to tell you.”

“Bob schedules
everything
.”
He gestures at the calendar on the wall behind the desk. Model-Ts, not model
T&A. “If it’s not on that
calendar, it isn’t scheduled.
That’s the first place I
looked when he didn’t show up
Tuesday. He had two rebuilds. He wasn’t here to do them. I even went by his house. All locked up. And his
car’s still here, parked
behind the garage. I didn’t
notice it until I went out to feed the dogs yesterday morning.”

“Have you reported him missing?” July asks. I half expect
her to pull a casebook out of her pocket.

“No. It’s
too soon, isn’t it? Someone
has to be missing for awhile before the police give a rip.”

“Seventy-two hours,” says July, “but given Bob’s reputation
as a solid citizen, you could make a case for speeding things up. You really
think something’s wrong?”

Perry swallows convulsively, a haunted look in his eyes.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,
Jules. This isn’t like Bob.
Besides, he left his
car
.”

“You’ve searched the lot?” I ask.

Perry nods. “Walked it from one end to the other. Checked
the outbuildings, too. Bob’s
not a young guy and he loves big, sloppy burgers . . .”

“I’m calling this in.” July reaches for the phone. So much
for our hunting/gathering expedition.

“What about the dogs?” I ask Perry.

“The dogs?”

“Were they out in the yard or penned when you came in
Tuesday morning?”

His eyes seem to read the air in front of him. “Uh, in. They
were in. Their pen’s out behind the garage.”

“So either Bob put them back in or . . .”

Perry’s eyes widen. “Or what?”

“Let’s take a look,” I suggest.

July glances over at me from the phone and nods, her brow
furrowing at whatever she’s hearing on the other end. “Don’t touch,” she
mouths, as if I have to be reminded.

Perry leads the way through the fine almost-rain to the
covered dog pen on the south-facing corner of the building. The inmates seem
happy to see us, jumping against the chain link enclosure and emitting hopeful
doggy whines.

There are three dogs: a large Shepherd/Collie mix, a smaller
gray and black mutt, and a Golden Lab to cover the middle ground between the
two. The pen has a pin-and-cradle latch with a combination lock.

I prod the lock with a fingernail, noticing subliminally
that I can hear the sound of traffic on the highway behind us. The dogs
congregate, vying for my attention. The Lab is limping. I drop to my haunches
and pat the fence with the flat of my hand.

“Come here, girl,” I coo.

The Lab minces over, showing an open, trench-like wound
about four inches long on her left hip.

“Evie’s a klutz,” Perry says. “She’s bigger than she thinks
and she tries to follow Max everywhere.” He indicates the small mutt, who’s nosing the knee of my jeans
through the wire. “Never learns.”

I get up, wipe my hands on my jeans, and glance over my
shoulder toward the highway. A screen of pines and manzanita blocks my view,
but the foliage isn’t my primary interest—a gleaming royal blue Volvo PV-544
sits against the curtain of greenery. I make it to be a ’64 or ’65. Classic.

I go over and press my nose to each window—figuratively
speaking. The upholstery looks factory new. I take off my knit cap, cover my
hand with it and open the door.

“I’ve already searched it,” Perry says from behind me.

I ignore him and peek under the floor mats, in the glove
box, and under the seats for anything out of the ordinary. I find nothing. I’ve
gone around to the trunk and am gazing into its empty interior when July joins
us. She looks like a Valkyrie—blood fever rising in her pale eyes.

“They filed a report,” she says. “They won’t declare him
missing until tomorrow morning.”

“Aren’t they going to send someone out to look around?”

“Nope.”

I close the trunk. “Well,
we’re
here. You’re a cop. And I was
almost a cop.”

“I’m Highway Patrol, Gina. I have no jurisdiction—”

“Highways have cars; right now we’re surrounded by cars and
we’re—gosh—a whole fifteen yards from a highway.”

“Gina . . .”

“You’re right. We should just go shopping.”

July casts a look down the length of the garage toward the
gated junkyard. “I’m not in the mood.”

I turn to Perry, who’s watching us warily. “Where did Bob
think someone was messing with his cars?”

“Uh, somewhere along the back fence.”

“Did you check back there?”

“I told you: I walked the whole lot. I didn’t see squat.”

I head across the back of the garage toward the yard, July
matching step with me. Perry brings up the rear.

The office phone bleats, the sharp sound rolling across the
wrecking yard from exterior speakers. Perry hesitates, then goes back to the
office, leaving us to slosh our way to the far corner of the lot.

Banners of gauzy mist trail through the tall sentry pines.
Highway 49 is louder here: engine noise and the hiss of Michelins on
rain-slicked tarmac. Through gaps in the foliage, I see cars flash by as if
taunting the disabled derelicts in Bob’s lot. In various stages of decay, they
are lined up in precise columns east to west, rows north to south, going
nowhere.

