Killer Moves: The 4th Jolene Jackson Mystery (Jolene Jackson Mysteries) (23 page)

Yeah, sounded like airy-fairy wishful thinking to me. “I do not see great promise in that plan.”

“If you don’t show up, you’ll look guilty and it could force Perez’s hand.”

Dammit. It seemed like I found myself backed into a corner every time I turned around. I hated it when people told me I had no choice. I hated it worse when it was true. “I don’t know what you think I can do, but since I don’t see a great Plan B here, I’ll go with you. But here’s the deal, I make no guarantees about anything after that. And if they do try to arrest me or otherwise force me into something, I promise you it will not won’t go well.”

“What part of this is going well now?”

Yeah, there would be that.

He tapped the phone in the console. “I left a few messages.”

“Obviously I didn’t get them.” I grabbed the phone and a whole list of missed calls and voicemails popped up on the screen. Jerry was on the list several times, my mother showed up twice and there was one call was from Gilbert Moore. A rock settled in my stomach. “Oh, crap. Gilbert called too, and he wouldn’t have without a reason. I’ve got to see what’s going on.”

“Make it quick,” he said, opening the door and stepping out. Before he closed the door, he leaned back in. “You can follow me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just go. I said I’d be there and I will.”

He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes. I will meet you at the rehab center in twenty minutes,” he said, slowly, deliberately and redundantly. “Twenty minutes, Jolene.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be there,” I said, dialing.

Gilbert answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“Headed to a meeting. I didn’t hear your message. What’s up?”

“We have a problem.”

“Kinda figured that.”

He huffed and sort of growled. “Finch left and I needed to get some supplies, so I started looking around. I opened up one of the ice chests and it was full of bags with—”

“Gilbert, stop, you know I don’t have any idea about what sample things you need to use for one thing or another. Call Finch. I gotta go.”

“Will you just listen for one damn minute?” he said, pretty much yelling at me. “I know what sampling shit to use. The whole thing is full of drugs.”

“Drugs? Like street drugs? Illegal things?”

“Jesus, are you really that stupid?” He didn’t wait for me to respond with the obvious answer. “You don’t get pills in big plastic bags from Walmart. There’s other shit too.”

I slumped forward, my head thumping on the steering wheel. It was tempting to repeat the process vigorously until I was unconscious, but that really wasn’t going to solve anything. “Look, there’s nothing I can do about it. Call 911 and let Bowman County do whatever they do about these things.”

“Now why in the hell didn’t I think of that?” he said, sarcasm and derision dripping from every word. “It’s your consultants that are dealing drugs from your jobsite. After I call 911, I’ll call the news too.”

“Just because it’s on the jobsite doesn’t mean it’s Waverman. He’s hardly the drug dealing type. And Finch, well, he nearly wets himself if you say boo to him. ”

“And, in your vast experience, Miss Jackson, just what is the drug dealing type?”

How the hell would I know? And that was the point—I didn’t know. And, admittedly, Waverman had rubbed me wrong from the beginning. For that matter, so had Finch. Maybe Gilbert was right. Maybe those drugs were why Waverman had left the hospital and had gone directly back to the site—he needed another hit or whatever. Maybe that’s what almost killed him--twice. “Okay, look, I don’t have time for this. Right, wrong or otherwise, just call the cops, tell them what you know and let the chips fall where they may.”

“You’re the boss,” he said. “Your job, your property, your ass. They can probably be at your house in half an hour.”

I popped my head up off the steering wheel. “Why would they go to my house?”

“Well, I sure as hell wasn’t leaving that shit onsite so they could come back and get it,” he said, his tone still rife with derision over my obvious ignorance. “Didn’t think it’d be real healthy for me if they found it in the back of my truck either. And since my rig doesn’t run without me, I took the stuff up to your house so I could get back to work, which you’d know if you’d listened to your goddamn voicemail. ”

“Why would you do that! I don’t want drugs at my house! Are you insane? You go get that ice chest and put it right back where you found it and call the sheriff. Right now!”

