A Dangerous Departure From Hillbilly Hollow

by Blythe Baker

  He gasped. “What? Are you okay?”

  “Almost,” I repeated. “I’m fine. It has just been a crazy twenty-four hours. But I wanted to call and let you know that I made it to New York safely, and the plan is still to be home in a few days.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, sounding genuine. Then, his tone became much snarkier. “Do the two of you have a lot of sight-seeing scheduled?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said dramatically. “I think Tucker will love helping me track down the man who hit me with his taxi a few months ago and then fled the scene. It will be a day for the scrapbook.”

  “I thought you didn’t know who hit you?”

  “I didn’t, and I guess I still don’t, but I saw him yesterday. He was parked outside of the airport and he drove away before I could talk to him, but I have a name. Ernest.”

  “What are the chances of that? Like, 1 in 500,000?” he asked. “Are you sure it was him?”

  “I know it sounds unbelievable, but I’m positive.” And I was. Absolutely.

  There was a long pause. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to go tracking him down, Emma? I mean, he hit you with his car and ran away? That doesn’t suggest he’s a great guy. What if he’s dangerous?”

  “Tucker will be with me.”

  Billy groaned. “That doesn’t make me feel better. Besides, he’s off duty and powerless there. Anyway, how many different cab companies are there in New York? How are you going to find this guy?”

  I’d been thinking about that all morning and hadn’t come up with a solid solution yet. “I don’t know. The names of these cab drivers have to be in a database somewhere, right? Maybe I could pay someone to find it for me.”

  “Like a hacker?” Billy asked, sounding, if possible, even more skeptical.

  Suddenly, I had a flash of memory. When I’d once had trouble logging into the tenant portal of the apartment building’s new website, Blanche had told me she would need to go talk to the ‘computer wizard’ she’d hired to make it for her.

  He lives right here in the building, which is convenient, but he did so much fancy stuff that I couldn’t keep up. I’ll pass your complaint along and have him take a look at it.

  Maybe her computer wizard would be able to work his magic for me.

  I jogged up the steps, held my coffee between my side and elbow, and punched in my code for the building’s front door.

  “Billy, I’m home now, and I have to go. But I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”

  “Emma, wait. I’m not sure about—”

  “I’ll talk to you soon, and I’ll see you in a few days. Bye.”

  I felt slightly guilty for hanging up on Billy when he was only trying to look out for me, but I had bigger issues to deal with. I needed to figure out which of my neighbors had helped Blanche create her website.

  I stood in the lobby, trying to think about what my next move would be, when Mable Abernathy’s door cracked open, and the wrinkled old woman popped her head out. Of course. Who knew more about the lives of the building’s tenants than the woman who had lived her the longest?

  “Oh, you already have breakfast. I was going to offer you a muffin,” she said, sounding disappointed.

  “Lucky for you, I’m still hungry,” I said, winking.

  Her parched lips pulled back in a smile, and she disappeared into the apartment, returning a second later with a giant poppy seed muffin in her hands.

  I grabbed it, pulled back the paper, and took a big bite, barely containing a moan. “This is delicious, Mable.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad you like it. I love baking, but there’s no way I could eat it all by myself. I love living in this apartment because I get to share with everyone who walks through the door. It’s a great way to keep up with everyone.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said, thinking there would be no better transition into my question than that. “Actually, I wonder if you wouldn’t be able to help me find someone.”

  “Of course, dear. Who are you looking for?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

  “I’m not sure, actually. I know Blanche hired someone in the building to create the website, and I was wondering—”

  “Oh, I hate that confounded thing,” Mable said, interrupting me. “I can never manage to log in. I wrote down my name and passcode, but it never works properly. I always had to call Blanche down to help me log in, and she would get so crabby about it. If you ask me, the fellow she got to design it didn’t do a very good job.”

  “That is frustrating,” I said, frowning in sympathy. “Do you happen to know who she hired to design it?”

  “Like I said, if you’re looking to hire the same person for a project, I’d suggest you look elsewhere. I’ve lived here for over twenty years, and this is the most trouble I’ve ever had paying my rent. Blanche even tried to claim I was a few months behind, even though I always pay on the first of the month. The system is full of bugs.”

  “No, I need to find them to discuss something else. I’m not looking to create any websites anytime soon.”

  She nodded, eyes still narrowed. This was the most upset I’d ever seen Mable. Usually, she was always chipper and friendly. “It was the young man on the fifth floor, apartment 5C. Stephen, I believe was his name.”

  “Thank you so much, Mable. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Of course, dear.” She began closing the door behind her, and then stopped, looking back at me. “If the topic of the website does come up, you’ll pass along my concerns, won’t you? I’d love to go back to paying by checks.”

  “Of course, I will,” I said, though I had absolutely no intention of telling a website designer that an elderly woman would rather pay by check than online.

  “If you happen to come back by later, I may have a slice of pie for you. I’m working on a new pumpkin pie recipe.”

