The Third Degree, page 5
“This is Marlie Schaefer reporting from the cozy little town of Lost Camp. A tragedy has rocked this once tranquil town. Jocko the wallaby is still missing.” The woman turned to the blond man and continued to speak with deadly seriousness. “The townsfolk are pulling together, as good neighbors do in times of crisis, to find this lovable creature.”
“Yeah, good neighbors who could use five hundred extra bucks,” Roberta muttered. “Don’t you hate how these reporters twist the truth?”
“I know,” Mollie said, nodding.
“With me now is Mr. Billy Brighton, Jocko’s trainer,” Marlie Schaefer went on. “Billy, have you any idea how this mysterious disappearance occurred?”
“It’s no big mystery, actually,” the man said, speaking with an Australian accent. “I been meaning to fix the lock on his cage for the longest time. It’s all rusted out from traveling in bad weather and all. I think old Jocko gave the thing a good whack and it sprung. He probably just hopped on out in the middle of the night.”
“Is Jocko in danger?” the reporter asked.
“Not exactly,” Billy Brighton replied. “It’s good weather here, and there’s lots of fruit orchards and rice fields for him to live on. But I paid a lot of money for—”
“Might not a hunter accidentally shoot him? Or could he be fatally injured while crossing a road?”
“Sure. I guess that’s always possible. But—”
“Yes, Jocko is in grave danger,” the newswoman said. “And time is running out. What would you like to say to all those who are out there searching for Jocko?”
“I want everyone who isn’t searching to know that I’m offering a reward of—”
“Undying gratitude,” Marlie Schaefer cut him off. She turned a sincere, sad face to the cameraman, who slowly crept in for a close-up. “All the good people of Lost Camp can do now is hope, pray, and search for Jocko, the missing wallaby.”
“Great,” said the cameraman. “That’s all the footage we need.”
The sincerity evaporated from Marlie Schaefer’s face. She and the two-man crew headed back toward the van.
“Miss Schaefer,” Billy Brighton called, catching up to the reporter. “I wanted to remind everyone that I’m offering a five-hundred-dollar reward. Is there any way to add that to your report?”
“Sorry, Mr. Brighton,” Mollie and Roberta heard the woman tell him. “This is going into our soft news spot at the end of the report. It’s supposed to make people feel warm inside. Money would just muddy the issue.”
As the trainer walked away, shaking his head, Roberta nudged Mollie. “I have an idea,” she said. She bounded over to the passenger side of the van, where Marlie Schaefer sat. “Miss Schaefer, I have an exciting story I think you should cover.”
Marlie Schaefer raised a skeptical eyebrow but rolled the window down. “Go ahead.”
Roberta told her how Jaime had gone off to look for Jocko and gotten lost. “And the authorities in Lost Camp are unwilling to take any action,” Mollie put in.
“So we’re talking about a teenaged kid missing for less than forty-eight hours?” the reporter summarized.
Roberta and Mollie nodded eagerly.
Marlie Schaefer began rolling up her window. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s not news.” The girls stepped away as the van began pulling out of its spot.
“What kind of a screwed-up world is this when a missing wallaby is more important than a missing person!” Roberta cried.
“Jaime being lost wouldn’t make people feel all warm inside,” Mollie said glumly.
The small crowd that had gathered to see the news report was dispersing. Mollie noticed that one of the men held a suit jacket. A closer look revealed that the jacket was splotched with red stains. “Roberta, isn’t that the guy who Mrs. Santos bombed with tomatoes this morning?”
“Looks like him,” Roberta agreed. “That’s really slimy what they’re doing to her.”
“It sure is.” Mollie charged over to the man. “Excuse me,” she said, standing in his path. “I’m a friend of Yolanda Santos, and I just want to tell you that I think the way your bank is treating her stinks.”
The man quirked his lip wearily. “Well, I think the way she’s treating my suits stinks. We all have our little grievances.” Up close Mollie saw that he was about thirty, with grayish skin and tired, dull blue eyes. He turned and began crossing the street to the bank building. Mollie wasn’t about to be dismissed so easily.
