The Shop

by J. Carson Black

  The FBI.

  First thing she’d do today: go and talk to Luke’s landlady, Mrs. Frawley.

  As Jolie unlocked the front door, she thought of something else.

  As far as she knew, even in all the media coverage of the standoff at the Starliner Motel, nobody had come up with a reason why Luke Perdue had taken Kathy Westbrook hostage.

  Most everyone she’d talked to had thought he’d “just snapped.”

  But no one, it seemed, wondered why.

  “All I know is there was two sets of police that came here that day,” Mrs. Frawley said. They were standing on the porch outside her house. Mrs. Frawley rolled a stroller with a baby in it, back and forth. The doors to Mrs. Frawley’s Saturn were open, a child’s car seat on the walk. The little girl was skipping back and forth across the driveway. “I’m on disability, and with Luke gone, that’s seven hundred dollars less I get a month. These are supposed to be my golden years, and this is what I’m doing when I should be on a Caribbean cruise, meeting the man of my dreams. Babysitting.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Jolie said. “There were two sets of investigators? Are you sure?”

  “Yup. And they came in twos. Two plus two.”

  “Two plus two equals four!” called out Charly, who was now pushing the car seat down the walkway.

  Jolie asked, “Did they identify themselves?”

  “They said police. But they didn’t have to—I knew it by looking at ’em. All that black Velcro stuff they wear.”

  “Did they give you their names and badge numbers?”

  “Two of ’em did. Those were the regular cops. The first set, they were FBI.”

  “Did they say FBI?”

  “Can’t remember if they did or not.”

  “You know what the FBI looks like?”

  “Of course I do. I watch NUMB3RS, all those shows. Char, come here!” she bellowed. Charly came hopping up and turned her back so Mrs. Frawley could help her with her My Little Pony backpack. Little kid wasn’t seven years old, and already in a harness.

  Jolie asked, “When did they come?”

  “Mid morning? The first set. The FBI agents.”

  “Did they have a warrant?”

  “Didn’t ask ’em. Just handed them the key and stayed out of the way.”

  “They say anything to you?”

  “They said Luke was in trouble, he was a danger to himself and others. I heard it on the news right before they got here, someone taking that lady hostage. At the time I didn’t make the connection because I couldn’t see Luke doing something like that.”

  “Did they take evidence?”

  “Both batches of ’em did. Walked out with bags of stuff.”

  “Did you see what they took?”

  “I was in the middle of dyeing my hair. I didn’t want to leave it on too long.”

  “Did they take a cell phone?”

  “Could’ve been in one of them bags.”

  “Granny?” Charly said, tugging on her grandmother’s sleeve. “When’s Luke coming home?”

  “Sorry, baby, he’s moved on to a better place.” Mrs. Frawley rolled her eyes.

  “Why doesn’t he come back? He just went on a playdate.”

  Jolie hunkered down on her heels. “He went on a playdate? When was this, sweetheart?”

  Charly chose that moment to turn shy. She pushed herself behind her grandmother and stared up at the trees.

  “Charly!”

  “It’s okay,” Jolie said.

  Mrs. Frawley’s voice softened. “Sweet pea, answer the nice lady.”

  “Do you know when Luke went on the playdate?”

  “When he went away with that man.”

  “What man?” Jolie asked gently.

  “The one that…” She stopped, looking confused. “The one in the black car.”

  “You mean the FBI car, honey?” Mrs. Frawley said. “Those men weren’t here then.”

  “It was like a movie.”

  “Movie’s her favorite word. Everything’s a movie.”

  Jolie said, “Did Luke get in the car with him?”

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded, fidgeting with the straps of her backpack.

  “When was this?”

  “Jeremy just came on.”

  “Honey, that’s early,” said Mrs. Frawley. “There were two men, Charly. They came here later. Luke wasn’t here then.”

  “What time does Jeremy come on?” Jolie asked Mrs. Frawley.

  “Ten in the morning on Disney.”

  “But you didn’t see anything.”

  “I was busy. I work from home, doing mailers.”

  “You didn’t hear a car?”

  “My printer’s really noisy. Plus, I never miss The Today Show. Have to turn it up because I’m deaf in one ear.”

  Jolie bent back down so she was face-to-face with Charly.

  “You said you asked Luke where he was going?”

  The little girl squirmed. “I called to him. I was in the door.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was going with Will.”

  “Will?”

  Mrs. Frawley shrugged. “She’s got Will Smith on the brain. I have all the Men in Black DVDs.”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The man got out.”

  “Got out? Of the car, you mean?”

  She nodded gravely. “He scared me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he looked like a bad guy in the movies.”

  “Movies again!” Mrs. Frawley snorted.

  Charly said, “When he lifted his arms, I could see a gun.”

  “Where was the gun?”

  “It was under his arm.”

  “Do you remember what color his hair was?”

  “It was yellow, like Granny’s. Only real short.”

  “Anything else you can remember?”

  “He stood like this.” She spread her legs slightly and put her hands on her hips. “He was right over there.” She pointed to where the walk met the driveway. “I asked him if Luke was going to be in a movie, and he said yes. It was a secret, and I couldn’t tell anybody.”

