Switcheroo

by Robert Lewis Clark

  “You’re an angel,” I said, wrapping up.

  “That’s what you think,” she leered at me over her shoulder as she sauntered toward the stairs.

  It took us another twenty minutes to leave the downstairs area. I met several more of Wendy’s friends. I was standing there talking to people in my towel, thinking seriously about pissing myself. Finally we broke away for a moment and went up to our bedroom in the loft.

  There are all kinds of no-money fun and I think one of the best ones is taking a piss when you have been holding it forever. The intense relief is a feeling of pleasure that can only be topped by sex.

  I flushed the john and came out of the bathroom to find that Wendy had dimmed the lights and hopped under the covers of the bed. Her wet swimsuit was on the floor. I dropped my towel and joined her for more no-money fun.

  While Wendy freshened up in the bathroom, I grabbed my cell phone, called the Holiday Inn on Cedar Bluff and asked if Tammy McHenry had checked in. The front desk informed me she had and I was patched through to her room.

  Grandma Tuttle sounded a bit worn when she answered the phone. She told me that things were as normal as could be expected. Hannah was enjoying jumping on the beds and Tammy had played with her in the indoor pool before going to work. Grandma Tuttle complained that she was unable to do laundry and she was concerned about her mail piling up at the house. She wanted to know when it would be safe to go home.

  “Give me until Monday night to try to figure this out. There are a few things I need to check that I can’t do on the weekend. Why don’t you try the room service? I know you’re probably afraid and this is inconvenient, but it’s for your own safety and for Hannah’s, too. ”

  “I’m not scared; I just want to do some laundry. And I want some mashed potatoes. All they have here is potato skins. Most people don’t even like the skins. It’s the inside that tastes good. And what do they do with the part they take out of the skins, when they don’t even sell mashed potatoes?”

  “Grandma Tuttle, I just don’t know. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I hung up.

  She had a damn good point. Do they throw out the best part of a perfectly good potato just to sell you the part that was touching the dirt with some sour cream and bacon on top?

  Sitting on the corner of the bed in this hulking chalet, I felt strangely disconnected. In spite of the party going on downstairs, I really wanted to go home and spend tomorrow raking leaves and not talking to anyone. Then maybe a ‘calmer’ over at Union Jack’s Pub tomorrow evening.

  What I did was call Tammy at Orby’s while I waited for Wendy to come out of the bathroom. It took a minute for her to get to the phone and I could hear the jukebox blaring in the background. When she picked up the phone, I told her about the car accident and the man in the Jeep-truck who had followed me. I told Tammy she had to stay at the motel through Monday night. Even if I had not found her truck by then, she would have to take her chances staying at the farmhouse. I told her I would keep trying after that but after Monday I would not be able to protect her any more. I would stay on the case, but I would need to start working my other jobs so my other clients would not get upset.

  “By asking around they’re gonna find you at Orby’s pretty soon anyway. Look how quickly they connected you with my house. Have you thought about changing jobs again?” I said.

  “Switching jobs ain’t the answer!” She was already upset about having to stay at Holiday Inn and this upset her some more. I thought she was being ungrateful. The Holiday Inn was pretty nice, but I didn’t say that since there was no convincing her now.

  What I didn’t tell her was I needed a paying customer, but I was thinking it. I did remind her because of the car accident I would have to attach a new vehicle to my expenses for this case. If I didn’t get the truck by Monday night, she could find somebody to work it full time and call our deal off.

  “I’ll meet you at the farmhouse Tuesday morning before work if I have not recovered the truck. We can go over the facts of your case and go from there, okay?” I was trying to be reassuring. I heard her exhale smoke. It sounded like hope leaving her. I could imagine her delicate jaw line and downcast eyes.

  She sighed, “Okay, but call me if you find anything sooner.”

  She hung up.

