The Biker At The Woodland Wedding And The Silver Zippo Secret
CHAPTER 2: THE SARATOGA TRAIL
The heavy twin-cylinder engines of two Harley-Davidson cruisers roared through the autumn dusk along Route 9, cutting south toward the historic thoroughbred town of Saratoga Springs. Tom leaned low over the wide handlebars of his chrome-laden Road King, his silver hair whipping back against the wind, his eyes locked on the asphalt ahead with absolute, predatory focus. Flanking him on the right, his thunderous custom shovelhead thrumming with raw mechanical horsepower, rode Grizzly.
By nine that evening, the two massive bikers pulled their machines up onto the sidewalk outside High Peaks Antiquities—a high-end, discreet estate brokerage tucked into a brick alleyway behind Broadway. The shop was closed, its wrought-iron security gate locked, but a dim amber light burned behind the drawn silk blinds of the rear office.
Tom didn’t knock on the brass door knocker. He drove the heel of his heavy steel-toed logger boot against the deadbolt casing. The aged brass latch sheared with a sharp, explosive crack, the heavy mahogany door swinging inward and crashing violently against the plaster wall.
Sitting behind a polished mahogany partner’s desk, counting stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills under a green banker’s lamp, was Arthur Pendelton, an oily, nervous man in his late fifties wearing a silk ascot and wire-rimmed glasses. Pendelton jumped to his feet, knocking his leather swivel chair backward as two six-foot-three bikers in patched leather vests filled the doorway like avenging angels.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Pendelton shrieked, clutching his cash box to his chest. “I have private security on call! You’re committing felony commercial trespass!”
Grizzly stepped forward, closing the broken door behind them with an ominous click of the slide bolt. He leaned his two-hundred-and-eighty-pound frame against the jamb, crossing his massive arms over his club vest with a slow, dangerous grin.
Tom walked straight to the mahogany desk, placed both hands flat on the green leather blotter, and leaned down until his ice-blue eyes were inches from Pendelton’s sweating nose.
“The nineteen-ninety-four silver Zippo lighter,” Tom said, his voice dropping into a razor-thin whisper that sounded like a dry straight-razor being drawn across leather. “Lot 44. The one you have listed in your catalog under Bradley Sterling’s name. Where is it?”
Pendelton’s face drained of every drop of color. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently above his silk ascot. “The… the piece was withdrawn from the public auction schedule this afternoon, sir! Senator Sterling’s executive assistant called from Lake Placid. The senator demanded the item be returned to his personal residence by private courier tonight!”
“Who brought that lighter to you in the first place, Pendelton?” Tom growled, his right hand shooting across the desk and clamping around the broker’s throat like an iron pipe vise, lifting the man on his tiptoes. “Tell me the name of the man who sold it to you.”
Pendelton choked, his hands scrabbling frantically at Tom’s rock-hard knuckles. “Marcus! Marcus Reed! He was Senator Sterling’s private chauffeur for twenty years! Marcus had a severe gambling debt at the raceway last month… he brought the lighter in as collateral… he told me the senator kept it locked in the glove box of his vintage sports car since the winter of two thousand and four!”
Tom released his crushing iron grip with contemptuous ease, letting the terrified antique broker collapse coughing, wheezing, and clutching his bruised throat into the plush cushions of his leather chair. Tom picked up the open inventory ledger on the desk, his eyes scanning the handwritten consignor notes.
In the margin beside the entry for the lighter, Pendelton had jotted a microscopic note from his initial appraisal: Flint wheel jammed with trace automotive paint scraping. British Racing Green metallic lacquer.
A cold, terrifying electric shock traveled down Tom’s spine, freezing the breath in his chest as the pieces of a twenty-year puzzle locked into place with mathematical brutality. Twenty years ago, the sole piece of physical forensic evidence recovered from Sarah’s shattered station wagon by an honest junior state trooper had been an untraceable microscopic fleck of British Racing Green metallic automotive enamel embedded deeply into the twisted chrome of her crushed rear bumper. That rare, exotic foreign paint formula had been dismissed as irrelevant highway contamination by County Sheriff Wilkes, who closed the investigation forty-eight hours later under direct orders from County Judge Albright.
“British Racing Green metallic lacquer,” Tom whispered, his blue eyes locking onto Grizzly’s with unadulterated, lethal clarity. “Bradley Sterling drove a brand-new, imported two-thousand-four Jaguar XK8 convertible during that election year. He bragged about the custom Connolly leather and the racing paint at the Lake Placid Yacht Club all summer. And three days after Sarah’s funeral, Sterling put the car in a covered trailer, claiming he had shipped it to his winter villa in Palm Beach. The car never left the Adirondacks.”
Before Grizzly could answer, the glass display case in the front showroom shattered inward in a deafening shower of fragments.
Two high-velocity rifle rounds tore through the frosted glass panel of the office door, chewing through the solid mahogany desk and obliterating the antique green banker’s lamp in an ear-shattering explosion of shattered glass, sheared brass, and burning lamp oil. White plaster dust and splintered wood rained down through the shadows. From the wet brick alleyway outside, the synchronized squeal of heavy high-performance tires and the deep, throaty rumble of supercharged V8 engines announced the aggressive tactical arrival of Bradley Sterling’s private estate security convoy.
