Framed: A Jarek Grayson Private Detective Novel (Grayson Investigative Services Book 2)

by Boyd Craven III

  “No.”

  “Yeah, Sally didn’t seem to think he was serious about it. When I asked her about the unhooding thing with Anonymous, she just laughed it off. She said that the Klan wasn’t what it used to be, and the old men nowadays use it as an excuse to shoot the shi—” she looked at me, her hand coming to her lips to stop the words.

  “Go on,” I said, figuring out what she was going to say.

  Showing restraint with curse words? Where did Johanna Nash go? Who was I sitting next to?

  “They come to talk and gossip there once a week. I guess it’s a known meeting place, but with a small town of a couple hundred people, one general store…Jarek! They have a bar there. I can smell the burgers!”

  Sure enough, as we were driving back out a slightly different way through town, we passed downtown, or what they called downtown. A post office sat on one side of a three-building block. To the left of it was a general store, and to the left of that was a storefront with black paper over the windows and a dozen Harleys parked in front of it. Across the street was the source of the smell, and I’d admit it wasn’t a bad one.

  It simply said “Bar” on the neon sign in the windows, and there was one car in front of it. Probably whoever was tending the bar at lunchtime in Sleepytown, USA.

  “You want to eat there?” I asked her, already knowing the answer.

  She nodded, and I marveled again at the fact that she seemed to have become the woman or younger girl I never got to see. Granted, I lost touch with her for eight years when she’d enlisted, but we’d still email and call each other for birthdays and holidays. I don’t think I’d ever seen her like this, and it was hitting me funny in a way I couldn’t describe.

  “Yeah, let’s try it out. Looks dead to me. You sure you don’t mind?”

  One car. It couldn’t be all that bad, and even if there were a couple people inside, it wouldn’t be enough to trigger my anxiety. I’d survived Tony’s twice now, though the one time I was beaten severely…yes, that was still survival.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Good, because there’s no way my new baby will fit through the drive-through!”

  Oh yeah, I gave her the truck. Great.

  We pulled into a slanted parking spot along the roadside, and almost before I could get my seatbelt unbuckled, Johanna was already bounding to my side of the truck, waiting on me.

  “What is going on with you?” I asked her.

  “What?” she said, looking around.

  “What happened to you? You’re…happy?” I asked her.

  “Is there something wrong with that?” she asked, a frown tugging the edges of her lips.

  I got out without falling on my face, nor getting road grime on my suit, and slammed the door.

  “No, it’s just that I only see brief flashes of this. Not an entire hour’s worth. It’s…disturbing,” I admitted.

  “Me being happy bothers you?” she asked, coming close.

  I tensed. She was in my personal space, and she knew it. I looked up to meet her gaze, and instead of anger, I could see the sunlight glinting off her irises, giving her a wild look somehow. Wild and unkempt as the wind picked up and blew stray strands of her hair around her eyes.

  “Not bothered, just…I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”

  “Come on,” she said, taking my hand and dragging me towards the door. “Oh, and go with it; small town bars are funny sometimes.”

  I pondered that. She was holding my hand, something I was working on comfort-wise. She wasn’t holding it to pull me along per se, but holding it as if…

  “Oh!” I said out loud. “You want people to think we’re a couple?” I stopped her short before she’d pulled the large wooden doorway open.

  “Yeah, like I said, small town bars can be funny.”

  She pulled away half a second, opened the door, and motioned for me to follow. I stepped in and my eyes adjusted in the darkened gloom, trying to make out all the details. It took me half a heartbeat too long, and Jo had grabbed my hand again and pulled me close to the bar. It was old and scarred. The entire place smelled of stale beer, and something crunched underneath my shoes. I looked down, expecting to see something disgusting like cockroaches, but it was peanut shells, evidentially dropped by a previous patron.

  The bartender was the only one I could make out, and she was standing just behind it, in front of what had to be the most impressive collection of liquor anywhere except my apartment. She was smiling and cleaning a griddle, drying its surface off. Next to the small griddle was a deep fryer.

