The Prodigal Girl

by Evan Ronan

  Class act to the end, this guy.

  Smiling, she squirms away and swats his shoulder. Marcus goes in for another kiss, but Shannon playfully turns aside. This only invites further public groping from Marcus. She shakes out of his lustful grasp. But Marcus has some parting words—

  “Damn girl! You looking fine!”

  Without turning around, Shannon waves over her shoulder and puts a little extra sway in those hips as she struts away. Whatever they were arguing about earlier, it seems forgotten now.

  Eighteen

  I feel like I’ve been home for five minutes the last four days. It’s late, but I haven’t eaten, so I cook up some pasta and find mostly fresh bread and carb it up.

  Just as I’m about to sit and finally chow down, I remember I haven’t called Carl yet about the t-shirts.

  He doesn’t answer. It’s eight-thirty, a weird time for a grown man not to take a phone call from his business partner. I’ve known Carl forever. He’s never done anything shady before. I remember one time in high school when he owned up to breaking the water faucet in the hallway so the whole class didn’t get detention. Fair play to him.

  I get dumped into voicemail. “Carl, it’s Greg. Give me a call. I received a complaint from a customer today about a shirt.”

  I leave it at that. Carl’s my friend. I trust him. But in business, friends aren’t always friends. I don’t give him any more information than that so he doesn’t have time to prepare a story. I hop online after and check out our website. It was a simple and relatively cheap set-up. The vintage t-shirts are the top of the funnel, directing t-shirt enthusiasts to the page where they can order more cheapies. There are a few comments, almost all of them positive with the exception of one.

  “Reproduction! Don’t give these creeps your money!”

  Oh shit.

  I text Tarika, asking her to call me. Normally she pings me back right away, but I finish my pasta and my bread and get through almost all of an NBA Summer League game before I hear back from her.

  Just a text.

  Need to see you tomorrow morning. Meet you at hall.

  I write her back but she doesn’t answer. Something must have happened when Shannon got home.

  While I’ve got the game on, I log into my PayPal account to check transactions. Today there are only a handful of sales for my online products. One is a …

  Yada, yada, yada. I won’t bore you with the details.

  Everybody hustles.

  But these days, I just feel like I’m chasing trends. Web this, web that, what’s everybody else doing? There’s a niche over here. There’s a need over there. Some of these things produce, just as many fizzle out.

  What am I doing wrong?

  I make a conscious decision to plug my phone into the charger that’s in the kitchen, so it’s just far enough away that I’ll be too lazy to check sales. No more torturing myself tonight about business and profit. I’ve got a great house, I own the hall free and clear, and I always think of something else I could try. Ideas have never been in short supply. One of these days, one of them will take off.

  You only need one home run.

  But it gets so tiring, constantly chasing the new thing. I feel like, with each new venture, I’m starting from scratch. I can apply knowledge, sure, but all those customers I’ve served in Business A have absolutely no interest in Business B.

  Everybody hustles, Greg. Get over yourself.

  I try watching the game but it’s Summer League. Ninety percent of these guys won’t make a real, live NBA team. And my mind refuses to shut down. I’m thinking about Ashlynn, which makes me think about selling the pool hall, which makes me think about Tarika showing up one day, which makes me think about the case, and now I’m onto human trafficking in Mexico. Lawyers, check cashing places, secret babies, clandestine meetings … it would help me to better understand Shannon.

  I sent the surfer down in Mexico a note through Facebook, though I have no idea if he’ll bother to read it or bother to respond.

  I decide to look into Olivia. Her last name is Jimenez. I try Google first and get a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated in two years. No Instagram or Twitter pages. LinkedIn helpfully returns a little under a thousand hits. Even after filtering for area, I’ve still got dozens.

  I search Olivia Jimenez through a couple different databases that my active PI license gets me access to. She’s got a driver’s license. Her last known address is listed. I compare that to the notes in Strommel’s case file and discover it’s the same one he visited.

  So that address belongs to her parents. I think she’s gotta be there. Shannon’s cover story, about going out with Olivia tonight, would collapse under its own weight if Olivia wasn’t around.

  I’ll check it out tomorrow.

  ***

  Tomorrow comes bright and early.

  I head out to Olivia’s place. It’s nine-thirty, a little early to go knocking on doors. So I wait as long as I can, which ends up being eleven minutes.

  I knock respectfully on the door. I don’t want whoever answers thinking it’s a cop or a salesman. Two wide eyes peer at me through the glass of the front door.

  “What you want?” comes a voice with a thick, Hispanic accent.

  “Good morning. I was looking for Olivia.”

  “Why?”

  “Mrs. Jimenez,” I say as informally as I can, “could you open the door?”

  “I don’t open the door for people I don’t know.”

  “Is Olivia here?”

  “She’s at work.”

  I wonder just when Olivia Jimenez returned home. And if that return happened to coincide, roughly, with Shannon’s and Marcus’s.

  “Oh, I should have known.” I smile as widely as I can. “We’ve called and emailed a couple times but haven’t heard back. We think she’s a great candidate for the survey we’re doing. It’s a long-term study that can be done after business hours and pays pretty well.”

