The Holler Thief: A Private Eye Mystery

by Jim Heskett

  Harry’s pulse inched up. He lifted a hand in a wave, and Kemba hesitated a moment, stretching a rubber band of tension across the parking spot. Kemba dipped his head in a nod and then lifted his hand in a limp wave, devoid of emotion. Then he disappeared inside.

  Harry looked at the barbershop and then to his own place of business, a few dozen feet away. Maybe operating an investigation two doors down from the prime suspect wasn’t the way to go. He decided the smarter move would be to conduct the rest of his business from his basement, where he felt (reasonably) safe.

  When his heart had slowed a little, Harry entered the convenience store and smiled at the woman behind the counter. She was plump, with a cute nose, hazel eyes, and cheeks dotted with red spots. Harry came to this convenience store often, but he couldn’t remember the woman’s name. She was only here from time to time.

  “Morning,” he said, then checked his watch. “Just barely.”

  “Morning. Gas outside?”

  “No, I’m on foot today. I was hoping I could talk to you for a moment.”

  At first, the woman blushed, then she cleared her throat and chirped a nervous giggle. “That ain’t something I hear every day. What can I do for you, hon?”

  “You know about the break-in that happened a couple days ago?”

  She frowned and tossed sad eyes over toward the strip mall. “Yeah. Too bad, he seemed like a nice guy. I hope he don’t have to move now.”

  “I was wondering if I could take a look at your security footage?”

  “Didn't I already show… are you police?”

  Second time he'd been asked that question today. She’d said the word like poh-leese, with a deep backwoods accent. Harry wondered if possibly she herself were from one of the hollers.

  He shook his head. He was surprised the law had been forward-thinking enough to check the footage. This also probably meant they hadn’t found anything useful, but he had to hope he could catch something they’d missed. “Not a cop. I’m a private investigator, looking into the theft.”

  Her cheeks reddened further. “I ain’t supposed to.”

  Harry stroked his beard and took a settling breath. Then he broadened his smile and moved a little closer to the counter. When he met her eyes, her head dipped, a little bashful, a little flirty. If this were Dungeons & Dragons, he would roll a twenty-sided die to see if he could persuade the woman. In real life, it did not work that way, unfortunately.

  Harry gulped and decided to push it further. “I know, but you would really be helping me out. I’m trying to find out who robbed the store, and these doofy cops are obviously clueless, right?”

  She snickered. “They usually are.”

  “So if you could let me take a peek at the security tapes… I only need to see about two minutes’ worth of footage from the day before yesterday.”

  “I dunno.”

  “You probably recycle the footage, right? How much server space do you have?”

  Her eyes glazed over at the mention of the word server, so Harry dialed it back. “Do you know if you keep all previous recordings, or does it get erased every few days?”

  Still, her head tilted left and right in a slow shake. Harry suspected they would only keep footage from the last week or two to save on server costs. No reason to keep around footage from months ago, sitting in a computer file costing the company money.

  “You’d really be helping me out,” he said.

  The store clerk shifted her weight from foot to foot for a few seconds as her brain chugged through data like a 1950s room-sized computer.

  Eventually, she blinked. “I’d say okay.”

  “Yeah? I appreciate it.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I would say okay, but my boss turned over our computer drives to the police. Soft drives? Hard drives? I don’t remember what they’re called. But the cops asked if they got all of ‘em, and he said he did.”

  Harry felt his heart sink down to his stomach. “Oh, I understand.”

  “Sorry, hon.”

  With no easy way through, Harry’s brain clicked and whirred into overdrive, trying to think of another solution. Then, like a lightbulb, an idea occurred to him. “Wait, your data is saved onto disc? Do you not have a cloud solution? Separate backup?”

  The woman’s blank face jittered left and right in a head-shake. She didn’t look like she knew the cloud from a hole in the ground.

