Read Sink Trap Online

Authors: Christy Evans

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Large Type Books, #Mystery Fiction, #Murder, #Crime, #Investigation, #Murder - Investigation, #Oregon, #Plumbers

Sink Trap (8 page)

BOOK: Sink Trap
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“I know that. I know she’s going to start dating. Dad’s
been gone three years.” I bit my lip, but I couldn’t stop the rush of words. “But he’s married!”
“Divorced,” Wade said. “Now.” He shrugged. “He and Tricia only stayed married for tax reasons, and”—he leaned forward, his expression hard—“I can hardly believe I told you that. It’s a gross ethical violation.”
“I didn’t hear a thing,” I said hastily. “But he’s still her boss.”
“
Bzzzzzz!
Wrong again, Georgie. He’s not her boss, never was. She’s an independent agent in his office. More like her landlord, if anything. Didn’t she explain that to you?”
“We don’t talk about business.”
Wade let go of my hand, sat back, and took a long pull on his beer. He shoved the empty basket that had held his chicken and fries to the edge of the table, and wrinkled his brow.
“Then it isn’t just me.” He nodded. “That explains a lot.” He leaned forward again, and reached for my hand. “You don’t talk about business with anyone, do you, Georgie? You don’t talk about business, or where you’ve been, or what you did while you were gone. It’s all off limits with you.”
“Wade . . .”
He squeezed my hand. “You used to trust me, Georgie.”
“I’m not the same girl that left Pine Ridge, Wade.”
He laughed. “Thank heavens! She was seventeen, and that kind of dating would purely destroy my political career.”
I laughed, too, then grew serious for a moment. I squeezed Wade’s hand, and let go, cradling my chin in my hands.
“It’s been a long time, Wade. Things change. People change. Trust takes time.”
Wade studied me over the rim of his schooner for a long while. I forced myself not to look away. He had to give me time, and if he couldn’t . . .
“Okay,” he said at last. “But when you’re ready to reveal
the mystery of the missing years of Georgiana Neverall, just remember I’m waiting for the story.”
I nodded. “I’m sure you’ll be among the first to know.” I reached across the table and shook his hand. Then I raised my glass.
“To mysteries,” I said. “May they never be revealed too soon.”
Wade grinned, and tapped his glass against mine.
“Which reminds me,” I said as I set my beer down. I dug in the pocket of my jacket, hanging on the back of my chair. “Speaking of mysteries, do you recognize this?”
“Miss Tepper’s brooch?” he asked. “Where did you get it?”
I repeated my story again, omitting the drain pipe, and adding my visit to Paula.
“You know who the brooch belongs to, and you can send it to her. Mystery solved. But you know Paula.” He chuckled. “That story will have as many heartbreaking moments as any romance novel in the library. Paula’s a sucker for a tragic love story.”
“Maybe so, but don’t you think it’s strange that her brooch would be here, when she moved to Arizona? And her phone here isn’t forwarded, or even disconnected?”
Wade shook his head. “Not really. You said yourself, she’s planning to come back. And people lose stuff all the time. Especially when they’re moving. You lost stuff when you moved, didn’t you?”
I’d lost a lot of stuff when I moved, just not the material things Wade was talking about.
“I suppose. I never did find the dogs’ water dishes. Had to buy new ones when we got here.”
“That’s what I mean. Stuff gets lost. Sometimes it gets found, sometimes it doesn’t.
“Nothing strange about it.”
I let it drop. Wade was certain there was no mystery, and I was sure he was wrong. Miss Tepper wore that brooch every day. Even when you’re moving, you keep track of the things that are important to you.
I thought about the things that had been important to me, the things I had kept close when I moved.
There weren’t very many.
But I’d bet that Miss Tepper hadn’t lost most of her life in the kind of crucible that had incinerated mine. And I bet her important things would have included that cameo.
I glanced at my watch. The hour had passed.
“I have to go,” I said. The reluctance in my voice was real. Whatever my thing was with Wade—if it was a thing—I truly enjoyed his company. Even if he occasionally got a little too close for comfort.
“I have an early class,” I continued, reaching back to slip my arms into my jacket.
“I’ll walk you out,” Wade offered.
I shook my head. “You don’t have to. I’ll be fine.”
I stood up and a huge yawn came out of nowhere, nearly cracking my jaw. “I just need to get home and get some sleep.”
Wade looked skeptical.
“It’s five minutes, Wade. I’ll be fine.”
I patted his shoulder and walked away before he could argue. Saying good night in a public place like that avoided a lot of potential awkwardness.
chapter 8
I pulled the Beetle out of Tiny’s lot and onto the street. Even on a Friday night, there was no traffic. Behind me, another car pulled out of the lot, too.
The high beams of the other car caught my rearview mirror, and for an instant all I could see was glare. Why didn’t that idiot dim his lights?
The truck—I figured it was a truck because the lights were so far off the ground—followed me for several blocks. In a town the size of Pine Ridge, that didn’t seem unusual. There weren’t that many main streets.
But when I took the turn off the highway, he turned right behind me. The high beams were still blinding me, and he pulled up nearly on my rear bumper.
I slowed down. If this guy was in such a hurry, I’d just let him go around.
But he didn’t. He stuck to me, so close his lights actually illuminated the road in front of me.
I wasn’t warm—in fact, the Beetle’s notoriously poor heater hadn’t even taken the chill off the interior—but a drop of sweat ran down the side of my face.
I rounded a curve in the road, sticking close to the fog line in the hope the truck would finally pass.
No such luck.
I was only a few blocks from home. One last sweeping left-hand curve before my turn.
Suddenly the truck behind me roared as the driver down-shifted and hit the accelerator.
The truck pulled within inches of my bumper. I was sure he was going to hit me.
I pulled the wheel to the left, trying to follow the curve of the road. The truck edged its nose around my rear fender and began to overtake me.
Slowly.
He inched forward, his engine loud in my tiny car, but he made no move to change lanes and pass. He just kept creeping closer.
I hit the brakes and pulled the front wheels to the right, crossing the fog line and stopping only inches from the drainage ditch that ran alongside the road.
The truck’s speed and momentum carried it around me, and the world was suddenly very dark as the lights passed me. The tiny VW headlamps looked weak and dim by comparison.
The truck sped away, its taillights disappearing around a corner a couple blocks farther on.
The jerk! He’d blinded me, nearly run me off the road, and then he didn’t even have the decency to stop to make sure I was okay.
I sat in the car for several minutes, letting my heart slow and my temper cool. I considered calling the police and reporting him, but I hadn’t been able to get a license plate, and I couldn’t even give them a decent description of the vehicle.
Looking for a big pickup in Pine Ridge was like looking for a Starbucks in San Francisco. There was one on every block.
The adrenaline rush passed and I started to shake. It
was a few minutes more before I was able to once again put the car in gear and drive slowly home.
 
