Nobody Dies in a Casino (24 page)

When Detective McKinley jumped back into the driver's seat, she deposited heavy-duty wire cutters on Charlie's lap. Off they started with neither lights nor logic. Charlie hefted the wire cutters experimentally.

“Don't even think about it,” the older woman warned, but with a grin. “Just be a good sport a little longer.”

They stopped again when that small light blinked on the dash again. Bradone took the wire cutters with her and came back soon after the small light died. They started off across country for a short but jouncing distance and parked up against a rock outcropping.

“Okay, Charlie, we've got to cover this thing.” She pulled a dark tarp out of the back of the Jeep and they spread it over the vehicle and themselves, Charlie still complaining but too afraid of what she didn't know about all this to refuse to hide. The tarp smelled like turpentine.

“What, you think we look like a rock here? You think they don't know exactly where we are? They've been tracking our dust for miles.”

Bradone peered out of a crack in the tarp edges and a faint light shown on a face that appeared surprisingly older. The sound of the helicopter drew closer. “Then why are they circling over there, Charlie, and not here?”

Charlie looked out, to see the helicopter hover over tossing Joshua trees, raise spectral dirt clouds in the searchlight that shone down from it. It wasn't nearly as close as it sounded.

Bradone shoved a water bottle in Charlie's face. “Drink as much as you can now. We can only carry so much once we leave the Cherokee behind.”

“I am not leaving the Cherokee behind.” But Charlie took a swig or two or five, mostly because fear and wine had dried out her mouth. “I'm going to give myself up before we get inside the restricted area and come face-to-face with that authorized deadly force. And I strongly suggest you do too.”

“Charlie, I think there's something you should know first.”

“I'm not listening to you anymore. You're crazy.”

Charlie threw back a corner of the tarp, but before she could rush out and flag down the authorities, Bradone said, “We're already inside the restricted area.”

CHAPTER
29

T
HE MINUTE THE
helicopter disappeared, they took off in the Cherokee again. “We won't be going far this time. Hang on.”

“Did you ask the stars about this?” Charlie could not believe they were out from under the tarp, moving across country, with no headlights. Behind enemy lines. The enemy was armed and they weren't. “They'll follow our tracks.”

“Charlie, will you stop whining? The helicopter stirs up so much dirt, it destroys the tracks.”

“What if the white Cherokees come after us?”

“There aren't any motion detectors on this side of the boundary. At least there didn't used to be. They can't mine the whole damn place with them. This restricted area is humongous.”

“You mean there were motion detectors on the outside of the boundary?”

“That's why the wire cutters. That's what the helicopter was investigating. It must have triggered a signal to somebody that they'd been disabled. Least we know they work. I always wondered if they were just there to intimidate curious tourists.”

“I thought Evan was bad about getting me into trouble.”

“I have to tell you about the last time I was here.” The outrageous woman laughed again.

“Stop that. They can hear your laugh clear back to the Pentagon.”

“The last time I was here, we almost stumbled over a bunch of ground troops slithering around on their bellies, loaded down with fantastic equipment. Oh Charlie, it was so funny—wait a minute, I think this is it.”

“What? The edge of a cliff? How can you see anything?”

“I almost can't.” She stopped and studied a sketch with a penlight. Looked up at the sky and back at the terrain around them. “Pretty sure this is it. Be back in a minute.”

“Don't leave me here alone.” Charlie'd gone from half-considering knocking the woman out with the wire cutters in order to get control of the Jeep to wanting to cling to her for safety.

But Bradone returned as suddenly as she'd disappeared to drive the Jeep Cherokee into the deeper darkness of a cave.

“What if they have land mines around here?”

“Then we're in big trouble.” Bradone turned on the dome light to parcel out food and water between two backpacks—even the cold, greasy leftovers from the Little A'Le'Inn. “We can snack on these tonight. It'll be like a slumber party.”

“Why can't we stay here in the cave?”

