Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [19]
On my way out, I checked around to see if they had any other victims. No kids but in the yard I found the dog we’d seen when we’d come for Bethany. He was skinny and his white coat was yellow from dirt and neglect. Dog growled but I talked to him a good while then undid his collar and coaxed him into the truck with me and drove off.
ATTILA JOHNSON
7.
Masked Rider
I popped awake just after four A.M. Ruby and I had been up until close to midnight but nothing could have kept me in bed at this point. I hadn’t smelled a horse in a week.
Ruby was asleep, on her side, nightgown bunched at her hips again. I got up quietly and went into the kitchen, passing Stinky on the way. The large cat was on the couch, dozing, his immense belly spilling out from under him. He lifted his head to gaze at me, decided I wasn’t going to feed him, and went back to dozing.
Lulu, on the other hand, rubbed against my legs compulsively as I made coffee. I ate a hard-boiled egg that Ruby had cooked the previous night when she’d suddenly decided she had to boil all the eggs in her fridge.
I took a quick shower and dressed then scribbled Ruby a note just as my cell phone chirped. It was Sal calling to tell me he was outside. I went into the hall and locked Ruby’s door behind me, taking a brief moment to savor the fact that she’d given me keys.
The neighbor, Ramirez, had his door open.
“Everything all right?” he asked, looking up from his giant mug of coffee. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt and boxer shorts. His thick arms were propped on his yellow kitchen table.
“Fine, thanks, Ramirez. Sal’s waiting for me downstairs.”
“Good,” Ramirez said, nodding then staring back into his coffee mug. The guy, as far as I could tell, never slept at all.
I went down the stairs and out onto Stillwell Avenue. It was still dark out. Here and there, fading stars punctured the sky. The air smelled salty and cold.
Sal had his truck pulled up to the narrow sidewalk in front of Ruby’s building. I got in.
“How you doin’?” Sal said. The guy looked wide awake and smelled freshly showered. His shaved head had a healthy pink glow. He had the heat blasting and was in a T-shirt that exposed his heavily tattooed arms.
“I’m good. Thanks for doing this,” I said. “It’s damned nice of you.”
The truth is, I wasn’t sure how much good Sal was going to do me if someone was really interested in ending my life. And the more hours that came between me and the incident on the beach the more I’d started wondering if it wasn’t just some strange coincidence. A random psychopath that maybe I should have reported to the cops. There was no way to be sure.
Sal drove. The day still hadn’t started for most people and the streets were empty. After asking if I minded, Sal put in a Beethoven CD, which he played at an earsplitting volume. Occasionally, he’d shout something at me over the insane roar of the music.
“You know that lady of yours got me into this. This Beethoven shit.”
“Oh yeah?” I had to scream for him to hear me. He turned it down a notch.
“I was feeling frazzled when I first met Ruby. The wife was giving me a hard time and my kid didn’t seem to like me and my back was going out and I was just a mess. First Ruby tried getting me to do that yoga crap she does,” he said indignantly. “Then, when she saw that was going over like a fireball in hell, she got on me to listen to classical. I gotta say, it helps.” Sal shook his big bald head and squeezed the steering wheel for emphasis. I nodded, then closed my eyes.
A half hour later, we were pulling into the backside entrance at Belmont. After peering into the vehicle and seeing me, Lazy Susan, the morning-shift security guard, waved us in, not seeming to care one bit that Sal’s truck didn’t have the proper stickers.
I glanced toward the training track