Red Hot Murder: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (22 page)

Lying on the ground, eyes shut, Angie’s first thought was that this absolutely hadn’t happened to her.

“Is she okay?”

“Did you see her fly?”

“What a set of lungs!”

“Never heard nothin’ screech like that li’l gal.”

She opened her eyes to see the ostrich with the cowlick silhouetted against the harsh sun and staring down at her.

With a groan, she struggled to sit up. Joey knelt at her side. Joaquin stood beside him while others, including LaVerne, hovered near.

Clarissa looked like she’d laughed for the first time in years.

“Can you move your legs, Angie?” Joey asked. “Now your arms. Okay. How’s your head? It hurt?” He looked around. “Where’s Doc Griggs? He should be here.”

“I’m okay.” Angie blinked a couple of times and shoved away the ostrich who was trying to peck at
her hair. She wiped congealed slop off her face, hands, and arms, but her hair was so full of gelatinous goop it was sticking up and out, spiked Goth-style.

“Let me see her,” Dr. Westlake said, working his way through the crowd. As he introduced himself to Angie, she stood up, to everyone’s relief. She’d finally met Dr. Griggs’s replacement.

“I’m fine,” she repeated after he studied her pupils and declared her all right. “Thanks to Joaquin.” She gave him a hug, careful to not smear him with food. “My hero.”

He blushed.

At her feet, the old chuck box lay on its side, the ancient wood split, and the bottom fell off and lay several feet away. Stuck up inside the back of the box, as if it had been pushed behind a drawer, was some paper. Angie reached for it. It crackled with age and dryness.

“What’s that?” she said. “It looks like a letter.”

“A letter?” Joey asked.

Angie saw that it was two pages, written in a flowery European script. She unfolded it and read,

She peered up into the chuck box. Unfortunately, both the dollar and the journal were gone, which gave Angie a good idea about this “Jim” character. She turned to the second letter.

“God has provided extremely well …” Angie reread the words. Was Beerstraeden referring to
the Dalton money? Did he and the not-so-virtuous Daisy Lane end up with it?

What else could he have been talking about?

Joey took the letters from her and read them. “The money’s gone,” he whispered, obviously reaching the same conclusion as Angie.

“Yes.” She had to agree. When the attack was made on Hoot Dalton and his money—whether by the stagecoach drivers or outsiders—Beerstraeden and Daisy must have grabbed the money and run. Eventually, they must have joined up with a cattle drive heading out of the desert, perhaps with Beerstraeden helping the cook. That could explain how his letter got stuffed into the back of a chuck box.

“There’s no treasure?” LaVerne asked.

“No treasure,” she replied. Around her, Angie heard the others’ disappointed murmur. No one really thought they’d find the Dalton treasure, yet up to this point, the hope had been there, the dream of riches alive in every one of them. She understood what they were feeling. Up to this point she’d hoped to find the cookbook and, with it, imagined the fame it might bring her. Now, her dreams, as well as everyone else’s, were gone.

Hopes and dreams.
They were so often the key—the reason for so much good in life, and sometimes for so much that went badly.

As food dripped off her, she looked around at the people discussing the letters, and realized then what she’d been dealing with all week—hopes and dreams.

Hal Edwards had hoped Clarissa would love
him. Clarissa had hoped for happiness in wealth, since she’d given up love for money. Teresa had hoped to leave town. Doc hoped Lupe would be with him one day. Lionel hoped to find peace in a bottle. And Joey, poor Joey, hoped for self-worth.

All around her, Jackpot was filled with people who came here looking for something more in life. And when such desires were shattered, the disappointment was fierce.

The pile of clothes on the floor in Hal’s bedroom should have been an immediate clue. Now she knew why their being there had struck her as so odd. That wasn’t the sort of thing a person did when searching for a will … that was the sort of thing done because of anger, jealousy, and loss … when there was no more hope.

Angie looked around. She saw Lionel standing near his trailer, LaVerne picking up food and tossing it in garbage bags, Clarissa still staring at her and chuckling.

How had she missed it?

She began to walk toward the cookhouse. Joey followed.

“Joseph!” Clarissa called, commanding her son to her side.

