Tried & True (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 5) (15 page)
Read Tried & True (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 5) Online
Authors: Jerusha Jones
Skip didn’t look anything like the man I’d married.
I recognized him, of course. But he was gaunt, his jeans and sweatshirt hanging on his lean body. A few days’ beard growth on his cheeks and a closely shaved head. Maybe—there was something different about his eyes, their shape and the tautness of the skin around them—maybe surgery? I didn’t think his weight loss could account for the difference.
But the voice and the lightness in the golden-brown eyes when he looked at me—those belonged to my Skip.
My first semi-coherent thought, however, was that I was glad Loretta wasn’t present to see him like this. He looked homeless.
But he had a gun, and he was holding it level, pointed at Ochoa’s gut. It became the only thing I could look at.
It was my gun, from the top shelf of the closet in my bedroom. I presumed he’d found the ammunition too, which I’d stuffed amid my unworn tank tops and shorts in a dresser drawer.
There was movement in my peripheral vision, and then there were a lot of guns. Ochoa’s companions had brought their own, as had Felix. Their pistols were extra long—silencers had been screwed onto the barrels. Which seemed weird to me, since they’d arrived on ATVs—not exactly the quietest form of transportation. It was one of those randomly incongruous things a brain hyped on adrenaline notices the nanosecond before all hell breaks loose.
There was no diplomacy, no gentlemanly warnings. I had no idea who fired first. I didn’t really care. It was deafening. Ear-splitting shots from Skip and the whistling pops of bullets fired through silencers. There was yelling and tumbling and rolling through the brush.
At least, that’s what I was doing. I’d been yanked or shoved, or maybe my legs had collapsed. I came to rest at the base of a tree, pine needles in my mouth, saltiness stinging my eyes, shadowy echoes still ringing in my ears.
More shots—short bursts and I couldn’t keep track of the number of bullets. But it was my gun—the loud one. At least, I thought so.
I shoved the hood back off my head and hinged my arms under my torso. By jamming my elbows into the ground, I dragged my body toward the trail. My boots felt like dead weights at the ends of my legs.
There was only one person in my field of view, and he was wearing camouflage. He was lying on his back beside the farthest ATV, moaning and rocking his hips from side to side, his gun on the ground near his shoulder.
It wasn’t the most rational thing to do, but I didn’t worry about that until much later. I got to my feet and ran to the injured man, bent so low my knees bumped my chest. No one shot at me.
I landed on my knees beside him, grabbed the gun and shoved it behind me. I leaned over him. It wasn’t Ochoa. “Where’d they go?”
But he was absorbed in his own pain.
“Where’d they go?” I shouted and punched his shoulder.
“Woods,” he forced out.
Big help.
Then more shots from farther down the trail, toward the ravine.
I swiped water from my brow with my sleeve, picked up the gun and ran with it. It wasn’t quite like running with scissors, but close. With the silencer, the thing was long and awkward and clunky, and the thought that tripping while I held it in my hand probably wasn’t a good idea zipped through my mind.
“Nora! Stop.” Skip barked the command.
I obeyed, so fast I teetered and almost did fall. He’d seen me.
Oh yeah, the red jacket, dodo.
Where was he? I spun around, looking wildly, but his jeans and dark sweatshirt blended in.
Which I didn’t—I was wearing a target. I set the gun on the ground, unzipped the jacket, ripped it off. But my garment underneath was a cream-colored raglan sweater—a gift from Loretta. She’d been practicing cables, and the simple chain of a six-stitch, right-twisting rope cable encircled the cuffs. And underneath the sweater, I was aware that my skin was awfully white—an anemic shade of winter pallor. I wasn’t making progress.
Why couldn’t I make my brain focus on what mattered?
“Skip?” I stumbled forward, veering toward where his voice had been.
He was only about fifteen feet away, but I didn’t see him until I almost bumped into him. Could have been because I was watching my feet, trying so hard to get the messages from my brain down there to my muscles and tendons so they would do what I wanted them to. I was shaking beyond control.
The green mound on the ground at Skip’s feet turned out to be Ochoa. Skip had spread Ochoa’s camouflage coat open, revealing a black vest strapped over his torso. He kicked Ochoa in the ribs and got no response.
