by J. R. Rain
“No...I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t sing anymore.” The last time I sang was for little Beth Ann, but I was not yet in the habit of breaking out in song, especially when drunk.
“Anymore? So you used to?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“C’mon. Let’s sober you up.” He took my arm and guided me through the mostly empty bar, and up onto the small karaoke stage. The DJ was still singing—and still butchering.
“Here’s one for you, Rick,” said the bartender.
Rick nodded and, still singing, found an extra microphone and tossed it over to me. Except I saw three microphones. I swiped at the middle one, and missed. Someone in the crowd laughed. Rick, without missing a beat, picked it up and wrapped my hands securely around it. He smiled encouragingly. The small crowd clapped encouragingly. Hell, I was encouraged. But I was also nearly drunk.
I looked dumbly at the microphone. I hadn’t held a microphone in years. Decades.
I swallowed hard.
“Love Me Tender” was still pumping through the speakers. Suddenly, I no longer cared that Rick had sounded bad.
I continued staring at the microphone. The crowd clapped louder. Rick nudged me, trying to catch my eye, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the object in my hand.
The microphone.
The song continued playing. Rick continued butchering.
Rick gave up on me and moved to the opposite side of the stage, distancing himself from the drunk old man. He must have said something or gestured toward me, because there was a smattering of laughter.
Laughing at me.
I stared at the microphone.
The song ended and Rick put a gentle hand on my elbow and guided me off the stage and back to a booth. There I sat until I sobered, and while I sobered all I could think about was how perfect and natural the microphone had felt in my hand.
Chapter Seventeen
I was in Detective Colbert’s office. We were both drinking Starbucks coffee from paper cups. The paper cups were wrapped with a thickish sort of brown sleeve.
“Here’s a question for you, King,” said Colbert. “Why don’t these cups start with the cardboard sleeve, rather than slipping them on later?”
“As in built in?”
“Yeah, that’s it, built in.”
“Makes too much sense,” I said.
He nodded. “Nothing much makes sense in that place.”
“Nope.”
“How much did these two coffees cost you?” he asked.
“I bought a scone, too,” I said.
“What the fuck is a scone?”
“It’s Irish, I think, for stale bread.”
“So how much for two large coffees and a scone?”
“Twelve bucks,” I said. “And some change.”
“If you were trying to bribe me, King,” said Colbert. “Just give me the twelve bucks and change.”
“It’s illegal to bribe a cop.”
He held up his coffee. “What do you call this?”
“Damn expensive coffee.”
“Exactly. So what do you need, King? You don’t just show up here with coffee worth its weight in gold for nothing.”
“I’m working on the Miranda Scott case.”
Colbert was a small man with a thick neck. His fingers were short and blunt, which often made for the best fists. Those fingers were now laced around the coffee’s protective cardboard sleeve, safe from the heat within. He snorted.
“You’re the third private dick to come in here about this case, King. I happen to be a busy man, you know.”
“If you were any busier,” I said, “you would be a blur.”
He searched absently for the tiny hole in the lid, found it and sipped. “Fucking thing’s not even hot,” he said.
He pulled off the sleeve and tossed it in the wastebasket under his desk.
“Almost seems naked,” I said. “Without the sleeve.”
Colbert sat back and looked at me. “You come in here bribing me with cold coffee and insulting my investigative techniques.” He shook his head. “It’s a good thing I like you, King.”
“What’s not to like?”
“Your accent, for one. How long you fucking been in California?”
“Nearly thirty years.”
“And yet you still sound like you should be calling pigs.”
“It’s my Southern charm.”
He sipped some more coffee, turned in his chair and looked out over Los Angeles. We were on the fifth floor of LAPD’s downtown office. A chopper flew past the window, catching some of the bright afternoon sun. Colbert inhaled deeply. Not quite a sigh. He was too tough to sigh.
“We have nothing,” he said. “And if we had something, that would be twice as much as we have now.”
“Which is nothing.”
“You got it.”
“No leads?” I asked.
“Only one. A neighbor saw a white van parked along the street on the day she went missing.”
“Plates?”
“Nope.”
“Description of the driver?”
“Caucasian male. And that’s it.”
“No one approached him?” I asked.
“Nope; he was simply observed.”
“And that’s it?” I said.
“So far. We’re following up with everyone she’d ever known. But no one can explain why she didn’t come home from Trader Joe’s or where she could be now. From all appearances, she’s disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“A random kidnapping?”
He shrugged. He still wasn’t looking at me. Cops didn’t like private investigators as a general rule. Which is why I played the kindly old man card and brought the coffee and tried not to trample on toes. I needed him, and I needed to know what stones had been turned.
“Maybe,” he said. “Hard to say. Maybe she just ran away.”
“She just finished filming a movie,” I said. “She presumably has a lot to live for. This is a very exciting time in her life. Why would she run away now?”
