Harley Jean Davidson 03 - Evil Elvis (34 page)

Harley’s heart rate monitor beeped and she sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Probably her blood pressure spiked, too. She closed her eyes. I need morphine before I say something stupid, she thought hazily.

* * * *

When
the doctors released her, Morgan took her home. She didn’t ask anything, just rested her head against the back of the seat and relished being alive. Answers could come later. Right now she just wanted something to eat, drink, and lots of space around her.

Without asking, Mike stopped at Taco Bell. He ordered her two bean burritos, extra sour cream, and nachos and cheese. He handed her a large drink, and she sucked down half of it before taking a breath.

Wiping her mouth, she said, “God, that tastes good.”

“Thought it might.”

She looked over at him when they pulled out onto the street. He stared straight ahead. It’d stopped raining but the streets were still really slick. Memphis drivers who wanted to get anyplace without the benefit of a tow truck usually kept their eyes on the road in this kind of weather. Mike’s jaw line sported what looked like a three day growth of beard, dark and bristly. A muscle in his jaw flexed a few times. He had a windbreaker on over his tee shirt, one of those navy colored ones with the police logo printed on it in white. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

It felt weird to be with him like this, their relationship—if it could be called one—having gone south. At the same time, there was a level of comfort in being with him. Like nothing could get to her as long as he was close. It wasn’t a dependency thing as much as an acknowledgment that his survival skills were a lot better trained than hers were—case in point, being zapped by a mime and buried alive. Morgan would have never let that happen to him.

Neither said much until they went into her apartment.

“What’s that?” Morgan asked, peering into the aquarium on her coffee table, and she remembered the ferret.

“Frank Burns. He’s only temporary.”

“I don’t have to ask to know where you got him. He looks like a skinny raccoon.”

“That’s what I said. Don’t take Shakespeare off the top. Frank’s a flight risk.”

“Sit down before you fall down,” he said, and he didn’t have to say it twice. She flopped back into her stuffed chair.

The tantalizing fragrance of Taco Bell increased with the opening of the white sacks. Intrigued, Sam waited impatiently for his portion as Morgan pulled out her burritos and his chalupas.

“So how did you find me?” she asked when her burritos were just greasy spots on sheets of Taco Bell paper, Frank gobbled his way through a teaspoon of mushy refried beans, and Sam cleaned chicken chunks from his whiskers. “There are lots of graves out there.”

“It wasn’t easy. Diva found you.”

She arched a brow. “You asked my mother?”

Morgan licked melted cheese off his thumb. “She told Tootsie that you were in grave—if you’ll pardon the pun—danger. Seems like she had a vision of you in trouble, stuck in a close dark space where there were a lot of headstones. Figuring out where the headstones were was easy once I heard you’d gone to Ridgeway Inn right across from Memorial Park. Finding you once we got there wasn’t quite so simple.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in Diva’s visions.”

“I think I said mumbo-jumbo, but this time it worked out. We found your van and tracked like Apache scouts to the place where he’d dragged you. Geronimo couldn’t have done it better.”

“Hunh. It’s all a little hazy, so where did he bury me?”

“You weren’t buried. You were in a broken coffin under a lot of brush ready to be hauled away. I figure he didn’t have enough time to do any digging or find an empty grave. It felt more like a crime of convenience instead of premeditation.”

“I’d have been just as dead.” She wadded up her burrito papers and stuffed them in the empty sack. “How did he know where I’d be? That’s the third time he’s known where I am. I’d like to know just how he’s doing that.”

“So would I.” Morgan frowned. The muscle in his jaw flexed again. “He has a pipeline to all your activities, it seems. Who else knows your work schedule?”

“No one. Usually not even my family. Tootsie does, of course.”

Morgan lifted a brow, and Harley shook her head so hard her eyeballs rattled.

“No way. Tootsie would never be involved in anything like this.”

“Anyone else at the office have access to employee schedules?”

“No. Besides, my schedule lately has been hit and miss, not regular. Like today, Tootsie gave me a pickup at the airport while I waited—omigod! What happened to the tourists left at Graceland?”

“They got some extra time with The King. When Tootsie called Diva, he said he’d had to send someone else after them, and asked if she knew where you were. That’s when she told him about her vision.”

“And he called you.”

“Right.” Morgan leaned back into the cushions of her overstuffed chair. It was a big chair, covered in white and off-white stripes. He dwarfed it. Sprawled with his long legs stuck out in front of him, he looked more like a coiled spring than relaxed. He had his jaw clenched so tightly the muscle kept twitching. “So, any problems with any of the other employees there? You have a disagreement with anybody?”

“Just Rhett Sandler, who does the payroll. But everyone’s had a disagreement with him. I think it’s his only form of entertainment, screwing up paychecks and hours. We get along okay most of the time.”

“Think this Sandler would feel the same way?” He gave her a look that showed nothing but mild curiosity. She knew better.

