ripped the sleeves and legs off a jumpsuit, uncovering yards of sleek golden flesh.
“I’m Kent,” he said, putting out a friendly hand. She took it in hers and held it warmly for a second. “I’m in trouble.”
Kent’s heart pounded. This was every one of his teenage fantasies coming true. Why had he wasted so many years with Nancy?
He gave her his most seductive smile. “Cops on your trail?”
Her seductive smile put his to shame. “Worse,” she said. “Oprah.” She pointed at a sign up ahead: Road Maintenance Sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. “I can’t pick up one more Coke can or Big Mac wrapper, and I’ve got to get out of here before my shift supervisor comes back.”
“Then let’s find you a safe place to hide.” Kent smoothly slid the gearshift into drive and, flipping on his blinkers, merged into traffic.
They rode in comfortable silence as Kent tried to think of something suitably cool to say. She didn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation, staring tensely ahead at the road.
“So, Oprah,” Kent finally said, “she must have some pretty tough enforcers.”
The woman slid down in her seat, hiding her face with her left hand. At first Kent thought he’d said the wrong thing. Then he glanced across the divider and saw there was an accident on the other side of the road. A small gray bus had flown off the roadway and slammed into a eucalyptus. The driver, who was wearing some kind of uniform, dangled out his window, obviously killed in the collision.
“That must have been some crash,” Kent said. “It looks like that guy’s head is dangling by a thread.”
The woman sank down farther in her seat. Poor, sensitive soul, Kent thought. Can’t even bear to look. He tapped the gas, and the Mustang sped on toward his glorious future.
Chapter Nineteen
“My arms are getting tired.” Gus’ voice echoed out of the empty grave. “Why don’t you climb down here and do some digging?”
“And get my cassock dirty?” Shawn peered down into the grave, his face gleaming in the light bouncing off his priest’s collar. “Besides, you’re doing great. You’re a natural-born gravedigger.”
Gus threw down the shovel and climbed out of the hole. “No, the bulldozer that dug this grave yesterday is a natural-born gravedigger. They haven’t used shovels here in fifty years.”
“Which is why your disguise is so brilliant. You don’t have to worry about running into the real guy.”
“I just want to run into the real woman so we can get out of here.”
“Dude, it’s all going to plan.”
Which was true, although the fact that they were still only halfway through step one suggested there was still plenty that could go wrong. That and the gaping hole where step two of the three-step plan was supposed to go.
The fraction of a plan they had grew out of Shawn’s realization that Tara was a serial neck breaker. While Gus was busy thinking back on things he’d said that might have inspired her to snap his spine like a twig, Shawn was furiously castigating himself. If only he’d read the signs, if only he’d noticed what must have been obvious. Now people were dead, and it was his fault. The only good thing was that Tara hadn’t wanted Henry dead, so she had only tased him instead of snapping his neck, too. Because if Henry-
Shawn stopped in midthought. Gus looked over at him, thinking that the idea of his father murdered was too much for Shawn to take. But Shawn was smiling.
“What’s funny?” Gus said.
“Animal House,” Shawn said. “On the other hand, if you want something that doesn’t have big laughs, but leaves you with a wry smile, a warm chuckle, and that nod of recognition that we’re all riders in the same cockeyed caravan of life, how about the fact that Tara didn’t kill Dallas Steele?”
“You just said she did. You said she was a serial killer.”
“And she may be. Which means she’s got a pattern. She makes a friend, gets close, and when the relationship is over, she snaps his neck and moves on.”
“So she would have killed you and not me.”
“Can you stop thinking about yourself for one minute?” Shawn threw up his hands in exasperation. “She’s got this whole neck-snapping thing down to an art. So why would she choose to stab Dallas Steele in the heart?”
“Variety?”
“Because she didn’t do it. Which means we didn’t tell her to do it. Which means we’re off the hook.”
Gus desperately wanted to believe Shawn. If only he could get past the one small flaw in his logic. “We saw her standing over him, holding the knife.”
“Right,” Shawn said. “So we know it was a perfect frame. Now who had a motive to want Steele dead?”
“Us?”
Shawn thought long and hard. He scrunched his eyes shut as he mentally replayed every moment of the case. Then he jumped up out of his chair. “Reynaldo!”
“Who?”
“The new wife’s old lover, the handsome but poor artist. He couldn’t stand to lose his true love to this arrogant billionaire, so he turned all his seductive powers on Tara. When she was completely under his control, he killed Steele and framed her for it.”
By the time he was done, Shawn was practically glowing with amazement at his own genius. Gus wanted to share in the moment, but he was still stuck on logic issues.
“That’s really good,” Gus said.“Couple of small things. First, if anyone had Tara completely under his control, it was you. Remember?”
“She could have been using me to protect him.”
Gus sighed. “Okay, maybe,” he said. “But there’s one other problem. Reynaldo doesn’t exist.”
“He doesn’t?”
“You made him up when you were trying to figure out why Steele invited us to Eagle’s View. Steele said he had a new wife, and you-”
Shawn jumped up from his chair. “Exactly what I meant! It’s the wife!”
Of course it was. It had to be. Steele had no other living relatives either of them knew about, so she stood to inherit his billions. And there was clearly something strange about their relationship. Steele was willing to spend a hundred million dollars simply to win an argument. If she didn’t have immediate access to that much cash, maybe a knife through the heart would have seemed like the appropriate response. If they could confront Mrs. Steele, Shawn was sure he could prove she was the real killer.
Gus didn’t doubt Shawn’s abilities. The trouble would be in finding her. They didn’t even know her first name-Steele had always referred to her only as his bride. There was no announcement of the wedding in any newspaper, local or national. City hall had no record of their marriage. And somehow the wedding of Forbes magazine’s Sexiest Billionaire Alive of 2007 and 2008 had managed to go unnoticed by tabloids that give saturation coverage to the nuptials of anyone who’d ever been in the same ZIP code as a celebrity.
After a fruitless afternoon of online searching and another hour wasted at the county’s hall of records, Gus was almost ready to give up and say there was no Mrs. Steele. But Shawn would not let him quit. He was sure he was right. And besides, if he admitted Steele wasn’t married, he’d have to come up with a new theory.
The next morning, armed with business cards identifying themselves as segment producers for E! Entertainment Television, they hit every florist, caterer, and bridal shop within a five-dollar cab ride’s radius of their office. Even promises of a prominent role in a thirteen-week docu-soap about the wedding got them nothing but blank looks from the employees. They checked the gift registries of the most expensive stores on State Street, but the name Steele never appeared.
“This is useless.” Gus dropped a wad of business cards into a wastebasket outside an art gallery. “No one’s heard of this wedding. There is no Mrs. Dallas Steele.”
