Rock and Roll Queen of Bedlam Page 8

  Wisely, I keep silent.

  “Where’s the Ranger?”

  “Paint shop.” Part of me wants to unload the whole Donny Thorndyke thing, but I don’t know Sloan well enough to trust him. He’d probably think I’m a hysterical female with the vapors.

  “Cherry car. Grandma’s?”

  I nod.

  He makes a U-turn and heads north on Maple. A quick right on the one-way heading east leads us to the edge of town.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the river. Local boys found a body. Someone you might be interested in.”

  A stab of fear shoots through me. I swallow hard. “Not Sara.” I breathe the name like a prayer.

  After a quick glance at my face, he says, “No, not Sara. Possibly her dad, Joe Stepanek. They want me to ID him.”

  “But if Sara’s with her dad, and he’s dead, what’s happened to her?”

  Sloan eases the car onto a rutted dirt road that winds around a saw mill and ends abruptly in a makeshift parking lot bordered by a thick grove of cottonwoods. An ambulance is backed in between two police cars. A young patrolman strings yellow crime scene tape around the perimeter. Two other cops are talking to a tall, skinny guy, who’s leaning against a beat-up ’70s vintage Bronco. He’s got a greasy ponytail, and his face has a greenish tinge. A fourth officer sits in a patrol car working the computer. A gray sedan with county plates is nosed up against the Bronco.

  Sloan shakes a finger at me. “Stay put.”

  He starts to get out and sighs. “Hell, I know you won’t.”

  Reaching into the back seat, he grabs a pair of leather running shoes and thrusts them at me. “Put these on. The body’s down by the river. I don’t want to have to pack you out of here with another broken ankle.”

  After a tentative sniff, I say, “They smell, and they’re too big. My shoes are fine.”

  Sloan curses and scrabbles around in the glove box. He pulls out a pair of handcuffs. “I don’t have time to argue. Put the shoes on, or I’ll cuff you to the steering wheel. Your choice.”

  “What a grouch,” I mutter. I slip into the clodhoppers and step out into dappled sunlight. A slight breeze flutters through the cottonwoods, clad now in brilliant spring foliage. The sound and smell of the river brings back a flood of childhood memories greatly at odds with this scene of death.

  “Al!” The burly cop emerging from the patrol car is Marty Montgomery, a guy I’ve known forever. He envelops me in a bear hug. “You working for the DEA now?”

  I grin up at him. “Good to see you, Marty. Not exactly working for them. I’m more like a consultant.” I glance at Sloan, who rolls his eyes in disbelief.

  “This girl used to beat me up in the fifth grade,” Marty says.

  “What a surprise,” Sloan says.

  I glance at Sloan. “That’s because he called me Al.”

  Sloan asks Marty, “Whatcha got?”

  Marty gestures at the civilian. “Guy was headed for his favorite fishing hole. He stepped off the trail to take a piss and tripped over the body. Fell right on top of him. Shook him up bad.”

  “Area sealed off?”

  “Yeah. We did a quick search. Looks like an overdose.”

  He gazes toward the river. “You wanna go down there?”

  “M.E. here?”

  “Yeah. They’ll be bringing the body up in a minute.”

  Right on cue, two EMTs emerge from the trees lugging a body bag. An older gentleman dressed in khakis and a tan polo shirt trails behind them. I recognize him as the county’s longtime medical examiner, Sherman McIntyre. As the techs place the body on the waiting gurney, he acknowledges Sloan with a grunt. “Want to take a look before we load him up?”

  Sloan says, “How ya doin’, Sherm?” and walks to the body.

  I follow, sliding my feet through the dirt to keep the oversized shoes from falling off. I peer around him. Do I really want to do this?

  As if he’s reading my mind, Sloan growls. “I’m not catching you if you faint.”

  I gulp and say, “I’ll be fine.”

  Sloan unzips the bag. Clad only in jeans, the dead man is sprawled on his back, face frozen in a permanent grimace. His right arm is bent and curled tight to his body. His left arm is extended, revealing the tattooed initials UAO on the inside of his wrist. His skin is pale, almost translucent in the fading sun. Slender and of average height, the man has the tough, stringy look of a street fighter. His light brown hair is chopped short, a homemade job. Blood has oozed out and congealed beneath his head.

