The Quiet Edge

by Rob Cornell

  “Look, lady, I don’t even know what it is. And I’ve got better things to do than pilfer through a purse I worked so hard to get back to you.”

  She held her hand out, palm up. “Give me your card.”

  “My card?”

  “I assume you have one if you really are a private detective.”

  Harrison got a card out of his wallet and handed it over.

  She held it close to her nose and squinted at it. “Kamille Bahar and Associates?” Her frown thinned her lips to a curved slash across her face. “You don’t look like either a Kamille or a Bahar.”

  “But I do look like an associate. Ms. Bahar owns the agency.”

  “I see.” No two words ever sounded more disdainful. She slipped the card into her purse. “You can go now, I suppose.”

  “Wow. Thanks, boss.”

  “No,” she said, impervious to Harrison’s sarcasm. “I won’t be hiring you at the moment.”

  As if I’d work for you, he thought while donning his most winning smile. “Have a nice day.”

  He turned and walked back the way they’d come, with a slight alteration in course. He had fifteen minutes before he had to get Dylan. Plenty of time to grab a beer at One-Eyed Betty’s.

  Three

  Jen was late. She was never late. Jacob Seelenberger took this as a good sign.

  He sat at one of the tables in the nearly deserted Java Hutt, half a cup of lukewarm mocha in front of him. Only one other patron occupied the coffee shop at the moment, a teen girl with blue hair and too many piercings to count, scribbling furiously in a spiral notebook. Probably writing poems about the agony of youth or something. Total cliche, but she was the only thing interesting to watch while he waited.

  The mocha didn’t sit right in his stomach. Rumbles and gurgles sent up a sour taste to the back of his throat. Didn’t help he hadn’t eaten all day. He’d always had a nervous stomach, ever since childhood. A recent visit to the doc also revealed he suffered from irritable bowel syndrome. Jake was supposed to avoid dairy and anything spicy. Of course, he never ate anything spicy, so no worries there. But he loved a cold glass of milk in the morning. And ice cream. How the devil was he supposed to give up ice cream?

  Another ripple of discomfort rolled through his belly. He winced and put a hand on his stomach.

  Come on, Jen. I can’t stand this much longer.

  As if the thought had summoned her, the bell above the cafe’s front door jangled. Jen rushed in, her presence instantly filling the room like it always did, like it had the first time he met her and knew he had to marry her, whatever the cost. The cost, in the end, had been a ring worth ten grand, and a little loss of control over his life. Yet, while he’d never admit it to anyone, Jake did not mind one bit that Jen wore the proverbial pants in their marriage. Jen had been born to lead, and—let’s face it—Jake always did better when he had someone to follow.

  Like he had always followed his big brother’s lead, until Joshua got himself killed almost five years ago.

  Once inside the cafe, Jen honed in on Jake and beelined to his table. She was breathing heavy and had a feral look in her eyes, a look Jake had never seen on her before. Was that…fear?

  Another good sign, much as it pained Jake to see.

  But then Jake noticed what she had clutched under her arm, and his already twitchy stomach did a couple barrel rolls.

  In a flurry of motion, Jen dropped the purse on the table, nearly knocking over Jake’s mocha, and flopped into the chair across from him. She threw her hands up, fingers curled as if she meant to strangle the very air around her. “You will not believe what just happened to me.”

  The blue-haired poet glanced up from her composition at the sudden commotion.

  Jake kept his expression frozen and his mouth shut, afraid any little quirk might give him away.

  Jen gaped at him. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”

  “What happened?” God, did his voice crack?

  Jen’s brow wrinkled. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. Just…” He patted his belly. “The stomach again.”

  She pointed at the cup in front of him. “Is there cream in that?”

  “It’s a mocha.”

  “There’s milk in that, Jakey. You know you’re not supposed to have dairy. And the caffeine’s bad, too.”

  “It’s a coffee shop. What was I supposed to order?”

