Bike Week Blues (10 page)

I surveyed the crowd. A handful of people
were dressed in biker garb, while the majority of patrons wore
regular clothes. A bald man at the end of the bar had on a
University of Florida golf shirt. “Calm down, Penny Sue. This is
Gator territory, and we need to be discreet,” I muttered through
clenched teeth. “Besides, we can’t be sure it wasn’t done by the
shooter. It was dark. Let it go. We’ll put a Band-aid on the
scratch when we get home.”

She drained her water. “A Band-aid? No
way.”

“I’ll bet we can fix it with white
fingernail polish. I learned the trick from one of our cleaning
ladies. She used it to fill nicks on sinks, tile, just about
anything.” Ruthie chuckled. “She eventually got married and moved
away. The white globs drove our next cleaning lady crazy. The poor
thing spent untold hours scrubbing and scraping them all off. Bless
her heart.”

Penny Sue shrugged. “I guess it’s worth a
try. Better than leaving him injured and defaced.”

I hurried to change the subject. “My
interview was not bad. Sergeant Hooks seemed nice.”

“Mine wasn’t tough, either. Lieutenant
Gunter moved here from Valdosta.”

“Well, mine was the pits.” Penny Sue spat
the words, still furious over Uga. “They’re after Rich. It’s guilt
by association. I’ve got to warn him!”

“Penny Sue, this is not our business,” I
said.

“Would you stand by and watch while someone
was mugged?”

“Of course not.”

“This is the same thing. Woody is convinced
that Rich is the killer. I know with every fiber of my being it’s
not true. I have to find Rich and warn him. Convince him to go in
for questioning on his own. I don’t want him getting caught in the
middle of a shootout between Vulture and the police. Whether or not
y’all help me is your decision.”

Help me
—I wish she hadn’t said that.
Penny Sue had come to my aid more times than I could count. Heck, I
was living in her father’s condo free of charge. How could I refuse
her plea—even if I thought it was stupid? “What do you have in
mind?”

Her brow furrowed with concentration as she
sipped her wine.

“Did you try calling his room? We could
leave a message for him at the front desk of the Riverview,” Ruthie
suggested.

“Too obvious. I’m sure the police have his
room under surveillance. Heck, they’ve probably instructed the
staff to notify them when Rich returns.”

“Why don’t you call his cell phone? Or page
him. Does his phone have a pager?”

“Yes, but that would leave a paper trail.
Warning Rich might be misconstrued as obstructing justice, even
though we’re trying to do the exact opposite.”

I hadn’t thought of that angle. Neither had
Ruthie, judging from the expression on her face.

“A shame we couldn’t get Lu Nee 2 in his
room. It does surveillance, you know,” Penny Sue said. “There’s a
way to hook it into your computer so you can see and hear
everything at a remote site. Problem is, the instructions for
connecting the computer are complicated.”

“What about Carl?” Ruthie asked. “I’ll bet
he could do it.”

“I’m sure he could, but I don’t want to get
him involved. Besides, how would we get that big robot into Rich’s
room?”

Penny Sue dug into her cosmetic pouch and
came up with a key. “I have a key to his room. He locked himself
out the second night and got another key from the desk. I was
supposed to return this when I left.” She smirked. “I forgot.”

“Sure, I believe that,” I said, rolling my
eyes.

“No, really, I was preoccupied.”

I thought of the nights that she’d come home
late with smeared make-up and a big grin. I supposed she might be
telling the truth. “Penny Sue, even if we have a key, we can’t take
Lu Nee in there. Spying is illegal. Besides, the cleaning crew
would surely notice it.”

“Put it in the closet?” Penny Sue
suggested.

“Closet? Lu Nee 2 wouldn’t see
anything.”

“She could hear.” Penny Sue stared at her
wine as if trying to divine the future. A bust, since the
Australian was crystal clear, no grape flakes or residue to swirl
into patterns or portents. “Okay, we’ll forget Lu Nee and
concentrate on finding him in person. Rich came to survey Harley
dealers. I’m sure he’s already visited the local shops. My guess is
that he’s scoping out the major bike events now.”

“Do you think it’s safe for the three of us
to go?” Ruthie asked nervously.

