Weekend Warriors (14 page)

Nikki nodded as she tipped her chair back and reached for the phone. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to recall the number for Tony’s Auto Body shop.

“Tony, it’s Nikki Quinn. Listen, I have a tremendous favor to ask of you. No, no, you don’t owe me anything because of your sister Angela. She paid the bill. I’m perfectly willing to pay you for your time. I’m working on this case and I have reason to believe someone bugged my car. It’s parked on the street outside my apartment building. I keep a spare key under the right fender in a magnet box. Can you go there now and check it out? You can. Thanks. Now listen, I want you to write this down. Jack Emery is the person I want you to deliver it to if you do find something. I’ll give you his address. Assuming you find something, when you give it to him make sure he understands it’s from me. I owe you, Tony. You’ll call me right away if you find something?”

“Right away, Miss Quinn.”

Her eyes miserable, Nikki got up to put her cup in the sink. “It should take less than a half hour till Tony calls back. I’m going to scoot upstairs and take a quick shower.”

Her own eyes miserable, Myra said, “I’ll sit by the phone, dear.”

Sweat dripped down Jack Emery’s body as he ran at five miles per hour on the treadmill in his apartment. He was breathing hard, his arms swinging at his sides. Ten more minutes and he would have run ten full miles on the machine, a gift from Nikki on his last birthday. He picked up his pace and did the last ten minutes at six miles per hour, the machine quivering under his fast-paced run.

Six minutes flat,
he thought in satisfaction when he yanked at the safety cord and hopped off. He wiped the perspiration running down his face with the sweatband on his wrist and headed for the shower. The doorbell rang just as he turned on the hot water. He gave his boxers a hitch and marched out to the door. He looked through the peephole and frowned. The guy looked familiar but he couldn’t immediately place his face. He yanked open the door.

“Are you Jack Emery?”

Jack pointed to his name over the doorbell. “Yeah.”

“Then I guess this is for you. Nikki Quinn said I should hand deliver it to you. Have a nice day.”

Jack looked at the electronic device in his hand.
Son of a bitch!
He slammed the door shut and marched back into the bathroom. For sure his relationship with Nikki was over. He cursed again, using words he hadn’t used since his days on the street back in the Bronx.

In the shower he lathered up and let the hot, steamy water beat on his naked body. He stared into the steamy mirror as he dried off. If Nikki found the bug, that meant she was searching for it. Which in turn had to mean she had something to hide. His gut told him she was up to her eyeballs in Marie Lewellen’s disappearance. And rich-as-sin Myra Rutledge was probably right there with her, aiding and abetting. “You fucking rich people think you can get away with anything,” he muttered as he stomped his way into the bedroom to get dressed.

Now he had to go to the office so he could get to the bottom of Nikki’s involvement. He had to satisfy himself one way or the other where she was concerned. The ironic thing was, Nikki would have done the same thing if she’d been in his position, even though she wouldn’t admit it.

He was pulling on his socks when the phone rang. He debated a moment before he threw himself across the bed and picked up the phone from the nightstand. “Emery here,” he barked.

“By any chance do you mean asshole Emery?” Nikki asked coldly. “You bugged my goddamn car, Jack. I want to know why.”

Jack clenched his teeth so hard he thought he heard his jaw crack. “Because you’re up to your neck in Lewellen’s disappearance, that’s why, and we both know it. Don’t take that as an admission of guilt, Nik. I’m going to find her. Then I’m going to prove you and Myra are responsible. Yeah, old Myra said the words but she doesn’t care about losing the mil. All she wanted to do that day was to get me the hell out of her house. Do you two think I just fell off the watermelon truck?”

“I’m going to fry your ass for this, Jack.”

Jack looked around his messy apartment, trying to compare it to Nikki’s bright airy apartment that was neat as a pin. It even smelled clean and good, like Nikki herself. His apartment was shabby, dreary and messy with beer bottles, pizza cartons, dirty socks and smelly sneakers all over the place. He closed his eyes. “Not if I fry yours first. Is that what you called to tell me?”

“Myra asked me to file a lawsuit against your department. She said you were supposed to be guarding Marie Lewellen and you let her get away. She’s suing for the full million and she wants another million for the angst and fear she’s going through. I’ll file the suit on Monday. You want to settle now?”

“Up yours.”

“Better tell your boss. I’ll hand deliver the subpoena. Hey, look at it this way, you bastard, you’ll get your picture in the paper. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

Jack slammed the phone back into the cradle, his face murderous. She’d do it, too. Christ, now what was he supposed to do?

