8 Bodies is Enough(50)
Carlotta pressed Priscilla’s face against her stomach. “Don’t look back. Don’t look back.”
But Carlotta could see, and from the look of the man’s twisted body, she knew he wouldn’t be getting up. She saw Jack and Liz emerge from the crowd and move toward the scene. Jack waved people back and Liz was on her phone, presumably calling 9-1-1.
Her mind raced—how odd that someone else from Atlanta would be here, in the same public place, mere steps behind her…and when she called him by name, he would literally run from her?
She looked at the keys she was holding and on impulse, held them up and depressed the panic button on the keyless remote. Across the street just beyond the bus crash, a car’s lights started flashing and the horn blaring.
A green car.
“Come on,” she murmured to Priscilla. “Time to go.” She turned and led her in the opposite direction. As they walked past a storm drain, she tossed the rental keys inside.
On the drive back to the house, she tried to distract Priscilla and lighten the mood by stopping to get an ice cream cake to take back to her mother and Birch and joking with her about boy bands she liked. Even though she knew the man who’d been following her was no more, she occasionally glanced in the side mirror, and her heartrate remained elevated. How close had the man come to finding her mother? And how gut-wrenching to know she was the one who’d almost led him to the door.
“Did that man back there die?” Priscilla asked, proof she, too, was still thinking about what had happened.
“I don’t know, sweetie, but it looked like a bad accident.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. I thought I did, but I was mistaken.”
She seemed to accept the explanation and happily launched into an earnest discussion about her favorite movies. Carlotta realized she was going to have to get up to speed on superheroes and princesses.
When they pulled into the driveway, it was late afternoon. Carlotta let Priscilla carry the cake. While they waited for Birch to open the door, they heard the sound of a car stopping in front of the house. Priscilla turned and grinned. “Jack!”
Chapter 21
CARLOTTA UTTERED a silent curse and took her time turning around.
Thankfully, Jack was alone, walking toward them with long, confident strides. He had donned a jacket, she knew, to conceal his sidearm. She couldn’t tell by looking at him what frame of mind he was in, but he wasn’t smiling.
“Hi, Prissy,” he said. “Carlotta.”
“Hi, Jack. Are you following me?”
“When it’s police work, we call it surveillance.”
The door opened and Birch warily studied Jack.
“Why don’t you take the cake inside with Birch, sweetie?” Carlotta urged Priscilla.
“Okay. Jack, are you going to have cake with us?”
“We’ll see,” he said with a wink.
“It’s okay,” Carlotta said to Birch. “Give me a minute.”
When the door closed, Jack said, “I saw you at the site of the bus accident.”
“Is the man dead?”
He nodded. “Leonard Motts, from Atlanta. No rap sheet, but reported connections to some bad people, including Hollis Carver.”
“The loan shark?”
He nodded. “Motts got into town Saturday, just before you and Peter. I found a keycard in his wallet from your hotel, and I’m betting it opens the door to the room Agent Johns died in.”
She swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“So, what’s behind this door that everyone is so interested in finding, and you’re so interested in hiding?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” she said softly. “So if you’re here doing police work, you should leave…for your own sake and for mine.”
He looked away, then shifted his weight and looked back. “What if I’m here as a friend?”
Carlotta smiled and reached for the doorknob. “Then come in.”
She stepped inside the house and Jack followed. His head was on a pivot, scanning and recording, as she knew was his second nature. They followed voices into the kitchen where Priscilla, Birch, and her mother sat around a table eating slices of the ice cream cake. Jack and Birch traded nods.
Valerie looked up. “Hello there.”
“Hi, Mom,” Carlotta said, then leaned forward to kiss Valerie’s cheek. “How are you today?”
“I’m wonderful, look at this beautiful cake.”
“I see. Mom, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Jack.”
Her mother smiled up at Jack. “Oh, you’re a tall one, like my husband Randolph.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “I’ve met your husband.”