“Ted said we’d be fine as long as we stuck
to the beaten paths—the Pub, J.B.’s, the bars on Flagler, even Main
Street in Daytona,” I reminded her. “Why don’t we start with the
Pub tonight? That way we can check things out and see how everyone
is dressed. We want to blend with the crowd.” I gave Penny Sue a
look that said, “No wedding ensemble.” She curled her lip at me.
“Anyway, Ted’s probably working traffic there tonight—we couldn’t
be safer.”

“Won’t we stand out if we pull up to bike
bashes in a car?” Ruthie asked.

“My car,” Penny Sue insisted immediately.
“No offense, Leigh, but your little bug is not fit for adults.”

At the police station, I’d had to pull her
out of the front seat, again. Size wasn’t the only issue here,
agility was a factor, too. Penny Sue probably needed to sign up for
a yoga class or something. The old joints were stiffening with age.
(Gawd, what was I saying? We were the same age!)

“Ted said that most of the people who go to
the Pub park at the shopping center across the street. No one will
know we arrived in a car,” I said. “I do wonder if we should take
the Mercedes, since someone has a grudge against it.”

“Pooh,” Penny Sue said, draining her wine
and holding it up for a refill. “It’s Woody who has the
vendetta—the gun shot was pure chance.” Our waitress arrived with
glasses of water and another wine for Penny Sue. “Do you go to Bike
Week?” Penny Sue asked the petite blonde whose nametag read
Angie.

“Sure, it’s a lot of fun. The Pub has a slew
of great shindigs. Bands, contests, and there’s a web site where
you can get the schedule.”

“Do you go with a man on a motorcycle?”
Ruthie asked.

“Sometimes. Sometimes I go with a bunch of
girls.”

Ruthie was still not convinced. “So, you
think it’s safe?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s a big party, like Mardi
Gras.”

Penny Sue sipped her wine demurely, wheels
turning in her head. Finally, in her best Georgia Peach persona,
Penny Sue drawled, “You’ve lived here a while?”

“All my life.”

“Do you know of a man named—he has a funny
nickname—Vulture?”

Angie stiffened instantly. “I’ve heard of
him,” she said flatly.

Penny Sue showed surprise. “What have you
heard?”

“He’s a rough dude—the kind that would kill
your mother for a warm Busch beer. If I were you, I’d steer clear
of him. I’d also wouldn’t throw his name around.” She eyed our
conservative black outfits. “People might get the wrong idea.”

Ruthie held her hands up. “We don’t know
this guy; we’ve only heard about him.”

“I don’t know what you heard, but he’s not a
person I’d want to look up.” Angie turned on her heel.

“Thanks, we appreciate the advice,” I said
to the girl’s back as she walked away.

Ruthie came unglued. “Don’t you ever mention
that name to a stranger again!” She wagged her finger at Penny Sue.
“We want to find Rich, not Vulture. Otherwise, you can count me out
of this whole mess. I’ll take the next plane to Atlanta.”

Penny Sue tilted her head contritely. “Get a
grip, Ruthie.” She stared into her drink again. “Woody showed me a
picture of Vulture. He’s the second man I saw with Rich at the
Riverview Hotel the day we broke up.”

“For goshsakes,” I nearly shouted, “why
didn’t you tell us before?”

She avoided my eyes. “I didn’t want to upset
you. Besides, I thought you might not help if you knew about
Vulture and Rich.”

“Darn right. I’ll help search for Rich, but
at the first sight of Vulture, I’m out of here with Ruthie.”

“Vulture is our only lead for finding Rich,
so we have to ask about him. There’s a half million bikers in the
area, if we don’t use the Vulture connection, we’re looking for a
needle in a haystack.”

She was right. The probability of running
into Rich was virtually nil. Yet, I feared that asking about
Vulture was like spitting in the wind—it might blow back in our
faces. If the guy was as nasty as everyone said, he probably wanted
to keep a low profile and wouldn’t take kindly to someone spreading
his name around. Still, without him, we didn’t have a chance of
locating Rich. “I’ll concede that we need to find Vulture, but
we’re not going to probe everyone we meet. We’ll only ask people we
know and trust—people who won’t tell Vulture we’re after him. Lord
knows, we don’t want him to come after us.” I glanced at
Ruthie.

She shrugged. “I’ll go that far, no farther.
If things start looking dangerous, I’m making reservations on the
next plane.”

“Fair enough,” Penny Sue conceded.

We downed our wine, paid the bill, and
headed to the condo. On the way, we stopped at Publix for air
freshener, the kind that killed odors instead of simply masking
them. The vanilla scent we used had made things worse. Vanilla
simply did not compliment sage, smudge stick, tobacco, and Bloody
Mary mix—the result being a putridly sweet stench of monumental
proportions.