“Mrs. Santos made a fair deal with your bank,” Mollie persisted, trailing after him with Roberta at her side. “You can’t just go and change the deal.”
“Listen, miss,” the man said, stopping outside the bank. “Banks are folding all over the country. We’re doing what we have to do. Mrs. S. doesn’t have to lose her home. She’s got four hundred acres in Hierro Canyon she can sell.”
“Who would want four hundred acres of canyon?” Roberta asked.
“The bank would buy it from her.”
“I get it. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?” Mollie challenged. “The bank wants that land.”
“Kid, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but you’re way off base,” the man said, pulling open the door to the bank and hurrying in.
“I’ll bet I’m not,” Mollie said, following close on his heels. “I’d like to speak to the president of this bank. What’s his name?”
“Mr. Eugene Terault,” the man said irritably.
Roberta touched Mollie’s arm. “As in Terault Realty?” she said, recalling the signs they’d seen on the drive in.
Mollie looked at the man with disdain. “Oh, yeah,” she scoffed. “I’m just a dumb kid. I’m way off base.”
CHAPTER 8
Mollie and Roberta decided to look for Eugene Terault. The secretary at the bank sent them to city hall, where Mr. Terault was supposedly in an all-day meeting with his brother, Oscar Terault. As it turned out, Oscar Terault was not only Lost Camp’s real-estate tycoon, he was also its mayor.
City Hall was just across the carnival site, at the center of town. The town clerk told them that the Terault brothers were lunching at the Sportsman Bar and Grill. After stopping to feed and walk Pirate, the girls headed to the Sportsman.
“Some sportsmen,” Mollie observed as they stepped inside the dimly lit bar. The front room was filled with bikers. Some hung on the bar, throwing back shots of alcohol and slurping beers; others played pool, darts, or the pinball machine in the corner.
“I don’t see anyone who looks like a banker or a mayor,” Roberta said. “Hey, but in this town, who knows? The mayor is probably a Hell’s Angel.”
“I’ll bet they’re in the back room.” Mollie pointed with her chin toward a doorway next to the jukebox.
Dog howls, low grunts, and a certain amount of actual drooling created a bizarre sound track to their walk across the bar. “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Roberta muttered under her breath.
Finally they made it through the back door and entered a plain room, decorated only with neon beer signs and posters of half-naked women. The scuffed wooden tables and chairs were all empty except for a long table off to the right. Around it sat a group of men, eating hamburgers and drinking coffee. “These must be the sportsmen. It looks like they’ve all got basketballs under their shirts,” Roberta whispered.
One of them was a jowly, dark-haired man wearing a sheriff’s uniform. Mollie guessed that the two men in business suits were the Terault brothers. They looked almost exactly alike with their weak chins, small blue eyes, and bald heads. The fourth blond, blue-eyed man could have been a Nazi storm trooper, except for the small gut hanging over his belt. And the fifth man was a broad-shouldered Latino in dark glasses and a shiny suit.
“Excuse me, Sheriff,” Mollie said, approaching the table cautiously. “I’m here to report a missing person.”
“Give the information to my people over at the station,” said the sheriff, waving her off.
“I tried,” Mollie said. “But your people are totally useless.”
The Terault brothers snickered. The sheriff glared at her. Then he snorted with laughter. “You calling my son-in-law-to-be useless?” he drawled.
Roberta and Mollie looked at one another. “Is your daughter named Agnes Sue?” Roberta asked him.
The sheriff narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Yep.”
“Then it’s your future son-in-law we’re calling useless,” Mollie said.
“Though your receptionist is no ball of fire, either,” added Roberta.
The sheriff grunted. “What you’re saying may be true, but I don’t appreciate the opinion of outsiders. Besides, anybody missing in the area is sure to be found by all the folks searching for that damn kangaroo, or whatever that hopping creature is called. That’s probably what your friend is doing.”
“What if he’s not?” Mollie pressed.
“Then we’ll take the appropriate actions, miss. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting going on here.”
Mollie took a sweeping glance at the table and noted all the empty beer glasses. The coffee looked as if it had come none too soon.
