Marja McGraw - Bogey Man 02 - Bogey's Ace in the Hole

by Marja McGraw

  “It’s your nickel,” Chris said. “What’s up?”

  I watched as his face became more serious. “Okay, slow down and tell me again.” He said uh huh a few times before responding to the caller.

  “Didn’t she give you a location? Some kind of clue about where she might be?”

  Chris listened again as the caller replied.

  “Okay, we’ll let you know if we find out anything. I think you should call the police again.”

  He paused and listened. “I mean tonight, not after we look into it.”

  Realizing he was talking to one of the Church Ladies, I guessed they’d had a call from Addie. Unfortunately, it didn’t sound like she’d given them much information.

  “Who was that?”I asked.

  “Jasmine. Addie called them.” He didn’t look happy.

  “And?”

  “She didn’t tell them much. She said she was at the diner when she heard two thugs talking about committing a crime. She left to go home and call the coppers. It seems they realized that she was listening, and one of the two men tailed her to her house. They argued, and when he saw a neighbor eyeballing him out the window, he decided to cheese it. But he told her he’d be back and that she was in big trouble.

  “Addie said she ran out at the last minute and pulled open the door to his camper, thinking if she couldn’t tail him in her car, she could hitch a ride with him and see where he was going.”

  “What was that little old lady thinking?” I asked. “Does she believe this is some kind of adventure, or does she think she can save someone or something?”

  “Ya got me, toots. It seems this guy wasn’t driving home. It looks like he was taking a trip somewhere. He stopped at a greasy spoon to eat and she slipped out of the camper to call her friends. Before she could tell Jasmine anything else, she saw him paying his bill and said she had to get back inside the camper. She hung up before Jasmine could ask her where she was or tell her to go on the lam.”

  I could tell by the slang that the Bogey Man was on the case, with no reservations. He didn’t like what he was hearing, and he wanted to find Addie. It helped that she hadn’t been discovered yet.

  “Did she give any clue at all?”

  “Only one. He’d stopped to chow down at a Barney’s Diner, but that doesn’t help because it’s a chain, and who knows which one they were at?”

  “Okay,” I said, shifting my brain into gear, “how many Barney’s Diners are there? And where are they? I know they’re not just in Los Angeles County, but I don’t know what kind of territory they cover.”

  “I know one way to find out,” Chris said, heading for the spare bedroom, which we used as a home office. “I’ll do an Internet search.”

  While Chris headed for the computer, I climbed up the stairs to take a look at my son. He just loved it when Chris and I became involved in a mystery, but I thought I might try to keep this one from him. I remembered that during the last school year, thanks to Chris and me, he got into some trouble at school for telling stories about dead bodies and talking the kids into playing a dead body/private investigator game.

  Actually, he didn’t come up with the game or convince anyone to play it. It was his best friend, Danny. Nobody died in their game. The kids concentrated on investigating a crime instead of dying, but the teacher still had a snit over the whole thing. It could have been ugly, but we had a friend who’s a P.I. go in and talk to the class and the staff. Things eventually died down.

  I watched Mikey sleeping for a moment before going back downstairs to see if Chris had turned anything up. His curly dark blond hair was sticking out in all directions, and he was smiling, maybe having a good dream. The one little dimple by the right side of his mouth brought a smile to my face. I quietly left his room.

  Hopefully, if Addie had called once, she’d call again. We had to find her before the driver of the truck did. After talking to Elsie, I’d mostly convinced myself that she’d been mistaken about seeing Addie in the truck. I hadn’t wanted her to be in the camper. Now I knew better.

  When I came downstairs, Chris was just hanging up the phone. I hadn’t heard it ring, so naturally I asked him who he’d been talking to.

  “I called Janet. She’s on duty tonight. I told her what’s been going on, and she said that basically her hands are tied. We have no evidence of a pending crime, and it appears that Addie went with that guy willingly. No crimes committed.”

  Janet is a friend of ours who’s also a homicide detective. We’d become friends when Chris and I were involved in a murder, which had consisted of a dead body being buried in the basement at Bogey Nights.

  “I know she’s right,” I said, “but this is really frustrating. We know something’s going on, but we don’t know what and we don’t know… Well, we don’t really know anything except that an elderly woman overheard a conversation about a possible crime, and that she’s hiding out in some stranger’s camper.”

  “If that dizzy broad – sorry, elderly woman – is caught in the back of that camper, she could end up the victim instead of the witness. She must have bats in the belfry.”

  “What did you find out about Barney’s Diner?” I asked, ignoring his dizzy broad comment.

  “They’re limited to Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, two very large areas. That dame could be anywhere. The gunsel could be discovering her even as we speak. She’s definitely in a jam right now.”

  “I sure hope he’s not planning to sleep in the camper tonight.” I hadn’t met Addie yet, but I couldn’t help comparing her to the other Church Ladies. She was, after all, one of them.

  “I have to admit that right now I feel as helpless as any man can feel.”

  “I know, Chris.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s getting late. Let’s get some sleep so we’ll be rested when we go see Donna.”

  “Who?”

  “The waitress at the diner. She may have seen or heard something.”

