HARPER TURNED AND looked out the rear window. “What the hell is going on?” she asked breathlessly.
“Dunno. But that guy got off the elevator and headed toward our room.”
“Omigod. Are you sure?”
I gave her a look. “I’m sure. I didn’t wait to see if he kicked in our door or if he had a room on that floor, so I’m not absolutely certain he was after us.” Only 99.9 percent, I didn’t say.
“What’re we gonna do now?”
“Dunno. Give me a moment.”
We were still headed east. If the guy was in the hotel it was probably safe to check Ellen’s house one last time, see if she’d come back early from Idaho—not likely but worth a quick look. I headed over there, pulled into the driveway. We bailed out, went through the place fast, still no sign of Ellen. We locked up and took off again.
“Where to now?” Harper asked.
My burner rang. It was Lucy. I pulled to the curb and answered, put it on speaker.
“Are you out of there?” Lucy said.
“Yes.”
“Good. I just hope I did the right thing. I mean, I don’t know why I got that feeling, Mort. I just did.”
“You did good, babe.”
“Really? Sometimes I don’t know. Not for sure.”
“You were right this time.”
“Good. I guess. I mean, I wish I wasn’t, but as long as it helped, I’m glad.” She paused, then said, “What’s going on, Mort? What was I right about?”
I didn’t want to get Lucy involved. I had to soft-pedal this one. “Harper is trying to avoid some guy. He might be trouble. She and I were in the hotel restaurant when you called. We got out of there right before he came in.” She would beat the shit out of me when she found out what had really happened, but this three-quarters lie was for her, not for me. I didn’t like doing it, but I had to. “We’re out of the hotel now,” I told her, “and not going back.”
Harper remained quiet, watching me. She knew I was giving Lucy half-truths, and she knew why.
“Well … good, Mort. I had the weird feeling it was something like that. Anyway, I Googled motels in McGill and got you a room there at the Desert Rose Motel under the names John and Britany Taggart. I told the guy on the phone I was Britany and that you and I were in separate cars but we were going to meet up there later and that you would get there first—and your wallet was stolen in Vegas, which is why I was making the reservation. While you’re there, Harper will be Britany Taggart. I told him what you look like, Mort, so go to the office and give the guy there the story. He’s expecting you. Leave Harper outside while you get the room. He’s not expecting Britany to get there until later. The room is paid for. Stay in the room and … be safe. You’ve got room fifteen, by the way.”
For the past few years, she had an ID and credit cards in the name of Britany Taggart. This business with the guy in the black pickup is why Lucy, Ma, and I have fake IDs. You never know when you’ll need them.
“Good work, hon,” I said. McGill was a small town about fifteen miles north of Ely on Highway 93.
“I’d really like to be with you right now,” Lucy said. “But I don’t know what good I would be, and Mom’s sort of … you know.”
“I’ve heard how that goes. You stay put. Harper and I will be okay. I’ve got something of a lead on Elrood. He might be up in Elko so we’ll head up there in the morning, get out of the area here.”
“That sounds like a good idea. Can I do anything more for you from here right now?”
“Not that I can think of. If I do, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, Mort. Keep Harper safe, and you.”
“Will do.” I ended the call.
“Keep me safe,” Harper said, swiping at a tear. “She is … really amazing.”
“On many levels,” I said.
The Desert Rose at dusk was pink stucco illuminated by pink floods. Other than the color, it looked reasonably inviting. More than inviting, under the circumstances.
I parked well away from the office and Harper stayed put while I went in. Lucy’s story got me by the gaunt fifty-something gray-haired guy behind the desk. I signed the registration form in the name of John Taggart and got a key for room 15.
“Sorry about you losing your wallet,” the guy said.
“Thanks. Worst thing isn’t losing the eighty bucks, it’s the license, credit cards, all the stuff I’ve got to replace.”
“I hear that.”
I got Harper and our bags into the room, then drove the truck a quarter mile north to the only other motel in town, the Silver Hills, left the truck in a dirt lot behind a Texaco station next door. I hiked back in the dark, ducking into side streets and behind bushes every time a vehicle came by, long before it could hit me with its lights.
Paranoia R Us.
With a population of eleven hundred, McGill was less than a third the size of Ely. It was good to be out of Ely, but this was only a stopgap measure. I wanted to get to Elko, far away from Ely and the guy in the black Ram.
