Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery) (9 page)

“You don’t seem to be getting the message,” she said.

“The bartender said…”

She went shopping for angry but came back from the store with scared. “Bruce is an idiot. He needs to learn to mind his own business.”

She caught me reading her anxiety and started walking again, faster now, heels clicking on the polished wooden
floor, veering left toward the Dutch door to the left of the reception desk. Checked luggage and coatroom.

Not wishing to loom, I stayed at a nonthreatening distance as she retrieved a long, black wool coat and shouldered her way into it.

Newly armored, she exchanged a few words with whoever handed her the coat, and then walked over and stood as close to me as personal space considerations would allow. “Do I have to call security?” she asked in a low voice.

Up close and personal, she was about my age. Middle to late forties somewhere. She’d had work done. Good work. Expensive work. You had to look closely around the corners of the eyes and the backs of her ears to see the spiderweb traces. Fifteen more years, four excellent plastic surgeons, and she’d begin to have that startled “what the hell just happened?” look they get when modern medical technology has gone one step too far in its quest to stave off the ravages of time. But for now, the illusion was alive, well, and working just fine.

Not only that, but she’d meant what she said about calling security. I could feel it. This was the only chance I was going to get so I went straight to it.

“I’m really worried about a friend of mine,” I said.

Apparently she didn’t share my anxiety. She turned and walked away.

As for me, I stayed right where I was. Further pursuit would almost certainly result in answering pointed questions from square-headed people, so I just stayed put. Either the magic of human decency was going to work, or it wasn’t.

She straight-armed one of the massive front doors and disappeared from view.

I waited.

A minute passed.

And then two.

Before the door swung open and Patty walked back inside with a look on her face that said her worst fears were confirmed. I was still standing there. Right where she left me. Not doing a thing that would give her an excuse to call security. She swallowed a curse and ambled in my direction, taking her time, making me wait.

“What are you, the jilted lover?” she asked.

“Not the way you mean it,” I said.

“What way’s that?”

“The way where I just can’t seem to get on with my life. Where I’m following her around, making an ass of myself. Stuff like that.” I shook my head and looked her in the eye. “Nothing like that.”

“No?”

“I skulked off into the bushes like a gentleman.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Maybe you didn’t love her so much after all.”

“Maybe I respected her choice,” I said evenly.

We had a short staring contest. “Big, tall gal?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Blonde?”

“More like brown.”

She shrugged. “You know women and their hair.”

I said I did.

“What’s your story?”

I gave her the condensed version. No names, places, or dates.

“Why would the mother come to you?”

“I used to be a private investigator.”

“What do you do now?”

“As little as possible.”

“Which explains her choice of partners, I guess.”

“More or less,” I admitted.

She walked away from me again. Out into the center of the lobby, to a pair of cowhide club chairs. Yee ha. She removed her coat and sat down on one of the former Guernseys. I wandered over and occupied the udder.

“Your friend’s got trouble,” she said as I settled in.

“This Teddy character?”

“Yeah. Teddy Healy.”

“Rebecca can take care of herself,” I said.

Her eyes clouded. “Not with Teddy, she can’t.”

“Why’s that?”

She thought about it for a second. “He’s got a real nose for weakness. One minute talking to a woman, and he knows what she does and doesn’t like about herself. It’s uncanny. He’s like a lion looking at a herd of zebras and immediately being able to pick out the slow and the weak.”

“Rebecca’s neither of those.”

“Neither was I,” she said.

I believed her but didn’t want to say so. My silence seemed to make her uncomfortable, so she began to talk. Seemed Patty Franklin was from L.A. Learned to play piano from her grandma. Worked the L.A. club circuit. Wasn’t getting rich but playing jazz beat the hell out of bag lunches in a cubicle. She’d been here in the tulles for about three months, tending to an estranged father who was dying of colon cancer. Back then, his doctor claimed he had a month to live, but the old man seemed hell-bent on defying the
odds. No telling how long he was going to be with us. She hated the Alderbrook, the state of Washington, the weather, and every other damn thing around here and was going to be back in SoCal about five seconds after her old man cashed his chips. Whenever in hell that turned out to be.

Pops had a sister who came over most nights and helped out, so Patty took the gig at the hotel just to keep her chops honed and her spirits uplifted. An old friend of hers had once said that the most miserable creatures on earth were people who got stuck caring for other people. At the time, she’d thought he was just being mean-spirited. Lately, though, she’d changed her mind.

Teddy Healy was nothing like her type. Not even close. She didn’t do rural. Back in L.A., she’d have sent him on his way without a second look. But she was bored and horny and miserable about being stuck out in the woods so she let him buy her drinks. Listened to his pathetic redneck chatter for a month or so before…before she had a few too many one night and found herself at his place.

She caught herself running off at the mouth and looked away from me. I could feel the ambivalence churning inside her. Part of her wanted to cough it up like a fish bone. To finally tell somebody what had happened between them, and how she’d been forever damaged by the experience. Another part of her was so consumed by shame and self-loathing that the very idea of anyone else knowing the details was more than she could bear.

“All the more reason I need to find Rebecca,” I said, hoping we could keep this thing on track.

The rush of feet and the sound of voices pulled my attention over toward the desk, where the last toothy knot
of dentists was checking out. A parade of bellboys and car jockeys was carting their baggage out through the big front doors. They toodel-ooed the hired help and followed their belongings into the great outdoors.

“He’s got a place on Prescott Creek.”

“You think that’s where they went?”

“I know that’s where they went. That’s what he does. He gets you out there where nobody’s going to interrupt his…” She censored herself. “By now he’s got her so coked up she’ll…”

“How do I get there?” I interrupted.

