In Stone Vol. 1-6: The First Six Travis Eldritch Problems (A Travis Eldritch Problem)

by Jennifer Vandenberg

  Once the calls were completed she worked for another fifteen minutes. I was itching to change back to myself so I could convince her to let me into Newman’s office, but luck was not with me. Mr. Newman returned and told Anda she could take her lunch. He went into his office and she grabbed her purse. Walking over to me, she took her coat of the rack, put it on over her dead ugly wrap dress, and started whispering.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me or not. Mr. Newman is going to be out of the office the next two days. I don’t start work until 10 a.m. There is a key under the flower pot in the hallway. I wish I could help you more, but that is my Problem. I can’t tell secrets. Good luck.”

  Without another word she was out the door and I was left standing in an empty office. My mind was filled with Anda and her information. Something wasn’t right and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Just as I was realizing that statues could get hungry, and boy, I wished I were having lunch with Anda, I slumped to the ground. It always happens when I turn from statue to human; I’m barely more useful than a bag of ground meat. I hoped I hadn’t made any noise that would alert Mr. Newman. I lay as still as I could while my muscles became something more useful than potato sticks (I really needed some lunch), and then slowly stood up. It was time to go.

  I had just reached the door when it opened. There was no way I could hide so I went with confidence—if people think you belong they don’t question you. A tall well-dressed man came in and gave me a startled look. I wondered what he was hiding. With a nod I went through the door and then ducked into the stairwell in case he decided to get a second look at me. Instead of heading through the lobby to the street in front of Newman’s office, I took the service door out to the side alley and caught the bus heading downtown.

  ●●●

  Jet was waiting for me at the office. I told him what I learned and congratulated him on his brilliant planning. Being Jet, he claimed it was more good luck than good planning, but I knew better.

  “So I guess we have our plan for tomorrow,” I said, putting my feet up on my battered old desk. Jet turned in his chair and shook his head.

  “We are not done today. We need to tail Anda.”

  I frowned. “Why? She told us everything we need to know to get into the office. Surely if she knew more she would have told me.”

  “She said she could not tell you any secrets because that is her Problem.”

  I nodded. “I figured it was why she made a good secretary for a crooked accountant.”

  “Then how was she able to tell you about the hidden key?” Jet asked. “Would not that be a secret also?”

  I thought about everything she told me. I already knew Newman was going to be gone. Her start time at the office was probably common knowledge to clients and other people in the building. But the location of the key would be a secret. So how had she told me? Jet was right. We needed to talk to Anda again. If she could tell us one secret than perhaps she could tell us more.

  Tailing Anda was not that easy. First, she left much later than we expected. Second, we almost didn’t recognize her since her hair and face were hidden by an oversized floppy hat. If Jet hadn’t noticed her pale blond curls escaping her low bun she might have given us the slip.

  But this wasn’t our first tail and we kept her in sight without her noticing. I was grateful when she walked into Nell’s deli. Nell’s sat between downtown and midtown and I had personal knowledge that their Arnold was worth dying for. And I had missed lunch.

  We waited for her to get her order and take a table before entering Nell’s ourselves. Jet went up to order our usual and I sat down across from Anda. She had ordered the Rich Man and I decided that a good sandwich improves the look of everything.

  “Good evening, Travis. I guess you do warm up over time.” She put down her sandwich when I sat down and she didn’t seem nervous at seeing me. All good signs that she wasn’t working for the Battleboys.

  “Do you eat here often?” I asked as Jet set a plate down in front of me. He sat next to me and I decided to distract myself with my sandwich instead of noticing that Anda didn’t answer. Surely, where she had dinner wasn’t a secret.

  “These are very good sandwiches,” Jet said after taking his first bite.

  “That is an understatement. These are the best sandwiches in the city,” Anda said, wiping her mouth with her napkin.

  “Yes, Travis thinks of this place as his second home.”

  I quickly swallowed. “As does Jet.”

  Anda laughed. “I have to be frugal with my money, but I would live here if I could. Instead I eat here one day a week as a splurge.”

  “I guess that is not a secret.”

  Anda stared at her sandwich. “No, my eating habits are not a secret.”

  “And neither is the location of Newman’s extra key,” I mused before taking another bite. Superb.

  “How odd. You’re right; the location of the key is very secret. Why would I tell you?”

  “More importantly, what else can you tell us?” Jet asked.

  Anda ate and said nothing. I looked at Jet. Something was bugging me but I was distracted by food. I decided the only thing to do was remove the distraction. We all ate and in too few minutes we had empty plates and fond sandwich memories.

  “So, you do not mind us searching Newman’s office?” Jet asked. Anda said nothing, just twisted her napkin into a rope. He looked at me. “Surely it is not a secret if you already told us.”

  And my therapy training kicked in. “What is your name?”

  Anda said nothing, just stared at me. Jet’s smiled dimmed a bit. I tried again. “Tell me your name.”

  “Travis, you know my name. It’s Anda.”

