Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) (28 page)

“You don’t think she’s involved, do you?”

“With Harry, yes, with the murder, no. She can be a vicious little ferret, but she’s not a killer. I think enough time has passed, and with Aunt Darcy in jail, she might be more honest if I ask her a few questions.”

“Harley—”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere else. Just to talk to my dear cousins. I’ll turn on my cell phone. Want to go with me?”

“No. And I don’t want you to go, either. I told Bobby I’d keep you here.” Harley cocked a brow at her, and Cami flushed. “Well, he told me to keep you here.”

“Bobby means well, but he has control issues. It’s all right, Cami. It won’t take long. I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour.”

Cami looked at her a minute, then sighed. “Better take my car. It’s started to rain.”

“Thanks. Want anything from Taco Bell?”

“One of these days you’re going to turn into a taco.”

“Bean burrito with extra salsa and sour cream.”

Cami rolled her eyes, an indication she didn’t appreciate the fine dining at Taco Bell. How sad.

While Cami tended to her zoo, Harley went to freshen up, washing her face and trying to do something with her hair so it didn’t look quite so unkempt. The beauty of her style was that it could go a day or two without brushing and no one could tell the difference but her. And Tootsie. But he was very attentive to things like that.

“Harley! Come help me!”

Cami’s shout sent her running to the kitchen, where she found Cami by the open back door. “Good Lord, Cami, what’s going on?”

“Two of the cats got out. Help me find them, Harley. They might come to you.”

“Sure. Cats love me.” Despite her sarcasm, Harley helped Cami search the garage for the missing cats. They found one behind the old refrigerator, and the other behind a ladder in the corner. After several scratches and a lot of cussing, the cats were safely inside and Harley went to pour hydrogen peroxide on her wounds. Cami, of course, had not been scratched. Typical.

“Well, that was fun,” Harley said when she went back into the kitchen. “Now, if there’s nothing else you can think of to keep me here, I’ll just get going. Leave the door unlocked.”

“Believe me, I’ll still be up. Use the garage door opener. It’s on the driver’s side sun visor. I rarely lock the back door.”

“That could be dangerous. When you talk to Bobby, tell him—”

“I won’t lie for you. Not to Bobby.”

“For heaven’s sake, Cami, I wasn’t going to ask you to lie, but even if I was, why is Bobby so different from anyone else I’d ask you to lie to for me?”

Cami’s cheeks turned pink, and Harley sighed. She’d been so afraid of this. Despite all Cami’s protests, she was much too attached to Bobby. Something would have to be done about that. Just as soon as she had time.

“Bobby’s not different,” Cami said defensively, “it’s just that I’m not any good at lying to him. He always seems to know.”

“No, he’s just always been a good bluffer. Remember strip poker when we were fifteen?”

“I always thought he cheated.”

“Well, he did, but even when he didn’t, he could bluff us right out of our dainties. Just tell him to call me on my cell phone if he wants to talk to me, which I’m sure he will when he finds out I left the house.”

“I’ll just hope he doesn’t call.”

“Oh, he’ll call. He won’t be able to resist checking up on me.”

Cami had opened the garage door, and she gave Harley the extra set of keys to her car. “Be careful,” was all she said, but Harley knew what she meant and nodded.

“I will. This shouldn’t take long. Madelyn was having an affair with Harry and I think it got too sticky. Maybe he threatened to tell Aunt Darcy or something. I don’t know. But a face to face is necessary if I’m going to find out who, what, and when from either of them.”

“I don’t envy you.”

“Neither do I.”

That was true. Madelyn and Amanda could be formidable when they chose to be, both of them quite capable of retreating behind bitchy smoke screens.

Slinging her backpack into the passenger side of the car, Harley slid into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. Nice. And it was an automatic, another plus. Cami’s car was relatively free of cat hair and dog hair, though a few stray strands were scattered over the front seats. The driver’s window was down, and as she backed out of the garage, Harley hit the button to roll it back up.

A light rain fell, spattering on the car, and she hit the lights and windshield wipers as she pulled out onto the busy street. Five lanes of traffic ran in front of Cami’s house, but it was fairly quiet this time of night. First, she decided, she’d go to Taco Bell, then eat on the way out to her aunt’s house. Maybe a little onion and garlic in their faces would expedite answers.

That had to be it. She had to think outside the box, let go of all her theories and be open to new ones. Aunt Darcy hadn’t killed Harry, and as far as anyone knew, had no reason to kill Julio. Of course, business partnerships went wrong all the time, and Julio hadn’t seemed to be the kind of man to prefer argument to action. Harry really had the only obvious motive to kill him. That made sense, since the coroner said Julio died first. But if Julio hadn’t killed Harry, then the most obvious suspects, at least the way the police seemed to be looking at it, were Aunt Darcy and Cheríe. If Harry had been killed by a woman, who put him on the elk horns? It took strength to do that. And rage. It just didn’t fit. This wasn’t a woman’s kind of crime. Not even Cheríe Saucier with her hefty biceps could have lifted a man eight inches taller and at least seventy pounds heavier to hang him on a door.