Joey ignored her and continued on with Angie. “Are you all right?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve got to find Dolores,” Angie said. Quiet Dolores, who’d practically brought Hal back to life, never married, and stayed in the background loyal and loving.

The cookhouse was empty, the food and equipment left unattended.

They hurried to the cabin where the help stayed. Joey showed Angie to Dolores’s room. It was empty, as well. Everything was neat. Too neat. She was gone.

Joaquin appeared in the doorway, breathing heavily as if he’d run to the room. “I found out which way she headed, Angie.” He’d obviously followed her thoughts about Dolores. “Some little boys saw her leave in her truck. They said she had a rifle and some other things with her. She drove out the back road.”

“Toward the lake?” Angie asked.

“Or into the foothills,” Joey said. “If you’re thinking what I am, it’s an area where a person could hide out forever.”

Angie ran to her bungalow, leaving a trail of tuna, noodles, chili beans, and butternut squash in her wake. There, she thrust the Beerstraeden letters into a drawer, grabbed the car keys and her cell phone, and ran out to the SUV.

“Lionel has to be behind this,” Doc said as Paavo and Merry Belle examined the body and the surrounding area for clues. They gave Buster the job of guarding the area, and not touching a thing. “I don’t see who else could have gotten Junior to do such a thing.”

“Does Lionel have the brains to pull this off?” Paavo asked as he and Merry Belle cordoned off the area with fresh tire tracks right in front of Junior’s trailer. “Or the cruelty? Despite everything, it seems he truly did love his uncle, and he’d been friends with Ned—and Junior. No, I don’t think it
was Lionel. We need to think of who could have gotten Junior to do something like this. Who could convince him?”

“Joey?” Merry Belle suggested, rubbing her aching back. Searching for clues and securing crime scenes was hard work. “He’d want to hide the proof that Teresa was married to Hal.”

“But Junior couldn’t stand Joey or Clarissa. I don’t see either of them working with the other,” Paavo reminded them.

He walked over to Doc, and Merry Belle joined them.

“Junior might not have been a good father,” Doc said, “but in his way, he did love his daughter. If she had a chance to inherit Hal’s estate, I don’t think he’d work against her to give it to Joey.”

“The same reasoning would rule out Clarissa,” Paavo added.

Buster had been listening, and called out, “Junior didn’t like any of them out at the ranch, except maybe Dolores.” He smirked. “They had a thing going, in fact.”

“Dolores?” Doc looked appalled. “I didn’t think she’d give him the time of day!”

“Didn’t she live at the ranch for years taking care of Hal?” Paavo asked.

“She doted on Hal,” Merry Belle said. “Nursed him through his sickness, took care of his physical therapy. You name it, she did it.”

The three looked at each other as the same thought struck.

Buster was confused. “Why are you all silent all of a sudden?”

Doc spoke first. “Hal wanted to keep his mar
riage to Teresa a secret. We all assumed it was because of Clarissa, but that never made a lot of sense. What if it was because of Dolores? Because he feared her jealousy? But she found out. That’s why his life was in danger—and why he left. Maybe he couldn’t handle the guilt over the way he’d treated her, and since he was unbalanced anyway, it was enough to push him over the edge.”

Disgust darkened Merry Belle’s round face. “He should have understood her better.”

“When he came back,” Doc theorized, “I wonder if Dolores thought he’d returned for her. But when one of the first things he did was try to get back Teresa, Dolores couldn’t take it. She killed him.”

“She probably knew Hal was helping illegals come into the country,” Paavo added. “She’s strong enough to have moved Hal’s body to the caves. It was a good hiding place and would warn the coyotes the area was no longer safe. In Ned’s line of work, he’d know a lot of people—legally here and not. As he learned of the attacks on Teresa, he started looking into them. He must have come across something—the amulet, most likely—that scared Dolores, that told her he was on to her. Somehow, she lured him to the caves and killed him.”

“I could see Junior letting her use him,” Doc said. “She got him to do her dirty work, break into the church and my office, looking for a will or any evidence about Teresa’s marriage. She must have convinced him that it would be to Teresa’s benefit—or to his.”

