A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery) (19 page)

She almost made it, too, but the weirdly sliding back corner of the trailer caught them hard on the passenger door side. There was a stunningly loud
bang!
as the side air bag next to Chris’s head deployed, and now it was the Lamborghini that was fishtailing over the narrow road. Alix knew better than to lean on the brakes, which would have eliminated what little steering control she had. Instead, she tried hard to steer “into” the skid. Unfortunately, “into the skid” meant heading for the edge of the cliff. Fortunately, the guardrail was sturdier than it looked. Also springier. When they ran into it, it bounced them jarringly back onto the road. She caught a dreamlike glimpse of her shoulder bag flying out the open window and into the void. The car was spinning slowly but uncontrollably, and now the rock face loomed ahead. It was the rear of the Lamborghini that would take the hit, she could see that, and there was nothing to do now but hit the brake pedal and pray for the best. As she flinched instinctively, there was another ear-splitting
bang!
and now the front air bag exploded into her face.

She didn’t know how long she’d been out—not long, she thought, probably only seconds. What woke her up was an acrid smell as penetrating as ammonia, and when she opened her eyes she saw that the car was full of a powdery gray haze, apparently from the air bags, which were now slowly deflating. Her nose hurt, but when she touched it there was no blood, and no give or wiggle either. Other than that—

In her fog she’d forgotten about Chris. “Chris! Are you all right?”

No answer. Chris’s head drooped on her chest. Alix’s heart sank. She touched her friend’s shoulder. “Chris?”

Chris’s head jerked weakly up. “Uh?”

“Chris, are you okay?”

It took a while for her to answer. “Yes…no…I don’t think so. My head…”

“Don’t move. I’ll call for help.” But even as she reached around for her cell phone she remembered that it had been in her shoulder bag, which was now probably floating down the Chama on its way to the Rio Grande and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. The thought of the cell phone reminded her suddenly of the guy in the pickup truck, about whom she’d also forgotten. And the eighteen-wheeler. My God, she was really in a daze. She looked anxiously up. The Lamborghini had spun completely around so she was looking back down the road, and there they were, a hundred yards back. The jackknifed truck, its trailer upright, its cab on its side, was more or less wrapped around the pickup, which was also on its side. Dust was still rising from the jumble. Nobody moving. Good. As far as she was concerned, she had no problem with them being dead.

“Alix,” Chris mumbled, “I don’t…I can’t quite…” And then her eyeballs rolled up, her head fell limply back, and she was unconscious again.

Alix was terrified for her. Chris was obviously injured, maybe seriously. She needed to get to a hospital fast. But what was to be done? She felt herself near panicking. They were on a road that might not see another driver for hours. No cell phone, no—

When the calm, reassuring female voice came over the navigation speaker, it was as if Alix were hearing the voice of God.

“This is your Always On-Call service. We have received a signal that your air bags have deployed. Do you need assistance? We have you on Highway 84, four miles northwest of Abiquiu, New Mexico. If you cannot reply—”

By that time Alix had found her voice. “Yes, we need assistance!” she shouted, close to crying with gratitude. “My friend is…”

“And you honestly think he was trying to
kill
them?” Ted asked, somewhere between astonished and skeptical. “Run them over the cliff?”

“I do, yes,” Lieutenant Mendoza said. “Absolutely.”

Ted just sat there silently shaking his head. Mendoza had called him twenty minutes ago and asked him to come by his office; something important had happened up above Española. He had just finished giving Ted the details.

“But look, Eduardo,” Ted said at last, “why jump to a conclusion like that? They were driving a fancy sports car, they were in open country, lowrider country. Why wouldn’t it make more sense to assume the pickup was trying to drag them into a race, or maybe playing a stupid game of chicken, and things just went wrong when the semi came around the bend?”

“Because…” Mendoza turned his Lobos cap backward to underscore the seriousness of the situation and began ticking points off on his fingers. Pinky: “One, the guy in the semi wasn’t some innocent lug who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a thug, an ex-con. The two of them were, and this wasn’t the first time they’d worked together.” Ring finger: “Two, the story London told made sense.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And number three and most important—” his middle finger was bent way back for emphasis, “—we got the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s report. Skid marks and vehicle damage patterns back her up to a T. The pickup and the semi tried to box her in and force her off the road, all right, and damned if she didn’t outmaneuver the two of them. She almost got away clean, too, but the semi skidded and the back end fishtailed into them. The Lamborghini totaled, but somehow she managed to keep it on the road and get it stopped without killing the two of them. Let me tell you, not only can that lady handle a car, she’s gotta have nerves of steel.”

“Sounds as if you’re becoming quite a fan,” Ted said.

“I’m impressed, yeah.” He turned the hat right way around and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

“So are you bringing her in to talk to you about it?”

“About this? No, not officially; it’s in Rio Arriba’s jurisdiction, Denny Ortiz’s baby. But she called me yesterday to let me know that picture’s a fake. Absolutely, definitely, categorically. She’s coming in to talk about that when she gets back, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we get into the Lamborghini thing too.”

Absolutely, definitely, categorically
, Ted thought. A bit more definite than she was the other day. “I’d appreciate it if you’d fill me in on what she’s got to say about it. About the painting, I mean.”

“You bet.”

“What about the drivers of those trucks?” Ted asked. “Has the sheriff gotten anything from them?”

“From one of them, the semi driver, and it’s the clincher. Denny talked to him, and he claims that all he knows is that the other kid, Eddie Sierra, paid him two thousand dollars to do it and he took him up on it, no questions asked, which Denny believes, because this guy is just dumb enough to do it. He also said it was just a practical joke, that they were just trying to scare them, not harm them, which Denny doesn’t believe, and neither do I.

