Читать книгу Sanctuary in Chef Voleur - Mallory Kane - Страница 11

Chapter Three

Hannah drove straight from St. Charles Avenue to her motel in Metairie in an exhausted haze. But now, sitting in her parked car, her brain was whirling, replaying every second of the past hour.

What had possessed her to place all her hopes of saving her mother on an old photo of a friendship from more than thirty years before? All she’d done was exhaust herself driving and waste over twelve of the precious hours her mother had left before her body went into toxic liver failure. All she’d gained for her trouble was the not-so-sympathetic ear of Kathleen Griffin’s handsome if grouchy son.

She turned off the engine and got out of the car. As soon as she put weight on her knees, they gave way. She barely managed to grab at the door frame to keep from falling. Her heart raced, her head felt weird—light and heavy at the same time—and the edges of her vision were turning black. It had to be exhaustion and hunger.

After a few seconds, she gingerly let go of the hot metal door frame and tested her ability to walk. Not too bad. But her hands trembled so much that it took her three tries to insert her key card into the motel’s door.

Once she was inside with the door closed, the tears she’d been holding back ever since she’d watched Billy Joe collapse and die came, as if floodgates had opened. She flopped down onto the bed and grabbed one of the pillows to hug as she cried. But within a couple of moments, she clenched her jaw and wiped her face.

That was enough of that. She didn’t have time to cry. She had to figure out what she was going to do. Here she was, eight hours away from her home, and if someone asked her why she’d driven all that way, she wouldn’t have been able tell them. In fact, she’d run away again as soon as Mack had started questioning her. He’d made her realize just how little she’d thought about what she was going to do.

What if she drove back to Dowdie and did what she should have done—gone to Sheriff King? For that matter, what if she’d gone to him about Billy Joe’s obvious involvement in something illegal? Would things be completely different now? Would Billy Joe be in jail instead of dead and would her mother be safe and sound at home, preparing to go for dialysis later in the week?

Or would she and her mother be sitting in an interrogation room trying to explain to the sheriff that they knew nothing about what Billy Joe was or was not doing?

When she’d raced to the Toyota and taken off with Billy Joe’s killer on her heels, she had actually considered going to the sheriff—for about ten seconds. Until she reminded herself that in her world, authorities like the police or Children’s Services had the power to destroy her life.

From long ago when she’d been barely old enough to understand, her mother’s admonitions were ingrained in her. If you tell the police Mommy fell asleep with a cigarette and started a fire, they’ll take you away from me and put you in an orphanage. You can put the fire out, can’t you, sweetie? Just put it out and don’t tell anybody. Then we’ll be safe. We’ll take care of each other.

And they had. Her mother had raised her alone. It had been just the two of them against the world. Then, when the roles had become reversed as her mother’s cirrhosis worsened, Hannah had taken care of her without regret—until the moment she’d witnessed a murder and run away.

Suddenly, Hannah remembered the phone call she’d gotten while she’d been standing outside Kathleen Griffin’s apartment. She blotted her cheeks on her shirtsleeve then fished inside her purse for her phone. Her fingers touched the smooth paper of the envelope, but she pushed it aside. Whatever was inside it wasn’t going to help her right now. In fact, it might make things worse.

She found her phone and sat there holding it, not wanting to look at the display. Maybe she’d misread the caller ID. Maybe her exhausted mind had merely overlaid Billy Joe’s name over whoever had really been calling her. But when she looked, the display definitely read “B.J.” Her heart jumped, just as it had earlier.

Someone was calling her from Billy Joe’s phone. There were only two possibilities. The man with the red tattoo, who’d shot Billy Joe in cold blood, or the sheriff.

As she’d peeled out of her mother’s driveway in her haste to escape Billy Joe’s killer, she’d prayed that the man would keep shooting at the Toyota until he’d emptied his gun. She’d prayed that one of their unconcerned neighbors would hear the shots and call the sheriff, and that the sheriff would catch him red-handed and charge him with Billy Joe’s murder. And she’d prayed that everybody in town would become so wrapped up in the murder that they’d forget about Hannah Martin.

She accessed new voice mails. There were two. If it was the killer who had called her, had he really been dumb enough to leave a message? She skipped the message from the sheriff’s office without listening to it and played the second incoming message.

