by Jude Hardin
“One thing led to another,” I said, finishing her thought. “What did you tell him when he left that morning?”
“That it was a mistake. A drunken mistake. Believe me, Nicholas, that’s all it was. And it’s not like I was cheating on you. We broke up, remember?”
She took a step my way, hands in her pockets, and buried her face on my chest. She sobbed against me, the warmth of her tears seeping through my shirt. I put my arms around her, felt her fingernails dig gently into my back. A chill rose and terminated on my scalp. Papa once told me that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. I hadn’t reached the indifference stage with Juliet. Didn’t think I ever would. Apathy is an emotion foreign to me. I care about things. I give a damn. It’s my nature. At that moment, I hated her.
I lifted her chin and covered her mouth with mine. Our tongues swirled like cyclones, deep and hard. I tore her shirt open, heard the plastic buttons dancing on the ceramic tile floor. I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom and we hurried out of our clothes, kissing and getting very busy with our hands.
But something was very wrong about it all. Before we went any further, I silently stood and walked to the window and gazed out to Juliet’s backyard. A hawk flew down and perched on the wooden fence. I couldn’t help thinking about her in the same bed with him. It gnawed at me. I didn’t know if I could ever trust her again, and without trust a relationship is a shaky and hollow thing. It’s like a fat figure skater, ugly and off-balance. It just doesn’t work.
I wanted to throw her down and fuck her. I wanted it to hurt. It was wrong.
The hawk flew away.
“Please come and make love with me,” Juliet said.
I talked to the window. “I can’t,” I said. “Not today.”
“Will you call me?”
“I don’t know.”
I put my clothes on and left her there naked and alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The black Beetle belonged to a man named Everett Spenser in Orange Park. He was eighty-two years old.
I drove to the address, a ranch-style brick with a one-car attached garage. A government foreclosure notice had been tacked on the front door. The place looked grim and forbidding with tall weeds and neglected shrubs.
I got out and peeked into the garage, which was full of everything but a car. I had my pistol out and at this point was pretty sure I wasn’t going to need it when a woman to my left shouted, “Oh my God, he’s got a gun.” I looked next door and briefly saw one of her legs disappear into the entranceway of her home. I pocketed the .25, walked over there, and knocked, PI license in hand.
“I’m calling the police,” she screamed. Her deadbolt snapped to the locked position.
“I can explain, ma’am,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. I have a license to carry this weapon. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Someone from behind, an NFL linebacker maybe, hit me just above the kidneys with a shoulder or sledgehammer or something. I fell to the concrete porch on my sore arm. When I turned over the barrel of a rifle was staring at me.
“Don’t move, motherfucker,” the man behind the gun said. Assassins never say things like that. They just shoot you. He wore an Elvis hairdo and a nerdy pair of sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames. I might have laughed if my cranium hadn’t been in danger of immediate modification.
“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “My ID is—around here somewhere.”
“Get that pistol out of the holster. Two fingers on the butt. That’s right. Now hand it over.” I had a feeling he had watched too many cop show reruns.
I gave him my gun. “I’m looking for your neighbor, Everett Spenser,” I said.
He bent down and picked up my ID, looked it over. “Just ’cause you’re a private detective don’t give you the right to go stalking around here with a gun. You scared Mama half to death.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“What do you want with Everett?” He clicked on the safety and held the rifle at his side.
“Can I get up now?” I said.
“Yeah. Sorry I had to lay you out like that. We’ve had some break-ins around here lately.”
I got up and brushed myself off. “I just need to talk to Mr. Spenser. Do you know if he owns a black VW Beetle, late model?”
“Never seen one over there,” he said. “I think the old man’s in a nursing home now. His daughter and her kids were living there with him, then all of a sudden I stopped seeing anyone. I heard he’s in that nursing home over on Kingsley, but I ain’t sure.”
“Do you know his daughter’s name?” I said.
“Dawn or Joy, something like that. You know, one of those dishwashing liquid names.”
“Palmolive?”
He didn’t laugh.
“Thanks for not shooting me,” I said. “Can I have my gun back now?”
Walking toward Everett Spenser’s room at the nursing home was like walking a corridor in an idiot’s nightmare. “Bunny, bunny, bunny,” the lady in room 102 chanted. The gentleman in 106 was certain he had not been fed, even though it was well past lunchtime. “I must eat. I must, I must. I will not eat peas,” he said over and over.
Spenser’s room was quiet except for the hum of a feeding pump mainlining nutrition into his gut. On the way in, one of the nurses told me he’d suffered a stroke a few months back and could only communicate with his eyes.
Just shoot me, I thought.
I asked Everett Spenser if he had ever owned a Volkswagen. Two blinks. That meant no. I decided to track down his daughter and find out for sure, but first I wanted to have a word with Homicide Detective Barry Fleming.
My arm hurt like a bastard. I thought seriously about driving to Hallows Cove Memorial and letting them admit me this time. Instead, I took a Dilaudid tablet and soldiered on.