“Bulletproof.” Skip snorted as though this precaution solidified his already poor opinion of the mobster.
“Is he dead?” I whispered. I couldn’t see any blood or obvious wounds on the body.
Skip raised his arm, and I saw that he’d been holding a gun—with a silencer attached—at his side. He fired two shots into Ochoa’s abdomen, just below the vest. “Let’s hope so.”
I blinked, staggered backward, slipped. Tried to say something. I don’t know—it was a keening sound. That man—that man who looked and sounded like Skip. That was not—not what Skip would do. Yet even as those thoughts spread, I knew how little I knew. These months on the run—running toward me, wrangling his plan the whole way, trying to turn the fractured pieces back toward his goal, whatever that was. Had I ever really known him?
I couldn’t breathe. I was making squeaking, clicking sounds in my throat.
Skip grabbed me around the waist, hauled me back toward the ATVs. At some point along the way, I recovered enough to put up some resistance, tried to walk for myself and carry my own weight, and noticed that he was limping, badly.
“Come on. I don’t know where the other guy is.” Skip’s voice was rough with urgency. He held my wrist in a vice grip and pulled me along.
“What promise?” The words blurted out by themselves, surprising me with their strength.
“That he would kill my family if I failed to perform the services I was offering.” We’d reached the closest ATV. He was holding me up. My legs had quit working again. He set the gun on the seat of the ATV and tilted my head up with a thumb under my chin. “Before I met you. I assumed my mom was going to drink herself to death. I wasn’t going to have a family, so it was a risk I was willing to take—then.” A little smile flitted across his face. “Things change.”
“How long have you—”
“A few days. I just needed to see you again before—” He pulled me close and pressed a kiss into my forehead. “This is
not
how I wanted to have a moment alone with you. Baby, it’s all over. I left you a note.”
A mechanical, droning buzz sounded overhead, close and low. The blades
whop-whopp
ed with reverberating intensity, but the helicopter’s approach was hidden by the thick canopy of tree branches.
The muscles in Skip’s jaw rippled. “Walt’s been taking care of you.” He said it in a hoarse whisper, his lips against my ear. It wasn’t a question. “Good. Let that happen, baby. You won’t see me again. I’m doing this so you can truthfully tell them you didn’t help me. I’m sorry.” Another fierce kiss, and Skip shoved me.
Hard and down, with a twist. My ankle crackled when it rolled, and I pitched sideways through the brush. My head bounced off something on the way down, and I landed on my shoulder and hip, an arm pinned beneath me.
Later, I would remember that I did hear an ATV start up and then race away. And I would recall Violet’s face a while after that, flushed and furious, blocking my view of the delicate ivy leaf. And the man in camouflage being strapped to a board and carried out with an IV bag held aloft over him. And shouts in the woods as things were found and zones were cleared.
They made me go to the hospital too. I was X-rayed with cold efficiency and then sat for a long time until someone wearing a lab coat wrapped my ankle in a tight bandage, daubed antiseptic in various places, and said that, since I didn’t have any extra holes in me, I could go home as long as I was mindful of the concussion.
It was late, and waves of fatigue exacerbated my dizziness. Des drove. I think he would have insisted even if I had been steady and fully functional on my own. He should start a taxi service. Probably would pay better than being sheriff.
And he filled me in on some of the things I’d missed. When the FBI team had found Ochoa, he’d been alive—barely. They called in a Life Flight helicopter, and two armed agents accompanied him to the Oregon Health & Science University hospital in Portland.
That was not the helicopter I’d heard. The first helicopter was the FBI sending in backup agents as quickly as they could while other teams were en route by road. And that massive reaction had been prompted by a series of frantic, persistent phone calls from Judge Trane.
“Judge Trane?” I asked, wondering if my hearing was still messed up from the gunfire.
“Apparently she also left you a message. They found your phone in the pocket of the red jacket you ditched. The ringer was off.”
Because of the memorial service. I’d forgotten to turn it back on. Des, as usual, reported these facts in a mild, unhurried manner, but my stomach lurched at the belated information. What was I supposed to have known? Would it have changed the outcome?
“Theo Gandy,” Des continued. “Sound familiar?”
“Uh, Theo? Do you mean Judge Trane’s assistant?”
