Portrait of a Dead Guy (26 page)
Read Portrait of a Dead Guy Online
Authors: Larissa Reinhart
Tags: #Mystery, #humor, #cozy, #Humour, #amateur sleuth, #Contemporary, #Romance, #cozy mystery, #murder mystery, #humorous mystery, #female sleuth, #mystery series
When I woke to the sound of birdcalls, I was taken back to summer nights in high school when we played music and drank too much around the campfire eating homemade pulled pork. I always woke the next day in a hazy state of hungover, just shy of food poisoning. That’s what I felt lying in the forest. The cutting ache in my side and throbbing head made me want to barf up non-existent BBQ. I lay still, fighting the dry heaves, confused as to why my arms and legs refused to work.
After my head cleared, I remembered. Ronny Price and my daddy’s gun. I flipped around to sitting and surveyed the damage. My lace shirt had ripped in several places and sported a rusty toe print from where Ronny’s dirty shoe created the sharp pain in my side. Silver tape still strapped my bootless ankles. Ronny lay a few feet away, bleeding from a gash in his leg where I winged him. He looked unconscious, but my shot had gone wide. Otherwise he’d have a much bigger hole.
However, I wasn’t sticking around to resuscitate a crazy man. And no way was I searching his body for the keys to his car with bound hands and feet.
My legs flailed to no avail. The tape wouldn’t give. Neither would the tape around my wrists. I tried rubbing the tape against the raspy bark of a sweetgum and only succeeded in scraping off skin from my arms.
I struggled to my feet, ignoring the blinding pain pulsing in my temples. Resolve and anger mixed with the pain as I steadied myself. I glanced down at the gun with regret. It would already take a miracle to shuffle out of the woods without having to juggle a shotgun between taped hands. Using small hops, I pushed it under the fallen debris and hoped Ronny wouldn’t look too hard.
By the time I reached the second ridge, every part of my body hurt. When I wasn’t cursing Ronny — and Dustin for blackmailing him — I began a rant on duct tape and the makers of my cheap socks that couldn’t withstand the wriggling, hopping movement I had mastered after numerous falls. I cursed Georgia for her hills, forests, and hard packed clay that felt like granite when my knees bit the dirt. Knowing anger was the only steam to fuel my engine, I continued to find fault in the world around me. The logging road was much longer and had more hills than I remembered. I didn’t want to think about the long trek down the county highway.
When the sound of a V8 engine reached me, I panicked and hopped into the woods for cover. My cursing turned to pleading at the thought of Ronny’s crazed anger when he found me missing. The time it took me to creep to this point in the lane would take him but seconds in his car.
I inched into the tree line and bumped against a fallen limb. The engine’s growl grew. Pitching myself over the log, I bent my knees to save my face. My forehead plopped into the weeds and dead leaves at the edge of a clump of seedlings. The vehicle roared past, taking the narrow, rutty road too quick for safety.
I wriggled forward, pushing with my shoulders and squinting my eyes against the weeds and stems that snapped and flapped against my face, hoping to hide myself. A thicket of sprouting honeysuckle looped and twined among the seedlings, tying them to the nearby trees in a tangled mess of vine. My head worked through the vines, perfuming the air with their sweet scent. The rumble approached. All of my moveable parts were writhing and scrabbling.
This time the vehicle crawled along the road. He was looking for me now.
I froze, flattened, and waited. The tires crunched over bits of gravel in the road. Dust kicked up from the dirty lane and floated in the air, mixing with the saccharine smell of honeysuckle. A squirrel chattered, angry at my abuse of his territory. A twig popped under a tire and the car stopped.
I held my breath, willing my body to disappear into the undergrowth.
I wished I had worn camo instead of teal. I would never again fault a man for wearing camouflage instead of apricot, even if that man wore camo every day.
A door opened with a metallic groan. Feet smacked the dirt road. Squeaky shocks absorbed the release of body weight. The door slammed shut.
