Second Grave on the Left (32 page)

“Because I don’t want you to commit suicide? That makes me stubborn?”

He leaned down, his face inches from mine, even though I couldn’t actually see it. “Abso-freaking-lutely.”

He totally stole that. I set my jaw. “I don’t need your help.”

“Fine. But you might want to just…” He put a finger on my shoulder and eased me to the left out of the bullet’s path. “Next time, duck.”

The feeling each time the world rushed back was comparable to a speeding freight train crashing into me. The force sucked the air out of my lungs, and the sound reverberated against my chest, echoing in my bones as the bullet picked up where it left off and flew harmlessly past. I stumbled to the side and had just enough time to look back at Evil Murtaugh as he blinked in surprise and aimed again.

If I had been paying attention, if the roar of the thunder and rain had not been so deafening, I might have heard the car speeding up the alley. And so might’ve Evil Murtaugh. As it stood, we were both a tad surprised when a black SUV came barreling toward us. The driver slammed on the brakes and skidded into a spin that swept Evil Murtaugh up like a tornado and threw him against the candy-making factory while leaving me untouched.

I stood a long moment, blinking against the rain pelting my face as the SUV screeched to a halt and Ulrich of the Three Stooges jumped out of the backseat. He strode to Evil Murtaugh as the passenger’s-side glass rolled down. Mr. Smith sat grinning at me.

“I swear, Juicy, you get into more trouble than my great-aunt May, and she’s senile,” he said.

I looked over at Ulrich. He checked Evil Murtaugh’s pulse, then belted him one, I was guessing for good measure. Angel fell to his knees in relief and then collapsed onto the ground in a dramatic rendition of
Death of a Salesman.

“How did you find us?” I asked Smith.

“We’ve been looking for this guy for quite a while. You were the most logical person to follow.”

“Are you cops?” I asked.

“Not hardly.”

Then what the heck? I heard sirens in the distance and knew they would leave soon. I looked over at Mr. Chao, aka Stuntman Dave. “Are you sure you should be driving with your injuries?”

Ulrich belted Evil again. “Now he’s just being obtuse,” Smith said.

“I’m out of here.” Angel sat up and saluted me before he disappeared. I liked the saluting thing. That might have to become standard operating procedure at the office.

“Charley, are you okay?” Cookie asked from the shadows. I doubted she saluted me.

“Super-duper, stay there.” I still had no idea who these men were. They could want Mimi just as dead as Evil Murtaugh did.

Mr. Chao climbed out of the driver’s side and came around. I headed him off, blocked the opening between the Dumpster and cinder block fence. If he wanted Mimi Jacobs, he was going to have to get through me. Which should take him about five-sevenths of a second. Give or take.

He leaned to the side and looked over my shoulder. Satisfied, he looked back at me, his hair already dripping wet. When he raised a hand to my face, I flinched, but only ’cause I thought he was going to break my neck or something. Stuff like that tended to happen to me. Instead, he ran his fingers over my brows, pushing my dripping wet bangs out of my eyes. Then he bowed slightly and headed back to the driver’s side.

“She’s alive,” he told Smith, and I realized he was talking about Mimi.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who you work for?” I asked him.

“You might say we work for the big guy.”

“God?”

He fought a grin. “Come down a step, as in commander in chief.”

“Then this does have something to do with the seat in the Senate.”

“Something, yes.”

“Damn, they don’t mess around. Wait, so, Kyle Kirsch did this after all?”

He squinted his eyes and shrugged. “Look farther north.”

“Oh, come on. That’s all you’re giving me?”

“We did just save your life,” he said, brows raised.

I snorted. “Please, I totally had that.”

Smith chuckled and shook his head. “I have to say, this was the most interesting assignment I’ve ever been on.” He leveled a regret-filled gaze on me. “I’ll miss you. And your boxer shorts.” He looked past me into the shadows. “Get that woman to the police. She has quite a story to tell.”

After one more solid pounding, Ulrich strode past me with a nod and climbed in the backseat. I had a sneaking suspicion I would never see them again. As they drove off, Cookie and Mimi tackled me from behind, and I was soon ensconced in the most suffocating group hug I’d ever been ensconced in.