“Because we can't see anything in here, silly. And this isn't really a cave. It's a mine tunnel, long abandoned. Probably full of bears and lions farther in, so you better stay with me.”

Charlie followed her over hill and dale and across rocks and rubble, carrying rolled-up blankets and pillows tied across the top of the pack. Not because she thought there were bears and lions in the mine shaft, but because right now getting into terrible trouble with the air force and the armed response personnel didn't seem as terrifying as being left alone out here at night with no idea how to get back out.

The crunch of their shoes, the brushing sound of scurrying night creatures when Charlie stopped whining and Bradone stopped to get direction from the stars. Was she looking at the position of the constellations to chart their course? Or searching for UFOs?

There are no such things as UFOs.

Without a trail, the going was risky. Sometimes a shadowed rock looked like a depression. And vice versa. Charlie followed as precisely in Bradone's footsteps as possible in the surreal lighting, hoping for a warning of cliff drop-off or rattlesnake or alien presence. Or more likely armed response personnel guys with big rifles. It was just her imagination that the smell of oranges was in the air. That's all it was.

Her guide and tormentor went on and on about her last visit here and the ground troops. Charlie was sure pursuers could hear the chatter, but the woman would not lower her voice.

“We could see them. They couldn't see us. They wore goggles like you say were in Evan's film, but we could see without flashlights because of the starlight, like we can now. They couldn't see anything. They were crawling around and into each other with these imposing guns—more boy toys, swearing and sweating. And it was chilly.”

“Why were they crawling around on the ground? This is air force, isn't it?”

“Oh, who knows? Some silly war game, but these goggles didn't work as well as the ones on the robbers in the now-famous Hilton heist. The packs on their backs, Charlie, they were computers, and these guys could not only not see, their computers were taking forever to boot up and were so heavy the men under them could barely get to their feet.”

“You're making this up.”

“No. They were testing this new technology and the computer was supposed to tell this sweating kid where the enemy was and everything. You should have heard them. It was also telling them the weather, which was inaccurate.”

“Boy-toy stuff like Pat the pilot smuggled out of Groom Lake for Evan. Bradone, we didn't have to come out here to figure that out. We already had, and we're both too old for slumber parties. Wait, that light on the dash that told you where the ground sensors were. Where did you get that?”

“Same place I got the Cherokee—from Merlin. That's nothing extraordinary. But maybe that wand-phaser thing—think of it—small enough to hold in your hand, but it can freeze an entire crowd in their tracks without harming them. Can you imagine what a weapon that could be? All kinds of things are tested out here.”

“Merlin who? And that's all the more reason why we shouldn't be out here.”

Bradone turned unexpectedly. Charlie bumped into her, lost her balance, and she and the pack and the bedding came down on her tailbone. This place made the surface of the moon seem cushy. And it smelled like orange juice. No, it didn't.

The astrologer stood above her with arms crossed and stars shooting every which way over her stupid hat. Her face in shadow. “Charlie, Richard says you don't like to admit to your psychic powers, so—”

“I don't have psychic powers. But you get labeled with that condition just once and every time your plain old garden-variety common sense comes up with a logical explanation for anything, it's hailed as psychic phenomenon. Total pain in the keister.”

“But you know Ardith Miller is dead.” She reached a hand down to help Charlie up. The starlight was so bright, it made shadows.

“I don't
know
know it—but she hasn't missed work in fifty years—”

“She could be too ill to call in sick.”

“That wouldn't account for the horrified look on Zelda the dealer's face this morning.” Charlie dusted grit off the seat of her pants and whined, “What does that have to do with anything? So we're out here because we have to see some lights in the dark, find out why I blacked out on the Mooney, have an adventure, and a lot of fun, and—”

“Get you out of Vegas, where I don't think you are safe—”

“I'm ‘safe' on a forbidden and undisclosed military installation where probably even the cleaning ladies have permission to shoot me on sight? If the snakes don't get me first.”

