by Rob Cornell
Chapter 16
Elizabeth Garaski made a buzzing noise and said, “Try again.”
I stood there, frozen, both in the figurative sense and a more literal one, too. As if to spite my poor planning, the wind picked up. It bit against my cheek, coming from the south. I felt like you could tap me with a small hammer and I’d shatter to pieces.
With only a thread of tolerance against this cold left, I had decided to go with bits of the truth instead of coming up with another ridiculous story on the spot. In fact, I blamed the cold for this whole thing falling apart. In the summer or spring—even fall—I’d still be in my car, down the street, working the surveillance like a real PI.
Today I felt like a total fraud.
Which is probably why Ms. Garaski didn’t believe the truth.
“I’m serious,” I said. “I’m a private detective.”
She didn’t explode into more laughter, but she snorted like a piglet.
That left me with my jaw hanging open and any words all jumbled and jammed in my throat. If I couldn’t convince her of the truth, I didn’t know what else to say.
She put the tips of her fingers over her mouth as if to hold in the laughter. She could still titter, it just came out muffled. Once she got control of herself, she dropped her hand and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are, but this is pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?” She crossed and rubbed her arms. She wore a long-sleeve dress that stopped at the knee, but the fabric didn’t look all that thick to me.
“I was hired,” I said, for some reason desperate to convince her of who I was, “to find Peter Brown. I’ve run into some things that suggest you know him.”
The last perks of laughter died in her throat. She visibly swallowed. Her eyes went wide for a second, then narrowed, honed in on me. “I think you should go.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“You need to go.”
She tried to slam the door in my face, but I expected that. I wedged my heavy winter boot against the bottom of the door, stopping it about two feet from closing.
“Ms. Garaski, please. I need to speak with you.”
“I don’t know where he is.” She tried shoving on the door, but my boots had thick soles and I used my leverage to keep it open. Good thing my other foot wasn’t on one of those slick patches, or I would have ended up on the ground with my head split open against the cement porch. “Stop that. Let me close the door. You’re letting the warm air out.”
“I’d call it hot air, actually.” I leaned my shoulder against the door and gently pushed so the door creaked another few inches open. “You know where he is, don’t you? Is he here?”
“I don’t have to talk to you. In fact, you need to leave before I call the police.”
I pulled the letters from my back pocket, having to reach up and under my parka to get at them. A chilling gust ran up my back through the brief opening I’d allowed. My spine turned to ice.
I held out the letters for her to see.
She jerked back as if I had reached out to grab her. But her gaze locked on the letters in my hand. She knew what they were. She pointed at them. “He kept those?”
I nodded. “Hidden in a stack of letters to his wife.”
Her face lost some color despite the cold air that had to be blowing in through the door and nipping at her cheeks. Instead of a rosy-faced elf, she looked like the ghost of Christmas yet to come.
“And you read them?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Why?”
“I already told you. He’s gone missing. I was hired to find him.”
“You really are a private detective?”
Why do people always ask me that? “Yes.”
She quit pushing on the door, but I didn’t move my foot—just in case. She said, “Is he in trouble?”
My heart sank a little. Either she didn’t really know what was going on with him, or she was putting on an act, pretending to have no idea. Either way made this harder.
“Ms. Gar—”
“Please stop calling me that. Makes me feel like an old maid. Call me Liz.”
“Okay, Liz. Are you telling me you do not know where Peter is?”
She looked at me as if I’d tried speaking to her in Esperanto. “Why would I? Our affair ended two weeks ago. He said something about being saved, and how he couldn’t defy God…” She smiled as she trailed off. “Ha. Looks like we got around to talking about God after all.”
“There’s a lot of God talk when it comes to the Brown family.”
As if God Himself didn’t appreciate my snark, a wind gust three times stronger than the last buffeted against me, almost knocking me off balance and burning my face with the cold.
Liz still had a hint of a smile on her face. “I don’t know anything about where he is now. But it’s good news he left her. That’s all I can say.”
“Why’s that?” My voice quivered while my body shook from the cold.
“Have you met her?” Liz rolled her eyes. “The woman is nuts. Talk about God. Sheesh. It’s like she decided whatever she didn’t like about her husband must be a sin. His sin. She’s no Christian, I’ll tell you that, too. She’s made up her own cult, and she’s the only member.”
I kept my own judgments about Mrs. Brown to myself. I was still processing them, but so far I didn’t disagree with Liz’s take. I wondered if Liz knew about the knife incident.
“Have you ever heard of Sunnygale?”
“The crazy people hospital? Why? Did someone finally check Debra in there?” She sounded genuinely hopeful, though her voice remained tainted with sarcasm.
I hadn’t thought about it from that angle. Had Carrie and I taken the presence of the brochure wrong? Maybe Peter was thinking about having his wife committed. It put a new spin on things. His last ditch effort to be free of his wife’s deteriorating mental state might have failed, leaving him with the only option—abandonment.
Meanwhile, Sasha sees it as an abandonment of her as well and simply can’t take living alone with her wacky mother anymore…
“Afraid not,” I answered. “But I thought maybe he checked himself in.”
