Oops! (Alo Nudger Book 10)

by John Lutz

  Once inside the office, he went to the half bath and poured the coffee into the washbasin drain slowly so Danny wouldn’t hear it gurgle down the pipes. He didn’t know quite what to do with the Dunker Delite, so he carried it with him to his desk and laid it on top of his stack of overdue bills, where it sat like a petrified feces paperweight.

  Nudger wasn’t so hungry anymore.

  He saw that there was a message on his answering machine and pressed the PLAY button.

  Beep: “Nudger?” Eileen’s voice. “Nudger, you odious son of a—”

  He pressed ERASE. Eileen had never called him odious before. He decided it must be a Henry Mercato word.

  Twisting his body, he adjusted the air conditioner to high, then leaned far back in his eeeking swivel chair, thinking about his conversation with Sally Brown. He wondered if he should have asked Sally about the concealed note reading “Close calls.” Probably not, he decided; Lois Brown and Sally hadn’t known each other well despite being family, and would hardly have exchanged confidences. Of course, Nudger was assuming the note was placed beneath the sweaters in the drawer to conceal it, considering what else was concealed there, and that Lois Brown had written it. Also assuming that it hadn’t been in the drawer for years and was now irrelevant. He knew that was a considerable amount of assumption, and probably the note would lead nowhere. “Close calls” could be anything from a book title to a reminder that someone named Close had phoned.

  Such a pessimist was Nudger.

  “Shouldn’t be that way,” he told himself “Every day is the first day of ... well, something.”

  He stood up and clomped back down the stifling stairwell and picked up his mail, then returned to the office and sat down again behind his desk. He’d noticed that even over the creaking of the steps, he could hear the grinding sounds his knees made as he descended and climbed the stairs. No pain yet, but surely this meant something ominous for his mobility and medical future.

  After working off the rubberband and throwing away the pork steak sale flier, he examined the half-dozen envelopes that were left, studying them hopefully. He was owed money. Not as much as he owed, but he was owed, and it was always possible that a check had arrived. And there was always the prospect of Publishers’ Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. Always.

  But the mail was comprised only of two advertisements, three bills or past-due reminders, and a letter addressed to him in Eileen’s handwriting. He threw away the advertisements, but not before yielding to curiosity and opening them. One was an offer of term life insurance. The other urged Nudger to purchase steaks through the mail. (It struck him how small the world was, that the steak-by-mail offer should appear in his mail along with the pork steak sale flier. What might it mean?) He resisted both offers, then stared at the Eileen letter for a few seconds before dropping it unopened into the wastebasket on top of the first two envelopes. The woman was a plague.

  Then his eye fell on a pink envelope in the wastebasket. It must have been stuck inside the folds of the supermarket flier.

  He reached down and plucked it from the trash, immediately recognizing the return address of a client whose husband he’d followed and reported on last month. Inside the envelope was a check for the five hundred dollars he was owed, along with a note thanking him for his services and expressing how relieved his client was that she now knew for sure her retired husband really was playing golf five days a week. He actually went to one of the nearby courses even when it was cold and snow was falling. She had read his passion correctly, but it was for the dogleg and the putt and not for another woman.

  Nudger was cheered.

  He decided to write checks for some of his overdue bills, then drive to Citizen’s Bank and deposit the client’s check in his account before mailing them. He dug his checkbook from the top desk drawer, removed the Dunker Delite from on top of the stack of bills, and set to work. He pondered for a while which bills to pay first, then settled on the greasiest ones rather than those longest overdue.

  At six o’clock, he wrapped the Dunker Delite in the supermarket flyer than placed it in the bottom of the wastebasket beneath crumpled papers and envelopes. From the wastebasket, he retrieved the postal service’s dirty rubberband and bound his stack of bills, noticing that grease was already seeping through the envelopes. Then he switched off the air conditioner and left the office.

