Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel (11 page)

The man didn’t need to check registration records or wasn’t inclined to bother. “No one here named that.”

Cate offered the description of Timmons that Matt Halliday had given her, skipping his derogatory details of Timmons looking like a druggie and/or weasel. “He may be staying with a blonde woman who drives an older Ford pickup. And he has an old Indian motorcycle. A ’48 Chief.”

“Don’t ring no bells. And I’d of noticed an old Indian bike, that’s for sure. Had one when I was a kid.”

“Okay, well, thanks. Is it okay if I just drive around and see if maybe I can spot them?”

“Help yourself.”

The RVs were parked on both sides of the long driveway that ended in a turnaround at a board fence highlighted with red reflectors. She stopped and asked a gray-haired woman working in her yard if she knew anyone named Andy Timmons. The friendly woman tried to be helpful, but she shook her head when Cate added the description of man, woman, and motorcycle.

Cate went on to the next RV park farther down the road. A palm tree stood out front, its straggly condition testament to the fact that Eugene was not palm-tree friendly. The spaces here were smaller, the RVs crammed into them close enough for a window-to-window handshake. No one answered her ring at the office, so she drove on by. A sign said “5 mph speed limit. Strictly enforced.”

Perhaps enforced by the bathtub-sized potholes dotting the street, Cate decided as she cautiously eased past the parked
RVs. One man walking his dog shook his head when she inquired about an Andy Timmons, but she got a potential hit with the second person she talked to.

This was a middle-aged woman, gray hair held back by an embroidered headband, down on her knees pulling weeds around the trailer hitch of her RV. She stood up, put a hand to her lower back, and came to the low picket fence.

“That sounds like Lily Admond and her boyfriend. She lived right down there.” The woman pointed a gloved hand toward an empty spot about four spaces down the street. “She had a trailer, about a twenty-five-footer. I never knew her boyfriend’s name, but I did see his old motorcycle a couple times. Usually he kept it all covered with a tarp. My husband thought it was something real special, but it was just a dinged-up old motorcycle, far as I could see.”

“She moved out?”

“She mentioned going down to Arizona. Said it was hard finding a job here. But I don’t know if that’s where they went.”

Cate could sympathize with the difficulties of finding a job. It was the reason she’d turned into an assistant PI. That and the fact that she finally figured out that God may have plans for her life that hadn’t been on her own agenda.

“Young couple in the fifth wheel down there next to them might know more,” the woman added. “I think they were friends.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Cate nosed the Honda on down to the fifth-wheel trailer next to the empty space. At one time, “fifth wheel” would have been meaningless to her, but now, courtesy of Uncle Joe, who’d considered various forms of living quarters on the road, she knew what it was. Fifth wheel meant a trailer that, rather than hooking to a hitch at the back end of a
vehicle, fastened to a big wheel-like thing in a pickup bed, similar to the hookups on big commercial eighteen-wheeler truck and trailer rigs.

The couple from the fifth wheel, with a baby in the woman’s arms, were getting into a pickup when Cate pulled up behind them. She tapped the horn to get their attention, and the woman opened the pickup window when Cate approached.

“Hi. I’m trying to find Lily Admond and her friend Andy Timmons. I think they were parked there.” Cate motioned to the empty space. “I’m hoping you might know where they went?”

The woman glanced over at her husband, as if uncertain about responding. The husband leaned around the woman to look at Cate.

“You a friend of theirs?”

Cate suspected he was really wondering if she was a bill collector or some similar unwanted company.

“Actually, I haven’t met them. Does he still have his old bike?”

“Oh yeah. He was thinking about selling it when his unemployment checks ran out. I wouldn’t of minded buying it off him, but Shauna here”—he gave the woman an affectionate glance—“she had this stuffy idea we should buy groceries and diapers and stuff like that instead.”

Cate smiled and gave the woman a thumbs-up gesture. “So, do you know where they are now?”

“Lily told me she was going to dump him,” the woman offered.

“Yeah?” The husband looked surprised. “He told me they might go down to Nevada and get casino jobs.”

If Timmons had picked up and gone to Nevada or Arizona, Matt Halliday probably wouldn’t be interested in tracking
him all the way there to find the motorcycle. She’d have to talk to Matt again.

“I appreciate the information,” Cate said. “I’ll stop by the office again and see if they left a forwarding address. If you happen to hear anything more about him, would you give me a call?”

She started to fish a Belmont Investigations card out of her pocket, then thought better of it. Private investigator might scare them off. She scribbled her name and cell phone number on a page from her small notebook instead.

Cate stopped at the office again, but the woman who answered the doorbell this time said Lily Admond hadn’t left a forwarding address with her. “I didn’t even know she was leaving until one morning she was gone.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Oh no. That’s what RV life is about, you know? Freedom. Sometimes I think that’s what I should be doing, instead of just sitting here watching them come and go.”

Although what she really seemed to be saying, as her doleful gaze followed a motor home rolling past the office, was, “Instead of sitting here watching life pass me by.”

Okay, she’d try Andy Timmons’s address from the motorcycle registration next, Cate decided. A long shot, but maybe someone there would know something helpful.

