Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (16 page)

I kicked his shin under the table as hard as I could.

Sam shouted, making everyone in the diner stop what they were doing and turn to look. The manager hurried out of sight, probably on his way over.

Sam reached across the table and grabbed a handful of my jacket.

“You want to make a scene,” I whispered. “Go for it. You’ll lose more than your job. You’ll trade that trailer of yours for three solid walls and a set of bars.”

His hand tugged a little on my jacket.

The manager burst out from the kitchen, sending the pair of doors swinging behind him.

“Go for it,” I repeated, forcing the edge into my voice to cover my trembling. My stomach had dropped to the floor the second Sam grabbed me. If my threat didn’t work, and he decided to drag me out of the booth, I wouldn’t last long. It didn’t matter what sex he used to be, Sam was three times stronger than me.

Sam let go just as the manager arrived.

The manager’s worry lines looked like miniature canyons on his dark face. He glanced back and forth between us. “Everything all right? How’s the, uh, coffee?”

“You all right, Sam?” I asked.

He started to speak, had to clear his throat. “Just fine.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to the manager. The smile I gave him probably looked as fake as it felt. “Just a couple more minutes and I’ll let you have him back to work.”

He hesitated, finally nodded, and left, glancing a couple times over his shoulder before reentering the kitchen.

“I could kill you,” Sam said. “Easily.”

I pulled out my picture of Doug and put it on the table, facing Sam. I think we both noticed my hand shaking. I pulled both my hands into my lap.

Sam smiled faintly, winked at me, then looked at the picture.

“Never seen him.”

“Maybe you just don’t recognize him,” I said. “You shot him in the back, after all.”

“I didn’t shoot anybody. If I wanted to kill someone, like for revenge like you say, I’d use my hands.” He laid his hands, palms up, on the table, and curled his fingers into claws. He made a ripping sound with his mouth and jerked his clawed hands apart. “Got it?”

I did. A threat. I would have to make sure I got everything I needed from him right now. I had pushed Sam far enough.

“But you’re reformed now.”

“Reformed,” Sam said. “Not weak.”

The manager had once again taken up watch from the kitchen. This time when I met his gaze, he didn’t move. I was pushing my luck here on both fronts. Time to wrap this up.

“When was the last time you saw Autumn?”

“If you know what the bitch did to me, than you know the answer to that question.”

I pounded on the table. “I’m asking you.”

Sam leaned in, his gestures becoming suddenly feminine—the way he tilted his head, the way his hands brushed across the table, even the lilt in his voice. “The last time I saw that cunt she ran crying from the house we were robbing.” Sam pitched his voice and mock wept. “‘No, no. I can’t do this.’“ His expression went blank. “Bitch.”

“The house you were robbing?” Something like tepid water seemed to pool at the bottom of my stomach. “The both of you?”

“Yeah. We went in there strapped. I told her to stick by me, I’d walk her through it. I warned her the family would probably scream, but that was okay, ‘cause a little screaming never hurt anyone. But the second the wife started screaming and begging, Autumn choked. Never seen anything like it. She started crying herself and just ran out of the house, leaving me.”

“She was there?”

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Brone? You said you knew all this.”

I flopped back in my seat and stared off into space.

“You get a different story?” Sam asked.

“Autumn ratted you out after she left the house?”

“Ran right to her fucking boyfriend about it and spilled her guts. That’s why she didn’t serve any time at all. Didn’t even have to step into a courtroom.”

I closed my eyes. I felt like I was in the glass case with the deserts, spinning around next to the banana cream pie. “Her boyfriend?”

“Tom Fortier,” Sam said. “She thought it was real cute, humping some cop while she’s hanging with me. She thought she was bad. I should have known better.”

I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. Speaking was as hard. I groped for the coffee, but knocked it over, spilling the contents across the table.

Sam hopped out of the booth before the coffee dribbled over the edge of the table and pattered on the seat. “Get it together, Brone.”

A moment later, the manager hovered by us, and the waitress sopped up the coffee with a rag.

