She answered the door in a hair net, a flowery housedress, and a yellow cardigan with toasted tea cake crumbs down the front. Her feet were in huge fuzzy slippers that I’d given her last Christmas.
“Mortimer! Great timing! I have a drain that’s plugged.”
Yep, great timing.
But the world plays ping-pong with our priorities on a regular basis, so I went in and got right to it after handing her the bag of goodies. I knew right where she kept the drain snake. She looked in the bag as I went to work on the bathroom sink.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“Stuff to keep safe for me.”
“From the cops?” she said hopefully.
“From anyone. Including the cops.”
“Good. That include Maude?”
“Well, no. You should give it to her if she asks for it.”
She sniffed the bag, as if its scent would tell her something she hadn’t seen by looking.
“It’s about this thing with Jo-X,” I told her.
“Who the hell is Jones?”
Her hearing aid isn’t always up to par. Batteries are an issue. She hadn’t heard a word about Jo-X. She doesn’t have television or a computer. No Internet, no iPhone. Just the morning paper, which I’d seen on her front porch as I drove up. Nor would Jo-X have held any interest for her, and I didn’t want to explain my latest coup. I especially didn’t want to mention his rapper lyrics, which were toxic as a cloud of powdered plutonium. I asked her about her kids to throw her off. Alex and Beth were both older than me by fifteen and seventeen years, respectively, and I had two tea cakes while she caught me up on the latest.
I left Velma with a drain so free of obstructions it could suck down a possum. At eleven twenty-five, I rolled by Danya and Shanna’s house, wondering if I’d missed a clue or two in my rush yesterday, but Fairchild and Day were in the backyard, standing at the entrance to the garage. I caught a glimpse of them as I went by. A patrol car was at the curb in front, an unmarked car in the driveway, two vans across the street. The front door of the house was open. I saw three crime scene techs milling around.
I parked up the street and phoned Fairchild.
“Where are you?” First words out of his mouth. No “Hi,” or “How’s it hangin’, Mort.” Nothing like that. Caller ID was making it harder all the time to surprise anyone.
“On the street. About a hundred feet west of you. West is the direction in which the sun sets in case you don’t—”
“Stay right there. Don’t move.”
Redundant instructions, but I thought I’d save time by heading toward him anyway. We walked back to the house together. He had a lit Camel jammed in the corner of his mouth, so we trailed smoke. He didn’t take the butt out until we hit the driveway.
“Got somethin’ to show you,” he said.
We went around back, then around to the far side of the house. “What do you think?” he asked.
“About what?”
He pointed with the last third of his Camel. “Someone tore the drainpipe off the wall last night.”
I looked around the yard, then over the back fence. “Didn’t figure this for a high-crime neighborhood.”
“Except for a recent murder, you mean?”
“Okay, that. But, a downspout? Who’d want that?”
“Wouldn’t know anything about it, huh?”
I looked up to where the remaining part of the drainpipe had been bent outward, then at Russ. “If I did—hypothetically, you understand—would you want me to tell you about it? And, by the way, I’ll let you know when that five thousand dollars is used up.”
He connected those two comments, which should have had no relation to one another, then looked down at his feet, took one last suck on the Camel, mashed the butt on the bottom of his shoe, and stuck the remains in a pocket to keep from contaminating the crime scene. What a cop.
“Vandalism,” he said with a sigh. “House here has been all over the news. Must’ve been kids, wanting a souvenir since it was Jo-X. We’ll probably never know who did it unless they Facebook it or try to sell it on eBay.”
“A drainpipe on eBay. That sounds about right, but I’d look harder at that Facebook thing. Kids can’t keep a secret worth a damn. Anything else you want to show me around here?”
He didn’t, so I left. A thought occurred to me, so I drove on down to Virginia Street and left the Toyota on a side street, across from Danya’s bank. I sat there for five minutes, then my stomach growled, reminding me of something I’d forgotten to do, so I went into Adelpho’s Greek Food on the corner and ordered up a lamb gyro with Tzatziki sauce, then sat at a window seat with a nice view of the front and side entrances to the bank.
