Offering a tired smile, he said, “I know you’re worried about my feelings, but I don’t think anything could surprise me now. My mother knows how to summon demons and she’s apparently connected to Boys Town as well. So what’s our next move?” He paused outside the Camry, managing to look cool as a Long Island iced tea even as sweat trickled down the small of my back.
I was glad he’d decided to let the relationship stuff go.
“You’re asking me?” I projected astonishment. “Then I want some lunch.”
To my surprise, he didn’t argue, just got in the car. “Mexican or Italian?”
Why did I smile because he offered the choice between my two favorites? On his own he’d go Japanese; he loved sushi and I couldn’t stand the stuff, except for California rolls. Chance said those didn’t count, though.
The hot seat made me hiss as I wiggled around. “Depends. Are we talking about Olive Garden Italian or good Italian?”
“I liked Johnny Carino’s when I ate there with my mom, but it is a chain, not a dive with red checkered tablecloths.”
I happen to harbor a soft spot for dives and the folks who operate them.
“Something more authentic then. Surprise me.”
When he pulled up outside a brown brick building on McPherson Avenue, I gaped at the wagon wheels outside the Cotulla Style Pit Bar-B-Q. “Home of the world-famous mariachis, huh? Too bad it’s not Saturday night.”
“We could come back.”
I gave him a look as we pushed into the dim, cool interior. There was a definite cowboy theme going on, a cheerful blend of Western and Mexican decor. The place smelled deliciously of barbeque and most of the tables were full, always a good sign.
A hostess sat us down with two menus, and I decided on the mixed parrillada with nopales and beans. He went with chicken chalupas. Chance also ordered us a pitcher of sangria, which earned him points. If he wanted them. Did he? I put that complication aside as the waitress departed.
“We need to figure out the connections here. Once we do that, I think we’ll have a good idea where to find your mom.” Easier said than done. “This may seem like a stupid question, but did you make sure Clayton Mann and Kel Ferguson are still locked up? Even so, they might have someone acting for them on the outside.”
Those two topped the list of people who wanted to hurt Chance and me, bad. Ferguson was a stone-cold killer for Jesus. He claimed angels told him that people he hunted would unleash the end times, and God didn’t intend to wrap things up yet. He wouldn’t say a word about what that had to do with the child he’d stolen, however. Even while he stood in the courtroom facing his sentence, he claimed divine inspiration.
Over and over, he’d said, “God will deliver me. No earthly bars can hold me.”
No matter how the prosecution questioned him, he never wavered from his story. Until they took him off the stand in disgust, and there were whispers of an insanity plea.
Sometimes I still dreamed about his eyes, as if he could somehow track my every move. He wasn’t easily forgotten. I’d finally managed to shake the feeling that he lurked around every corner, though. Mostly. Except on really dark nights.
In his egocentrism, Clayton Mann didn’t see why anyone should get to tell him no. Rape wasn’t a crime to him; it was him teaching the woman that she wanted him. And he’d very nearly been the end of me.
As far as I knew, they were both in prison.
If they aren’t . . .
Chance paled, both hands wrapping around his glass, and for a minute I thought he might be sick. Then he knocked back his drink as if it were whiskey. “I should’ve found out first thing. It never occurred to me they might strike at me through my mom. Oh, Christ.”
The waitress brought our food and I paused long enough to let her settle the plates. “That doesn’t feel right. They’re both . . . more direct. And I doubt they know anything about rituals. I just brought it up because we need to cover all angles. How does that go? Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth?”
I saw the tension ease out of him. “You’ve been reading Sherlock Holmes again. After you left, Corine . . . I bought a first edition of The Deep Blue Good-by because I forgot you weren’t coming back. It’s still on the bedside table at home.”
As a mass market paperback, it wouldn’t be valuable. He’d probably found it in a second-hand shop somewhere, but it meant everything that he remembered my passion for Travis McGee, a hero who ranted about the destruction of the Everglades before people practiced environmentalism. I loved John D. MacDonald. All those times I rambled about one of his colorfully titled novels, I thought Chance tuned me out. But he’d listened and remembered. If I was wrong about that—
Through the front windows, I watched the Camry explode in the parking lot.
Odds and Ends
“You know”—Saldana eyed the wreckage in the parking lot of Cotulla Style Pit Bar-B-Q—“if you wanted my attention, you could’ve just called.”
“Funny.”
He sighed. “When the call came in, I just knew you had something to do with it.”