*   *   *

Blue and red lights undulated over the buildings as a plethora of police and emergency vehicles cordoned off the alley. Two EMTs loaded a handcuffed Evil Murtaugh into the back of an ambulance while another EMT was seeing to a concussed Hulk. He moaned a lot. I knew how he felt. I stepped over to watch them load Evil just as two men in crisp suits walked up to me. There seemed to be a lot of crisp suits around lately. Dillard’s must have had a sale.

“Ms. Davidson?” one of them asked.

I nodded. Now that all the excitement was over, my back was stinging. Evil Murtaugh had ruined a perfectly good jacket and left a bit of a fissure across my spine. I squirmed in my jacket, trying to ease the discomfort.

“I’m Agent Foster with the FBI.” He held up his ID. “And this is Special Agent Powers.”

“Yeah, right,” I said with a snort. “I’ve heard that before.”

Agent Foster’s expression didn’t change. “So we were told. That’s why we’d like to talk to you before we question this man.”

I looked into the ambulance at Evil. “Sucks when the real deal shows up.”

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute,” Uncle Bob said as he strode toward me.

“I think I’m probably off to the station,” I told the agents.

“We’ll meet you there.”

“Are you injured? How’s your head?” Uncle Bob asked. He was such a softy.

“Better than yours. Have you considered electroshock therapy?”

He blew out a long breath. “You’re still mad at me.”

“Ya think?”

*   *   *

As it turned out, Evil Murtaugh and Evil Riggs were related. Cousins or something. Big surprise. They both hailed from Minnesota and had been in and out of trouble their whole lives. But nothing like murder. At least, not that we knew of.

The station was like a melting potty of old and new cases by the time we arrived. Morning was burning its way across the horizon as Cookie sat with Mimi in an interview room for support while Mimi gave her statement. They’d both been wrapped in blankets and given hot chocolate. All things considered, they looked pretty comfy. Mimi’s parents had shown up and were in there with her as well. Her father couldn’t let go of her and kept her in his embrace, which made it difficult for her to drink her cocoa, but I doubted she minded. One was never too old to revel in the embrace of your dad. From what I could tell, a lot of old baggage was being unpacked, dirty underwear and all.

Uncle Bob was working on getting Warren’s charges dropped, and he’d called in Kyle Kirsch, who was due any moment.

“I don’t think they were paid enough,” Ubie said as he walked up, a pile of papers in his hands. I was pouring creamer into a cup of coffee while trying to keep a blanket around my shoulders, mostly to hide the slice across my back. I didn’t think I could stand another round of superglue. “The Cox cousins’ bank accounts show cash deposits of fifty thousand each.”

“So, who are the Cox cousins again?”

He sighed. It was funny. “The men who kidnapped you? One of them just tried to kill you in a dark alley? Art and William Cox? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Of course. I just wanted to make you say
Cox
again. And as determined as they were,” I said, taking a sip, “they were probably promised a lot more once the job was done.”

“I’m sure. But we can’t trace the deposits. And the dead gunman from the motel was a jailhouse chum of theirs. We’re still looking into his financial records, too.”

I looked over as Kyle Kirsch hurried into the station, two bodyguards on his trail. I recognized him from his campaign posters. He stopped to ask the desk sergeant a question, and Mimi came barreling out of the interview room toward him. She ran into his arms.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and he gaped at her.

“Me? Are
you
okay? What happened?” he asked, hugging her to him again.

“This man came after me and Cookie and her boss, Charley, saved my life.”

I cringed. It was nice of her to leave out the part where we were the reason she almost got killed in the first place.

Uncle Bob strolled up to him and offered a hand. “Congressman,” he said.

“Are you Detective Davidson?” he asked, shaking his hand.

“Yes, sir. Thank you for coming in. Can I get you anything before we start?”

Kyle had agreed to give a statement, insisting he had nothing to hide. He hugged Mimi again, a sad smile on his face. “I guess this is it,” he said to her.

“We had to do this sometime.”

“That we did.”

I wondered if they would be arrested for not coming forth earlier. I hoped not. They were victims in all of this as well.

“This is Charley Davidson,” Mimi said when she saw me hovering.

Kyle took my hand. “I owe you everything.”

“Warren!” Mimi ran into her husband’s arms as he practically stumbled into the station, looking as harried as usual.

I spoke to Kyle under my breath. “I hate to have to tell you this, but I thought you were the one behind these murders for quite some time.”

