The line went dead.
Chapter Twenty - Monday
I AWOKE TO THE SOUND of someone banging around in the service bay downstairs. Even when you’re expecting it, Monday morning comes too early. Unless, of course, you’re an annoying early-bird like my cousin Earl.
I got up and fumbled around aimlessly for a minute, trying to decide whether or not to tell someone about my weird phone call last night. Lord knows I couldn’t tell Earl. He’d have a field day with it. I couldn’t tell Paulson, either. He was already on the verge of having me psychoanalyzed. And if I got labeled as crazy ... well, there’d go my P.I. gig.
I padded to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. It was still perking when a knock sounded at the door.
I figured Earl must’ve already gone through the coffee thermos he brought with him every day. I shuffled to the door in my dad’s T-shirt and sweatpants. Not ready for a dose of Earl-style humiliation, I slapped on my Woody Woodpecker wig before I cracked open the door.
“What do you want, Earl?” I hissed.
It wasn’t Earl.
“Uh ... just hoping to get a cup of that coffee I smell?” Grayson averted his eyes, but only after he’d gotten a good look at me in all my morning glory.
Great.
“Gimme a minute, for cripe’s sake.” I slammed the door and groaned at my reflection in the hallway mirror. I readjusted my wig and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I stared at my saggy sweatpants and gave up hope. I opened the door. “Sorry. You kind of caught me off guard.”
“Not a morning person, are we?”
“You want some coffee or not?”
“Yes. Please. Might I add, you look dapper this morning.”
“Dapper is a masculine descriptive.”
“Well, those are men’s clothes, aren’t they? I swear, do you own anything actually manufactured for the female anatomy?”
I slammed the coffee cup on the table. “Jeans. You saw ’em last night. What are you doing up so early?”
“Call me The Princess and the Pea, but it’s hard to sleep through the whine of a pneumatic drill.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. But the good news is, that means Earl’s busy fixing your RV.”
“Good! So what’s on the agenda for today?”
Grayson stood there smiling, tapping his index finger annoyingly on his coffee mug.
My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Well, seeing as I’m kind of stuck here, I thought I’d explore the local entertainment options.”
“You saw them all already. There’s nothing to do here.”
Grayson scratched his head. “Remind me again why you live here?”
I blew out a sigh that could’ve extinguished the candles on a centenarian’s birthday cake. “I told you. I’m working on my escape with the P.I. gig. Which reminds me, I’ve got to give Paulson a report on Vanderhoff today.”
“Vanderhoff?”
“The old lady who keeps getting the weird phone calls. Hey. You didn’t call the shop last night, did you?”
“No. But I heard the phone ring a few times.”
“My parent’s old landline. I finally answered it. It was nothing but beeps and static. Then a mechanical voice said, ‘We’re watching you.’”
Grayson’s back straightened. “Interesting.”
“Nuts is more like it. Should I tell Paulson? He already thinks I’m crazy for seeing imaginary dead guys.”
“I tell you what. You help me, I’ll help you. Let me borrow your car, and I’ll teach you how to bug a phone. Deal?”
I sneered. “Whose phone? Earl’s? I already hear way more out of his stupid mouth than I want to.”
“No. Vanderhoff’s. We can put a listening device in her phone, and then you’ll know whether she’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs or telling the truth.”
“In my book, that’s called invasion of privacy.”
Grayson shrugged, then locked eyes with me. “In mine it’s called on-the-job training. For a future P.I.”
I SLIPPED INTO A PAIR of jeans and my best threadbare button-down shirt. With the woodpecker wig centered on my skull and the last dregs of Mom’s dried-up eyeliner applied, I almost looked feminine. I hobbled down the stairs in a pair of Mom’s inch-high pumps to check on Earl in the service bay.
“Well, look at you,” Earl teased. “I ain’t seen you out of coveralls in a year. I thought you’d done sewed yourself into ’em.”
“Yeah. Ha ha and all that. Look, you got everything you need to keep going with repairs to Grayson’s vehicle?”
