She got there first, shortly before noon, and claimed a booth with her back to the wall and a good view of the entrance. Teffinger showed up a few moments later, wearing jeans, a gray cotton shirt, and a sport coat. An elderly waitress hugged him as he looked around. He spotted Aspen and, as he walked over, she decided that he was close enough to her in age, if he decided to make a move.
“You’re still alive,” he said, slipping into the booth. “I like that.”
He looked good.
Really good.
Magazine-cover good.
“That’s the first thing I check every morning when I wake up,” she said.
He grunted and picked up the menu.
“Anything you want, up to three dollars,” he said. She must have had a look on her face because he grinned and said, “Okay, four.”
They ordered.
Then he somehow got her to tell him her life story.
Halfway through the meal, she decided it was time to get to why she’d called the meeting. “I have to tell you what I’m going to tell you because you need to know,” she said. “But no one can know that I told you. If the word gets out, I’ll lose my job.”
Teffinger was okay with that.
“I think two of the lawyers in my firm might be mixed up in Rachel Ringer’s death.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Who?”
“They’re both senior partners,” she said. “One is a woman by the name of Jacqueline Moore. The other is a man named Derek Bennett.” Then she told him about the conversation she overheard in the hallway yesterday.
He seemed interested, but not as much as she expected.
“I’m working another angle,” he said. “Between you and me, we’re pretty sure we know who killed one of the four women, namely Tonya Obenchain. What we’re trying to figure out now is if he killed the other three as well.”
She stopped chewing and studied him.
“That’s not public knowledge,” he emphasized. “So keep it that way.”
She promised.
“If you give me his name I can snoop around the firm,” she said. “See if he has any connections to Rachel or the other two lawyers I just told you about.”
Teffinger hesitated, then leaned across the table and whispered in her ear: “Brad Ripley.”
Then he got a call.
He listened intently, wrinkled his brow, and stood up. “I have to run,” he said. Then, over his shoulder, “Sorry.”
After Teffinger left, Aspen realized he hadn’t paid the bill.
She checked her purse and found four dollars.
Shit.
Now what?
Two minutes later, just as she was about to flag down the waitress and explain the situation, Teffinger ran back in and put a twenty on the table. “Sorry about that. I have no idea where my mind is half the time.”
With his car surrounded by bikers, Draven walked through the side streets of downtown Pueblo, hugging the buildings and keeping a good lookout for alleys and doorways in case Harleys rumbled up the street.
He was six or seven blocks away when he realized he’d made a huge mistake. Because of all the frustration trying to open the goddamn tattoo woman’s safe, he’d completely forgotten to grab the logbook.
He immediately turned around and headed back.
Shit.
It would have only taken him three seconds to pick it up.
Now he had to go all the way back.
Dodge the asshole bikers.
Risk being seen by some busybody with a cell phone.
He kicked a pop can lying on the sidewalk. It turned out to still be half full and drenched his sock with sticky syrup.
Goddamn it!
He managed to get back into the tattoo shop without incident, then stayed low and crept to the front window and looked down the street.
Oh, man!
The bikers were still there, about six or seven of them. Worse, someone was hooking the car up to a tow truck. Draven hugged the floor for ten minutes or longer and then looked out the corner of the window as the truck went by. Faded white lettering on the door said, “Bob’s Recovery and Repo Service.”
“Screw you Bob,” Draven said under his breath.
Two bikers followed the tow truck.
The remaining assholes split into two groups and headed off in separate directions.
No doubt to scout for Draven.
He found the logbook and checked for the name of the woman who had been in the shop the same day as him, getting the tattoo on her breast. She was Isella Ramirez. Then he shoved the book under his sweatshirt, checked the back of the building, saw no one, and left.
Two cabs sat in front of the downtown Marriott. Draven got in the front one and told the driver to take him to wherever it was that the used car lots clustered together. Five minutes later he got dropped off on Main Street, about a mile north of town. At a place called Harvey’s Quality Cars and Trucks, he bought the cheapest car on the lot-a rusty 1979 Ford Granada-under a false name for $450 cash, and then headed north on I-25.
Mia Avila was going to be sorry for sending him on this wild goose chase.
Very sorry.
On the way back, he stopped at a payphone and called Chase, the stripper. “Have you got some time for me today?”
“You’re going to give me another eight hundred, right?”
“Absolutely. That’s the deal. I have it right here in my hand.”