Footsteps stirred more dust as they tracked across the road, plodding closer. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to lie still, but my body began trembling all the while my brain screamed to cut it out. The footsteps stopped, retreated, and stopped again. I took a minuscule gasp of honeysuckle air. The feet pounded hard and fast across the compacted dirt. A tiny tear tracked down my cheek and stuck on my lip.
Shit, my inner voice screamed, I do not want to go out like this.
“Gotcha.”
My body began to writhe, wriggle, and buck with an uncontrollable desire for freedom. I managed to get my knees under my chest and push off with my toes when a hand snagged my waistband.
“Quit squirming!”
“Screw you, Ronny Price,” I screamed. “You kill me and I’ll haunt you every night, you scumbag!”
His hand tore out the vines around my shoulders and I kicked my legs with the intensity of a pissed off mule.
“Just lay still.”
“Hands tied or no, I knew I should have tried to shoot you again.” I kicked again and felt my feet smack against something firm.
He grunted in pain and then spoke. “You shot him?”
I prepared to bellow my answer just as the question actualized in my brain. “Ronny Price?” I squeaked and tried to crane my neck to see behind me, but couldn’t.
“Just calm down and lie still.”
“Oh my Lord, who is that? Can you cut the tape, please? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh Lord Jesus, thank you.” I stopped flopping but continued to jabber into the crushed weeds. “You need to hurry. Ronny Price is still out there. He did this to me. He murdered Dustin and Pete and stole from Mr. Max. He’s crazy.”
I heard the snick of a knife opening and the ripping of the tape at my ankles. My legs collapsed apart. “Oh, thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I could think of something.”
I turned my head to the side, but only saw trampled weeds and an end of the honeysuckle vine. Tiny leaves tickled my nose as a curling tendril waved before my face.
“Luke?”
“I’m damned sure I’m not Ronny Price.” He ripped his knife through the tape at my wrists. My arms fell to my sides in painful relief. “You’re going to be just fine. Don’t worry about anything. Sheriff’s up there now. He and his boys took the logging lane near Avtaikin’s place when they located the Lincoln with the LoJack. They found Price, but didn’t find you.”
I lay on my stomach staring into the pine straw, spent. Luke’s hands ran over my legs, up my back, and down my arms, checking for injuries. My eyes squeezed shut while he gently prodded my head.
“Ouch.”
“You’ve got another goose egg,” he murmured. “I’m going to roll you over now. Tell me if it hurts too much. Sheriff Thompson’s got the ambulance coming.”
He placed one hand on my neck and rolled me slowly toward his body. Another wave of nausea wafted over me as my back collapsed onto the forest floor.
“What hurts?” Luke smoothed my hair from my forehead and attempted a smile that appeared more of a grimace.
“Pretty much everything. What are you doing here?”
I closed my eyes while his hands drifted down the length of my body, gently bending my joints. I gasped as he prodded my side.
“Did he kick you?” I strained to hear Luke’s low rumble, then shrank back when he touched my tender cheek.
“In the face, too?” His rumble crept to a growl.
“Is my face messed up?” My hands flew to my face, but it made my shoulders ache so I let them drift to the ground once again.
“Don’t worry, you’ll do. Can’t mess up that pretty face too bad.”
“You think I’m pretty?” My voice cracked. “Ronny said I was a little nothing.”
“You’re too much of a mess to be nothing. Now, your hair is pretty interesting. You got little flowers stuck all in it. And some dirt and grass, too. You look like a blonde hedgehog.”
“Thanks a lot,” I mumbled and heard him snort. “You want to tell me how you found me?”
“Weren’t too hard to spot with your tail stuck in the air pointing straight to heaven.”
“No, how did you know I was out here?”
“Long story, hon.”
I threaded my fingers through his. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“The Sheriff used the vehicle’s LoJack system JB installs on every expensive dealer car. The LoJack uses radio waves for the police to track stolen vehicles. That part was a piece of cake.” Luke spoke to the trees while I searched his face for some glimmer of emotion within the deadpan delivery. “Lucky for you Maksim Avtakin reported your disappearance from his house. Said some drawings and a chat with Todd McIntosh tipped him off you might be in trouble. They located McIntosh’s Civic in the dealership parking lot. Video surveillance showed you and Ronny leaving together in the Lincoln.”