“Who’s Grayson?”
Oh, crap. I don’t want to get into this with Earl. Not right now.
“Knickerbocker. It’s his first name.”
Earl eyed me mischievously. “You two on a first-name basis now?”
“He’s a private investigator, Earl. He’s going to help me on the Vanderhoff case.”
“The Vanderhoff case? What. You a detective now, too?”
Aww crap!
“I’m working on something for Paulson, okay? Grayson’s helping me out.”
Earl grinned. “I bet he is.”
“Listen, Earl. He’s a customer. Nothing more. He’s paid six days rent in advance, and shelled out the entire tab for the parts. He even gave me five-hundred down toward your labor costs. That’s nearly thirty-five hundred bucks. Don’t blow it, okay? We need the money.”
“I dunno, Bobbie. Something smells fishy to me.”
“Who cares? His money’s good. And we sure could use it.”
Earl put on his pondering face for a moment. “You’re right, boss man.” He sniggered and punched me in the arm. “If you ask me, sounds like a case of ‘Don’t ask, don’t smell.’”
As my eyes returned from their orbit around the top of my skull, I spied Grayson coming down the stairs dressed in black jeans, a black shirt, and that vintage black fedora. His polished shoes were the only things gleaming in the entire garage.
“Good morning, Earl,” he said. “How’re the repairs going?”
“Don’t ask, don’t sm–”
I punched Earl hard on the arm.
He drew it back and sulked. “Ouch! That hurt.”
“You ready to go, Drex?” Grayson asked.
“Never been more ready.” I glared at Earl and turned to Grayson. “Come on, then. Let’s roll.”
Chapter Twenty-One
AS I STEERED THE MUSTANG out of the crumbling parking lot of the mechanic shop, Grayson fiddled with an old-fashioned looking cellphone he’d retrieved from inside his RV. Maybe he didn’t embrace technology either.
“How did you become a private investigator?” I asked.
“I read a book when I was a kid called, So You Want to be a Detective.”
I shook my head and smirked. “It’s never a straight answer with you, is it?”
“Playing it straight all the time is no fun. Sometimes, a sense of humor is the only thing that can get you through.”
“Yeah. Life can be a real riot, all right.”
“Come on, Drex. Of all the career choices in the world, what made you go for private investigator?”
I steered the Mustang onto Obsidian Road. “I took one of those aptitude tests on Facebook.”
“You mean the kind that tells you what kind of pizza you’d be?”
“Exactly. It said I should be a shoe store manager.”
“Ouch.”
“Freaking Facebook.”
Grayson laughed and fiddled with the door lock. “I don’t follow. How did that lead you to getting your intern license?”
“Oh. I was so pissed off after that Facebook test that I drank half a bottle of vodka. I woke up at three in the morning, still snockered. As fate would have it, the TV was blaring this late-night infomercial on how to ‘Train at home in your spare time to become a private investigator.’”
“I see.” Grayson pursed his lips and tapped his fingers on the door handle.
I smirked. “I know it so
unds totally lame, but I was only pulling in ten bucks an hour on my job as a mall cop. Barely enough to cover the gas to Gainesville and back.”
“Wait a minute. You were a mall cop? Really?”
I pressed my molars together to keep from cursing myself for letting that slip. Grayson laughed out loud, stifled himself, then laughed some more.
“Did you have a Segway?” he managed before bursting out laughing again.
“Smartass.”
“Sorry,” he said, finally composing himself. “It’s just that ... well, most people who go into this line of work have a background in the military or law enforcement. Though I suppose mall cop could count as some branch of non-government counter-intelligence.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.”
Grayson pursed his lips and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m done. Tell me, from which prestigious school did you earn your intern certificate, Detective Drex?”
I shot him some side-eye. “The Forensic Academy. It was just one of those wild-hair things. Like I said, I’d been half-lit when I called up. I put the tuition on a credit card. It was non-refundable. When I sobered up in the morning, I figured, the money’s gone, so what the hell.”
