Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun Read online

  Chapter Three

  Elmo and I hit the road, maneuvering the 210 while it was still dark. We drove across the Mohave and watched the sun come up over the desert with genuine joy in our hearts, glad to be leaving our troubles behind.

  Several hours later, we crossed the border into Arizona, winding our way up the mountain to Flagstaff, then back down the other side, past the crater, where fifty thousand years ago, a meteor left a hole the length of twenty football fields just south of where I-40 leads to Winslow. Seeing vast stretches of sand, devoid of humanity, where lizards and prairie dogs eked out an existence in 120-degree heat amidst a formidable array of Spanish bayonets, scrub brush, and cacti, made my human struggles seem less serious. I turned up the radio and sang along to a love triangle about a heartbroken trucker who drove his eighteen-wheeler through a local motel room to kill his cheating wife, apparently loving her to death.

  I noticed a dark blue Buick in the rearview mirror and slowed down to get a better look. The car slowed too, deciding not to pass me. I thought I'd seen the same car in Needles. I pulled off at the first Winslow exit into a gas station where a family with several small children was gassing up their car. Their mere presence made me feel safer. The blue sedan didn't exit. I felt relieved and unloaded Elmo, hoisting his short-legged body out of the Jeep to save his arthritic shoulders. The moment his paws touched the sand, he pulled up short and let out a mournful sob. I knelt and quickly removed several cockleburs from the pad of his foot and pulled him in for a hug. A little girl with Shirley Temple hair and wearing pink shorts walked over to ask what kind of dog he was and then trotted back to her car, telling her mother, "That lady has a basket hound."

  "You are a basket hound." I patted Elmo, grateful for a little comic relief.

  We pulled into Tucumcari about midnight. I entered the faded turquoise lobby of the Holiday Inn, gave my name to the slight-of-frame desk clerk, and signed the register. Wearing a Raiders jacket, a young man with scraggly hair slouched in the lobby, watching the game on an old TV set. Other than that, all was quiet.

  I yanked the luggage out of the Jeep and then backed the vehicle up until its tailgate almost touched the motel room door. New Mexico was a collection point for the theft of Jeep Cherokees. Stolen at night from tourists, they were collected in an area outside of town and trucked down to Mexico before sunrise. I was determined not to awaken and find myself on foot.

  Morning in New Mexico was breathtaking from my small motel window: a backdrop of lapis skies and white puffy clouds floating above the odd plateaus surrounding Tucumcari, beauty orchestrated to the sweet drumbeat of Elmo's tail against the dresser as he signaled the need for a walk.

  I stepped outside and took in a deep, clean breath of fresh air before packing up our duffel bags and checking out. Elmo and I went straight to DeRoy's Restaurant across the street from a pasture where this morning a young boy and a middle-aged man were wrestling four nanny goats. I took a booth next to the window to watch the show. The biggest goat butted the skinny boy onto his behind as several leather-faced men in the restaurant chuckled and sipped their morning coffee at the gray Formica tables.

  I looked up when I heard a familiar voice across the room taking a breakfast order. She was here: the tall waitress, French perhaps, with jet-black hair swept back from her face in the manner of a society matron, impeccably dressed as if she'd been beamed up while dining on caviar in Hyannis Port and accidentally beamed down in Tucumcari slinging hash, a Town and Country model set against a backdrop of counter stools and pie racks.

  "Well, hello!" she said brightly, not knowing my name but recognizing the face. "How was your trip?" I told her my trip was just fine.

  "Apple, cherry, homemade-this-morning banana cream, butterscotch cream, and lemon meringue."

  "Butterscotch now, banana cream to go." I smiled.

  "Wise choice." She smiled back before going to the pie case.

  I wondered if she had a husband or a boyfriend who knew how attractive she was and that she was wasted on this prairie plateau like pate in a lunchbox.

  Outside the window, the goats were safely behind the barbed wire fence and the wind was rumpling the wheat-colored grass like a hand through a small boy's hair. I could see why people stayed on here.

