Lucky Town

by Peter Vonder Haar

  Contents

  TITLE

  LEGAL

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Prologue

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lucky Town

  a Clarke & Clarke Mystery novel

  Peter Vonder Haar

  Copyright 2019 by Peter Vonder Haar.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover design and art by Jami Anderson (jamidesign.com).

  The book is a work of fiction. All characters, incidents, and dialogue are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  To Kathryne, Erin, and Sydney.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A relative of mine (who shall remain nameless) who’d made a career of writing once told me this was a “lonely pursuit,” which I suspect was a way of justifying his lack of friends and why his cousins never visited him. And while it’s probably true that solitude is more conducive to the act of completing a novel, it’s something I never could have accomplished without a huge number of people in my life.

  First, let me thank everyone who dropped their hard-earned money for a copy of Lucky Town. I know how many options there are for your reading dollar, and I’m honored you picked this one.

  To my editors, Mason and Kathy Hart: thank you for doing the work I should’ve asked y’all to do in the first place. Dinner’s always on me.

  To the “beta readers” of Lucky Town – Jami Anderson (who also created the excellent cover art), Tracy Croom, Doug Harris, Kristy Kincaid, Dana Losey, Melissa Turnquist, and Jeremy Rogalski – as well as Mom, Dad, and my sister Jessica: thank you for your patience and for fixing some occasionally embarrassing plot holes.

  And sorry to Dad for naming one of the less pleasant characters after you. I was thinking of someone else, honest.

  Finally, to my wife Tory: I rarely feel confident about anything, but I’m certain this never would have happened without you. Your encouragement, sacrifice, and feedback that occasionally veered into brutal honesty were integral to getting this done (to say nothing of solving every plot problem I had). I love you, and now I can finally say “I’m a writer” wasn’t just a cheesy pickup line.

  Prologue

  Ever woken up in a hospital room?

  It’s not an experience I recommend to … well, anyone, but if you’ve had the pleasure, there are things you’ll always remember. Even before opening your eyes: first the glare of fluorescent lights piercing your closed eyelids, then the aroma of industrial cleaning agents heroically masking the accumulated odors of decay and rot, followed by the feel of sheets and pillowcases worn threadbare by hundreds of bodies and industrial wash cycles.

  It’s all right if these things are unfamiliar to you. Outside of pregnancy, an average person probably gets through life without a hospital stay. But I’m the wrong person to make that call.

  This wasn’t my first rodeo. I’d seen more emergency rooms than birthdays by the time I was in my twenties. I was oddly proud of this until I entered my third decade and started experiencing the kind of chronic aches and pains that aren’t supposed to show up until years later. I thought it was hardly fair to experience all the disadvantages of middle age without even buying a new Corvette.

  Cracking my right eye open (the left one was still being stubborn), I took comfort in the familiarity of my surroundings. I’d been in this particular room now for almost a week, but I again confirmed my neck worked by turning my head, taking in a TV tuned to a Richard Dawson-era episode of Family Feud and the expected array of life-preserving machinery.

  Oh, and also my mother.

  If I’m an old pro at regaining consciousness in medical facilities, my mom could give a TED Talk about waiting patiently for others to do so. All six of her kids (five boys, myself included) were involved in sports, most of them subsequently embarked on careers with potential for injury, and at least one (hello) has proven uncannily prone to taking beatings. Mary Clarke would be Norm from Cheers if he hung out in the various hospitals in the metro Houston area instead of a bar run by an ex-Red Sox pitcher.

  Attempting a smile, my jaw felt like it was held in place with razor blades. Though it couldn’t be too severe, because the doctors hadn’t bothered to wire it shut. In my mind, the grinding of misplaced bone on bone caused Mom to look up from her book. Realizing I was awake, her expression shifted from middle-grade maternal concern to resigned anticipation.

  Feeling the need to reassure the woman who gave me life, I spoke: “Hrrggkkkk.” It sounded (and felt) like my mouth was full of gravel.

  Setting her paperback down on the bed, she said, “Can you talk?”

  I tried swallowing and only tasted a hint of blood. There was a cup with a straw next to the bed, but when I reached for it, Mom got there first, holding the straw to my lips like I was an invalid, which — in a sense — I was.

  I felt better after some water. Mom leaned forward in her chair.

  “Tell me everything.”

  Chapter one

  One week ago.

  I woke up in my bed, in a considerable amount of pain.

  Neither eye was swollen shut, so it was with normal vision that I absorbed the daylight and saw my bloody clothes from last night draped over my dresser.

  And then I remembered I’d been in another fight.

  I sat up, tentatively self-evaluating my pain points before going to the bathroom mirror and confirming the worst. Legs: fine. Groin: fine, except I had to go to the bathroom — hardly unusual after just waking up. Abdomen: sore. Ribs: no problem.