“Why in hell would he do that?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to ask.”
She leaned forward a little and looked beyond me. “Damn, it’s cold out there.” She drew back, pulling the collar of her dress closer around her neck. She shivered. “I hate the winter.”
“Me, too.”
She stared at me for a silent second, shook her head. “Not for the same reasons, I’ll wager.” She jostled her head as if she’d walked face-first into a spider web. “Anyway, do me a favor. If you find him, have him get in touch.”
“I can let him know you’d like that.”
“Thanks.”
I nodded, started to turn away, my head hung low, my spirits as tamped down as the snow under my boots.
“On more thing,” Liz called out. When I turned around, she had a gun in her hand aimed straight at me.
Adrenaline gushed into my system, but I couldn’t use it for a thing. I had my gun, of course, on a clip holster on my belt. But getting to my belt meant digging under my parka or unzipping it. By then, Liz could have emptied all six of her revolver’s chambers and started to reload.
I held my hands out at my sides. “Whoa.”
She stood in a traditional shooter’s stance as if she were at the range. I had every confidence she knew not only how to fire the weapon, but how to actually hit things with it. “If you ever pull that shit with the door on me again, I’ll have your brains all over my front yard. Got it?”
“Loud and clear.”
She stood there a few seconds longer, then slammed her door shut. I could hear the sound of a deadbolt snap into place.
I walked back to my car, trembling. From the cold, I thought. I’m just cold.
I wasn’t convinced.
Chapter 17
I returned to my office to plan out my ne
xt move. I cranked up the heat, shed my parka, scarf, and gloves, then I got behind my desk and hit the computer. Objective: Get as much info about Sunnygale as possible.
Their official website didn’t give me much more info than the paper brochure. Outside of their own website, I found sites that offered reviews from people how had spent time at the hospital. Many raved about Sunnygale’s outpatient program, which offered them the benefits of attending the facility without having to stay overnight. I found a fair amount of negative remarks, too, but from what I could gather the reviews fell into two categories. The positive reviews came from people who had willingly checked themselves in. Most of the negative comments came from those forced to stay at the hospital.
What I had gathered about Peter’s personality from Carrie and the others, as well as the stuff Mrs. Brown allowed me to take, made it hard for me to believe he needed a place like Sunnygale. But when I returned to their homepage, started scanning the info again, I realized something that had sat in front of me the whole time.
Sunnygale had both a mental health branch and an addiction branch. Peter was known to come home from work and plow his way through a case of twelve beers nearly every night. He also had sleeping pills—heavy-duty sleeping pills. While Mrs. Brown might have felt quite at home in the mental health wing, Peter might have sought help from the addiction side.
Enter requisite thought of Sheila—old family friend, executor of my parents’ estate, and full-on alcoholic. She could have drank me under the table. Hell, she could have probably drank my bartender, Paul, under the table. She’d been real good at hiding it. Now, she’s in the wind. I have no way of finding her. And after her nasty little betrayal not long ago, I can’t say that I miss her much. Not the real her, anyway.
I brushed aside thoughts of Sheila and turned my mind back to the case.
So I had determined Peter might have been a good candidate for Sunnygale’s addiction recovery branch. Big deal. I still couldn’t drive over, knock on the door, and ask of Peter Brown could come out and play.
If Peter had enrolled in their program, he had made himself invisible and impervious for the duration. I supposed I could wait. But a little net search told me the average time in an addiction facility could range from a week to three months.
A week I could handle. I wasn’t about to cling to this case for a quarter of a year, though.
I chewed on my lip, staring at the computer monitor without actually seeing it. I tapped my fingers on my desk. I hummed the theme song to Downton Abbey—not that I watched the show or anything. Honest.
I thought of something. A ludicrous idea. Stupid in the extreme. I tried to shove it out of my mind. The idea nipped at my heels, not letting me go.
Was it worth the time and effort?
Was it worth possibly losing my PI license?
Was it worth a chance of going to prison for fraud?
I reminded myself that I took cases not because I needed to, but because I wanted to.
I scanned through Sunnygale’s website again, reading every inch of fine print I could find. Nothing suggested my plan wouldn’t work.
As long as I didn’t get caught at it.
* * *
“You want what?”
Devon “The Devil Man” Whitegard and I used to hang out in high school. In the last few years, we got to know each other again through some help he did for me on a case. In payment for his services, I took on the task of giving him singing lessons. Now he fronts a band currently called The Mugly Ducklings. They seem to rename the band every other week or so. Last time they called themselves Zod’s Creatures. Every other Wednesday they take over the stage at the High Note and play. Dev’s come a long way, and the band mixes styles from bluegrass, punk rock, easy listening and everything in between. It shouldn’t work. Somehow they make it work.
I found Devon where I usually do—in the basement of his mother’s house. Upon my arrival, Mrs. Whitegard started baking something. She always does.