  Okay, I tell myself, I can do this. Then I look at his eyes. Dark blue. Luminous. Fixed on a distant horizon as if he sees something wonderful known only to him. Sara’s eyes. I inhale noisily and look away.

  Sloan glances over his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “It’s Joe Stepanek. Right?”

  “Yeah, it’s him.”

  McIntyre holds up a baggy with a hypodermic needle inside. “Found this under the body.” Sloan slips on a pair of latex gloves and leans over the body. He smooths a finger over the exposed left arm. “Just the one puncture mark. No needle tracks. Weird, huh?”

  McIntyre shrugs. “We’ll know more after the post.”

  “But he didn’t use drugs,” I blurt. “Sara said he wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

  The three men regard me with varying degrees of skepticism. McIntyre looks puzzled; Marty, quizzical. Sloan reacts with his typical patronizing manner. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m sure he was the pillar of the community.”

  “I’m not saying he was great guy,” I protest. “Sara knew he sold drugs. Her dad told her, ‘Users are losers, but they’re going to buy it somewhere, and it might as well be from me.’“

  “And let wifey take the fall when the family business gets busted,” Sloan adds.

  “Well, yeah,” I admit. “I only got Sara’s version, but she was adamant about her dad not using.”

  Marty peers over my shoulder. “But look at him, Al. Those are prison tats. White supremacist stuff, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Sloan says.

  He picks up Stepanek’s left hand, enclosed in a plastic bag, and points out the ornate spider web tattooed between Stepanek’s thumb and forefinger. “Could mean a number of things. Used to be earned by killing a minority. But now the white cons are outnumbered, and they band together for protection. Hard to say if he’s the real deal.”

  We study Joe Stepanek’s body. A crude Celtic cross adorns his right bicep, now flaccid in death. The number 5 is inscribed on his right wrist. His chest is the canvas for a choppy sea into which the sun is setting, its beams bisected by three flying gulls. Its message is simple and uplifting, the workmanship starkly beautiful in contrast to the prison body art.

  “The one on his chest is quite good,” I say, my voice choked with emotion. I clear my throat. “Doesn’t look like the rest of them.”

  “Freedom,” Sloan says. “It symbolizes freedom. Probably done after he got out.”

  A wave of sadness sweeps over me. Whatever this man was, he had hopes, and dreams and at least one person loved him unconditionally. I blink hard, determined not to weaken my position with unseemly girly emotion.

  Marty points at his wrist. “What about the 5?”

  “Symbolizes the white supremacists’ code of silence,” Sloan says. “The 5 stands for ‘I have nothing to say.’ The boys know their rights.”

  “And UAO?’ I ask.

  “United as one,” Sloan says. “Another biggie for the Brotherhood.”

  He turns to Marty. “It’s our boy, all right. Joe Stepanek. Case closed.”

  For Sloan it’s simple: another case closed.

  “What about next of kin?” Marty asks.

  “His daughter, Sara, is one of my students,” I say before Sloan can answer. “Sara has a little brother in a foster home somewhere. I’m here because Sara’s missing. It’s been a week now, and nobody cares!”

  The words come out hot and angry. Marty squirms b
ut, to his credit, gives me his full attention. “Anybody report her missing?”

  I fight back tears. “Possibly her caseworker, Peggy Mooney. Sara left a note, so everybody thinks she’s a runaway. But things don’t add up.”

  I soften my tone and place a hand on Marty’s arm. “I’d appreciate it if you’d check for me.”

  Sloan looks at my hand on Marty’s arm and seems to grow larger, not unlike Vlad in his pre-neutered days. Marty sees it too. “You two seeing each other?”

  Sloan nods. I shake my head.

  Marty grins. “Nice to get that cleared up. I’ll check on the Stepanek girl and let you know, Al.” He glances at my shoes. “If I don’t, you might stomp the shit out of me.”

  Chapter 11

  Sloan and I sit on the porch swing, swaying to and fro in companionable silence. Sloan is being Sloan, and my normal chattiness has been stifled by sudden death. I sip a glass of Dodie’s best Pinot Grigio. Under the circumstances, she’ll surely understand. Sloan holds a can of Budweiser. As he takes a swallow, his stomach growls loudly.

  “We never got dinner,” he says.

