Tonight I Said Goodbye (St. Martin's Minotaur Mystery) (30 page)

"It's fine, Julie."

She shook her head. "No, it's not. I can't believe I did that. My husband has been dead for ten days, Lincoln. Ten days. And I'm jumping on you in a hotel hot tub. Classy." She looked up at me and pushed her hair away from her face. "It was an emotional response to a lot of fear and confusion," she said. "That's all it was."

"Of course. I didn't think you might have actually found me attractive." It was a juvenile response, and I regretted it as soon as it left my mouth.

"That's not what I meant," she said.

"I know. I'm sorry."

She gave a short laugh and then sighed. "That was the problem, Lincoln--I do find you attractive. In so many ways. In
every
way. I've known you for one day, and yet I'm incredibly drawn to you. And I feel that's wrong. It
is
wrong, considering the circumstances. But I can't help it. You came to me when I needed someone, and you have all the qualities I'd always . . . I'd always thought my husband had," she finished softly.

We sat in an awkward silence after that. After a few minutes I realized she was crying. I didn't move toward her this time, though. I'd learned my lesson. Eventually, she reached out and took my hand in hers, brought it away from the steering wheel and to her face. She kissed my fingertips softly, her lips so warm they seemed to sear my flesh. A few of her tears fell to my skin as well. It was an appropriate mix. She placed my hand back on the steering wheel, took a deep breath, leaned back in the seat, and closed her eyes.

Then it was just me and the road. The traffic was sparse, and I stayed in the left lane with the cruise control set on seventy-five. Fast enough to make good time, but not fast enough on the interstate to attract attention from police. I watched carefully for them, and once I saw a state police car headed in the opposite direction, but it did not slow.

The dashboard clock rolled over to midnight, and a song lyric popped into my head:
lonely midnight drivers, drifting out to sea.
Who did the song? What was the song? I couldn't remember either answer, but there that line was, trapped in my mind. Funny.

We crossed over the state line early in the morning and then spent two hours driving through North Carolina before entering Virginia. The entire eastern seaboard in an exciting midnight tour. Police drove past and didn't slow. Julie and Betsy slept soundly. I stopped once to
fill the car with gas, and I called Joe. He answered immediately, and I realized guiltily that he probably hadn't slept at all, waiting for my call. I told him what had happened, and I told him I hoped to be in Cleveland later that morning. We wished each other well, and then I drove on, a lonely midnight driver drifting out to . . . to what? A quick, simple solution, I thought optimistically. I didn't believe it, though. Not even for a second.

Dawn broke as I pushed us through the mountains in West Virginia. The hills came up out of a gray mist, becoming more defined with each passing minute, the fog and shadows fading as the sun rose and burned them away. My mind was still alert, but my body had begun to ache--the hours of sitting in the cramped Contour combining with the lack of sleep to make me long for a bed and some hours to enjoy it. Julie woke around six, stretched, and smiled sleepily at me.

"I can't believe I slept that long," she said. "I'm sorry. I should have stayed awake to help you pass the time."

"I wouldn't have been much for conversation anyhow," I said. "My brain was pretty much dead to everything but the highway in front of me. I was surprised that you didn't wake up when I stopped for gas, though."

"You stopped for gas?" she said, and then laughed. "Has my daughter stirred?"

"Not once."

"Good."

We drove on for a while, and then I noticed the needle on the gas gauge was creeping toward empty once again. This was the longest stretch of driving I'd done in years, and the thing that most surprised me was how quickly the gas seemed to disappear. I stopped at an exit that boasted several gas stations and a Cracker Barrel restaurant. The Cracker Barrel meant coffee. Coffee would be very nice after ten hours on the road.

Betsy stumbled out of the car groggily after Julie woke her. She stood in the parking lot and rubbed her eyes with her tiny fists, then
gave a great yawn, opening her mouth so wide I thought I could drop a basketball into it.

"Where is we?" she asked with all the energy ofa sloth.

"Where
are
we," Julie corrected, and I wanted to laugh. We were driving through the mountains, hiding from gun-wielding thugs and even the police, and Julie was still correcting her daughter's grammar. Priorities.

"We're in West Virginia," I said. "Do you know where that is?"

"Of course," Betsy said as if I'd asked her if she knew her own name. Oops. Never underestimate the children.

"Are we going home?" she asked, and Julie and I exchanged a glance.

"We're not going home, exactly," Julie said, and I was relieved that she'd decided to field the question. "But we're going to be close."

"Do I get to see Daddy?"

Julie's smile stayed in place. "Let's go eat, honey. You're wearing me out with all these questions. It's too early for them."

Betsy shrugged and started for the restaurant, then stopped and stared at me. I followed her eyes and saw she was looking at my shirt, where a cluster of tiny dried drops of blood remained.

"What happened?" she said.

"I had a nosebleed while you were asleep. Nothing to worry about." I looked away from her. If there's anything that feels worse than lying, it's lying to a little girl. We went inside the Cracker Barrel, my legs wooden and awkward as they propelled me across the parking lot. Yeah, I'd been in that damned Contour for too long.

I had scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, and six cups of coffee. The coffee was strong and rich, and it rejuvenated me, giving a sharper edge to my mind and making the morning feel more like the start of a new day instead of the continuation of a long, strange night. Julie had an omelet, and Betsy ate silver-dollar pancakes drenched in an obscene amount of syrup. Kids. I'd chosen the wrong profession, all right. If I'd wanted to make money, I should have been a dentist. She didn't ask about her father again, which surprised me. Most of the young children
I'd known weren't prone to giving up on a question like that until they'd received a satisfactory answer. Maybe she'd sensed some note of warning in her mother's voice, or maybe she'd asked the question so many times in the past few days she was giving up on the satisfactory answer. Or maybe she was just distracted by the pancakes.