13

That idea resulted in a display of the changing face of the city. What may have been a modest residential area where Andy lived earlier was now a new and bustling strip mall. A tantalizing scent drifted from a small restaurant with a banner proclaiming “Best Barbecue in Town!” The hair-and-nails salon next to a dry cleaners reminded Cate her nails were beginning to look as if she shared Octavia’s love of the scratching pole. And the tattoo parlor brought back memories of the time she and college friend Tangela decided to fill one dateless Saturday night by getting tattoos. But God had wisely confused their way and given them a flat tire to boot. If not for those impediments, she might right now have a fire-breathing dragon circling her ankle.
Thank
you
,
Lord
!

But she felt a twang of disappointment that wherever Andy Timmons had once lived was obviously gone. Another dead end. However, disappointment did not plunge her appetite into depression, and the pulled-pork sandwich she had in the barbecue restaurant was great, meaty and juicy. Hey, she’d have to tell Mitch about this place.

It wasn’t until she got home that the thought occurred to her that concentrating her search on Lily Admond might be
the best way to find Andy. She got on the computer and, using a database Uncle Joe subscribed to for Belmont Investigations, found a rural address for a pickup in Lily’s name. Cate knew it was probably an old address, but hopefully worth checking out. She thought about going out there yet today, but a call from Uncle Joe made her decide to put it off until later.

She called Mitch to see if he wanted to run over to Uncle Joe’s with her, and he came by a few minutes later. Clancy was riding shotgun in the front seat when Cate opened the SUV door. He offered her a sloppy face kiss, which Cate managed to detour to her elbow. Mitch shooed him into the backseat, where he curled up in a red-plaid, padded doggie bed.

“You bought Clancy a bed?”

“I leave him here in the SUV a lot. I didn’t want him to be uncomfortable. He can take it with him when he goes back to his owner.” Mitch changed the subject. “So they really did it.”

“That’s what Uncle Joe said.”

The truth of that was verified when Mitch parked in front of Uncle Joe and Rebecca’s house. A motor home filled the driveway, big and bulky as a tyrannosaurus rex on wheels. A mural of a desert scene, complete with cactus and howling wolf, decorated the back wall. Uncle Joe stepped out of the door, can of Pledge in hand. He beamed the same way Mitch had when he’d just bought his Purple Rocket motorcycle. Men did like their motorized toys.

“You’re going to drive that down the highway?” Cate said. “It’s enormous!”

“Not all that big,” Uncle Joe scoffed modestly. “It’s only a thirty-footer, and they make them a lot bigger than that. C’mon in and take a look around.”

“Where’s Rebecca?”

“In the house getting sheets and blankets to make up the bed.”

“Is she going to drive it too?” Cate asked.

“She says not, no way. But I’m thinking she’ll change her mind after a while. Drives like a dream.”

Cate eyed the metal hulk again. Dream, nightmare, whatever.

Uncle Joe held the door open, and Cate and Mitch stepped inside. Clancy was still in the SUV.

Cate strolled the interior length of the motor home. Two big seats up front for driver and passenger were on a higher level than the living area, wide console between them, TV above. A sofa and small upholstered chair, kitchen counter with double sinks, propane kitchen stove, microwave. A dinette with upholstered bench seats overlooked a window across from the kitchen, a refrigerator/freezer beyond. Bathroom on one side of the aisle, small tub and shower on the other. Queen-size bed in back. Storage cabinets tucked in everywhere. Not an inch of wasted space. And, Cate had to admit, all quite cozy and comfortable looking.

“So, how soon are you taking off in it?” Mitch asked.

“Well, not within the next fifteen minutes.” Uncle Joe grumped, as if fifteen minutes was the time frame he’d prefer. “We’re still waiting for Cate’s PI license. And I have to get a tow bar put on the car so we can pull it behind the motor home. We’ll probably take a couple of short trips to see how everything goes, but I’m thinking we’ll be seeing the northern states this summer and hitting the Florida beaches by fall.”

Cate and Mitch went to church together on Sunday, as usual. It was a gorgeous spring day, blue skies with a decora
tive sprinkle of fluffy clouds, the kind of day that made Cate think maybe God was showing off just a bit. Oak trees with a haze of new growth, red tulips along the walkway to the church, scent of freshly mowed grass. Clancy waited in his red-plaid dog bed in the SUV. After church, Cate asked Mitch if he’d like to take a drive out in the country.

“A see-the-countryside drive or a working-type drive?” he asked.

Hmm. Mitch knew her all too well.

“I could check on an address that might be connected with a case I’m working on,” Cate admitted. To sweeten the prospect, she added, “But we can find a place for Clancy to run out there too.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

They went by Mitch’s condo and then Cate’s house to change out of the clothes they’d worn to church. Octavia sniffed at Cate’s shoes as if she suspected Cate had been fraternizing with a hairy dog.

“Yes, we’re taking Clancy along,” Cate admitted to the cat. “But you don’t even like to ride in a car, so you shouldn’t be complaining.”

