Gumshoe for Two

by Rob Leininger

  “Exactly my point. Something’s going on that someone doesn’t want anyone looking into, not with a vehicle registered to a dead woman. I don’t know how Mort getting that hand fits with any of this, but if it weren’t for that SUV popping up all over the place up north and this FedEx thing, we wouldn’t have the slightest idea there might be any connection between Allie and Reinhart.”

  She looked at Sarah. “You and Mort made that giant leap up in Bend with that guy, Fred Something. I’ll bet the FBI isn’t on the same planet as us right now, investigation-wise.”

  “Maybe we ought to turn it over to them,” I said.

  Ma stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Bite your tongue, doll. We cut this tree down, we get the lumber. I’m talking Good Morning America, The Today Show, Dateline, Hannity—”

  “Hold it down a little, Ma,” Jeri said, looking around. The bar had another three or four people in it by then.

  Ma patted my knee. “Got a little carried away there, but you get the idea. This could be retirement, Caribbean beaches, Fiji, lovely brown men in tiny bathing suits bringin’ me mai tais in a cabana.” Her eyes danced. “Anyway, I’ll keep digging. We gotta find that SUV. That’s key. We find that and we’re golden.”

  But we weren’t golden yet. Things were squishy, which felt like a long way from golden. On the bright side, Ma was probably right about us being miles ahead of the Feds. I oughta know. I used to be one. The size of any bureaucracy is inversely proportional to its effective IQ. Put twenty FBI guys in one room and the collective IQ wouldn’t be sufficient to open a can of Spam. A task that size would require weeks of high-level meetings, an organization chart, an environmental impact statement, and a look at applicable OSHA regs. Same thing in the White House and Congress, which keeps me awake nights, considering how little Spam figures in the bigger scheme of things, like an imploding affordable health care system.

  Ma took off, thinking Caribbean beaches. That left me, Jeri, and Sarah—and, surprise, they wanted to talk alone again. So I sat at the bar and tried to chat up O’Roarke about low-fat recipes and color coordinating our clothing, but he wasn’t interested.

  Sonofabitch.

  So I used another Wicked Ale to help nudge my thoughts about this Reinhart-Allie-Odermann-Bye mess. I gave that up after about thirty seconds. We didn’t have enough information. Did Odermann have the SUV, or didn’t he? Did Bye have anything to do with any of this, or was his dead sister a dead end, leaving Bye out of it? Was Bob a criminal mastermind? And Jayson Wexel, forty-nine, chief of staff to the High Priest of Prevarication, cremated in his house. Was that an accident or murder? I hadn’t heard the official result of that yet. And Reinhart’s hand. Was the good senator dead or alive? What about Mortimer Angel? What was he in all of this?

  “Do you think I might’ve killed Reinhart and shipped his hand to myself in a fugue state?” I asked O’Roarke as I ran a bead of moisture around the bar top with the tip of a finger.

  “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

  I turned on the barstool. Jeri and Sarah had their heads eight inches apart, talking quietly. Maybe some sort of lending program was in the works. Maybe they were comparing notes.

  “Think I’m paranoid?” I asked O’Roarke.

  “Hell, no. People really are out to get you, spitfire.” He nodded at Jeri and Sarah. “Those two especially.”

  Well, shit. Enough of this. I went back and sat with the girls. “What’s up?” I asked, always a great opening line.

  “Jesus Christ, Mort. She asked if you wanted to shower with her and you turned her down? You didn’t tell me that part.”

  “I didn’t want to brag. When you’re done chatting you’ll find me at one of the roulette wheels.”

  I got up and left.

  The three of us ate dinner at the Peppermill buffet, one of the top three buffets in Reno. They allowed me to choose the venue—probably a consolation prize. I chose the Peppermill because the parking was easy and I could have roast beef and other fine cuisine, and they could have salads with chickpeas and beets and other stuff that wasn’t meant to support life—though looking at those two gorgeous broads, I might’ve been wrong about that.

  When we left the casino, the sunset was a band of golden fire above the Sierras. A discussion ensued, resulting in Sarah driving us back to her apartment so Jeri and I could retrieve Jeri’s Porsche and Sarah could entertain herself with a textbook and a report that was due on Wednesday, day after next.

