Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 16



I called Gracie from the Caliente bar phone. I hadn’t made up my mind whether or not to advise her to take the offer. According to Dick, the case was worth one to two million. It seemed like he was always settling similar cases in that dollar range. Of course, we already had in excess of six figures invested into the case, and we’d have to recoup our expenses before our client saw any money. And then Dick would take forty percent in fees of the two-hundred-grand that was left over, which didn’t leave a whole lot of money for Gracie in the end. For all that she’d lost, a hundred grand take-home seemed like an insult.

I let the phone ring eleven times before hanging up. No one was home. I would have called her cell phone, except she didn’t have one. She was almost sixty years old and living the small-town life—too old fashioned and entrenched in older days to bother with new-fangled contraptions like modern communications devices. I looked at my watch. It was already four o’clock.

I decided I’d drive back by my house and just check it out on the way back to the office. Maybe there was something left that I could salvage.

When I got there, I wished I hadn’t bothered. Where there once was a house, now only three blackened pieces of wood jutted up from a large hole in the ground filled with ash. The house had been old—it had a pier and beam foundation. Everything had been wood. I had lost everything but my car, which had not been parked in the garage because the house was so old and so small that it didn’t have one to start with.

I truly now had virtually nothing except a set of wheels and the forty bucks in my pocket. Even the clothes on my back really belonged to Miles.

Now what?

For lack of a better place to go, I drove back to the office. I crept in softly, hoping to avoid Dick. I held my breath and tiptoed all the way from the front entrance to my office door, shutting it softly behind me. Miles was waiting for me, working at my desk.

“So?” Miles asked softly.

“He offered three hundred grand, good only until six p.m. tonight.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I know. I called Gracie, but no one answered.”

“What else did he say?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, come on!” Miles was mad, and he was getting louder. “I lost my hair for you! The least you can do is not leave me hanging.”

“Shhhhh! You’ll bring Dick in here! I don’t feel like explaining anything right now!”

Miles clapped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry,” he whispered through his fingers.

“What’d I miss while I was away?”

“Dick’s been in rare form, stomping around and yelling at anyone who gets in his way. I’m starting to think he has a soft spot for you, judging from the way he let the fire chief have it for not saving your house.”

I knew better than that. “He’s upset about the files, not me, you doofus.”

Miles shrugged. “Plus, the mayor is all over him for ‘facilitating the destruction of key evidence.’”

“The mayor’s the one who gave the order to send the files to my house!”

“I know, but you wouldn’t know that to listen to the mayor talk. He’s obviously looking for a scapegoat.”

“For crying out loud,” I said. “Have you been able to make any headway on finding another expert witness?”

“Yeah, but they all want time to run their own air sampling tests, which you know could take a year or more. I did find a few who said they’d be willing to rely on Schaeffer’s data, except now we don’t have Schaeffer’s data.”

I did a forehead slap. “Ugh! I can’t believe Dick was too cheap to make Xerox copies of it all!”

“Maybe if he didn’t spend all his money on new cars, he’d have some left for your cases.” Miles sighed. “I think it’s time to face the fact that this case is dead, my dear. Just like Derrick. Just like Schaeffer.”

“It’s not dead. We have a three-hundred-grand settlement offer on the table. If it’s the best we can do under the circumstances, it’s the best we can do.”

I whipped out my cell phone and dialed Gracie Miller’s house again. Still no answer. “I think we might have to go over there and hunt her down. Want to go?”

“Yeah,” Miles said. “Anything to get out of this joint.”

Miles hopped up from my desk and cracked open my office door slowly. He pressed one eye to it to make sure the coast was clear. When he gave me the signal, we crept out.





***





Gracie’s house appeared to be deserted. No car in the driveway, no lights on. We walked up to the front porch and knocked on the door anyway.

We waited. Nothing.

I knocked a little harder, but still there was no answer.

When I decided to upgrade from medium knocking to full-on fist pounding, the door swung wide open of its own accord. There was no one there.

“Gracie?” I called. “Mrs. Miller? It’s me, Chloe!”

“And your favorite paralegal, Miles!” he sang out.

I looked around for Gracie’s cat, named Cat—a friendly long-haired black and white mutt (if cats can be mutts) who had a dog complex. She always came running and rubbed against my legs when I visited, wanting me to scratch her behind the ears, but now, she was nowhere to be seen.

“Cat?” I called. “Here, kitty kitty kitty?” I made little kissing noises into the air, but still no Cat.

“Do you think she’s gone?” Miles asked.

I poked my head into Gracie’s bedroom. Clothes were strewn everywhere. The closet door was wide open, and it didn’t look like there was much left in it. I went to the bathroom and opened her medicine cabinet. It was empty, too. And the litter box was gone.

“It looks like she packed up and left in a hurry!” I yelled at Miles.

Miles’s voice came back to me from the kitchen. “Hey, come here! Look at this!”

I went into the kitchen to find Miles holding an envelope.

“It was taped to the refrigerator door,” Miles said, handing it to me.

It had my name on it. Miles and I looked at each other, alarmed.

I opened it, pulled out a sheet of paper, and started to read aloud:



Dear Chloe,



I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I couldn’t, on account of I knew you’d try to stop me. I figure by the time you get worried enough to come around looking for me and find this note, I’ll be long gone. I would have left it at your house, but I couldn’t, on account of you ain’t got a house no more. Everybody in this here town’s talking about how that nice Dr. Schaeffer’s dead, and how you’d be dead too if that nice detective hadn’t been there to save you.



“Hey!” Miles interjected. “What about me? What am I, a hill of beans? I could have saved you too, for all they know!”

“Old lady Ellason is probably telling everyone Nash carried me out of the house naked. You can’t blame ’em for not noticing you.”

I continued to read.



It ain’t my business what you were doing with that nice detective in your house at three in the morning without a shirt on, honey, but you take my advice and be more careful, you hear?



“Great,” I said. “What’d I tell you? The Kettle tongues are all wagging.”

“On the upside, it’ll probably be really easy for you to get a date now, if you want one. Everyone will think you’re easy.”

I ignored him and kept reading.



A nice girl like you has no business attracting bad gossip. It’s the last thing you need, especially with arsonists and killers out to get you. Anywhoo, I figured that since they killed Dr. Schaeffer, and since they tried to kill you, all this stuff might be related to my law suit and I might be next. Well, I can’t wait around for that to happen. When this all settles down, and if you’re still alive, we’ll talk about what to do next. I’m sorry I can’t tell you where I’m going, but I figure if I write it down in this letter, somebody bad might find it just as easy as you. I’m sorry honey. Take care of yourself, and we’ll talk soon. Love, Gracie



I let loose with a string of expletives that might even have made HBO producers feel squeamish.

Miles, however, was unphased. “Wow, Chloe. I didn’t even know you knew any of those words.”

I ripped up the letter into a bunch of tiny bits, and then ripped the tiny bits into even tinier bits and threw the pieces over my head. A pretty obvious possibility had escaped me until now. All this time, I thought the violence was about the files. But what if it wasn’t just about the files? What if it was about my life, too? After all, we hadn’t found anything in the files that confirmed motive.

But why would anyone want to kill me? I didn’t know anything worth killing for!

Maybe they didn’t know that I didn’t know.

Holy Mary, Mother of God. “We have to go see Nash,” I said. “Now.”

I raced back to my car, Miles hot on my heels. The tires screeched as I tore out of Gracie’s parking lot and around the corner of the main road to the police station.