“No problem, no problem,” the manager said, his voice taut.

I sat there, dazed.

“Can I get back to work now?” Sam asked.

I licked my lips, though my tongue felt like sandpaper. “Something happened between them,” I said. “Between Tom and Autumn.”

Sam laughed. “She played him good.”

“Played him how?”

“The second he got her off, she dumped him. Like she was fucking him just for a get out of jail free card.” He laughed again. “Wish I’d tried that.”

Chapter 13

So many lies.

That was part of a detective’s job, sorting through the lies. But the biggest lies weren’t supposed to come from your client… or the police.

I tried dialing Autumn while I sped around Hawthorne in circles. The call went straight to her voicemail, and I remembered I had told her to keep the phone off. I snapped my cell closed and tossed it at the passenger seat. It bounced off the leather and tumbled down to the car’s floor.

I changed lanes without signaling and got a blaring horn in response from the Toyota I cut off. I slammed on the gas, heading north to the cabin, then changed course. What good would talking to Autumn do? She’d only lie to me again. And Tom. Fucking Tom.

I tried to keep cool. Sam was a criminal. There was no reason to believe his story, except that it rang true. It explained Tom’s grudge, and why he had remained so guarded about it. It also explained why Autumn had tried to keep from telling me about her time with Dixie. But worst of all, it offered up another possible suspect.

Could Tom have set the whole thing up, killing Autumn’s husband and framing her for the murder? Then he catches the case, making it easy for him to further manipulate evidence and the direction of the investigation. The thought made my stomach clench. I wanted to believe Tom was a killer no less than I had Autumn. But all of this was speculation. I had no proof. I could be wrong.

As much as I wanted to chew out Autumn for lying to me, I needed to talk to Tom first. I needed answers.

I pulled to the side of the road and retrieved my phone from the floor. This time dialed Tom.

“We need to talk,” I said when he answered.

I got silence for a moment.

“Finally decided to come clean,” he said.

“Come clean?”

“Are you going to tell me where she is?”

Now was not the time to split hairs on why I wanted to see him. If he believed I was going to tell him where Autumn was, it would only make it easier to get a meeting.

“Pick a place,” I said.

“How about the old standby?”

I cringed. The idea of going to the
High Note
did not appeal to me in the least. “Some place else?”

“And miss out on free beer while listening to you apologize? No way.”

His cockiness almost made me snap and start asking questions right there on the phone. That wouldn’t do any good. I needed to get him face to face. This was a finesse job, and I’d have to fight my anger every step of the way.

“Fine,” I said through clamped teeth. “Meet me there in thirty.”

“If I get there early, I’ll help myself.”

“One last thing,” I said. “Keep your buddy Palmer out of this. I want to see you alone. This is between us.”

“Whatever you say, Rid. I’m just glad you’ve seen the light. Maybe we can still be friends after this.”

I hung up. A few deep breaths kept me from chucking my phone out the window. The guy had nerve. Lies or not, it was a good thing I’d pulled Autumn out of this mess before Tom got his hands on her.

On the drive to the
High Note
I found myself thinking about high school, hanging out with Tom and Devon. I never suffered the ridicule as much and Tom and Devon had. While they were tripped in the halls, or heckled between classes, I walked unnoticed, neither disliked or liked. Just there. I never felt like I had anything to prove to those people.

Was that what still drove Tom? Was he still making up for all that rejection?

Devon, on the other hand, reacted just the opposite. He didn’t seem to have anything to prove to anyone. He’d curled up into his shell and ran a computer empire from his bedroom in his parents’ basement.

Then again, his obsession with computers may have been his version of compensation.

So what was mine?

I left. I felt no need to stay among those who did not want me, including my parents.

Now look at me.

As I pulled into the
High Note’s
parking lot and cruised past the entrance, I caught Tom jimmying the lock. He looked over his shoulder at me with a snide grin on his face, then went right back to working the door while I pulled in next to his car.