  “A decaf soy latte would have been fine.”

  The mere thought of ingesting soy milk nauseated him, but he wouldn’t argue with her. He wouldn’t win. “Okay. I’ll get that next time.”

  Jen rolled her eyes. “You’re a terrible liar, Jakey.”

  “All right. I’m sorry.”

  He looked down at her purse. Plain brown leather, with one of those magnetic snaps to hold it closed. Not a bit of wear on it, because Jen never used a purse for longer than a few months before she found another she adored and had to buy. Today, this one was supposed to get an even earlier retirement than usual. Yet there it sat in front of him.

  He felt like a pair of hands were wringing his guts like a wet rag. “Did…did you get it?”

  “Oh,” Jen bellowed. “Oh, I got it. I got it, no problem. I told you I would. But then…” She pressed her fingers against her temples and rubbed. “Jesus Christ, it’s like a nightmare.” That unfamiliar fear filled her eyes again.

  “For crying in the night, Jen. My stomach can’t take anymore. What happened?”

  “Some guy,” she said, and the way she said guy made it sound like a curse, “tried to steal my purse.”

  He had to react. If he didn’t react, she would know something was off. If his reaction sounded fake, that might be even worse. She had said so herself, he was a terrible liar. But he had to lie now, and he had to lie good. His marriage depended on it.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he blurted. Every word sounded stilted in his ears. This was why he had never gotten parts in the school plays, no matter how many times he’d tried out.

  All at once, the urge to use the bathroom overtook Jake. That’s all he needed was to poop himself out in public. Damned IBS.

  “I am not kidding,” Jen said, showing no signs of suspicion. Instead, her gaze seemed to have turned inward. She stared in the middle distance between them, but was seeing something else entirely, maybe reliving the experience. “This prick yanks my purse off my arm and takes off. Then, this other guy, runs after him. It happened so fast, I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on at first.”

  “Another guy? Went after him?”

  “Yeah. I thought maybe they were in on it together. I’m still not sure they weren’t. But the other guy, he’s a private detective, comes back with the purse and tells me a story about getting in a knife fight with the first guy, and…” She shook her head as if trying to rattle the pieces of her story into some kind of order that made sense.

  Which made Jake feel a little better, because it didn’t make much sense to him, either. Private detective? Knife fight?

  “But he got your purse back?”

  “Yes. Except the one thing I really cared about isn’t in it anymore.”

  Oh, no. Please, God, no. “What thing?”

  Jen huffed and rolled her eyes. She raised a hand as if to smack Jake upside the head. She didn’t, of course. She had a sharp tongue, sure, but she never physically assaulted him. “The flash drive, you idiot. I had it. I was bringing it here just like we planned. But either the guy who took my purse or the private detective guy must have taken it. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

  The swirling flame in Jake’s gut expanded. He broke into a cold sweat. “You lost the flash drive?”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  Jen’s eyes narrowed to slits. Her upper lip curled. “I didn’t lose it, Jacob.” Her voice quivered in that way it did when she was holding back her rage. Something she only did out in public. “It was taken. And if we don’t get it back bef
ore your mother realizes it’s gone, it won’t matter that you’re her only surviving son. She will gut us both.”

  Four

  The Bell’s Two Hearted Ale Harrison drank at One-Eyed Betty’s helped thin the adrenaline that remained in his system from his afternoon adventure, but the awkward silence he now suffered on the car ride home wrecked any lasting effects. Typically, the drive from Dylan’s shrink in Ferndale to their house in Royal Oak only took about ten minutes. Alas, it was construction season in Michigan, and Woodward had a lane closure that put their current arrival time in the Who the hell knows? range.

  Dylan hadn’t said a single word since he got in the car. He stared out the passenger-side window, arms crossed, his head in some other world Harrison would never have access to. A lock of his long dark hair hung in his face, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. Occasionally, he slipped a hand free to scratch at the stubble on his cheek, then folded his arms back up.