“Your insatiable passion for the profession is inspiring.”
I grinned despite myself. “Thanks.”
“Where did you plan on getting the two years of training you need?”
“I didn’t. I’d been under the impression that once I passed the test for the Class CC intern license, I was good to go.”
“I guess you should’ve done a better job investigating it before you shelled out the money.”
I blew out a breath and rolled my eyes. “I guess. But half a pint of Stolli has a way of making me lose my train of thought.”
“So does tequila.”
I pulled into Cherry Manor. “We’re here.”
Grayson opened the side door. “Well, Ms. Graduate of the Forensic Academy. Time to show me what you’ve got.”
VANDERHOFF TOOK A FINAL drag off a Marlboro and stamped out the stub in the overflowing ashtray on her coffee table. She sat back in the wingback chair. Above her, on the back of the chair, the doll in tattered lace watched over our conversation like a graveyard demon.
Vanderhoff was recalling the events of the day for Grayson.
“Beth-Ann put me under the dryer and went out for a smoke,” the old woman said. “I was all by myself in her garage. I mean, you know, beauty parlor. Well, some guy all dressed up in a hat and an old-fashioned, double-breasted suit came in and asked me my name. I told him. Then he asked for the time. I told him that, too. But then he said something weird.”
“What?” I asked.
“He said, ‘Excuse me, but I meant to inquire after the year.’ Just like that. Well, when I told him, he looked kind of surprised. He thanked me and left. Then I get home and my phone’s ringing. It’s those damned beeping robots.”
“You didn’t mention the guy before,” I said.
“Eh. I didn’t think it was important. Well, truth is, I forgot. My memory ain’t what it used to be.”
“So have you gotten any more calls?” Grayson asked.
“Yeah. Last night, as a matter of fact. That robot man again. Now he wants me to meet him at the Stop & Shoppe tonight at nine-thirty. Well, I can’t go.”
“Why not?” Grayson asked.
“That’s when Matlock is on!”
“Was it the same voice that told you to go to A&P and steal the bananas?” I asked.
“I guess.” She looked at Grayson and shook her head as if I were some kind of nincompoop. “I mean, how many robots would get the idea to call me up? Right, detective?”
“Good point,” Grayson said. “Pardon me, but could I trouble you for a glass of water, Mrs. Vanderhoff?”
The old lady batted her gray eyelashes at him. “No trouble at all.”
Vanderhoff hobbled into the kitchen. I followed her and stood in the kitchen door to serve as a lookout.
As she got a glass from the cabinet, I snuck a peek back into the living room. Grayson was fiddling with the phone jack on the wall. I’d expected him to stick something in the receiver of the old rotary dial phone, like they do in the black-and-white movies. I scowled and turned around. Vanderhoff had the glass in the sink, filling it from the tap. She turned around and took a step toward the living room.
“Uh ... wow. That’s a lot of magnets,” I said, pointing to her refrigerator.
“Yeah. But I won’t be getting no more. Mandy used to send ’em to me from all over the place.”
“Oh.” My eyes scanned the dozens of magnets littering the freezer door. I spotted my business card. It was half-covered with a brown magnet that looked like a mound of dog poop.
Nice.
I needed to buy Grayson some more time. “I see you’ve stuck my card on the fridge here with a magnet from ... where is that?”
Vanderhoff hobbled over to the refrigerator. While she squinted at the magnet, I shot a glance into the living room. Grayson was sticking the old-fashioned cell phone thingy under the sofa cushion.
“Grave Creek Mound,” Vanderhoff said. She straightened up and sniffed. “That was the last one she sent, if I recall correctly.”
I nodded solemnly. Vanderhoff took another step toward the living room. I jumped ahead of her in an effort to warn Grayson she was coming. My gut flopped when I saw him fluffing the pillows on the sofa.
He winked at me and said, “And that, my little grasshopper, is how it’s done.”
“How what’s done?” Vanderhoff asked from behind me.
I cringed. Grayson didn’t even blink.