I gave the door three knocks then one before opening it with the key and ducking inside. I shut it quickly, then turned and Harper gave me a hug. Not so much a hug as like someone clinging to a rock as the tide came in. She’d changed into her too-large T-shirt. Didn’t feel like she was wearing anything under it, but what did I know? Anyway, I’m tough. I’m okay with large fast-moving bugs, spiders, and braless women.
I let her hang on until she was ready to turn loose. I took the time to gaze around. The room was a standard small rectangle, bathroom at the far end, a single queen-size bed against a wall in the middle, facing a TV and desk, wall lights on either side of the bed, single light overhead in a generic fixture. Only one wall light was on. Harper’s gun was on a night table at the side of the bed nearest the bathroom.
She looked up at me. “This is just so … awful.”
“I know.”
“It’s like someone really is after us. After me, actually, and you pretty much got in the way.”
“We don’t know that for sure, but …” In fact, we did. I tried to sugarcoat it. Big Guy had been seated at a table in the restaurant for one minute when we got up and left. Three minutes later he’s up on our floor? That didn’t come close to passing the smell test.
“We need a name for that guy,” I said. “We can’t keep calling him ‘big guy.’ How about Max?”
I felt her shrug. “Okay.” She took a deep breath, then turned me loose and sat on the bed. “I guess I’m kind of a wuss, letting all of this get to me.”
“It’s getting to me too, kiddo.”
She gave me a dim half-smile. “Kiddo. I feel like a kid. I mean, I can face a class full of hormone-driven freshman hellions, but this is … different.” She took another deep breath. “I’ll try to keep it together, Mort. I haven’t been a teacher for five years for nothing.”
“Take your time.”
She closed her eyes, hung her head. Then she looked up at me. “I still feel kinda shaky. I’m gonna take a shower. Maybe that’ll help.”
“Go. Enjoy. I’ll take one later. Didn’t get one last night at Olivia’s.”
She gave me another half-smile. “We should’ve.”
We? Nope, not gonna touch that one.
She took a wad of clothes into the bathroom, left the door partway open, turned on the water. I couldn’t see into the bathroom from where I stood. Good enough.
I paced for a minute, out of sorts, then phoned Lucy. “We’re at the motel,” I told her. “Got safely out of Dodge, so thank you.”
“Who is this guy Harper’s avoiding, Mort?”
“She doesn’t know him. She’s never seen him before. He pretty much showed up out of the blue.”
“Could it have something to do with her mother who’s missing?”
“We don’t know. Anything’s possible.”
“That all sounds so weird. I mean, you were off to find that Elrood guy. No big deal. Now this.”
“You’ve got your special abilities, I’ve got mine.”
“Yeah, well, I like mine better. Harper’s there with you now, is she? Doing okay?”
“In the shower as we speak.”
“Groovy.” I heard a smile in her voice. “So you two are gonna head up to Elko in the morning?”
“That’s the plan. How’s your mother holding up?”
“She doesn’t start with the fun stuff until tomorrow. We haven’t been talking about it very much. Avoiding it, actually. Looks like we’re gonna watch a movie tonight. Or two movies. Call me in the morning? Not too early, I might be up kind of late.”
“Will do.” I ended the call, looked around the room, didn’t see a billiard table or dartboard to occupy the time, so I dug out my Forsyth novel and read a few pages.
Five minutes later Harper came out in a tank top and panties with a towel wrapped around her head.
“Look at you,” I said. “All dressed up, no place to go.”
She smiled. “I don’t have to be. All dressed up, that is.”
“Uh-huh. It’s a free country. Do whatever you like.”
“Wow. That’s a huge improvement.”
“Right. I’m gonna hit the shower. How’s the water?”
“Wetter than usual. You’ll totally need a towel after. Just to get dry, though.”
“Part of this PI shtick I’ve got going is that I run into women with razor-sharp wits.”
“Do you? That’s gotta be annoying.”
“It is. Also, I didn’t get any useful information out of you, which doesn’t surprise me. But I’m glad to see you’re back in form.”
She looked down at herself. “You noticed? Cool.”
I smiled, opened a three-pack of underwear, took out one, and went into the bathroom, shut the door.