  The waitress came back with what looked like a quarter of a pie so thick I could lose my fork in it and gave me a beautiful smile. "I thought you might like a piece of chocolate French silk, on me." Her dark taffeta skirt and matching apron, bordered by white lace not unlike the white meringue on top of the pie, brushed my face. The breeze from the open window washed her perfume over me. The restaurant had cleared out, the fanners heading off for their early morning work. I walked behind the counter and she turned to face me as if she'd been expecting me.

  I pulled her dark chocolate skirt up and slid my hand under the elastic of her white lace panties and into the delicate white meringue of her body, silencing her surprise with my mouth and going deep inside both warm, wet places with a slow, rhythmic intensity as she pushed against me with feverish strokes, seemingly as starved for the touch of a lover as I was. She was the soft, silky, chocolate French desert I had hungered for, right up until the moment that a large, hairy hand slammed a cup of coffee down in front of me. "You need more coffee?" the grubby cook in his stained white apron asked.

  "Uh, no." I snapped back into my body.

  "Your waitress is in back. You can pay me when you're ready. What kind of pie to go?"

  "Banana cream...and chocolate French silk," I said sheepishly.

  Fifteen minutes later, heading west again on I-40, Elmo and I shared the chocolate French silk pie at speeds in excess of seventy miles an hour.

  "It's getting bad, Elmo. I'm starting to have these Ally McBeal fantasy moments. You have no idea what it's like to face forty-one alone."

  "Ruff," Elmo barked for more pie.

  "Thank you for acknowledging that. It if rough."

  I tried to feed him with one hand and myself with the other, managing to sling the whipped topping onto the dashboard and across my shirtfront and coating the steering wheel. Elmo had banana cream on both ears. The front seat looked like the eating scene in Tom Jones.

  "You, of course, can see a girl you like, go up behind her, jump on her, and hump her damned ass off. I, on the other hand, am expected to be a little more civilized. Being a guy is easier. It just is." Elmo put his face into the piece of pie I'd balanced on my leg. "That was mine, by the way. Help yourself," I said to him, attempting to clean us both up with a damp napkin. Elmo's ears elevated a half inch at the base of his head, an indication he was finally having a good time.

  My cell phone rang, the unexpected shrill sound nearly causing me to drive off the road. I'd forgotten about the cellular company somewhere near the Texas panhandle that automatically dials travelers on the highway and connects them to annoying commercials. I grabbed the phone, preparing to disconnect the call, when a pleasant voice said my name.

  "Who is this?" I asked.

  "Mark Silvers in L.A., Barrett's brother. I'm calling because you're the last one who saw Barrett before she was attacked. Can you still hear me?"

  "Not well."

  "Our family is so worried about Barrett. She's still unconscious. Did she mention anything to you about what she's involved in? I mean, do you know why anyone would want to do this to her?"

  "Nothing that made any sense," I said cautiously. "Maybe we can talk when I get back, Mark, I'm losing the connection. Give me your number," I requested, noting the caller ID read Unavailable.

  "We've had enough crises. I don't want to cause a wreck. I'll be in touch. You have a safe trip."

  "Oh, by the way"—I kept him from hanging up—"Barrett doesn't have a brother."

  A pregnant silence ensued, then the caller hung up.

  An involuntary shiver ran down my spine. Who called me? And how did he get my cell phone number? Someone wanted to know how much I knew. Was he driving alongside me right now and I
didn't know it?

  I glanced in my rearview mirror and my heart leapt into my throat. At eighty miles per hour, the dark blue sedan had its bumper inches from mine. Suddenly I felt the metal crunch, and I gripped the wheel, my body lurching forward into it. I stepped on the accelerator wanting to get off the open road to safety, but there was nowhere to go. The blue sedan pulled up along my left side, keeping pace with me, edging me farther off the shoulder. Two hundred yards up ahead, the shoulder merged into the abutment of a bridge. That's where he was forcing me at high speed. The options flashed through my head: pull off and stop, keep trying to outjockey him to get back on the road, or beat him to the bridge. I floorboarded the gas pedal. The cars ahead of us were panicked at being caught in a road race, and several of them scattered over both lanes. The shoulder was lumpy and precarious. The high speed rocked the Jeep, making me think I would teeter over the right side of the embankment, but I held my breath and kept my foot jammed to the floorboard. The distance between me and the abutment narrowed faster and faster as my heart raced. Two hundred yards, a hundred and fifty yards, a hundred, fifty, twenty-five, fifteen, five. I could see the pores in the concrete pilings!