“Hold on, you all,” Merry Belle said. “You can’t
go blaming Dolores when I’ve got proof that Joey’s the killer! I’ve got the heel rand. I don’t believe Dolores would try to pin the crime on Joey.”

“She didn’t,” Paavo said. “Lionel did. It was an action of opportunity, that’s all. He didn’t know about Hal’s marriage. He thought Joey stood in the way of his inheritance. If Joey was locked up for Hal’s death, Joey couldn’t inherit, and Lionel was next in line. He probably found the heel rand on the ranch and was waiting for an opportunity to use it. The day he went out to the caves with Angie gave it to him. He brought the heel rand with him and then supposedly ’found’ it. He’s also the one who put the note in my pocket. But that’s all he did.”

“Lionel often said that all he ever wanted was for life to go on as it had the five years Hal was away,” Buster added. “He liked being boss.”

“Let’s get back to the cookout,” Paavo said. “We need to ask Dolores a few questions.”

Dolores made her way through the narrow trails that led to the foothills. Much as she would have liked to try to brazen this out, to continue to be unseen and unnoticed as she had most of her life, she was afraid that this time she couldn’t pull it off. She’d been so shaken and upset by Junior’s call that Merry Belle was onto him, she hadn’t thought clearly, and had used a gun that could be traced back to her.

Also, the visitors troubled her. Paavo Smith was a real cop, not someone who didn’t want to make waves like Sheriff Hermann. And where the people in town paid no attention to Dolores, Angie Amalfi wasn’t that way. Angie noticed things. Noticed
her.
That was why she’d tried to scare them into leaving. It hadn’t worked.

Dolores was afraid to take the chance of staying put. She’d created an opportunity—it had been easy to stampede the ostriches by shouting and waving a red tablecloth at them like some toreador. When everyone’s attention was on the
chaos, she threw a few things into her truck and ran.

Now, she began to speed.

Calm down,
she told herself. It would take a long time before the people at the ranch put everything together, and she’d have a good head start. The disruption she’d created at the cookout should keep people too busy to miss her for hours. No one ever thought about her until there was work to be done.

Once they did miss her, they’d figure she headed for the Mexican border. Let them think that. She just had to get into the hills, the high desert, and she could hide out there a month or two before turning south.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been on the run; not the first time she’d had to live in the desert, relying on her skill at hunting and foraging for sustenance. She’d been only twelve years old when she crossed into this country with her uncle and cousins. She could do it again.

Thinking about them, about the uncle and two cousins who were dead now, about all she’d been through in this country, and about Hal Edwards, a great sorrow filled her.

Tears clouded her vision.

The evil she’d done was all Hal’s fault. How could he have treated her as he did? After the way she’d stayed at his side when everyone else, even his own wife, abandoned him; the way she’d nursed him back to good health after his stroke; the way she’d worked to make him strong again. She’d loved him, taken him to her bed, given him everything she could.

Once he was healthy again, she wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted her back in the kitchen.

And now …

She wiped the tears that kept falling and falling.

She had to get away. She couldn’t let them catch her. The state would kill her; take her life, like she took Hal’s. And Ned’s. And Junior’s. And possibly even Maritza’s, a good woman who never did harm to anyone.

“Damn you, Hal!” she cried, her foot pressing down even harder on the gas pedal. “I hate you!”

The road curved sharply around the hillside. She swung the wheel hard as she tried to wipe away the tears that were blinding her. Her vision cleared just in time to see there, in the middle of the road, a large boulder.

The grass ground out an agonized shriek as Angie drove her SUV away from the parking area. Joey was with her, riding shotgun.

The ostrich with the cowlick stood by the side of the road, its eyes wide with surprise and curiosity as she zipped by.

Angie sped into the desert. She had to find Dolores. Most likely, Dolores wouldn’t think she was being followed and might not go too fast.

As she somehow managed to keep control of the SUV, she pulled out her phone. Nearing the cave area, she had enough cell phone service to call Paavo. The phone kept cutting out, but he understood well enough to tell her to go back.

“I’ll be careful,” she said just as the cell failed completely. She doubted he heard her.

