The Summerland (14 page)

* * * *

Arden never knew that while two sets of eyes were watching her, only one was measuring her, making decisions on her life. And on her death.

Standing on the elevated boardwalk which ran in front of the entire downtown area, Arden marveled over the antique oak and beveled glass doors, which beckoned passerbys strolling the wooden path. In L.A. these places would have been broken into about thirty seconds after the owner closed for the day. There were no alarm systems, no bars on the doors or windows, nothing but antique locks that looked like they took a skeleton key, for God’s sake.

The stores obviously catered to the tourist trade, but just two doors down from where she currently stood was an honest-to-God western clothing and tack store. Not one of those trendy places that sold red boots and Garth Brooks shirts and designer paddock pads for the pampered horse, but a store that counted on the patronage of the local farmers and ranchers. A place with Wranglers by the stack, cotton snap-up shirts, and no-shit riatas piled up helter-skelter next to the scratchy woolen blankets that ranch horses the world over knew and grimly anticipated.

This little town amazed her with it’s constant shifting, changing. Every time she tried to buttonhole it, give it a neat little definition, she was thrown for yet another loop. It was something she’d experienced in other countries, but never expected to see in Northern California. Her most recent surprise stood before her.

The Eight-Fold Path was a quaint little shop, dimly lit and smelling of sandalwood. Crystals of all shapes and sizes glinted behind strategically lit display cases. Jewel-toned jars lined the top of an ancient apothecary table and held a myriad of incense sticks and cones. Gleaming wind chimes hung from u-hooks sprinkled liberally throughout the room, their delicate tinkling further cementing the intimate feel of the establishment.

The woman behind the counter had to be a hundred and fifty years old if she was a day, but the welcoming smile she showered on Arden was as youthful as Spring. “Good morning, dear. Welcome to The Eight-Fold Path, the road to spiritual and personal enlightenment.”

* * * *

Special Agent Frank Drebin was leaving. Ashton stood in the door of the Administration Building of the Sheriff’s Department and watched him fold his impossibly long body into the government sedan with a feeling of profound regret. If someone had told him three days ago that he would actually want the FBI in his town he would have had a hearty laugh at their expense. Drebin had been recalled to San Francisco to have a look at one of their unsolved cases. The man certainly put in quite a few miles.

In his hand he held Drebin’s profile of their killer. At the top of the cover page was Drebin’s pager and cell phone number. He’d given Bill carte blanche in contacting him if anything new came up, and Bill knew he fully expected an update at least every few days. It was comforting to know he wouldn’t be flying solo on this one.

Sitting in the middle of his paperwork-overwhelmed desk was the final crime scene report that the Modesto crime lab had compiled. A criminalist from the Modesto Scientific Investigation Division had arrived late yesterday afternoon and scanned each scene, proclaiming them to be secure. So this morning the crime scene tape would come down and the local lookey-loos would be out in force. Knowing that criminals sometimes return to the scene of the crime, he’d assigned one of his patrol deputies the duty of sitting under a covert tree and photographing any and all visitors over the next several days.

It seemed that everything he’d secured for investigation was being released today. Arden’s car had been analyzed from bumper to bumper, with no abnormalities to be found with the exception of what had caused the breakdown in the first place, a split radiator hose. He’d had Tony Ortiz come by the station yesterday afternoon to fix Arden’s car, knowing she would want to be on her way as soon as possible.

He was avoiding her. He’d even gone so far as to have Gail call the bed and breakfast and leave a message regarding the release of her car. He had way too much on his plate right now to be thinking about a woman, even one as strong and smart and sexy as Arden Jones, and when he was around her he couldn’t help but think of her.

Chapter Fifteen

Arden returned to her room pleasantly exhausted from her exercise, but puzzled by her visit to The Eight-Fold Path. She didn’t know what it was she had expected after her surfing of the Wiccan websites last night, but The Eight-Fold Path certainly wasn’t it. Ynes, the kindly woman behind the counter had invited her to sit down for a cup of tea and a lesson on the misconceptions of the Wiccan religion.

