Death by Marriage (23 page)

Letty came in for a reading, excitement about her wedding radiating from every elderly pore. She left in a huff, for the first time dissatisfied with what Crystal saw in her pretty pink ball. That was yesterday, and it seemed as if business had dried up along with Letty’s departure.

The DreamWear phone hadn’t rung in hours. I actually jumped, nearly sliding off my stool, when a call came just before closing time. “Gwyn, it’s Peter Koonce.” His whisper was so soft I could barely hear him. “I’ve got some guys here trying to sell estate jewelry. Told ’em I’d have to look up a price in the backroom. Will you call your cop friend and ask him if I’m freaking over nothing?”

“Peter, if it doesn’t feel right, dial 911.”

“Please, Gwyn, I have to get back out front.” And men thought females had quirky minds!

“Okay, see if you can stall them. I’ll try to get help.”

My call to Boone went straight to voice mail. He must be in a meeting or something equally inaccessible. I didn’t want to involve any of my mall neighbors in a potentially dangerous situation, so I considered for all of three seconds and called Chad. I could only hope he was relatively sober.

Chad’s cellphone was also offering me voice mail when he finally picked up with a decidedly unfriendly, “Yeah?”

I sketched the problem in a couple of anxious sentences, then added, “There’s no way to tell if the jewelry’s hot, but I thought if you got here in time you could follow them.”

“Chicken, sweetheart?”

“You mean
me
?” I squeaked. “I don’t think—“ A dial tone rang in my ear. Was that a yes, or get lost?

I locked up without doing any of my customary closing routine, jumped in my car, sped down the alley behind the stores, and zipped through the opening between Nature’s Foods and the Bingo Parlor. I pulled into a parking space
two car-lengths back from the
front of Antiques Etcetera, turned off my headlights, and peered through the broad plate glass window. Two men were at the counter, obviously haggling with Peter over price. So far, so good. Peter’s suavity had slipped a bit, his dark hair mussed where he’d run his hands through it a time or two. The smaller of the two men appeared to be getting itchy, while the much larger of the two—think pro-football center—looked like he was prepared to stay all night to get the price they wanted.

Money exchanged hands. They were about to come out, and I was all alone out here . . . I must be out of my mind. I screeched—I couldn’t help it—as my driver door was flung open and a strong arm dragged me out.

“Stupid!” Chad growled as he pulled me across the deserted parking lot toward his battered ranch wagon, which he’d parked as far from a security light post as possible.
Damn
! Besides scaring me half to death, his breath was enough to knock me over. I wasn’t getting in a car with him . . . but of course I did, because our Mutt and Jeff bandits, or whatever they were, had left Antiques Etcetera and were getting in their car, a tan SUV just like a thousand others on Florida roads. I fastened my seat belt. I had a sneaking suspicion that, drunk or sober, Chad would be able to follow them.

The SUV turned right onto the Bypass and, a block later, made a left onto East Golden Beach Boulevard. Past Edge Park, past the police station, straight east toward the far edge of town. Finally, we left houses and condos behind, in favor of plant and tree nurseries, truck farms, and occasional cow pastures. We were not, however, destined for the end of the road, where Golden Beach Boulevard turned to dirt before it dead-ended at the jungle-like Arcadia River. At a church decorated with a painted rainbow façade, the SUV made a hard left onto a road that went straight as an arrow past horse farms and ostrich farms. When that road ended, an abrupt right had us crossing the Arcadia on a concrete bridge before another ninety-degree right led us down into a community of people who preferred privacy to town amenities. Here, the roads were no longer straight, but meandered along the contours of the snakelike river and inland perhaps three-quarters of a mile on roads that must have been laid out by a mad maze designer.

The SUV and the ranch wagon seemed to be the only cars moving on this side of the river, so surveillance became a lot tougher. Chad had to drop back. I made a slight protesting noise as he turned off the wagon’s headlights. “Wanta get shot?” he taunted.

This was absurd. I wasn’t cut out to be brave.

“Keep an eye out for the SUV. I can’t get close enough to see if they turn in.”

