All at once our eyes met, locked, and before I could turn away, she winked at me. Relieved, and more than a little excited, I winked back.
She said something to her friends, who looked at me and giggled, and I felt my face burn. The redhead rose with catlike grace, snatched up the garden gnome, and stood examining it.
“Watson!” Hobbs was stiff with excitement. “Someone has taken the bait!”
“Uh, maybe,” I said, and got no further because the redhead came sashaying toward our table, the gnome swinging in her hand.
She stood the little bugger on the table between Hobbs and me.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Candy.”
I cleared my throat and swallowed. “You certainly are.”
She gave me a wicked smile.
Hobbs gaped at her with no more expression than a trout.
Candy thumped the gnome’s head. “I saw you put this guy on our table. Is this some pervy way of trying to meet girls?”
I shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”
She slid onto the bench beside me and batted her black eyelashes. “If you like,” she said, “you can buy me a cactus and mushroom burrito.”
So I did.
While Candy and I flirted, Hobbs turned away, pretending to study the crowd. I felt sorry for him—a little. His plan had netted him nothing, but had snagged me the company of this lovely young lady. In profile, Hobbs bore a striking resemblance to a young Basil Rathbone, and I wondered if this chance of nature had inspired—or merely accentuated—his peculiar delusion.
The table next to ours was occupied by four boys who looked no older than thirteen. Under normal circumstances it would be strange to see them out this late alone, but Cartopia was something of a magical carnival, where all things seemed possible.
I’d been trying to tune out their conversation, devoted mostly to movies, vampires, computer games, and girls. I had assumed it was annoying Hobbs as well, until he abruptly turned to face them.
“Say, lads, how would you like to earn a bit of pocket money?”
All eyed him stonily a moment before one spoke up. “How much?”
Hobbs extracted a coin from his pocket. “A shiny new quarter. Each.”
“Jeez,” said another. “Who do we have to kill?”
“Nothing so difficult, I assure you. I merely seek information regarding a hooded figure riding a bicycle in this neighborhood.”
“I know him,” said a boy with a shock of white hair. “Cost you five bucks.”
Hobbs squinted at him. After much agonizing, he pulled out his wallet and gave the kid a five. “What can you tell me?”
“He’s the Garden Gnome Bandit, of course. Don’t you watch TV?”
“I know his sobriquet,” Hobbs said testily. “I wish to know his given name and where he lives.”
“Heck,” said the kid, “if I knew that I’d sell it to CNN for a million dollars.”
When no further information was forthcoming, Hobbs turned about in disgust. “When,” he asked of no one in particular, “did our younger generation become such a nest of vipers?”
Hobbs directed his sour disposition at Candy. “I must inform you, miss, that the good doctor cannot possibly take you to wife. He is fated to marry a woman named Mary, or Margaret. Something beginning with an ‘M.’”
Candy rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, damn.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Ain’t it a shame?”
I dreaded the explanation that must surely follow. That because Hobbs considered me his Watson, sent by providence to assist him in his work, I must therefore follow in Watson’s footsteps and choose a wife with the same initials as Mrs. Watson, the former Mary Morstan.
Instead, Candy said, “You’re a doctor?”
Sighing, I slipped a card from my shirt pocket and placed it before her. Jason Wilder, it said, Computer Doctor.
Candy read it and giggled. “Well,” she said, “you can operate on my software anytime.” Then, laying a warm hand on my leg, she stretched and kissed me on the neck, sliding her lips up to my ear.
I must have closed my eyes for a moment, because next thing I knew a grim-faced man with a silver Cervélo road bike stood across the table glowering at me. He wore a black leather vest over a sleeveless Ramones T-shirt, and tattooed snakes crawled up his arms to bare their fangs on his biceps.
His eyes fixed on mine. “You got some kind of death wish?”
“When I go,” I said, recalling a line from Nick at Nite, “I just want to be stood outside in the garbage with my hat on.”
