Speeding west, Bonnie groped in her fanny pack and took out a pack of Parliament Whites and a lighter. She tamped out a cig and fired it up. Her hands were still shaking, and the first hungry inhalation made her cough.
Damn, she’d needed that. She hadn’t been completely kidding when she’d asked Pascal for a smoke.
She switched on her wipers. The rain was coming harder—not yet a downpour, but more than a drizzle. It was a good thing Pascal’s shot had gone so far wide. If he’d blown out one of her windows, she might be getting wet right now, and she’d had enough water for one night.
It occurred to her that this was the second time she’d been shot at in the Jeep within the past six months. First Jacob Hart, now Pascal. Did that make the Jeep lucky or unlucky? Hard to say.
The circumstances had been totally different, of course. Pascal had been acting on pure adrenaline and rage, while Jacob had planned his move and lain in wait. Maybe she could have avoided the confrontation with Jacob if she’d played things smarter. She couldn’t see how, though. If she could have done it over, she would probably have done it the same way.
She had taken care of Kurt Land in the woods—well, she thought she’d taken care of him, anyway—then returned to his townhouse to search it. She’d turned up a safe deposit key. No surprise. He would have needed a secure place to stash the blackmail documents, not to mention his loot; dumping a big pile of cash into a checking account would raise too many questions. Retrieving the money for her client wasn’t strictly part of her job, but she was a full-service PI.
She went to the bank, opened the safe deposit box, and found herself looking at bricks of hundred-dollar bills in neat bundles. The money went into her backpack. At the bottom of the box she discovered an envelope. The financial documents, she assumed. Wrong. Photo printouts. Night shots taken with a camera phone. They were vague and indistinct, but she could make out enough detail to see Jacob Hart’s profile and the slim figure of a girl.
On a January evening she again met Mr. and Mrs. Hart in her office. She handed over the money—all of it. She might be a killer, but she wasn’t a thief. Then she dealt out the photos like a hand of poker, only these cards were face up, and she watched Jacob’s face as she said, “You lied to me.”
She expected a denial, but there was none. He nonchalantly admitted the truth. He really had dismissed Kurt Land for embezzlement, as he’d said. But the blackmail attempt had nothing to do with Hart & Hawthorn’s business practices. It involved a personal matter.
“This girl.” Bonnie tapped the nearest photo.
“Yes,” Jacob said, while his wife closed her eyes and looked away.
It seemed Kurt Land had become obsessed with Jacob after his dismissal and had staked out his house. One night when Jacob left, Kurt followed him. He saw Jacob pick up a girl in Brighton Cove and drive her to an apartment in Maritime. Later he saw Jacob drop her off a block from her home. He followed her to her house and got her address. Using a reverse directory, he identified her as the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Wright. Her name was Sienna, and she was fifteen years old.
“Fifteen?” It was the first time Bonnie had heard Gillian Hart speak above a whisper. “My God, she’s still a child.”
“There are no children in this town,” Jacob said complacently. “They grow up fast. The girls, especially.”
“I’ve overlooked a lot ...” Gillian said in a warning tone.
Jacob gave her a hard stare. “And you’ll overlook this.”
Bonnie figured he was right. His wife wouldn’t leave him. She would do anything to avoid a scandal that would wreck her image and her perfect life.
“There’s nothing you can do, Miss Parker,” Jacob said in his unruffled way. “Yes, I misled you about the details of my blackmail problem, but you are the one who removed Mr. Land. You’re in it with me. If you bring me to justice for abusing a minor, I’ll tell the authorities about the work you’ve done for me. With my reputation ruined, I would not care about saving my own skin.”
“I’m not real big on working through the system,” Bonnie said.
He leaned forward, his eyes glittering and cold. “Perhaps you’re thinking you can dispatch me, as you dispatched Mr. Land. I wouldn’t do that. The details of our arrangement will come out postmortem in the event of my demise.”
“That’s probably bullshit.”
“Don’t test me, Miss Parker. One way or the other, if I go down, you go down. You may count on that.”
Bonnie figured he had her pretty much by the balls, metaphorically speaking. There were a lot of nasty things she would have enjoyed doing to him, but she couldn’t risk the repercussions. And yet she had to do something. Though Jacob had promised his wife that the affair was over, Bonnie assumed it was only a matter of time until he resumed seeing the girl. She bugged Sienna’s room and started keeping tabs on her. A month passed. Nothing happened. She was beginning to think Jacob might keep his word.