I’m convinced that if I measure the distance between wrecks,
I’ll discover it is uniform. Except, I notice, for a silvery green Chrysler
LeBaron, three from the end on the row nearest the highway. This one’s about ten inches from true.

“That must be the one Bob was upset about,” I say as we
approach it.

July walks around the car, glancing from it to its nearest
neighbor. “I guess I see what you mean. It’s angled a little. Bob found that
disturbing?”

I nod, making a circuit of the car. It’s in pretty good
shape as wrecks go; it still has wheels and the rear ones have fully inflated
tires on them. “I don’t share his obsession, but I can understand how someone
that organized could be weirded out by this. Everybody straightens pictures now
and again.”

“No they don’t.”

I pause near the rear of the car. “Bob said it was about six
inches off. This looks like more than that.”

“The ground is pretty torn up, too.” July looks down at the
muddy turf under our feet. “Somehow I doubt raccoons did this.”

Judging by the dents in the roof, the car’s been rolled a
few times—possibly the cause of its demise. Which does not explain a peculiar
wound in the driver’s side rear quarter panel. We squat to give it a closer
look.

“Someone’s been using it for target practice,” July
observes.

“Along with Bob’s
dogs?”

She frowns at me through the mist.

“There’s a wound on the Lab’s left hip,” I explain. “It
looked like a bullet track to me.”

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but—”

“Someone’s messing around in Bob’s lot; Bob goes to
investigate and goes missing. Meanwhile, a dog and a car turn up with bullet
holes in them. Where’s to jump?”

The mist is closing in hard now, our world dwindling to a
circle of lumpy mounds ringed by sentinel trees. The place looks like a
graveyard.

We watch each other think, then July’s eyes stray to the
rear of the LeBaron.

“Yeah,” I say, “I think we should.”

We move together to the rear bumper and stand looking at the
trunk. My throat is suddenly too tight to swallow. I don’t want to open it,
especially when I realize the rain is masking an unpleasant odor that I tell
myself is rotting upholstery.

I reach into my pocket and give my flaky
matryoshka
a
quick rub, then reach for the latch, but July stops me.

“Let me, Gina. I’m off duty but I’m still a cop.”

The lock is jammed, inevitably, and it takes both of us to
pry it open. When at last it pops, the smell is staggering. Soggy light
trickles into the dark trunk—enough light to make the size and shape of the
contents recognizable—a human body in royal blue coveralls.

My throat closes up altogether at this point, making it hard
to breathe. My eyes sting. I turn them up into the rain.

July says softly: “Damn.”

“Are you carrying a weapon?” I ask.

She shakes her head, pulls out her cell phone, dials 911.

“I was thinking of Perry.”

She glances at me sharply, mouth open, but the dispatcher
comes on and she launches into a terse description of the situation. I step
into the aisle and watch for Perry, who is perhaps this very moment on his way
to parts unknown or lurking somewhere in this automotive cemetery.

In mere moments, I hear sirens, though I can’t tell from
which direction.

“There’s a unit up on South Auburn and another one just down
the hill on 49,” July says, from behind me. “You don’t think Perry did this?”

“Perry wouldn’t have any reason to be sneaking around the
yard at night; he has access any time. Even if he were doing something
underhanded in the wee hours, he’d know what nights Bob was working late and
avoid them. Like he said, Bob scheduled everything. And Perry wouldn’t excite
the dogs. Besides which, his reaction to Bob’s disappearance seemed genuine.”

I pride myself on being a good judge of character, with one
glaring exception. And that gives me pause. As anxious as Perry seems, he
obviously doesn’t want us poking around the lot, and I suspect he lied about
finding the dogs penned on Tuesday morning. I have to assume that whoever shot
the Lab also shot Bob. You wouldn’t expect a murderer to escort the mutts
safely back to their pen before making a getaway.

“Gina? July?”

We both jump at the sound of Perry’s voice. I bend and pick
up a fist-sized rock.

“Here!” I shout.

He looms out of the mist a moment later, fading from ghostly
to solid in four or five steps. “Find anything?”

His eyes go from my face to the open trunk of the LeBaron.
Is that fear in them or something else?

He moves toward the rear of the car. July circles him,
warily; I pull back and let him pass by me. I don’t want to see Bob’s body
again, or smell it, so I keep my eyes on Perry’s face as he rounds the rear of
the car and peers into the trunk.

His face looks as if the mist has soaked through the pores
of his skin and leached out every bit of color. “Oh . . . Oh,
God.” He steps back and gulps several short, sharp breaths.

Over his shoulder I see that July has armed herself with a
rock and is within striking distance.

“He’s dead,” I say.

Perry shakes his head. “No, he can’t be. Oh, God, this can’t
happen.”

He squats suddenly and I scuttle back several steps. July
cocks her arm. But Perry is doubled over, hands on head, shaking
uncontrollably. Either he is innocent or he’s one hell of an actor.

The sirens are congregating in the parking lot. Flashing
lights paint the mist above the roof of the garage a fitful red.

July drops her rock. “Let’s talk to the police.”