Read Tried & True (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 5) Online
Authors: Jerusha Jones
“Thank you,” I murmured while trying to gracefully retract my upper half into the passenger portion of the vehicle. “I’m going to be making some phone calls,” I said in an attempt at conciliation, “but I will try to keep my personal business to myself if you will. Don’t you have earbuds or something?”
I only got a grunt in response. But the driver in the car next to us gave me a thumbs up—apparently he’d witnessed the whole confrontation—and I smiled back, shaking my head. How I longed for the peace and quiet and long stretches of empty, tree-lined road in May County.
So I slid the divider in the safety partition closed and called Walt. He also answered immediately.
“Nora.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement, as though he wanted confirmation that I was alive and breathing on the other end of the line. His voice felt like home, and I instantly relaxed.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
“How can I help?”
“I’m waiting. There’s nothing to do at the moment. You already do so much for me.”
“I hate this inactivity. It’s an appalling idea, but I’d actually prefer hacking our way out of a storeroom again than this waiting around, hoping to hear from you.” His breathing was even, steady—and so very comforting.
I wanted to ask him to chuckle, since I love to hear that sound, but it didn’t seem like an appropriate request at the moment. “Tell me about the boys. Are the donkeys settling in okay?” I asked instead.
And Walt did chuckle. “Those things are eating machines. Well, all the males on the property are, but it’s possible we’ll end up spending more on donkey chow than on food for the boys. You sure they aren’t going to grow anymore?”
“I was promised they’re miniature and supposed to stay that way,” I replied.
“Latrelle asked if we can get a mare and breed mules.” There was a slight sense of chagrin in Walt’s tone. Latrelle was ten years old and one of the most recent arrivals at the boys’ camp. He was either more worldly-wise than the other young boys or he’d been doing some self-directed biology research.
I grimaced and was glad that I hadn’t been present for that awkward conversation. It sure hadn’t taken the boys long to start thinking about procreation. “And in your great wisdom, you answered that question how?”
“I announced that we would be having a movie night with pizza and popcorn.”
A wealth of distractions. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Did it work?”
“For now.”
I kept Walt talking, nudging him when he fell silent. He’s not the talkative sort, but his soothing presence and the everydayness of the things he had to relate were balm to my soul. I hadn’t realized how homesick I was until I heard the deep timbre of his voice, the way he calmly and patiently—and humbly, although he didn’t realize it—dealt with the care of twenty-two formerly-abandoned boys.
When Walt and I finally hung up, traffic had started moving again. I had one more call to make—the one I’d been subconsciously procrastinating on because I expected it to involve bad news. Which was in no way fair, since I wasn’t the one who was suffering.
“Hi, darling,” Loretta answered. “How are you?”
I should have been the one to ask that question. For being such a fragile woman, my mother-in-law has Amazonian strength. “Just dandy,” I said. “Really. How are you and Tarq?”
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I made the call to the hospice service. It’s time. The nurse will come out Monday and get us set up on the program.”
I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the side window. “Does he know you called?”
“No. He’s hardly been awake today, but he’s moaning in his sleep, restless. Nora—” Loretta choked back a sob. “I haven’t done this before.”
“None of us have,” I whimpered through tears. “I’m stuck here until the judge makes a decision. How long—?” I couldn’t finish. How could she possibly estimate the expiration date on Tarq’s life? Every moment was precious.
Loretta sniffed mightily and forced a hint of cheerfulness into her voice. “The hospice nurse will be a big help. We’ll get him started on a morphine drip. He’s refused a feeding tube—in his health care directive—you know…” Her words dwindled into quiet sobbing.
I groaned. I needed to be there. I glanced up to find the driver staring at me in the rearview mirror. No doubt he was questioning the prudence of picking up such an emotionally unstable fare. I wiped my wet cheeks with the back of my free hand.
“Ask Etherea,” I whispered to Loretta, “if you need help over the weekend.” The general store proprietress was a capable, unflappable woman, and she’d kept her cool while riding with me on a frantic race to the hospital with a bleeding, gunshot man in my pickup bed. “And Gus,” I added. “You’re surrounded by friends.”
I could barely hear her muffled response. “I know that, silly. You just get this Judge What’s-her-name to do the right thing.” Ever the scrapper, my mother-in-law.
The taxi wheeled into the semicircular drive at the hotel’s entrance and squeaked to a stop. I slid the partition open, tossed more than enough cash onto the front seat, and darted out of the vehicle and through the revolving glass door to the lobby, exchanging one form of imprisonment for the next.
“What have you been up to?”
He grinned down at me. “Come see.”
He led me to the stairwell. We jogged down several flights, ducked into the quiet, carpeted hall of a guest floor and around the corner to a service room that held the big laundry and cleaning carts the housekeeping staff used. From there, we plummeted to the basement in a service elevator.
I poked Josh in the ribs. “Do you have blueprints for this place? I sure wouldn’t have wanted to play hide and seek with you as a kid.”
“That’s not the half of it.” Josh emitted a gleeful chuckle and nodded toward a shiny Kawasaki motorcycle parked next to a row of pylon barriers protecting the employee entrance from either bad drivers or runaway garbage trucks. “The pillion seat’s not the most comfy thing in the world, but we’ll be fast and nimble.”