Deaf Octavia couldn’t hear her, of course, but it always seemed as if the cat got the gist of their conversations. Sometimes Cate suspected her of some super-cat ability to read lips. She considered that possibility now as Octavia gave her an accusing, blue-eyed stare.

Nah. That was
Twilight Zone
stuff. Cats could not read lips. But in case this one could, Cate added, “But you know you’re my favorite furry creature in the whole world.”

Following Cate’s directions, Mitch headed west on the road to the coast, then, a few miles out of town, turned off to the south. More turns brought them to Mad Crow Road.
Trees, a few nondescript cattle, and a couple of big-eyed deer, not people, populated the area. Cate didn’t spot any crows, mad or otherwise. A hand-scrawled sign at a gravel driveway identified the address she was looking for, a Wood For Sale sign tacked to the post below it. A double-wide mobile home sat beside several outbuildings well back from the road. Of more interest to Cate was the travel trailer under a nearby madrone. She felt a flutter of excitement. Had she hit the jackpot and found Lily and Andy already?

“Yeah, I know Lily,” the guy who came out from behind a mountain of firewood said in answer to Cate’s question. The statement wasn’t rude, but his up-and-down assessment of her held a hint of “what’s it to ya?” challenge.

He was tall and lanky, with heavy boots and a black stocking cap that revealed a shock of hair as red as Cate’s own. The tail of a blue-plaid flannel shirt hung over his faded jeans, and a chain saw dangled from one hand.

Cate tried not to think about those old chain-saw massacre movies. Which, of course, made her think of them in full gory detail. Plus more stray thoughts about chainsawed bodies, body parts tucked away in freezers and basements. Or maybe woodpiles.

“What do you want to know for? She in trouble?” he asked. The unfriendly attitude suggested their both having red hair did not establish an instant bond with Cate.

“No, nothing like that,” Cate assured him. “Actually, it’s a friend of hers I’m trying to find.”

“That punk Timmons? I told her she was off her rocker having anything to do with that deadbeat. He’s bad news all the way.”

Cate revised her hope that Andy Timmons might be found with Lily in the nearby trailer. Chain Saw Man’s attitude
suggested that if Timmons showed up, he’d run him off the property. Maybe off the planet.

“You’re Mr. Admond?” Mitch asked. Apparently he was thinking the same thought that had just occurred to Cate, that this might be an ex-, or even current, husband.

“Lily’s my sister. She divorced that scumbag Admond, so Connie and I were letting her stay in our travel trailer. He come sniffin’ around once, but I don’t think he’ll be coming again.” He gave a shark-in-a-flannel-shirt smile of satisfaction. A chain saw was no doubt an effective ex-husband deterrent.

“Lily got tired of being stuck out here in the boonies, so I pulled the trailer into town for her. I wouldn’t of, if I’d known she was going to take up with that Timmons jerk.”

Either Lily was the world’s worst at picking men, or her brother was unfairly prejudiced about her choices.

Cate glanced toward the small trailer out back. “But now she’s come back alone?”

“Her and Timmons wanted to take the trailer down to Arizona or Nevada or somewhere, but I said no way. I went and got it. I tried to talk some sense into Lily and get her to move back out here, but she wouldn’t do it. I should of drug her back out here anyway.”

He could probably see, as Cate could without even knowing Lily, how far he’d have gotten with that.

“So they went on down to Arizona without the trailer?” Cate asked. She kept a wary eye on the chain saw.

The guy looked her up and down again. The inspection apparently did not upgrade her status. “I don’t see any reason I should be blabbing to you about where she is.”

The brother might not approve of his sister’s choices in men, but he was still protective. Cate hesitated, wondering
how close she had to stick to Halliday’s “confidential” instructions. Before she could decide, the brother turned and clomped back to the far side of the woodpile. A moment later the roar of the chain saw put a final punctuation mark on their visit.

“I don’t think we’re going to get any more information here,” Mitch observed. “Why
are
we looking for this woman and her friend?”

Cate started to tell him, but that matter of “confidentiality” shot up like a stop sign. She sometimes shared generalities about cases with Mitch, and he’d helped her several times and come to her rescue more than once. She couldn’t imagine that his knowing details of this case could matter. But clients had a right to confidentiality, and Matt Halliday had been specific about it in this case.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with murder or dead guys or anything like that,” Cate assured him.

Mitch swiped a hand across his forehead and shook the pretended sweat toward the ground. “Whew. That’s a relief. For a minute there I figured now we’d be looking for a place to dig up a dead body.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If that were the case, I’d have brought a shovel and a body bag,” Cate said primly.

For a moment he looked as if he believed that, then he grinned. “True. You’re quite efficient. Okay, then, what now?”

“Now we find a place for Clancy to run.”

Which they did. A clearing along a creek, where Clancy roamed with his nose to the ground and his tail waving like a skinny whip above the tall grass. He dug a hole, dirt flying behind him. He chased something unseen in the tall grass. He splashed in the creek and came back to happily shake
cold water all over them. Mitch found an old towel in the SUV with which to dry him off, but Clancy had other ideas.