Popped Off

by Allen, Jeffrey

  “Maybe the barn is filled with fake hair products.”

  “That would be creepy.”

  “But fun.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Do you think the soccer guy is in there?” Julianne asked, glancing at the barn.

  “I’m guessing yes.”

  “What if he’s not?”

  “Then we will be getting back in the van and heading home.”

  “You are so sexy when you have a plan.”

  “Thank you.”

  The barn doors opened, and Elliott emerged.

  He walked over to us. “What are you going to do with Moises if you find him?”

  “You mean when I walk into the barn and find him?”

  “No. He might not be in there. I mean when you find him.”

  I shuffled my feet against the gravel. “I want to ask him some questions about some missing money. And trophies.”

  “Are you going to arrest him?”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “You aren’t?”

  Elliott was wearing on my patience. “No. I’m not. I thought you knew who I was.”

  His mouth twisted. “I do. I mean, I think I do.”

  “Your cousin knows me.”

  “Not well.”

  “But he knows I’m not a cop.”

  “Maybe you’re undercover,” Elliott said, his eyes narrowing. “Maybe you’re wearing a wire.”

  I turned to Julianne. “Let’s go. We are wasting our day here.”

  “Wait!” Elliott cried. “Don’t go!”

  “Then tell me why we are here, or we are leaving,” I said, irritated.

  “My cousin is in the barn. He is not elsewhere.”

  “I know.”

  “How did you know?”

  I couldn’t understand how anyone this dense had managed to steal money from a casino.

  “I was just guessing,” I said.

  Elliott nodded slowly. “Good guess. I guess you are a good detective.”

  I glanced at Julianne. “See? I’m good at my job.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “This is your evidence?”

  She had a point.

  “Come on,” Elliott said, motioning to the barn. “My cousin wants to speak with you.”

  About time.

  26

  The inside of the barn was massive and warm, filled with haystacks and old farming tools. Rays of sunlight fought their way in through the cracks in the exterior.

  Elliott walked us over to a computer on top of a blanket on top of a haystack.

  “Where’s your cousin?” I asked.

  “He’s not here.”

  “You told me he was.”

  “I was fooling you.”

  “See?” Julianne said. “I told you he wasn’t a good reference.”

  “We’re leaving,” I said. “I don’t like games, Elliott, and you’ve been goofing around since you were spying on us at the gas station.”

  “I actually started spying on you at the casino,” he said.

  “Whatever. We’re leaving.”

  “You don’t wanna speak to Moises?”

  “He’s not here. You said so yourself.”

  “But we can speak with him.”

  “How? Telepathy?”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Elliott said.

  I sighed. “How can we talk to Moises?”

  “He’s being held hostage.”

  “Hostage?”

  “Yes, but he’s all right.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “Then how are we going to talk to him?”

  He pointed at the silver laptop. “On that.”

  I looked at Julianne. She shrugged.

  “I can contact him,” Elliott said. “But I don’t know where he is. His kidnappers are totally devious.”

  “You know who they are?”

  The skin around his jaw tightened. “Yes. They are evil.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I can’t say. They might come after me.”

  He moved his eyes to the ground, staring at his feet.

  His fear seemed real, so I left it alone for the moment.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk to your cousin.”

  Elliott knelt at the laptop and booted it up.

  “Where are we, by the way?” Julianne asked. “Whose farm is this?”

  “I dunno,” Elliott said. “The house is vacant. But I can still get Wi-Fi out here.”

  “How did you find it?” she asked.

  “I was just driving,” he said. “I didn’t want to be near the casino.”

  “Which reminds me,” I said. “Did you take the money from the casino?”

  “Let’s talk to Moises first,” he said. “Then it will make sense.”

  I doubted that but said nothing.

  He logged into Skype, pushed the call button, and waited. The Skype application rang, but there was no answer.

  “Weird,” Elliott muttered.

  He disconnected the call and tried again.

  The application dialed again, and the ring was interrupted almost immediately.

  “I’m here. I’m here,” a voice said. “Sorry. I was finishing lunch.”

  “I’m here with Deuce Winters,” Elliott said.

  “And his wife,” Julianne said.

  “And his wife,” Elliott repeated. “I think they are okay.”

  Other than the headache I was getting.

  “All right,” Moises said.

  The screen blinked, and Moises appeared on it. The shot was tight, mostly of his face. He hadn’t shaven since I’d seen him last, but otherwise he looked fine. All I could make out in the background was a white headboard and some obscured photos on the wall. He appeared to be sitting in a bedroom, but I couldn’t be sure.

  He held up a hand. “Hi, Deuce.”

  “Hey, Moises. How are you?”

  He appeared a bit confused as to how to answer that. “Uh, I’m all right, I guess.”

  “Okay.”

  “How are you?”

