Switcheroo

by Robert Lewis Clark

  “Now Rust, none of my cars are warrantied. In fact, I get ‘em to sign at least three papers saying so,” Eddie said defensively

  He misunderstood me. Most people do.

  “Look, Eddie, it’s nothing like that. There’s no legal action against you. I am trying to find out where these trucks came from, who owned them previously? One was recently stolen,” I said.

  “You think the previous owner stole it?” He relaxed now he saw this visit was not about him.

  “I don’t really suspect anybody. I’m really just looking for a starting place.”

  “Who is the client?”

  “Tammy McHenry,”

  “Really, she is a hot little thing, I remember.” Eddie leered.

  Well, I could tell him how hot.

  “Yeah, can you pull this deal and see where these trucks came from?”

  Eddie went to a file cabinet and brought back two files, “These trucks were part of a deal I made at the auction out West. I bought ten trucks coming off lease from Vanguard Leasing. You could call them to verify. Don’t know who was driving them before. You’re gonna have to get your starting place elsewhere.”

  “One quick favor, Eddie, can I use your credit bureau account to pull a credit check on a dead-beat dad?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but you need to buy your next car from me, you hear. Getting close to that time, too,” he said; nodding out the window toward my sled.

  With this, Eddie shook my hand and left. I was alone in his office. I pulled a chair up to his computer and started typing Georgie Parker’s name into the credit bureau software. I would soon see if I could get Tammy’s friend Kim some child support.

  What my two new clients lacked in ability to pay, they were making up for in intrigue. Especially Tammy. I better start doing some sit ups again. She had stayed thin with the Virginia Slims diet. Cheap cigars didn’t seem to be helping my gut.

  Never give anyone you do not fully trust your date of birth. Did you know that with your correct address, date of birth and name, anyone can pull your credit report, view public records and also send black balloons when you turn forty?

  I printed out a credit bureau report on Georgie using his date of birth and his mom’s home address. There were a few recent inquiries and a new address reported in Macon, Georgia. So, Georgie went to Georgia. That fit neatly.

  At seven Sunday evening, I was at Tammy’s Grandmother’s house again. We sat in the simply furnished den, me on an orange velvet chair, Tammy on the old area rug that was on the worn hardwood floor. She was folding laundry while Hannah watched TV. I folded a few things absently while we talked, trying to be helpful. I put down a kitchen towel and picked up the next item, skimpy lace panties. I blushed, throwing them back in the basket. Tammy laughed.

  “You know, Grandma Tuttle should not wear those. Act her age, you know?” I laughed. “What is this thing?” I said, holding up a strange baby garment. It was like a t-shirt with a snapping flap at the bottom.

  “It’s a onesie. It makes changing diapers easy and kinda helps keep diapers in place. Keeps ‘em from leaking. It’s top and bottom underwear for babies.” Now she knew the extent of my diaper experience.

  “You know,” I said “A larger version of these could be used to prevent a problem that has plagued plumbers for years. A prominently visible butt crack.”

  Tammy laughed as she nodded in agreement. She did appreciate some of my humor.

  We had discussed some of our plans tonight. I reviewed what we were going to do one more time.

  “Ok, so tonight we put a note in the car saying we will meet them at the mall tomorrow night. I’ll follow you out there and we’ll leave my car at McDonald’s, next to the mall. I climb into the bed of the truck and hide under a blanket. Then you leave the truck in the parking lot at Oakridge mall just like they asked. Then, you walk back to McDonald’s and appear to leave in my car. If no one is following you pull back around Sears Auto Center and watch the truck from there. If anyone follows you, drive to the Oakridge Police station. I will wait for whoever comes for the truck.” This was to be the macho part where I surprise and apprehend the bad guy and get him to take me to the other truck.

  “I like it, but I don’t like taking the truck out there. I mean, there is a chance they could take it from us and I’d have nothing. Can’t we just ride around the mall and look for suspicious characters?” Tammy said, from behind her basket piled high with folded clothes.

  “We could, but I don’t think we could catch anybody that way,” I said. “These notes are pretty non-threatening. I think we are dealing with amateurs.”

