AFTER BREAKFAST THE next morning, Lucy, Harper, and I drove our cars back to Reno. We arrived at the Washington Street house where Lucy and I live at 1:35 p.m. The house used to be Jeri’s. Jeri DiFrazzia was my fiancée, my love, and my mentor in the art of investigation two years ago, murdered back then by an evil woman named Julia. Jeri ran her investigation business out of the house. It had two floors, gables, dormer windows, a home gym, covered front entrance two steps up from the front yard, five hundred feet from the Truckee River and a pedestrian and bike path where Lucy and I regularly took ten-mile jogs.
I stashed the stuff I’d removed from Kyle’s truck in the detached garage—except for the handguns and the .30-06 rifle. I’d never fired a Casull .454 revolver before. I was looking forward to it. I locked the firearms in a gun safe Lucy’s father bought us last year. I didn’t need the Sequoia any longer, so Lucy and Harper followed along in Lucy’s Mustang as I returned it to Avis.
“Where to?” Lucy asked when we stood outside in the Avis parking lot, temperature in the high nineties.
“Ma’s,” I said. “Let’s see what’s going on, make sure she’s okay and doesn’t need us for anything right away.”
Turns out I hadn’t thought that through all the way to the endgame, not that it would’ve mattered in the long run. Ma was at her computer when we went in. Lucy made a beeline to the old Coke ad. She flipped it out of the way to reveal the poster of my nudie picture at the WNBR a year and a half ago.
“Cool,” Harper said. “Except for the red body paint, he hasn’t changed any that I can see—I mean, that I saw.”
That got a giggle from Lucy and a bawdy cackle from Ma. I thought about heading out to get a beer somewhere, let the three of them settle down.
Ma still hadn’t heard what had happened in the past two days. Lucy told her the story—Kyle capturing her and Harper, taking them into the hills near Silver Peak, that he was going to kill them once he got his hands on a copy of the video the two teenage girls had made. By then, Ma was staring daggers at me. She’d figured out the timing.
“You called me two nights ago, boyo, and didn’t say one flippin’ word about these two being kidnapped.”
“I didn’t want to upset you or make you worry.”
“You also called me yesterday evening.”
“Uh-huh. I kind of remember that.”
She glared at me. “You didn’t tell me Lucy and Harper had been kidnapped then either.”
“Must’ve slipped my mind. You know how it is with Alzheimer’s. Means you only need one novel, one DVD.”
“Clean out your desk. You are so damn fired, Mort.”
“I am … decimated, Ma.”
She glared at me, then faced Lucy. “You and Harper were kidnapped? Then what? I mean, here you are. You’re not hurt? Either of you?”
“No. Mort showed up and saved us.” She didn’t get a chance to elaborate because Ma grabbed her in a hug, then hugged Harper. Then, surprise, I got one too. I usually get left out. “Good job,” Ma whispered in my ear.
“Not necessarily.” She backed off and gave me a hard look. “I asked you yesterday if Kyle was dead. Is he?”
“Still don’t know, Ma.”
“Why the hell don’t you?”
“It’s sort of a long story. How about we catch you up on everything after we shower, change into clean clothes? We only stopped by to say howdy and get hugs. Let’s meet up in the Green Room in an hour, maybe a little longer, say three thirty, get all of us caught up on events.”
“Booze,” she said. “Sounds good. It’ll be a mite early for that, but I’ll make an exception this time.”
Knew she would.
Back at our house, we got Harper settled into a spare bedroom on the second floor. Freshen-up showers for one and all, clean clothes, a tour of the house, the yard, a walk around the block to stretch our legs and give Harper a feeling for the neighborhood, then we took Lucy’s Mustang to the Golden Goose. The girls wore killer sheath dresses, Lucy in black, Harper in emerald green, both of them with lots of leg showing through thigh-high splits. The dresses were Lucy’s. She and Harper looked like sisters. I had on black jeans and a white linen Guayabera shirt.
I parked on the fourth floor of the parking garage, and we walked down two flights and across the skyway to the Goose. We rode the escalator to the first floor and strolled through the moronic siren song of a thousand slot machines, the girls turning dozens of heads as they went. We finally got to the Green Room, tucked far enough into a corner of the casino that it was still one of Reno’s best kept secrets. We hoped it would stay that way.
By the time Ma arrived, the girls had daiquiris in front of them and were draining them through red straws as thin as hypodermic needles. I had an icy bottle of Pete’s Wicked Ale, first one since Harper and I were at the Red Lion in Elko. We were perched on stools at the bar under the eerie green track lighting with a television above the bar running a soap opera designed, apparently, to lower IQs.
