Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

by A W Hartoin

  “You just want to walk in the snow,” I said.

  “It’s an experience. When you get to my age, you want as many as you can get.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  We got out and walked through the streets to find the main square with a huge Christmas tree and a statue of a pretty chill guy with a super pointy beard and a globe under one arm.

  “That’s Johannes Kepler,” said Moe.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Don’t be obnoxious. He was a mathematician and astronomer. Look there’s a museum.”

  Regretting this big time.

  “Oh, it’s closed,” said Moe. “We’ll have to come back.”

  That’ll happen.

  “We’re on a case,” I said.

  “We have time,” he said.

  “Let’s find the Purcell house.” I steered him away from the statue and museum to wander down the hilly cobbled streets and finding a charming new sight around every bend. In one little square, we discovered a fountain filled with black metal sculptures celebrating Fasching, the celebration before Lent. Moe couldn’t get enough of the witches and trolls and took at least a hundred pictures. I’d been to a couple of Fasching parades in Stuttgart and they were an experience with wild costumes designed to scare winter away. Young women got chased around by trolls and monsters to be marked up with colorful grease pens, tossed onto the parade floats, and have hay or confetti dumped over their heads. Children were rewarded for their costumes with loads of candy and the bands were fantastic. Think Mardi Gras without the drunks.

  After I managed to drag Moe away, we found the Purcell house down a side street and across from a small bakery that happily wasn’t packed. We went in and I got Moe another espresso against my better judgment. Then it was just waiting to see if anyone came out. The lights were all on and they’d been home earlier. The street was parked up, but all the streets were. It was impossible to know which cars were theirs. They didn’t have a driveway.

  “There’s an Italian grocery store in this town.” Moe looked up from his phone, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.

  “Closed.”

  “It might be open.”

  “Closed on Sunday. Everything is closed on Sunday.”

  “I keep forgetting it’s Sunday,” he said. “I could’ve used some Italian wine and some prosciutto. Another reason to come back.”

  I looked at him in consternation.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You are a different kind of Licata. Fats never stopped for food.”

  “She didn’t get that from me. Her mother is a problem. She was always on Fats about her weight.”

  “Really? She doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her,” I said.

  “That’s why,” said Moe. “How long are we going to wait?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “Who taught you this crap technique?”

  “My dad and it’s not crap. It’s surveillance.”

  Moe tapped his empty cup on the table. “This espresso was terrible and I need a nap. I say we pound on the door and ask why the hell that girl decided to get you killed.”

  “That’s a hard no,” I said. “I want more information before I have a confrontation. When Spidermonkey wakes up, he’ll scour their financials.”

  Moe groaned.

  “You can leave me here. There are buses.”

  “Not a chance in hell. I don’t think that girl masterminded that disaster of a kidnapping, but you’re a sitting duck over here.”

  “Hardly. I’ve got my Mauser.”

  “In your handbag.”

  “Where else should I have it?”

  He eyed me and said, “Shoulder holster.”

  “Never. That would put attention where I don’t want it.”

  “There’s no avoiding that, cupcake,” he said with a grin.

  I crossed my arms. “I noticed you didn’t like that other guy treating me like a cupcake.”

  “He treated you like a cupcake,” Moe said. “I’m calling you one. It’s an affectionate nickname.”

  “I will get Fats to kill you.”

  He laughed and looked back at the Purcell house. Then my phone buzzed and it was Novak, who wasn’t as good a sleeper as he wanted.

  “Did the German confirm?” he asked.

  “Yep. It’s them.”

  “The house is quiet?”

  “How did you know where we are?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? You’ve got a tracking device around your neck,” said Novak.

  “That’s not good,” I said.

  “It’s fine. Let me see what’s going on in there,” he said. “Here we go. Mom is on Pinterest. Madison is writing a paper on self-harm, ironically enough. And the kid is playing a video game.”

  “Not all that helpful. Has either Jake or Madison looked into me?” I asked. “Do they know I’m here?”

  “They both googled you after it happened,” he said. “Looks like they were checking on your condition. Then there was some interest in St. Seb and the case there, but nothing since.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I said. “Do they follow Aaron on Instagram?”

  Novak chuckled. “Not a chance. No food whatsoever.” He paused and then said, “This is interesting. We’ve got another phone.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “A burner.”

  “Sweet,” I said. “Whose is it?”

  Novak typed for a few minutes and then said, “It hasn’t been on the home Wi-Fi in five months.

  “That’s a long time.”

  “It was super active for about two weeks and then went dark. I’m tracing the provider now, but it’s encrypted.”

  “Beyond Madison’s capabilities?”

  “She has no capabilities,” he said. “Looks like it’s definitely Madison’s phone. It was used when Jake was in school and the mom was at work.”

  “When was it first used?” I asked.

  “June sixth. This is going to take a while,” said Novak.

  “You’re in Madison’s regular phone, right?”

  “Sure. What do you want to know?”

  I drummed my fingers on the table and Moe watched me silently. I thought he’d have his two cents like Fats always did, but he wasn’t a bulldozer like his niece. “Give me the best friend. Boyfriend. Somebody I can interview.”

