Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (7 page)

"You're
very knowledgeable." I laughed at being caught in my head. She locked eyes
with me, letting me know there was something about my face lighting up that she
found attractive. "I'm trying to impress you," she said softly.

I
was charmed by her sense of humor and liked her svelte appearance. She had a
thick head of silver-gray hair, Dresden china eyes, and an infectious smile. It
was as if she knew a very funny secret about life but was trying not to tell
me. Her small talk was peppered with clever turns of phrase and melodramatic
gestures. She asked me if I'd like to join her for dinner tonight. I briefly
contemplated an evening across the table from a delightfully witty woman.
No
dating drunks,
the little voice in my head commanded. I gave her a polite
excuse about having other plans, and in fact, I hoped I did. I intended to call
Callie Rivers.

"Vandalism,"
Ramona remarked as we passed a case full of broken artifacts on our way out of
the room. "Someone came in here just after Frank died and broke a good
many of the finest pieces. Have no idea what it was all about, but it's made
Isabel even more nervous. I hope I'll see you again soon." She handed me
her business card, and I felt her eyes bore through me as I turned and walked
away.

Outside,
I took a deep gulp of fresh air. The atmosphere in the Anthony mansion was
stifling. I couldn't chalk up the appearance of death stones in both Frank Anthony's
and Barrett Silvers's hands as being sheer coincidence. Up until a few days
ago, I'd never even heard of a death stone, and now I knew two people who'd
been marked by them.

Following
up on Ramona's remarks about Frank's murder, I decided to drive down to the
crime scene. The Tulsa Health Club, on the fifth floor of one of Tulsa's famous
old art deco buildings, had been a bastion of male dominance for half a
century. On the glass of the big double entrance doors, the club had etched a
large revolver and the inscribed warning: Keep Guns Holstered while in the Gym.
No wonder guys in this town are so polite,
I thought,
each of them
knows the other one s carrying a gun!

A
buxom young woman obviously hired for ornamentation swung her 38Ds into my face
and asked what she could do for me. She had olive eyes, auburn hair, and a
great smile, and for a moment, my mind drifted past the present into a future
where Ms. 38D was giving me a head-to-foot rub: long, sensual, full-body
strokes down my leg that somehow missed the mark and managed to glide across
the center line, leaving me weak with anticipation as her large breasts
rhythmically brushed my face until I captured them in my lips. Then, above me,
I saw Callie's face, her eyes as crystal clear as a Canadian lake, looking into
my soul, and I suddenly felt unfaithful. My fantasy went limp.
How can I be
running around on Callie when I'm not even with Callie?
I thought,
aggravated that Callie's image was censoring my fantasies.

"Could
I help you?" The young woman leaned her 38Ds into me and raised her voice
in volume as if I were hard of hearing. Being twenty years my junior, she
probably thought I was hard of hearing, a fantasy buster in and of itself. I
asked if Mr. Caruthers was in the gym. She said he wasn't. Just then, a man in
his mid-fifties with thick arms, a rich, black head of hair, and a proud barrel
chest that preceded him like the prow of a ship strode into the club.

"Hello,
Mr. Caruthers," the woman behind the desk beamed. "Johnny will be
ready for you in five minutes."

"No
problem. How you doin,' Maggie? Your husband treatin' you right? Cuz if he's
not, I'll come over there and give him a run for his money." Mr.
Caruthers's words ricocheted off the walls as if he thought he owned all the
airspace on the planet.

When
I spoke his name, he turned, allowing me to introduce myself as a friend of
Frank's. By now I'd said it so many times I was beginning to believe I was a
friend of Frank's.

"Damn
sad about Frank," he said.

I
told him I was a writer from L.A. working on an article about Frank's life. Mr.
Caruthers seemed to relish the fact that he would be in print.

"Well,
if you do, say that we're going to find out who the slimy little coward is who
killed Frank and give him a little Oklahoma justice."