“Probably not, but if you’re saying he’d try to kill me, why would he kill passengers on our vans? That doesn’t make sense. Unless he thinks he’ll make more collecting unemployment.”

“Maybe Sandler has a grudge against management. Maybe he wants to ruin the business.”

She thought about that. “It’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t know why. Ask Tootsie about the ogre’s son. Rumor is they don’t get along that well.”

“I think I’ll do that.”

She didn’t doubt it.

Sam stepped into her lap from the arm of the chair and curled up. Vibrating with a steady purr like a massager, he reminded her that she’d made it home alive. Horrified tears stung her eyelids and she blinked furiously. Crying was off-limits. It was something other people did, not her. Dammit.

“You okay?”

Morgan sounded really concerned, and that only made it worse. She nodded.

“I’m just fine,” she said between her teeth.

“So I see.” He got up and went into her kitchen. He came back in a few minutes with a glass of chilled white wine. “Drink this.”

“Only because you insist.” She tossed it back in three swallows. Morgan looked down at her with a slightly raised brow, then took her glass and refilled it. This one she slowly sipped. The French doors to the balcony were open, white sheers shifted in the warm wet breeze, and the scent of damp grass and magnolia blossoms teased the air.

“I don’t like Hughes trying to kill me,” she said when Morgan got a Coke and sat down in the chair across from her. “When did he get out of jail? And why didn’t someone tell me?”

“Hughes? He’s not out. He’s been charged with fraud.”

“Fraud? Not murder?”

“Not murder. Details to follow, so just be patient, okay?”

She stared at him. “Then who just tried to kill me?”

“Beats me. I thought you might be able to shed a little light on that.”

“You’re the cop. I’m just an innocent citizen. Okay, not exactly innocent, but undeserving of being stalked by a homicidal maniac.”

“I agree.” The muscle in his jaw flexed again, but he looked calm enough. Maybe there was something to that old saying about still waters. Or was it muddy waters? Nana would know. Or not.

“So,” she said, “either I’m being stalked by two killers, or Hughes is just a pissed-off guy with the right motive, no alibi, and bad luck.”

“I’m beginning to think the first.”

“Great. I feel so much better.”

Morgan leaned forward in the chair and clasped his hands while he looked at her intently. “Think, Harley. Someone obviously knows you and wants you out of the way. Who’d want to see you dead?”

“Besides ex-boyfriends, a cheerleader when I was in junior high, my old boss—and quite possibly my current boss—and you, I can’t think of a soul.”

He sat back. “I don’t want you dead. I just want you to quit finding the dead. It occurred to me that you made a few enemies this past spring, but if they’d wanted you dead, you’d already be dead. Besides, they wouldn’t bother killing a few Elvises just to annoy you.”

Harley had to agree with that.

“Anyone else?”

“Well ... okay, this is probably nothing, but Tootsie and I were talking about the ogre and why he preferred Lydia to his own son joining the family business. Seems like Junior has a few behavior problems and grudges against his father.”

Morgan gave a noncommittal nod. “I’d heard something like that.”

“Then I’m telling you nothing new. As usual, you’re way ahead.”

Morgan’s cell phone rang, and he answered it with the usual “Yeah,” then got up and went out onto the balcony to talk in low tones she couldn’t hear. Dammit. Undercover stuff could be very intriguing. Of course, curiosity had a lot to do with it, too. Who was he talking to out there? Did it have to do with her, or with the other case he was working?

“It’s impolite to talk on the phone in front of guests,” she said when he came back in.

“I’m the guest.”

“That’s even worse.”

A faint smile tucked in one corner of his mouth. He looked tired.

“I don’t want to leave you here by yourself,” he said, and looked at her.

“I’ll be fine,” she lied. “I can lock my doors. I have an attack cat. And Mace.”

“Yeah. That’s great. Your brother will be here in a few minutes.”

She scowled. “I’m fine!”

“Then play cards with him. I’m not leaving you here alone.”

She said a few things that weren’t very nice and stood up. While she’d planned on telling him exactly what he could do with himself, a sudden rush of blood from her head to her feet made her stagger and say something that sounded more like “urk!” Morgan leaped forward and grabbed her arm to steady her.

“Sit down, okay?”

“Only because I want to,” she said, reeling like a drunk.

He did the cop equivalent of an eye roll. “Fine. I don’t care why you do it. Just sit down. Sit!”

She sat.

Eric arrived thirty minutes later. He wore baggy black pants, a Slipknot tee shirt, and did a handshake with Morgan that reminded Harley of hand games little girls played. Then he looked over at her.

“Chick, you really need to stop hanging around with the wrong people.”

“Good advice. I wonder why I never thought of that.”

Eric grinned. “I brought a Jackie Chan movie and my sleeping bag.”

“Don’t get too comfortable. You’re not staying long,” she said. “And what did you do to your hair?”

“Chick, this is the real color. Don’t you remember?” He ran a hand through his dark brown hair. It was thick and coarse and looked normal. He’d trimmed it but left his sideburns a little long and had the beginning of a beard.