The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

big-screen TV and a tumble with Betsy?
    Divorce never occurred to you?"
    Leander laughed and Theo felt a chill run through his body. "You really are dense, aren't you, Crowe?
    See that shed up there? Well, I hauled twenty-eight million dollars' worth of methamphetamine out of that shed last year. Granted, I only get a piece of that but it's a nice piece. I move it all. I'm a salesman, a family man, innocuous and unnoticeable. Who'd suspect me? Mr. Milquetoast."
    "Your wife?"
    "Bess found out about it. Funny thing is,she was following me because she suspected an affair, but she never found out a thing about Betsy and me. She was going to turn me in. I had no choice."
    Theo pulled up next to the shed and turned off the Volvo. "You have a choice now, Joseph. You don't have to do this."
    "I'm not doing anything but going back to my life until there's enough money in my offshore accounts to take off. Don't get me wrong, Crowe. I didn't enjoy killing Bess. I'm not a killer. Hell, I've never even taken any drugs. This isn'tcrime, it's just a well-paid delivery route."
    "So you're not going to shoot me?" Theo really, really wanted to believe that.
    "Not if you do what I tell you to do. Get out of the car. Leave the keys. Slide over and come out on my side."
    Theo did as he was told and Leander kept the pistol trained on him the whole time. Where did Leander learn to do that? He'dhadn't had a television that long. Guy must have taken a mail-order course or something.
    "Miguel! Ignacio! Come out here!" Leander gestured with the pistol for Theo to move toward the shack. "Go inside."
    Theo ducked to get through the door and immediately saw rack upon rack of lab glass, glass tubing, and plastic barrels of chemicals. A single metal chair sat in front of half a dozen electric burners that were filling the shed with a brutal heat.
    "Sit down," Leander commanded.
    As Theo sat he felt the handcuffs being yanked out of his back pocket.
    "Put your hands behind you." Theo did as he was told and Leander threaded the handcuffs through two metal bars at the back of the chair and snapped them over Theo's wrists.
    "I've got to go find these guys," Leander said."Probably taking a siesta. What wasBurton thinking when he put a house trailer down here? I'll be back in a second."
    "Then what?"
    "Then Ignacio will shoot you, I'm guessing."
    Molly This was a first: a guy that actually did what you asked him to do. When she heard a car coming down the ranch road, she asked Steve to makehimself look like a trailer and he had done it. Sure, she had to make a little box diagram in the air with her hands, and he missed the first time, trying to make himself look like the tin shed next to him, a miserable failure that resulted in only his head changing and making him look like a dragon wearing an aluminum bag over his head, but after a few seconds he got it.
    What a guy. Okay, his tail, which had always hung down into the creek bed before, was showing, but maybe no one would notice.
    "What a guy," she said, patting him on his air-conditioning unit. Or at least it was an air-conditioning unit now. No telling what body part it had been before he changed into a trailer.
    She's patting my unit Steve thought. A low growl of pleasure rolled out of his front door.
    Molly ran and hid behind the shed, peeking out to watch the white Volvo pull up and stop. She almost stepped out to say hi to Theo,then saw the other man in the car holding a gun on him. She listened as the bald guy led Theo into the shed and made some threats. She wanted to jump out and say. "No, Ignacio won't be shooting anyone, Mr. Bald Guy. He's busy being digested right now," but the guy did have a gun. How the hell did Theo let himself be taken prisoner by someone who looked like an assistant principal?
    When it was evident that the bald guy was coming out, she ran to the dragon trailer, caught the edge of the air-conditioning unit, and swung herself up onto the roof.
    The bald guy was going around to the front door. She ran over Steve's back and looked down over the edge.
    "Miguel! Ignacio!" the bald guy yelled. "Get out here!" He seemed uncertain about going into the trailer.
    "I saw them go in there," Molly said.
    The bald guy stepped back, looking like he was going to go into a fit searching for where the voice had come from.
    "You're an assistant principal, aren't you?" Molly said.
    The bald guy finally spotted her and tried to hide the gun behind his back. "You're that crazy woman," he