Motor Mouth: A Barnaby Novel

  “He did not.”

  “Yep. He did. Still had the chain and handrail attached.”

  Hooker burst out laughing. “I don’t know who’s more pathetic…him or us.”

  I slouched in my seat. “I think we’d win that contest.”

  Beans sat up and looked around. He gave a big Saint Bernard sigh, turned twice, and flopped down.

  “This could take a while,” I said to Hooker. “They’re not going to sort this out in fifteen minutes.”

  Hooker reached over and ran a fingertip along the nape of my neck. “Want to make out?”

  “No!” Yes. But not here and not now. I wasn’t going to give in on a freeway. If we were going to have make-up sex, it was going to be good. It for sure wasn’t going to be in the backseat of an SUV.

  “Just some kissing,” Hooker said. He put his hand over his heart. “I swear.”

  “You’re not planning on doing any touching?”

  “Okay, maybe some touching.”

  “No.”

  Hooker blew out a sigh. “Darlin’, you’re a hard woman. You’re doggone frustrating.”

  “And it’s not going to do you any good to drag out your Texas drawl,” I told him.

  Hooker grinned. “It got me where I wanted to go when I first met you.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not going to get you there now.”

  “We’ll see,” Hooker said.

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Come on, admit it,” Hooker said. “You want me bad.”

  I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and we both knew what that meant. He held my hand, and we sat there, holding hands, staring out the windshield, watching the cleanup spectacle like it was a television show.

  There were fire trucks and medical-emergency trucks from three counties and enough flashing strobes to give a healthy man a seizure. The medevac helicopter didn’t drop out of the sky, and no one seemed to be rushing around, frantically trying to save a life. So I was hoping that meant no one was critically injured. All but one of the fire trucks left the scene. And one by one the EMT trucks left, some with flashing lights. None of the EMT trucks sped away with sirens blaring. Another good sign.

  Tow trucks and police were working on the outer perimeter of the crash, moving cars. The road was still blocked, but the problem was shrinking. A tow truck inched into the heart of the wreck.

  “They’re going to try to get the coach off the Hummer,” I said to Hooker. “I’m going out for a better view.”

  I was afraid to climb onto the car again. Too many lights now. Too many people looking around. So I stood beside the SUV with my sweatshirt hood up and my hands in my pockets, hunched against the cold.

  After a lot of discussion, the tow-truck driver attached a chain to the coach and slowly winched it back. The rear on the Hummer had been squashed down to about three feet of compressed fiberglass and steel, so the coach didn’t actually have all that far to drop. It came off with a decent amount of grinding noise and a loud wump when it hit the ground. It bounced and jiggled a little, and then it went stoic, silently enduring its disgraced condition.

  Now that the motor coach was off the Hummer, it was easy to see how Rodriguez had escaped. The right front had taken the biggest hit, and the shell of the coach had completely peeled back, leaving a gaping hole where the door used to be. Rodriguez had probably gotten yanked out of his seat and then found that the handrail had broken free of its moorings.

  Hooker had his head out. “What’s going on?”

  “They pulled the coach off the Hummer. And now I think they’re going in to investigate. Probably want to make sure no one’s inside.”

  Hooker pulled his head back into the SUV and slunk down. They were about to discover poor Bernie Miller in the motor-coach bedroom. And he wasn’t exactly Sleeping Beauty.

  I watched two cops enter with flashlights. Long moments passed while I held my breath. The cops came out and stood beside the bus. One was on his talkie. More cops came over. Some suits pushed through the crowd. A uniform unrolled yellow crime scene tape, securing the area around the bus.

  I leaned into the SUV. “They found him,” I whispered to Hooker.

  Hooker looked at me. “Why are you whispering?”

  “It’s too horrible to say out loud.”

  An unmarked cop car with its Kojak light flashing cut through traffic and eased up to the outer perimeter of the smashed cars. Two suits got out, followed by Spanky and Delores. They all power-walked to the bus, and even from my distance, I could see Spanky’s eyes go wide. He stopped and stared, mouth agape, arms dangling at his sides. If I’d been closer, I’m sure I could have seen the blood drain from his face and his breathing get shallow. He swayed slightly, and one of the cops moved him forward, toward the coach. They got to the door and stood talking. One of the cops was gesturing at the coach, and Spanky was appearing to listen, but I suspected nothing was registering in his brain.

