3 Swift Run (25 page)

“The state patrolman mentioned it when we—I—called to say I was stuck on the highway.
He said what a great guy you were.” A lie, but Charlie figured it wouldn’t hurt. “Look,
can you put the gun down?” She put some emphasis on the word “gun” in case Dan hadn’t
caught on.

“Uh-uh,” Fred said. “You’re a crafty one, you are. You might not be much bigger than
a snippet, but you’ve got some wiles. You just march to the aisle by the window and
fetch a roll of duct tape so I can make sure you don’t try to pull a fast one while
I call the cops. I’ll bet you know right where that tape is, what with looting the
place and all.”

Charlie began to walk backward, not wanting to turn her back on the shotgun. “How
did you get here?”

“Snowmobile. I live just over the rise”—he jerked his head to the west—“and when I
saw the light come on I fired ’er up and headed over here, fixing to catch me a looter.
Which I’ve done.”

Suddenly Dan rose up behind Fred—how had he gotten over there? Charlie wondered—and
with a series of moves she could barely follow disarmed the man, ejected the gun’s
shells, and returned the gun to Fred before he could do more than squawk. “Wha—?”

“I’m Father Dan Allgood.” Dan extended his hand. “I’m sorry I had to rough you up
a bit, but shotguns are touchy and I didn’t want that one to go off, especially not
with my friend Charlie close enough to absorb a lot of shot.”

Fred gobbled, his face reddening, and looked from Dan to Charlie. Dan’s calm finally
seemed to work on the man, and his color subsided. He shook Dan’s still-extended hand
reluctantly. “Since when are Catholic priests looters? Not in my day.” He shook his
head sadly at the decline of the church’s standards.

“I’m Episcopalian.”

“Oh, well, then.”

Charlie choked on a laugh at Fred’s easy acceptance of an Episcopalian as a criminal.
She pulled out her wallet. “Look, here’s two hundred dollars. That should more than
cover the food we ate and repairs to the door.”

Fred took the bills and hurried to the front door. “You’re vandals, too?”

“I’m sorry we had to damage the door to get in,” Dan said. “You wouldn’t have wanted
us to freeze to death, though.”

Fred didn’t look like he was quite as convinced of that as Dan, but he nodded. “I
suppose I can see why you thought it was necessary to vandalize and loot my store,
under the circumstances.”

Charlie and Dan listened for a few minutes as Fred told them how he’d come to own
the store and how lousy business had been recently. When Fred quit talking to wipe
his nose again, Dan said, “Did you say something about a snowmobile?”

“Sure did.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got another one?”

“Sure do. The missus and me like to take ’em up to Winter Park and let ’er rip. There’s
a lot of squawking from environmentalists these days about snowmobiles ‘negatively
impacting the wildlife’ and what have you, but I say it’s still a free country—barely—and
I have a God-given right to ride my snowmobile when and where I please.”

His whiskery jaw jutted out, and he looked as determined as any Minuteman defending
the Boston common. Charlie couldn’t remember which article of the Constitution protected
the right to ride treaded vehicles, but she didn’t want to put Fred’s back up by mentioning
it.

“Any chance you could help us get to a town?” Dan asked. “We’d pay you.”

Fred’s eyes lit up. “Sure can. Long’s you don’t mind riding pillion.”

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Charlie found herself clutching Dan’s middle, both of them layered
in cold weather gear supplied by the now-helpful Fred and his wife, Aileen, rocketing
across the snow-covered countryside on what was possibly the loudest form of transportation
ever invented. They followed Fred and Aileen; she would ride their snowmobile back.
The storm seemed to have moved east, so the wind had diminished, but it was bitterly
cold, and Charlie was grateful for the face mask, goggles, hat, and gloves that Aileen
had loaned her. The jouncing of the snowmobile jarred every bone and muscle in her
body, including her ass, and she was grateful when they reached a smooth stretch of
snow she suspected was I-25. Dan pointed to the right, and she made out a snow-covered
lump that might have been his truck. Nodding against his back to let him know she’d
seen it, she pressed herself more tightly against him and hoped the motel wasn’t too
far away and that it would have rooms available. She’d pay half a month’s salary for
a hot shower.