  We talked about it a little more and agreed to go ahead with taking the truck out there. After Hannah went to bed, I walked out to the truck with Tammy. She showed me the note that had teleported in yesterday, instructing her to be at the Oakridge Mall with the truck at eight p.m. Pretty much the same drivel about further action and efforts to locate her where-abouts.

  Today the damaged black Ranger was in the garage. To make Tammy smile, I wrote ‘wash me’ on the side of it in the thin dust. Tomorrow the blue truck would be here. The forty-five minute drive to Oakridge would be easier in the undamaged truck.

  I was hoping for a repeat of Saturday night, but Tammy gave me a brief hug and seemed ready for me to leave. Taking the hint, I told her I would see her after work tomorrow. Walking to the car, I glanced at the porch swing. My thoughts drifted a bit and the next thing I knew I was home in my own driveway. It’s funny how your subconscious can drive like that.

  Chapter 10

  Monday seemed to fly by. I already had five calls done for LISA and was back to the Arcade Building by four. I made a detour on the way to my office and ducked into Willie Crandle’s office. Willie was an attorney with whom I had made friends since I moved into my Mom’s office building three years ago. Willie had a general practice, but made most of his living handling a variety of legal matters for the blue-bloods of Knoxville. I always thought it was because of my mother that Willie tolerated me. He did this so well I thought we were friends. I had tested this friendship before by offering his two secretaries some part-time work. Willie didn’t seem to mind as long as the ladies finished his work first.

  I went into the high ceilinged office with its old plaster and mahogany and sat down by Wendy Forsyth, the better looking of the two legal aids. I walked past Willie’s office manager, Thelma, who was a protective, motherly type who didn’t seem to care for me or anyone else that I could tell. Thelma was dependable and the customers were accustomed to her abrupt manner. Some seemed to enjoy complaining to Willie about her. Sort of a standing joke. Willie always defended her. Thelma had been a fixture of the office for years, almost like the desks or filing cabinets.

  I gave Thelma a cordial head nod and hello. She had the body of fire hydrant and the personality of a battle axe. She gave me a look that would sour milk and said “Mr. Stover.” Her tone conveyed a judgment passed. This was as good as it got with Thelma.

  Wendy had on a wool sweater and matching skirt and I couldn’t help looking at her legs as she stood up to say hi.

  After we exchanged pleasantries I got to the reason for my call.

  “Look, Wendy,” I said softly, “I’ve got a horribly busy week and I need help keeping up with my reports and paperwork. I was hoping you could help me out.” I told her I would pay twenty dollars a report for every report she could turn out this week. She could take the stuff home at night and email it to LISA for me in the morning. I had paid her fifteen dollars last time, I hoped she remembered this.

  “Rust, I’ll do it for ten each, but I need a favor, too. I’ve been meaning to call you. I’ve got a legal workshop to go to this weekend in Gatlinburg, sort of a retreat. Husbands and wives are being invited and there will be a party afterwards. I really just don’t want to go up there alone. Will you go with me?”

  She looked at me with her dark brown eyes, no pupil was visible. I had been to the theater with her and dinner a few ti
mes, the last time a few months ago, but no serious love connection. She was a divorcé with a kid in middle school. When you’re my age and single most potential dates are divorcés. I would be scared to try seeing a girl over thirty that no one had thought to marry yet. She would most likely be ugly, psychotic, into scrap-booking or in a convent. Anyway, Wendy was pretty, with a generous figure.

  “What about Briana?” Briana is her daughter.

  “Staying with her Grandma,” she smiled.

  “OK, I guess. When do we leave?”

  “Saturday at eleven. Swing by and pick me up,” she said, touching my hand. “Thank you so much.”

  I left her the memory card from the digital camera and my chicken-scratched notes for the reports from that day. I left quickly, followed by the watchful gaze of Thelma, the office Nazi.

  I called Tammy at her Grandma’s to make sure we were on for tonight. I was to pick her up around seven. The truck was gassed up and ready. There was an answering machine message from Officer Billingsworth from KPD.