Ma was in Reebok jogging shoes, black slacks, and a blue shirt. She was still on a walking kick, averaging four miles a day. She had lost fifteen pounds in the year since she’d started the routine. And she’d given up the Camels, but she was vaping which was weird, especially when she gave off a subtle scent of pineapple.
Traci Ellis was the lone bartender that afternoon. She was twenty-six, gorgeous, slender but curvy, sporting her usual amount of cleavage. Against all odds, she was Patrick O’Roarke’s fiancée—O’Roarke being the evening bartender five days a week, forty-seven years old, six-five, Yosemite Sam moustache, and humorless this past year when it came to honoring well-deserved free-drink coupons.
Traci slid a double shot of bourbon in front of Ma, planted her elbows on the bar, stuck her face a foot from mine, and said, “You’re lookin’ good, kiddo.”
“Kiddo is my word, kiddo. Hands off.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, “hands off.” She said it with a smile, aware that Traci was an unrepentant flirt, but harmless as a golden retriever puppy since flirting was all she ever did. She was an expert at it, however. I thought her tip income would be impressive. I would have to ask O’Roarke if she had eclipsed him as the household’s senior breadwinner.
Harper gave me a sidelong look after Traci moved on to a guy farther down the bar. “You’ve had practice in the art of dealing with a certain kind of woman,” she said.
“Explains a lot, actually.”
“You mean that night at Olivia’s?”
“That’s right.” She bumped my shoulder with hers, a friendly gesture—and still flirty.
The soap opera ended with someone’s nephew coming in French doors and finding a fifty-something vamp in the arms of a twenty-something shirtless stud who was the husband of the nephew’s sister. Maybe. I could’ve been wrong about that because my IQ is well above sixty.
“How about we get a table and talk?” I said.
“’Bout time,” Ma replied. She grabbed her drink and stood up. “I want to know what you did about Kyle.”
We gathered around a table twenty-five feet from the nearest people in the place, two women wearing skirts and silk blouses, high heels kicked off, laughing raucously and a bit drunkenly about their husbands.
Ma leaned closer to me. “Okay, boyo, where the hell is Elrood Wintergarden? How’s that comin’ along?”
“Ha ha, Ma. Who’s Elrood?”
She smiled. “I probably oughta give that to one of our competitors. I’m thinkin’ Yancy Hubbard.”
“I would. Those two deserve each other.”
She chortled, then got serious. “Early this morning I had Jerry send that video to Sylvia Haas.” Jerry Westfall was her most competent hacker, barely nineteen years old, sworn to secrecy with one of Ma’s death threats hanging over his head. He was paid enough to keep his mouth shut. So far he had, which was unusual considering his age.
“And?” Lucy said.
“And nothin’. Yet. My guess is she’s sweating bullets about now. She can’t know exactly where the video of Kyle’s confession came from, though she oughta be able to guess in a general way. She might be looking at us. But I ain’t heard nothing and it’s been eight hours.” Ma peered at me. “I still want to know how you got him to say all that. It looked like he was hurting some.”
“Worse than you know, Ma,” I said. We’d kept his arm out of the videos. I told her about the shaped charge on the radiator, the night trip to Wells, the toy alligator, the whole nine yards. It was the first Harper had heard about it in that much detail, especially the stuffed gator in which I’d hidden the explosive.
“Wow,” she said when I was done.
“Yeah, wow,” Lucy said. “And he wasn’t even wearing his cape and tights.”
Harper smiled. “If I remember, he wasn’t wearing anything for quite a while after he almost killed Kyle.”
“Huh?” Ma grunted. “Did I miss somethin’?”
“Nothing important, Ma,” I said.
Lucy stepped up to the plate. “Mort failed to mention that Kyle made him strip when he got to the cabin.”
“Thanks, sweetheart,” I growled.
She smiled as she sipped her drink. “You’re welcome.”
“Strip?” Ma said. “What’s that mean? How far?”
“All the way. Buck naked. He wasn’t even wearing flip-flops.”
“Really?” Traci said. “Not even flip-flops? How did I miss out on that? Where was this? And why?”
Aw, jeez. It was dim in the place and she’d snuck up on us on little fairy feet in her dark outfit. Wasn’t anyone keeping an eye out for that broad? She needed to drag a chain or wear a string of little flashing lights.
“It was sort of a weird deal,” Lucy said, not missing a beat. “I’m still okay with this daiquiri, in case you’re here about our drinks.”
Everyone else was too, so Traci left. She looked back as she went and gave me a risqué wink.
