The office consisted of two cubicles and a reception desk. There was no one at the reception desk.
“Can someone help me?” I called into the small office.
“I can,” a man’s voice came from inside one of the cubicles. “Come on around.”
I walked around the reception desk and the false wall that had been erected behind it, toward the sound of the man’s voice. And sitting at a desk with nothing more than a telephone, a computer, and a dusty plastic fern, was a small, balding man of about fifty, wearing a sport coat so loud he had to shout to be heard over it.
“What can I do for you?” the man asked. A small engraved sign on his desk identified him as Timothy Feldner. He gestured toward a steel-and-cloth chair to one side of his desk, and I sat down.
I identified myself and told him about my guesthouse business, and then being careful with my words, said, “I’m trying to track someone down who might owe some money, and I figured this was the place to ask about something like that.” Hey, I didn’t know that Julia and Wilson didn’t owe anyone money. So it wasn’t a lie, Melissa.
“That’s what we do,” Feldner exhaled. Every word out of his mouth sounded like it had been forced out through a bellows. Everything he did seemed to take enormous effort. He looked like a basset hound, only sadder. Chasing after delinquent payers must have been a remarkably demoralizing job. “What’s the person’s name?” he asked.
“It’s actually two people,” I told him. “The first is a woman named Julia MacKenzie, who lived in Gilford Park a little over two years ago. I checked her previous address. And her phone number from then has been disconnected.”
Feldner pondered that a moment and asked, “You got a birth date?” I gave him the one Paul had told me, and he dutifully punched the keyboard for a while, positioning his screen so that I couldn’t see it—don’t give away the merchandise for nothing, after all. He shook his head. “Nah. I don’t have anything with that date. Possible she was lying about her age?”
“Not by too much,” I told him. Probably not, anyway. What if Paul was a lousy judge of women’s ages?
“Okay,” Feldner said. “Tell you what. I’ll get on it, and we’ll get you back your money.” He reached into his desk and pulled out a piece of paper already on a clipboard that had a pen attached to it with a rubber band. “Fill out this form, and we’ll call you in a few days.”
It’s not that I hadn’t anticipated that response, but I’d been hoping to avoid it. I took the clipboard, but didn’t start filling out the form. Instead, I gave Feldner my best smile, the one I hadn’t used in a while but was hoping to have saved for a more enjoyable occasion, like after I got off Luther’s motorcycle later today, assuming I was still alive.
“I’m really in a hurry on this,” I said, my voice dropping to what I’d hoped would be a purr but what sounded more like a seriously sore throat in need of chicken soup stat. “Isn’t there a way we can speed this process up a little?”
Feldner wasn’t buying the voice or the smile. “Lady, it’s summer, and our business is slow,” he said. “We’re only open four days a week, and, frankly, it’s mostly to do paperwork. We don’t get a lot of walk-in business. So level with me: You’re not really interested in this as a collections matter at all, are you? You lost track of this Julia person, and you don’t know where to find her, so you want me to push a few buttons and furnish you with an address, right?”
Busted. I dropped the smile and moved into a grimace. “A phone number would do,” I suggested.
“We don’t work like that. Find yourself a private investigator.” Feldner took the clipboard from my hand and put it back in his desk drawer.
“I am a private investigator,” I told him. I took the license out of my tote bag and showed it to him. “I have a client who wants to find Julia MacKenzie, and the cops won’t help me out. I don’t have a source in the records bureau. You can take five lousy minutes and punch up her information, can’t you? I’ll make it worth your while.” I pulled a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and held it between my fingers.
He wheezed out a laugh. “Twenty bucks?” He coughed. “You want me to risk losing my license for twenty bucks? You must be really desperate. Not to mention cheap.”
“I’m both those things,” I assured him, then thought about it. “I don’t know that cheap is the word I would use…”
“Sorry, lady,” he said. “I’m not able to help you.”
“It’s for a really good cause,” I tried.
“I gave at the office.”
I stood up, defeated. “I really don’t know what else to do,” I said. I’m not even sure I was speaking to Feldner.
“So now you’re doing pathetic?” he said. “You think I don’t see pathetic every day and hear pathetic on the phone about once an hour? That’s the best you can do?”
I put my hand on my hip and faced him. “I don’t have money,” I told him. “I’m really not interested in offering you sex.”
“You’re not my type anyway.”
“Yeah, thanks. I really don’t have a huge arsenal of tactics to try out,” I said, a little more forcefully than I’d anticipated. “You got any ideas?”
“Tell me what’s so special. How come you’ve got to find this Julia person?” Feldner, for all his bluster, really seemed to want to find a reason to help me. “And this time, do us both a favor and tell the truth. I’ve heard a million lies, and I can smell them through the phone now.”
The truth? Fine. “Okay,” I said. “I have two ghosts in my house. One of them was about to propose to Julia MacKenzie when he was murdered, and now he wants me to go find her and give her his ring.”
He sat there for a long time, his eyes shifting from my face to his phone—maybe he was thinking about calling the cops to have me removed—and back again. Then he sat back in his chair and exhaled again. “I thought I’d heard them all,” he said. He put on his glasses. “Give me the twenty.”
