by Jude Hardin
That’s when the maintenance man walked in.
He was carrying a ladder.
“What are you doing?” he said.
I palmed the little gold lipstick tube. “Putting this tile back where it belongs,” I said.
“I got a call about that from Paul Jones. Who are you?”
“Perry Davis. I’m an inspector for the Department of Defense.”
I eased the tile into place, climbed down from the toilet, pocketed the camera. I opened the door to the stall and walked over to the sink to wash my hands.
“One of the night guys must have been messing around up there,” the maintenance man said. “I’ll have to have a talk with them.”
“Might be a good idea.”
“You shouldn’t have climbed up there like that. You could have fallen, hurt yourself real bad.”
“Just trying to be helpful,” I said.
“Appreciate it. Since I’m here anyway, I guess I’ll take a look. Try to see what the heck they were doing. I couldn’t find a work order on it anywhere.”
“All right,” I said. “Well, have a good one.”
“You too, Mr. Davis.”
I opened the door and walked away. Took the elevator to the first floor, made a beeline for the exit. I needed to get out of there before the maintenance man figured out there had never been anything to work on behind that tile.
Angela the receptionist spoke to me as I walked past her fancy desk.
“How did it go?” she said.
I turned and faced her. My back was against the door. One more step and I would have been outside.
“Great,” I said. “No problems.”
“Glad to hear it.” She fanned herself with her hand. “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”
I shrugged. “Feels OK I guess.”
She was trying to bait me into some clever banter, but I just wanted to make it out the door and never look back.
“Anyway,” she said. “It’s been a long day. I’m so ready for a nice drink somewhere. Maybe some dinner. One more hour, and I’m out of here.”
She smiled at me in a flirty way.
I looked at my watch. “Yeah. Well, I better get going. I still have a lot of paperwork to—”
Her phone buzzed. She held a finger up, indicating she wanted me to stick around while she took the call.
I didn’t.
I backed out of the door and walked toward my car at a pace that would have made a New Yorker proud. I was almost trotting when I heard Angela’s voice from behind.
“Inspector Davis!” she shouted. “Mr. Von Lepstein wants to talk to you before you leave.”
I pretended not to hear her. I climbed into the Altima and fired it up and burned some rubber on the way out of the parking lot.
I tooled through the industrial park, made it out to the highway and took a left. I needed to take the Altima back to the rental car place. If someone came looking for Perry Wendell Davis, the trail would stop there. I’d used the Visa card Di had left for me, so my real name wasn’t on anything.
I took a right on Wells Road, breathed a sigh of relief. In ten minutes I would be Nicholas Colt again. In ten minutes I would be driving my Jimmy back to the studio.
I was feeling pretty good about everything until I looked in the rearview mirror and noticed the flashing lights behind me.
It was Von Lepstein. I could see his face. That’s how close he was.
Riding my ass and flashing his headlights and honking his horn.
Fuck.
He obviously wanted me to pull over. Could the maintenance man have figured anything out that quickly? I didn’t think so. Then what did Von Lepstein want with me? What could possibly have been urgent enough for Aero-Fleck’s chief executive officer to leave his post and frantically pursue a DOD inspector?
I had no intention of stopping to find out. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. I needed to lose him and get rid of the Altima and get the hell out of Orange Park.
I downshifted and sped up and started weaving through traffic. I could still see his headlights, but they were farther away from me now. They were several car lengths behind and two lanes over. If I could make it to the interstate, I stood a good chance of shaking him. That is, if a cop didn’t nail me somewhere along the way for speeding and running red lights.
My cell phone rang. The one Di had left for me.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” Di said. “You’re going to have to pull over and talk to him.”
“Where are you?”
“Don’t worry about it. Ahead on the right there’s a Chinese buffet that went out of business a few months ago. Turn in there and pull around back. And don’t hang up. I want to hear what Von Lepstein is saying.”
“I think I can lose him,” I said.
“Don’t even try it. Pull over like I told you to.”
I steered into the parking lot, whipped around to the service entrance, and killed the engine.
“You still there?” I said.
“Yes. Set the phone somewhere where I’ll be able to hear your conversation with Von Lepstein.”
I set the phone on the passenger’s seat and rolled down the windows and waited.
The defunct Chinese place completely blocked my view of the road. There was a big green dumpster and a stack of empty pallets and a rusty grocery cart. The cart had some old clothes in it and a pair of combat boots and a Jacksonville Jaguars ball cap. It was a homeless person’s cart. I wondered what the story was behind that. I wanted to think the owner had moved on to something better, but I doubted that was the case.
Von Lepstein pulled in beside me.
I opened my door and climbed out.
He opened his door and climbed out.
“I wanted to talk to you before you left,” he said. “About the inspection.”
“Are you out of your mind? Is this how you always do business? I really don’t appreciate you chasing me down like this, Mr. Von Lepstein. The inspection went fine. I’ll email you my report. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
I started to get back into the Altima.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Pardon me?” I tried to conjure up an expression of disbelief, as though he’d asked me a question that was beyond ridiculous. Like how to get to the moon from here or something.