“From your impound buddy?” I grumbled. The
seat
he’d pointed out looked very much like the narrow top rail of a fence. The sort of thing once doesn’t straddle without bruises to show for it later—bruises in really awkward locations. Goody.
“Nope. Different buddy. And he’ll be mad if I scratch it, so be careful.”
“I’m glad we’re in your old stomping grounds,” I admitted. “You have a network like—” Except I’d run out of ideas of what to compare Josh’s resourcefulness to, but I splayed my fingers to show him all those useful social connections. He was doing exactly what I’d encouraged Loretta to do—tap into the neighborhood supply chain, whether it be for physical or emotional support.
He gave me a helmet which had a tinted face shield. Anonymity too. He’d thought of everything.
Josh fired up the bike and helped me climb on behind him. I gave my zippered jacket pocket one last pat to make sure my phone was still safely tucked inside. The volume was set to the loudest level plus vibrate so I wouldn’t miss the judge should she call.
Then we took off with a lurch, and I needed my hands for hanging on. Thanks to the rock-hard rear seat, I was riding a little higher than Josh. He was slanted forward to control the bike in much the same way a jockey perches on a racing saddle. So I had an amazing view. San Francisco can be very pretty at night.
As far as I could tell, we’d evaded our set of FBI tails, but we were headed to a location where an entire FBI team was camped out. Turbo-Tidy Clean’s two-timing corporate sleazebag lawyer, Freddy Blandings, lived in an elite neighborhood on the side of a steep hill. It was a development of oversized houses on minuscule lots with narrow strips of haiku lawns marking each little fiefdom.
I’d expected Blandings to have a gate—any highfalutin lawyer worth his salt who doesn’t live in downtown San Francisco will have a gate stretched across his driveway. It’s a status thing. And I had warned Ebersole and Butch as much.
What I hadn’t expected was that Blandings might be having a party. And a fancy one at that, complete with valet parking. Which meant the gates at both ends of the semicircular drive were wide open.
Josh slowly wove the motorcycle around and through the lineup of Mercedes, Lexuses, BMWs, and one Maserati waiting to enter Blandings’ square patch of property and disgorge their passengers. I had no idea where along the crowded street the valets-for-hire were squirreling away the luxury vehicles, and was very glad it was not my problem to solve. I also didn’t see a good place for Blandings’ FBI surveillance team to hide, unless they’d signed a short-term lease on an empty house nearby. I hoped we were slipping as easily under their noses as we were through the backed-up cars.
After we cleared the traffic, Josh wound higher up the hill along the curving switchbacks until he found an empty lot with a “For Sale” sign planted at the curb. At the far edge of the property, from under a scraggly pine tree, we had a good bird’s-eye view of the hustle and bustle at the Blandings homestead. I should have packed buttered popcorn and Junior Mints.
“I didn’t bring binoculars,” Josh muttered.
In the faint light rising from the neighborhood below us, I could see the scowl on his face. “One tiny thing you couldn’t predict.” I squeezed his arm. “It’s okay. I can squint.”
From the shimmering bright colors on the women who sashayed up the front steps to Blandings’ house escorted by dark-clad men, it was safe to assume the bash was formal. Evening gowns and black tie. I started getting nervous jitters in my stomach.
I’d wanted the Mongrels to send a message for me—something Freddy Blandings couldn’t possibly misinterpret. But I hadn’t wanted to humiliate him publicly or embarrass him in front of his peers. I needed his unknowing cooperation. I definitely did not want him to bolt or completely shut down in fear.
The Mongrels weren’t known for pithy understatements. This could get ugly—in a hurry. “Too many people,” I murmured. “Maybe I can call it off.” I unzipped my pocket and palmed my phone.
“No.” Josh stayed my hand. “Too late. The Mongrels won’t be intimidated by a bunch of people in their dress-up clothes, and you shouldn’t give them the idea that you are either.”
Josh was probably right, but that didn’t keep me from shivering inside my leather jacket. When Skip had returned his wedding ring, he’d also written a short, business-like note telling me that he had, for some time, suspected Freddy Blandings was working both sides of the fence. Isn’t that a nice, romantic bit of information to include with an object of such emotional significance? The only thing I could hope was that Skip had written it when he was under pressure, and that he’d been forced to put niceties aside at that particular moment.
Except, what kind of wish was that? And what did it say about me? I didn’t want to think about the answers to those questions.
And now we were about to find out for sure where Blandings’ loyalties lay. Maybe.
The valets had completed their job with remarkable dispatch, and they were clustered around one of the open gates, smoking and telling raucous jokes, if the volume of the laughter that drifted up to us was an indicator. All the glamorous guests were safely ensconced inside the gleaming pseudo-mansion. Faint strains of string music also wafted on the cold air. If Blandings had hired a string quartet, then he was really pulling out all the stops. I wondered what the special occasion was.
Josh kept checking his watch. “Not the most punctual bunch, are they?”
