Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

THE NEXT MORNING, having spent a restless night on a sprung motel mattress, Cindy dressed in brown trousers, a Fair Isle sweater with pastel colors around the neck, and brown leather boots with flat heels. She pulled her blond curls into a ponytail with bangs, put on her camel hair coat, and tucked her snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special into the pocket.

She checked out of the Red Moon Motel using her corporate card and headed due west in her rented Ford Focus. Her computer bag was on the seat next to her, milky coffee was in the cup holder, and she had programmed the GPS with the address of William Fish’s lake house in the woods.

She couldn’t know for sure if Mackie Morales had been staying at the Fish house, but it was a good bet. Morales had been seen in a town only thirty minutes from this lightly populated area on the ragged fringe of nowhere.

Cindy’s instincts rarely let her down, and right now they were swearing that she was on the right track.

Driving north, Cindy easily found Lakeshore Drive, which hugged Lake Michigan’s shoreline. She passed blocks of nice older homes on wooded lots on her left, the lake just visible through thinner clumps of trees on her right.

She continued on, and as she drove farther away from the town, the homes became more spaced out, then sparse, sunlight flashing through gaps in the woodland like strobe lights.

Ten miles out, the GPS spoke and Cindy took the car right onto a dirt road toward the lake. The road was more like a rut, bumpy and potholed, winding between walls of trees crowding in on both sides.

The road branched into a narrower dirt rut, and as the GPS announced, “You have reached your destination,” Cindy saw a green chalet-style house at the edge of a clearing. The white trim and the lines of the house were crisp against the dark woods behind it, making the house look almost like a paper cutout. The lake wasn’t visible from here.

Cindy drove past the house and stopped her car on the road to the lake. From where she had parked, she could see the house through a break in the woods.

Cindy cut her engine and took her binoculars from her bag. From what she could see, the house was in good repair. There was no mailbox and no car, and the only sign that the house was occupied was a small tricycle on the sun-deprived patch of grass that served as a lawn.

Was someone living here?

Or was the place abandoned?

Cindy thought about getting out of the car and approaching the house with a story of being lost, in case someone was there. She wanted to take a look through the windows, listen, and maybe even ring the bell.

But since her cloak of invisibility was at the dry cleaners, she couldn’t take the chance that Morales might open the door with a loaded gun in hand.

The tricycle wasn’t proof, but it was a definite maybe that Morales was here, seeing her boy.

Cindy had done what she’d come to do. She’d checked out her lead, and now she needed help with the next step.

It was time to see what kind of deal she could cut with the local authorities.

CHAPTER 12

CINDY WAS WITH Captain Patrick Lawrence in his office on West Washington Avenue, the Village of Cleveland PD.

The captain was a big, stocky man, about forty, with thick brown hair a

nd florid skin. He was wearing a sling, recovering from a gunshot wound to the right arm from an accident at a gun show, where a one-chambered bullet went off.

Lawrence was on the phone with someone called Reilly, saying he couldn’t use a phone or his computer or even a pen, for Christ’s sake, and don’t even think of pulling a gun. He listened to Reilly for a few seconds, then laughed and said, “Yeah, my left hand works okay.”

Cindy looked around the office. She saw the shelf of Green Bay Packers bobble-heads, the marksman plaques on the wall, the photos of the captain with a twelve-point buck, and a family photo with a good-looking wife and four boys who looked like their dad.

Lawrence was saying, “I gotta go, Reilly, but thanks for your support.”

He hung up the phone and a turned to face Cindy.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “My brother-in-law was worried about me. Now, do I have this right? You’re a reporter from San Francisco and you have a line on a fugitive who was seen in my district?”

“She’s wanted for murder,” Cindy said. “Multiple murders.”

Lawrence said, “And the name of this fugitive?”

“Not so fast, Captain,” Cindy said. She smiled, showing that despite the ponytail and the pastels, she was a pro. “I want to help you catch this person, but I need something in return.”

“Christ, yeah. You want me to go out with you on a fishing expedition, and if we hook something you want an exclusive story. Something like that, Ms. Thomas?”