License to Thrill (12 page)

They looked at each other.

Twilight Studios. The same movie studio Nolan and Maybelline had once worked for.

Happenstance?

Charlee didn’t think so. But what was the bond? Why had Elwood brought them here?

A high wooden fence divided the studio lot, but time and the desert had eroded the once stately planks into slumping, thin gray posts staggering across the red dirt like teeth sliding forward in an aging mouth. Several boards were missing from one area and a narrow trail told the story. Someone or something entered frequently through the opening.

Charlee parked the Bentley beside the fence.

“If your father brought our grandparents here, then where is the camper?”

“Inside the studio lot?”

“How did they get in? The padlock is rusted shut.”

“Maybe Elwood knew another way in.”

“What now?” Mason asked.

“We go in.”

“The sign says no trespassing.”

She stared at him. “What planet are you from?”

“Are we going in on foot?”

“Unless you’ve been holding out on me and you’ve got a magic carpet in your back pocket, yes, we’re going to trespass on foot.” Charlee opened the car door.

“But I’m wearing loafers and I left my sunscreen back at the hotel.”

“That’s why I have on cowboy boots and a hat,” she replied tartly.

“Oh, yeah?” he retorted. “I thought it was because you wanted to look tough.”

“That too,” she confessed. “Come on.” She was halfway to the hole in the fence before he even got out of the car.

He shut the door, shaded his brow with his hand, and looked around. “Do you think the Bentley will be safe parked here?”

“I don’t think any gangbangers will be stealing your mag wheels if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, it’s just if anything were to happen we’d be stranded.”

“What about your cell phone?”

“That’s assuming I can pick up a tower.”

“You’re unnaturally attached to your car, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he grumbled. “I’m aware I place too much value on a car. Can we get on with this, please?”

“Oooh, hit a touchy spot.”

“Do you want me to bring up your towed Corvette?”

She raised her palms. “I surrender. No more cracks about the car.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

Charlee led the way through the fence and into the lot. They walked side by side into the false facade of an Old West town. The first building they came to was an aged saloon with the obligatory hitching post, as dusty and weather-beaten as a real saloon might have been a hundred and twenty years before. The sheriff’s office came complete with tumbleweeds and had the window-panes knocked out while the nearby livery stable hosted a rusted anvil and bent horseshoes. The town ended at the dry goods store with barrels of fake food sitting out front.

“I think I’ve seen this set in an old western or two,” Charlee mused. “Ever see
Shane?”

“Twilight didn’t produce
Shane”

“They could have used the set.”

“Don’t think so. According to Gramps, back in those days the studios were pretty territorial. They practically owned the actors.”

“Yeah, Maybelline mentioned something like that.”

The sun lasered down. Sweat collected along Charlee’s collar and a vague uneasiness settled in her belly. The place was dead quiet. Not even the scratch of a scurrying lizard. The eerie theme song from
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
drifted through her head.

“No one’s here,” Mason said.

A dread of dizziness washed over Charlee. Something wasn’t right. If Elwood brought their grandparents here, then where were they? What if her father had crossed the line from small-time-get-rich-quick schemer to big-time felon?

She simply couldn’t believe that. Regardless of his numerous faults, her father, no matter how much trouble he was in, would never hurt his own mother.

But what if there were other people involved? Don’t forget the goons in the white Chevy. She didn’t know if they had anything to do with Elwood kidnapping Nolan and Maybelline or if they had been following the Bentley for some other reason.

What if the Malibu goons were debt collectors and they’d been tracking her in order to get to Elwood? The possibility was a very real one. It wouldn’t be the first time her father had owed money to the wrong people. Once, he’d even ended up in the hospital following a debt-related beating. Her uneasiness grew.

Elwood was here. He had to be. They needed to keep looking. She took off down movie-land street.

“Where are you going?” Mason asked.

“Every good western has a farmer’s barn. It’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

They found the barn squatting at the end of the lot next to the facade of a farm house. The barn was for real, however, and the donkey’s bray that broke the silence was just as authentic.

Charlee jerked her head around in time to see someone disappearing around the corner of the barn.

Without dithering, she went in hot pursuit.

