No Right Turn by A.J. Stewart

Author:A.J. Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jacaranda Drive Publishing

Chapter Twenty-Two

Despite my better efforts, it felt as though I wasn’t getting very far. It was a familiar feeling. Cases, like baseball seasons, have a momentum all of their own. You can try but you can’t force it. You just have to keep showing up, doing your best work and making sure when the momentum turns in your favor you hang on like hell.

It seemed like Dale Beadman was a regular Ray Romano. Everyone loved the guy. And even those that didn’t love him, like Rory Lobe and Winton Gifford, didn’t exactly hate him, either. Of course, it was entirely possible they had sold me a bridge. Time would tell. And even the one guy who did hate him, Travis Zanchuk, didn’t seem to fit the profile. He just didn’t have the energy to pull off a heist of this magnitude. Once again, I could be wrong. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Mike Walters had given me an inkling of momentum. It wasn’t much, but even a ground ball to shortstop can become an error that changes things your way. This Ansel Brasher guy sounded like a likely customer. And when it came to crime, the most likely customer was most often the guilty one. The guy who looked like he did it usually did.

I just had one itch to scratch before we were done at DBR. Simon Lees wandered back into the workshop to study his diagnostics or telemetry or whatever the hell it was. Lucas went for a final walk around the museum. I went upstairs to find Dale Beadman’s assistant.

“How was the track, Mr. Jones?”

“It was an education. Say, is Dale still here?”

“No. He has a dinner with some sponsors. Can I help?”

“Perhaps. Do you have GPS on your vehicles?”

“I don’t know. You mean like maps?”

“No, like a locator. For tracking purposes.”

“No, I don’t think we have anything like that.”

“Just a thought. What about gas?”

“Gas?”

“As in gas purchases. Do you do expenses with receipts, or how does that work?”

“For which vehicles?”

“I was thinking about the rigs that carry the race cars.”

“No, I think they use fuel cards. It’s all done electronically. You’d have to talk to Sydney.”

“Can I? Talk to Sydney?”

“She wasn’t in earlier. But we could drop in on her office and see.”

Dale’s assistant walked me to another section of the offices, where we found Sydney. She was six-two, thin as a bean and as gorgeous as a supermodel. That was just the superficial analysis. Dale’s assistant told me Sydney handled the team accounts, which made me think of Missy Beadman, back in the day, and confirmed that Sydney was also smart. Which made me wonder about the law of averages, and whether somewhere, Sydney’s opposite twin was a short, ugly, stupid person. And whether that person was Detective Ronzoni.

“Take a seat, please, Mr. Jones,” said Sydney. “Now, how can I help?”

I find talking to extremely attractive people disconcerting. It’s like dealing with another species. They’re generally pretty hard work. They have to be. It’s a defense mechanism.

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