  “Yes, and I know your Problem. You have no problem with secrets. You have a problem with questions.”

  “What do you mean?” Anda asked, leaning forward.

  “If someone asks you a question you can’t answer it. But you can tell anything you want if you aren’t asked.”

  Jet’s grin returned. “That is a great Problem.” I had to agree. It was way better than Statuism.

  ●●●

  Is it actually breaking and entering when you have the key to the door? I didn’t consider that question too long as we entered the front office of Hunter Newman, CPA early the next morning. Instead I was glad my luck was working as the key not only opened the front door, but the door to Newman’s private office as well. Looking around at the expensive furniture (nice desk) and wall of file cabinets I wondered what we were looking for and how we would know when we found it. What does laundered money look like? I hoped we’d find out and quickly.

  “Look at that.”

  I turned to see what Jet was interested in. At first all I saw was midtown and then I realized that the reason I could see all of midtown was because the entire wall was made up of floor to ceiling windows. You could hardly see the seams between them.

  “That is a little creepy,” I said.

  “Yes,” Jet agreed, but he walked closer to the windows. “It would be like working in a scaleswimmer bowl.” He turned away from the window and nodded to the other wall. “What is the plan?”

  “You start at one end and I’ll start at the other.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “A file that says ‘laundered money.’”

  “Of course.” He grinned and opened a drawer. The smile dimmed and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. There were a lot of files. It was like looking for a thread puller in a pile of milkmaker-feed when you didn’t know what a thread puller looked like.

  “Just skim the labels to start with. Maybe we’ll see one that doesn’t match.”

  Jet nodded and stood on his toes to get a better look. I sighed. Sometimes he was more helpful than smart.

  “Jet, why don’t you look though the bottom rows and I’ll take the top ones?”

  With his smile back he closed the drawer and opened the bottom one.

  Twenty minutes later,
I glanced at my watch. 8:30. We still had time but I was beginning to wonder if we would find anything. Jet was done with his drawers, but I still had two to go through so I told him to search the desk. I was having a hard time concentrating since every file looked the same with the same white label and hand written title on it. I figured Anda hadn’t made these files, as a lot of them seem ratty like they were created a long time ago and then neglected.

  I was just about done with the last drawer when I found my oddity. Two of the files had the same name. I pulled them out and started to open them when I heard Jet cough. Turning toward him, I asked if he found anything. Shaking his head he pointed at the door. The knob was turning. I quickly stuffed the two files into my inside jacket pocket and closed the drawer. Jet was standing to the side of the desk and I decided to play nonchalant and sat in the plush office chair.

  Newman knew a good chair. This one was covered in black milkmaker-hide with a high back and six wheels. It also spun around as I found out when I swiveled to see who was coming in the door. I had hoped it was Anda. Instead it was the Battleboys.

  Well, it was two Battleboys. Two didn’t worry me, Jet and I had taken on a lot more than that. I have found that the thugs who join the Battleboys were heavy on muscle and light on brain. I liked our odds.

  “Morning, boys. Looking to have your taxes done?”

  They looked at each other and I spun in my chair. Inability to understand basic humor. Sad.

  “Brian said not to talk to you,” the one on the left said. I stopped spinning.

  “Brian Handle sent you. Does he have his taxes done here?”

  More silence. No hope for these two. “Well, you can go back to the Handler and tell him you didn’t talk to us. We don’t have anything he wants.”

  “He said he wanted you,” the right one said.

  “And he sent you two to fetch us. Why didn’t he just send an engraved invitation?”

  “He said to use these if you didn’t cooperate.” The left thug, I decided to call him Blondie just for fun, pulled a long handled rod out of the bag at his side. A mesh circle was attached to one end. I didn’t recognize it but assumed it was a weapon. I stopped swiveling and sat up. Jet grunted and I looked at him. For once he wasn’t smiling and I started getting nervous.

  “What have you got there?”

  The Battleboy shrugged. “A nervator,” Jet said quietly.

  Dumb name. “And what does it do?”

  Another shrug. Jet answered again. “It stops your nerves from working so your body does not listen to your brain.”

  “Sounds awkward. How come I’ve never seen one?”

  “They are common on Gregos.”

  That surprised me. Jet was from Gregos and he always made it sound like a peaceful moon. It never occurred to me that they had weapons and war there, too. I mean, he thinks the Problems that They bestow upon us are Gifts. I figured Gregos was all sunshine and happiness.

  “So what are the chances these two morons know how to use it?”

  Blondie smiled. “Why don’t we find out?”

  I put my hand up. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to my weapons expert.”

  “Enough talk. Come with us.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or we’ll see what these do.” The other Battleboy took a nervator out of his bag and they started toward us. I didn’t see how we were going to get around them without getting zapped but I was willing to try. Jet apparently had other ideas.

