Out on a Limb

by Joan Hess

  I watched the stream of impeccably clothed men and women, most of them in their twenties and thirties, as they went inside to grunt, grimace, and otherwise regenerate themselves on a daily basis. Adrienne Armstrong would have fit in perfectly, and it seemed likely that she had as recently as the morning after she’d discovered her husband’s corpse.

  My dress was inappropriate, but I decided to give it a shot. I pulled a few oak leaves out of my hair, then conscientiously locked my car (as if it might be the prime target in a metallic sea of Mercedes, Porsches, Jaguars, and SUVs large enough to haul soccer goalposts, twenty screaming children, and the odd umpire or two) and went inside.

  Even these paragons of physical vitality sweated, I realized as I wrinkled my nose. The carpet looked as if some of them had come directly from the polo field. I wandered down a hall, keeping an eye out for Randy, and ducked around a corner when I heard his voice. The only door opened onto an expanse of six tennis courts, all occupied by players dressed in white and making primitive noises as they slammed their rackets against pastel-colored balls. Adrienne Armstrong was not among them.

  I retreated, then paused to listen for Randy’s voice from what I presumed was a reception area. As I may have mentioned in the past, I go to extremes to avoid even the mildest glint of perspiration. Life’s too challenging to inflict intentional discomfort. I therefore did not frequent athletic clubs, and would have been equally as familiar with the facilities of, shall we say, the Kremlin or a Klingon battleship.

  I peered around the corner at the main hallway. Two women dressed in designer exercise attire came by, both carrying monogrammed bags and chatting about a fundraiser. I smiled as best I could, causing no more than one well-drawn eyebrow to rise, then waited until they were out the front door before proceeding into the labyrinth, where I might encounter dragons, ogres, and aerobics instructors.

  Eventually I went into what proved to be the ladies’ locker room. Half a dozen women were in various stages of putting on or peeling off Spandex shorts, socks, pricy athletic shoes, and halters.

  One of them, a peppy thing with wide brown eyes, looked up at me from a bench. “First time?” she asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said. “Is this where Adrienne Armstrong comes?”

  “Wasn’t that the most awful thing! I could have cried when I heard about it on the news. My husband, Bradley, said it was all the fault of that group of crackpots who want to prevent progress in Farberville. This community is growing, and people have to live somewhere, don’t they?”

  “Indeed they do,” I said, sitting down beside her. “Have you seen Adrienne since this happened?”

  The woman shook her head. “She missed our Tae Bo class this morning. She’s usually the first one on the floor, and I don’t think any of us could stop staring at her usual spot over in the corner. Bradley had his secretary send flowers to her house, but I’m thinking I ought to go by and see how she’s holding up. Such an awful thing!” She finished lacing up her shoes and slipped terrycloth bands on her wrist. “Are you a friend?”

  “Not a close one. How often does she work out?”

  “She just puts all the rest of us to shame. She comes for the Tae Bo class every morning, then does the weight machines for an hour. To be honest, my muscles are screaming so bad that it’s all I can do to make it to the whirlpool to soak. Some evenings, if she doesn’t have a function, she’ll come back to run laps in the gym or play racquetball. I don’t know how she does it at her age.”

  “Which is?” I inquired.

  “She has to be at least twenty-five, but she’s got the tightest butt out here. Just ask Bradley, who was thoughtful enough to share that with me while we were vacationing in Aruba over Christmas. Like I wanted to hear that!”

  “Did Anthony come here, too?”

  She pulled her hair into a ponytail and secured it with a matching terrycloth band. “Yeah, but not so much anymore. He used to play tennis a couple of evenings a week, but then he started canceling dates at the last minute. Too strenuous at his age, I guess.” She stuffed her purse and bag into a locker. “Kimberlee’s my personal trainer, and she doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Will I see you again out here?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “I just dropped by because I’m worried about Adrienne. Such an awful thing, you know.”

