Executive Dirt: A Sedona O'Hala Mystery (16 page)

Huntington glared at Mark next. Mark didn’t smile. “You hired her.”

They stared at each other wordlessly, letting the seconds tick by. Huntington didn’t lose an ounce of his glare when he said, “I’ll bring the Porsche by in the afternoon. You drive it straight to Bobbins, get the stuff, get pulled over and then return it right to me.”

“I still have to deliver the pillowcases.”

Sean shook his head. “The police will confiscate them all as evidence if there’s anything in those boxes.  Just make sure that if there is contraband, it spills out.  Give them every reason they need to demand a search and take everything off your hands.”

“Well, if they take the pillowcases, I hope no one expects me to sew enough replacements for the charity,” I huffed.

Mark broke the staring match to grin at me.

Chapter 23

With Cary dead, no one nagged me to stay after five. I went in at seven and bolted at four o’clock to allow me enough time to meet LeAnn and Huntington at my house. Huntington had insisted on providing lessons on driving the Porsche.

Predictably, he had to lecture about every detail, when really, no matter how fancy the dash, whether it takes a key or a push button to start, the concept is the same:  Push one pedal to go and the other one to stop.

When I finally backed out of my driveway with LeAnn in the passenger seat, I grinned. “Ready?”

She nodded. “Yup. I hope this solves Steve’s case for him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What? Do you think we’ll fail?”

I shook my head as I cautiously steered the Porsche around the corner at the stop sign. The car drove like a magic carpet ride without the sound of wind to distract from the smooth ride. “No, we won’t fail. It’s just that his cases are never easy.  At least they haven’t been.”

“Well, he never had my help!”

I had to smile.  “True.”

Driving Huntington’s expensive car made me more than a little nervous, but we made it to Barb’s Bobbins without incident.

Barb was ready for us.

We loaded three boxes in the backseat where LeAnn could easily dump them out once we were well away from Barb and her bobbins. When the cops pulled us over, they’d be able to see anything and everything in those boxes.

Our hands were dusted off, and we were ready to leave when a Harley blew into the lot at full throttle.  Well, it was a Harley so it probably wasn’t at full throttle, it just sounded like it was about to run us all down.

“OhmyGod, what is Wanda doing here?” Barb gasped.

I hadn’t met Wanda yet, but who else could she mean other than Joe’s mother?

Wanda sputtered to a stop and yanked off her rainbow-colored helmet while dismounting. She wore jeans and leather boots with a fringed pink leather jacket.

“I’ve got pillowcases,” she said. Her eyes were nearly obscured behind heavy black designer eyeglasses. Instead of complimenting her, they overwhelmed her brown-turning-gray hair, making the glasses more memorable than her face, except for her nose.  She had shared her nose with her son; it was just as large, and neither the glasses nor the nose stud distracted from its size.

She untangled a long skinny box that was strapped down on the Harley and hurried over to join us, a tornado spinning and then stopping in front of the car.

“I made some extras.  Came to help. This was my...my son’s route.”  She swallowed hard.  Her arms shook.

“You didn’t need to come,” I said. “We have this covered.”

Her chin, a foot under mine, lifted. “It was his route.  Now it’s mine.”

I waved at the already crowded backseat. “If you want to add yours, we’ll get them all delivered.”

“Nonsense. I’m small. I’ll fit just fine in there. I gotta live up to the boy’s memory.” She yanked the door open and wedged herself in without ever taking her hands off the cardboard box. The thing resembled a tall, unwieldy shoebox, one that would easily fit a size thirty shoe.

With the other boxes already packed in the backseat, she couldn’t set her box down.  She propped it upright on her lap, extending it almost a foot above her head, blocking a good half of the rear window.

“I’m not sure it’s legal to have a package blocking the right side like that,” I said hesitantly, just as my brain realized the benefit.

LeAnn and I shared a glance. This wasn’t according to plan, but with her sitting there blocking the back window, we might not even have to speed to get pulled over.  Maybe this was a boon rather than a bother.  And maybe she had brought her coded pillowcases, all neatly packaged in a separate box. So far, she was the only one who had touched that box, too. Maybe there was enough proof of wrongdoing in the box for the cops to arrest her.

