Popped Off

by Allen, Jeffrey

  When we crawled into bed, I told her about going to Comanche River.

  “And don’t worry,” I said. “I already consulted the chart. It’s a green night.”

  She smiled. “That sounds . . . nice. Your parents will watch Carly?”

  “Of course.”

  She pressed into me, her legs entwined with mine. “Then I look forward to a green night with you away from home.”

  We switched off the lights, and I fought off the guilt about having another motive in going. I rationalized it by telling myself that I probably wouldn’t find anything while we were there, that it really would be just about me and her.

  I tossed and turned, trying to convince myself.

  Julianne was out the door the next morning, just as I was stumbling down to the kitchen. I sat at the table, waiting for the coffeepot to refill—Julianne always emptied an entire one before leaving for the office—and for my eyes to unglue. The laptop was still on the table from the night before, and I pulled up my e-mail.

  The usual junk mail was in the folder, but there was also an e-mail from Belinda.

  Something else is missing. Can you give me a call when you get this?

  She’d sent the e-mail just after midnight.

  I wondered what she could’ve discovered in the middle of the night that necessitated the e-mail.

  Carly rushed downstairs hugging about sixteen dolls and stuffed animals, complaining that she was already hungry. I set her up at the table with toast and a glass of milk, then grabbed my cell and dialed Belinda’s number.

  “You got the e-mail?” she answered.

  “Good morning, Belinda.”

  “Oh, right. Good morning. You got the e-mail?”

  “Yep.”

  “When can you meet me?”

  “Uh, I dunno. Meet you where?”

  “You know the field house out at Lake Park?”

  “The stone building in the middle of the complex?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I checked the clock. “An hour or so?”

  “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Wait. Can’t you just tell me?”

  The line buzzed. “I think you just need to see it. I’ll meet you there in an hour.” She hung up.

  I set the phone down and sighed. I hadn’t planned on a trip to the soccer fields. I was hoping for a nice leisurely morning at the pool, with a little grocery shopping mixed in.

  But, hey, plans change.

  It beat going into an office or not getting to spend the day with my daughter. I needed to keep the complaining to myself.

  Carly finished her breakfast and put on a tank top and shorts while I finished my coffee and tossed on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I ran a brush through my hair and met Carly back in the kitchen.

  “We’re going to the soccer field, okay?” I told her.

  “Do we have a game today?”

  “No.”

  “Practice?”

  “Nope. I need to go see Miss Belinda about something. It won’t take long, and then we can come back and swim. It’s going to be hot.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s always hot, Daddy.”

  “I know. You wanna take anything with us?”

  She dashed up the stairs. She was at the stage where she always had to take a backpack full of stuff with her wherever she went. Stuffed animals, books, crayons, it didn’t matter. She needed to have a bagful of things before she’d leave the house.

  She bounced back into the kitchen, her pink Hello Kitty backpack strapped across her shoulders. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  “Got everything?”

  “Yes. White kitty, a coloring book, and my bottle of water. From last night.”

  “Perfect.”

  We climbed into the van and headed across town. I wasn’t used to morning traffic in Rose Petal, because we rarely had to head out into it. But we hit every light as it turned red, and ended up being ten minutes later than I’d planned.

  Lake Park was an expansive athletic complex on the east side of town. It housed eight soccer fields, two football fields, and two baseball diamonds. The older kids played their games out there, so we had yet to have to fight the weekend crowds to get in and out of the complex. I wasn’t looking forward to those Saturday mornings.

  The field house was in the middle of the soccer fields, a medium-sized stone building that housed a snack bar on two sides, some bathrooms on another, and I didn’t know what on the other. The referees always hung out there on hot days, so I’d always assumed it housed a locker room or something similar.

  Belinda paced back and forth in front of the door on the mystery side like a waddling walrus. She stopped as soon as she saw us.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Traffic was bad.”

  She nodded. “Always is coming this way.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “So. Why are we here?”

  She pulled open the door behind her and waved us in.

  It was a large concrete-floored room, maybe twenty-five feet by twenty-five feet. A long folding table rested against the far wall, a group of folding chairs lined up next to it. The rest of the room was empty, and the air was stagnant and warm.

  I spun in a slow circle. “Uh, okay.”

  “We pay to use this space,” Belinda said. “We have to rent it from the city every season, even though we already pay exorbitant fees to use the fields.”

  “Daddy, it’s hot in here,” Carly complained.

  “We won’t be here long,” I told her. I looked at Belinda. “Right?”

  “During the season, we keep a bunch of stuff out here,” Belinda continued. “Cones, jerseys, extra whistles, coolers. Stuff we might need on Saturdays. The officials will change in here, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Daddy, it’s really hot in here.”

  “I know, kiddo. Give me just a minute.”

  She sighed and plopped down on the concrete.

  “But near the end of the season, we start clearing it out,” Belinda said. “Cleaning it up.”

  I sighed, frustrated that we weren’t getting to the point. “Okay.”

