Page 18 of Race With The Devil

CHAPTER SEVEN

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Lytton Illuminati’s spread on the way up Mormon Mountain was spectacular. The back deck gave an unfettered view of the bowl of Mormon Lake and the pine-encrusted mountains around it. Wolf actually lived at the pot plantation farther uphill, and this was his tech center with all his equipment and communications.

It also came with a big-nosed, bowl-headed rival of his named Tobiah Weingarten.

The slim-hipped Tobiah with his white acrylic belt was not a member of the MC like Wolf. He’d started out CEO and CTO for Leaves of Grass, but apparently, Unity told me, he’d become so much more. His know-how had brought down drug kingpins, psychos, and human traffickers.

And contrary to popular belief, the ménage he was having with Wolf and a gal named Tracy wasn’t a match made in heaven.

“Get your goonish shoes off my table,” said Tobiah.

“They’re not goonish,” Wolf said. “They’re engineer boots. Trés cool, which is more than I can say for your high-top tennies.”

“They’re Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars,” yelled Tobiah through gritted teeth. I expected him to say Wolf was giving him high blood pressure, that he needed his meds. He bellowed, as though to be heard over Wolf’s next interruption. “All right. The first thing I noticed about this purported email from Sideshow Barbara—“

Wolf yelled just as loud from his perch kicked back on the sofa, feet still on the coffee table. “We should go in chronological order. Mine came first. I found old stuff on Lavinia’s phone going back a few months.”

Lytton, no doubt familiar with the two clowns, held out calming hands. “All right. Let’s take it down a notch. But Wolf’s right. Lavinia’s phone came first.”

Now that he had center stage, Wolf popped to his feet and strode with one arm behind his back. He waggled the phone as a prop. “Now, this Android S7 Edge needed its contacts back. Odd how even the contacts had been stripped, always a suspicious sign. If Lavinia did not take her phone on this alleged walk where she fell off a cliff, why would she leave it stripped in her garage, just waiting for Tutti to find?”

“She wouldn’t,” said Bellamy. She’d wanted to come and help, now that Lyric was settling into her new house.

Wolf shot her with the phone. “Exactly! She wouldn’t! So, in addition to recovering contacts, I was able to get photos and text messages. A text to Unity from September sixteenth illustrates what I am trying to say.”

Tobiah muttered, “Any moron can recover phone data.”

Wolf’s nostrils flared. “The first thing I noted, there was only one José in her entire contacts. And it’s the José in Flagstaff you two went and saw. Maddy later verified his wife had been giving birth the day Lavinia went missing.”

Unity sat by me on the loveseat. Her body heat slammed me like a wall. The weather was sublime for November—not a whisper of wind, sliders open to the fresh piney air—and Unity had squirmed into a skin-tight halter that accentuated her boobs. Those babies must’ve been placed up on an inner bra shelf of the shirt because they sure bobbled out the deep neckline. I was even starting to like her giant anchor. Her long blonde-striped hair was wrapped in dread rags to keep them clean when she rode, and she chewed on a sharp pencil she took notes with.

“Tutti could’ve gotten the name wrong, because José didn’t own anything with California plates.”

Wolf pointed at Unity. “The next thing I did with the contacts was run them through the ADOT vehicle registration database. Course, there’s a margin of error here because sometimes kids will drive their parents’ cars.”

“True,” said Lytton, “but not many of those are tricked out for sideshows.”

“No one ever really said the guy who took her away was a sideshow participant,” said Tobiah. “He could’ve been driving a Lincoln Continental or a VW Bug.”

“Bugs are distinguishable,” said Wolf. “Tutti would’ve said a Bug.”

“Okay, point being,” Tobiah said irritably, tapping a pen on his desktop, “it could’ve been any guy. You’ve got to throw your net wide.”

“Which I did,” Wolf said with narrowed eyes, turning to a wide screen on the wall. He clicked a remote, and a list of three people appeared. “These are the contacts in Lavinia’s phone who have registered cars in California. One, Gloria Steinman. Tutti said it was a guy, so Gloria’s out. Here’s a guy, Jens which is similar to José, but he drives a red Nissan Cube. Gross. I think Tutti would’ve noticed that.”

“Maybe not,” said Tobiah, ever the devil’s advocate. “He said it was dark out.”

Wolf put on an exaggerated patient face. “Please. You’d have to be blind to say a gross red box was a blue sedan. Now for the third guy, John Kinkaid. He does have a blue Honda accord which is a four-door sedan. But I ruled him out because he actually does live most of the year in Eureka, California, almost all the way to Oregon. He has a skiing cabin near the Flagstaff Snowbowl.”

“So you found nothing,” bawled Tobiah, eagerly moving his mouse in a circular pattern. “Now about this email from Sideshow Barbara—“

Wolf held his arms up high. “There are no Barbaras in her contacts either.”

“Big deal,” sneered Tobiah. “Could’ve been an acquaintance from the sideshows.”

“Wolf isn’t done,” Lytton said. “What about the texts you recovered?”