Reed Ferguson Short Stories

by Renee Pawlish

  I glanced at a panel with buzzers for individual apartments on the wall by the door. One was labeled for the manager, in apartment 105. I hit the buzzer and waited. A moment later, a small gray-haired man limped toward the door. He surveyed me through the glass and then opened the door.

  “Yes?” His voice was nasal, and he had a small oxygen tank hanging over his shoulder, with a tube that snaked up to his bulbous nose.

  “You’re the manager?” I asked.

  He nodded and gave me a curt smile that was all yellow teeth. “I don’t have any units available.”

  I pulled out my wallet and showed him my private investigator’s license. I didn’t actually need to be licensed in the state of Colorado, and the license was something I bought off the Internet, but I found it helped give me credibility, and it loosened lips.

  He gave it a perfunctory look and then squinted at me. “Who’s in trouble?”

  I switched my wallet for my phone and showed him the best picture I had of Jerrod’s lady friend. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  “Sure, that’s Lashondra Maher. She’s in 302. Is she in trouble?”

  Now I had her name. I asked him to spell it and I typed it into an app on my phone.

  “How long has she lived here?”

  He thought about that. “Oh, just a month. She moved here from Missouri. She doesn’t seem like the type for this place. It’s mostly retired people, but she seemed to want it and she had the money for her deposit. She’s been a good tenant so far.” He eyed me suspiciously. “Are you here to ruin that?”

  I ignored that. “She was last seen with this man.” I didn’t really know if my statement was true, and I sounded like a two-bit detective in a cheap novel, but it was a good way to keep the conversation going. I showed him a picture of Jerrod. “Has he been visiting her before last night?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t get out much.” He studied me closely. “You’re looking for them?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This man,” I pointed at my phone, “didn’t show up for work today. I’d like to talk to Lashondra about him.”

  “I don’t know if she’s home.” He opened the door wider. “Let’s go see.”

  It was an effort for him to navigate the stairs, and our progress was slow. He was sucking air by the time we reached the third floor, and I had a brief vision of him having a heart attack. I did not want to perform CPR on him. I followed him to 302 and he rapped on the door with withered knuckles. We waited and then he knocked again, but no one answered.

  “She’s not home,” he said, stating the obvious.

  “Is there anyone else I could talk to who might have seen my friend?” I gestured down the hall. “May I ask around?”

  He frowned. “I can’t have you bugging everyone.”

  “It’s important.” I spoke in my most official-sounding voice.

  “Well.” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “We could talk to Norm, down in 101. He’s got a small porch, and he sits around all day, just watching people come and go.” There was slight disapproval in his tone.

  “Good.” I started for the stairs before he could change his mind.

  It was a laborious process getting back to the first floor, and he was huffing again as we stopped in front of unit 101.

  “Hey, Norm,” the manager called out as he knocked on the door.

  The door opened and the sounds of an old game show blared into the hall. A man who could’ve been the manager’s twin, except that he was a good foot taller, stood with his hand on the doorknob. He even had the accompanying oxygen and tube under a large nose.

  “Whaddaya want?” he asked. His voice boomed at us over the television.

  The manager jerked a thumb at me. “He wants to know if you saw Lashondra last night.”

  “Or today,” I interjected.

  “He thinks a guy Lashondra was with might be missing,” the manager said.

  “Huh.” Norm scrutinized me as his lips went in and out slowly. “I saw Lashondra last night. She was getting it on with her boyfriend.”

  “You don’t say?” the manager’s ears perked up. He waited for the sordid details.

  I steered the conversation away from that and showed Norm a picture of Jerrod.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Norm said.

  “You saw them last night?” I reiterated.

  “Yep,” Norm said. He gestured toward the front of the building. “I was sitting on my porch and I saw her walking him to a nice silver car. I think he was drunk because he was kinda staggering. He was carrying on, and she had to help him to the car.”

  “What’d he say?” I continued.

  “He mumbled something about partying at the lake, and he grabbed her ass.” Norm winked at me. “She pushed his hand away kinda rough, and that only made him go after her more. Wherever they are, I’d say they’re having a good time, if you know what I mean.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “What else did he say?”

  He shrugged. “She was getting him into the car by then, and I didn’t hear him say anything else.”

  The manager crossed his arms. “I guess that’s it.”

  We turned to go.

  “But,” Norm said. I paused. “She said something about getting dessert.”

  “They were going out to eat?” The manager snorted. “That’s it?”

  Norm winked again. “If you saw the look on her face, I think he was the dessert for her.”

  I eyed him. “What look?”

  “Like she couldn’t wait to get at him.” He grinned lasciviously. “That woman had a wild look in her eyes. Trust me, they’re not missing, they’re somewhere having a really crazy time.” He snickered and stared at me.

  “There you have it,” the manager pronounced.

  “Yep,” Norm said.

