Motor Mouth: A Barnaby Novel

  I gave him my number and disconnected.

  “Maybe we should go back to the hotel and see if Carl needs a potty break or wants to get lunch,” Felicia said.

  We went back to the lot, piled into the car, and Rosa headed for Collins. After three blocks, Beans made the balloon noise again, Rosa pulled the car to the curb, and we all got out and waited for the air to clear.

  We were standing not far from the take-out part of Joe’s Stone Crabs. A black limo glided to a stop in front of us and Suzanne got out.

  “Omigosh,” she said when she saw me. “Barney. How’ve you been? Where’s Hooker?”

  “He’s been kidnapped.”

  “Jeez,” Suzanne said, “that’s too bad. There’s so much of that going around these days. Excuse me a minute. I have to get my stone crabs.”

  “Who’s that?” Rosa wanted to know. “She looks like a big bitch. I like her already.”

  Suzanne was carrying a large bag when she came out. “So what are you up to?” she asked me, handing the bag over to the chauffeur.

  “I’m trying to find Hooker. These are my friends Rosa and Felicia.”

  “Have you gone to the police?” Suzanne asked.

  “No. Hooker and I are sort of wanted for multiple counts of murder. Oscar, Spanky’s spotter, Hooker’s security guy…and they’ve probably added Ray by now.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Ray isn’t dead,” Suzanne said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, Ray’s with me. You want to see him?”

  FIFTEEN

  Felicia, Rosa, and I got back into the Camry, rolled the windows down, and followed the black limo to Suzanne’s condo. We valet-parked the car and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. All the time, I was dying to jump up and down and yell and be embarrassingly excited because I’d found Ray. Since I hadn’t a clue as to what was going on, and I didn’t want to screw anything up, I just kept my lips pressed tight together and my hands balled into fists at my side and tried to look calm.

  “It’s just a temporary rental until I get everything straightened out,” Suzanne said, plugging her key into the lock. “Still, it’s not bad, and it’s got a great view.”

  The condo stretched across the back of the building with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the ocean. The décor was modern, mostly white with touches of pastel. The kitchen was high tech and looked totally unused.

  “Where’s Itsy Poo?” I asked Suzanne.

  “She goes to play group on Tuesdays. And then she gets a whirlpool bath and a pedicure.”

  Beans was pressed into my leg as if he understood pedicure and didn’t think a lot of it.

  Suzanne set the stone crabs on the kitchen counter. “Follow me, ladies, and I’ll show you what pissed-off mothers do for fun.”

  We all marched into the bedroom, which was about half the size of a football field. Her bed was one of those four-poster things, draped in white gauze. The carpet was white. The woods were pale. The upholstered pieces were white. The curtains were drawn, and I thought this was probably to keep the sun out so she didn’t go snow blind.

  “This unit has his and hers bathrooms,” Suzanne said. “My bathroom is through the door to the right. And his bathroom is in here.”

  Suzanne took a key off the dresser, unlocked the door to his bathroom, and stepped back. Ray was prisoner in the little room, still dressed in the clothes he’d worn to the beach meeting. He was tethered with an elaborate system of clunky chains that wrapped around the toilet and the pipes under the sink. His hands were free to do whatever he needed to do, but he didn’t have enough chain to do what he really wanted to do…which was to choke Suzanne. He had a pillow and a quilt, a stack of magazines, and a tray with leftovers from takeout.

  “Now you’re all accomplices to kidnapping,” Ray said. “If you don’t get me out of here, you’re all going to jail for the rest of your lives.”

  “What did he do?” Felicia asked. “He cheat on you?”

  “No. He’s my brother-in-law,” Suzanne said. “He rudely killed my husband before I had the chance to do it myself. And now he’s planning to swindle my kids out of their inheritance.”

  “You have no proof,” Ray said.

  “It’s always a mistake to mess with a mother,” Suzanne said.

  “So this is where Ray went after he talked to Hooker and me,” I said.