  He would use the bank drive-through to deposit his check, and immediately afterward mail the paid bills at the post office on Marshall Avenue. Then he’d have some supper, maybe at Shoney’s. It was angel-hair pasta special night, he was pretty sure. After narrowly avoiding a Dunker Delite, his stomach would welcome angel-hair pasta.

  After supper, he would wait until nightfall and then drive to Spain.

  Lacy’s cottage at Hostelo Grandioso was dark, but the ostentatious Cadillac was parked near the back of the lot, no more conspicuous than a calliope.

  Nudger parked the Granada near the Caddy, then climbed out and looked around. The lot was dimly illuminated by Spanish, curlicued-iron overhead lights that were placed too far apart. Near the driveway and office was a faint red glow from the neon caballero spinning his lariat.

  As he approached Lacy’s cottage, he heard its laboring air conditioner. Then he heard her voice.

  “C’mon in, Nudger.”

  Lacy was standing in the dark with the door open about six inches.

  “I heard you drive up,” she said, “then I looked out the window and saw you blundering around out there.”

  Nudger didn’t know how he might have blundered, but he said nothing as he stepped past Lacy and into the cottage.

  The only illumination came from the old TV On the flickering screen, O. J. Simpson, noticeably older since his trials, was talking soundlessly, his eyes wide and sincere, his expression one of wronged innocence.

  “Why don’t you have a light on?” Nudger asked.

  “I don’t need one to watch television.” She walked over and switched on a lamp that had a bullfighter silhouetted on its shade. She still had on her faded jeans from this morning, but now she was wearing only a bra and was barefoot.

  “Thanks for getting dressed up for me,” Nudger said.

  She shot him a wicked grin. “Lots of men would rather see me in this than a ball gown.” She turned off the TV and made sure the drapes were closed all the way. “I’m only trying to stay cool, so don’t get any ideas.” But she winked as she said it. She sat down in the room’s only chair, a red vinyl creation with heavy dark wooden arms that looked as if they’d been attacked by worms. Spain was everywhere. Nudger sat on the edge of the bed. Briefly, its springs sounded like a mariachi band as his weight settled.

  Lacy smiled at him and hooked her right thumb beneath her bra strap above the cup, sort of the way old men did when they were about to snap a suspender. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

  Nudger found himself staring not at her meager breasts, but at the slight roll of fat above the waistband of her jeans, surprising on such a slight woman. He averted his gaze and related what had happened at Lois Brown’s house.

  “Are you sure there was nothing suspicious about that washer and dryer?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Not that I could see. But I’m not an electrician.”

  “You haven’t accomplished diddly,” Lacy said.

  “It felt like at least diddly.”

  “I’m ahead of you, Nudger. I’ve been researching, checking back issues of newspapers, talking to contacts. I found out about McClary leaving part interest in his business to faithful and probably loving Lois Brown. She sold it almost immediately for three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “How did McClary die?” Nudger asked.

  “The kid Sally told you right. He went outside his front door to get his newspaper from his lawn one morning after an ice storm, and his feet went out from under him. Struck the back of his head on the porch step and died almost instantly.”

  “Did any surviving McClarys ob
ject to Lois Brown inheriting that much money?” Nudger asked.

  “He didn’t leave much family. His wife had died of cancer two years before his death. Some distant relatives in Oklahoma got their share of the wealth. Faithful, fucking Lois got the rest.”

  “Ease up,” Nudger said. “You don’t know anything about their relationship.” He wasn’t sure why he was defending Lois Brown and McClary, except that they were both dead and couldn’t defend themselves.

  Lacy snorted. “Live in the real world, Nudger.”

  “What about the ’Close calls’ note? That mean anything in your world?”

  “It might.” She stood up and walked over to her laptop computer where it sat on the tiny Spanish desk. The chair she’d been sitting in went with the desk, so she remained standing as she switched on the computer and began working its keyboard. “It might mean a lot of things,” she said, not looking at him, “or it might mean the Close Calls shops that are located in several shopping malls around town. They sell telephones and audio equipment and such, but their specialty is cellular phones.”

