“About Lou,” he added quickly. “Tell her I’m sorry about Lou.”
He certainly wasn’t doing himself any favors saying anything like that.
Jeff held the door to the Pontiac open for me, and I settled into the seat, watching Tim and Willis and Franklin. As Jeff got into the car and started the engine, I asked, “Do you really think he did it?”
He didn’t answer as the car moved out of the lot, passing a Chevy Impala that looked remarkably like Tim’s, Detective Kevin Flanigan at the wheel. Flanigan caught my eye, and I could see that he might not have been too happy about Tim taking over this whole Dan Franklin thing. Maybe we should’ve called Flanigan from the get-go, when we were following Franklin on the Monorail.
“You’re really under lock and key, aren’t you?” Jeff asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, looking out the window. We were across the street from the Stardust, and I could see the Circus Circus big top a block or so up to the right.
Jeff was about to turn left onto the Strip, but I put my hand on the steering wheel.
“What?” he asked.
“Let’s make a stop,” I said.
His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile. “I told your brother I’d take you to your shop. He won’t trust me ever again if I don’t do that. And what is it he wants to talk to me about?”
I sighed. “I had to tell him about the ten-thousand-dollar withdrawal.”
“You told him we stole his mail?”
I shook my head. “No, no, I sort of glossed over the details.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and said, “Glossed over them how?”
“He knows you were involved.”
He chewed on his lip for a second, then said, “But you left out most of the details, didn’t you?”
“Does it matter? They’ll check his account, and then they won’t need us,” I said, trying to convince myself. “But for now, I think we should go to the wedding chapel.”
He grinned.
“Kavanaugh, I didn’t think you cared.”
I slugged him on the shoulder. “I don’t mean we should get married or anything.”
“I’m crushed.”
I rolled my eyes. “Give me a break. There’s something there I want to check out.” I was thinking about Will Parker coming by to pick up Dan Franklin-in a blue car. Something about that car still tugged at my brain. Plus, Will Parker giving us an address for an In-N-Out burger joint stuck in my craw.
“Something or someone?” Jeff asked. “I’m not the kind of guy who drops a girl off to see another guy.”
I leaned back in my seat and sighed. “Okay, fine, take me back to my shop.”
But he’d already turned right. In the direction of the wedding chapel. I didn’t say anything, just let him drive.
But when we approached the intersection-That’s Amore on our right and the Love Shack on our left-Jeff took an unexpected turn to the left.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
And then I saw it. A blue car sat in the front lot at the Love Shack. A blue car with the right headlight smashed in and the bumper a little bit askew.
Chapter 48
Jeff Coleman blew a long, low whistle.
“Looks like a bad one,” he said.
“That’s the car,” I said. “Will Parker came to pick up Dan Franklin in that car. I thought something looked a little off, but the way he parked, I couldn’t really tell until now.”
“Do you think this was the car that hit Lou?”
I shrugged. “Could be.”
“But you said it’s Parker’s car, not Franklin’s. So what’s up with him? And why is it over here and not across the street?”
I had no freaking idea. My head was a jumbled-up mess of thoughts all knocking into one another like kids in one of those Moonwalks.
“Maybe they’re in on it together,” I suggested. “There were some hints that Sanderson, the guy who owns this wedding chapel, might have been involved, too.”
“I didn’t take you as a conspiracy theorist, Kavanaugh.”
“I’m grabbing at straws here,” I admitted.
“Playing devil’s advocate for a moment,” Jeff said. “Why would Will Parker leave his smashed-up blue car so everyone can see it? If he used this car to run down Lou, then you’d think he’d hide it.”
“But maybe he thinks no one will notice if it’s parked over here. Then again, Dan Franklin’s car is allegedly being serviced,” I said.
Jeff fished a cigarette out of his front breast pocket. He put it in his mouth but didn’t light it. He saw me watching him. “What? I’m not going to smoke it. I just think better with it.”
Now there were so many ways to respond to that that I couldn’t figure out which one to throw out at him. He noticed and grinned, the cigarette bobbing between his lips.
“No cracks, Kavanaugh.”
I held up my hands in surrender. But before I could say anything, the door to the Love Shack swung open and Will Parker sauntered out.
Jeff and I ducked down in our seats, and I could only hope that Parker hadn’t seen the Pontiac when Jeff and I were at That’s Amore the other day. He didn’t seem to pay any attention, though, as he got into his car, started the engine, and pulled out of the lot.
After a few seconds, Jeff eased the Pontiac out after it.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Following him,” Jeff said, now taking the cigarette out of his mouth and balancing it on the empty ashtray in the center console. “I figured that’s what you wanted, right?”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but it seemed like a good idea, so I let him think that. I nodded. “Maybe now we’ll find out where he really lives.”
“If he goes home,” Jeff said.
We were about two cars behind Parker, heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard. The Stratosphere tower was hovering over us; I twisted my neck to try to see the rides up at the top. There’s something called the Big Shot, in which you get strapped in and shot a hundred sixty feet up at forty miles an hour, and then it drops you. Fast. And craziest of all was Insanity, which is totally insane because it’s a huge claw extending sixty-four feet from the Stratosphere Tower, dangling you more than nine hundred feet above the Strip. And then it spins. Not that I’d ever want to ride it, but it sort of fascinated me: a ride spinning around that high in the air. Vegas was also big on roller coasters. Circus Circus had one in its Adventuredome, New York-New York sported a coaster that spun around its skyline, and the Sahara had one, too. MGM used to have a roller coaster, back in the day when it was trying to compete with Disney and Universal as a family attraction, but it failed miserably, and now the coaster was just a memory. In its place was the Monorail track. Not exactly an exciting thrill ride, as I could attest.
“Be careful he doesn’t spot us,” I warned. “This car sticks out like a sore thumb.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Jeff said, and the way he said it made me take pause.
Jeff’s stint in the Marines intrigued me. He knew how to pick locks, break into houses without breaking into them, covertly follow cars in traffic. I also had learned a few months back that he “knew” people who could give him information. While I was curious, I hadn’t pried into his business. I was afraid if I did, he might think I was far more interested in him than I wanted him to think. Although the more I got to know him, the more intrigued I was.
“I wasn’t a spy, Kavanaugh,” he said, reading my mind. “I served my country like a lot of these kids these days. But it’s worse now, over there.”
“You were in the Gulf War.”