“There’s a whole maze of old trails, some fire roads, and dry creek beds Dolores could drive through,” Merry Belle said. She’d left Buster in charge of the crime scene, Doc with him, while she drove the Hummer. Paavo was at her side. “If Dolores gets far enough and starts hoofing it, she can hide out for years. She knows the desert, knows how to survive in it.”

“I only hope Angie doesn’t catch up to her,” Paavo said grimly, hands clenched.

“You told her not to go after Dolores,” Merry Belle reminded him.

“Yes.” Paavo’s response came through gritted teeth.

“Don’t worry,” Merry Belle said with sudden insight. “We’ll probably find Angie stuck off the road. Anybody who doesn’t know those trails won’t get very far.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Merry Belle got on the radio to request aerial backup from the State Police as they sped past the hacienda and onto the back road.

“Turn there,” Joey yelled, “or you’ll end up on the road to the lake. I don’t think that’s where she’s going.”

“Agreed.” Angie made the sharp turn, and found herself on a narrow fire road. The higher the dirt trail went into the foothills, the more twisted and winding it became, the surface rougher and more treacherous. The constant bounces and jolts made her already banged-up body ache even more.

She tried to call Paavo to tell him the road she’d taken, but the signal was gone.

“I’m never leaving home again!” she muttered as she pressed forward.

“And miss all this fun?” Joey asked. “You’re doing fine.”

The SUV rental skidded as she careened around an unexpectedly sharp bend. Before her, Dolores’s black pickup jutted onto the roadway. It had crashed into a boulder, leaving the hood crumpled. The driver’s side door hung open.

Angie stomped hard on the brakes. The SUV went into a spin. As the back end skidded on the rocky road, the side swiped against the truck with a grinding whir. Finally, the SUV bounced off the roadway and the engine died.

“I guess I spoke a little too soon,” Joey grumbled, rubbing his head where it had bumped the windshield. He’d put on his seat belt as soon as Angie had begun driving, so he hadn’t hit too hard.

When Angie realized she was still in one piece, she stared with horror at the black truck, certain that Dolores was going to leap out of it with guns blazing.

She didn’t.

Joey reached over and tugged at Angie’s shoulder. She immediately realized the wisdom of his action, and quickly bent down the same way. The two of them cowered behind the dash.

“Where do you think Dolores might be?” she whispered. “She’s not in the pickup, so she must have gone off on foot. She could be far … or she could be watching us this very moment.”

“I don’t know,” Joey whispered back. “She must
have been hurt in that crash. She might be lying across the seat, or dead. I don’t like this.”

“But the door’s open. I think she got out.”

“That’s likely, too,” Joey said, not exactly helpfully.

“Do you think she’d hurt us?” Angie’s voice was tiny. “To me, she seemed like such a nice lady.”

“Hurt us? Are you kidding? She’s only killed three people that we know of—including my father!” Joey cried, sounding very nervous. “Of course she’d hurt us!”

Enough said. Angie turned the ignition key. When the engine refused to turn over, she pumped the gas pedal. Still nothing. She kept trying.

“Stop,” Joey whispered. “You’re flooding the engine. It won’t help.”

“Paavo and the sheriff shouldn’t be far behind,” she said. “If Dolores is gone, we can simply sit here and wait.”

“You don’t know how fast the sheriff drives,” Joey said. “If her big Hummer zips around the blind curve too fast, it could flatten this car with us in it. We should try to walk down the road to meet them.”

“Okay.” She pushed the door open when a shot rang out. The bullet tore a wide hole in the windshield and the rest of the glass spidered. The console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats splintered from the bullet’s impact.

Angie gave a yelp, pulled her door shut and locked it, then crawled completely under the dashboard.

Joey was already down there.

“Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea,” Joey said.

“At least we found out where Dolores is,” Angie added, trying to stay positive even as she peeked up at the cracked windshield and the ruined console.

“Get out of that car! I need it.” The voice was shrill and quaking, and came from high above and off the road.

“Don’t listen to her,” Joey whimpered.

“I’ll give you one minute to think it over and get out. Then, I’m coming down. I don’t want to kill you, Angie! But I need your car.”

Angie reached up to try the ignition key again, but before doing so, whispered to Joey, “What do you think she’ll do if she finds out the engine is stalled?” Angie asked.

