Jeffery Deaver - Triple Threat

Hannah squinted. “Really? I can have my guy in Hamlin do the bodywork for a thousand. The hitch is fine, I’ll buff off the scratches myself. And why’s that even an option? Didn’t your brother-in-law tell you I was in a hurry?”

“I—”

“So, we’re down to option one. And let’s think it through.”

“How’s that?”

She continued patiently. “You can get bulbs for six bucks a pop at NAPA, cheaper at Wal-Mart. I need four of them. The lenses? Let’s be generous. Fifty bucks each. Just need two. That’s a grand total of one twenty-four in parts. Labor? Now, the bulbs aren’t screw-mount, like you said. They’re bayonet.”

Rudy’s face had gone red beneath the smudges. “Well, I meant ‘screw,’ you know, in a like general sense.”

“I’m sure you did,” Hannah muttered. Which was really a very funny line, even if she didn’t seem to realize it. “You put a glove on. Right? Stick your finger into the broken base and push and twist. You can do all four in a minute or two. Takes you another five minutes to mount the new ones. So you’re basically charging me four hundred dollars for twenty minutes’ work. That’s a thousand dollars an hour. My lawyer doesn’t charge that. Does yours?” A look at Pellam.

“I don’t have a lawyer.” He did but he wasn’t going to get involved in this. He was enjoying himself too much.

Silence for a moment.

“I have overhead” was the only defense Rudy could mount.

From beneath her dark, silken eyebrows, she gazed unflinchingly into his evasive eyes.

“Two fifty,” he muttered.

“One fifty.”

“Two fifty.”

“One fifty,” Hannah said firmly.

“Cash?” came the uneasy riposte.

“Cash.”

“Okay. Jesus.” The mechanic sullenly retreated into his garage to fetch the tools.

Pellam glanced at the Winnebago. He had no talent whatsoever when it came to motor vehicles, except for the uncanny ability to attract state troopers when he was speeding. Rudy was going to hose him. Maybe he should have Hannah go over the estimate.

He walked to the vending machine and bought a Moon Pie. Pellam noted the “complimentary” coffee and thought about making a joke that it better say nice things about you because it looked like sludge. But Hannah just didn’t seem to be the sort to share clever comments with. He bought a vending machine instant coffee. Which wasn’t terrible, with the double milk powder.

“You really picked that fellow up?” Pellam asked her after a moment. “I clock a hundred thousand miles a year but I never pick up hitchers.”

“Even pretty women?”

“Especially them. Though I’ve been tempted.” A glance into her pale eyes. Then he grazed her tan.

She chose not to flirt back. “I normally wouldn’t’ve, but he did help me out. And I mean, really, a poet or grad student? He’s about as harmless as they come.”

“Still could be pretty dangerous,” Pellam said gravely.

She looked at him with consideration.

“What if he started reciting poetry at you?”

A blink. “Actually, he did. And it sucks.”

“You ever been to Berkeley?”

“No. I don’t travel much. Not out of the state.”

Pellam had scouted for a film there. The movie was about the regents at a fictional school, which happened to look a lot like UC-B, tear-gassing protesting students in the sixties, and the rise of the counterculture. All very politically correct. The critics liked it. Unfortunately most of the people who went to see it, which was not very many, did not. Pellam thought the concept had potential but the director had ignored his suggestions—because he was JTLC. And even though he’d been a successful director himself years ago, anyone who was Just-the-Location-Scout, like Just-the-Grip or even Just-the-Screenwriter, was bound to be ignored by God.

“He seems old to be a student.”

A shrug, a glance toward Pellam, as if she was noticing him for the first time. “Maybe one of those perpetual college kids. Doesn’t want to get into the real world. Afraid of making money.”

The Moon Pie was pretty good. He thought about offering her a bite.

But he liked it more than he liked her, despite the glance from her cool, gray eyes.

Pellam eyed a ‘74 Gremlin, painted an iridescent green that existed nowhere in nature. Now, that was a car with personality, whatever else you could say about it. From the tiny engine to the downright weird logo of, yes, a gremlin. He stuck his head inside. It smelled like what 1974 must have smelled like.

Rudy finished the job in jiffy time and even washed the windshield for her, though the water in the pail didn’t leave it much cleaner than before.

She paid him and the big mechanic went on to look over Pellam’s Winnebago. Two flat tires, wrecked bumper, probably front-end work. Maybe the fan. If a bit of paint and fixing some dents was going to cost Ms. Hostility nearly three grand, what the hell was his estimate going to be? At least he had the production company credit card, though that would entail a complicated and thorough explanation to the accounting powers that be—and in the film business those were formidable powers indeed.

Rudy went off to do his ciphering. Pellam expected him to lick his pencil tip before he wrote, but he didn’t.

“Where the hell’s Taylor?” Hannah looked around with some irritation. “I told him to meet me here.”

Pellam decided that with her impatience, edge, and taste for authentic jewelry, in quantity, a poet would not make the cut in a relationship.

Good luck to you, Ed.

“You have Taylor’s number?” Pellam asked.

“No phone. He doesn’t believe in them. One of those.”

He didn’t know exactly what that category was, but he could figure it out. “How big can Gurney be?” Pellam asked.

“Too big,” she said.

She was tough but Pellam had to give her credit for some really good lines.

Rudy came back and, maybe it was Hannah’s presence, but the estimate was just under three Gs. Not terrible. He said okay. Rudy explained he’d call for the parts. They’d be here in the morning. “You’ll need to get a room for the night.”

“I have one.”

“You do.”

“The camper.”

“Oh, right.” The mechanic returned to his shop.

Pellam ate some more Moon Pie and sipped coffee.

She looked around the repair shop office and didn’t see anything to sit on. She started to ask Pellam, “You…?”

But she was interrupted when two law enforcement vehicles, different jurisdictions, to judge from the color, pulled into the lot in front of the station. They parked. Werther got out of the first and was joined by the second car’s occupant, a young Colorado state trooper, in a dark blue shirt, leather jacket and Smokey the Bear hat.

Pellam and Hannah left the shop, stepping into the windy afternoon, and joined them.

“Ms. Billings, Mr. Pellam, this’s Sergeant Lambert from the Colorado State Patrol. He’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

Heads were nodded. No hands shaken.

Lambert wasn’t as young as he seemed, looking into the weathered face up close, though he was still a decade behind Pellam. His dark eyes were still and cautious.

“You were both near Devil’s Playground around 10:30 a.m. today, is that correct?”

“I was,” Pellam said. “Around then.”

Hannah: “Probably, yeah.”

“And the sheriff says you weren’t alone.”

“No, a man was with me. Taylor… Duke was with me.”

“I see. Well, seems a man was murdered about that time near the Playground. On some private land near Lake Lobos.”

“Really,” Hannah said, not particularly interested.

“His name was Jonas Barnes. A commercial real estate developer from Quincy.”