  “Where to?” I asked Jeri when we were alone, headed south on Valley Road.

  “You didn’t shower with her? Wow.”

  “We could talk about something else. That salad you had at the Peppermill looked mighty tasty. Beets and sprouts, yum.”

  “Seriously, Mort? You wasted water?”

  “Yup, nope. I mean, I showered later, so I guess yup.”

  “Jesus.” She shook her head, then reached over and rubbed my neck, gave it a little massage. “You’re something else.”

  I didn’t say anything. She was right, of course, but I decided to let my natural humility shine through.

  “How about we swing by Odermann’s place?” Jeri said.

  “You’re driving, kiddo.”

  She smiled, hit I-80 and headed east, got off at Vista, looped through an aging subdivision, and pulled to the curb across from Bob’s house. A glow behind curtains suggested someone was home.

  We sat there for a while, then Jeri turned off the engine.

  “Stakeout?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  “Be a lot faster if I go kick in the front door, ask him about that SUV,” I said.

  “You should do that, see how it turns out. The essence of PI work is experience.”

  Okay, she had me there.

  We settled in and began to talk in earnest. An hour passed, then another. Somewhere during the third hour I was finally convinced that all the antics with Sarah—Holiday—was not an issue with Jeri. If there was an issue, it was undetectable, a sneeze in a hurricane. Something about Holiday had gotten under Jeri’s skin, something about shared loneliness, frustration, desire, fear, repression—a real potpourri of emotions, too tangled for me to sort out. But Jeri kept at it—what else are stakeouts for?—speaking quietly, doing her best to explain it to me, and, I thought, to herself. I think she knew what she felt, but hadn’t known why—not entirely. Talking it out seemed to help. Finally she blew out a gust of air and said, “Anyway, Mort, I understand all of this. I get it.”

  “Not sure I do. Yet. I mean, your acceptance of it.”

  Her voice remained serious. “Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. This thing about not owning you. It feels . . . deep.”

  “I’m not a deep guy.”

  “You’re deeper than you think. Anyway, Bob’s lights have been out for over an hour and stakeouts are ten percent boredom and ninety percent having to pee, so let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Which we did.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MA SAID, “I found another connection with those lists, but I don’t like it. I like the Odermann thing.”

  “What’d you find?” Jeri asked.

  Tuesday morning in Ma’s office, with bagels. Mine could’ve used a breakfast steak and a fried egg on it, but no such luck.

  “Okay, try to follow this,” Ma said. “Reinhart’s wife—her name is Julia—has a married brother living in Alaska. The brother’s wife has a sister named Lana who married a George Szupello and they live in Vegas. In case you’ve forgotten, Szupello is on the list of those SUV owners. If the name hadn’t been so far out there, I never woulda found it. Szupello of all things.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, that’s thin,” I said. I didn’t know how the hell she’d found it. Jeri had said Ma was good, but maybe she was too good, coming up with stuff like that.

  “It’s a drop of spit in Tahoe,” Ma said. “Lake Tahoe has enough water in it to cover all of California something like a foot deep.”

  “I didn’t k
now that,” I said. “Nice stat.”

  “You two,” Jeri growled. “Can we keep it on track?”

  Ma grinned. “Anyway, there it is, but I wouldn’t follow up on that on a bet. At least not yet.”

  “We’ll keep after Bye and Odermann,” Jeri said. “I like it that the SUV was registered to a dead woman.”

  “I sort of like Julia,” I said. “We oughta stake her out.”

  Jeri turned to me. “Why? She pretty?”

  “What I saw of her on TV, she ain’t bad.” In fact, she was or is a fairly typical trophy wife, given what I know about trophy wives, which is to say they’re younger and prettier than the wife who helped make the guy successful, and they’re interested enough in an older man’s wallet to grit their teeth and put up with the sex thing. And, having come up with that great analysis, I said it aloud.

  “Okay, you’re not a complete idiot,” Jeri said.