“Well, okay,” Mollie said. “My father’s a detective, and he always says that sitting around doing nothing is one of the best ways to fight crime.”
“My father’s a cop, too,” Roberta joined in. “He’s always hoped that someday he could retire and get a job like yours.”
With their noses in the air, Mollie and Roberta whirled around and left the room.
“Hey, ba-beeeee,” one of the bikers yelled the moment they stepped into the bar area again. He leered at Mollie and pretended he was about to kiss her.
“Yeah, I like my ladies young and fine,” another biker declared as he eyed Roberta. “Brown Sugar” by the Rolling Stones came on the jukebox.
Mollie squared her shoulders and walked toward the door, looking straight ahead. “We’re almost there,” she said midway. Roberta didn’t reply. Mollie glanced from the corner of her eyes.
Roberta wasn’t anywhere near her.
Mollie looked back and spotted Roberta over by the pool table. She was peering down at a passed-out biker in a leather jacket. For a fleeting moment Mollie thought Roberta had knocked him out. Realizing that was highly unlikely, Mollie ran back to get her friend.
“Roberta, what are you doing?” Mollie whispered. “This isn’t the time to get friendly.”
“I’m trying to see his jacket.”
A tall pockmarked biker with a life-size portrait of Frank Sinatra tattooed on his chest approached them. “Don’t bother with him,” he sneered. “You’re looking at a real man.”
“I was just admiring his jacket,” Roberta said. “Do you know where he got it?”
“His grandmother knitted it for him,” the biker said, laughing. He had only six teeth left in his mouth. “How the hell should I know?”
“Ro-bert-a!” Mollie grabbed Roberta’s arm. “You can take fashion notes later.” As she pulled Roberta away from the passed-out biker, she bumped into something hard. It was someone’s broad back.
“Hey!” this biker said, turning on her fiercely. His eyes were cold. Ice cold. He was the sort of person you could never imagine having been a child. Or if he ever was a kid, he was the kind that threw firecrackers at cats and shot frogs with BB guns.
Mollie froze as she looked up at him. An ugly scar divided the right side of his face. His black hair was combed straight back, and he had a scruffy half beard. “You made me spill my beer, bitch!” he growled.
“I’m sorry,” Mollie apologized. “It was an accident.”
The biker snarled and wrapped his massive hand around Mollie’s upper arm. “You know what, girlie,” he said, “I think maybe you should lick this beer off my shirt. Every drop of it.”
Mollie swallowed. She was searching desperately for an escape route when she heard a soft click over her right shoulder. The biker’s fingers unfurled from her arm. Mollie turned and saw a short but very muscular Latino man. In his hand glistened a very large knife.
“You touch my wife again, I’ll skin you alive,” he warned with a quiet intensity. He reached out and pulled Mollie behind him.
“You have no idea who you’re screwing around with, do you?” the biker sneered.
“You don’t scare me, Gemulka,” the stranger replied, stepping closer to the biker. Mollie watched intently. For an instant she saw fear flicker on Joe Gemulka’s deep-lined face. Then it passed.
“That young thing is your wife?” Gemulka laughed hoarsely.
“She’s old enough,” the man said. He turned to Mollie and shoved her lightly forward. “And you, vamonos! I want my supper.”
Deciding to go with the flow, Mollie let herself be pushed forward. Roberta hurried along at her side. “I’m with them,” Mollie heard her tell a biker on the way out.
Outside, the harsh sunlight forced Mollie to squint. By the time she had blinked twice and adjusted her vision, the man was half a block away.
“Who was that?” Roberta asked. “The Lone Ranger?”
“I don’t know, but I guess we just met Joe Gemulka,” Mollie said. “He’s a scary character.”
“They should give him his own horror series,” Roberta agreed. “Joe Gemulka. Joe Gemulka Returns. Joe Gemulka Five. He makes Jason and Freddy look like cream puffs.”
“Yeah. What was all that about, anyway?” Mollie asked. “Why were you staring at that guy’s jacket?”
“I wanted to see the back of it. I’m not really sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“I needed to see the back of the jacket to be certain,” said Roberta. “From the front it looked the same, but if I’d seen the back, I’d have known for sure.”