  “You have a team mom?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Sandy Yook. She’s awesome.”

  “She grab your trophies for you?”

  “Yep.”

  Belinda nodded. “She comes here to get them.”

  “In here?”

  “Yeah. We have them delivered here. It’s the largest storage space we have access to.”

  I wasn’t getting it. “Okay. Good to know.”

  “The trophies were delivered last week,” Belinda said.

  “To where?”

  She laughed. “To here.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Thirteen hundred trophies, Deuce,” she said. “A box for every team, a trophy for every kid in the Rose Petal soccer program.”

  I knew that. It was recreational soccer. No standings or records. Every kid got to play. And every kid got a trophy.

  “You know for sure they were delivered?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I met the delivery guy here the Saturday before last. Took him an hour to unload them all. The only empty space in here was where that table was set up.” She pointed at the table against the wall. “All thirteen hundred trophies. Boxed up and divided by age group and division.”

  “What are you telling me, Belinda?” I asked. “That they were stolen?”

  She laughed. “Well, yeah. But guess what?”

  I sighed again. I was tired of guessing. “I don’t want to guess.”

  “Guess who’s the only person with a key to this room?”

  I thought for a moment. “Moises Huber?”

  She nodded slowly. “That’s right.”

  17

  We walked out of the building and back out into the morning sunshine and heat. Carly asked if she could go play in one of the massive soccer goals while we talked, and I told her sure. I watched her sprint across the grass.

  “W
hy the hell would he take the trophies?” I asked.

  “I really have no idea, Deuce,” Belinda said, leaning against the building. “Not a clue.”

  “They aren’t expensive, are they?”

  “As many as we buy, they end up being less than a buck a trophy,” she said. “It’s a minimal cost.”

  “So what could he possibly do with them?”

  “No clue.”

  “And how would he get them out of here?”

  Belinda shrugged. “Guy that delivered them had a twenty-five-foot U-Haul. Big truck.”

  I nodded. Someone would have noticed a truck like that pulling into Lake Park. Unless it had been the middle of the night.

  “Maybe someone broke in,” I said.

  She pointed at the door. The lock looked perfect.

  “Maybe someone else has a key,” I said.

  “I had to leave my driver’s license at the city rec office just to get the key to come over here and show you,” she said. “There is one spare key, and Huber has it.”

  My head hurt. I couldn’t put any of it together. The pieces didn’t fit. The gambling and the money did, but a bunch of cheap trophies for kids?

  That didn’t fit.

  “Okay,” I said. “Can you get me the delivery guy’s info? And the contact info for the trophy company?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But I’m telling you it’s him. Huber took ’em.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do, Deuce,” she said. “Something wasn’t right with him the last few weeks. He was acting goofy and nervous. And I’m telling you, no one else could get in here. Who would want them?”

  No one I could think of. Most of the coaches complained about even having to pick them up. We avoided it at all costs, cajoling a parent to do it for us. And they were cheap. They’d break at the drop of a hat. So it wasn’t like they’d be worth anything on the black market.

  No, I didn’t have a clue as to what Moises Huber would want with thirteen hundred cheap soccer trophies.

  18

  We said good-bye to Belinda, and she promised to e-mail me the trophy info I’d asked her for. I really wasn’t sure what good it would do me, because I agreed with Belinda. It might not make much sense that Huber took the trophies, but he was the overwhelming choice to have done so.

  Carly and I spent the rest of the day at the pool. She’d been good the previous two days, while I’d been occupied with trying to figure out where Huber was, but she was starting to pull a bit more on me, and that meant she needed my attention. She wasn’t a high-maintenance kid, and I had learned over the years that if she was pulling on me, it meant that I’d been ignoring her.

  So we did cannonballs and got McDonald’s for lunch and built a giant Lego farm and ate ice cream and made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Julianne came home to a messy house but laughed when she saw us both with aprons on, covered in melted cheese.

  And that was one more reason I loved Julianne. She didn’t complain when things weren’t perfect when she came home. She seemed to sense when we needed a totally disorganized day, and was happy to catch the tail end of it.

  It was a good day.

  As was the rest of the week. We swam. We went to camp. We goofed off. Summers were when I most appreciated being a dad. Schedules went out the window, and I could just enjoy time with my daughter without anything getting in the way.

  I poked around, looking for a bit more on Huber, but didn’t come up with anything. The Internet gave me nothing, and I couldn’t find any other leads. But I’d learned from Victor to be patient. Sometimes the case had to come to you.

  Friday morning I dropped Carly at my parents’ house. Julianne and I weren’t leaving until that evening, but any chance they had to spend with Carly, they tried to drag out for as long as possible.

  Carly sprinted out of the minivan and onto my parents’ front porch. My dad was in his swinging chair, and she launched herself onto his lap. He hugged her, whispered something into her ear, causing her eyes to widen.

  “You offer her cash if she doesn’t tell me about all the stuff you buy her this weekend?” I asked, coming up the stairs.