  At the last possible moment, I cleared the car ahead of me and skidded back onto the interstate, dodging the abutment, my heart nearly pounding out of my shirt. It only took him a second to catch up with me. I increased my speed to eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five, and broke into a sweat. If anything bigger than a grasshopper jumped into the road, we would both explode like pumpkins all over the freeway. Drivers catching sight of us bearing down on them moved to the right lane to let us fly by. We flew past the Welcome to Texas sign so fast that I couldn't read the gigantic lettering.

  My mind raced. It was obvious this guy wanted to run me off the road and make it look like I'd lost control of the car. Well, he'd made two mistakes. He'd underestimated my driving skills, and he'd attempted it in broad daylight. A nice dark night in the rain would have given me problems, but now I was just getting mad. Where the hell is the highway patrol when I need them? I reached down between my seat and the door and felt for the short-handled fire ax I always carried for emergencies. The feel of the rubber-wrapped handle gave me comfort.

  Elmo began to gag. An entire pie and a thrill ride down the highway had turned his stomach upside down. "I can't stop, buddy. You're going to have to take a deep breath and just think good thoughts." Elmo let out a loud belch and stretched out flat on the backseat.

  The maniac tailing me edged up on my left rear bumper. I could hear the crunch of metal as he tried to force me to spin out. Elmo whined and panted. We whipped past Vega, Texas, a mere bump in the prairie, and flew by a sign reading: Amarillo 20 miles. I said a prayer and pushed the speedometer up to a hundred miles per hour. If in the next twenty miles I could keep from killing myself or someone else, this jackass would be history. I concentrated on the road and not overcorrecting for any road hazard. At this speed, the slightest turn of the wheel could put me in a tailspin.

  "Holy shit!" I said out loud. Up ahead an eighteen-wheeler had decided to pass on a slight uphill grade and was now parallel and struggling next to a red Honda. I tried to slow down, but at a hundred miles an hour, I was closing on the trailer. I hit the ABS brakes and prepared for the ride of my life. The brakes grabbed. I kept my foot jammed to the floor even though the sound was terrifying, like metal ripping the bottom out of the car.

  The brake pedal vibrated up and down, but I never let up, remembering two cops who were killed in squad cars with ABS brakes when they panicked over the sound and let up. I decelerated to forty miles an hour, ten feet before I was about to breed my Jeep with an orange-juice ad on the back of the truck doors. The Honda driver saw me coming in his rearview mirror and pulled off on the right shoulder. I floorboarded the gas pedal again and whipped between the truck and the Honda. I was about twenty feet out in front of the truck when the blue Buick, following my same route, cut in front of the truck and came up alongside me pointing a gun across the passenger seat at me.

  I slid down in the seat trying to make myself less of a target and jammed the gas pedal down farther as the skyscape of Amarillo came into view. I was picking up traffic and intentionally zigzagged from lane to lane, making it harder for him to tail me. Just as we crested the ridge on I-40 in the middle of town, I slammed on the brakes and whipped my car to the side of the road. He went forward another hundred feet and the sirens blared, two big, beautiful, red flashing lights screaming after him. I had led him into the one speed trap in the whole United States I could count on, because I'd been ticketed there twice myself. In fact, another two hundred yards down the road there's a billboard asking anyone who feels he's been unfairly arrested for speeding to call the law firm on the billboard.