“What’s your real name? Why were you checking out our schematics? You some kind of corporate spy or something?”
“That’s a pretty serious accusation,” I said. “And it’s also pretty ludicrous. I already told you my name. You never asked for identification, but you should have. It’s protocol, and that’s the one area of the inspection I plan to fail you on.”
“Can you show me your identification now?”
“I can, but it’s not going to make any difference in your grade on the inspection.”
“Please.”
I pulled out my wallet and showed him my driver’s license and my Department of Defense ID card. Beneath my indignant exterior, I was trembling like a Chihuahua in an ice storm.
“Satisfied?” I said. “Because I would really like to—”
“These are fake,” he said. “Want to know how I know they’re fake?”
I laughed. “Sure. This should be good.”
Before he could answer, I heard a whirring sound followed by a sickening thud.
Von Lepstein’s mouth opened and his eyes bulged. He fell to his knees and then toppled forward. There was a wooden shank sticking out of his back, what appeared to be a splintered-off piece of a broomstick.
I looked around, didn’t see anybody. Von Lepstein’s back had been to the dumpster, so the makeshift dagger had to have come from that direction.
I reached into the passenger’s side door of the Altima and grabbed the cell phone.
“Di, you there?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you? Von Lepstein’s dead. Someone threw a—”
“Take his wallet and get out of th
ere,” she said.
“What?”
“Just do it. Now.”
She disconnected.
I reached into Von Lepstein’s sports coat and pulled out his wallet, and then I climbed into my car and sped away.
I drove to the rental place and turned in the car. I’d parked my Jimmy on the other side of the mall, by Books-A-Million, so there was no chance of anyone connecting me to the Altima. All trails led to Perry Wendell Davis, a man who technically didn’t exist.
But Nicholas Colt did exist, and he had just witnessed a murder. He’d seen Kurt Von Lepstein—the chief executive officer of Aero-Fleck Audio—die from a stab wound, and then he had taken the dead man’s wallet.
Nicholas Colt was rattled. Confused. He needed to talk to Di. He needed a drink.
But he still had some work to do.
I went to my studio, stood behind the counter and sealed the lipstick camera into a small padded envelope. I had no idea what to do with Von Lepstein’s wallet. I thought about locking it in the briefcase along with the flimsy binder and the cell phone and the credit card and the phony DOD credentials, but I didn’t. I decided to stick it in my pocket and take it to the Airstream later. It would be safer in the gun locker with the phony birth certificate and social security card. I set the briefcase on the floor behind the counter and tried to forget about it for the moment.
There was a picture calendar tacked to the wall beside me, each month decorated with a photograph of a vintage guitar. I glanced at it, and for the first time all day realized it was Friday the twentieth. One week until the president would make his speech at the University of Florida commencement ceremony.
It had been a pretty lucky day so far. For me, that is. Not for Kurt Von Lepstein. I’d planted the bug in the CEO’s office and I’d taken pictures of the coded classified document and I’d made it out of the plant with the camera. All without being arrested and charged with espionage against the United States of America. As days go, it had been lucky as hell, right up to the time Von Lepstein started following me. I still couldn’t figure out how he’d caught on, how he’d come to the conclusion I was a fraud. Maybe Diana could fill me in later.
I grabbed a Sharpie and wrote KEYS TO THE CONDO across the front of the envelope in block letters. My instructions were to wait until dark, and then deliver it to the drop box at the attorney’s office.
Fridays and Sundays were my free days. No guitar students. Fridays to catch up on business matters, and Sundays to catch up on rest.
So it caught me by surprise when Terry Vine walked in at six o’clock carrying the instrument I’d loaned him.
“Hi, Terry,” I said.
“Hey.”
He leaned the guitar case against the counter and sat on the wooden stool there across from me.
“What’s up?” I said.
“I’m here for my lesson.”
“Your lesson was yesterday. Your lesson is always on Thursdays at four-thirty. This is Friday, and it’s six o’clock. I don’t do lessons on Friday.”
“It’s Thursday,” Terry said. “And my lesson is at six. It’s always been at six.”
I looked at the calendar again. When you’re fifty, and you tend to overindulge in spirits from time to time, and you work hard trying to build your business and you have a kid in college and you have recurring nightmares about a murderous television evangelist and a neo-Nazi cult and a video game called Snuff Tag 9 and a serial killer called The Zombie, you lose a day every now and then. Sometimes, you even wonder if you’re losing your mind.
Pixilated, my grandmother used to say. It meant you were going bananas.
But I knew I had seen Terry yesterday, and I knew his lessons were always at four-thirty.
Maybe he was losing his mind.
I put my finger on the calendar, on the box with 20 printed on it.
“This is today, Terry. And—”
He started laughing. “I’m just messing with you, Mr. Colt. Don’t get all uptight now.”
“Messing with me?” I said.
