“Bible verses have two numbers—chapter and verse. I don’t know what this is. That’s why I kept it.”
Snoop punched a few keys. “Ponder is a graduate teaching assistant in, wait for it… environmental studies. My god, his picture looks like he’s Taliban, except he’s wearing a peace symbol on a chain instead of an AK-47.”
Snoop printed the photo. “Ponder is twenty-nine years old.”
“Maybe he’s a professional student,” I observed. “Where does he live?”
Snoop punched the keyboard. “A house near campus. Okay, the next number belongs to Steven Wallace… That’s Doctor Steven Wallace. Teaches environmental studies at UAC. Michelle called him several times a day for the last four days.”
“John, it sounds like Michelle hangs out with an older crowd. Does that seem like her?”
“In high school she had lots of friends her own age,” he said, “but I don’t know any of her college friends.”
“Oh, wait, some calls were Dr. Wallace calling her,” said Snoop.
I asked, “Why would she telephone a professor on the weekend? Especially the weekend before spring break? And why would he call her? Classes aren’t scheduled for another week.”
John set down his coffee. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter 5
“Michelle, this is Chuck McCrary. I’m the private investigator you met at your grandfather’s Super Bowl party. Call me back when you get this message. Your parents are worried.” I disconnected, then texted the same message. “That’s all I can do, John. Her phone rings at least once, so it’s turned on. She sees who the caller is, then rejects the call. If her phone were turned off, it would go straight to voicemail without ringing.”
“She obviously doesn’t want to talk to either one of us,” John said. “Oh, geez, look at the time. Penny will be home any second, and it’s my turn to cook.”
“Okay. I’ll go find Michelle.” I grabbed the slip of paper. “I have three names and addresses near campus. She’s likely at one of those.”
“Should I call those other three people?” asked John. “See if Mickie’s with one of them?”
“They wouldn’t talk to you either. Something smells like three-day-old fish. I understand Michelle being friends with a senior in the same major. Maybe they belong to the same student club. Maybe Shamanski’s a mentor. But, if you add in an older, male graduate assistant to the mix, it gets a little hinky. Hell, the guy’s practically my age. Although a student organization fits the bill. Ponder or Wallace might be a faculty sponsor. Otherwise, what interest would a tenured college professor have in a freshman woman? Unless he’s a dirty old man. If he’s tenured, he’s old enough to be her father. This is a rarified atmosphere for Michelle to be breathing.”
I turned to Snoop. “When you get back home, research everything you can find on Shamanski, Ponder, and Wallace.” I grabbed my briefcase. “I’ll check these three addresses.”
John shook my hand. “Bring her home, Chuck.”
“Don’t expect too much, John. She’s a legal adult. I’ll make sure she’s okay, and I’ll ask her to call you, but I can’t make her come home if she doesn’t want to.”
###
Wallace lived near downtown. I decided to check nearer to UAC first. Shamanski’s apartment was a mile from campus. I cruised the parking lot for Michelle’s car—her father had given me the license plate and a description. No joy.
I found Michelle’s car parked in the driveway at the second address I checked. She had a Save Our Seas specialty license plate on a very used Honda Civic. A bumper sticker read Today’s Environmentalists Are Tomorrow’s Heroes. At least she believed in something. Maybe she wanted to be the poster child for political correctness on campus.
Ponder’s address was a two-story, shingle-sided Craftsman-style house that must have been a hundred years old. It looked every bit of its age. A wooden shutter on the second floor hung by one hinge. Behind it, I saw the original dark brown color of the siding. The rest of the siding had weathered to a hopeless beige. The exposed roof rafters were moldy where the paint had peeled. The composition roof was on its last legs, judging from the number of patches. The square wooden posts supporting the porch roof had warped and split. The front steps had been replaced with concrete ones, now cracked and settled with a large split down one side. Weeds and bare earth had replaced the lawn.
Gentrification had not hit this neighborhood.
