Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (4 page)

"You
are a basket hound." I patted Elmo, grateful for a little comic relief.

We
pulled into Tucumcari about midnight. I entered the faded turquoise lobby of
the Holiday Inn, gave my name to the slight-of-frame desk clerk, and signed the
register. Wearing a Raiders jacket, a young man with scraggly hair slouched in
the lobby, watching the game on an old TV set. Other than that, all was quiet.

I
yanked the luggage out of the Jeep and then backed the vehicle up until its
tailgate almost touched the motel room door. New Mexico was a collection point
for the theft of Jeep Cherokees. Stolen at night from tourists, they were
collected in an area outside of town and trucked down to Mexico before sunrise.
I was determined not to awaken and find myself on foot.

Morning
in New Mexico was breathtaking from my small motel window: a backdrop of lapis
skies and white puffy clouds floating above the odd plateaus surrounding
Tucumcari, beauty orchestrated to the sweet drumbeat of Elmo's tail against the
dresser as he signaled the need for a walk.

I
stepped outside and took in a deep, clean breath of fresh air before packing up
our duffel bags and checking out. Elmo and I went straight to DeRoy's
Restaurant across the street from a pasture where this morning a young boy and
a middle-aged man were wrestling four nanny goats. I took a booth next to the
window to watch the show. The biggest goat butted the skinny boy onto his
behind as several leather-faced men in the restaurant chuckled and sipped their
morning coffee at the gray Formica tables.

I
looked up when I heard a familiar voice across the room taking a breakfast
order. She was here: the tall waitress, French perhaps, with jet-black hair
swept back from her face in the manner of a society matron, impeccably dressed
as if she'd been beamed up while dining on caviar in Hyannis Port and
accidentally beamed down in Tucumcari slinging hash, a
Town and Country
model
set against a backdrop of counter stools and pie racks.

"Well,
hello!" she said brightly, not knowing my name but recognizing the face.
"How was your trip?" I told her my trip was just fine.

"Apple,
cherry, homemade-this-morning banana cream, butterscotch cream, and lemon
meringue."

"Butterscotch
now, banana cream to go." I smiled.

"Wise
choice." She smiled back before going to the pie case.

I
wondered if she had a husband or a boyfriend who knew how attractive she was
and that she was wasted on this prairie plateau like pate in a lunchbox.

Outside
the window, the goats were safely behind the barbed wire fence and the wind was
rumpling the wheat-colored grass like a hand through a small boy's hair. I
could see why people stayed on here.

The
waitress came back with what looked like a quarter of a pie so thick I could
lose my fork in it and gave me a beautiful smile. "I thought you might
like a piece of chocolate French silk, on me." Her dark taffeta skirt and
matching apron, bordered by white lace not unlike the white meringue on top of
the pie, brushed my face. The breeze from the open window washed her perfume
over me. The restaurant had cleared out, the fanners heading off for their
early morning work. I walked behind the counter and she turned to face me as if
she'd been expecting me.

I
pulled her dark chocolate skirt up and slid my hand under the elastic of her
white lace panties and into the delicate white meringue of her body, silencing
her surprise with my mouth and going deep inside both warm, wet places with a
slow, rhythmic intensity as she pushed against me with feverish strokes,
seemingly as starved for the touch of a lover as I was. She was the soft,
silky, chocolate French desert I had hungered for, right up until the moment
that a large, hairy hand slammed a cup of coffee down in front of me. "You
need more coffee?" the grubby cook in his stained white apron asked.

"Uh,
no." I snapped back into my body.

"Your
waitress is in back. You can pay me when you're ready. What kind of pie to go?"

"Banana
cream...and chocolate French silk," I said sheepishly.

Fifteen
minutes later, heading west again on I-40, Elmo and I shared the chocolate
French silk pie at speeds in excess of seventy miles an hour.

"It's
getting bad, Elmo. I'm starting to have these Ally McBeal fantasy moments. You
have no idea what it's like to face forty-one alone."

"Ruff,"
Elmo barked for more pie.

"Thank
you for acknowledging that. It if rough."