  I put on some khaki shorts and a t-shirt and UT sweatshirt and got ready to go back down to the party. I was going to need a car right away and had no money saved up for one. I would have to float myself another loan against my mother’s un-cashed rent checks. Since my mother had been holding these checks for so long, I had used that money before and paid it back as quickly as possible, taking the chance that she would not go crazy at that moment and cash all those rent payments.

  Finally, Wendy came out of the bathroom smelling good and looking even better. Her shoulder-length hair was still wet and she had changed into casual party attire. She began vigorously toweling her hair dry, which made her body shake in interesting ways.

  “I almost forgot to ask you if you had any luck finding my fighting Bobcats,” I said, having been in a daze I had forgotten about this.

  She stopped toweling her hair for a moment and looked at me. I sucked in my gut.

  “Why yes, I did. The Oliver Springs Bobcats are the most likely choice. There were six other schools that call themselves the Bobcats but most are in West Tennessee. Oliver Springs was the only one within two hundred miles.”

  She turned the blow dryer on, but I kept talking again anyway. I began by restating the facts regarding the case, being vague about the true nature of the stolen item, and speculating aloud about possible solutions.

  “You know, Oliver Springs is only about five minutes away from Oakridge. Hell, everything with this case is somehow connected with Oakridge. The invention, the murder, and now maybe even the theft. I’m going to go to Oakridge tomorrow and figure this thing out. Really all I have to do is find the best barbeque place near Oliver Springs and I should find my missing item.”

  Wendy turned off the blow dryer and began brushing her light brown hair. She didn’t realize I was watching.

  “You didn’t ask me who wore number thirteen at Oliver Springs. I think that is the most important part.”

  “True, but these numbers get reused over the years, usually. There could have been fifty guys with the number thirteen at that school during its history.”

  She looked at me, “But how many of these number thirteens are known criminals specializing in drug trafficking?”

  “Yeah?” I thought I new what she was going to say. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept quiet.

  “The most notorious number thirteen at Oliver Springs was their quarterback that graduated in 2007. His name is Stanley Allen Bailey. The secretary in the admissions office told me all about him. Said he was a known seller and user and she was sure he has a prior record. He even sounds shady because his nickname is Slink, supposedly because he could scramble away from pursuing defenders when he was quarterback of the Bobcats: slinky like, see? Now it sounds like he might be evading the police, so when you think about it, the nickname still works.”

  She just might solve my whole case if I let her, “Pretty slick, Wendy.”

  “Slink, not Slick, dummy,” she said, misunderstanding me. “Now let’s go watch UT win, come on.”

  She grabbed my hand, smiling brightly, and we went to watch the Volunteers try to eke out another victory.

  Saturday night, me, bushed on the couch. I could not concentrate on UT’s football game against South Eastern Conference opponent Georgia. I’m not sure that I would have even been into a match up with Florida, UT’s true nemesis. I was thinking about the disappearing trucks, my kept woman at the Holiday Inn, my escalating expenses and my limited clues for solving this crime. When Tammy had teleported she had smelled hickory smoke and saw a football jersey with number thirteen. Finding some good-smelling barbeque or finding Slink (or both) was my best bet.

  This was serious. At lea
st two people had died and I almost made that list during my showdown at Grandma’s OK Corral. I was ready to get back to Knoxville, get myself some new wheels and get to Oakridge. I had enough money (in my mother’s slush fund of un-cashed checks) to buy a used Jaguar XK8, but this didn’t make financial sense. I would not be able to put that kind of money back into the account fast enough and I was in no position to care for a nice car right now. A better plan was to buy a cheap dealer trade-in.

  Since tomorrow was Sunday, I would have to go to one of the larger auto dealers. I trust these guys about as far as I could have thrown Al Roker before the stomach staple thing. I think there is some larceny in every car dealer’s heart. Some more than others. There are still a few good dealers out there. An honest dealer will answer a straight-forward question. “Has this fender ever been hit?” you might ask. “No” he might say. Now, the whole other side of the car may have been torn off, welded and plastered back together, but the salesman would not volunteer that. Hey, you didn’t ask.