“What about Sierra? What’s his story?”

“We’ll probably never know. He’s still unconscious. They don’t think he’s going to wake up.”

Ted nodded. “So what do you think this was all about, Eduardo?”

Mendoza shrugged. “No idea, but I think we can make a couple of starting assumptions. First, this turkey, Sierra, didn’t come up with it on his own. Both these guys are losers, as dumb as doorknobs. What’s more, where would Sierra get two thousand bucks? No, somebody put him up to it—paid him enough for him to give two thousand dollars to his good buddy.”

“Makes sense.”

“And then, I think it’s safe to assume it was London they were after, not LeMay.”

“Why?”

“Well, because of the other attempt on her life.”

“Other attempt…?” Ted leaned forward, his hands on the desk. “Wait a minute, you think the casita explosion
wasn’t
an accident?”

“I don’t think so, I know so. Sorry, Ted, I meant to tell you; guess I forgot.”

“No apology necessary. Homicides are your affair; I’m just interested in the art. That was the deal. But as long as you’ve brought it up…” An inquisitive lift of the eyebrows.

“Well, we figured it was at least worth checking the explosion out, so we did some poking around and we found out that LeMay originally booked a room in the main building for London. Then, according to their records, the day before they showed up she called to change it and put London in that casita instead—that specific casita, as a special surprise.”

Ted frowned. “So you think LeMay set her up? But—”

“No, LeMay didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“But you just said—”

“No, I said their
records
showed it was LeMay. Someone c
laiming
to be LeMay. Pay attention.”

Ted sighed and sat back. “You’re losing me here.”

“Ted, just because someone claims to be someone doesn’t prove he’s who he says he is. As you should be very well aware, Rollie, old pal.”

“True enough,” Ted agreed with a smile.

“Nope, it was Liz Coane who made that call.”

Ted was genuinely startled. “How the hell did you come up with that?”

Mendoza’s lips parted in a toothy grin. “Superior policework, my man. See, the hotel’s log book shows the call coming in at two thirty-five Thursday, but no telephone number to go with it. So that tells us nothing. But…now switch to our investigation into the Coane homicide. We are there doing the painstaking information-gathering for which we are so justly famous, and of course, one of the things we’re examining is the call log in her cell phone—made and received. And lo and behold, we find that on Thursday, September 9, at two thirty-four in the afternoon, she placed a one-minute call to—”

“The Hacienda Encantada,” Ted said. “Sonofagun.”

“Yup. It was Liz who set her up.”

“But how would she have gotten into the casita to rig the propane? And when? Or did she get somebody else to do it?”

Another shrug from Mendoza. “Oh, it probably wasn’t that hard. Of course, that particular casita doesn’t exist anymore, but we brought in a propane stove guy, and he looked at the way the casitas are hooked up in general, and he says he could have done it easy—that just about anybody could have—from the outside, in back, where the tank feeds in. To make it even simpler, none of the casitas have windows in back.”

Ted took this in soberly. “Two attempts to kill London inside of three days,” he mused.

“Looks like it. By two different people, too, since Coane wasn’t around anymore to arrange the second one.” He shook his head. “I sure wish I had some idea of what the hell is going on.”

“Well, whatever it is, it proves she’s in it up to her ears. I knew she had to be, right from the start. A chip off the old…What?” he asked, aware that Mendoza was staring quizzically at him. “What?”

“Ted, let me get this straight. Here’s this girl—this woman—who, by the skin of her teeth and her considerable daring and abilities, manages—barely manages—to escape two attempts to kill her…and your conclusion is
she’s
gotta be guilty of something? What am I missing?”

“A lot of things,” Ted said warmly. “The fact that her father is who he is; the fact that she followed right after him into the art world; the fact that she got this job with LeMay only through his kind assistance; the fact that—”

“The fact that you’ve got some kind of a thing about her.”

“I have—?”
But in the midst of taking umbrage he found himself laughing and suddenly relaxing. Even to his own ears his rationale was full of holes. “Yeah,” he said, sighing, “you’re right, Eduardo. I’m not exactly being objective, am I? Okay, what can I say? I guess there was just something about her that rubbed me the wrong way.”

Such as the fact that she had been utterly, supremely unsmitten by his charms?
he speculated. But this particular fact he thought it best to leave unreported.

“Well, I wondered about her at first too, but now I’ve come around to thinking she’s straight-arrow. You need to give her a fair chance, Ted.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, meaning it, but very much ready to change the subject. “You said they’re up in Española now? Neither of them seriously hurt?”

“Right, last I heard. They’re keeping LeMay in the hospital for observation at least overnight, though. London, I don’t know where she is now. They looked her over and let her go, but she’s probably still there at the hospital with LeMay would be my guess. This all happened just a few hours ago.”

“Well, would you have any objection if I drove up there to ask her a few things?”

“No objection at all, but you can get there faster than that. LeMay’s pilot, her old boyfriend, is worried about her. He’s taking their plane up to the Española airport. If you went with him you’d be there in fifteen minutes instead of an hour and a half. Want me to call the airport here in Santa Fe? Maybe he hasn’t left yet.”

“Yes, please, I’d appreciate that. I’ve got some questions I need answers to.”

Oh, yeah, like what?
he asked himself during the brief drive to the airport a few miles south of the city.
What was so important that he had to fly up there right now, this minute, to see her? Exactly what were these questions that were so urgent they couldn’t wait a day or two until she returned to Santa Fe?

Could Mendoza have inadvertently hit the nail on the head?
he wondered uneasily.
Did he have “some kind of a thing” for her?