Then time crept by like a sloth doing the hundred-yard dash in sub-zero weather.
I had another gyro.
And a Diet Coke.
A lady with a kid in a car seat went into the bank, came out four minutes thirty-seven seconds later. And, yes, I timed her.
Eighteen hundred seconds passed as 12:18 turned into 12:48.
A man in a suit went into the bank, stayed inside for eleven minutes two seconds, came out, got into an Audi, took off south on Virginia Street.
I couldn’t pack in another gyro but I was bored. Adelpho—all five feet two inches of him—smiled at me since I was taking up a seat. I smiled back, got another Diet Coke, thought maybe I could order up another gyro to go, eat it later.
A white Pontiac pulled up and an elderly lady, eighty pounds overweight, wearing a Goodwill dress and a wide-brim hat, got out on the passenger side and limped into the bank in clunky black shoes.
I drank the last of my Coke. Slurped it. Stared at the bank.
Goodwill clothing. Big hat. Limp.
Huh.
I got up, ambled across the street, and went into the bank to think about opening a new account.
No old lady in the place, but the bank had restrooms. I could see the Pontiac through a glass door at the side of the lobby.
I sat on a couch in a common area and picked up a magazine on a glass table, sat back, started to read an article about Ibo Island off the coast of Mozambique. Cool place. Might go there on vacation if they weren’t beheading Americans.
The old lady emerged slowly from the safe deposit area, came out through a low swinging door, and headed for the side entrance. She was tall, and she had a big purse that looked like it had some heft to it.
I got up.
The lady went outside, and I followed. As she was opening the car door, I said, “I like the hat, Shanna, but that dress has got to go.”
Well, I didn’t mean it like that, like she should take the dress off, right then and there, although I wouldn’t have stopped her if she did, but it slowed her down and brought her head up. And, yes, it was Shanna.
She got in the car, moving spritely now. I went around to the driver’s side. “Your dad’s worried about you,” I said to Danya. She had on a dishwater blond wig, dark glasses. Might fool a cop from sixty feet away.
“Tell him I’m okay.” She put the car in reverse, started to back up, then stopped. “I didn’t kill Jo-X. I mean, we didn’t.”
“Didn’t think you did.”
“But the whole world does, Mortimer.”
“Mort. You should talk to the police, get this cleared up. Both of you, actually, since both of you live in that house.”
“Can’t do that. Anyway, you’re fired. I mean, I never hired you. Gotta go, but it’s been nice talking to you.” She backed up and cut the wheels.
The windows were rolled down so I gave it one last try as the Pontiac started forward. “You should at least call your dad.” I looked at Shanna. “You, too, Celine, if you have family around.”
The car lunged as Danya hit the brakes. “What? What did you call her?” Her dark glasses stared at me like insect eyes.
“Celine.”
“Fuck.”
She hit the gas, stopped as she glanced left on Virginia Street, then w
ent one block north and turned east. Gone.
I had the tag number, description of the car, so I got out my cell phone and called Fairchild.
“Now what, Angel?”
“I just saw your kid, Detective. Me, America’s foremost finder of missing per—”
“Where?”
“—sons. South Virginia Street. Driving a Pontiac Grand Am, white, couple years old. Last I saw her, she turned off Virginia, east on Vassar. Shanna was with her.” I gave him the license plate of the Pontiac, and he hung up on me, probably felt he had things to do, but he didn’t give me time to give him a description of the girls, an oversight that was likely to bite him in the ass.
Okay, then. C’est la vie.
I went back to my car, headed east on Vassar keeping my eyes open, but the neighborhood was a vast rectangular grid, too many turns and exits, so I came up empty. I did, however, see a sudden increase in the number of police cars patrolling the streets between Virginia Street and Kietzke Lane.
