Rock Chick

by Kristen Ashley

  “I haven’t seen them, it’s just the rumor, I’m just keeping rumors straight. Maybe when Indy stops taking it slow, we’ll find out.”

  I calmed Andrea down with an iced, hazelnut, decaf latte and promised her I’d call her the minute I did it with Lee. At this rate, post-coital, I’d be on the phone for a week.

  Once Andrea was settled, I noticed a guy who’d arrived practically the minute the door opened. He’d already bought three espressos, which he sucked down in one swallow and he’d been reading a sports magazine now for three and a half hours. He had dark blond hair a week or two past needing a cut, a killer bod, compact with muscles and not an ounce of fat. He was wearing a white t-shirt, jeans and running shoes.

  If he wasn’t my height, I didn’t have an ugly bruise on my face and I didn’t already have enough man problems, I would have been flirting with him ages ago. I didn’t do men my height or shorter, they had to be taller than me if I was wearing heels. That was a rule.

  I watched him for a few minutes, thinking that had to be a helluva magazine to require more than three hours of study.

  Lee told me he had a lot of men. Maybe men enough to go to North Dakota and sit in surveillance at Rosie’s. Maybe men enough to hang out at Fortnum’s and keep an eye on me.

  Fucking Lee.

  I sauntered over to the guy and stood in front of him until he looked up.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he replied and smiled. Definitely cute and definitely not one of Terry Wilcox’s steroid-ridden bad guys. The look of this dude said he would never hit a woman, or at least I hoped so.

  “You need another espresso?” I asked, giving my head a flirty tilt.

  “Nah, thanks, I’m juiced up enough.” He went back to reading.

  Hmm. What did I do now? Never really had someone gone back to reading after I gave them the flirty tilt. Even if they weren’t entirely interested, they gave more reaction to the flirty tilt. Maybe it was the mini-shiner.

  “Good magazine?” I asked and he looked up again.

  “Yeah, the best.”

  I nodded and wished I’d worn a tank top or camisole that day so I could have leaned over and given him some of my power cleavage. My cleavage would have negated the effects of the shiner.

  Instead, I was in jeans, a brown, hand-tooled belt with a big, silver buckle that had a design made out of what looked like miniature rope, brown cowboy boots and a chocolate brown, fitted tee that said “I do all my own stunts” across my boobs in yellow and red lettering.

  “I’m not into sports,” I told him and then sat on the arm of his chair, peering over the magazine to look at it. His entire body tensed and he turned his head to stare at me and I gave him a mega-watt smile. “Though I like going to games and stuff, do you go to games?”

  I pressed the side of my breast against his arm, still pretending to try and get a look at his magazine.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I gave him an innocent look.

  “Who me?” Then I winked.

  His face went pale and his cell phone rang. He stood up to get it out of his jeans and he stood so fast, he nearly knocked me off the arm of the chair.

  I righted myself as he said, “Talk to me.”

  Then his eyes cut to me and he handed me the phone. I stared at it, astonished, then took it and put it to my ear.

  “Leave Matt alone, he’s just doin’ his job,” Lee said.

  I was a little shocked at the call, I just wanted to fluster Matt a bit.

  How did he…?

  Fucking, fucking Lee.

  “What’s his job?” I asked, my blood pressure ratcheting up a notch.

  “Making sure you don’t get kidnapped or shot at.”

  “Or do anything stupid?”

  “That too.”

  “How did you know I was screwing with him?”

  “Trade secret.”

  “Tell me or I’m moving to Venezuela, losing myself in the jungle and shacking up with a local.”

  Silence, then a sigh.

  “Fortnum’s is wired and there are cameras. We did it last night.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Remember the conversation we had in the kitchen yesterday?”

  I remembered every encounter I’d had with Lee since I was five. I most vividly remembered those that occurred in the last twenty-four hours, and not just because they were the most recent.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re on Terry Wilcox’s radar. That’s not good. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

  “By bugging my store?”

  “That and anything else I can think of.”

  I stood staring at Matt who was beginning to look amused.

