Cash & Carry (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 4) (16 page)

CHAPTER 22

I sat there somewhat at a loss, realizing I hadn’t been coached on this part. But it was probably wise to clear out just as quickly as Angelica had. I left one of the hundred dollar bills from her envelope to pay for my meal. The waitress certainly deserved a generous tip for all the time I’d hogged a gigantic booth. And I figured if the bill was counterfeit or marked, then the FBI could clean up my mess. I was looking at all money as suspect these days.

I hurriedly dodged through the parking lot, trying to remember if I’d parked Lentil on the far side of an Interstate Distributor semi or a Schneider semi. Orange—it had been a big orange rig. Of course, numerous trucks had both come and gone since I’d arrived, and it was as though the puzzle in the parking lot had been rearranged.

There she was. I climbed into the cab and thought about ripping the wire off. But I would have to take off my shirt again, and that seemed too much hassle, especially in a truck stop parking lot when Lentil didn’t have tinted windows. I just wanted to go home. Matt and Violet could retrieve their equipment later.

Besides, they were plenty busy at the moment. Maybe.

I finally put a finger on how I was feeling—deflated. I hadn’t worked the conversation around to Angelica’s illegal activities well enough or long enough. Other than her possession of the bracelet, I doubted the FBI had cause to detain her at the airport. I’d been desperately hoping she’d just spill the beans about everything. Terribly naive of me.

Of course, Angelica was smooth, and I should have expected that. What an utter flop.

I put Lentil in gear and puttered slowly through the semitruck obstacle course to the exit. Saturday morning on the freeway was actually pleasant—on this particular stretch of freeway that was far from major metropolitan areas, anyway. The other drivers were intent upon getting to their destinations as quickly as possible. I stuck to the right lane, behind the rear pilot car for a long-load flatbed semi that was carrying the blades for a wind turbine and in front of a sawdust hauler. Moseying along, enjoying the scenery. The Columbia River looked calm, mellow, slow. But looks can be deceiving.

I turned on my blinker, properly signaling for the Woodland exit, and chuckled to myself. I drove like an old farmer in an old pickup. Just chugging along. Gone were the days of dodging crazy traffic at breakneck speed. I definitely liked this more relaxed pace.

One of the phones in my bag rang. I fished it out and saw Matt’s name on the caller ID. I pulled to a stop at the county road that went straight through town and carefully checked both directions. No cops to nab me for driving while talking on a cell phone. I answered after I turned left.

“We have a problem,” Matt said. “Look in your rearview mirror.”

“So?” I glanced up. The big grille of a hefty sedan filled my mirror.

“She just dropped in behind you. She’s been following you the whole way, one car back from that sawdust hauler. You didn’t notice?”

This time I stared into the mirror as I slowed for a red light at one of Woodland’s few traffic-controlled intersections. “Are you sure? I thought she was going to Portland, to the airport.”

“So did we. Taking the Woodland exit right behind you proved otherwise. You’re going to have to hold her off until we can scramble some units to you. Above all else, don’t go to Mayfield. She may be armed.”

“Wha—” I gulped and tried again. “Where are you?”

“We had to go past, to the next exit. Otherwise she would have realized we were tailing her while she’s tailing you. Stay on the phone with me. We’ll circle back to you.”

I rolled forward with the green light and peered into the mirror again. The glare made it hard to see, but I was fairly certain the driver behind me had a ponytail.

Angelica didn’t get her hands dirty, didn’t sully her image of poise and glossy-coated steely command. That’s where men like Sam Tibbetts came in—the man who had threatened my dad—to act as leg-breakers, enforcers. Sure, she must have a whole army of thugs at her beck and call. Why didn’t she just send one of them after me if she was having second thoughts about our transaction?

Was it because I was a woman too? Maybe she thought she could take me on. The parking lot at the truck stop would have been a better place to do it. Unless—

Unless she had realized, belatedly, that she recognized me. I glanced in the rearview mirror again, but this time at myself. Did I look too much like the former me? Like the happy woman who’d attended the San Francisco Opera opening night with Skip last fall? Maybe Sidonie had been too successful at cleaning me up.

“Do you still have the microphone on?” Matt’s voice blared in my ear.

I punched the speaker button and dropped the phone on the seat. I needed both of my hands for acting natural, steering carefully and keeping to the speed limit in town. “Yeah. Forgot to turn it off,” I shouted.

“Good. Our receiving team’s out of range, but they’re hustling to catch up. Don’t stop. Don’t go home. Just meander. Try to stay in Woodland.”

Except there isn’t much to Woodland. Angelica was no dummy. If I started driving up and down residential streets, she’d immediately know I’d spotted her. Both of our vehicles were big enough to do some serious damage—to each other, to other people, to buildings—if things got out of hand. I let Matt talk away, giving instructions as his car’s engine whined in the background.

But I wasn’t listening.

Because Angelica wasn’t trying to hide. She was riding my bumper, hard. Where was a sheriff’s deputy when I needed one to hand out a tailgating ticket?

I had one advantage. I’d lived in May County for a few months now. I knew more about the backroads than either Angelica or Matt did. Which wasn’t to say I knew a lot.

Maybe she just had to pee—or needed gas—or a fast food fix in private with no witnesses to her French fry obsession. Maybe there was some innocuous reason for Angelica to take the Woodland exit right behind me. But we’d already passed all the opportunities for those simple indulgences.

There was one way to find out what her intentions were.

After the last intersection, I sped up. And I mean a lot. Floored it.

Lentil’s engine ratcheted up to a lovely roar, and she shot ahead. This kind of rush could sure get addicting. But one glance in the mirror revealed that Angelica’s car had beefy horsepower too.

