by Ang Pompano
Big Al gave me a blank look. Of course, he had no idea who Estelle was. Hell, he had no idea who I was.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’ve got to find Hicks. He’s Estelle’s son-in-law. But he keeps moving. This is the second address I’ve had for him.”
We heard the distinctive whine of a mail truck coming down the street.
“Leave it to me,” Big Al said.
I snickered. I didn’t have time to humor the old man. Yet, I marveled at the fact that in spite of having forgotten most of what happened in his life, he remembered that he had been a detective. Before I could stop him, he ran down to Hicks’ mailbox and flagged down the mail carrier.
“I want to send something to my old neighbor but I lost his new address. Can you help me out?” he said.
I’ll be damned.
The mailman clucked his tongue. “Hold on, I’m new on this route. What’s his name?”
That blank look came over my father’s face again. “His name is, uh...”
Come on. Come on. I just told it to you. Big Al continued to struggle. I went up to the mail truck.
“It’s Roscoe Hicks,” I said.
“Right. Right. See what I mean, I forget stuff. Don’t get old. The Golden Years are fool’s gold.”
The mailman laughed. “I hear ya. Hold on, I think there’s still some paper work they filled out here.” He looked through a folder that sat in a box on his dashboard. “Here you go, Oglethorpe Court, 3751 Pine Barren Place, Pooler. Let me write it down so you don’t forget it again.”
He wrote the address on a piece of paper and handed it to Big Al. I know for damned certain he wouldn’t have given the address to a younger guy.
“I thank you.” Big Al tipped his hat in an almost courtly gesture.
“You have a good day, sir.”
As the mailman continued on his route, Big Al had a satisfied look on his face.
“I still got it,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess you do. I owe you a beer.”
“I can’t. I got to get home. My mother will be looking for me.”
Good lord, I felt like I’d stepped into the cuckoo’s nest. I looked at my watch. My new “partner” had been with me for over two hours. That was a long enough break for the staff at the nursing home.
Although he had said he wanted to go home, when we pulled into the parking lot of The Palms, my father gave me a questioning look.
“What’s this?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
Here we go. I got a knot in my stomach. If he gave me a hard time about going back in as Maryann had predicted, I was going to have a hell of a situation on my hands. I skirted the issue.
“I have to go in there for a minute.”
“Okay. I’ll wait here.” No tricking him. In some ways, he was still sharp. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and pretended to go to sleep, as he had done the first day I visited him in the home.
I should have known that things had gone too easy up until then.
“Have it your way. I have to report to some people in the station. Wait here. It may take me a while.”
I got out of the truck and headed toward the building. I walked as slow as I could as I tried to figure out how I was going to ask Maryann for help to get him back in without looking like a complete ass. My finger slipped off the call button the first time I tried to press it. The second time I punched it with conviction. I did what I had to do that afternoon, and if Maryann had a problem with it, I’d face the consequences.
“You’re reporting to the chief?” My father was behind me, walking fast to catch up. His fancy stick never even touched the ground.
“I guess you could say that,” I said.
“I gotta talk to him, too.”
“It’s a her,” I said.
“The best chief I ever knew was a woman. I remember one time we...”
Wherever he was going with it, I wasn’t interested. I knew the next few minutes were not going to be pretty. The buzzer rang and the glass door slid open.
“I know the code to the station, you know,” Big Al said to me.
I sighed. That was another conversation I was going to have to have with Maryann. As we walked in, she stuck her head out of her door and called down the hall to a charge nurse to help my father settle in. Then she retreated to her office.
The other nurse rushed down the hall with a big smile on her face. She took my father gently by the arm.
“Welcome back, Mr. DeSantis. How was your afternoon?”
“Good. Good. I was working on a case.”
The nurse turned toward me. “I’m sure it did him good to get out.” She glanced toward Maryann’s office and gave a shrug.
“My friend is a detective, too.” My father looked at me as if he were trying to put a name to my face. “Nice guy.” Then he leaned in to the nurse and said in a low voice. “He’s got a lot to learn.”
The nurse winked at me. “I’ll take care of him from here.” She waved for me to go.
On the way out, I stopped by Maryann’s door intending to tell her that at least one patient had cracked the door code.
She looked up from what she was doing at her desk. “It wasn’t a good idea to bring him out. We have our guests’ best interest at heart. We have the experience and we know what we are doing.” Ouch! Talk about snippy.
She punched the number into a box on the wall. I heard a buzz and the entrance door opened. I snickered and left without telling her about the code.
*****
When I hit the fresh air, I took a deep breath. As stressful as the afternoon had been, things actually worked out pretty well. Now that I got to know the old man a little better, I’d come to the realization that I couldn’t take everything he said to heart. In fact, I actually enjoyed hanging out with him. It seemed like we were better as friends than as father and son. I was cool with that.
