Swingin' in the Rain (11 page)

  Friction, I thought. I could scrape the car up against the guard rail until we stopped. Of course, if the guard rail gave way we’d fall off the road and into the canyon. But I had to do something; I didn’t know how much longer I could keep the car on the road. If I drove directly into a guard rail it would give way for sure but if I could hit it at an angle we might have a chance.

  “Hang on!” I said.

  “What are you gonna do?” George demanded. “Can you even see?”

  “Just barely,” I said. The wipers were on high, but I could just make out the center line.

  “I’m going to stop us, George!”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to use the guard rail.”

  “You’ll kill us!”

  “Just hold on!” I yelled.

  “To what?” George asked, bracing himself.

  The first impact wasn’t so bad.

  We struck the rail, and bounced off. It held. I hit it again, bounced, then hit it again. The next time we hit it we just kept scraping along, sparks flying.

  “Oh my God!” George screamed.

  Screeching metal, more sparks, and I felt the car start to slow down.  If we could only stop before we ran out of guard rail, we might make it.

  “Alex—“

  “Hang on,” I said, again. “It’s working.”

  “Alex—“

  “Shut up! I’m saving our lives!”

  It seemed to go on forever and then, suddenly, we stopped.

  George and I sat there quietly for a moment, before I realized we might not be out of the woods. The guard rail could still give.

  “George! Get out. Get out!”

  I opened my door, jumped out, slipped on the wet pavement and went down on my ass. George couldn’t get out on his side because of the rail, so he slid over and looked down at me.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes.” I scrambled up and out of the way. “Get out!”

  ”Are you crazy!” someone yelled at me.

  A man had gotten out of his car and was running toward me. I was trying to catch my breath when I saw his turquoise-tipped cowboy boots first.

  “I’m sorry! No brakes! No brakes!” I gasped. It was all I could get out.

  He stepped in closer as I looked up at him. He had on a large hat that kept me from seeing his face clearly. But I could see that he had long brown hair. I looked beyond him. There were no other cars stopping. In fact, at the moment there were no other cars on the road except for the stranger’s Lincoln.

  I looked back at the man. Something shiny was reflecting off of his hat.

  “Are you all right?” He didn’t sound exactly concerned, almost annoyed.

  “Yes,” I said, “yes. I’m, sorry. I’m so sorry. I had no brakes.”

  Suddenly there were flashing lights and two police cars pulled up.

  “It could’ve been worse, lady. A lot worse,” he said, and quickly disappeared.

  Four young policemen jumped out of their cars and started asking questions, but all I could think to tell them was to call Detective Jakes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “George,” Jakes said, as he arrived, “I would have expected better from you.” He held his umbrella over me, but I was already soaked.

  “W-why?“

  Jakes looked at George and then at the condition of the Explorer. He turned to look at one of the uniforms.

  “Didn’t anyone call for an ambulance?”

  “Yes, sir,” the cop said, “but she sent it away.”

  Jakes looked at me.

  “We’re fine. Just a little shaken up.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were headed home and the brakes gave out.”

  “Just like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You tell me.”

  He frowned. “Could just be bad brakes. This didn’t happen after the club, right? It happened after Patti’s house.”

  “Maybe someone followed us.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No, but I wasn’t looking.”

  Jakes looked at George.

  “I didn’t see anyone,” George said. “But it’s been raining so hard, you can barely see the road.”

  “Maybe you better go, George. I need to talk to Alex, alone.” Jakes said.

  “Are you and Wayne okay staying with Sarah a while longer?” I asked him.

  “Sure. Take your time Sweetie. I could use a drink right now anyway. Do you have some wine at home?”

  “Yes I do and you know where,” I told him. “I’ll be there soon.”

  “Okay,” he said. He looked at Jakes. “You know you really shouldn’t be mad at me. Just imagine what could have happened to Alex if I wasn’t with her. I always have her back.”

   “I’m not mad, George. Just concerned, okay? I’ll have a car take you home.”

  As he got into the police cruiser I heard him give the driver my address. It was good to know that he and Wayne would be there when I got home.

  “What were you thinking?” Jakes asked me. “This time I should wring your neck.”

  “Just let me explain.”

  “I’ll let you explain,” he said, “but it should be someplace dry. Come on.” He grabbed my hand.

  “Where?”

  “Someplace we can talk privately.” He tugged me to his car, then stopped and looked at me. “Did you and Doctor Watson touch anything in Patti’s house?”

  I hedged. “Everything is the way we found it.”

  “And the front door?”

  “What about it?” Jakes gave me the look I knew so well. “It wasn’t locked, okay? That’s the only reason we went in, to see if Patti was hurt.”

  “A likely story,” he said. ”Okay, come on.”

  He practically stuffed me into his car. My cell phone was burning a hole in my purse. I stole a quick look. Yep, the pictures were in tact.

  Jakes decided to take me someplace very private—his apartment. We had put our heads together many times before in restaurants and bars, but this time he wanted no one else around us.

  Jakes also arranged to have my car taken to the LAPD impound to be examined in the morning.

  We stopped at a Starbucks to get two coffees. Jakes’ kitchen was almost as clean as it had been when he first moved in. He took all his meals and drinks out.

  We toweled off and sat down at his kitchen table and I told him about the club.

