by Bill Bernico
“It’s Walter Burke,” Eric said. “But he prefers Bud.”
“Not Wally?” I said.
“Better not,” Eric said. “You call him Wally and he’s liable to pop you in the nose. He hates that nickname. He told me kids in school started calling him Wally Cleaver, like the kid on that TV show. Pretty soon everyone was asking where The Beaver was. He beat up a few of them and they never called him that again, so better stick with Bud.”
“Sounds like a feisty kind of guy,” I said. “Could be just what I need. You got an address or phone number for Wally, er, I mean, Bud?” Eric looked it up and read the information to me. I added it to my notes and tucked the pad back in my pocket. “Thanks, I’ll look him up in the next day or two. Gotta run. I was supposed to be in the office by now.”
“So what?” Eric said. “What’s the boss gonna do, fire you?”
“No,” I said, “I think I’ll just let myself off with a warning this time.” I left Eric’s office and drove to mine. The office felt decidedly empty without Gloria there at the second desk and I was no good at working alone. It had been Gloria and me for the past eight years and before that it had been me and my dad, Clay Cooper. Even if Gloria and I had both been busy and didn’t talk for hours, there was still something comforting about having her in the room with me.
I sat there for more than an hour, catching up on our client database entries when my office door opened and a young woman, perhaps no more than nineteen or twenty stepped in. Her eyes went to Gloria’s empty desk before settling on me.
“Hello,” she said. “Do I have the right place?”
I stood behind my desk. “That would depend on what you want,” I said. “This is the office of Cooper Investigations.”
“Then I guess I’m in the right place,” the woman said. “I think I need someone to look for my boyfriend. Is that something you do?”
“Let’s back up just a little,” I said, directing her to the client’s chair that sat across from my desk. She sat and nervously wrung her hands in her lap. “All right, suppose you start by telling me your name.”
“It’s Bonnie,” she said. “Bonnie Sanders.”
I extended my hand and she shook it. “Well, hello, Bonnie Sanders,” I said. “My name is Elliott Cooper. Now what’s all this about me finding your boyfriend? Have you misplaced him?”
Bonnie shook her head. “Not exactly,” she said. “We were in a restaurant yesterday, just trying to get a quick sandwich before we drove out to the desert. We sat in one of the booths and some guy came over and told Greg, that’s my boyfriend’s name, Greg Mulligan, that he had to leave.”
I narrowed my eyes. “He had to leave?” I said. “Not you?”
“Yes,” Bonnie said. “Then this guy, I assumed he was some kind of manager or something, pointed to a sign on the wall that read, ‘No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service’ and said that since Greg wasn’t wearing anything on his bare feet that he’d have to leave. Some sort of health code or something.”
“Well,” I said, “he was perfectly within his rights to ask Greg to leave. It is a health code, especially in a place where food is served.”
“I realize that,” Bonnie said, “but this guy said I could stay and then escorted Greg out the back door. I tried to follow them but he kept me from coming into the back room with them. I had to leave by the front door.”
“And?” I said.
“And I had to walk halfway around the block to get to the alley,” Bonnie said. “And when I got to the back door of this restaurant, Greg wasn’t there. That was yesterday around noon and I’m worried.”
“Have you told this to the police?” I said.
Bonnie nodded. “I stopped a patrolman on the street and told him about it this morning,” she said. “He told me I’d have to call or stop by the precinct, but that it probably wouldn’t be looked into until Greg had been missing at least forty-eight hours. I didn’t bother going to the precinct. I just went to a public phone and looked you up in the book and came right here. Can you help me, Mr. Cooper?”
I pulled the notepad from my pocket and wrote down Bonnie’s name, address and phone number along with the pertinent information about Greg Mulligan. She gave me a wallet-size photo of her boyfriend. I looked back at Bonnie. “You know,” I said, “if you wait until tomorrow the police will be able to look into this for you for free. If I take on this case, it could end up costing you several hundred dollars.”
Bonnie reached into her purse and withdrew four one hundred dollar bills and passed them over to me. “Is this enough to get you started?” she said.
I picked up the bills, examined them and set them aside. “That will do for a start,” I said. “Are you sure this is what you want to do with your money?”
“What good is having money if I can’t use it for good?” Bonnie said. “I can afford it and I really want to find Greg. Please, Mr. Cooper.”
“Sanders,” I said aloud. “As in Sanders Industries? That Sanders?”
Bonnie nodded. “That’s my father,” she said.
“I can start on this as soon as I get your signature on a contract,” I said. “I’ll start looking for him within the hour.” I drew up one of my standard contracts and had Bonnie sign it, assuring her that I’d do whatever it took to find her boyfriend. I gave her one of my business cards. She thanked me and left the office.
I called Gloria at home. Mrs. Chandler answered the phone. “Mrs. Chandler,” I said. “It’s Elliott. Can I speak to Gloria?”
“She’s taking a nap, Mr. Cooper,” she said. “Would you like me to wake her?”