“What?”
“The twenty bucks. Hand it over.”
So I did. Feldner took the bill without looking at it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. “Now you’re a client,” he said. “I’ll look into this and call you later today. We close at four; it’ll be before then. How’s that? If anybody asks, I have no way of knowing that you’re anything but a creditor searching for a delinquent payer. Got that?”
I nodded. “There’s one more person I want to find,” I started.
He looked over his half-glasses at me. “For twenty bucks?” he said. “You’re on your own for that one.” He handed me back the clipboard. “Fill out the form.”
I filled out the form.
“There’s nothing to it,” Luther Mason said. “Just hold onto me and relax.”
Personally, I didn’t see how that was going to be a relaxing activity, but then, I’d never ridden on a motorcycle before.
There had been just a little tension when Luther rode up to the guesthouse to pick me up. Steven, having been alerted to the situation by his spy (who at one time had been my daughter), made sure to be in the front room at noon just “by coincidence.” He glowered at me when I came downstairs in a pair of jeans, my high school windbreaker and a pair of boots.
“Long sleeves and long pants in this heat?” he asked.
“If it gets too hot, I’ll take off the jacket,” I answered.
“I don’t want to hear about what you’re going to take off,” he snapped.
I stopped in my tracks at the door. “Excuse me?” I said.
“You heard me.”
I turned to face him. “Just in case you need a reminder,” I told The Swine, “we’re not married anymore. So I can see anyone I want and do pretty much anything I like. Are we clear?”
He looked like I’d hit him in the face with a wet washcloth. “I’m not accusing you of…anything, Alison,” he said.
“That’s right, you’re not. So get a look on your face that says you’ve accepted what I’ve told you, and I’ll se
e you when I get back in a few hours. Okay?”
He changed his disapproving grimace into a disappointed grimace, which I guessed he considered an improvement, and I walked out the front door, where I could hear the motorcycle idling. Motorcycles, even when not in gear, are not quiet.
And, in this case, not even road-ready at the moment. Luther was making some adjustments on two front-wheel bolts with a pair of pliers, which made me put my hand to my mouth.
“Big motorcycle mechanic doesn’t have the right tool for the job?” I teased when I got close enough.
“These aren’t standard bolts,” he answered with a wry grin. “None of the standard wrenches work. Do your homework before you make fun of someone.”
Duly chastised, I admitted to knowing nothing about motorcycles and being just a tiny bit apprehensive. I might have mentioned something about throwing up. Luther grinned some more, which was appealing, and said he’d “be gentle.” Which was wiseass, and not that appealing.
Luther first instructed me on how to shift my weight when he did, making it easier for him to turn and keep balanced. He then handed me a helmet and insisted I put it on, fitting the straps to my head. “We don’t move so much as down the driveway without a helmet,” he said.
I bit back my accumulated anxiety and got on the seat after Luther was already on the bike. Now I was supposed to grab him around the waist from behind and hold on tightly. But apparently, I wasn’t doing that well enough.
“You’ve got to hold me tighter than that,” Luther yelled over the engine rumble. He adjusted my hands on his midsection, and pulled so that my arms reached further around him. “Like this.”
Before I could shout back that I wasn’t entirely sure his concern was really for my safety, we were off. And I immediately gripped him like a boa constrictor, too terrified to put together actual words.
Luther knew better than to take roads with a great deal of traffic or the major highways, where all we would see would be other vehicles and the only smells we would experience would be various kinds of exhaust fumes. Instead, he headed for the back roads near the beach and headed south.
The boardwalks were incredibly crowded today. Even a weekday in July with no rain on the New Jersey Shore meant enormous hordes of people flocking toward our most famous natural resource. Aside from Bruce Springsteen.
But Luther, as a longtime rider in this area, knew how to get near the shore without using the main drag. We could see the beach, and he got closer in the areas without a boardwalk or public swimming, where there were fewer people.
It did get a little freaky when I saw a biker riding in the lane next to us turn toward me and tip his helmet. It wasn’t his friendliness that bugged me; it was when I realized he was transparent that I got a touch unnerved.
I’d like to tell you the ride was exhilarating, and in a way, it was. The wind in your face really does make you feel free and part of the scene around you, not locked in a separate reality like you are in a car, although I could have done without the bugs hitting my visor every minute or so. I was aware of everything going on around me, and I felt like I was as close to flying as I’ll probably ever get.
Aside from that, I was absolutely petrified with fear.
Luther had told me to tap him on the shoulder if I needed to stop for any reason, probably concerned that I might feel sick to my stomach at some point, in which case he’d want to be anywhere but directly in front of me. I didn’t feel ill, but I still didn’t see how I could keep a tight hold on Luther’s waist and tap him on the shoulder at the same time. If I’d had a third arm, believe me I’d have been using it to hold onto him tighter.
Hello. My name is Alison, and I’m a major coward.
Eventually, Luther must have realized I’d had about as much as I could take for a first time out, and he steered toward the entrance to Island Beach State Park.