Now what?
Fairchild and sixty or eighty police officers probably had the streets covered. Danya and Shanna’s rental house was a beehive of crime scene activity. I couldn’t think of any other place to look. I’d gotten damn lucky, finding them at the bank—luck being the reason Russell had hired me. But luck runs in streaks, and I felt like this streak had about run its course.
So, time to make my own luck.
I drove back to Velma’s place, got my bag of clues, checked her drain again, still suckin’ it down, then went back home and sat in the kitchen sorting through the things I’d gathered, trying to find a thread I could pull to unravel this sweater. A longneck of Pete’s Wicked Ale didn’t help, but didn’t seem to hurt, either. Fairchild wanted me to skate around the fuzzy edge of the law, avoiding the kind of rules that did nothing but get in the way. Speaking of which, I’d gotten away with a felony or two, which pleased me enough that I rewarded myself with another Pete’s.
The stuff I’d found on Jo-X were the felonies. Ripping the downspout off the side of the house was probably no more than a misdemeanor so it barely counted. Maybe I should’ve kept it as a souvenir. I mean, the downspout of the place where Jo-X was last seen decomposing? You kiddin’? I could have picked up five grand on eBay once things cooled down.
But now, when I thought about it, I had reached the end of this rope, spinning my wheels, hitting a brick wall, mixing metaphors, so I opened a third Wicked Ale and considered other options.
At 5:05 that afternoon, Fairchild called me. I was standing in the kitchen looking out at the backyard, reluctantly coming to the conclusion that things had run their course here in Reno and I was going to have to head south. Vegas was calling; its voice was getting louder. And Caliente. And hot desert temperatures of a hundred five, hundred ten degrees. Things pointed that way, not very tangible or compelling, but in Reno, nothing was pointing anywhere, nothing that wouldn’t be neck-deep in police.
“Didn’t find her,” Fairchild said. He sounded tired. “We got the car. Danya borrowed it yesterday from a boy she knew up at the university, left it on the street in front of his house in Sparks. But they got away somehow.”
Maybe because they were in disguise, Russ? Could that have been it?
So they’d made it as far as Sparks, then ditched the car. Sparks is so close to Reno you could set a McDonald’s cup on the border between them and the two cities would wage a pitched battle to determine whose union workers would pick it up.
“How close was the car to a bus stop?” I asked.
Silence. “Well, shit on a biscuit. I’ll have to check that.”
He hung up again.
I fired up a grill and cooked a couple of burgers, ate them with a plate of beans, tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do in Vegas. Finally I decided to wing it, which is what I do.
Six eighteen p.m., Russell was back on the phone. “Checked with the bus driver on the nearest route, two other nearby routes. No one saw Danya or Shanna.”
“Sorry about that, Russ.”
“You come up with any more ideas?” An indication of just how desperate he was, treating me as an equal. Or more.
“Working on some stuff,” I told him. “Nothing definite yet. I’ll let you know if I get anywhere.”
He wanted to know more about the “stuff” I was working on, but that wasn’t our deal. I work best when I skate around the murky edge of the law, which meant working alone. He told me Danya still wasn’t answering her cell. They’d pinged her GPS but still hadn’t gotten anything. She had a credit card but hadn’t used it. Finally, he hung up, unhappy because his kid was doing things he associated with criminal behavior—or using the kind of tricks she’d learned by having a cop for a father.
A hundred ten degrees. The Toyota would hate that, hate Vegas, leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere just for spite. I phoned a car rental place near the airport and ordered up a car for tomorrow morning.
I had five grand. I could run up a hefty credit card bill and pay it in full later, so I made the car a good one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS A convertible—a silver Ford Mustang, three hundred ten horsepower, 6-speed manual transmission, great for laying rubber. I thought a convertible would be fun after driving around last summer in Jeri’s Porsche with the top down. Paying for it with Fair-child’s money was like the cherry on top of a smokin’ hot sundae. I figured he owed me fresh air after all the secondhand smoke he’d subjected me to a year ago when we were sorting out decapitations.