  “Do you remember the part of the conversation this morning where you said you’d be at Fortnum’s whenever you were done?” Silence but I didn’t wait for a response. “Well, don’t bother.”

  * * * * *

  Ally and I walked up to Rosie’s house.

  Matt followed us there and was now sitting in his SUV watching us, but we were ignoring him.

  Jane had returned, no sign of Duke or Dolores, but she’d taken the opportunity to, what she called, “canvass the neighborhood” (as Duke lived in log cabin surrounded by four acres of evergreen trees, I wondered what neighborhood she was talking about). Nevertheless, she scored some points by learning that the dirt lane to Duke’s cabin had been a hive of activity in the last day or so, including a sighting yesterday morning that could have been Rosie. No sign of Duke’s return before or after Rosie.

  This meant that Rosie was looking for Duke too, or had been yesterday morning. Whether he found him or not was anyone’s guess.

  We stood on Rosie’s porch and knocked. Rosie lived alone, in a bungalow that needed serious renovation. I used to wonder how he could afford the bungalow, I didn’t exactly pay him a fortune. It was on the out, out, outskirts of Platte Park but close enough to the park and to Pearl Street to be a prime piece of real estate.

  Now I knew how he could afford it.

  No answer on the knock so we looked in the windows. I’d been to Rosie’s dozens of times and it didn’t look any different than normal.

  “Be a shame to lose those primo pot plants. Do you think someone’s taking care of those plants?” I asked.

  Ally gave a shrug and then turned brightly to me. “I bet I know who’d know!”

  “Who?”

  “Lee.”

  I shoved her shoulder. “Smartass.”

  Deciding to take a page out of Jane’s book, we “canvassed the neighborhood” knocking on doors and asking people if they knew or had seen Rosie.

  No luck, most people were away at work, the ones that were in barely knew him and no one had seen him. He didn’t seem incredibly popular, nor did Ally and I for knocking on their doors.

  Somewhere between getting stun-gunned and our current adventure, Ally had business cards made up with her and my names and numbers on them.

  When she gave the first one out, I nearly choked.

  “Where’d you get those?” I asked her as we walked away from the house.

  “I called Brody. He made them up last night. Put them in my mailbox. Aren’t they righteous?”

  Dear Lord.

  Brody was a friend of ours, had been since high school. He was a computer dweeb, worked at home programming PC games, barely ever left the house and he made a shed load of money. He also barely ever slept. He lived on energy drinks and cheese puffs and shopped for groceries exclusively at open-all-night-convenience stores.

  We headed to the emergency contact of Rosie’s we hadn’t yet gone after, the one whose beauty sleep I’d disturbed the day before. Rosie had recorded his name in the employee file as Kevin “The Kevster” James.

  The Kevster answered the door wearing a pair of filthy jeans, a black Hendrix tee so faded it was now gray over a thermal, long-john shirt even though it was firmly eighty-six degrees. He had scraggly hair of an indescribable colo
r and it was pretty clear we’d found out who was looking after Rosie’s pot plants, with liberal sampling.

  “Hey dudettes.” Was his greeting.

  We introduced ourselves and he smiled. “Dig it! I heard about you guys.” He turned to me. “Rosie talks about you all the time, thinks you are the shit. Best job he’s ever had, man, workin’ for a rock chick.”

  I felt the first rush of warmth toward Rosie I’d had in two days.

  “Hey!” Kevin asked, “What happened to your eye?”

  “Got hit in the face by a bad guy,” I told him.

  “Hope you kneed him in the nuts,” The Kevster said, leaning forward to look at my eye.

  “I bit him.”

  “That’s good too,” he replied though it was clear a knee to the nuts would have been the preferred form of retaliation, unfortunately by that time I was stun-gunned.

  “We’re looking for Rosie,” I explained.

  “Step in line, dudette. Everybody’s looking for Rosie. Ehv-ree-bud-ee. Had dudes here all day yesterday asking about him.”

  “Who are these dudes? Do you know them?” Ally asked.

  “Most of ‘em, yeah. They want some product, if-you-know-what-I-mean.”

