The Holler Thief: A Private Eye Mystery

by Jim Heskett

  The walls were adorned with flowery wallpaper. The living room contained a giant glass-and-oak display case with dozens of tiny figurines inside. Cherubs, Norman Rockwell scenes, little dogs and cats. These weren’t like the wizard and dragon collectibles Harry amassed for his role-playing games. These were like blasts of pure Americana, shot from a cannon onto every surface of the house.

  The furniture looked mostly antique, and the glass surfaces were covered in crocheted doilies. Another cabinet showed a collection of commemorative WWII plates. Nothing on this ground floor felt like a Harry Boukadakis contribution.

  “This is… different,” she said.

  Harry paused in the living room as he nodded all around him, hands on his hips, looking out of breath from the short jog up the stairs. A slight flush colored his cheeks. “Yeah. I haven’t had time to… you know.”

  Serena nodded. She did know. Harry had moved to Eureka Springs a couple of years ago to care for his ailing mother, and with her passing a few months before, now he owned this house and everything in it. And with his son off to college out of state and his wife living halfway across the world for work, Harry was all alone in this foreign house.

  “Before,” he said, “I was commuting to Fayetteville every day, but that’s not an issue. Mom’s gone, so now, I guess I don’t have much excuse. I need to hire someone to rip out all the electrical, plumbing. The whole house needs an overhaul. Oh wait… I do have an excuse: I can’t afford it.”

  He chuckled, but his eyes fell to an old purse sitting on the floor, near a corner in the connected dining room. Harry’s wife had taken an irresistible job in Hong Kong last year. But there were bits and pieces of her personality here, too, like the abstract art print on one wall that definitely did not look like something an octogenarian would purchase. Serena hadn’t brought up his wife at all. She’d done the long-distance relationship thing before and knew how disappointing and unfulfilling it could be. With a marriage as lengthy as Harry’s, though, she hoped they would survive it.

  “I just need to grab a few things from the basement,” he said, and waddled over toward a door near the kitchen. He opened it and said, “Computer: basement on.” Lights flicked on across the subterranean level as Harry descended the stairs.

  When Serena followed, she entered a room that looked more like the man cave she’d expected to see. One section of the room had been reserved for the home entertainment area, with a couch and tv and speakers anchored to the walls. Another section contained a glass desk with six widescreen computer monitors stacked in two rows of three to form a curving mega-monitor. A computer tower with glowing neon lights hummed beside the desk.

  “Feels a little more Harry down here, doesn’t it?” he said as he took a briefcase from the desk and opened it. He rifled through drawers for papers and stacked them in the briefcase. He drew a hunting knife in a sheath, looked at it for a moment, and then put it in the briefcase.

  “Are you planning to work out of here, or the office?”

  “Both, I guess. Either. I don’t want to lug all this computer equipment from one place to the other. My LAN party days are far behind me now. But renting the office space feels more professional.”

  “Plus, you’d have to explain the flowery wallpaper and the doilies to your clients.”

  He smirked. “Yeah, there’s that, too. So I’ll be mobile, meeting clients there, but keeping my research here. Maybe. I’m still trying to sort out how that will work.”

  “Did you get a gun yet?”

  He shook his head and then held up his hands as if to ward off an incoming attack. “I know, I know. I just don’t… like them.”

  She said nothing, because she didn’t enjoy repeating herself. To Serena, operating a private eye business out of a strip mall with no gun—even if only for baseline protection—seemed crazy, despite living in a small town.

  But as a grown man, he could make his own decisions, as wrong as those were.

  And, she supposed, that’s why Harry kept her on retainer. She was supposed to be his gun. Thinking that made her feel guilty, since she’d seemed off her game lately.