“Buck naked,” Ma said, getting things back on track.
“It was so he couldn’t hide a weapon,” Lucy told her. “Which he did anyway. An ice pick.”
“Yeah? Where? Or don’t I want to know?”
Aw, jeez.
Lucy described the ice pick holder. My back.
“Christ, Mort,” Ma said. She stared at me, then put a motherly hand on my leg. “That musta hurt.”
“It did. Still does, sorta. Do I get a bonus for that?”
She patted my leg a few times. “How’s that?”
“Much better now, thanks. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t have to use that ice pick. I didn’t get a chance to practice pulling it.”
“But he was totally prepared,” Lucy said. “He said the Boy Scout oath right after he took care of Kyle.”
“Did not.”
“So where’s this Kyle character now?” Ma asked. I’d ended the story with his confession, didn’t tell her how I’d left him.
I shrugged. “No idea.” I told her I had unchained his feet, left him with two half-liters of water, no food, twenty miles up in the hills, low on blood, low on fingers.
“I would’ve turned out his lights,” she said.
“That sounds good on paper, Ma. But it would’ve been one too many.”
She thought about that. “Gotcha.” She gave that a few more seconds, then shook her head. “I still would’ve.”
“One too many?” Harper asked.
“Those two are always saying goofy things like that,” Lucy told her. “How’s your daiquiri?”
“Good.”
“Mine too. We should have another one, get loose.”
Right then, I heard the words “Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Haas.” I whipped my head around. Lucy put a hand on my arm. She’d heard it too.
We stared at the TV from across the room. Breaking news. Ginger Haley, talking head for the NBC affiliate, was outdoors holding a microphone, squinting in the sunlight. A sprawling Spanish-style mansion was behind her, police cars with flashing red and blue lights, yellow crime scene tape keeping her from getting too close to the action.
“… in what appears to be a murder-suicide. Ms. Haas and her husband, Carl Haas, an orthopedic surgeon here in Reno. They were discovered by Ms. Haas’s brother and his wife at two fifty this afternoon. Early reports indicate that Ms. Haas and her husband died sometime between noon and 1:00 p.m. today.” Ginger looked behind her, then faced the camera and shrugged, at a loss for what more to say about the Haases, which meant she wasn’t likely to make it to the big time in Manhattan. Finally, she said, “We’ll bring you more news as it comes in.”
“Wowie,” Lucy said. We all got up and headed for the bar like a school of fish, closer to the television.
Ginger must’ve been told to keep it going because she said, “Uh, this is the second major, um, upset in Nevada’s government in the past couple of weeks. The first was the disappearance of Attorney General Annette Leeman a week or so ago. Leeman’s body was discovered in the trunk of a car by Reno private investigator Mortimer Angel in eastern Nevada in the town of Ely, five days ago.”
Traci Ellis touched my arm. “Nice goin’, spitfire,” she said, using O’Roarke’s nursery-school name for me when I’d done good. “Your name rolls off Ginger’s tongue like, well, like strawberry ice cream.”
“Hush, girlie.” Though I might have to ask about that strawberry ice cream thing at a later date, find out exactly what she meant and how it worked.
Ginger held an earbud closer to her ear. She nodded slightly, then said, “At this point there doesn’t seem to be any connection between Leeman’s murder and the events in the Haases’ residence.” She listened to the earbud again, then said, “Oh, uh, there is, there might be, some sort of a video that”—she pressed the earbud closer and gazed into the camera lens—“that might pertain to this terrible event? No details right now, but we’ll keep you informed as new information is made available.” One more look behind her, then, “This is Ginger Haley in Reno for NBC News.”
A commercial for Carnival Cruise Lines came on. They didn’t show one of their ships ramming another in port, shredding a fantail, so it wasn’t enough to keep us glued to the TV. We got up and headed back to our private table.
Quietly, Lucy said, “It sounds like she took that video kinda hard. Sylvia, I mean, not Ginger.”
“Kinda,” Harper replied. “Both of them, actually, but Sylvia got the worst of it.”
“I always thought people in politics were book smart and dumb as turkeys in the rain,” Ma said. “Especially U.S. senators if they’ve been in office more than two terms.”
Sounded right to me, although I could think of a few representatives who would drown in a drizzle if they didn’t have an aide to keep them from gawping up at the sky.
“Now what?” Lucy said to no one in particular.
