Before The Killing Starts (Dixie Killer Blues Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter 30

Dixie
only had to walk about a mile
before he got lucky and a cab picked him up. He'd felt Crispy's phone buzz in
his pocket while he was walking and he checked it sitting in the back of the
cab, As he expected it was from Chico; demanding an update. An update on where
they were specifically. He reckoned that clinched it. Chico was onto him. Why
else would he make contact with Crispy—the supposed sidekick—and not with Dixie himself?

He thought about sending
a message back, making up some story to buy himself some more time. But what to
say? He lay back in the seat and closed his eyes and gave it some thought. He
let out a short laugh as an idea crossed his mind. In the front the driver
looked at him in his rear-view mirror, worried that he'd inadvertently picked
up some screwball. Dixie ignored him and got his wallet out. He found the piece
of paper with the details that Dave, the bartender at Kelly's, had given him
over the phone.

He typed out a reply to Chico's text:
I've lost him. We met up with a guy called Evan Buckley. The two of them
gave me the slip. What do you want me to do?

He smiled to himself as
he hit the send button. If Crispy's real purpose had been to keep an eye on
him, it would make sense to Chico. If not, what the hell? He had nothing to
lose. He might even get a reply from Chico.

He got the driver to
drop him at the nearest car rental office and hired a medium-sized van. It was
better than a sedan for a couple of reasons: one, he might need to sleep in it,
and, two, if he managed to catch up with Ellie, it would be useful to hold her
in while he decided what to do with her.

First things first,
though. The money.

He got his own phone out
and found the number of the GPS tracking device that he'd called from Alvarez's
office. He hit redial and waited for the text to come back. Almost immediately
his phone pinged. He opened the text and clicked on the link. A map opened in
his phone's browser, the tracker's location clearly indicated. He smiled to
himself again. It was the exact same location as last time. She hadn't moved
it.

He put his phone away.
He didn't need the map. He knew exactly where he was going. After all, he'd
chosen it in the first place.

He felt a unpleasant
flutter in his stomach the whole journey. He didn't know if it was excitement
or trepidation. A very unwelcome thought dug its way into his mind and wouldn't
give him any peace. Would Alvarez have phoned Chico after he'd left? The guy
had been so full of himself, so sure that he'd solved Chico's problem in two
seconds flat. He'd definitely enjoyed showing off in front of Dixie. Maybe he'd
got the urge to do the same with Chico. Call him up and gloat. And give him the
tracker's number at the same time. That was the problem with them, anybody or
everybody could ring the number. Then he might send some of the other guys to
pick up the money, leave Dixie to concentrate on finding Ellie. He'd need to be
careful when he got there.

He suddenly laughed out
loud to himself. They didn't have a key. What the hell was he worrying about?
He must be getting old. Worrying about every little thing. Real and imagined.

It didn't take long to
get there. He didn't recognize any of the vehicles in the parking lot and there
was nobody waiting in any of them. He jogged across the lot, into the main
lobby and took the stairs up to the second floor. He found the unit he was
looking for. He still had his keys in his hand. Looking down at them he was
surprised to see a slight tremble.

Pull yourself
together
.

He found the right key
and tried it. It didn't fit. He must have mistaken it on the ring. He looked
again. No, it was definitely the right one. Was it the right unit? He checked.
Yes, it was the right one.

What the hell was going
on? He'd have to get the manager. He ran back down the stairs to reception and
found the guy. He was in the middle of eating his lunch and wasn't at all
pleased at the interruption. He looked like a man who enjoyed his food. Dixie explained the problem and they went through a great long rigmarole of verifying who
he was. Thank God he'd booked it using his credit card.

Then they went back
upstairs and the manager tried Dixie's key. Dixie was relieved when it didn't
work for him either. The guy got his master key out and the lock opened up
without a problem.

'It's probably new,' he
said, inspecting Dixie's key. 'We've had a bunch of them recently that didn't
work.'

Dixie
nodded understandingly. The feeling
of trepidation that had been building inside him was getting to fever pitch.
Now
just get the hell back downstairs.

Despite the fact that
his lunch had been interrupted, the guy didn't seem to be in any hurry to get
back to it. Dixie didn't want to open up with him standing there. Was the guy
waiting for a tip?
Get a new locksmith
.

He got the hint in the
end and headed back to his office. Dixie let himself into the unit and turned
on the light. His heart was thumping, his mouth dry. The unit was a small five
by five space, the smallest you could rent but more than enough room for the
single bag sitting in the back corner. It looked quite lonely, sitting there
all alone. Like it had been discarded when its owner had no further use for it.