  “Mr. Stover, I need you to come downtown and make a statement to one of the detectives about this thug you stuck in the trunk of his own car. Come by at 9:00 tomorrow morning, good day.” Billingsworth’s voice was deep, like James Earl Jones only there was a gangster rap accent to it.

  I got out my checkbook, wrote out November’s pointless rent payment and mailed it to my mother’s real estate office. I wrote a check for eighty dollars to Wendy and left it on my desk for her to get in the morning. I would not see her since I would be at the police station making my statement.

  The Knoxville Police Department is near downtown, close to a rough neighborhood. This is good, since a lot of city police patrol calls are made in East Knoxville.

  I met Billingsworth at the office and he introduced me to Detective Stratton, who would take my statement. Stratton knew I had been on the force, but we had not worked together. So he did not hate me.

  Stratton was sort of a Big Bopper looking guy, without the booming singing voice. He sat down with a pen and recorder and asked about the events leading up to Cedric Litton’s imprisonment in his own trunk. When he was almost done he looked over his cheater glasses at me and said, “You know, Mr. Stover, I thought the gun in the video footage looked pretty shiny. The .22 we recovered was cheap gunmetal. Did that dude have more than one gun?”

  I looked him in the eye and said, “That was the only one I saw.”

  “I see, you didn’t take anything else off him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Playing dumb, not hard for me. We shook hands and I left. I didn’t know why I wanted the nickel-plated piece at the time, but it ended up at the bottom of the Tennessee River later that week when my conscience caught up with me. For now, it was in the glove box of the LeBaron with my police special revolver.

  I hopped into the Chrysler and headed to Straw Plains to pick up my little waitress. Oh, sorry, server.

  Tammy was her usual cute self when I got there. Grandma Tuttle was putting Hannah to bed so we headed to the garage. The truck had not been used for a while, it wouldn’t start.

  I pushed it out of the garage and jumped it off with the cables I kept in the LeBaron. Watching Tammy lean forward under the hood made me want a jump of another kind. No time. We had an eight o’clock appointment.

  I followed in the LeBaron as Tammy drove the Ranger out onto the highway. It had been a long time since I had been to Oakridge.

  The nuclear epicenter of the world in the time leading up to World War II had changed. Now the government housing had all been sold to regular folk. There was nuclear power and research, but no more bombs were being built.

  Tammy took the back way up Clinton Highway and then left on Emory Road. This was okay with me; it made a nice country drive. Now we turned right and followed the river past a landing where sculling teams rowed by day. Twilight was shimmering on Melton Hill Lake.

  She turned left onto Illinois Avenue and pulled into McDonalds. I left the LeBaron and hopped into the small truck bed. I curled up tightly and hid under the piece of canvas I had brought. Riding to the Mall in the dark under the canvas felt a little silly. Things men do. I was turning into a macho asshole, but I couldn’t see myself telling the cops about these two trucks that trade places. Have you ever seen ‘The Fly?’ No one believes the doctor. He eventually goes insane, turns into fly and is eaten by a spider. So I took matters into my own hands like an idiot.

  Tammy slammed the truck door and whispered she would see me soon. I had given her my cell phone. She was supposed to walk back by the trail through the woods behind the Mall and wait at the McDonalds on Illinois Avenue for me to meet her, and to call 911 if she was attacked. I considered telling her a cheeseburger might do her some good while she waited.

  I waited quite awhile, about twenty minutes. Then I heard footsteps approaching. The footsteps stopped. I froze. Someone pulled the locked door handle of the Ranger, and it snapped back with a loud clack. That was all I needed to hear. I sprang up to a kneeling position in the truck bed and drew my revolver. I was aiming at a fellow in a windbreaker with round glasses. He had the look of a muscular John Denver with straw blonde hair sticking out from under a black ball cap. He would have made a very nerdy biker with those glasses and it made me think of what Red, a.k.a. Billy, had told me at Orby’s. This may be the man the killed Tammy’s husband. He froze for just a moment when I told him to.