“Next week is spring break. I’m going out of town, so you said I could do two lessons in a row this week. Thursday and Friday. You told me to come at six. Don’t you remember?”
I didn’t remember, but Terry was a good kid and I knew he wouldn’t lie to me.
“Must have slipped my mind,” I said. “Go on back to the studio room. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Terry walked back and started setting up. He was lucky that I just happened to be at the studio. Normally, I would have been home by six o’clock on a Friday.
I dropped the padded envelope into the drawer under the counter, joined Terry in the studio room and taught him some more magic on the six-string. After the lesson, I asked him where he was going for spring break.
“I’m flying out to California to see my dad,” he said. “He sent me money for a ticket.”
“That’s great. What part of California?”
“The Mojave desert. My dad’s in the air force, stationed at Edwards there. And he’s going to take me to some other cool places. Los Angeles, Disneyland. And there’s a big motocross race at the Rose Bowl. Can’t wait to see that.”
Terry put the Telecaster in its case, snapped it shut.
“Sounds like a fun time,” I said. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your dad?”
He didn’t answer my question. In fact, he didn’t say another word. He picked up the guitar case and walked out of the studio room.
Kids. I must have pushed the wrong button. I sat there for a couple of minutes wondering what I’d done to make him angry.
I turned the amplifiers off and locked the studio room, walked to the front counter and called Juliet to ask her if she wanted me to bring home something for dinner.
“Are you coming now?” she said.
“Shortly.”
“I guess some chicken sounds OK.”
“KFC?”
“Get some at the deli at Publix. And some macaroni salad.”
“OK.”
“So what have you been doing all afternoon?”
“Working,” I said. “Ordering some things online, balancing the checkbook, running errands. Stuff like that. And then a while ago a student came in, and I ended up giving him a lesson.”
“What student?”
“Terry Vine. Did I ever tell you about him?”
“Yeah, you talk about him all the time. You always say he reminds you of yourself at that age. But I thought you didn’t schedule any students on Fridays.”
“Special circumstances,” I said. I explained why Terry had come in, and that I had forgotten about agreeing to the Friday lesson.
“OK. Well, see you in a little while then.”
“Bye.”
I shut everything down, grabbed the envelope and headed out. The attorney’s office was in another strip mall about three miles from my studio, and before I hit the halfway point I noticed someone else was tailing me. I made some unnecessary turns to make sure. They weren’t going about it aggressively this time, but I was definitely being followed. Maybe it was Diana. I hoped it was. I hoped she would get in touch with me sometime before the night was over.
By the time I reached the strip mall, there was a fat yellow moon rising over the stand of pines behind the buildings. I parked and got out and walked up to the attorney’s storefront. All the lights were off, the lawyer who ran the place long gone for the day. The metal plate on the lower right side of the door said DROP BOX in big red letters. I opened it and dropped the little padded envelope into the chute.
The car that had been shadowing me was on the other side of the parking lot. It wasn’t Di. It was a man. He’d gotten out of his black Jeep Cherokee and was pretending to look at a 1966 Ford Fairlane with a FOR SALE sign in the window. It was dark, and there were fifty yards of asphalt between us, so I couldn’t make out his features. But it was definitely a man. Either that or Di had grown a beard and a set of biceps as big as hams.
I thought about walking over there and talking to him, but I didn’t.
I figured he was working with Di. That was the only explanation. Nobody else had a reason to secretly follow me around. Maybe he was there to protect me. Maybe he was the one who had shanked Von Lepstein.
I didn’t want to blow his cover, so I didn’t go talk to him. He was actually pretty good at what he was doing. Most people would have never noticed the tail. But Nicholas Colt wasn’t most people. Nicholas Colt had been a licensed private investigator for a lot of years, and he knew when he was being followed.
Now Nicholas Colt was a secret agent, and he was starting to like it.
FRIDAY, APRIL 20
Well, I did it. After catching my husband in lie after lie, I finally hired a private investigator. His name is Max Marlin, and I received my first report from him today. We met in person at the Huddle House in Green Cove Springs this morning.
Max was sitting at a booth drinking coffee and reading the newspaper when I got there. He was a big man, very muscular, with short black hair and a beard. I recognized him from a picture he had emailed to me.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Juliet?”
“Yes. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Marlin.”
“You can call me Max. Have a seat.”
He folded the newspaper and set it aside.
I scooted into the seat across from him. I was a little nervous. Anxious, actually. The way you feel when you’re waiting for the results of a Pap smear or something.
A waitress came and asked if I would like something to drink.
“Coffee,” I said. “And a glass of ice water.”
Max laced his fingers together and rested his hands on the table. His arms were massive, his chest broad enough for me to do a cartwheel on. At least it seemed that way.
“I have some good news, and some bad news,” he said.
“OK.”
“The good news is, I don’t think your husband is seeing another woman.”
“Are you sure? I mean, he gets phone calls at all hours, sneaks out in the middle of the night, lies about where he’s been. And he never pays much attention to me anymore. All classic signs. What else could it be?”