  I made a mental note of that. If it was good, I’d ask her for the recipe to pass on to my grandma. Grandma could be prideful, especially when it came to her baking, but there was nothing she loved more than beating Margene Huffler. I knew she’d take help from wherever she could get it.

  12

  After finishing off the rest of Mable’s delicious lemon and poppy seed muffin, I showered, slipped into my favorite pair of jeans and a dark gray sweater, and then walked up the two flights of stairs to the fifth floor. The fluorescent light in the hallway was broken, casting the landing in stark shadows. I could see lights coming out from each of the units, and it smelled strongly of curry or some other spicy dish.

  Unlike Mable, I had never made much of an effort to know my neighbors. I was content to move quietly in and out of the building, talking to no one, and going about my business. Now, however, when my investigation into Blanche’s sudden death required a good deal of talking with my fellow tenants, I suddenly wished I’d been a bit more social.

  5C was at the end of the hall, shrouded in so much darkness I almost missed the door and knocked on the brick wall next to it.

  The door opened and a young man with vibrant blue hair and a black hoodie on opened the door. He smiled broadly, defying my expectations. “How can I help you?”

  “Oh, hi,” I said, trying to fend off my surprise. “I’m Emma. I live on the third floor.”

  He held out his hand. “Stephen. Nice to meet you, Emma. Are you new to the building?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve lived here for about three years, I think.”

  His smile faltered slightly. “Me too. I’m surprised I haven’t seen you around.”

  “I’m not exactly a socializer,” I said, being honest.

  “Okay, then I should assume you are here for a serious purpose if it isn’t a social call?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  “Nothing too serious,” I said, smiling so he wouldn’t shut me out before I could even start the conversation. “I heard you were the person who created the website for the building?”

  He groaned. “If you have an issue with the site, you need to take it up wi
th Blanche’s son, okay? I’m not an IT guy. I created the site, but I’m not here to troubleshoot it. Maybe if she’d paid me a fair price, I’d be more understanding, but I didn’t make enough to be dealing with tenant issues two years later.”

  “No, the site is fine,” I said. “Or, at least, last I checked it was fine. I’ve just heard that you know your way around a computer.”

  He raised a light eyebrow, tilting his head to the side. “I guess that’s true.”

  “Okay. Well, it might seem strange, but I’m trying to find a cabbie. A specific cabbie, but I have no idea where to start. I thought maybe there would be a database somewhere online…a way to contact them.”

  “You want to find a cabbie?” he asked, both eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline now, his head tipped forward until his chin was resting on his chest.

  “Correct.”

  “Did you used to date one?” he asked. “Or does one of them owe you money?”

  I laughed. “No, nothing like that.”

  He twisted his mouth to the side, looking me up and down as though assessing the likelihood that I was hiding weapons on my person. “Do you have money?”

  I nodded. “Cash.”

  His face spread into a slow smile, and then he stood back, throwing his door open and letting me come inside. “Welcome to Casa Becket.”

  Stephen Becket’s apartment would have been very tidy if it hadn’t been for the mess of chords that stretched from his large corner computer desk to the cable port in the wall above the kitchen counter.

  “Mind the cords,” he said, gesturing at the river of cables as if I could have missed them. “The worst thing about these old apartments is that there aren’t enough outlets and they aren’t designed for modern day technology. I have to use my ethernet cable to get a decent signal in this brick prison.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, trying to sympathize. I’d always done most of my out-of-office design work at coffee shops or the library, so the internet speed in the building had never been a serious concern of mine. Once I was off work for the day, I was so tired of looking at a computer that I’d usually spend the evening in bed watching a movie or reading a book. “The worst.”

  Stephen hopped over the thick rope of electricity and plopped down in a well-padded computer chair. His computer was already on and humming. It was obvious he spent a lot of time in front of it.

  “Okay, you are actually in a lot of luck here because I once had a bit of a feud with a taxi driver.”

  “Okay?” I said, a question in my voice. “How does that help me?”

  He looked over his shoulder and smiled at me. “Because I play dirty, my friend. The driver ripped me off and thought he could get away with it. So, I contacted the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. That’s the agency within the city government that regulates the for-hire vehicle industry. If you want the name of a driver, that’s the place to go. Of course, government bureaucracy means they won’t willingly release private information to citizens, so I had to enter through the backdoor, if you know what I mean.” He winked at me.

  “You hacked in?”

  He nodded. “You betcha. It was easier than you’d expect. I had the cab number and a name. Raul Gonzales found himself on the no-flyers list next time he went to the airport. Suspected terrorist activity.”

  “You got him in trouble with the federal government?” I asked, suddenly wondering whether I wasn’t in over my head. What would Stephen do to me when he realized I only had fifty dollars in cash in my pocket? Would I be able to fly back to Missouri?

  “It wasn’t the first time,” he said with a shrug. “So, anyway, you’re lucky because I like to leave my little backdoors unlocked for future use. It will only take me a minute to kick it open and get you what you need. Do you have a cab number?”

  “No, just a name,” I said.

  “Okay, let’s have it.”

  “Ernest.”