We hurtled down the county road, trees whinging by in my peripheral vision while I focused on the dashed yellow line. This would really not be a good time for an elk or deer to take a stroll across the two-lane road. Or for a slowpoke car to pop up in front of me.

That thought made me ease off the pedal just a bit. But Angelica didn’t, and in my side mirror, I saw the big front grille of her car ease to the left, into the oncoming lane, up beside my rear bumper.

“Oh no, you don’t,” I gritted through clenched teeth and let Lentil drift too. Nose to tail. I didn’t want her parallel to me.

It was incredibly reckless, but if I kept her busy driving then she wouldn’t have time to pull out a gun and start shooting, right? Surely she wasn’t as ambidextrous as all that.

Wait. She’d flown here. She couldn’t have a gun unless she’d picked one up from an accomplice after landing in Portland. Was it a risk I was willing to take? What did Matt know that I didn’t? Or was he just professionally and reasonably suspicious?

That’s when I decided.

Of course, I had previously notified my lawyer of the developments in my case. It was time for an update.

I slowed so I could free one hand from the steering wheel. But I had to swerve a lot to keep Angelica behind me. Our bumpers were going to trade paint at some point. Good thing mine was already rusty.

I grabbed another phone from my bag and punched a speed dial number.

“Hello, darling.” Loretta sounded as breathless as I felt. “I was just going to call you. I have a question about this lace knitting pattern. Should I pass the first stitch as if to knit or as if to purl when doing an SSK decrease?”

“Car chase. Angelica Temple. I’m coming in hot,” I yelled over the noise of Lentil’s big knobby tires whapping on the pavement. I jerked the steering wheel again and the back end careened into a little loose gravel. With any luck, maybe I could crack Angelica’s windshield. “Can you be ready with your rifle? And Tarq too?” Forget the knitting needles. I needed serious armament.

Loretta is reportedly quite the markswoman. I’d never actually seen her shoot, but when we’d shaken down my Numero Dos, Viktor Lutsenko, she handled her lookout role and the accompanying rifle with confident ease.

There was just the barest hint of a pause, then Loretta said, “In our meadow?”

But I couldn’t answer because I had to turn. Lentil’s tires chattered as I tugged on the steering wheel. The phone went flying. In fact, everything in the cab except me spun across the seat and crashed against the passenger door. I was barely hanging on by my seatbelt and fingernails. All my stuff clattered onto the floor.

Gus’s service station and the general store were blurs as I squealed ninety degrees and whipped past them, heading deeper into the forest on a road that county crews had not bothered to paint with outside lane lines, probably figuring that drivers would realize they’d left the paved surface when they hit the trees. I felt as though I’d just completed three back-to-back runs on the sickening teacup ride at Disneyland.

I’d surprised Angelica with the turn, but she’d recovered quickly. Her big car loomed in the mirror once again. By now, she had to know I was leading her somewhere. She’d probably already lost her bearings.

This was a huge risk on her part, unless she was certain I’d be a pushover. Why? What was compelling her to keep this up?

Maybe she was afraid of being lost. I knew for a fact that even the most up-to-date GPS programs did not have many of May County’s backroads on their maps. Even if she had a GPS unit in her rental car, it would just show that she was driving in a sea of undeveloped green.

I tore down the road, slowing when I had to for the hard curves. Lentil’s brakes were making clunky sounds, and the temperature gauge for the radiator was in the red zone. But Angelica would not let up.

If I had been driving the old, wheezy Lentil, I would have been in a pickle. But this was the new, improved, muscle-bound Lentil, courtesy of Gus. She was performing admirably, all things considered. I stomped on the accelerator again to give the brakes a break. All that airflow up under the hood had to be good, right?

I had the switchblade in my tote bag. Walt had returned it, thoroughly cleaned and restored to its vicious shininess. Well, not in the bag anymore. It was rolling around somewhere on the floorboards now.

I’d left the handgun Josh had given me at home. Because I didn’t have a concealed weapon permit for it, because I didn’t really know how to use it, because I’d been going to meet the FBI in a very public place. All those factors had made the idea of stashing it in my bag seem ill-advised. Now I regretted being so sensible.

Three blue reflectors on a tree stump. I spun the wheel hard and plowed into the ditch and up over the rise that constituted Tarq’s driveway. For the barest instant, Lentil floundered, then she was up and away, charging over the meadow.

Tarq’s cabin was tucked back against the trees, and it looked deserted. Which was normal. And I hoped Angelica would assume the same.

She’d almost spun out, but she was a vexingly superb driver and within seconds was right behind me again. I veered off the rutted track into what looked like a sweet field of hip-high grass, bulrushes, and cattails.

All that foliage hid exactly what I was looking for—a marshy mud pit. The home of great blue herons, security-conscious American bitterns, and lesser sandhill cranes. Gus had once told me that Tarq’s property was, in his opinion, the best viewing site for freshwater wading birds in the whole state. And I was about to disturb their habitat. At least the birds weren’t nesting right now. I hoped they would forgive me.

I slowed the tiniest bit to encourage Angelica to shove her grille up against my license plate, then I led her into the swamp.

And Lentil did her thing. Frankly, it was awesome.

The tires churned and flung mud behind in such vast quantities that the splatters merged until the understated navy blue paint on Angelica’s car was completely coated. I only had a sliding sort of control over Lentil’s trajectory, and we wallowed for a rumbling minute before the wheels hit firmer ground. My pickup bounded up over a berm, and I steered her around at an angle to the disabled Chrysler. I caught my breath for a moment, then slid out of the cab and peered over the hood from behind the protection of Lentil’s pinging engine block.

There are some things rental cars just aren’t prepared for, and Tarq’s front yard is one of them. I could almost hear the mud happily burbling up around the axles and oil pan as Angelica’s heavy car slowly settled into its permanent resting place. The daytime running lamps flickered and died.