Wendy Hornsby - Telling Lies

“Take it easy,” I said.

“Fucking instant media heroes.” He had worked himself into a red-faced sweat, and he wasn’t ready to quit. “For twenty-two years, Aleda evaded a fugitive warrant for conspiracy to murder. She could have come in anytime and faced the charges like Emily and the others. You ever wonder why she didn’t?”

“Shit happens,” I said.

A waitress hovered nearby until Lester came up for air. She was topless, with little fried-egg breasts. She emptied the ashtray and wiped the table. Though the woman was wearing nothing except a G-string and an appendectomy scar, she got no notice from Lester.

“Need anything here?” she asked.

“Two scotch and sodas,” I said. “Easy ice.”

“Easy ice I can do.” She made a dip, wiped the table again around Lester’s untouched drink, then jiggled away.

He seemed chagrined after his outburst. I gave him a moment to collect himself. He sank back in his chair and blew out a long breath.

“Everything turns to shit, doesn’t it?” he sighed.

“For instance?”

“Everything. The way Aleda set up her surrender, we thought it would go down so smooth. I’m sorry. I’ll say it again. I’m sorry.

“No one blames you,” I said.

“I should have known better.” He shrugged; then he tapped the table beside my hand, shying away from actually touching me. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“That’s two of us.” I smiled at him, feeling sorry for him for some reason.

“Are we clear now?” he asked. “You know, I’m not such a bad guy. And it’s not that I don’t have a lot of respect for what Emily has been doing. She came a long way from the days of ‘burn, baby, burn.’ A whole lot further than some of the others. It breaks my heart to know what happened to her. And you.”

I smiled. “You have a heart?”

“Don’t let it get around, will you?”

The waitress came back with drinks and a cash register tab. I put a twenty on the tab and she went away. I didn’t want a drink, but ordering was like paying rent for our seats.

Lester ran his damp hand over the stubble on his cheeks. When he looked at me finally, his eyes were rimmed in red-fatigue, the smoke, guilt, tears, could have been any of them.

I pushed my drink aside. “Detective Flint and I just spent the most interesting hour at the county crime lab, talking to an explosives man,” I said. “You know something about homemade bombs, don’t you?”

He shook his head, but I knew better.

“Emily’s car was nearly vaporized by the blast up at the academy,” I said. “It’s amazing what the technicians were able to reconstruct with the tiny bits they had to work with. The device was a masterwork. Beautifully simple. Four sticks of dynamite taped to the gas tank, with a sound-activated detonator. It would have taken a big sound, like the firing of a gun at close range, to set off the explosion.

“Elegant, don’t you think? The driver fires a shot and kaboom – double play, if he hits his target. The flaw was, he only got one shot. If he’d been a decent marksman, I wouldn’t be here.”

Lester managed a wry smile. “Can’t get good help these days.”

I smiled, glad he was in a better frame of mind. I had something more to talk about. I pushed my chair out a little so I could stretch my legs. I needed a long soak in a hot tub. Emily didn’t have a tub. I wondered whether Mike did. Business first, I thought, and looked up at Lester.

“Remember Jaime Orozco?” I asked.

“Sure.” He furrowed his brow, seemed suspicious.

“He told me someone in their group of activists was on the FBI payroll.”

“So?” He shrugged. “That’s the way the game is played.”

“Was Rod Peebles on your payroll?”

He chuckled. “Funny, isn’t it? Question like that starts going around about a politician, he’s in trouble. If I say yes, the liberals will kill him; say no and any good conservative will do the job.”

“Either way, then, he’s doomed. So why don’t you just tell me the truth.”

“Truth is relative,” he said.

“Fuck that,” I said.

He laughed, loud enough for the stripper to look our way. “Okay. So maybe we gave young Peebles a little federal scholarship. A little work-study.”

“You show him how to build a bomb?”

“No bombs. He gave us information, and that’s all.”

“That’s a lot,” I said. “He was a traitor to the Movement. He betrayed his friends. For what? Only money?”

“Rod was a true patriot, unlike the rest of them.”

“So was Benedict Arnold, if you were British.”

“Then call me a Brit,” he said. “Look, Maggie, it was no big thing. Rod didn’t have a fat-cat daddy to make things easy for him like the rest of them did. He didn’t have strong political convictions one way or the other. He just wanted to get through school the best way he could. So we helped each other. That’s the way the game is played.”

“He must have had some political attitude,” I said. “He’s a career politician.”

“He has a good face and he reads his lines well.”

“Is Rod still on your payroll?”

He shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t mean he isn’t on someone else’s.”

“Any ideas?”

“Lots of them. And none of them worth a damn.” He rose from his seat. “I have a plane to catch, Maggie. I’m glad we had this little talk.”

“It’s been an education,” I said.

He smiled again. “See you around, kid. Maybe out at the pool sometime, huh?”

He touched my shoulder, his hand lingering just long enough to be noticed as lingering. Then he turned away and headed for the exit.

“Did he talk to you?” Mike asked. He had been waiting out-side, as Lester had instructed.

“He talked. I’ll tell you on the way home. Lester picked a great place to meet. Did you peek inside there?”

“Not me,” Mike said innocently. “But why didn’t he get you a waitress with better tits?”

I laughed. “Take me home or lose me forever.”

In the car, I pulled off my boots. “Any word on Rod Peebles?”

“Can’t find him. You think he was the driver, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Rod Peebles, the man who wasn’t there.”

“What does that mean?”

“Something Lester said. Rod was never anything but a front man. I think he still is. Just a billboard-pretty face. If he tried to shoot me, my guess is it wasn’t his own idea.”

“Who then?”

“You’re the detective. You tell me.”

By the time we arrived back at Emily’s apartment, it was much too late to call Denver. But I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Casey all day. So I dialed anyway.

“Hello,” Linda answered, breathless as if she had run.

“It’s Maggie. Sorry about the hour. May I speak with Casey?” There was a pause. She hadn’t said a thing after hello. I began to think she had simply walked away to find someone else to deal with me. Then I heard her breathe.

“Linda?”

“Casey isn’t here,” she said.

“Oh? Where is she?”

“Skiing.”

“At this hour?”

“No.” Another long pause. That’s when I began to panic. “Scotty went to pick her up. They probably stopped for something to eat. Maybe they went to a movie.”

“Is Casey all right?” I demanded.

“Well of course,” she snapped back. “She’s with her father. You think we aren’t capable of caring for her?”

“No matter how late it is, would you please have her call me the minute she gets in? I’m still at Emily’s.”

“Certainly. Merry Christmas.” And she hung up.

Mike was coming in from the kitchen with a beer. “Everything okay?”

I nodded, but I had a horrible feeling. The morgue had been bad. Nearly getting shot down had been terrifying. This was worse. Borderline hysteria. I tried to shake the feeling off as maternal paranoia tempered by shock hangover. While my day had been a nightmare, Casey was a long way away from everything that had happened. Safe with her father. At the same time, too far away from me.