“Casey was certainly correct about being tired. He almost drove off the road. If you hadn’t yelled…”
Melody’s voice trailed off. Drake was still shaken up.
“Avis wouldn’t have been happy about having a totaled Lincoln Continental. To say nothing about our personal unhappiness. I’m glad for his sake that he’s staying at the motel tonight. Also, I thought that his response to us telling him about Fred was rather tepid. I suspect he’s not going to fire him.”
“Let’s see what Peaches has dug up.”
They had left Casey making arrangements at the front desk. Melody knocked on Peaches’ door. When it opened, Peaches gave a welcoming look to Melody and a neutral look to Drake. Maybe he shouldn’t have come to Peaches’ room, but Melody had insisted. They went inside but didn’t sit down.
Peaches looked at Melody when he spoke. “I didn’t find anything. I went through Fred’s room very carefully. No gun, nothing incriminating.”
Melody had asked Peaches to search Fred’s room while Fred was out to dinner. She thanked him.
“I also searched the car and the bus. After Fred returned with the van I searched that. Nothing.”
Fred had taken most of the runners to dinner in the van. Drake wasn’t surprised. “He’s too smart to leave a gun where it could easily be found. The sheriff’s officers checked the bushes and the trash containers and didn’t come up with anything. Wherever the gun is, it’s well hidden.”
Melody asked, “Did you get into any trouble with the detective for having a gun?”
Peaches shook his head. “It’s licensed and everything. It hasn’t been fired. I’m not a suspect. I wish I could help. Grace was a good girl. She didn’t deserve to be killed. I said I’d protect her, and I didn’t.”
“It’s not your fault.” Drake had also been having guilt feelings. “There was nothing you could do. We don’t know that it was Fred.”
“We don’t know that it wasn’t.”
There was obviously no love lost between Peaches and Fred.
CHAPTER 23
Today’s run goes from the top of the first hill on Route 1 north of the Santa Maria River to Port San Luis, west of Avila Beach. You may take any route you like, but we recommend that you stay on roads the whole distance, as the beach is impassable in some areas and loaded with speeding dune buggies in the vicinity of Pismo Beach. Although you’ll start on Route 1, you may choose to take local roads through parts of Oceano, Grover City, Pismo Beach, and Shell Beach.
“Casey and Fred didn’t give us much time to mourn for Grace.”
Drake was momentarily taken aback by Melody’s statement, because she was less sentimental than most women, which was one of the things he liked about her. He knew she was deeply frustrated by the fact that they were leaving the scene of the crime without having any evidence as to what happened. Both of them felt the kind of guilt that comes from thinking they should have been able to save Grace, without knowing exactly how they could have done it. So Melody’s emotions were understandable. Drake, himself, harbored a pent-up fury, which threatened to erupt.
“The damned race must go on, in spite of a rising body count. Nothing is as important as the publicity for California, or maybe it’s the publicity for Giganticorp, or just maybe it’s publicity for Casey’s Senate run, although I don’t see how negative publicity like this can help him.”
The newspapers had played up the story as big news, even though they had little in the way of facts to write about. But when did reporters ever let a paucity of facts get in their way? Several reporters had asked questions of Melody, since she had been rooming with Grace. Melody refused to speculate about what had happened, leaving them to make up their own theories or repeat what the sheriff’s office said about a possible mugging.
Drake, the oldest runner, was asked a few generic questions, the kind answerable with a bland statement such as, “She was a wonderful young woman. I don’t know why anybody would want to hurt her.”
He was glad the men and women of the press didn’t have enough insight to ask him penetrating questions. The liaison between Grace and him hadn’t been leaked to them. Thank goodness. They had talked to the other male runners, trying to uncover a hint of a romance gone bad, but that attempt had failed.
Drake and Melody were taking their frustrations out on the road, running hard on the relatively level terrain, pulling away from all the runners except the ubiquitous Tom/Jerry and Phil/Brian teams, which they hadn’t gained on except for the two days in which they finished first.
Melody voiced a thought that had been bouncing around in Drake’s head. “Why don’t we quit the race? This isn’t fun anymore.”
“Well, for one thing, we’re being paid to run. A thousand dollars a day isn’t chicken feed.”
“Since when did you ever let money dictate what you did?”
“Since I’ve grown old enough to worry about my future. A few more days and I’ll have enough money to buy half my own cabin in Idyllwild. Fifty percent makes a healthy down payment.”
“I get the feeling you’re half serious. All right, we’ll stay in the race, at least for the moment, with the understanding that we’ll try to dig up evidence on what happened to Grace. I think the murderer is amongst us and that his name is F-R-E-D.”
“I’ll have another talk with F-R-E-D.”
“This time I’m going to join you. I want to look him in his piggy eyes when he goes into his music hall routine designed to obscure the truth.”
“I have a message for you, Mr. Drake.”
If there were any words in the English language that could get Drake’s heart racing faster than those just uttered by the desk clerk at the Avila Beach motel, he didn’t know what they were. The man picked up a folded piece of paper and handed it to Drake. He handed an identical sheet to Melody.
“Here’s one for you, Miss Jefferson.”
Drake and Melody cast alarmed glances at each other before they focused on the pages. Drake saw his name written in green fountain pen and knew that the writer was Fred. He unfolded the paper and read the beautifully written message.
“I’d like to see you and Melody in my room as soon as you get here.”
It was signed “Fred.” Drake’s level of concern went down a few notches. Melody held her message up, side- by-side with Drake’s. They were identical, except that hers stated Fred would like to see her and Drake. Melody looked from one to the other.
“It must be important if he wants to see us when we’re hot, sweaty, tired, and bedraggled.”
Drake quashed the impulse to say that at least Fred wouldn’t be tempted to harass her. “Maybe he’s trying to catch us off guard.”
“But we’re not off guard, are we? Let’s go.”
They obtained Fred’s room number from the desk clerk and marched down the corridor to his room. He opened the door within a few seconds of their knock. The harsh odor of cigarette smoke issued forth from the room.
“Come in, come in. Thanks for coming so promptly.”
Melody went into the room first and wrinkled her nose. “Your note implied that it was important.”
“Yes. I’d like you to meet my new assistant for Running California, Charles Ortiz. Charles flew down from San Jose this afternoon. Charles, these are Melody Jefferson and Oliver Drake, but call him Drake.”
They shook hands. Charles was a good looking young man, tall and thin. He had a high-wattage smile. But Drake was upset. This was what was so important that they had to do it unshowered? Meet Fred’s new assistant? An assistant brought in when Grace’s body was barely cold? He was tempted to say something sarcastic about the