  He leaned close to the counter to spy the electronics near her feet. He pointed. “That one. The one with the red and green lights on the front, looks like a Blu-Ray player.”

  The clerk hunkered down next to the machine. “This’n?”

  “Could you pull it away from the wall a little?”

  She obliged, and Harry saw what he was looking for: an ethernet cable sticking out of the back of the machine. It probably did have a cloud backup option, so even if the cops had the physical drives, he could still access the footage.

  “Did you get the answer you wanted?” she asked, standing back up and dusting off her pants.

  “Sort of. Do you know how to access those online backups? Do you have a password?”

  Her eyebrows jumped up her forehead. “You mean the camera recordings? Yeah, we can access that online.” She leaned closer. “I think I know how to get in, but, I gotta be honest with you. I forgot my password and I need to reset it, but I need my boyfriend.”

  “Okay, why?”

  “It’s complicated. He set me up with an app to store all my passwords, but it’s got this one master password to get into where all the other passwords are, right? Does that make sense?”

  “Sure, I follow.”

  “Well, my boyfriend knows my master password, and he’s down in Jasper, working on a crew today. Never has his phone on him because he works with concrete and he says it always gets everywhere. I’m pretty sure he’s gonna come by tonight when I get off work at 7. I could ask him then…?”

  Harry smiled and set his business card on the counter. This was the third or fourth from the pack of a thousand he’d given out. “Thank you. I’ll stop by later, okay?”

  She picked up the card. “Harry Boo… Harry Boo-kuh… Boo-cadda-kiss?”

  Instead of correcting her, he smiled the best smile he could muster. “Thanks for your time, ma’am.”

  He dropped a wink at the end, which made her giggle again, and then Harry left the convenience store to chase a bunch of drunks at an AA conference.

  20

  Harry had a text note in his phone with a list of four names. He had begun with four hundred names, all of them recovering alcoholics in town for the AA conference. He’d whittled that down to eighty with criminal records. Of those eighty, four had the sort of rap sheets that could lead to murder. And one of them, he knew. Well, not exactly knew, but had already seen her once around town.

  In his experience, the recovering drunks were decent people. He’d seen enough of them attend the AA meeting in the office space next to his own to form such an opinion. But, Harry knew that forming opinions on a large group of people based on interactions with a small chunk of them was not a good way to conduct an investigation. But stereotypes sure were handy for saving time and effort.

  Harry had to admit, the notion that a recovering alcoholic was so mad about the presence of bottles that he or she smashed them in a rage and murdered Lukas Maslow for it was thin. Very thin. But until he could access the security footage at the convenience store, or the other financial checks on Kemba Wood completed running, or something else magically appeared in front of his face, Harry had no leads to pursue. So, he decided to take a trip to the conference and poke around.

  Another lesson his mentor had taught him: when you have no leads and no next steps, throw pebbles into the pond and see which way the water ripples, then follow it.

  Most of the conference guests were staying at the Motorway Lodge, where the conference itself was held. Harry knew this had been something of a sticking point with his friend Neva who managed the Su
nrise Hotel and Spa—they’d lost the high-stakes bid on the contract to provide room blocks to the conference. There were probably a few scattered at the many bed & breakfast establishments littering the town, but the bulk of the attendees were camped at the lodge.

  Harry entered the meeting room wing of the Motorway Lodge to find large swaths of writhing chaos. Way too many people crammed into hallways too narrow to contain them. Humans with name tags everywhere, running around and giggling and carrying cups of coffee to and fro. Harry wasn’t sure if he’d assumed an AA conference would be a dour occasion, but these people were wild and not afraid to have boisterous fun.

  Every conference Harry had ever been to had descended into drunken madness by the second or third day. These people had accomplished the same goal, but without alcohol to speed the transition. An impressive feat.

  He barely managed to avoid being knocked over by a woman playfully chasing another man across the hall, then he made eye contact with a single woman sitting at a folding table at the far end of the wide entryway room. She nodded at him and waved him over.