“I guess I owe the Bear an apology.”
A smug look hovered underneath Luke’s serious countenance. “The apprehension was successful thanks to a concussion and injury to the perp’s leg, which looked like buckshot graze. I volunteered to find you, which Sheriff Thompson allowed,” he muttered the final two words, “for once.”
“Why are you talking like a cop?” I struggled to sit up, but Luke gave me a gentle shove back to the ground.
“Five years as a Military Police Investigator will do that to you.” He fixed his eyes back on the forest and shrugged off the statement.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned forward, letting his arms dangle over bent knees. His long fingers picked at a crushed flower.
With a need to steady my nerves and clear my head, I stared at the pines above me, swaying in the slight breezes. When wind pushed through the waving thin columns, the whooshing sound always reminded me of the ocean. Which made me think of Tybee Island, Savannah’s local beach, and some rollicking Luke and I had done there.
“I think you like secrets, that’s what I think,” I said. “You never want to tell me anything. If you keep your thoughts to yourself, you don’t have to get close to anyone.”
“You watch too much daytime TV. I just know when to keep my mouth shut. As soon as Sheriff Thompson heard I was looking for a job, he was all over me to apply for deputy in Forks County.”
“Work around Halo? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Forget I even mentioned it. It’s bad enough I spent all those years pushing papers in the Army for petty theft violations when I wanted to do CID. Criminal Investigation Special Agent. Then I got out and found out I had to go through the Police Academy and start all over again. I’m going to be forty before I get to detective.”
He slapped his boots. “You think I wanted to move back to this crappy town to throw my stepbrother and his buddies in the can every other weekend?”
“We would be proud to have you serve in Forks County. Halo’s a great town to live in.”
“I don’t want to work in the boondocks. I’m going to apply in a city, maybe Atlanta.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Halo. We had two murders in the last couple weeks. That’s as good as Atlanta.” I glanced at my battered body. “Almost three murders, actually.
“Anyway, I think you’re afraid that working in Halo means settling down. Or just settling. You need to forgive your momma and JB and find some peace.”
“Stop analyzing me. Do you really want to get into this now? Can’t you just act like a normal victim and lay here until the ambulance arrives?”
“I am not a victim,” I said, ignoring my body’s obvious distress. “I just helped the sheriff catch a criminal.”
“A minute ago you were trussed up like a hog ready for slaughter. I have never met anybody so foolhardy in my life. Shooting someone with your hands tied like that? You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself.” His eyes held the color of a thunderstorm. “It was easier to be half a world away, trying to remain ignorant to what went on in your crazy life.”
The wail of an ambulance siren startled me and Luke stood, brushing pine needles off his pants.
“My life is none of your business.”
“Don’t I know it. I don’t know why that idiot stood you up in Vegas, but I wished he had married you and taken you out of the picture. It would make my life a hell of a lot simpler.”
He leaned over, kissed me, and spun toward the road, waving to flag down the ambulance.
I can’t say my jaw didn’t drop, my toes didn’t curl, and my insides didn’t heat enough to fire some pottery. But I did recover enough from the flip-flop of my emotions to turn toward his retreating back and spit out a last word.
“For the last freaking time. I was not stood up in Vegas!”
I smiled wide, hoping I didn’t have Everlasting Ruby Red lipstick on my teeth. My hair looked good for once and not flying around my head like an electroshock case. Casey had straightened and shellacked it into submission. I yanked the straps of my bra back to my shoulders and took a final peek at my aquamarine toenails for chips in the polish.
Casey nearly pushed me through the door. “Let’s get this over with. I want some of that champagne.”
We entered into an open room of waiting guests in a beautiful gallery in Virginia Highlands, one of Atlanta’s funkier old neighborhoods. My old classmate Shelia worked at this gallery, host to a collection of Georgia illustrators and artists I admired.
