“As positive as I can be. We can call him up to confirm, if you want.” Although it would be embarrassing as hell for Booke to learn I’d been having incredibly vivid dreams about him, if I was wrong about the experience. I wasn’t eager to talk to the Englishman anytime soon. The whole thing had just been too strange.
Chance shook his head. “I trust you. Let’s see what we can dig up on that symbol.”
His casual acceptance warmed me. No matter how crazy the stuff I brought him, he always believed me. Smiling, I went back to the living room for my last clean outfit; we’d been away almost a week and I needed to do laundry. From inside my purse, my phone vibrated silently but insistently.
That meant I had a new message.
Huh. I brought it to my ear, input the code, and listened. “Hi, this is Lenny. Lenny Marlowe? You said not to help, but they laid me off at Delta and I got to thinking. You know in them movies how bad guys always return to the scene of the crime? So I got some doughnuts and went over to the warehouse. Sure enough, around two, they came back. They cleared stuff out of there, put crates in a white sanitation truck, but it wasn’t no trash they took out. Well, I was real careful and I followed them. They went to 6874 Hal—hey!” An explosive burst assaulted my ear, and then the call devolved into sobs and whimpers.
Oh, shit. The call was time stamped three hours ago. “Chance.” He didn’t respond right away, so I shouted, “Chance! Come on, we have to go.”
“What’s the matter?” He came out into the hall half-dressed, but for once I didn’t pause to appreciate his bare chest.
“We need to go see Lenny Marlowe.”
“Why?”
I understood his confusion but we didn’t have time for it. “He might be in trouble.”
Understatement. I dressed in record time and sprinted for the Mustang. Chance joined me and put the car in gear. To simplify matters, I gave him my phone and let him listen to the message himself as he drove.
“Shit. Call Saldana and have him meet us there.”
That sounded great. It made a nice change to have a cop on our side for once, instead of being in the crappy position of trying to explain the wildly improbable. I still wasn’t sure I trusted him, but he was the one who had given us Lenny as a lead. Would he have done that if he intended to watch and kill him for showing a little initiative? Would he really go to that much trouble to confuse us?
I was starting to think . . . No. I hadn’t tossed out the dirty cop idea entirely; maybe somebody in the station was sneaking around his office, listening to his personal conversations? But then again, except for Saldana, I hated cops, so it made me happy to blame one.
Our pet policeman answered on the second ring. “Saldana.”
“I may have a problem that requires your assistance,” I said in lieu of hello.
He sighed. “You know, Corine, there’s a picture of you next to the definition of high maintenance. What is it now?”
Because I did need his help, I ignored the insult. “Our mutual friend Lenny Marlowe called me in the middle of the night. I was asleep and I missed it, but the message struck me as alarming, to say the least. We’re headed over there to check on him, but I’d appreciate your official presence on scene.”
There was a long pause, and background noise increased. Somebody must’ve come in. I heard him talking and a mumbled reply, maybe from his partner, Nathan Moon. I could go a long while without seeing that fellow and never miss the man. Finally Jesse came back on the line, speaking cautiously.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll take a ride over to check on your nephew. I don’t mind a bit, Miss Alice. No, it’s no trouble,” he added, although I hadn’t spoken.
Huh. He didn’t want his partner to know he was talking to me? Interesting.
“You’re good,” I said with a snicker. “You should do Vegas.”
“I will when you get me thrown off the force,” he muttered. “Who knew being a mentor would turn out like this? I’m on my way.”
I closed my phone with an audible click and glanced at Chance. “I think I may be wearing out my welcome with Officer Saldana.”
A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “His loss.”
The sky hung over us like a swathe of gauze. Unlike the almost blindingly bright and sunny other days, the air felt heavy this morning, sullen and threatening. In silence we followed the access road leading back to the trailer park where Marlowe lived.
Jesse managed to beat us there. We found him waiting in the tiny excuse for a front yard, beside the BEWARE OF DOG sign. Chance got out and went toward the porch and knelt as if he were listening to something I couldn’t quite make out. I studied Saldana’s grim expression and knew we were too late.
“Don’t go in,” he warned us. “I already called the forensic folks. It’s bad in there.”
“Pulled-apart-by-demons bad?” I ventured.
Shaking his head, he answered, “Shot-up-with-automatic-weapons bad. What did he say when he called you?”