I
tried to feed him with one hand and myself with the other, managing to sling
the whipped topping onto the dashboard and across my shirtfront and coating the
steering wheel. Elmo had banana cream on both ears. The front seat looked like
the eating scene in
Tom Jones.

"You,
of course, can see a girl you like, go up behind her, jump on her, and hump her
damned ass off. I, on the other hand, am expected to be a little more
civilized. Being a guy is easier. It just is." Elmo put his face into the
piece of pie I'd balanced on my leg. "That was mine, by the way. Help
yourself," I said to him, attempting to clean us both up with a damp
napkin. Elmo's ears elevated a half inch at the base of his head, an indication
he was finally having a good time.

My
cell phone rang, the unexpected shrill sound nearly causing me to drive off the
road. I'd forgotten about the cellular company somewhere near the Texas
panhandle that automatically dials travelers on the highway and connects them
to annoying commercials. I grabbed the phone, preparing to disconnect the call,
when a pleasant voice said my name.

"Who
is this?" I asked.

"Mark
Silvers in L.A., Barrett's brother. I'm calling because you're the last one who
saw Barrett before she was attacked. Can you still hear me?"

"Not
well."

"Our
family is so worried about Barrett. She's still unconscious. Did she mention
anything to you about what she's involved in? I mean, do you know why anyone
would want to do this to her?"

"Nothing
that made any sense," I said cautiously. "Maybe we can talk when I
get back, Mark, I'm losing the connection. Give me your number," I
requested, noting the caller ID read Unavailable.

"We've
had enough crises. I don't want to cause a wreck. I'll be in touch. You have a
safe trip."

"Oh,
by the way"—I kept him from hanging up—"Barrett doesn't have a
brother."

A
pregnant silence ensued, then the caller hung up.

An
involuntary shiver ran down my spine.
Who called me? And how
did
he
get my cell phone number?
Someone wanted to know how much I knew. Was he
driving alongside me right now and I didn't know it?

I
glanced in my rearview mirror and my heart leapt into my throat. At eighty
miles per hour, the dark blue sedan had its bumper inches from mine. Suddenly I
felt the metal crunch, and I gripped the wheel, my body lurching forward into
it. I stepped on the accelerator wanting to get off the open road to safety,
but there was nowhere to go. The blue sedan pulled up along my left side,
keeping pace with me, edging me farther off the shoulder. Two hundred yards up
ahead, the shoulder merged into the abutment of a bridge. That's where he was
forcing me at high speed. The options flashed through my head: pull off and stop,
keep trying to outjockey him to get back on the road, or beat him to the
bridge. I floorboarded the gas pedal. The cars ahead of us were panicked at
being caught in a road race, and several of them scattered over both lanes. The
shoulder was lumpy and precarious. The high speed rocked the Jeep, making me
think I would teeter over the right side of the embankment, but I held my
breath and kept my foot jammed to the floorboard. The distance between me and
the abutment narrowed faster and faster as my heart raced. Two hundred yards, a
hundred and fifty yards, a hundred, fifty, twenty-five, fifteen, five. I could
see the pores in the concrete pilings!

At
the last possible moment, I cleared the car ahead of me and skidded back onto
the interstate, dodging the abutment, my heart nearly pounding out of my shirt.
It only took him a second to catch up with me. I increased my speed to
eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five, and broke into a sweat. If anything bigger
than a grasshopper jumped into the road, we would both explode like pumpkins
all over the freeway. Drivers catching sight of us bearing down on them moved
to the right lane to let us fly by. We flew past the
Welcome to Texas
sign
so fast that I couldn't read the gigantic lettering.

My
mind raced. It was obvious this guy wanted to run me off the road and make it
look like I'd lost control of the car. Well, he'd made two mistakes. He'd
underestimated my driving skills, and he'd attempted it in broad daylight. A
nice dark night in the rain would have given me problems, but now I was just
getting mad.
Where the hell is the highway patrol when I need them?
I
reached down between my seat and the door and felt for the short-handled fire
ax I always carried for emergencies. The feel of the rubber-wrapped handle gave
me comfort.

