As I weaved in and out of the evening traffic on I-5, I called Liz on my cell.
“Guess what I found?” I said, when she picked up.
“What?”
I told her about the money and the note.
“Do you have it with you?” she asked.
“The note, yeah. The money, no.”
“Where’s the money? In the locker?”
“No, Ramon has it.”
“Who the hell is Ramon?”
“Costilla’s sidekick.”
“Shit.”
I passed a slow-moving van on the right as I flew past Old Town and Presidio Park. “I know. Nothing I could do, though. But you need to see the note.”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “There’s something else you should know though.”
“What?”
“Charlotte Truman’s dead.”
My chest tightened. “What? How?”
“Not sure. After you talked to her, I called a friend in LAPD and asked him to notify me if her name popped up in anything unusual. He just called. They found her in her hotel room.” She paused. “A witness got a license plate leaving the hotel in a hurry.”
“They run it?”
“Yeah, it was rented out of Lindbergh Field. By Randall Tower.”
It was like I saw the punch coming but didn’t bother ducking. “What a fucking surprise that is.”
“Agreed. Where are you right now?”
“On the five, the La Jolla Parkway exit,” I said, trying to block Charlotte’s face from my mind.
“You going to see Carter?”
“No, I’m going to talk to Randall.”
The line buzzed for a moment, and I knew she wasn’t happy. “This isn’t for you to handle.”
“The fuck it isn’t,” I said. “I just got off the phone with the asshole.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. He called me, said we had to meet. And I agreed.”
“You need to wait for me. Or Wellton,” she said. “He was on his way to Westwood to meet with the LA guys about Truman. I can call him on his cell.”
“Randall called me, Liz,” I said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “I’m going to see him. And I’m not waiting. Come if you want, I don’t care. But I’m not waiting.”
“Where are you meeting?” she asked, the aggravation clear in her voice.
“He says he’s up at the gliderport.”
“Noah, don’t do anything until one of us gets there. You got it.”
“Bye,” I said and clicked off the phone.
It rang again five seconds later. I figured it was Liz again, but the caller ID on the phone showed a number I didn’t recognize. I punched the button. “Hello?”
“Dude,” Carter said. “I’m starving. Where’s my dinner?”
“Carter, I’m busy right now,” I said, swinging the Blazer over into the far right lane. “I can’t.”
“What’s going on?”
I told him what I’d found, what Liz found, and where I was headed.
“Wait for Liz,” he said. “If you tear him up, there’s gonna be nothing she can do.”
“The letter’s good enough,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It doesn’t mean shit. Doesn’t mean he killed her.”
“She was afraid of him, Carter,” I yelled into the phone. “She was hiding the money. Charlotte Truman is dead. Ramon told me again that they didn’t kill Kate. I believe him.”
“You believe Costilla’s thug? Come on. You’re not thinking, Noah.”
I fired the phone at the passenger door. I took the La Jolla Village Drive exit and headed toward the Torrey Pines gliderport to find Randall Tower.