“What’s that?”
“We have to rent another car. He’s already seen your Cadillac.”
“Good point.” I paid the bill, and then we walked to the door. She grabbed the handle and opened it for me before I had a chance.
“Why, thank you,” I said, plucking a toothpick off a table as I made my way outside.
“One more thing,” she said. “I’m paying for the rental car.”
“Not necessary.”
“Oz, you’ve let me stay at your place, you’ve been more than generous with your time, and you were nearly killed in the process.”
“Eh. It’s no big deal. Mackenzie and I like the company.”
She smacked the hood of the Cadillac. “Will you stop being so gallant all the time? Let people do stuff for you. Got it?”
I gave her the three-finger salute. Little did I know what she had in mind when she’d said “rental car.”
29
I put my ear to the dash. “Is the damn thing even running?”
Ivy snickered. “Yes, Grandpa. It’s called a hybrid car. It’s running off the battery right now.”
We were sitting at a light in the rental we’d just picked up, a red Toyota Prius. It had taken me ten minutes to figure out how to start it. Actually, it had taken only two minutes to figure out how to turn it on…I just didn’t know it was running for another eight minutes, all while Ivy sat there and hid her snicker.
The light turned green, and I pressed the pedal that made the car move. I couldn’t say I’d “hit the gas,” of course. We drove across town toward the hospital, but the driving experience bordered on surreal. It was like sitting in a metal bubble and being pushed. There was no vibration of any kind.
Maybe I was losing touch with new technology.
Once at the hospital, we circled the block until we found the sign for Austin State Hospital Employee Parking. We backed into a parking spot at a picture-frame store across the street. For the first few minutes, we guessed at which car belonged to Dr. Patterson. We’d narrowed our selections to two. Ivy thought it was a burgundy four-door Lexus sedan. I thought it was a silver Acura MDX.
“You’re going with the SUV because you think he carries bodies around in the back of his car,” Ivy said.
I shrugged.
“That’s too obvious.”
“Eh, maybe, maybe not.”
We sat there in silence for a moment, both of us staring at the hospital parking lot.
“You know, nothing connects the doctor to the cemetery,” I said, “although he did seem quite interested in the bandana. I want to go back to the cemetery, look around some more.”
“And why is that?”
“Because of one thing the doctor said: there had been no recent burials at the cemetery, yet we know we found an area where the ground had definitely been disturbed.” I turned in my seat to face her. “Maybe someone wasn’t burying something, but, instead, unburying something.”
She wrinkled her nose, doubtful. “I don’t know. If he was guilty, like whether he was burying or unburying, don’t you think he would have said something other than there were no burials? I mean, wouldn’t he come up with a response that would take away our suspicions?”
She had a point. “You’re pretty good at discounting my theories.”
“I hope you’re not offended. But, frankly, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. So, it’s kind of a guessing game.”
I shifted around in my seat and leaned back, but kept my eyes on her. “Guess we make a pretty good team,” I said.
She nodded.
“Some might say it makes sense to combine our talents. You know, like Batman and Robin.”
“You mean Batman and Batgirl.”
“Yeah, that works.”
She arched an eyebrow. “How about Wonder Woman and Batman?”
It was hard for me to go there. My Wonder Woman—for very different reasons—had always been Nicole.
“I’ll give you top billing: Batgirl and Batman.”
“We’re not making a movie, weirdo.”
“True.” I paused, glanced toward the exit of the hospital. “But what if we combined our two little PI firms into one? You could move to Austin, and we would kick ass. I know it.”
She smiled. “You’re a funny guy, Oz.”
“You haven’t thought about it?”
“Not really.”
“So you have thought about it.”
“A little. More here in the last thirty seconds than in the previous three days combined.”
“Bam. Left hook to the kidney by Batgirl.”
Now she smiled. “It would never work, for a lot of reasons.”
“Name them.”
“I live in San Antonio, where I have a lease on some nice office space.”
“And I work out of a car-repair shop. What’s your point?”
She giggled. “And then there’s Saul.”
“Have you not heard of weekend relationships? Those are the healthiest out there. And I read stories where they said the sex was the best.”
She rotated a finger next to the side of her head. “You’re loco, Ozzie.”
“So you’re saying you’ll think about it?”
“You’re relentless.”
“You should have met my dad.”
She flicked her hand against my arm and pointed at the exit.
“Houston, we have movement on the scene,” I said.
It was Elena. And she’d just opened the door to the Lexus. Ivy pulled out a five-dollar bill from her jeans pocket and smacked it in my hand.
“But we didn’t bet on it,” I said.
“Oh, that’s to get you to be quiet about this crazy merger idea.” She winked at me.
“I don’t give up that easily.”
Another flick on the arm. I looked to the hospital exit and watched Dr. Patterson rush across the parking lot. His stride was that of a penguin. He walked right past the SUV and stopped at a smaller car.
“A frickin’ Prius?” I exclaimed.
She snatched the five dollars from my hand. “I’m not sure why, but I think I deserve that money back.”
It was now one Prius chasing another Prius.
