Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 03 - A Deadly Change of Heart Read online

  Parts of the path were clear and the view to the ocean unobstructed, while other parts were surrounded by dense growth. Diane headed up a short rise, then around a sharp turn in the path that wove through a thick stand of trees. As she rounded a second turn, she spotted a tall man standing a short distance off the trail. She’d startled him and he spun around to see who was coming down the path. Diane stopped. She squinted at him, slightly irritated. She’d run along this trail many times and never before had she encountered another human being this early in the morning. This was her private world. How dare he invade her sanctuary? She never told anyone about this place—at least no one she could remember.

  “Good morning,” Diane said.

  He didn’t reply. His face was angry. Then Diane noticed the second person, a dark-skinned man in an expensive suit. He looked foreign, but Diane couldn’t ascertain his nationality. She noticed the tall man’s enraged expression. How dare you be mad at me? This is my personal space. I didn’t invite you here, she thought to herself.

  The foreigner looked over at his companion. “Is this going to be a problem?”

  Diane’s eyes moved to the open case sitting on the ground between the men. It was full of cash—bills stacked in thick bundles. Next to the case was an aluminum box with heavy-duty handles riveted on both sides. The box was closed tight and a piece of white tape with red markings was wrapped around it as a seal. Diane returned her stare to the tall man. She put the pieces together in her mind. This was some sort of private transaction—illegal enough to require a secluded meeting place—and dangerous to be a witness to.

  “Afraid so,” the taller man replied to his associate’s question.

  Diane listened to the words and tried to make sense of the scene. Her initial reaction was confusion. She shouldn’t have felt fearful, but her intuition told her to run. She turned and sprinted down the trail in the direction she’d come. The two men started after her. Diane ran as hard and fast as she could. She wanted to shed the ankle weights, but couldn’t stop long enough to pull the Velcro straps off. She felt like she was trying to run through wet cement. She wasn’t sure if it was the added weight or the knowledge of what she’d just witnessed that caused her heart to race. This section of trail had a lot of switchbacks, but Diane tried to run a straight line to shorten the distance between her and her car.

  The foreigner gave up the chase when he snagged his silk jacket on a tree branch. The other man pursued Diane relentlessly. His long legs carried him easily through the brush. Diane glanced back once to see if they were gaining, and stumbled over an exposed tree root. She fell and cried out with pain as the rough ground ripped through the knees of her sweat pants. She yanked the Velcro strap on her right ankle as she sprung to her feet but missed the left one. She made three strides before he leapt through the air and tackled her to the ground.

  Diane yelled, but no one was around to hear her screams. The foreigner arrived at the scene a few seconds later. The two men dragged Diane, kicking and screaming, across the trail toward the ocean. She’d managed to finish the job started by the tree branch and ripped the sleeve completely off the expensive silk jacket. She also landed a well-placed blow to the taller man’s shin, but couldn’t free herself from their grips.

  The men dragged her to the edge of the cliff. Her eyes widened with terror when she realized her fate. The high cliffs dropped sharply to the rocky coast, at least a hundred feet below. The deafening sound of the waves pounding on the rocks drowned out Diane’s screams of terror as she tumbled over the edge.

  Chapter Two

  I stepped off the bus and gazed at my surroundings. I was still officially in San Diego, but I was close enough to the border to hear the barks from the dogs roaming the streets of Tijuana. The city bus let out a puff of smoke as it pulled away from the curb on its way to the next stop. I watched it rumble down the street and hoped I wouldn’t need to use it to get back home. I checked my watch and unfolded the map that gave directions to the auction grounds.

  My friend Jason was supposed to give me a ride to the auction this morning. When I told him it was a U.S. Marshal’s auction of police-seized vehicles, he retracted his offer. He told me if I came back with some drug dealer’s car, he was going to move to another state and leave no forwarding address so I couldn’t find him.

  I explained to him that this was a great way to get a good deal on a car. The public at large doesn’t generally know about these auctions and the competition is usually slim. Also, since drug dealers usually pay cash, it’s not likely there will be any liens on the properties being sold. Jason ridiculed my explanation and predicted that with my luck, I’d come home with a bargain BMW and find a skeleton in the trunk. I told him he was acting like a paranoid coward and hung up on him. I wasn’t really mad at him, but I was desperate to get my own wheels, again. My Jeep had been stolen and the insurance company only gave me seventy-five hundred dollars to replace it. I’d been begging, borrowing, and bussing for the last month, and I’d had enough.

