“’Bout.”
“You got a flashlight?”
The one he pulled from a pocket could have been in a spy catalog. It looked like a pen but had a light worthy of a tow truck. As I climbed up the bricks I considered the “coincidence” of his having that handy right now.
I leaned over the edge and peered down into the chute, aware of just how easy it would be for him to climb up, lift my legs, and send me headfirst to the bottom.
I shot the light down. Brick outside, brick inside. But this one was narrower than the shorter version. I could have braced my arms and legs and lowered myself down and inched back up without problem, even if there weren’t handholds, which there always were with weathered brick. Still, it had a murky feel to it. Poor Guthrie! But it also stood on bare ground. With a crane, it could have been lifted up and whatever in it exposed, be that Guthrie or . . . something hidden.
The tallest of the smokestacks was twenty yards away. I started to run, but Blink trailed behind. Why was he so interested in what I was doing? Did he suspect something was down in them, or was he just happy to waste my time? To keep me from poking into anything else back in town?
I hurried to the tall stack and climbed up. The outer bricks were every bit as easy to scale as the others. But the inside was a different story. The inner cylinder was metal, slick and just wide enough across for a stuntman to slide down. It was nowhere near broad enough to allow him to bend his elbows or knees and get purchase coming back up, assuming his shoes would stick on this slick surface. Bare feet? Not likely unless he went down in sandals. No way anyone could manage to untie laces. I didn’t need a phobia to be unnerved by this baby. What had Guthrie been thinking?
Despite the desert sun, I was shivering. I clicked on the flashlight and stared down. The tube was two stories high. The light bounced off the bright metal and I had to squint to make out even the disk that formed the bottom, to see how it was unlike the others. The bottom was actually a foundation. So, even with a crane there’d be no lifting the chimney up and freeing a prisoner at the bottom. I stuck my head in. “Omigod!”
“What?”
“It’s really hard to see down there.”
“What? What do you see?”
“I don’t know. It’s . . . hard . . .”
“Is it shiny?”
I stuck my head back into the tube, peering down. The dead air shrouded my head and neck. I was ridiculously relieved to come up for air and see Blink watching eagerly. “Really hard to see that far down. What could he have dropped?”
He didn’t answer.
“Forget it,” I said and snapped off the flashlight. “If something’s there, it’s not going anywhere. I’ll tell Zahra and—”
He came whipping up the bricks, sunglasses falling to the ground, key-ring still in his hand. “Where do you see it?”
“The edge. It’s tricky, but you have to get the beam right to the edge down there.” I held out the light. “This whole thing is freaking me out. I’m sweating all over. I’ll wait in the truck.”
“Fine.”
“Give me the keys.” I took the ring, lowered myself down the stack, forced myself to walk, not run, to the truck, got in, fastened the seatbelt, and started the engine as one would to turn on the air conditioning.
I’d be halfway up the exit road before he realized I was gone.
23
BLINK’S TRUCK WASN’T a junker. But in the family of vehicles it was a ne’er-do-well uncle dragging home after an all-night bender. The steering was loose, the brakes were stiff, and everything rattled. I eased out the clutch. The engine pulled, straining the low gear, but I wasn’t about to try shifting here where failure meant disaster—not and have to shift back the instant I started up the exit road. Coming down that road, peering out across the hood ornament into nothingness, I’d told myself that despite Blink’s warning, going uphill would be easier by far. It always is.
Or almost always. That miserable road Blink had built was all pebbly sand, no wider than the truck, with only a few low cacti to mark the drop-offs. An inch too far to either side and I’d roll the truck all the way back to the desert floor. Tires had worn ruts in the sand and I steered so the hood ornament stayed halfway between them. Now I understood why Blink had that odd addition! I just hoped—had to trust—that the ruts remained even and the rise between them reliable. There was no way to check. Even if I stuck my head out the window and looked down, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything but air.
“Hey, stop!”
I hit the gas. For an instant the wheels spun and then caught, jerking the truck to the right. I could feel the right tire grabbing air. It was all I
could do not to snap the wheel back. I edged it slightly to the left, listening for the deeper sound of sand under the full width of tire, feeling for the evenness of the grip.