“Now nothin’,” Ma said. “This mess is cleaning itself up. The hag killed her husband for messing with those two young girls because it meant she’s not gonna be vice president, at least not on this planet, and she would’ve had to deny Kyle’s video, which she knew wouldn’t work for long because more shit is gonna come out once people look harder. Now we sit tight. It’s likely this thing will roll over the three of you pretty soon, RPD or the FBI, but it’s not a crime to not report a crime when it happens to you and only you. You don’t have to put yourself in the public’s eye. Shouldn’t have to, anyway. It might be a Fifth Amendment issue. Guess we’ll find out. If not, I’ll post your bail.”
She looked at Lucy. “Anza kidnapped you and Harper, but if you don’t want to press charges, that’s up to you. All Mort did was save you, so they might be forced to pin an attaboy medal on his chest after they get through pissing and moaning—which they always do when they don’t get the credit they think they deserve, even though they were sitting around the office eating doughnuts at the time. The state can bring its own charges—if Kyle makes it out of the hills alive and gets caught trying to sneak off to Uruguay or someplace south of El Paso. Which ain’t likely if, like you said, he was losing essential fluids.”
“Nice, Ma,” I said.
She shrugged. “No tellin’ what’s gonna happen now. Too many ways it can go.” She turned to me. “But you’re fired, boyo. I’ll give a statement to the media to that effect later. I don’t want this ‘cluster’ hurtin’ my business.”
“Cluster, Ma? It’s not like you to pull that punch.”
“Huh.” She stared at her drink. “That’s what I get for hittin’ the booze early.”
Historically speaking, I get fired two or three times a year for finding bodies, body parts, and other infractions of the rules, none of which are written down anywhere, which I think is both wrong and prejudicial. This, though, was a banner year for Mort firings.
We headed back to barstools for more drinks and the five o’clock news. Ginger was back in the studio. A video had surfaced implicating Sylvia Haas in some sort of illegal activity, but details were being withheld by the authorities, as was the provenance of the video: yours truly.
Ginger’s eyes sharpened as she said, “An unnamed source in the Reno Police Department indicated that the video might be a motive for that alleged murder-suicide at the Haases’ residence this afternoon.”
“Might be and alleged,” Lucy said. “Good call, Ginger honey. Wait’ll you find out the lieutenant governor had her psychotic boyfriend murder a lot of people, including the attorney general. That’ll brighten your day.”
We abandoned the bar again and went back to the privacy of our table. Ma hadn’t heard much of what had taken place earlier that week, so it didn’t take long for it to get around to the way Harper and I met, the gun she pulled on me, the iffy drive down the mountain on three tires, one of them squishy. That led to the stabilizing solution that kept the truck upright and steerable, which got more than its rightful share of commentary and girlish laughter. The talk then turned to Olivia Olsen, “Double-O,” and clothes so wet they formed puddles, clothes in the dryer, then to my being forced to sleep in a too-small bed with Harper under conditions that might be considered unseemly in one or more Bible Belt soybean states.
“Forced,” Ma said. “Right. In one room, one bed, and that old gal had your clothes. You might’ve come up with a way out of that, which reminds me of the Chickadee.”
Oh, no.
“Chickadee?” Harper asked, lifting an eyebrow.
Ma told the story. She loves to tell it, but she doesn’t embellish because it’s a beaut all by itself. “To avoid having to further grope the left tit of a busty Hispanic girl in a bar in the town of Bend, Oregon—”
“Further grope?” Harper interrupted.
“Yep. The size of a cantaloupe was the report. To avoid it, Mort excused himself to the men’s room, then squeezed out a back window, which was three sizes too small for a circus midget, and the Chickadee was already there in the back alley watching as he slithered out head-first. I believe she called him a shithead. That right, Mort?”
“Somethin’ like that,” I mumbled.
“Slithered,” Harper said. “What a marvelous image.”
“The point of the story,” Ma went on, “is that Mort is inventive when it comes to avoiding certain things. Which he obviously didn’t at Olivia’s place.”
“So I got lucky?” Harper said.
Ma smiled. “Not just you. I took that picture you saw in my office today. He doesn’t always get off scot-free. I’m not convinced he doesn’t choose when to run and when to stay put and enjoy himself.” She toasted me with her drink. I thought about having Traci cut off her booze.
Then, of course, Harper had to mention the cosmic timing of Olivia returning our dry clothes as I was in mid-stride, crossing the room to retrieve a towel. I was six feet from the door when Olivia popped in.
“You lead a charmed life, boyo,” Ma told me.
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Olivia complimented me on my man,” Harper went on. “One look and she told me I was a lucky little gal.”
Lucy choked down a laugh and spilled a bit of her drink.
