The Mountain Man's Bride, page 19
She frowned. “This is no time for bravado. We need you to lay low and not go around calling attention to yourself. You could very easily make a mistake that gets you arrested—or worse.”
“Arrested? How? For what?”
“Compromising a police investigation, for starters. Tampering with evidence. Withholding evidence. Have you shared any of your findings with the police?” She pulled a file folder out of a drawer in her desk.
“Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Good. I want to hear it. Let’s set up an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow?” Lehigh tossed his hands in the air. “Why not now?” He handed her the envelope. “You might want to read that.”
“I can’t right now. I’m booked up.” She made a quick note on the outside of the envelope and set it on the corner of her desk.
“Oh, that’s right. You have to go buy wine. Don’t let my legal situation get in the way of your good time.” He stood and took a step toward the door. She stopped him with an edge of steel in her voice.
“That was uncalled for.” She glared at him, then stood. “Make an appointment with my receptionist. I need to work on another case right now.”
Lehigh stared, openmouthed. “You’re seriously kicking me out of your office?”
“I have another appointment. Besides, it looked to me like you were leaving anyway.”
He nodded, one long, slow toss of his head. “I see.”
“Lehigh. Don’t be offended. It’s not personal.”
“Yeah.” He half-turned toward the door, then stopped and faced her again. “But you see, I kind of had the impression that it was. Personal, I mean.”
“In what way?” She had already busied herself again at her desk.
He dropped his gaze to his feet. “In the way that you seemed to be taking a personal interest. In me, and in my case.”
“I see.” She nodded, rolled her tongue around inside of her mouth. “Well, you’re not the first client I’ve had who’s gotten that impression, so clearly I’m communicating something wrong.” She sighed and strolled around her desk, gathering her thoughts. “Mr. Carter—Lehigh—I like you. You’re a nice guy, a fierce and loyal fighter for your fiancée, or girlfriend, whatever your current status. You’re smart, and tough, and even charming at times. But.” She stared at her desk for a long moment, then glanced back at him. “Even if things were…different…even if you were someone I could be interested in…ethically, I couldn’t get involved with a client.”
“What’s this? A lawyer with ethics?” He tried on a grin, but it failed at half mast when she didn’t smile back.
Instead, she took a breath, bit her lip, then cocked her head to the side a bit. “I hope you know me well enough to say that I am exactly that. But, all that aside. Lehigh, let’s just say I’m…” A long pause as she seemed to choose her words carefully. “Taken. Okay? And so are you. And that’s a good thing, for both of us. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”
Lehigh stood still, stunned by the directness of Sam’s speech. Of course she was taken! A beautiful, accomplished, intelligent woman like her wouldn’t stay single in Mt. Hood County for ten minutes. “He’s a lucky guy,” he said.
Samantha burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Lehigh asked.
“Nothing. Nothing. You’re a lucky guy too, Lehigh.” She stepped toward him and took his hand. “Do me a favor, okay? Stay out of harm’s way, and keep yourself in one piece so you can keep fighting for that fiancée of yours.”
Lehigh nodded. She squeezed his hand, gazed into his eyes, and for a moment he thought she would change her mind. But she turned away, and he left the office without looking back at her.
And as for her advice to stay out of trouble…he ignored every word.
Chapter
Lehigh pulled into the Roadhouse parking lot at low speed and proceeded at a crawl down the line of cars parked at haphazard angles along the front of the building. He allowed himself a wry smile. If these guys drove and parked this badly before getting to the bar for happy hour, he didn’t want to be on the road with them a couple of pitchers later.
With all but one of them, that is.
He found the black Beamer around the corner of the building, nestled between an oversized SUV and a mini-pickup jacked up on even more oversized all-terrain wheels. He parked across the rear of all three vehicles, blocking their exit. He planned to leave ahead of them anyway—just ahead of them.
“All righty then,” he said to the dogs before getting out of the truck. “Here goes nothing.” They stared at him in awe, as if he’d just written and delivered the Gettysburg address. He gave them treats from the glove box and left them chewing happily in the back seat.