  I hold up a business card I printed out last night.

  “What is the survey for?”

  I keep on smiling. “I’m afraid I can’t say because that would impact the study. What I can tell you is it involves young women who’ve been in the workforce for a few years, who hail from a specific socio and economic background.”

  The two wide eyes peering at me unwiden a bit. “You said it’s paid?”

  “You bet.”

  “She’s at work,” the woman says. “Go see her there.”

  “I’d love to, but Olivia didn’t provide that information to us when she filled out the application.”

  “She works over in Willingham,” the woman says. “At that kids’ party place. It’s called Partastica.”

  I remember I’m supposed to respond.

  “Thank you.”

  ***

  I’m sitting outside Partastica. It doesn’t open for another hour, but I’ve seen a couple employees go in and out. One of them being the woman I spoke with briefly a few nights ago.

  I’ve already met her.

  I’ve already met Olivia.

  As this sinks in, I think back to what I said to Olivia the other night when I was trying to get information about Shannon.

  I had made up a story about recognizing Shannon as one of my daughter’s old friends from high school. Believable enough, sure. I hadn’t said much else. But if Olivia is involved in whatever Shannon has going on currently, Olivia sure as hell didn’t believe a word I said.

  In fact, she sure as hell told Shannon some fortyish year old guy was asking about her, a mere half hour after Shannon rolled out of Partastica.

  Ah hell.

  There’s a good chance then that Shannon knows she’s being followed. Whether she was able to piece it together last night while I lingered at the coffee shop though …

  Rather than talk to Olivia, I blow it off. Anything I ask her will be funneled to Shannon.

  Shit.

  I head back to the hall and open up early. Bernie should
be in soon. So should Tarika. I’m dying to know what happened last night between them.

  This morning I stick with ten-ball to keep things simple. Think three shots ahead and execute. Three shots ahead and execute.

  Three shots ahead.

  And execute.

  I’m thinking about my next three steps in the case when Tarika enters through the front door. This morning she’s wearing stretch pants and a t-shirt.

  It is a Tuesday in summer. She should be at work.

  “Greg.”

  She comes over and throws her arms around me. I feel her body against mine as she begins to cry. I rub her back as gently and platonically as possible.

  “Can we talk in the back?” she asks.

  I lead her into my office. She takes the same seat as before.

  “I had to call out of work. It’s all too much. I can’t take it.”

  I sit on the edge of my desk so I’m closer to her. Her perfume is distracting.

  “Let me tell you what I saw last night,” I say. “Then you tell me what happened.”

  “Okay.”

  So I go through it with her. At my big reveal—that Shannon was meeting Marcus at the mall—she is not surprised in the least. I share with her what little I heard them say in Starbucks. Then I skip ahead to this morning and my discovery that Olivia works at Partastica.

  “There’s a good chance I’m burned,” I say. “She might have already figured out it was me too.”

  Tarika nods. “She point-blank asked me if I hired someone.”

  Shit.

  “My fault,” I say. “I didn’t know I was speaking with Olivia the other night.”

  “It’s okay, Greg.” She looks away. “I told her I hadn’t.”

  “She’ll figure it out,” I say, regretting nearly every move I have made so far. I should have stayed away from Olivia altogether.

  But then again, I didn’t have any other leads to follow.

  Ah hell. I can’t help but feel a real detective with much more experience under his belt wouldn’t have gotten burned this easily. I’ve let Tarika down, whether she knows it or not.

  “Okay,” Tarika says. “My turn.”

  I circle around the desk and sit in my chair. There’s something about a case that makes me want to drink. The hard-drinking PI is such a tired cliché, but I can see why it happens.

  Tarika scoots forward on her chair. “Shannon told me about the baby. She was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say. She was afraid of how I’d react and didn’t want to be judged. That’s why she came home separately from Marcus. He agreed to care for Aisha until Shannon got back on her feet.

  “Aisha is their daughter. She’ll be four in a couple months. I can’t believe it. I still can’t believe I’m a grandmother.”

  She pauses and looks away. Tarika has probably imagined what being a grandmother would be like. I doubt she thought she’d be this young, though, and I also doubt she ever thought she wouldn’t meet her granddaughter until the girl was almost four years old.

  This is not the way it was supposed to go for her.

  “She explained what she was doing at the lawyer’s,” Tarika suddenly restarts. “She wanted to draw up a will and discuss custody issues. She wants—and I do too—primary custody of Aisha. We don’t think Marcus will put up much of a fight. He hasn’t bothered to get a job or do much of anything since he’s gotten back. His parents are doing all the work.”

  I don’t point out that Shannon herself hasn’t done much of anything either.

  Tarika shakes her head. “Knowing them, they’ll fight us on custody just to spite us. They really are just …”

  “Playing devil’s advocate,” I say gently, “Aisha is their granddaughter too.”

  She gives me a sharp look. “And you think they care about that? They didn’t care about what their own boy was doing five years ago and never bothered to hire anybody to find him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I called and asked them periodically. The idiots actually had the gall to file for a restraining order to keep me from calling, if you can believe it.”

