Hide & Find (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 3) (16 page)

“Enough to coerce him to take a road trip, or so he says. If they don’t arrive together tomorrow, then we’ll abort.” Josh slowed down, spoke patiently, reminding me we’d already run through this scenario.

“Right,” I whispered. “Right.”

“You know what else this means?” Josh asked.

My brain was overloaded at the moment and not prepared to hazard a guess. “Just tell me.”

“The paintings are originals. There’s no way Lutsenko would make a gamble like this for anything less.”

“What’s their black market value?” I asked.

“No more than fifty percent of value at auction. Most likely a lot less. I expect Lutsenko negotiated a steep discount.”

“Still,” I muttered. “He’s getting a good deal if he trades what we asked for.”

“He’ll get more than he bargained for. Eat pasta tonight. It’ll make you sleepy, which you need. Then eat plenty of protein and fat for breakfast, but no carbs. That’ll keep you alert throughout the day tomorrow,” Josh said.

“You sound like a coach.”

“Pack tonight too. So you have a few extra hours to remember if you forgot anything,” he added.

“Now you sound like Clarice,” I said. “We’ll be in place and on time. Get some sleep yourself. And thank you — for everything.”

I stuffed the phone back in my pocket and looked at the scattered dust and wood shavings at my feet. Sweeping was no longer on my agenda.

I’d spent the week nursing my terrifying hope — everything depended upon Lutsenko taking the bait. But now that he actually had, I succumbed to a whole new level of gut-wrenching anticipation.

CHAPTER 17

The weather conditions had been flirting with snow, even producing a few tracings here and there over the past week. But as I walked, the flakes started falling in earnest. Big, soft fluffs that settled with dampening effect. The air was still, and the trees were completely flocked within minutes.

The woods were hushed, peaceful; the trees gentle giants. I wanted to dodge between their knees and find a hollow amidst their root ridges to hide in, a blanket of snow to cover me until this was all over. I envied the woodland animals and their uncomplicated lives.

Well, I guess it depended on where the creature ranked in the food chain. I sighed and scuffed a long streak through a snow-filled rut.

Josh was right. Tomorrow was going to be as good a day as any for a shakedown. Or at least an attempted shakedown.

When I got back to the mansion, I placed a short phone call to Gus. He’d been holding a package for me, and it was time to pop that baby in the mail.

Clarice rose to the occasion, producing spaghetti and meatballs in epic portions. Emmie and I held fork-twirling contests which also resulted in massive mouthfuls that made it difficult to chew with our lips closed. Clarice narrowed her eyes behind her cat’s eye glasses and made a show of daintily dabbing the corners of her mouth with a paper towel. Emmie and I failed to take the hint.

Because we are a classy bunch. I should start a finishing school for girls. I have no doubt Clarice would sign on as headmistress.

oOo

The next morning seemed leisurely, accustomed as I was to dashing off to some crisis or other at the break of dawn or earlier. But the rendezvous with Lutsenko was set for mid-afternoon, so I had the luxury of being jittery in the comfort of my own home instead of freezing my tushie off at the scene for a few hours.

I took Emmie on a walk through the woods. I’d assembled a change of clothes, her notebooks and pencils, and a few snacks in her little backpack, and then I zipped her into her winter coat and settled a hat on her head.

She hopped along, glancing over her shoulder to watch her footprints line up behind her, her cheeks pink from the exertion, arms outstretched for balance. I stooped to scoop up a handful of snow, but it was too dry to pack nicely and it crumbled off my gloved fingers.

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “I’m going to ask Walt if you can hang out with the boys today. But there’s a chance that Clarice and I won’t be home tonight, so are you okay with spending the night in the bunkhouse?”

She squinted up at me. “Where are you going?”

“It’s a business meeting.” I wrinkled my nose at her. “Not my favorite thing, but it has to be done. Icky grown-up stuff. Just promise me one thing — if the snow gets stickier and you end up having a snowball fight with the boys, go easy on them, okay?”

“Okay,” she chirped and aimed a mighty kick at a small drift, sending it poofing in a shower of ice sparkles.

And I had the sudden, stabbing thought that I should designate a guardian for her. She wasn’t even mine, really — at least not yet — and if something happened to me, she’d be stranded in a Neverland of bureaucracy. I needed to ask Tarq to set up a legal cocoon for her, just in case. Except my lawyer was doubtless as preoccupied as I was today. Sheltered in Walt’s care was absolutely the safest place for Emmie at the moment.

Walt and a couple of the boys were feeding the pigs when we arrived. Walt flashed a slight smile as I stepped to his side and leaned over the railing to scratch Orville’s back. The pig grunted happily, the noise echoing since his snout was deep in a bucket of slops.

Walt nudged me. “Don’t lean too hard.”

I straightened. “Huh?”

“The pen’s a little shaky,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t want you to end up face-first inside. The boys are working on their construction skills.” He chuckled. “The pigs haven’t figured it out yet, but if they were determined and coordinated, I think they could flatten a section and escape whenever they wanted to.”

“And the next pen would be built sturdier,” I said.

Walt nodded, the little smile back and lightening his eyes. “Exactly.”

I wanted to hug him. I just love his policy of laissez faire, his gentle but firm approach in training the boys. But I restrained myself and instead requested an imposition upon his hospitality in the form of Emmie.

“Of course. Always.” Walt glanced over at the huddle she and Eli and Odell had formed. They were examining something Eli had produced from his pocket and were safely out of earshot.

“Is this one of those things where you’re going to give me a watered-down version of the event later?” he asked.

I nodded. “Thanks for taking care of my girl.”

“I hate this, Nora.” Walt’s blue eyes blazed.