She could hear Mason’s footsteps pounding close behind her. She rounded the barn in time to see a man desperately trying to scale the mesa. She tackled him at a dead run and knocked him to the ground. That’s when Charlee realized the guy was at least sixty and wearing ratty gold prospector clothes.

“Please don’t hurt me, sister,” the old man panted. “I swear I don’t know nothing about these weird goings-on.”

Mason, Charlee, and the old prospector, whose name turned out to be, oddly enough, Waylon Jennings, sat on moldy hay in the barn out of the direct heat of the relentless sun, sharing the Pepsis Charlee had bought at the convenience store.

“Yep,” Waylon said, “I thought I was seeing things when Elvis Presley got out of the camper. Seein’ mirages are pretty common when you spend a lot of time alone in the desert but I couldn’t figure out why in the hell I’d be having a vision about the King. I never cared much for his music and as for his movies, well they flat stank. ‘Cept I kinda liked
King Creole.”

“Forget the movie criticisms,” Mason interjected. “What happened?”

Waylon shot him the evil eye, then spit a stream of chewing tobacco juice at his shoes. Mason jumped aside and the old prospector turned his attention back to Charlee. “When Elvis pulls an older couple out of the back of his camper and I see he’s got them tied up I start thinking maybe it’s for real and I’m not imagining things, so me and Jackass—that’s my donkey—come down off the mesa for a closer look.”

Mason watched Charlee’s face as she studied the old man. The woman was intensely focused. He could actually see her listening. He realized she was probably a very good private investigator.

Somewhere along the way, however, his attention shifted from respecting Charlee’s interrogation skills to admiring the way her faded jeans curved tight over her perfect butt.

Maybe it was the desert heat, maybe it was lack of sleep and food, maybe it was sheer desire, but without warning, Mason was lost in a very sexy vision of his own and it startled him. He wasn’t driven by sexual impulse. At least not usually. But something about tough, irreverent Charlee Champagne tapped into his baser instincts and made him want to throw back his head and howl with lust like a lonesome desert wolf.

What in the hell was the matter with him? Why, after twenty-seven years, had his libido chosen this particular moment to go haywire?

But even more disturbing than his physical desire for her were the other, more subtle feelings she roused in him. Affection. Tenderness. Happiness.

Dear God, he realized with a jolt. He was happier when he was around her. Happier than he’d been in years. Even when they argued, even when things went haywire, even when she was so stubborn he wanted to wring her sweet neck, he was happy.

Stunned, he could only gaze at her in wonderment. Surely he was mistaken. It had to be something else.

“Pepsi tastes real good,” Waylon said. “Ain’t had a soda pop in close to five years. The stuff costs too much.”

“The older couple,” Charlee gently nudged him back on topic. “And Elvis?”

“Oh, yeah. Where was I?”

“Elvis took them out of the camper.”

“Yeah and the lady was saying he better untie them or he’d be sorry and you could tell Elvis wasn’t about to untie her ‘cause she looked like she was going to put her foot to his backside real hard. Feisty she was.”

Mason wanted to yell at the old man to “get on with it” even though he wasn’t in the mood to dodge more tobacco juice. In his normal life, he was a take-charge guy, accustomed to maintaining a tight rein over both his job and his body, but out here, tempted by Charlee’s unexpected appeal, away from the defining manners and mores of his world, he was clearly a guppy on parched soil gasping for oxygen and he hated feeling out of control.

But Charlee was running the show and she merely nodded patiently at Waylon. “Go on.”

“The lady and Elvis got into a shouting match and when Elvis wasn’t looking, the older man got loose from his ropes, sneaked up on him, and cracked Elvis on the head with one of those big Igloo thermoses from the back of the camper. Elvis went down like a sack of sand.”

Way to go, Gramps!
Mason mentally cheered.

Charlee winced. “That must have hurt. What then?”

“Well, sir, I mean, ma’am…the older man untied the woman and then they hopped into the camper. They spotted me as they were driving off and they stopped and asked me if I needed a ride. Said they was on their way to L.A. Hell, I ain’t got any use for that city. Left there in nineteen and eight-one when my ex-wife kicked me out and I ain’t regretted it for a second. I told that nice couple thanks, but no thanks.”