  We nodded. We knew what he meant.

  “Anyone else?” I said.

  “Sure, first up a couple of guys I’m pretty certain were vice. You know, cool as shit but still smelled like cop. Scared the bee-jee-zus out of me that they’d want to come in but they weren’t interested in me. Then two sets of dudes who need to switch pharmaceuticals or their muscles will explode, like The Hulk. Ka-pow!” He clapped and then jiggled his hands in front of his chest.

  I looked at Ally then back to The Kevster. The first ones were likely Lee’s men, the last ones were Wilcox’s boys.

  “Two sets?”

  “Yeah, one set two guys came to the door, two sat in the car. Second set was only two.”

  I had a gut feeling so I described the shooters who started this whole fiasco and he nodded.

  “Yeah, man, that’s them. The set of four were steady but the twosome were nervous-as-shit, looked like they needed sleep. Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been to any of your parties. Rosie says your parties rock. He says you have cashews and everything. I’ve never been to a party with cashews.”

  Ally handed him a card. “If you see him or hear anything, let one of us know.”

  “Wow! A Rock Chick Card. That’s the shit, man. Does, like, Axl Rose have one of these?”

  “Not yet,” Ally said.

  “Cool.” The Kevster nodded. “You wanna come in? I’m just about to slip in The Big Lebowski and light up a spliff. Would be cool to watch The Dude with a couple of Rock Chicks.”

  I declined, though I wouldn’t mind watching The Big Lebowski. It was one of my favorite movies. So much so, it was a friend test. If you didn’t like The Dude and Lebowski, then you could be a friend but would never be a good friend. Ever.

  “No, thanks, gotta find Rosie.”

  “That’s cool, come back whenever. Later.”

  We sat in the car and stared at The Kevster’s house. Matt was on his cell, in his SUV, parked directly behind us.

  “The second set are the shooters and it doesn’t appear they’re working together with Terry’s goons.”

  “So you have a four-way competition with Lee,” Ally said.

  “Yeah, except I know what’ll happen to Rosie if Lee or I find him, I don’t know what’ll happen if those guys find him.”

  Ally kept staring at the house. “You sure we should be doing this?”

  I answered truthfully, “Hell no.”

  “We still gonna do this?”

  “Doesn’t have to be a we,” I told her.

  She turned to me. “Girl, the cards have both of our names on ‘em. Let’s motor.”

  Best friends like Ally don’t grow on trees, let me tell you. She liked The Big Lebowski as much as I did, that’s all I’m saying.

  We went back to Tim’s, with Lee’s man Matt following us. We parked two houses down and noticed crazy Grizzly sitting on his porch, the goggles still on top his head. Grizzly’s house was directly across the street from Tim’s and Grizzly looked like he spent a lot of time on the porch.

  “We should talk to him, he looks like he keeps an eye on the neighborhood,” Ally said.

  She was right, I knew she was right. I still didn’t want to talk to him.

  My cell phone went and I looked at the display. It said, “Lee Calling”.

  Shit.

  I flipped it open.

  “Hey.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Looking for Rosie,” I answered.

  “Jesus, Indy.”

  “He’s my friend and he’s my employee and you haven’t been shot at and kidnapped.”

  “Leave it to me.” He sounded kind of bossy.

  “Not at the current price, no.” I sounded kind of huffy.

  “All right, then this is no cost.”

  I felt a wave of relief sweep through me, followed closely by a wave of despair.

  I pushed down the despair.

  “Good, so I don’t have to sleep with you?”

  Ally’s eyebrows went up.

  “No, you’re gonna sleep with me, just not as payment for finding Rosie.”

  “Lee –”

  “Go back to Fortnum’s. I’ll be at your house at seven to take you to dinner.”

  I harrumphed.

  Then I asked, mainly out of curiosity because there was no way I was going to dinner with Lee, that might mean inebriation, or kissing, or something else that would take my mind off my plan and that couldn’t happen, “Where’re we going?”

  “Barolo Grill.”

  For a second, I forgot about my vow to avoid all things Lee.