Almost on the thought, she spotted lights. They cast a warm yellow glow across the
snowy landscape, and she was relieved to find they belonged to a small motel with
VACAN Y
blinking redly from a sign near the office. After securing the last two rooms, Charlie
and Dan thanked the store owner and his wife and shucked off the gear the couple had
loaned them, packing it into a garbage bag supplied by the motel clerk for Fred and
Aileen to carry back with them. They waved good-bye as the old couple fired up the
snowmobiles with big grins on their faces and pointed the machines north.

Feeling utterly exhausted, even though it wasn’t much past seven, Charlie fed quarters
into a vending machine to get “dinner” in the form of snack crackers and peanuts and
took them to her room after bidding Dan good night. He had enveloped her in a bear
hug that did more to warm her than any number of showers or hot cocoas would and told
her to sleep tight. The dialogue from a cop show on the next room’s TV seeped through
the thin walls, and Charlie wondered how many of the motel’s guests were stranded
travelers. Not giving it much thought, she stripped and headed straight for the shower.
Fifteen minutes later, the water turned tepid and she stepped out, wishing she had
clean clothes to put on.

The roads would be plowed by the morning, she told herself, and they could return
to Dan’s truck and finish their journey. Wrapped in a towel, she fished her cell phone
out of her purse and called Gigi, wanting to know what her partner had discovered
about Wilfred Cheney’s disability and Patrick Dreiser. Just when Charlie was about
to hang up, Gigi answered, sounding flustered.

“Charlie! I tried to call you twice. Are you home?”

“Stranded in Mead. The trip was a bust. Neither the sheriff nor the Eustis family
could positively ID Heather-Anne as Amanda. What did you learn from Cheney?”

Gigi lowered her voice. “Ot-nay ow-nay. Es-lay ere-hay.”

“No pig Latin, Gigi,” Charlie growled. “We’ve been over this.” Her mind translated.
“Wait—did you say Les is there?”

“Es-yay.”

Charlie heard shuffling sounds that seemed to indicate Gigi was moving; then a door
closed.

“Okay,” Gigi whispered. “I’m in the bathroom. By myself. I can talk now.”

“What happened? Why is Les there? What does he have to say about Heather-Anne?”

Gigi explained about finding Les in the basement. “I smacked him good with the Ping-Pong
paddle,” she said with evident satisfaction.

“Too bad it wasn’t a cast-iron poker.”

“Charlie! Anyway, he said he didn’t kill Heather-Anne—”

“He
would
say that.”

“—and that someone is after him.”

“Did he say who?”

“He said he doesn’t know, but I think he might be lying.”

Duh.
Charlie thought for a moment. “Have you called the cops?”

“Why?”

“The man broke into your house. He’s a wanted criminal!”

“Oh.”

Charlie could almost hear Gigi thinking and knew that turning Les in had never crossed
her mind. She let almost a minute pass before saying, “Gigi?”

“I don’t think I can do that, Charlie. Not hand him over to the police. I mean, it
was awful of him to run off with Heather-Anne, and of course I understand that the
embezzling was criminal, but it seems so
mean
to call the cops on him.”

“You need to be meaner.”

“I know.” Gigi said it sadly, as if meaner were an unobtainable goal.

“Well, if you’re not prepared to hand him over to the police, at least make sure he
sticks around long enough so I can talk to him. He’s got to know why Heather-Anne
was killed, and maybe who did it.”

“I’ll try. He’s not going anywhere tonight—he’s drunk enough Scotch to put a sow to
sleep. When do you think you’ll be back?”

“Noon tomorrow,” Charlie said optimistically. Assuming the plows cleared the highway
overnight, they found someone to drive them back to Dan’s truck, they were able to
dig it out and get it back on the road, it wasn’t damaged, and no more snow fell.
Piece of cake,
she thought, hanging up.

32

A snowplow’s growling woke me the next morning. I snuggled my face into my pillow,
trying to ignore the sound, but eventually I sat up. Sunlight streamed through the
window, and last night’s storm was a thing of the past, except for the foot or so
of snow covering the neighbors’ roofs and lawns. The night’s events came back to me,
and I remembered Les was in the basement. After he’d stumbled down the stairs, too
drunk to make a move on me, I’d locked the door. He could still get out the window,
I supposed, if he wanted to leave, but he hadn’t seemed in any shape to go crawling
through windows. I wondered vaguely how he’d gotten here.