  “Why didn’t you call me before you went to there?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know if it meant anything,” I said. “I mean, Patti just said to meet her there. Besides . . . I didn’t think you’d want to go to a club . . . like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you’re kind of . . . straight.”

  “Of course I‘m straight.”

  “No, I meant . . . straight-laced. You know . . .”

  “Are you trying to say I‘m too uptight to go to a swinger’s club?”

  “No, of course not,” I lied. “I meant it’s just not your . . . scene.”

  “But it’s yours?”

  “No,” I said. “Look, we’re getting off the point. I didn’t want to call until I knew I had something to tell you.”

  “And you do?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I have a lot to tell you, and then you can decide what to do.”

  ”Is that a fact?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “If you want to give this all to Rockland, that’ll be up to you.”

  He gave me a hard stare. “You know I don’t want to give that asshole anything,” he said. “All right, talk. Impress me.”

  I told him everything that happened from meeting Patti at the door of the club to calling him from her house.

  “Let me see the clay animal you stole.”

  I took it out and passed it to him. “I didn’t steal it,” I said. “My daughter made it for her father.”

  He turned it over in his hands. “You say this is a dog?”

  “It was made by a little girl!” I snapped. “Jeez, you’re just like George.”

  “Okay, take it easy,” he said, passing it back. “You believe that office belonged to Randy or, at least, that Randy spent time there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can check and see if Randy is listed as an owner of the club,” he said. “What else?”

  “Patti,” I said. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She ditched us at the club.”

  “Did she admit anything to you while she was there?”

  “No,” I said, “she was careful, except for the fact that she met Randy at the club.”

  “Well, I know Rockland spoke with her, but I don’t know if she’s a suspect or not. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Have you talked to any of Randy’s old clients?” I asked.

  “I met with two of them, talked with another on the phone.”

  “And?”

  “None of them seem to hold a grudge.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said. “He stole from them and they don’t care?”

  “They got their money back, Alex,” he said. “In business that’s pretty much all that matters.”

  “One of them might be lying.”

  “Hell, they all might be lying. But remember that’s pretty much what we found out a while back, when Randy was still alive.”

  “Maybe somebody was planning to kill him later, and finally did.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so.”

  “So there are no suspects?”

  He hesitated.

  “Jakes?”

  “You’d be a suspect, but I can’t see that you’d be a serious one. But then . . .”

  “What?”

  “ . . . Rockland’s an asshole.”

  “Is he going to come after me?”

  “He’s probably going to want to talk to you again, at some point.”

  “If he doesn’t come up with somebody better, he’ll come after me, won’t he?”

  “Look, I’ll do what I can, Alex. But you have to stay out of trouble.”

  “I will,” I said, “but—

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Now, don’t get mad . . .” I said to him.

  “Oh, that’s never a good way to start a sentence,”

  he said. “What did you do?”

  “Well, while we waited for you, we looked around and . . .”

  I told him about searching the house, which is how we knew Patti had packed and left. I also told him about looking through the desk, finding the old phone book and taking photos of some of the pages. I was careful to tell him that we used rubber gloves when handling the book, and put it back where we found it.

  “Yeah, when you told me you left the place the way you found it I was afraid it was something like this,” he said. “You know, our Forensics people are very good, Alex. If they looked hard enough they’ll find some trace of you and George.”

  ”Well,” I said, lamely, “maybe they won’t look so hard.”

  He sat there, shaking his head.

  “Jakes?” I said. “You’re not going to yell?”

  “No,” he said, “I’m not gonna yell. Let me see the photos.”

  I took my cell phone from my purse and handed it to him. He scrolled through the photos.

  “How can you possibly see anything?  Each shot is so tiny.” I grabbed the phone from him.

  “Here. You just widen out the image with your fingers. See? Streeeetch the image and it gets bigger. Gee, Jakes, it is two thousand eleven!”

  He grabbed the phone back. After struggling with the screen for a minute, he managed to enlarge each one of the photos. “What did you say this mark is?”

  “A fleur-de-lis.”

  “And that’s a symbol the club uses?”

  “Yes.”

  He squinted at the pages the way George had done.

  “Maybe that’s a little blurry—“

  “No,” he said, cutting me off. “It really doesn’t matter what the symbol is. It’s there, and it must mean something.”

  “We can check with those people,” I said, anxiously, “see if they knew Randy—“

  “Whoa,” he said. “I think it’s time for you to settle into the background.”

  “But . . . I’m the one who found this information.”

  “Alex—“

  “Jakes, I can do things a cop can’t,” I said. “I can go places without needing a warrant—“

  “—and that’s called breaking the law!” he pointed out.

  “Well . . . if you and I went together it wouldn’t be breaking the law.”

  “No, I’d just get in trouble for messing with another detective’s case.”

  “So what do you want to do?” I asked. “Give this information to Rockland? Or just let him try to build a case against me.”

  “Neither,” he said, “that’s not what I want to do.”

  “Look,” I said, “there are men and women on that list. We can take turns. You talk to the women and I’ll talk to the men.”

  “Why not the other way around?”

  “Come on, Jakes,” I said. ”The women who go to those clubs will eat you up. Especially if you wear a uniform. Do you have one by the way?”

  “Of course I do. And you’re saying the men will love you?”

  “Well, I’m not saying they’ll love me, but I bet I could get them to talk to me more than you could.”

  He hesitated, still studying the photos.