  “What can I get you two?” she asked, turning her smile on us.

  Three teeth were missing when she smiled. I tried not to wince, because I had been in the process of checking her out. I have nothing against women with missing teeth, but the ones she had left were yellowed, and one was turning black. Judging by the smell coming from her mouth, she probably didn’t brush them all that often either. Clean griddle or no, the bartender grossed me out, even if she had a playboy bunny figure.

  “Burgers and fries?” Jo asked. “You want a drink?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take a Heineken in a paper cup,” I told her.

  “Paper cup?” the bartender asked.

  She got close, and I could see her nametag, Jackie.

  “Yes please. I don’t see Styrofoam anywhere, and I really have this thing about germs. See, a disposable product—”

  She turned away and then turned back towards me, pulling the long handle of a beer tap. I could smell the griddle heating back up, and Johanna snickered next to me. The bartender handed me a tall frosty glass of beer in an actual glass. I glowered at her and turned to look around the bar again now that my eyes were getting used to the darkness inside.

  An old TV hung in the corner, the power cord hanging loose on the ground as the dead unit stood sentinel.

  “Grab a seat hun,” Jo said. “Girl talk.”

  I took my beer and the napkin that had been slid under it and walked towards the back. There was an old chipped pool table mixed in with some 50s-style restaurant chairs and tables. All told, the place probably seated thirty people. I picked a spot towards the back, where it was dark enough that I couldn’t see if things were clean or not, because at that point I didn’t want to know.

  “There’s no karaoke until Friday night, hun!” the bartender had leaned over to shout to me.

  “Sure,” I called back.

  I sat there for a few moments, trying to assess myself. My heart rate was slow, and although I was only mildly grossed out with the bartender’s teeth and the fact I was about to take a drink from a glass that didn’t come from my own bar setup, I was feeling pretty good. A sip of the beer had me almost smiling in relief. No germs could survive on a glass so cold, and parts of the beer had frozen into a slush floating just underneath the foamy head.

  I took another sip and put it down, wishing my father could be here with us right now. I don’t think he’d recognize me. I killed most of the beer waiting for Jo and the food.

  “Here you go,” Johanna said as I was pulling my tablet out to check for a signal.

  She’d slid two plates on the table. Both had impressive-looking bar burgers with a side of fries so hot they were still sizzling. I reached behind me to the closest table and got the condiments. Salt and pepper, and ketchup.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jo promised before winking and heading into what had to have been the women’s restroom.

  “This can’t be that bad, can it?” I asked myself.

  I was fixing my food when the door opened up, the bright daylight sending bolts of pain to my eyes as four men stomped in. I could hear the creaking of their leather and was able to make out their silhouettes from the day-piercing gloom. Big, leather-bound men, looking right out of an old Mad Max movie my dad had me watch with him.

  Two of them stopped at the bar, probably ordering, and I could make out the third one walking my way when the door closed. My eyes protested in the s
hift of light again, and I lost sight of him until he was almost right on top of me.

  “Jackie makes a pretty good burger, huh?” the guy asked.

  I looked up. He was a good six and a half feet tall and as broad as the table I was sitting at.

  “I haven’t tried it out yet, but I’m about to,” I told him, not wanting to run on at the mouth and suddenly feeling uneasy.

  “Give it a try, you’ll like it,” he said and headed towards a door further down the hall where Johanna had disappeared to.

  I blew out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding and put my burger back together after adding enough ketchup to make it good for me. I had already salted both Jo’s plate and mine and was about to dig in when she slid into her seat.

  “Ketchup?” she asked, and I slid it over.

  “So what has gotten into you?” I asked her, using a non-literal phrase to test things out.

  “Before my mom and dad got divorced,” she paused to take a bite of half a dozen fries that had been dragged through the ketchup, “we lived out in the country. It wasn’t this town, but it reminds me of where I grew up so much. The old farm, the old mud truck…”

  “Mud truck?” I asked her, taking a bite of the burger.

