The Jetpack Boogie: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 4)

by Richard Levesque

  Carmelita nodded—a little uncomfortably, I thought.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Peggy called back last night, just after five.”

  Alarmed, I said, “Can you play that one, too?”

  She nodded. A moment, later she opened her mouth again, and the conversation came out.

  “Hello?” Carmelita said.

  “Carmelita?” Peggy sounded panicked.

  “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “He was here.”

  “Hennigar?”

  “Yes.”

  Damn it! I thought, as I pictured Cosmo giving up my business address. For all I knew, Elsa hadn’t given this Hennigar person my name at all. Maybe she’d just said that she’d learned about the power source through someone she’d met at Cosmo’s mansion. If that was true, then any trouble that followed was all Cosmo’s fault. I imagined myself holding him by the collar with one hand and punching him in the face with the other.

  “Are you all right?” Carmelita asked on the recording.

  “Yes. Just shaken up.”

  “He didn’t hurt you?” Carmelita re-affirmed.

  “No. I’m fine. Really. But that man is scary. He makes me think of a lizard that’s learned to get up on its back legs and talk.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Jed. He almost barged into the inner office, but I threatened to scream. He just smiled, Carmelita. It was the scariest smile I’ve ever seen. Like a snake if a snake could smile.”

  “Did he leave then?”

  “He tried to get me to give him Jed’s home address, but I wouldn’t. I told him to leave, and I threatened to scream again. He said no one would hear me, and I asked if he really wanted to try me. I got that smile out of him again one more time, and then he turned around and went out the door.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Five minutes. I wanted to make sure he was good and gone before I called you. I’m still shaking.”

  “Do you want me to come there? Take you home?”

  Peggy hesitated on the recording and then said, “Would you?”

  Then the recording ended.

  I looked at Carmelita, amazed at the way she’d handled the situation with more care than many human beings would have been able to muster. The feeling was almost enough to chase away my anger at Beadle, and the eagerness with which I awaited Andrik Hennigar. Let him come, I thought. Let him.

  “How was she?” I asked.

  “Like she said. Shaken. But all right.”

  “You made sure no one followed you?”

  “Of course. Not to her place and not back here. I told her she shouldn’t go into the office today, and she agreed. Reluctantly, but she agreed. Before I left, I told Guillermo that there was some trouble at the office and that if you came through the portal not to let you out of his sight. Then, when I got back here after Peggy’s, we agreed that he should shut down the crossover machine and take it back to the workshop where it would be safer in case anyone came here trying to make trouble.”

  “And Guillermo went for it?”

  “He did. I find that I can convince him of a lot without trying too hard.”

  I’m sure, I thought, given how you look just like a twenty-five-year-old version of his late wife.

  “And after that, you crossed over and just waited for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “All night.”

  “All night,” she repeated.

  “Thank you, Carmelita.”

  “You’re welcome.” She sounded a little surprised to have gotten the accolade from me.

  “I mean it,” I said. “You took care of Peggy and Guillermo. Not to mention safeguarding the machine and making sure I was all right. That’s great work.”

  “There’s one more thing, too, since we’re talking about how wonderful I am.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Peggy got one more lead on Katrina Mulligan. I called the number and asked a few questions. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I’d prefer to handle those things myself, but given the circumstances, no. It’s fine. I’ve got bigger things to worry about now.”

  Turning back to the phone, I called Peggy at home. She answered on the third ring and sounded terribly relieved to hear my voice.

  “I wanted to check on you,” I said.

  “And I’ve been wanting to check on you. Carmelita was awfully tight-lipped about where you were last night. What’s been happening?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about. Helping Guillermo with an experiment. It’s all under control now.”

  “Are you going to be back in the office tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All right. Well, I’ll be there, too.”

  “Thanks, Peggy. And thanks for being so on top of things last night. You’re sure you’re ready to come back to work after that creep came in there?”

  “I don’t scare easy, Jed. You know that.”

  I did, and I told her so. Then I hung up and immediately dialed again.

  “Who now?” Carmelita asked as the phone rang in my ear. “Sherise?”

  I shook my head and listened as the line clicked and a woman said, “Hello?”

  “Yeah, can I speak to Cosmo Beadle?” I answered, giving Carmelita a look that said she had the answer to her question now.

  The woman on the line said, “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Beadle isn’t here at the moment. May I take a message?”

  “This is Jed Strait. I need him to—”

  “Mr. Strait,” the woman said, cutting me off. “Mr. Beadle gave me explicit instructions should you call. He left a note, which I’ve got…right here.” I heard a moment’s shuffling of papers and then the woman said, “Mr. Beadle writes the following: ‘That Nazi piker has sicced the dogs on us, Jed. You’re not safe where you are. Me neither. I’m going into hiding for a week or so, and I suggest you do the same. Be on the lookout for a European fellow named Hennigar. He wants Elsa, and I don’t think he has much patience.’ That’s the end of the message, Mr. Strait.”

  I sighed and thanked her. “If he calls in, be sure and tell him I phoned. Let me give you a number where I can be reached.” Turning to Carmelita, I said, “Have you got one of Guillermo’s phones?”