What she had learned made her uneasy. It almost made too much sense, at least the way Ynes had presented it. Honor the land, nature and do no one harm. It seemed like a very simple, straightforward credo. Then her teacher had explained the name behind the shop and Arden began to see where the Wiccan religion took the fork in the road other religions dared not to.

According to Ynes, The Eight-Fold Path was a training manual of sorts for initiates wishing to become an adept or master of the Magickal Arts. In Ynes’ coven, only white magick was practiced; dabbling in the black Arts resulted in immediate expulsion from the community. The journey down The Eight-Fold Path began with mental discipline through fasting and physical discipline. Arden could understand that, even appreciate its simplicity. Granted, she’d never been particularly religious, even throughout her formative years in the Lutheran church. Personally, she’d always wondered why she needed a middleman to talk to or appeal to God. It made no sense to her, and probably never would.

The second aspect was the development of the Will through mental imagery, visualization, and meditation. Once again, no real surprises there. The whole chanting thing was an association she made with religion as a whole anyway. Arden started to get a little leery of the whole thing after that. Ynes ran down the list of the remaining physical and attitudinal changes required to become an adept, and it included everything from the controlled use of drugs to astral projection and sexual magick.

Arden wasn’t so sure she bought the whole hocus-pocus, casting spells thing and told Ynes so. The woman smiled a gentle smile and handed her a card. It was embossed with the symbol she’d seen in the paper and now knew to be the Wheel of the Year. At the bottom of the card was a name and address. Josie Galloway, High Priestess, Hwy 140N.

* * * *

Shaking her head in consternation at what some people actually believed, she entered the lobby of the bed and breakfast, only to be stopped by Mindy Turner in the lobby. Mindy relayed the message that her car had been both released and repaired, and could be picked up at the Chevron station down the street.

Arden ignored the questions swirling through the innkeeper’s eyes, knowing that Mindy had been keeping track of her whereabouts since her dinner with the Sheriff two nights ago. From the hungrily inquisitive look on her face, the Sheriff’s late-night departure last evening had not gone unnoticed.

Refusing to validate or even acknowledge his visit, Arden concentrated instead on the news Mindy had given her. It considerably lifted her spirits. She wanted her own car back, and as soon as possible. The rental she’d acquired was bland and drab compared to the spunk of her little sports car. She bolted up the stairs to her room, contacted the rental company for pickup of the sedan, then hurried to the shower.

With the release of her car she became free of any ties to the Sheriff’s Department. After last night she wanted to stay as far away from Bill Ashton as possible. He was too close and she was too damned attracted to play by even her own rules.

Now that she had her car she could investigate Samantha’s disappearance herself, without any rules or encumbrances. She knew deep inside, that Sam had become the killer’s latest catch. If she could ferret out any information that may save Sam’s life, she would never let it go.

As the hot water pummeled her, kneading the muscles in her neck, shoulders and back, her mind lazily drifted from fantasy to steamy fantasy. Shaking herself out of what was almost a trance, she decided on a course of action. She would meet Josie Galloway and find out exactly how or even if the Wiccans tied into her sister’s disappearance.

* * * *

With something akin to joy, she paid the repair bill for her car, marveling at the low price on the repair of the radiator. Then, in the shadows of the inky garage she saw a Hispanic man staring at her and knew. He was Tony Ortiz, the one who’d found her car. Hesitantly approaching him, she introduced herself.

Tony was immediately apologetic and more than happy to answer questions about his response time to the call and exactly what had been wrong with the vehicle. And while he never said it, Arden knew that he had repaired the little car dirt cheap because he felt guilty about the role he had played in Sam’s disappearance, no matter how small.

Thirty minutes. That was all it had taken Tony to respond to Sam’s call for help. Thirty minutes in time where everyone who touched this event became effected by it. Thirty minutes that changed her life.