  “I glow under your praise, darlin’, but I like Julia for another reason. If Reinhart is dead, who benefits?”

  “The entire country,” Jeri said. “How’s that help us?”

  “Cui bono,” Ma muttered.

  We both stared at her. I was about to burp her when she said, “In case you’re Latin-challenged, that’s Latin for ‘who benefits.’”

  “Man, I gotta remember that,” I said.

  Jeri said, “Can’t see that she benefits. Odds are she isn’t gonna be First Lady now. Or even the wife of a powerful politician, even if he is a low-life grub worm. Let’s get outta here. We’ll go check out Odermann or Bye, Ma.”

  “Yeah, bye,” Ma said.

  “Bye, bye, Ma,” I said.

  Jeri spun me around and shoved me toward the door. “I don’t know if you’re gonna make it as a PI, Mort.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “This is serious fucking business and you’re a goddamn flake and a half.”

  Ma’s bray of laughter followed us out the door.

  Jeri drove us straight to Sarah’s place where we switched cars again. Holiday and I sat up front in the Audi while Jeri took the backseat. I knew it was Holiday because cleavage was abundant. I had the impression Tonopah had worn off and someone’s hormones were starting to flare up again.

  We parked on California Avenue across the street from a place called the Dancing Hippo, which hardly seemed like a good name for a place that caters to an anorexic crowd in high heels. I’d been in there one time, with Jeri, and almost starved to death on one of their sandwiches before I made it out the door. Eighty feet away, Leland Bye and four other attorneys were making two or three hundred dollars an hour while we sat in the car and watched the place and made something like, oh, zero dollars per hour. But the view was terrific so I didn’t complain. Every so often I looked up at the office building, just to be sure no one had moved it, which, if they had, would have made me look like a damn fool.

  We had a license plate and VIN on Mary’s SUV, but no SUV. During our travels around town we’d picked up a brochure from the local Mercedes dealer and had pictures of a Mercedes G550 so we could tell one of those from any of a hundred other SUVs. If it showed up, we’d be all over it.

  Yawn.

  At twelve fifteen, Jeri said, “We could go over to the Dancing Hippo and get something to eat.”

  “No we couldn’t,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t have anything in there to eat, that’s why.”

  “Tofu.”

  “Just what I said. Negative calories. It takes more calories to break that stuff down than you get when it finally turns to pond scum and shoots on through.”

  “Je-sus, what a fuckin’ image,” Jeri said.

  “Phone Ma. See if she’s got anything on Julia.”

  “Julia?” Holiday asked.

  “Reinhart’s wife,” Jeri said. “Mort’s got a bug up his butt.”

  “Really? There’s a doctor’s office across Virginia Street, over on Ryland.”

  I shook my head sadly. “I distinctly remember someone telling me I wasn’t cut out for this PI thing since I was a flake and a half, and here I am with two flakes. So how about that Julia thing, huh?”

  Jeri shrugged, got Ma on the phone, put her on speaker, and told her to look into Julia.

  “Been there, done that,” Ma said.

  “No hits?”

  “Nothing much. Other than it don’t look like she’s in line to be First Lady anymore, what with a husband who probably can’t tie his own shoes—if he’s still alive, that is, which I wouldn’t put a lot of money on.”

  “How about the basics, Ma?” I said. “Age, address, that sort of thing.”

  “Hold on, I got that somewhere around here.” Papers shuffled, then: “Okay, she’s thirty-six, blond, five foot nine, hundred thirty-two pounds—bitch—no children, been married to Harry for eleven years. They got hitched six months after he got rid of some baggage by the name of Rhonda Reinhart, née Fenner, of Bryn Mawr—la-de-fuckin’-da—the same year their youngest kid, Kyle, graduated from Ha’vid—more la-de-da—with a Ph.D. in economics. I think you’d be better off looking into this Rhonda lady since she’s the one who got dumped, except she’s remarried, lives in Baton Rouge, and her name is Rhonda Alsford now. So, back to Julia . . .” She read off an address in the hills of southwest Reno where a starter home would run newlyweds in the seven-hundred-thousand-dollar range. A look at a city map and, lo!—same gated community where Bye lived. I liked that, except that particular community sprawled over the hills like fungus and involved hundreds of homes, maybe a thousand, some of which were nearly two miles from the guard shack. Big place. I also liked Rhonda, who had been tossed aside like a used Kleenex—revenge being a dish best served cold according to all the experts.

