Motor Mouth (Alex Barnaby 2)

“He doesn’t look real,” Rosa said. “He looks like one of those wax people. Like he was made for a horror movie.”

Especially now that he had big tooth marks in his shoulder.

“What are you going to do with him?” Rosa wanted to know.

Hooker and I looked at each other, sharing the same thought. We now had a dead man with holes in him that perfectly fit Beans’s canines. We couldn’t just put Huevo back in the locker like Gobbles had suggested. Sooner or later it would occur to people that there’s only one dog on the circuit with teeth that big…and Hooker would be dragged into the murder mess. Even without that, I couldn’t put Huevo back in the locker. It felt disrespectful to dismiss him that easily.

“I think he looks like fish food,” Rosa said.

Felicia did another sign of the cross. “You better hope God wasn’t listening to that. Suppose this man is Catholic? It would be our fault he doesn’t get a prayer over his body. It would be a black mark on our soul.”

Rosa cut her eyes to me. “Can’t afford to get too many more of those.”

“Yeah,” Hooker said. “I’m standing in a hot hauler, staring down at a Mexican with a hole in his head. Wouldn’t want to push my luck by pissing God off.”

“We should take him to his relatives,” Felicia said. “It’s what God would want.”

“His relatives are in Mexico,” I said. “What would God’s second choice be?”

“He must have somebody here,” Felicia said. “He wouldn’t be traveling alone. Where is he staying?”

We all shrugged. It wasn’t as if we could go through his pockets and find a matchbook.

“Not in a motor coach,” Hooker said. “Probably in one of the big hotels on Brickell Avenue.”

“We need to put him someplace where he’s going to be discovered,” I said. “If we leave him in the hauler, he might be taken to Mexico and disposed of and his family would never know what happened to him. Hard to know the killer’s plans. We could leave him in the hauler and make sure the police find him, but it’ll be even more of a scandal for NASCAR. And chances are good that Hooker and Beans will be brought into the investigation. Hooker might even become a suspect. So I think we need to find neutral ground. We need to leave Huevo someplace not associated with NASCAR and someplace where he’ll be found and recognized.”

“The Huevo corporate yacht is tied up in South Beach,” Gobbles said. “We could put him on the yacht.”

“That would be nice,” Felicia said. “We could take him for a ride. I bet he’d like that.”

“He’s dead,” Hooker said. “He doesn’t like anything. And that’s a terrible idea. We’ll get caught and arrested and spend the rest of our lives in jail. We’ll never get him on the yacht without being seen.”

“Then maybe someplace close to the yacht,” Felicia said. “God likes the yacht idea.”

“What, do you have a direct line?” Rosa wanted to know.

“I got a feeling.”

“Uh-oh, is it just a feeling feeling? Or is it one of those Miguel Cruz feelings?”

“I think it might be a Miguel Cruz feeling.”

Rosa looked at me. “That’s a serious feeling. Felicia had a feeling Miguel Cruz was in trouble, and an hour later he fell into a sinkhole on Route One, car and all, and broke his back. And another time Felicia told Theresa Bell she should light a candle. And Theresa didn’t do it, and she came down with shingles.”

Hooker looked pained. He drove race cars. The only vision he really related to was a back bumper.

“How about this,” Hooker said. “In the interest of moving on with our lives, let’s put Oscar in the SUV and drive him to South Beach. We can go to the marina and look around for a nice final resting place for him. Then we can check into a hotel for the night, and we’ll figure the rest out in the morning when we’re not so creeped out.”

I nodded agreement. I was hoping I’d go to sleep and wake up and find out none of this had ever happened.

“We gonna have to scootch him to the door,” Felicia said. She looked at Huevo through the plastic wrap. “Okay, mister, we gonna move you now. You gonna be home soon.” She looked over at Gobbles. “You and Hooker gotta grab hold of Mr. Dead Guy’s behind, or something.”

Gobbles clapped a hand over his mouth and ran for the bathroom.

“Gobbles got a weak stomach,” Felicia said. “He’d never make it in wholesale fruit.”

“If we scootch him along, we’ll rip the plastic,” Rosa said. “I think we gotta carry him. I’ll get one side and Hooker can get the other side.”