Chapter 42

CHAPTER 42

W e went to Coral's. It was warm there and there would be coffee and I wouldn't have to explain to Poppy yet and I could keep Max's arm around me. And also, Coral would gut Harvey when I told her what had happened, even before Max and Maggs got to him. Ecstasy it was.

I will give Rowan's truck credit. Maggs and I had been cocooned in airbags on all sides when it hit the boulder. I didn't even have a scratch. Rowan was fine, too . I'll also give Rowan some credit; he was more concerned about Max than the truck.

And now we were lined up at the side counter, Max between me and Rowan, with cups of hot caffeine in front of us, wrapped in Coral's blankets.

Max was in worse shape. At least he hadn't hit his head on a rock again, but he was sniffling, the cold I'd feared was here with a vengeance and not helped by another river bath. He looked like hell.

Of course, so did I.

"What else is wrong?" Coral said to me after Rowan explained about the car. "Something happened to you, you wouldn't be like this for just that."

"Just that?" Max said, and she ignored him.

"Yeah," I told her. "Harvey came out to the cottage. He shut Maggs inside and dragged me out and grabbed my breast and—" My voice rose and so did Max, so I pulled him back down onto his seat. "But Fernanda stomped him, and Maggs went for his throat, and I pepper-sprayed him—thank you for that—and he fell down the steps and disappeared. And then Rowan gave me a ride back so I'd be safe, and the truck tried to kill Max." I stopped, knowing my voice had risen. "I am not okay, but I will be."

I stopped because Poppy came in with Marley and, hearing my voice, came around the bakery case. She stopped short when she saw me.

"What happened ?" she said, and I thought, I can't tell that again, and Max said, "Stay away from Harvey Ware."

"No kidding," Poppy said. "He came into the shop and was awful." She looked at me. "He said he's going to marry you."

"No," I said.

"Well, that's what I said, but then he was so awful that Marley threw him into the street." She looked back at Marley, approving and warm.

"Good for you, kid," Max said, but he still looked grim.

Coral looked at Max. "Oz would take care of this."

"I am not Oz," Max said. "But I will take care of it."

"And now about the truck." Coral transferred her stare to Rowan. "How could no one have been driving it? Weren't you behind the wheel?"

"Someone hijacked the autopilot." Rowan held out his cellphone. "I can start and stop the truck with this. And there is a mode to drive it, mainly designed for things like bringing it to you in the rain from a parking spot, but nothing long-distance."

"The rain," Max muttered. "The human body is waterproof. What kind of loser needs a car like that?"

That made me feel better. Max was getting back to normal. Maybe I was, too.

"I didn't buy it," Rowan said. "It was loaned to me by Tesla to write an article on my experience driving it."

"I can give you my experience almost getting hit by it," Max said. "It sucks."

"I'll relay your thoughts," Rowan said.

"Isn't the signal encrypted?" Max asked Rowan.

"My phone is synced to the truck," Rowan said. "I have no idea if it's encrypted. I am really, really sorry about this. But I didn't do anything. Rose can vouch for me. She saw it as it happened. She was right there next to me."

Max glared at me. I don't know why he gets these jealous fits. He's leaving me as soon as he catches a killer. What does he think I'm going to do when he's gone? Join a nunnery?

Actually, not a bad idea. I bet it's peaceful in a nunnery. Maybe one next to a river. Where the nuns carry pepper spray.

"A drone," Max said and sneezed.

I frowned at him. He'd interrupted my nunnery. "What?"

"Someone hijacked Rowan's truck remotely and used it like a drone to attack me."

"Who would do that?" Rowan asked.

"Not Harvey," Marley said. He'd been watching us as if we were some kind of subspecies. Old Folks in Danger. "I worked on his van once. It's all he can do to turn the key to make it start."

"There's the rest of your harem," Max said to me.

"I was in the truck," I said. "They wouldn't do that if they wanted to marry my phantom money."

"It's more who has the capability to do it," Max said.

"I do," Marley said, "but I didn't. It's not that hard if you have minimal skills."

"The Ferrells," Coral said.

Max nodded. "Possibly. Either one of them has the smarts and they definitely have the technology."

Rowan shook his head. "The kid is right, it's as easy as playing a video game. It doesn't take any special skills."

"Hijacking the signal does," Max said. "I think."

"What is going on in this town?" Rowan asked.

"I'd tell you, but then somebody would kill you," Max said.

Rowan looked like he wasn't sure if he should laugh and then decided not to. "Okay. Well, I'd prefer to stay alive."

Max looked back at me. "I had just finished talking to Herc when that truck came for me. And he was suggesting that your friend here is a problem that I should resolve."

"Oh." I thought about it. "That's even more reason to get Rowan involved. He's got a lot to lose."

"Herc?" Rowan said. "Who is that? And what did he mean by ‘resolved'?"

"Something you should know," I said to Max. "What Rowan and I were talking about in the truck. He's here because he's writing a book about a death in Bearton he thinks is the work of a serial killer."

Max groaned and leaned forward and put his head on the counter.

I leaned over and put my arm around him. "There, there. Every little thing's going to be all right." Bob Marley singing three little birds. I hadn't thought about that in ages. Really should start playing that again.

"No," I heard Max whisper to the counter, "it won't." He lifted his head and stared at Rowan.

"Okay, we've been dumb," I said, feeling a lot more solid now that I was thinking again. "It's that Outsider thing that's been part of the problem. We shut Rowan out because he was a stranger, and that meant he didn't know what was going on and couldn't tell us things we needed to know. But he has stuff we all need to know." I turned and smiled at Rowan. "Tell everyone what you told me."