“Darcy!”
Blink sounded closer, but I didn’t dare adjust the speed or take my eyes off the road even to check the rearview mirror. All I could hope was that the heat, the run across the desert floor, and the steep road would slow him.
Ryan Hammond’s girlfriend, Melissa, stole the Oscar. She foisted blame on him. Any hope he had of work in the business was gone.
Something scraped the fender. Blink? Could he—But no way. It had to be the cacti.
A “Melissa” claiming to be Guthrie’s wife was in the house with the Oscar. But it was only after I mentioned his name that she said she was his wife. If I’d asked for my brother John, or Gary, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, would she have annexed herself to them?
Still, she was there, with the Oscar.
Omigod! She
brought the Oscar there. There was no reason to believe Ryan Hammond ever crossed the threshold.
The path was steeper. The wheels slipped. I had to slow down—I hated to—to check behind me for Blink. I forced myself to ease my foot up, feeling for the solid sound of traction. “Ah.”
He had to be somewhere behind me, on the path. If only I could go faster, but I didn’t dare.
Hammond and Melissa had once been involved. Maybe they got together again and Oscar made three. Maybe. I was in serious speculation land here. The only thing I was sure of was whenever there was a question these days, the answer was likely to involve Ryan Hammond.
Him, I couldn’t find. But her! There she was, just yesterday, in the house of his friend, Guthrie. How did she go from showing up at Zahra’s ranch with her stolen statuette to answering the door at Guthrie’s house with it and a gun? There might be connections other than via Blink Jones, but none so obvious.
The bumper hit rock—the cliff wall on the left. The truck bounced sharp right. I pulled left, held steady, and slowed. The bumper scraped the wall again, but it didn’t jerk the truck. My shoulders were near my ears. How much longer was this damned road, anyway? I kept moving a gnat’s breadth from the wall, very slowly easing the gas in. After a hundred yards or so, I checked the mirror. No Blink in sight. Had he given up and gone back down to co-opt one of those rusty rattletraps? Did they even have plates?
Something buzzed. I jumped, almost lost contact with the pedal. It was a moment before I realized the sound was my phone. It was vibrating. I was near enough to the top to get the signal! The truck crested the rise out of the basin where Zahra’s rancho hid, off the miserable goat track of a road Blink had built, and onto a superbly flat, graded, two lane. I turned west and stepped on the gas.
My phone nearly vibrated off my hip. I flipped it open. Missed messages were lined up, looming, like clouds out of the Gulf of Alaska in January. John. John again. Gracie. Gary. Mom. Gary again. Janice.
Janice, the nice one!
She’d called me maybe three times in my entire life and one of those was when I got married. We were as close to acquaintances as biological sisters can get. Her message tempted me, but I went for John’s latest. “A couple of digits off? You had reversed two pair!”
Leave it to John to lead with complaint!
“But it’s the VIN for the Mustang GT used in the movie. Car was sold four times and then reported stolen end of last year. Where is it! Call me.”
Good work, John!
I was sure he could run down the info, but not that fast. Computer-wary as he was, he must have called in a favor from the tech guys. I could have called back and asked. Instead I reconsidered what had happened yesterday. First I surprised Melissa in the house with the stolen Oscar. Then I called Blink with the news the cops were outside. He pulled that snazzy maneuver, sideswiping the patrol car, giving the cops a lure they couldn’t refuse. I’d assumed it was to get me out of the garage free. But what if it had been to allow
her
to get the
Mustang
out of there? I had to give the guy credit for panache.
I almost wished she’d pulled it off alone, but, no, she had to be in it with Blink. No way she’d leave her own car near Guthrie’s house when she drove off in the Mustang. Damn Blink! The guy gave her a lift there. Had to be that!
She wasn’t Guthrie’s wife—
Was she—“Oh, shit!”—Blink’s wife?
No wonder he wouldn’t let me in the house!
No wonder, so I wouldn’t see her? Or the Mustang? I was piling suppositions upon suppositions, but if, indeed, she was in this with Blink, where else would she hide a hot car fast? These might be suppositions, but they were going to be easy to test.