  I popped back into the SUV and grabbed a bag from the back. “I have my binoculars in here somewhere,” I said to Hooker. “I need to see this. I think they’re going to take Spanky into the coach. I bet they want him to ID the body!”

  Hooker put his hood up and pulled the drawstring. “No way I’m going to miss this.”

  I found the binoculars, and we both got out and stood beside the SUV. Spanky was obviously inside the coach with the police. Delores was at a slight distance, flanked by two uniforms. A news helicopter hovered overhead, and a mobile satellite truck from one of the Charlotte stations crept up to the tangle of cars.

  I had the binoculars trained on the hole where the door used to be, waiting for Spanky to appear. A cop came into view first, then Spanky. A normal person would be horrified by finding his spotter dead on his bed. And Bernie was especially horrifying since we’d dug him up. On the heels of the horror, you’d expect sadness or at least a solemn respect for the dead. Spanky, true to form, was pissed off. And it would seem he wasn’t pissed off because someone had killed Bernie. Spanky was pissed because his coach was ruined. I’m not a professional at reading lips, but this was easy. Spanky was in a rage, stomping around, hands on hips, screaming the f word, his face brick red, the cords standing out in his neck.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He threw his hands into the air and pointed at his trashed motor coach. “How the fuck did this happen? Who fucking did this? Do you know how much this fucking coach cost?” he asked a cop.

  He was pacing and gesturing and somehow our eyes caught. I saw recognition register. For a long moment he seemed in suspended animation. Not sure what to think. Not sure what to do. Finally, he snapped his mouth shut, turned on his heel, and stalked back to the unmarked cop car. He pulled the door open and rammed himself into the backseat. Delores minced over in her high-heeled boots. The two plainclothes cops followed, looking like maybe they should check their bullets at the door so they wouldn’t be tempted to shoot Spanky.

  “This might be a good time to try to leave,” I said to Hooker. “I think Spanky spotted us.”

  The traffic wasn’t moving forward yet, but some cars had crossed the median and some SUVs had done the all-terrain thing and rumbled over curbs and climbed embankments to reach intersecting parking lots and ultimately other roads. The traffic jam wasn’t nearly as dense as it had originally been, and Hooker was able to work his way through the pack and go off-road.

  The SUV lumbered over hill and dale, and as luck would have it, ended up at a fast-food joint. We bought a bag of food, stopped at a neighboring gas station and filled up, bought more food at the gas station convenience store, and skulked away.

  Hooker drove north out of habit. We couldn’t go back to the warehouse. We were afraid to check into a motel. We didn’t want to involve friends. So we parked in a supermarket lot and fed Beans and started eating our way through a bag of doughnuts. I was on my second doughnut when Hooker’s phone rang. It was Spanky, and Hooker didn’t need to use the speakerphone function for me to hear. Spanky was yelling into
the phone.

  “You sonovabitch,” Spanky yelled. “I know you’re responsible for all of this. I saw you sitting there watching. You think this is funny, don’t you? You did this just to ruin my week. You knew I had a new motor coach that was better than yours. So you had it wrecked. And it wasn’t enough to waste Oscar and your poor retard rent-a-cop, you had to leave Bernie in my bed. You are such a dumb sick fuck.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” Hooker said. “You think I killed three men and arranged to have your motor coach trashed because why?”

  “Because you’re jealous of me. You can’t stand that I won the championship. And I know you put Oscar in my new truck, too. I’m gonna get you for this. You better watch your ass.”

  Hooker disconnected. “Spanky’s an idiot.”

  Hooker’s phone rang again.

  “Uh-huh,” Hooker said. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.”

  “Now what?” I asked when he was done.

  “Skippy calling back. He wanted to remind me that the banquet was black tie.”

  “It’s Sunday, and the banquet is Friday. There’s no way.”