But evidently he’d never had any intention of doing that. He had held off from seeing Sienna only because he knew that Bonnie was sure to find out about it. He didn’t want word getting back to his wife. His course of action was clear: eliminate Bonnie Parker, and then there would be no obstacle to his love match.
Jacob could not have killed Kurt Land, because their known acrimony would have made him an obvious suspect. But he had no known connection with Brighton Cove’s only PI. Their relationship was completely off the books.
He lay in ambush in the alley behind her office. When she left late one night, he took his best shot. It wasn’t good enough.
There had been no postmortem exposure of their arrangement, though the prospect had cost her a few sleepless nights at the time.
She hit Highway 35 and turned north. Within a mile she saw the Roach House coming up on her left. Couple of cop cars in the lot. Some lookie-loos standing around. She cruised past without slowing. In another mile she would hit Branch Avenue and head inland. Away from the highway, away from the motel. That was good. She didn’t like being near it, didn’t like the feelings it brought up.
The camper in front of her was obeying the speed limit, which meant it was going way too slow. She was thinking about passing on the shoulder when red and blue lights flared in her rearview.
Crap.
She pulled over, worrying about the carbine in the rear storage compartment of the Jeep. She’d tossed a blanket over it, but she wasn’t sure it was fully concealed. The unregistered Glock in her fanny pack could be trouble too. Luckily she’d pulled on a rain poncho before leaving her house. It was a big floppy sheet of black vinyl with an attached hood and snaps at the sides, and it was loose enough to conceal the bulge around her waist.
She took a closer look at the car in the mirror and recognized it as Dan Maguire’s Buick, his personal ride—the one she’d trashed a few hours ago. He’d stuck a portable light bar on the roof. This was getting better and better.
She adjusted the mirror to see if Dan was alone in the car. He was. Then she noticed a ragged strip of duct tape on her wrist.
Hell. She’d never removed the tape. Bits of it clung to both arms. If Dan saw it, she’d have some ’splaining to do.
In the mirror, he climbed out on the driver’s side, wearing civilian clothes.
She clawed at the tape on her right wrist, tearing it free, and tossed the scraps on the floor.
Dan approached the car, moving quickly in the rain.
There was still tape on her left wrist. No time to get rid of it. She lowered her arm, wedging it between herself and the car door. With any luck he wouldn’t see it.
He rapped on the window. With her right hand she rolled it down. Glancing down, she saw the discarded tape on the floor mat and nudged it under the seat with her foot.
“Surprised you’re doing traffic stops, Dan. They bust you down to patrolman?”
He wiped a smear of raindrops off his face. “That’s funny, Parker. You’re a riot.”
“Whoa, what’s with the attitude? You seem more constipated than usual. Getting enough fiber in your diet?”
“Maybe I just don’t like it when people mess with my personal property.”
“Somebody TP your house?”
“An unidentified party dumped a pile of dogshit in my car.”
“Kids these days.”
“I’m not so sure it was kids.”
“Mischievous raccoons?”
“I’m thinking it was you.”
“Jeepers, Dan. What do you think I am, some kind of sociopath? Oh, right, you do.”
She didn’t know why he was wasting her time. Pascal must have determined the Kirbys’ address by now. He could get to them at any moment.
“So tell me,” Dan said, hunching his shoulders against the rain, “why exactly are you tooling around at midnight?”
“Got a yen for some Taco Bell.”
“Where were you before this?”
“On the beach.”
“In the rain?”
“It hasn’t been raining long.”
“What were you doing on the beach at night?”
“Meditating.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You?”
“What, I can’t be spiritual? I was opening my friggin’ chakras.”
She was glad she had the cigarette. It steadied her, gave her something to do with her hand. Her right hand, anyway. The left was still wedged out of sight.
“No witnesses?” Dan pressed.
“Why would I need witnesses? I’m not a suspect in anything, am I?”
“It seems like you’re always out and about when there’s trouble.”
“No more than you, Dan. What kind of trouble are we talking about?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Must be something big, to bring out the chief of police at this hour.”
“We received an anonymous shots-fired call from the Coach House. And you just happen to be in the vicinity.”