I sat for a second, the engine cut but a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD still spinning in the player. I listened to them sing about sharing a lonely view with the birds. I sang along for a bar or two, the feel of my breath pushing up from my diaphragm and turning into music as satisfying as a sigh. You didn’t have to sing for an audience to enjoy it. Sometimes singing felt better than just breathing by itself.

Centered, I opened the door and the music stopped. I stepped out and started toward the bar.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve got to tell you,” Tom yelled from the door. “This lock is too damn—”

The next thing I realized I was on the ground, my face hot and tingling. But I could shift the details in my mind, reorder them like a film editor cuts a movie. I had just a glimpse, but before I fell I saw Tom engulfed with an orange fireball as something exploded from within the
High Note
.

Chapter 14

Pieces of my parents’ pride and joy, the karaoke bar they had started and nurtured and made into something more than I would ever understand, fell around me while I lay stunned on my back.

The asphalt, slightly cracked where I’d landed, stabbed between my shoulder blades and waves of pain echoed from so many places in my body I couldn’t tell the source. It was the heat, though, that worried me most. I didn’t know how big the explosion was, only saw that glimpse of the flames enveloping Tom before I went down. Right now, the fire could be roiling toward me. I had to stand, had to move back.

I could think about all this, but I couldn’t get my limbs to cooperate. Shock. Confusion. Part of me might have even believed the explosion was a dream. If I lay there a minute, eventually I’d wake up, the hard pavement replaced by my mattress and sheets.

Then I heard someone shouting my name over the crackling fire. A second later a pair of hands gripped my shoulders and yanked me up. Someone saving me, I thought at first, until the same pair of hands thrust me into the side of my car.

Like a crash dummy, I bounced off the car and toppled back to the ground. The pain in my body didn’t seem to get any worse, but shifted to new, more tender areas. Only instinct finally brought control of my body back to me as I threw my hands out to break my fall and keep my face from crunching into the ground.

“You son of a bitch,” my un-savior said, and a foot slapped into my side, flipping me over, my shoulder cracking against the front tire of my car.

I raised my hands to shield myself as the face loomed over me. My brain processed the horn-rimmed glasses. Then the bald head.

Palmer.

He had his hands fisted and looked ready to kneel down and start pounding on me, but he backed off a second and looked toward the
High Note
, a grimace pinching his features.

I sat up and followed his gaze.

“Oh, God.”

The damage to the
High Note
didn’t look as bad as I’d imagined it would, at least not from the outside. Flames chewed at the edges of a giant hole where the entrance used to be. I could barely see through the smoke and shadows to the inside, but whenever a wisp or tendril curled out of the way, I caught glimpses of more flames feasting on tables and chairs.

“What did you do?” Palmer asked me. “What the hell did you do?”

I couldn’t answer him, couldn’t move. My eyes had found Tom… or what was left of him. A dark, flaming lump lay a handful of yards away from the door. Pink patches of flesh clung to his burnt body, exposed in areas where his clothing had curled away into ashes. The form did not move, except for a swatch of hair flapping in the breeze on his blackened and bloody scalp.

Palmer grabbed me again and lifted me to my feet. My gaze remained locked on Tom’s body.

I felt Palmer’s breath against my cheek, and his spittle when he shouted.

“What happened? What did you do?”

I barely heard him. I didn’t give a damn what Palmer thought. All I could do was gape at Tom’s body, and the burning hole blown out of all that remained of my parents.

The wetness on my face startled me. I blinked away the tears, turned to look at Palmer. Rather than shove my way out of his grip, I wanted him to hang on. He was the only thing holding me up. A primal ache hollowed out my chest, echoing the damage to the
High Note
. I missed my parents. I wanted to see them, wanted to hug my mother, stare my father in the eyes. Most of all I wanted to hear their voices. They had defined themselves by the music they could create from their breath. I wanted to hear them sing.

All I did hear was the gnashing flames eating away their memory.

Palmer’s expression changed. He shook me. “Get a hold of yourself.”

I opened my mouth to speak, blubbered something unintelligible. I’m not even sure what I meant to say. Words did not fill my head, only images, flickering bits from the past.