  No, Devonie Lace is not a public transportation kind of girl. I need to be independent. If I had lived in the days of the old West, you would’ve never found me in one of those canvas-covered buckboards, traveling in a wagon train across the country. I’d have to have my own horse and the freedom to ride off whenever the mood struck. I couldn’t be bogged down with the heavy burden of the other pioneers’ needs and worries and weaknesses.

  To top it all off, I have a wedding to plan and not a lot of time to get it done. It’s challenging enough keeping appointments with florists, caterers, photographers, dressmakers, and ministers without having to memorize a bus schedule that seems to change on a weekly basis.

  A wedding. Now that’s an occasion I never thought I’d be a party to. My attitude toward marriage began on my first day of kindergarten, when a little brown-haired boy tattled on me for tearing his naptime towel. Didn’t he realize I was infatuated and was only trying to get closer by pulling him toward me? Instead of returning my affection, he ran crying to the teacher. That was my first experience at love, and things went steadily downhill from there.

  After more than three decades of failed relationships and heartbreaks, I met Craig, the man I’m scheduled to marry in just a few short weeks. He’s not like any man I’ve ever known. I knew he was a nice guy the night my Aunt Arlene tried to fix me up with him during a dinner party, but when he followed me all the way to Switzerland to save me from some very evil people, I couldn’t believe it. Nobody ever even followed me home, let alone halfway around the world.

  To be honest, though, at first I was a little worried he was one of the bad guys. I mean, in real life, what man would follow a woman he’d just met all the way to Geneva because he thought her life might be in danger? And what man would risk his own life for that same woman? Only in the movies, right? That’s what I thought, too. But Doctor Craig Matthews is just such a man. Since I’ve met him, I haven’t had a single dream about being married to Mel Gibson. I still have the occasional Tom Selleck dream, but what red-blooded American woman wouldn’t?

  Craig offered to buy me a new car to replace my stolen Jeep, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Just because I’m getting married doesn’t mean I can no longer take care of my own needs. I assured him I could get a perfectly suitable vehicle with the insurance money I’d received. I hoped today would be the day I found that suitable vehicle because many more bus rides and I might sell out and take him up on his offer.

  I wandered around the auction grounds and scoped out the vehicles I thought I’d bid on. Unfortunately, I’d missed most of the preview period and would be bidding blind. I narrowed my list to three SUVs that looked promising: a Jeep Grand Cherokee, like the one stolen from me, only red and a few years newer; a white Toyota Forerunner; and a black Nissan Pathfinder. All three were less than two years old and very clean.

  The Jeep went for ten grand. I kept my hopes up for the Toyota, but when the bid got over eight thousand, I headed to the next lot before the
gavel struck. I hoped I was the last of the serious SUV buyers and the Pathfinder would be mine. No such luck. My meager seventy-five hundred dollars wasn’t going to buy me a ticket off of the City of San Diego’s public transportation system—at least not today.

  I trudged toward the gates, studying the schedule in my hand to see when the next bus would arrive to take me back to the marina where I live on my sailboat, the Plan C. I stopped for a moment and regarded the next lot to be auctioned—a Ford Explorer. I hadn’t noticed it before and it’s a wonder why. It was orange—not orange like a pleasant, sunset-sky orange, or even a fashionable burnt orange, but orange like the fruit. The crowd was thin and the bidding was about to start. I almost walked off, leaving it for the other bidders, but the thought of another bus ride home flashed through my mind.

  When I was in junior high, I rode the bus to school daily. I remember Harry Fate, an all around troublemaker, would sit in one of the front rows during the hot months when all the windows in the bus were open. There was no air conditioning and the only relief from the heat was letting the breeze from the outside air blow in your face. Harry would wait until the bus reached an adequate speed, then spit out the window, looking back to see which poor unsuspecting kid got a spit bath across his or her face. Everyone hated Harry, but he was tough and mean, and no one ever dared to cross him. I learned to sit on the opposite side of the bus from him. There are a lot of Harrys out there and many of them still ride the bus. I pushed my way through the crowd and raised my hand. “Five thousand!” I called out.