  “You’re a late arrival,” she said as she handed him a Sharpie and a name tag. The welcoming grin on her face made him feel like he was about to receive a knockout timeshare condo pitch. Or, maybe the woman was simply happy to add one more to the conference.

  “Just arrived in town today,” he said, and wrote Layne P. on the tag before smashing it against his shirt, above the pocket.

  “It’s lunchtime,” the woman said as she handed him a manilla envelope, “so not a lot going on at the moment. There’s always a round robin pickup meeting happening in Conference Hall B that starts every hour, but the next big speaker meeting isn’t until 4.”

  Harry nodded and pretended he understood what the woman was talking about. He knew all of those English words, but not in this context. “Conference Hall B. Got it. I’ll take a look around for now.”

  He noted that she hadn’t checked his name against any list. Trusting people, these alcoholics were. As he wandered away from the table, he flipped through the contents of the manilla folder. It contained a lanyard, a schedule for the conference, and several brochures and pamphlets about things to do in Eureka Springs. Harry stuck the schedule in his pocket and then left the manilla envelope on a nearby windowsill.

  For a few minutes, he hung out next to the table by the bathrooms, flipping through stacks of AA literature spread out. He kept his eyes low and his ears open. Disparate bits of conversations floated around as the attendees crossed the hall between various meeting rooms. They talked about the quality of the conference, they talked about surprising romantic couplings that had sprung up, they mentioned something disconnected about vape pens making people sick, but mostly, they talked about lunch.

  And then, Harry saw her. She was white, nearly six-foot, with blond hair and cheekbones like a model. Ginnifer Applewhite. He had spotted her around town once already, but he couldn’t remember where or when. A woman like that stood out. But despite her undeniable good looks, she didn’t have much going for her to suggest a functioning adult lived within.

  Her rap sheet had included a small number of violent crimes. And the one that had caught Harry’s interest: she once broke into a liquor store and vandalized the interior.

  Of all the people at this conference, Harry had placed Ginnifer at the top of his suspect list. She leaned against a wall, her arms crossed over her chest, hiding her name tag. Looking bored and uninterested in joining any of the myriad conversations happening around her. After a lull, she peered left and right and then sneaked off. Well, she didn’t exactly sneak, but it was close enough.

  Something stirred inside of Harry and commanded him to learn where she was going. Maybe he could get lucky and catch her doing something to finally give him a solid clue. Maybe today was Harry’s day.

  He launched after her as she pointed her feet down a hall and slinked off that way. Ten seconds later, she halted and turned, casting suspicious eyes back. She took out her phone and flicked her thumb along the screen, and Harry had to find a place to hide for however long this would last.

  He dropped his head and shuffled toward a cluster of three people having a private conversation. He stood at the edge, smiling and nodding and pretending to be part of the group while they all tossed raised eyebrows at him.

  “Afternoon, friend,” said one smiling older man. “Where you from?”

  “Virginia,” Harry said, sneaking glances toward Ginnifer.

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  “In more ways than one,” Harry said, which surprisingly made the group chuckle. They all gazed at him with bright and shining faces, and he felt a wave of the strangest sensation: unearned acceptance. With one accidentally witty comment, Harry had been inducted into this little circle of friendship. Part of him wanted to stay here in this warm and inviting group, but he couldn’t do that. He was on the clock.

  “You travel for conferences a lot?” asked a woman standing across from Harry. He was about to reply, but he watched Ginnifer put her phone away. He shrugged and gave a quick wave goodbye and then disengaged from the group. Probably better to skedaddle now, rather than have to lie to more people to keep his cover.

  Ginnifer continued marching down the hall. Harry followed, then paused when she pressed the bar on the double doors to exit the meeting hall wing of the lodge. He let her go and then hesitated a few beats so he wouldn’t slip outside immediately after her.

