Beneath a Buried House (Detective Elliot Mystery Book 2) (13 page)

Elliot studied the bartender for a moment. He seemed a bit nervous, but not overly so. “He’s dead. He was dressed in business clothes when we found him. My guess is he would’ve been wearing the same thing when he came in, would’ve looked out of place.”

The bartender took another look. “Now that you mention it, there was someone like that.” Picking up the photo, he nodded. “Yeah, I think this is the guy.” Glancing at Elliot, he shrugged. “The thing about the clothes, it jogged my memory. Yeah, he was here all right. Said he was looking for someone.”

“Did he give a name?”

The bartender shrugged. “Just said he was supposed to meet someone here.”

“Could it have been Brighid McAlister?”

“No, but now that I think about it she and the dude there hit it off. They had a few drinks. They left together.”

Elliot picked up the photo and put it away. Snub’s selective memory concerned him. “Did the person he was looking for ever show up?”

“Not that I know of.” Pausing, he tapped his fingers against the countertop. “It’s coming back to me now. Seems like the dude said he was some kind of journalist, a newspaper reporter or something.”

Elliot made a note of that. “What time did he and Brighid leave the bar?”

“It was early. Things hadn’t picked up yet. Around seven. Do you think Brighid had something to do with it?”

“Something to do with what?”

“You said the dude was dead.”

“It’s possible,” Elliot said.

The bartender wiped the counter again. “It’s hard to believe. I mean, Brighid was a pretty straight-up gal for a hooker. I guess it just goes to show you. You never know about people.”

“Yeah,” Elliot said. “Which reminds me, were you here all night that evening?”

“That’s right. Closed the place up.”

“You never left?”

“Nope.”

Elliot put his notepad away, and he was about to ask another question when a brutal noise blasted through the bar.

The car horn.

Cyndi.

Elliot pulled the Glock from its holster and sprinted for the door. When he reached it, he yanked it open and flattened himself against it, weapon raised. The parking lot, except for his car, was empty.

He searched the lot as he made his way to the car. If the attacker was fleeing, it was impossible to hear over the strident blaring of the horn. As he drew near the car, he saw Cyndi slumped over the steering wheel, and his heart fell about three inches in his chest.

She was alone in the front seat. Elliot pressed his face against the glass of the rear door. Nothing. He holstered the weapon then tapped on the glass. As Cyndi raised her head, relief flooded Elliot, but it was quickly negated by the fear in her eyes. Regret tore through him. What had he been thinking, leaving her alone in a place like this? Dazed and confused, Cyndi sat motionless for a moment. Again, Elliot tapped on the glass. This time she unlocked the door and slid over to the passenger side.

Elliot climbed in beside her. “What happened?” She fell into his arms, and as he drew her trembling body close, he felt lousy, personally responsible for her pain. “Sorry. I should’ve known better, leaving you alone like that.”

Finally, she raised her head and reached up to his face. “I’m okay.”

Slick moisture touched his cheek. “No you’re not,” Elliot said, taking her right hand into his. One fingernail had been ripped off, and a droplet of blood welled bright red.

Panic once again contorted her face, and she jerked her hand away. “Oh, no.”

Elliot gently pulled her hand back and examined it. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I’ll bandage it for you, and you can tell me what happened.”

He leaned over and opened the glove compartment, where he kept a package of adhesive bandages. Removing the paper from one, he wrapped it around the injured finger. “There,” he said, “that should do it.” She didn’t pull her hand away.

“I don’t know where he came from,” she said. “I looked out the window and there he was, just staring at me, and grinning, as if he’d been there all along. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even scream.”

“You were frightened. It happens.”

She nodded. “He yanked on the doors like some lunatic, but I’d locked them like you said. When that didn’t work, he started banging on the windows. I’ve never been so scared.”

Again Elliot told her he was sorry, though he suspected the words fell far short of what he wanted from them. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I guess I’ve forgotten how to worry about anyone other than myself.”

A sad look crossed Cyndi’s face, as if Elliot’s last words had touched her in a way the ones before them had not. She leaned close and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Don’t say that, Kenny. It’s just not true.”

