Going to the Bad (12 page)

I think Leanore might have said something else about how to
help Mida, but I was focused on the car behind us. It had come up fast and now aggressively rode our tail.

Leanore tried to turn around and look. “Who is that?”

The vehicle swerved into the lane reserved for oncoming traffic. A powerful engine roared. I recognized the Cadillac Escalade as it passed us going over a hundred miles an hour.

Leanore checked her seat belt. “What on earth do they think they're doing?”

“I don't know, but I wish they'd quit driving on the wrong side of the road.” Suddenly the Escalade cut in front of us. I slammed on the brakes and jerked to the right.

The van dipped off the road, then shot up. I struggled to keep us from flipping as a loud bang came from the front of the vehicle.

We came to a stop a short distance from the road. From the way the van tilted to one corner, I guessed we had a flat tire. The Escalade had spun around and now faced us.

Sally King got out, but it wasn't her so much as what she had in her hands that made me say, “Call nine one one.”

Before Leanore or I could get to our phones, Sally was at the window. “Put your hands up.”

As I obeyed her command, I said quietly to Leanore, “Is that what a small-caliber rifle looks like?”

“Yes.” Leanore also raised her hands. “I guess we know it works.”

“Stop whispering in there.” Sally banged on the window with the end of the rifle. “Open the door and get out.”

We both obeyed. Sally had us each walk to the front of the van.

“There's no need for this.” Leanore's voice was the very definition of nonthreatening. “I thought we all got along well earlier.”

Sally raised the rifle. “What did you do to my mother?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You broke into her house. Why?”

“That's—”

I was about to say
crazy
, but thought it hit a little too close to
the mark and stopped myself. “That's not true. Your mother invited me in and she's still the legal owner of this entire property. I didn't do anything wrong.”

“I don't believe you. She was screaming.”

Leanore made a noise.

I followed her gaze to a car approaching on the highway. “Someone's coming, Sally. You better put that rifle down before you get into trouble.”

She looked frightened, but as the vehicle neared, her expression changed. “I'm not the one who's going to be in trouble.”

The lights belonged to a pickup with a camper shell. It looked exactly like the kind of vehicle a seedy, old thief such as Carter King would drive. It pulled off the road next to the Escalade and stopped. For a moment the rough idle of the engine obscured all other noise. Then the truck shut off and the door opened.

Christmas Eve, 3:58 p.m.

I
realized that I hadn't truly been afraid until that moment.
If Carter King had shot Bud, would he do the same to us? What was to stop him from dumping the bodies back at the farmhouse with all those dead animals?

But instead of an old man, someone much younger stepped out of the truck. “Mom, what are you doing?”

He looked to be in his early twenties, but unlike Sally had smooth, acne-free skin.

Sally didn't take her focus from us. “Did you get all the holiday stuff I put on the list?”

“Who cares?” He gestured to the news van. “Why are you pointing a gun at TV newspeople?”

“Brandon, you know how important this Christmas is to me. You got a fresh turkey, right? Because there's no time left to thaw a frozen one.”

He gestured to Leanore. “Why are you pointing a gun at Leanore Drucker? She's famous. There's an ice cream flavor named after her at Dewars.”

The Leanore Drucker was one of my favorite flavors at our local ice cream parlor. It was sweet and mellow with a little bit of a tart aftertaste. Very appropriate.

But Sally didn't seem to care about Leanore's status as a dessert. “They were trespassing and snooping around.”

“I was invited by your mother,” I said. “She's the legal owner so it wasn't trespassing.”

“Stop arguing with me,” Sally shouted. “All I wanted was an old-fashioned Christmas, but first my dog runs away, then you
two show up and the Christmas lights won't go straight. Now my mother won't stop screaming.” Her grip on the rifle tightened. “So thank you very much and merry Christmas.”

“Mom, do me a favor and put the gun down.” Brandon maneuvered himself so his own body blocked her shot at us. “Someone could get hurt, and that's the last thing either of us wants.”