  If you are mugged or held at gun point for some reason and you turn and run as fast as you can, there is a one in five chance you will get away without being shot. Even if you get shot, then there is only a one in twenty chance the wound will be fatal. Most people are bad shots; others don’t have the guts to shoot at all. I fell into the second category.

  Mr. Glasses ran across the mall parking lot toward a group of cars. I jumped out of the truck bed, stumbled a bit and was right after him. He won the foot race to a small pick up truck and took off, tires squealing. Not fast enough. OU812 would have been a more interesting license plate, but the generic plate he had was fine with me. I kept repeating the number all the way back to the Ford Ranger and wrote his tag number on the pad in my wallet. I drove to McDonalds.

  Tammy was drinking a milk shake at McD’s when I got there. Her cheeks sank nicely when she sucked on the straw causing my knees to weaken slightly. I was glad I had done ten push ups this morning.

  After I told her what had happened I explained all I had to do was run this license plate to find our man in the glasses. She seemed pretty pleased and she was relieved I had not lost the truck. I told her ‘zero mistakes’ was my specialty. She didn’t know me, so what was the harm?

  When we got back to Straw Plains and the truck was safely locked in the garage we said good night. I did get quick good night kiss for my good work. This went a long way toward making up for the fact that I would probably never see any money from this case.

  Chapter 11

  Tuesday morning I had to work double quick on my field assignments from LISA in order to have extra time for my two new cases. By four thirty, I managed to get back to the office and give my pictures and notes to Wendy to type. She gave me copies of the stuff she had emailed to LISA this morning. My shoes clicked quickly and loudly down the marble hall to my own office. It had a waiting area and reception desk, but I was currently without a secretary. I have had only had one secretary in four years of business. Took only three months before it became to great a financial strain, a luxury I could not afford.

  In my office I made coffee and frantically started dialing my phone. My first call was the hardest one to make. I called Lt. Stratton at KPD. He did not sound like the Big Bopper when he answered.

  “Listen, I gave you a free bust last weekend. I need a favor. I need a plate number run and no one else at the department will help me. I don’t even do much real detecting anymore, mostly just field investigations, so I just need help this once. What do you say?” I tried to inject real sincerely into th
is appeal, but it still sounded cheesy.

  “Okay, but I need to know what this is for,” Stratton said. I heard keys tapping in the background as I began to talk.

  I started from the beginning, skipped ninety-five percent of the story, made up a few things and basically just told him that I was trying to chase down a stolen vehicle for a client. He asked my client’s name, checked his computer, and he said there was no case in the file. She should have called the cops. I told him that she lacked confidence in our law enforcement, although I did not share her view.

  “How did you meet this girl?” Stratton asked.

  “I was inspecting her dead husband’s vacant house trailer.” Try a little truth for a change.

  “I don’t know why I even asked,” sighed Stratton. “The State of Tennessee shows Tammy and Travis McHenry as owners. Prior owners, Vanguard Leasing. Doesn’t show who the lessee was. There’s no way for me to pull up the actual person driving the car,” Stratton said.

  I had Stratton read me the vehicle ID number, hung up and called my pal Nick at Dickinson Ford. He put me on hold and called Vanguard Leasing to get me the lessee’s name for the truck.

  My pen was on the paper, eagerly ready to write. Here was the answer to this case.

  “So, what’s his name?” I said.

  “There ain’t no him. The truck’s leased to Oakridge National Labs.”

  “Thanks, Nick. I’ll see ya.”

  I said bye and hung up.

  Not registered to an individual, but to an institution. This was getting way too involved for pro bono work, damn it. Now what?

  The dear old woman who opened the door Wednesday morning looked at me with motherly affection. Unfortunately, she was not my mother. He name was Ruby Harper and she was my mother’s personal assistant. The term “maid” was beneath both of them, but Ruby did a lot of that kind of work. Some cooking, too, but no windows. Ruby was a solid woman with hair the color and texture of steel wool. She worked five days a week, from ten until six. Her main duties were cooking and dealing with lawn and cleaning contractors. She had worked for my mother for thirty-some years now. She had seen me grow up, graduate from high school and college, and had followed my illustrious detecting career.