Kiss of Death

6

Once Oliver had his own room—room three, of course—at the motel, Claire, Eve, and Shane set out lightproofing the rooms Michael and Oliver would be staying in during the day. That wasn’t so hard; the blackout curtains in the windows were pretty good, and a little duct tape around the edges made sure the room stayed dim—that and a DO NOT DISTURB sign on each knob.

“Dead bolt and chain,” Shane told Michael as the three of them left the room. Dawn was starting to pink up on the eastern horizon. “I’ll call when we’re at the door again, on your cell. Don’t open for anybody else.”

“Did you tell that to Oliver?”

“Do I look stupid? Let him figure out his own crap, man.”

Michael shook his head. “Be careful out there. I don’t like sending the three of you out by yourselves.”

“Linda’s riding shotgun with us,” Eve said. “Literally. With an actual, you know, shotgun.”

“Actually, Linda’s driving us. We said we’d buy her breakfast and haul some heavy stuff for her at the store. Kind of a good deal, plus I think everybody likes her. Nobody’s going to come after us while she’s with us.”

It might have been wishful thinking, but Michael seemed a little relieved by it, and he knocked fists with Shane as they closed the door. They heard the bolts click home.

“Well,” Eve said, “it’s the start of a beautiful day in which I have had no sleep, had my car burned, and can’t wear makeup, which is just so great.”

The no-makeup thing was Shane’s idea, and Claire had to admit, it was a good one. Eve was, by far, the most recognizable of their little group, but without the rice powder, thick black eyeliner, and funky-colored lipsticks, she looked like a different person. Claire had lent her a less-than-Gothy shirt, although Eve had insisted on purple. With that and plain blue jeans, Eve looked almost... normal. She’d even pulled her hair back in a single ponytail at the back.

Not a skull in sight, although her boots still looked a little intimidating.

“Think of it as operating in disguise,” Shane said. “In a hostile war zone.”

“Easy for you to say. All you had to do was throw on a camo T-shirt and find a ball cap. If we can find you some chewing tobacco, you’re gold.”

“I’m not in disguise,” Claire said.

Eve snorted. “Honey, you live in disguise. Which is lucky for us. Come on, maybe Linda’s still got some cookies left.”

“For breakfast?”

“I never said I was the Nutrition Nazi.”

Linda was up—yawning and tired, but awake—when they opened up the office door. She was sipping black coffee, and when Eve said good morning, Linda waved at the plate of cookies on the counter. Eve looked relieved. “Ah—could I have some coffee, too?”

“Right there on the pot. Pour yourself a big one. It’s already a long day.” Linda had put on another shirt—still checked, but different colors—but otherwise, she looked pretty much the same. “So, you kids get any sleep at all?”

“Not much,” Shane mumbled around a mouthful of cookie as Eve poured a chunky white mugful of coffee. He held out his hand in a silent demand for her to get him some, too. She rolled her eyes, put the pot back on the burner, and walked past him to the cookie tray. “Hence, Miss Attitude.”

“The attitude comes from someone not even wanting to fetch his own coffee.”

Shane shrugged and got his own, as Eve raided the cookie tray and Claire nibbled on part of one, too. She supposed she ought to feel more tired. She probably would, later, but right now, she felt—excited? Maybe nervous was a better term for it. “So,” she ventured, “where do you go to buy a car here?”

“In Durram?” Linda shook her head. “Couple of used places, that’s all. Any new cars, we go to the city for them. Not that there’s many new cars round here these days. Durram used to be an oil town, back in the boom days, pumped a lot of crude out of the ground, but when it folded, it hit the ground hard. People been leaving ever since. It never was huge, but what you see now ain’t more than half what it was fifty years ago, and even then a lot of those buildings are closed up.”

“Why do you stay?” Shane asked, and sipped his coffee. Linda shrugged.

“Where else I got to go? My husband’s buried here; came back dead from the war in Iraq, that first one. My family’s here, such as they are, including Ernie, my grandson. Ernie runs one of the car lots, which is why I figure we can find you what you want at a good deal this early in the morning.” She grinned. “If an old woman can’t make her own grandson get out of bed before dawn to do her a favor, there’s no point in living. Just let me finish my coffee and we’ll be on our way.”