  “You can’t be hungry.”

  He looks surprised by my comment. “A man’s gotta eat.” Grandma would be only too delighted to feed him, but she’s vanished. Dodie is dining out with Buddy the car painter and, I hope, working on my discount.

  “Grandma Sybil has leftovers.”

  Sloan springs from the porch swing and stops it so I can climb out. Nice to know chivalry is not dead. I follow him to the kitchen and open the door to the fridge. “House rules: Top shelf, off limits. Second shelf, help yourself. Third shelf, eat it quick before it goes bad.”

  I sit at the kitchen table and watch Sloan off-load last week’s meatloaf, leftover green bean casserole, and a slab of pound cake from the third shelf. Declining my offer of microwave warming, he digs in.

  Finally, he comes up for air. With quick, precise movements, he rinses the dirty dishes, loads the dishwasher, and then walks to the table. He sits down, reaches over, and turns my chair sideways, yanking it close to him until our knees touch.

  “How about it, Al? You’re holding out on me,” he says.

  It? What it? Ohmigod! Does he think we’ll have sex on our first non-date? I leap from my chair. “I told you this isn’t a date. Sex is out of the question!”

  Sloan stares at me thoughtfully then chuckles. “Sex, huh? I was talking about Sara. You remember Sara, your missing student?”

  “Oh, Sara,” I say in a small voice, flames licking at my cheeks. I sit down and look everywhere but at his face.

  He leans over and puts his hands on my thighs. “You told Marty things don’t add up. Maybe I can help.”

  “Will you let me know what you find out?”

  His hands tighten. “If I can.”

  “The other night you told me you wouldn’t share information.”

  “That was before we found Joe.”

  “After you left that night, Sara called me. She sounded scared. Somebody took the phone away from her before she could tell me what she wanted. I pressed star sixty-nine but got the ‘party is unavailable’ message.”

  “I’ll have it traced. What else?”

  I fill him in on some of it: the Hewitts and their new lifestyle, the discrepancy in Peggy Mooney’s story, the notebook of poems. I tell him about Nick: his illness and crush on Sara. Sloan listens carefully, but I can see the skepticism on his face. It does sound a bit silly, so I hold a few things back: Sara’s abortion, her recent plunge into depression, the mysterious key, the Church of the Holy Light.

  Sloan tips back in his chair, folds his arms … and shoots me down. “Tough situation. Kids run away all the time. Overloaded case workers are too tired to care. As for the Hewitts, who knows? Maybe somebody died and left them some ready cash.”

  I try not to show my bitter disappointment. Why did I think he’d be different from the others? “Just let me know about the phone, okay? I’ll get you the number.”

  I trot up the stairs, Sloan at my heels. But wait! Do I really want Sloan in my private quarters? If I don’t let him in, he’ll think I’m hung up on the sex thing again. I open the door to my apartment and flick on a light.

  Sloan looks around and points at the phone. “Messages.”

  “I’ll get them later.”

  “Might be important. Maybe Grandma had an accident.”

  I know he’s manipulating me, but what if he’s right? Praying the message isn’t too personal, I press the play button and hear, “Hey, Ah-LEG-ra. It’s Trent … you know … from Better Buy. Your nephew gave me your number. Just wanted to tell you I felt something hot between us the other day, and I think you felt it, too. Maybe…”

  I hit the stop button and groan. Note to self: Yell at little rat-fink, Nick.

  “Trent from Better Buy, huh?” Sloan says. “Want me to kill him for you?”

  “I can handle it,” I say and then add hastily, “Not the killing part, of course.”

  I dig through a jumble of paper, unearth the mystery phone number, and hand it to Sloan.

  Sloan tucks the slip of paper into his shirt pocket and takes a step toward me. “Bet you’ll never forget this date,” he challenges. “Dead body and all.” “Not a date,” I say.

  He comes closer. His pale eyes are intense, focused. The image of a snake charmer and his asp comes to mind. I back slowly away until the backs of my thighs hit the desk.

  “Not a date,” he repeats. “And I’m not going to kiss you now.”

  He cups my face in his hands and leans into me, his lower body pressing against mine. Sloan’s lips are surprisingly soft and warm as he touches them to mine, setting off a firestorm of sensation that leaves me gasping. His tongue, hot, silky, and talented, slips into my mouth.

