Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course (9 page)

What the hell? They’d stolen her car and then wrecked it? She stepped closer and looked in the rear window.

There was something in the hatch.

The body was curled up, like somebody who was asleep, with black plastic garbage bags sort of wrapped around it. But the head was all wrong. The neck was twisted awkwardly, so the face was toward her. There was a hole in the face and a lot of blood, but she wouldn’t forget that dimple. Or the carefully moussed hair.

She jumped, back-pedaling fast, and collided with a silver van.

Its alarm whooped and echoed in the metal building. “Warning!” a stern voice boomed. “Step away from this vehicle.”

She didn’t just step, she ran for her life.

When she was on the other side of the fence, it occurred to her that her hands were cut and bleeding. As she rounded the corner of the garage, she felt a draft from the seat of her jeans, and the knee, too, where she’d snagged her pants on the fence.

Ollie met her at the corner. His face was beet red and he was breathing hard. “Christ,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of here. A cop car just pulled in.”

“We’re going to jail,” Jackie said, breathlessly, diving headlong into the backseat of the Nova. “Prison. There’ve been Canadays in trouble before. I’m not saying different. But nobody ever went to prison till now.”

“Be quiet,” Ollie hissed, pulling the driver’s door closed. He raised his head up slowly until it was level with the window.

“Here comes the gray Lincoln,” Ollie said. “It’s that boss. He’s getting out now, going over to talk to the cops.”

“Ronnie Bondurant,” Jackie said. “Jesus. Jesus. He killed that boy.”

“What are you talking about?” Ollie said, whipping his head around to look at her. “What boy?”

“Jeff,” Jackie said. “He’s dead. I saw him. In that garage. In my car. The ‘Vette. Shot in the face, wrapped up like garbage. Oh, Jesus. I never want to see something like that again.” She shivered even though it was probably ninety degrees inside the closed-up car.

“He was dead? You’re sure?”

“Oh, yes,” Jackie said soberly. “And it was my car. They had it hooked up to a tow truck in there. Ollie, I touched it. My fingerprints are all over that car. What if they try to make it look like it was me that killed Jeff? People saw me yelling at him yesterday. And today. What if they try to say it was me? They could do that. Make it look like I broke in. Shot Jeff, ‘cause I figured out he was the one who stole my car.”

“Nah,” Ollie said. But his voice somehow lacked the ring of conviction.

“What’s Bondurant doing?” Jackie asked. She couldn’t bring herself to look.

“He’s checking the lock on the door. Now they’re walking around to this side. Stay down. Hey. Now they’re walking back toward the front. Hey! He’s showing the cops a car.”

“A car?”

Now Jackie sat up to look for herself.

Sure enough, Ronnie Bondurant had the door of a midnight-blue Gran Torino open. The taller of the two cops, a skinny white guy, walked around and slid behind the wheel. Ronnie bent down to show him something. He stood up, brought out the key ring, selected a key, and handed it to the cop.

They heard the motor start. Saw the other cop laugh, shake his head, then get in the passenger seat. The headlights came on and the Gran Torino glided out of the Bondurant Motors’ car lot at a sedate ten miles per hour. After all, they were cops, and they were on duty.

Jackie stared at the disappearing red taillights. “They’re going for a test drive. There’s a dead guy in that garage, and those goofballs are going for a test drive.”

Ronnie Bondurant beat it toward the office. He wasn’t running, but he was making good time. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. They saw lights switch on.

“We’ve got to do something,” Jackie said. “By the time those cops get back, anything could happen.”

“What can we do?” Ollie asked unhappily. He’d been more than willing to eat Vietnamese food and go along with the charade of a stakeout. It was exciting. But now, things had gone too far. He hadn’t counted on finding a body or breaking and entering or getting mixed up with police and heavily armed used-car dealers.

“Let’s just leave,” Ollie suggested. “Right now, before that Bondurant guy comes out and spots us.” He turned the key in the ignition and started the Nova. The gas pedal was going to be a problem. As would be seeing over the steering wheel.