  I’d gotten all I was going to get from them, so I thanked them both and left. As I walked back to my car, I mulled over this latest bit of information. Had Jerrod gone with Lashondra on a long weekend without bothering to tell his work? From what Darcy said, that didn’t sound like him. Maybe he was too drunk to worry about that. And he clearly wouldn’t have told Darcy anything. I couldn’t help but wonder if something more sinister was afoot. What else could account for the way Jerrod and Lashondra were acting? I tried to think beyond the obvious. Could Lashondra have drugged Jerrod and been taking him somewhere against his will?

  Regardless, I wanted to know more about Lashondra Maher, so I headed home.

  Chapter Seven

  I let myself in the condo and went straight to my office, logged onto the computer, and typed Lashondra Maher in a Google search. It was an unusual name, but I didn’t get any direct hits. The results included sites that had “Lashondra” as a first name, with a different last name, and the same with “Maher.” When I put quotes around “Lashondra Maher,” I came up with nothing.

  My office is decorated with my favorite possessions: a collection of film noir DVDs, first edition mystery novels, and framed posters of The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, two of my favorite movies with Humphrey Bogart. As was my habit, I glanced up at them for inspiration.

  “What am I missing?” I muttered to Bogie.

  He stayed silent.

  I sat back and absentmindedly clicked through the search results while I racked my brain for something I might’ve missed. Had I gotten the name wrong? But I’d verified it with the apartment manager.

  I was staring at the computer screen when I noticed a link that was part of an article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a Missouri newspaper. The headline read, “Jennings Woman Guilty of Fraud.” I looked more closely. A portion of the article was visible below the link, and it started with “Thirty-year-old Destiny Maher was convicted of fraud…” I leaned in and clicked on the article.

  The item was three years old, and short. It said that the case against a woman named Destiny Maher had wrapped up, and that she had been convicted of credit card fraud and stealing checks from her friend. Th
e amount of money, over twenty thousand dollars, meant that she faced up to a year in prison.

  I thought fast. The apartment manager had said Lashondra had moved to Denver from Missouri. I googled Jennings, Missouri, and found that it’s a St. Louis suburb. Were Lashondra and Destiny related?

  I searched for Destiny Maher, but found only one more article about her arrest. Beyond what little I’d already learned, it said that she’d been turned in by her boyfriend. I spent a while poking around the Internet, but I couldn’t find a connection between Lashondra and Destiny. If there was one, I knew who might be able to find it. I picked up my cell phone and called a number.

  “What’s up, O Great Detective?” a laid back voice said.

  This from Cal Whitmore, my best friend and the Dr. Watson to my Sherlock Holmes. Although, since Cal is way smarter than I could ever hope to be, he really should have been the Holmes of our duo. He’s a computer genius – as well as a genius, literally – and he could find just about anything on the Internet. And, like many geniuses, he also has little common sense.

  “Do you have a minute?” I asked.

  “I’m in the middle of a project, but I can make time.”

  Cal owns a consulting firm that specializes in computer cyber-security. He’s frequently hired to break into systems in order to see just how ‘protected’ they really are. And he usually succeeds.

  I explained about Jerrod Rhodman and Lashondra Maher, and concluded with, “Can you see if Lashondra Maher and Destiny Maher are connected somehow?”

  “Sure.”

  I spelled the names for him.

  “Hold on,” he said, then started humming.

  I heard the sound of his fingers clicking on the keyboard as he worked. It was like a maestro at a piano. And it didn’t take him long to find an answer.

  “Lashondra and Destiny are the same person,” he said after a minute.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s Destiny Lashondra Maher.”

  “So she’s going by her middle name now,” I said. “And she was convicted of credit card fraud.”

  “I found her record, too. She spent a year in prison for that. And you’re not going to believe who turned her in.”

  Some of the things Jerrod had said popped into my head. “Her boyfriend at the time, Jerrod Rhodman.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “When I spoke with Jerrod about the woman he was seeing on the side, he said that Darcy didn’t need to concern herself with things from his past. The way he said it made me think Lashondra – or Destiny – was his ex. And Darcy also overheard him say ‘I’m sorry for what I did to you.’ If he was talking to Lashondra, maybe he was apologizing for turning her in.”

  “Huh,” he said. “This woman and Jerrod have hooked up again?”

  “It looks like it. And Jerrod has been making a lot of cash withdrawals lately. I wonder if Lashondra’s behind that.”

  “Could be.”

  “And now Jerrod is missing.”

  “Find her, find him.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Hey, thanks for the help,” I said.

  “As long as I can stay here, no problem.”

  I laughed. Cal had helped me a lot in the past, but one thing he didn’t want to do was leave the confines of his secluded house in the foothills west of Denver. He was a hermit, without the beard, and most of the time, without the crazy.

  “Tell Willie hi,” he said.

  “Will do.”

  I ended the call and thought for a moment. Jerrod Rhodman was carrying on with his former girlfriend – a known felon. I thought back to my search of his house. He’d been withdrawing large sums of money, as recently as yesterday. And now he appeared to be missing. The whole thing stank, and one question kept rattling around in my brain.

  What had Lashondra done to Jerrod?

  Chapter Eight

  I was about to call Darcy when I heard the front door open.

  “Reed?” Willie called out.

