Motor Mouth (Alex Barnaby 2)

“Looks like it’s just you and me,” he said when he came back. “If they were searching for something, they were neat about it. Nothing seems out of place.”

I filled my travel bag plus a couple brown grocery bags with clothes and other essentials. I hadn’t had a chance to buy food, so there was very little in the refrigerator to worry about. I flipped the lights off and gave one of the bags to Hooker. “From what I could tell, they did a decent search. Things were disrupted in drawers. My bed had been taken apart.”

“They were looking for the chip,” Hooker said.

“Fortunately, I have the chip in my pocket,” I said.

“I think it’s time to get help. It was probably time to get help yesterday, but I was hoping it would all go away. I think we should go to my house tonight. We’ll be safe there. First thing in the morning, we’ll call Skippy and see if he’ll send a NASCAR lawyer or at least a PR guy with us when we talk to the police.”

Gus Skippy is vice president of a bunch of stuff. He was originally a newspaper guy, and now he was a NASCAR problem solver, shrink, babysitter, spin master, fashion icon, and the corporate communications guru who butt-kicked and bullshitted NASCAR through the millions of sticky situations that occurred during a season. He hung out with a big guy named Herbert who was known as the honorary mayor of NASCAR. They were both good old boys from Carolina, and when you put the two of them together, they were the Odd Couple of NASCAR.

We went down the stairs, locked the door behind us, and walked one block. Hooker’d taken the precaution of parking away from my building. He was driving the black Blazer, and Beans was waiting, nose pressed against the back window.

Hooker drove north to Mooresville and the collection of back roads that led to his property. He had close to fifty acres, and had placed his house squarely in the middle, behind a stand of pines. The house was only minimally visible to passing cars. He’d combined parcels of land, and three small ranch houses had gone along with the land purchase. Two of the houses were rented out to crew members. The third house sat at the edge of Hooker’s driveway and served as a gatehouse. Butchy Miller lived in the gatehouse.

The story goes that Butchy was the local high school football hero who got lost in a bottle of steroids, bulked up to skin-popping proportions, shrank his wiener into uselessness, and developed anger-management issues. He consistently lost at poker, and he scared the hell out of anyone, living or dead. Hooker considered him to be the perfect security guard, and had installed him in his gatehouse, not because he actually needed a security guard but more because he frequently needed an extra hand for poker.

Hooker stopped at the side of the road and looked at his gatehouse. “The lights are off.”

“It’s late. Butchy’s probably asleep.”

“Butchy’s afraid of the dark. He sleeps with the lights on. When he goes out, he leaves the lights on so it’s not dark when he comes home.”

Hooker unbuckled his seat belt. “Stay here. I’m going to take a look.”

He quietly jogged to the house and disappeared in deep shadow. He reappeared on the far side, and I could see he was peeking in windows, inching his way around. He got to the front door, opened it, and stepped inside. Minutes later he emerged, closed the door, ran to the truck and got in.

“Butchy’s dead,” Hooker said, putting the truck in gear, pulling onto the road. “Shot in the head. Like Huevo.”

“Omigod, I’m so sorry. He was your friend.”

“We weren’t exactly friends. It was hard for anyone to be friends with Butchy. It was more like having a three-hundred-pound paranoid rottweiler on the property. Still, I feel bad that he’s dead. Especially since I’m probably to blame.”

“Was he shrink-wrapped?”

“No. He was sprawled on the living room floor. He had an arsenal in that house, so he must have been taken by surprise. Or maybe this was done by someone he knew.”

“Someone like Bernie Miller?”

“I don’t think he knew Bernie. The Huevo people tend to keep to themselves. And Bernie is new to the area. Bernie came on the scene as Spanky’s spotter at the start of the season, just like you. He used to race modifieds, had a bad crash last year and screwed up his knee. Couldn’t drive anymore. Got a job spotting for Huevo and the sixty-nine car.”

We were barreling down a dark country road. “Where are we going?” I asked Hooker.

“I don’t know. I wanted to put some space between us and the crime scene. I deliberately tripped the silent alarm when I left. If there’s anyone at the main house, the police will walk in on them when they come to investigate.”

“And they’ll find Butchy?”

“Yeah, the police will find Butchy and take care of him. He’s a local boy. Everyone knows Butchy.”

“You don’t think we should go back and wait for the police?”

“Darlin’, right now I’m more afraid of the man with the gun than of the police. One thing’s going to lead to another with the police, and they’re going to want us to stay in the area. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’m afraid we’d be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Hooker drove to a budget chain motel in Concord. I registered us under a phony name, paid in cash, and hoped no one saw Hooker and Beans sneak in. It was a generic motel room with dark industrial-grade carpet and a dark floral bedspread designed to hide cheap wine stains. No Childress Vineyard wine consumed here. This was a wine-by-the-gallon-box-type room. It felt like I’d stayed in a gazillion of these rooms since I’d started the race season. We found a plastic ice bucket, which we filled with water and set on the floor for Beans.

Hooker and I crawled into bed and then thrashed around, unable to sleep all night. We gave up at daybreak and tuned the television to the local news.

The camera crew was set up in front of Hooker’s gatehouse. The gatehouse was ringed in yellow crime scene tape. The tape cut across Hooker’s driveway entrance, limiting traffic. The on-scene reporter was talking about Butchy. Shot in the head. Found in his living room. No one at home in the main house. Police are looking for Sam Hooker. Wanted for questioning.