He strolled through the front door as if he owned the place and sat at the bar without a single glance at any of the patrons. No need to go looking for his quarry. They’d find him, soon enough.
Babs, the silicone-enhanced barmaid, dressed in her usual low-cut tank top and painted-on jeans riddled with rhinestones, faked a smile, and set a coaster in front of him. “Welcome to the Roadhouse. Just in time for happy hour.”
“Shot of Jack Black, beer chaser.” He ignored her gravity-defying breasts and twirled around in his chair to face the billiards tables. In the corner, a couple of familiar faces stood behind cue sticks, and another familiar face leaned over a table, sizing up a shot.
The face he sought. Paul van Paten.
“Six off the seven, far corner,” Paul said. Two clicks of colliding ivory later, the solid green ball plunked into the designated pocket.
“Lucky,” Lehigh said.
Paul’s face froze and his eyes locked onto Lehigh. Dark tousled hair covered half of his creased forehead. A curled sneer split the handsome face’s lower half. “Think you can do better?”
“I don’t waste my time in pool halls,” Lehigh said. “Unless I’m searching for punks.”
His drinks appeared at his elbow. He slammed the Jack in a swallow, then half the beer.
Paul sauntered around the table toward the bar, pool cue gripped at the waist. Too high of a grip to use it as a weapon. “Well, you’re out of luck. The only punk in here’s about to leave.”
“You should settle your bill first,” Lehigh said. “T’ain’t good to stiff the waitress.” Someone sniggered at the unintended double meaning.
Color rose in Paul’s face, visible even in the dim light of the bar. “Did you have a reason to come here, other than to ruin my day?”
Lehigh shrugged and finished his beer. “Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
Paul’s buddies closed in around him. Curly-haired Thornburgh and the big blond, Brockton, stood to one side, pool cues in hand. An athletically built African-American, almost as tall and broad as Brockton, closed off the other side. “We don’t want trouble,” the black man said in a soft voice.
“Unless you do,” Thornburgh said. He giggled, a nervous laugh.
“I don’t have business with any of you,” Lehigh said. “Except van Paten.”
“You have business with him, you have business with us,” Brockton said. “Right, guys?”
“Shut up, Brock,” Thornburgh said. “Paul can decide for himself if he needs us. What’s the word, boss?”
“Stay put for now.” Paul pointed to Lehigh’s empty glasses at the bar. “Now, Mr. Carter, as a lawyer I feel obliged to advise you of Oregon’s strict laws about driving under the influence of alcohol. My guess is that you’re getting close to the legal limit already with those two drinks. If you left now, there’d be no reason for us to alert the local authorities about a dangerously inebriated driver on the highways. But if you stay…”
Lehigh chuckled. At least a dozen empty long-necked brown bottles littered a small table next to the billiards rack, with at least as many shot glasses scattered among them. “Am I to believe you boys had no part of all those dead soldiers over there?”
“Ben here’s our designated driver.” Paul indicated the tall black man with a nod of his head. “As for the rest of us…well, we might be a little loose and ready for action. If that’s what you want.”
“Good.” Lehigh stood face to face with Paul. “Because I’ve had it with you, you coward. It’s bad enough you hire red meat like these boys to do your fighting for you. But to let a woman take the fall for your crimes—that’s unconscionable.”
The three men behind Paul muttered in angry voices. Brockton pushed forward, fists raised. Paul stopped him with a raised hand. “You’re up to something, Carter. Coming in here, baiting us like this. I’m not falling for it. Stand down, boys.”
Lehigh snorted. “Yeah, I’m up to something. I’m up to my ears with your crap, that’s what. Do you know where I just came from? Huh? No? I’ll tell you. Stacy’s lawyer’s office. He just prepared a statement for her to sign. It’s going to end Jared Barkley’s murder case right now. You want to know what it says?”
Paul’s smartassed smile faded a bit, and his eyes widened. “Let me guess. She’s turning state’s evidence against you.”
“Close.” Lehigh pushed through the crowd of men to the door, then glanced back at them over his shoulder. “It’s a confession.”
