The Wolfe Widow (A Book Collector Mystery) (14 page)

Disappointing, in fact a total flop. Not, however, a fiasco.

I could see as I left that my routine needed work. I have never been afraid of work. And that gas station wasn’t the only game in town.

I had no luck at all on the west side of Harrison Falls.

Three service stations later, I finally got a nibble. Archie would have been proud of me. The guy behind the counter had one of the last surviving mullets in the region. I tried not to stare at it. I met his slightly spacey blue eyes instead. I imagined that the particularly vague expression was not being faked but was the result of years of dedicated marijuana use. A decade of supersized fries probably accounted for his jowls and the strain on his Rush T-shirt.

“Hey man,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, um, man,” I said, and launched into my found-money routine. It was pretty pat by now. Repetition can do that. “So,” I said, finishing up, “if you know this guy, it would help.”

“Uh, what guy?” Puzzlement settled on his pudgy features.

I resisted the urge to snap. I was, after all, lying my sore and damaged head off. It wasn’t this guy’s fault. “The movers with the green truck?”

“The green truck?”

“Yes. The guy with the green truck who dropped the envelope with the money in it. He was helping a woman move out to the Van Alst place the other day.”

“Uh-huh.”

I waited and then, when more was not forthcoming, added, “I would like to get the money back to him. I do not want to contact the police as I don’t consider them to be friends.”

“You want to give it back?”

“Yes.”

“And he doesn’t want to take it?”

Maybe I’d been inhaling a bit of that ganja because like a fool I said, “Who?”

He stared at me, probably thinking I was the stupidest person he’d seen since whenever.

He said, “Can’t help you. But I know some guys who have a truck and do a bit of moving as a sideline.”

“Does their truck have writing on the side?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And what does the writing say?”

“It’s their landscape business. It’s just letters.”

I knew that trucks with lettering on the side couldn’t be scarce in our part of the world, but the moving connection was also interesting. It wasn’t like I had anything else to go on. “Letters? That could be them. Could you give me a name? I’d recognize that, I think.”

He said, “Frankie?”

“Frankie? Right. I think that might be his name.”

“And he don’t want this money back?”

“Oh, I am sure he does. I can’t remember where, um, he lives.”

He nodded. Sagely. He got that.

“Do you know?”

“Not exactly.”

I blinked. “Not exactly?”

“Well, like, not the exact address or anything.”

“Right. Um, well, what do you know about where he lives?”

“He don’t have an exact address, I don’t think.”

“He’s homeless?” That was bad for many reasons, none of them including compassion, as we
were
talking about the guy who hit me.

“Not exactly homeless.”

“What then?” That came out a bit sharper than I’d intended.

The mullet guy looked kind of hurt.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m nervous knowing I have this money and all.”

“You got it on you?”

“No, no,” I said hurriedly. “It is in a very, very, very safe place until I find Frankie. Wherever he is. I am sure he’ll be grateful to you for any help you give me.”

Fear fluttered across his features. No question about it.

“Don’t tell him I told you where he lives.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“
You
”—I pointed at him to ensure he’d know who I was talking about—“didn’t tell
me
where
he
lives because you
don’t
know.”

“Right, that’s good then.”

“You suggested that Frankie didn’t have an address.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s good.”

So far it sounded like Frankie was dangerous enough.

I decided to try a Wolfe-like trick: “You suggested that I could find him if I went to—”

“I never mentioned Sullivan’s.” His hand shot to his mouth, but too late to stop the words.

“Who’s Sullivan?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Man, Frankie and Junior won’t like that if I talked about them. They’d . . .” His voice trailed off. His hand shook a bit.

Frankie and Junior. Two dangerous dudes. Now we were getting places.

“Sorry,” I said, “I couldn’t hear you. And if I did, I wouldn’t remember.”

He stared. I guess that was too subtle. “Remember what?”

“Hey,” I said. “Let’s pretend we never had this conversation.”

He nodded, loving that idea.

“I’ll never mention it unless you talk to Frankie about me.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he sputtered.