  “Obviously you’ve never been called into the NASCAR hauler after a race you just screwed up and had to face Skippy. Remember the time I flipped Junior the bird on national television? And the time I got pissed off and punted Shrub into the wall and caused a seven-car wreck? Trust me, we’ll make the banquet.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked Hooker. “Where are we going to sleep tonight?”

  “I thought I’d go to Kannapolis. I figure they won’t look for us there. No one intentionally goes to Kannapolis.”

  “This is it?” I asked Hooker. “This is where we’re going to spend the night?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “We’re parked in front of a house.”

  “Yeah, we’re tucked between a bunch of cars that belong here. We’re invisible. And my buddy Ralph lives two houses down. He lives alone in one of these ramshackle little houses, and he’ll leave for work tomorrow at six in the morning. And he never locks his house. Got nothing worth taking, if you don’t count a fridge full of Bud. So we can go in and use his bathroom and not get busted.”

  “That’s great, but I need a bathroom now.”

  “There’s a patch of woods two blocks from here. I was planning on walking Beans and hiding behind a tree. You’re welcome to join me.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Women don’t hide behind trees. We aren’t built for it. Our socks get wet.”

  Hooker looked down the block at Ralph’s house. “We could probably trust Ralph to let us stay with him tonight. Ralph’s the one person who wouldn’t get accused of aiding and abetting. Nobody would ever think Ralph knew what he was doing. He’s a good guy, but his primary skill is his ability to open a beer can.”

  Hooker searched for Ralph’s name and dialed it. “Hey, man,” Hooker said. “How’s it going? Are you alone? I need a place to crash tonight.”

  Five minutes later, we were standing at Ralph’s back door. Hooker, Beans, and me. I had a bag of clothes. Hooker had a bag of junk food. Beans had himself.

  Ralph opened the door and looked out at us. “Whoa, dude, you got a family.” He stepped to one side. “Me casa is your casa.”

  Ralph was raw-boned skinny. His snarled brown hair was shoulder length. Baggy jeans hung frighteningly low on plaid boxers. His shirt was rumpled and unbuttoned. He had a beer can in his hand.

  Hooker made the introductions, and then he and Ralph did one of those complicated bonding handshake things that men do when they don’t want to hug.

  “We’re sort of hiding out,” Hooker said to Ralph. “I don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”

  “Gotcha,” Ralph said. “Her old man’s looking for her, right?”

  “Yeah,” Hooker said. “Something like that.”

  Ralph draped an arm across my shoulders. “Honey, you can do better than him. He shops at Wal-Mart, if you know what I mean. Hangs out there on a Friday night with his bag of candy.”

  I cut my eyes to Hooker.

  “I haven’t done that for a couple weeks now,” Hooker said. “I’m changing my ways.”

  Ralph scratched Beans on the top of the head, and Beans affectionately leaned against Ralph and pushed him into the refrigerator.

  “Ralph and I have been friends since grade school,” Hooker said. “We grew up in the same town in Texas.”

  “We both used to race cars,” Ralph said. “Only Hooker was always good, and I never had the killer instinct.”

  Hooker got a couple beers out of the fridge and handed one over to me. “Yeah, but Ralph’s famous,” Hooker said. “He won the sixth-grade spelling bee.”

  “Yep, I was pretty smart back then,” Ralph said. “I could spell anything. Pissed it all away. Can’t hardly spell my name anymore. Living the vida loca though.”

  “Ralph hooked up with DKT Racing early on, and they brought him here to the stock-car capital of the world. And he’s still with DKT.”

  “Probably could have a brilliant future there,” Ralph said, “but I prefer to keep my head up my ass.”

  The kitchen appliances were avocado green and at least thirty years old. A blackened pot appeared to be stuck to a stove burner. The sink was filled with crumpled beer cans. Hard to tell the exact color of the walls and linoleum floor. No room in the kitchen for a table.

  We moved to the dining room. Pool table in the dining room. Ralph had pulled a chair up to the pool table, and a pizza take-out box was open on the tabletop. There was one piece of pizza left in the box. It looked like it had been there for a long time.

  “Don’t shoot a lot of pool?” I asked.

  “Comes and goes,” Ralph said. “I like to use this for a dining room table because the bumpers stop the food from falling off.”