She drank it fast, faster than Shane and Eve could gulp their own, and in about five minutes the four of them were piling into the bench seat of Linda’s pickup truck, with more rust than paint on the outside, and sagging seats on the inside. Claire sat on Shane’s lap, which wasn’t at all a bad thing from her perspective. From the way he held her in place, she didn’t think he objected, either. Linda started up the truck with a wheezing rattle of metal, and the engine roared as she tore out of the gravel parking lot and onto the narrow two-lane road heading toward Durram.

“Huh,” she said as they passed the town limits sign, barely readable from shotgun blasts. “Usually there’s a deputy out here in the mornings. Guess somebody overslept. Probably Tom. Tom likes those late nights at the bar, sometimes; he’s gonna catch hell for blowing it again.”

“You mean fired?”

“Fired? Not in Durram. You don’t get fired in Durram ; you get embarrassed.” Linda drove a couple of blocks, past some empty shops and one empty gas station, then took a right turn and then a left. “Here it is.”

The sign said HURLEY MOTORS, and it was about a million years old. Somebody had hit it with buckshot, too, once upon a time, but from the rust, it had been a while ago—maybe before Claire was born; maybe before her mother was born. There was a small, sad collection of old cars parked in front of a small cinder-block building, which looked like it might have been built by the same guy who’d built Linda’s motel.

Come to think of it, it probably had.

The cinder blocks were painted a pale blue with dark red trim on the roof and windows, but the whole thing had faded to a kind of pale gray over time. As Linda stopped the truck with a squeal of brakes, the front door of the shack opened, and a young man stepped out and waved.

“Oooh, cute,” Eve whispered to Claire. Claire nodded. He was older, maybe twenty or so, but he had a nice face. And a great smile, like his grandma.

“Oh, he is cute!” Shane said in a fake girly voice. “Gee, maybe we can ask him out!”

“Shut up, you weasel. Claire, hit him!”

“Pretend I did,” Claire said. “Look, he’s bleeding.”

Shane snorted. “Not. Okay, out of the truck before this gets silly.”

Linda, ignoring them, had already gotten out on the driver’s side and was walking toward her grandson. As they hugged, Claire scrambled down from Shane’s lap to the pavement. He hopped down beside her, and then Eve slithered out as well. “Wow,” she said, surveying the cars on the lot. “This is just—”

“Sad.”

“I was going more for horrifying, but yeah, that works, too. Okay, can we agree on nothing in a minivan, please?”

“Yep,” Shane said. “I’m down with it.”

They wandered around the lot. It didn’t take long before they’d looked at everything parked in front, and from Eve’s expression, Claire could tell there wasn’t a single thing she’d be caught dead driving—or, more accurately, caught with the dead, driving. “This sucks,” Eve said. “The only thing that has decent trunk space is pink.” And not just a little pink, either; it looked like a pink factory had thrown up all over it.

Linda’s grandson wandered over, trailed by her. He caught the last bit of Eve’s complaint, and shook his head. “You don’t want that thing, anyway,” he said. “Used to belong to Janie Hearst. She drove it fifteen thousand miles without an oil change. She thinks she’s the Paris Hilton of Durram. Hi, I’m Ernie Dawson. Heard you’re looking for a car. Sorry about what happened to yours. Those fools are a menace—have been since I was a kid. Glad nobody was hurt.”

“Yeah, well, we just want to get the heck out of town,” Eve said. “It was my car. It was a really nice old classic Caddy, you know? Black, with fins? I was hoping maybe somebody could tow it in, fix it up, and I could pick it up later on, maybe in a couple of weeks?”

Ernie nodded. He had greenish eyes, a color that stood out against his suntanned skin; his hair was brown, and wavy, and got in his face a lot. Claire liked him instinctively, but then she remembered the last cute stranger she’d liked. That hadn’t turned out so well. In fact, that had turned out very, very badly, with her blood getting drained out of her body.

So she didn’t smile back at Ernie-much.

“I think I can set that up,” he said. “Earle Weeks down at the repair shop can probably work some magic on it, but you’d have to leave him a pretty good deposit. He’ll have to order in parts.”

“Hey, if you can make me a good deal on a decent car that isn’t pink, I’m all good here.”

“Well, what you see is pretty much what you get, except—” He gazed at Eve for a few long seconds, then shook his head. “Nah, you won’t be interested in that.”

“In what?”