  Serena watched him close the briefcase and then stare at it for a few moments. He breathed, lost in thought, nose whistling. Harry and Serena used to work together every day, with Serena in the field and Harry in an office or bunker somewhere, hands on the keyboard, communicating over secured channels. Back then, as she and Harry grew older and changed, the differences weren’t as obvious. But now, when she only saw Harry for a few days each month, the differences were much more stark. Over the last year or two, he seemed to have grown shorter. More hunched. He didn’t smile as much as he used to, and he always seemed tired. His allergies had gotten worse. He ate with no regard for nutrition and he cleared his throat constantly. He was still just as quick with a snarky or self-deprecating comment, but it didn’t communicate the same joy as it had when they were both younger.

  Or maybe that was all in her head.

  “You okay?”

  He looked at her, seemingly baffled by this question. “Fine, why?”

  “Doesn’t matter. So you’ve taken the barber’s case.”

  “Kemba Wood.”

  “So you’ve taken Mr. Wood’s case. What’s your first move?”

  He waved toward a blank cork board, attached to the wall above the desk. An unopened box of thumbtacks and a few feet of yarn sat next to it. “I’m not really sure. A thief stole his cigars, so they’re out there, somewhere. Someone had the motive and opportunity. There have to be whispers out there, people talking.”

  “How do you shake the trees in Eureka Springs?”

  He chewed on this for a few seconds, hands on his hips. “Stuff goes missing all the time, but this is a bigger deal, with all the windows getting busted out. Something like this will definitely make it into the local news, and people will talk about it. I just have to be where they are, so I can be in on it, too.”

  “Okay, so how do you do that?”

  “Hang out at Maria’s, or around The Roasted Pig coffeeshop? Most of the town stops by at least one of those every day.”

  “So you can just sit at the coffee shop for an hour or two and glean useful intel?”

  He nodded. “You’d be surprised. It’s a small town, and people can’t help themselves. Everybody knows everybody’s business here.”

  The lack of decisiveness on his face concerned her. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” As soon as she’d said it, she realized how condescending the words had sounded. “Wait. I didn’t--“

  He held up a hand. “No, it’s okay. It’s a valid question. I did my two supervised years. I passed the board test and I have a piece of paper to prove it. Plus, I’ve worked cases for the hotel by myself before.”

  She wanted to argue that finding hotel guests’ missing slippers wasn’t quite the same thing, but she held her tongue. Harry required support at the moment, not a pointed needling of his confidence.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s get to work.”

  5

  Bright and early, Harry strode into The Roasted Pig coffee shop on Spring Street. Local event flyers decorated the walls, countless art crawls and rap battles and candlelight meditation classes. The walls were pockmarked with years of thumbtacks and staples, giving the place a lived-in feel, probably by design.

  Harry (secretly) preferred the coffee from the new chain place, but he would never admit that out loud. The Roasted Pig was probably the best source of concentrated foot traffic in town. He also worried that if Maria from Maria’s Burritos discovered he wasn’t supporting the locally owned coffee shop, she might stop giving him extra meat for free. Now that Harry had grown accustomed to double meat burritos, going back to a regular serving size felt like a step in the wrong direction.

  He ordered a coffee from a blasé teenager, and when she asked him if he wanted room for cream, Harry confronted that existential crisis with a simple, “No.” He felt quite proud of himself. Then when she wrot
e Harvey on the side of his cup, the elation fizzled like a doused firecracker.

  Not-Harvey Boukadakis took his coffee to a table in the corner and sat. He lifted the lid of his laptop to give him cover, but he was actually here to sit and see who walked through the front door over the next hour or two.

  At first, he sat and watched, and with each passing minute he grew less and less sure he was making good use of his time. But, with nothing else to go on, he stayed firmly in place.

  For thirty minutes, Harry sipped his increasingly stale coffee and waited. Every time his laptop screen darkened, he tapped the trackpad to keep the machine awake. A parade of town regulars filtered in to buy coffee and bagels. Harry recognized some, and a few waved or stopped by to chat. Harry politely nodded and smiled, although he tried to hurry the friendlies along so he wouldn’t attract too much attention to himself. He wasn’t famous or well-known around town or anything like that, but he knew enough locals—mostly via visits to his mother over the years—to make staying incognito a challenge.