Devon’s downstairs office felt more like a cave. The extreme lack of light when you first walk in from the lit basement shocked my eyes every time. But Devon likes things dark. The room’s only illumination comes primarily from the half dozen computer monitors and a couple desk lamps he has set around tables that line three of the four walls. The tables also have various electronic guts strewn across them in between the four computer stations he has set up. The number of computers in the office fluctuates. I’ve seen as many as eight running at the same time. Despite the cave-like feel of the office—which should reek of BO—the room smells like air freshener and sugar cookies.
Probably his mom’s doing.
I waved a hand to indicate all the stuff around him. “I need fake identification. Can you do something like that?”
Devon stroked his wispy excuse for a goatee. His “devil’s lock,” one thick lock of hair growing off the front of his otherwise shorn head, hung between his eyes, giving him a disjointed look. “The question is, do I want to?”
“So you can?”
Another stroke of the fuzz on his chin. “I never said that.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been having those kung fu movie marathons again. They’re bad for your health.”
Devon made a face. “Cut me some slack, dude. I—”
An alarm sounded, the sudden noise nearly yanking my heart out through my throat. A cool wash ran down my back. I spun toward the sound and spotted the source on a wall shelf. The R2-D2 alarm clock whistled and bleeped in place and made a rocking motion between its two feet like a robot potty dance.
Devon stood from the wheeled chair he sat in at one of the computer stations. With slow, casual, tree-sloth speed, he shuffled over and gave R2 a bop on its domed head. The alarm cut off immediately.
“Time to wake up?” I asked.
“It’s my normal raid time. I’m one of the group’s healers. Can we take this up later.”
He started to saunter back to his chair. I put a flat hand on his chest to stop him.
“I’m pretty sure you were speaking English there, but it doesn’t matter. I need your help on this, and the more time I let by, the more my window closes.”
Devon gave his computer a longing look. Knowing Devon like I did, he loved computers more than he did women. He didn’t work and sleep out of his mother’s basement because he couldn’t afford his own place. Hell, he could live on the north side without a problem. He either stayed at his mom’s because he didn’t want to leave her in the house to live alone, or he did it for her famous cookies.
Maybe a little of both.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t do that kind of thing.” He pointed a finger in my face. “I’m not saying I can’t. But I don’t.”
Some of the buoyancy I felt when I first had the idea deflated out of me. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea anyway.
Devon clapped me on the arm. “Don’t get all weepy on me. I can still hook you up, then I can get back to kicking the ass of Grimroara and get that fucking helm I’ve needed for weeks now.”
Devon could mix regular English with Geekese as good as anyone.
I waited. Usually a translation would come along without my having to ask for one.
He must have seen the confusion in my eyes. “How long have we been hanging again since the high school days? Three, four years? You still haven’t let me get you into the MMOs.”
This one I knew, simply because he had pushed so hard on the subject in the past. MMO stood for massively multi-player online. Shorthand for a game you played through the internet with other people. Video games don’t do a thing for me. Maybe because I suck at them so badly.
“Save it, Dev. You know I can’t get into that stuff.”
He sighed, bushed his devil’s lock aside, tucking it behind one ear. The piercings in his lip, ear, and eyebrow shined in the ghostly light cast by the monitors. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not my point. My point is I know a guy.”
Interesting. Devon never struck me a
s the type to “know a guy.” A little too mobster for a grown adult still living with his mother. “Can he put together a full package? I’m going to need more than a fake driver’s license that’s only good for underage kids buying beer with it.”
He scrunched up his face as if something bitter had touched his tongue—also pierced. “It all comes back to the MMOs, brother. You’d be amazed the people I meet. I have an FBI agent and a former CIA operative in my guild.”
“If you’re talking about people online, you know they can lie, right?”
“I did background checks on both of them. They’re the real deal.”
The kind of background check Devon could do made mine look pathetic. He could use his computer to slither his way into just about anything. I don’t know how he hasn’t made it into prison yet. In any case, it meant his info was good.
“You do a background on this guy you know?”
“Of course. What’s funny is, he and I met a while ago. We grouped on a dungeon. Got some sweet drops that night.”
I kept my mouth shut and listened. Eventually he’d start talking sense again.
“Anyway, I knew someday you’d come to me looking for his kind of thing.” His eyes glowed. I could smell his body odor over the air freshener. I could also smell incoming sugar cookies. “So I added him to my friends list and have kept in contact. I think I can convince him to do it for you, but he’ll have a hefty price.”
“I’m not worried about money.”
“Neither is he. He’ll want to bank a favor.”
The hot, sweet smell of those cookies drew even closer. “What kind of favor?”
But before Devon could answer, the knock came at his door. Devon’s mom peeked her head in. “Would anyone like a cookie or three?” She opened the door wide in a dramatic reveal of the plate she balanced on one hand. The cookies were shaped like Millennium Falcons and slathered with white frosting.
My mouth practically turned into a waterfall. My stomach growled.
I must have looked ravenous, because Mrs. Whitegard handed me the whole plate. “Enjoy, boys.” She closed the door and a few seconds later I could hear her muffled footsteps on the carpeted stairs going up.