18
THE GPS LED ME OUT Louisville Road to what must have been No-Man’s-Land a few years before. Eventually I found Oglethorpe Court, a “village” of manufactured homes plopped in the middle of scrub lands full of fan palms and herds of long horned cattle. In spite of being in the wide-open spaces, the homes—actually trailers on foundations, all with a screened porch and car port—were crammed so close together that you couldn’t fart without the neighbors hearing.
I parked in front of 3751 Pine Barren Place, and walked across a postage stamp sized “lawn” of white pebbles that made a crunching sound under my shoes. Nobody answered when I knocked at the door, but I thought I heard movement inside.
“Go away!”
It must have been my day for running into the pissed off of the world. I knocked again.
A woman dressed in Wal-Mart chic—a pink t-shirt and leopard print stretch pants—finally came to the door and stood behind the screen. I glanced at the picture of Estelle’s daughter. It would take a stretch of the imagination to think this was Jill Hicks. The woman was a blonde, lean and muscular, as if she worked out with weights, but her most noticeable distinction were her eyes, outlined in heavy black that extended to curves that upturned toward the temples, reminding me of a nightmarish Cleopatra. She stood behind the screen door and seemed surprised when she saw me.
“Oh. I thought you were the jerk next door.” She had a hint of an accent that reminded me of my English neighbor Lynch.
“No, I’m another jerk.”
At least I made her smile. She softened a bit.
“I’m studying for an exam. Unless you’re an expert on randomized algorithms, I don’t have time to chat.”
I never pegged her for a math major. Shame on me for judging her by her looks.
“Sorry, I can’t help you there. I can’t even figure out why people watch unboxing videos.”
She started to clos
e the inside door.
“I’m looking for Roscoe Hicks,” I said.
The door opened wide again. Her mouth twitched.
“May I ask who you are?” she said from behind the screen.
I held out my card. She opened the screen door enough to take it. Unlike Nate Roman, she actually looked at it.
“Blue Palmetto Detective Agency?” She closed the screen door.
“Al DeSantis, as you can see from the picture on the card.” I looked at the name on the letterbox on the wall next to the door: Hicks/Wharton.
“I take it that you are Ms. Wharton.”
“Yes. Marnee Wharton.”
“Ms. Wharton, do you know Jill Hicks?”
“I might.”
“I’m hoping you can help me.” I glanced at the names on the mailbox.
“We were friends. She’s dead. A car crash, a little over two months ago.”
“So I understand. And Roscoe Hicks. Do you know him?”
She fingered the card and shifted her body.
“My boyfriend.”
Boyfriend? Mr. Hicks didn’t waste any time in getting back into the game. But that wasn’t my business. She must have surmised what I was thinking.
“Roscoe was lonely. What can I say?”
“Does he live here? I’d like to talk to him.”
“Good luck with that. He dumped all of his shit here after his wife died and then took off after a couple of weeks. If I had known, I wouldn’t have bothered to put his name on the box.”
She looked at my card again. “All kinds of investigation,” she read. “You know what Mr. Detective? When you find him, tell him to cough up his half of the rent. It’s due.”
Sorry, sister. I’m not working for you. “One more thing. Can you tell me about the accident?”
“Did I say it was an accident? As I said, I’m studying.”
She closed the door.
“I have more questions,” I said to the door knocker.
I wanted to ask Wharton if she had a picture of her boyfriend, but she didn’t respond to my knocking. And how about Hicks taking up with Wharton so soon after his wife died? I guess everyone deals with their grief in different ways.
19
THE AFTERNOON HAD BEEN eaten up quicker than a pizza in a frat house, and I needed to allow myself a break from work. I was more than happy when Max sent me a text asking if I’d like to walk down to Little Beach and then go for a bite to eat.
Spending any time with Max sounded like a good idea to me.
“Where is this place?” I asked when I met her at her house.
She handed me a nylon bag with a beach blanket in it. “It’s not far from the village. There are boulders that form a jetty and you can still see the pilings from an old dock. It’s small so tourists never go there, but it’s perfect for relaxing and watching the river.”
*****
A half hour later, Max led me along a path at the edge of the plume grass, the tall grasses that grow at the end of the water action, until we got to the destroyed dock she had mentioned.
She was right, the place was almost deserted except for some gulls and the little shorebirds at the water’s edge that ran back and forth playing tag with the waves. Looking west, the Savannah Bridge loomed up river.
I took the blanket out of the bag and spread it on the sand, then we flopped down on it and watched the sun speed toward the bridge and the hills beyond.
I was writing her name in the sand with a stick when Max smiled at me and moved a little closer. I put my arm around her.
“The sunsets are best when there are a few clouds,” she said. “I love clouds. If I painted clouds that look like that with those purples, pinks, and oranges, people would say it wasn’t realistic.”
“But there they are,” I said.
“Do you like living here a little better?”
Where was she going with that?
“I don’t have much choice.”
She looked disappointed and made an exaggerated pout. “That’s too bad. I love it here.”