 Elliot wasn’t sure how she would know, but the sincere nature of her words was enough. “What happened after that?”

Cyndi hesitated. “You’re not going to like this part. I thought it was over, but he picked up something from the ground, a piece of beer bottle I think.” She started to cry again. “He scratched the hood of the car. The sound of it made my skin crawl. I’m surprised you didn’t hear it. Anyway, that’s when I got the nerve to honk the horn. He ran off after that, and I guess it finally hit me, and I panicked.” She gestured to the hood with her bandaged finger.

Elliot looked through the windshield and saw the damage. He scrambled out of the car, and when he saw what had been scratched into the paint, an assortment of emotions ran through him, most of it anger. “Lock the doors again. I won’t be long.” He stormed back into the bar.

The bartender took one look at him and headed for a back exit. Elliot caught him just before he reached it. Snub acted surprised. “I told you everything I know. What gives?”

“Yeah, well, I thought of something else I wanted to ask you about.” Elliot guided the big man outside, stopping in front of the car.

His eyes widened when he saw the symbol. “What’s that?”

“You tell me.”

“Hey, I had nothing to do with this.”

Elliot grabbed him by the collar and shoved him toward the hood of the car. Snub caught himself with both hands, his nose about an inch above the symbol scratched into the paint. “Take a closer look,” Elliot said. “It bears an uncanny resemblance to the artwork slopped across the floor of your bar.”

“There’s such a thing as police brutality, you know.”

Elliot tightened his grip. “Is that right? Well someone crossed the line, sport. This is personal now, and I don’t care much about anything except for finding out who messed with my car and scared my date. Tell me and I’ll go easy. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long night.”

“I don’t know. I swear.”

Elliot slammed the guy onto the hood of the car. “I don’t believe you.”

A hand gripped his arm from behind. Considering his awkward position and the proximity of his attacker, the only thing he could do was let go of the bartender and spin around and face whoever was behind him, but before he could, a soft voice stopped him.

“No, Kenny. This isn’t the way.”

It was Cyndi.

Snub scrambled to his feet. “Honest man. I don’t know anything about this. But I’ll put the word out. I don’t like this any more than you do. It’s bad for business.”

“That’s funny,” Elliot said. “I thought it was your business.”

The bartender straightened his clothes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who decorates with pagan symbols.”

Snub looked shocked for a moment, then he said, “If you understood anything about paganism, you’d know about karma. You know, what goes around comes around.” He gestured toward the car. “We don’t do this kind of stuff. Besides, the symbol in the bar is a pentacle.” He shook his head. “This is some kind of Satanic thing, not pagan at all.”

“Maybe not,” Elliot said. “But some people preach one thing and do another.” He leaned over and ran his hand across the hood of the car, feeling the roughness of the paint where it had been disturbed. “And those that do so lean that way not because of a lack of knowledge, but an accumulation of it.” He traced the inverted star with his finger. “You might say their perceptions of the world are out of kilter, upside down if you will.”

The bartender’s face went blank, and he was silent for a moment. “I don’t know who messed up your car, Detective. That’s all I’m saying.”

Elliot took a step toward him, but again Cyndi stopped him. “Come on, Kenny. Let’s just go.”

Elliot handed the bartender one of his business cards. “Let me know if you hear anything, about this or the dead guy in the picture.”

Cyndi was already in the car. Elliot sank in beside her.

After leaving Cymry’s, Elliot offered to take Cyndi home, apologizing and offering to make it up to her, but she said it was okay and reminded him that he still owed her dinner. Perhaps the gesture was as inconsequential as Cyndi trying to salvage the evening, but Elliot hoped it was of more significance than that.

Inside the Knotty Pine, Cyndi walked across the room and chose a table along the wall. Elliot sat across from her. He watched as she ran her fingers through her hair, an act that would have pushed it back had it been long and straight, but in its short and curly state the action just fluffed it. In the smoky atmosphere of the dimly lit barbeque joint, she looked as if she’d just stepped off a movie set, the leading lady in an old Alfred Hitchcock film.