  I almost dropped it. I wasn’t expecting anything more than a greasy patty with the fixings layered on top of it. Instead, I got what had to have been the best burger I’d ever eaten. I’d seen the griddle, the little hand weights that held it down as it cooked to speed the process…but nothing prepared me for this.

  “Good? Anyways,” Jo said, “it’s a big truck, lifted like the Dodge.” She nodded over her shoulder towards the exit. “And you drive it through mud and over rocks and stumps. Trying not to get stuck.”

  “That sounds barbaric,” I told her dryly.

  I mean, tearing up a perfectly good piece of equipment, or potentially tearing it up, to drive through a mud hole? I shook my head, not understanding the “fun” she seemed to get from it, but I wasn’t going to make her mad by telling her I thought it was dumb.

  “Don’t knock it till you try it,” she said over a mouthful of food.

  She drank what had to have been some sort of pop, and I sipped on my beer. The man came out of the restroom and saw me. He gave me a gesture with his hands and then rubbed his stomach. Was he hungry? Jo saw my gaze and turned around. The man made the gesture again as he passed us, a puzzled look on his face.

  “These are fantastic,” Johanna said, and he smiled.

  “That guy is huge,” I whispered to Johanna.

  “They have to grow them big out here. That’s the only way to get the cows and pigs to cooperate, plus all the heavy machinery.”

  “They grow them…what?”

  Jo cracked up and took a big bite of her burger, her eyes rising to meet her eyebrows.

  “It’s good,” I whispered to her.

  “Oh…my…God…” was all she said before taking another ravenous bite.

  Watching her devour that burger would usually have grossed me out, but I was having the same issue she was. I hadn’t gone into the bar all that hungry or thirsty, but the burger was so good I was having a hard time putting it down between bites.

  “Looks like you got yourself a new pair of converts down there!” one of the bikers at the bar shouted.

  They chuckled, and then it was another man’s turn to slide away from the bar and start walking. Already figuring he was headed to the bathroom, I ignored him and focused on finishing my food. I was excited to have a couple different places to start on Mephisto. The worm, and now, perhaps some fingerprints.

  “Jackie makes one of the best burgers in the county,” the man said. He’d evidentially made a side trip instead of heading right to the bathroom.

  “I must admit, this was surprisingly good,” I told him.

  I took in his features. He was older than the other man, probably in his mid-fifties, his beard and hair shot through with white and gray streaks.

  “What do you think of Jackie?”

  “The bartender?” I asked him.

  Jo kicked me hard under the chair, and I looked down there to see what the matter was. I got another kick, not as hard, on the other leg. Ahhh, nonverbal. She was trying to tell me something. Her face was blank as far as cluing me in, so I looked back up to the man.

  “She seems pleasant enough. I asked for a paper glass instead of a glass glass, but she overrode me, gave me this,” I said, holding up my beer. “And I’ve not regretted it. The food is excellent.”

  “She’s a keeper, that one. Isn’t she just the prettiest lady around here?”

  Sometimes, I just can’t help myself, even when I see it coming.

  “She’s got an amazing figure,” I started, and saw Jo motioning with her hands, even going as far as dragging her thumb across her throat. “But if she’d get her teeth fixed, she’d be a knockout. You know, with modern dentistry, I bet they could fix her right up in a month or two, or if she wanted to save her teeth, she could probably get by with having them capped and crowned after implants—”

  “Excuse me?” the man said, and I got another kick under the table.

  I was going to have a bruise.

  “She seems like a lovely lady,” Johanna answered for me. “We’re just passing through, not looking for trouble.”

  The man pulled a plastic pop bottle from somewhere behind him and unscrewed the top, spitting inside of it. It was flecked with bits of what had to have been chew. I was more than mildly disgusted with the act and the fact he carried it around with him. The man grunted at the both of us and walked towards the bathroom.