Wanda’s presence bumped my nerves up another two notches. I was even more thankful that we had decided the cops would pull us over with a reason rather than us just turn in the contraband.  We’d look all the more innocent this way.

Of course, I wasn’t counting on the gun.

Chapter 24

Conversation was nil.  Wanda didn’t offer even a lame attempt at polite social niceties, and I was too tense to bother.  The route we had mapped out was as short as possible from Barb’s to the charity, but the charity was on the outskirts of town because rental space was cheaper there.

Mark’s mother turned around and began rearranging the boxes in the backseat, almost as planned.  She shoved one box off the seat onto the floor, opening it in the process.

“We can make room for your box,” she said as she grunted and toiled away.  Barb had done a nice job of packing the pillowcases, forcing LeAnn to take some out of the box on the seat and put them on top of the box on the floor. It wasn’t actually creating any additional space, but maybe Wanda wouldn’t notice the shuffling was somewhat pointless other than to expose the contents of the boxes.

“There, I think you can set your box inside this other box, kind of on top,” LeAnn offered. The words squeezed out of her lungs rather painfully because her seatbelt had locked tight across her chest.

Wanda mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“Well, you could slide it across the top,” LeAnn suggested.

There was no response from the backseat.  LeAnn finally faced forward with a heavy sigh.

A couple of teenagers in a Silverado pulled up next to us at the red light. We had at least another two miles before the cops were supposed to ticket us for speeding.

The young gal in the Silverado slid her window down.  She wore a black and red biker jacket, and her wide bulging eyes made her look remarkably like a cockroach with a bandana. She pointed a 9mm at me through the window.  I hadn’t seen much of her face at the truck stop restaurant, but I recognized the leather coat.  She was a biker.  Wanda drove a Harley. It was possible the two of them knew each other.

“Nice car,” the biker chick shouted at me.  Her window was open; mine was not. She hollered,  “We’re takin’ it for a ride.”  She kept the gun steady while opening her truck door.

For all I knew she and her boyfriend were really interested in stealing Huntington’s Porsche.  It was a super cool car.  The light was still red.

“You’re clear on both sides, go!” LeAnn yelled.

I hit the pedal without bothering to take my eyes off the gun pointing at me, testing the zero to sixty.  The car was rated at somewhere around 5 seconds, but I believe I set a new record at three. Maybe they could tell from the tire marks. There was definitely some extra black left on the road.

The dash and front panel of the car was state-of-the art with more whistles and bells than my phone.  Somewhere amongst the display that included camera monitors, a GPS system, and the latest in anti-theft protections, there was a dial that told me how fast we were moving, whether we were using gasoline or electric, and whether or not the oil was low.  All I noticed was that the assholes behind us started shooting.  “All these cool features and this thing can’t emit a lethal plume of gas that might kill them?” I complained.

LeAnn shook her head. “The idea behind these hybrid electrics is that they don’t emit enough fumes to kill a grasshopper.”

“Damn shame.”

“Yes, yes, it is.”

“You can’t just take off!” Wanda screeched from the backseat. “OhLordHeavenHelpUs, they’ll kill us for sure.  You have to stop!”

There went the very slight possibility that the occupants in the Silverado were randomly after the car. Well, they’d probably take the car too, along with the pillowcases, but Wanda was obviously expecting them and afraid of them.

I hit highway twenty-four doing ninety.

“Hey! This isn’t the way to the donation center!” Wanda protested.

“I’m not driving this thing to the donation center with someone shooting up the town behind us,” I snapped. “Don’t worry. We’ll outrun them.”  I caught her eye in the mirror.  Hers were dark pinpoints behind her glasses.  It was not hot inside or outside the car, but beads of sweat dotted her forehead.

“You can’t outrun them!”

It didn’t matter what she thought. If I had any say, the Silverado wouldn’t catch us, and I’d never see the guy or his girlfriend again.  Of course, if the cops didn’t get their ass in gear, they might not catch us either.  And we were now nowhere near where we’d planned on being pulled over.

Apparently, Wanda wasn’t about to give up either, because as I pressed down on the accelerator, she smacked me with her purse.

“Hey!”

