Thicker Than Blood (14 page)

Hank threaded his way through the throng of drinkers bent on making the most of happy hour.

Bruno looked him over as he approached as if he were an overgrown melon.

Rachel squirmed on her bar stool and introduced them.

Hank’s hand brushed her back, leaving a tiny shiver in its wake.

“Well, I see you got other business.” Bruno buttoned his sweater. “I got to meet some guys for supper.” Slumped shoulders giving him a desolate look, he pushed his way out to the street. A twinge of guilt pricked at Rachel’s innards.

The bartender stopped in front of Hank, who had taken Bruno’s vacated stool. Hank ordered a Mexican beer. Someone was playing the Billy Joel number again. It reminded Rachel of Lonnie.

She frowned into the mirror that covered the wall behind the bar. Lonnie was so young. He should have lived another sixty years. Her fingers around the soda glass whitened.

Hank was examining the label on his beer bottle. “Any more from the sheriff about that plane?” he asked.

“Nope.” She inspected the ring her glass had made on the bar.

Hank shoved the straw-colored hair away from his eyes and exhaled as if he were blowing out candles. “So what’s on your mind?”

“What do you know about Jason Karl’s death?”

Puzzled eyes sought hers before he gave an almost invisible shrug. “What’s there to know? He was apparently taking a pee by the side of the road and some crazy driver, probably going way too fast, lost control of his vehicle, veered off the road, smacked Jason, then got away without being seen. Fairly typical hit and run.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Happened out in the desert. Nobody around.”

Rachel opened her handbag, dug to the bottom of it and extracted the tie tack. “Ever seen this?” She tossed it on the bar. The etched tortoise seemed to turn its head to watch her.

Hank squinted at it. “What’s it supposed to be?”

“Hello there!”

The smooth female voice came from behind Rachel. She covered the tie tack with her hand and turned to meet the almost-black eyes of Alexandra Miller. The three of them danced the prescribed steps of small talk, then Alexandra excused herself and made her way past the bar toward the booths.

Rachel caught sight of a white-haired woman in a bright yellow jacket. “Isn’t that Charlotte?” she asked Hank. “In the booth where Alexandra sat down.”

“Not likely,” he said. “They hate each other.”

Rachel opened her hand. The metal caught the light.

Hank swiveled on the bar stool and peered intently at the tie tack. “Could swear I’ve seen it somewhere, but I can’t think where.”

“It belonged to Jason.”

“Where’d you find it?”

“Wedged under the hood of that car in the garage. The one with the crinkled fender.” She plucked at the limp napkin under her soda glass and plunged on: “Did you know that the guy who worked for me also died unexpectedly?”

Two lines appeared over Hank’s nose. He loosened his red-and-blue striped tie. “When?”

She told him and added, in slow, measured words: “I don’t think either one was an accident. I have some pretty persuasive reasons.”

“And the cops? They think these reasons are persuasive?”

“They haven’t heard them.” She ran her finger back and forth on the grain of the oak bar top.

He glanced over the rim of his beer mug at her. “Why not?”

“I’m not sure they’d believe me.” Rachel mopped up the little puddle around her glass with the frayed napkin.

His eyebrows climbed into the shock of sandy hair. “That’s their problem, isn’t it?”

A truck lumbered by on the street, shaking the entire building. The urge for a drink swept over Rachel, bringing an overwhelming sense of loss. The jukebox was playing “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” She banged a fist on the bar. “They need to get some new music here.” She tossed her head, relinquished the bar stool, and moved toward the exit.

“What’s wrong?” Hank stepped down from the stool, left some bills for the bartender, and caught up with her at the door. “How about dinner?”

“No thanks. Don’t you have to get back to work?”

He turned her toward him, looked into her face. “Whatever I said, I apologize.”

For a long moment she glared at him, but slowly her scowl wilted. “My fault. I’ve been uptight lately. I know I’m not exactly the playgirl of the month.”

“Let’s grab a hamburger at least.”

She dropped her eyes, wanting to tell him she was an alcoholic, knowing she wouldn’t, but nodding to dinner anyway.

Chapter Twenty-four

The burgers and fries they picked up from Tommy’s filled the car with a rich, salty smell. The evening was dimming toward full dusk when Hank turned the Mustang onto a narrow road that twisted uphill.