  Nudger didn’t see any likely connection, but the possibility shouldn’t be ignored. “Can’t we check that out without using a computer?”

  “I use Nexis-Lexis,” she said. “Know about Nexis-Lexis?”

  “Isn’t one of them a car?”

  “Not in this case. They’re an on-line service lawyers use regularly for research. They put a hell of a lot of paralegals out of work. I can log on and and easily gain access to state public records.” Her fingers moved expertly across the key board. “I tell you Nudger, I don’t see how you can do detective work these days without knowing at least something about computers.”

  “I know something about them,” he said defensively. “More than you might think.”

  “Sure,” she said, concentrating on Nexis. Or possibly Lexis.

  Nudger sat watching her with envy and regret. He knew he’d have to start using a computer in his work soon, maybe get that software program he’d seen advertised, the one with every listed phone number in the country, perfect for skip tracing. Maybe he should even get a cellular phone, call people from restaurant tables and traffic signals. Maybe everybody in the software program. He shuddered, causing the bedsprings to whine musically.

  “Close Calls is listed as a private company,” Lacy said. “I was hoping it was public, so we could get some heavy information. Incorporated five years ago right here in Missouri, owner and CEO a man named Wayne Hart.” She lifted her bare shoulders in a shrug, then switched off the computer. “That’s it.”

  “Wayne Hart, you said?”

  “Right.”

  Nudger stood up from the bed and walked over to her.

  She looked up at him. “Something, Nudger?”

  “Does that computer have a redial button?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Nudger sat on a bench near a fountain, sipping a café au lait from Merry-Go-Grounds, which was located only a few stores away from Close Calls in the West Gallery Mall.

  Even considering it was a weekday morning, the mall wasn’t crowded. He observed several walkers stride vigorously past, silver-thatched and somber-faced and wearing expensive hiking shoes. And a few packs of roaming teenagers, giggling, shoving, and yammering at each other, passed Nudger’s bench. But when it came to actual shoppers, folks in the mall to make purchases, he didn’t see many. And he’d been only one of three customers in Merry-Go-Grounds. Maybe the experts who claimed the day of the mall was past were correct. Specialty shops you could drive to, park in front of, and walk in and out of within a few minutes might be the fad of the future.

  But it seemed to Nudger that malls were more than anything clumps of small specialty shops, even if they were anchored by major department stores and usually connected by a roof. He looked around at Pretty Plus Sizes, Cards Are Us, Just Luggage, and Glamour Puss Cat Accessories, and decided that shopping malls were far from dead.

  He dropped his empty paper cup into a trash receptacle, then stood up from the bench. After waiting for a woman staring into a window to move on, because he thought that from the back she resembled Eileen, he strolled along the mall with the sparse flow of pedestrian traffic, listening to the pleasant trickling sound of the fountain fade.

  At the sunglasses kiosk, he turned right and walked past a jewelry store, a Quicker Image gift shop, and found himself standing before Close Calls.

  The doorway was wide, opening onto a red-carpeted area with podiums or ornate tables on which various phone products were displayed. Nudger stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered in, taking a cursory look at a cellular phone in the shape of a cartoon character he didn’t recognize, some sort of rodent with a sword, and a shield that apparently flipped down to form the phone’s mouthpiece. There was an answering machine much like his own, only several generations later. Pagers that looked like colorful bars of soap were on sale. A low table held a symmetrical display of cordless phones.

  Ordinary desk and wall phones were relegated to the back of the store. Also in the back of the store was a wide counter with a cash register and charge card machines.

  Behind the counter was a kid with scraggly black hair and a fuzzy mustache. On the wall behind him was a display of plastic-wrapped phone accessories. He seemed to sense Nudger looking at him, so he put down whatever he’d been reading and walked around from behind the counter.

  “Let me know if there’s any—” he began.

  “I’m only browsing,” Nudger said, cutting him off. On the kid’s stained white shirt was a name tag that said he was DEREK. Nudger would have guessed Derek.