  “That’s her boyfriend, I think,” Jo said as soon as he was gone. “So watch it.”

  “My leg hurts,” I told her. “You kept kicking me. How am I supposed to know what you mean when you kick me? I don’t get nonverbal stuff. You know that. If you were trying to get me to shut up, just hold your hand up, a finger at the lips should suffice…I—”

  Jo held a hand up to her lips, and I shut up as the man walked past us again, heading back to the bar where his companions sat. He pulled the spit bottle out of his rear pocket and emptied his mouth into it.

  “No wonder her teeth are rotting out. If that’s her boyfriend, his chewing tobacco habit probably did it,” I told her, trying to be funny. But I was so grossed out by the spitting.

  Johanna stiffened. Evidentially I wasn’t as quiet as I had thought, because he spun and started to walk back over. His heavy tread worried me, and I stood at the same moment Johanna did.

  “Back door,” she whispered, throwing a twenty on the table.

  “What did you say about my woman?” the man thundered just as we made it to the emergency exit at the back of the bar.

  “He didn’t say anything, and we’re just leaving,” Jo said.

  Wow, she didn’t go all alpha girl on him. Was this a new Johanna? I hesitated.

  “If your retarded boyfriend says one more damned thing…”

  The last was punctuated with a beefy arm smacking me across the chest. It was so sudden and so unexpected that it hurt more than it probably should have. I gasped and saw Jo blur into motion. She chopped at the man’s neck as he put an arm out, stopping her blow, using his other hand to swing at me.

  I don’t know how, but at the last second I ducked, and his fist hit the wood frame of the emergency exit. He cursed and shook his hand. I took the opportunity to duck under his outstretched arms and push the door open. I heard a heavy grunt and thud behind me as Johanna was on my heels a second later.

  I don’t think we spoke until we got to the truck. With a grace I didn’t know I possessed, I was able to scramble in and buckle up as the front of the bar opened and four leather-clad figures rushed out, one limping and cupping his balls.

  “Go,” Johanna screamed at the ignition as the truck fired to life.

  “Their bikes…” I complained, looking around.

  We tore out of the bar in reverse, almost dipping off th
e road before Jo whipped the wheel around and had us pointing more or less in the right direction.

  “What happened to you in there?” I asked her. “You hesitated.”

  “Didn’t you see his tattoo?” she shouted, fumbling with the gearshift and the radio all at once.

  “I saw a lot of tattoos, some of them quite closely,” I told her, not quite shouting.

  “Force Recon. I caught a glimpse of it as he slapped you.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” I asked her and then made the mistake of looking in the rearview mirror.

  Four bikes were running down the center of the road. We turned onto a dirt road, and if anything, they sped up.

  “They know everything I do, and then some,” Jo said. “By the way, nice duck there.”

  “Thanks. Nice…whatever it was that you did to him.”

  “Uhhhh…we have a problem,” Johanna said, looking back for the first time.

  “Yeah. I know. We have to lose them.”

  “The cops around here are probably all related to everyone,” Jo complained and then jerked the wheel.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed as we jumped a ditch and bounced through a freshly turned field.

  “We’re going mudding!” Jo shouted back. She let out another rebel yell, right out the side window.

  7

  We arrived back at GIS in time for Jo to switch out vehicles. A very nervous and worried Skye was waiting and chatting with Annette. I saw her through the glass and headed in.

  “What happened to the truck?” Skye asked.

  “Jo took it mudding,” I told her in way of explanation.

  Boy did she ever, but at least we had lost the bikers and made it out of hillbilly hell, whatever that meant.

  “I was worried that you two forgot, or I’d have to go alone,” Skye told me after a moment’s hesitation.

  Jo pulled up and honked. She was in the town car, one of my favorites.

  “And don’t you let Jarek know about that picture!” Annette admonished.

  “Oh, he already saw it,” Skye said, her blush almost making her head look like it was ready to explode.