Low Pressure

Chapter 10

Dale Moody glowered suspiciously at his ringing cell phone and debated whether he could be bothered to answer it. After three rings he checked the caller ID. Haymaker. Who had recently warned him that Rupe Collier was on his tail.

Ordinarily it was months between his and Haymaker’s telephone visits. It didn’t bode well that he was calling again so soon.

He answered. “What’s up, Hay?”

“Rupe Collier came sniffing again.”

“When?”

“This afternoon. And this time he didn’t phone. He pulled up into my driveway while I was out watering the yard. No way I could avoid him. His hair’s thinning. You can’t tell it on TV.”

“What did he want?”

“Same as before. You. Says it’s real important—vital was the word he used—that he talks to you before tomorrow.”

“What happens tomorrow?”

“You ever hear of EyeSpy?”

“The kids’ game?”

“The tabloid.”

Dale listened with increasing despair as his old buddy recounted Rupe’s story about a shifty columnist for a widely read tabloid newspaper. It seemed that Dale Moody was the only English-speaking person on the planet who didn’t read Van Durbin’s column or was at least familiar with his byline.

“According to Rupe, this Van Durbin’s column tomorrow is about Low Pressure and the true story it’s based on. He’s going to bring into question whether or not the guy who got the time did the crime. This has got Rupe’s tighty-whities in a wad. He called the columnist pond scum, which is funny, coming from someone as slippery as Rupe.”

Dale failed to see the humor in any of this. In fact, if he was a lesser man, he’d break down and bawl.

“Anyhow,” Haymaker continued, “he’s all hot and bothered to talk to you before this writer from New York gets to you.”

“Gets to me?”

“I haven’t told you that part yet. Rupe says Van Durbin was asking about you. Asked if Rupe knew where you were, how to get in touch with you. He’s got research people checking every avenue they can think of.”

“Shit.”

“Suddenly you’re a real popular guy, Dale. Seemed to me that Rupe was more interested in keeping you from talking to this Van Durbin than he was in talking to you his own self.”

Rupe’s worst nightmare would be him talking to any media about the Susan Lyston case and Allen Strickland’s trial.

“Hay, did you tell him—”

“Not a damn thing. I wouldn’t.” After a slight hesitation, he added, “Only thing is… See, Dale…”

“What?”

The former policeman made a sound of disgust. “Rupe’s carrying the note on a used car I bought from him last year. The wife wanted the mother-lovin’ thing. I hate it, but she had to have it. The bank wouldn’t loan us enough to buy it, but Rupe made it easy for us to drive it straight off the lot with no money down. Interest rate out the wazoo, but the wife… You know how it is. Then two months after we became the proud owners of the car, she got laid off out at the quarry. I can’t sell—”

“You’re behind on the payments, and Rupe is using that as leverage for you to give me up.”

Haymaker’s silence was as good as a confirmation. Dale uncapped the bottle of Jack Daniel’s on his TV tray and took a swig straight from it. “How much time did he give you?”

“Till eight o’clock in the a.m.”

“Jesus. Rupe must be real scared of this Van Durbin character.”

“Right down to the shine on his Luccheses. He’s afraid that guy will tree you before he can.”

“How much do you owe him?”

“Look, Dale, don’t worry about that. I wouldn’t sell out a cop buddy to that asshole. I only told you so you’d know how jumpy Rupe is to find you. I won’t tell him squat, but you gotta believe that I’m not his only resource.

“I’m figuring he’ll call in every favor and marker he’s holding on personnel inside the Austin PD and city hall. Some of our former colleagues didn’t think as kindly of you as I did. Do. So consider this a heads-up.

“And, Dale, Rupe may not stop at arm-twisting, either. While he was in the DA’s office, he cut a lot of deals with felonious types. I know of one who works for him now as a repo man. Guy carries a chain saw as his persuader, and I kid you not.”

Dale took Haymaker’s implied warning to heart. He would put nothing past the former prosecutor. “I appreciate you telling me, Hay.”

“You covered my back more than once, and I don’t forget stuff like that.”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

“You mean about the car? No sweat. My son will give me the money.”

“You sure?”

“The little prick is always happy to oblige. Gives him an opportunity to remind me of what a lousy provider I am and always have been.”

Before they hung up, Haymaker promised to call him with updates as they happened. Dale tossed his cell phone onto the metal TV tray, lit a cigarette, and drew hard on it as he stared thoughtfully into the half-empty bottle of whiskey.

Rupe Collier was afraid his life was about to be derailed. Well, good. It was about time the son of a bitch realized the consequences of the deal he’d made with the devil. Dale had been living with them for eighteen years.