  Chapter 19

  “Old people love ‘em. But they really do look like cop cars,” said the hung-over car salesman at Shippler Ford. He had a face like an old garden implement and a personality to match, dulled by too many happy hours.

  Sunday morning was hitting me hard, too. It had been a great weekend with Wendy, but too much drinking and eating all the wrong things added to Saturday morning’s car wreck had left me feeling like a total corpse. It was the feeling of having played in a tough football game during which you were forced to drink beer in the huddle.

  class=Section5> I had to agree with the salesman (his name tag said ‘Used Car Consultant’). The ’97 Ford Crown Victoria did look like an unmarked cop car. I could picture the crusty old man who had traded it in, driving twenty miles below the speed limit and giving younger, faster drivers brain aneurisms from road rage.

  I had to walk past what seemed like miles of Mustangs, Taurus’s and Focus’s (or Foci?) to find this Crown Vic. It was parked with other trade-ins from the day before. It was not even been detailed yet, although it was not very dirty. Silver with gray interior, it looked about twenty-five feet long. If I was going to crash again, it would protect me, a valid concern after my recent smash-up.

  “It doesn’t have the police interceptor,” Yawned the sales man. “But it does get about twenty miles to the gallon. $4,995 plus tax.”

  The price was right. My philosophy of cheap transportation took precedent until I switched to a job with less driving. Field inspection and investigation wears out cars fast. Wrecking them ends things even quicker.

  He started the engine, which had a fairly soft V-eight sound, the muffler still intact. The salesman stared off into space, dreaming of his next drunk, draw or day off. I listened for squeaks and rattles.

  “Right now it wouldn’t be a bad idea if some people thought I was a cop. Let me take it for a spin.”

  After a perfunctory test drive, I decided to buy it with a thousand of my own money and a short term loan from my own checking account for the rest. It wasn’t the Blues Mobile, but it would do for now.

  When I got home with my new wheels, I sat down at my computer and started printing out names and addresses of restaurants: any place in Oliver Springs or Oakridge that might sell barbeque. I also tried to look up Stan Bailey a.k.a. ‘Slink’, no listing. He was probably one of those people who just had a pager or a cell. I also printed out Randal Kendrick’s address, my new ORNL scientist buddy. His little girl was dating someone named ‘Slink.’ I would be surprised if it was a different Slink than the one I was looking for. How many scoundrels with that moniker could there be.

  I grabbed my briefcase and I hopped into my new car heading towards Oakridge. I grabbed a CD from my briefcase and then realized that I had bought a car with no CD player. Avoiding actual work, I went to Buy-It electronics and bought an in-dash CD player. The kid who waited on me told me I didn’t need the CD player because any new radio had a jack for my MP3 player. I was going to tell him I didn’t have an MP3 player, but then he would try to sell me one and we would both know I was a dinosaur. I like to keep that to myself.

  While they installed the CD player, I drank the free coffee in their lounge and dozed through part of a Tennessee Titans game.

  Now it was five o’clock Sunday evening, I was tired and hungry and I had procrastinated until most of my day was gone. I was barreling down Emory Road along the river with my window open, resting my elbow on the door. Some old blues were playing through my new CD player. It was the kind of music that sounded just a little rough until the singer started and then you wondered ‘why does this guy think he can sing?’ I guess a good blues singer sort of growls out the notes. But the mood of the song did suit my own.

  About fifteen minutes later I pulled up to Big Earl’s, an Oakridge tradition. They were known for having great country cooking, served with a smile and for their good barbeque. Big Earl’s was very crowded. Since I was alone, I sat on a stool at the lunch counter and looked for a waitress. A young man set a glass of ice water down in front of me and took my order. He was thin and had a few visible tattoos on his arms, but his eyes were clear and serious. The tag on his apron said ‘Chris’. Big Earl had built his business by hiring kids straight out of juvenile hall. He gave troubled teens a chance to straighten up and be responsible. Working for Earl was considered a wise decision for a youngster with a criminal record, a second chance.