“Probably kill us,” Joey answered glumly.

Angie pulled her hand back, fast. At Joey’s words, her breathing turned ragged, her stomach plummeted, and all her positive thinking switched to negative. Thoughts of Paavo came to her, of the beautiful wedding they’d never have, and her eyes filled with tears. Why had she been so ridiculous about the ceremony and the locale? Who cared how extra-special it was? It was a wedding, for pity’s sake, not a royal inauguration!

Then she heard the roar of a fast approaching vehicle.

“Oh, my God!” Joey covered his head. “It’s Merry Belle!”

Angie screamed.

The impact could have been heard in seven counties. Or so it seemed to the two inside the sheriff’s
Hummer. When Paavo had gotten his breath back from the jolt of his safety belt, he saw that the Hummer hadn’t crushed the SUV as he imagined. It was a fender-bender, true, but at least the SUV didn’t resemble an accordion.

It had been a complete shock to round the bend, Merry Belle going at bat-out-of-hell speed, and to see both the pickup and SUV right in front of them.

Merry Belle braked, all the while roaring profanities. By some miracle, she had managed to stop in time.

Angie’s head popped up from inside the SUV just long enough to catch Paavo’s eye. A French-manicured fingernail pointed toward the hills. Then she ducked again.

Rifle in hand, before Paavo could say a word, Merry Belle sprung open her door. “I’ll show her!”

“No, wait!” Paavo tried to grab her, but she jumped out and ran for the cover of Dolores’s pickup. She wasn’t fast enough. A shot fired from above. Merry Belle dropped instantly to the ground, clutching her leg.

“She shot me! I don’t believe it. I’ve actually been wounded in the line of duty!” She was more in rage than pain, and dragged herself to the cover of the truck. “Now I’m really mad.”

More shots rained down on the window of the Hummer. The bulletproof glass dimpled but held. Paavo, lying flat, called to Merry Belle, “How badly are you hit?”

“Leg wound. Lots of blood,” Merry Belle gasped. “But I’ll live to see Dolores pay for this.”

“Stay put.” Paavo repositioned himself on the front seat and pushed open the passenger door. It
was no more than a foot away from the driver’s door of the SUV.

Looking out, he had a clear view of the SUV’s shattered windshield. “Angie, are you all right?”

A muffled voice yelled back, “Yes.”

He breathed again with relief. “Don’t stick your head up again,” he shouted. “Just listen. I want you to open the driver’s door—kick it open—if you can.”

He waited. At last Angie’s door swung open until it met and overlapped with his. Angie looked up from under the dash, a wild grin on her face. Behind her, he saw Joey’s head pop up. “Maybe I will have my wedding after all,” she said.

“Not if we stay pinned down like this,” Paavo warned. “Dolores is panicked right now. You can’t trust that she’ll be at all rational. Remember that.”

Angie’s face fell even as she nodded, and for the first time, Paavo noticed the strange bits of … something … plastered to her hair and clothes. “You sure you’re not hurt?”

“Only my pride.”

Joey cried out, “Just get us out of this!”

Dolores fired again. Shots bounced off the windshield of the Hummer and into the hood of the SUV.

“Angie, listen to me. I want you two to come into the Hummer. It’s safer, and the windshield’s bulletproof. The doors will provide you some cover, but you’re going to have to move faster than you’ve ever moved before.”

“It’s so far!” She looked so scared he wondered if she could move at all. “You mean it?”

“I’ve never been more serious.”

Dolores felt woozy. Every part of her body ached from the earlier crash of her truck, but especially her neck and head, which had seemed to bounce like a tennis ball between the windshield and the back of the seat. It had been all she could do to drag herself from the truck. She knew she’d be found if she stayed on the road, and so had worked her way up the hill. Overland—that was the way to safety.

It had been hard going. Every step jarred her, and her neck felt as if it were on fire. She was halfway up the hill, halfway to safety, when she heard a car engine.

She thought she’d caught a break when she saw Angie in the driver’s seat, Joey with her.

If only they’d listened to her, gotten out of the SUV and walked away, she would have let them go.

Wouldn’t she?

Or was it too late for that?