“What are we doing?” Cyndi asked after they’d ordered. “We both know it’s a bad idea, being together like this.”

“It’s completely by design,” Elliot said, “motivated by my dark agenda.”

“Which is?”

Elliot smiled. “I want to get to know you.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

The waitress came over and set their order, a couple of chopped beef sandwiches on the table, along with a jug of beer, and Elliot waited until she’d left. “You stir something inside of me,” Elliot said, though after getting the words out he couldn’t believe he’d said them. “Old feelings that I haven’t felt in a while.”

Small barrel-shaped beer mugs sat on the table. Cyndi carefully filled the one closest to her. “In a while? That would suggest there have been others who captured your attention before. How many
before
s have there been?”

Elliot took the pickled banana pepper from his plate and bit into it, grabbing a napkin as the juice squirted out. He wiped his mouth then took a swallow of beer. “There have been a few,” he said. “But only one like you.”

“So who was she? Or should I ask, who is she?”

Elliot finished off the pepper. “It was a long time ago. High school.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What’s a guy like you been doing for entertainment all this time?”

Elliot had spent a lot of that time trying to anesthetize the memories he’d just dragged up. The wise thing would’ve been to forget the whole thing, put it behind him and go on with his life, but he had not been able to do that. He took another drink of beer, wanting the cold liquid to lessen the sting of the pepper’s heat, but hoping at the same time that it would not extinguish it entirely. It was, after all, why he indulged in such culinary delights, and why women like Cyndi tantalized him. “The usual things.”

A hint of a smile touched her lips. “You climbed out of that one nicely. So who was she?”

With that Elliot let the memories run free. “Her name was Carmen.”

Cyndi put down her sandwich. “That sounded rather final. What did you do, get rid of her?”

With Cyndi’s question running through him like an accusation, Elliot wiped his mouth again then folded the napkin. The old doubts and wounds still ran close to the surface.

Cyndi reached across the table and stroked his arm. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. So I remind you of someone. That’s not exactly what a girl wants to hear, but it doesn’t bother me that much. Anyway, she must have been pretty special.”

Elliot looked at the woman with the smoke-colored eyes who sat across from him, her delicate features, the faint smattering of freckles on her face. “You’re nothing like her,” he said. “And you don’t remind me of her at all.”

“Then why did you bring her up?”

Elliot took a sip of beer. He wasn’t sure, exactly, who had led the conversation in the direction it had gone, but since the subject was now on the table he decided to address it. “It’s the way you make me feel.”

  Again Elliot could not believe what he’d said, for if fear could be underpinned with seduction, then that was the look that came over Cyndi’s face.

She ran her fingers through her hair. “And how do I make you feel?”

Elliot picked up his sandwich. “Hungry.”

The non-answer made her smile. “This could be a dangerous relationship. We wouldn’t want you to become overweight.”

“No,” Elliot said. “People from my neck of the woods live a lot longer if they stay in shape. That reminds me. You never answered my question.”

“What do you mean?”

“Earlier in the car, I asked you where you’re from.”

She shrugged. “Right around here. Tulsa, I mean. Listen, I have to go.”

Cyndi opened her purse and pulled out her phone.

Elliot could tell by the conversation that she was calling for a taxi. “You don’t have to do that. I can take you home.”

She shook her head. “Maybe some other time.”

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t want me to know where you live?”

“Maybe I don’t.”

A few silent minutes later, a man came into the restaurant, stopping at the door. Cyndi got up from the table. “My ride,” she said.

Elliot signaled to the waitress that he’d be back, and he followed Cyndi outside to the parking lot, where a taxi was parked. The cabbie opened the back door, but before Cyndi could get in, Elliot gently wrapped his fingers around her arm, just above the elbow. “Will I see you again?”

“That depends,” she said. And she rose up on her toes and kissed him, not a heavy kiss but a touching of their lips that left Elliot near drunk with passion. Then she climbed into the cab and closed the door. Elliot watched until the taxi was out of sight, then he went back inside and settled the bill with the restaurant.

Chapter Eighteen