“It’s a small town. I’m in the vicinity of pretty much everything.”
“I just think it’s interesting. The coincidence, you know.”
“You think I fired the shot, Dan? Is that it?”
“It’s not the gunshot that got me out of bed. It’s what’s inside the motel room.”
“Dead body?”
“The officers at the scene report a bathtub rigged with wires. Like something was hooked up to the wires. A car battery, maybe. Any idea what that’s about?”
“Either the world’s worst high school science experiment or a torture setup.”
“It’s summer. High school’s not in session.”
“So, torture.”
“That’s what we’re thinking.” The rain fell harder. “And that’s why I was headed over there. We don’t get too many torture cases in Brighton Cove.”
“Maybe that should be our slogan.”
“They tell me whoever was in the room cleared out in a hurry.”
She wondered how far she could press him for info. “Any ID on the guest?”
“Some foreigner. That’s all the manager remembers. Latin American, he says.”
“That covers a lot of ground.” Alan’s friend must have kept his mouth shut about a local attorney’s interest in that particular guest. “Any way to narrow it down? Credit card, license plate, vehicle description?”
“I’m told the guy paid cash. Manager didn’t see the car. And the Coach House isn’t the kind of place where you sign the register.”
“Guess not.”
He leaned in through the window, squinting at her. “When was the last time you were in the Coach House?”
She blew smoke in his face. “I don’t frequent dives like that.”
“So you’re saying we won’t find your prints in there?”
This was a bluff. Any motel room would have thousands of prints, too many to process. “I haven’t been inside, so how could I leave prints?”
“Yeah. How could you?”
He was staring at her from inches away. In the close confines of the car, she was reminded of Pascal’s penetrating gaze. A tremor threatened to zigzag through her body.
“You okay, Parker?”
Apparently she hadn’t suppressed the tremor well enough. “Torture kind of freaks me out. Good thing I wasn’t around during the Spanish Inquisition.”
“If you had been, you’d’ve found a way to beat the system. Unless you came up against me.”
“Wanna put me on the rack, Dan?”
“It would be one way to get answers. I know you’re involved somehow. Like before, I’m smelling your stink all over this thing.”
“I’m smelling your stink, too, buddy boy. Maybe you didn’t clean out your car as good as you thought.”
He squinted harder. “You think you’re smart, smarter than me.”
“That’s not setting the bar very high.”
“But it’s the smart ones who always trip up.”
“Sounds like somebody’s been watching Columbo.”
He stared off into the night, then turned his head to face her. “Tom and Rebecca,” he said.
She was sure she hadn’t heard him correctly. “What?”
“They were your parents, right? Tom and Rebecca Parker.”
“You’re into genealogy now?”
“They were crooks. They got murdered in a motel. Probably not much different from the Coach House.”
“You sure you haven’t been sampling the illegal substances in the evidence room?”
“Are you saying Tom and Rebecca weren’t your folks?”
“I’m saying it’s none of your damn business who’s in my family tree.”
“Everything about you is my business. I’ve made it my business. You’re a bad seed.”
She thought about giving him the finger, but her right hand was occupied with the cigarette, and her left had to stay out of view. “Look, am I getting a ticket or what?”
“No ticket. I just stopped for a chat.”
“Great. Nice talking to you. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a Burrito Grande with my name on it.”
“Got my eye on you, Parker. I’m watching. Always watching.”
“With all the great stuff on TV, I’m surprised you can find the time.”
He started to walk off. She peeled off the tape on her left wrist, then thought of something. She stuck her head out the window into the rain.
“Hey, Dan? What got lifted from the sporting goods shop?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I might have a lead on some hot merchandise.”
“Well, unless it’s a PSE Mach-twelve, you’re on the wrong track. That’s a—”
“I know what it is.”
“Is that your hot merch?”
“Nope. Guess I’m wasting your time.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
And fuck you, too, she thought.
She drove off, maintaining the posted speed limit until she turned onto Branch and was out of his sight. Then she floored the gas pedal, accelerating down the two-lane rural road at sixty, hoping she didn’t hit a damn deer.
She’d lucked out, anyway. If Dan had noticed the carbine in the rear or the tape on her wrist, she would be cooling her heels in the station house. She could have talked her way out of it eventually, but by then it would have been too late to save Alan Kirby and his family.
She only hoped it wasn’t too late now.