In less than thirty minutes he was storming into his office, the same murderous look still riding his features. He sat down at the computer and started to bang at the keys.

The scrap of paper torn from his notebook was alongside the computer. He typed in the license plate number of the eighteen-wheeler parked at Myra Rutledge’s house. They could have spirited the Lewellens away in the truck in the middle of the storm and no one would have been the wiser.

Alan Stephen Lucas. Born August 3, 1958. Address, P.O. Box 206, Vienna, Virginia.
He stared down at the social security number and wrote it on a yellow pad of paper. He tapped in more numbers using the department code to allow him access to social security files. He blinked and then knuckled his eyes.
Deceased.
The guy was dead! He cleared the screen and typed in the number again. Alan Stephen Lucas was just as dead as he was a minute ago.

Did the guy sell the truck? Was it part of his estate? Why was someone still driving the truck and using Lucas’s license plates? He scanned the screen to see the date of death. Not quite five weeks ago. Time enough to take care of details like selling the truck or changing the plates. Lucas wasn’t old, so that had to mean there was a widow someplace. Then again, maybe the guy was divorced.

Jack yanked at his desk drawer and pulled out a well-thumbed booklet with access codes to the different government agencies. He typed in Bureau of Vital Statistics and then the name Alan Stephen Lucas and waited while the screen processed his request to be faxed a copy of Lucas’s death certificate. He cursed ripely when he realized he would have to wait for Monday for the fax. He typed the words in capital letters, RUSH, TOP PRIORITY.

Did truckers belong to unions? He didn’t know. He tapped and punched for the next hour until he came up with Local 233 in Roanoke, Virginia. Even if he sent an e-mail he’d probably have to wait until Monday for a response. Instead he copied down the telephone number and called it. He waited through eleven rings before a gruff voice came on the line and said, “Yeah, what’s your poison?”

Must be trucker lingo. Jack identified himself and said, “I’m trying to locate Alan Lucas. Do you know how I can reach him or his wife?”

“Alan died a while back. I don’t know where his wife is. She’s probably on the road somewhere. She’s the one that drives the rig. Alan was disabled. Why do you want him?”

Jack ignored the question and asked one of his own. “Do you know how I can reach his wife?”

“Do I sound like a private secretary, mister? Send her a letter.”

“Yeah, thanks for your help.” Wiseass.

It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. He cleared the screen, brought up Word, and typed a message saying it was imperative Kathryn get in touch with him as soon as possible. He filed the message in his personal file folder but not before he printed it out. He scribbled the address on the official stationery, ran it through the postage meter and dropped it in the mail basket.

He flexed his fingers. He was on to something. He could feel it. His nose twitched like a rabbit’s. “Let’s try the Bentley next,” he muttered.

Jack stripped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. What the hell, with Nikki temporarily out of the picture, he didn’t have anything better to do on a Saturday afternoon.

 

 

Winston Bugle frowned as he hung up the phone. He didn’t have any use for cops or district attorneys. He reached for the CB and said, “This is Bugle Beagle out here. Anyone listening? I need to get a message to Big Sis. All you ears pay attention now, you hear. Tell her some D.A. called from the District asking questions. Saw on the I.D. he was calling from D.C. Keep trying Big Sis until she responds. Have her call me. Over an’ out.”

 

 

Myra made no pretense of not listening to Nikki’s conversation with Jack Emery. The moment she hung up the phone she said, “Was that wise, Nikki? Won’t that just fuel things with Jack?”

“It’s called CYA. Covering your ass. I know Jack. From time to time he has to be reined in. I told you he’s sharp. He’s one of the best and for that I can’t fault him. He has that old prosecutor instinct. I respect that. He really does hate injustice. He hates defense attorneys, of which I am one. He says they catch the bad guys and people like me make sure they walk away clean. We had a lot of fights about it. He’ll shave a corner here or there to get the job done. His instinct has always been right on the money. He knows in his gut we had something to do with Marie’s disappearance. He just can’t prove it. Yet.

“I’ll bet you fifty dollars, if I call him at the office, he’ll answer. The minute he hung up from me he hightailed it there. He’ll stay there all day, through the night and all day tomorrow if he’s on to something. All I did was throw a bone he now has to deal with. It was just to throw him off stride a little. The man has a single-minded purpose in life. Shit, Myra, I can’t even hold that against him. He came off the streets in New York. He worked his way through college and law school. No one helped him. He’s where he is because he earned his way.