  “Well, I’m confused as to what’s actually going on here. Your cousin brought me here and tells me you’re being held hostage or something, and now you’re on the computer, and I don’t really know anything more than I knew this morning.”

  Moises nodded. “Yeah, I could see that.”

  “So I’m really hoping I’m going to get some answers here.”

  “I took the money,” he blurted out. “I had to.”

  “All right.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “So someone made you?”

  “Yes. I mean, no.” He frowned. “Yes and no, I guess.”

  “You aren’t making sense.”

  “I know.”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  Moises glanced to the side. “I don’t have much time.”

  “So you took the money?”

  He hesitated. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “No.”

  He was basically admitting a felony to me. I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  “That’s going to be a problem, Moises,” I said. “I might be able to help if you were able to return it, but if you can’t . . .”

  “I know.”

  “I’m assuming you can’t tell me where you are.”

  A black police baton entered the picture and hovered near his neck, a reminder that he couldn’t say too much.

  “No, I can’t.”

  The baton retreated.

  “I’m not exactly sure what you need from me, Moises,” I said. “I don’t know that I’m in a position to help.”

  “I need more money.”

  “More?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He glanced to the side. “I can’t say.”

  I really wasn’t sure why Moises Huber thought I might lend him money. We weren’t close friends. We were a
cquaintances. Everything felt a little out of place right at that moment.

  “I need to go,” he said. “They say I need to go.”

  The screen went black, and the call was disconnected.

  Elliott closed the laptop. “Well, there you have it.”

  “Elliott, no offense,” I said, feeling the anger inside me about to erupt, “but I have nothing.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, looking both confused and offended. “You spoke to my cousin.”

  “Yes. For a couple of minutes. And all he did was ask me for more money.”

  “Yes. Can you give it to him?”

  “Absolutely not!” I said.

  Julianne’s hand touched my shoulder, her signal for me to tone it down and cool off.

  I took a deep breath. “No. I won’t give you or him or anyone any money.”

  Elliott’s shoulders sagged, and he sat on a haystack. “They are going to hurt him. I know it.”

  I tried a different tack. “Your cousin admitted to taking the money. He says he needs more. Why would he need more?”

  Elliott rubbed at his chin and then pulled off the fake mustache. He wadded it up and threw it to the ground. “Because he owes more. We owe more.”

  “Owe? To who?”

  “To them.”

  “Who’s them?”

  The fear I’d seen earlier returned to his face. “The girls.”

  27

  “Look, I’m not talking about the girls. Not a chance,” Elliott Huber said.

  I had spent ten minutes trying to get him to open up about whoever was holding Moises hostage, but had had no luck in pulling any details from him. He was adamant in refusing to talk about whoever it was, and his fear seemed born out of actual experience rather than any sort of deception.

  “Okay,” Julianne said, sensing my frustration and giving me a second to regroup. “Let’s talk about the money, then.”

  He pulled off the ball cap and the wig to expose a head of short, black, spiked hair. “Okay.”

  “Moises admitted that he took the money,” I said. “Did you take yours from the casino?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “To help him.”

  “Why does he need so much money?”

  Elliott’s mouth twisted, and he fidgeted.

  “I’m assuming it’s gambling,” I said.

  He looked up at me. “Why do you say that?”

  “Things I’ve heard. You work in a casino. Sorta fits.”

  He looked past me. “Yeah. It’s gambling.”

  “So he needed the money to pay a debt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “To these girls?”

  “Man, I’m not saying anything about them.”

  “I’m going to assume it’s them.”

  “Whatever.”

  “So he owes them money, and now they’ve kidnapped him or something because he hasn’t paid them,” I said, glancing at Julianne.

  She shrugged, then nodded. She was as lost as I was.

  “If you had to steal for him, his debt must be huge,” I added.

  “It is.”

  “So what do these girls want? Just their money?”

  He shifted on the hay bale. “No.”

  “What else?”

  “I’m not supposed to say.”

  I looked at Julianne. “I can’t believe we’ve wasted an entire Saturday with this ridiculousness. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  I grabbed her hand and we headed for the barn doors.

  “Wait. You’re leaving?” Elliott asked.

  “Yes. We’re leaving. I’m going to go home and try to salvage this day.”

  “I thought you were going to help us.”

  “And I thought you weren’t going to jerk me around,” I said. “But that’s all you’ve done. And it’s gotten old. So we’re gonna go home and pick up our daughter and do something a little more rewarding than sitting around with some jackass in a fake mustache and fake wig who talks in circles.”

  He flinched, like a pet who’d been scolded. “I’m sorry.”

  We reached the barn doors. “Me, too.”

  “It’s the trophies,” he said. “They want the trophies.”

  “The soccer trophies?” I asked.

  “Yeah. But I don’t know why. I swear.”

  “So they want to exchange him for the trophies?”

  “And the money I took,” he said.

  My head spun. None of it made any sense.

  “Where are the trophies?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why do they want them?”