"Honey, why don't you go to the bathroom?" Julie said when her daughter was done eating. "We're going to be in the car for quite a while again."

"Okay." Betsy left her plateful of syrup and went to the bathroom, and Julie turned to me.

"So what's the plan for the day?"

"We're meeting my partner outside the city," I said. "Then the three of us will sit down and talk."

"What about your reporter friend?"

I was surprised she'd brought up Amy. "I can ask her to join us," I said. "Is that something you want?"

"Yes." She nodded. "Yes, I think that is definitely something I want."

I sipped my coffee. "I see. Would you mind telling me why?"

"Why I want the reporter involved?" When I nodded, she said, "Insurance, I guess."

"Insurance?"

"Yes. For example, if anything were to happen to me--if, heaven forbid, the police screwed up, or Hubbard paid them off--my story would still be told. I'd like to know that."

"You're more scared of Hubbard than of the Russians, aren't you?"

She held my eyes for a second and then nodded. "Yes," she said, "I am. He killed my husband, Lincoln. You don't have to believe that, but I know it's true. And I know my husband was scared of him, too. My cocky, brave husband, who always thought he was invincible, was scared of Jeremiah Hubbard. So scared that he preferred to throw his life away--throw
our
life away--rather than upset the man. You think Wayne avoided the police because he was afraid of the Russians?" She
shook her head emphatically. "No way. He was concerned about them, obviously, but the only person who
scared
him was Jeremiah Hubbard."

I thought about Cody and his FBI badge, and I thought about Richard Douglass, the top attorney in town, and maybe I was a little bit scared of Jeremiah Hubbard, too. At least the Russians used methods I understood, methods I was familiar with. Hubbard worked through different channels entirely, controlling situations with a checkbook instead of a gun. And there was no doubt his checkbook was far more powerful than any number of guns.

Betsy returned from the bathroom, bringing an abrupt end to my conversation with her mother. I paid the bill, relieved myself of some of the coffee, and then went back to the car. I was approaching twenty-four hours without sleep, but I wasn't feeling it yet.

We drove out of West Virginia and into Ohio. As we headed north, Julie occupied Betsy by playing silly games like racing to see who could find all the letters of the alphabet on road signs. They were both stuck on
X
for quite a while, until Betsy spotted a hotel sign boasting of expanded cable. She wrapped the game up by finding a
Z
in a sign for a radio station called "Rock 93, WZPL." The victory seemed to take something out of her, though, because she fell asleep again around eleven, as we neared Akron.

"Home sweet home," Julie said as we drove through Akron and continued north on I-77 toward Cleveland. "Somehow I feel safer now."

I pulled off the interstate at a rest stop a few minutes later. Julie went to the bathroom, but we let Betsy continue sleeping. I leaned against the trunk of the car and called Joe.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"Just south of the city. Where are you?"

"Don Gellino's lake cottage. You remember it?" Don Gellino was a retired cop who owned a small cottage in Medina County. He called it a lake cottage, but the body of water it stood beside wasn't much more than a large pond. Good fishing, though, if Don was to be believed.

"I remember it. How the hell did you end up there?"

"Don's in New Mexico for the winter staying with his kids. He left the key with me and asked me to check in on it from time to time. I thought it was as good a spot as any for our purposes."

"Can't argue with that. Is Kinkaid with you?"

"Not yet. I'm supposed to call him soon, though. I just didn't think it would be a real good idea to drop him on Mrs. Weston on top of everything else she's got to deal with."

"Good choice," I said. I didn't want Julie to see Kinkaid, either. Whether my reasoning for that decision was based on Julie's welfare or my own feelings for her was another question, and not one I felt like dealing with at the moment. "Julie wants Amy there, too."

"Why?"

I explained her reasoning as best I could. "It makes some sense, Joe. If there's anything usable as leverage with Hubbard, it's going to be the threat of going public."

"I don't see why we need leverage with Hubbard. We're not negotiating a business deal, you know. This woman needs to talk to the police."

"Let's do it her way, Joe."

"Fine."

I hung up with him and called Amy at her office. I got the voice mail, so I tried her cell phone, and this time she answered.

"Lincoln, I've been waiting to hear from you all day. You have no idea how close I've come to going to the police with this."

"With what?"

"With
everything,
jackass. When I saw the story come over the wire this morning I about died."

"Story?"

"Yeah, the story about the shootout at the Golden Breakers hotel. Don't tell me you weren't involved with it. I'm not that clueless."

"I was involved with it," I said. "Did the story give my name?"

"No, it didn't give any names except the cop they interviewed and the hotel owner, some guy named Burks."

"Lamar Burks, yeah. So what
did
the story say?"

"Just that there was an exchange of gunfire in and around this resort hotel early last night, and no arrests have been made. Apparently a desk clerk was beaten up, but she's in stable condition."

"There wasn't anything about someone being killed in this shootout?"

"No. Should there have been?"

I frowned. "Yeah, there should have been. If there was a body at the scene, would the reporters know about it by now, or could the cops be holding out?"

"Press would have it by now," she said confidently. "All we got on it was a little briefon the national news wire. I called the South Carolina bureau of the Associated Press for more details, and they told me they didn't have anything else. No one was injured, and no arrests had been made, they said."

No one was injured. Had I imagined shooting a man in the face? No, that didn't seem like the type of thing that was easy to misinterpret. I'd killed him. If his body hadn't been there, the Russians had taken it with them. Once I thought about it, that move made some sense. Leaving the body behind would have tied them to the shootings, and they were probably even more eager to avoid that than I was.