“Conducting an interview, ma’am,” he said. “As you know, I’m helping train our Bobbie here to become a bona fide private investigator. Don’t you think she did a fine job?”
Vanderhoff shrugged noncommittally. “I guess.” She handed Grayson the glass of water. He drank it down in one, long gulp.
“We should be going,” I said as he handed her back the empty glass.
“Thank you for your time. It’s been lovely.” Grayson kissed Mrs. Vanderhoff’s hand. She beamed at him like a smitten, geriatric schoolgirl.
“Come back anytime, Mr. Grayson,” she said as we stepped onto the front porch. Vanderhoff stood in the doorway, grinning and waving as we climbed into the Mustang.
“You seem to have a way with women,” I said, and waved back at Vanderhoff. Her grin faded, and she closed the door.
“She seemed nice enough,” Grayson said.
“Sure. For a woman whose been known to spot the Virgin Mary in her French toast.”
Grayson laughed. “It always pays to be polite—until it doesn’t. They should make that rule number one in the P.I. handbook.”
I grimaced. “What does that even mean?”
“Hey! Let’s get a picture of you standing in front of her place.”
“For what?”
Grayson pulled his cellphone from his pocket. “For your scrapbook. Detective’s First Year.” He snapped off a couple of shots of me with my mouth hanging open.
“I wasn’t ready,” I said sullenly.
“She’s ready?” a woman asked excitedly. She’d been walking by on the sidewalk, towing a little white poodle on a leash by her side.
“What?” I asked. The woman was Nancy Parker. I’d seen her at the beauty parlor a couple of times. Bad tipper, according to Beth-Ann.
“Vanderhoff,” Parker said breathlessly. “Is she finally getting ready to sell her place?”
“No. Why would you think that?”
Parker’s face collapsed with disappointment. “You’re the second ones to stop and take a picture of her place today.”
“Really? Who were the others?”
“I dunno. Just a guy I’d never seen before. I figured he was a realtor from Waldo or something.” She glanced over at Vanderhoff’s house and let out a big sigh. “Well, Doodles, we should get going.” The little dog yipped. “Y’all have a nice day, now.�
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“You too,” Grayson said.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.
Grayson sighed wistfully. “Darn it. I guess I’m going to be missing Matlock tonight.”
I fought back a grin, turned the key in the ignition, and fired up the Mustang.
“Let’s do a test call,” Grayson said as we cruised out of Cherry Manor and past the Stop & Shoppe. “See if mister tele-buggy’s working. Give Vanderhoff a ring.”
“Who? Me? What should I say?”
“Ask her if her refrigerator’s running. Or if she’s got Prince Albert in a can.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you ever take anything seriously?”
“A few things. Sure. But this doesn’t make the short list.”
I pulled over and dialed Vanderhoff. The phone rang ten times before she answered it.
Grayson kept an eye on his own cell phone. When Vanderhoff finally picked up, a text message came up on his phone display. He tapped a button and stuck a pair of earbuds in his ears while I spoke with Vanderhoff.
“Mrs. Vanderhoff?” I asked.
“Oh. It’s you, Bobbie. I wasn’t gonna answer. I thought it might be that robot man again.”
“No. Just me. I wanted to say thank you for the hospitality.”
“Oh. You’re welcome, honey.”
“Have a good day, now, and let me know if you get any more weird calls.”
“I will. Tell Mr. Grayson it was a pleasure to meet him. He can come by any—”
“I will. Bye.” I hung up and sneered at Grayson. “You made quite the impression, lady-killer.”
He grinned and pulled out the earbuds. “I know. I heard every word.”
“So it’s working?”
“Like a charm.”
“Good. Speaking of charm, I need to call Paulson.”
Grayson’s eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead. “I fail to see the connection.”
I smirked. “I need to give him an update on the case. But I don’t know exactly what to say.”
“Tell him the Mothman’s in town and is performing a one-night-only gig at the Stop & Shoppe tonight at nine-thirty.”
I shot him a look. “You know, you’re almost as bad as Earl.”
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