  “Do I ever!” she said, clutching my hand for a brief moment. “Everybody feels so bad, especially the staff. Adrienne spends more time out here than most of them. She has her charity work, of course, and volunteers at an elementary school, tutoring little minority children. I wish I had as much time as she does, but Bradley’s just now getting his firm on its feet and I work at the reception desk three days a week. Do you have an accountant?”

  “Yes, but I’ll keep Bradley in mind if the situation changes.”

  I gave her a weak smile, then left the locker room and made it to my car without encountering Randy Scarpo. I’d hoped I might run into Adrienne Armstrong, but in that I had no idea what to say to her, it was just as well. Any mention of Daphne would be awkward.

  Hoping that Sally could hold down the fort for a while longer, I resolved to find Joey. There were a few challenging aspects: no last name, no residence, no current employment, no clue to his whereabouts. Then again, Farberville did not have a limitless number of garages.

  I decided to start with the garages I’d driven by over the years, and then, if necessary, consult the yellow pages for the more remote ones. Sally might be driving off whatever hapless customers came into the Book Depot, but they would return. And until I helped Daphne, I had custody of her baby.

  Asking innocent questions of those who worked in garages proved more frustrating than I’d anticipated— when I could find anyone who would listen. The hierarchy was impossible to determine when all the men wore grease-stained jumpsuits and refused to stop making deafening noises with various pneumatic tools. Although they seemed comfortable standing under vehicles on racks or sliding beneath same held aloft by flimsy jacks, I did not. I’d mouthed my query at six or seven places before a guy jerked his thumb and shouted for me to go into the office.

  The older woman seated behind a desk piled high with papers and folders looked up as I closed the door behind me. She had a helmet of bleached hair and serious purple eye shadow, but her smile was amicable.

  “Help you, honey?” she said. “Car trouble?”

  I sat down across from her. “I’m looking for a mechanic named Joey.”

  “Nobody named Joey here, but Mort ought to be finishing up that valve job before long and he can take a look. He’s been working here for eight years, and before that he was over Cannelletti’s shop out towards Farmington. Real dependable, Mort is, and damn smart at pinpointing the problem. No complaints all the time he’s been here.”

  “It’s not about my car, although I’m sure it could use some attention from someone as skilled as Mort. This Joey is in his mid-twenties, and he was working in a garage until about six months ago, when he was sent to jail for assault. He was released a few weeks ago.”

  “No last name?” she asked with such sympathy that I refused to imagine what she was thinking. “Cute guy, huh?”

  “I’ve never met him,” I said evenly. “I’m trying to help a friend locate him.”

  “Of course you are. I wish I could tell you something, but nobody named Joey has worked here for the last fifteen years. A few years back there was a guy named Joseph, a real hell-raiser with the ladies, but he was in his sixties and wasn’t what you’d call attractive unless you were blind in one eye, which he happened to be, too. He left town after he was caught peeping in sorority house windows—and some fraternity houses as well. The city prosecutor personally drove him to the bus station and bought him a one-way ticket to Alabama… or was it Mississippi?”

  “Thanks, anyway,” I said as I stood up.

  She gnawed on her lower lip. “There was a fellow out at Cannelletti’s earlier this spring, name of Jose. That’s
kinda like Joey, ain’t it? I heard he got into some trouble with the police. You want I should call out there and ask?”

  “Out toward Farmington, you said? No, please don’t bother to call. I’ll go by and see if they might have any information.”

  “Are you a lawyer, honey? You got that look about you.”

  I’d forgotten that I was still wearing my navy suit. “No,” I said, “I’m not a lawyer. Just helping a friend, that’s all.”

  “Right,” she said. “Well, I hope you find this fellow. You sound kinda desperate.”

  I could see that she wanted me to drop back onto the chair, burst into tears, and tell her the wretched truth about my lust for a muscular young mechanic who’d rotated my tires more than once.

  I “left her to her fantasies and once again went out to my car. The afternoon was dwindling, as was Sally’s goodwill. But I finally had a lead, or at least an intimation of one. Someone named Jose could certainly have Americanized his name. Or not, I thought glumly as I drove past the stadium and out toward Farmington, keeping an eye out for a garage named Cannelletti’s.