“Yes, he’s power hungry. He likes being on the news and he likes getting his picture taken with the mayor and the police commissioner. So do a lot of other guys. He just made it happen for himself. He’s pretty much going by the book and we’re the ones that threw the book out.”

“That was a sterling testimonial, Nikki. That tells me you are still very much in love with Jack Emery.”

“I’ll get over it.”

“What do you think he’ll do next, dear?”

Nikki threw her hands in the air. “My guess would be the first thing he’ll do is change his underwear. The word lawsuit against the office is a really dirty word. He’s going to have to call the D.A., the mayor and then the police commissioner. Then he’s going to go to the office and run those license plates if he did take them down. Jack has a mind like a steel trap. There is one good thing about Jack in regard to his career and his profession, though. He keeps everything to himself, you know, close to his vest. Part of it is that wild ambition of his and it’s also part of the thoroughness of him. What that means, Myra, is he gets all his ducks in a row first and then he pounces.”

Myra sat down with a thump. She longed for Charles as she struggled for the right words. “Dear, does that mean we’ll have to . . .
take him out?”

Nikki doubled over laughing at the expression on Myra’s face. She sobered almost instantly. “It just might come to that, Myra.”

 

 

“Last minute check, sisters,” Alexis said as she jammed her canvas bags in the trunk of her car. “Yoko, you’re driving my car and I’m riding with Kathryn. That’s in keeping with what Kathryn told Miz Slick, that you were just going as far as San Francisco.”

“Is everything wiped clean?” Julia asked.

Yoko adjusted the blue bandanna wrapped around her forehead, allowing her long silky hair to cascade down her back. “I wiped everything twice,” she said, peeling off the latex gloves. “With alcohol from Julia’s bag,” she added as an afterthought.

“We all checked out using the automatic room check-out. That’s all taken care of. Yoko, did you clean off the remote controls?”

“Yes, I did, Kathryn. We’re leaving the rooms cleaner than they were when we checked in.”

Kathryn looked at the Dag watch on her wrist. It did everything but talk to her. “Time to rock and roll, sisters.” Yoko giggled. “Stay close behind me and whatever you do, don’t speed or call attention to yourself. We’re driving straight through, so there won’t be any stops. Anyone have to use the bathroom?”

“No, Mother,” Julia grinned.

“Let’s go. We’re only forty-five minutes behind schedule. Jeez, wait a minute! Did someone remember to go to Home Depot to pick up the folding table? We do need an operating table.”

“That was my job. I picked it up on my way in. It’s in the trunk. I took it out of the box, so my fingerprints are all over it. If we leave it somewhere, remind me to wipe it clean, ” Julia said.

“I’ll remember, Julia,” Yoko said. She slid into the car. The moment she put the key in the ignition, she let out a yelp. “This is a stick shift! I do not know how to drive with gears.”

“Oh shit!” Alexis said. “It was the only one left. Okay, okay, crash five-minute course. See this, it’s in the shape of an H. Middle is neutral. Low, straight up is second, down to neutral, top of the H is reverse and then down again to third which is high and you cruise in high. You need to use both feet. At the same time, Yoko. You ease up on the clutch, feed a little gas and shift, low to second to third. Each time you have to use the clutch. For each gear, Yoko. You got that? Now, if you hit a hill, you have to be careful or you’ll slide backward. Julia, you drive behind her in case that happens. That way she’ll only slide into you. Try it, Yoko, once around the parking lot. If you get stuck, drive in first. We’ll keep an eye on you.”

“I’d say this is a glitch. That’s two so far. Three, if you actually count the surgery,” Kathryn said grimly. She watched with the others as the Ford Taurus bucked and chugged forward, then backward and came to a dead stop a foot from them. The car bucked and stalled.

“I think I got it. I’m ready. I can do this, Kathryn.”

“I know you can, kiddo. Think wagon train, sisters,” Kathryn said, hoisting herself up into the cab. She started to sing, “Rolling, rolling, rolling . . .”

They were ninety minutes out of Los Angeles when Kathryn’s personal cell phone rang.

“You can’t answer it, Kathryn. You’re supposed to be in Bermuda,” Alexis said.

“I know. It’s a Nextel. It takes messages. When it stops ringing, I’ll walk you through the process to retrieve the message.”

“I have the same phone. I know how to do it. It’s Sam Slick.” Alexis said, raising her eyebrows. “She said Bugle Beagle wants you to call him. Some district attorney wants to talk to you ASAP. She said you have his number. The call is out to all truckers to give you the message. She said if you need her to call any time of the day or night. That’s it,” Alexis said, hitting the power button to turn off the cell phone.