It was two thirty in the afternoon and I wanted a drink, something high-octane to knock me out for a few hours. I resisted the urge to stop at Kelly’s Pool Hall.
I drove to the courthouse in Green Cove and parked at a meter across the street. I knew I would have to pass through a guard station with a metal detector, so I left my gun in the truck. As it turned out, I saw Fleming heading toward his car in the police-only parking lot.
“What do you want, Colt?” Fleming was wearing the same suit he had on the day I shoved him into the hot tub.
“And a good afternoon to you, too, Detective Fleming,” I said. “I was just wondering if I might have a few minutes of your time. Just a few questions.”
“Make it quick. I have a meeting.”
“Who was tailing me in a black VW Beetle last night?”
“Someone was tailing you?”
“Knock it off, Barry. It’s no secret you want to burn me.”
“I should burn your ass after that little episode at the station the other day. You were out of line. You owe me a cleaning bill for my suit, by the way. But I haven’t had anybody following you.”
“What about Roy Massengill the other night?”
“Massengill was on his own. Off duty.”
“So you don’t know anything about a black Bug?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die. I really have to go now.” He opened his car door.
“Wait. Anything from the coroner on that fire?”
“What we have on that is confidential at this point. You’ll have to wait for the press release like everyone else. Sorry.”
“Yes or no, Barry. Was the female Brittney Ryan?”
“You’re a persistent son of a bitch. I’ll give you that. All right. Yeah, we’re pretty sure it was her. We’re just waiting on dental records to confirm it. Not a word to anybody, Colt. Understand? And stay out of my way. This is way out of your league now.” He climbed in and started his car.
My heart sank. I motioned for Fleming to roll down his window.
“One more thing,” I said. I was still curious about what Beeler had said about pocket forty-seven and the plane crash
. I asked Fleming if it might be possible to have a word with him.
“Nope,” Fleming said.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with your case. I—”
“Beeler’s dead,” he said.
“How did that happen?”
“Gotta go, Colt.” He rolled up his window and pulled away.
I walked to the truck and called Papa on my cell.
“Fleming said it was probably her,” I said, my voice not quite steady.
“That sucks,” Papa said. “What now? I guess the case is over for you, huh?”
“It’s not over for me. Someone in a little black car tried to kill me last night. I have to assume they’ll try again.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I have to find out who was driving the Beetle. Fleming said it wasn’t one of his guys, and the tags were a dead end. Everett Spenser is a goddamn vegetable in a nursing home. He denies ever owning the car. But he might be confused, might have forgotten. I’m going to talk to his daughter. Other than that, I’m not sure. You got any ideas?”
“I guess you could stake out your camper. If someone’s after you, they’ll probably show up there eventually.”
“I’ll think about that. You feel like getting drunk and doing a little fishing later?”
“Best idea I’ve heard all day.”
“I’ll see you later, Papa.”
We hung up.
I punched in the number a nurse had given me for Dawn Block, Everett Spenser’s daughter. She answered, and I heard a baby crying in the background.
“My name is Nicholas Colt. I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for the owner of a black Volkswagen Beetle, one of the newer ones.” I told her the tag number.
“Daddy never had a car like that,” she said. “He didn’t believe in buying anything foreign. He was in World War Two, hundred and first Airborne. He still thinks the Germans and Japanese are evil.”
“Thanks for your time,” I said.
I was still across the street from the courthouse, and I got an idea. I walked inside, made it through the metal detector, took the elevator to the ground floor where the Division of Motor Vehicles was located. I took a number from the dispenser and waited to be called. When my turn finally came, I talked through a hole to a platinum blonde with bright red lipstick on the other side of the windowed booth.
“I lost all the paperwork on my car,” I said. “I’d like to get a replacement registration.”
I told her the tag number, and she keyed it into her computer.
“You’re still at the same address?” she said.
“What does it say there?”
She read the address. “Wait a minute,” she said. “The information I have here says you were born in 1924. That can’t be right. You’re Everett Spenser? May I see your driver’s license please?”
“I must have written the tag number down wrong. So sorry. Bad case of dyslexia. I’ll go outside and do it right this time. I’ll be back.”
She gave me an unforgiving look. “You’ll have to get a new number and wait in line again.”
I had no intention of getting a new number or waiting in line again. I recognized the address when she read it. It was Mark Toohey’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The air outside was thick, the way it gets before a storm. My lungs ached, my arm throbbed, and generally I felt like crap.
Toohey answered the door wearing the bathrobe the blonde had been wrapped in the other night, his face swollen with sleep.
“Did I wake you from your nappy nap?” I said.
“What the fuck you want?”
“Anybody ever tell you that you have an attitude problem? Can I come in?”
He opened the door and stepped aside. The air conditioner was cranked, and the place reeked of cologne and marijuana.
“What can I help you with today, Mr. Colt?”
“I’m looking for Brittney Ryan again. Seen her?”
“Nope.”
“I assume you know Leitha’s dead.”