We’d purchased three cans of freshener and
each of us entered the condo with our can spewing. Within a few
minutes we’d expended our ammunition and opened all the windows,
for the third time that day. While we waited for the place to air
out, Ruthie fixed Uga’s wound with white fingernail polish. Even
Penny Sue had to admit that it did the job and said she’d remember
that trick for the future. By then, the odor in the condo was
finally approaching tolerable, so we sat in the living room, next
to the open sliding glass doors.

“Angie said the Pub had a web site. Let’s
check out today’s events.” Ruthie fetched her laptop computer from
the bedroom and put it on the coffee table.

I watched curiously. “Don’t you have to plug
it into a telephone socket?”

“No. Poppa gave this to me for Christmas. It
has a remote access card and connects to the Internet by
satellite.”

“Amazing. Pretty soon people will just talk
to their computer instead of using keyboards.”

“I wish they already had that. We could sure
use it for Lu Nee 2,” Penny Sue said.

Ruthie nodded as she typed in the commands
for a Google search on the Pub. Amazingly, she found it right away.
“Tonight is the Blow Out Party. There’s also something called the
Wall of Death.”

“They used to have those at the state fair,”
Penny Sue said. “You know, a guy rides a motorcycle on the inside
wall of a big barrel thing. It’s amazing.”

“Centrifugal force,” I said, recalling
college physics.

“Whatever. It would be fun to see
again.”

I sighed. “You know, we only have a week
together, and I really don’t want to spend the whole time hunting
for Rich. We have to compress this search—go to several places each
day. Let’s hit J.B.’s and the Pub tonight.”

“We’ll start at J.B.’s—their seafood is
good—then swing by the Pub,” Penny Sue suggested. “We won’t be
conspicuous in my car at either place. Main Street in Daytona is a
whole ’nother matter. I don’t think we should go there in either
the Mercedes or your bug.”

“It’s a Turbo Beetle.”

“Excuse me, I didn’t realize you were so
touchy. But, even a Turbo Beetle is not a match for a Harley.”

“Frannie May’s son, Carl, has a motorcycle.
Maybe he’d go with us to Main Street,” I said.

“I’ll ride with Carl,” Ruthie blurted. “I
prefer an experienced driver.”

“Like a Klingon?” Penny Sue asked
peevishly.

“Don’t make fun of Carl. Do you want to hear
snide comments about Rich? There’s plenty of material there.”

“I wasn’t making fun of Carl—well, maybe a
little—but Ruthie dissed my driving.”

I shook my finger. “I’ll ride with you, but
you must promise to leave Carl alone.”

* * *

We dressed in the hippest, most
biker-looking outfits we could manage. Ruthie wore her $200 black
Moschino jeans and the biker shirt that I’d given her. I wore the
same black tee and Liz denim capris. (No $200 jeans in my
wardrobe.) Penny Sue was decked out in the white bustier with black
stretch pants, a leather jacket, and Harley boots with red flames
on the side. She hadn’t shown us the boots before. I shuddered to
think what else was stashed in her closet.

We took the Mercedes and arrived at J.B.’s a
little before six, thinking we’d beat the dinner crowd. Wrong. One
of New Smyrna’s oldest fish houses, J.B.’s was known for Southern
Cooking with Attitude, a trait that explained Penny Sue’s fondness
for the place—the food matched her personality. The other reason
was a tall, handsome bartender she’d all but swooned over on our
first visit.

On normal days J.B.’s was busy, but Bike
Week pushed it to a new height. The parking lot was packed with
bikes, mostly Harleys, forcing us to park on a side street a block
way.

“We’ll never get a table,” Ruthie said as we
tromped along Turtle Mound Road.

“Don’t be negative,” Penny Sue chided.
“You’ll jinx us. You said yourself that we create our own reality.
Think positively. See a booth open up the minute we walk into the
restaurant.”

Bikes—three abreast—rumbled by, forcing
Ruthie off the pavement. She teetered in her high-heeled boots, and
I had to grab her arm to keep her from falling flat on her face.
“Hmph. Hard to be positive when I’m about to break my neck,” Ruthie
complained. “Why I let you talk me into wearing these Prada boots,
I’ll never know.”

“You look fantastic,” Penny Sue, in the lead
as usual, said over her shoulder.