Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 7-9: Buried Alive, Her Last Scream, The Killing Game. J. Kerley A.
was waiting on the porch when Cherry rolled up. She was in the first dress I’d seen her wear, a dark amethyst that highlighted her slender waist and compact hips. The demure décolletage nonetheless displayed a half-circle of warm cream ringed with small dark stones. Her knee-bottom hem hinted at curvaceous calves flowing into slender, defined ankles.
“You look ready for a Parisian runway,” I said.
She shook her head like I was twitting her. “The dress cost twelve bucks at a second-hand store in Jackson. I spent a day with a needle and thread getting it to fit halfway right.”
“I don’t think I could take all the way right.”
I saw her neck color slightly. “So is the Doc in or out?” she asked, changing the subject as she stepped to the porch.
“He has a malaise and won’t be able to attend,” I said, expecting Jeremy was eavesdropping behind the door.
Her face fell. “At least you tried. What’s bothering the guy?”
The door opened at my back. My brother appeared in loose jeans and a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the Edmonton Oilers hockey team.
“Mon Dieu,” my brother crooned, brushing past my introductions as if I were invisible, striding directly to Cherry. “You are the loveliest woman I’ve seen since arriving here!” Jeremy took Cherry’s hand and bowed to kiss her fingertips. “You shame the angels, my dear.”
Cherry’s face turned red. Her mouth moved, but no words came out.
“I just explained that you’re under the weather, Dr Charpentier,” I said.
He shook his head, angry at himself. “I have a condition called IBS. It comes and goes. Today it seems particularly vexatious.”
Cherry regained her voice. “My aunt has IBS,” she said. “I understand why you need to remain here, Dr Charpentier.”
“You’re too kind. Before you go, Detective Cherry, please grace my home for a few moments. I get so few visitors, and none so beautiful.”
Cherry stepped into the living room, eyes wide at the sophisticated decor. Jeremy followed, pretending to masturbate over her derriere while grinning lasciviously at me.
Eight minutes later – minutes my brother had jam-packed with dissertations on plant genetics, the nutritive components of honey, the geology of the area, and a speculative foray into the sexual psyche of Jack the Ripper – Cherry pulled out of the hollow to the main road and aimed toward the Mountain Parkway.
“Damn, Ryder, is Charpentier bright or what? I wish he felt better.”
“You said your aunt had IBS? What’s it mean?”
“Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It manifests a lot of ways, like cramps, diarrhea, constipation, flatulence. Some days you can’t get too far from a toilet.” Cherry shook her head in sympathy.
“Ugh,” I said, inwardly complimenting my brother on a masterful choice of affliction.
“I’ll drop you off at the church,” Cherry said, as we pulled off the Parkway. “Then I’ll see the Feds in their hideaway and get my mic in place. We can saunter into Burton’s visitation like …” I saw Cherry’s eyes rivet on the rear-view mirror. “Damn!”
“What?”
A roaring engine followed by a horn blast. Cherry veered toward the berm. A vehicle blew by, a blue panel van marked A-1 Air Conditioning Service. Seconds later it was out of sight.
“Must be one helluva AC problem,” Cherry said.
After three minutes, I saw the church in the distance. Cherry pulled between a pair of church buses.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get mic’d up. The we’ll go hunting bad guys.”
I stepped out just as a blue work van swooped to our bumper. The A-1 Air Conditioning van. The side door slid open. Agent Gloria Krenkler was sitting in a jump seat in what I recognized as a surveillance vehicle.
“Why, Detective Ryder,” Krenkler said, as though we were old friends. “I didn’t know you were a fan of visitations. Why don’t you jump in here and we can talk.”
Feeling like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, I climbed inside the surveillance van, Cherry behind me.
“My compliments to whoever pimped your ride,” I said.
Krenkler folded a piece of Juicy Fruit and fed it between her teeth. “I didn’t think it would arrive in time. But now we can see everything. Just like we saw you two on the road. Care to explain, Detective Cherry?”
“Explain what?”
“Why you invited Ryder to our show?”
Cherry canted her head, as if the question seemed bizarre. “I thought you’d want him along, Agent Krenkler.”
“Why on earth would I want such a thing?”
Cherry ticked off reasons on her fingers. “One, I have doubled our surveillance range; two, added high-level experience and, three, put another layer of protection and safety in place should we encounter an armed killer. May I ask your specific objections to my considerations, Agent Krenkler?”
Krenkler’s attendant agents snuck looks at her. I saw a slow smolder behind the eyes before Krenkler’s face went blank. She nodded to the older agent in the front passenger seat, a mini-mic ready to pin inside Cherry’s collar.
“Hook her up, Agent Rourke.”
“Ryder, too?”
“I don’t think I need to hear him.”
Cherry and I stepped into the church lot two minutes later. Banks of flowers flanked the coffin. Cherry nodded to people, shaking hands or gathering someone in an embrace. She introduced me without reason, a good friend or perhaps a beau. I nodded that I was going outside to take a look around, mouthed back in five.
I leaned against a sycamore and studied rugged backcountry types smoking and looking uncomfortable in collared shirts and clip-on ties. Bar buddies of Burton, I figured, none appearing particularly malevolent. I watched an ancient woman in a blue dress make unsteady progress toward the men, marking her passage with quivering thumps of cane and talking to herself as she went. She broke into the men’s conversation, speaking to each in turn. They nodded and spoke back respectfully, holding their cigarettes behind their backs, like kids caught smoking on a schoolground.
I avoided looking the two hundred feet to the blue van at the far edge of the lot, figuring Krenkler had field glasses to her tight little eyes.
“Lose your love-muffin already, Carson?”
My head snapped to the smiling face of my brother. His dark suit was as fitted to his frame as a Vogue model, his smile radiating joyful warmth. Blue had been the perfect choice of shirt, highlighting his robin’s-egg eyes. His cologne recalled smoked sherry served with fresh-picked limes.
“Jeremy? What are you—”
“You were right. If I pretend to be on the side of the angels for an hour or so, I can return home with Miss Cherry convinced of my stellar citizenship. You didn’t tell me she was such a sugary little cupcake, Carson. What’s keeping you from opening her legs and closing the deal?”
“The FBI’s here, Jeremy,” I hissed through closed lips. “They’re watching.”
He froze. “What? Where?”
“At the far end of the lot. Don’t look, just shake my hand like we barely know one another.”
We shook hands as Jeremy backpedaled to a semi-stranger’s distance. “Perhaps I should leave,” he said through a frozen smile.
“They’ll ask who you are and why you left without visiting dear ol’ Sonny.”