“We can’t just leave,” Jackie said, tugging at his arm. “Jeff’s dead. And he’s in my car. We’ve gotta call the cops. Or they’ll find him and think I did it.”

“You? You couldn’t have killed him. I was with you all night. You don’t even have a gun. I’m your alibi.”

“They might not believe you,” Jackie said. “That’s why we’ve got to be the ones to tell them about the body. I’ll go back inside the restaurant and call 911. You stay out here and watch, okay?”

“Okay,” Ollie said reluctantly.

Jackie was gone for a long time. Ollie watched the front door and the side of Bondurant Motors so hard that his neck got a cramp and his eyes started to water.

He glanced across the street toward the Candy Store, just to rest his eyes. Cars were still streaming into the parking lot and people were lined up to get inside. But now the short bald bouncer he’d seen before was gone.

In his place was the woman of Ollie’s dreams. She was statuesque and slender, with long, jet-black hair that streamed over her shoulders and skin the color of lightly toasted almonds. She appeared to be wearing nothing more than a pair of sneakers, a gold lame bikini top, and a matching thong. When she bent over to talk to the driver of a car and take his parking fee, he saw that the tan was all over, and what with the light from the colorful strings of bulbs around Bondurant Motors and the dancing spotlights of the Candy Store, he could see very well indeed.

He was trying to decide if the girl was Japanese, or maybe Polynesian, when his reverie was broken by the shrill blaring of a police siren. Two cruisers came speeding down U.S. 19. Ollie saw the girl look up with alarm. When she spotted the cars with their flashing blue lights, she seemed to disappear right before his eyes. Like a frightened doe, vanished into the mist, Ollie thought sadly.

Jackie came bustling out of the Taste of Saigon.

“Thank God,” she said. “Come on. We’ve got to go over there and give them a statement.”

“A statement?” Ollie was alarmed. “Why do I have to give them a statement? Can’t I just be an anonymous bystander? I didn’t see anything.”

“You saw what was going on over there,” Jackie said, beginning to lose patience with him. “There’s a dead man over there, you know.”

Ronnie Bondurant was standing outside talking to the officers by the time Jackie walked up, trailing the reluctant bystander.

“You again,” Bondurant said when he saw her. “What the hell is this woman doing here, officers?”

Just then, the Gran Torino came screeching into the parking lot. The driver, who had been gnawing on a drumstick from Kentucky Fried Chicken, put the half-eaten leg back in the bucket with the rest of his supper.

“Uh-oh,” the driver told his partner. “We’re screwed.”

Jackie was taking deep breaths, trying hard not to sound like a hysterical female. It was difficult—she could feel the hysteria welling up inside her, like those Fizzies you put on your tongue when you were a kid. The panic and fear were there, fizzing just below the surface.

“There’s a man inside that garage back there,” she said, pointing toward the metal hangar. “He’s dead. I think he was shot in the face. He’s inside a red Corvette.”

She glared at Ronnie Bondurant. “My red Corvette. They stole it from me last night. I called the cops and filed a report. You can check the records.”

“Dead man inside a Corvette.” One of the cops, a heavyset black man with thick glasses, was writing in a notepad. He acted like he was in charge. “Any idea who the deceased was?”

“His name is Jeff,” Jackie said. “He works here. He’s the one who sold me the Corvette. On Saturday. He ripped me off. Sold me a lemon. I told him and Mr. Bondurant here that I was gonna get a lawyer, call the police, and maybe get a story in the newspaper. Mr. Bondurant has a gun,” she said, pointing to Bondurant’s jacket.

“What?” Ronnie Bondurant sputtered. He threw open his sport coat. The only thing beneath it was his knit sport shirt, the fabric strained against his thickened waist. “This girl is crazy. A troublemaker. I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Look in the garage,” Jackie repeated. “You’ll see.”

The two test-driving cops drifted up to the knot of people standing around outside the office.