“It’s in the garage on the right side,” he said calmly.

“No! Have you heard nothing I’ve said? I do not need a trunk full of illegal drugs to help me get arrested. If I don’t show up as directed by a test detective in about fifteen minutes, I might as well go directly to jail.” I wanted to scream—just scream—really, I did. “You are the project manager, Gilbert. I need you to take care of this—the right way, right now!”

“Goddammit,” he said, disgusted. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Apparently not, Mister Moore, but do enlighten me.”

“People dealing that much shit are real serious about keeping it and I’m not playing guard until the cavalry arrives. I’ve already taken one bullet for nothing and I’m not taking another one.”

He was trying to play the guilt card on me, but I wasn’t buying it. He didn’t get shot at the cabin because of me and this wasn’t because of me either. And while I could sort of see why he thought he had to take the stuff, it was still a stupid thing to do. “Okay, I see why you think you had to do it, but that doesn’t solve the immediate problem of what to do now.”

“I’ll meet you at the south end of Turkey Ranch Road with the stuff,” Gilbert said. “You take it with you and turn it in. Problem solved.”

“Maybe for you,” I said. “But as I have already explained, it is a very bad plan for me. You take it.”

“I’m not leaving the jobsite,” he said firmly. “They’ll be back and I’m not leaving my crew here alone. And in case you’re thinking of just leaving it where it is, well, I wouldn’t.”

I did not have time for this, and I certainly didn’t need to hear him explain any more of my ignorance to me. I had a lot of things I’d be explaining to him when this was all over and he wasn’t going to like it one little bit. “Fine. Ten minutes. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I tossed the phone in the console and headed toward the cemetery gate, muttering every expletive I wish I’d said before I hung up.

I was going to be late to the meeting—no way around that—but how late might be negotiable.

Navigating the winding concrete trails through the tombstones at a dignified speed was not going to help my cause, so I hit the gas and headed for the exit with a totally inappropriate zest and swiftness. To my credit, I generally kept all four tires on the narrow path as I did so. I also voiced a running dialogue for anyone who might be listening, apologizing profusely for past, present and future indiscretions. Not so much to my credit—and in flagrant violation of all that is good and holy—I had only one hand on the wheel and no eyes on the road as I dialed my phone. Jerry picked up just as I cleared the gate and launched the BMW onto the highway. “I’m on my way,” I said. It was sort of true. Okay it was a blatant lie. So were the next words out of my mouth. “I’m just going to be a little late.”

“Jolene…”

“Look, there was a problem at the jobsite and I have to go pick up some stuff from Gilbert. He’s meeting me so I don’t have to go all the way back, but I have to do it. It won’t take but an extra ten or fifteen minutes.” Or perhaps thirty, but who was counting. “If I hurry, I might not even be late at all.”

“It would be in your best interests to be on time,” he said evenly. “Preferably without a police escort. And you do recall that several people are convinced locking you up will solve all their problems? I can only do so much.”

“I know that, Jerry, and I wouldn’t do this if I had any other choice. I’ll explain when I get there.” I could see him shaking his head through the phone. No, not really, but I knew he was. “I’ll be there, Jerry, really I will.”

“You better be,” he said, clicking off.

Well, that had more shades of bad tangled up in it than I could count, and when Mister Sheriff learned why I was late, well, it would only add to the joy. There would be hell to pay on many fronts, but there were illegal drugs on my jobsite and I had no choice but to go get them so I could turn them in. It made perfect sense—on some planet somewhere, in some alternate universe.

“Well, Jolene,” I said to myself. “You can fret and worry about it, chew on it like a dog with a bone like you usually do, or you can just accept your mission and sit back enjoy the ride.”