  He’d been like this for the past three days. Broody. Uncommunicative. Down. After a year of living with his brother’s bipolar, Harrison thought he should be used to these moments, but…not so much. He never knew what the hell to say to Dylan during one of his depressive states.

  As far as his manic states went? That was a different monster entirely.

  His brother was only three years younger than Harrison, had turned forty a few months ago, but sometimes Dylan still seemed like a teenager to Harrison. Intellectually, Harrison understood this came from a combination of Dylan’s illness and Harrison’s new caretaker role. It also didn’t help they both once again lived in the house they grew up in together. It was like a permanent flashback to their high school years, only without their parents. He knew all this, understood it fine, yet still sometimes wanted to smack Dylan upside the head and tell him to act his age, get over it, snap out of it.

  He didn’t, though. Not once.

  He hadn’t quit the FBI and moved back to Michigan to berate his little brother. He’d come to help him. He only wished he knew how. Which was the crux of it all—after a year of carting Dylan to psychiatrist and therapy appointments, keeping on top of his latest prescriptions and making sure he took them, contributing an income to Dylan’s criminally anemic disability check, nothing had changed. Dylan still struggled, and Harrison did not know what more he could do.

  The car’s air conditioning was on full blast. Harrison still felt a little squishy under his arms and in his crotch from all the sweating he’d done. He looked forward to a shower and change of clothes when they got home. If they got home.

  Dylan sighed and shifted in his seat as if uncomfortable or annoyed or…Harrison didn’t know what.

  Finally, Harrison couldn’t take the silence anymore.

  “What’s up?”

  “It’s freezing in here.”

  “You want to turn down the air?”

  “Whatever.”

  Traffic started to move again. Daring to hope they might make it through the construction snarl, Harrison crept forward a half car length before the brake lights on the Civic in front of them flared and he had to stop again. He noticed himself strangling the steering wheel with both hands and forced himself to ease his grip.

  “Want to tell me how it went with Dr. Grayson?”

  Dylan sighed again.

  Harrison waited, but apparently that was all the answer he was going to get.

  “That good, huh?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t matter? Then why do I take you to her every week?”

  “You don’t have to. I can drive myself.”

  Harrison inched the car forward, as if that might encourage everyone stuck in front of him to suddenly move out of the way. The Civic didn’t go anywhere, though. Nor did the construction crew suddenly clear the road and wave everyone on by.

  “First off, you don’t have a working vehicle. Secondly, last time I let you borrow my car to go to an appointment, you skipped the appointment and spent two-hundred dollars at Time Travelers on Magic the Gathering cards.”

  Dylan shrugged. “So?”

  “Two. Hundred. Dollars. And you don’t even play Magic the Gathering.”

  “I like the artwork on the cards.”

  “Again, I say, two-hundred—”

  “Stop harping on me.”

  “I’m not harping. I’m…exasperated.”

  “You already chewed me out about the cards. Why are you bringing this up now?”

  “Because you just—”

  The person in the black F-150 spewing diesel fumes behind them honked his horn. What the hell did he think that would accomplish? He could see as well as anybody that traffic wasn’t moving.

  Harrison glared at his rear view mirror and resisted the urge to flip the douche the bird.

  “I’m sorry I’m not Mr. Sunshine,” Dylan said. “It’s not like I want to be this way.”

  Harrison took a deep breath. “I don’t expect you to be Mr. Sunshine. I asked how your appointment went. Is that a crime?”

  “It went the way it always does. Nothing new. I complain. She listens. She offers advice that hasn’t helped for the last ten years, but what else is she going to say?”

  “You’ve been seeing her for ten years?”

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “Not her. But plenty of others. And they all say the same basic crap. Same with the psychiatrists. They prescribe the same drugs, each one of them thinking they’re going to work differently because…I don’t know, their Rx pad is better than the others?” He slumped in his seat. “It’s tedious.”