Elmo
began to gag. An entire pie and a thrill ride down the highway had turned his
stomach upside down. "I can't stop, buddy. You're going to have to take a
deep breath and just think good thoughts." Elmo let out a loud belch and
stretched out flat on the backseat.

The
maniac tailing me edged up on my left rear bumper. I could hear the crunch of
metal as he tried to force me to spin out. Elmo whined and panted. We whipped
past Vega, Texas, a mere bump in the prairie, and flew by a sign reading:
Amarillo 20 miles. I said a prayer and pushed the speedometer up to a hundred
miles per hour. If in the next twenty miles I could keep from killing myself or
someone else, this jackass would be history. I concentrated on the road and not
overcorrecting for any road hazard. At this speed, the slightest turn of the
wheel could put me in a tailspin.

"Holy
shit!" I said out loud. Up ahead an eighteen-wheeler had decided to pass
on a slight uphill grade and was now parallel and struggling next to a red
Honda. I tried to slow down, but at a hundred miles an hour, I was closing on
the trailer. I hit the ABS brakes and prepared for the ride of my life. The
brakes grabbed. I kept my foot jammed to the floor even though the sound was
terrifying, like metal ripping the bottom out of the car.

The
brake pedal vibrated up and down, but I never let up, remembering two cops who
were killed in squad cars with ABS brakes when they panicked over the sound and
let up. I decelerated to forty miles an hour, ten feet before I was about to
breed my Jeep with an orange-juice ad on the back of the truck doors. The Honda
driver saw me coming in his rearview mirror and pulled off on the right
shoulder. I floorboarded the gas pedal again and whipped between the truck and the
Honda. I was about twenty feet out in front of the truck when the blue Buick,
following my same route, cut in front of the truck and came up alongside me
pointing a gun across the passenger seat at me.

I
slid down in the seat trying to make myself less of a target and jammed the gas
pedal down farther as the skyscape of Amarillo came into view. I was picking up
traffic and intentionally zigzagged from lane to lane, making it harder for him
to tail me. Just as we crested the ridge on I-40 in the middle of town, I
slammed on the brakes and whipped my car to the side of the road. He went
forward another hundred feet and the sirens blared, two big, beautiful, red
flashing lights screaming after him. I had led him into the one speed trap in
the whole United States I could count on, because I'd been ticketed there twice
myself. In fact, another two hundred yards down the road there's a billboard asking
anyone who feels he's been unfairly arrested for speeding to call the law firm
on the billboard.

I
pulled back on the road and drove slowly past the trap, breathing for what
seemed like the first time in hours. Two squad cars and two officers with guns
drawn had a white man with blond, scraggly hair, in his late twenties, spread-eagle
against the hood of a blue Buick. I recognized the jacket as belonging to the
man in the motel lobby. Someone was going to a lot of trouble to try to kill
me, and I had no idea why. I could have told the Amarillo police, but having
been a cop, I knew that when the whole interrogation was over,
"Raider" would end up knowing more about me than I would about him.

I drove
into Tulsa around five thirty Sunday evening. For a town that annually endured
bone-chilling winters, stifling summers, and the often-carried-out threat of
tornadoes, Tulsa always managed to look as pristine as a Southern belle after a
twelve-hour train ride, not a hair out of place. I had to admit, it was comforting
coming home to a place where no one had ever heard of a three-step deal and
where a "power breakfast" was prunes.

Maneuvering
the Jeep past upscale malls and state-of-the-art medical facilities, I passed
the sixty-foot bronze statue of praying hands, a humorous source of collegiate
speculation about the size of the rest of the bronze man's anatomy, which
remained mercifully underground.

I
turned off Lewis into a neighborhood with neatly kept wood-frame houses and
yards filled with ancient oaks. The branches overhanging the street rustled
gently in greeting, creating a cool, sun-filtered canopy. I let out an audible
sigh, releasing the tension I'd held inside for two days, and swung into the
driveway of a house with a long front porch. I was home. Safe.