He smiled sadly in understanding. “I don’t blame you, but I promise,” he said to Uncle Bob, “I had nothing to do with them. I’m not exactly innocent, but I’m not guilty of murder.” He took out his cell phone. “I know we have an interview, but would you mind if I called my mother? I couldn’t get a hold of my dad. I think he went fishing, and he never carries his cell. I just want to let them know where I am and what’s going on before they see it on the news.”

“Not at all,” Ubie said.

“Thank you.” He spoke over his shoulder as he walked away. “She’s visiting my grandmother in Minnesota.”

Uncle Bob and I both froze. I stepped up and placed a hand on Kyle’s, lowering the phone from his ear.

He frowned and closed it. “Is something wrong?”

“Kyle … Congressman—”

“Kyle is fine, Ms. Davidson.”

“The murder suspects were hired henchmen from Minnesota. Did you tell your mother or grandmother what was going on? What happened in Ruiz? Or even that Tommy Zapata wanted to step forward and confess what he did?”

Kyle blinked in surprise, contemplated what I’d said, then turned from me, his face a mask of astonishment.

“Kyle, everyone who was in that room with Hana Insinga is dead except for you and Mimi. And trust me, Mimi was not going to see another day if those men had anything to say about it.” I touched him gently on the shoulder. “That leaves you.”

He covered his eyes with a hand and breathed deeply.

“Your mother didn’t happen to borrow a hundred thousand dollars from you recently, did she?”

“No,” he said, facing me with a resigned expression. “My mother comes from money. She would never have had to borrow any from me.”

That explained the ritzy house in Taos that she lived in with a retired sheriff.

“Do you think she’s capable of—?”

“My mother is more than capable, I promise you.” A bitterness suddenly edged his voice, cold and unforgiving. “I told her everything that happened that night twenty years ago. She made me swear not to tell my father. She said I would be arrested, that people would say I was just as much to blame as anyone. The minute school let out for the summer, she sent me to my grandmother’s.”

“She knew all along?” Uncle Bob asked.

He nodded. “When I told her I was going to step forward with Tommy Zapata, she went ballistic. She said nothing mattered more than the Senate. And eventually, the presidency.” He laughed, a harsh, acidic sound. “It would never have worked, anyway. They would have found out about my past, my lifestyle. People like me don’t get to be president, but she insisted that I try, beginning with a seat in the Senate.” He leveled a hard gaze on me. “That woman is nuts.”

“Maybe we should get that statement now,” Uncle Bob said.

He led him to a separate interview room while I hung back. My head was still pounding out a symphony, but it had moved from Beethoven’s Fifth to Gershwin’s “Summertime.” I did feel better about one thing. My stepmother may be nuts, but she wasn’t a murderer. Not that I knew of, anyway.

I took two ibuprofen and sat on one of the chairs in the waiting room. My lids grew heavier than I would have liked, but I wanted to wait on Cookie and see what Uncle Bob came up with. I was pretty sure we just solved a murder mystery. Still, my lids didn’t care. The world blurred, dipped, spun a little, did the Hokey Pokey and turned itself around. Then my dad came in. I figured he’d heard what happened and came to check on me.

“Hey, Dad.” I pried my body out of the chair and gave him a groggy hug. I hadn’t seen him since the night of the attack, which made me a very bad daughter.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, holding me tight.

“Um, what are you doing here?”

“I still have to give my statement on the attack.”

“Oh.” Duh.

“Why are you wrapped in a blanket? What’s going on?”

“Dad, I’m fine. Just the usual. PI stuff and all that.”

“Charley,” he said, exasperated, “you need to find another job.”

I scoffed as Denise and Gemma walked in. I was surprised to see the old ball and chain with him as well as my sister.

“What are you doing here?” Denise asked. “I thought she wasn’t coming.” She glanced at Dad questioningly.

He gritted his teeth. Sucks when the old hag spills the beans. Gemma raised a cordial hand in greeting, then yawned. She looked as exhausted as I felt.

“And why wasn’t I coming?” I asked Dad.

He shook his head. “We’re just going over some things. I didn’t think you’d want to be here,” he said, stumbling over his tongue. This was interesting. “You have to give a statement from your perspective later. I didn’t want to take up your time or influence your testimony.”