  “I do.”

  “The number?”

  She wrote it down, and I read it back to Cosmo’s secretary.

  After I hung up, Carmelita said, “What now?”

  “Now…” I said. “Now, I think I need to go to Sherise. We’ve got some things to talk about that I don’t want to do over the phone. When I get back we can talk about Katrina Mulligan.”

  “I should still drive you.”

  “I’m fine, Carmelita. You wouldn’t believe the things I had to drive in that other world, and I was fine.”

  “You didn’t have any moments of lost time like you had here?”

  I could have lied, but she would have seen through it. “Twice. But none while driving. Or flying.”

  She raised an eyebrow at this. “That’s two too many, Jed. I’m driving you until Guillermo gives you the all clear.”

  “Fine. But you stay in the car when we get there.”

  “Of course.”

  Carmelita had taken charge of my notepad, wallet, license, keys, and gun when I’d crossed over. Now she gave everything back to me, along with the photo of Katrina Mulligan. I slipped on the shoulder holster and pocketed the wallet and keys, absently transferring Jetpack Jed’s wallet to the inner pocket of my jacket alongside my license and the photo; the tablet went into my other inside coat pocket. In my other front pants pocket, I still had Elvira’s letter to Guillermo, and in either outer jacket pocket, I had a non-lethal gun—one from Guillermo and one from Elsa.

  Thus laden, I went into the bedroom closet and got my old fedora, dropping it onto my head and feeling like I’d just run into a long-lost friend. Then I headed for the back door, where Carmelita was waiting. Before I got there, though, th
e phone rang.

  Cosmo, I thought.

  I picked up the receiver, ready to give the old millionaire a piece of my mind. Instead, I heard a woman’s voice, and she was shouting.

  “Strait! Where the hell have you been today?”

  “Who is this?” I asked, matching her anger if not her volume.

  “It’s Imelda! Why does no one answer the phone in your office? You were supposed to get back to me by today on Katrina Mulligan!”

  I took a deep breath, reminding myself that I still had bills to pay and that Imelda Bettencourt was the only source of income I had right now. “There was a problem at the office, and I had to send my secretary home for the day. My assistant and I have been hitting those names you gave me, but all of those women seem to be colluding to keep me from getting anything concrete.”

  “You’re saying you’ve got nothing? For God’s sake, Jed. The arraignment is tomorrow. I can’t go in there with nothing.”

  “There’s no way to postpone? Don’t lawyers do that all the time?”

  “Not with a case like this. The press is all over this thing. I need to cast a little doubt on the cops’ theory and I have to do it quick. Otherwise, Peter’s as good as done in Hollywood no matter what the trial ends up delivering. You know what happened to Fatty Arbuckle, don’t you?”

  I had no idea who Fatty Arbuckle was, but there had been plenty of Hollywood scandals in the world I’d grown up in, so I had a pretty good idea of what she was getting at.

  Imelda went on. “If I lose Peter, then you lose me. Do you follow?”

  I sighed and said, “I do.”

  She acted as though I hadn’t acknowledged her threat and made it more explicit to drive the point home. “Not only will I not be hiring you anymore, but I’ll make sure you don’t get work as an investigator for any other attorney in the city. You’ll be lucky if you get hired to find a lost puppy.”

  “All right,” I said. “I understand. You need something on Katrina quickly. I’m on it. But if all of her friends keep to the little secret circle they’ve got going, you can’t blame that on me.”

  “Well it’s not getting blamed on me. I can tell you that.” There was a pause where I could hear her breathing loudly into the phone, her anger barely contained. “I need you to call me by five today with something concrete or you can call us done.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Five it is.” Then I hung up without waiting to hear what else she had to say. Looking at Carmelita, I said, “Sherise is going to have to wait. What did you say you got on Katrina’s friends?”

  She cocked her head a little, processing what I’d just said along with the change in plans, and then said, “Peggy got a number for the last woman on the list. Beatrice Stark. When I called her, she didn’t sound like those other women. She sounded smug when talking about Katrina. Like Katrina needed to be taken down a few rungs.”

  “So, the hen circle hadn’t gotten to her,” I said. “Or she’s been excluded from it and had no qualms about telling the truth, maybe out of spite.”

  “Perhaps,” Carmelita said, her tone thoughtful. It was as though the possibility of such behavior had never occurred to her before. “Either way, she couldn’t tell me where Katrina is. She hasn’t heard from her since the murder but has been following it in the papers. And…” She drew out the last bit for suspense before saying, “I got the name of the old boyfriend.”

  “The one who owns hotels?” I asked.

  “The one. Jonas Pfeiffer. I made a call to my friend at The Record. Rich boy, apparently. Inherited a ton of cash and sank it all into upscale hotels. Some resorts in Mexico like that one woman told you, but others here.”

  “Where?”

  She closed her eyes a moment, accessing her memory, and then said, “Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Santa Barbara.”

  My heartbeat kicked up into a new gear as I said, “Santa Monica.”

