‘You omitted a lot back there,’ Amanda said as we sped through the California night to the airport.
‘He might share with Bohler and she’ll just get in my way.’
‘Of your messing with a future United States senator?’
‘And, potentially, a president of the United States,’ I said.
‘Don’t joke. Mixing the Wades in with whoever killed Marilyn Paul ups the threat to you tenfold. They’re powerful people and all you’ve got are vague suspicions that they know things they won’t tell you.’
‘I have suspicions because Marilyn Paul had suspicions. It’s why she planted those bones and the little axe, and someone killed her for it.’
‘Fair enough, but right now the case is stuck with a junior-grade cop supervising an impound garage,’ she said. ‘A woman who is trying to blame you for the murder. How quickly can you prove enough to get real police detectives involved who can make you safe?’
‘Things might firm up if Laguna Beach PD identifies Runney as the corpse in Arlin’s rubble.’
‘Arlin killed him to escape his own money woes and start a new life?’
‘If it was Arlin.’
‘You really think it could have been that red-headed man that asked for directions?’
‘I don’t know. Halvorson is the most mysterious of the musketeers. He’s stayed under the radar for twenty years. He could have been in on the plan with Arlin.’
‘Whatever the plan is,’ she said.
‘There is that confusion, yes,’ I said.
‘Want to go to Tucson?’ she asked.
I did. I wanted to go there badly, to put my hands around Halvorson’s landlord’s neck and shake everything he knew about his tenant from his head. But more than that, I wanted to get Amanda home, safely away from me. She’d been right. I was messing with a future senator. Guys like him employed people who didn’t smile much.
‘Halvorson’s long gone from Tucson,’ I said.
‘The grims are waiting,’ Amanda said. She pointed to the two men waiting outside Signature Flight Support at Chicago’s Midway Airport as we taxied up. It was four in the morning. ‘No doubt they’re displeased I gave them the slip.’
‘They watch you closely?’
‘When I called work, saying I wouldn’t be coming in, they would have checked with security at my condo, found out I’d left and begun tracking me.’
‘You can’t play hookey?’
‘Sure I can, so long as they can come along. Remember, my father was murdered not that long ago. Today they had to make sure I wasn’t abducted for ransom.’
‘Again,’ I said. Amanda had been abducted for ransom when her father was still alive.
‘I was wrong to blow off the day on the sly. I was wasteful of their time and that’s company money. I should have notified them.’
‘Have they been waiting here all day and all night?’
She laughed. ‘No. They knew when I’d be landing. There’s a website, free and accessible to all, that tracks all flights by aircraft tail number. They plugged in mine first thing this morning, saw that we were in the air to Oregon then tracked us flying to John Wayne Airport outside Laguna Beach. It was only when they saw us airborne back to Midway that they began to breathe easily.’
‘Why didn’t they call your cell?’
She grinned. ‘I left it in the Toyota.’
I was amazed and appalled. ‘Cat and mouse? That’s really your life now?’
She gazed out at the lights of the runways. ‘I’m wealthy; I’m a target. I felt confined and needed to rebel, like a young schoolgirl. But it was wrong.’
The co-pilot dropped the cabin door and we climbed down into the chill of a predawn, late October Chicago. ‘We’ll drop you in Rivertown,’ she said.
‘I’ll get a cab.’
‘Take my Toyota, at least.’ It had been pulled up behind a black stretch Escalade.
‘Cabbing is easier. Call me tomorrow?’
‘If I’m allowed a call from my gilded prison,’ she said.
I looked out the lobby window as I called a cab. One of her guards got behind the wheel of the Escalade; the other held the rear door open for her and then got in front next to the driver. A third guard followed in the Toyota. Her gilded prison was thickly walled, indeed.
She’d surely traveled a long distance since we’d first met in that small art gallery on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Watching her taillights disappear into the last of the night, I wondered if it would prove to be too far, or whether I’d simply not traveled far enough.