10:05 p.m. I came out in jeans, no shirt, bare feet, hair wet. Harper was under the covers on the side nearest the bathroom, shoulders bare, sheet across her breasts and tucked under her arms, reading the novel she’d picked up: Suspicion of Malice. Her clothes were on a chair against the opposite wall.
She looked up at me. “You look very clean.”
“An illusion I create with smoke and mirrors to fool the teeming masses.”
She patted the bed beside her. “If you want to get in here and read, I won’t bite or even grope. But leave your jeans off, if you don’t mind.”
“I like these jeans.”
“Do you regularly sleep in long denim pants?”
“Not regularly, not every night.”
“Then take them off, hop in and read for a while or conk out. I won’t touch you, I promise. And if you touch me, I’ll scream and call 911.” She went back to her novel.
Good enough.
I got my gun out, checked its load, set it on the night table on my side of the bed, then checked the door one last time, made sure the deadbolt was thrown and the security gizmo was set. Even so, one good kick and the door would blow open so I jammed the back of a chair under the knob. At least it would make a hell of a racket if Max tried to break in.
I stripped off my jeans.
“Jockeys,” Harper said. “And here I thought you were a boxers man.”
“I’m nothing if not versatile.” I got between the sheets and picked up my novel.
Harper turned a page. “Next question: Do you go to bed in underwear on a regular basis?”
“Not usually. Sometimes I make an exception.”
“I don’t either. Ever.”
“Interesting, but irrelevant.”
“Couldn’t find undies with little red hearts, huh?”
“Hey, I’m trying to read here.”
She smiled without looking at me. “This is a pretty good novel. How’s yours?”
“Mine’s a classic. Well, a classic thriller, not one of the classic classics like The Scarlet Letter.”
She kept her eyes on her book. “That’s an interesting choice of classics to pull out of thin air.”
“Hawthorne and I never really hit it off. Only reason I mention him is because my therapist suggested aversion therapy whenever I run into certain things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Stray naked women in my bed for one.”
“You have a therapist? That sounds like an excellent idea. Hope he or she is good.”
“It’s hard to read with all this talking,” I said.
“I know, right? I wish you’d shut up.”
“You and Lucy will get along great.”
“I’m sure, since we have something in common. Sort of, anyway.”
I didn’t ask what.
Harper put her book aside at 11:00, got out of bed, turned off the light on her side, and walked six feet to the bathroom. And, no, she doesn’t wear anything to bed, but I knew that.
On the other hand, my underwear was going to stay in place as if super-glued.
I read until she came back. She slipped into bed. I got up and heard a snicker, but I’m used to it so … water off a duck’s back. I didn’t even break stride as I went into the bathroom.
When I returned and was about to get into bed, I heard that snicker again. I turned off the light on my side, kept the jockeys on, and got between the sheets.
Someone sighed, sort of loud too, but it was dark so I couldn’t tell who it was.
We were out of the motel by 6:40 the next morning. I was in jeans and a T-shirt. Anticipating another hot day, Harper wore blue shorts and her contour-revealing tank top. “Let’s go back to Ely,” she said. “I want to see if Ellen is home yet.”
“Maybe not a good idea. Also, you could call her. You have Jeff’s number.”
“I know, but I’d still like to go. We could grab a quick bite to eat at her place. Something actually healthy. Isn’t there a way to do it safely?”
Safely? Safely would be to get a quick unhealthy bite right here in McGill and head straight for Elko. “Maybe,” I said, not listening to a little voice whispering in my head. Which I should have.
“A quick in and out?” she said hopefully. “Anyway, I have another tank top at her place. I left it there last time I came to visit. I could use it.” She gave me a smile. “It’s thin too. And tight.”
“Two very fine qualities in a tank top.”
“I thought you’d think so.”
I shrugged, put the truck in gear. “If we see a black pickup anywhere around her place, we’re outta there.”
We got to Ellen’s at 7:02. The sun was up but it wasn’t hot yet, temperature in the sixties, birds in the trees, a dog trotting along a sidewalk, and a white sedan of some kind parked in Ellen’s driveway.
“Huh,” I grunted. “Looks like she’s got company.”
“She better not mind us barging in on her. She’s got some explaining to do since she took off when she knew I was coming to see her.”
“She’s got Jeff on her mind, Harp.”
“Even so.”
I parked at the curb and we got out. We ambled over to the car, a Nissan Altima. I peered in a window and there was a dead guy on the floor in back.