  ~*~

  Chris and I arose early the next morning. I called Constance to see if Mikey could stay with her and she said if we brought him over she’d give him breakfast and keep him for the morning. She started to laugh when she realized we were on the trail of another bad guy.

  “And how are you going to keep this from your seven-year-old son? You know, the one who’s every bit as curious as you are. The one who knows when you and Chris are keeping something from him. The one – ”

  “Okay, Constance, I get your point. I’m going to tell him we have some restaurant business to take care of and that’s why he’s spending the morning at your house. So I’m counting on you to back me up on that lie. Oh, Lord, I sure hate to lie. I need to set a good example for my son. Maybe I’ll just tell him that Chris and I are going to meet someone at a diner and hope he relates that to the restaurant on his own.”

  “Good luck with that one,” Constance said. “Your son can smell trouble even before you know it’s coming. Last night he was asking me when I thought you might have another case.”

  I rolled my eyes and remembered my mother telling me that someday they’d get stuck that way. Lowering my eyes, I glanced at the clock. “Gotta go, Constance. We want to be at the diner as soon as it opens. I have a feeling the Church Ladies are going to be there bright and early, and I don’t want them interfering with our conversation with the waitress.”

  “Good luck with that, too. I know those ladies and nothing can stop them.” Constance laughed, but I detected just a hint of fear in her voice. She attends the same church that the Church Ladies and I go to.

  We hung up and I let the dogs in. I’d already fed them and they were ready for quality time with their person, except this person didn’t have time to play.

  “Go get Mikey,” I said to Watson. She looked up at me with her soulful eyes and left the kitchen to go wake him up. She has many tricks for making him get up, and when I heard him giggling I knew she had stuck her head under the covers and licked his toes.

  “Good morning, Duche
ss,” Chris said. “I passed Watson on the stairs. You must have sent her to wake Mikey up.”

  “I sure did. She does it so sweetly that he doesn’t get cranky. If I’d sent Sherlock, he’d have jumped up on Mikey’s bed and pushed him onto the floor.”

  Mikey walked in the kitchen a few minutes later, looking for his breakfast.

  “You’re going to eat at Constance’s house this morning. Did you brush your teeth?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. How come I’m going to Constance’s house? And how come I had to get up so early? It’s Saturday, Mom.” He turned to Chris, who didn’t know my cover story.

  “Your dad and I have to run some errands this morning so Constance said you could eat with her and spend some time together.”

  Mikey turned toward me, slowly, and gave me a suspicious look. “Okay, what’s up, Mom? You’re giving me the brush, aren’t you?”

  I laughed. “You’ve been hanging out with Chris, uh, your dad too much. You’re beginning to sound like him.”

  Chris is actually Mikey’s step-father. We’d lost my son’s real father to cancer when Mikey was very young. It warmed my heart that my son had decided he wanted to call Chris dad.

  “Am I getting the bum’s rush or not?” Mikey asked.

  “No, Ace, your mother and I really have some business to take care of this morning. We need to keep an appointment to meet with a waitress, and the place where she works opens at six o’clock. We need to talk to her before she starts working.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of that? What could be more normal than Chris and I talking to a waitress? After all, we own a restaurant, and it was what we really were going to do. Okay, so he left out a few details, but at least it was an omission type lie instead of a flat out lie. Yeah, Chris could spin a yarn with the best of ‘em.

  We dropped Mikey off and drove to the diner, after checking the gates at home to make sure the dogs couldn’t get out.

  As we pulled up I looked around for Jasmine’s car. I didn’t see it, so I figured we were off to a good start.

  Chris and I asked who Donna was and we asked for a table in her section, which turned out to be a window table. Donna was young, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, and she looked tired. I remembered the same feeling from my own waitressing days. It wasn’t an easy job, especially during the morning rush. Fortunately, it was early enough that there wasn’t a huge crowd. Her dark blonde hair was cut short, probably so she didn’t have to bother with it. She was a husky young woman, although not overweight, and she had a very small tattoo of a cartoon character on her left wrist.

  She saw me looking at the tattoo. “It’s not real. My son put it on there with one of those things you get wet and stick on your skin. It’ll wash right off.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I’m sorry if it seemed like I was staring. I really wasn’t.”

  “Not a problem. Can I take your order?”

  We ordered our breakfast and asked her if she could talk to us for a minute.

  “Sure. Let me go turn in your order first though.”

  Returning, she asked, “Now, what do you need?”

  “Yesterday a woman named Addie was here. I understand she and her friends are regulars. She’s an older woman, and – ”

  “Oh, sure, Addie. I know who you mean. What about her?”

  “Was she acting oddly while she was here?” Chris asked. “Did anything out of the ordinary happen? She’s disappeared and her friends are worried about her.”

  “Do I know you?” she asked. “You look awfully familiar.”

  “I have one of those faces, that’s all.”

  “Okay. Anyway, yes, something happened, but I don’t know exactly what. Addie was sitting at a table, waiting for her friends, when she got a funny look on her face. I stopped and asked her if she was okay. She told me to shush, that she was trying to listen to the two men sitting behind her. She’s always so polite that I was kinda surprised.