 
Saturday morning came, as it always did, far too early. I had to be in class at eight, and the college was halfway back to Portland. Twenty minutes, minimum.
At least the early summer sun was shining, and the traffic was light. Another few weeks, and the tourist flow over Mount Hood to and from the recreation spots in Central Oregon would clog the highways all weekend.
All the way to school I kept checking my rearview mirror, looking for a big pickup truck with blazing headlights and an idiot behind the wheel.
I saw a lot of candidates, though not one of them did anything more stupid than usual. There was always some fool that considered a Beetle an affront to his monster truck and had to pass me.
Maybe I was just overreacting. The guy last night had been a jerk, sure. But I was tired, probably driving below the speed limit and not paying a lot of attention.
There were a lot of jerks on the road who couldn’t wait an extra minute to get wherever they were going.
I shouldn’t get upset over one more.
I breathed deep and remembered the calming techniques from my martial arts classes.
Let it go.
Or as Sue would say, “Build a bridge and get over yourself.”
 
 
The upside of an early class was having the rest of the weekend free.
As I left the college, I flipped my phone open, and tapped in the number for Doggy Day Spa. Sue answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Sue,” I said. “Still got time for Daisy and Buddha this morning?”
There was a snort of laughter on the other end of the line. “Morning?! It’s quarter to noon.
Some
people have been up and working for hours!”
“And
some
people have been in class for three-and-a-half hours.” I wrestled with the door lock on the Beetle. It needed to be repaired, or more likely replaced, but finding anyone willing to work on a thirty-year-old car was a challenge.
“Oh. Right. Hang on a minute.”
The phone thunked onto the counter, and I listened to the faint conversation as Sue finished up with another customer. By the time she came back on the line, I was in the car.
“You have lunch plans?” Sue said when she returned. Another one of those famous conversational left turns.
“With Daisy and Buddha?”
“Hmmm. Can’t think of any place that will let them in,” she replied, “so no. Just you. Smart aleck,” she added with a chuckle. Sue generally took my ribbing about her conversational acrobatics with aplomb.
“First tell me when I can bring the dogs in,” I replied.
I started the car, idling in the parking lot while I finished talking. Unlike my mother, I didn’t have a Bluetooth headset, and driving a stick shift while juggling a cell phone wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“There’s an opening in about thirty minutes, or we can have lunch first, and you can bring them in about three. What works for you?”
I looked over at the clutter of empty coffee cups and snack food wrappers on the seat next to me. A fast-food coffee and biscuit didn’t constitute a meal.
“Lunch first,” I said. “And can you call Paula, see if she wants to join us? She promised me a story.”
“About what?”
“Miss Tepper, and the brooch. Now I have to get off the
phone so I can drive. I’ll meet you at the shop in twenty minutes, if the traffic gods cooperate.”
“I’m willing to trust them. Get yourself back here.”
“Right.” I hung up and pulled out of the parking lot.
 
 
When I pulled up in front of Sue’s shop, she was waiting outside. She spotted me, locked the door, and tried to get into the passenger side of the bug.
I quickly grabbed up the debris from the seat and shoved it into a bag, which I then dumped over my shoulder into the back.
“Man, Georgiana, now I believe you’re a construction worker. It looks like you’re living in this car,” Sue said, as she slammed the car door.
“Hello to you, too.”
“Take the left,” Sue said. “Paula’s already there.”
“Where?” I asked, pulling across a break in traffic, and heading north.
“Franklin’s. You remember where that is?”
“Of course. I haven’t been gone that long. In fact, I’ve been in there a couple times since I came back.
“You said Paula’s waiting?”
“Yep. She doesn’t have a lot of time, but she said you’d want to hear her story. Next right,” she reminded me.
Franklin’s parking lot was nearly deserted, and we parked near the door. Paula was waiting in a booth next to the front window of the fifties-style coffee shop, and she waved at us as we climbed out of the car.
I debated for about a nanosecond over the menu. Franklin’s made the best club sandwich I had ever eaten, and served it with homemade potato salad. I silently promised myself a long walk with the dogs, and ordered the sandwich.
While we waited for our iced tea, I took the brooch out and set it in the middle of the table, where we all could see it. “Wade says she just misplaced it while she was moving,” I said. “I suppose he could be right.”
“Yeah, right.” Paula snorted in a very unladylike manner. “Wade has—sorry, Georgie—the soul of an accountant. What does he know about lost love and broken hearts?”
BOOK: Sink Trap
2.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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