The loaded pistol was a lure he could barely resist.

But for one more night, he did.

“Come again?”

“Atlanta.”

“Texas or GA?”

“Georgia.”

Dent might just as well have told Gall he’d gone to Timbuktu. He was sitting on the edge of the hotel room bed, his elbows on his thighs, staring down at the toes of his boots. Realizing it was the posture of a child preparing for a parental lecture, he straightened up. “We thought—”

“We? Who’s the second party? Or don’t I already know?”

“Are you going to keep interrupting? Because if you are, I’m going to hang up.”

Dent could imagine his mentor clamping down hard on his cigar and scowling.

“Thank you,” Dent said politely, then with emphasis, “Bellamy and I are trying to reconstruct that Memorial Day. Who did what, and when.”

“What brought this on?”

Dent told him about Van Durbin’s accosting them and what the subject of tomorrow’s column was going to be. “It doesn’t matter whether or not there’s any substance to the question. Just posing it implies that something ran afoul. He’s a weasel. Has this nasty little grin that suggests he’s seen your mother nekkid. I could break him in half. You could break him in half. But his column is famous nationwide, and, with just a little finessing of the facts, he can do a body either a lot of good or a lot of harm.”

“This situation just gets better and better.”

“Tell me.” Dent sighed.

“So why did you sign on for more crap? Get away from her.”

“I told you, we’re trying—”

“Yeah, yeah, but didn’t she cover the details of that day in her book?”

“There’s a problem with that.”

Gall harrumphed. “I can hardly wait. Lay it on me.”

“There are gaps in her memory of that day. She’s lost segments of time.” He gave Gall an abridged version of everything Bellamy had told him.

When he finished Gall said, “So what she thinks she remembers, and what she believes, aren’t necessarily what actually happened.”

“Right.”

“And what she disremembers—”

“Is apparently a threat to somebody who’s kept a secret for eighteen years and doesn’t want it revealed now. Which places Bellamy in danger.”

Gall released a long stream of air, running out of breath before he ran out of expletives. “Which once again puts you up to your neck in the Lystons’ shit.”

“It’s my shit, too, Gall.”

The old man didn’t refute it. How could he? The Lyston case had factored significantly into how the airline regarded Dent following the accident.

“Okay, so why Atlanta?”

Dent explained why they were there. “Bellamy wanted to call and give Steven advance notice of our visit, but I thought a surprise attack would ensure a more honest reaction from him. I didn’t want to give him time to think about it.”

“Well, that makes one smart thing you’ve said since we started this conversation. When is this ambush going to take place?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh. And what will the two of you be doing to pass the time between now and then?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

Gall snorted. “That’s what I figured.”

“You figured wrong.”

“Separate beds?”

“Separate rooms. Happy now?” Gall made a sound that could have been interpreted any number of ways. Since Dent didn’t want that topic explored, he left it alone. “What about my airplane?”

“I wondered when you’d get around to remembering that you’ve got a real problem of your own.”

With a few more minutes of give-and-take in a similar vein, Dent had been given a complete assessment of the damage and an estimate on the time it would take to repair it.

“In the meantime I’ll go bankrupt.”

“Don’t go jumping off a building yet,” Gall said. “I’ve already talked to a guy.”

Dent was instantly suspicious. “What kind of guy?”

“One with lots of discretionary funds. He called me a while back looking for a private pilot.”

“No way.”

“Hear me out, Ace.”

“I don’t need to. My answer is no.”

“He’s got an incredible plane. Brand-spankin’-new King Air 350i. All the bells and whistles money can buy. Pretty as a picture. You’d fuck it if you could.”

“How come he doesn’t already have a pilot?”

“He did. He didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Bad sign.”

“Or a lucky break for you.”

“You know my golden rule, Gall. Never again will I fly for anybody except me. I for damn sure won’t be a rich guy’s chauffeur. He’d probably want to put me in some dumb cap and uniform.”

“You don’t have to sign on for the rest of your miserable life. Just till your airplane is fixed. And you haven’t even heard the best part.”

“What’s the best part?”

“In the interim, for a reasonable percentage of every charter, he’ll let you use his King Air. What do you think of that?”

Dent gnawed the inside of his cheek. “How reasonable a percentage?”

“I took a stab at twelve. He said okay. Prob’ly could have got him to agree to ten. The money doesn’t matter to him. He wants his plane ‘broken in’ by a good pilot.”

The deal was better than reasonable, especially considering how much Dent could charge per hour to charter an airplane of that caliber. But he resisted the temptation. “I’d be at his beck and call. And at the whim of his wife and bratty kids. I’d probably have to fly a yapping lap dog, too.”