Aw, jeez. I got up. “Estrogen cloud’s gettin’ kinda thick here. O’Roarke’s on duty now. I could use a buddy fix.”
To more girlish laughter, I headed toward the bar.
O’Roarke saw me coming. He opened a Pete’s and slid the bottle toward me. “Nice goin’, spitfire. You found the attorney general. Beer is on the house for the next three minutes.”
“My finding Leeman is old news. You’re a day late and a dollar short, but thanks for the adult beverage. I’ll take another beer in two minutes, thanks.”
“I haven’t seen you in a week. I’m catching us up on events and drinks. And good luck with that second beer.”
Traci Ellis was still behind the bar. She came around the end and headed toward the women’s locker room—the table I’d just left. “Gotta see what all the laughter’s about,” she said. “You guys stay put.”
“Good luck,” O’Roarke said to me. “She’ll be back.”
Which took three minutes.
“The Chickadee?” Traci snickered when she returned. “Oh. My. God.” She had tears in her eyes.
She popped into a back room and I heard laughter so strangled it sounded almost like crying.
“Told you,” O’Roarke said. “You might want to cut and run before she comes back, tell me about this Chickadee thing later.”
I marched back to the table and plopped down.
“If we’re done discussing my numerous shortcomings under duress,” I said, “we can talk about my analysis of how Harper’s car was disabled, then my finding the shaped charge Jake put on the radiator of my truck, which was—and it bothers me that I’m the one who has to bring this up—sheer freakin’ genius, people.”
“Granted,” Harper said, “but not as interesting as the events in Grange.”
I took another hit of Pete’s Wicked Ale. “Okay, great, everyone here has seen me in the buff. Let’s move on.”
“I haven’t,” Traci said. “Uh, how’s everyone doing with their drinks? Anyone need a refill?”
Sonofabitch. I was going to have to padlock a cowbell around that dame’s pretty, intrusive neck.
We caught the six o’clock news to see if anything more had been added to the story. Nada, so we left the Green Room and took an elevator to the Golden View, the best restaurant the Goose had to offer, up on the thirty-seventh floor. Before I left the bar, Traci slipped me a packet of free drink coupons held together with a rubber band. I counted them later: fifty. O’Roarke was gonna be pissed.
The Golden View is Reno’s only revolving restaurant, whirling around at the dizzying speed of one revolution every forty-eight minutes. I hadn’t been in the place since I was there with Holiday when we were following Julia and her lawyer and lover, Leland Bye—both of whom had since shuffled off to their well-deserved rewards.
Reno slowly slid around far below as we ate a leisurely meal. Three of us had been on the move too much. Time to slow down and relax, eat good food, talk about things other than clothing issues. We could mull over Sylvia and Carl’s demise later, and how much to tell RPD—and the FBI if and when they jumped into the game.
We took our time—the restaurant went around four times while we were there. We finally packed it in at 9:15, dusk, sun below the Sierras, pastel mauve and rose glow in the clouds to the west. The three women grabbed their purses and headed for the elevator. It figured the guy in the cape and the tights would get stuck with the bill, which came to well over two hundred bucks, with tip.
Ma left us on the second floor. She took an escalator down to street level to walk the mile back to her house. Lucy, Harper, and I went across the skyway to the parking garage and up two flights to Lucy’s Mustang.
Lucy and Harper went around to the passenger side while I opened the driver’s-side door.
“Hold it right the fuck there, Sally,” Kyle said. “You two girls stay put. Nobody fuckin’ move.”
I turned. He was coming around the back of an orange pickup truck, fifteen feet away, shuffling closer. He was a hideous sight, hair in disarray, eyes bloodshot under the security lighting, half his left forearm missing. He had a man’s necktie tied around his left bicep, a revolver in his one and only hand, centered on my chest. I caught a stench of decaying flesh.
Lucy and Harper were on the far side of the car. Kyle licked his lips, staggered slightly as he took a step closer to me, then looked past me at the girls.
“You two sluts get over here and stand next to this son of a bitch. Do it now. If you run, he’s dead.” He aimed the gun at my head.
“Mort!” Lucy yelped. I didn’t turn to look at her, but I could tell by her footsteps that she was doing what the murdering bastard told them to do.
“No, Luce!” I cried. I lowered my center of gravity and lunged at Kyle.
His gun went off. A bright light filled my head and I stumbled backward into the side of the Mustang. From an interstellar distance I heard three quick explosive pops as I landed on the concrete floor. My vision went dark. From a million miles away, I heard one last sharp pop, then Lucy said, “Ow, ow, ow, shit!”
Then the darkness turned black and I was gone.