Free On the Hook by Cindy Davis Page B

autopsy. She rarely watched TV, especially this type of show.
    Westen woke at 3:15 from a nightmare where she was wearing a neon green jacket and tie-dyed electric blue sweatpants. A mob was chasing her down a sidewalk, begging to be ushered across eight lanes of sixty-mile-an-hour traffic to the beat of an oompah band—all of which would undoubtedly be easier than finding a Picasso that by now could be anywhere in the world.

Chapter Ten
    At seven a.m. Wednesday morning, their driver Ryan let them out in front of Starfire Trucking. Westen was ready for investigating, sort of. Though Smith had indeed acquired two outfits of decent enough clothing for her, she’d neglected to include underwear. When faced with queries about this, Smith had laughed and said that since she didn’t wear any, it never dawned on her that Westen might.
    So, feeling grubby in two-day-old underwear, Westen settled into the backseat cushion. Beside her, Smith was still waking up; she clutched a gargantuan to-go cup of coffee in one hand. The other held the envelope KJ had provided. They’d thought it best to keep the information close at hand. They’d divvied up the ten thousand dollars. Some had been left back in the hotel; the remainder was with each of them.
    From KJ’s information, they knew Starfire was big as trucking companies went. Their fleet of four hundred trucks traveled the US and Mexico from stem to stern and back again. Since Westen was the only one coherent enough to form sentences this early, she approached the booted feet of a man reclining under the enormous cab of a tractor. She nudged the boots with a toe. The body slid out on one of those dollies. Soon, a dark, curly head popped into view.
    “Could you point me to where I can find Brad Kerrington?”
    The man’s left arm came up, a greasy index finger pointed toward a long building about a hundred feet away. “See the guy with the clipboard? He’s Ed, the foreman, he’ll know where Brad is.”
    Westen thanked him and raced toward a paunchy man, probably in his thirties, who was already hurrying in the opposite direction. By the time Westen and Smith reached him, he stood in the middle of a group of men, the clipboard resting on his paunch, giving out assignments for the day.
    He noticed the women standing there and gave a nod of his balding head that said he’d be through soon. Westen feared the truckers she sought were amongst this group and would be wheeling away to points unknown before she could get the information out of him.
    He finished within five minutes and he turned toward them. His piercing gaze seemed to stab through to Westen’s two-day-old bra. She couldn’t stop her arms from folding around her breasts as he started toward them.
    “I think he likes you,” Smith whispered. “Bet he asks you to dinner.”
    “Argh, argh, yuk.”
    He banged Westen on the back. “Are you all right?”
    She managed a nod.
    “Something caught in your throat?”
    “A bug. I’m fine now.” She cleared her throat to prove her statement. It was all she could do not to flash Smith a glare, or bang her on the back.
    “I’m Ed Youngblood. May I help you, ladies?” His voice held a smoker’s rasp.
    “My name is Westen Hughes. This is Phoebe Smith. We’re looking for Brad Kerrington and Knox Blake.”
    Mr. Youngblood’s brown eyes narrowed. “What for?” He’d lost his friendly tone. Westen assumed he wouldn’t be asking her two-day old bra out.
    “We’re investigators from New Hampshire Property and Casualty.”
    She didn’t think it possible, but his eyes narrowed further. Now they were just tiny slits, no wider than the slot in her paper shredder.
    He shook the clipboard at her. “The investigators were here yesterday.” His tone inferred they must be impostors. “They spent the whole day disrupting schedules, checking trucks and generally making nuisances of themselves.”
    “We are independents hired by Agent Valentine,” Westen said, not sure how, if