“Where’d you go, Hannah?” She cringed and swallowed against a sick dread that settled in her stomach. That wasn’t the sheriff. It was the man with the red tattoo on his hand. She’d never forget that awful voice as long as she lived.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I need to see you, talk to you. I need to make sure you’re all right. Call me as soon as possible and let me know where you are. I’m worried about you. Bye-bye, Hannah.”

Numbly, Hannah pressed the off button. She sat there, trying to will away the nausea that was getting worse with every passing second. Then, unable to stave it off any longer, she jumped up and ran into the bathroom, where she heaved drily. After a moment the heaves slowed, then stopped. She splashed water on her face over and over, trying to cool her heated skin and soothe her burning eyes.

At last the nausea dissipated, but there wasn’t enough water in the world to wash away the sight of what that man had done to Billy Joe.

Had her mother’s boyfriend deserved to die in such a horrible way? Maybe. Maybe not. But she wondered—if she’d gotten the chance to kill him, would she? She couldn’t honestly deny it. Of course, she’d have tortured him first to find out where he was holding her mother.

When she’d come home from the drugstore with her mother’s prescriptions only to find her missing, she’d threatened Billy Joe with going to the sheriff, but he’d quickly and effectively reminded her of his earlier warning.

She should have made good on her threat and gone to the sheriff then. She should have realized that of the two, Billy Joe or the sheriff, the sheriff was the more trustworthy. He’d have arrested Billy Joe and Hannah and her mother would be at home now, safe and healthy.

But instead she’d done the cowardly thing. She’d kept her mouth shut. She’d pretended nothing was wrong. It was what she’d always done. Long, harsh experience had ingrained the habit into her, as deeply as drinking was ingrained in her mother. It was what alcoholics did. It was what the children of alcoholics did. They pretended and lied and never told their secrets.

But now, doing what she’d always done was going to get her mother killed.

Hannah stood, grabbing the back of a chair when she felt light-headed. She needed to head back to Dowdie, but a lifetime of taking care of her mother and herself had taught her to pay attention to her body. There was no way she could drive eight hours tonight, no matter how desperate she was to get back home and find her mother. She’d fall asleep at the wheel.

Digging into her purse, she pushed aside the sealed envelope and her wallet, searching for the two high-energy protein bars she’d seen earlier. They were a little misshapen and the worse for wear, but still sealed. When she opened the first one, it was practically all crumbs, but she ate it anyhow, then ate the second one as well, washing them down with water from the tap in the bathroom, hoping that they’d be enough to satisfy her hunger and keep her from feeling so faint.

Then she took a shower, which made her feel a little better, if she didn’t count the exhaustion and her still queasy stomach.

Dressed in the only clothes she had, she lay down on the bed and turned on the TV, hoping to relax by watching a mindless sitcom for a while. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, according to the bedside clock. She groaned. It had been twenty-two hours since she’d witnessed Billy Joe’s murder and run for her life. During that time, she hadn’t closed her eyes, except for that fitful nap she’d taken early that morning.

She flipped channels until she recognized an episode of Friends. She leaned back against the pillows and tried to concentrate on the jokes Chandler was making. Four episodes later, she groaned and shifted position. She scrolled through the other channels on the old TV, but there was nothing interesting on. She reached for her paper cup of water, but it was empty, so she dragged herself up from the bed and went into the tiny bathroom to refill it. The next thing she knew, she’d dropped the cup and splashed water all over her legs and the floor. She’d fallen asleep standing up and dropped the cup.

She tossed a towel down and dried the water, but when she straightened, she started feeling queasy again. And now the edges of her vision were turning black and sparkly, which told her she’d faint if she didn’t lie down.

She lay down on the bed. Was all this caused by her exhaustion and hunger? She’d eaten and rested—a little. She didn’t have to consider for long to figure out that the nausea and light-headedness were the result of all the stress she’d been under added to hunger and weariness. Within the past forty-eight hours, her mother had been abducted from her house, her life and her mother’s had been threatened and she’d witnessed the kidnapper—the only person who knew where her mother was—murdered in cold blood.

Then, panicked and thinking only of staying alive, Hannah had fled.

Breathing shallowly, Hannah waited for the nausea and light-headedness to pass. She closed her eyes and tried her best to relax and clear her mind. But Mack Griffin’s slow, knowing smile rose before her closed lids.