***
Lehigh made it halfway to the truck before Paul caught up with him and spun him around. “You’d better be lying, Carter!”
Lehigh sighed. “I wish. But no. Nice work, by the way, getting an innocent woman to take the fall for you. What’s next for you? Kidnapping babies?”
“I just talked to her this morning. She didn’t say anything about confessing.”
“Not to me, either. Apparently she only talks to her lawyer about such things.” Lehigh pushed past Paul toward his truck.
Paul ran past him, pulling keys from his jacket pocket. He stopped short when he reached his blocked-in car. Again he spun to face Lehigh.
“Is this your idea of a joke? Or is that how they teach you to drive in the sticks? Move this hunk of junk, or I’ll—”
“What? Ram me? Doubt it. It’d cost more to replace your dented bumper than my whole truck is worth.” Lehigh stopped several feet away and stood with his arms crossed. “This screws up your plan, doesn’t it, Paul?”
“It screws everything up. You’re the one who belongs in jail, not her. And when I get through with you, you’ll wish you were in jail.”
Lehigh cocked his head. “Oh, really? Funny. I noticed you pulled all the right strings to get yourself out of stir, but you let Stacy rot in county lockup for days on end. Why’s that?”
Paul shook his head. “You’re even more stupid than I thought. She’s charged with murder one, hayseed. She’s got reason and resources to flee. They don’t let people like that out.”
Lehigh spat between Paul’s feet. “If you wanted her out, she’d be out, just like you. No, you want her in, so she can’t create trouble for you. And if she has to go down, well, you don’t mind—so long as it ain’t you. And you’ve got her so warped, so confused, she’s doing this to protect you. Out of—” He choked on the words, despite his having rehearsed them for over an hour. When he spoke again, his voice sounded raspy and thin. “Because she loves you, dumbass.”
“You don’t believe that for a minute. And as for the rest—you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lehigh shrugged. “Call her lawyer. He’ll tell you.”
Paul whipped out his phone. “I will do just that.” He pounded a few keys, then held the phone to his ear. Lehigh sauntered to his truck and got in.
Now, it was up to Constantine Richards.
***
Lehigh didn’t wait to find out if Stacy’s lawyer—or more likely, his secretary—would play along well enough to fool Paul. Besides, providing a distraction right then seemed like a good idea—pull Paul’s attention away from any inconsistencies or holes in Lehigh’s story. He started the truck’s engine and burned rubber racing out of the parking lot. The dogs whimpered and hunkered down on the back seat.
Sure enough, Paul followed, phone jammed to his ear. Lehigh kept an eye on him in his rearview mirror. Paul appeared animated, alternating between yelling into his phone and listening with his mouth clamped shut. Lehigh even took a few detours to make sure of Paul’s intention to follow him and not think too much about where they were going.
Or, how fast.
Or that Paul, in his haste to catch up to Lehigh racing out of the Roadhouse parking lot, had forgotten to buckle his seat belt.
At the designated location, Lehigh pushed his speedometer well over eighty miles per hour—in a fifty mile per hour zone. Sure enough, Paul kept pace. When the highway opened up to two lanes in each direction, Lehigh kept to the left, as did Paul.
After taking a blind corner a few seconds before his pursuer, Lehigh swept the truck into the right lane and dropped his speed down to fifty. Paul zoomed around the corner and flew past, still yelling into his phone, then braked.
But not before getting caught in the speed trap staffed by none other than Detective Jim Wadsworth.
The red and blue lights flashed even before Paul passed the detective’s car, already idling on the side of the highway, partially hidden by a couple of overgrown shrubs. A quick burst of the siren announced the success of the snare, and Paul, shouting and pounding the steering wheel, stopped on the shoulder a couple of hundred yards down the road.
Lehigh drove past the infuriated, half-inebriated lawyer, and waved.
Chapter
As fun as it had been to mess with Paul and ruin his evening, that was only step one of the night’s plan. Step two would be much trickier—and carried far more risk.