Max looked unhappy about the smile I'd given Rowan, but there was a higher purpose here.

Rowan looked a bit hesitant, so Max glowered at him. "Your car almost killed me. Talk."

He gave us the news in short form: He was tracking a serial killer he'd been trying to find across the country for years and had ended up in Tennessee because of a relatively recent kill that was part of his profile. "I call him the ‘Director.' He never kills children or teenagers; in fact I don't think he's ever killed anyone under twenty. He doesn't torture, and he has a moral element to his killings in that his victims are often criminals or killers, too."

"Big Dexter fan?" Marley said.

Masters ignored him. "He—or she—has two signatures. He always takes a piece of his victim's clothing, and he always poses them in a way that shows why they were guilty of something and needed to die. Thus, the ‘Director.'"

" Now you tell us?" Max asked, anger in his voice.

"You haven't been open with me, either," Rowan said.

"Why here?" I asked. "If you thought this killer was in Rocky Start?—"

"No," Rowan said. "I came here out of curiosity. Every time I spoke to people anywhere near here, they'd tell me I should come here. In a really weird way. I had to see what that was about. But you've had some deaths, so now I am interested in Rocky Start."

I looked at Max. "Rocky Start is evidently not nearly as undercover as everybody thought. Okay, I say we pool info. Starting with who the hell could have taken over that truck."

"She has a point," Coral said. "Rowan is involved now. Whoever hijacked his truck has seen to that."

"Herc wants him to disappear," Max said.

"That's the second time you've mentioned this Herc fellow," Masters said. "He means me harm? Why?"

"Because you're here," I said. "In Rocky Start. And you're a journalist."

"I need to know more," he said to me. "What the hell is the big secret in this town?"

"No," Max said sharply. "We are not getting interviewed."

"It's really better that you not know," I said, but I knew that was a non-starter. He was a journalist. "Is there any way we can trace whoever took control of your truck through your truck's electronics?"

He shook his head. "I have no idea."

"Dottie would know, I bet," I said to Max.

"Dottie may have done it if she's working for Herc," Max said. He looked at Marley. "Could you?"

"There's probably no trace of it in the car's system," he said. "It was a signal that's gone now."

Max looked at Rowan. "What else about this Director nut?"

"Not much. Except he—or she, but I lean toward he—usually kills months apart. If you've had two here in a matter of days, that's a change." He shook his head. "I need to access my notes."

I figured he wanted some time to sort things out on his end, and we needed that on our end too: Max looked like hell, my jeans were damp, and Poppy looked like she had things to say.

I stood up. "Okay, let's take a break, get dry clothes, figure out what we're going to do."

"Don't leave town," Max said to Rowan.

"I don't have a ride," Rowan said. "I'll be around."

"Just a second," I got out my cell and walked away to call Lian.

While I waited for her to answer, I heard Rowan say to Max. "I just want you to know. Rose in the truck. I was trying to get her home safe, nothing else. It was all business. We weren't . . ." His voice trailed off; evidently he didn't want to specify what we weren't doing.

"This is good," Coral said, having come down the counter to see what I was doing. "Jealousy is a powerful motive."

"For what?" I said. "We don't want Rowan dead."

"For Max to stay," Coral said, always the romantic.

Lian answered and I said, "Rowan's truck was just sabotaged and is now in the Little Melvin. He needs a bed for the night."

"On my way," Lian said, sounding very peppy.

I went back to the guys. "Lian would be delighted if you'd spend the night. She's on her way to get you."

Rowan exhaled. "Great. All my clothes were in the truck, so I'll have to do something about?—"

"Tinker Tailor Thrift Shop," I said brightly. "Just this side of Frozen Assets, the ice cream parlor next to the Wok Inn."

"We should confer again this evening," Rowan suggested, smiling at me. "At the Wok Inn."

Lian came in through the door, having evidently run from across the street to collect Rowan. The last thing he said to me as they went out was, "The Wok Inn. Tonight."

Max finished his coffee. Morosely.

"Hey, you don't have to go to the Wok Inn tonight," I said. "I can ask the questions."

Max gave a short laugh. "Ha. As if I'd let you go alone."

"Lian will be occupying his attention."

"Lian's got nothing on you." Then he cheered up a little. "Besides, I want to see this Rowan guy in clothes somebody around here donated to a thrift shop."

"Something for you to look forward to," I said. "Come on, we need to go home and dry off."

"First, I need to kill Harvey Ware," Max said.

I looked at him to see if he was joking, then realized he wasn't. "No. He's been hurt and scared off. We need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture."

"There is no bigger—" Max began, but I cut him off.

"We'll deal with Harvey. But not today."

Max didn't look happy, but he left Ecstasy with me. He was thoughtful as we went back to Oddities with Poppy and Marley, who were mostly silent. "Pike spent three decades keeping this place off the map," Max said. "Masters can end that. And if he ends that, all of this—" he indicated State Street, "—is over."

"Would that be a bad thing?" Marley said.

"The town's been stuck like this for so long," Poppy said. "Maybe it needs to change."

Max looked at me.

"We're the Old Guard," I told him. "They're the new. They're going to change things, and they might be right. This place has been preserved in amber for so long, there's been no growth."

"Growth here could be fatal," Max said. "So we need to think long and hard about how we're going to deal with Masters, because if Herc has his way, he'll disappear forever."

"I am getting very tired of Herc," I said and opened the door to the shop.

Max sneezed. "Me too . "