I found it much more comfortable to look at a clump of dead weeds with drooping seed pods poking out of the snow. “I know. I’m not fond of it myself.”

Walt pulled his glove off and tipped my chin up with his warm hand, forcing me to meet his gaze. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

I hated it too — keeping him in the semi-dark — but it was vital to me that Walt be able to maintain his integrity through, and in spite of, all my questionable exploits.

“I’ll bring Emmie over as soon as you’re ready. You’ll call when you get back?” Walt murmured.

I nodded.

Then I squashed Emmie with one last embrace and whispered, “I love you,” into her ear.

It was a lonely trek back to the mansion.

oOo

Clarice met me at the kitchen door with a no-nonsense glare. “Double check,” she commanded and waved at the table. She’d assembled our supplies last night as Josh had instructed, but now in Emmie’s absence, the items were spread out for review.

As usual, she was prepared for every contingency and some that weren’t even in the realm of possibilities, like an attack from Mars. I held up the box of aluminum foil and shot her a questioning look.

“It blocks RFID signals,” she huffed. “I’ve been doing some research of my own.”

“I was planning on leaving my passport here,” I said. “I’m pretty sure everybody involved in this little escapade already knows who I am.”

Clarice shrugged. “Should block reception for that traitor phone of yours too.”

“Really? Isn’t that kind of kooky?” I tried not to smirk.

“If it’s stupid but it works, it’s not stupid,” Clarice growled.

“Amen to that.” I slipped back out onto the patio and stretched to retrieve the two GPS trackers from their hiding spot in the crook of the downspout. “Let’s wrap these up too. Better safe than sorry.”

Clarice hustled out with a sheet of foil a yard long, and I dropped the little boogers into it. She crumpled the foil into a ball with a sly grin stretching her wrinkled face.

“You are enjoying this way too much,” I chuckled.

Then I grabbed the handy little bug detector gadget I’d ordered online and Gus had brought from my general delivery address. I went back outside and put Lentil in neutral, letting her roll just to get some movement and therefore, in theory, a broadcasting signal from any motion-sensing trackers attached to her undercarriage.

Either the detector was broken or Matt hadn’t bugged my pickup yet. Maybe he’d gotten tired of my co-opting his equipment. But I wouldn’t put it past him to have done something even sneakier.

So I had to roll around on the ground for a visual inspection. Joy and peaches.

The snow had accumulated higher than Lentil’s rims, which meant it funneled down my coat collar as I scootched underneath and aimed a flashlight up into the pickup’s wheel wells and other nether regions I didn’t know the names of.

I’d been zipping along the county roads, stocking up on groceries and running errands in Woodland all week. I’d made a particular point of being busy and out and about in addition to my construction support efforts — all part of my normal routine and not activities I needed to hide from the FBI. Today, although we’d be going to some of those same places, I especially did not want my nosy babysitter to show up. At any point in the plan, the presence of federal agents — who are notoriously lacking in a sense of humor let alone an appreciation of precarious and imaginative antics — would be disastrous. Hence the precautions.

All those miles resulted in Lentil’s underside looking as though it had been spray blasted by a fire hose filled with mud. Nothing new and shiny or even dull black drew my attention. Plenty of lumps and bumps in a bland, ubiquitous brown. Short of driving her through a rushing mountain stream to wash her clean, I wasn’t going to find a bug if the detector didn’t.

I crawled out from underneath Lentil and staggered to my feet, trying to shake the snow from between my layers. I popped the hood and again looked for anything newer than the majority in the engine compartment. It all appeared old and on the verge of exhaustion.

One more check. This time I started the engine and backed up, executing a lovely nine-point turn until the pickup bed was as close to the kitchen door as I could get without actually parking on the patio and bashing either of the support posts for the roof overhang. If a bug was going to broadcast Lentil’s location, it would have.

But the detector registered nothing. I would have to live with that result and kick the nagging worry out of my head.

“You finished squirreling around?” Clarice bellowed when I finally came in from the cold. “Eat.” She jabbed a finger at a paper plate nestled among our supplies. It was laden with cold cuts and cheese slices — protein and fat — per Josh’s orders.

I grimaced but obeyed. I may have also whined for the allowance of another mug of coffee to wash it all down with and was summarily indulged.

“Just don’t tell me you have to pee at a crucial juncture,” Clarice grumbled. But I noticed she consumed an extra dose of caffeine too.

She tossed our lunch leftovers in the trash. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

I examined Lentil’s cab for any sign of castaways of the adolescent foster boy variety — it would be equally treacherous to have a stray child show up, as had happened in the past, as it would to have a fully armed and menacing federal agent appear at an inopportune moment — while Clarice bundled our supplies into one of her rolling suitcases and heaved it into the pickup’s bed.

She climbed onto the seat and slammed her door closed. Then she swung her left arm around, her hand bunched into a fist.

I almost ducked.

“Fist bump,” Clarice growled. “For luck.”

“How commando of you.” I provided the obligatory knuckle tap.

“Gotta start somewhere,” she muttered.

But I was pretty sure there was a note of unmitigated glee in her raspy voice, and I considered whether or not I might have unleashed a monster. Because if there’s anybody you don’t want to be on the bad side of — bad guys included — it’s Clarice.

Almost immediately, the weather conditions took my mind off Clarice’s disturbing enthusiasm. In the few minutes it had taken us to scarf down our lunch, the snow had started up again, falling flurry-style in big, slappy wet clumps. Lentil’s windshield wipers barely kept up, and a couple times the tires spun in particularly deep, snow-filled potholes before gaining lurching traction. And that was just in the driveway.

Once we were on the county road, the wheels revolved with that high-pitched noise distinctive to slush, and the view through the windows became more white blur than green trees even though I was driving well below the speed limit.