“What happened with Elvis?” she asked.

“Well, not long after the couple left, Elvis came to, got on his cell phone, and called somebody. I guess it was about an hour later, though it might have been longer, this black limousine pulls up and guess who gets out?”

“Who?”

“Go on, guess.”

Charlee shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Take a guess.”

“Marilyn Monroe,” Mason spouted and got to his feet.

Waylon frowned at him. “Don’t be dense. Marilyn Monroe is dead.”

“So is Elvis.”

Waylon needed a minute to process that before resuming his dialogue. “Anyway, one of them old-time western movie stars gets out of the limo. I can’t remember his name but I know his face.”

“John Wayne?”

Charlee glared at Mason. What was she getting testy about? She was the one who had sacked the old guy and now she was acting like they were best buds. “Don’t pay him any mind. He’s from a big city and doesn’t know any better.”

“No, not John Wayne,” Waylon said, a waspish note in his voice. “You think I don’t know the Duke?”

“Okay, if it wasn’t John Wayne, who was it then?” Mason asked.

The old coot had spent way too many years baking his brains in the Arizona sun searching for some nonexistent gold mine. He didn’t know if they could trust a single word the guy said.

Waylon snapped his grizzled fingers three times, trying to jog his memory. “He was in that movie with Walter Brennan. He played a gunslinger.”

“Oh, that narrows it down,” Mason said.

Charlee speared him with a do-you-mind expression. Actually, he did mind. He was hungry and hot and horny beyond all common sense. He needed a meal, a bath, and a bed. But mostly, he needed to find his grandfather and get the hell back home where he belonged before he did something irrevocably stupid like have crazed monkey sex with Charlee and ruin his family’s best-laid plans for his future.

“It’s okay, Waylon,” she said. “You don’t have to remember the guy’s name. It’s not important.”

“Give me a minute, I know I can think of it.”

“Let’s just say some famous movie star showed up in a limousine to pick up Elvis and then they drove away together. Is that how it happened?”

Waylon nodded his shaggy, unwashed head. “Yep. That’s it exactly.”

“You know.” Mason glanced at his watch and tapped his foot impatiently. “Now we know our grandparents have eluded Elwood and are on their way to L.A., we should get back on the road. Let’s roll.”

Forward motion. He had to regain control. Move things along. He’d allowed Charlee free rein but now it was time he took charge. If he didn’t…Helplessly, Mason found his gaze drawn back to Charlee’s curvy rump.

Forget distractions. He had a goal. Find Gramps. Nothing else mattered.

Determined, Mason started for the car without even waiting to see if Charlee was going to follow.

CHAPTER 8

N
owhere Junction Next Exit. Last Chance for Food And Gas Next One Hundred Miles.

Nowhere Junction. Now that was truth in advertising. Mason figured the only place more isolated than here was the dead center of Antarctica.

“We gotta stop,” Charlee said as she blew past the sign at a good ninety miles an hour. “My stomach is about to eat a hole through the bottom of my feet and my bladder’s threatening to explode.”

Mason gripped the armrest with both hands and clenched his teeth. He shouldn’t have let her behind the wheel again after they left the abandoned movie studio lot, but she’d had the keys in her pocket and she’d simply slid into the driver’s seat without asking if he wanted to drive. He was conflicted about that on so many levels.

On the one hand he did hate driving without a license. Breaking laws, even small ones, went against everything he stood for. On the other hand, she drove like a banshee with a firecracker clenched between her teeth. But when he’d outrun the Malibu, the capricious thrill blasting through him unnerved Mason so deeply he had insisted she drive.

He didn’t like unplanned emotions. He was a cool, calculating guy, known in business for his unruffled aplomb. Faced with the evidence he could get just as embroiled in a car chase as some joyriding teenager had been a startling revelation to say the least. He thought he’d outgrown that irresponsible wildness after Kip’s death.

But now, because of Charlee, he found himself longing for freedom. She made him want to break with tradition. She made him want to stand up to his folks and tell them he was tired of living the life they’d chiseled for him. Dammit, but she made him want to have fun.