I played the message for the third time. “I feel like shit. We told him to leave it be.”
Saldana eyed me with an expression of pure dislike. I didn’t expect I’d be fending off his advances anytime soon. “You told him enough to interest him and get him in trouble, the poor dumb bastard.”
“You’re saying this is my fault?” I didn’t know if I could argue that. “You gave me his name, so how about we spread the blame around some?”
“You think I’m not aware of that? Christ, I told you his name and now he’s dead. It’s as much my fault as yours. More. I don’t deserve to wear this badge.” Jesse yanked it off his belt and studied it for a minute, dull silver in the palm of his hand, and then crammed it into his jacket pocket. “I should resign right now.”
Oh. So that was it.
“Maybe you bent the letter of the law, but you had good intentions. You wanted to close the case and you thought—”
“Fuck what I wanted. A man is dead. Don’t talk to me about good intentions.” Saldana stalked to the end of the drive to wait for the coroner’s wagon, now driving down the dusty road toward us.
“We should get out of here. If Moon comes . . .” I trailed off when I realized Chance wasn’t listening to me.
With a sigh, I crunched over the gravel to see what had him so enthralled. At last he straightened with a tiny, blood-spattered dog in his arms. Butch had lost some of his attitude but not his red leather collar. Trembling, the Chihuahua curled deeper into Chance’s arms, as if he wanted to hide. He regarded us from damp, perplexed eyes, as if wondering how his day could possibly get worse.
“Shit,” I said. “We’re keeping him, aren’t we?”
Chance leveled his best look on me. “What do you think?”
Have Dog, Will Travel
The damn dog fit perfectly in my red spangled sari sling bag.
We left the scene just before the official vehicles arrived, and I had a feeling that was the last favor I could safely ask of Saldana. With guilt weighing on him, he might let his partner lock me up on principle, though it wouldn’t bring back Lenny Marlowe.
And Nathan Moon definitely didn’t like me. I guessed it was a case of genuine mutual antipathy. Sometimes people just scrape you raw, no logical reason for it.
“Any idea what streets start with ‘Hal’ around here?” Chance asked.
Butch nudged my hand with his head and I petted him absently. “Wonder if we could Google it.”
He eyed me. “You have a laptop hidden in your bag?”
“Smart-ass. I was thinking of going back to the house, but I guess you want to keep moving.” I didn’t blame him for that. We had targets on our backs, and I’d like to draw the fire away from Chuch if we could.
“Check the glove box. Maybe there’s a map.”
In my experience people rarely owned a map to the area where they lived, but I looked anyway. I was right. “Stop at the next gas station. We’ll buy one.”
“What do you suppose he saw that was worth killing him over?”
I could only guess. “The contents of those crates?”
“That seems like a safe bet. How’s Butch holding up?”
The dog whined in answer and buried his head in my handbag. “He’s stressed. I hope he’s not a piddler.”
We got off the highway and I went into an Exxon station. Chance filled up the Mustang while he waited, and I bought two Cokes as well as the map. I also picked up a plastic bowl, a bottle of water, and wet wipes for the dog. He didn’t much enjoy his makeshift bath, but I couldn’t carry him around looking like he belonged in an evidence locker. By the time I finished inside, the leaden sky opened up in an old-fashioned Texas downpour. I ran with my head low; Butch whimpered and disappeared into my purse.
My blouse became transparent when wet, something I hadn’t known before. Otherwise the sudden bath didn’t feel bad. It made a nice change from the constant heat.
“Got it?” Chance asked.
“Yeah.” I unfolded the map and looked for the listing of streets. “Shit, there’s a lot of them. It could be any of these.”
“Check the address and make a list of the streets that have the right range.”
“Good idea.”
After rummaging underneath Butch’s bony butt, I unearthed a pen and tore a page out of my day planner, not that I ever used it for anything but scrap paper. The dog watched with cautious interest as I jotted down names that potentially fit our criteria. One of them I tapped with a frown.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine they’re doing . . . whatever near a golf course. This looks like an upscale neighborhood. Wouldn’t those folks notice strange comings and goings and complain about it to somebody?”
He thought about it. “Depends. There comes a point where every house has such high security walls that the neighbors don’t have any idea what goes on inside. In poor areas, nobody gives a shit, and in expensive ones, you pay for privacy. It’s middle class neighborhoods where everybody knows each other’s business.”