During those first few seconds after he’d opened the door, she’d had the odd notion that her mother had sent her to Kathleen Griffin’s home for this very reason. Because her own personal knight in shining armor had opened the door, ready and waiting to charge into battle for her, to rescue her mother and sweep them both away from harsh reality, pain and heartache.

But as soon as he’d fixed those hazel eyes on her, it had been immediately obvious that he had no idea who she was, nor did he care.

She should have turned and run sooner than she had, but at the time, she hadn’t realized that with each passing second she’d become more mesmerized by his greenish-gold eyes and his large, capable hands and more dismayed that she was so affected by a perfect stranger. Still, in that first fairy-tale moment, something in his eyes behind the cynical smile and the worldly attitude had made her think he really could rescue her, even though she knew nothing about him except that he apparently was Kathleen Griffin’s son.

He might look honorable and trustworthy and knight-like, but Hannah reminded herself of what she had learned at her mother’s knee—men were never trustworthy. As big and strong and protective as they seemed, the reality was that men were always liars, bullies and cheaters.

But somewhere along the line her mother had gotten it wrong, because Stephanie also believed that women were weak. All they could do to protect themselves was pretend there was nothing wrong, lie when questioned and trust the untrustworthy men, since they had no other choice.

Well, not Hannah. She’d decided a long time ago that she would only trust herself. She hadn’t met a man yet who could take care of her as well as she took care of herself and her mother. She lay down and tried to relax. She’d sleep for a couple of hours, then check out and get the car filled up so she could—

The car.

Her eyes flew open. Oh, dear Lord, the car. How had she forgotten about the car? Billy Joe’s voice, filled with naive pride, came back to her. My car. That’s where the drugs are. They’re hidden in the trunk lining.

She sat up, her heart thumping wildly. She’d driven for eight hours in a car filled with drugs. A stolen car, as she’d discovered when she’d gone through the glove box and found that it was registered to a Nelson Vance, of Paris, Texas.

She couldn’t drive the Toyota back to Dowdie. She couldn’t drive it one more foot. She needed to abandon it and leave the motel. Now.

She closed her aching eyes as tears of exhaustion, frustration and hopelessness welled up. That meant she had to wipe down the car, inside and out, to get rid of her fingerprints, and take a cab to another depressing motel, then make arrangements to find another car or ride the bus back to Dowdie. And she had to start right now. She couldn’t afford to sleep until she’d put miles between her and the Toyota.

She pressed her palms against her eyes, wishing she dared to set her phone’s alarm and sleep—if only for a half hour.

As if prompted by her thoughts, her phone rang. Hannah’s heart jumped into her throat and every muscle in her body went on full fight-or-flight alert. It was him again. The man with the red tattoo. The man who’d killed Billy Joe. She sat up straight, wringing her hands. Her chest tightened until she could barely breathe. She was afraid to answer and afraid not to. Cringing with dread, she pressed the answer button and put the phone to her ear.

“Hey, Hannah Martin,” the dreadful menacing voice said.

Terror arrowed through her. She wanted to drop the phone and smash it, but her fingers clutched it tightly and she pressed her other hand against her chest as she waited to hear what he said. She shouldn’t have answered. She should have let it go to voice mail so she’d have a record of what he said.

“Not talking? That’s okay,” the voice said conversationally. “I just wanted to let you know I’ll be seeing you soon. Very soon. You’ve got something that Billy Joe promised us.”

She didn’t speak, wasn’t sure she could. She pulled the phone away from her ear. She needed to record him if she could just find the record button.

“Wh-what are you talking about?” she rasped, hoping to keep him talking. Where was the stupid button? She pressed Menu, Settings, every button she could think of. Then finally, there it was. Memo Record. She jabbed it.

“You know what I’m talking about,” the man was saying. “You ran off with Billy Joe’s car and we need to get it. Why don’t we meet and I’ll trade you my brand-new car for that beat-up Toyota. Oh, and I can pick up that other little item, too, that Billy Joe gave you. I’ve got to say, Hannah, it’ll be good to see you.” The voice was barely audible, but Hannah heard every word. There was no mistaking the implied threat. “Now, remind me where you’re staying.”

“I don’t know who you are and I don’t have anything. Billy Joe didn’t give me anything!” she cried. “Leave me alone!”