  That was generally good news. It meant I’d taken only a few shots to the body, and no one had kicked me in the balls. I wasn’t a religious man, but I willed a silent thank-you to whatever deity was in charge of genital protection. The Greeks probably had somebody.

  I noticed some abrasions on my knuckles, but not too many, indicating the fight hadn’t lasted long. Unfortunately, my head was one big mass of throbbing, so after dragging myself into the bathroom, I took a look.

  It wasn’t pretty (even less than usual, I mean): My left eye was swelling nicely, with some purpling already evident around the socket. My nose didn’t look broken. This time. Though the lump on the bridge provided plenty of confirmation it had already happened three tim
es before. The back of my head stung and was tender to the touch, but no blood came away on my fingers. Finally, I had a cut on my chin, which brought flashes of a class ring. Whoever clocked me had graduated high school, at least.

  All told, the damage didn’t look too bad. Clearly there’d been no ER visit, and Charlie hadn’t felt the urge to bust out the first aid kit. Between that and the lack of ball-kicking, we had all the hallmarks of a successful evening.

  After brushing my teeth (gingerly, my jaw still ached) and shaving, I gathered up my bloody clothes before going downstairs. The physical evaluation was complete; now it was time for the psychological ordeal. Namely Charlie, my twin sister.

  The coffee smelled good, and I was grateful that she had bothered to make some. She was a tea-drinker herself, probably thanks to some unknown British ancestor. I didn’t see her in the kitchen, so I went into the laundry room and prepared to dump last night’s soiled fashions into the machine.

  “You’ll want to soak that shirt.”

  I turned. Charlie stood in the doorway, arms crossed. She was decked out in her version of business casual: a Dead Kennedys’ T-shirt and jeans that could charitably be referred to as “distressed.” Her long brown hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she completed the ensemble with red suede Pumas. Few places would consider that suitable work attire. Fortunately, we were self-employed.

  And I knew the soaking trick, for crying out loud.

  “Uh huh,” I said, throwing the shirt into the old iron laundry sink. I ran cold water until it was submerged, “Can you hand me the dish soap?”

  An unreadable look passed over her face, but she retrieved the bottle from the kitchen and gave it to me. Grunting my thanks, I squeezed a healthy dollop into the water and stirred everything with my hand until it was sufficiently frothy.

  There was still a decent chance the shirt was ruined. It wouldn’t be the first.

  “What do you remember, Cy?” she asked.

  Being a former detective and current private investigator, I summoned my formidable powers of recollection. There was a bar — pretty sure it was the Wing Joint over on Washington, but they all tend to run together in your mind after a time — and a fairly dense weeknight crowd. McHugh was pitching against the Angels. It was an away game, on the West Coast, so the evening was already fairly far along by the first pitch. I’d gone there by myself (as a mostly non-drinker, Charlie was the smarter twin), but was only two beers in when something happened.

  I relayed all this to her. “This sounds suspiciously like one of those ‘I was just minding my own business’ introductions,” she said.

  “But I was minding my own business,” I protested. “A guy can’t go catch a game at a bar without looking for trouble?”

  Charlie laughed. “If you just wanted to watch the game, you’d have gone to Rudyard’s or Alice’s Tall Texan.”

  “Alice’s doesn’t have TVs,” I said.

  “You know what I mean. You weren’t looking for a quiet evening’s contemplation; you went to a sports bar packed with meatheads because you knew it was the easiest place to start shit.”

  The evening was coming back to me. “I wasn’t the one who started it.”

  “You never are,” she said.

  The meathead in question had been talking trash all night, I remembered. He especially liked bagging on George Springer whenever he was on screen, but his vitriol wasn’t limited to the TV, as he was increasingly argumentative with his group’s waitress. His friends and someone I assumed was his girlfriend tried several times to get him to calm down, with little success.

  Noting his position in the establishment relative to mine, I filed it away for future reference. Belligerent drunks were tiresome and unpredictable, but they tend to be the only prospects when the night wears on.

  “See?” Charlie jumped in, ‘Right there, you talked about ‘prospects.’”

  “And?”

  “And?! You were obviously sizing up the crowd. Unless your romantic target profile has completely changed and now you only hit on drunk bro assholes.”

  I said, “Wow, ‘romantic target profile’ sounds a lot less serial killer-y when you say it.”

  No response to that, but maybe her patience was running out. Sisters, right?

  “May I continue?”

  I took her eyeroll as a “yes.”

  McHugh was taking a 4–3 lead into the eighth inning when the “drunk bro asshole” in question hovered into my peripheral vision, returning unsteadily from the restroom and scanning the room. His eyes settled on his embattled waitress and he hailed her in the fashion customary to his kind.