“Something that I keep out back. Nobody around here will buy it. I’ve been trying to make a trade with a company out of Dallas to get it off my hands. But since you said big classic Caddy—”

Eve jumped in place a little. “Sweet! Let’s see it!”

“I’m just warning you, you won’t like it.”

“Is it pink?”

“No. Definitely not pink. But”—Ernie shrugged—“okay, sure. Follow me.”

“This ought to be good,” Shane said, and reached into his pocket for a cookie he’d hidden there. He broke it in half and offered it to Claire.

“Can’t wait,” she said, and wolfed it down, because Linda was world-class with the cookies. “I can’t believe I’m eating cookies for breakfast.”

“I can’t believe we’re stuck in Durram, Texas, with a burned-out car, two vamps, and the cookies are this good. ”

And... he had a point.

Eve had a look on her face as if she’d just found the Holy Grail, or whatever the Gothic equivalent of that might be. She stared, eyes gone wide and shiny, lips parted, and the glee in her face was oddly contagious. “It’s for sale?” she asked. She was trying to play it cool, Claire thought, although she was blowing it by a mile. “How much?”

Ernie wasn’t fooled even a little bit. He rubbed his lips with his thumb, staring at Eve, and then at the car. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I guess I could go to three thousand. ’Cause you’re a friend of Grandma’s.”

Linda said, “Don’t you go cheating this gal. I know for a fact you paid Matt down at the funeral parlor seven hundred dollars for the damn thing, and it’s been sitting for six months gathering dust. You ought to let her have it for a thousand, tops.”

“Gran!”

“Don’t Gran me. Be nice. Where else in this town are you going to sell a hearse?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been working on making it more of a party bus.”

It was gigantic. It was gleaming black, with silver trim and silver curlicues on the same, and faded white curtains in the windows at the back. Grandma Linda was right—it was covered in desert dust, but underneath it looked sharp—really sharp.

“Party bus?” Eve said.

“Yeah, take a look.”

Ernie opened the back door, the part where the casket would have gone... and there was a floor in there, with lush black carpet, not metal runners or clamps as there would have usually been for coffins. He’d built in low-riding seats down both sides, two on each side, facing each other.

“I put in the cup holders,” he said. “I was going for the fold-down DVD screen, but I ran out of money.”

Eve, as though in a trance, reached in her pocket and pulled out the cash. She counted out three thousand dollars and passed it over to Ernie.

“Don’t you want to drive it first?” he asked.

“Does it run?”

“Yeah, pretty well.”

“Does it have air-conditioning?”

“Of course. Front and back.”

“Keys.” She held out her hand. Ernie held up one finger, ran back to the shack, and returned with a set dangling from one finger. He handed them to her with a smile.

Eve opened the front door and started up the hearse. It caught with a cough, then settled into a nice, even purr.

Eve stroked the steering wheel, and then she hugged it—literally. “Mine,” she said. “Mine, mine, mine.”

“Okay, this is starting to seriously creep me out,” Shane said. “Can we move past the obsessive weird love and into the actually driving it part?”

“You guys go on and take it out for a spin,” Ernie said. “I’ll get the paperwork ready for you to sign. Be about fifteen minutes.”

“Shotgun!” Shane said, one second before Claire. He winked at her. “And you get the Dead Guy Seat.”

“Funny.”

“Wait until there are actual dead guys sitting back there.”

It wasn’t safe to say that, not in front of Ernie and Linda; after a second, Claire saw Shane realize that. He blinked and said, “Well, maybe not. But it would be funny.”

“Hilarious,” Claire agreed, and went around to the back. Getting in was a bit of a challenge, but once she was sitting down, it felt kind of like what she imagined a limo would be. She looked around for a seat belt and found one, then strapped herself in. No sense dying in a car crash in a hearse. That seemed a little too tragically ironic even for Eve. “Hey, there really are cup holders.”

“Fate,” Eve said with a sigh.

“I’m not sure fate had to burn up your car to get the point across,” Shane said, buckling his own seat belt.

“No, not that. The hearse. I’m going to name it Fate.”

Shane stared at Eve for a long, long few seconds, then slowly shook his head. “Have you considered medication, or—”

She flipped him off.

“Ah. Back to normal. Excellent.”

Eve pulled the hearse around carefully, getting used to the size of the thing. “It probably gets crap gas mileage,” she said. “But damn. It’s so dark!”