The bad feeling that he
felt intensified at the sight of the bag. What can you tell from simply looking
at a bag from five feet away? It seemed it could certainly make your stomach
turn over. He took a couple of quick steps across the room and picked it up.

Empty.

Just as he knew it
would be
.

He didn't need to open
it, he could tell from the weight. He knew there were just under five hundred
notes to a pound in weight, which means three million dollars in one hundred
dollar bills weighs about sixty-six pounds. The bag in his hand didn't weigh
sixty-six ounces.

He opened it up and
looked inside anyway. It wasn't completely empty—she'd left the GPS tracker for
him. It was a little plastic box about three inches by two inches and an inch
thick. He wondered if she'd known it was there or if she'd simply transferred
the money to another bag—one with wheels maybe. He dropped the tracker back
into the bag and threw the bag into the corner. Might as well leave it there in
case somebody else came looking for it.

A sudden thought crossed
his mind and made him smile—as much as anybody who's just found out they've
been double-crossed out of three million dollars can smile. He could take the
tracker and drop it into a dumpster somewhere. Outside a fish restaurant maybe.
Then whoever came looking could spend their time rooting through all the
rotting fish and food leftovers, or, even better, spend a few days tramping
around a landfill site. He was glad her mind didn't work along the same lines,
but then again he'd never done anything to her to piss her off that much. Had
he?

The thought of her gave
him another idea. He could take it with him in case he caught up with her. Then
he could stick it where the sun don't shine and he'd never lose track of her
again. Not that there'd be much chance of losing her again if he ever found her—people
six foot under the ground don't tend to go very far. But in the end he couldn't
be bothered and just left it in the bottom of the bag.

He turned out the light
and closed the door. The manager hadn't given him a new key so he couldn't have
locked it if he'd wanted to. He went back downstairs and out to the parking lot
and got in the rental van.

What the hell was he
going to do now?

Chapter 31

Evan booked a room on
the floor above Ellie and then spent a few minutes freshening himself up before
going back to wait in his car outside the hotel. He got a text from an unknown
number while he was waiting. It turned out to be Ryder making a big deal about
how it was now safe for Evan to go back to his office, now that the real
detectives had sorted his mess out for him. It was irritating to give Ryder the
satisfaction of riling him, but at least he knew that the two guys were out of
the picture for the time being.

He saw Ellie arrive and
park up about ten minutes before they were due to meet. She was alone in the
car. Nobody drove in behind her and he hadn't seen anybody else who looked
remotely suspicious. He was about as sure as he could be that it wasn't a trap.

He got out of his car
and followed her into the hotel. She walked straight past the reception desk
and across to the elevators. There was a car waiting to go and she stepped
right into it. The doors started to close. Evan had to run the last few yards
across the lobby to get his foot in the doors before they could close
completely. They opened again and he stepped in.

Ellie looked up and did
a small double take. She looked rough. The side of her face was bruised and her
bottom lip was swollen. She tried a smile. It wasn't a very good one. It
certainly didn't get within a mile of her eyes.

'Somebody hit you?' he
asked. He made no effort whatsoever to put some concern into his voice. A few
more slaps like that probably wouldn't do her any harm.

She put out her hand to
press the button for her floor but he intercepted it and pressed the floor
above.

'What are you doing?'
she said. 'I'm on the third floor.'

'I'm on the fourth,' he
said. 'Better view.'

She gave him a tight
smile. A
have it your way
sort of smile.

'No reason why we
shouldn't go to my room, is there?'

She gave a small shake
of her head but didn't say anything.

'There isn't somebody
waiting in your room you want me to meet?'

She didn't bother saying
anything to that either. He didn't actually think she had set something up; she
was just pissed she wasn't in control.

They rode up the rest of
the way in silence and he let her get out first and walk ahead of him. Again,
it wasn't that he thought she was going to do a runner. He was just being gentlemanly—despite
the fact that there wasn't what he'd call a
lady
in sight. He let them
into the room and she dropped into the only armchair. He locked the door and
leaned against it, and they stared at each other in silence for a minute or
two.

'Tell you what,' he
said, 'I'll tell you what's happened since I last saw you and then you can tell
me what the hell's going on.'

He ran through it all on
his fingers; the fight in the bar; the confrontation afterwards with Juan and
José; his visit to her ransacked hotel room (although he didn't mention the
photograph he'd found); almost getting caught by Juan and José at her hotel the
following day and, finally, Juan and José's visit to his office.

'I don't know about
you,' he said, after he'd finished checking them all off, 'but that sounds like
a lot to happen in just a couple of days.'

'I haven't exactly been
having the time of my life either,' she said, pointing at her face.

'The difference is though;
you know what this is all about. I don't. At least when you were getting beaten
up you knew the reason why.'

