She was wearing a short jean skirt and a halter top. She was a head and a half shorter than I was, and her face looked better than it had that afternoon, owing to her nap, the soft forty-watt lighting, and the fact that she had applied some makeup: pink lipstick, eyeliner, a touch of rouge.
“That’s right,” I said. I sipped my coffee and tried to appear not soft in any way.
“So maybe I will,” she said.
“Or you could be grateful that you have a dad who loves you.”
“What’s this, Rusty? You trying to lay a guilt trip on me?”
“Just trying to characterize the situation as it really is. It’s not like you’re some fifteen-year-old who’s hooked up with a stoner. This is real, Isabella.”
“Real, Rusty? What’s real is, my father is overreacting to a situation he doesn’t even begin to fucking understand.”
“Then help him. People tend to think the worst when they don’t know all the facts.”
“It’s none of his business.”
“That’s not his perception.”
“I don’t give a shit about his perceptions.”
“Maybe if you laid it all out for him, he wouldn’t be so scared for you.”
“Maybe I would lay it all out for him if it was any of his goddamned business, which it isn’t—or yours—or anybody’s but mine.”
“Still,” I said. “There’s gotta be a reason.”
“A reason for what?”
“Why you’re scared, too.”
She raised her chin. “I’m not scared.”
I set my cup on the countertop and said, “Okay. Come on, Arch.”
She let me get to the door, waited till I’d pulled the bolt and my hand was on the knob, before saying, “He’s not even here.”
I turned around. Archie hadn’t moved. He remained beside her, the tip of his tail slowly moving back and forth, his left paw an inch from her left foot. She was barefoot. Her toenails matched her lipstick, bright pink.
“How do you know?”
“He’s in Georgia. His cousin from Atlanta picked him up.”
“He told you?”
“Christ, I told you I haven’t talked to him in months. His mom told me.”
“What’s the cousin’s name?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“Why do you do that?” I asked.
“What?”
“Drop the F-bomb like that.”
“What are you, my fucking mother? I’ll drop the fucking F-bomb anytime I fucking feel like it.”
“That’s painfully clear. My question had to do with why.”
She reached into the back pocket of her jean skirt and took out her cell phone.
“I’m calling the cops. Right now.”
“Okay,” I said. I opened the door. The night air smelled of honeysuckle, achingly sweet. “Come on, Arch. We’re leaving.” He didn’t move. I snapped my finger, slapped my thigh, called him again.
“You sure he’s your dog?” she asked.
“This was a favor for your dad,” I reminded her. “If your boyfriend’s down in Atlanta, there’s no good reason for me to waste my time.” As if there might be a good reason to waste it. “Archie!”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s not anything to me.”
“Then why did you call his mother?”
I crossed the room, grabbed Archie by the collar, and coaxed him out the door. He whined in protest. They say dogs tend to prefer one sex over the other. My luck I got one who liked girls. I stepped outside and shut the door. Counted to ten. Walked down the stairs. I opened the passenger door and Archie hopped inside. I got behind the wheel, shut the door. Archie looked over at me as if to say, So why aren’t we going already? I pulled out my cell and started to dial Farrell’s number. He couldn’t be downtown yet; he could call in sick, turn around, come back. Then I hit the clear button and pulled up Felicia’s number.
“He’s in Atlanta,” I told her.
“She told you that?”
“Just now.”
“She’s lying.”
“To get me off her back?”
“Why didn’t she tell her dad that in the first place?”
“Because she lied about cutting it off. Didn’t want Farrell to know she was keeping tabs. Now she has to fess up. So it could be true. Atlanta, I mean.”
“Have to assume it isn’t.”
“Right.”
“I’ll call Mom back.”
“You’ve already talked to her?”
“She says he went to Memphis with a buddy.”
“She did? Farrell said she wouldn’t give him the time of day.”
“I’m a woman, Ruzak, and a mother.”
“She could be lying.”
“She did lie. Either to Farrell or to me or maybe to both, so I’m staking it out.”
“You’re going to Memphis?”
“Her house, dummy. I’m staking out her house.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“In an investigative sense or…”
“Farrell’s scared of him. I’ve never known Farrell to be scared of anyone.”
“It’s okay. Bob’s coming with.”
“He is?”
“We’re bringing a bottle of Chablis and some Laughing Cow. Making a night of it.”
“Don’t approach,” I said. “We just want confirmation—”
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Ruzak?”
A shadow was coming down the path toward me. I scrunched down in the seat. She had put on cowboy boots and a ratty cowboy hat and was talking on her cell phone. She passed by the front of the car without noticing me. I sat up and watched her go down the sidewalk. Archie watched, too, and whined softly.
“Ruzak,” Felicia said. “When somebody asks you a question like that, you really should answer.”
“She’s leaving,” I said.
“Follow her,” she said.
Isabella got into a light blue Ford Fusion. I started the car.
“I am,” I said.
10:47 p.m.
