Harley Jean Davidson 03 - Evil Elvis (10 page)

Morgan didn’t look trustful, but after a moment he nodded. “All right. Just don’t you get involved. Whoever the murderer is, he’s bold enough to kill in plain sight of two dozen tourists. I don’t think he’d hesitate to kill anyone else who got in his way.”

“Well, I don’t have to worry about that since I don’t intend to get in his way.” That much was certainly true. She intended to pass along any information she learned to Tootsie and let him pass it on to his roommate, Steve the cop. Any credit for identifying the killer would only be made public after the police had made an arrest. While the most important thing was catching the killer, Tootsie hoped good publicity lessened any negative press generated by the murders on Memphis Tour Tyme buses. And it wouldn’t hurt Harley, either. She’d love to prove Bobby wrong, as well as Morgan. She wasn’t always a screw-up.

“I hope not,” Mike was saying, “‘cause your luck may not hold out.”

“And here I thought it was more than luck that kept me alive.”

“Right, but there won’t always be someone around to rescue you.”

“Rescue me?” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “I don’t recall anyone around in that warehouse, or showing up before I got away from that last maniac who intended to kill me.”

“We seem to remember things differently. I showed up at the warehouse, and again right in the middle of the shooting last time.”

“Yeah, but I’d already escaped. Mostly.” He just looked at her and she felt a little guilty. “Okay, I concede that part. But I probably would have gotten away both times.”

“Guess we’ll never know.”

“Guess not.” An awkward silence fell between them. Then he looked toward the door as the announcer’s voice came over the speakers. “They’re calling my name. Got to go do my stuff.”

“You’re actually going to sing? Good God. Can you sing?”

“I do all right.”

“I’ve got to hang around to see this.”

“Don’t stay on my account. Feel free to leave.”

“No way in hell. I’d give a week’s pay for this entertainment.”

Morgan groaned. “I’d give a month’s pay to get out of it.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Here I am. Do me a favor. Go away.”

“Sing to me, Elvis baby. I’ll be the blonde at the bar.”

“In the short purple skirt.” He looked her up and down, and something in his gaze made her stomach flip. He still had a powerful effect on her libido. Damn him.

It seemed forever but could only have been a few seconds before the announcer’s voice came over the speakers again, his words incomprehensible over the roar in her ears as her blood surged like ocean surf. She could almost smell the seaweed, see the moonlight, feel Morgan’s hands...

“Later,” Morgan said, snapping her out of her brief trance, and she blinked as he turned and walked away.

Why did she have to run into him again? She’d been doing all right. Now she had to wait a minute for the blood that had rushed from her head to work its way back up before she tried to walk. By the time she got back inside Morgan was performing his rendition of Suspicious Minds. He would. It was her favorite Elvis song. The rat.

He gathered more than a few interested looks from the women in the crowd, swiveling his hips in a pretty good Elvis imitation, the tight black leather pants leaving little to the imagination and sparking more than a few memories. Why did they have the heat on in this place? She fanned her face with a bar napkin and tried to think of something else.

Cami found her leaning against the bar. “That guy onstage right now looks pretty familiar to me, Harley. How do I know him?”

Without taking her eyes from the stage, Harley said, “He’s Morgan’s twin brother.”

Cami squinted at the stage. “Really? I didn’t know he had a twin.”

“He doesn’t.”

Cami set her drink down on the bar, but missed. Ice and vodka spilled across the counter and onto Harley’s arm. “Damn. Sorry about that. I missed the bar. Why doesn’t he have a twin?”

“You’d have to ask his parents. I’m not going to have to carry you out to the car, am I?”

Considering that, Cami said, as the last lyrics faded into a riff of guitar chords, “I don’t think so. I’ve only had three drinks. I’m still functioning.”

Harley turned to look at her while Morgan left the stage. “Just not so well, it seems.”

Cami smiled sloppily. “I’m fine.”

“Uh huh. Here come Yogi and Diva. Straighten up, and we’ll leave soon.”

Yogi was smiling broadly. “Did you hear the applause? They loved me!”

“I’d have been shocked if they hadn’t. You were great.”

“Got any pointers for me?”

“Yes, a little less melodrama with the cape. Other than that, don’t change a thing.”

Yogi nodded happily. Diva smiled serenely. Harley sighed enviously. It’d be nice to live in their world.

Her world currently required that she get her drunken friend to the car, however. Of course, they’d had to park in the very back of the crowded lot. I-55 and a chain link fence edged the parking area, and she tried to remember just where she’d left her Toyota. Headlights of passing cars on the interstate and overhead vapor lights provided enough illumination for her to walk Cami across the asphalt without falling into a pothole, though she wasn’t navigating much better than her friend. Stupid of her to wear sandals with heels. Not used to them, she wobbled like a drunken sailor.

It took luck and skill, but she managed to get the passenger side door open and Cami safely wedged inside without too much damage to either of them. Humidity and effort took its toll, however. This year summer had swung between steaming heat and monsoons. She wasn’t sure which was worse. At least it wasn’t as hot as previous years, though tourists unfamiliar with southern summers found that hard to believe.