I wanted to find Michelle, but part of me hoped she wasn’t inside this ramshackle heap. The bright, sunny girl I had met at Hank’s Super Bowl party shouldn’t be in this miserable excuse for a house, even for a short while.
I had driven my anonymous white minivan, one of a bazillion others. I parked seventy-five yards up the street and watched the house for a while.
My stomach growled as a ragged old woman trudged down the street pushing a wobbly grocery cart. Two black plastic garbage bags, containing all she owned in the world, hung from the cart. She stopped the cart, straightened up, and rubbed the small of her back with both hands. She stretched, then pushed aside the overgrown branches of a neglected Ixora bush to retrieve a faded aluminum can hidden among the discarded plastic bags and scraps of paper. She tossed it into the cart.
I got out of the van when she got closer. “Ma’am?”
She looked up at me.
“What brand of can did you just find?”
She peered into the cart and picked up the faded can. “Looks like a Diet Coke.”
“I’ll give you ten dollars for it.”
“It’s only worth a dime.”
“I’ll give you ten dollars for that can.”
She shrugged and handed it to me.
I handed her the ten, returned to the van, and tossed the can in the litterbag. Maybe she could have a good meal tonight even if I couldn’t.
Another hour passed and the street remained as deserted as a ghost town. I missed the old homeless woman. My stomach complained some more.
After sunset, lights came on in the rear windows on the second floor of Ponder’s house.
I parked behind Michelle’s Civic and climbed the concrete steps. The entire first floor was dark. The doorbell was the old-fashioned type that you had to twist like you were winding an alarm clock. I twisted twice and waited. I felt faint footsteps vibrate through the porch floorboards, but no one came to the door. I twisted the bell again. Same vibrations. I heard an upstairs window scuff open and then close. Someone had looked out at the street. They must have seen my van parked behind Michelle’s Honda, but no one came to the door.
I tested the screen door handle. Unlocked. I rapped on the wooden doorframe. It rattled like it was barely fastened to the wall. “Hello. Anybody home?” This time I heard the floorboards creak from the upstairs, but no one appeared.
I swung the screen door open and stepped inside. I wasn’t breaking and entering; the door was unlocked. I shined a Maglite around the square foyer. Dark-stained, Florida heart pine floors scratched and worn with age. Double-wide pocket doors opened onto a parlor on the left. A wide wooden staircase climbed up the left wall of the central hall. I flicked the light switch at the bottom of the stairs. “Hello. I’m coming up. Anybody home up there?”
I’d climbed halfway up the stairs when a shirtless man banged open a door at the rear of the second floor. He blinked in the hall light. Eyes sensitive to light—a sign he was high. A peace symbol on a chain around his neck peaked out from behind his scruffy beard. Snoop was right. In real life he looked even more like a Taliban. The man shut the door behind him and stood by the window at the rear of the central hall. He spread his feet apart, swaying. He steadied himself with one hand against a side wall.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, too loudly.
I held out a business card and kept climbing the stairs.
He wore ragged cut-off jeans. Not fashionable cut-offs; just worn-out pants like a homeless person. He didn’t look like any graduate assistant I had
when I was at the University of Florida.
“I’m Chuck McCrary. I’m here to speak to Michelle Babcock, please.”
“There’s nobody here by that name, asshole. Get lost.” His brown eyes were wide and darted back and forth. I wondered what he was high on. Then I wondered why I wondered; it made no difference.
“When will she be back?”
He raised his voice. “I don’t know any Michelle Babcock.”
He didn’t hesitate at the name. It was familiar to him.
I reached the top of the stairs. “Are you James Ponder?” I extended my business card toward him. He ignored it.
“Don’t know anybody by that name either.”
“Is James Ponder in?”
He balled his hands into fists. “Who wants to know, asshole?”
“You always this polite to strangers?” I reached the top of the stairs.
Dirty bare feet completed his ensemble. He raised a fist. “You’re trespassing, asshole. Get the hell outta here.”
“I’ll leave after I talk to Michelle. Fair enough?”
“You’ll leave anyway, asshole. Get outta here before I call the cops.”