A faint pounding and Les’s voice calling “Gigi!” got me scrambling out of bed and
into my clothes. By the time I’d brushed my teeth and put on just a dab of makeup,
it was only fifteen minutes later, but Les acted like I’d left him stranded on a desert
island for a week and a half when I unlocked the basement door.

“For God’s sake, Gigi! I’ve been pounding on the door for half an hour. What? You
were so busy putting your face on you couldn’t come down and let me out? You didn’t
have to lock the door in the first place.” He stomped to the fridge, smelling like
stale alcohol. He jerked the door open so hard the condiment bottles clinked. “There’s
no orange juice!”

Hangovers made Les surly.

“I suppose there’s no paper today, either,” he said, peering out the window at the
snowy driveway. “Lazy buggers. Any excuse not to deliver the paper. If you’re making
eggs, I’ll have mine over easy.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I glared at him and decided to practice being meaner.
“Charlie thinks I should call the police on you.”

That got his attention. He whirled and tried out a smile. “Gigi. Hon. That’s not necessary.
I’m sorry if I sounded a bit … testy. It’s just that I’m worried. Look, I’ll scramble
us both some eggs, okay?”

“I want cereal.” I crossed to the pantry for the Honey Bunches of Oats, poured some
into a bowl, and added milk. After a moment, Les did likewise. We sat at the kitchen
table, eating in silence. “Heather-Anne told Charlie you guys had a fight and that
you left,” I said finally, stirring the leftover milk in the bottom of my bowl.

Les burped. “I need some coffee.” He got up and began to make a pot, complaining that
I didn’t have his favorite brand anymore. Finally, with the coffee brewing, he came
back to the table. “We did. That newspaper clipping arrived and I lost it. Heather-Anne
and I had been reasonably honest with each other about our pasts. She knew that my
business dealings weren’t always on the up-and-up, and I knew she’d made a habit of …
of separating men from their money. I knew she’d been married before and that she’d
walked away from those marriages with a lot of cash.”

“Marriages? How many?”

“Two that I knew about. A guy named Cheney in Tennessee and another guy in Oklahoma
when she was younger. Parnell Parkin, his name was. Three,” he added reluctantly,
“if it turns out she was the wife referred to in the Wyoming clipping. She had a rough
childhood. Her dad left when she was only three or four, and her mom found herself
a succession of sugar daddies who often didn’t want Heather-Anne or her brother around.
He was younger and sick. They were always trying to scrape together money to pay for
doctors or get him medicine. Anyway, her mom pretty much brought her up to think that
the best way to make a buck was to use her assets to con some poor schmuck out of
it.”

I was thinking “poor thing” when images from Reba’s video of “Fancy” started playing
in my brain and I wondered if Heather-Anne hadn’t made the whole story up after hearing
that song. She probably didn’t even have a brother, sick or otherwise. Les got up
to fill his coffee cup and actually brought me one.

“Thanks.” I took a sip, wondering how Charlie could possibly prefer a cold Pepsi to
coffee. “So you got mad when you read the clipping and…?”

“We fought. Argued. I accused her of lying. She slammed out of the house and I drank.
You know how I get sometimes.” He looked a little sheepish. “I guess I fell asleep.”

Or passed out.

“When I woke up it was the next morning and she was gone. Gone gone, not ‘out walking
the beach in a snit’ gone. I couldn’t think of where she might have gone except here,
so I got a ticket to Denver and followed her.”

“Heather-Anne told Charlie that you left first and
she
followed
you
.”

He flapped a hand. “No, it was the other way around.”

“Why were you in Aspen?”

“I’ve kept in touch with Cherry and Moss. I knew they were out of the country. I needed
to keep a low profile because of the arrest warrant, and I missed skiing, and I thought
Aspen would be a romantic place for me and Heather-Anne to make up when…” He trailed
off, looking sad.

I didn’t know what to believe. Staring at his profile as he sipped his coffee, I realized
something. “You really loved her, didn’t you?” I felt like someone had squeezed my
rib cage too tight. “You wouldn’t have risked coming back to the States if you didn’t.”

Les’s expression told me all I needed to know. Before he could say anything, though,
the front door creaked open and Dexter called, “Mom, I’m home. James’s family took
off for a day on the slopes, so they dropped me. Mom?”