“Known what?” Mollie cried impatiently.
“Known for sure if it was Jaime’s jacket.”
CHAPTER 9
“No! No! No!” Mollie cried, stamping her foot.
Roberta lifted the parking ticket off Fathead’s windshield. “We should have seen this coming,” she commented. “The sheriff probably busted the meter himself.”
“Well, that ticket’s not our only problem. Look!” Mollie pointed to her right front tire.
“Flat as Angela Carbajal without her padded bra,” groaned Roberta, recalling one of their more unpleasant schoolmates. “You’ve got a spare, don’t you?”
“Yes, but Johnny has my jack. I lent it to him so he could work on some guy’s old Jeep.”
“Very bright, Mollie,” Roberta said glumly. “Oh, man! I don’t even want to think about dealing with a Lost Camp towing company.”
At that moment a blue pickup truck drove toward them. “Look who’s coming,” Roberta said. It was the man who had just rescued them at the Sportsman.
“This isn’t your day, is it?” He laughed as he pulled up alongside them.
“He probably slashed the tire,” Roberta whispered warily as the man stepped out of his truck.
“Would you like a hand?” their rescuer asked, squatting by the tire. “Looks like you hit a nail or something. You have a pretty good-sized puncture.”
“Made by a knife, no doubt,” Roberta whispered to Mollie. She huddled closer to Mollie, and they both eyed the man nervously.
He looked up at them and smiled. “I’m sorry if I scared you in there. Those guys are rough. You have to look like you’re more loco than they are. You can’t even blink. A good, mean psycho on your side is sure what you seemed to need.”
“I sure did,” Mollie said, letting down her guard a bit. “Thanks a lot.”
“No problem. I try to stay out of that place. You should, too.”
“Then what were you doing there?” Roberta asked skeptically.
“Me?” The man pushed back his cowboy hat as he examined the jack hookup for the Jeep. “Oh, I was there because the owner wants me to fly in some new kitchen equipment for him. I’m a pilot.”
Instead of the taut and volatile image he had projected in the bar, the man now seemed amiable, even gentle. The burning insanity was gone from his dark eyes, and Mollie noticed he was quite handsome—for an old guy, anyway.
Just then Pirate came to the half-open window. The man stood and petted him. “Hey, big guy.” Pirate licked his hand, and Mollie relaxed completely. She had never seen the dog be wrong when it came to judging people. “Galileo Cannales,” the man said in introduction. “My friends call me Golly.”
Roberta and Mollie introduced themselves and told him briefly why they happened to be in the Sportsman Bar and Grill.
“Sheriff Ruiz isn’t going to jump to help anyone,” he commented. “And you don’t want to know my opinion of the Terault brothers. I don’t think I could express it in decent language.”
He went to his truck and took out a jack. Holding it against Fathead’s hookup, he shook his head. “My jack won’t work on your Jeep,” he told them. “I have to get back home now to make my kids supper. You’re welcome to join us. Then we can come back later with the right jack. My neighbor has a Jeep like this. Her jack should fit.”
“Thanks. That’d be great,” Mollie said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble. But I warn you that dinner won’t be anything fancy.”
“That’s okay,” Mollie said, letting Pirate out. “We’ll come.”
“Do you think we should?” Roberta asked as Golly got back into his truck. “I don’t want to be featured on Unsolved Mysteries or A Current Affair or something.”
“Pirate is with us,” Mollie pointed out. “Besides, I think we can trust this guy. He’s got McDonald’s toys hanging from his rearview mirror.”
Mollie put Pirate in the back and squeezed into the front of the pickup with Roberta and Golly. They drove about five miles out of town until they came to a small airstrip. Three two-seater planes were parked alongside a metal hangar. “How far away do you live?” Roberta asked.
Golly laughed. “This is home. I own this airstrip.” He parked, and the girls, along with Pirate, followed him behind the hangar. Several yards back was a small ramshackle house with a wide porch. The patchy lawn was strewn with automobile and airplane parts. Three boy’s bikes were tossed carelessly against the porch.