  I got up and sauntered into the living room. Willie was just coming out of the kitchen with two glasses of water. Darcy was standing near the couch. If dinner and a drink had been supposed to relax her, it hadn’t worked. Her brow was furrowed, and she was nervously running a hand along the seam of her silk blouse.

  “What’d you find out?” she asked me.

  “The woman Jerrod was with is Destiny Lashondra Maher,” I said. “Have you heard of her?”

  Darcy sighed. “No.”

  I told them everything I’d learned, including my conversation with the geriatric duo at Maher’s apartment. “She’s going by ‘Lashondra’ now.”

  Darcy was shaking her head when I finished. “Wow. Jerrod fell for her, she scammed him, and he sent her to jail.”

  I nodded. “It looks that way.”

  Willie put the glasses of water on the coffee table. “What about those bank statements and withdrawals that Jerrod was making? Do you think he’s giving money to Lashondra again?”

  “It’s a good possibility,” I said.

  Darcy snorted. “Good Lord, she suckered him again?”

  “What would he see in her?” Willie murmured.

  “She doesn’t hold a candle to you,” I said to Darcy.

  Willie agreed.

  Darcy giggled. “Well, aren’t you both sweet?”

  “He may have fallen for her, and they left for a romantic getaway, but I wonder if that’s all.” I told them my suspicion that Lashondra might have drugged Jerrod.

  Darcy frowned. “Jerrod may be a pud, but I’d hate to see anything happen to him.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “I need to see if I can find them.”

  “Where’d they go?” Willie asked.

  “Norm overheard Jerrod say something about going to the lake.” I looked at Darcy. “Any idea what that means?”

  “The lake?” Darcy’s lips twisted up as she thought. “That might be his friend’s place near Fort Morgan. Jerrod went there one weekend without me.”

  Fort Morgan is a small town eighty miles northeast of Denver. Other than the fact that it’s surrounded by farmland, I didn’t know much about the area, or what lakes were around there.

  “You think that’s it?” Willie asked me.

  “Could be,” I said. I looked at Darcy. “Where in Fort Morgan?”

  Her lips twisted more. “Hmm, it was a while back, right after I met him. I don’t think he said, but I think his friend owned the place. It’s a private lake, and you have to pay dues to be able to use it.”

  “What’s the friend’s name?”

  “Hmm. Pack … no, Patton. I remember because it made me think of General Patton.”

  I grinned. “Whatever works.” I checked the time. “I better get going. It’ll take me an hour to get out there.”

  “You’re going in the dark?” Darcy asked, taking on Willie’s worrying role.

  “Lashondra’s had a twenty-four hour head start,” I said. “Besides, if I can find this place, and she’s there with Jerrod, the darkness will give me cover.”

  “Why don’t you take Cal or the Goofballs with you, just in case?” Willie suggested. “As backup.”

  “I doubt I could get Cal to leave his house, and at this time of night?” I shook my head. “And even if I could, it’d take him a while to get here, and that’s more lost time.”

  “Then the Goofballs,” she said.

  I hesitated. “Quiet is something those two are not. I’m probably better on my own. I’m just going to see if I can find the place. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Uh-huh.” Willie knew better.

  “Taking Ace and Deuce is a good idea,” Darcy said. “They could call for help if you run into trouble. I’d feel terrible if something happened to you because of all this.”

  I grinned again. “Nothing will hurt the Grea
t Detective.”

  They both chuckled, but I could tell it would make them feel better if I had the Goofballs accompany me, so I agreed.

  I called Ace’s cellphone as I went into the bedroom to retrieve my Glock.

  “Hey, Reed,” he greeted me cheerily. “We’re playing pool. Want to join us?”

  “Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to join me.”

  “For pool? I just asked if you wanted to play with us.”

  “No, I mean…” I whacked my forehead with my palm. “I want your help with a case.”

  “Really?” he asked excitedly.

  “I need you and Deuce to be my backup.”

  I quickly filled him in.

  “Yeah, we’ll do it!” he said when I finished.

  “Great. I’ll swing by B 52s in a little bit to pick you up.”

  “I’ll tell Deuce.”

  “Good.”

  I ended the call. Then I strapped on my ankle holster and shoved the Glock into it, grabbed a flashlight, and strode back into the living room.

  “The Goofballs are going with me,” I announced.

  I received relieved smiles from both of them.

  “Call us as soon as you find out anything,” Willie said.

  “I will.” I gave her a kiss, said goodbye to Darcy, and headed out the door.

  Chapter Nine

  “You just want us to watch your back?” The disappointment was clear in Ace’s voice.

  “Aw,” Deuce said.

  Ace was sitting beside me in the passenger seat, and Deuce was behind him. We were driving northeast on Interstate 76, and I was explaining to the Goofballs what I wanted them to do. They were less than enthusiastic.

  “That sounds boring,” Ace said.

  No matter how much I explained to them that being a private eye sometimes involved mundane tasks, they didn’t buy it. They wanted car chases and shootouts.

  “Just stay in the car,” I said. “If I find the lake house and I need your help, I’ll call you.”

  “I want a piece of the action,” Deuce said. “Like a car chase.”