  A sloppy pyramid of tires almost obscured the faded sign in the window of the squat, concrete-block building. Several cars beyond redemption in anyone’s lifetime (including Mort’s) were parked in the weeds on either side. I would not have been surprised to see buzzards circling overhead.

  I parked and went into the office. A bald man with a bristly gray mustache was glaring at an invoice and mumbling under his breath. It was just as well that I couldn’t understand his words.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  “Are you Mr. Cannelletti?”

  “Are you mistaking me for the pope?” he said as he put down the paper and stared at me. “Do you think I got a flock of cardinals out there doing lube jobs?”

  “The thought never crossed my mind.” I sat down on a stool across the counter from him. “I’m trying to find someone who may have been working here up until six months ago.”

  “The warranty’s only good for thirty days.’!

  “Oh, nothing like that,” I said, doing my best to envelop him in a warm glow of camaraderie. “It’s a personal thing.”

  “What those jerks do on their own time is none of my business. I make it clear when I hire them that there’s no point in calling me for bail. Better they should call the archbishop. Same fat chance.”

  There was a hint of amusement in his eyes, however, so I persevered. “I’m looking for a man named Joey, or perhaps Jos6 when he worked for you. All I know is that he’s about twenty-seven years old and was sent to the county jail six months ago. He was released a week ago.”

  “Calling himself Joey, is he?”

  I leaned forward. “So you know him? Do you have any idea where I can find him?”

  “You his probation officer?”

  It occurred to me that the day might have gone more smoothly had I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, rather than running around dressed like little Miss Perry Mason. “No, I own a bookstore in Farberville. It’s important that I find Joey. Can you help me?”

  Mr. Cannelletti studied me for a long moment. “The best way I can help you is to not help you. He’s bad news, this Joey. What with the way he used to do drugs, I was always worried that he’d cause an accident out in the bays. I was about to fire him when he took care of the problem himself.”

  “But you know where I can find him, don’t you?”

  “He came here last week, looking for a job. I told him I couldn’t take him back on account of having hired somebody else. The truth is I’m shorthanded and he probably knew it, but he just shrugged and drove off.”

  “You didn’t answer my question, Mr. Cannelletti.”

  “I don’t guess I did. Okay, you look old enough to know your own mind. There’s a bar in Waverly, just past the first stoplight. That’s where he used to hang out, and where he got himself arrested. Mostly punks, bikers, and prostitutes. It’s no place for a lady, especially an unescorted one. I’d go with you, but Mrs. Cannelletti would get all kinds of ideas and I’d be sleeping in the hammock until the first freeze. I’ll tell you the name of it if you promise you won’t go there by yourself.”

  He was a rather sweet old man, and I felt a twinge of guilt as I showed him my palm and said, “I promise.”

  “You’d lie to Saint Peter, wouldn’t you?” he said, sighing. “You’d better be real careful, lady. The name of the bar is Dante’s. Joey, or Jos6 Guilerra, as he used to call himself, drives an‘89 Trans Am, bright yellow with black racing stripes. He seemed sober enough when he was here last, but I wouldn’t count on it if you chase him down. What’s more, you walk in that place dressed like you are right now, they’re all likely to think you’re from the INS and all hell’s gonna break loose. Green cards are scarce in there.”

  I got off the stool. “Thanks, Mr. Cannelletti. You’ve been a great help.”

  “I just hope you heard what I said. Joey was a fairly good mechanic, but he’s real tightly wound. I can’t imagine why you’re looking for him, but the best advice I can give you is to forget about it.”

  “I wish I could,” I said truthfully. “Did he ever bring a girl named Daphne out here?”

  “That pathetic little thing. Sometimes she’d come along while he was working and offer to clean the restrooms or make coffee. She was real eager to talk to someone, even if just about the weather. A couple of times my wife took her around to yard sales to buy clothes. Joey didn’t much like it and stopped bringing her. Is she doing okay?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, then left before I blurted out the truth. After all, he might as well see it on KFAR at five o’clock, or at ten.