  “Yo, bitch!”

  The bar was loud, so only a handful of people heard, fewer still knew who he was bellowing at, and the two bouncers had disappeared downstairs, doubtless to deal with the Very Serious Threat of college freshmen trying to sneak in to deplete the bar’s domestic beer reservoirs.

  Without turning my head, I watched the waitress’s reaction. She tensed up but didn’t acknowledge him, perhaps hoping he was directing his charms elsewhere. No such luck.

  He lumbered past me with the bovine grace you’d expect from a person who’d been downing pitchers of Bud Light for three hours and grabbed her by the arm, tugging her toward him.

  “Where are my mozzarella sticks?” The act of speaking clearly took a lot out of him, as he was concentrating like she was about to reveal the riddle of the Sphinx.

  The young woman shook out of his grasp and strode off, probably to get the manager or the bouncer. I figured this was as good a time as any, left $20 for my beers, and got up from my stool.

  “Why didn’t you wait for the manager?” Charlie asked.

  “Why do you keep interrupting my story?” I countered.

  She said, “This was a completely avoidable situation. She did the right thing, de-escalating tensions by leaving to get help. You initiated contact for no good reason.”

  “I had good reasons,” I said.

  “You got something against fried cheese?”

  “Can I finish?”

  The guy was taller than me, but not by much. Bigger guys tend to put too much faith in their size, which can lead to a mouth overdraft of their ass’s checking account. I was counting on that, as well as my own (relative) sobriety.

  “Don’t you think it’s about time you called it a night?”

  He spun around, mostly without stumbling. “Who the fuck are you?”

  I smiled. “I’m the guy telling you to go home, chief.”

  In my experience, calling a guy “chief” — or “buddy” or “champ” — is almost guaranteed to get a rise out of them, and this dude wasn’t defying expectations. He laughed and tried to shove me in the chest, so I put him in a wrist lock and started bringing him to the floor. He swung with his left but mostly caught shirt as it glanced off my ribs. Before he could bring his arm around again, I elbowed him in the nose, releasing his wrist as I did so.

  He started wailing and brought both hands to his face as I stepped backward. One of the bouncers was coming up the stairs and made straight for us.

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “Must have walked into the Golden Tee machine,” I said. “He looks like he’s had a few.”

  I stepped around the drunk dude, who was now bleeding freely from his hopefully broken nose. His friends were slowly rising to see what was going on and I saw their waitress walk up behind the bouncer. She gave me the briefest of nods and returned to cashing out her checks, while I walked down the stairs and out of the bar.

  chapter TWO

  “Back up,” Charlie said.

  “What?”

  “You took the drunk dude down in two moves and left? That’s it?”

  I said, “I mean, he really wasn’t in any condition to fight.”

  “And the blood on your shirt? The black eye? Did you stop at another bar on the way home?”

  “Oh, that,” I said. “Nah, his friends jumped me in the parkin
g lot.”

  Charlie said, “Seems like a significant part of the story to leave out.”

  I was unlocking the front door of my trusty 1998 Toyota Corolla when I heard a footstep on the gravel behind me. I turned to my left and the beer bottle that had been aimed at the side of my head caught me on the thicker occipital bone of my skull. At first, I was more relieved than angry that I hadn’t gotten any glass in my eye.

  Then the anger came.

  There were three of them, two dudes I recognized from socializing with the asshole upstairs hanging back while the bottle-wielder looked equal parts surprised and disappointed that his bar-brawl tactic hadn’t worked.

  Use a whiskey bottle next time, junior, I thought, as I aimed a straight jab at his face. I put my hip into it and was rewarded with the crunch of bone under my knuckles. He staggered back, cursing, and I bull-rushed the bigger of his friends, hoping to take him by surprise.

  Charlie said, “It didn’t occur to you just to get in the car and drive off?”

  “You know the locks on that thing,” I replied. “Hell, the driver’s side door barely closes all the way.”

  “Of course.”

  The big guy recovered from his shock faster than I would’ve liked and didn’t go down when I hit him. He landed a sloppy punch to my ribs that might have caused some damage if he hadn’t been fighting gravity as well as me. I stomped on his foot as hard as I could, then kneed him in the groin.

  Hey, I didn’t say everyone had a successful evening.

  I looked up just in time to see a fist come looping in. I ducked, so I only caught most of it. That one hurt, but he’d only gotten enough weight behind it to carry him forward. I spun around as he overextended and nailed him in the back of the head with my elbow. He groaned and dropped to the ground.

  Red and blue lights suddenly illuminated the lot. I heard rapidly receding footfalls I deduced belonged to the bottle guy (former detective, remember). Then others approaching with cautious authority.