“Done,” he said, leaning his bike against the table. “Too bad you forgot your hat.” He flexed his muscles, making the snakes writhe horribly, and grabbed a handful of my shirt. The cotton ripped as he yanked me off the bench and spilled me onto the blacktop.
He bashed me in the leg with a surprisingly heavy chukka boot, and I rolled with the motion, pushing to my feet just in time to avoid a second kick. Catching him off balance, I landed a roundhouse right to the side of his head. The blow should have knocked him to his knees, but he merely snarled and threw a solid jab to my jaw. My head swam with stars.
“Quinn!” the cry was Candy’s, and she sounded plenty mad. “Leave him alone!”
I blinked, clearing my vision, and saw her grab Hobbs’s gnome from the table and swing it towards Quinn’s face. He swore as the figure smacked him in the nose, then wrenched it from her and dropped it at his feet.
“Watch close,” he said to me. “Here’s what’ll happen if I catch you sniffing around Candy again.” He raised his boot and slammed the heel down on the gnome, scattering chunks of colorful plastic over the blacktop. “Get the message?”
I did.
Quinn swung aboard his bike like an outlaw who’d just shot the sheriff. With a parting sneer, he sped off into the night.
I expected some reaction from Hobbs. At the very least, a pointed I told you so.
Instead, he turned to Candy. “Quickly! Tell me where that fellow lives.”
She shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell me squat about himself. That’s why I dumped him.”
Hobbs swung to the four boys behind him.
“I have five dollars,” he said, “for the first lad to bring me that fellow’s address.”
The boys looked at each other.
“Ten,” said the white-haired kid.
Hobbs grimaced. “Ten.”
When my cell phone rang next morning, the kid wanted twenty. I served as go-between for the negotiations.
“Twelve,” Hobbs said.
“Twenty,” countered the kid.
“Fifteen.”
“Twenty.”
An hour later I pulled my ultra-blue PT Cruiser into a Burgerville lot kitty-corner from Cartopia. The white-haired kid was there leaning on a black Schwinn and munching a cheeseburger.
Hobbs spoke through the car window. “Sorry,” he said, pawing through his wallet. “It seems I only have eighteen dollars.”
“Sorry,” the kid said. “Seems I caught amnesia.”
Hobbs scowled and handed him a twenty.
“Couldn’t get his address,” the kid said, pausing as Hobbs turned purple, “but I got something just as good. His license number.” He pulled a crumpled paper from his pants pocket.
Hobbs stared at him. “His bicycle has a license?”
“You don’t know nothin’, do you? Nah, the dude stashed the bike in the back of a Subaru. You really think he’s the bandit?”
“Quite possibly.” Hobbs eyed the kid with new interest. “You remind me of someone I once knew. By any chance, is your name Wiggins?”
“That’s a dumb name. Everyone calls me Whitey.”
Hobbs nodded as if the kid had said yes. “Tell me, Whitey, would you be interested in earning an odd dollar now and then, purely in the pursuit of justice?”
The kid flicked his fingers, making the twenty snap to attention. “At these rates, sure. Call me.”
“And how will I reach you?”
Whitey leaned down, looking past Hobbs at me. “Why do you hang out with this tool?”
I shrugged. “Because I seem so cool by comparison.”
The kid studied me a moment. “Nah,” he said. “You don’t.”
While I fired up my laptop and plugged in my wireless Internet connector (guaranteed to work anywhere this side of the Sahara Desert), I explained that I had Whitey’s phone number in my cell-phone log.
“Your telephone knows who calls you? That’s ingenious.”
“You bet. It was the latest thing back in 1988.” I was now into the DMV records. “2006 Subaru Outback, registered to Gregory Aaron Lafarge. 13606 SW Gaston Circle.”
“Gregory, eh? Your young lady addressed him as Quinn.”
“My fiancée” I lied, just to needle him. “Candy is only a nickname, you know. Her real name is Martina McBride.”
“You are a poor liar, Doctor. I happen to know that her given name is Candace Blotnick.”
“Don’t tell me. You somehow deduced this from her accent, her brand of cigarettes, or the chips in her fingernail polish.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I searched her purse while she was busy trying to save you from that Lafarge fellow.”