  “You know, Tarika, it’s possible they knew where the kids were the whole time. That would explain why they never bothered to hire a PI.”

  “My suspicions exactly,” Tarika says. “I wouldn’t put it past them. Just goes to show you that some people are just evil.”

  Why am I challenging her on everything? I don’t know, but I keep doing it.

  I’m very wise like that.

  “They were probably scared about their boy going to prison,” I point out. “Running off with an underage girl. Why would they try to find him? And, if they knew where he was, why would they tell you?”

  “BECAUSE SHANNON WAS ONLY FIFTEEN!”

  I’ve gone way too far. I know that. But at the same time, the obvious needs to be pointed out to Tarika. Yes, the Tanners coulda, woulda, shoulda done a lot of things differently. But they didn’t. And they didn’t because they loved their boy, in their own weird way. If Tammy committed a crime, honestly, depending on the severity of it I might look the other way.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’d be mad and disappointed as hell, but I wouldn’t do the police any favors.

  That’s the damned truth of it.

  I raise a palm. “You’re absolutely right. Those idiots should have done the right thing. But they didn’t.”

  Tarika eyes me for another moment before speaking again. “Anyway, she asked me about life insurance.”

  “Life insurance?”

  She stands and nods. “For the baby. She’s a mother now and the lawyer recommended she get some when they were talking about the will and custody.”

  “Tarika, don’t go just yet.”

  She doesn’t respond to that. “She asked me if I had any, and how much, and what I thought she should do.”

  I can’t argue with planning ahead. Though it does show remarkable foresight for a twenty-year-old who’s been living in Mexico for the last five years, presumably scraping together money by waiting tables or living a life of petty, or perhaps significant, crime.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her what I had, and gave her the number of my guy. I don’t know what kind of deal she’ll be able to get without an income, but she’s young and in great health. So who knows.”

  She turns to leave.

  “Hold on, Tarika, let’s—”

  She turns back around. “She’s bringing my granddaughter home tonight. I have a lot of shopping to do. Have to pick up a bed and clothes and toys.” She smiles but it’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen. “Tomorrow she’s going to start looking into daycare, so she can begin applying for jobs.”

  “Tarika.” I try to maintain some semblance of calm. “There’s a lot more going on here. Keeping the baby from you is one thing. I can sort of buy that. But what is she doing at that check cashing place? And why is she meeting with Marcus secretly?”

  “She was afraid of how I’d react to him being back. She said they had fallen out of love but she’d never bring charges against the father of her little girl.” Tarika shakes her head. “She didn’t want to get into an argument about going to the police or taking him to court. Shannon knows now he took advantage of her, but she doesn’t want to do anything about it. She just wants to move on. Damned irresponsible of her, if you ask me. Now that man will go unpunished. How long before he preys on some other girl?”

  “That doesn’t fit,” I say, thinking back to last night. “They argued about something—”

  “She said they met to talk about the baby.”

  “Okay, fine. They met about the baby. But when they left, he kissed her. She kissed him back. He groped her in the middle of the mall.”

  Tarika closes her eyes, as if embarrassed. “She told me they weren’t together anymore.”

  Not together anymore can mean a lot of things.

  “Why didn’t she tell you she was going to see Oliv
ia at the party place? Or her friend at the check cashing joint?”

  “Greg.” Tarika folds her arms. “Thank you for your help. But I think we’re done. I don’t feel right snooping on Shannon. This is all my fault, don’t you get it?”

  “How is this your fault?”

  “She felt like she couldn’t talk to me, Greg. That’s why she kept the baby a secret. That’s why she kept Marcus a secret. That’s why she didn’t want to tell me where she was going and what she was doing. I was this close to driving her away again.”

  “But how?” I challenge. “Everything I’ve seen from you tells me you’re a good mother who loves her daughter deeply. You didn’t pressure her to get a job when she came back. You didn’t pry into her past. You didn’t demand to know where she was at all hours. You just gave Shannon her space.”

  She holds out a palm to stop me. “Regardless, Shannon felt like she couldn’t talk to me. For whatever reason. I need to own that and adjust how I’m behaving if I want to have a relationship with my daughter.”

  Oh boy.

  I can’t help but feel like Tarika is being manipulated here. The phrase emotional hostage comes to mind. But as to what end Shannon has in mind, I have no idea.

  “Before you go, I want to tell you one more thing.” I’m about to exercise the nuclear option. “Remember I told you about a certain contact I have?”

  She doesn’t want to hear anything else. Tarika is ready to move on and restart her life with her daughter.

  “Yes?”

  “He told me about a wild rumor going around. He told me that Marcus and Shannon weren’t just into drug trafficking. They were into human trafficking.”

  “Do you honestly believe that about Shannon?” Tarika says, growing angry. “You’ve watched my girl for a few days now. Do you think she … I mean, honestly, Greg!”

  Everybody knows everybody.

  But there’s a contradictory corollary to that.

  Nobody knows anybody.

  Not really.

  I think the Japanese have a saying for it, that every person has six faces and three hearts. The first heart we show to the world. The second, to friends and family. But the last, we keep to ourselves and ourselves alone. And this is the truest heart we have.