  Some of the older residents referred to him as “Jeanie’s kid,” even though Harry was in his forties and hadn’t grown up here. But they’d known his mother as a staple of Eureka Springs life for decades, applying a brand to Harry not so easy to remove. A couple of his table visitors offered their condolences for his mother’s passing, even though it had been months and most of them had offered theirs once or twice before. Harry was practiced at offering a flat smile, nod, and a simple “thank you” as a response.

  After another thirty minutes, his tailbone hurt from sitting so long in the awkward chair, and he considered leaving. But the next person through the door caught Harry’s attention. A tall, white man, about twenty-two years old. He had spindly dreadlocks sprouting from his head like hookah tendrils. He was wearing heavy-duty brown work overalls and didn’t look up from his phone while waiting for his drink.

  When he picked up his coffee, the man turned toward Harry for a moment. Harry raised his coffee in a salute, which made the young man cock his head in confusion.

  As Harry had hoped, the young man drifted over to his table. Even so, Harry’s heart thumped in his chest. Here was his chance. The thing he’d spent an hour waiting for: someone connected to the Eureka Springs “underground,” if such a thing even existed.

  “Do I know you?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve seen you around, though. Small towns, right? I’m Harry.”

  “Elias.”

  Harry leaned a little forward and dipped his head. “Can I ask you something, Elias?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You look like the kind of person who knows things.” Harry motioned a hand toward the empty chair at the table.

  Elias frowned, but he sat. “I know a thing or two. What’s up, bro?”

  Even though they weren’t that close to the coffeeshop’s other patrons, Harry lowered his voice and leaned forward for effect. “I’m looking for something.”

  A sparkle of mischievous recognition flitted across the young man’s eyes. “Ahh, I see. I’m really good at finding things that people are looking for. What do you need?”

  “I’m on the hunt for some special cigars. The kind you can’t get at a store.”

  The kid’s face screwed up in confusion. “I don’t… do you mean weed for blunts? You need some pot?”

  “No, I’m not looking to get high. I mean real cigars. High-quality imports.”

  The kid turned up his palms. “Not sure what to tell you. I think they still have Native American smoke shops just past the state line to Oklahoma. That’s maybe where I’d check first. There’s also probably dark web sites where you can get that stuff, but that’s outside my skill set, if you know what I mean.”

  Harry sat back and sighed. “I think I know what you mean. Thanks for the tip.”

  Elias put his hands on the table to push himself to his feet. Then his face changed, as if remembering an important detail. “Are you friends with the new barber or something?”

  Harry tried to keep his eyes from widening or his jaw from dropping at the mention of such a juicy detail. “Why do you ask that? You don’t seem like you get too many haircuts.”

  “Come on, Harvey,” Elias said, his gaze darting to Harry’s cup. “Everyone knows about his cigars going missing. But you want to know what’s weird?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Elias paused, looking Harry up and down. He smirked. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “What is what worth to me?” Harry said, quietly scorning himself. He’d given away his excitement at a possible lead, and this kid had seized on it. Harry should’ve known better. Next time, he would keep his poker face active at all times. “How can I tell what it’s worth if I don’t know what it is?”

  Elias tilted his head down toward the floor. For a second, Harry didn’t get it, then he leaned over to look. One of Elias’ palms sat open under the table, secretly waiting.

  Harry sighed and slipped a twenty from his wallet, then leaned over to pass it to the kid under the table. Elias snatched it, gave the bill a quick glance, and then cleared his throat.

  “My friend’s little brother had cartons of cigarettes stolen from him.”

  Harry opened a text note on his laptop. “Your friend’s little brother’s name?”

  Elias made a face as he stood. “Not a chance. He’s underage and I’m no narc.”