I had now breached another supposedly secure site. “No criminal record,” I said. “At least under that name. And for your information, I was just about to open a can of whoop-ass on him when she interfered.”
“Of course you were.”
The bossy lady in my GPS device, whom I affectionately call Gypsy, led us across the Willamette River and up the steep slope of Council Crest. That hill is a mare’s nest of twisty streets and treacherous dead ends, but once she’d sorted through Gaston Lane, Gaston Avenue, Gaston Street, Gaston Drive, and Gaston Court, she brought us at last to the Lafarge abode.
It was a canary-yellow house with a plastic picket fence, a deflowered dogwood, and a bunch of flowers I couldn’t name. There was no garage, and the carport was empty.
“Our bird is out.”
“So it would seem,” Hobbs said. “Still, we had best make sure.” And before I could stop him, he hopped out, trotted up the walk, and pressed a finger to the doorbell.
I watched from the car, wishing I’d brought a baseball bat, or my set of ninja stars. I didn’t want to end up like that gnome back at the food-cart lot.
No answer.
“Too bad,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Holding up a finger, Hobbs strode briskly along the front of the house, into the carport, and opened a gate into the backyard. The finger beckoned me to follow.
“Damn,” I said. But I went. And stopped short, staring.
The front yard had shown the hand of a skilled gardener, but the back was where that gardener really went to town. And that person had an inordinate fondness for garden gnomes. They peeked from under bushes, lurked behind flowerpots, and lounged upon birdbaths.
“Bingo,” I said.
“Or in the modern vernacular,” Hobbs said, “cowabunga.”
I’d counted over a dozen gnomes when a patio door rolled open and a head emerged, bundled in a fluffy white towel.
“What the hell,” said the head, “are you doing in my yard?”
The head belonged to a woman swathed in a pink bathrobe and fluffy white slippers.
Hobbs said, “I am pleased to inform you, madam, that your yard is being considered for a feature article in Horticulture magazine. Tell me, is this masterpiece of your own design or have you employed a team of professionals?”
“If you’re from Horticulture,” the woman said, “I’m Lady Gaga.” She thrust a hand through the door, a hand clutching a telephone. “See this? I’m already dialing nine-one-one.”
“I apologize for the subterfuge. We were merely seeking an old chum of ours, Mr. Gregory Lafarge.”
“You’re friends of Greg’s? Now I’m really calling the cops.”
“Please, good lady. I entreat you. Could you not tell us when he will return?”
“Never, I hope. Next time I see that bastard it will be in court. Now get your butts off my property.”
Hobbs backed quickly toward the gate. “One last question, if I may. When you last saw your Greg, was he in the habit of smashing garden gnomes?”
The woman was speaking into the phone.
“If you’re still here when I hang up,” she yelled, “I’ll be smashing garden gnomes over your heads!”
Hobbs was feeling grumpy. I would be too, if I’d just paid that wiseass Whitey another twenty bucks to find out where Lafarge had parked his car the night before.
We sat in the Cruiser on SE 7th Avenue, a street of mixed business and residential buildings, with a low-hanging elm shading us from the streetlights. At last, shortly after 9 p.m., Lafarge’s Subaru tooled past and parked on a dark side street.
At first I feared Whitey had stiffed us, for the man who emerged wore a preppy golf jacket and chinos. But the jacket came off and the chinos came down, revealing the familiar leather vest, sleeveless T-shirt, and too-tight jeans. Popping the rear hatch, Lafarge extracted his Cervélo bike and leaned it against the car as he donned one more article of clothing—a dark sweatshirt with a hood.
“Don’t say it,” I told Hobbs. “I know. Cowabunga.”
Lafarge sped off in the direction of the food-cart court, and I drove a parallel street, just close enough to follow. After a quick stop at Cartopia—looking for me and Candy, no doubt—he left the bright lights behind and sped off in a zigzag pattern through the residential neighborhood.