  “Oh. My. God! How did you know? I love it there!”

  “Honey, you demand your family birthday dinners are there every year. It’s not hard to figure out you love it.”

  Then he disconnected.

  Something about his calling me “honey” and processing my desired birthday destination made my stomach flip over in a happy way.

  “What’s this about not sleeping with Lee?” Ally asked.

  I stared at Grizzly then looked in my rearview mirror. Matt was taking a call and shaking his head.

  “You know how I’m saying Lee and I are taking it slow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’m taking it slow, Lee wants things to go a little faster.”

  “I see.” Ally was grinning.

  “What’s with the grin?” I demanded.

  “Girl, you are so not gonna go slow.”

  Great.

  We got out of the car and walked up to Grizzly’s house. Ally forged ahead without a care in the world. I drug my heels and looked back at Matt. He’d gotten out of his SUV, pulled a handgun out of the back waistband of his jeans and tucked it in full view at the hipbone in the front. He leaned against his SUV and crossed his arms.

  “They come back, sportin’ a bodyguard,” Grizzly said by way of greeting, not looking at us but looking at Matt. “So now, I suppose you want me to think you’re serious. Especially now with you and a shiner. Jeez. You knee him in the nuts?”

  “How do you know it was a him?” I asked.

  “Girls don’t go for the cheekbones.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know that.

  “Did you?” Grizzly persisted.

  “What?”

  “Knee him in the nuts?”

  “I bit him.”

  “Bit him!” He threw his head back and laughed. “Next time, go for the gonads.”

  “Good advice,” I said.

  He looked at Matt. “Let me guess, trainee PIs.”

  “No,” I said.

  Grizzly swung his big head to me. “Bounty hunters?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not cops,” he said with derision.

  “Un-unh.”

  “Feds?” T
his was said with incredulity.

  “I own a bookstore.”

  Grizzly didn’t answer. Grizzly was staring at me as if a second head decided to sprout out of my neck at that moment.

  “I’m a bartender and back up barista,” Ally put in.

  Grizzly still didn’t answer. I noticed he had a cat in his lap and was stroking it. Two more cats sat on the cement railings of his porch and another one was curled up on his welcome mat, a welcome mat that had kitty-cat footprints printed on it.

  “You like cats?” I asked.

  “Who doesn’t like cats?” Grizzly returned.

  “I like cats,” I assured him, and it was no lie, but I would have said it anyway because he also had a shotgun sitting across his lap.

  “Me too,” Ally said.

  Grizzly looked at Matt then back to us. “Who’s the guy?”

  “Just ignore him, we are,” I told him.

  Grizzly shrugged, it was all the same to him, then said, “Good thing you did for Mr. Kumar, he has it rough. Told me you were the biggest score he had all day with your cupcakes.”

  I looked down the street to the corner store. Mr. Kumar was standing outside it, waving at us.

  We waved back.

  “We gotta take care of the little guy, you know? Franchises are takin’ over the fuckin’ world. In ten years this great nation is gonna be wall-to-wall franchise and every mom and pop shop is gonna be out of business. The franchise was the beginnin’ of the fuckin’ end for America. That and being able to turn on red. It’s red, man, don’t turn on red. Fuckin’ Nixon.”

  I wasn’t sure what Nixon had to do with franchises and traffic lights but I wasn’t going to disagree with a guy who had a shotgun on his lap and weird goggles on his head.

  “We’re looking for a friend of Tim Shubert’s, Tim lives across the road.”

  “I know Tim. I know who you’re lookin’ for too. Mr. Kumar told me. Tim’s had lots of visitors the last couple of days. Seen him before,” he nodded at Matt then looked to us, “seen you before too.”

  “His friend’s name is Rosie, little wiry guy, dirty blond hair?”

  “The Coffee Man? Yeah, Tim brings back coffees for me. That guy is a genius.”

  “Well, Rosie is my coffee man, he works at my bookstore.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “That’s a great bookstore, used to be you could read all day and not be disturbed. The old lady was cool. It still like that?”