  Before I had a chance to get out of the chair Jet pushed a button on the desk and pushed my chair toward the windows. I sailed out the now open window and separated from the office chair on the way down. I try not to fall out of second story offices and now I knew why. I prepared for a hard landing and instead got a soft one. Had this been downtown I would have hit pavement. Since this was midtown and people cared more about appearances, I hit a bed of yellow dancing ladies. The chair was not so lucky. It was now a mangled mess on the sidewalk. That was too bad. I really liked that chair.

  I looked up and saw a Battleboy looking down at me with the nervator still in his hands. He fired as I rolled away and avoided becoming a mind-numbed hostage. I ran around the corner of the building and waited to see if they would come down and follow me. A few minutes later I saw Blondie and the other Battleboy (I’m calling him Brownie) come out of the building and head for a black van. They had Jet between them and he had a blank look on his face. He walked like he was asleep and I assumed he had been hit with the nervator. It was nice of him to get me out of the line of fire but he had to know it was temporary, as I wasn’t going to leave him in Brian’s hands.

  After waiting what seemed like an eternity I finally decided that no one was going to come looking for me. They probably knew I would go looking for them. The only problem was I didn’t know where they had gone. The only place I could think to look for the answer was in Newman’s office.

  I walked by the ruined chair and looked up. No one had closed the window and I wondered how Jet knew it opened. I went around to the front door and headed up the stairs. I still had the key in my pocket, but I didn’t need it. All the doors were open. Battleboys must be born in a milkmaker-house.

  I walked over to the open window and looked down. I was glad I hadn’t seen that view before. I often wish I had more brains than luck, but not now. Leaving the window I walked over to the desk. The button Jet had pushed sat among a row of buttons. I pushed it and the window closed. I pushed a different one and the window to the right opened. I pushed the first button and the first window opened. There were five buttons and five windows. I didn’t push them all because I didn’t care to see the wall disappear. Who needed their windows to do that? I started to sit down and remembered the chair was gone. That gave me another pause. He had a wall of windows that could completely retract and his chair had wheels. Did Newman have a death wish? Maybe it was related to his Problem. Boy, would my therapist relatives have fun with him.

  “Oh, you’re still here.”

  I turned from the window and saw Anda standing in the doorway. She was dressed in a tweed wrap-around dress that fit her like a burlap sack.

  “We had a little problem.”

  “You would have a little problem if Mr. Newman saw you playing with his windows. They are his favorite things. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Maybe. In the process Jet was taken hostage by two Battleboys.”

  “That’s awful. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find him and get him back, but I don’t know where to start.”

  “Do you know why he was taken?”

  “I think they wanted both of us but Jet pushed me out the window.”

  “And you’re not dead.”

  “The chair died. I just killed some dancing ladies.”

  She walked to the window and looked down. “Mr. Newman is going to be very upset. He loved that chair as much as his windows.”

  “Anda, Mr. Newman is in deep with the Battleboys and more specifically Brian the Handler. His days may be as numbered as Jet’s.”

  “I would like to help you, but I don’t know anything. Maybe they want what you found. Maybe you can trade Jet for it.”

  Remembering the files in my jacket pocket, I removed them and smoothed them out.

  “I looked through all the files and these were the only duplicates I found. Why would there be two?”

  Anda just looked at me and I swore. Rethinking the question I said, “There are two files and I don’t know why.”

  Anda took the files from me and opened them. “They are for a construction site. This one is the one I have seen. It shows the log of who I have called and how much time has been spent on the project.” She opened the other. “No, I’ve never seen this one before. It appears to be a spreadsheet of money going in and out of the project.

  I didn’t bother to look at the spreadsheet. I was no good at numbers and just assumed they were as crooked as our accountant. “Is
there an address for this construction site? I mean, I need the address for the construction site.”

  Anda handed me a piece of paper. It was an invoice with a letterhead at the top. Below the company name was an address. I didn’t know if I’d find anything there but it was the only clue I had.

  “I’m going to go check this out. It may give me more clues.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  I knew she was going to say that. Why did women always want to come along?

  “No?”

  Anda opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She tried again and then hit me with the file. I admit it, I was enjoying myself. How often do I win an argument with anyone?

  “That was just mean.”

  “But fun. Why do you think I want you anywhere near that place?”

  She didn’t say anything and I shook my head. “That one wasn’t on purpose. Talking to you makes my head hurt.”

  “I could be useful.”

  I looked her up and down. She had an okay face, it couldn’t be denied. But the rest of her was really plain, and not in a good way.

  I started to speak and then took a moment to rearrange my thoughts, not easy, I’ll tell you. “It does not appear you have any other Problems.” Whew.

  “Not Problems, no. But I do have assets.”

  “Not that I can see. No offense. I don’t want you going with me. It will be dangerous.”

  “I know where you are going.” She held up the file. “I’ll just go on my own, so you might as well let me go with you.”

  “You have no reason to go. You barely know Jet.”

  “You need back-up. What if you turn into a statue?”

  She had a point. I did prefer having friends around when I did dangerous things. I hated turning into a statue and being at the mercy of the Battleboys.