That I could do. Seamstresses have to have good eyesight. But the road we were on seemed to be ending with not a sign of the SUV we followed into this cul-de-sac. We’d missed them, darn it. But how?

And then I caught a flash of light through the mass of trees ahead. “There! There must be some way to get back there.”

Chad slowed to a crawl, peering into the darkness. Streetlights were among the amenities the inhabitants of this neighborhood had eschewed. And there it was, a narrow dirt road almost completely overhung by live oaks, cabbage palms, and slash pines. A scary, one-way path to . . . what? “Uh, Chad, I don’t think—”

But the ranch wagon, obviously accustomed to dirt roads, seemed to make the turn of its own accord. We crept along, headlights still off, Spanish moss occasionally swishing across the front window like some gray creepy-crawlie out of a horror movie. A quick glance at Chad showed his body on alert, eyes gleaming, even though their blue-green had turned to indigo under nothing more than moonlight. He was enjoying this. He was on the hunt, and he loved it.

Wasn’t that why I’d called him? Somewhere inside his ruined hulk was a spark of the old Chad, and I had a feeling he might just have found it.

There seemed to be a faint glow ahead, as if from the windows of a house. About half way between the glow and the beginning of the dirt road, we came to a wide place in the road, a man-made turnout, obviously created as a pass-point. If two cars met on the narrow road, one of them wouldn’t have to back up the entire distance. Chad pulled into the tiny turnout and parked. “Stay here,” he ordered. “If you can manage it, turn this thing so it’s heading out. No lights!” Before I could protest, he’d melted into the trees. Vanished like a wraith into the Florida jungle. No way he hadn’t done this before. Could I pick ’em, or what?

With only a few bumps and grinds I slid across the gear box to the driver’s seat. I hesitated before starting the engine, somehow certain the noise was going to startle every creature in the woods into a cacophony of noise
. Silly. Chad just turned the engine off. Nothing frightening about turning it back on
. The old wagon purred to life. I reached for the gears and froze in horror. I glanced at my feet. Sure enough, the miserable wagon had a clutch. Scott had tried to teach me once and given the whole thing up in disgust in under fifteen minutes, certain I was killing his lovely Vette. Not that this old wagon couldn’t take my fumblings—it probably wasn’t the first time it had suffered from an ignoramus behind the wheel.

Mentally, I reviewed the gear positions Scott had tried to teach me. Gently, carefully, I eased the gear shift into first—
Ee-grind-eeee
. My stomach lurched. Belatedly, I used my left foot to ram the clutch to the floor. I tried again. Blessedly, the gear shift did not scream in anguish. If I was lucky, that was all the shifting I’d have to do. But the road was tight, and making it in one turn was out of the question. Fortunately, I got Reverse right on the first try, and after that it was just a case of persistence and keeping my hands from shaking so hard the gear shift wouldn’t move at all.

At last I was settled with the wagon’s nose facing home. I heaved a sigh and turned the engine off. And that’s when I heard it, a great crashing noise in the underbrush just behind the car. Chad! They’d seen him, he was running for his life. I fumbled for the keys, turned the engine over. The noise rose to a roar. Chad and a multitude of pursuers. They were going to kill him! I tromped on the clutch, jammed the gears into first, then, praying hard, I craned my neck to peer out the rear window.
Dammit, Chad, where are you?

Chapter 18

A herd of wild hogs charged out of the jungle so close to the rear bumper that one or two hit it, shaking the wagon like a baby’s rattle. I didn’t care. They could r
attle away the whole night
as long they weren’t Chad pursued by an assortment of bad guys with guns and knives. The relief was so great I burst into tears. The thunder of hooves faded. Tears continued to drip. I’d been so cocky, so full of myself, asking questions all over town as if I were some kind of genuine investigator, when I was nothing but a silly girl who designed costumes and suffered from delusions of grandeur. It was now painfully apparent I wasn’t cut out for this line of work. I couldn’t even tell Chad from a wild hog!