Mister Hospitality has a limited vocabulary, I thought. “Go ahead, call them. I’ll wait.” I sidestepped to the center of the hall, staking a claim to his space. I leaned against the banister and crossed my arms.
He looked a little perplexed.
“If you’re not James Ponder, who are you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. His gaze jerked from side to side across the hallway, passed over me each time like a searchlight.
“I’ll call you Whiskers. Go ahead and call the cops, Whiskers. Or we could be civil to each other. Either way, I’ll wait here until I see that Michelle is okay.”
“Shit, I’ll throw you out myself, asshole.” He pushed off the wall and gathered his balance.
Maybe he was used to the Taliban beard and the wild eyes scaring people off.
“Don’t be stupid, Whiskers. The drugs you took make you aggressive. I don’t want to hurt you. I only want to make sure Michelle is okay.”
He doubled both fists and charged like a berserk bull.
I sidestepped and he slammed into the banister, smashing his groin. I’d seen people so high on drugs that their pain receptors shut off. His balls would be sore as a boil when he came down off his trip. As high as he was, if I had been at the top of the open stairwell when he charged, he would’ve tumbled down the stairs.
I set my business card on the stair rail. I wanted this idiot to remember who I was. I stepped a few feet away. “Where is Michelle?”
He rose to his hands and knees. He struggled to his feet, stepped toward me, and swung his right fist.
This time I caught the swing on my left forearm and hit him in the solar plexus with my right. I pulled the punch. I didn’t want to send him in the hospital; I just wanted to stop him.
He crumpled to the wooden floor and curled into a ball.
The door at the rear clicked opened. “James, what’s going on out there?” Michelle stepped into the hall. “Hello, Chuck. I saw your text earlier. I thought it might be you.”
Chapter 6
Michelle had changed since I had met her at Hank Hickham’s Super Bowl party. Her hair was a little longer, and she wore it in a single braid. She wore a peace symbol necklace identical to Ponder’s. Her green tee-shirt trumpeted, “Mother Earth does not belong to us; we belong to Mother Earth” in gold letters. Trained observer that I am, I noticed she was not wearing a bra. I was careful not to leer. Reading a tee-shirt is not leering. Her shorts were a fashionable white raw silk. Her gold-trimmed leather sandals revealed that her feet were clean, unlike her boyfriend’s.
“What’re you doing here, Chuck?”
“Your father asked me to find you and make sure you’re okay. He’s worried.”
“Tell Daddy I’m fine.” Her eyes were very bright, very wide.
Is she high too? I pointed at Whiskers. “I presume that Mr. Congeniality here is James Ponder?”
“Yes. Have you two met?” She glanced down at Ponder, who was having trouble getting to his knees.
“Briefly, when he attacked me.”
“You’ll have to forgive James. Sometimes I think he gets off more on adrenaline than he does from having sex with me.”
If Michelle was trying to shock me, it wasn’t working. “Are you okay?”
“Sure. How did you know his name?”
“I’m a private investigator, Michelle; I know lots of things. Your parents are worried about you. Would you please call your dad or your mom? Use my phone if you like.”
Ponder struggled to his feet and stepped between Michelle and me. I let him.
His eyes blazed. He stuck his arm out to block Michelle. “She’ll do no such thing, asshole. You can’t tell her what to do.”
“But you can? That’s not fair.”
“You can’t force Michelle to go with you, asshole,” Ponder said.
Michelle frowned and took a half step back toward the door. She looked ill at ease. She grasped her braid in her left hand and twirled it, let it go, twirled it again.
I sidestepped so I could see her without looking through Ponder. “Michelle, please call your parents.” I held the phone out again.
She crossed her arms, not looking at me. “Daddy’ll insist that I come home. He doesn’t understand me.” She struck a pose. “He doesn’t understand what motivates me now that I’m grown up and see beyond the mentality of the middle class.”
Ponder stepped between us again. “Michelle has a higher purpose than short-sighted, middle-class reactionaries like her parents could ever understand. She cares about the future of the entire planet.” He spoke like he was on a picket line at an oil refinery. “She’s a true friend of Mother Earth.”