Choosing Option B, I slipped on my sunglasses, fluffed my hair and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. The theme song to
Mission Impossible
started playing in my head. I hummed the first few notes, which was all I could remember, and pressed down on the gas. The pretense was seriously lame, but it was better than gritting my teeth and cussing the whole way there and back. And, the juvenile fantasy seemed to be easing my irritation. In fact, I was feeling almost cheerful, humming and singing away. I was, that is, until I realized somebody had changed tracks on me and I was belting out “I see a bad moon rising,” followed by a totally unnecessary stating of the obvious, “I see trouble on the way.”

Then again, trouble wasn’t technically on the way. It had arrived long ago and never left—a fact easily confirmed by my race to pick up a shitload of illegal drugs on my way to meet with my fiancé sheriff and a police detective so I wouldn’t get arrested for stealing stuff from the lab at the rehab center. Yes, trouble was a given. Still, since I was already courting death by pretending I could drive like Tom Cruise, singing “Hope you are quite prepared to die” seemed extra stupid, so I turned off the mental melodies in my head and shifted my attention to a different distraction—my new ride. And oh, what a glorious distraction it was.

Deciding that the silver luxury sedan had to be insured all the way down to its new car smell and ergonomically comfortable seats, I was becoming less troubled by the six-digit price tag. The fancy gadgets were still worrisome, but I was kind of getting over being afraid of driving it. In fact, compared to the take-no-prisoners truck vibe of my Tahoe, the quiet smooth glide was almost like floating on clouds. With just a light touch of the wheel, the car gave a quick tight response and the performance tires hugged the asphalt like a stealthy panther. It was a sweet ride with cushy comfort and jet-propulsion speed. Okay, technically, I don’t know the speed because my eyes were watching for other things—like sheriff’s cars with lights on them—but it seemed superfast to me.

I made the rendezvous point in about half the time it had taken going to the cemetery, so I was slightly ahead of schedule, but Gilbert was there. His white pole truck was parked on the side of the road in wide area near the Turkey Ranch Road cutoff. Heading toward him, I hit the brakes and whipped off the pavement and dropped onto gravel and dirt.

The panther lost its stealthy grip and the car started to spin. As my body flung around with it, I heard myself scream. I also think I cried, saw God, begged for my life, peed a little and yelled a whole bunch of obscenities—but not necessarily in that order. I was staring straight ahead, waiting to be called into the light, when the car jerked to a stop.

Then, the clouds parted—or more accurately, the dust settled—and I could see cars zipping by on the highway off to my right. My hands still gripped the steering wheel and I could hear myself gasping for breath—both good signs that I wasn’t dead. Also good, the car was still purring like a kitten and no warning lights mocked me from the dash. Even better, I was reasonably sure I hadn’t crapped my pants.

I put the car in park, rolled down my window and peeked out, surreptitiously surveying my position on my erstwhile landing strip. The car was perfectly situated, aligned parallel to the highway with its trunk toward Gilbert and its nose headed back toward town. It looked like it had been placed there with deliberate and accurate precision by an expert driver who was showing off her super-cool skills and killer moves. And as long I kept my jelly legs, quivering chin and fear-glazed eyes in the car, no one would know otherwise.

I managed to regain my wits enough to remember how to pop the trunk. That done, my still-shaking hands needed something to do, so I adjusted my sunglasses and fluffed my hair again.

Watching in the side mirror, I saw Gilbert grab a large red ice chest with a white lid from the bed of his truck bed and carry it toward the car. A thump in the cargo hold and a slam of the trunk lid confirmed that I now had full and complete possession of the stolen and illegal goods. Yay.

Gilbert walked up to my window, his right hand absently rubbing his still-healing left shoulder. He rested a hand on the roof of the car then bent his tall frame down toward me. “You better take a look at that stuff before you turn it over.”

“I’d ask why you think I need to do that, but I don’t have time to hear it or think about the answer and I’m not sure I even want to.”

“You probably don’t, which is why you should.”

“Don’t start any cryptic crap,” I said, shaking my head. “I have to go.”

“Take it easy on the drive back,” he said, staring down at me. “You might not be so lucky next time, and waking up dead would really screw up your schedule.”