“Listen to your son,” Leanore said, again with the soothing voice. “He sounds like a wonderful young man. You should be very proud.”

Sally hesitated, then looked at her son. “Did you get a fresh turkey?”

“It's practically still alive.”

I managed not to laugh, but I felt my affection for Brandon growing. Not only had he stepped between me and a gun, he also had a sense of humor.

Sally lowered the gun. Brandon quickly took it away from her. He escorted her to the Escalade with instructions to check on Mida.

After she drove away, he hurried back to us. “I'm so sorry.”

“We didn't mean to cause so much trouble,” I said. “All we wanted was to talk with your grandma about her brother, Carter.”

“Let me guess, she invited you in, then forgot who you were and started screaming.”

“Exactly.”

He looked down at the dirt. “She's sick. It's not her fault.”

We continued talking while Brandon helped me change the tire. He said Mida had moved off the farm shortly after the scandal with her brother in the fifties. She married badly, had Sally, and then divorced his now deceased grandfather. When Sally had gotten pregnant with Brandon twenty-two years ago, the two women bought the mobile homes and moved back to the farm. His father wasn't in the picture.

When I asked about Carter King, Brandon said he'd never even met his great-uncle. He'd always assumed the man was dead. By
the time we'd put on the spare tire, the conversation had come around to Leland Warner's relationship to Mida.

“They knew each other as kids. The Warner family used to live on that land over there that's now the refinery.” He tightened each of the nuts with a cross wrench. “But we're not relatives.”

We each stood and I lowered the jack. “She called him Cousin Leland.”

“Maybe they used to call him that as a friend of the family and now Grandma can't remember the difference.” The tire reached the ground. Brandon knelt again and gave each of the nuts another turn with the wrench. “She gets very confused between the past and the present. In the beginning she only mislaid things. Now it's like she's mislaid herself.”

I glanced at Leanore. I didn't want to open this can of worms, but I also didn't feel right about going behind Brandon's back to social services. Once you've changed a tire with a man, you owe him better than that.

“Maybe Mida needs more professional care than you and Sally can give her. Have you considered moving her to a facility?”

“We had an aide that came every day and helped, but Grandma's pension went bust last month. There's no money anymore.”

They'd probably been forced to cancel her medical-alert service too. No wonder Mida believed she wore an emergency button around her neck. She probably had until recently. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm using my winter break from classes at Cal State Bakersfield to fix up the old farmhouse on the other side of the property. Hopefully we can rent it out and make a little extra money that way. Until then, Mom is taking care of Grandma during the day.”

I started to ask if Sally was a whack job, but thankfully Leanore jumped in before me. “Being a caregiver is stressful enough, but if your mother also struggles with her own issues, the burden might be too much.”

He stood up and wiped the grease off his hands with a rag.
He'd been careful not to get anything on his
CARTOON NETWORK
T-shirt. “You're right. Mom has always struggled with . . . issues, but she loves Grandma very much.”

Leanore and I exchanged a glance, but didn't say anything.

Brandon recognized our less than subtle meaning. “I understand it's a bad situation that shouldn't continue indefinitely. If Grandma's pension doesn't resume and we can't rent the farmhouse, we'll go ahead and sell this land if we have to.”

Leanore and I said good-bye to Brandon with considerably less concern for Mida. I admired him for taking care of his family. A lot of young men his age would have buckled under the weight of an aging grandmother and a mentally unstable mother.

On our way to the freeway I scanned the side of the road looking for my Mountain Dew bottle. I saw it and recognized the entrance to the dirt road we'd taken to the farmhouse.

I was glad I'd laid a trail of bread crumbs. As much as I liked Brandon, I wondered if he'd been truthful about never seeing or hearing from his great-uncle. A return trip to the farmhouse might be necessary.

I drove back to the hospital so Leanore could get her car. The sun had almost set, so the lights were on in the parking lot. I pulled up next to her Camry and idled.