“Please don’t,” I said. “I just called to let her know that I’m going out on a case right now and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I’ll have my cell phone on in case either of you needs to reach me. Would you tell her that for me when she wakes up?”
“I will,” she said. “Thanks for calling and good luck with your case.”
“I made need it,” I said and hung up.
I started at the restaurant where Greg was shown the back door and asked to speak to the manager. He was a middle-aged man named Larry Pendleton. He wore a full-length apron and a white paper hat. He must have read my mind as I looked him up and down.
“Yeah,” he said, “I know. My chef didn’t show up today. Can you believe that? It’s almost impossible to find good help these days.”
“Mr. Pendleton,” I said, “I’d like to talk to you about something that happened here yesterday if you have the time.” I held up my shield and I.D. for him to see.
“Sure,” he said, “If you don’t mind following me around while I work.”
I followed him into the kitchen and stood against the wall, out of the way while he flipped a couple of hamburgers on the grille.
“So what’s on your mind?” he said, pressing down on the meat until it flared up.
“Yesterday there was a couple in here,” I said. “A young woman and her boyfriend.”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Pendleton said. “I get hundreds of people in here every day. What was special about these two?”
“The young man, Greg Mulligan, wasn’t wearing shoes and…” I said.
“I remember that guy,” Pendleton said. “Filthy feet on an otherwise clean body. I pointed to the sign in my restaurant. You know, no shoes, no shirt, etc. Well, he must have thought that applied to everyone else. I told him he’d have to leave and he got belligerent. I asked him to leave.”
“Out the front door?” I said.
“No,” Pendleton said. “I didn’t want him walking past all my customers again while they were eating, so I escorted him out the back door.”
“And?” I said.
“And nothing,” Pendleton said. “He stepped out into the alley and I closed the door. That’s it. What else were you looking for?”
I sighed. “That was yesterday morning,” I said. “And he hasn’t been seen since. Looks like you were the last person to see him so that’s why I came here first.”
I wrote this information down in my notebook and turned back to Pendleton.
“Anything else?” Pendleton said. “‘Cause I’ve got a lot of customers to feed yet.” He stood there, spatula in hand, waiting for my reply.
“I guess that will do for now,” I said. “I’ll be in touch if I need anything else. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Pendleton.”
I turned and left the kitchen, leaving the restaurant through the back door. I stepped out into the alley and looked at my surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. A large green dumpster sat against the building, both of its hinged covers open and leaning against the building. I stepped up onto my tip toes and looked down into the dumpster. There was nothing but garbage and it was beginning to stink. I looked south down the length of the alley and saw a few more dumpsters but nothing out of the ordinary. To the north there was more of the same nothing. I noticed a couple drops of blood on the asphalt, along with tiny bits of broken glass. This was certainly no place for a barefoot man to be walking around.
I followed the blood trail for about thirty feet and then there was nothing. It stopped fifty feet short of the street. Either Greg Mulligan jumped over the six-foot fence, or he got into some sort of vehicle. Either way, the blood trail stopped. I stepped up onto a wooden box that sat next to the fence and peered over it. Someone’s back yard was on the other side. It went with a gray house with blue shutters. I stepped down off the box and walked to the end of the alley and up the street, around to the front of the gray house. The front lawn needed cutting and the weeds were growing up between the cracks in the sidewalk. Paint was peeling off the side of the house and one of the upstairs shutters was hanging by a single hinge.
I stepped up onto the porch and pressed the doorbell. I didn’t hear any bells or buzzers inside so I knocked on the door panel. There was no response so I knocked again, harder this time. This time I hear someone stirring inside, their footsteps coming closer.
“Hang on,” a groggy voice inside said. A moment later the front door opened and a man in pajama bottoms and nothing else looked out at me with a look that I interpreted as annoyance. “Yeah, what do you want?”
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, holding up my shield and I.D. “I’m looking for a missing person.”
“So why are you bothering me?” he said. “I don’t have him.”
“I never mentioned that the missing person was a man,” I said. “How did you know?”
The man shifted on his feet and scratched his ass. “I took a guess,” he said.
“A guess?” I said. “That’s it?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Now if you don’t mind.” He started to close the door but I stuck my foot in the jam. He pulled the door open again and looked down at my foot. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Like I said,” I told him, “looking for my missing person. Now, would you like to cooperate with me, or would you rather spend a couple of hours downtown talking to the police?”
The man thought it over and then opened his door wider to let me in. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get this over with. I have to get some sleep before I start work in six hours.”
“So tell me what you know,” I said. “And don’t leave anything out. You can start by telling me your name.”
The man scratched his ass again. “Leo,” he said. “Leo Laszlo.”
I wrote that information in my notepad and looked up again. “Go on, Leo,” I said.
“Yesterday morning I’m taking the garbage out,” he said, walking me through the house to the kitchen in the back. He pointed out the window at his garbage cans. “I’m just sticking my garbage in the can when I hear someone in the alley. It sounds like they’re hurt.” He points to a section in the fence separating his yard from the alley behind the restaurant. “See that knot hole.”
I leaned in and looked where he was pointing. “Yeah,” I said. “What about it?”
