Motor Mouth (Alex Barnaby 2)

I clapped my hand over my mouth again.

Hooker tossed the shovels into the back of the SUV and closed the door. “Let’s roll.”

Ten minutes later we were still rolling without incident. The garbage bags were rattling in the wind as we drove, but the bungee cords were holding. We were taking the scenic route, avoiding the highway, Hooker reasoning that it would be easier to retrieve Bernie if he blew off the roof on a country road.

“Where are we going?” I asked Hooker.

“Back to Concord. My original plan was to leave him someplace where he was sure to be found. On the doorstep to Huevo corporate, or maybe take him back to his house. But now I’m thinking I don’t want him found right away. With the kind of luck I’m having, Rodriguez and Lucca will be the ones to find him. And they’d probably rebury him in the same shallow grave. I don’t want to have to dig him up a second time.

“I’d still like to leave him on Huevo property, but someplace where he’d be on ice for a while. I was thinking we could leave him in a motor coach. We keep our coaches parked on shop property, hooked up to electric. The air runs all the time so the coach doesn’t get funky and the veneers stay nice. Huevo probably works the same way. We could put him in Spanky’s coach. Spanky won’t be using it until February. All we have to do is turn the temperature down.”

I stared at Hooker in openmouthed stupefaction.

“What?” Hooker said. “Do you have a better idea?”

The Huevo campus is huge. Acres of landscaped lawn and clusters of perfectly maintained, brilliant white, two-story blocky buildings that house the Huevo offices, cars, transporters, and shops that build the cars. We wound our way between the buildings to the transporter garage, and just as Hooker had predicted, six motor coaches were parked in stalls, hooked to electric. The coaches were dark, no lights burning, not even running lights. There were security floods on the buildings, but not a lot of the light reached to the bus lot.

Hooker parked, and we both got out and looked up at Bernie. He looked none the worse for the trip. His garbage bags were still intact.

“You take the bungee cords off, and I’ll get a towel,” I told Hooker. “I don’t want Bernie getting Spanky’s coach all wet.”

Motor coaches have keypad locks, but everyone in the drivers’ lot uses the same universal code. I was hoping that held true when the coaches were stored. I punched in the standard number of 0’s and blew out a sigh of relief when the door unlocked. I switched my flashlight on, went inside, and found my way to the rear bathroom. I grabbed a couple large towels, leaving one on the bed, taking the other with me.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Hooker said.

We tugged at Bernie, and he tumbled off. A lot easier to get him down than it had been to get him up. Hooker took what he thought was Bernie’s head, and I grabbed Bernie’s foot again, and we tried to wrestle him into the coach.

“The coach door is too narrow,” I said to Hooker after several attempts. “Try turning him again.”

“Darlin’, we’ve turned him every possible way.”

“It’s this thing sticking straight out. It must be his arm. It just doesn’t fit through the door.”

“Go inside and see if you can find something to grease him up with. Maybe if we get him slippery.”

I took the flashlight and went through the cabinets, but they’d all been emptied. I was checking the refrigerator when I heard a sound like a baseball bat hitting a tree trunk.

I went to the coach door and looked out at Hooker. “What was that?”

“I don’t know, but I think he’ll fit now.”

“What are you holding behind your back?”

“A shovel.”

“That’s disgusting. That’s desecration of the dead.”

“I’m a desperate man,” Hooker said.

We wrangled Bernie through the door, I dried the garbage bag off as best I could in the stairway, and we carted Bernie back to the bedroom and set him on the towel on the bed.

“Maybe we should take the bag off,” I said. “I’d hate to have someone discover him and think he was garbage.”

“No!” Hooker said. “Trust me. You don’t want to do that. He’s a lot better in the bag. A lot better.”

Hooker adjusted the temperature, and we closed the door on Bernie. We walked Beans around so he could tinkle and stretch his legs, and then we all piled into the SUV and headed for the abandoned factory that Hooker hadn’t bought.

The factory was just as we’d left it. No SWAT teams. No flashing police strobes or crime scene tape. Our hidey-hole was still our secret. Inside the building it was pitch black and cold. At least it was dry. It had a bathroom that worked. I took my grocery bag filled with clothes into the bathroom and changed. When I came out Hooker was already dressed and feeding Beans.