  Some joker printed the word SUNKIST across the door of my new Explorer with a green marker while I was inside paying for it. I only had to give sixty-five hundred for it, and I planned to use the rest of the insurance money to have it painted. If the lettering didn’t come off, that would motivate me to take care of the color sooner than later. As I pulled through the exit gate, a pair of young men smiled and waved at me. One of them held up a green marker and laughed. I smiled and waved back. “Jerk,” slipped through my clenched teeth, but he couldn’t hear me through my closed windows.

  San Diego freeways are probably the busiest in the world. Bumper-to-bumper and door-to-door, there’s not always room to maneuver when time is limited. By the time I saw the two-by-four in the lane I was travelling in, it was too late. I hit it with both front wheels and felt the bump-bump as all four tires rolled over it. The steering got sloppy, and I realized I had at least one, if not more, flat tires. I searched the dash for the emergency flasher button and hit it. Then I signaled my intention to move over to the shoulder. Of course, no one would let me move over. They blasted past as though I didn’t exist. Finally, a trucker saw my predicament and flashed his lights at me, showing his intention to let me move in front of him, then off to the shoulder. I waved to him as I pulled off and he flashed his lights again.

  Both front tires were flat. I called a towing service. The tow-truck drove right on past me. I waited several minutes until he could circle around. He came up behind me again and pulled off the freeway.

  “I didn’t stop the first time ‘cause I thought you were a Caltrans employee, picking up garbage or something. You know, Caltrans trucks are painted almost that same color,” the tow-truck driver informed me.

  I nodded. “I know. Can you tow it to the nearest tire shop?”

  “Not your lucky day,” the man behind the counter noted as he filled out the work order.

  I nodded in agreement. One of the grease monkeys came in from the shop and marched behind the counter. “That your Explorer with the two flats?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “We can’t repair either one—sidewalls are shot.”

  I frowned. “Can you match the two good ones?” I asked.

  “Which ones would that be?”

  I looked at him curiously. “The ones that aren’t flat. You know, the back ones,” I said.

  “Oh, those. Well, we can’t match them exactly. They aren’t what I’d call good, though. You probably only have a couple thousand left on them, and your spare is balder than a my Uncle Artie, and believe me, he’s as hairless as they come.”

  My shoulders drooped in despair. I was going to have to dip into my paint-job money to buy new tires. “Okay. Let’s put four new tires all around. Can we use one of the not-so-good rear tires to replace the spare?” I asked.

  “You bet,” he assured me.

  I sat in one of the hard plastic chairs in the show room and paged through a magazine while I waited. I’d gotten halfway through an article about the rise in teenage smoking and wondered how anyone with half a brain could start smoking in this day and age, with all the evidence of the cancer risks and emphysema. These kids won’t think smoking is so cool when every breath they take is a struggle and their best friend is an oxygen tank. The tire mechanic interrupted my reading.

  “We found something weird with your spare,” he announced.

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah. Wanna come see?” he said, gesturing me toward the door.

  I followed him out to the shop, past the sign that warned against customers entering the work area. My Explorer was hoisted up in the air. He led me to a device used to remove the tires from the rims. The rim bolted to the apparatus was wrapped in duct tape, with a strange bulge on one side.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. Thought maybe you’d know, since it’s your car.”

  “I just bought it today. I haven’t a clue.”

  “Well, we can cut the tape off and see what it is,” he offered.

  I nodded. “Let’s do that.”

  He pulled a pocketknife from his jeans and started slicing the heavy gray tape. When he finished removing the tape, he handed me the item that had been stuck to the inside rim of the spare tire. It was a woman’s small leather purse. “Yours?” he asked as he handed it to me.

  “I guess it is, now,” I replied, taking it from him. I wandered back into the waiting room and sat down with my new “extra” while he finished putting the tires on.

  It was a stylish brown leather purse fashioned like a small backpack. I lifted the outer flap and loosened the drawstring that held it closed. I pulled the items out one-by-one and laid them on the table in front of me: a pair of sunglasses in a hard plastic case, a small hairbrush, a lipstick, two compacts for blusher and pressed powder, an address book, an unopened book of thirty-three-cent stamps, an envelope and a wallet. I checked all the pockets for anything else. I found a pack of cinnamon gum and a roll of breath mints. I regarded the stamps for a moment. Stamps haven’t been thirty-three cents for almost a year.