“I like being here with you.” I wasn’t saying that because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I meant it.
She smiled, then quickly went all serious on me. “So, why did you come here if you hate Georgia?”
“It’s not that I hate Georgia. I hate making plans and then having them changed on me.”
“You mean you hate to be told what to do.”
I’m far from a teen, but since I couldn’t rebel against my father back when I was, I made up for the lost opportunity by rebelling against authority whenever I could. At least that’s what I was told in the one session of counseling that I had gone to. I never went back, so who knows what else is going on in my head?
“You could say that. I guess. I had plans to move to L.A.”
“So, I’ve heard. Several times in fact. Is that when Greenleaf called you?”
I had the feeling that she knew the answer to that. She and Greenleaf seemed to be pretty tight.
“Yeah, you might say I had a bad day at work. I was in an accident on a bridge in New Haven. I got pissed off, and quit.”
“You quit because you were in an accident?”
I don’t know why I was answering her questions, but I did.
“Maybe that was an understatement. I was nearly polished off by a drug dealer who I probably would have killed if a truck didn’t do it first. Then I threw my badge at the chief and the mayor.”
“You had a right to be upset.”
I sure did, especially after Kim had egged me on by implying the accident was my fault and that I should be more like Donahue. I didn’t tell Max that part.
“But I wasn’t upset. It was more like I was free. I was coming out of a relationship and had been planning on taking early retirement when I turned thirty-six to go out to L.A. anyway. I was moving the schedule up by ten months. No big deal.”
“Oh? You were in a relationship?”
Max perked up. I think the only thing she heard was the part about me coming out of a relationship.
“According to her, we were more like housemates with privileges. We decided we were both better off going our own way. I sold my half of the house to her at a loss and used the money to buy a condo in Santa Monica. There was no reason to hang around in Connecticut.”
“So, the bridge thing was an excuse to go out there sooner.”
I was opening up more to Max than to anyone else in my life. “More like the last straw. I had this feeling that if I stayed any longer I would get killed before I got the chance to retire.”
“It was time to leave. I hear you,” Max said. “A few years ago, I made up my mind that the TV industry screwed me over for the last time. I said goodbye to a hit investigative news spot that I created, and goodbye to the misogyny that came along with it.”
I wasn’t sure if it was exactly the same thing, but I was relieved to know that Max and I were in agreement that sometimes you have enough of a situation and you have to move on.
“Right, it was time. So, like I said, I felt free. I was trying to finish up paperwork on the bridge incident when my cell phone rang. The woman on the other end tells me she’s Felicia Greenleaf from the Blue Palmetto Detective Agency. If I learned anything on the force, it was that nothing good comes from dealing with private detectives.”
Max looked like she had heard the funniest joke in the world. “What are you smiling about?”
“The irony. Look at you now. Go on.”
“I told Greenleaf I had something important to do and didn’t have time to talk to a detective. I was about to hang up when she told me my father had founded Blue Palmetto, and she was the agency’s chief and only administrative assistant. I’m like, No shit? I had figured the old man had died long ago.”
“You t
hought your father was dead all along?”
“Yep, but she tells me Al Sr. is alive and in a home with dementia. It was weird to be reminded that I was a Junior.”
Max put her hand on my shoulder. “I know it must have been a shock. But everything she was telling you was true.”
“The way I looked at it, he was only contacting me because he needed me. And I told her so. There was a moment of silence. Finally, Greenleaf cleared her throat kind of like I remembered my fifth-grade teacher used to do to get my attention. She told me my father was being well cared for, but she needed to know how I wanted her to proceed. I took that to mean she was looking for someone to pay the bills.”
“Actually, your father planned all of that ahead. I think she wanted to know about the agency,” Max said.
“Right, but I wasn’t following the conversation. I asked her why would I care? And she said because I was the owner of not only the detective agency but a house on Ava Island. She even told me it was in Greg Allman’s old neighborhood.”
Max laughed. “Not exactly. His place was twenty miles from here. But go on.”
“Whatever. It’s too late anyway for us to become drinking buddies now that he’s dead. You want to hear this or not?”
“I’m listening, go on.” Max said.
“I asked her if she was sure I inherited all those things, and she got all bent out of shape. You know how Greenleaf is.” I imitated Greenleaf’s voice as I said, “Not inherited, own. I told you Mr. DeSantis, Sr. is not dead!” Max and I both laughed at my imitation.
“So, you decided to do the right thing and come down to help out.”
“No. I told her I didn’t want any part of my father’s agency or his home. Then I hung up.”
“And yet you ended up here.” She put her hand on my leg. “That’s what happens when you resist a force of nature.”
“Or the universe decides to take a dump on you. When I got home, I had a letter from a lawyer in Santa Monica. I read the letter three times before it sunk in. The condo would never be finished. The builder ran away with the money. My money was gone and I had no job. I wouldn’t even be able to pay the rent on the apartment I was living in.”