  Novak messed around for a minute or two and came back with, “Bad news is that Madison’s high school friends either moved or went to college back in the States.”

  “But she has a boyfriend,” I said.

  “She doesn’t. She’s told several of the friends that, but the contact is sporadic.”

  “Is there good news?”

  “She’s friends with people at work. Not close as she was with the high school friends, but they go out and do things occasionally.”

  “Name?”

  “MacKenzie Saperstein at Pizza Hut is the closest. Olivia Jones is in there, but not as much. She works at Burger King.”

  “Can you send me their addresses and whatnot?” I asked.

  “On it.”

  Moe tapped the table hard. “She’s on the move.”

  “Got to go,” I said to Novak and hung up.

  Madison got an ice scraper out of the trunk of an old Kia and we stood to leave.

  “We’ll never catch her,” I said.

  “Why not?” Moe asked, leading me to the door.

  “We have to get to the car.”

  “It’s half a block away.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Fats said you had no sense of direction, but I thought she was exaggerating.” He opened the door for me and we walked past Madison angrily scraping ice and snow off her windshield.

  “That’ll take a minute,” said Moe. “Ours is clean.”

  Once we turned the corner, we broke out in a jog and jumped into our car in record time. Moe drove back to the Purcell house slowly like he was afraid of the ice and we got there just as she finished cle
aring the back window. Moe put on his blinker to park and Madison waved at us before she jumped in to pull out of the only parking spot on the block.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked. “She’s seen us.”

  Moe snorted. “She hasn’t seen us. We’re just a car wanting a spot. White Mercedes are a dime a dozen around here. I’ve seen six just while we were walking around.”

  He waited until Madison turned a corner before he took off after her.

  “They weren’t the same make,” I said.

  “You think she knows?”

  “I did.”

  Moe grinned at me, showing off a golden bicuspid on his left side and I had a Home Alone flashback. “You aren’t normal.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I meant it as a compliment.”

  We caught up with Madison, keeping back a few car lengths with a Smart car between us. We needn’t have bothered. She wasn’t paying any attention. Her head was bopping around to music I assume, either that or she had a spastic condition and shouldn’t have been driving. That head was really moving.

  “See,” said Moe. “She’s clueless.”

  “It seems that way, but she has a burner phone,” I said.

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Me,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, everyone else that doesn’t have a cadre of hackers on the payroll does.”

  “I guarantee you that the average twenty-year-old girl doesn’t.” I told him the burner history and he nodded sagely. “I told you. Someone else is in charge. He gave her a burner and she screwed it up until he caught it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You don’t use the home Wi-Fi for a burner phone,” said Moe. “Anyone with access to the router could see that it was on there and get nosy.”

  “He knew she was doing it somehow and shut it down?”

  “I would. Whoever gave it to her was monitoring the data. He’s smart enough to do that.”

  I sat back and watched Madison’s head bouncing around. “But not smart enough to make the plants on Anton’s laptop convincing.”

  “They were convincing to the cops. That’s what he was going for.” Moe grinned at me again. Very Harry Lime. “He didn’t bargain on you and the sister questioning it. He’s no genius. If he thought about it, he would’ve worked hard.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He sent somebody to nab Tommy Watts’ daughter. It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to know a little surface work isn’t going to do it.”

  “Dad wouldn’t let it go or Fats or Leo,” I said.

  “Or Chuck or your grandad or flipping Calpurnia. This moron came after someone with friends. He’s not a thinker.”

  “That’s why I don’t think it’s The Klinefeld Group. He gives her an encrypted burner, sets this whole thing up with a private plane but uses a teacher to grab me.”

  “He’s all over the place. That’s why you’ll find him.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t feeling particularly confident. I didn’t say it, but I was feeling more and more like our non-genius had connections of his own. If he was part of The Klinefeld Group, they could easily mask him with a new identity. He could head off to Argentina as other psychos had done before.

  “Are we going to Böblingen?” I asked.

  “That’s my read,” said Moe.

  “Work?”

  “Probably.”

  “You sound disappointed,” I said.

  “I was hoping she was going to visit her felonious friend,” said Moe.

  I laughed. “You’re hanging with me now, not the Fibonaccis. It’s not going to be that easy.”

  “I like easy,” he said with another grin.

  “Get used to disappointment.”

  Moe left the highway and we followed Madison to the post gate. We didn’t even have a car between us anymore, but she never glanced in the rearview once. I was watching.

  The gate guard checked Moe’s ID and my pass quickly, so we stayed right on Madison’s tail, following her to the packed parking lot in front of the PX complex.

  “Wow,” I said. “Everybody and their mother’s brother is here.”

  “It’s Sunday. Where else are you going to go if you need cat litter and a bottle of wine?”

  “Good point.”

  We parked about as far from the doors as possible, but we weren’t in a rush. Madison was obviously going to work. Moe and I headed in without our subject in sight. That would’ve driven Dad insane. He taught me to always have eyes on, but sometimes you can just relax. I’d learned that much on my own.