I followed, turning off my lights so as not to alert him, and pulled over on several occasions when we had a clear view of his progress. Hobbs fretted all the while. Each time I stopped he admonished me not to lose our quarry, while every time we got under way he warned me against getting too close. Hobbs will make a fine mother some day.
On we went, heading alternately north and east, through a neighborhood undoubtedly rich in garden gnomes, and I feared at any moment he would pull into a dark driveway and vanish.
At last he turned right onto Belmont, another major through-street, and swung to a stop at a row of bicycle racks at the corner of 34th Avenue, just outside Stumptown Coffee.
Several nearby businesses were open. Aside from the coffee shop, his most likely destinations seemed the swanky Aalto Lounge & Bistro, the neighborhood tavern called the Belmont Inn, or Zupan’s Market, the grocer of choice for neo-hippies. I would have laid money on the Belmont Inn, but Lafarge fooled me by slipping into the gaudily painted Laughing Planet Café.
Then there was nothing to do but wait, which I did by leaning back to rest my eyes. It didn’t take both of us to watch the front door of the cafe.
Almost at once I got a punch in the arm.
“Watson, look!”
I bolted erect. “Is he leaving?”
“No. But look who is arriving. Our greedy friend Whitey.”
He was right. The white-haired kid was just now chaining his bike to the rack, right next to Lafarge’s. A moment later he strode down the block and entered the Laughing Planet.
“Dining on me, no doubt,” Hobbs said sourly.
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “Maybe he’ll get something on the bandit. You have another twenty on you?”
Hobbs looked even more sour. “No. Still, I must know what he’s doing here.”
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Kids get hungry too. You were a kid once, weren’t you?”
The look he gave me chilled me to my heels.
“Silly question. Of course you weren’t.” Since he was already mad, I plunged ahead. “How does this reincarnation stuff work, anyway? Were you born with Holmes’s knowledge and memories full-blown in your head, or did they sort of creep up on you?”
Hobbs’s face softened, and I thought he might actually tell me. But before he could speak the door behind me opened and a dark figure slipped into the Cruiser. We swung about, staring.
“You bozos had me fooled last night,”
Lafarge said, “but going to my house was a stupid play.” He showed us the snout of a gun. “Hands on the ceiling, quick. And they better be empty.”
We complied.
Hobbs was calm. “Your wife told you.”
“She hates me,” Lafarge said, “but she loves me too.”
A dark panel van the size of a UPS truck stopped at the corner ahead, blocking us from the beams of oncoming traffic. I tensed.
“Are you going to shoot us?”
“I might. You used Candy to get to me. That I cannot forgive.”
I said, “Huh?” but the word was drowned out by a clashing and clattering of metal. Hobbs and I turned to stare at the panel van. There was a flurry of activity between the truck and the sidewalk. Then the doors slammed shut, and the vehicle heaved into motion and spurted up Belmont toward 39th.
Hobbs said, “The bicycles.”
Moments before, the racks next to Stumptown had held as many as twenty bikes. Those racks were now bare, and the pavement was littered with mangled U-locks.
Lafarge said something unprintable. “Out of the car, you two. Quick! And leave the keys.”
“What?”
He waved the gun at my nose. “Now.”
I edged out of my seat, careful to grab my laptop, while Hobbs exited onto the sidewalk.
Lafarge jumped out and slid into the driver’s seat. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said.
I stood watching the big blue rear end of my beloved Cruiser roaring off after the panel van.
I shot Hobbs a disgusted look. “Did that make any sense to you?”
“I admit I am somewhat puzzled,” he said. “What did he mean by ‘She hates me, but she still loves me’?”
“You,” said a new voice, “are such a dweeb.”
We turned to stare at Whitey, who stood on the sidewalk behind Hobbs.
I said, “What are you doing here?”
He made a face at me and turned on Hobbs. “What are you going to do to get my bike back?”
As it developed, we were not entirely without resources. My GPS was rigged so I could follow it on my laptop, allowing me to track the progress of the Cruiser. But the car was already two miles away, and still moving. And we were on foot.
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 Page 7