“Aren't you going to park?” she said.

“I need to go to the station first and check in with Callum. He was going to get a copy of the old police report on the stolen jewelry.”

“I know why you're investigating Bud's shooting, especially if you think the guilty party is going to escape punishment.”

“But,” I said.

She took a breath. “Bud may die. Won't you be sorry if you're not there to say good-bye?”

“That's what Rod thinks too, but I'll be much sorrier if the person who killed him is never caught.”

Leanore got into her own car and left for home. I called Rod
upstairs. If there'd been news, I'd have stayed at the hospital, but the surgery was still under way.

When I tried to tell him about meeting Carter King's family, Rod again said it was a waste of time. I knew he was tired, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed. I usually went to Rod when I needed to talk things over, and the weird situation out at the King farm definitely needed talking over.

I told Rod I'd meet him at the hospital in an hour and drove to the station. On my way into the building I noticed that the animal shelter's truck wasn't in the lot. Ominous considering the five o'clock show began in ten minutes. I passed the control room, where a skeleton crew prepared for the show, then went into the studio.

Ted and the demon sat at the anchor desk reading over their scripts. The explosion of garlands and poinsettias that covered the set this time of year threatened to swallow them.

I navigated around the robotic cameras run from the control room. “Thought I'd stop by to wish you luck, Ted.”

“I'm so glad to see you.” Ted wiped his brow with a Kleenex. The sweat there did not come from the studio lights. “The animal shelter guy never came back and we don't have a floor director. Can you bring in the pets and hand them off to us at the end of the show?”

“Isn't there someone better qualified?”

“All you need to do is bring in the crates during the commercial break and take the animals out for us when we ask for them.” He lifted some papers. “We have the notes from the noon show, so we know what to say.”

“But Lilly will look terrible on camera.” The demon must have realized how that sounded because she tried to switch her tone. “It's not just you. I had to veto Freddy and Callum helping as well.”

Freddy was wearing shorts and Callum looked like the Unabomber on vacation, so there were real reasons they might not be suitable. What was wrong with me?

“I'll do it.” I immediately regretted the words, but Ted looked so relieved that I couldn't take them back. Besides, helping Ted, who'd been such a good friend to me that morning, would only take a few minutes.

I left the studio and walked to the newsroom. Except for Freddy, using one of the assignment-desk phones, the room was empty.

“Dude, I totally don't care if your Christmas is ruined.” Freddy's voice was firm, but he wasn't yelling. “I don't care if your mommy and daddy want their precious baby home so they can spoon-feed you turkey and mashed potatoes. You're scheduled to work.”

Freddy listened for a moment, then hung up.

When he saw me, he shook his head in disgust. “The kid scheduled for audio tomorrow asked for the day off, was told no, and then called out sick via text message. Millennials, man. And I thought I hated the baby boomers.”

I didn't point out that Freddy was himself a millennial. Maybe carping about the fickleness of young people went with the job of assignment manager.

“Callum's in the break room,” he said. “Can you tell him about audio sicking-out? I'd go, but I can't leave the scanners.”

Freddy was officially down the assignment-manager rabbit hole. Seeing how he'd so completely settled into the job only reminded me how itchy and unhappy I'd been. Whatever my future at KJAY held, it wasn't going to be on the assignment desk.

What then, when everything was said and done, was there left for me to do here? How much longer would they keep paying a chief photog when there were no photogs on staff?

I found Callum sitting among dogs and cats in their pet carriers. An empty birdcage sat to the side. I didn't ask. On the wall above Callum a muted TV played KJAY, but he wasn't watching. Instead he examined dozens of photocopied pages spread out on the round table before him.

“Hi, kiddo.” Callum used his foot to kick a chair away from the table for me. “My source came through with the police file. It makes for interesting reading.”

Instead of sitting down I fished a dollar out of my coat pocket and went to the vending machine.