Claire moved aside the white curtains to look out the back window as they drove past the front of the used car lot. Linda and Ernie were standing in front of the shack, waving, so she waved back. “I’m probably the first person to wave from back here,” she said. “That’s weird.”

“No, that is awesome. Awesome in the deliciously creepy sense. Okay, here we go, hold on...” Eve hit the gas, and the hearse leaped forward. Shane braced himself against the dash. “Wow. Nice. I thought it might only go, you know, funeral speed or something.”

“You’re not seriously naming this thing.”

“I am. Fate.”

“At least call it Intimidator. Something cool.”

“My car,” Eve said, and smiled. “My rules. You can go buy the pink one if you want.”

He shuddered and shut up.

Eve made the block without incident, and pulled the hearse back into the car lot about five minutes later, bumping it carefully up the drive and parking in front of the shack. As she switched the key off, she sighed and wiggled in the big leather seat in satisfaction. “This is the best road trip ever.”

Shane bailed out. Claire scrambled to slide out the back and found him waiting for her, grabbing her around the waist and helping her out. He didn’t let go immediately, either. That was nice, and she felt herself sway toward him, as if the world had tilted his direction. “I guess we’d better go in and make sure she doesn’t pay him even more money,” Shane said, “because you know she would, for this thing.”

“She’s a giver,” Claire agreed. “Also, maybe Linda’s got more of those cookies.”

“That’s a good point.”

Inside, they found Eve already signing the papers. Her driver’s license and proof of insurance were already on the table, and as Ernie said hello to the two of them, he gathered up her information and made a copy at the back of the office. It was small, and crowded, and pretty dusty. It looked as though Ernie was the only one who worked here, at least most of the time. Linda was leaning against the wall, staring out at the car lot through the big glass window. She looked pensive.

“Is there something wrong?” Claire asked her. Linda glanced at her, then shook her head.

“Probably nothing,” she said. “I just wonder why the sheriff hasn’t been around yet. He’s usually circling the town pretty regular, and he hasn’t been here yet. Deputy wasn’t at the sign, either. Strange.”

Ernie filled out the title and handed it over, along with the paperwork and Eve’s driver’s license and insurance. Eve juggled all the paper to shake hands with him, and he gave her a smile that was definitely flirting. “Thanks,” he said. “You staying in town long?”

“Oh—ah, no, I’m—we’re heading out. To Dallas. With my boyfriend.” Eve said it without too much emphasis, which was good; Claire didn’t think Ernie was a bad person or anything. And Eve was cute, even when she hadn’t made an effort to dress herself up Goth-style.

Ernie winced. “Should’ve seen that coming,” he said. “Well, enjoy the new ride, Eve. And don’t be a stranger.”

“No stranger than I am already,” she promised, straight-faced, and then they went out to admire the big black hearse again.

Linda moved straight past them to her own truck. “Hey,” Shane called. “How about breakfast? We were going to buy—”

“No need,” she said, and climbed into the cab. Through the open window she said, “I’m going to go see the sheriff, see if I can find out what the heck’s going on today. If I don’t see you kids before you go, have a safe trip. And thanks for livening up my week. Hell, my whole month, come to that.”

“No, thank you,” Shane said. “Your motel is great.”

She gave him a tight, quiet smile. “Always thought so,” she said. “Good-bye, now.”

She took off in a spray of gravel, raising plumes of dust as she skidded back onto the road. Ernie, who’d come out with them, sighed. “My grandma, the race car driver,” he said. “Have a good trip, now.”

They said their thanks, got into the hearse, and headed back to the motel.

They never got there. As they passed the town limits sign, and the road rose up a little in a mini-hill, Claire caught sight of flashing red and blue lights up ahead. “Uh oh,” she said. Eve hit the brakes, and she and Shane exchanged a look. “That’s the motel, right? They’re at the motel.”

“Looks that way,” Shane said. “This is not good.”

“Ya think?” Eve chewed her lip. “Call Michael.”

“Maybe they’re—”

“What, hanging out there looking for somebody else? Call him, Shane!”

Shane dialed the number of Michael’s cell phone, listened for a second, then closed his phone. “Busy,” he said. “We need to get in there.”

“And do what, exactly?”

“I don’t know! You want your boyfriend dragged out to french fry in the sun?”

Eve didn’t answer that. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, looking agonized, and then said, “I’ll apologize later, then.”