Leaning back against the side of the car to catch her breath, Harley happened to look over when a vehicle stopped in the aisle between cars. An Elvis impersonator opened the back door to the taxi, and when he straightened up and looked in her direction, something about him struck her as very familiar. It wasn’t until the taxi had pulled away to go out the exit that it hit her—the missing Elvis killer!

“Hey, wait a minute,” she shouted, and started running after the taxi, but it’d gone around the far end of parked cars by then. She kicked off her heels to run faster and try to catch the taxi driver’s attention, but that didn’t help. As it passed under a vapor light, she saw the Elvis looking back at her.

* * * *

Harley
spent the better part of the next morning at the Memphis Tour Tyme office tracking down the taxi and driver that had made a pickup at Dad’s Place around ten. How did the police do it? No wonder it took them so long to solve cases, when they had to follow so many leads that ended in dead-ends before they got lucky.

“Where are you going?” Tootsie asked as she stuck the paper with the name and address into her backpack. “And leave your cell phone on. Just in case.”

“Just in case what? Never mind. Stupid question. I’m following up a lead, talking to the taxi driver who picked up the missing Elvis last night to see if I can get an address where he took him. With any luck, he took him home and we can get a name as well.”

“That wouldn’t be luck, baby, that’d be a miracle. If the guy recognized you running after him, he’s probably smart enough not to go straight home. Not with that taxi driver, anyway.”

Harley sighed. “I know. I wasn’t thinking. I was just so surprised to see him after I’d looked all night, watching all those Elvis guys onstage—and some of them are really bad—that when I recognized him as the Elvis killer on my van, I just took off. And let me tell you, it’s not a good thing to run in parking lots in your bare feet. I’ll have bruises for a week.”

She’d already told Tootsie about Morgan, and knowing he’d never endanger an undercover cop, it was important for him to know that the police were obviously following in the same direction in their investigation. They’d gotten on it pretty fast, sending in an undercover guy. Of course, there’d be a lot of pressure from the Convention and Visitors Bureau, as well as the city officials, who’d want any hint of danger for tourists to be quickly squelched. That’d be a lot of dollars to lose in a month-long Elvis celebration.

Tootsie leaned back in his chair. He was once more his impeccable self, well-groomed and his shoulder-length auburn hair tied in a ponytail at his nape. The lines around his mouth had eased, but he still had bags under his eyes that told her he hadn’t stopped worrying. He smiled slightly.

“I don’t even want to know why you weren’t wearing shoes. And remember, don’t try to talk to this guy on your own. All you have to do is—”

“I know. Get you the information. You’ll take it from there.”

“Right. Whatever the reason this guy is taking out Elvis impersonators, I don’t want him doing it on our buses. It’s not good for business.”

“Not good for the Elvises either.”

“No,” he agreed. “It’s not. The thing is, we aren’t really sure it’s about Elvis impersonators anyway. It could just be a guy with a grudge against the victims for some other reason. Maybe they had a disagreement, lover’s spat, a difference of opinion over politics, religion, women, whatever. The police are checking out all those leads, but you’re the one who can possibly identify the killer.”

“So can Lydia, if we can get her to be coherent. I don’t think the police were able to get much from her that made sense. Anyway, I could be remembering the wrong guy, you know. Maybe it’s just one of the other passengers that had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

Tootsie nodded. “The process of elimination will determine that. Meanwhile, see if you think this guy’s a likely suspect, and if you find out his name, I’ll turn it over to Steve. I guess you’ve already given a description of him to the police?”

“As much as I could. I mean, he looked like Elvis. I gave his height, approximate weight, and all that, but I couldn’t remember any distinguishing features for the police artist. All I can say is that he had a different walk. Yeah, I know, that sounds stupid, but it was something about the way he moves. Really, it’s the perfect disguise, hiding as Elvis in a bunch of Elvis impersonators. I mean, they may dress a little differently, in white jumpsuits, or in baggy suits of the fifties, or in black leather, but they’re all so similar it’s hard to pinpoint any big differences between them.”

Except for really sexy undercover cops in tight black leather, she thought before she could stop herself. She had to quit doing that. It got very distracting.

“Gotta go,” she said then, and heaved her backpack over one shoulder. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck, I presume.”

“What else?”

She found the taxi driver in line at The Peabody Hotel. Taxis waited in an area by the parking lot off Second Street, while valets scuttled out to open car doors and usher in guests. On Union Avenue, horse-drawn carriages waited for tourists. There’d been a lot of discussion about the horses being allowed to wait or even pass by restaurants. Something about manure and diners. Harley had her own opinion about that—City Hall spread around enough manure that a few more piles here and there in the streets shouldn’t matter in the least. After all, the horses wore diapers, but politicians weren’t required to wear muzzles. The horses won out, but the politicians were still there. Unfortunately.

So far, no law had been passed about the politicians.

After finding an empty parking spot just outside the employee door opening onto Third Street, she stuck a few coins in the meter and cut through the alley. The taxi was still in the same spot, his ID number on the light atop the roof. The driver sat inside, a craggy-faced man wearing a Memphis Redbirds baseball cap.