  “Think you could get us in there, Ma?” I asked. “The place is gated.”

  “Is one and one two?”

  “Wait, I’ll ask.” I looked over at Holiday. “You’re the engineer. Is it?”

  “In binary, one-one is three, so I don’t know.”

  “Binary, huh? We could’ve used that in the IRS to keep people off balance. So, Ma, it’s looking like we’re kinda stalemated on that math problem—”

  “Je-sus Christ,” Jeri said. She took the phone off speaker and from what Holiday and I got from the one-sided conversation that ensued was that one and one were in fact two, and given roughly ten minutes’ notice, Ma could get us through any gated community in Reno or Sparks.

  “I’ll let you know,” Jeri said. She hung up, then gave me a slit-eyed look. “Reinhart’s wife, Mort? What the hell for? We’ve got this Odermann-Bye thing cooking.”

  “Call it gumshoe intuition.”

  “Right. I’ll do that. In the meantime, I’m gonna go over to the Dancing Hippo and get something to eat. You with me, Sarah?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Just don’t get tofu,” I called out as they crossed the street.

  When they got back, I was finishing off a slice of pizza.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” Jeri asked as she and Holiday got back in the Audi.

  “Dominos. They deliver.”

  “You had it delivered?”

  “Uh-huh. Medium-size meat-lover’s special. I told ’em to hold the tofu.”

  “Some guy came by, delivered pizza? No physical address, just a car parked at the curb?”

  “It was a girl, actually. Cute, too. But yeah, I gave her a five-dollar tip and she only had to drive half a mile so this was her lucky day.”

  “They delivered to a car? Seriously? Economy must really suck right now.”

  “Does, yeah. Anyway, since I’m getting bed sores on my butt, I came up with an idea.”

  “Do I want to hear it?”

  “Probably not, but I want to go back to Gerlach and watch the highway. I can sit outside that motel and see everything that comes by. Only place that SUV has been seen is up north. I phoned, got a reservation. They said they’ll hold the room for an hour, till I phone
back.”

  “I don’t know, Mort. Maybe. It’s not the worst idea you’ve come up with. Want to take Sarah with you?”

  “Well, no. I was thinking I’d catch a little alone time.” I looked at Holiday. “That okay?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Sure. Fine.”

  Didn’t sound fine, which probably meant I’d just disappointed someone. “I thought you had a report due tomorrow?”

  “It’s finished. I know someone who could turn it in for me. But if you don’t want me along, that’s fine.”

  Jeri tracked this exchange, didn’t say anything. I was on my own. When I first thought about being a PI, I’d thought about dark alleys and bullets whizzing past my ears. This was worse.

  “A little down time won’t hurt any of us,” I said. “So, yeah, I’ll go up there, ask around, keep an eye out, be back tomorrow. That okay, honey bun?” I said to Jeri.

  “If you want. We’re kinda spinning our wheels here.” She gave me a questioning look and flicked her eyes toward Holiday, but I gave her a little head shake that said no. I got a minute eyebrow lift in return that said it might be nice if I reconsidered. But she’d said she didn’t own me, so I was taking her at her word. I was free to do what I wanted.

  I got out of the car then bent down and looked in. My Toyota was parked at Jeri’s place. “I’ll walk. It’s less than a mile. I’ll be in Gerlach by four, four thirty. I might even see that SUV on the drive up, you never know.”

  “Call me,” Jeri said.

  “If you find out anything about Allie,” Holiday said, “let me know right away. I’m really worried.”

  “Will do. See you two later.” I gave them both one last look then took off, west on California, north on Arlington, walking fast to work off the pizza, eager to get on the road, be alone for a while. I hadn’t known I needed it, but the idea of heading out on my own felt good. I wanted some quiet time to think without having to talk. It’s not that easy to do around an estrogen mist. Thinking, that is.