“What I see,” Bondurant said, turning to the cops, “was that we had a break-in here earlier. A car alarm went off, and these two alert officers were here right away. Ask them. They’ll tell you there’s no murder here. Just a break-in.” He glared right back at Jackie and at Ollie, who was wishing intensely that he could be somewhere else. Maybe across the street, discussing Oriental belief systems with the parking lot attendant.

The tall cop, the test driver, had the grace to blush. “Uh, actually, we didn’t check inside, Mr. Bondurant. Remember? We got to discussing cars.”

“Well, you can check it now,” Ronnie said quickly. “This girl and her partner here—I think they may have broken in earlier. I heard a noise back in the garage, but I didn’t see anybody. They must have jumped the fence.”

“He’s lying,” Jackie burst out. “Jeff stole my car, and I can prove it. That’s why he killed Jeff. Ask him who stole my car. If he didn’t steal it, how come it’s inside in that garage? Who put the body in my car? Ask him that.”

“Deranged,” Ronnie said. “Drugs, maybe. You see that a lot in my business, kind of clientele I’m forced to deal with. I’d suggest a drug test. But first I want these two off my property.”

“Mind if we check the premises?” the black cop asked. “We’ve got a report of a possible homicide. We need to check, get the paperwork taken care of. Before the homicide detectives get called out and all that kind of thing.”

“Go ahead,” Bondurant said, crossing his arms defiantly across his chest. “But she’s not going in there. In fact, I want her removed right now.”

The cops all looked at each other. Finally, the black one who was in charge stuck his writing pad in his hip pocket.

“Sorry. She’s a witness. She called in the complaint. He stays here,” he said, nodding toward Ollie. “She shows us what she thinks she saw.”

It was fully dark now, and the back part of Bondurant Motors, the part the public did not see, was not all lit up and flagged and shiny like the front. It was dark back here, and the asphalt was broken and uneven and the air smelled sour, like rust and motor oil.

“Right in there,” Jackie said, pausing in front of the chain-link fence. “The door’s closed now. It was open before.”

The black cop, whose nameplate said “Hilley,” played his flashlight over the fence, letting it linger on the top. “How’d you get in there, ma’am?”

He was nice, calling her ma’am.

“She broke in,” Bondurant said, catching up with them. “Trespassing, they call it.”

“I could see my car through the door,” Jackie retorted. “My car was in there. They had my car.”

“Bullshit,” Bondurant said. “This girl is crazy. First she comes around, complaining we sold her a lemon. She made a disturbance, caused us to lose a couple sales. Then she comes back, says somebody stole her car, accusing me, us, of stealing the car we just sold her. She was probably doped up and wrecked it somewhere. Just wants to get off the hook for the payments.”

“You got a key to this gate?” Hilley asked.

Bondurant unlocked the gate. With Hilley leading the way with his flashlight, they picked their way through the debris. At Hilley’s request, Bondurant produced yet another key. He unlocked the door to the garage, pulled it open, and reached around inside. He fumbled a bit before finding the light switch.

Then he stepped aside, bowed low at the waist, and swept his arm out wide in a mocking invitation to enter.

“Be my guest.”

Hilley had his hand on his holstered gun as they walked inside the garage.

The silver van was there, its headlights and blaring alarm gone silent. There was a sizable work area, a red metal Craftsman tool chest, more stacks of tires, and on the wall, a calendar with a generous-busted girl whose cleavage spilled out of an unzipped Snap- On tool jumpsuit.

In the same exact spot where Jackie had seen the red Corvette barely an hour ago, now stood a tired- looking two-tone olive green and wood-grain station wagon, its hood raised, more tools littering the floor around it.

“Where was this car you mentioned, ma’am?” Hilley asked, turning to her.

Jackie’s mouth hung open.

“Ma’am?”

“It was right here. The Corvette. Jeff was stuffed inside the hatch. Part of his body was covered with garbage bags. Black ones. It was right here,” she said, thumping the door of the station wagon.

Hilley turned to Ronnie Bondurant.

“Do you know this Jeff she’s talking about?”