Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [110]
We dressed in silence, kissed briefly at the door, and stepped out onto the walkway. It was almost eleven-thirty. Two doors down, a man and a woman, half-crocked from the sounds of their movement and slurred voices, quarreled over which of them had the room key. A moment later I realized we were listening to Wes and Lillian Tindale.
Our meeting surprised me, but it shocked them. Mouths agape, they both turned and stared.
For a few moments the four of us looked at one another and then, without a word, Stephanie pivoted around and began walking away. I followed. Downstairs, we climbed into the Lexus, while a dumbfounded Wesley and Lillian gawped down at us.
As we headed out of the lot, two men in a rental car headed in. “Stop,” I said. The two men parked next to us and headed toward a room on the ground floor. “I thought you two were leaving town,” I said, rolling the car window down.
The two balding men looked startled. Hillburn and Dobson from Jane’s California Propulsion, Inc. I’d been suspicious of them for pulling out of town after our chat, but now I was even more suspicious because they hadn’t pulled out of town at all.
“What are you two doing?” I asked, getting out of the Lexus.
They looked at each other and headed for their room without answering. I ran over to them and grabbed Dobson by the arm. “No. I want to know what you two are doing. I thought you said your company couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with our syndrome. If that’s so, why are you hanging around?”
“Doesn’t have anything to do with you,” said Hillburn, who had the key in the door.
“You two are up to something.” They just stared at me. Before I could say anything else, they opened the door, went in, and slammed it in my face.
“Did you see those bastards?” I said, getting back into the car.
“I don’t like them, either, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Achara was going to look into rocket fuel products. Maybe she’s found something.”
“I’m surprised we haven’t heard from her. The library closed hours ago.”
We stopped at the fire station, where Stephanie retrieved some personal items out of Holly’s Pontiac, which was still parked there.
It was hard for me to look at our fire station, a place I’d loved for so many years, a home away from home, a place I was destined never to inhabit again.
Just as we were about to leave, a black Suburban pulled around the corner, Scott Donovan at the wheel.
“I’ve been looking for you two,” Donovan said. He had a strange look on his face, as if surprised to see us.
“Here we are,” Stephanie said.
“Do you have some news for us?” I asked.
“You guys . . . I just want to meet with you in the morning. Before the news conference. That all right?”
Stephanie turned to me. “Sure.”
“I just . . . I’ve been looking all over for you. Where were you?”
“Out and about,” Stephanie said cheerily.
“We ran into Hillburn and Dobson. From JCP? They’re still in town. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
Donovan rubbed his chin. “It seems very odd. Where’d you see them?”
“The Sunset Motel.”
Donovan gave us a look. “I’ll go check it out. And don’t look so glum. We’re going to lick this.”
“I’m not glum,” I said.
“No? Is there a reason you have a room reserved over at Alpine Estates?”
It took a moment to realize what he was talking about. He seemed disappointed when Stephanie explained the room was my father’s.
After we left, I said, “He look like he’s been drinking?”
“Maybe.”
“That newspaper guy in Tennessee hinted that he was quite a drinker.”
The street lamps on Ballarat complemented a gigantic moon dangling over the south corner of Mount Si.
My girls would be wondering where I was. Once again I’d fobbed them off onto a baby-sitter and was ashamed of myself. Tomorrow was little enough to give, but tomorrow was theirs. We were getting nowhere with this quest, and I wasn’t going to waste my remaining hours struggling like a wild horse in quicksand. It seemed the more I fought, the more hopeless things looked. Tomorrow I would hold the news conference, gather