Things were about to come together. For the first time since Guthrie died I felt hopeful.
I hit the gas, coming as close to speeding as possible in this old vehicle. And I started through the rest of my phone messages.
John: “I’m at SFO. I’ll be south of Matamoros by morning. I got word from my guy in Brownsville across the border there. They’ve discovered another one of those unmarked gravesites, could be ten years old. There are reasons to believe some are Anglos, kept separate, much better preserved. Looks like they were buried with possessions, so maybe . . .” His
breath hit the phone, slow, thick, as if he were putting off something he couldn’t bring himself to say. “Amazing, but . . . one of them still has some red hairs . . . curly.”
Curly red hair, like Mike’s. Like my own.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. I stared at the phone, not seeing it. It couldn’t come to this; it just couldn’t. Mike could not be dead. He couldn’t have been dead all this time. No! It wasn’t true. I would have known if he died; I would have felt it.
Wind slapped my face. The body in Mexico, it didn’t mean anything. There are two hundred million Americans, not to mention Canadians, Brits, Australians, and Europeans, who could be called Anglos. Hundreds of thousands with red hair. Thousands with wavy—not wiry—dark red hair. It wouldn’t be Mike.
John would have thought that. And still he was on his way there.
I clicked on the next message.
Gary: “John’s going to Mexico. I’m checking international law. I can’t believe . . . God, I hope this is nothing. Call me.”
Gracie: “I know you heard from John. Odds are—But, look, Mike could take care of himself . . . bottom line, he’d survive.”
Mom in tears. I couldn’t make out a word.
No!
I couldn’t bear to think of Mom like that. Suddenly my face was wet; I could barely see to drive.
Gary: “I’ve got the best guy in the state on international law. Whatever we have to do, we’ll do pronto. This whole thing sounds crazy, but you know, Darce, ragged as Mike was that fall—He hated working for Dad. It’s my fault. I should never have goaded him. When he didn’t go back to school that semester, I was on him all the time about freeloading. If he wasn’t going to school, get a job. I just kept at it. And Katy, too—I know she feels terrible—she shamed Dad into taking him. Still, though—”
The message had run out. He called again with the oft-uttered mantra of us Lotts. “Mike would never hurt the family.”
Janice: “Mom called me about Mike and the bodies outside Matamoros. I guess John left for there yesterday. No one ever tells me anything. Sometimes, I think they forget I even exist. It’s like Berkeley’s on the other side of the country instead of the Bay. I mean, except Mom. But I’m not calling you to complain about that; that’s not your . . . Never mind. I mean, the thing is, I don’t want you to worry. Drugs and voodoo and murders in Mexico: it’s common knowledge. Mike’s not a fool. You may not have realized it because you were a kid, but Mike and I . . . I know him. Anyway, what I’m saying is, don’t worry, I mean, despite—”
Don’t worry, indeed! I couldn’t even stop shaking. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. I knuckled the tears from my eyes, but it was useless. I kept thinking: one day I don’t think about Mike and I let him die.
Why did guys just assume they could do any asshole thing and survive? Mike, and, dammit, Guthrie.
I was desperate to put off the question none of my siblings had raised. When would we see the possessions that’d been buried with the bodies? When would each one of us have to go through them, desperately hoping to recognize nothing? I couldn’t leave the family hanging again. I needed to get home and be ready.
I focused on the road, and by dusk I was on Blink’s street. I gritted my teeth and pulled the old pickup into his driveway.
24
I WAS READY for Blink’s wife to come running out at the sight of his ride. But not all wives are homecoming cheerleaders. It was dark enough to have lights on, but she didn’t. Which didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t home.
The lot was protected on one side by a creek, on the other by a stand of trees. The backyard was large, wooded, overgrown, more of an East Coast yard than the normal manicured and fenced California plot. No place to hide anything.
But the house was a two-story affair, as if it had been raised to allow for an above-ground basement. Home improvement for thieves? An entry door led from the driveway. A circuit of the house showed that every window was curtained off or covered with thick shades. To keep the light out or the curious from peeking in?