“I didn’t say it’d be perfect,” Gall grumbled. “But you could keep eating.”

Dent loathed the prospect of having a boss, of taking orders, of having his time, his life, governed by somebody else. But Bellamy’s two-point-five grand wouldn’t last long. He could tighten his belt, literally, and skip a few meals, but he had to keep making payments on his loan or he’d lose his airplane to the bank.

“We’ll talk about it when I get back,” he said. “Soon as we set down at Austin-Bergstrom, I’ll come straight out.”

“I’ll be here. Unlike some people I know, I don’t go winging off without telling anybody.”

Dent ignored that, and, at any other time, he would simply have hung up. But he had more to talk to Gall about. “This columnist, Rocky Van Durbin, he’s a snake. He didn’t know who I was this morning, but he will by now, and he’ll be all over that. If he comes nosing around—”

“I’ll kick his Yankee ass.”

Dent actually grinned, not doubting for a moment that Gall would, and that he would enjoy it. But his grin was short-lived because he needed to stress the importance of his next warning. “Listen to me, Gall. Are you listening? This is serious.” He described the pickup truck he’d seen earlier. “I got a bad vibe. Could be nothing. But—”

“But you trust your instincts, and so do I.”

“You haven’t seen a truck like that around your place or near the airfield, have you?”

“No.”

“You swear?”

“Why would I lie?”

“Mule-headedness. Misplaced pride. Sheer meanness. Shall I go on?”

“I haven’t seen a truck like that. Swear.”

“Okay, but keep your eyes peeled. Promise?”

“I’ll promise, if you’ll tell me something.”

“What?”

“What are you doing with her?”

“For crying out loud, Gall, how many times do I have to say it?”

“I heard what you said. But if you’re telling me the truth, and you’re not even getting laid in the bargain, then what’s in it for you?”

“Exoneration.”

After a considerable pause, Gall said, “Fair enough, Ace.”

Responding to the soft knock, Bellamy went to the door connecting her room to Dent’s and pressed her palms as well as her forehead against the cool wood. “What, Dent?”

“I need to ask you something.”

“You can ask me through the door.”

It had been somewhat surprising to her that he hadn’t pestered her for details on her marital split, but, after she’d told him about the dissolution of her marriage, they had both lapsed into a brooding silence, exchanging only desultory conversation for the remainder of their flight.

The busy, noisy restaurant where they’d eaten dinner hadn’t been conducive to intimate conversation, so they’d kept theirs impersonal and as light as possible given the circumstances.

When they’d checked into the chain hotel, he’d remarked on the economic reasonableness of sharing a room, but she’d ignored the remark, and when they reached their neighboring rooms, they’d parted company.

It would be best to leave it that way.

But he knocked again and said, “I have to be looking you in the eye when I ask what I need to ask.”

She counted to ten silently.

“Come on, A.k.a. You can always scream and knee me in the balls if I get out of line. But I won’t.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then, with exasperation, flipped the latch and pulled open the door. “What?”

He took in the haphazard, scraggly topknot of hair and her squeaky-clean face. She wore a shapeless T-shirt and plaid flannel pajama bottoms that pooled over her bare feet, one of which she folded over the other in a parody of modesty.

He snuffled a laugh. “That’s how you go to bed?”

“That’s your question?”

He grinned. “Not that it isn’t sexy.”

“I wasn’t going for sexy. I was going for comfort.”

He’d made himself comfortable, too. He stood in stocking feet, bringing her eye level with his chin rather than his clavicle. Several of the pearl snaps on his shirt had been undone. She tried to keep from looking at his chest in the open wedge.

“Your question?”

Reaching behind him, he pulled a toothbrush from the back pocket of his jeans. “Can I borrow some toothpaste?”

“Why didn’t you buy toothpaste when you bought the brush?”

“Have you got some, or not?”

She turned away, went into the bathroom long enough to get the tube from her toiletry bag, and returned with it, noticing that he’d stepped across the threshold into her room. Staying at arm’s length, she extended the toothpaste to him. He took it from her, but instead of uncapping it, squeezing some paste onto his brush, and leaving, he pocketed both and stayed.

“I do need the toothpaste, but that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

She folded her arms across her middle and waited for him to continue.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Oh.” For a moment the simplicity of the question took her aback. She hadn’t expected a practical one. “Maxey’s is a ten-minute drive from here. It opens for lunch at eleven-thirty. I thought we should arrive about then.”

“Giving Steven no time to become too busy to see us or to duck out the back door.”

“Something like that.”

He bobbed his chin. “Good plan. Want to meet for breakfast first?”

“I’ll just have coffee here in my room.”

“You don’t eat breakfast?”

“Sometimes.”

