“I don’t think so.”
“Okay.”
“It’s Kevin,” Webb said. “We’ve got a seventeen-year-old female guest who just left the hotel premises carrying a suitcase. She was picked up by Kevin, Walt. Your Kevin. His car, out back by the circle. Reason I know this is the girl’s father is over at the auction. He asked me to keep an eye on her. Considered her a flight risk. And now she’s flown. She’s a minor, pal, and that puts Kevin smack in the middle of aiding and abetting. And, beyond that, statutory-if you catch my drift. And this is one hot babe, so I doubt I’m really that far off.”
Blood pulsed so loudly in Walt’s ear, he switched the phone to the other side, thinking it might help. It didn’t. He could hardly hear.
Once again, he glanced at the attaché in the backseat.
“You there?” Webb asked.
“Yeah,” Walt answered.
Kevin would be nineteen in a few weeks. That was how the courts would see it. Webb was basically right.
“He drove off our property, or I’d offer to help,” Webb said.
“You have helped, Chuck, big-time. Thanks. I’ll get back to you.”
Walt ended the call. He caught sight of Brandon. Gail was tearing into him, one of her rants that could peel paint off the walls. Four of his deputies had formed a gauntlet into the tent.
He speed-dialed a number on his mobile phone. He waited. There was no answer.
He speed-dialed a second number, and was boiling mad by the time Myra answered.
“Myra? Goddamn it, Myra!”
“Walt, what is it?”
“What do you think it is, Myra? It’s Kevin. Again. He’s not answering his phone, and I need to speak to him.”
“Because…?”
“Because he has an underage girl in his car. Underage and carrying a suitcase, Myra. The girl’s father thinks she might be running away, and that puts Kevin square into the middle of it… as in, a felony count. Do I have your attention yet?”
“I’ll call-”
“He’s not answering,” Walt said, “which makes me all the more sick to my stomach. Did you do as I asked? His phone service? Did you do that, Myra?”
“That location thing?”
“Yes, the Web tracking,” Walt said. “The GPS… did you sign up for that?”
“I signed up, but I’ve never used it,” she said. “It seemed kind of like… spying, or something.”
“I need you to go on the Web and find him, Myra, now. Right now.”
Tonight, of all nights, he thought. Kevin had a knack for bad timing.
“I don’t have a clue how to do this, Walt. You know me and computers.”
“Figure it out,” Walt said. “Call someone. Do something. But figure it out. And call me back. We’ve got an hour, maybe less. The father’s going to want answers. Kevin has got to bring that girl back here and right now.”
“Oh, God.”
“It’s up to you, Myra. This is something you’ve got to do. Right now, not a minute to lose.”
“Me?” Since the death of Walt’s brother, Myra’s mothering duties often had been passed to proxies.
“We’re lucky to have gotten the tip. Find him, and then we’ll deal with it.”
Walt hung up. He climbed out of the car. Gail was halfway across the lawn, heading away from him. He felt her receding fury as a wave washing out to sea. No longer directed at him, he celebrated that burden lifting.
Brandon was pale. He looked disoriented. Walt knew that feeling, savored the fact that it belonged to someone else.
“Stand ready!” he ordered his men as he opened the Cherokee’s back door and removed the seat belt from the attaché’s handle. “Chances are, something’s going down.”
33
Fiona studied herself in the mirror. She was wearing a black tea dress. She wore it well. It wouldn’t be considered sexy or daring, just “right.”
Her cottage had warmed with late-afternoon sun. If she stayed too long indoors, she’d break into a sweat. She gathered up her camera bag and her purse, pulled her only black sweater from a hanger, and deposited everything into the passenger’s seat of her Subaru, then headed next door.
Leslie and Michael Engleton had offered her a ride to the auction, but she’d decided to drive herself and wanted to tell them in person. Their house sat atop a secluded hill overlooking a teardrop-shaped pond. It faced the slopes of the Sun Valley ski mountain to the west.
She heard children playing as she entered the house through the kitchen-a niece and two nephews from Carmel, here for two weeks-and wished she’d thought to bring them presents.
Leslie would not be ready on time. She knew she’d find Michael somewhere close by the children, and there he was, dressed for the auction and on his knees, playing pick-up sticks in the house’s main living room, one of three.
Michael was a handsome man, with a shock of white hair in the black that rode above his left ear like a feather. She loved the way he looked at her, like there was no one else in the room-one of his many gifts.
“Perfect,” he said when he spotted her. “She’ll be down in a minute.”
She wondered if he meant the way she looked or the fact that she’d arrived on time. To his credit, Michael never flirted. But she secretly wished he would try just once.
She explained her decision to drive herself, that it was a job for her. Though disappointed, he didn’t act surprised.
“We’ll see you there, then,” he said. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Maybe by dessert.”
She allowed herself a smile, at Leslie’s expense, and was turning to leave when she remembered to say something to the children. She had looked after them on several previous visits and liked all three very much.
It was only then she paid any attention to the pick-up sticks. She stepped closer to the game, looking straight down at the pile of colorful knitting-needle-length wooden sticks interlocked in a jumbled mess.
Perhaps it was flying with Walt, the bird’s-eye view. Perhaps it was her photographer’s eye. Whatever it was, she saw something in that pile of sticks that ran a spike of adrenaline through her.
She was in her car, speeding out the drive, before she realized she’d been rude. She’d forgotten to say good-bye.
34
With the open attaché displaying the Adams bottles inside the air-cooled Plexiglas case, Walt kept an eye on the crowd at the cocktail party. An ATKINSON’S MARKET bag containing Remy’s pants and belongings rested on the grass at Walt’s feet. If the bottles were stolen without the attaché and its GPS, then Walt’s plan to follow it to George Clooney would fail. Convinced he had not seen the end of these people, he watched for the woman who’d been wearing the copper-colored blouse, the woman who’d pushed the baby stroller across Main Street and stopped the wrecker, the woman who’d run naked from the motel room. He believed she was the one in charge. She was the one he was after.
Arthur Remy hobbled in on aluminum crutches. Approaching Walt, he looked like a man on too many painkillers.
“Sheriff…”
Walt handed Remy the bag. Remy rummaged through his belongings, his pants, his wallet, found the security card, stuffed his pockets. He then dropped the bag and pants into the grass.
“You have quite a few officers here this evening. I counted four outside.”
“Deputies, yes. An ounce of prevention…” Walt said.
He had five total, Brandon and four others. The radios were live, the MC parked nearby, its dispatcher maintaining control over the team. Walt had three roadblocks set up, if needed.
Remy shuffled over to the case containing the Adams bottles, like a mother hen checking her nest. He glanced at the bottles, then up at Walt, and for a moment Walt sensed Remy knew the bottles had been handled. But Fiona had photographed their position, and Walt believed they had been returned exactly.