Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

She listened. Effie waited. Both women looked out the windows of the café, and Angelica pointed sharply up the street.

“There,” she said. “Look. An Escalade. Vinny said the car that did the drive-by was an Escalade. And that one’s got a new windshield. You can see the plastic installation tab hasn’t been removed from one side. Nick said something about Bill smashing the windshield of Cline’s Escalade.” Effie raised her eyebrows. Angelica had transformed before her eyes from babbling author to armchair detective.

“What are we going to do?” Angelica asked.

Effie slammed her fist into her palm.

“I have a better idea.” Angelica looked at the car, the reflection of the men in the window beside them, the hillside, and the harbor. “Cause a distraction in exactly ten seconds.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

ANGELICA STOOD. EFFIE scrambled, thinking fast. She watched, counting mentally, as Angelica approached the next booth.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. Could I just borrow this sugar? We’re all out.”

She saw Angelica leaning over. Effie shoved her coffee cup and saucer off the edge of the table. The china shattered on the floor, coffee splashing on the legs of a couple at the next table. Everyone turned to look, including the men in the booth. Effie shrugged, made an embarrassed face, and got up to assist the waitress who came over to clean up the mess.

“You know what?” Angelica turned and smiled at the waitress. “We’ll just take our check, if you don’t mind.”

She flashed Effie a set of keys with a chunky black remote before tucking them into her sling. Effie smiled, and the two women left some money on the counter and walked quickly out into the street.

“We’ll need another distraction for cover,” Angelica said, “in case they look out the window.”

The evening winds were sweeping in across the harbor. The two women seemed to have the same thought. Angelica tossed Effie the keys and stopped a couple walking two dogs right outside the window of the café.

“Oh, dachshunds! Look at them! They’re just gorgeous! You know, Radclyffe Hall had dachshunds.”

“Who?”

Effie unlocked the Escalade parked at the top of the hill, put the keys in the ignition, put the car in neutral, and released the emergency brake. She gave Angelica a nod, and the two edged over to the wall beside the café window as the people with the dogs continued on.

Nothing happened. The car remained in position. At the bottom of the hill, by the harbor, a police cruiser parked, and two officers got out.

“Fuck,” Angelica snapped. “We’ll have to push it. It’s not moving! Fucking, fucking shitballs!” She stomped her foot. Effie’s eyes widened. She almost laughed. Angelica looked like she was about to throw herself at the vehicle and push it down the hill with her one usable but injured hand when the car began to move.

Angelica and Effie watched as the Escalade rolled down the hill, gathering speed, and then slammed into the police cruiser; the crash was so loud and thunderous that everyone in the street stopped and turned.

“Triumph!” Angelica whispered fiercely.

The two women leaned forward and saw the men in the café rise from their booth. People were running to the crash, including the two officers who had only made it to the edge of the park.

Effie tugged at Angelica. She resisted at first, seeming to want to stay and watch her work.

“Take that, you murderous bastards,” Angelica snarled. Effie grabbed the sling and dragged her friend away.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

FAT PEOPLE REPULSED Cline. They always had. Unfortunately, he couldn’t look at someone like Sheriff Clayton Spears without imagining the man naked, seeing the alien creases and folds of his figure beneath the tan uniform, the parts of him that excessively sweat or grew hair in unnatural biological reactions to his bulk. He reclined in his wing chair in the third-floor office and eyed the man perched on the settee before him scribbling notes in the stupid little notebook he held with his sausage fingers.

“And could you provide a list of the people who can vouch for your presence and activities at the party?” Clay asked. He sat back, making the settee creak. Cline was thinking how he’d dispose of the piece of furniture after the sheriff was gone. Perhaps he’d burn it. “Was there someone with you for a majority of the event?”

“I didn’t sneak out of my own party, leaving my house and my personal property unguarded in the presence of hundreds of strangers, so I could go and blow holes in the house of a man I barely know, Sheriff.” Cline rolled his eyes. “Everything in this house, everything in this room, is expensive. That lamp at your elbow is Baccarat Eye. It’s worth twelve thousand dollars.”

The sheriff looked at the lamp and seemed startled by its presence. He shifted his bulging body to the edge of the settee, apparently not wanting to make physical contact with anything in the room if he could possibly avoid it. “I can see you’re a man of taste, Mr. Cline,” the sheriff said. “You said you were in the importation business?”

“I did.”

“What do you import?”

“Focus, Sheriff.” Cline leaned his chin on his hand. “You’re not here about me. You’re here about the drive-by and the overdose. Don’t lose track.”

“Mr. Cline, I’ll ask whatever questions I deem necessary for the investigation,” the sheriff said. Cline smiled. He enjoyed a little pushback, flickers of power and protest in the fat man’s eyes, but the sheriff’s tone of voice hadn’t sold what he was saying. He was the mongrel in the room, and Cline was the purebred Doberman.

“What do you make, Sheriff?” Cline asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Your salary. What is it?”

“I make a hundred and eighteen thousand, one hundred and thirty-seven dollars.” Clay straightened on the settee. “That’s the base.”

“And that keeps you comfortable?” Cline let his eyes wander over the creature before him. “I suppose your living costs are meager. Your room at the Inn can’t cost much, and you don’t look like you blow wads of it indulging in the single man’s footloose lifestyle. That watch. Where do you even get a watch like that? Walmart? Dollar General?”

Clay turned the plastic watch on his wrist self-consciously.

“Maybe you lost everything in the divorce.” Cline yawned. Turner was on the phone in the hallway. Cline heard him murmuring, “What do you mean? How badly? A police car?”

“Now I’m the one who feels like we’re getting away from the point of my inquiry here tonight, Mr. Cline,” the sheriff said.

“Haven’t you ever dreamed , Sheriff?” Cline asked, leaning forward, suddenly full of enthusiasm. “Haven’t you ever fantasized about who you could be in the world? Before you started shoveling down Pop-Tarts and Miller Lite to drown your self-loathing, before you realized you’d be stuck here forever in Bumfuck Nowhere because your parents raised you as an unimaginative, codependent hick, didn’t you at least flirt with the idea that you could be something ?”

Clay struggled. Cline watched as the sheriff glanced at the men guarding the doorway of his office as though seeking their assistance. Always looking somewhere else for help.

“I’ll give you a million dollars,” Cline said, throwing a hand out as though he were tossing bills into the air. “I’ll even tell you what to do with it so you don’t blow it all on cheap hookers and a yellow Hummer. Go and get gastric-band surgery. Liposuction. A brow shave and some cosmetic dental work. Put some of the cash into fast rollover investments. Hire a personal trainer, a stylist, and a speech therapist and get yourself a decent watch, for fuck’s sake. If you like law enforcement that much, get a cover job—consult for a private security firm, something that gets you into a suit every day instead of a Halloween costume with a toy cowboy badge. In twelve months, your life will be unrecognizable.”