  My brain checks out and hovers somewhere near the ceiling, clucking its disapproval as the rest of me reacts to the delicious things Sloan is doing to me. Acting entirely on its own, my right foot slips out its shoe and coils around Sloan’s leg, pulling him in closer. My hands—bold little creatures—grab his and place them on my butt before sliding sinuously up his body to snake around his neck. A slight tilt of the head gives him better access to my mouth. My ears are even getting into the act. Someone’s moaning. Surely not me. And the thudding of Sloan’s heart. Wow!

  No wait—too loud even for Sloan’s heart. In a flash, my brain flies back into my head, and I realize someone’s pounding on the front door. Bang, bang, bang. Five-second pause. Repeat. A signature knock. I know it well.

  Reluctantly, my leg disengages, and I let go of his neck. I pull back, pleased to see the dazed expression on the face of Mr. Stone Cold Sloan.

  “It’s Noe from next door,” I croak. “I’d better see what he wants.”

  “Sloan,” I say when he doesn’t react. “I need to get the door.”

  He starts, as if waking from a dream. “Oh, sorry.”

  With Sloan trailing behind, I gallop down the stairs and open the front door.

  “Oh, good. You here,” Noe says.

  As always, he refuses to come in the house, preferring to conduct business in the open doorway. When Sloan pops up behind me, Noe grasps the situation at once. He beams his approval. “Good. Very good,” he tells me before turning his megawatt smile on Sloan. “Too many woman in theese house. Need man.”

  He thrusts out a right hand for Sloan to shake. Noe’s life is written on his hands: thick, capable hands with ground-in dirt he can never scrub away. Hands that can thin apples, fix a balky tractor, or gently pat the back of a newborn grandchild. Noe and those like him provide the backbreaking labor that supports the agricultural backbone of Vista Valley.

  “You Meese Allegra’s new man, right?” Noe asks Sloan.

  “No,” I say.

  “Yes,” Sloan says and then speaks to Noe in rapid-fire Spanish.

  A delighted Noe listens, nodding and murmuring his approval. I hear my name mentioned frequently.

  “What
are you telling him?”

  “How it is,” Sloan says and falls silent.

  “And how is it?”

  Sloan ignores me.

  Noe takes his hat off and scratches his head. He looks at me and searches for the words. “I come over to tell you. Meese Grandma and I talk. All set. She park car in my garage. You put truck in hers.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t,” I protest.

  Noe’s face grows stern. “I telling you. All set. Those bastards come back, I shoot their asses.”

  I glance at Sloan, who looks amused. I have no doubt Noe would carry out his threat. With several shotguns in his arsenal of weapons, Noe has earned the respect of our neighborhood hooligans.

  “Better take him up on it, or he’ll be offended,” Sloan advises.

  “Yeah, I bet you know all about machismo.”

  “Should have told me your truck got vandalized. Noe thinks it was kids.”

  “It’s possible,” I say, not wanting to shoot down Noe’s theory. “But I had a run-in with a colleague last week. He’s got a hair-trigger temper and some nasty little friends who like to terrorize people.”

  Sloan frowns. “Who is this guy?”

  I have every intention of spilling the Donny Thorndyke story but stop short when a lavender, daisy-enhanced PT Cruiser pulls up to the curb. Grandma climbs out and scurries up the front walk.

  “Good,” Noe says, glaring at me. “Meese Grandma here. She tell you garage thing.”

  Hoping to forestall a lengthy rehashing of his offer and my crass refusal, I quickly assure Noe I’ll go along with the plan. Mollified, Noe greets Grandma and heads home.

  “Back already?” Grandma chirps.

  Before I can answer, Vlad pops out of the shrubs greeting Grandma with an inquisitive rowwr? After a half-assed swipe at my ankles, he trots to Sloan and twines his big orange body in and out of Sloan’s legs, purring like a small gasoline engine.

  “Oh, look.” Grandma Sybil claps her tiny hands. “Vlad likes Mr. Sloan.”

  “No Mr.,” Sloan says. “Just Sloan.”

  Vlad flops onto his back and waves all four paws in the air in ecstasy as Sloan rubs his belly. I see him bend over and take a closer look at Vlad’s nether regions.