“But not tomorrow.”

“Dent.”

“Okay. Fine. No breakfast for you. So… we’ll meet around, what? Eleven-fifteen?”

“Perfect.”

“Up here or in the lobby?”

“Are you always this detail oriented?”

“Absolutely. Pilots usually don’t get do-overs. The airplane can be on autopilot, but you don’t want the pilot to be, do you?”

She knew he was baiting her, but she went along. “Lobby.”

“Roger that.”

“Is that all? If so, it’s late.” She gestured toward the open door behind him, but he didn’t take the hint.

“Did you talk to Olivia?”

“No change.”

“That’s good.”

“I suppose. Did you speak to Gall about your airplane?”

“He tacked at least another two weeks on to how long the repairs will take.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

Then for the next several moments, neither of them spoke or moved. She swallowed, hearing the gulp herself and knowing that he probably had, too. “I’m going to say good night now, Dent.” Again she gestured toward the gaping doorway.

“I haven’t asked my question yet.”

“You’ve asked several.”

“But not the main one.”

“I’m exhausted. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“Was your heart broken?”

Of course she knew what he was referring to, and she figured he wasn’t going to give up and go away until she answered him. “Over losing the baby, yes. Very much so. Over losing him, no. The breakup was an inevitability. Long before the documents were filed, he and I were already separated emotionally.

“His plans to remarry were announced even before our divorce became final. He and his intended relocated to Dallas. I moved to New York and started outlining my book. There were no blowups, no fireworks. It was all very civilized.” As an afterthought, she added, “Just like the marriage had been.”

At some point during the telling, he’d shortened the distance between them. She had retreated from the intensity of his eyes by lowering hers, and now found herself talking to that enticing triangle that provided a view of soft brown chest hair.

His voice low, he said, “A shame about your kid.”

She only nodded.

In her peripheral vision she saw him raise his arm, and a second later the clip holding up her hair was released. He caught the tumbling strands and combed his fingers through them.

“Dent? What are you doing?”

“Getting out of line.”

Then his arm curved around her waist and he lowered his head. His lips caught the startled breath that escaped hers, and the shock of the contact brought back the vivid memory of the first time she’d ever seen him.

She and Susan were at a Sonic drive-in. He’d pulled up beside their car on his motorcycle and had looked past Bellamy in the passenger seat to Susan, who was behind the wheel.

The lazy smile he’d sent her sister caused curls of sensation deep inside Bellamy’s twelve-year-old body. It was an awakening that, even from her inexperienced point of view, she had understood was sexual. The stirrings had intrigued and thrilled her, but the mind-stealing strength of them had frightened her.

It still did.

She put her hands against his chest and tried to push away.

“You didn’t scream,” he whispered against her lips as his brushed back and forth across them, barely glancing them on each pass. At first. But when she still didn’t scream, or even murmur a protest, he cradled the back of her head in his palm, his mouth claimed hers, and the kiss became deep.

As a virginal preteen, and as a woman who’d taken lovers, she had daydreamed about kissing Denton Carter. While writing her book, specifically the sex scenes between him and Susan, it hadn’t been her sister he was kissing, caressing, and taking with adolescent fervor. It had been her. The fantasies had left her aroused, but irritated with herself. Surely her imagination embellished how good lovemaking with him would be.

But now she realized that her daydreams had actually been tepid. His kiss was delicious and darkly erotic. It delivered. It promised more. And the substance of what it promised made her wet, feverish, and needy.

His hand moved over her hip and into the loose waistband of her pajamas, where it applied pressure to her ass, drawing her forward, lifting and securing her against him.

“Damn,” he groaned. “I knew you’d feel good.”

His mouth scaled down her throat, then lower, leaving her T-shirt damp where he planted kisses as he moved toward her breasts, which were so tight and tender she realized she had to stop this now.

“Dent, no.”

She gave his chest a forceful push. His hand snapped free of her pajama bottoms and he fell back, cursing when his spine came up hard against the edge of the open door. “What the hell?”

“I don’t want to.”

“No?” He looked down at her nipples so obviously peaked against the thin fabric of her T-shirt. “Then want to explain—”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Well, you kinda do. One minute you’re kissing me back like there’s no tomorrow and whimpering make-me-come noises. The next, you’re shoving me into doors. Forgive my confusion.”

“Well, we can’t have you confused, can we? I don’t want to have sex with you. Is that clear enough?”

His body was rocking slightly, like he was furious, on the brink of losing his temper. She actually flinched when he whipped the tube of toothpaste from his pocket and pitched it onto the bed. “I lied. I don’t need anything from you.”

Then he backed into his room and slammed the connecting door closed.