“Maybe she cracked under the pressure,” said Colbert.
“Being an actress is her life’s dream.”
“So then maybe she’s celebrating in Hawaii with her co-stars and didn’t bother to tell dear old mom.”
“Except she tells her mother everything.”
“You think she’s telling her mom about every guy she fools around with?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
He shook his head. “I still think she’s out partying somewhere. Vegas maybe. She’ll show up.”
“Or not.”
He studied me a moment. “You’re here for the file,” he said. He stretched his short legs under his desk and crossed his ankles. He didn’t look like a man who was looking very hard for a missing girl. Maybe his instincts were right and mine were wrong.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe just a peek.”
“You promise to stay out of my hair?”
“I work on my own,” I said. “I happen to be a helluva self-starter.”
He thought about it, nodded. “You have a bit of a reputation for finding people. You could, of course, just be damn lucky.”
“There’s always that.”
“Either way, we could use the help.” He slid a manila file toward me. “Make a copy of this. Tell no one. Bosses don’t like us giving away our real police work to private dicks.”
“Sure thing.”
“And King?”
“Yeah?”
“Anyone ever mention you sound like Elvis?”
I took the file and stood. “Once or twice.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was after hours, and I was sitting in the Trader Joe’s manager’s office. By “office” I meant a raised platform at the front of the store. I think the openness of the manager’s office was supposed to inspire a sense of trust and togetherness with the employees and customers. I thought it ins
pired a sense of opportunity for thieves. Then again, what did I know? I’m just a simple private dick.
The Trader Joe’s store manager was a thin man with pale skin. Since there was absolutely nothing remarkable or distinguishing about him, I decided he needed a tattoo. Or a piercing. Something, anything to distinguish him. His name was Ernie.
“Look,” Ernie was saying, “I’m sorry to sound rude, but I’ve been through this at least a dozen times now. I don’t know what else to say that hasn’t already been said before.”
“I understand,” I said. People like Ernie shut doors. People like me opened them. That is, when I’m sober. “Does anyone from your staff remember seeing her?”
Behind me, the closed grocery store was a beehive of activity as employees swept and stocked and cleaned.
“Christ, have you ever been here during rush hour?” he asked.
“Like Pamplona,” I said, “minus the bulls.”
He didn’t find me very funny. “I’m sorry, Mr. King, but no one remembers seeing her.”
That wasn’t entirely true. According to the police report, which I had committed to memory after many careful readings, a young employee working in the parking lot had reported seeing her. Ernie wasn’t being entirely honest with me. I wondered why. Maybe he was just eager to tally up that day’s receipts and go home. Maybe.
“Is Edward Rutherford here tonight?” I asked.
Ernie knew he was caught. “You know about Ed?” he asked.
“Yup,” I said.
The store manager drummed his fingers on his desk. “Look, I just want this to go away. I’ve had police investigators in and out of here for the past week, not to mention a handful of you private eye guys, or whatever it is you call yourselves.”
“I prefer investigative engineer.”
But he wasn’t listening to me. “Anyway, it’s been totally disruptive. I should be counting registers right now, but instead I’m dealing with this again.”
“It’s very inconvenient,” I said, “when someone disappears.”
“Hell, yes, it’s inconvenient.”
“It’s probably less inconvenient than being kidnapped and murdered.”
“Nobody said anything about a murder.”
“No, not yet,” I said. “But it’s looking more and more probable. And it happened on your store’s property. Imagine how that’s going to play out once word gets out. Talk about your PR problems, Ernie. You think investigators are harsh? Wait until Access Hollywood gets wind of this.”
The color drained from his face, and kept on draining until he was as white as snow. “We need to find her,” he finally said.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said.
“I’ll go get Edward.”
“Good idea.”
Chapter Nineteen
Edward was a lanky kid wearing badly faded jeans, a red Hawaiian shirt, and a dour expression. I introduced myself and told him why I was here. He shrugged; obviously, he was overjoyed. I asked if he could show me where he had seen Miranda on the evening of her disappearance. He shrugged again and nodded.
“Over here,” he said in a monotone. He led the way through the automatic front doors, which Ernie had left unlocked for us, and out across the mostly empty parking lot.
Trader Joe’s isn’t a big market, but it attracted big business. The small parking lot, which wrapped all the around to the rear of the store, was often packed to overflowing with vehicles, with many more squatting for a parking space to open up.
Edward led me past a long row of red plastic shopping carts and hung a right, leading us to a section of parking lot located behind the store. Now behind the building, he pointed to the second to last parking spot, to an area that abutted a gently rising dirt hill.
“I saw her park here.”
I nodded. According to the police file, this was indeed where Miranda’s vehicle had been discovered. So far so good. Still, I wasn’t learning anything new.
