The Glass Highway by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman [Estleman, Loren D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781453220511
Publisher: I Books
Published: 1983-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

16

“HEY, BEAUTIFUL HUNK.”

I was standing on the sidewalk in front of the jail like an immigrant on Ellis Island, sucking free air and fingering a stale Winston out of my battered pack. Last night’s snowfall had already melted off the street and been swept into yellow piles against the curb. Fern Esterhazy was sitting there behind the wheel of a green Jaguar with the top down. Her long red hair was windblown and she was wearing dark glasses and a leather coat with a standing collar.

I went over and said, “Crank the top up. The Ann-Margret look doesn’t include blue skin.”

“You ex-cons have no adventure in your souls. Hop in.”

I hopped in. The soft leather seat wrapped itself around me like an amorous stingray. “Let’s just make circles till I can smell something besides Lysol.”

We took off with a chirp of expensive rubber. I caught my hat and stuck it on the floor under the dash. The engine whined up the scale, gathering breath during the gear changes. She shifted like a Daytona veteran. I turned up my own collar against frostbite.

She said, “I tried to bail you out when I heard. They wouldn’t let me.”

“There’s no bailing out a material witness. Who told you I was sprung?”

“Dad got a call from Cecil Fish this morning.”

“What about Paula Royce?”

“Every time we meet you ask me the same thing. A Mountie spotted her last night driving a stolen car near Kingston and gave chase. They don’t ride horses anymore, except in parades. She ran him around for a while, then went off a curve straight into the lake. She drowned.”

“She wasn’t that stupid.”

“To steal a car, or to run it into the lake?”

“Both. Pull over a minute.”

We were doing sixty through the business district. She down-shifted, braking at the same time, and we skidded into the curb. Gasoline romped around inside the tank. I pried my fingers loose from the padded dash, got out, and walked back a block to drop a quarter into a newspaper stand on the corner. A picture of Cecil Fish fielding questions at a press conference took up a fourth of the front page under a headline reading witness held in broderick slaying. Below the fold was a smaller picture of me. I recognized it from my investigator’s license photostat of two renewals ago. I paged through the paper, but there was nothing in it about the chase that had ended in Lake Ontario.

Fern appeared on foot beside me. “They just released the story,” she said. “It won’t be in print until tomorrow.”

I stuck the paper under my arm. “How about a lift down to the police station?”

“Let go of it, Amos.”

In broad daylight, her face showed faint lines like her stepmother’s.

I said, “Just for a minute. I want to thank Assistant Chief Proust for his hospitality.”

We went back to the car. She touched off a cigarette with the dash lighter and wheeled us into the traffic lane. “Bud was a sweet kid. I never thought I’d miss him but I do.

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