First day of July, perfect time to hit Vegas if heatstroke’s your thing. I phoned Rufus, told him to put my judo lessons on hold for a while, caught a taxi to the rental place near the airport, picked up the Mustang, then hit I-80 east at 9:40 a.m., top down, happy to be on the road, headed in a direction, any direction. Motion can fool you into thinking you’re getting somewhere. It’s mental feng shui, good enough that it almost works on Amtrak.
Gumshoe on the loose, road trip, free to turn left, right, or keep going straight ahead. I left Reno with eight thousand dollars in a lockbox in the trunk of the car, a few hundred in my wallet. It was a lot to be carrying around, but cash is still king, and if things got murky in southern Nevada, I didn’t want to leave a big credit card trail.
East through Fernley to Fallon, south on US 95 to Schurz, past Walker Lake to Hawthorne, then through serious desert as the temperature climbed into three digits. Left turn at Coaldale, then forty hot, dry miles to Tonopah.
Tonopah, where Holiday and I stayed at the Mizpah Hotel, working the Harry Reinhart caper. The memory was still sharp. And good.
Caper. Another word I need to use more often.
Around a broad swooping bend in the highway, the town appeared to be about eight miles up a long sloping rise. I went eight miles and the town was still six miles away. That was the desert for you, full of mirages and vast distances that fool the eye. At an elevation of just over six thousand feet, Tonopah was cool when I finally got there, only ninety-eight degrees.
One thirty-five. Time to gas up. Time for food.
McGinty’s Café looked like a fair bet since there was a Texaco station right next door—and a fifties motel, the Stargazer.
McGinty’s was doing a modest lunch trade, eight customers in the place, four booths and five tables empty. Two waitresses. The counter was half full, so I sat in a booth with a view of the highway and an occasional car trolling along at twenty-five. I picked up a menu stuck in a metal holder that also corralled salt, pepper, nondairy creamers, sugar packets.
“Hi, I’m Lucy. I’ll be your server.”
She’d snuck up on me. Eighteen years old, fresh-faced, pretty, auburn hair cut in a short, perky style. Gave me a déjà vu moment, put me back in high school for a few seconds, senior year, thinking about who to ask to the prom.
“Start you off with something to drink first?” she asked.
“Coke or Pepsi, either one.”
Lucy stared at me for a moment.
Then hustled away, came back a minute later, and set a big plastic cup of Pepsi and a straw in front of me.
“Ready to order?”
“The fried chicken okay?”
“It’s dead. How okay is that?”
I stared at her.
“Joke,” she said. “It’s . . . well, fried chicken. I mean, if you were battered and fried, would you be okay?”
“Let me guess. Your parents don’t own this place.”
“Nope. So, how ’bout that chicken?”
“Why not? And fries.”
“The Heart Buster Special. Works for me.”
She hustled away, slender, trim, curvy, wearing black pants and a short-sleeve white shirt, mouth that wouldn’t quit.
I looked out at the street. Watched trucks roll by, spinning up dust devils. Hot blue sky. Weeds. A crow perched atop a power pole, eyeing the asphalt for roadkill. Tonopah is built on a hill, a pile of rocks, actually. Without US 95 going through, the place wouldn’t have so much as an outhouse.
One forty turned into one forty-eight, then a huge crash in the vicinity of the kitchen and a man’s voice: “Son of a bitch, Lucy! That’s it, that’s the last goddamn time! Get outta here! Out! You’re fired!”
Lucy slowed as she went by. “Your lunch is gonna be late.” She kept going, pushed through the door into the hot afternoon, and was gone. The other waitress, fortysomething with big hair and a pen tucked behind one ear, came by. “Chicken’ll be another few minutes, hon. Sorry ’bout that. I’m Terry, by the way. Can I get you a refill on that drink?”
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 9