“That’s the one. He made a mistake and accidentally copied her on an email about you which he forwarded to some unapproved recipients—one of which was Felix Ochoa.” Des shook his head with a short chuckle. “I’m fuzzy on the details—you’ll have to get those from Matt. But I do know she fired this Gandy fellow on the spot and that the FBI has locked down the email servers for the bankruptcy court so they can figure out who all Gandy was talking to and about what.”
If that was the case, then all my efforts at seeding Ochoa with reasons to come out of his shell—and buy my company—had been for naught. But he’d come anyway. For another reason. The promise he’d made to Skip. Maybe the pressure I’d exerted had pushed him over the edge, just a different edge.
Des broke into my spinning thoughts. “Are you sure there were only three men, Nora?”
“Yes. Three men and three ATVs. Well, besides Skip. Why?”
“And Skip took off by himself?” Des persisted.
“I already told them—I didn’t see him leave. But there was no one else. Why?” I shifted for a better view of Des’s profile in the dark Jeep.
“Some of the counts aren’t matching up, and now that it’s dark, the FBI had to put a hold on further searching until tomorrow. It makes them—us, me included—nervous when not all the people or weapons are accounted for. Too bad Trudy’s taken her dogs to a training convention, or I’d have suggested we bring them in. The dogs don’t care what time it is.”
“Des, I’m a little slow here.” I sighed. “Could you go over that again?”
“Three men are in the hospital—Ochoa, the one who was shot near the ATVs, and the one who fell down a muddy embankment and broke his leg. Two handguns, both with silencers, were located. One was in the possession of the guy with the broken leg and the other was on the trail near your red jacket. So one man and two guns are missing.”
In other words, my husband was still a fugitive, and now Skip was considered armed and dangerous. In a way, I appreciated the fact that Des hadn’t come out and said it point blank.
“He won’t be back. You don’t have to worry.”
“Nora.” There was warning in Des’s tone. Probably a warning against unrealistic hopefulness.
“He promised. I won’t see him again.”
The sobbing came out of nowhere, and Des reached over and held my hand.
oOo
Clarice is fiercely loyal—both ways. Either for you or against you. I’d been immeasurably blessed by having her on my side. But Skip was now irreversibly in her
against
camp, and she made no bones about airing her opinions on the matter, even though she had to resort to muttering under her breath at the breakfast table so that Loretta wouldn’t hear.
We started with the coal room because it was the only point in the basement with outside access and because we’d used it before for a couple of clandestine activities. It was a logical place to begin. It was also a concrete box of a room with a chute from the delivery hatch and a few steps up to the people-size door. The ceiling consisted of joists and the bottom side of the subfloor of the room above. There were no good places to tuck a note.
“Huh,” Clarice grunted, fists firmly planted on her hips. “How long did he say he was here?” With her toe, she nudged the edge of a thin mattress that was on the floor under the high end of the coal chute as though it might harbor bedbugs. Skip had left scant signs of his habitation.
“A few days.”
“Then you can’t tell me he confined his movements to the coal room.”
“How’d I miss him?” I braced myself against the wall and shifted my full weight onto my good leg. My sprained ankle was throbbing with a vengeance inside the wrap.
“Easy. You were grieving. We all were.” Clarice relented and came over to clamp a supportive arm around my middle. “We didn’t have reason to come down here. I think the last time I got into the linen supply was on Tuesday, and that’s way at the other end of the basement. He would have had free rein of this level, which means”—she gave me a little jostle to make her point—“that note could be anywhere.”
Of course, she was right. Hope mingled with despair is such a difficult emotion. A little goes a long way, and I felt as though I’d overdosed on it.
“I should have noticed anyway,” I whispered.
“What, like ESP? Balderdash,” Clarice growled. “We all—you, me, Loretta, the FBI if they’d been paying attention—knew he was coming this way, moving toward you. It was his choice to remain hidden. Did you think of that? How simple it would have been for him to waltz up those stairs to the kitchen and say, ‘Yoo-hoo, honey, I’m home,’ huh? But he didn’t. And if I know Skip—which I do, unfortunately—then there was a reason he kept his presence secret from you.”
“Like wanting to avoid prison,” I murmured. Besides, he had come upstairs at least once—to search my room and steal my gun.
“Yep. That’s a good reason,” Clarice said. “Come on, girl. Get your rear in gear. Are we going to find this note or what?”