“They were what—six, eight?—beers deep when I mentioned the particulars. Maybe it was too much to expect them to remember the time frame.” I almost chuckled, and then another thought struck me sober. “I hope they get the address right.” I leaned against the pine tree trunk, but it was too knotty to be comfortable.
Fog was rolling in, creeping up the hillside, giving a diffuse vaporous glow to the lights below. The damp set my teeth to chattering in a way the cold alone hadn’t been able to.
But there was something about the moisture in the air that allowed noise to travel farther. Either that or the noise was insanely loud at the point of origin.
Harley exhaust pipes, gearing down for the uphill climb. I’d spent enough time with Gus to immediately recognize the sound. But this was the battle roar of a whole bunch of bikes. Poorly maintained bikes designed to instill fear in the hearts of those they passed. I knew it before I saw them.
And then everything happened incredibly fast. Mongrels massed in a thunderous display of unhygienic thuggery—three, four wide in the street. They blew by the frozen clump of valets and wheeled into the semicircular driveway. Even at my distance, the reverberations pulsed through my chest cavity and limbs.
The Mongrels didn’t confine themselves to the intricately patterned brick driveway. Riders peeled off and rode their bikes through the landscaping, cutting ruts in the flower beds and crunching through low shrubs, getting slogged down in the over-irrigated grass and flinging dirt clods with their rear tires.
There must have been guests out on a rear patio because, when several Mongrels disappeared behind the house, screams erupted in short order—women’s screams of the high, piercing, running-in-stilettos variety.
Mongrels were racing, mob-style, below me, but my thoughts slowed to the speed of a barely dripping faucet. Blinking, licking my lips, swallowing—all those things were beyond my ability. I couldn’t hear the violins anymore.
And that’s when I saw one guy standing on the porch, illuminated so thoroughly that I could tell that the greenish color on his head was not a helmet but rather tattoos, so densely inscribed that they covered his bald head. He was whirling a chain thingy with a heavy blob at the end. He broke one of the lanterns flanking Blandings’ front door with the makeshift flail, creating a shower of glass.
Another burly Mongrel on the lawn waved, arm extended overhead with something in his hand, and gunshots popped through the night.
I instinctively ducked, but the gaunt branches of the pine tree would never suffice for cover. Josh muttered words that came out sounding like a growl and hunched beside me.
I’d specifically instructed that there were to be no weapons present, let alone brandished. I should have known Ebersole would suck at taking orders, that he would add his signature arrant violence to the evening. I should have realized just how out of character it would have been for his gang to operate with restraint—or intelligence, or an awareness of consequences.
The tattooed man now had a knife in his right hand. He must have been a walking junkyard of metal implements. His broad back blocked most of his movements, but he appeared to be carving a memento into Blandings’ front door.
Sirens rallied below us. Pulsing wails joining together in urgency, but still a long way off. I became aware that the dog who lived in the dark house next to our hiding place was howling its head off.
Josh tugged on my arm, but I was rooted to the spot. Horror, guilt, shock—a whole slew of terribleness was roiling in the pit of my stomach.
Through all the racket, the Mongrels noticed the sirens too. The one who seemed to be the leader emitted a piercing whistle accompanied by a slicing motion of his hand across his throat. The guys who were still on their motley choppers made a ragged and untidy, but very speedy, exit. The ones who’d decided they could wreak more havoc on foot hurried to reclaim their machines and join their retreating comrades.
“Come on,” Josh hissed. “We’ll catch them at the bottom.” He pulled me along.
Somehow, I strapped on my helmet, mounted the bike, and ended up with my arms clamped around Josh’s waist as we hurtled farther up the hill and then down the other side, avoiding the route we’d taken into the neighborhood.
He was right about catching up with the Mongrels. It was just a matter of listening for their distinctive roar. And of staying far enough back that we wouldn’t be considered part of the pack.
Because the Mongrels were either too stupid or too blatantly arrogant to split up. They roared en masse through quiet streets until they hit the freeway. And from there, it was a straight shot to Emeryville. None of the sirens I’d heard materialized into a pursuing police cruiser.
We had no need to follow them, but we were. Maybe Josh had gotten caught up in the thrill of the chase. I’d rather leave that to the local police, should they eventually get the memo, or to Blandings’ FBI surveillance team. We’d just get in the way and inspire Judge Trane to new heights of ire if she found out about my extracurricular activities.
Technically, I’d obeyed her directive to not meet with any of my Numeros. To me,
meeting
implies talking. And I’d only observed. But if she thought
meeting
was suggested by proximity, then I could be in trouble.
I thumped Josh’s back to get his attention, but he gunned the motorcycle, changed lanes, and shortened our distance from the Mongrels pack, forcing me to use both of my hands as well as my knees and toes to maintain my precarious seat. In the bustle and anonymity of the freeway, we wouldn’t be associated with the outlaw bikers. There’s a world of difference between a large group of pieced-together Harleys riding in formation and a shiny Kawasaki running alone, so that wasn’t a concern.
But still. I gritted my teeth inside the protective bubble of my helmet and willed myself to ignore the cramps in my fingers in order to keep a grip. Because I had the distinct impression that my evening was just beginning.