She moved gracefully and effortlessly, and I watched her until she got into her dark Mercury Sable and drove out of the parking lot, and as she did so, I was certain I had just met my first vampire.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I sent Danny a text asking for an update, and he responded almost instantly: Anthony was in stable condition and sleeping soundly. I texted Danny back and reminded him that his cell phone was supposed to be turned off.
He wrote back: Yes, Mommy. And added a happy face.
Danny was being oddly playful and, well, nice. Maybe it had to do with his son being seriously ill. I didn't know, but I found it creepy as hell. Any feelings I had had for Danny were long gone.
And what did he want to talk about? I didn't know.
I sat in my minivan for a few minutes, wondering what I should do next. The museum could wait. The girl needed my help, except I didn't have much to go on. I removed my copy of the picture of the big black man, and I suddenly knew what I needed most.
Manpower.
* * *
His business card was still in the van's center console. I turned the interior light on, even though I really didn't need it.
His card was simple but compelling. On the right side were written the words: Jim Knighthorse, Private Investigator. On the other side, filling the entire left half of the card, was his picture. He was smiling. A sort of crooked half-smile that showed a lot of teeth. The smile was arrogant. The smile was casual. The light in his eyes was filled with good humor, as if he alone was in on a joke.
I had met the tall man a few weeks earlier. At the time, he had radiated a quiet strength and a lot of cockiness. Both were good qualities when it came to investigations. In fact, I would argue that both were ideal in a good investigator. But more than anything, I had sensed a sort of old-school chivalry in him, that he was a man who protected those who couldn't protect themselves.
I needed this man.
I made the call and, despite the fact that I sensed I had interrupted him from something important, he immediately agreed to meet me.
* * *
"I had a strange feeling we would meet again," he said, as he approached my van.
Correction: swaggered to my van. Even though he limped noticeably.
"Maybe you're psychic," I said.
"I'm a lot of things," he said, grinning easily, "but being psychic isn't one of them."
By a lot of things, I knew he meant a lot of good things. I shook my head. The guy was too much. But he was hard not to love.
I was standing outside my minivan, itself parked outside a Norm's in Santa Ana. When you work the night shift like me, you're fully aware of each and every all-night restaurant, even if, like me, you can't actually partake from them, outside of water and cheap wine.
Knighthorse glanced over at the dimly lit Norms. "You would make a cheap date."
"What can I say, I'm a simple woman."
He glanced at me sideways. "I somehow doubt that. Anyone who hangs out with Orange County's most famous defense attorney has a few surprises up her sleeve."
He was, of course, talking about Kingsley, whom I was with when I first met Knighthorse on the beach a few weeks ago. "Okay, maybe one or two," I said.
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned a hip against the van's front fender. Although it was chilly out, he was wearing only a black tee shirt and blue jeans.
I'm a woman. I'm recently divorced. Outside of an orgasm a few weeks ago, I hadn't had any sex in six years. The orgasm, I think, opened the floodgates.
So I'll admit it. I found myself staring at his biceps. Just his biceps, I swear. The way they reflected the yellowish parking lot lights. The way the thick veins protruded nearly an inch off his muscles. The way the muscle itself seemed to undulate even with the slightest of movements. I have keen eyesight, and I used every bit of it as I studied his biceps.
He looked down at his shirt. "Is there something on me? It's jelly, isn't it? I just ate a jelly donut and I felt some of it drop, I just didn't know where."
"It's not jelly. Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind."
He quit inspecting his shirt and went back to leaning a hip against my fender.
"So tell me more about the little girl."
I did, recalling everything I could. I handed him a photocopy of the trio at McDonald's. He studied it closely. Holding it up to the parking lot lights. Myself, I could see it perfectly, but he didn't need to know that.
"We'll need to canvas the area," he said.
"That's what I figured."
"A guy like this, some lowlife drug-dealing asshole, is probably on the move, especially if he just killed the mother."
"We're making a lot of leaps here," I said. "The guy could be innocent. Maybe he's an old friend."
Knighthorse shook his head and came over to me. He smelled of raspberry donuts and Old Spice. God, I loved a man who wore Old Spice. The jelly donuts, not so much. He held up the picture of the black man and pointed.
"Look here," he said. "He's wearing a trench coat for a reason."
"Covering a gun?"
"Why else? It's 80 degrees here 300 days of the year. But look..." Knighthorse shuffled through the three photos I had given him. "There. Look."
I saw it. It was a slight bulge at the man's hip. "A gun," I said.
"Of course."
"And we're not racially stereotyping him?" I said. "Because he's black?"
Knighthorse looked down at me, and all the swagger and cockiness was gone, and I saw the real investigator in him, the man who took his job deadly serious. "What does your gut say about him?"
"That he's our guy. That he killed Maddie's mom, or at least knows the person who did. That he presently has Maddie somewhere, perhaps hurting her, perhaps killing her."
Knighthorse's jaw rippled. I think his teeth actually ground together. "Yeah, that's what my gut says, too. And race has nothing to do with that."
"What are the chances he's a drug dealer?"
"About the same chance that I'm tall and roguishly good-looking."
I shook my head. The guy was too much. I said, "So, if he supplies drugs to the neighborhood...."
"Few will talk," he said.
"That, and they're probably scared of him."
"Someone will talk," said Knighthorse.
"And if he did kill Maddie's mother, then he's laying low."
Knighthorse winked. "We're gonna need more manpower."
Chapter Thirty
There were four of us now.
We were all sitting in the McDonald's in Buena Park, the same McDonald's where, for all I knew, Maddie's mother was last seen alive.