She hopped on the interstate, heading west. I stayed three cars back in the far right-hand lane, in case she made a quick no-signal exit. Cracked the window for Archie. His nose worked furiously, sniffing the humid evening air. Past the mall exit. Past the Cedar Bluff exit. A few miles ahead, the interstate split: I-40 west to Memphis, I-75 south to Atlanta. She might be going to either place, or neither, depending on whoever had told the truth, if anyone had told the truth. I wasn’t sure anyone had yet, except Farrell, and his truth might have been colored by his love of and fear for his only daughter. I wasn’t prepared for a road trip. I didn’t even have a toothbrush, and what about my dog? She got off at the Lovell Road exit and seven minutes later pulled into the parking lot for Cotton Eye Joe’s, a popular country-music dance club I had never patronized in all my years in Knoxville, owing to the fact that I didn’t like country music, rarely frequented bars, and never danced.
She parked. I parked. She got out. I didn’t. The lot was dominated by pickup trucks, plenty of which were F-150s and some of which were white, but I didn’t see anyone matching his description, and the group she joined outside the door was comprised entirely of females: a tall, skinny girl with straight black hair and a long nose; another about Isabella’s height, wearing a nearly identical getup—the boots, the short skirt, the distressed cowboy hat—but having about fifteen pounds on her; a third girl with wavy blond hair and jeans so tight, they had to be cutting off circulation to certain indispensable muscle groups. They loitered outside the door for a couple minutes, talking, smoking, texting on their phones. I watched and debated with Archie what to do once they went inside. There is no better way to weigh pros and cons than with your dog. How could you ever lose?
“So what do I do, Arch? Follow or stay put? The jig is up if I follow. No matter how dark and crowded it might be in there, she’d spot me in two seconds. She might—probably will—go off like a rocket. But so what? My job�
��s to protect her, not her feelings. Worse-case scenario, one of these trucks is Quinton’s, but not likely he’s going to jump her in the middle of a honky-tonk jam-packed with beer-loaded, testosterone-laden good ol’ boys. Unless he’s drunk and itching for trouble. Unless she treats him with the same contempt she shows her father and me. Plus, it would be nice, for all involved, to confirm he’s back in Knoxville. What do you think?”
He was staring at me, the tip of his tongue protruding from his mouth. I patted his head, which induced a nod.
“Right, but you’ll have to stay here. Just a quick look around, and please don’t eat my seats while I’m gone.”
The club was crowded. Wednesday was ladies’ night, and the floor was packed. I didn’t look for her under the pulsing lights, but kept my head down and walked along the periphery of the crowd till I got to the bar and slid into the last available stool at the corner. The bartender came over. She asked what my name was before she asked what I wanted to drink. I told her it was Rusty and ordered a beer. The music blared; I could feel the beat pulsing against every inch of my body. I decided, if anyone asked, my car had broken down and I had ducked inside to have a drink while I waited for the tow truck. To my left sat a thin-faced woman in her forties, her dyed-blond hair braided into two ponytails that lay over her back like carriage reins. She shot me a sidelong glance.
“You okay?” she asked. “You look a little lost.”
“My car broke down,” I said. “I’m waiting for triple A.”
I saw Isabella sitting at a table with her friends on the opposite side of the dance floor. They were sharing a pitcher of beer and rebuffing all males who approached. Girls’ night out.
The thin-faced woman said, “That’s a bitch.” She held out her hand. “I’m Nancy.” She had to shout over the music. “You’re Rusty.”
“You’ve got good ears.” The bones in her hand rolled under my fingers.
“I’m extraordinarily well preserved,” she said with a laugh. I really didn’t know how to take that, so I looked away and sipped my beer and wondered what the hell I was hoping to accomplish. Isabella had her cell phone out, thumb dancing over the buttons. The girl in the tight jeans was gone; I looked for her. She was dancing with a beefy guy in a torn plaid shirt. The song ended and another one began without a pause and they kept dancing. He leaned forward, whispered something in her ear, and she laughed. Nancy delicately dropped her hand on my forearm.
“You shouldn’t stare,” she said.
“I gotta confess,” I said. “I don’t get country music.”
“I’m not that crazy about it myself,” Nancy said. She laughed. Her teeth looked oversized, probably because of the thinness of her face. “But I like country boys.”
A cougar. I relaxed a little. I was probably at least ten years too old for her.
“So you come here a lot,” I said. “Maybe you know my cousin. Quinton Stiles.”
She shook her head. Her glass was empty. I signaled the bartender to bring her another and she said, “You trying to get me drunk, Rusty?”
“He’s kind of the black sheep of the family,” I said. “Did a few years at Brushy Mountain for beating up his girlfriend.”
“Any man ever hit me, I’d cut his balls off,” she said.
“But you hear all the time about women who come right back for more. A guy beats her within an inch of her life, and she dives right back into the same pool. Like that singer a few months back, after her boyfriend smacked her around in a car.”
She shrugged. “Some women are self-loathing cows.”
“You think so? But she’s beautiful and famous and rich and could have anyone she wanted.”
“It’s not what’s on the outside, Rusty. It’s what’s inside. You’re not a woman.”
I admitted I wasn’t.
She said, “And never been in love, either, I’d bet.”
I thought that was a little presumptuous, but I didn’t say anything. Isabella and one of her girlfriends were coming toward me. I turned away and ducked my head, as if that would help, as she, oblivious to my presence, walked right past me and into the bathroom.