  It sure sounded tedious. It also struck Harrison how little he knew about his brother’s situation. Mom had never talked much about it, and Dylan never talked about it at all. Not that Harrison had done a very good job of staying in touch with his brother after college. He’d been too wrapped up in his own life. Until mom died, leaving no one else to take care of Dylan.

  “I’m trying to help,” Harrison said. “You know that, right?”

  Another sigh and shrug. “I guess.”

  Traffic moved another few feet. Harrison wondered how it would feel spending his forty-fourth birthday stuck in traffic on Woodward Avenue. Only two more months to go. At this pace he might find out.

  The silence fell between them again. Harrison debated turning on some music. Maybe that new play list of 90s rock ballads he’d put together the other night. Music would be the easy way through this silent crawl home. The easy way wasn’t his style, though.

  “You want to hear about my adventure I had while you were in with Dr. Grayson?”

  That drew Dylan’s gaze. “Adventure?”

  “I foiled a purse snatching.”

  The corner of Dylan’s mouth quirked, like he wanted to smile but couldn’t make it happen. “Bullshit.”

  Harrison raised one hand and put the other over his heart. (Not like he needed either of them on the wheel at the moment.) “I swear on the memory of Kurt Cobain.”

  “That’s pretty serious for you.”

  Was that a hint of light in Dylan’s eyes? Harrison felt a pinch in his chest. He grinned. “That’s because I am serious. I’m headed to the Java Hutt and this guy grabs the purse of this lady behind me. My instincts took over…”

  “Of course they did.”

  “…and I ran after him.”

  Harrison relayed the whole thing in minute detail, embellishing here and there in response to Dylan’s reactions to the story, while Dylan would pipe in with an occasional “No way” or “You’re kidding,” growing more animated than he had been in days. Harrison became so wrapped up in the experience, he lost track of the traffic jam, the construction, the jerkoff in the F-150, and startled himself when he pulled into their driveway with barely any memory of the rest of the trip home.

  He pulled into their attached garage and wrapped up his tale while the garage door rumbled closed behind them, making sure to get across the utter lack of gratitude he received from the woman whose purse he’d recovered.
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  A wisp of a smile touched Dylan’s lips. “My big brother. Always the hero.”

  “Not always.”

  And as quickly as a wisp of smoke, the smile disappeared. “Yeah, always.”

  He got out of the car and went inside, leaving Harrison to sit there wondering what the hell that meant.

  Five

  Someone had burned something on the stove. The stink of it—over-fried cheese, maybe—reached Jake in the hallway as he made his way down to apartment 2C. The walls had a yellow film on them the same hue as the fingers of a lifetime smoker. Jake made sure to stay in the center of the hall so he wouldn’t accidentally touch them. He didn’t want to contract anything. He could practically feel the hepatitis in the air. Just walking into this rundown crypt of an apartment complex made Jake’s skin itchy.

  Of course, what else did you expect to find in a city like Roseville, also lovingly known as Roachville by the locals?

  This was the second time Jake had come here. He planned to make it his last.

  When he reached 2C and faced the displeasurable task of knocking, he pulled his handkerchief from the front pocket of his tan suit coat and wrapped it around his knuckles. Three quick knocks, then he stuffed the handkerchief in the pocket of his slacks, straightened his spine, and situated his face in what he hoped was a stern expression of disapproval. The man who lived here had some serious explaining to do, and Jake found he did better with confrontation if he prepared himself ahead of time.

  He had even rehearsed on the drive over what he would say when Ken Jankowski answered the door.

  Mr. Jankowski, your failure has put me in a most precarious position.

  Not too aggressive, but a clear and respectful rebuke. Calling him Mister Jankowski, instead of Ken, added the right touch. It said, I am treating you as an equal even though I am disappointed in your performance.

  Unfortunately, he’d worked so hard on that opening line, he hadn’t had a chance to think through what he would further say, other than demand his money back.