Page 20 of Race With The Devil

“Ha! Don’t you think that should be up to Tracy? Maybe she wanted to play Gladiators and Gals without you. Let’s just go see her and ask her what she thinks.”

“Ah,” said Lytton, “that’s the whole point here. I don’t think anyone asked Lavinia Dock what she thinks. Unity. Did she ever complain about Tutti?”

Unity shrugged. Next to her, Tobiah and Wolf were shoving each other with the tips of their fingers. “She mentioned the usual stuff you’d expect. He was always in his lab, never took her anywhere. But she was very excited about her wedding. I was a bridesmaid, and it was just a nonstop party. Tutti seemed excited. You should’ve seen the ring he bought her. And his vows to her brought tears to our eyes, even though another bridesmaid privately mentioned it was plagiarized from Foreigner.”

“Which foreigner?” asked Lytton.

Unity grinned, dimpling her diamond studs. “The hair band Foreigner.”

“You fucking trekkie!” shouted Tobiah. His shoves were having barely any impact on the larger, more solid Wolf, so he’d moved to shoving with his entire palm. Still no effect. “Tracy didn’t even want to go to FurCon with you in that slutty Lola Bunny costume!”

“Oh yeah?” blared Wolf. Just one of his palm shoves sent the skeletal CFO stumbling back three feet. I fully expected them to start bitch-slapping each other. “Shows how much you know. She wanted to crop the tank top even higher! It turns her on to exhibit herself.”

Tobiah’s eyes flashed. “Fuck you, you toolbox! Tracy’s much too ladylike to expose herself to anyone other than me.”

Wolf shoved Tobiah harder. This time the financial whiz did fall and spin on his ass. “Whatever happened to ‘us,’ you fucking pencil-neck? I thought we were all in this together. All for one!”

When Wolf went to straddle Tobiah’s high-tops, I stepped in. I grabbed the remote Wolf still brandished like a club. He didn’t even glance at me.

“Wolf said the last texts were Sunday,” I said. I clicked the “next” button and got a couple of generic texts, friends talking about a TV show and the like. “We need to find out Lavinia’s response to his invitation to go hiking. Seems way too coincidental, a Sideshow Barbara talks about her falling off a cliff, and he invites her hiking on a cliff.”

“Definitely,” said Unity. “Keep clicking. This is just Whitney talking about The Walking Dead.”

We had to step aside a little as Lytton finally stood and got between the two combatants. We raised our voices to be heard over their argument.

“Okay, here we go,” I said, as Lavinia’s response was revealed.

King Tut, that’s a very lovely invitation. But I think you must have forgotten you asked me to drive Corey down to the University of Arizona on Monday, remember? You said he had a delivery to make. Love, Your Lovey

“What the fuck?” I muttered. “They were bringing fentanyl to the U of A?” It had slipped my mind that Lavinia Dock was married to one of the biggest criminals in Arizona. I’d never really envisioned what they did with the stuff he concocted, other than bring it to sideshows to sell. But of course, it figured that he had bigger clients. It just hit close to home that they were poisoning the minds of students with it. The U of A in Phoenix had a College of Medicine I’d been thinking of applying to. I know, I know. An old guy like me, a doctor. I’d be over fifty by the time I got my MD. But I’d gotten a late start in life, wasting ten years in Club Fed just to cover my worthless brother’s ass.

Unity said, “Worse things have been known to happen with that shit. So, Lavinia told him no. It’s not likely he forced her to the Grand Canyon.”

“Who’s this Corey person?” I asked.

“I’ve heard her talk about him. He’s some kid who assists Tutti, makes deliveries. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have a car, though, why she’d have to drive him to Phoenix.”

“Let’s find out who he is.” I clicked “next” some more, but like Wolf had said, the last texts were Sunday. That was it. “Lytton,” I called over to the ganjapreneur, who was still holding his palms out against the two red-faced techies. “Did the Bare Bones ever fire Tutti? I mean, has there been an overture toward getting rid of him as a vendor?”

“What? Oh, no. We decided to keep him in the dark about our plans until Lavinia pops up. Listen, Tobiah. Get back to your research on the Sideshow Bob email.”

“Sideshow Barbara,” Tobiah huffed as he clambered back into his desk chair. Snorting and running his fingers through his bowl haircut, he clicked back into action. It was amazing how quickly he turned into a lively gameshow host when discussing his work. “It was sent from gmail, which only traces back to Google’s IP addresses.”

“No duh,” sneered Wolf.

Tobiah carried on as though he hadn’t heard the heckling. “So, I traced the public IP address assigned to within a mile of downtown Flagstaff. But that covers a lot of ground, including a couple of FedEx Offices where the person could’ve rented a computer and paid cash.”

Wolf scoffed. “So you found nothing.”

“Not necessarily. I did a reverse search on all social networks—nothing. Sideshow Barbara is a ghost.”

Wolf said, “Then what do you mean, ‘not necessarily’? Sounds like a bunch of dead ends.”

Tobiah proudly turned his beak to the ceiling. “I was able to narrow it down to one of the two FedEx Offices by eliminating one of them. It was definitely sent from the one on Beaver Street.”

Wolf couldn’t resist chuckling. “Beaver Street,” he muttered. “As if.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.