  “It was easy,” Suzanne said. “I told him I wanted to talk to him in private about transferring the boat over to him. He came up here. I hit him with a blast from a stun gun, trussed him up, and I was in business. I guess the moron never told anyone he was coming here.”

  “Ask her about the chip,” Ray said to Suzanne.

  “Shut up.”

  “Ask her!”

  “What about the chip?” I said to Suzanne.

  “Ray and Oscar have a product in R and D that’s worth a lot of money. They didn’t realize I knew about it, but I keep my ears open.

  “I knew it was ready for sale, and I knew Oscar was using it on the cars. It got him a championship, but more than that, it was a flashy way to demonstrate the technology to prospective buyers. I was willing to be the good corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I was even willing to be the good ex-corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I’m not willing to be the widow who sits by and watches the slime-bag brother rape the company.” Suzanne’s frozen eyebrows narrowed ever so slightly. “So I had to bring Ray in for questioning, right, Ray?”

  Ray gave her the death glare. And Suzanne ignored it.

  “And now the prototype has disappeared, and Ray doesn’t want to tell me where it’s wandered off to,” Suzanne said.

  “I told you where the chip is,” Ray said. “Jesus, why don’t you just ask her?”

  Suzanne kept her eyes on Ray. “Ray has this insultingly ridiculous story he’s constructed about the product disappearance. His contention is that you and Hooker have it. And it gets even better. He claims you got this particular product by stealing a car hauler. The same hauler that was supposed to carry Oscar back to Mexico.”

  “Are you talking about the gizmo in the gearshift knob?” I asked her.

  Suzanne turned to me, mouth dropped open, eyes as wide as they’d go on Botox. “I thought he was lying. The story was insane. I mean, who would believe something like that? Don’t tell me it’s true!”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  Suzanne tipped her head back and gave a whoop of laughter. She looked over at Beans. “I guess the tooth marks in Oscar make sense to me now. You should give him an extra dog biscuit for that one.”

  “He thought Mr. Dead Guy was a big chew toy,” Felicia said. “He’s just a puppy inside.”

  “So where’s the circuit board?” Suzanne asked. “Do you have it?”

  “Not exactly. But I know where it is.”

  “And it’s safe? You can get it for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Suzanne gave a sigh of relief. “You can’t imagine how much time and money went into the making of that thing. It’s my sons’ future.”

  “So it wasn’t about the boat?”

  “Not entirely. The boat was just part of it. By the time Ray’s executorship ran out, there wouldn’t have been anything left of the company. Ray would have stripped every asset from it.”

  Ray didn’t say anything. They’d obviously had this conversation before and it didn’t end well for Ray.

  “There are a couple things I don’t understand,” I said to Suzanne. “I know the value of traction control in a race car, but I get the feeling this is bigger than just rigging a contest. Why is this one little circuit board so important?”

  “The technology has the potential for wide use,” Suzanne said. “Everything on that tiny circuit card is exclusive to Huevo. The concept, the programming, the wireless technology, and the battery composite are all straight out of development and have never before been seen…anywhere. If the circuit board fell into the wrong hands, it could eventually be unrave
led and the technology could be stolen. The battery alone is worth hundreds of millions. The wireless technology will revolutionize the aircraft industry.”

  “So you wanted to get it back just so it wouldn’t get duplicated?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Suzanne said. “Idiot Oscar amused himself by producing a microprocessor that could easily be embedded in an engine and regulate engine speed. It was illegal and made use of the new battery and wireless technology, but it was a simple program, and it self-destructed each week when given the signal. At the same time, Oscar had established a partnership with a technology broker.”

  “Anthony Miranda?”

  “Yes. Miranda has an overseas client who is willing to pay top dollar. Unfortunately, some of that technology could have been used in very bad ways by Miranda’s client. I would have stepped in sooner, but I didn’t know that part of it until I got to Florida.

  “Anyway, a prototype circuit board had been produced for Miranda. It was programmed to demonstrate the wireless technology that could be used in aircraft. So genius Oscar brought two different circuit boards to Florida and somehow managed to put the wrong circuit board in the sixty-nine car.”