I
asked him if he knew where Frank had been before he came to the gym that day.
Caruthers shrugged, saying he had no idea, and when I repeated that Ramona
Mathers told me Frank was clutching a rock in his gym bag when he died,
Caruthers laughed.

"Never
heard that. Sure she didn't say
cock"?
I'm sorry. Excuse me,
ladies, but Ramona Mathers always liked her hooch, ya know? She and Frank got
it on a couple of times, but don't go printin' that, now!" He laughed
appreciatively. "You girls are gonna get me in trouble!"

A
man, naked to the waist, appeared in the doorway announcing he was ready to
give Mr. Caruthers his massage. The man's upper body was so buffed out that his
head looked like a tiny pea resting in a sea of mahogany-hard triceps and
biceps.

"Be
right there, Johnny," Mr. Caruthers boomed. He waved goodbye to us, pushed
open the big double doors to the sauna, and swaggered off into a cloud of
steam. Hank Caruthers was a typical oilman. Slick.

I
headed for my car. Jamming my hand into my pocket looking for my keys. I came
up with Callie's phone number.

"If
I were Callie, I'd say it must be a sign," I said out loud to no one.

Callie
didn't seem at all surprised to hear from me, saying she'd been sending me
"brain waves" to phone her and let her know what was happening. I
drove straight to her high-rise.

Callie
was waiting in the doorway of her apartment wearing a white silk jumpsuit and
looking like a Lancome ad. "Don't you look smashing?" She smiled.

"Thanks.
You know, with the blond hair, and the white jumpsuit, and the white carpet,
and the white leather furniture, I have the feeling when I get here that I've
died and gone to heaven." I pulled her into me.

"Teague,
I'm not sleeping with you," she said, establishing the ground rules.

"I
don't recall asking you to." I grinned, getting my bearings on her style.
I wasn't going to let Callie Rivers bowl me over like she had last night.

"But
just out of curiosity—" I interrupted the thought by kissing her with a
slow, sensual warmth. "Why
aren't
we sleeping together?"

"Because"—she
began, and then had to pause to catch her breath, I noted with
satisfaction—"you need to focus on staying alive, Teague. You're behaving
as if what's happening around you isn't life threatening."

I
thought about telling Callie how I'd grown up in a family so combative that
breakfast could be considered life threatening, that by the age of eight I'd
mastered Zen and the art of flying flatware, and that I did have fear, but most
of it was inherited. Instead, I kissed her again and assured her that I was
focused on both of us staying alive. I sagged into a chair and kicked off my
shoes, working on feeling at home, in a platonic kind of way.

"I
just crashed Frank Anthony's wake and met one of his attorneys, Ramona Mathers.
She told me that, according to Hank Caruthers, Frank Anthony died clutching a
rock in his hand, and when she showed me the petroglyph tracing, it was almost
identical to the rock Barrett had been given by the Latin guy who tried to kill
her. Hank Caruthers, whom I met at the gym today and who was in the gym when
Frank died, told me there was no rock. The rocks are called death stones, by the
way," I said.

"So
your friend in L.A. was marked by whoever owned the death stones."

"Marked
by a dead man. The owner of the rock was Frank Anthony, and he was killed
before the stone ever got to Barrett Silvers," I said.

"So
whoever killed Frank Anthony pried the stone loose from his hand and delivered
it to your friend in LA?"

"Could
be, but why go to all that trouble?" I asked.

"You
said she was terrified when she saw it, so obviously she knew what it meant.
Perhaps she knew it belonged to Frank Anthony, and its arrival without Frank
meant he was dead, and she was next."

"That
means she had to have known Frank Anthony, but how?"

"Your
friend in L.A. knows more than she's telling you. Start with her," Callie
replied.

"Maybe
all my friends know more than they're telling me. Last night when I left here,
there was blood on my windshield and the words 'Retern it.' No one knew I was
here—except you." I blurted it out, wanting to clear up the matter once
and for all.