“Don’t act all innocent, Hannah. Billy Joe was fighting for his life. Why would he lie? But you were there. You know what he said. He said you stole Mr. Ficone’s money. He said you’re the key to the missing money.” He paused, but she didn’t take the bait. She didn’t answer.

“Hey, that’s okay. I’ll call you back once I get closer to you. I’m driving right now and I really shouldn’t be on the phone. So I’ll be talking to you later, once I get to that town. Watch yourself, Hannah. Don’t make the mistake of lying. You’ll end up like Billy Joe.”

She gasped. “You killed him. I know you did. I saw you.”

“Oh, Hannah, you really should try to control that imagination of yours.” he said, his voice as gentle and sweet as a new father’s. “Oh, by the way, your mom says hi. Bye-bye, now.”

“Wait!” she cried. “You know where my mother is—?”

The line went dead. “Wait—please. No, no, no.” She stared at the display. The icon indicated that the computer was recording. With a shaking finger, she stopped it.

Your mother says hi. That couldn’t be true, could it? The man with the red tattoo couldn’t know where her mother was. Only Billy Joe knew and the man had killed him.

She held her finger over the play button, but after a few seconds, she shuddered and dropped the phone into her purse. She couldn’t listen to it again. Besides, he was lying about her mother. When Billy Joe told him he’d kidnapped her, the man had sounded surprised and shocked. Then Billy Joe had died right in front of him. No. He didn’t know where her mother was. He couldn’t.

Could he?

* * *

MACK DRUMMED HIS fingers on his kitchen table as he waited for the search results to show up on his tablet. He’d input “Stephanie Clemens, Texas.” There were eleven Stephanie Clemenses in the state, apparently, not to mention all the Clemenses that weren’t Stephanies and all the Stephanies that weren’t Clemenses.

He’d found one whose age was about right in a town called Dowdie. She was listed as forty-two years old and living with Hannah Martin, age twenty-five. Mack sat back in his chair, staring at the screen. So Stephanie Clemens was his odd visitor’s mother. She was forty-two, which meant she’d been seventeen when her daughter was born. Mack shook his head. Children having children.

There was a telephone number listed beside Stephanie Clemens’s name. He entered the number into his cell phone under the name Hannah Martin. Then he dialed it. There was no answer. Probably a landline.

He input Stephanie Ann Martin Clemens, Dowdie, Texas, into a search engine, and three police reports popped up. The first, dated two years previously, was a call regarding drug activity at her home address. Mack skimmed the short paragraph. No arrests. Clemens claimed she used marijuana to alleviate nausea from an illness. Although she couldn’t produce a doctor’s order or even a note confirming that, the police hadn’t placed her under arrest.

The second and third calls were for domestic disturbances. The location was the same address, but were four and five months before. They involved Clemens and Billy Joe Campbell, age thirty-eight. One of the calls had been made by Hannah Martin.

Mack typed in Hannah Martin, Dowdie, Texas, but found no other references to her. He sat, staring out through the French doors that opened onto the small patio behind his house. St. Charles Avenue, but what he saw wasn’t a big concrete fountain and fish pool, it was Hannah. He should have known the instant he’d laid eyes on her that she’d be trouble. He should have recognized the signs.

“Two domestic disturbances involving your mother and her boyfriend,” he said aloud. “That’s been your life, hasn’t it, Hannah? Watching your mother get beat up by thugs that didn’t deserve her. She’s the only role model you’ve ever had, isn’t she? That’s all you’ve ever known!” His voice gained in volume as anger built inside him.

Suddenly, the house was too small and hot for him. He vaulted up out of his desk chair, sending it crashing into the kitchen counter behind him. Then he threw open the French doors and stepped outside, gulping deep breaths of the cool breeze that had blown in with an afternoon thunderstorm. It was unusual for a summer storm to cool the air, but he wasn’t complaining. After a few moments, the pressure in his chest and the heat along his scalp dissipated.

Mack knew too much about women like Stephanie Clemens and Hannah Martin. And he knew way too much about abusive boyfriends. He’d been six years old the first time he’d seen blood dripping from his mother’s nose. Her boyfriend had slammed her face against one of the tall columns of the four-poster bed. Mack had flung himself at the guy, trying to break his nose, but at six, he wasn’t strong enough or tall enough.