  “It was Rodriguez,” Ray said. “He picked up the wrong package. I had both packages labeled and locked away in the hotel’s safety-deposit box. Miranda’s man was flying in the day after the race to pick up the prototype for demonstration. I didn’t even know about the mix-up until the day after the race when I went to get Miranda’s package.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight. Rodriguez put the wrong circuit board in the number sixty-nine?”

  “The chip that actually controls engine function is embedded directly onto the engine, but since the signal was traveling some distance to the car, we found it to be a more reliable system if we added a second chip that picked up the start signal and relayed that signal to the primary. Because we powered the relay chip with the new battery material, we kept the chip close to us until the last moment. And as a final precaution, it was programmed to self-destruct. Plus, we only used the second chip on Huevo cars. The morning of the race Rodriguez was in a hurry and grabbed the wrong package out of the safe. And Rodriguez placed the chip in the knob without examining it.”

  “Could that prototype circuit board control the car?”

  “No,” Ray said. “And it wasn’t programmed to self-destruct, either.”

  “So you’re telling me Dickie actually won the race?”

  This was the first time Ray smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Isn’t that a kicker? Who would have thought he could actually drive that car?”

  “Why didn’t you hurry up and make another circuit board for Miranda?”

  “There’s no way to hurry. The prototype circuit board and battery could have been reproduced…but not quickly. Certainly not in the two week window we were tied to. The demonstration schedule was in place.”

  “Why didn’t you just reschedule?”

  “Imagine that Miranda is Darth Vader,” Ray said. “And you had to tell Lord Vader that he needed to reschedule his demonstration. Miranda is ruthless. Miranda has no tolerance for mistakes. And when the chip didn’t get dropped into Miranda’s hand as promised, his twisted paranoid mind screamed double cross. Miranda’s assumption was that I was selling the chip elsewhere. And things turned very ugly.”

  “Anybody mind if I have some stone crabs?” Felicia wanted to know.

  “Omigod,” Suzanne said. “I forgot about the stone crabs. Let’s all go into the kitchen, and I’ll have a pitcher of booze sent up.”

  “Hey!” Ray said. “Pay attention here! What about me?”

  “What about you?” Suzanne asked.

  “I’m chained!”

  “Don’t whine, Ray,” Suzanne said. “It’s unattractive.”

  “I told you everything you wanted to know,” Ray said. “You’re just keeping me here because you’re a sicko. Not my fault that you turned into a dried-up old hag and Oscar dumped you, sweetie pie.”

  Suzanne lunged at Ray, and we all jumped on her and dragged her back from the bathroom.

  “Not a good idea to wrestle with him,” I told her. “I need him to be alive and coherent so he can set Rodriguez and Lucca up as murder suspects.” I looked at Ray. “You’re still going to do that, right?”

  “Sure,” Ray said. Sullen but hopeful.

  “Unfortunately, Rodriguez and Lucca have disappeared and might be dead, so you’ll have to work that into your plan,” I told him.

  I looked over at Suzanne. “Do you mind keeping him here awhile longer? He’s probably safer here than out on the street where Darth Vader might run into him.”

  “Sure. We’re having a good time together. And I know it seems crass to bring this up, but I want the circuit board. It belongs to Huevo Enterprises.”

  Rosa, Felicia, and I cut our eyes to Beans.

  “He ate it,” I said.

  “I put it down for only one minute,” Felicia said. “And he did a big lick on the table, and the little thingy was gone. And now we’re waiting for him to make poopie.”

  Suzanne went dead still. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes,” we all said.

  She stood with her hands slack at her sides and her face expressionless. “Let me get this straight. We’re waiting for that dog to shit out my billion-dollar circuit board.”

  “Yes,” we all said.

  “This is priceless,” Suzanne said. “I’ve been keeping Ray here for two days because the true story he was telling me was too insane to be believable, and now it turns out a Saint Bernard ate the circuit board. Is there anything else I should know?”

  “Miranda is holding Hooker hostage for the circuit board. And there’s another man missing. A friend of mine who is also involved. Jefferson Davis Warner.”