  “None of your beeswax,” he said, setting Carly down. “What goes on in my house stays in my house.”

  “We’re on the porch.”

  “Watch yourself. I can still take you out.”

  “Right.”

  Carly slithered by me and disappeared into the house.

  “Gonna go spend your wife’s money at the casino, huh?” my dad asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Shut up.”

  “Watch yourself.”

  I leaned against the weathered railing. “We’re just going up for the night.”

  “So nice of her to carry your big butt around like that.”

  My father never passed up the opportunity to needle me about staying at home. And I never passed up the opportunity to let it stick me.

  “Whatever,” I said, lacking a better response. “You know anything about New Spirit?”

  “The church?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You looking for Jesus?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe the Lord is calling to you?”

  “Dad.”

  He chuckled. Nothing gave him more pleasure than giving me a hard time.

  “I don’t know much about it,” he said. “Know a few people who attend. They seem to like it just fine. Think your mother got invited once or twice. We declined.”

  My parents were longtime members of the local Methodist church. Asking them to attend anywhere else was like asking them to move to Kenya. Wasn’t gonna happen.

  “You ever met the pastor?” I asked.

  He thought for a moment. “Haywood, right?”

  “Haygood.”

  “Same difference,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve ever said hello to him. Seen him around, of course. Can’t say I’ve ever heard anything bad about the man.” He studied me. “Why?”

  “Just a thing I’m working on.”

  “Ah. You playing Inspector Clouseau?”

  “Ha.”

  He chuckled again. Small things like bad jokes made his day.

  “Just looking for a guy that works there,” I said.

  “That the soccer fella?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  He shrugged. “Aw, ya know. Word gets around.”

  I shook my head. He and his buddies were like a group of old women. Nothing went on in Rose Petal without them getting wind of it.

  “Heard he took a bundle from Carly’s soccer thing.”

  “Looks like he did, yeah.”

  “Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if no one played soccer.” He wrinkled his nose. “Stupid game.”

  I was beginning to think soccer was the most hated sport in America. Or at least in Rose Petal. “Your granddaughter would be devastated.”

  His mouth twisted. “Well, yeah. There’s that. But still. There’s no scoring. And their socks are too high.”

  “Good reasons to abolish a sport, Dad.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “This Huber fella . . . That’s the guy, right?”

  I nodded.

  “He got kicked out of his regular game.”

  “Regular game?”

  My dad nodded. “Poker. And not some sissy game like you play in, where they play old maid, or whatever the hell it is you clowns play.”

  “We don’t play old maid.”

  “Slapjack, whatever. It ain’t poker.”

  My father’s poker-playing sensibilities were offended because we played a whole variety of games based on poker, but they weren’t necessarily traditional forms. We invited him one time, and he was horrified.

  “So he got kicked out?” I asked, trying to get him back on track.

  “Yep, that’s what I heard.”

  “Who played in the game?”

  My dad shrugged. “Not exactly sure. Think your neighbor down the way. Guy wi
th the truck.”

  “Joel?”

  “Yeah, think so, but I can’t remember.”

  “Why’d he get kicked out?”

  “They got tired of taking his IOUs.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “They were playing for that kinda money?”

  “Told ya it wasn’t the old lady game you play in.”

  A couple of crows buzzed the porch.

  “Yeah, but they played for that kind of money? That required IOUs?”

  “Guess so.”

  The birds buzzed by again. I knew our game was small. We all tossed twenty bucks in and played on that. No one won a ton, but no one lost a bunch, either. It sounded not only like Huber was playing in a game that had high stakes, but also like he was overmatched in it. And if they’d kicked him out, he still owed them money.

  Everything kept coming back to gambling and money.

  My dad stood and steadied the swinging chair behind him.

  “You probably won’t like the casino,” he said, heading for the house.

  “Why’s that?”

  “They don’t have Go Fish.”

  He cackled all the way into the house.

  19

  I went home and spent the rest of the day tying up loose ends around the house. Dishes, laundry, bills, vacuuming. Which meant we could come back from Oklahoma to a clean house and not worry about having to do anything. Those were the little things you learned when you stayed at home, but never appreciated prior to that. And those were the things I tried never to say out loud, for fear of losing my man card.

  I sent Victor an e-mail telling him about the missing trophies and about the poker issues. I’d held off on telling him because I wanted to see if I could come up with a link myself. It felt like I was always leaning on him to put things together, and it bugged me. I worked them through my head while getting the house squared away, but nothing clicked. It was frustrating. I felt like I’d learned a bunch of new things about Huber, but was nowhere closer to figuring out exactly what was going on with him. The only thing I felt sure about was that he definitely had some money issues. And it sure looked like he had some sort of gambling problem. I could see how that might lead to him stealing money, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he might run off with a bunch of crappy trophies.

  Julianne came home early, and I pushed the thoughts of Moises Huber out of my head so we could enjoy the two-hour drive north to the Oklahoma border.