Just as Arden turned to leave, Tony made a surprised sound and grabbed her arm. Looking back she saw that he was holding out a piece of paper.

“
I almost forgot. I found this jammed in the hood insulation when I was fixing the radiator, ma’am. It musta just got crammed up there. I don’t know why I didn’t just throw it away, but I’ve never seen anything like it, and for some weird reason I thought I should give it to you. It’s probably nothing.” He thrust the paper into her hand and scurried back to the comforting darkness of the garage.

Arden looked at the paper curiously, not even beginning to comprehend what it was that she was looking at. To her it looked like a bunch of abstract lines. Probably some kid’s doodles that flew out the window and got caught in her hood. She absentmindedly stuffed it into her back pocket, heading to her car.

Driving down the highway toward what she hoped would be a gold mine of information, she was completely unaware of the fact that she’d been followed.

* * * *

For a moment Teddy wondered if the target had made her. Why else would she have changed cars? Getting close enough to the garage to hear the conversation between Arden Jones and the mechanic clarified it. Settling back into the seat, looking for all the world like a tourist, the assassin waited to see where the prey would go from here.

* * * *

Stumpy woke with a phlegmy snort. His neck ached with a crick more painful than a kick to the balls. He could barely lift his goddamned head, for Christ’s sake. He experimentally shifted his body, sitting up gingerly, looking around the deserted street. Shit, he’d slept the morning away. It had to be at least ten.

Looking around for the military-babe’s car, he spotted the sedan parked in the overflow lot halfway down the street. Frowning, he decided what to do. Why was he even here in the first place? He still couldn’t remember what had compelled him to stake out the broad’s place. Damn. He could have been home sleeping in his own bed, maybe with a piece of tail if he’d played it right. Instead, he’d fell to sleep sitting up and drunk in a public parking lot. He was lucky one of the other deputies hadn’t seen him. He was already in enough trouble with the Sheriff as it was.

Shaking his head in disgust, he pulled the pickup truck out into traffic, heading toward his trailer. Just as he reached the main drag in town he saw a bright red flash and blond hair flowing in the breeze. Now there’s a pretty picture, he thought, straining to focus his blurry eyesight on the young blonde in the convertible. His bleary eyes widened as he realized that Arden Jones had just driven past him, headed due north on Highway 140.

He turned right onto the road, cutting into traffic behind a nondescript sedan. Both cars were headed out of town, toward Yosemite. Yawning behind a huge hand, Stumpy hoped like hell she wasn’t headed for the Park for a day of sightseeing. He hung back, putting plenty of space between himself and the little red convertible. He knew these roads like the back of his own hand. He’d been driving them since before he was legal.

As the three-car procession wound through the steadily rising hills of the Midpines area, he began to get a feeling, and it was a bad one. He couldn’t pinpoint it, and didn’t even try. Something was wrong, and that’s all there was to it. Fumbling for the cell phone the Sheriff had nagged every officer into carrying, he set it on the seat beside him and then concentrated on the highway unfurling before him.

* * * *

Arden had never seen a road or country like it. She was only five minutes out of town and already the scenery had changed dramatically. She approached a passing lane and pulled over to the right, enjoying the landscape too much to charge pell-mell up the hill. Only two vehicles were behind her, and both seemed content to continue up the mountain at a leisurely pace. Just as she thought she couldn’t be surprised, the trio topped the crest of a golden peak, and the road began a deep, curvaceous descent. Initially, the road was composed of wide sweeping turns, and Arden gleefully put the car through its paces. The hairpin turns further down the mountain were no match for the superb handling of the car and soon she left her driving companions in her wake. The downward grade finally began to level out and take a final elliptical turn. As she rounded the corner, the Merced River spurted out of a ravine to her left, bordering the road she drove on, churning alongside the rock wall separating it from the two-lane road.