California Schemin' - Kate George [81]
“Jeez, this must have cost you a fortune,” I said. “When did you decide to go with a metal ceiling?”
“I don’t know, I guess when we found all that old metal under the Homasote, but it’s not real embossed bronze or anything. It’s molded plastic, painted with metallic paint. It was pretty inexpensive compared with, say, real metal tiles.” She laughed. “I think they look pretty good, if I say so myself.”
“Looks fab. What’s Tom think?”
“He likes it. It was a little too much work in his mind, but I think it was worth it. Forget the ceiling. Tell me what happened to you. I had to run a story written by Lucy in the paper and listen to her yak about how I’d have to hire her back if you didn’t show up soon. Dirty little .”
“Backstabbing Howe,” I finished with her. Not that all Howes were like Lucy. It’s just what we’d called her for as long as I could remember.
“Spill.”
So I told my story, front to back, including the identity of the dead woman and the mysterious Richard Hambecker and his disappearance. A gambit of emotions ran across her face as I talked, and she got more and more serious as I got to the end.
“The senator got away? He murdered his wife and got away?”
“As far as I know. I haven’t heard any noises about him showing up back in Sacramento. My bet is Mexico. Easy access.”
“And Richard Hambecker?” The look she shot me made me squirm. Meg could always read my mind. “Do you think he headed to Mexico, too?”
“No. Somehow I think he’s cut his losses and moved back into the dark recesses of whatever agency he came out of, the identity of which remains a mystery. I’m thinking not the FBI, because that’s where Madison hails from, and she swears those boys were not with her.”
“You really can’t remember Moose’s real name? That’s strange.”
“I’m pretty sure he told me, but I just can’t remember. I’m blaming it on the drugs. I’m sure being sedated for hours on end must have affected my memory.”
“Richard admitted to sedating you? Why would he do that? You could sue him for all sorts of things, if you ever saw him again.”
“He always seemed like an unlikely thug—or agent, whichever. He was nice to me. He seemed like the kind of guy who’s naturally nice to people in general, but he had this hard edge, too. Self-preservation, I think. The ability to do what needed to be done, even if it was distasteful to him.”
“Well, I don’t like him. Anybody who can drug a woman and drag her all the way across the country is not okay in my book, especially when it’s my best friend he’s abducted.”
“How did you even find out I was gone? It’s not like I called everybody up and announced I’d been abducted.”
“Max called. He stopped by to see to his horses and noticed the dogs acting strangely. He checked in the house and called Tom when you weren’t there. Tom called me. He was hoping you’d decided to go away for a couple of days or something and forgot to tell Max, like you’d ever leave your animals without making sure you had them taken care of.”
“He was just hopeful. He would rather think I’d neglected my animals than think I’d been abducted. It’s a natural response.”
“Then there was the mad flurry of activity when Brooks was trying to find out where you might have gone and Sheriff Fogel wasn’t available because of some emergency at the Sacramento Airport, which I knew was about you, but no one believed me. Brooks apologized later, but Tom never did. On top of that, Beau was gone off somewhere and hadn’t bothered to tell us where, just called and left a message.”
“Yeah, well, he walked right into the spider’s web. Didn’t even know he was a hostage until I showed up. I swear guys are dense sometimes. Feed them chips and beer and give them either sports to watch or a project to work on, and they won’t even come up for air until the world's already come to an end.”
“They can’t help it. It’s the way they’re put together. You’ve got to admit it has advantages. By the time they even realize something’s wrong, the world’s been saved, the emergency is over, and all they have to do is say phew, boy,