The jerk had swatted him away like a bothersome fly, then bent down to whisper in his ear, “If you try that again, your mom will hurt worse. Understand?”

Mack’s hands cramped and he looked down to find that he’d clenched his fists. Carefully, he relaxed them, shaking them a little to ease the cramping. He took a few more breaths of chilly air, letting it flow through him, cooling the frustrated anger.

He found himself once again wishing Billy Joe Campbell were alive, because he’d like to have a few minutes with him, just long enough to give him a taste of his own medicine. But Mack had more sense than that, and more self-control—and Billy Joe was dead. He took one more deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of damp earth and fresh rain, then went back inside.

As he was retrieving his chair and rolling it back up to the table, his phone rang. He looked at the display and sighed. It was Sadie, the woman he’d been seeing. “Hello,” he said, making sure his voice was bland.

“Hey,” Sadie said. “What happened to ‘hi, doll,’ or ‘sexy Sadie’?”

“Busy,” he said impatiently, not really trying to mask the frustration in his voice. He looked at the clock in the corner of the screen.

“Well, business can wait until tomorrow. I’m back in town and I want to see you,” Sadie said in her low, sexy voice. “Come over.”

Mack arched his neck. It was easy to get too big a dose of Sadie. And he’d gotten a nearly lethal overdose about the time she’d gone out of town. Her absence had convinced him that he’d had enough of her to last a lifetime. He’d told her from the beginning that he wasn’t interested in anything long-term, and she’d responded that she wasn’t, either. As he rubbed his eyes, he wondered if she’d been telling the truth.

“Can’t,” he said. “I’m working on a new case and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be tied up for quite a while.”

“Oh, come on,” Sadie said. “You have to eat. Let’s grab dinner and—”

“Sadie,” he interrupted, gently but firmly. “No.”

“Fine,” she said. “Tell me about this big case you can’t tear yourself away from.”

“It’s not just the case,” he said. “It’s a lot of things. It’s been fun, but...”

“But?” she echoed.

“You know. We talked about this. We were never in it for the long haul. We both agreed.”

There was a slight pause. “That’s true.”

He didn’t speak. He really didn’t like this. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen tonight as the night to break up with her.

“Okay, then,” she said. “I enjoyed—everything.”

“Me, too,” he replied. He took a breath to say something else, but she hung up. He winced. That abrupt hang up was the only indication that she might have been upset.

Maybe he should have handled that in person, but unfortunately, Sadie could be quite persuasive in person. Or at least she had been once, he amended, as his brain compared Sadie and Hannah. Hannah, with her unmade-up face and flyaway hair and no lipstick, won by a mile.

Mack shook his head and resisted the urge to pound on his temples with his fists. He didn’t want Hannah Martin in there. She was nothing but trouble. Mack had always loved women, but he’d learned very young that relationships were not for him. Whenever he met someone he was attracted to, he made his position clear from the first moment. If the woman protested at all, then she was not the woman for him. Most women he asked out were happy with the arrangement, because Mack was very careful to pick like-minded women. Usually he picked well. After a while, by mutual agreement, he and the woman parted ways and eventually he met another like-minded woman.

He sat down to send an email to Dusty Graves, Dawson’s computer wizard, to ask how much longer until she had information back on the license plate of the car Hannah had been driving. As he did, his phone rang. Surely it wasn’t Sadie again. Give it up, doll.

But when he looked, the display name was Dust007. “Hey, Dusty, what you got for me?”

“Finally got the info on that plate you wanted me to run,” Dusty said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s registered to a Nelson Vance, of Paris, Texas. He reported it stolen about a week ago. The license and registration also report the vehicle as sky blue, not dark blue.”

Mack’s stomach sank. Stolen and repainted? Ten to one, whoever stole it was either reselling cars or running drugs. Either way, this wasn’t good. “A witness? Any sightings by highway patrol? Anything?”

“The Tyler, Texas, police have a BOLO out on the car. The DEA has been watching a small-time narcotics distribution ring operating around the area. The perps apparently steal a vehicle from a neighboring town or county, use it for one drug delivery, then clean it out and abandon it. This vehicle is suspected to have been stolen by the ring.”

Dusty was right. Mack didn’t like what he was hearing at all. What was Hannah Martin doing driving a car suspected of being stolen by a narcotics distribution ring?