  “Anyway, I left her alone. Before long the men paid their check and left. Addie threw some money on the table and walked out right behind them. She didn’t even bless me when she left, which is something she always does. I’ve gotten used to it.” She was quiet for a moment. “I sure hope nothing’s happened to her. Those guys didn’t look very friendly. They didn’t even leave a tip.”

  Chapter Six

  “I’m sorry about the tip,” I said. “Sometimes people just don’t realize how important a tip can be.”

  “Yeah, and I waited on them really good, too. They were very demanding.” She looked embarrassed, as though she hadn’t meant to complain in front of us. “Say, I know why you look familiar. You own that new restaurant, Bogey Nights, don’t you?”

  “We do,” I replied.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what does Bogey mean?”

  I laughed. She was young. “My husband looks just like a movie star named Humphrey Bogart. He used to be a really big star.”

  “Huh. Never heard of him. Do you have any openings for a waitress at your restaurant?”

  “Not at the moment, but if you’ll keep in touch with me I’ll let you know when something comes up. Most of our waitresses look like famous old-time movie stars,” I explained. “We had a waiter who looked like John Wayne, but he moved out of state.”

  “Now, I do know who John Wayne was,” Donna said. “Do I look anything like an older movie actress?”

  “No, but not all of our employees are look-alikes. Come by the restaurant and talk to me one day and we’ll see if we can work something out.”

  “Can you tell us what the men looked like?” Chris asked, changing the subject and trying to move things along.

  “One of them was just average. There was nothing special about him at all. Average everything from height to weight to looks – even his coloring. The other guy, well, he was kind of memorable.” She went on to give the same description that Elsie had given us; over six feet tall and slender, salt and pepper hair, with a droopy mustache.

  “Is there anything else you can recall?” Chris asked.

  “Nooo. Hey, wait a minute. I’ll be right back.” Donna disappeared into the back of the diner.

  “I wonder what that was about,” I said, reaching across the table and patting Chris’s hand.

  “No telling. She looked like she remembered something important though.”

  Donna returned and placed a piece of paper on the table, weighting it down with a salt shaker. “The average guy dropped this on the floor when they were leaving. Well, he actually knocked it off the table. I picked it up and stuck it in my sweater pocket, figuring I’d throw it in the trash on my next trip into the kitchen. Will it help?”

  Chris turned it around and looked at it, and then shoved it across the table to me. There was an address on it with the word VIC scrawled underneath.

  “It just might,” Chris said. “Thank you for your help.”

  Donna beamed. “My pleasure. If little Miss Addie is missing, I hope you find her.” She lowered her voice. “Those four ladies are kind of pushy, but I really like them. They seem to genuinely care about people, even if no one else does. And they’re always blessing me. I can use all the blessings I can get.”

  Donna walked over to another table and took their order. She gently slapped an older man on the shoulder, making me believe he was a regular, too. He smiled at her back when she headed for the kitchen. Someone else waved at her. I had the feeling she was well-liked by the customers.

  She turned in the older man’s order and returned with a tray bearing our breakfast. We thanked her, and she left for the door to greet some new customers.

  “What do you think, Chris?”

  “If the guy dropped this piece of paper, then it must have been something the two men were looking at while they sat here.”

  “I wonder if someone named Vic lives at this address. Addie said the two men were planning a crime. Could this Vic be involved?”

  “Here’s another thought,” Chris said.
“What if VIC stands for victim?”

  “Ohhh, you’re good. I never would have thought of that.”

  “I think we’d better check out this address and see who lives there.” Chris dug into his hash browns. “After we eat.”

  I had just picked up my fork when I heard loud voices at the front door. Before I could turn around, the voices moved closer.

  “There you are,” Jasmine said. “Move over. We’ve got news, and we need to get moving.”

  Chris and I were sitting on opposite sides of the booth, and we each moved closer to the window. The Church Ladies slid in next to us, with Lila and May sitting to my right. Jasmine needed more room, being the larger of the three women, and she sat next to Chris.

  “What’s cookin’?” Chris asked, taking a bite of egg.

  “We heard from Addie again!”

  I thought I had a flair for the dramatic, but Jasmine’s tone of voice could have earned her an award. I even thought about applauding. She’d put so much feeling into so few words.

  “And what did she have to say?” Chris asked calmly. “Did she tell you where she is this time?”

  “Yes,” Jasmine said.

  “And more,” May added.

  “This is big,” Lila said, not wanting to be left out.

  And then the women sat quietly, waiting for only heaven knew what.

  Chris lost his calm. “Are you going to tell me what she said or do I have to buy you breakfast to get the skinny.”

  “The skinny?” Lila asked.

  “The information,” I interpreted.

  “Breakfast would be nice,” May said, “and bless your heart for offering.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Chris said. He waved to Donna, motioning her over to the table.

  Donna glanced at us and smiled when she saw the ladies. She held up her index finger indicating she’d be over in a moment.

  “While we’re waiting, tell me what Addie said.” Chris was sounding ever so slightly frustrated.

  I clamped my lips together and kept my smile to myself.