Lehigh returned to the Roadhouse Grill, where Thornburgh and Brockton loitered around the pool table, still clutching their pool cues—but not to sink ivory balls into corner pockets. Instead, staggering drunk, they used the long sticks as crutches, to keep from falling off their bar stools.
“You got some nerve, coming back here,” Thornburgh said without getting up.
“I got nerve wherever I go.” Lehigh signaled to Babs for a beer and stood across the pool table from them. “Where’s your other buddy?”
“You mean me?” Ben’s large frame cast a growing shadow from behind Lehigh. “Don’t turn around. You just keep having your conversation like a gentleman. I repeat, like a gentleman.”
Lehigh nodded. He hadn’t come here to fight, so being surrounded didn’t create problems…unless they had other plans.
“Just thought I’d come by to give you a message from Paul.”
“Ha!” Brockton downed his whiskey. “Like he’d tell you anything. Why wouldn’t he just call us?”
“He got detained.” Lehigh’s beer appeared and he took a swallow. “The message is, don’t wait up. Unless you, too, decide to drink and drive tonight.”
“Paul got a dewey?” Thornburgh’s eyes widened and he set down his drink on a table covered in peanut shells. To Brockton’s questioning stare, he said, “D–U–I. Driving under the influence.”
“That ain’t the worst of his problems.” Lehigh took another sip. “It appears he needs an alibi for the night of Jared Barkley’s murder.”
“Paul wasn’t nowhere near Elk Creek,” Brockton said. Thornburgh shot him a furtive, wide-eyed glance, but the big blond kept talking. “He was with us.”
“Sure, sure. ’Course he was. But, uh, where were you?”
“We was on the coast, playing poker,” Brockton said.
“Just the three of you?” Lehigh scratched his cheek. “Seems kinda like a small crowd for poker.”
Silence hung in the air for a beat. Then, from behind, Ben’s rumbling baritone. “Sometimes we like small games.”
Lehigh nodded. “Yeah, me too, sometimes. So, just the three of you, right?”
Thornburgh and Brockton nodded. “That’s right,” Ben said. “So?”
“Then where was Paul?”
Empty stares.
“He’d have made four, right?”
Brockton staggered around the pool table, dragging his walking stick behind him. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
Thornburgh grabbed his arm from behind. “Brock, easy now. Remember what Paul said.”
Brockton shook off his friend’s grip. “I don’t care. This one needs to be taught a lesson.”
Lehigh took a step backward and lowered his beer glass, readying it, if need be, to splash Brockton in the face with it. “S’matter? You don’t like math?”
“I don’t like you.” The big blond drew the stick back like a batter preparing to hit a fastball. Thornburgh grabbed the shank before Brockton could swing it forward.
“None of us like him, Brock. But van Paten said hands off him until, uh…you know.”
Brockton blinked, shook the cane free, glanced at Lehigh, but leaned his would-be weapon against the pool table. “Oh, yeah. The broad thing.”
“The ‘broad’ thing?” Lehigh sipped his beer. “I take it you charmers mean my ex-fiancée? Yeah, her confession creates a problem for you guys, doesn’t it? Makes it hard to frame me for it now.”
“It complicates matters a bit,” Ben said from behind Lehigh.
“But,” Thornburgh added, “you’re going down, my friend.”
Lehigh stepped to one side so he could keep all three men in view. “I don’t see how. I was out of town when Barkley was killed.”
“Yeah. So was Paul.” Brockton sniggered. “Doesn’t mean you couldn’t hire it done, too.”
“Too?” Lehigh frowned, acting as best he could like a man deep in thought, rather than one celebrating inside for Brockton’s slip-up. “You mean, like the real killer done?”
“What he means,” Thornburgh said, “is that if you were smart, like, uh, well, if you were, you could hire people to, um…keep an eye on things.”
“Yup. Could.” Lehigh nodded. “Responsible people. People who were in town, of course. But not you guys, because you were all at the coast playing poker, right?”
“Hey, we—uh, yeah.” Brockton frowned. “Hey, Thorny. He’s right. We got a problem.”