'What, and that makes it
easier—'

'And I'd be willing to
bet it was probably all your own fault.'

She extended her middle
finger towards him. 'Up yours, Evan.'

'Ever the lady.'

'If it's as bad as you
say, why are you still here?'

He was about to say it
was for one reason, and one reason only, but then he realized that wasn't the
case any more.

'For one, I don't have
any choice any more. Unless Juan and José's visit to my office was an isolated
incident and they'll give up now, they're going to be back.'

'Okay, I can see your
point. What's the other reason?'

She had a mocking
half-smile on her lips that he'd have liked to slap off. She knew damn well
that she'd hooked him with her promise of helping him find Sarah. She probably
didn't know that he believed her now, thanks to the photograph. Believed that
she
could
help him, at any rate. He still wasn't sure about whether she
would. He hadn't planned to bring up the question of the photograph at this
point. He'd have preferred to find out what was going on before going down that
route. But, you don't always get to call the shots.

'You know why. You said
you'd help me find Sarah if I helped you.'

'I didn't think you
believed me.'

'I didn't.'

She didn't look quite so
sure of herself suddenly. It wasn't the answer she was expecting.

'So what changed?'

Now it was his turn to
give her an irritatingly smug smile.

'Well it sure as hell
wasn't because I sat down and thought to myself:
you know I did Ellie a huge
injustice, I'm sure she really wants to help after all
.'

This time she managed to
keep her middle finger under control. Maybe it was because she was too busy
watching Evan's hand as he reached into his jacket pocket. Did she have any
idea what was coming? He took the photograph out of his wallet and handed it to
her.

She stared at it dumbly
for a split second before she realized what it was. Her head snapped back up.

'Where did you get
this?'

He took a quick step
forward and snatched it out of her hand again. He didn't want to risk her doing
anything with it.

'Where did you get it?'
she said again.

'It was in the front
compartment of your suitcase. I found it while I was waiting for you to turn
up.' He didn't think he needed to tell her that he'd gone through her diary as
well. Or mention the other piece of paper for the moment.

'It's not important
anyway,' she said. 'You don't need it to find Dixie. I already told you that.'

'I know.'

'You know what?'

'That I don't need it to
find Dixie.'

Her brow creased into a
slight frown. Did she really not know why he was interested in it? The
slightest of doubts crept into his mind. Had he been mistaken? Or had she
simply forgotten who the other person in the photo was?

'So what do you want it
for?'

'I think that's obvious,
don't you?'

The frown intensified.

'You need to work on
your confused face,' he said, trying to sound confident.

She shook her head. 'I
have no idea what you're talking about.'

'The other person in the
photo,' he prompted.

'There isn't anyone else
in the photo.'

'Okay then, the other
person's arm. The arm that's round your neck.'

'Show me.'

Was it a trick to get it
back? Or was he making a mountain out of a molehill?

'Don't worry; I'm not
going to try to take it—even though it's mine in the first place.'

He passed it back to her
and she studied it carefully before giving it back to him.

'I honestly don't
remember who that was. I'm not even sure when it was taken. I just grabbed the
first photo I could find of Dixie.'

'Why cut it in half?'

'For Christ's sake, Evan.
If I could have found one of Dixie on his own . . .'

She trailed off as
something occurred to her. She let out a genuine laugh.

'I don't believe it. You
think it's Sarah. Don't you?'

Evan wasn't sure what he
thought now in the face of her reaction. If she wasn't being genuine, she was
one hell of an actress.

'You do, don't you?' she
said again.

'I recognize the
bracelet,' he said. It sounded pretty lame to him now.

She held out her hand
and flicked her fingers at him.

'Show me.'

Again she studied it carefully
before handing it back.

'It doesn't mean
anything to me.'

'But it does to me. I
bought it for her.' He was sounding increasingly desperate in his own ears.

'And it's one of a kind
is it? You commissioned it personally so that nobody else in the world would
ever have one like it?'

He didn't answer her.

'No, I didn't think so.
There's probably thousands of them out there. Probably came out of a Christmas
cracker.'

'Okay, but what's the
likelihood that you know two people—Sarah and whoever that is in the photograph—with
the exact same one.'

She shrugged. 'Who
knows? You're clutching at straws. It's not her.'

He didn't know what else
he could do or say. It didn't really matter what he said, she was adamant that
it wasn't Sarah. That, or she was determined not to admit it. This wasn't how
he'd seen it panning out. He'd expected to catch her on the back foot. Expected
to see something in her reaction that confirmed his suspicions. In fact he'd
seen the exact opposite. It made him question his own convictions.

'Okay, put a pin in
that,' he said and cringed at what he'd just said. 'Why don't you tell me
what's been going on.'