  Then her face lit up. “Is Luke going to be in Men in Black?”

  Davy Crockett met Jolie at Bizzy’s Diner. He sat down, placing his hat with deliberation on the table. The top of his skull gleamed in the low lights of the diner. When he turned to look for the waitress, Jolie noted the shar-pei folds where his head met his neck. Despite his massive proportions, his bare head made him seem vulnerable, like a newborn. “What’s so important you had to interrupt me in the middle of my Lean Cuisine?” he asked her.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. I didn’t plan to eat out, but now I’m here, I believe I’ll have the Manhandler Breakfast. They’re still serving breakfast, aren’t they?”

  “Far as I know. But what are you going to tell your wife?”

  “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. A man’s got to have some kind of life. It’s not like I’m sleeping around or anything. So what’s up?”

  “It’s about Luke Perdue.”

  He frowned. “The one-man wrecking ball. Yup, he sure did raise our profile at the Gardenia PD. Made us look like a bunch of clowns. FBI didn’t come off looking too good, either.”

  Jolie told him about the man she believed picked up Luke Perdue on the morning of the standoff. “It was right before ten a.m. What time was the call-out?”

  Davy thought about it. “Between ten a.m. and eleven. If you pushed me, I’d guess right around ten thirty. You’re saying just before Luke showed up at the Starliner Motel, he left with an FBI agent?”

  “That’s what the little girl said. The FBI showed up at Luke’s apartment around ten forty. I know that’s true because Mrs. Frawley was looking at the clock. She was dyeing her hair.”

  “Jesus, that’s fast.”

  “Around ten, some gu
y—Frawley thinks FBI—picks Luke up. At ten thirty you get the call-out to the Starliner Motel—”

  “And fifteen minutes later, the FBI’s searching the premises.”

  “Without a warrant,” Jolie said. “I’m sure they’d claim ‘exigent circumstances,’ if Mrs. Frawley had asked.”

  “Which she didn’t,” Davy said.

  “When did the standoff end?”

  “Around dinnertime. I remember seeing the chief when he came in.” He shook his head. “The man was shell-shocked.”

  “Do you know when Gardenia PD was dispatched to Luke’s place?”

  “It wasn’t at ten forty, I can tell you that much.” He leaned forward. “What does all this mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It was FBI shooters who took him out. Her too. You have any ideas?”

  Jolie had been thinking about it since she left Mrs. Frawley’s. “Maybe he was scared.”

  “So he holds a woman at gunpoint?”

  “If he was scared enough. If he got away from the blond guy? The man Charly saw? He might have seen that as an option.” Jolie realized how weird this sounded. “You think the FBI picked him up for some reason and he escaped?”

  “Neat trick if you can do it. Why are you dumping all this on me? Luke’s Most Excellent Adventure is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s headache. They’re the ones who’re investigating the Starliner Motel shooting now.”

  “Then you’ll have something you can give the FDLE.”

  He ran a palm over his clean skull. “Tell you what. Y’all give me Mrs. Frawley’s contact info, I’ll see it gets to the right people. Then it’ll be their headache.”

  From his solemn expression, Jolie could see it sinking in. And there was a lot more to this story. Jolie saw her uneasiness reflected back to her in Davy Crockett’s eyes. They both felt the same way.

  Jolie said, “The little girl—Charly—said Luke was going with Will. She thought it had something to do with Will Smith, the actor. But maybe Luke told her he was going against his will.”

  “Could be. Looks like the FDLE’s gonna have their work cut out for them.”

  The waitress came and took their orders. After she left, Davy said, “Now I’ve got something for you.”

  21

  Davy knew a guy who knew a guy. The second guy did some work on Chief Akers’s house. Davy thought it was under the table. But the thing was, this guy—his name was James Dooley—used to get drunk up in a bar in Wewahitchka, where he lived, and claim he had “offed thirteen people.” He would tell anyone who listened he was a hit man in another life, but now he’d gone straight, although he still did favors from time to time.

  “Do real hit men boast?” Jolie asked.

  “How would I know? But you might want to check him out just the same.”

  After they parted ways, Jolie tried Amy’s cell again. This time Amy’s mailbox was full. The Royal Court Apartments were only a couple of blocks from Bizzy’s, so Jolie drove by. The U-Haul was still out in front. As Jolie walked across the parking lot, she heard a thump and a scrape. She came around to the end of the U-Haul and saw Niraj Bandhu and another guy carrying a table into the apartment. Niraj struggled, his arm in a sling.

  Jolie followed them in. Niraj’s face looked pale and sweat popped out on his forehead. He sat on the couch.

  “You probably shouldn’t be doing that,” Jolie said.

  The other guy, a skinny Southern rocker type, took one look at Jolie and said “Hey, man, I gotta go.”

  When he was gone, Niraj said to Jolie, “She’s not here. She never came back. They replaced her at the office.”

  “Maddy replaced her?”

  “I guess so. I haven’t seen her, either.”

  “You’re staying?” Jolie motioned to the coffee table and the other furniture.

  “I didn’t know what else to do, and I have to get that U-Haul back or it’s going to cost me another day.”