  So Joey hung out at a bar named Dante’s, which was not a comforting name in that the volume of the trilogy we are all most familiar with included the word inferno. And what I expected to say to him if and when I found him was not glaringly obvious. Asking him if Daphne had borrowed his car to drive to Oakland Heights and shoot her father might not prove to be an interesting hypothetical, especially for someone who used drugs and had been described as “tightly wound.” I doubted six months in jail had mellowed him.

  But, I thought as I drove in the direction of the Book Depot, he was the only lead I had. Daphne had offered nothing more than a hackneyed plot seen on TV dramas weekly, if not daily. Daphne’s mother had told me nothing whatsoever. Peter would not be enlightening me any time soon. Adrienne would be buffered by her family and her lawyer. Unlike Miss Marple, I could not stop by the vicarage for cucumber sandwiches and village gossip.

  I parked behind the bookstore and went inside. Sally was reasonably civil as I thanked her for minding the store and assured her that I felt well enough to handle the infrequent customer who might wander in. Although I could see she was salivating for details of my delicate condition, I shooed her out, stuck the flyspecked Closed sign in the window, and called Luanne.

  “Hey, biker chick,” I drawled, “wanna go for a pitcher of beer?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Would it be your first pitcher of beer today?” asked Luanne, not altogether facetiously. “Sally called earlier. She wants to organize a baby shower. Gurgles from a baby are charming, but gurgles from someone with Sally’s girth are—”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, “but I need your help.”

  “To browse outlet furniture stores for matching bassinets?”

  “I had to tell her something,” I muttered, then added, “Will you meet me at my place in half an hour? Wear something … well, casual.”

  “Pink or blue?”

  “Damn it, Luanne! I have a lead on Joey. If I don’t find him, you may find yourself feeding strained beets and spinach to Skyler until he graduates to pizza. Caron will drop out of school and join a punk band crisscrossing the country in an old school bus adorned with satanic images. In the meantime, I’ll be at the women’s prison chopping cotton—or, if I’
m lucky, working in the laundry room. Sweat will be streaming down my face and Big Bertha will be ogling my comely backside. Sooner or later she’ll pull a shiv on—” “A what?”

  I realized I was getting carried away and tried to temper my tone. “A weapon made from a spoon or, in this case, maybe a barrette.”

  “Big Bertha’s going to pull a barrette on you?”

  “And it won’t be pretty,” I said. “Now, are you coming with me or not?”

  Luanne was silent for a moment. “Dressed as a biker chick?”

  “If I knew what biker chicks wear, I’d tell you,” I said testily. “Come by in half an hour.”

  “And then we steal Harleys? Do you know how to operate one?”

  I replaced the receiver and went home to rid myself of my prim suit. I was not surprised to find Inez in the kitchen, heating a bottle in a saucepan of water.

  “How’s Caron doing?” I asked as I peeled off my jacket and hung it on a chair.

  “Fine, I think.”

  “You brought her assignments?”

  “Oh, yes, Ms. Malloy. All of her teachers were really nice about it. Mrs. McLair said Caron doesn’t even have to write the paper on Macbeth that’s due on Monday. We read the first act today. I suppose it’s all really symbolic and deep and stuff, but I thought it was creepy.”

  “It is, Inez. Where are Caron and Skyler?”

  She lowered her voice. “Skyler’s in the living room. Caron’s in her room, talking on the phone to Merissa. Rhonda the Rottweiler just won’t let go of this. This morning she was conducting a lottery on who everybody thought was the father. Tickets cost a dollar.”

  I shuddered. “And you told Caron?”

  Inez took the bottle out of the pan and squirted a few drops of formula on her wrist. “I didn’t, but you can be sure Merissa has by now. I wish there was something I could do, Ms. Malloy, but I don’t know what it is.”