“This goes to a park?” Rachel asked.

“Sort of. I live up here.”

She opened her mouth to say this wasn’t a good idea, but he quickly added, “Beyond my house, the road goes into the Angeles.”

Hank parked the car and held the burgers while she climbed over the chain to a trail that led toward national forest land.

She eyed the mountain looming ahead. “Are we trespassing?”

“If we are, I do it all the time.”

Keeping an awkward foot between them, they hiked between California oaks and scrub.

Rachel turned and was stunned by the view of city lights, like drops of water spilling out of the mountains and pooling into a burst of brilliance before paling again in the distance.

“Not bad.” She kicked at a pine cone, sat down and put her arms around her knees. “You bring a lot of women up here?”

“One or two. The last was my cleaning lady—she had trouble making it the last few yards. She’d never seen the lights. Can you imagine living in LA and never seeing the lights?”

“So the only woman in your life is your cleaning lady?”

Hank studied his shoelaces for a moment, then returned her gaze. “You don’t leave people a place to hide, do you?”

She shrugged, still looking at the lights. “I guess I want to save all the hiding places for myself. You don’t have to answer.”

He handed her a burger. The wrapping paper crackled in the stillness. “There have been a few women in my life.”

“None of them important, though, right?”

“Actually, a couple were fairly important, and one was earth-shaking.”

She cocked her head at him, but said nothing.

He leaned back against a rock and looked at the sky. A breeze churned the air. “I flunked out of college in my freshman year, joined the Peace Corps, went to Brazil to teach the natives how to farm. Without pesticides, of course. But the bugs there were the size of frying chickens. The kids used to hitch beetles to little cardboard carts and have races.”

“You’re kidding.”

Hank scratched his cheek. “No joke. Wound up teaching them to dust their crops with as many pesticides as we could lay our hands on.”

“You taught them? You mean you flew?”

“Had to learn how so I could teach them.” He glanced at Rachel, then unwrapped a hamburger and began to eat. “I married a Brazilian girl, had a daughter.”

Rachel congratulated herself for predicting that something would be wrong. She was losing the struggle to keep her face blank and glad for the darkness. Instead of the question she wanted to ask, she said, “You speak Portuguese?”

“The Peace Corps gave us four weeks of intensive training.”

Rachel was careful not to look at him. “So if you were having such a good time, why did you come back?”

Hank said nothing for a moment, then, “I got tired of the bugs, the humidity, of so many people barely able to feed themselves. The few rich were very rich, the rest were dirt poor. Corruption was so bad that postal employees stole the mail, and you had to pay bribes to get anything from canned goods to an education. People were routinely accused of imaginary crimes and had to bribe their way out of jail.”

An insect buzzed at Hank’s ear. He slapped at it and went on. “At first, you think you can make a difference. But soon you realize you have to play the game. And the name of the game is eat or be eaten.”

Rachel looked down at her hands, which were busy shredding a napkin. She rolled the paper into a ball. “Your wife doesn’t fish?” She stared levelly into Hank’s puzzled frown. “What were your wife and daughter doing that Sunday when we went fishing? What are they doing now?”

Hank made a sound, more a bark than a laugh. “Haven’t the foggiest, they’re in Brazil. I haven’t seen them in over a year.”

“You left them there?”

“My wife couldn’t bring herself to leave papa and all the servants. Eventually, I came home alone.”

“So you’re divorced?”

“No. She’s Catholic and won’t. I never bothered to file here. I give her a chunk of my paycheck. She doesn’t need the money, but it makes me feel better. I’ve been back three times to visit my daughter.”

“Funny,” Rachel said huskily, “how you can think you’ve got the world by the ying-yang and you wake up one day and it’s all gone sour.”

“Yeah, isn’t it.”

They watched the city lights the way people look into a fire, seeking something unknowable.

Hank shifted his gaze to her face. “What about you?”

She studied the sky for a moment. “I was a farm kid. My mother died and Pop, well, he couldn’t deal with things without her. He lost the farm, along with just about everything else. I inherited the garage, what there was of it, from my grandfather.”

“Where was the farm?”