She hit the gas, and the hearse picked up momentum coming down the hill. It zipped past the motel, doing way past the speed limit.

One of the police cars—there were two in the parking lot—backed out and raced after them. Eve didn’t slow down. She hit the gas.

“Eve, what the hell are you doing? We can’t outrun them in a hearse, in the middle of the desert!”

“I’m not trying to,” she shot back. “Claire, look out the back. Tell me if the other car joins in.”

It took a few seconds, but then Claire saw another flare of red and blue flashers behind them. “They’re both following,” she called back. “And how is this good, exactly?”

“Text Michael,” Eve told Shane. “Tell him the coast is clear and to get his butt out of there.”

“What about Oliver?”

“Michael’s too much of a Boy Scout not to tell him, too. Don’t worry about that.”

Shane texted fast. “It’s still kind of sunny out, you know.”

“Oliver’s older,” Claire said. “He can stay out in the sun a lot longer than Michael. Maybe he can lead the police away, or something.”

“That’s up to them,” Eve said. “I just need to keep driving as long as I can before we give up. The more we piss these guys off, the more chance Michael and Oliver have of getting away.”

It turned out, as the police cars cranked it up, that Eve’s hearse really wasn’t made for car-chase speeds. They were overtaken in about another mile, and boxed up in another two.

Eve, surrendering, eased off the gas and hit the brakes to slow down and pull over.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Shane said. “Keep your hands up, and play nice. You panicked, that’s all. We were telling you to pull over, but you locked up. Got it?”

“It’s not going to help.”

“It will if you play the ditz. Better sell it, Eve. We’re in enough trouble already.”

The rest of it went straight out of the reality-TV-show playbook. The police ordered them out of the car, and before she knew it, Claire was being thrown up against the back of the hearse and searched. It felt humiliating, and she heard Eve crying-whether that was acting or not remained to be seen; Eve cried over smaller things. Shane was answering questions in a quiet, calm voice, but then, he’d spent a lot of time getting hassled by the Morganville police. For Claire, it was kind of a new experience, and not at all a good one. She had the deputy, she supposed; he was a tall, skinny guy whose uniform didn’t fit very well, and he seemed nervous, especially when he put handcuffs on her.

“Hey,” Shane called as his own hands were secured behind his back. “Hey, please don’t hurt her. It wasn’t her fault!”

“Nobody’s hurting anybody,” said the sheriff from the night before. “Okay, let’s just calm down. Now, let’s have some names. You?” He pointed at Claire.

“Claire Danvers,” she said. Oh man, there went any chance at all of ever getting into MIT. She was going to have a mug shot that got pasted all over Facebook. People were going to mock her. It would be high school all over again, times a million.

“Address?”

She gave him the address in Morganville, on Lot Street. She didn’t know what the others would have done; maybe she ought to have lied, made something up. But she didn’t dare. Like Shane had said—they were in enough trouble already.

Eve gave her name in a trembling, small voice, and then Shane finished things up. They both gave the Glass House address.

“So, you’re all, what, sharing a house?” the sheriff asked. “Where’s the blond kid from last night?”

“I—” Eve bit her lip and closed her eyes. “We had a fight. A big one. He—he left.”

“Left how? Seeing as the car you came in is still smoking in the parking lot back there, and it ain’t going anywhere. There’s no bus coming through here, young lady.”

“He hitched a ride,” Eve said. “With a truck. I don’t know which one. I just heard it on the road.”

“A truck,” the sheriff repeated. “Uh huh. And he wouldn’t be back there in Linda’s place with the door all locked up, then.”

“No sir.”

That, Claire reflected, might be almost true, because if Eve’s gamble had paid off, Michael and Oliver weren’t there any longer. Where they were was another story.

“Well, we’re waiting for Linda to get back; then we’ll open up those doors and see what’s going on. Sound okay to you?”

“Yes sir,” Eve said. “Why the handcuffs?”

“You three are a bunch of desperate characters, way I see it,” the sheriff said. “I find you causing trouble last night, get a report your car’s been trashed by the very same boys who say you threatened them, and next thing you know, I’ve got one man dead and two men missing this morning. The dead one got found in his pickup truck just about a mile up the road from your motel.”

“I—” Eve stopped, frozen. “Sorry, what?”

“Murder,” the sheriff repeated, slowly and precisely. “And you were the last ones to see them alive.”