  Harry reached again for his wallet, but Elias shook his head and turned to leave. So Harry closed his laptop as the dreadlocked young man wandered away and out the door, leaving Harry with a sore tailbone and a tantalizing piece of information.

  Was there a tobacco bandit in Eureka Springs? If the underage kid was selling cigarettes to his underage friends, then maybe a rival teenage entrepreneur was moving in on his territory, and then expanded to rare cigars to beef up his inventory.

  Somehow, though, Harry didn’t think so. Something about it didn’t feel right.

  Harry slipped his laptop into his briefcase and stood, then the blasé teenager at the counter flashed her eyes at him.

  He scooted over toward her. “Sorry, did I forget to take my credit card or something?”

  “The cigars and the cigarettes? That’s not the only thing going missing.”

  He forced his face to stay as flat as possible. “Oh yeah? What can you tell me?”

  “Are you a cop?”

  Harry shook his head and drew business card #2 (out of 1000) and passed it across to the young lady. “Not a cop. I’m just trying to find something that’s missing.”

  “I know people who’ve also had stuff taken lately. Like, a lot. A lot of people.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  The young lady chewed on her lip for a few seconds, and her cheeks reddened as she averted her eyes. “I don’t wanna say.”

  Like a smack to the face, the pieces fell into their slots. The young lady was embarrassed, probably because she was also a victim. It wasn’t a tobacco thief in Eureka Springs. No, the scope was bigger than that. Someone was stealing things around town people wouldn’t report missing. Drugs, illicit tobacco, probably other things. From the criminal’s perspective, it was the smart move.

  Some sort of teenage criminal mastermind in the making?

  “Would you mind coming into my office when you get off work to chat?”

  “Yeah, I would mind. No way am I going on record or anything like that. Plus, you’re old enough to be my dad.”

  He wasn’t sure how the last bit was relevant, but he pushed on. “Okay, sure. Can I ask just one more question?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Harry took a deep breath to calm his racing nerves. “See anyone unusual in here yesterday?”

  Her eyes squiggled left and right across the ceiling, like a computer accessing memory. “I mean, it’s hard to say. So many people come in here every day, right? Like, hundreds.”

  “So no one who stood out?”

  She flexed her jaw. “Okay, wai
t, yeah. I did make some weird orders yesterday, actually. Some of those holler guys were in here.”

  “Holler guys?”

  She tilted her head to her right, toward the west. “You know the No-Name Holler in the valley outside of town? They don’t come often, but there were several of them in here yesterday.”

  No-Name Holler?

  “Thanks,” Harry said as he clutched his briefcase. As he turned, he could barely contain the grin on his face. A real lead!

  6

  Before taking a blind trip out to No-Name Holler, Harry returned to the strip mall. He wanted to get another good look at the barbershop, especially since Kemba had opted not to call the cops, so there was no police report of the theft.

  Harry’s head buzzed with the new information from the coffee shop, but he had to remind himself not to accept his own theories as automatically true. During his supervised private investigating time, Harry found he often would get excited about an idea and pursue it to its end, ignoring clues that didn’t fit his desired narrative. His mentor had frequently reminded Harry to keep his options open and never assume anything as indisputable.

  As Harry wandered down the street, he noticed a different feeling in the air. All the usual local and tourist pedestrians traversed the sidewalks, but everyone seemed distant today. They seemed preoccupied, like zombies.

  Like pod people.

  Or maybe that was all in Harry’s head and the town residents had not been replaced by pod people. But if they were pod people, they wouldn’t exactly announce it, would they?

  Harry chuckled quietly at his own little fantasy as he entered the strip mall parking lot. The broken glass was gone, but the lack of a front window remained. Kemba had reinforced his plastic wrap window replacement with duct tape and a framework of floor-to-ceiling 2x4s to act as a temporary front wall. Harry knew nothing of carpentry and construction and he marveled at the design. For a former pro football player, Kemba seemed to possess a wide range of skills.