“Up in the delta. Hot, humid, lots of mosquitoes, but terrific farmland. More vegetables to the acre than anywhere in the state, maybe the country. My grandfather used to say with land like that we could almost feed the world.”

“Big tug of war, the delta,” Hank said. “A real pressure cooker. Farmers want the land, cities want the water, the greens want it for ducks and fish. One of these days, something will blow.”

“You’ll never get the farmers out of the delta. They’re all like my grandfather. You’d have to shoot them first.”

Hank gave a dry chuckle. “You don’t know how determined the others can be.” A sudden breeze plucked at the empty bag. He grabbed it as it began to dance away. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About Jason.”

She took the bag from him, shoved the empty wrappers into it, jammed it under her heel, and turned to look at him. His long legs looked awkward sitting on the sloping ground.

“It’s sure a weird string of incidents, last but not least being a plane that falls out of the sky and then disappears,” she said.

His features knit themselves into a frown. He turned toward the lights. “Why didn’t you call the cops when you found that tie tack?”

She wavered, wishing she hadn’t begun this. “It’s not that simple.”

“What’s hard about it? You pick up a phone.” The moon was becoming bright as daylight faded.

She started to get up. “Hey, I’m probably an idiot. Never mind.”

He put his hand on her arm, but she rose to her feet anyway, then looked down into his face, studying the expression there. A cloud floated across the moon, darkening the landscape. The silence drew out and grew leaden.

Hank reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. “I’m fine.” She got to her feet. “Let’s go.” She started down the trail toward the car.

“Hey!” he shouted.

She didn’t turn until something struck her lightly, first in the shoulder, then in the calf. She swung around. He was pelting her with pine cones. “Cut that out!”

“Lighten up,” he called. “We need to get a life. Both of us.”

“Sorry. I’ll try to be more entertaining.” She turned back to the trail, wanting only to get away from him.

Thorns caught at her shirt. She stumbled over a rock, sat down hard, and skidded down a small hill, landing with a splash at the bottom. The water wasn’t so cold as it was surprising. She tried to stand, but the rock under her foot rolled, pitching her again. This time even her shirt got soaked. “Shit.”

“If this is your siren act, it needs a little work.” Hank’s voice came from her left, but she couldn’t see him.

A hand snaked out of the shadows, grabbed one of her flailing arms, and hauled her out of the water.

“Good God, you’re soaking wet.” He took her face between his hands and raised it to his.

The kiss was slow and deliberate and when he ran his tongue lightly over her lips, she stopped struggling.

Then he began to unbutton her blouse.

Chapter Twenty-five

In an earlier life, Andy’s Bodyworks had been a tire store. The letters spelling Firestone were still visible under the whitewash that covered the cement block walls.

Rachel couldn’t find a place to park, so she drove around the block to the city lot, turned off the car and propped her elbows on the steering wheel, thinking of the night before.

Hank had wrapped her in his own shirt, taken her back to his house, an A-frame on the rim of the canyon, and loaned her a pair of jeans and a rope to use for a belt. “As a matter of fact,” she had told him earnestly, “I have something in common with your cleaning lady. I had never seen the lights, either.”

The door to the body shop was heavy and as soon as she pushed against it, a buzzer sounded, the door gave way, and Rachel almost fell against a burly chest.

“Excuse me.” She shouted the words into a broad black face atop a massive neck.

Thick fingers jammed a cap onto a nearly hairless head. Rachel gaped after him, taking in the uniform and the badge as he stepped past her to the sidewalk.

A second man, this one short and wiry, followed his partner to the parking lot.

Rachel swallowed a little gulp of air as they got into a beat-up car with more primer showing than paint and roared off with the sound of a jet plane.

“Close the damn door,” came a surly voice from inside the shop. “You’re lettin’ it all out! You got any idea what air conditioning costs?”

“Sorry.” She pushed the door shut. “What were the police doing here?”

“If that was any of yer business, I’da sent you a special delivery letter.” The man behind the counter was fortyish with a round face beneath red hair; his lips were thick, his fingers looked permanently grease-stained. The sleeves of his once-white shirt were rolled up and the name of the shop, Andy’s was tattooed on one forearm. His belly bulged over his belt like a poisonous mushroom.