“Stop! They’ll kill us. You always give them what they want. They mean business!” She undid her seatbelt, the better to reach me.  The Porsche started beeping a warning.

“Ow! Hey!” I used my right arm to grab at the purse while steering with the left, but I had to let up on the accelerator or risk running off the road. Another audible warning from the front panel began complaining, but I was too busy trying to keep the car in my own lane to investigate.

LeAnn was no lightweight; Mark and Steve would have been proud.  She twisted in her seat, grabbed the purse, Wanda’s arm and Wanda’s hair.  She stuffed everything backwards.

The Porsche emitted another shrill warning, but there was no time to figure it out. The Chevy’s grill was bearing down on us like giant grizzly teeth.  The driver was about to rear-end Huntington’s hundred-thousand-dollar stealth car.

The road was clear for at least five hundred yards. I floored that gas pedal hard enough to channel shades of Fred Flintstone when he was late for work.

Hundred-thousand-dollar cars have good stability. We shot away like a rocket booster was strapped to the trunk.  I had no problem holding her steady until we caught up to the chicken farmer in front of us.

“What did Huntington say about that noise?” I yelled over the numerous shrill beeps.

“I think it’s her seatbelt,” LeAnn shouted, still fighting off Wanda’s slaps.

The car shrieked again, a different, longer wail.

“Shit.”  I had to switch lanes to dodge around the pokey farm truck. Now that we were closer, the crates in the back of his truck didn’t seem all that well tied down.  There were three large mesh boxes stacked across a broad bed.  Each crate held six or so shelves of chickens.  The truck took up more than one lane, but with the Silverado determined to mash us into the chicken truck, I had no choice.

I swerved into the left lane and punched the accelerator again. Huntington’s car complained the entire time.  This car was made for that man.  All he ever did was complain at me.

“I think it warns you when you drift across lanes or drive too close to another car,” was LeAnn’s opinion.

“Hang on! That chicken truck is too wide.” The truck itself wasn’t oversized, but the crates were a foot or two over the sides, hanging into my lane.  One wrong move on my part or that of the chicken driver and we were all going to be tenderloins. The chickens knew it too.  They flapped and squawked, sending a steady snowfall of feathers across the window.  Even with the windows closed, there was a distinct smell of chicken poop.

“Where the hell are the wipers?” My eyes weren’t leaving the view of the road to search for the switch.  With a death grip on the steering wheel there was no leeway to start pushing buttons hoping to discover where the genius design engineers had hidden the wipers.  At this speed most of the feathers and stray bird shit didn’t stick anyway.

My cell phone, nestled in my jacket pocket, rang.  “As if.”

The cameras on the Porsche flashed a picture of chicken wings as we sped by. With the windows closed and warning beeps at full orchestra, the squawking was akin to one elongated peacock hoot trying to make itself heard above the din.

The Chevy didn’t wait for me to clear the front of the chickens. With a swerve worthy of a monster truck show, it slammed off the road on the right, churning dust.

The chicken crates swayed dangerously, caught between two vehicles, feathers, dust and a driver who had just panicked enough to slam on the brakes.

“They aren’t stopping!” Wanda split her attention between us and the back window.

“Neither are we,” I muttered.  The wheels barely held the edge of the road when we returned to our lane because I oversteered.

Wanda shrieked, deliberately careening forward, grabbing at me, at buttons and LeAnn.  The radio stared blaring.

Mark’s mom slapped her. Hard.

I finally found the windshield wipers, but not before somehow accidentally turning on the GPS.  It started talking too.  Did it give directions to hell in a handbasket?  Because I’m pretty sure that is where we were headed.

I overcorrected again. We wobbled back into the right lane, the swinging finally slamming Wanda into the side of the car.

“Put your seatbelt on,” I yelled at her.

The problem with highway twenty-four was that it didn’t have much for side roads.  There wasn’t a lot of traffic, which was fine for speeding, but we were on a one-way ticket with no way to lose the guys behind us.

The Silverado was no slouch in the speeding department, but the Porsche, electric or not, wasn’t having any problems keeping distance between us, not until a motorcycle passed the Silverado. “Uh-oh.”  Mark had a motorcycle.