“Yeah, man. I heard about that. What a drag. Swear to God, I ain’t heard from Brittney. Maybe she left for California. That’s what she was always talking about.”
I hit Toohey on the chin with an uppercut. He fell, and I kicked him in the ribs a couple of times to make sure he stayed down.
“Jesus Christ.” Toohey cupped his jaw in his hand. He sounded like a bad ventriloquist now.
“You got five seconds to tell me about a black Volkswagen.”
“What the f—”
I kicked his ribs again in the same spot and heard a crack this time. Toohey moaned.
“The kneecaps are next,” I said.
“Black Volkswagen? You talking about that shit Mandy drives?”
“Who’s Mandy?”
“My girlfriend, man. You saw her. My ex. Bitch split on me. Like I really give a fuck.”
Something clicked in my brain. “What car lot does she work for?”
“Rent-A-Gem,” Toohey said.
Bingo.
I bent over and felt his jaw. “It’s not broken,” I said. “But you better take care of those ribs. Where can I find Mandy?”
“I told you, she works at Rent-A-Gem.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m not going to find her there,” I said. “In case you haven’t heard, Rent-A-Gem is a crime scene now.”
“She rents a house somewhere down in Middleburg. I swear, Colt, I didn’t have nothing to do with no stolen cars.”
“Did you know she used your address for phony papers on the Beetle?”
“Bitch.”
On the way to Middleburg, I stopped at the public library and found Mandy’s address on the Internet.
It was a wood-frame house, small, probably two bedroom, and looked pretty much like every other house in the subdivision. A white Ford Econoline van was parked in the driveway.
Thunder crackled in the distance. I parked across the street and waited. I called Papa to let him know what was going on.
“You even sure she’s there?” he said.
“I saw a light go on in the front room, so somebody’s home. I want to catch her leaving and follow her. I got a feeling she’s not going to be very cooperative if I just knock on the door and start asking questions. Plus—shit. She just came out.”
“She alone?”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Doesn’t look like the weather’s going to be good for fishing.”
“Yeah.”
“But we can still get drunk.”
“Yeah.”
The van went south. I followed it to Middleburg High School. It was late in the afternoon and the students and faculty were long gone for the day.
I pulled in behind her in the parking lot, blocking her exit. The door opened and she took off running across the football field with a suitcase. I tackled her at the fifty-yard line. She tried to gouge my eyes with her fingernails before I straddled her and pinned her arms down.
“Let me go,” she said.
“The only place you’re going is to jail.”
She was panting and struggling beneath me. “You don’t understand, man. If I don’t deliver this suitcase, I’m dead.”
“What’s in it?”
“Money.”
“For who?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I think you should tell me. Otherwise, I’m going to break every bone in your face.”
She called my bluff. “Go ahead and hit me, motherfucker. Kill me. I’d rather die than go to prison.”
“What if there was a way for you to get out of it?” I said. “Clean. Just walk away.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “You help me, I’ll help you. You can take the money in that suitcase and go start over somewhere. Far, far away from Jacksonville. Tell me what you know, and you’re free as a bird.”
“I could have done that in the
first place. That’s no deal. Wherever I go, he’ll find me and kill me.”
“Not if I find him first. It’s your only chance, Mandy. Take it or leave it.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Her façade crumbled. “Rent-A-Gem was a front. This guy they call Pirate was selling names and social security numbers to Marcus Sharp, and Sharp used the socials for fake bills of sale on stolen cars. All we had to do was get the cars out of state clean, and then Sharp had a buyer up in Atlanta who had them shipped overseas. Sharp was making a mint, and everything looked legit on paper. That black Bug I was driving was supposed to go to Atlanta this week, but when Sharp got killed it kind of blew everything to hell. It was Pirate’s idea for me to follow you the other night. I didn’t want to use my van, you know, for obvious reasons, so I took the Volkswagen. I can see now that I fucked up royally.”
“Where did the money in the suitcase come from?”
“It’s one of Sharp’s payments to Pirate. A thousand bucks for every name and social. I’m supposed to leave the suitcase under the bleachers.”
“Why did Pirate want you to follow me?”
“I don’t know. He said he would give me two grand to tail you for a few hours, so I did it for the money. I didn’t ask why.”
“You know who shot my window out?”
“No.”
“How did you and Pirate communicate? If he called you on a cell phone—”
“He sent texts from a blocked number. I’ve never even heard his voice.”
She wasn’t much help, but I thought I had it figured out anyway. I thought I knew Pirate’s true identity.
“Don’t even think about sticking around,” I said. “You need to pack your shit and get out of town.”
“You’re not going to have me arrested?”
“I don’t care about you. I want Pirate.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Brittney must have somehow known about Rent-A-Gem being a front for a car theft ring. It was that knowledge that got her and her sister killed. A man known as Pirate was the killer. Pirate sold names and social security numbers to Marcus Sharp for use on bogus registrations for cars that were shipped overseas. So who was Pirate? It had to have been someone with access to Everett Spenser’s records at the nursing home, and it had to have been someone who had contact with Brittney Ryan.