  Moe slapped on his VFW hat. I’m not going to say what he called it because…gross. He couldn’t stop grinning about it though.

  “I bet you wouldn’t say that with my grandmother around,” I said.

  “That is absolutely right. I’d never say that in front of a lady,” said Moe, nodding to some soldiers in uniform who definitely had respect for the hat.

  “Hey,” I said. “What about me?”

  “You’re not a lady. You’re Mercy.”

  “I’m insulted.”

  “So be it. You can’t tell me you’re the same as Janine or your mother,” said Moe as we went into the building.

  “What about Fats?” I asked.

  “That’s more like it.”

  I can see it, but it still sucks.

  “I’m liking you less.”

  “No, you’re not.” Moe stopped in front of a vendor with a Goufrais chocolate display.

  “Would you like some samples?” the vendor asked.

  “I’ll take two and give them both to my pretty friend if that’s alright with you,” said Moe.

  “Of course, sir.” The vendor held out a tray with little chocolates shaped like tiny bundt cakes and I took two.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “Those are amazing.”

  “I’ll take three bags,” said Moe.

  “All for Grandma?” I asked.

  “For you, Fats, and Janine. You and Fats might not be ladies, but chocolate is always appropriate.”

  I considered saying something snide, but I had luscious chocolate and Moe was less offensive through that lens.

  He paid and I wandered through the tables crowding the wide passage to the food court. It was packed with families eating burgers, fried chicken, and cheesesteaks. I didn’t really get it, but I guess it was a taste of home kind of thing. I stopped next to the drink dispensers and kept an eye on the Pizza Hut storefront through the crowd. Each of the fast-food joints was mini, even smaller than the typical mall food court places, but they seemed to keep pace with demand. I was grateful for the noise and crowd. I’d worried about being recognized, even with my hat pulled low, but nobody noticed me.

  Moe joined me and then said, “I’m going into Starbucks. I need another espresso.”

  “Do you though?” I asked. “We’re on the job here.”

  “You’ve got it covered and it’s not like somebody’s going to grab you up next to a table of toddlers.”

  “Well—”

  Moe was off and I leaned on the wall, watching and pretending to look at my phone. Eventually, Madison came out to the Pizza Hut cash register, wearing a uniform that wasn’t as clean as it should’ve been and exchanged words with a guy who wasn’t happy to see her. She chatted and helped get the customer’s food, while he rang up the order, but there was definitely a cold shoulder going on. Madison didn’t seem to notice or maybe she just didn’t care.

  After the order, she took over the register and said something to him, but he didn’t reply before taking off his cap and going in the back. Madison shrugged at the customer at the register and gave them a huge smile.

  I texted Moe that I had a co-worker going off shift and headed out the doors into the swirling snow. There might be a back way out of the complex and I didn’t want to miss him for lack of trying. But I was lucky, the guy came out the front doors and turned right toward a side parking lot.

  I chased him thro
ugh the incoming customers to an ancient Jeep that didn’t seem roadworthy and yelled, “Excuse me!”

  He didn’t turn around until I slid on the ice and banged my cast on his hood.

  “What the—”

  “Sorry. Sorry,” I said. “I slipped.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Are you alright?”

  “Fine. I just wondered if I could talk to you for a second.”

  He opened his car door and said, “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  I hated to do it, but that guy was not looking receptive, so I whipped off my hat and did the old fluff the hair and bat the eyes. “Can I please ask you some questions?”

  He glanced back at me through the falling snow and I saw the double-take and then the confusion I’d seen so many times before. The who-exactly-am-I seeing look.

  I stuck out a hand and said, “Mercy Watts. I’m doing an investigation and I’d like your help if you’re willing.”

  He was frozen. I’d seen that, too. Nothing to do but continue. Marilyn was a double-edged sword sometimes.

  “So I saw that you work at Pizza Hut.”

  Nothing.

  “And you work with Madison Purcell,” I said.

  That woke him up. The deer in the headlights look vanished, replaced quickly with a scowl. “Yeah, I work with her.”

  “Great. Would you mind talking to me for a few minutes? I won’t take up very much of your time.” I was using the Marilyn voice. You know, a little breathless and ditzy. He liked it. I can always tell.

  “Um…sure. You’re really her?” He was blushing now. A flipping great start. Couldn’t have asked for better.

  “I am and I’m on a case,” I said. “How well do you know Madison?”

  “Not at all. She’s super stuck up,” he said. “Is this about that teacher that tried to kill you?”

  I smiled and said, “You got it.”

  “And you think Madison had something to do with it?”

  Still breathless, I said, “Oh, no. It’s just background.”

  “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  I stuck out my hand again. “Your name is?”

  “Gareth.” He took my hand like it was on fire and dropped it immediately.

  I asked Gareth the basic questions and saw Moe watching us from beside the garden center wall. He let me go on alone without interrupting and I appreciated that, but I wasn’t getting a lot. Gareth had worked with Maddison since he graduated from high school and he wasn’t a fan.