  “I don’t know. I swear.”

  “You should just call the police, Elliott,” I said. “I don’t think I can help you.”

  “Moises said not to.”

  “Well, Moises has sorta gotten you into a lot of trouble, hasn’t he? Maybe you need to stop listening to him.”

  “Can you at least help me find the trophies?” he asked. “Please?”

  I opened the door for Julianne. “Remind me to tell Victor to fire me when we get home.”

  28

  I was exhausted by the time we got home, worn out by the shenanigans and the utter waste of time brought on by the cousins Huber. Julianne was polite enough to take Elliott’s phone number as we left the barn, but at that moment, I had no intent on using it.

  We picked up Carly at my parents’ house and took her home, aiming for a quiet afternoon and evening with our daughter. She was happy to be home with us, but tired, as she usually was after a night or two with her grandparents. She put her head down on the living room floor as the three of us played Candy Land and was asleep in about thirty seconds.

  “Do we just let her nap there?” Julianne asked.

  “She’ll wake up if we move her.”

  “Okay.”

  I pushed the game board to the side and scooted next to her as Carly started to snore on the floor.

  “I’m sorry the weekend went to crap,” I said.

  “Weekend is only half over,” she said. “And I owe you an apology, too.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She took a deep breath and sighed. “Because I have been a royal bitch about having a baby.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  She held up a hand. “Yes, I have. Don’t argue. I know when I’m being me and when I’m being a pain in the ass, and that is all I have been for the past few days.”

  “Okay.”

  She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “You may not know this about me, but I’m a little obsessive.”

  “You don’t say.”

  She smiled. “Exactly. So I know I’m caught up in this baby thing. I’m just a little . . . anxious.”

  “Why?”

  She pursed her lips and dipped her chin. She blinked several times, staring into her lap.

  “I really want her to have a sister or brother,” she said. “But what if it doesn’t happen?”

  Something snagged in my gut. “Why wouldn’t it happen? Is something wrong?”

  She squeezed my hand, moved her eyes to me. “No. Nothing is wrong. At all. I promise.”

  I let out a long breath. “Okay.”

  “I just worry about what it would be like if we couldn’t have another,” she said. “Would she be lonely? Would we feel unsatisfied? I don’t know. It’s just this . . . thing . . . on my mind right now. And I can’t shake it and it’s silly and it’s turned me into a bit of a lunatic.”

  I let go of her hand and put my arm around her shoulders. I didn’t like seeing her worried, but it was nice to see a sign of vulnerability from her once in a while. She always seemed to have such a handle on everything in her life that I rarely saw her doubt anything that was going on.

  “If for some reason we weren’t able to have another baby, we would be fine,” I said. “All of us. Her, you, and me. Fine. We’d find another way to fill the void.
Adopt or something. I don’t know. It’s not silly at all, though. You want a baby. And you aren’t exactly the most patient person walking the planet.”

  She laughed softly and laid her head on my shoulder. “Really?”

  “Really. And that’s okay, too. But we can’t force it. It’ll happen when it’s time. And, yeah, that sounds awfully touchy-feely, but I’m not sure how else to put it.” I kissed the top of her head. “And for the record, I really want another one, too. It’s not just you. I just didn’t make charts and graphs.”

  She slapped my thigh, and I laughed.

  “I’m just feeling these motherly instincts,” she said. “And I need to feed them. I want to nurture and care and change diapers and get up in the middle of the night. Again.”

  “Maybe we could rent a baby.”

  “No. I want full ownership.”

  “Ah. Okay.”

  She stood and pulled me up with her.

  “Come upstairs with me,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Do we have the green light?”

  She smiled and pulled on my hand. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  29

  I woke to a midget poking me in the cheek.

  “Get up, pretty boy,” Victor said.

  I rolled over, disoriented. The last I knew, Julianne was in bed next to me and we were sweaty and breathing heavy.

  “Your gorgeous wife said to come wake you up,” Victor said. “Said you were napping.”

  “You’re like waking up to a real-life nightmare.”

  “Want me to hop in bed with you?” he asked. “Maybe spoon with you?”

  “Jesus, no,” I said, searching under the covers for my shorts. I pulled them on and threw the sheets off. “Move, or I’ll step on you.”

  He chuckled and moved from the side of the bed. I found my T-shirt on the floor and pulled it on over my head. “What do you want?”

  “Wanted an update,” he said, hopping up into the old easy chair in the corner of the room. “On our case.”

  “I’m not sure it’s our case anymore,” I said and told him about our evening, morning, and afternoon.

  “Well, that dude called me,” he said when I finished.

  “What dude?”

  “The cousin.”

  “Elliott?”

  “Yep. Says he’ll pay.”

  “With what money?” I asked. “Thought he was stealing money to give to his cousin.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that when he called,” Victor said. “He just told me that he’d met with you today and that you weren’t sure you wanted to help.”