30
I’d never tailed anyone. Well, except for one time when I was in high school—five buddies and I squeezed into my car and tried to follow our assistant principal. We were sure he was having an affair with our female principal. We thought it might be fun to take a few pictures and get a good laugh. He ended up at a grocery store. Not one to let a prank go to waste, while he left his cart to meander through the produce section, we loaded his cart with about thirty items—everything from toilet paper to tampons to baby food. Anything we could find. When he got back to his cart, he stopped and stared for a second. Then he looked around and scratched his head while we hid behind the dessert pod and snickered.
Admittedly, I enjoyed bucking the system a bit when I was a youngster.
“Don’t lose him,” Ivy said with another smack to my arm.
“Roger that, Batgirl.” I rubbed my arm. “But stop beating the crap out of me.” I shot a wry smile at her as I took a left at the speed of a tortoise.
He disappeared over a ridge.
“Punch it,” she said.
I jammed my foot to the floor. The Prius did nothing in response.
“Punch it!” she said even louder.
“I’m punching. I’m afraid my foot might break through the floor, and then we’ll have to use our feet like the Flintstones.”
She gave me a quizzical look.
“You never watched The Flintstones?”
She shrugged. “I was busy just making sure I had food.”
Oh, right. “I’m sure you can find old episodes on cable or YouTube.”
“I’ll make it a priority. Hey, there he goes. Turn right.”
I turned so quickly I thought the wheels might pop off. They didn’t, and we caught up…only because he was driving a Prius.
Ivy didn’t say anything. She was chewing on her nail.
A moment later, the doctor pulled up to a red right in the left lane next to a median. We were three cars back in the middle lane. I saw two firemen walking along the median, holding out boots. On the boots were signs that read: Help Cure MD.
“Muscular Dystrophy,” Ivy said.
Before I could think of something witty or sarcastic to say about her powers of breaking down an acronym, something very strange happened. Dr. Patterson extended his arm out his window and dropped a wad of greenbacks into a fireman’s boot.
Ivy and I looked at each other. “Did you expect to see that?” I asked.
She shook her head and went back to chewing on a nail. I tried to pull her hand away from her mouth, but she jerked away. “Don’t say anything. It’s a bad habit.”
“Gotcha.” I put two hands on the wheel, faced forward, and focused on following Patterson. We didn’t say much over the next ten minutes. I wondered if Ivy was feeling the same thing I was: less certain about our absolute certainty of Patterson’s involvement in Chantel’s disappearance.
The doctor made his way into old West Austin. Homes were, as expected, much older, but many had been remodeled. It was a much sought-after location for homeowners. In fact, Nicole and I had looked in this area before we’d purchased our home. Way out of our price range.
Patterson pulled into a long driveway and stopped in front of a detached garage behind the house. We parked on the opposite side of the road, four houses down from his.
“He’s done well for himself,” I said. The gray-brick home was a two-story with a small front porch. The royal-blue shutters and matching door made it stand out from the other homes on the tree-lined street, all with lush lawns. Apparently all the homeowners had invested in planting winter rye.
Ivy nodded. “Either he came from money—”
“Or he’d bought a dump and remodeled it.”
She tilted her head in acknowledgment.
We both sat in silence and surveyed the area. An older couple was walking a dog at the cross street in front us. A few squirrels pranced around tall trees in Patterson’s front yard before scampering up to the first branch. The tops of the trees swayed from the northerly breeze. Cotton-ball clouds dotted the blue sky.
“If this isn’t a postcard for Pleasantville, USA, I don’t know what is,” I said.
“That was a movie, you know.”
I turned to her. “That’s why I used the term.”
A slow nod. “But you’re right. It seems like the perfect place to live, where no one would expect anything bad to happen.”
“I like how your mind works.” I glanced between the homes. “For our purpose, though, I wish these older neighborhoods had alleys. It would give us a backyard view of the home.”
“So, we followed Patterson from the hospital to his house. All he did was drop some money in a charity boot, which either means he cares about other people or maybe he thinks someone was watching and it was more about perception. Either way, what do we do now?”
“Sit and wait. See if he leaves and follow him again. Or see if anyone else shows up. At least until I need to grab Mackenzie from Tito’s place.”
A few minutes passed. My eyes had scanned the house a hundred times, looking for any movement through the windows.
“If it could only be nighttime,” I said.
“Why?”
“Then we could sneak onto his property and look through the windows. Not that he’d have a kidnapped girl sitting on the couch, eating popcorn, and watching The Man in the High Castle.”
She didn’t respond.
“You have seen that TV series, right?”
“Heard of it. What’s it about?”
“Let’s just say it’s a satire wrapped with a lot of intrigue and suspense.”
She looked uninterested, her eyes still glued to Patterson’s home.
An hour passed, and we both got antsy. I pulled out my phone and texted Tito to ask if he was ready for me to pick up Mackenzie.
“I need to pee,” Ivy said.
I looked in the back. “No empty bottles.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You think I was going to pee in a bottle?”
I pointed at a neighbor’s home. “They have a nice cluster of bushes. You could just squat behind them.”