  Beans walked up to the table and sniffed the pizza. He turned his head to look at Hooker, and then he looked at me, and then he put his two front paws on the table edge and ate the pizza.

  The living room furniture consisted of a lumpy couch with a large burn hole in one of the seat cushions, a coffee table that was completely covered with beer cans, take-out coffee cups, crumpled burger wrappers, empty grease-stained French fry containers and fried chicken buckets, and a large-screen television occupying an entire wall.

  “Bathroom?” I asked.

  “Down the hall. First door on the left.”

  I poked my head in and took a fast look around. Not terrifically clean, but there weren’t any dead men in it, so I thought I should be grateful. There was a stack of dog-eared publications on the floor. Mostly automotive with a few girlie magazines in the mix. A bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo on the edge of the tub. Plastic shower curtain decorated with gobs of soap and streaks of mold. A single towel hung on a hook on the wall. Good chance that this was Ralph’s only towel.

  Hooker, Beans, and Ralph were watching a game on television when I returned to the living room. They scooted over to make room for me, and we all sat there until close to midnight, drinking beer, pretending we were normal.

  “I gotta go to bed,” Ralph finally said. “I gotta go to work tomorrow. Where are you guys staying?”

  “Here?” Hooker said.

  “Oh yeah,” Ralph said. “Now I remember.” And he shuffled off, down the hall, past the bathroom. A door opened and closed and then there was quiet.

  “How many bedrooms does Ralph have?” I asked Hooker.

  “Two. But he keeps his Harley in the second bedroom. He’s rebuilding the bike, and he doesn’t have a garage.”

  “So we’re sleeping on this couch?”

  “Yep.” Hooker stretched out on his back. “Hop onboard. We’ll sleep double-decker. I’ll even be a good guy and let you take the top.”

  I rolled onto him, and he grunted.

  “What was that grunt?” I asked him.

  “Nothing.”

  “It was something.”

  “I just don’t remember y
ou as being this heavy. Maybe we should cut back on the doughnuts.”

  “Good grief.”

  Beans came over to investigate. He looked at us with his droopy brown eyes and then he climbed on top of us and settled in with a sigh, his huge dog head on mine.

  “Help!” Hooker gasped. “I can’t breathe. I’m squashed. And there’s a spring poking me in my back. Get him off.”

  “He’s lonely.”

  “If he doesn’t get off, he’s going to be an orphan.”

  Five minutes later, we were all stretched out on the pool table.

  TWELVE

  Hooker, Beans, and I were awake but still on the pool table when Ralph staggered past us on his way to the kitchen.

  “Morning,” Ralph said.

  I looked at my watch. Six thirty. I had no good reason to get up, but I was uncomfortable enough not to want to stay where I was. I crawled over Hooker and wriggled myself clear of the bumper. I expected Ralph to make coffee and pause for breakfast, but he ambled through the kitchen and out the back door. He got into a truck parked in his small backyard and drove off without a backward glance.

  Hooker came up behind me. “Ralph’s not a morning person. He sleeps in his clothes so he doesn’t have to decide what to wear when he rolls out of bed.”

  “No shock there. Do you think he’s got coffee?”

  “Ralph’s only got beer and takeout.”

  I felt my shoulders slump. I really wanted coffee.

  Hooker hugged me to him and kissed the top of my head. “I can see you’re crushed by that news. Never fear. You take a shower, and Beans and I will go out and get coffee.”

  “Do you think it’s safe to take a shower in there?”

  “Sure. Just leave your socks on.”

  When I came out of the bathroom, Hooker had hazelnut coffee waiting for me. My favorite. Plus a fruit cup and a bagel with lite cream cheese. Not subtle, but thoughtful. He’d also bought newspapers.

  “‘Body found inside championship race driver’s million-dollar motor coach,’” I read. “‘Police are withholding information until relatives can be notified, but sources close to the driver say the deceased was part of the Huevo race team. The body was discovered as the result of a bizarre seventeen-car crash in which the motor-coach driver fled on foot and then stole a car from an innocent bystander. The motor coach was heavily damaged in the crash.’”