We finally got off the motorcycle—I doubted I’d ever feel right calling it “a hog,” no matter how natural it sounded when Luther said it—near a campsite where the campers had clearly gone to swim in the bay, giving us a somewhat secluded area. All I knew was that it felt great to be standing up and taking off my helmet, even if my legs were a tiny bit shaky. Like a tumbleweed in a tornado.
Luther took off his helmet and gave me a grin. “So,” he said. “What’d you think?”
I knew exactly what I wanted to say—I’d been rehearsing it the whole ride. “It was really exhilarating,” I told him. “It made me feel alive and free. Please don’t make me ever do it again.”
Luther laughed. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to,” he said. “There’s no other way to get you back home.”
“There’s no bus?”
“Afraid not,” Luther said.
“Well okay, but just that one time.”
And that’s when he kissed me.
I enjoyed the moment for just a moment—and he was quite a good kisser and the mustache was interesting—and then pulled away.
Right now, my life was very complicated. I had an ex-husband in my house, not to mention two ghosts and even more guests, all of whom were clamoring for my attention. It’s not that Luther had taken me by surprise; you have to really be distracted not to see a kiss coming at you. But the swing of emotions from fear to relief to suddenly being held close was a little startling. And I realized I barely knew Luther; we’d met only a few days earlier. Aside from the job-related trip to a biker bar, this was the first time we’d been alone together since our first meeting, at Veg Out.
And frankly, I felt a little like a line was being crossed without my expressed consent.
Luther gave me a confused look. “Too soon?” he asked. “Or did I miss a signal?”
I hadn’t had time to sort through my feelings yet, so I said, “Maybe both. I’m not sure, but I know I’m not ready.”
Luther nodded, absorbing the information. “Fair enough,” he said. “You let me know when you are.”
“Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” I said.
“Don’t be. I can handle it. I’m a big boy. That’s what my therapist says, anyway.”
Luther was constantly surprising me. “You see a therapist?” I asked.
He grinned on the left side of his mouth. “Bikers can’t have issues that need to be addressed?” he said.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking,” I told him. Although it sort of had been. I decided to change the subject. “So how’d you get off work at the bike shop on a weekday to come here with me?” I asked.
“Well, it’s possible I didn’t tell you the whole truth about working at the bike shop,” Luther said, grinning on both sides now.
“You don’t really have a job?” I asked.
“No, it’s more in the area of my not so much working at the bike shop as I own the bike shop.”
I nodded. “Ah. So that makes it easier to get off work when you want to.”
He laughed. “Yeah, my boss is really understanding about that sort of thing.”
“I’ll bet. How’d you come to own the bike shop?”
Luther looked shy, almost, like a little boy who was worried about sounding too boastful. “I worked hard for a long time and saved my money. Then I came into a little more when my mom passed on, and I had just enough to buy it out from the old owner, who liked me and wanted to retire. I’ve been running the place for a couple of years now, and I have to tell you, it’s been the best time of my life.”
We sat on the grass and Luther produced what he called a “picnic lunch.” It was in a white paper bag in a carrying compartment on the side of the bike, and consisted of a roast beef sandwich on rye for me (he’d called ahead for my order) and a green salad in a plastic container for him, both of which he said he’d gotten at New Deli, a sandwich store in Harbor Haven.
He also brought out a small bottle of wine with one glass—Luther said he didn’t drink when he rode—and a bottle of diet soda. He poured for me, we clinked glass to bottle, and partook of our elegant rep
ast, which took roughly seven minutes to finish.
“Who do you think killed Big Bob?” I asked Luther as we sat there. I took off the long-sleeved jacket; it was well into the nineties.
“Is that why you came with me today?” he asked. “To pump me for information?”
“I’m not asking for information,” I said. “I’m asking for your opinion.”
“You’re dodging the question.”
“I know.”
Luther lay back and looked at the sky through his sunglasses. “I honestly don’t know who could have been that mad at Big Bob,” he told me after a while. “Maybe he and Wilson got into something and that’s why Wilson took off. Wilson is sort of…impulsive.”
“Violent?” I asked.
“Nothing serious, but I saw him take a swing at a guy once or twice. He and Big Bob got into a fight about a bike once. A broken beer bottle was waved around, but nobody was seriously hurt.”
“That sounds impulsive, all right. Was Big Bob violent?”
Luther shrugged. “I didn’t think so, but it’s possible I didn’t know him as well as I thought. Maybe Big Bob was involved in something I didn’t know about, drugs or something. But…” His voice trailed off.
“But what?” Sure, I liked Luther, but the truth was, I had come out today to try and sort out the Big Bob thing, at least to have a direction in which to go. That was part of it, anyway. And Luther seemed to be thinking of something that might suggest a direction.
“There was a thing with Little Bob, not long before Big Bob stopped being around,” Luther said. “I was never really sure what it was about. But there was this one night that they got into an argument at the Sprocket, and they pretty much had to tear Little’s hands off of Big’s throat. You know, sometimes Little Bob doesn’t remember how big and strong he really is.”
“So you think Little Bob might be a suspect?” I asked. It was simultaneously easy and difficult to imagine; the man sounded so gentle but looked so capable of doing serious damage.
Old Haunts Page 14