Granny Gets Fancy

by Harper Lin

  “He’s not my friend, and yes.”

  Marijuana was legal for medical use in our state for those who had a prescription from their doctor. Recreational use was still strictly prohibited, so I wondered how Dips n’ Donuts managed to survive so openly without getting shut down. Even Arnold Grimal wasn’t that incompetent.

  I got my answer at the front door. A notice said, “Medical Marijuana Distribution Center. All buyers MUST produce their state permit for medical marijuana before we can sell to you. Peace.”

  Albert had a medical condition? Somehow, I doubted that.

  We entered, and at first, I saw nothing because I broke out in a series of sneezes.

  “Here, grandma,” some dull-eyed kid in a waitress uniform said, handing me a surgical mask. I put it on. The sneezing subsided, and I got the chance to look around.

  The dimly lit interior was fitted out like a living room, with sofas and easy chairs and bean bags. Most were occupied by young people smoking from pipes, joints, or bongs. Yes, I knew what bongs were. Just because I was old and disapproved of drugs didn’t mean I was innocent. A side room had a set of gaming consoles that would have made my grandson moan with envy. All the chairs in that room were filled by young men staring at the screens through their bloodshot eyes, their fingers moving with remarkable dexterity over the controllers. Some soothing Asian music filtered through an invisible sound system. It sounded like Buddhist chants or old plumbing when you turned on the tap. Something like that.

  To one side of the main room stood a counter where various brands of marijuana were on display on little trays. Behind it stood a middle-aged man with dreadlocks and a Phish T-shirt. He studied us through sober eyes. In fact, he was the only sober person in the room besides us.

  Albert sat at a corner table, a joint between his fingers. He saw us and flashed us a peace sign, which made him drop his joint. It landed on his shirt, and he slapped it out before it could set him on fire. We went over.

  “You have a permit for medical marijuana?” I asked as we sat down. He looked like he had been taking a lot of his “medicine” that morning.

  “Yeah, of course. The dudes here run a tight ship. They don’t want the man coming down on them.”

  “What’s your condition?” Octavian asked. Unlike me, he wasn’t having a sneezing fit. In fact, he looked remarkably comfortable in this strange place.

  “Um, like, glaucoma.”

  “What’s glaucoma?” I asked. I knew very well what it was, but I wanted to see if he did.

  “It’s, like, an eye thing … right?”

  “So your doctor gave you a permit?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, chuckling. “Doctors are cool about that.”

  I bit my lip. Yes, doctors were all too quick in handing out medicine. So quick that the average lifespan of Americans was actually declining thanks to the overprescription of opioids. At least you couldn’t overdose on marijuana like you could on opioids. The worst that could happen was that you ended up like Albert.

  That was bad enough.

  The young waitress who had given me the surgical mask came over.

  “Can I take your order?” she asked. Her eyes were almost closed, not that I could see them very well under her blond dreadlocks.

  “We don’t need any marijuana,” Octavian said. “We’re just here to speak to my, um, grandson.”

  “No, I mean, do you want something to drink? We don’t do table service for the marijuana,” she said.

  “Oh, um, an orange juice for me,” Octavian said.

  “I’ll have a chamomile tea,” I said.

  When she left, Octavian turned to me. “She didn’t look surprised to see us here. In fact, no one does.”

  Albert cut in. “Plenty of old people come here.”

  “You mean for legitimate medical reasons,” Octavian said.

  “I have a legitimate medical reason.”

  “No you don’t. You’re wasting your life.”

  “Hey, you’re not my dad.”

  “If I was, you wouldn’t be like this.”

  “Gentlemen,” I said. “We have a murder to solve.”

  “Oh yeah, that,” Albert said. “I checked out the Cheerville Gazette like you asked. No dice. I’ve been keeping an eye out at the country club too, but I haven’t seen the dude.”

  “You probably did, but you don’t remember,” Octavian grumbled. “You probably don’t remember what you did five minutes ago.”

  “Sure I do. I was, like, um …”

  “Can we focus on the task at hand, please?” I asked. Octavian pulled out his laptop.

  “Here,” he said, opening it and turning the screen so Albert could see a mosaic of photos we had collected of country club members who had sat near the back during the dinner. “Is any one of these the man who asked you to give a drink to James Garfield?”

  He studied each one. To my surprise, he appeared to actually take this seriously and focus on each face. At last, he shook his head.

  “Nope, sorry. None of these is the guy. He kinda looks like him, though.” He pointed at one man. “But the guy I talked to was thinner and had less gray hair.”

  “It must be one of the four men we couldn’t find an image for,” Octavian said.

  I nodded. “That’s something. I’ll cross-check their names with the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if any owns a black Mercedes.”

  “They won’t tell you,” Albert said.

  “Oh yes they will. I have my ways.”

  Albert laughed. “Disguises, guns, contacts in the government … you are one weird old lady!”

  “Watch your tone,” Octavian snapped.

  “What?” Albert said.

  “You should learn some respect for your elders, although I guess that won’t be forthcoming considering that you don’t have any respect for yourself.”

  “You sound just like my dad,” Albert griped.