I continued scanning the back lot. Three cars were presently parked back here, one of which was quite dusty and appeared abandoned. Opposite the parking lot was the store’s receiving docks. The docks were stacked with empty wooden pallets, with broken shopping carts parked haphazardly about. Two Dumpsters were packed to overflowing with straining trash bags and flattened cardboard boxes. A homeless woman was sleeping between the two Dumpsters. It looked kinda cozy, actually.
“What do you do here at Trader Joe’s?” I asked Edward.
He shrugged. “I’m a box boy.”
I detected a noticeable lack of pride in his voice.
“You bag groceries inside?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But you saw her park her car outside?”
“Yes. Sometimes we take turns collecting shopping carts.”
“What time of day did she arrive?”
He thought about it. “I started work at four. This was sometime before my first break. Probably around six.”
“Did you also see her leave?” I already knew the answer. According to the police report, Edward had stated he had not seen her leave.
But now he hesitated...and continued hesitating. He looked away and bit his lip. Ah. Something that wasn’t in the police report, perhaps?
“Well, I was bagging groceries when she left. I might have seen her leave, but I’m not sure. You know, we’re pretty busy at that time.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “But you did see her leave, didn’t you, Edward?”
He didn’t answer me. He was looking off somewhere in the near or far distance, hard to tell at night. He sucked in some air to speak, but remained silent.
“Look, you did nothing wrong,” I said. “Most of the men in your store were probably checking her out. Nothing wrong with that. You’re only human.”
He nodded; we were silent some more, then he said, “Is this just between you and me?”
“I don’t see anyone else around, except for that old lady sleeping between the Dumpsters, but I’m pretty sure she’s high or drunk or waiting for her boyfriend Ernie to get off work.”
Edward laughed, but he still wasn’t talking.
“What do you know, Edward?” I pressed.
“It could be nothing,” he finally said.
“Could be is more than what we have now.”
“It’s just a hunch,” he said.
“I live and die by hunches.”
“I didn’t tell the police—” He paused.
“Because you didn’t want them to know that you were secretly watching her.”
He took another deep breath. Like pulling teeth, this one. Finally, he said, “There was a guy, a bum. He was watching her, too.”
My pulse quickened. In the hills above, tree branches rustled in the breeze. Lights in the houses twinkled, appearing and disappearing behind the shifting branches.
“How do you know he was a bum?”
“I’ve seen him outside before, begging for money.”
“Okay, so he was a bum. Lots of people were watching her, Edward, we established that.”
“I know.”
“Besides, you were busy and didn’t see her leave, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but when I looked up again, she was gone...and so was he. I’m pretty sure he followed her out.”
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath of my own. “Tell me about him.”
And so he did.
Chapter Twenty
“So why didn’t this Edward kid tell the police about the bum?” asked Kelly, my on-again/off-again girlfriend.
We were in my apartment cooking a late-night dinner together. I’m not much of a cook, granted, but I’ve developed a few specialties. One of them is spaghetti, which is what we were cooking now. At the moment, the spaghetti was boiling but the pasta was still hard and translucent and not very appetizing. Soon that would all change. Ah, the magic of spaghetti.
“And admit he was following her?” I asked. “Stalking her in his own way, however
innocent it might have been? That could look bad.”
“So why not make something up?” she asked.
“And lie to the police? Bad things happen when you lie to the police, especially if you’re not very good at it.”
“So why does he spill his guts to you?”
“I’m not the police. He felt comfortable around me. And, I believe, he was feeling guilty.”
“Guilty?” she said.
“Guilty because the information he held back might have helped find her.”
“So he tells you now after, what, almost a week?”
“Better late than never,” I said.
“But the little shit might have waited too long.”
Kelly was still dressed in a cream-colored power suit, having come straight from a meeting with some high-level executive types at Paramount Studios. She thought the suit made her look fat. I thought the suit made her look yummy. She didn’t care what I thought. As she sipped from her wineglass, she left behind a very sexy lipstick smudge on the rim.
“So what will you do with this info?” she asked.
“Find the bum, talk to him.”
“You think the bum did something to her?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“And how will you find him? We are, after all, talking about a bum.”
I grinned. “I’ll figure something out. I am, after all, an ace detective.”
“Or so you keep telling me.”
I stirred the boiling spaghetti, which was softening and turning more opaque. Doing its own kind of magic.
Kendra the Wonder Kat was sitting on top of the refrigerator, watching the whole show below, her whiskers occasionally twitching, her glowing yellow eyes alert should I accidentally open a can of tuna and place it in front of her.
“Kendra worships you,” said Kelly.
“She has to worship me,” I said, adding a touch of salt. “I feed her.”
Kelly was seated on a stool, elbows on the Formica breakfast counter, which, at the moment, was doubling as a bar counter. The bar counter sort of hovered over my kitchen sink, allowing her full view of my every move. Lucky girl. She was currently snacking on some leftover corn chips from Tito’s Tacos and drinking from her third glass of white wine. Her eyes had that glazed look they get when she’s nearly drunk.