  I pulled back on the road and drove slowly past the trap, breathing for what seemed like the first time in hours. Two squad cars and two officers with guns drawn had a white man with blond, scraggly hair, in his late twenties, spread-eagle against the hood of a blue Buick. I recognized the jacket as belonging to the man in the motel lobby. Someone was going to a lot of trouble to try to kill me, and I had no idea why. I could have told the Amarillo police, but having been a cop, I knew that when the whole interrogation was over, "Raider" would end up knowing more about me than I would about him.

  Chapter Four

  I drove into Tulsa around five thirty Sunday evening. For a town that annually endured bone-chilling winters, stifling summers, and the often-carried-out threat of tornadoes, Tulsa always managed to look as pristine as a Southern belle after a twelve-hour train ride, not a hair out of place. I had to admit, it was comforting coming home to a place where no one had ever heard of a three-step deal and where a "power breakfast" was prunes.

  Maneuvering the Jeep past upscale malls and state-of-the-art medical facilities, I passed the sixty-foot bronze statue of praying hands, a humorous source of collegiate speculation about the size of the rest of the bronze man's anatomy, which remained mercifully underground.

  I turned off Lewis into a neighborhood with neatly kept wood-frame houses and yards filled with ancient oaks. The branches overhanging the street rustled gently in greeting, creating a cool, sun-filtered canopy. I let out an audible sigh, releasing the tension I'd held inside for two days, and swung into the driveway of a house with a long front porch. I was home. Safe.

  My parents popped out on the lawn as if spring-loaded. Mother, the size of a wiry sparrow, pulled us from the car and kissed us hello. Dad made one lap around the car's exterior and said, "What happened to your car? You should get those dents in the rear fixed."

  "Is that all you can say to your daughter, Ben?" Mother chastised.

  "Hi, sugar." He gave me a chipper kiss on the cheek.

  "Elmo, precious, has your mommy endangered your life by driving all alone across the country?" Mother asked the exhausted hound, who looked as if he might go into a drool state from sheer fatigue. She towed Elmo up the steps. "Now, none of us wants to miss tonight's news about Frank Anthony! He was set on fire!" Mom nearly shouted.

  "Is that a euphemism for 'found God'?" I smiled at her.

  "He was torched!" Mother regurgitated the word being used by a reporter. "He was shot once in the head and once in the chest, then set on fire!"

  "Once in the head and once in the chest usually means we'd prefer this little incident go un-discussed," my dad said with a dark humor I had grown to appreciate more and more with time.

  "You should see if Mrs. Anthony will let you make a movie out of it. Frank Anthony was a wonderfully kind man," Mother continued.

  "Studios don't want stories about wonderfully kind men. They want tits, ass, action, and murder," I replied.

  "Well, maybe there's some of that too. Call Mrs. Anthony and talk to her," Mom instructed me.

  Maybe she s right, I thought. Focusing on someone else s murderer beats the hell out of focusing on the guy who tried to be mine. "I'll check it out," I said.

  Dad resumed
his dinner, slamming down two hamburgers with four strips of bacon in under five minutes, confirming my suspicion that I was descended from a pack of wild dogs, and then he turned on the evening news. Deaf from a lifetime of oil derricks and high-powered rifles, he cranked the volume up to atom-splitting levels to hear the latest police bulletin. The police sergeant being interviewed was none other than my old buddy Wade Garner, who looked appropriately serious and competent as he told a reporter that the police now believed Frank Anthony was killed by professional assassins. Police were asking for the public's help in locating a dark green Lincoln Town Car with two men inside. The broadcaster then noted that Mr. Anthony was an international businessman with ties to many organizations, including Celluloid Partners, one of the principal investors in some of Hollywood's biggest motion picture studios.

  "So Frank Anthony suffered from fits of glitz," I mused.

  "I don't think he suffered from fits." Mother waved at Dad and mimed muting the TV. Dad turned the sound down, and the effect was akin to having the dentist take his drill out of my mouth. My body relaxed immediately. "Now, my friend Callie Rivers could tell you if he suffered from fits, and she can tell you whether you should pursue this Anthony story. She's a psychic astrologer."

  "You go to a psychic?" I was slightly amused.

  "I don't go to a psychic. I know a psychic astrologer."