“But mostly, we're out here to give your exceptional garden-variety common sense a chance to study some uncommon phenomena and hopefully come up with some logical explanations.”

“Is that all? Why didn't you just say so?”

*   *   *

Tucked in their blankets and munching cold fries, they watched the amazing heavens. Charlie raised up on an elbow occasionally to look down on a supersecret air base that didn't exist. It looked more like an oversized, well-lighted factory complex with runways.

Charlie, convinced her companion was suicidal and intent upon taking Libby Abigail Greene's mother with her, consoled herself that at least Libby was seventeen. She'd inherit Charlie's winnings in Vegas and the equity in the Long Beach condo and the college fund. And a trust would dole it out until the kid was twenty-one, in case a jerk boyfriend decided he should spend it for her.

She had her grandmother. And Maggie Stutzman, Jeremy Fiedler, and Betty Beesom, who all lived in their little gated compound. Larry Mann would keep an eye out for Libby too. And someday Libby would get her grandmother's money as well, not that there was much of that. The kid would not be without resources just because she would be without Charlie.

But who would take on Edwina Greene and her hot flashes?

The stars so very clear, the heavens so full. “This is probably the last night sky I'll ever see.”

Bradone laughed aloud again. Why couldn't she go back to that safe silent laughter? “You are so melodramatic and droll. I thought you'd be happy to solve some of the mysteries that surely lie out here where Patrick Thompson flew workers who come and go from the Janet Terminal, where the bicycle cop felt he had to go before alerting the whole department, and got himself killed. It's not Patrick we keep coming back to in our investigations, Charlie, it's here. I maintain that Ben Hanley was a natural death. So we've taken care of almost half the dead bodies already, and we just got here.”

“We don't know who ordered any of the murders, Bradone, and we only know who performed the first one. But not to worry, I'm peaceful, composed. My stomach isn't even hurting.” Charlie stuffed another cold, greasy A'Le'Inn fry in her mouth. “I'm resigned to my own death.”

“No dear, the stars are with us tonight, trust me. That is, if you were accurate about the date and time of your birth. Were you, Charlie? Many people don't know.”

“Well, I am one of them. I'm adopted. Edwina has that information somewhere.”

Bradone was silent for so long, you could almost hear her holding her breath. But when she spoke, the melody was gone. “You fool. You crashing imbecile. You fucking cretin. You slathering cunt. You—”

“Well, the day is right, and the place. But the time—I think I was remembering Libby's birth.” It felt kind of nice to be upsetting Bradone the detective for a change. “I mean, what's the big deal?”

“What's the big deal?”
The woman's invective continued and grew even coarser. That generation really knew how to swear. But it was interesting that after all Charlie's pleading before,
now
Bradone whispered.

She ranted on until even her whisper grew hoarse, then sat up, letting the covers puddle around her waist. Her arms flung gestures at the sky and Charlie and the creepy earth around them.

“Do you realize what you've done, Charlie Greene? You've added two more bodies to your death count. Ours.”

CHAPTER
30

T
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fries felt better to Charlie's ulcer than the ground did to her butt. “Okay, so now what?”

“Shut up.”

Charlie lay back in her bedding, awaiting death by murder. “You sound like my mother.”

“Then I'm elated that I never had children. Charlie, why do you hate me so?”

“Because your presentation sucks. You come on like a spy novel. ‘Trust me, Charlie. Follow me behind enemy lines. With full unquestioning cooperation. Because I am your friend. I know all and you are stupid.' And then it's, ‘Oh my, it's your fault, Charlie. You've put us in dire and deadly danger.' Hell, I'm the one with a kid and a crazy mother—all you're responsible for is a fun life, two cats, and a houseboy.”

“You're right. I've been stupid.”

“No, babe, you've been manipulative. I've been stupid to let you get me this far. And you know what we're going to do about it? You are going to tell me in plain language your full agenda here.”

“Or you will do what?”