"You
believe I would tell someone who might harm you that you were here?"
Callie's hurt expression shifted immediately to anger.

"I
just don't know you—"

"But
you know me well enough to try to sleep with me?"

"I'm
sorry. Forget it."

"How
can I forget it? Do you think I want you here if you don't completely trust
me?"

"I
trust you."

"Then
why would you accuse me of something like that?"

"I
didn't. I don't know. I'm confused. I've been chased by weird guys doing weird
things and suddenly I'm here, and he's in the parking lot..."

"Oh,
Teague..." Her voice trailed off in disappointment.

"I'd
better go." And I found myself outside her closed door again.

Damn!
What in the hell is wrong with me! Things were going great
—
great
—
and now they suck!
I had a habit
of doing that. Being too abrupt.
It's simply that life is short. Why not get
to the point?
I tried to defend myself to myself, but even I wasn't buying it.
I took the elevator downstairs and headed toward 21st and Utica.

I
should buy her something to apologize,
I
thought.
So how can I, an army green, navy blue person, buy her, an electric
orange, hot pink person, the right gift? And what is the definition of right:
looks right on her? Or gets her right into bed with me?

I
had always made it a point never even to glance at the kinds of items Callie
Rivers undoubtedly wore: shoes with feathers, shorts with bows on the sides,
and any cosmetic item where they offered a free gift with purchase. I strolled
inside one of the more chic shops in Utica Square and went right to the lizard
handbags in an array of colors no self-respecting lizard had ever worn. There was
a small, orange-ish bag with a beautiful gold clasp. I bought it without even
opening it, happy that it cost hundreds of dollars, thinking of it as a
Medieval Indulgence that might buy my way to heaven.

Imagine,
me feeling happy leaving a store, clutching a new purse. My God, it s a first!
I thought grinning, and crossed the parking lot with a
snap in my step. To my right was the damned blue Buick parked a hundred yards
away, obviously trying to stay back, but not to the point that any fool with an
IQ of six couldn't have figured it out.

I
got in my car and drove slowly out of the Utica Square parking lot, made a
tight U-turn, and pulled up to the east entrance of the store. I dumped the
purse out of the shopping bag and replaced it with my twelve-inch fire ax. Then
I hopped out of the car and dashed inside as if I'd forgotten something. I
exited out the south entrance while the driver stayed focused on the store's
east doors. I came around on the driver's side with a shout, bringing the fire
ax down so hard that it nearly amputated his door handle. I reached inside and
grabbed the man by his black leather jacket and pulled his head, suddenly and
violently, through the open window, delivering a palm strike to his face.

"You
tell whoever you work for to get off my ass, or so help me, I'll amputate your
arm and every other damned part of your anatomy!" I shouted.

His
car squealed out of the parking lot, leaving me standing in the middle of the
concrete, clutching a fire ax in my trembling hand as shoppers cut a wide swath
around me.

I
phoned Wade and told him what had happened and gave him a description of the
guy, saying I would bet a hundred dollar bill he was my Texas rager. Then I
went home and put an ice pack on my hand. Only in the movies did people beat
one another up without any physical ill effects. My palm strike had rearranged
Raider's jaw, but it had also bruised my hand. Mother was alarmed at how
swollen it was and asked me how it happened.

"Looks
like she punched somebody out." Dad leaned over to examine my hand,
looking debonair in his shiny black tux and tartan cummerbund while speaking of
me in the third person. "Looks like the kind of bruise you get when you
whack the bejesus out of someone," Dad repeated, giving me one more chance
to 'fess up.

"For
heaven's sake, Ben, she doesn't hit people!" Mother said, rustling her
taffeta.

"Don't
you both look fabulous!" I swooned, pulling my hand away.

"We
clean up real nice, don't we?" Dad grinned. "And you've got ten
minutes to do the same." I jumped into the shower, delighted to have a
reason to end the inquisition.