“Sorry,” Nancy said. “That was out of line. Anyway, it’s been going on for thousands of years and probably will for thousands more.”
“Love?”
“Men beating up on women.”
“I read somewhere the Y chromosome is being phased out of the gene pool,” I said.
“You read somewhere what?”
“In another hundred thousand years or so, there won’t be any men.”
“Then how could there be people?”
“Well, I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of it, but there have been cases of spontaneous pregnancy in certain species.”
“Are you a professor or something? You talk like one.”
I found myself unreasonably flattered. “It’s just a theory.”
“I hope it isn’t true. I like men.”
“It bothers me, too, not because I like men or even because I am one. I won’t be around when it happens—well, no man will—but it’s like knowing the sun’s going to blow in another four million years. Or the deal with all the asteroids flying around willy-nilly. Or the fact that any day Yellowstone’s going to erupt and wipe out half of North America. Not that I lie awake at night worrying about Yellowstone, but there it is. There’s really not that much that falls within our sphere of influence, no matter how much we’d like to believe there is. It’s really kind of a helpless situation.”
She was smiling for some reason. “What is?”
“Life.”
She put her hand on my arm again. “So you know what you do, Rusty? You dance.”
She pulled me onto the floor and, just my luck, a slow song was playing and she pressed into me with her head on my chest and her hair smelled like strawberries and I could feel her shoulder blades through her blouse and for some reason I thought of Laughing Cow cheese. The long-nosed girl was sitting alone at the table, and I wondered if Isabella was still in the bathroom or if she had slipped outside and how I was going to extract myself with any alacrity from my semimetaphorical dance. I’d come here only to do a job and now I was two-stepping with a stranger.
It was the longest song in the country-music canon, and when it finally ended, I thanked Nancy for the dance and said I really needed to check to see if the triple A guy had shown up to tow my car. I bought her another drink and noticed her pupils were dilated and her nostrils flared slightly, and I suggested she might seriously consider calling a cab. She laughed. So I slipped the bartender a twenty and told her Nancy shouldn’t be driving, and the bartender nodded and said she understood.
“You’re a nice guy, Rusty,” Nancy said. “A little weird, but nice, and I don’t believe for a second your car broke down. I think you’re a cop or a jilted boyfriend and you’re looking for a dude named Quinton Stiles so you can arrest him or beat the shit out of him for messing with your girl.”
“I’m not any of those things,” I said. “Except maybe the weird part.”
11:33 p.m.
I saw her at the table as I laboriously navigated through the crowd to the door. Somebody had ordered another pitcher, so odds were she’d be a while. I’d wait outside in the car with Archie and keep an eye on the parking lot in case he showed up, but my gut was telling me he wouldn’t and that I was wasting my time—only I wasn’t wasting my time. I was keeping a promise to a friend.
Archie greeted me like I was the last person he expected to join him, lapping at my face, scratching at my pants with a forepaw. For a dog, all reunions are joyous.
I dialed Felicia’s cell.
“Did he show?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“Me, either.” I pressed the phone tightly against my ear: I was having trouble hearing her through the residual hum of “Jesus Take the Wheel.”
“I’m almost hoping he doesn’t,” she said. “Stakeouts are fun.”
“Can you see any
thing through a foggy windshield?” I asked.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“What’s your story if a cop knocks on the glass?”
“Our car broke down and we’re waiting for triple A.”
I could have told her that if a half-drunk middle-aged barfly could see through that line, a seasoned police officer probably could, too.
“You might as well call it,” I said. “He’s not going to show.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t for sure. But Farrell asked and you asked, and if she does know where he is, he knows you’ve been asking and he won’t show.”
“Why not? He’s done his time. He’s a free man. He can do what he wants.”
“Are the lights on in the house?”
“No.”
“She’s gone to bed. He isn’t coming.”
“Jesus, Ruzak. Just when I was starting to have fun.”
“I’m at a bar.”
“Why are you at a bar?”
“Because she is.”
“Well, she’s free, too.”
“She’s free and he’s free, but you and I aren’t. We’re stuck in our cars waiting for … What exactly are we waiting for?”
“Ruzak, sometimes I think you have more angst than a fourteen-year-old girl.”
“It’s all backward,” I said. Firm up, Ruzak! “I should be chasing the bad guy and you should be chaperoning the victim.”
At that moment, Isabella and the long-nosed girl stepped outside. Isabella retrieved a pack of cigarettes from her purse and they lit up. Their faces glowed in the garish light. Isabella pulled out her cell phone and proceeded to text.
“I need to get hold of her cell phone,” I said.
“She’s gotta sleep sometime.”
“I could slip her a Mickey. Only I don’t know how to make a Mickey. What’s in a Mickey?”
“Three ounces of vodka, one ounce of orange juice, and the contents of two sleeping pills.”
“You’ve made a Mickey before?”
“I was guessing.”
“He was a saloon keeper who drugged his customers.”
“Huh?”
“The guy the Mickey’s named after. Mickey Finn.”
The Highly Effective Detective Crosses the Line Page 3