  Five seconds later, he opened the door and tossed eyes left and right. He spotted Ginnifer’s blue top to the right, so he angled left. But he was able to catch his target’s reflection in a window across the street.

  She was smoking a cigarette, leaning against the building, standing by herself. It was an entirely solitary and lonely experience. His heart hurt for her and he didn’t know why. It was a strange form of empathy to experience, especially since he considered this woman capable of murder.

  Harry sighed and continued walking toward the street so he wouldn’t give himself away. Ginnifer Applewhite was a possible suspect, but not a quality one. Maybe if she’d come out here to the alley to hide Lukas’ murder weapon, but she was only here to puff on a coffin nail. Finding an actual cigarette smoker seemed rare these days, since all the kids used those undetectable motorized things to consume nicotine now.

  Harry was poised to toss one look back over his shoulder toward Ginnifer, but then he noted something that made his jaw drop. Something completely unexpected. Across the street on the sidewalk opposite the motel was a squat man with low-grade (probably prison-made) tattoos and a mullet flowing down his back.

  And Harry recognized the man.

  This was the same man who had hit Harry in the stomach with a baseball bat yesterday. He was sure of it. Sooner or later, everyone in a small town encountered everyone else in a small town. Harry had never once been to the grocery store without having at least three to four chit-chat conversations with people he knew.

  “Hey!” Harry bellowed. Immediately after saying it, he knew he should’ve kept his mouth shut, but he couldn’t help it. The surprise of the chain of events still rambled around in his head, making his body flood with adrenaline. Fight or flight would trigger soon.

  The hillbilly across the street turned toward Harry. He held a cylindrical object in one hand. Harry guessed it was a foot-long sub sandwich.

  The hillbilly gasped as realization settled on his face. He dropped the sandwich as he took off, limping badly as he went. The sidewalk along the street angled up, beginning the long and winding path toward the Sunrise Hotel.

  Harry broke into a run. He immediately regretted wearing dress slacks, as the pleats weren’t exactly aerodynamic. But he ran anyway. Within five steps, he’d crossed the street and was now directly behind the hillbilly. Still more than a dozen steps behind, but he was at least in range now.

  But, Harry soon discovered, he was not in the same ballpark skill level as this guy. Even limping, he hustled
like the wind, becoming smaller and smaller as he raced up the hill. The elevation didn’t seem to slow him down at all. Harry jogged after him, knees and back aching, belly tossing to and fro with each step. Almost immediately, Harry felt his cheeks flush and his breaths shorten.

  He slowed, then felt himself running out of energy as the hillbilly made a turn at the next intersection. The distance grew and grew each passing second.

  But Harry refused to give up. He gritted his teeth and sucked in a breath, then ran. Damn his heaving lungs. He had a real chance to catch the guy. Harry closed his eyes to command his body to expend every ounce of available energy to push himself up the hill.

  But Harry did not catch him.

  Because three steps later, a car door flung open right in front of Harry. Out of nowhere. Parked next to the curb, a formerly unseen driver pushed open the door. And then he slid outside and in front of Harry as if he’d magically teleported in from another plane of existence.

  One second there was nothing, the next, an impassible roadblock.

  Harry skidded to a stop to avoid running into the door as the new arrival stood to his full height. He snarled at Harry, yellow teeth clenched together in a terrifying grimace. His face was instantly recognizable from Harry’s recent past.

  A member of the Fayetteville crew.

  “Harry Boukadakis,” the man said. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t beat the shit out of you right now.”

  21

  Phillip Dugan looked exactly like his name suggested: a 1950s private investigator. Son of the Dugan Agency’s founder, he carried on his dad’s style, as well as his PI agency. He usually wore tall suits to match his gangly frame, as he did today. No pinstripes, but he seemed like the sort of man who could make that style work, if he wanted. His hair was black on top and graying near the temples. He wore it slicked back, probably with pomade from some tub that had been originally purchased during the Eisenhower administration.