Damn. She’d been thinking so hard she’d turned the wrong way, she realized, and swung down a street that led through the neighborhood to go back the right way. About the time she reached the main road, her cell phone rang. She reached over to fumble in her backpack for it. It’d be Bobby, of course.

“Do not answer that,” a rough voice said from the back seat before she could reach her phone, and she let out a startled yelp. When something hard nudged the back of her head and he added, “Shut up!” she clamped her lips tightly shut.

Never argue with a man with a gun
, she decided as her cell phone quit ringing.

“Go the way I tell you to,” her stowaway said next, and she realized he had a thick accent. Her stalker?

This couldn’t be good. She peered into the rear-view mirror, but he nudged her again with the gun barrel and told her to keep driving.

“How’d you get in here?” she asked after a moment, hoping to keep him diverted while she inched a hand toward her cell phone.

“Both hands on the wheel,
chica
. Pull into that driveway. There.”

“The apartments?”

“
Sí.
”

The apartments, the lake . . . after being dragged down this road and across the grass earlier by dogs, she knew she wasn’t too far from Cami’s house. All she had to do was catch this guy by surprise, abandon the car, and run through the trees to get to safety. Lights were on in apartments ringing the lake, but dark shadows hugged the buildings and stretched to the shore. Trees crowned a slight rise to her left, then sloped sharply downward to more apartments and backed up to the cove right behind Cami’s street. Dogs barked, sounding muffled by the misty rain and low fog. The Saturn’s windshield wipers slapped rapidly back and forth at about the same tempo as her heart rate.

Using the gun as a prod, he pointed her toward a curve of the lake where cars usually parked to watch the ducks and geese. She put the car in park, wipers still going back and forth, occasionally making a screeching sound when the rain slowed. The engine idled, and she tried to see if anyone was out walking their dogs in the rain. Not a soul, just a few dark shapes by tall reeds that were probably nesting ducks. Where was an attack goose when she really needed one?

Silence stretched, and for a moment she thought the guy in back had fallen out. She glanced up in the rear-view mirror again and caught a glimpse of dark eyes behind a dark ski mask rimmed in red. To her surprise, the guy climbed over the seats and plopped down on the passenger side, dumping her backpack onto the floorboard. It was dark where they sat, but even with the knit ski mask that covered his head and face there was something vaguely familiar about him. That was puzzling. If it was her stalker, she hadn’t caught even a glimpse of his face the night he’d attacked her.

“Okay, just who the hell are you?” she demanded in what she hoped was a firm, authoritative tone. “You’ve been following me and I want to know why.”

“José. I must talk to you. You are the only person who can help me.”

That was a surprise. “I didn’t think help was what you had in mind.”

“Well it is.”

He said
is
like
ees.
Harley shrugged. Maybe she could negotiate here. Maybe he was more desperate than murderous.

“Why’d you hit me in the head the other night?” she asked, planning to distract him long enough that she could open her car door and escape.

“I did not hit you. After you ran, you hit the edge of the open Exit door.”

“Oh. You sure about that?”

“
Sí
. I saw you. Perhaps I should have tried another way to talk to you.”

“Ya
think?
So what do you want with me?”

“You must tell the
la policia
 . . . they have arrested the wrong person. She did not kill Harry Gordon.”

“Then who did? You?”

She was glad she didn’t understand Spanish when he swore, then said, “No, it was not me! I was there after the store closed, waiting for my brother Julio.”

“Inside the store?”

“No, no, I helped them unload heavy crates, then went to the store. When I came back, I waited across the street like always. Sometimes I meet him there, but this day, he never came out. Only the blue car was left finally, so I went inside. I saw Harry Gordon, and I knew at once he was dead, so I ran to go back to my car. Then I heard someone calling for him, so I hid in a big chest. I was afraid they would see me and think I had killed him.”

José paused, and Harley heard him take a deep, raspy breath. After a moment, he said in a hoarse voice, “Two women came while I hid there, both with hair the color of yours. One, she came first and left fast, then the other came in a big white car and I thought she would never leave. When she did, I heard you come in the front door and ran fast to get out before the police came next.”

Harley thought about that a moment. He’d been there when she came in, and maybe he’d been the one to bang the door. But it’d been her aunt’s car she’d seen driving away. “Tell me,” she said, “did you hear any gunshots? A fight?”

The ski mask-covered head indicated negative.

“So why haven’t you told this to the police? Oh wait—are you here illegally?”

“
Sí
, but it is not just that. My brother, he is dead because of what he knew. Maybe I am next.”

“How much did Julio know about the smuggling? Is that why he was killed?”

His eyes glistened behind the ski mask as he nodded. “
Sí
, it has to be. He knew too much.”

That was unnerving. It looked like open season for smugglers, which wasn’t so bad, but she didn’t want to end up mistaken for one.

“So how’d you find me?” she asked. “How did you know where I’d be tonight?”

“I saw you. Today, earlier. And I saw you when you came to the gardens.”