  “You’re sure? Beverly Hills would be the closer one to start with.”

  I shook my head. “Santa Monica,” I insisted, picturing the abandoned hotel that Jetpack Jed had driven past this morning. Looking at my watch, I saw it was almost quarter past one. Less than four hours to find Katrina and secure a payday—and future paydays—from Imelda. “We don’t have a lot of time,” I said and headed for the door.

  “We’ll have a bit of traffic,” Carmelita said.

  “I know. Maybe I should take the jetpack.”

  “If you try, I’ll have to stop you. You’ve done all the soloing you’re going to do until Guillermo gets your malady sorted out.”

  I knew she was being flippant, but I could also tell that she meant the part about stopping me from flying. I also knew she was more than capable of putting a stop to me—or just about anyone else—if she wanted to.

  “Fine,” I said. “You drive. But pretend you’re flying, all right?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It took almost an hour to get to Santa Monica. More than once, I wished for the jetpack or for the ability to make the car fly above the traffic, if only in little bursts. Carmelita was a competent driver, though, and did her best to dart in and out of clusters of traffic or to jump over to less crowded streets and then back onto our main route.

  When we were still about five miles away from our destination, the jock on the radio started his chatter after playing “Keep Your Light On” by a kid act calling himself Little Mick and the Mighty Mites. “All right, all right. If you liked that one, then grab your seat with both hands ‘cause you’re gonna have a hard, hard time keeping still when I play the next one.” The jock’s delivery was quite different from Jetpack Jed’s, which I found as a relief. Even so, hearing the chatter made me think of my double and how I still wanted to take him apart. The jock continued, saying, “You’ve been asking for it all day, but I can’t play it non-stop, kiddies, can I? All right, all right. Here it is. The Sunsetters and ‘The Last Lie You’ll Tell.’”

  With that, my guitar started coming through the speakers.

  “Unbelievable,” I said.

  “You don’t like it?” Carmelita asked.

  “No, it’s not that. It’s…just listen.” When the male vocal kicked in, I said, “Hear that?”

  She cocked her head and said, “It’s you.”

  “Terrible, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not a good judge. All the songs sound the same to me. Well, not the same. I just can’t tell what’s good and what’s not. Is this one any good?”

  “Apparently. I’m not a fan of my own voice, but Sherise sounds great. The guitar’s not bad, I suppose.”

  We listened in silence, and though I still struggled with the sound of my voice, I could see where the jock was coming from. It was strange hearing it this way, not in the club the way Sherise and I had performed it, not in my living room where I’d written parts of it and practiced the licks. Mostly, though, I thought about Sherise and how much she believed in the song, how much work she’d done in just the past couple of days to get the song on the air this way. I felt regret that she’d had to do all that work without me, and I almost asked Carmelita for the phone, intent on calling Sherise and trying to make up with her that way rather than in person.

  The song ended before I made up my mind, and the jock started talking again. “Now that is a jumper, kiddies. Y’all recovered from that yet? While you catch your breath, I’m gonna play a taste of an interview I did with one of the Sunsetters yesterday. If you’ve been listening today, you’ve heard this in bits and pieces, and I’m gonna stretch it out a little more until the end of the show. But here. Have a listen.”

  The interview began with the jock asking Sherise how long she’d been singing.

  “Professionally, not that long,” she said. “My partner in The Sunsetters and I started working on a few songs a couple months back, but I’ve been singing just for myself for a long time.”

  “And your partner, that would be this Jed Strait you told me about earlier?”

  “Yes, that’s ri
ght.”

  “He’s playing the guitar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’d he get that sound? It’s not like anything I think I’ve heard before.”

  “Jed’s got a great sound, doesn’t he? He was in the war and played some before he went off to fight. He says he just came home with those ideas in his head and started playing practically as soon as he got off the ship in New York.”

  “Well, I think that’s pretty special. Now, you said Mr. Strait doesn’t work as a full-time musician. What else does he do?”

  “Jed’s a private detective,” she said, and I could hear happiness in her voice as she was talking about me, pride even. It made me want to go to her right now instead of following this lead to Santa Monica.

  “And you? You said you’ve only been singing for a little while? How do you keep the lights burning?”

  “I run a nightclub and dance there sometimes.”

  “You want to give your club a free plug?”

  She laughed a little and said, “It’s called Let There Be Darkness. And it’s not a place for children.”

  “My goodness,” the jock said. And then he was back live, the playback of the recorded interview over. “Well, I hope you enjoyed that little bit of chatter with Sherise Pike from The Sunsetters. She’s a real stick of dynamite if you ask me, and this record is just blowing up. If you’ll stick around, next hour I’m gonna sneak in the B-side even though I’m not supposed to do it. Don’t tell, now! But you gotta stick around for the commercials or they’re gonna shut me down.”

  From there, he went into a pre-recorded ad for a tire store south of downtown, and I clicked the radio off.

  “You’re famous,” Carmelita said as she changed lanes and accelerated away from a panel truck.

  “Hardly,” I said. Still, despite my denial, I was impressed at the work Sherise had done to get the song so much exposure.