“How do I know that?”

“Because I wouldn’t know what to say about you. You’re acting kind of weird.”

“Head injury. Just forget you ever saw me or I’ll tell Frankie you told me where to find him.”

He shook his head hard enough that it must have messed with his brain. I fished in my bag and pulled out a twenty. I handed it to him. “Is this for gas?” he said.

“I didn’t get any gas. I don’t even have a car. It’s for you. Keep quiet about what we talked about.”

“Is there really an envelope full of money?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I screwed up again. I’m always falling for stuff.”

“Well, your secret’s safe with me. I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Steve,” he said. “And you’re not the only one who doesn’t tell the truth.”

I figured that if she hadn’t died of a broken heart, Steve’s mother probably worried herself sick over him. A couple of twenties and a Klondike bar and this guy would be under your control.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“About what?” Steve said.

“Not being the only one who didn’t tell the truth.”

“You said there was a lot of money and then you admitted there wasn’t.”

“Agreed. But what didn’t you tell the truth about?”

A sneaky look slid across his face. I fished out five dollars, held it out of his reach and said, “The truck.” My heart sank. All this for nothing? “What about the truck?”

“It’s not green.”

“It’s not green? The green truck isn’t green?”

“The truck that went with that woman to the Van Alst place wasn’t green.”

“What color was it?”

“Red.”

I shivered. “How do you know it was the same truck I’m talking about?”

“Because they told me they were moving someone to the old Van Alst place and there was this big scary lady waiting for them in her Grand Prix and yelling orders at them while they were filling up their truck, like she owned them. She gave me the evil eye too. I was just minding my own business here at the cash. She gave me the creeps.”

I saw then that I’d been asking the wrong questions. And been given the wrong information. There was only one truck and it was red.

“And Frankie and Junior were in the truck?”

“I’m not telling you that. Do I look crazy? Keep your money. It’s not worth it. Can you go now?”

“But I’ll find them at Sullivan’s?”

He went white before my eyes. Even his mullet seemed to lose its color. “I never sent you!”

“And we never had this talk,” I said.

He agreed.

I left the service station and headed in the opposite direction to where the Saab was tucked out of sight. Fear makes people do funny things and I didn’t want to take a chance that Steve wouldn’t call Frankie or Sullivan, whoever he was, and tell them I was asking questions about an envelope full of money that had fallen out of a truck accompanying a big scary lady on the way to Van Alst House.

I walked around the block and headed back to the car, keeping well out of sight of the service station.

A red truck. Something new to think about, if Steve was actually telling the truth. But how could Kev have been wrong about the color?

*   *   *

SO, SULLIVAN. WHO
was that? The second guy in the truck? Or was that Junior? Were Frankie and Junior couch surfing at this Sullivan’s place?

I figured it wouldn’t take too long to find a guy named Sullivan in a place the size of Harrison Falls. I headed home to my computer. My head was spinning slightly and the last thing I wanted to do was to crash the Saab. Didn’t want to run over anyone either. I’d been on the receiving end of that. No need for anyone else to suffer.

*   *   *

AFTER WALKING THE
dogs and feeding them, I had a solitary dinner of the signora’s food. The kitchen was empty and echoing without my uncles. The dogs helped but they weren’t that good at small talk. Time to get to work.

It sounded like Frankie was the owner of the red truck, if indeed it was a red truck. Judging by my gas guy’s reaction, Frankie was not to be trifled with. So time to find this Sullivan. There were ninety-seven listings for Sullivan in the Harrison Falls area on 411. There was no Frank, Frankie or Francis. No Junior either, and I assumed Junior’s given name would be Francis too. I spent a bit of time at the kitchen table combining Sullivans. It was still a long list and no guarantees. I left aside the Sullivans in Harrison Falls East and Harrison Falls South. I’d try them if I had to. But as I was in Archie Goodwin mode, I settled in to do the grunt work.

It wasn’t eight thirty yet. Most people with day jobs would be home from work, finished with dinner and errands and not yet hitting prime-time television.