  “Those guys got Gobbles?” Felicia said. “I didn’t know that. That’s terrible. He’s such a sweetie. I bet he’s scared.”

  “Ray knows where he is,” I told everybody. “Don’t you, Ray?”

  “We had him on the boat with us. And then we moved him to the car,” Ray said. “Rodriguez was keeping him close. He had him in the trunk.”

  “He’s not on the boat, and he’s not in the car,” I said.

  “Then I don’t know where he is,” Ray said. “You have to ask Rodriguez.”

  My phone buzzed, and I looked at the readout. Skippy.

  “Sorry,” Skippy said. “I went to a bunch of different sources, but no properties turned up. Has the dog pooped yet?”

  “No.”

  “I got an actor lined up, and if you don’t get too close, he could be Hooker. All he has to do is get in the car and follow the guy in front of him at parade speed. We might be okay as long as he doesn’t have to talk. If he opens his mouth, I’m fucked.”

  The line went dead, and I put my phone back in my pocket. I was between a rock and a hard place. I wanted to give the circuit board to Suzanne and her kids. I really did. But more than that…I wanted Hooker safe.

  “I know that circuit board belongs to you,” I said to Suzanne, “but I can’t sacrifice Hooker for it.”

  Ray had been sitting on the toilet lid, taking it all in. “If you cut me in, I can help,” he said. “I can talk to Miranda. I can make a deal so everyone benefits…even Hooker.”

  “Eat dirt and die,” Suzanne said. And she closed and locked the bathroom door.

  We followed Suzanne out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

  “If I let him go, he’ll kill me,” Suzanne said. “Just like he killed Oscar. And I know he killed Oscar. I have spies everywhere, listening at doors, reading memos before they get shredded. Ray decided to stage a coup, and Rodriguez was the designated hit man. Rodriguez grabbed the wrong chip because he’d just drilled Oscar and his slut girlfriend, and he was running late. Rodriguez had Oscar packaged up and in the back of his car when he stopped off at the hotel to get the chip. Rodriguez was in a rush and not paying attention.
”

  “What are you going to do with the guy in the bathroom?” Rosa wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “I brought him here because I was told Miranda was coming into town to personally pick up the prototype. I thought I might be able to get the chip ahead of Miranda and use it as leverage to keep Ray in line. After I had Ray here awhile, I realized nothing is going to keep Ray in line. Ray is insane. He feels no remorse for anything.”

  “Maybe he needs to get fitted with cement shoes and go for a swim,” Rosa said.

  “First thing, we need to find a way to get Hooker and not give up the circuit board,” I said. “Then we’ll worry about Ray.”

  “We could force them to give us Hooker,” Felicia said. “Just go in there and shoot ’em up.”

  “How many men are with Hooker?” Suzanne asked.

  “Miranda and two others, for sure,” I said. “Rodriguez and Lucca have disappeared. They could be with Miranda, but most likely they’re playing poker with Oscar.”

  “We could take them,” Rosa said. “Four against three.”

  “I’m game,” Suzanne said.

  This was a ridiculous idea that scared the bejeezus out of me. It wasn’t as if we were army rangers or something. We were a former Vegas showgirl, a cigar roller, a grandmother who sold fruit, and a mechanic who wasn’t any good with guns.

  “Any other ideas?” I asked.

  Silence. No other ideas.

  “Gee, it sounds like a good plan,” I said, “but we can’t do it because we don’t know where they are.” Thank God.

  “I’ve got that covered,” Suzanne said. “We let Ray lead us to them. Three of us leave and one stays behind to guard Ray. The one who stays behind opens the door to see if Ray’s okay, and then she feels sorry for him, so she opens the handcuffs so he can have some stone crabs. And she lets Ray escape. Then we just follow Ray.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds dangerous for the one who stays behind.” In fact, it sounded nuts!

  “Piece of cake,” Felicia said. “I could do it. Look at me. I’m a grandma. He’ll believe I would let him go. But you have to promise to come get me before you bust in on the bad guys. I don’t want to miss anything.”