I grabbed Ponder’s beard with my left hand and pulled his head down, making him bend over. “I’m talking to Michelle, not to you, Whiskers. If you step between us again, I will throw you to the other end of the hall. If you interfere after that, I will toss you down the stairs.” I jerked down on his beard and forced him to his knees. “Now sit down like a good little boy.”
I turned to Michelle. “Can we go downstairs and talk where we won’t be interrupted?” I glanced at her boyfriend.
She turned to him. “Go back inside, James. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
James glowered at me, hatred in his eyes. He began to struggle to his feet, collapsed onto his back, and groaned.
Michelle led the way downstairs into the parlor. She turned on the light and stood in the center of the room, hands on her hips. “Now what?”
After seeing the filthy, dilapidated furniture, I was glad she hadn’t invited me to sit down. “You said your father doesn’t understand what motivates you. What doesn’t he understand?”
She looked at the ceiling as if she could see Ponder sprawled on the floor upstairs. “What James said. I am motivated by caring for the future of the entire planet.” She said it like she was quoting scripture. “We—all of us—we’re tomorrow’s heroes. I see the bigger picture now. My parents are entrapped by the bourgeois worldview of the middle class.”
Cute; she talked like a robot. I let it pass. “You’re here of your own free will?”
She looked a little uncertain, but nodded. She twirled her braid again.
“Will you at least call your parents?” I tried to hand her my phone.
She crossed her arms again and looked away. “Daddy will lecture me with middle-class bullshit. He talks at me, not to me. I’m involved with an important project this week—important to the whole planet. Tell Mom and Dad I’ll be home by the weekend. They can lecture me then.”
“That’s five whole days, Michelle. You know they’ll worry.” I handed her my business card, one without the logo of a knight on a white horse. Maybe my card needed a logo of Don Quixote tilting at a windmill. I felt about as effective. “If you need someone to talk to… someone who
won’t lecture you…”
She accepted the card and stuck it in her pants pocket.
I turned toward the door. “I hope your boyfriend’s all right. I told him I was here to make sure you were okay, and he charged me like a bull—twice. I didn’t hit him hard.”
“Don’t worry about him. James has more balls than he has brains.”
“Call me if you need anything. Day or night, okay? I don’t do lectures.”
She put a hand on my arm. “I’m all right, Chuck. I really am. I know what I’m doing.”
Yeah, right.
Chapter 7
Ponder flinched when Michelle slammed the bedroom door behind her. “James, you idiot, were you born stupid or did someone drop you on your head?”
“What—what do you mean? That asshole attacked me. I had to defend myself.” He moaned as he rolled onto his side on the bed and clutched his stomach with both hands. He glanced up. Is she buying it? Nope.
Michelle scoffed. “Don’t make me laugh. Compared to you, Chuck McCrary’s a Boy Scout. He took it easy on you, or you’d be on your way to the hospital.” She took two steps toward Ponder and he recoiled on the bed. “Sometimes, you act like… like… ” She stomped a foot and clenched her fists. “I simply don’t understand you, James. When the adrenaline takes over, you’re a different man—one I don’t even know. McCrary was Special Forces. You know, Green Berets. He could kill you with his bare hands.” She turned away. “Forget it.”
She picked up her cell phone. “Katherine or Steven should have called by now. Do you think they’re okay?”
Ponder sat up on the bed. “They may be a little later than we’d planned. They have extra stuff to do before tonight.” He wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Extra stuff like what? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Ponder’s eyes narrowed and his lips pressed into a thin line. “They’ve planned a little extra surprise for the Earth killers.”
Michelle’s eyes widened. “Sounds like fun. What kind of extra surprise?”
“A big one. You’ll see.” He glanced at his phone. “Since we have time to kill… ” He slid his hand up the inside of her thigh. “You have another condom in your purse?”
Day of the Tiger (A Carlos McCrary Mystery Thriller Book 5) Page 31