I felt like that was a trifle unjust. I hadn’t blown out the windows at the warehouse or killed poor Maris. Chance is the one who attracts trouble like a lightning rod. My life in Mexico City had been pretty quiet. So by my calculations, I needed to stay away from him. Adventure followed him like a hound dog after a bone, and I’m not shamed to say I’d enjoyed enough excitement.
“So you came out to see me?” I managed a smile for my mentor. Still didn’t know what I was supposed to do with him. “That’s so sweet.”
“Slow day.” Jesse shrugged. “Just the usual gang stuff, so I thought I could spare a few minutes to take a look here.”
There wasn’t too much to see. The formerly piss yellow Camry smoldered in half a dozen pieces, and the cars parked on either side weren’t in great shape either. If we hadn’t stopped for lunch, we’d be dead. Some people might call it coincidence, but we could thank Chance’s luck for that. We definitely had somebody on our tail, though. I suspected they’d planted the bomb when we went into the police station, and that took some stainless steel balls.
Was it possible that our enemies had a guy on the police force? Someone who had a vested interest in making sure nobody ever found out what had become of Min? Well, shit. Jesse had known our every move since I made the mistake of trusting him.
We shouldn’t stay with Chuch and Eva anymore. Maybe the mechanic had good wards, but you couldn’t charm a house against fire, gas leaks, or Molotov cocktails. It was so wrong that our enemies could aim such a wide variety of threats at us, and we didn’t even know whom we were fighting. Or why, for that matter.
I felt numb. Though I’ve been burned out of my home and seen some scary things in my life, I’d never found a demon-chewed corpse before yesterday, nor had a vehicle blow up before my eyes. These people weren’t messing around; they’d kill us if they could.
For the first time I wondered if we should step back and let it go. Maybe uncertainty was better than dying. After all, I’d lived for twenty years without knowing what happened to my dad. My mom and I figured he just left, though Twila tried to sell me a different version of events. Right now I had too many other things to worry about to focus on it, but it weighed on me nonetheless.
Chance finished his interview with Saldana’s partner. We finally met the guy, Nathan Moon, and I’d been wrong about him all the way. Not a big, burly type. He was short, bowlegged, and paunchy with a sunburned, sullen face. I still bet he played bad cop.
Shortly he proved it. “So you don’t have any idea why somebody would launch your ride?”
I didn’t know what Chance had told Officer Moon, but I clammed up, courtesy of cops hassling me over the years. They always thought I was a charlatan, a grifter, or worse. Never mind the fact that Chance and I helped people; we didn’t talk the elderly out of their pensions. If Saldana wasn’t standing here, this would turn ugly. Hell, it might anyway. I didn’t know if I could trust him; in fact, things had gone drastically wrong ever since I took him into my confidence.
I lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug and wished I had a long, tall glass of lemonade. “Maybe they thought it belonged to someone else.”
“Drug dealing’s about the only thing that would get people so riled up around here.” Moon pretended to consider. “Maybe if a deal went bad or some money went missing. You think any of them drug dealers drive a Camry?”
“I don’t know any,” I said sweetly. “So I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”
Jesse elbowed his partner. “Cut the lady some slack. Remember that talk we had about not treating victims like perps?”
I wasn’t sure I liked being classed as a victim, but I didn’t protest. The two cops exchanged a look, and then Moon stalked off to harangue one of the uniforms on scene. I imagined their office would be tense for a day or two. Or maybe Nathan Moon just acted like this all the time.
We stood by in the heat while the bomb squad went over the odds and ends. Finally a guy came over, red-faced and sweating. “Here’s the timer. Looks like the remains of a digital watch. We’ll know more later, but it was definitely a DIY ignition. I reckon they made it out of stuff you can buy at Home Depot.”
At that point, Saldana got involved in a discussion that went straight over my head. I swiped my palm across my forehead, ready to collapse somewhere shady and cool, but we didn’t have a ride. The rental car agencies would flip over their signs to closed after the busted engine block on the Suburban and now the exploding Camry. Once we established that the police didn’t need anything else from us, Chance shepherded me back inside.
As I nursed a Diet Coke in the blessed restaurant air conditioning, he called Chuch. “Hey, is Eva home? Good. I need a favor, and after this we’ll call it even. I’m talking about wiping your debt.” He paused, listening. “Settle down. I’m not about to ask for a night with your wife. Do I look like Robert Redford?”