“Hi there, trying to reach Frankie. He there by any chance?”

“Wrong number.”

“Hello, looking for Frankie. Is he at your place?”

“Frankie who?”

“Oh hello. Did Frankie drop in tonight? I need to speak to him.”

Click.

This went on. By the thirty-fourth call I was getting discouraged. I reminded myself I didn’t have anything better to do and anyway, this was the easiest form of detecting there was. Archie would never have given up and he would have made little witticisms after every call.

Of course, there was always the chance that Frankie had been alerted that a strange woman was trying to reach him, but I decided not to worry about that. There was no way he could have figured out who I was as I made the calls from this burner. I sighed. For all I knew, Frankie was on his fourth boilermaker at the local bar.

Wait a minute. The local bar? There was something familiar about that.

I would have smacked myself on the head, but that would have been a bad idea. I did go back to 411 and checked out “Sullivan” under businesses.

Sullivan’s Bar and Grill.

Bingo.

Jackpot.

And all that.

I’d never get that hour of calling back, but now I had something to get my teeth into. If I remembered correctly, Sullivan’s was a rough-and-ready joint in the same area of town as Willows Road.

What now?

I didn’t want to go walking in there asking for Frankie. The situation obviously called for a ruse. But ruses usually require a confederate and mine were, as previously mentioned more than once, MIA. Except of course for the most unpredictable one.

Kev.

But Kev was trapped at Van Alst House. That left nobody.

I stared at Walter and Cobain. They could be recruited for undercover work and had been, but somehow I didn’t think they’d make the cut for the trip to Sullivan’s Bar and Grill. The cats were beautiful, but useless in a ploy, unless your name was Kevin Kelly, but that’s an old story. Let’s not go there now.

What would Archie do?

Archie might make a deal with a little number. I had an idea who that little number could be. Minutes later I had a deal that Archie might be jealous of. The only problem was I needed to wait until the next day for the dame to be available.

Maybe that was just as well, as my head was throbbing and my knees were wobbly again. My girlhood bedroom and all those ponies beckoned.

*   *   *

“WHAT?”

A garbled blithering emerged from the phone. The blithering was compounded by being whispered. It might have been funny except for the only word I could make out: “kill.”

I tried to break in: “Eagle, I can’t hear you. You are whispering and I can’t understand.”

The blithering took on a higher tone, still unintelligible.

“Please don’t panic, um, Eagle. Take a deep breath and tell me what is going on.”

“Kill them.”

Okay, two words now, but I was no further ahead. As they say, consider the source. The source was Uncle Kev so it could have been nothing at all. Or, given the circumstances, it could have been big news. “Kill them” sounded more like big news.

“Kill who?”

“I can’t talk.”

Now that was clear. “Don’t leave me hanging. Kill who?”

“I’m coming over.”

“What? It’s two in the morning!”

“Life or death. Wait for me.”

“Tell me what’s going on. Should I call the police?”

“No police. Don’t open the door to anyone else but me, Bo Peep.”

“But—”

“Shh.”

“Is Vera all right?”

But of course, he was gone. Fine. He always did have a knack for keeping people on their toes.

I couldn’t concentrate much for the next hour or so. I jumped at every noise. None of the noises were Kev. I had fallen asleep on Uncle Lucky’s sofa surrounded by dogs when Kev hammered on the door. The dogs set up a ruckus as I opened it and he tumbled in, dropping a squirming object in a large gray blanket.

I stared. “What is—? Oh no, Kev. What are you thinking?”

Two Siamese hunkered down in terror. One yowled. The other raked my ankles.

Walter and Cobain were silent for a shocked second. That was all it took. The next second the air was full of shrieks and barks and, yes, snuffles.

When I managed to corral the dogs and check Cobain’s bleeding nose, Uncle Kev was on the floor trying to entice the cats to emerge from under the sofa. A sharp-clawed paw emerged and Bad Cat gave Uncle Kev something to remember him by.

I barely managed to say that he had it coming and by the way, had he lost what little mind he possessed?