With the truck about to hit, Emory and Jeff shoved their doors open and leapt to the other side of the road, tumbling over the pavement.
BOOM!
Crunching, twisting metal and smoking rubber screeched down the road.
Lifting his eyes, Emory saw Jeff crouched beside him. He patted him on the back. “Are you hurt?”
Jeff shook his head. “No.”
They looked behind them to see that the truck had hammered into the side of the car and was now pushing it down the road, skidding almost one-hundred feet before it whimpered to silence.
Emory raced to check on the condition of the driver. Jeff followed, but once his partner told him the driver was unharmed, he advanced to the front of the truck to inspect the damage to his car.
“Damn!”
Twist-tied to the truck’s grill, his red sports coupe was crushed in the middle like a stepped-on cola can, and every window frame held shattered glass or nothing at all.
“Mother f…” Jeff caressed the trunk of his car. “There’s no coming back from this. DOA.”
Emory joined him in front of the truck. “Jeff, I’m sorry.”
Clutching a sweat-stained University of Tennessee baseball cap, the hefty lumberjack of a truck driver joined them. “What were you doing in the middle of the road?”
“We lost a wheel.”
The driver pointed behind him. “Must be that tire I almost hit back there.”
Emory squinted up the road but couldn’t see it. “Why would a tire just pop…” His words dropped, as did his chin, when he saw the chicken-bone doll on the road.
“What is it?” Jeff looked his partner’s face up and down, and followed his eyes. “Oh. My. God. You think it’s that curse?”
Emory frowned at him. “I wasn’t thinking that!”
“Don’t lie. I was kidding about that. Look, if it had really been the curse, it would’ve been your car.”
“It did hit my side of the car.”
“It’s not the curse!”
“I didn’t say it was!”
Jeff caressed his car’s broken side. “Someone obviously tampered with it while we were inside that damn meditation center.”
“Who? Who knew we were there?”
An hour later, after the three men involved in the accident finished telling their versions to the police, Virginia arrived to pick up her partners. As they piled into her black hybrid, she watched Jeff’s car being towed away. “Oh my god! Are you two sure you’re okay? Do we need to go to the hospital?”
Jeff answered from the passenger seat, “We’re fine.”
Emory slid to the middle of the backseat. “We got out of the car before it was hit.”
Jeff checked his face in the visor mirror. “Did you find out about the hot air balloons?”
“So we’re done talking about what happened here?” Virginia threw the car into drive.
“Later.” Jeff eyed Emory in the mirror. “We have different explanations.”
“Hot air balloon pilots aren’t required to file a flight plan, so I called all the balloon tourism companies in Knox County, and none had a balloon up in the air at that time.”
By the time she finished speaking, Virginia had caught up to the tow truck. As no passing lane would appear for a while, they were unable to escape the image of the crash even as they avoided conversation of it.
Jeff adjusted his seat, driving it into Emory’s knees. “Of course, since they’re not required to file a flight plan, we can’t know for sure a balloon didn’t fly near the Godfrey Tower at the time Corey died.”
Emory put his feet behind Virginia’s seat, now sitting catty-corner. “I think someone would’ve reported a balloon flying that close to downtown.”
“Enough about the damn balloon.” Virginia pointed at the damaged car in front of them. “What happened with your car?”
“It was tampered with.”
Virginia asked Jeff, “Who would want you dead?”
“Me? Why do you assume it’s me? Emory was in the car too.”
She smiled. “I know you better. Do you think it’s related to the accident you had last month?”
“Possibly. We never did find out who that was.” Jeff turned on the radio station and winced at the sleep-inducing New Age music pan-fluting through the speakers.
Emory tapped Jeff’s shoulder. “You said that guy last month – the one who caused your accident – was casing the office, right?”
Jeff looked at Emory in the rearview mirror. “Yeah. I saw him from my apartment window.”
“But you’ve had no break-ins. Do you think he was actually looking to kill you?”
“No. He could’ve easily moved to ambush me in the time it took me to run downstairs and get out the front door.”
Virginia asked, “When you chased him in your car, do you think the reason he put out the spikes was to stop the pursuit, or was he hoping you would lose control and die in the accident?”
“I thought it was to stop me, but maybe he was trying to kill me.”
Emory tsked. “I don’t think so. Police use those all the time, and I’m not aware of any resultant fatalities. So then why would he loosen the lug nuts today – something that had a high probability of killing us both? I could be wrong, but I don’t think they’re related.”
“Of course, we’re missing the most obvious choice. The man we just interviewed. Guru Bike Shorts had plenty of time to sabotage my car while we were touring the place.”
Emory responded, “But how would Randy Graham know which car is yours?”
“Maybe he saw us pull up.”
“Maybe. If someone is trying to get us off this case, at least there’s one thing we know for certain. Corey Melton’s death was no accident.”
Virginia slapped the steering wheel. “Wait a second! Someone loosened your lug nuts?”
“Tires don’t just fall off on their own.”
“Oh my god!” Virginia turned the radio off again. “Becky said the same thing happened to her about a week before Corey died.”
“It did?” asked Emory.
Jeff followed with, “What are the odds of that?”
Virginia shook her head. “I wonder if that has anything to do with… Becky gave me Corey’s laptop, and I searched his browser history. A few weeks ago, he started looking into home security systems.”
“Huh.” Jeff reached for the radio power button once more, but Virginia slapped his hand. “Maybe he knew what happened to his wife’s car was no accident.
Emory added, “And maybe he knew his life was in danger.”