  Big Earl was a father figure to these kids, many of whom had no one else to look up to. Big Earl was rumored to be a millionaire, but he lived modestly. Of course I ordered the barbeque pork plate. This was served with any side dish you liked, as long as it was slaw, barbeque beans and fries. Chris set the food down in front of me with little flair and a polite ‘anything else?’ I said just more sweet tea and proceeded to smell my dinner, as he went to get the tea pitcher.

  The key to great barbeque is sauce and time. The time is to slow smoke the meat on low heat. Smoked pork barbeque cannot be whipped up. It cannot be micro-waved. It is usually better to start cooking it the day before you actually want to serve it. The sauce is even more important. There as many recipes for it as there are people who eat it. Most really good recipes are closely held proprietary secrets. The owner of a good restaurant may have a manager who can make the sauce from premixed spices but he won’t let anyone know the whole recipe.

  A truly good sauce has balance. Bad sauce can be all heat and no sweet, too bland or too vinegary. The same characteristics in harmony create a treat for the senses. This sauce was good but short of that. It was good enough, so I pretty much cleaned my plate, even though I would likely have to sniff a lot more barbeque to find my mark.

  My belly full, I waved slowly for my ticket. Without making much eye contact, Chris stuffed a greasy handwritten ticket under the edge of my plate and told me to have a good night.

  “Wait a second,” I said, as he turned away quickly. “Do you know a guy named Stanley Allen Bailey?”

  “Yup,” Now he was looking me in the eye.

  “How do you know him?” I laid down a twenty dollar tip on a six dollar ticket.

  “My parents owe him some money,” he said sharply. “Don’t really care for him that much, piece a shi...well, I mean, he’s a crook if you ask me.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “He hangs out at Bentley’s a lot, like all those suit types. Or at his office.”

  He shot a nervous glance over the counter full of empty tea glasses.

  “Thanks Chris,” I said. He was refilling drinks before I even finished speaking. It was good for a kid like Chris to stay busy and work late, keep him out of trouble. The ceiling at Big Earl’s was high but not twenty feet high. I went back toward the restroom and took a quick peek into the kitchen and store room. There was no place big enough in this restaurant to hide a truck.

  I drove by a few other little barbeque places on my way to Bentley’s. Gracie’s, The Red and White Checker, Old Sarge’s all wi
th damn fine barbeque, but none of these buildings were big enough to hide a prize pig, much less a pickup truck.

  Discouraged, I pulled into the mall across from Bentley’s parking lot and stopped the Crown Vic. Bentley’s was a tasteful stucco building with just-so landscaping and a breezeway for the valet to let you out of your car. Screw the valet; I wasn’t out to impress anyone. So I waited for a break in the early evening traffic and dashed across Illinois Avenue looking like the old Frogger video game.

  The façade was trimmed in pink neon with “Bentley’s” written in pink cursive neon glaring at me through the nightclub’s dark tinted windows. Ignoring the valets and bouncers, I paid my cover and walked in.

  If it is possible for a place to be posh and seedy at the same time, that was Bentley’s. They have an excellent dinner menu and wait staff, but there are condom machines in the bathrooms, along with an old dude in a black vest who brushes your coat, sprays you with Halston and then tries to bleed you for a tip. There were a few couples eating dinner or enjoying a dance, but for the most part, Bentley’s is what you might call a pick up joint (or a meat market, if you want to be crude).

  There was a strange mix of people at the bar: young executives getting blitzed before the work week, older men out to cheat on their wives, and women both young and old looking to score in the same way.

  I took a seat at the bar and decided to speak to the only people in the place whose motives were clear to me, the bartenders. They were out to get these people smashed in a hurry and to make good money doing it. That made sense and it kept the taxi drivers busy, too. Go, economy, go!

  I sat down and almost instantly a napkin appeared on the mahogany bar in front of me and a calm voice asked “What may I get you, sir?”

  This lady bartender was not a knock-out but not bad. She was not the kind of person you would notice unless you needed a drink or information. I needed both.