AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Definitely the senator, as the sheriff could give a rat’s ass what O’Toole wanted. But he paid attention to Amy Wilcox. Anyone who wanted a future in this neck of the woods did.
The 911 line rang and Steve used it as an excuse to duck out of this clusterfuck, beating me to it.
“Do I make myself clear, Detective Cooper?” Bartlett demanded.
I glared at the little tick. Yeah, he made it perfectly clear: Wilcox was starting her takeover of the department and the town.
“Well, do I?” Bartlett snapped.
I was about to tell him to fuck off when Steve Crider hurried back. “Chief, We’ve got a call. Accident on Factory Road near the hairpin turn. EMT is on scene. Initial report is there’s a motorcycle involved.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, eager to get out of this cluster. I didn’t wait to see if Bartlett concurred. I just turned and ran out to the Gladiator.
Pete OneTree, I thought.
I was wrong, of course.
CHAPTER 11
Igot no response to my picture, which was nothing R-rated, just me wrapped in a sheet with the Shady Rest’s brass headboard behind me. Nothing bare but my shoulders and my legs, so totally PG. I do not do R-rated phone pictures, that’s just asking for trouble and Vince knew that. He’d been playing. I assumed something at his meeting had interrupted him because I could not imagine him ignoring what I’d sent unless he’d been forced to stop texting. I should at least have gotten a DROP THE SHEET text back.
I put my phone down and my t-shirt back on—the jeans stayed on the floor—and got out of the bed. There was a door on each side of the bed, and when I went through one, I found that both doors led into a long room, the width of the unit. A closet ran along the wall on the other side of the headboard, but I was distracted by the soaking tub at one of the short ends, a huge white sucker with thick towels on racks and a variety of small bottles on the shelf next to it that I was fervently hoping were bubble bath. I love a deep soaky bubble bath. A wide mirrored vanity ran across the back of the room opposite the closet, with two sinks and a long stretch of counter for whatever anybody needed a long stretch of counter for, all of it encased in beautifully finished wood like a cabin, if your idea of building a cabin was throwing large amounts of money at a forest. It was rustic in the same way that Marie Antoinette had been a shepherdess.
I was never going to leave.
I snooped until I found the toilet and another sink discreetly hidden behind a door on the short wall opposite the tub, and then, since I was half naked after stripping to send Vince the naked-shoulders-and-brass-bed pic, I gave up and ran a bath even though it was still afternoon and I should have been working. Of course, that was bubble bath on the shelf. Of course, there was champagne in the fridge when I finally found the fridge (under the long stretch of counter, next to the microwave, each of which was hidden behind wood doors because having them in plain sight would have been tacky). I sank into my bubbles and sipped my champagne and thought about my life and decided that regardless of what it had been before I’d walked into Versailles on the Ohio, it was pretty fucking good at the moment and I should live in the now and wallow in all of it and figure out the rest of my life later.
I made a note to do something fabulous for Anemone. Like maybe finish her copy edits, saving her from the corrections she’d made.
And then I’d think about my life. Seriously, for a change.
CHAPTER 12
I arrived on scene to find Factory Road blocked by both of Burney’s fire engines and the EMT truck. At least they hadn’t been in a meeting. I pulled to the side and ran to the hairpin turn. Fire Captain Olson was there, staring into the ravine where a winch line stretched over the railing. I joined him, expecting to see Pete OneTree’s Harley smashed on the rocks below, along with his body.
But the broken motorcycle seventy feet down was a dirt bike. I saw Mac, twenty feet farther below that, wearing a harness and hooked to the end of the winch line attached to the front of one of the fire engines. He was kneeling beside a body, but I couldn’t make out details. It was a tough spot to administer medical aid.
“I’m going down,” I told Olson.
“We only have one line,” Olson said, which explained why his other guys were just gaggling about.
“I’ve got a winch on the Gladiator,” I said. “Clear your other truck out of the way.”
He nodded and issued orders while I ran back to my truck. I pulled it up next to the fire engine that had Mac’s winch on the front. I grabbed my climbing harness from under the back seat and buckled it on. As I did so, I asked Olson, “How did the bike get by the barrier?” referring to the double-reinforced guardrails Will Porter and I had put in after first Navy’s car, then Liz’s and then the BMW ML was driving ended up there.
Olson pointed farther down the road. “Skid marks.”
A drunk driver? That was a hell of a miss. Olson must have sensed my thoughts as I tightened the chest strap so he explained as best he could figure. “Motorcyclist was coming uphill and went off the road before the barrier, moving fast. Momentum carried the rider out and into the ravine.”
I had flashbacks to Navy’s car doing the same, except coming downhill. And straight, never braking or turning, going through the old guardrail. I clipped into the locking hook on the end of my winch. Whether by design or accident the result had been bad for the biker. I noticed the single skid mark but it didn’t look right. Something glinted in the roadway near the edge. It was a mirror from the motorcycle which triggered my detecting nerves. It shouldn’t be there if this had just been an accident.
“Leave everything where it is for evidence,” I told Olson as I handed him the control for my winch. “Let it out steady as I go down.”
Olson nodded as I stepped over the guardrails, turned my back to the ravine and then began my descent. I’d have preferred to free rappel down a line, but I had to get back up eventually.
It took a long minute to get to Mac. And by the time I got there, he’d given up.
“He’s dead,” Mac said as I arrived. There was no helmet because Ohio didn’t require them.