  “No I don’t. If your dad had told you these things, you wouldn’t have turned out this way. Do you want to be a nobody for the rest of your life?”

  I was surprised that Octavian cared at all about this chronic underachiever. After all, Albert wasn’t his responsibility. But I had not yet finished getting to know my new boyfriend.

  Albert waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and picked up his extinguished joint from where it sat on the table. “You don’t know me, dude. I’m probably making more than you did at my age. The country club gig is just a cover, bro.”

  “A cover for dealing drugs.” Octavian looked ready to smack him.

  Albert laughed. “If it’s legal for some people, why shouldn’t it be legal for everyone?”

  “I don’t believe for a minute all these kids here have glaucoma or some other medical condition.”

  Albert gave him a smug smile. “Of course they don’t. They jumped through the hoops to get a medical certificate, just like I did. Not everyone wants to do that. It’s a pain, and then you end up on the Feds’ list. A lot of people prefer buying it the old way. That’s where I come in. But don’t worry, bro. Uncle Sam gets his cut. I declare it all as tips on my tax forms. They got Al Capone for dodging taxes, but they ain’t gonna get to me that way.”

  I was amazed he was confessing all this but then realized I had pretty much caught him in the act that night at the country club. Besides, it wasn’t like we could prove anything.

  Now I wanted to smack him.

  To my surprise, Octavian gave him a warm smile and put a hand on his shoulder. From the look on Albert’s face, he was even more surprised.

  “You could have a great future in business,” Octavian said. “You identified a demand in a changing market that wasn’t being adequately served. You have obviously researched your product and consumers well and offer a reliable service at a price low enough that they don’t go to the competition, namely this place. And you even keep your taxes in order. I’ve known many entrepreneurs who have fallen down on this last step. Some didn’t even try to fudge their t
axes. They were merely ignorant of the laws and either paid too much tax or paid too little and got in trouble. There’s only one flaw in your business plan.”

  “What’s that?” Albert asked. Octavian had his attention now.

  “Your business isn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, you’ll get caught.”

  “I’m careful.”

  “Perhaps you are, but are all your customers careful? If one of them gets busted, the first thing the police will do is ask where they bought the marijuana. They’ll offer to let them go in exchange for their dealer’s name. Your name.”

  Albert paled. He obviously had never thought of that.

  Again, there was a reason they called it dope.

  Albert tried to rally. “They’d never do that. Most are my friends.”

  Octavian gave a sad smile and shook his head. “Every day, there’s some poor sap in the newspaper who thought the same thing. And many of these dealers who get caught aren’t peace-loving hippies like you. They’re gangbangers who’d shoot anyone who squeals. People who command fear. And still people point the finger at them in order to save themselves.”

  Albert didn’t reply.

  Octavian squeezed his shoulder. “You’re not dumb, Albert. Underneath all that fog, you’re an intelligent young man. Someone who could make a future for himself. I’m not saying you have to be some boring old suit in an office building somewhere, but you have the entrepreneurial spirit. With a bit of training and focus, you could make some good money. You could do anything you want.”

  He produced a business card. He didn’t do a sleight of hand like Peter and Penny Price, but it had a similar effect on the stoned young man. Albert blinked at it and cocked his head as he gingerly took it. Apparently, no one had ever offered Albert a business card before.

  “When you sober up, call me.”

  We stood.

  “Thank you for your help, Albert,” I said. “It really brings the case forward.”

  “Good luck, son,” Octavian said.

  Albert sat there, looking confused.

  After we got out of there, I removed my surgical mask and took a deep breath of fresh air. Then I gave Octavian a peck on the cheek. “That was quite a pep talk you gave him.”

  “The boy needed it. And I meant everything I said. If there’s one thing I understand, it’s business and people who have the potential for it. You saw how he focused on those pictures even though he was more baked than Grandma’s apple pie? He’s got a sharp mind. He won’t for long if he keeps dulling it with that junk, though.”

  “Don’t expect him to make the right choice. People so rarely do,” I said as we got to his car.

  “That’s too cynical. I suppose given the kind of people you had to deal with in your line of work, you’re used to seeing the worst society has to offer. But in the civilian world, people tend to bumble along just fine. Albert may never live up to his full potential, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all just a phase.”

  “You’re a dear.”

  “Can you be a dear and drive?” he asked, handing me his keys. “I think all that smoke in there got me stoned. I’m having trouble thinking clearly, and that tie-dyed doughnut on the roof is beginning to look tasty. As a matter of fact, can we stop at a bakery?”

  Twelve

  A quick call to the CIA records office got an old friend there on the task of matching car ownership to the four names we couldn’t match pictures to. The CIA had access to the DMV. I wasn’t sure if they had actually been granted that liberty, but protecting the country meant we sometimes bent the rules or even broke them. Had that sometimes been abused? Yes, sadly, it had. For the most part, however, it had been a force for security.

  My friend came up with nothing. None of those four names owned a Mercedes of any color.

