Live Bait

27

Grace MacBride was in her home office: a narrow, wooden-floored space that looked more like a dead-end hallway than a room. Several computers lined the desk-high counter that stretched the full length of one wall, and she rolled from one to the other in her wheeled chair, checking the monitors, tweaking command lines, cursing the flood of useless information that clogged the Net’s public-domain sites. It was easier to hack into any protected site than it was to sort through the drivel jamming the public search engines, and it was time she started to do just that, because this was taking much too long.

She’d plugged Morey Gilbert’s and Rose Kleber’s names into the new software program first thing yesterday, and added Ben Schuler’s name when Magozzi called her last night, but after hours of sifting through the legitimately accessible databases, the only link the program had found between the three was a tendency to shop at the same local grocery. As did everyone else in that neighborhood. It was possible, she supposed, that there was no extraordinary connection to be found – but Magozzi and Gino weren’t thinking that way, and she trusted their instincts.

She scowled at the unremarkable grocery store revelation the program had thought worthy of an asterisk, then balled up the paper and tossed it to one side. ‘This is nonsense,’ she said aloud.

Grace had tried to be legal for months now, breaking through the fire walls of the truly off-limits sites only when it was absolutely, positively necessary. This feeble attempt at walking the computerized equivalent of the straight-and-narrow was a private, silent nod of respect and gratitude to Magozzi and the other cops who had finally ended the reality of her years of terror, if not the haunting, lingering aftereffects. Then again, she rationalized, it was cops of another sort who had put her in jeopardy in the first place, and by respecting Magozzi’s dogged adherence to law, wasn’t she also respecting theirs?

It took only moments to reconfigure one computer’s operating system and initiate the search parameters for bank and phone records for the three victims. Bank and phone company sites were fair game as far as Grace was concerned. Bastards sold every detail of their customers’ lives to the highest bidder, then got all self-righteous and privacy oriented when the cops asked for information. It didn’t make sense to her that the police had to have a warrant and the telemarketers didn’t, so she broke into those sites regularly and gleefully. Besides, Magozzi knew damn well she was going to do this when he asked for her help, whether it was spoken aloud or not.

The other sites she was about to access – the IRS, the INS, the FBI – were a little dicier to justify, but that didn’t slow the speed of her fingers as she rolled down to the big IBM and happily started clattering away on the keyboard. She was still pissed at the FBI, and sometimes she hacked into their sites for no particular reason other than pure spite. But this was different. This time she was doing it for Magozzi. Not that she’d tell him, of course. No reason to torment the man with personal knowledge of computer crime.

The phone rang just as her printer began spitting out little droplets of ink in the shape of asterisks. Grace picked up, smiled when she heard country music and raucous laughter in the background. ‘Hey, Annie. What are you doing in a bar in the morning?’

A warm, syrupy drawl answered her. ‘I am not in a bar, I am in a cantina, and they have the best huevos rancheros in town.’

‘It sounds like a bar.’

‘Honey, the library sounds like a bar down here. These people really know how to have a good time. Grace, you have got to get your pathetic, skinny little butt down here. You are not going to believe it. I’m lookin’ at a roomful of men in boots and honest-to-God cowboy hats, and you know what?’

Grace’s smile broadened. ‘I’m afraid to ask.’

‘These good old boys open doors, they pull out chairs, they tip their hats, and they just plumb knock a woman off her size sixes. And the very best part is that I am the fattest woman in Arizona.’

‘You must be very proud.’

‘What I am, is the one and only package on the shelf for any man who likes a Renaissance woman. What the hell was I doing in Minnesota for so long? Up there I was just another hippo in the Fantasia chorus line; down here I’m the big fat lush peony in a row of scrawny daisies. God, I love the Southwest, but I miss your face. Hell, I even miss Harley and Roadrunner.’

‘I miss you too, Annie. You could call a little more often.’

‘I’ll do better than that. I’m flying back up there this weekend. I talked to Harley last night; he said the rig should be ready to ride any day now.’

‘You’re making the road trip with us?’

Annie chuckled deep in her throat. ‘Wouldn’t miss it. Besides, that’ll give us a chance to go over what I’ve managed to pull together down here so far. You told Magozzi you were going, didn’t you?’

‘I told him.’

‘Did he cry?’

‘Actually… I only told him about Arizona.’

For a moment, all Grace could hear from the phone was some cowboy crooner singing about leaving his heart at the Tulsa Greyhound Station. ‘You little weasel,’ Annie finally said. ‘You can’t string that poor man along like that. We already committed to those missing child cases in Texas, and Harley says the requests are really starting to pile up. We are going to be on the road a long time, Grace. You’ve got to tell him… unless you’re thinking of staying up there, maybe marrying the guy and getting a place without bars on the windows so you aren’t raising your kids like zoo animals.’

‘Don’t be silly, Annie. Magozzi and I don’t have that kind of relationship.’

‘The hell you don’t. You two have sex every time you look at each other; sleeping together is just a formality you haven’t gotten around to yet.’

Grace was silent for two seconds, which was a big mistake.

‘Lord God,’ Annie said. ‘You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?’

‘I’m thinking about a lot of things lately. But I’m coming to Arizona.’

After the phone call with Annie, Grace found Charlie, who was better than any barometer, sitting in the hallway facing the basement door, staring at the knob.

Bad weather coming, Grace thought.

Annie hung up the phone and drummed her fingernails on the rough-sawn oak bar. They were periwinkle today, because there weren’t many women in the world who could wear that color, and Annie liked to stand out. Besides, she’d wanted to wear her periwinkle contacts, and the idea of her fingernails not matching her eyes was insupportable.