“You’d never find it. It’s a driveway off a dirt road. Way the hell out there.”

“Show me.”

“Pffffft,” she scoffed. “Like I’m gonna get involved with that.”

“Maybe it’s time Teddy got what was coming to him,” I suggested.

I watched as the idea took a bite out of her. As I’d hoped, the prospect of retribution held a certain primal appeal. Human beings are like that. You do them wrong enough and they start making up little seek-and-destroy Clint Eastwood movies in their heads. Ninety-nine percent of the time, nothing happens because, first of all, the opportunity never presents itself, and secondly, because they don’t really have the balls to do anything about it, even if it did. Tonight, however, Patty Franklin found herself traipsing among the other one percent. Here she was, face-to-face with the possibility that her revenge novella could, quite possibly, come true, a prospect that excited her in a way and to a degree with which she wasn’t particularly comfortable.

“You don’t know what Teddy’s like,” she hedged.

“What’s he like?”

“He likes to humiliate people.”

“He’s not going to humiliate me,” I said.

“He’s got this little…” She searched for a noun but came up empty. “This piece of lead, I guess. It’s wrapped in leather. It’s got this loop that goes around his wrist.” She made a striking motion with her left hand.

“A sap?” I tried.

“Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. A sap. He always has it in his pocket.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised.

“He’s quick with it.”

“You’ve seen him use it?”

She hesitated a beat. “Out in the parking lot one night…some drunk followed me out of the bar, started hitting on me.” She rolled her eyes. “Poor guy was stone cold before he ever knew what hit him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind too.”

“Know what Teddy did?”

“What did he do?”

“He pissed on the guy, and then left him laying there in the parking lot.” She showed her palms to the ceiling, as if to ask the universe, “What’s with that?”

“Show me how to get to Teddy’s place,” I said again.

This time she thought about it. She threw a glance over at the checked baggage window. I watched as she ran her revenge movie again.

“I’ll change my clothes,” she said.

“Leave the keys,” Patty said as I jammed the Tahoe into Park.

She insisted I park out in the road. Made me turn the car around so it was facing back the way we’d come. Not taking any chances, this girl.

I popped the car door and stepped out onto the shoulder. Faded signs on either side of the driveway said it all. Posted. No Trespassing. No Soliciting.

The house was forty yards away at the top of a little rise. Big decaying two-story from the late fifties, with a ramshackle, brokeback roof that had needed replacing a decade ago, and a pair of dormers looking out over the yard like raised eyebrows. Down below, a wide front porch ran the length of the house. Here and there a post or two was missing from the railing. Half-a-dozen hanging baskets, complete with dead plants, decorated the underside of the porch roof.

I looked over at my car.

Patty had crawled over into the driver’s seat. She rolled down the window. “You even look like you’re going to lose and I’m out of here,” she said. “I’ll call 911 as soon as I’m back in cell phone range, but I’ve spent all the time with Teddy Healy I’m gonna.”

We’d run out of cell phone bars three or four miles back, just as we turned off the last of the paved roads. She’d been right. I’d never have found the place on my own. She put the window up, adjusted the seat, and started the car. The doors locked by themselves.

I walked up the incline toward the house. The sound of my crunching feet played counterpoint to the gurgling sounds of the surrounding forest. It had rained earlier in the day and the woods were alive with the sound of water dripping and sinking and otherwise moving downhill.

Overhead, the ancient Douglas firs creaked and groaned as the intermittent wind swirled their heavy branches.

I was within twenty yards of the porch when the light to the left of the door blinked on, and there he was. Barechested, fastening the last couple of buttons on a pair of 501 jeans, he strutted onto the porch in his bare feet.

The laird of the manor threw an angry hand my way. “Didn’t you see the sign, asshole? No trespassing. Get the fuck outta here ’fore I hurt your sorry ass.”

He’d once been buff, but time and excess had taken their toll. The last bulky remnants of years in the weight room had migrated south. The upper portion of what had once been a broad muscular chest was morphing into a passable pair of breasts, while the bottom half of his torso had begun a permanent pilgrimage toward his waist.

“You best walk your big ass back to the car,” he said with a malignant grin.

I kept moving his way. His face and torso were covered with a light sheen of sweat; the roots of his curly black hair sparkled in the dim light.

“I’ll need to have a few words with the lady,” I said.

He smirked at me. “Who the fuck are you? Comin’ out here tellin’ me what you need. Don’t nobody give a rat’s ass what you need, asshole.”

“I need to speak with the lady.”

He slipped his right hand into his pants pocket.

Behind him, the drapes covering the big bay window quivered. I watched as a woman’s silhouette peeked out between the curtains. Teddy caught the shift in my focus and looked back over his shoulder. The head immediately disappeared.

He gave me a big smile. “Oh, you neeeed to,” he sneered and stepped off the flagstone walkway. “Well, why in hell didn’t you just say so, pilgrim? If I’d known you neeeeded to…well, hell.” He bowed at the waist like a cavalier and swept a hand elegantly across his body, gallantly inviting me to pass.

I took him up on it, but not like he’d planned. I stepped even farther onto the lawn and passed him on the opposite side, too close to his right side for him to be pulling anything out of his pocket. His shithouse grin got bigger and bigger right up to the point where I gave him enough space.

Patty was right. Teddy boy was real quick with the skullbuster. I was looking for it, but it damn near didn’t save my bacon. The business end of the cudgel whistled so close to my face I could feel the breeze in my nostrils as it went zipping by.