“Spanky? No. He’s waiting to make an entrance. He’ll be in around eight when he knows the place will be packed. Did you come to see the show?”
“I thought it might be fun.”
“It’s going to be painful. I had to get shit-faced before I could write the story for the last race. I can’t believe this guy won. There’s no justice in this world. I swear, halfway through the season it was like the sixty-nine car was driving itself.”
“Huevo had a good setup on that car.”
“Huevo had a magic setup on that car.” Cox looked around. “Where’s Hooker? He’s usually half an inch behind you.”
“He’s staying in tonight.”
“There were two guys looking for him earlier. Not from around here, but I think I saw them at Homestead. One guy looked like he’d had his head run over by a train.”
Damn! I’d started to relax a tiny bit, thinking maybe we left our problems in Miami. And now I was back to having that horrible hollow feeling in my stomach and my heart was beating a little too fast.
“Was the second guy smaller and bald? And did the big guy have a snake tattooed on the back of his neck?”
“Yep. Friends of yours?”
“No. Not friends.”
Hooker is the rock star of NASCAR. When he’s at the track, cameras are constantly in his face, and the fans follow him everywhere. Hooker genuinely likes the press and the fans, but there are times when there’s just a tad too much enthusiasm and Hooker ends up having half his clothes ripped off. And sometimes, in a state of ill-conceived adoration, the occasional fan will look a lot like a stalker. This year after a well-intentioned fan broke into Hooker’s condo and accidentally set the kitchen on fire trying to make a romantic breakfast for two, Hooker moved out of Huntersville and bought a large house on a large tract of secluded land in Mooresville. And a couple months ago, after a tour bus drove up Hooker’s driveway and dumped thirty people on his front lawn to take pictures, Hooker got security-gated, installed a large, steroid-angered gorilla in the little gatehouse, and had his property ringed with an electric fence. So I wasn’t worried that Hooker would be caught offguard by the two Huevo henchmen.
Nevertheless, I called to warn him. “I’m at Topper’s, and Dan says Horse and Baldy were looking for you earlier.”
“I’ll juice up the fence with a couple extra volts. I’m guessing you’re barside, wanting to see the Spanky spectacle.”
“Yep. Too bad you’ll miss it. It’s going to be awful.”
“Darlin’, you’re hitting a new entertainment low.”
I blew out a sigh because it was true. I disconnected and ordered a beer.
A half hour later, Spanky and Delores graced the room with their grandeur. As was expected, half the bar applauded and half booed. Dan and I did neither.
Dan threw back a handful of bar nuts. “I’m going to puke.”
“You can’t puke. You’re an impartial journalist.”
“No such thing. That crap went out with fedoras. To slightly change the subject, what do you make of Huevo’s murder?”
I sipped my beer. “I haven’t given it much thought. Do you have an angle?”
“No. But I think everything I’ve heard so far is wrong. Everyone is intrigued by the bite marks, but I don’t think they have anything to do with the murder. The medical examiner said they happened later, after Huevo was already dead. I think they’re accidental. I think someone killed Huevo and packaged him up to keep him on ice. Probably just used whatever was at hand. Which would lead me to think this wasn’t planned.”
“Someone just happened to have miles of shrink-wrap?”
Dan shrugged. “It’s a common household item, and some people stockpile. If you shop at the big-box stores, you buy in quantity to save money. The teams do it all the time. Anyway, my theory is that someone killed Huevo and needed to keep things neat, so they wrapped him. They had him sitting in a corner, waiting for it to get dark so they could dispose of the body, and their dog decided Huevo looked tasty.”
“So the killer had a big dog?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. And it was an inside job, because Huevo was found in Spanky’s truck. Someone was making a statement. And by the way, if I knew who the killer was, I’d send him a box of Godiva. Putting Huevo in Spanky’s new Avalanche was genius. I hear Spanky threw up when he saw it. Plus, they impounde
d the truck as evidence.”
“What kind of statement do you think the killer was making?”
“Don’t know. Sometimes people commit crimes and actually want to get caught, so they leave clues. Sometimes it’s an ego trip and they want to leave a calling card. Or maybe this was a kind of revenge crime. Maybe someone was pissed off that Spanky won. If it had been me, I would have killed Spanky and left him in Huevo’s car, but that’s just me.”