Dim light leaked between curtains from unit four. The Lexus parked in front of the room reflected tiny pinpoints of light.
I went around behind the motel and let my eyes adjust to the night, which took a while. The moon looked like a tooth, stuck in the black top of a hill. A minute later it was gone.
My cell phone rang. I’d forgotten I had it with me. Not a good idea to have phones ringing in the night when you’re trying to skulk around.
“What’s up, Ma?” I said quietly after checking the screen.
“Just makin’ sure you’re not gettin’ into any more trouble, boyo.”
“Who, me?”
Silence. “Okay, that don’t sound good. Where are you?”
“At a motel between Caliente and Vegas.”
“There ain’t nothin’ between Caliente and Vegas except Gila monsters and vultures.”
“And a motel. And a diner. Not sure about Gila monsters, Ma. I’m thinking that’s New Mexico.”
“What the hell are you doin’ down there? Do I want to know what you’re up to?”
“Probably not.”
“Okay, then. You’re fired.” She hung up.
She was so cool, I could hardly stand it.
I was about to turn the phone off when “Monster Mash” started up again. “Sonofabitch,” I hissed. “Yeah? What?”
“You find anything yet?” Russell asked.
My favorite pudgy cop, talk about luck. I looked around, didn’t see anyone headed my way to check out my new ringtone. “Workin’ on it, Detective.”
“That’s not what I asked, Angel.”
“If I find anything that you oughta know, I’ll let you know.”
“Anything you find out, I oughta know about it.”
“Well, okay, if you insist, pi is approximately three point one four two. Got that last year from Holiday. There’ll be a quiz on that in the morning, so study up.”
He disconnected. Maybe he knew Ma.
I called him right back.
“Yeah?”
“I need you to check on someone. Name’s Lucy Landry.”
“Lucy? That assistant you ‘came across’? I thought you said you trust her.”
“I do. A lot. Just get her birthday for me.”
“Birthday?”
“Date of birth, Russ. Month, day, year.”
“I know that,” he growled. “What I want to know is why.”
“If I miss it and don’t get her a gift, I’ll never hear the end of it. You know women.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“Do it, Russ. Get back to me within ten minutes. She’s got a California driver’s license, if that helps. Middle initial K.”
I ended the call.
The night pressed in dark and quiet around me. I set the phone on vibrate, then walked slowly around the back of the diner. The ground was black on black. Maybe I would get lucky and not fall into an open pit.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MEANWHILE, BUDDIE WAS rubbing Arlene’s feet, as he did every night about this time. Her feet hurt, even if she wasn’t on her feet all that much. She didn’t do much waitressing. She had Melanie for that. The cook and his wife lived in the trailer behind the diner. Melanie was the dimmest of a wide selection of low-wattage bulbs, but the cook, Kirby, didn’t glow much brighter. Both were in their twenties, neither of them a high school graduate. Melanie also did the rooms at the motel in the morning, at which time Arlene had to do the waitress thing. Mostly she ran the cash register for the diner and the motel, ordered supplies, kept the diner and motel stocked up—food and sheets, little bars of soap. Buddie did basic maintenance around the place and ran the backhoe as far away as Hiko to the north, Moapa to the south, which brought in nearly twice as much money as the diner and motel combined.
Except, maybe . . .
Room four.
Room four was the cash cow. Four was the retirement fund, or so Arlene had thought in the beginning when she first came up with the idea. But it hadn’t worked out quite as well as she’d hoped it would, back when she told Buddie to install two video cameras with lenses so small they looked like fly specks up in the corners of the ceiling. He’d also installed the microphones and put the wireless in the wall. He could use a drill, do basic tasks if they weren’t too complicated. Arlene had had to hook up the system to the monitor in their private living space in the diner’s back rooms where Melanie and Kirby weren’t allowed.
Arlene’s eyes were closed. A cigarette burned in a corner of her mouth. This was the best time of the day, Buddie rubbing the pain out of her feet—maybe there was something to that foot reflexology crap after all, she thought. What was it about feet that connected them to other parts of the body? Rub a certain spot and it helped settle the liver? Did she really believe that? Oh, but it felt so good. And her son, Buddie Junior—Big Bud dead of an altercation with a lawn mower twenty-three years ago, the dumb ass—had worked on her feet from the time he was eight years old, twenty-six years ago, when he was just a little thing. Now he was six-seven, a three-hundred-fifty-pound monster, but pretty good with a Case 695ST backhoe digging septics and trenches, and great with his big hands on her feet, kneading out the pain. Twenty-six years of it, he knew what she liked.
“Got that nice Lexus outside four,” Buddie said, breaking the silence.
“Uh-huh. Don’t stop.”
“Think the guy’s worth it? It’s been a long time. Ten months since we got us one.”
“Maybe.” Arlene’s eyes were still closed. “Let’s hope.” She sent a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Ten months. About average. The longest had been sixteen months between catches. Longer than she’d thought when they’d started, thinking they’d catch one every month or two. But maybe it was for the best. So far the law had never come around, at least not in any official capacity, although her heart about skipped a