  I was about to open the wallet when the tire mechanic pushed through the doors. “All set,” he announced, handing me the keys.

  “You’re done?” I asked, surprised at how quickly he finished.

  “Yep. You’re ready to roll.”

  I quickly stuffed all the items back in the purse.

  “Find anything exciting?” he asked.

  “No. Just the usual stuff,” I replied, pulling the drawstring tight.

  “Pretty weird, hiding a purse inside a tire, don’t you think?” he said.

  I nodded in agreement. “Yeah. It’s weird, all right.”

  I parked the Explorer in my usual spot at the marina. My neighbor, Mr. Cartwright, watched me walk down the dock.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Lace,” he greeted in his usual formal manner.

  “Hi, Mr. Cartwright,” I replied.

  “Is that your new vehicle?” he asked, motioning toward the Explorer sitting in the parking lot.

  My eyes followed the direction of his pointing finger. “Yes, it is. I bought it today.”

  “It’s orange,” he noted.

  I smiled as I stepped over the railing. “Is it?”

  After grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator, I sat down on the sofa with the purse. I opened it and pulled the wallet out. There was no cash and no credit cards. There were senior photos of t
wo boys, both good-looking young men. The driver’s license belonged to Diane Parker, forty-one years old, five-feet-seven inches tall, one hundred twenty-five pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. The address on the license was for an apartment in San Diego. I removed the address book and checked the front cover for a phone number. The address and phone number had been crossed out and new ones penciled in below it. The new address matched the one on Diane Parker’s license. I picked up my phone and punched in the number. After one ring, a recording announced that the number was disconnected.

  I stared at the purse sitting on my sofa. I figured the low-life drug dealer stole this purse from poor Diane Parker, took the cash and credit cards for his own use, then got himself arrested and thrown in the slammer. Why he hid the purse in his spare tire was a mystery, but I gave up trying to make sense out of the actions of criminals a long time ago. I just wanted to contact Diane Parker and give her purse back.

  I paged through the address book looking for other Parker names. I found two: Brad Parker Junior and Malcomb Parker. Both addresses had a UCLA notation penciled next to them. I wondered if these were Diane’s sons, and the boys in the senior pictures in her wallet. I tried both numbers, but got a recording each time. I didn’t leave a message.

  I thought about starting at the beginning of her address book and phoning until I found someone home who could tell me how to reach her. I glanced over at the purse sitting next to me and saw the corner of an envelope poking out of the top. Maybe there was something in there that would help. It wasn’t sealed so I thought it would be okay to read it. I pulled it out, opened the sheet of paper folded up inside and began reading:

  Dear Bradley:

  I’m writing you this letter because I fear you won’t let me say all the things I need to say in person. I also fear your reaction. After our discussion this morning, it’s clear to me that I’m making the right decision to divorce you. I turned the other way when I knew you were unfaithful to me. I told myself it was just a phase you were going through—a phase that started after Malcomb was born and lasted eighteen years. In case you wondered, I’ve never cheated on you. You almost convinced me of my worthlessness during our marriage. I resigned myself to the fact that the life I had was the life I’d been dealt and there was nothing I could do about it. But as the boys got older and closer to leaving the nest, I decided I needed to rethink that belief. I knew I’d never last in that house with you, without the boys there to provide some reason for living. Death looked better than any life with a man as cold hearted as you. When I began taking that thought seriously, I knew it was time to get out, for my own survival. I don’t want any part of your business, or what’s left of it. Whatever financial problems you’re having, I’m sure you’ll find a way out of them, like you always do. I’ll have the house appraised, and you can either pay me half, or we can sell it and split the money. I’m keeping the Toyota, and I’ll make the payments, since I’m working now. You know, I stopped loving you a long time ago, but the funny thing is, the reason I stopped loving you was because you made me feel like such a nothing. I didn’t think you’d want to be loved by anyone as worthless as me. I actually stopped loving you because I thought that would make you happy. Is that insane?