“But
how
did he get here?” I asked as I limped behind her toward the infirmary.
“Like mother, like son?” Clarice pitched an eyebrow at me over her shoulder. She meant hitchhiking. It was a possibility—one among many. And since Skip owned Mayfield, he wouldn’t have needed navigational help.
An hour later, we found the note. In the icebox with the money from the gold bar conversions. Of course.
Skip had placed his note—really a large packet of papers—in the one spot that was reasonable to assume I would access the most often. Because who doesn’t need money? I couldn’t tell from just looking, but I wondered if Skip had helped himself to some of the cash. It was his, after all. Or at least he’d been the one in possession of the funds when he’d disappeared.
The
first
time—I reminded myself, clutching the packet to my chest—the first time he’d disappeared. Not this most recent disappearance. I shuddered and scrunched my eyes closed. I was going to have to readjust my paradigm, such as it was, all over again.
Clarice gripped my elbow, and I opened my eyes to see her frowning, with the wrinkles deeply puckered around her lips.
“Listen,” she hissed and pointed over our heads.
Loretta was chattering in the kitchen. Occasionally, Emmie would answer her. Nothing of consequence, just mundane comments about lunch and school and Pea and Queue, the new donkeys. But it sounded as though they were both easing out of the dull black cocoon of grief, emerging again into the everyday interests of the living. Hints of their underlying personalities were shining through. I grinned at Emmie’s remark about the Terminator’s particular preference for spelling tests as a source of dietary fiber. Apparently one of the Clayborne boys had come up with the idea, and it was a big hit with the goat.
Clarice squeezed my elbow hard and glared at me.
And then it struck me—I could hear every single word they were saying. Clearly.
“Who needs an intercom when you have a dumbwaiter shaft?” Clarice muttered hoarsely.
For those days when Skip was hiding in the basement, he would have—could have, at least—known exactly what was going on. Because we always talked in the kitchen, including—and perhaps especially—when discussing sensitive subjects after Emmie went to bed. I’d told Loretta and Clarice about everything that had happened in San Francisco while sitting directly over where I was now standing.
oOo
She’d instigated the altercation by yelling at me about taking unnecessary risks. I’d thought her definition of
risk
needed a reality check and told her so. Our relations had deteriorated from there.
So Clarice and Loretta and I did note reading by committee. I separated the papers and laid them out on the kitchen table. I sat with my swollen ankle propped on another chair, and Emmie snuggled on my lap. Clarice and Loretta leaned over my shoulders. We all quickly scanned.
And then re-scanned. And then read every word.
At least I did, and judging by Loretta’s sniffles, she was dwelling on the same paper I was.
“I never knew,” she whispered. Her hand was heavy on my shoulder. “Did he tell you?”
I shook my head.
It was a copy of a medical record—documenting a hernia surgery and the resulting complications. Follow-up test results and confirmation. Skip was sterile due to extensively and irreversibly damaged vasa deferentia. Simply, the hernia, or perhaps the attempted repair of the hernia, had caused an involuntary vasectomy.
I counted backward from the dates on the record. When he was twenty-four years old, Skip had found out that he’d never father children.
Which meant that the little girl on my lap wasn’t his. I gulped, but for the first time in a long time, my tear ducts were dry.
“So you’re not married,” Clarice muttered.
Another stapled bunch of papers were a copy of our marriage annulment—on which Skip had forged my signature beside his own—because fraud is a legal basis for annulment in California. And fraud includes knowingly concealing from your spouse the inability to produce children. The papers were stamped “FILED” and dated nine days ago. I’d become single on the same day I’d boarded the flight to San Francisco.
Skip had written the name and phone number of the lawyer who had processed the annulment on a separate slip of paper. I grabbed that and stuffed it into my pocket.
It appeared a Washington-based lawyer, under the direction of the California lawyer, had processed a couple of property transfers. The deed to Mayfield had been signed over to Walter P. Neftali. The freight terminal was now mine—officially and legally, although not by means of communal property law anymore.
“What’s
haywire
mean?” Emmie asked. She held Skip’s handwritten note—the one piece of paper I’d been specifically avoiding in an effort to save the best (worst?) for last—and was puzzling over his somewhat illegible scrawl.