I turned off the engine and slid over into the passenger seat. I fished around in my purse for a tissue and dried my tears. As far as Chad was concerned, the hog incident was going to be nothing more than a funny story. Hilarious. And thank God it was too dark for him to see my tear-ravaged face. Or discover the horrible truth that all my thoughts had been for him. I’d never even considered the threat to myself until long after the last faint sounds of pigs crashing through the underbrush had vanished, leaving nothing but chirping insects and the soft rustling of small creatures of the night.

I might have looked calm, sitting there in the front seat waiting for Chad, but my nerves were still doing some kind of frenzied street dance. When the driver’s side door cracked open and a shadow loomed outside, I had to jam my hands over my mouth to keep from crying out. Chad? It had to be. The blasted man moved on cat feet, I hadn’t heard a thing.

“Good girl,” said his voice as the shadow slid behind the wheel. “You actually got old Bess turned around.”

“Old Bess?”

He patted the steering wheel. “Ranchers tend to treat their vehicles like the horses they replaced, so, yeah, we call her Bess.”

“We, uh, had a disagreement or two,” I conceded, “but she was pretty tolerant of my mistakes. Sorry, Bess,” I added, imitating Chad by patting the dashboard.

“Heard the pigs,” he said as he eased Bess onto the dirt road. “Give you a scare?”

“I thought it was you,” I admitted in a very small voice. “Being chased. So, yes, it gave me a scare.” Maybe by tomorrow I could make a funny story of it, but tonight I stuck to the bare facts, hoping Chad didn’t sense just how terrified I actually was.

“Sorry, kid.” He patted my shoulder, I swear the same way he patted Bess. “I forget you’re a city girl. Haven’t spent much time in the real Florida, have you?”

Which was all too true. Even most native Floridians, let alone snowbirds, never venture out of the thin veneer of civilization that lines Florida’s coastline. We never stray into the vast interior of ranch land, farm land, tangled jungles, and swamps that are home to a million alligators, deer, black bears, wild hogs, and a multitudinous army of smaller creatures. There are even a few magnificent Florida panthers, so scarce now that sighting one is worthy of a spot on the evening news.

“Look for a street sign,” Chad said, interrupting my wandering thoughts. “I need to tell the cops how to find the house.”

We were driving on asphalt now and I did as Chad asked, somehow surprised that this side of the river had little green street signs exactly like those in town. I didn’t plan to let Chad get away without telling me what happened back there, but at the moment I kept my mouth shut. If I pelted him with questions, I came across as just another nagging female. Give him space, and I hoped he’d open up on his own.

We drove the eight miles back to my car in silence. Chad parked but left the motor running to keep the chill out. “Your guess was good,” he said. “And you can tell Koonce his instincts were right on. Hopefully, he has insurance to cover the cash he laid out, because I’m pretty sure the cops will match up the jewelry to stuff that’s been stolen.”

“What did you see?”

“More than I expected to.”

“Chad?” He was teasing me, darn it, drawing out his tale for maximum effect.

“I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was a pretty good argument going. I had a feeling the boss was none too pleased about the goons using Pete Koonce as a fence.”

“You saw the boss?”

“I saw somebody who was acting like
a
boss. Could be he was only the highest ranking gang member present. There were three guys sitting around a table, drinking beer. The boss guy remained standing. There were a bunch of items laid out on the table, mostly larger than jewelry. Heirloom plates, cups, clocks, candlesticks, silver. Quality stuff, all of it. And against the walls—flat screens, PCs, X-boxes. You name it, they had it. I figure Koonce was a trial run. They were hoping to sell him the antiques as well, but the boss guy was wary, thought they ought to sell farther away from home.”

“You got all this without hearing a word?”

“Not my first surveillance and I’m good at body language. Can even manage a bit of lip reading occasionally. Besides, I knew how I’d handle it if I was in charge.”

Great. My hero wasn’t government, after all. He was fresh out of jail.

Mentally, I swatted myself with a phrase from Gramma Wallace, who lived long enough to see me graduate from college.
Get thee behind me, Satan
. Bad thoughts about Chad I didn’t need
. Positive, Gwyn. Think positive.