  “Our sale on pagers is in its very last day,” Derek said earnestly.

  “Do I look like I need a pager?” Nudger asked.

  Derek grinned. “No, but you look important, like maybe you need a cellular phone.” So saying, he rested his hand on a sleek gray model that was only two dollars if you signed up for the service at time of purchase.

  “Don’t those things give you brain cancer?” Nudger asked.

  Derek didn’t blink; he’d heard the question before. “If they do,” he said, “it wouldn’t be for a long time anyway. Years, I’ve heard them say. And the real experts say there’s nothing to that brain-cancer scare. Hey, our phones are less dangerous than smoking cigarettes.” He moved nearer to Nudger with a smooth little shuffle, like a boxer sensing the advantage and moving in to land a blow. “If you’re superstitious about the brain-cancer thing, why don’t you buy a pager, then you can call people back on a conventional phone.”

  “You the manager?” Nudger asked.

  “No, he’s away right now. But I can page him.” Derek winked. Nudger was beginning to dislike him. “Really, I can probably help you with whatever it is you need,” Derek said.

  Nudger thought maybe he could. “I’m a freelance writer doing a piece on shopping malls,” he said.

  Derek didn’t seem any more excited at meeting a real writer than if he’d discovered a hangnail.

  “How’s your business been here the last six months or so?” Nudger asked, forging on like a genuine writer.

  Derek looked sad and rubbed his peach-fuzz mustache. “The whole mall’s been falling off. Nobody can figure out why business is so bad. Socks and Clocks, just a few doors down, closed up last month. They say a calendar shop is going to move into their space.”

  “That might work,” Nudger said.

  “It’s kind of seasonal,” Derek said with a gloomy air of confidentiality.

  Nudger looked around. “The owner have any plans for this store?”

  Derek shrugged. “Far as I know, he doesn’t plan on closing it down.”

  “You know much about the owner?”

  “Just what I’ve heard. He owns all four of the Close Calls shops, and they say next year he might open one in Crossrivers Mall in North County.”

  “So the cellular phone business is doing okay?”

  “Nope,” Derek told Nudger. “Bu
t compared to some of these other places, we’re in really good shape. What I hear is that Close Calls makes a solid profit per unit every year on fewer units than our competitors. Not that we aren’t realistically priced or competitively flexible per product according to the new industry paradigm.”

  “I never thought you were,” Nudger said, recognizing that Derek was speaking company rote that even he probably didn’t comprehend. “Or weren’t.”

  Derek blinked. “And we’re not just cellular phones, as you can see.” He waved a long, skinny arm in an inclusive gesture. “We sell all types of phones as well as answering machines, caller ID devices, pagers, and various accessories.”

  Nudger pulled his little spiral notebook from his pocket, unclipped his pen, and pretended to be taking notes. “Your name is ... ?”

  “Derek Wilson. I’m assistant manager.”

  “And the owner’s name—no, I guess you wouldn’t know that.”

  “It’s Hart,” Derek said. “Wayne Hart. I’ve never met him personally, but everybody working for Close Calls knows who he is. He’s plenty rich. Lives in a big house, like an estate, up near the river. I went up there once for a company picnic.”

  “I thought you said you never met him.”

  “He wasn’t at the picnic. He’s the kind of chief executive that keeps his distance. Some chain-of-command thing. I don’t believe in that sorta crap myself.”

  “Me either,” Nudger said, and drew a reasonable likeness of a cat in his notepad. He hadn’t gotten the ears quite right.

  “Not that Mr. Hart’s not a nice guy,” Derek said. “It’s just that he’s busy. Most any place doing business in a shopping mall is in a fight to survive, so nobody begrudges Mr. Hart working to keep us all employed.”

  “Guess not,” Nudger said, pressing down hard with the pen and rearranging the cat’s ears. Still not right.

  “Each quarter we do a little less in gross unit sales,” Derek said. “We’re hoping the new miniature pagers will boost sales next month.”