  Jolie asked, “Do you know a man named James Dooley?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did Amy ever say anything about Chief Akers threatening his wife?”

  “We didn’t talk about things like that. I knew she and Maddy were good friends, but it wasn’t really my business. She had her relationships and I had mine. Kind of hard to explain.”

  “Did you ever talk to Chief Akers?”

  “I don’t think I ever met him.”

  Jolie asked if Niraj had ever met Amy’s brother, Luke.

  “I met him a few times. Man, he was antsy.”

  “Antsy?”

  Niraj shifted on the couch and winced. “He had all this energy. Like he was going somewhere in a hurry.”

  “He was ambitious?”

  He laughed. “No, he just talked big. He’s like those people who think they’re gonna win the lottery. Always talking about how he’d strike it rich. Amy, she liked to burst his bubble. He’d be boasting about some new can’t-miss scheme, and she’d just blow him out of the water. She could be very cruel.”

  Jolie didn’t doubt it. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “It’s been months.”

  “What did Luke do for a living?”

  “Worked for a landscaper. Blowing leaves, trimming hedges, that kind of stuff.”

  “I take it he didn’t want to be a leaf blower forever.”

  “No kidding. He talked about getting his own tree-trimming business and stealing his boss’s main client.”

  “Main client?”

  “The attorney general of the United States, you believe that? Luke thought he could shut out his employer, offer him a better deal.” He let out a short laugh. “Quintessential Luke. He knew nothing about running a company—totally out of touch with reality.”

  “Did you know about his underage girlfriend?”

  “Riley? That was one of his plans. He said he was going to knock her up and marry into all that money.” He grinned. “If Luke owned a store, it’d be called Schemes ‘R’ Us.”

  Jolie asked him if he was surprised Luke had taken the woman at the motel hostage.

  He thought about it. “I was and I wasn’t. Luke wasn’t the violent type.”

  He scratched his arm. The sleeve of his T-shirt rode up, revealing a peacock tattoo. “One thing I wasn’t surprised about, though—he sure got himself into a shitload of trouble.”

  Jolie was about to run an NCIC search on James Dooley when Skeet came by her desk. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  He had a weird smile on his face. “How about we go to my office?”

  Jolie pushed her chair back to get up. Just then she heard a voice out front and recognized it immediately. Riley Haddox. “I need to do one thing first.”

  Skeet said, “That’s fine.”

  “You sure?” Jolie glanced in the direction of the front room.

  “It’s been waiting all day. It can wait a little bit longer.”

  He had some kind of secret. Jolie knew from experience it didn’t bode well for her.

  “Anytime in the next couple hours.” He rapped his knuckles twice on her desk before walking down the hallway to his office.

  Jolie went out to meet Riley.

  Zoe was with her. Did Riley take Zoe with her everywhere?

  The contrast between the two girls was dramatic. Riley was beautiful. Blonde hair, lithe body, the works. Zoe, on the other hand, was just pretty. There were some people you pegged as likeable before they opened their mouths, and Zoe was one of them. She was shorter than Riley and heavier, but, taken altogether, attractive. Jolie found her attention going to Zoe, which Riley clearly sensed and didn’t like.

  Riley took back the spotlight. “Do you know if the police have the phone? Can you get them to give it back?”

  “Why don’t we go to my desk?” Jolie couldn’t say “go to my office” because she didn’t have one, just the desk pushed face-to-face with Louis’s desk. But since Louis was taking vacati
on time, they’d have a modicum of privacy.

  Riley clacked behind her.

  Jolie motioned to one chair and pulled another from around Louis’s desk.

  Riley sat down, then Zoe. Riley said, “Why didn’t you call me back?”

  “Because I didn’t have anything until just a while ago.”

  “You were going to call me, weren’t you?”

  This girl needed a good talking to. Through Kay, Jolie knew that Riley’s father was at his wits’ end with her. He couldn’t control her and apparently didn’t even try. At this point, she wasn’t even going to college—any college. “If I’d had anything, I would have.”

  Riley’s eyes narrowed.

  Clutching her purse to her chest, Zoe leaned forward. “It’s been so good of you to help us. Riley’s just so scared—”

  “I can’t imagine if those photos got out!” Riley said. “What would I do? It could hurt us—hurt my family. It would be humiliating!”

  Jolie didn’t think it would be any more humiliating than being forced to resign as head of the DOJ after he was charged with failure to report a substantial amount of income on his tax returns. But she didn’t say that. Her own daddy had brought her up to be better than that. “I wish I could help you, Riley, I really do. But there’s some question where the phone is. It was not put into evidence by the Gardenia PD. It’s not with the FBI, either.”

  Riley’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Are you serious? What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No one knows where the phone is? How can that be? Mrs. Frawley said—”

  “Mrs. Frawley said the police searched Luke’s apartment, but she didn’t see what they took.”

  “But what do I do now?”

  The phone’s GPS could be tracked, but all Jolie’s requests to date on tracking phones had been denied due to privacy issues. Law enforcement agencies big and small didn’t want to touch that hot potato unless it was absolutely necessary. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do.”