  I then asked her to go through the entire list of names we had, all thirty-five of them. She came up with seven matches, Mercedes being a popular vehicle. Four weren’t black, so I discarded those, leaving three. Two were matched to men who didn’t look a thing like the man who tried to ply James Garfield with wine.

  The third was owned by the man who Albert said looked a bit like him but was too old and heavy.

  That got me wondering. I went back to the source of that picture. It was a legal magazine article about Rob Fleming, a lawyer there in Cheerville who got in the news for winning a major case using a clever interpretation of contract law. I didn’t understand the intricacies of the legal argument reported in the article, but that didn’t matter. The man was obviously successful and no doubt very well off.

  The thing that struck me was the date of the article—four years ago.

  Rob Fleming’s age as reported in the article was fifty-four, meaning he was fifty-eight now. Men in their fifties were strange creatures. I’d known many of them. Their midlife crisis had generally passed. It was men in their forties who tended to buy sports cars and trade in their wives for a newer model. They were passing out of their last glimmer of youth and desperately grasping at it.

  Not so with men who’d made it into their next decade. Generally by that time, especially for professional men, they were at the top of their game in their chosen field and had accepted the fact that they were what they were. Youth was gone, their kids had grown or were close to that point, and their main concern was the fact that they were aging. A lot of men got their first heart attack in their fifties. Some men even died from one thing or another. Men in their fifties began to get scared.

  This led to one or two reactions—shrugging their shoulders and accepting that life had nothing more for them except a gradual downward slide or going on a health kick. My gym was filled with men in their fifties.

  Had Rob Fleming gone on a health kick, getting rid of the extra weight and dyeing out some of his gray hair?

  I scoured the internet for more images of Rob Fleming but couldn’t find anything new enough to confirm my suspicions.

  Until I hit pay dirt.

  Two years ago, Rob Fleming gave a speech at a convention of the state bar association. A convention report on the bar association’s online newsletter included a small and not particularly clear photo of Fleming standing at a podium and speaking to the assembly.

  Yet the photo was clear enough to show that his hair was less gray than in the previous photo, and he looked like he had lost weight.

  A halfway point between the man in the first picture and the man Albert had spoken to?

  I emailed both pictures to Albert along with an explanation of my theory. To my surprise, he texted me back within a few minutes.

  “Gr8 detective work, granie! Think ur rite. If the dude at the speach lost a few more and put in some hair die he’d be the dude with the whine. Ill try to find out more tomorow, brb.”

  Entrepreneurial potential or not, Albert needed to work on his spelling.

  And I had to Google “brb.” Turned out it meant “be right back.” But of course he wouldn’t get back to me until tomorrow at least. I guessed that in the stoner community, that counted as getting right back to someone.

  I would have to be patient. This was not the sort of murderer who would be killing again. Even if it wasn’t Fleming but some other “pillar of the community,” the man had murdered for personal reasons. He was not some lunatic like the man who’d tried to kill the movie star Cliff Armstrong, someone who would slaughter a whole crowd in order to take out his target. Whoever killed James Garfield had done so on the sly, hoping to preserve whatever part of his life Garfield had put in jeopardy.

  And what was that? The young woman in the photo? His daughter, perhaps?

  No, not a daughter. One of the personal details I found was that Fleming had two sons. No daughters. A trip to the county records office did turn up that he had gotten divorced five years previously, however.

  The following day, I got a cordial invitation from Octavian to lunch with him at the country club. Yes, he used “lunch” as a verb. He was really getting into this whole country
club thing.

  The lunch was more of a work meeting than a date. It turned out that there was a special lunch for members on the first Saturday of every month. “First Saturdays” were a long tradition at the club, and most members made a point of attending. We might just get lucky.

  I felt grateful for him offering to drive. His Lexus was far more presentable than my Nissan, and thankfully, he had recovered from the secondhand smoke of the day before. I hoped his stomach had recovered from all those éclairs he had devoured on the drive home.

  “I’m glad you heard about this,” I told him as we drove up that sweeping driveway to the plantation, um, I meant the country club. “This could be just the break we need.”

  “Actually, I had forgotten all about it until Albert told me. There’s hope for that boy yet.”

  “So he actually called the number on your business card?”

  “He did indeed. I was worried he would use it as a filter for one of his joints.”

  “Filter?”

  “You put a bit of rolled-up paper, preferably hard paper like from a business card, at the end of the joint so you can smoke the joint all the way down to the end without burning your lips.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “Here we are,” he said, stopping in front of the parking attendant.

  The lunch took place in the grand ballroom. It felt a bit eerie being back there. Octavian and I instinctively took a seat near the back by the doors so we could watch everyone come and go. Octavian was turning out to be a natural at this.

  We scanned the room, looking for Rob Fleming. There must have been a couple of hundred people standing in the room and the front hallway, both men and women. It turned out more men had brought their wives this time. I hoped that meant there would be no golf jokes.

  After we didn’t see him for a few minutes and the room began to fill up, Albert appeared at our table, dressed in his white blazer with the logo of the country club on the breast pocket. So far, we were still the only people at the table, since there was no assigned seating and most people went to the front.

  “Can I take your order?” Albert asked, acting normal as some more people filed past.