“Well,” Leo said, “When I heard some guy moaning, I set my garbage down and looked through the knot hole. I see this guy standing on one foot, holding the other foot. Looks like he’s picking something out of the bottom of his foot. I see blood and I figure this dimwit must have stepped on some of that broken glass. What kind of idiot walks around in the alley with no shoes on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “So what happened then?”
Leo pointed to his garbage cans again. “I finished dropping my garbage in the cans,” he said. “It’s none of my business if the guy wants to cut his feet up like that.”
“That’s it?” I said. “Did you see him leave or which way he went?”
“That’s just it,” Leo said. “A few seconds later I hear this car pull up and stop in the alley. Then I hear a car door slam and the car leaves again. I take another look through the knot hole and the barefoot guy is not there anymore. I just figured he got a ride, forgot all about him and went back into my house. That’s all there is to tell. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get back to sleep.”
“You’ve been a big help, Mr. Laszlo,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Leo showed me out the front door again and I hurried around the block to the front of the restaurant where my car was parked. I still had very little to go on, but at least I had an idea where Greg had gone.
I checked the notes Bonnie Sanders had given me. It listed Greg’s address on Wilcox near Fountain. It was a ten minute drive from where I was. The building housed four apartments, two up and two down. Greg’s apartment was the lower on the north side of the building. I found his name along with three others on the four mailbox doors in the doorway. I pressed all three of the other doorbells and waited to be buzzed in. It always amazed me the way people could be so trusting and buzz someone in before they even knew who was calling, but sure enough, I heard the front door buzz and quickly entered the front hallway. To my left I found Greg’s apartment door and pressed the doorbell button. No one answered so I knocked and still no one came to the door.
I opened my wallet and pulled my library card from one of the pockets and slipped it between the lock and the door jam. The door opened and I quietly let myself in, closing it behind me. The curtains were drawn and I flipped on the light switch. It was a classic—living room, kitchen and two bedrooms. I immediately saw a face I recognized in a silver frame on the TV stand. It was Bonnie Sanders looking like she had just come from Sunday school. Next to her photo was a larger version of the photo Bonnie had given me back in my office.
I walked into one of the bedrooms and saw what I expected to see—a bed, dresser and closet full of clothes. The second bedroom was being used as an office of sorts. There was a desk against one wall, facing the window. I opened the top middle drawer and poked around but found nothing unusual. I slid it shut again and tried the top drawer on the right. It held nothing but computer manuals and ‘How-To’ books regarding web site building. The bottom drawer held only a pack of copy paper and extra printer cartridges.
The drawers on the left side of the desk were locked but they were no match for my skills. I slipped my belt out of its loops and used the buckle to pry the top drawer open. My eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw the two dozen or so bundles of wrapped bills. I pulled one of the bundles out of the drawer and examined it. The wrapper identified it as having come from the First California Bank and sported a five with three zeros after it—a cool five grand. I pulled the rest of the bundles out and laid them on the desk, counting as I did. There were twenty-five bundles of bills in all. Made me wonder where a young guy like Greg could lay his hands on a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. And why wasn’t this cash in the bank?
I returned all the bundles to the drawer and slid it shut aga
in. After a minute or so I was able to pry the drawer down low enough so that it locked again after closing. It was time to talk to Bonnie Sanders again. Something wasn’t adding up and I was determined to find out what it was.
Once I left Greg’s apartment and sat behind the wheel of my car again, I pulled Bonnie’s information sheet from my pocket and found her address and phone number. I dialed it and listened as it rang.
“Hello,” Bonnie’s voice said as if it hadn’t a care in the world.
“Bonnie Sanders?” I said.
“This is she,” Bonnie said.
“Bonnie, this is Elliott Cooper,” I began. “I wanted to know…”
“Oh, Mr. Cooper,” Bonnie said. “I’m so glad you called. You’ll never believe this but Greg came back on his own. I appreciate your efforts but I won’t be needing your services anymore.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “When did he come back and where has he been?”
“Mr. Cooper,” she said, “that’s not important anymore. I’m just glad he all right, so if you wouldn’t mind, I have to go now.”
“I’ll bring your refund over right away,” I said. “I was only on the job for less than a day. You have two hundred dollars coming to you from your retainer.”
“Never mind,” Bonnie said. “You just keep that for your trouble. Good bye.”
“But…” I said into a dead phone.
I decided to drive home and run this information past Gloria to get her take on this strange set of circumstances. I made it home in twenty minutes.
When Mrs. Chandler saw me come in the front door she held one finger to her lips. “She’s sleeping,” Mrs. Chandler whispered. “It’s been a rough morning.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“She thought she felt contractions,” Mrs. Chandler said, “but decided that it was probably just indigestion and decided to lie down for a while. Best you just let her rest.”
I nodded agreement and said, “Where’s Matt?”
Mrs. Chandler gestured with her chin toward the living room. “I gave him a large picture book to look at. I told him the television would make too much noise for his mother. He’s been looking at that book for the past half hour now.”