  His fingers stopped typing, the room falling into a heavy silence. “Ernest what?”

  “I only have a first name.”

  Suddenly, Stephen spun around in his chair and crossed his hands over his stomach. “You only have a first name?”

  “Is that bad?”

  He looked at me like I was a child and sighed before turning back around. “It isn’t good. For your sake, you better hope Ernest is an unpopular name. I can narrow down the list, but I won’t be able to give you any specifics.”

  “Anything will help,” I said.

  Stephen’s fingers flew across the keyboard faster than I thought possible. Screens opened and closed before I could even tell what was on them.

  “So,” Stephen said, his fingers still moving a mile a minute. “Did Blanche tell you I designed the website? Before she died, I mean?”

  I found it weird that he added that caveat. Did he expect Blanche to have been able to tell me anything after she died? Surely, he didn’t have any clue about the ghostly visions I’d been seeing, so it seemed strange for him to make it clear that it’d have to have been before her death. I brushed it off, though.

  “No, I asked around a bit,” I said.

  “Mable?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “That old lady knows everything. And she doesn’t have to hack into anything to figure it out. She’s observant.”

  “That she is,” I said.

  “But I would have been surprised if Blanche had given you my name. She wasn’t my biggest fan,” he said.

  “She asked you to design the website, though?”

  “Yeah, but things went South from there.” He smiled. “Let’s just say, Blanche believed I was abusing my power.”

  I wrinkled my forehead, wondering how someone could abuse their power over an apartment building website, when suddenly, I remembered something.

  “The graphics,” I said, my voice trailing off.

  Stephen looked over his shoulder again, grinning at me.

  “The panda pooping on the home page? The frog that flipped you off on the log in page?”

  He nodded to both. “I thought they were funny, but Blanche got really upset. Really, really upset. She kept asking me to stop messing with the site and kept changing the password, but I had already set up my back door. She couldn’t keep me out. So, she blackmailed me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she found some dirt on me and threatened to tell the police if I ever did it again. Blackmail.”

  “Oh,” I said, desperately wishing I could ask Stephen what dirt she had to hold over him. But I knew he wouldn’t tell me. Why would he? If he didn’t want Blanche to have the information, he surely wouldn’t tell me anything about it.

  “Somehow Blanche found out about one of my previous hacks. You remember when I said I put Raul Gonzales on the no-fly list?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that was easy because I already had the back door.”

  My jaw fell open. “You hacked the government? You had a back door to the National Security Agency?”

  He shrugged like it was no big deal, but I could see the smirk on his face. “It was just a prank to see if I could pull it off. But Blanche found out about it and threatened to tell the government. I would do a few years in federal, at least. And they’d have eyes on my online activity forever. It would have totally ruined my career. So, I stopped the stupid graphics. She also increased my rent by one hundred dollars a month, which totally sucked.”

  “How did Blanche find out information like that?” I asked. Blanche was a divorced, former housewife, who spent most of her time in her apartment, watching reruns of old TV shows. Her television had rabbit ears and a staticky screen. She wasn’t exactly tech-savvy.

  “I have no idea. I definitely didn’t tell her. Maybe she has a connection with someone who can dig up dirt on people. I don’t know.”

  Up until that point, I’d felt as though Stephen had been honest with me. But now I had a strong feeling he was lying. The only thin
gs I had to go off of were his suddenly nervous behavior and the fact that he had just revealed the secret that could get him locked away in federal prison to me, a relative stranger. So, if he had been willing to brag about his illegal escapades to me, he had probably done the same with Blanche, and she had decided to use the information to get what she wanted.

  Part of me was proud of Blanche for standing up for herself, but another part of me was busy formulating a theory. What if Blanche had been using her information on Stephen for more than just stopping vulgar cartoons from appearing on her business’ website? What if she had been blackmailing him into working for her? I had no idea what Blanche would have wanted Stephen to do, but if she’d been willing to blackmail him once, it seemed likely she wouldn’t have had an issue doing it again. Could he have grown sick of being a puppet and ended her once and for all? Or, had Blanche finally decided to share the information she had on him, causing him to silence her forever?

  The theory seemed dark, especially since Stephen seemed like a genuinely nice guy, blue spiky hair and all. But if Blanche’s autopsy came back as anything other than a natural death, every possibility had to be explored. And anyone Blanche was blackmailing would immediately be pretty high on the list of suspects.

  “Okay,” Stephen said, startling me from my suspicious thoughts. “I have a list of every cabbie in New York City who goes by Ernest, Ernesto, or Ernie. Sixty-seven names.”

  He rolled his chair away from his desk and moved towards the printer that took up half of his kitchen counter. Three pages of paper rolled out. He picked them up, tapped them once against the counter to align them, and then held them out towards me.

  I grabbed them and shoved them down into my purse. “How much do you charge?”

  He tossed his head back and forth, looking up towards the ceiling in thought. “Because I already had the back door set up and you were fun to talk to, we’ll call it a cool forty. First time buyer’s discount,” he said with a wink.