Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery R.M. Wild (inspirational books .txt) 📖

“Through the metal?”

“Yes. The drill should be fine. Make sure you push hard. Position the drill about two-thirds up the slot and drill in about the length of the key.”

My stomach was rebelling. If I screwed it up, I’d destroy the car. “I don’t understand what the point of this is. It would be so much easier if I drove my Honda.”

“Just do it, Casket. They suspended me for crying out loud. If anything, this is payback. Besides, carjacking is an important life skill.”

Whoever said there was a fine line between cops and crooks wasn’t joking.

“Get going, will you? Before somebody sees you.”

I made sure the drill’s battery was snug and then touched the tip of the drill bit to the ignition, squeezed the trigger, and pushed as hard as I could. The drill whirred, the bit inside the hole emitted an ungodly screech, and it screwed out metal shavings.

“It went in, but it’s stuck,” I said.

“There’s a button above the trigger. Reverse the drill and pull it out.”

I did. It whirred and came back out. I was suddenly overcome by a strange elation, one far stronger than when I had graduated from college, and said, “I got it!” Other than cleaning the house, I had never really worked with my hands before. It was incredibly satisfying. “Now what?”

“You got a screwdriver?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, put a screwdriver in the hole you made.”

“Which one? A flatty or a crossy?”

“Geez, Casket. They’re called flatheads or Phillips heads. How do you get any of your house maintenance done?”

“Eldritch helps me when I need it.”

I could practically hear him roll his eyes over the phone. “Grab the flat screwdriver, stick it into the hole you just drilled, and turn it, just like you would turn a key.”

I stuck the screwdriver into the hole and turned it. The engine started and the siren blipped.

I panicked. “It knows I stole it!”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mettle said. “It’s just a dumb car. Turn off the siren. The switch is under the radio.”

I switched it off. “Okay, it’s quiet.”

“Congratulations,” Mettle said. “You’ve now committed grand theft auto.”

“What?! You said—“

“I’m joking. I’ll see you in a little bit. Try to drive the speed limit.”

The whole drive, I slumped low in the driver’s seat and hid behind the steering wheel. I peeked over the curve of the wheel like a sneaky gremlin, afraid that any motorists would see a timid Ron Weasley driving the cruiser and call the real cops.

I kept my speed well below the limit. All the traffic slowed around me and drove five MPH slower than I did. Everywhere I went, the traffic trembled in my wake. I felt like a traveling black hole that warped space and time around it.

I wanted to wave the traffic on, to make them speed up, but I didn’t want to call attention to myself. Nobody had the guts to pass me, nor to honk. Even when I pulled up to the four-way intersection in town, all the other cars just sat there and waited for me to go first.

To be honest, I can’t say I didn’t get a little tingle from the power. I tapped the gas pedal and the supercharged engine kicked in and shot away from the intersection, spitting gravel at all the normal cars behind me.

No wonder so many cops took advantage of their position. Just sitting in this thing made me feel powerful, like I could do anything in society I wanted. It gave me a new appreciation for all the times that Matt Mettle didn’t bust into someone’s house without a warrant.

Eventually, I pulled off the highway and parked on the shoulder. Mettle didn’t want anyone on the force seeing him get into the cruiser, so he had told me to park at least a mile from the police barracks.

After a few minutes, I saw his muscular form strutting down the highway to meet me.

He opened the driver’s door. “What took you so long?”

“Traffic,” I said. “Everyone slowed down.”

He waved me out of the driver’s seat and I climbed over the center console to the passenger side.

“That’s why you have to use your lights if you want to get anywhere fast,” he said. He leaned over to inspect my work with the screwdriver. “Not bad. For a girl.”

“Your instructions were surprisingly succinct,” I said. “For a meathead.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Now that your business has tanked and I don’t have any bad guys to bust, what do you say we finally go out to dinner?”

Was that was this was all about? “I thought you needed the car to help me get to the bottom of this mess.”

“We will, we will, but not on an empty stomach, duh.”

“I can’t afford to eat out.”

“My treat,” he said.

“You’re suspended.”

“I’ll tap my trust fund.”

“You have a trust fund?”

“Yeah, I’ve got an uncle I trust. He’s been sending me protein money each month in the hopes I’ll pay him back when I win Mr. Universe.”

I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t want protein shakes for dinner. “I’ve got a better idea,” I said, thinking my best bet at this point was to find Peter Hardgrave. “Let’s eat a chocolate cottontail and then go down the rabbit hole.”

14

As expected, there were no guests waiting for me back at the inn. The social media smear campaign had done its job and left a flaming pile of feces all over my virtual step.

We parked the cruiser in the weeds on the side of the house. From the trunk, Mettle retrieved his big police flashlight, as big as a billy club, and followed me into the woods. The sky had grayed for the afternoon and the trees with their twisted branches looked like something out of a Tim Burton film, but I had tromped the trail to the lighthouse so often, I knew it as intimately as I knew The Great Gatsby and could walk the path with my eyes closed if it got too scary.

Behind