She smacked my arm. This one had a little force behind it. I rubbed my arm, feigning the look of pain on my face. Then she hit it again. “Am I your punching bag now?”
“He’s backing out of the driveway.” She quickly slouched down in her seat. Without looking toward Patterson’s home, I did the same.
“Has he passed us yet? I can’t hear anything, so…”
She sat up. “Let’s go” she said, popping her hand off the dash like a cowboy might kick a stirrup into a horse’s side.
I pushed the gearshift into drive and began to putter along.
31
I’d never seen anyone try to master the art of running in place while sitting in a car. Not until Ivy pumped her legs up and down while typing out text messages.
“You should make a YouTube video for this. Might go viral and give you your ten minutes of fame.”
“Do you want me to pee on the seat?”
“It’s your rental, remember?”
She looked up, and I gave her a cheesy grin.
“Look out!”
I jammed my foot onto the brake, stopping just inches from a kid crossing the street on a bicycle. My heart was nearly in my throat. I gasped.
“What the fuck, Oz?” Ivy exclaimed.
My eyes were on the kid, who slowed but didn’t stop his forward movement. “Sorry!” I yelled through the window.
The kid eyed me back. He was skinny, was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that was cut off at the arms. I saw at least one tattoo, as if he were trying to fit in with the older kids in the neighborhood. In this area—where drug deals and prostitution were more common than not—that wasn’t a good thing. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me, so I punched the button to slide the window down.
“Hey, sorry about scaring you. My bad,” I said, waving a hand at him.
His eyes stayed on me.
“I think he’s in shock, Ozzie. Do you think we need to see if he needs a ride home?”
I put my hand on the door handle just as he raised his hand. “Fuck you, cracker!” the boy said while flipping me off. He jumped the curb on the other side of the street and rode his bike through a yard of what looked like an abandoned house.
I turned to Ivy. “I guess it’s rather obvious we’ve left Pleasantville, USA.”
She shrugged, her legs still moving non-stop like a west Texas windmill. “Kids like that boy have very little chance of breaking the cycle and finding a way out. It’s more likely he’ll end up dead than even finishing high school. It’s really quite sad.”
In following Patterson, we’d made a circuitous route from his residence, traveling to various parts of the city, including parts of the sprawling UT campus. At times, he’d slowed to a crawl, as if he were searching for someone. It was late, dark, but on a college campus, time was almost irrelevant. After the UT tour, he drove to a part of the city that was the opposite of “pleasant.”
Two blocks ahead, there were three cars stopped in front of a red light. One of those cars was Patterson’s blue Prius. The light turned green. I “punched” the pedal to the floorboard and practically begged our Prius to reach the light before it turned red again. We zoomed through the dimly lit intersection at about twenty-five miles per hour.
“Go, Speed Racer. Woo-hoo!” Ivy shouted.
“You know Speed Racer, but you don’t know the greatness of The Flintstones?”
She shrugged. “Hey, don’t get too close. Not many cars in this area.”
I lifted my foot just as I saw my phone lighting up in the cup holder. Ivy picked it up,
as we’d agreed.
“Did Tito drop Mackenzie off at the Sandbergs’ place?” I asked. Mackenzie had called just after we’d started tailing Patterson for the second time today, begging me to allow her to spend the night at Ariel’s house. Tomorrow was a teacher’s in-service day of some kind, apparently. I gave in after she had Ariel’s dad send me a text. By then, I’d handed all texting duties over to my co-pilot.
“Yep, Tito dropped her off a little bit ago,” Ivy said, her legs still moving incessantly. “He says that Mackenzie had taken a few pictures of her painting and couldn’t wait to show them to Ariel.”
“So she’s done with the painting? When can I see?”
“Hold on,” she said as she typed a message into the phone.
I kept my eyes on the blue Prius. Patterson slowly made a left turn, and I followed at an even-slower pace, heading down a street where I could see only little flickers of light. Like Bic lighters.
“What did Tito say?”
She raised a finger, indicating I should hang on while she finished her texting, so I focused on the blue Prius. Its brake lights suddenly came on, so I quickly pulled off to the side of the road and camped under the canopy of a sprawling tree.
Ivy looked up for a second. “What’s Patterson doing?”
“Just sitting in his car right now. Tito reply yet?” I tried to see the message on my phone, but I couldn’t make it out.
“He said you sound like a five-year-old.”
I gave her a blank look. “Did he say that or you?”
She grinned. “I editorialized it just a little bit.”
“I’m laughing—can’t you see?”
“Seriously, Tito said everything is cool. Mackenzie is fine, was jumping up and down when she got to Ariel’s house, but she still hasn’t finished the painting.”
“Wonder what this big surprise is. Can’t wait to see it.”
“Patience, Jedi warrior.”
“Finally, you’ve seen a movie that the rest of the free world has seen.”
She began to pound her feet into the floorboard. “Dammit, we gotta find a place that has a restroom.”
This time, I flicked my hand against her arm and pointed toward Patterson’s car. “Check it out.”
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