It had been a genuine hardship preparing for today’s color choice; there was no doubt about that. She’d had to rush to the salon first thing this morning to get a black rinse in her hennaed bob, because there would never, ever be a day when Annie Belinsky wore red highlights with her periwinkle silk kimono; but as she looked around the cantina at the thirty pairs of male eyes ogling her, she decided it had been worth the effort. How on earth working women with families ever managed to keep themselves looking presentable was beyond her.

She smiled – just a wee bit wickedly – and wriggled her big, silk-clad fanny a little deeper into the bar stool and swore she heard the sound of thirty sighs of longing.

There were women with some of the men, of course, and Annie suspected that several of them were plotting her demise. Everything they ever saw in magazines or on television had taught them that there was absolutely nothing remotely alluring or fashionable about being overweight, and a lot of them probably spent a lot of time doing aerobics and calculating calories to ensure they would never achieve such a state. For the most part, they were all tanned and slim and athletic-looking in their butt-hugging jeans and little bitty T-shirts. But Annie’s presence – her open flaunting of every excess inch as if it were gold – had them totally flummoxed, and totally pissed, since men who normally lusted after Barbie dolls in bikinis were now in drool stage two over a fat woman.

Annie could have told the miffed women that men didn’t respond exclusively to any particular body type – in her opinion, the gay male designers had perpetrated that myth – they responded to how a woman used her body and her eyes and her voice, and oh, honey, Annie had that down pat.

‘Miss Belinsky?’

Lord in heaven, she’d never seen him coming, and Annie rarely missed anything. He’d just sneaked up right behind her and nearly knocked her off the stool with that earthy, cowboy, slow-motion way of talking. The accent of the Deep South, like Annie’s, was syrup on a platter, but it only sounded good coming from women. If you were a man and wanted your voice to work for you, you just had to come from cowboy country.

‘Well, hello, Mr Stellan. You are one of the few men who ever succeeded in startling me.’

He stood there with his cowboy hat held respectfully at his chest, looking for all the world like Gary Cooper in some of the old movies – except his eyes were too intense. ‘Miss Belinsky, I will use any method available to plant myself in your memory.’

Annie gave him a tiny smile of mystery, rewarding his appropriate response. Not that the man had a chance with her, of course. He had the look and the voice and the manners, but he was, after all, a real estate agent. Sleeping with a real estate agent was a ride down the slippery slope to mediocrity – almost as bad as sleeping with a lawyer. ‘So tell me, Mr Stellan. Do we have the hacienda?’

‘Indeed you do, ma’am, terms and price that you specified.’ He laid a rental agreement on the bar for her to sign. ‘The owners were a little reluctant to lift the no-pets clause, until I explained about him being a police dog ’n’ all. He doesn’t attack on sight, or anything, does he?’

Annie touched the corner of her mouth with a periwinkle-tipped finger. ‘No. He most definitely is not an attack dog.’ She signed the agreement with a flourish.

‘Well, that’s surely good news. I suspected he was a tracker, being that you’re here to help the chief find his daughter.’

Annie smiled at the notion of Grace’s dog tracking anything except Grace, which was almost as funny as the notion of Charlie as an attack dog. ‘You’re a well-informed man, Mr Stellan. I don’t recall mentioning that we’d be working with your fine local police department.’

‘Ah, heck, everybody in town knew that about three minutes after you showed up. It’s a real small place, Miss Belinsky.’

A real closed place, Annie thought as she strolled down the sidewalk toward the chief’s office a little later, feeling a lot of eyes on her. If one little old heavyset woman in a dress could turn this many heads, these locals would purely have a fit when they saw Harley on the streets.

Chief Savadra was the single exception so far, and the minute he gave her his standard morning sad-smile, she felt totally at ease, free to be herself. He was surely the ugliest man in town, with his rough-cut, sun-seamed face and a wiry body that didn’t seem to know where most of its parts were going at any given time; but there was something special about him Annie had liked the minute they met.

‘I hear you got the hacienda.’

Annie went straight for the watercooler she’d had delivered on her second day. ‘I swear, news travels faster in this town than I can walk.’

‘The way I hear it, you do not walk at all, Miss Annie. You sashay.’

Miss Annie. She liked that. Reminded her of Mississippi. Liked it especially because there was no flirtation behind it; just a friendly tease. ‘Wait till this town sees the other three. I’m the conservative one.’

Chief Savadra leaned back in his creaky wooden chair and watched her start packing files into her briefcase. ‘I thought you weren’t leaving until Friday.’

‘I’ve done about all I can do before the computers get here. Now that I’ve signed on the hacienda, I can head back a little early.’

‘You miss your people.’

Annie gave him a sidelong glance. ‘I didn’t expect to, at least not this much, but I do. Don’t tell them.’

The chief smiled. ‘I’ll take a run out to the place next week; make sure the a/c is turned on and the pool is filled before you get back.’

‘Thanks, but Joe Stellan has some people coming out to take care of that.’

‘I’ll still take a look, flash my badge in front of the help, put the fear of God into them.’

Annie smiled. ‘That’s nice of you.’

‘Are you kidding? No way in this world I’ll ever be able to repay you all for what you’re doing for me. What I don’t get is why you’re doing it. What prompts a group of people to travel halfway across the country to give away technology that’s probably worth a million bucks?’

‘That’s kind of a long story.’

‘I look forward to hearing it.’