“You have any more of that whiskey?” I asked out of nowhere. “It looks delicious.” It was a long shot, but it might help us bond.
She looked me over, sizing me up. “You don’t seem like a whiskey gal. No offense,” she said. “You seem more of a girly drink kind of person. Am I right? You probably drink wine, too,” she added, saying the word wine as if it were some kind of filthy puddle of muddy water, a concoction beneath human consumption.
I smiled. “No, ma’am, my grandmother taught me well. She served me my first Manhattan when I was nineteen. Bourbon, a dash of sweet vermouth, some Angostura bitters, and lots of ice, if I remember right. Oh, and a maraschino cherry.”
She cocked her head to the side, seeming impressed. “Could have fooled me!” she exclaimed and then turned her back to us and bent over to root around in one of the cupboards below the countertop. After a few seconds she produced a slim bottle of tawny liquid whose label showed an old man smoking a cigar.
“You say you like bourbon?” she asked, a glint in her eye.
“My favorite,” I said, only half lying. My favorite usually happened to be whatever the host or hostess was pouring.
Mike and Carlos were silent, transfixed by this little interchange. Mrs. Vandenhoovel found a glass on the countertop, rinsed it out for a half second, and then poured me an inch of the drink.
“Bottoms up,” she said, hoisting her own glass in the air at me.
I did the same and then took a small sip.
I wasn’t used to Bourbon straight up like that, and the fumes almost burned off the little hairs in my nose. But it had a bright and not completely unpleasant burning sensation as it went down the hatch and immediately warmed my stomach. It tasted like jet fuel mixed with maple syrup and a hint of butterscotch.
“That’s delicious,” I said, no longer merely trying to ingratiate myself with her. “What do you call that?”
She smiled knowingly. “This here’s called Pappy Van Winkle. Another Dutchman, just like my late husband. But this Dutchman’s from Kentucky. Mine was from Pennsylvania. Anyway, this family makes the finest stuff there is. I just thought I’d share some with you since I don’t get that many visitors.” Then she eyed Carlos again. “You want to try some, cowboy?”
He and I exchanged a look. “Why not?” he asked.
Mrs. Vandenhoovel scanned the countertop and settled on a glass that may or may not have been clean. She gave it a quick rinse in the sink and then poured Carlos a much healthier portion than I’d received. He and I exchanged a look as she handed it to him.
There was about an inch and a half of Pappy Van Winkle in the glass—probably about three ounces—but Carlos treated it like a shot, and down the hatch it went. And then it immediately came back up, as Carlos ran towards the sink and spit most of it out. His whole body was heaving, and when he turned to face us, his eyes were red, and his face was flushed. He was breathing heavily, a look of utter confusion on his face.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Carlos!” I chastened him. “That’s a sipping drink. You don’t do shots with that stuff.” I grabbed the bottle off the counter and examined it.
“Here,” I said. “Read this.”
He squinted and looked at the bottle where I was pointing. “107 proof. Huh. I guess that explains that,” he said, his voice trailing off.
I shook my head and exchanged a look with Mrs. Vandenhoovel. “Amateur,” I muttered.
Mrs. Vandenhoovel was having a high old time. “I thought you’d be man enough, but I guess you had me fooled there, cowboy.” She was smiling at him, the cigar jutting out of her mouth like Winston Churchill. Carlos had quickly dropped down a notch, while my stock had risen considerably.
Mike sighed. Being a Mormon, he was probably bored out of his mind by all of this or was secretly looking down his nose at all of us.
I tried to get us back on track. “Mrs. Vandenhoovel, do you think your nephew went to Cabo San Lucas? Did he say?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t say.”
“So you have no idea where he would be staying there?” Mike asked. I shot him a look in which I tried to convey a big whopping duh.
She shook her head again. “No, I’m afraid not. Is he in some kind of trouble? I wonder where he got all this money.”
“Don’t go spending all that money at once, Mrs. Vandenhoovel,” I said. “It could be evidence of something. We don’t know what yet, but I would stay away from the casinos if I were you.”
She considered my advice for a second. “We’ll see. Tomorrow is half-price buffet and double points at Sam’s Town,” she said, referring to a casino popular with locals.
“Well, stick to the nickel slots anyways, okay?” I asked, smiling.
She shifted her body to lean against the counter. “Want to come with? The bus leaves here at ten.”
“We’ll see,” I said. I realized that it might actually be a lark to spend a few hours with Mrs. Vandenhoovel playing the slots. But I had a feeling I’d be busy.
I sensed that Mike was getting impatient. “I don’t suppose you know your nephew’s address here in town?” he asked. He was trying to make it sound like a very casual question, but it wasn’t working.
Mrs. Vandenhoovel looked Mike over for a second, as though sizing him up for a glass of Pappy Van Winkle.
“I do,” she said. “Not by memory. But by magazines.”
“Huh?” Carlos blurted out.
“Just a minute,” she said and then disappeared into one of the back rooms. When she returned, she was holding a copy of Fortune magazine.
She held it out to me. “He saves these for me and then brings them over in big stacks.”
And there it was, printed right on the address label. “Steven A. Fisher, 2913 Hall Boulevard, Apt 408, Las Vegas, NV.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. “I’ll just tear this section off so you can keep the magazine.”
I handed her back the magazine and wondered if there was anything else we should ask, given how friendly and open she was. Then it hit me. “Would you have a picture of Steven we could look at?”
She smiled. “Of course!” With that, she disappeared into her back rooms and then reappeared clutching a five-by-seven framed photo of a teenaged boy. She handed it to me.
“So handsome!” she exclaimed.
I studied the photo. Add a few decades and fifty or sixty pounds, and it was definitely Aaron. I wasn’t sure about the handsome part. “Thank you so much!” I said, handing the photo back to her.
Mike handed her his business card. “Can we have a phone number to get in touch with you?”
She took his card. “Over there on the table. It’s printed on the phone.” And then she smiled sheepishly. “I’ve never had to call my own phone, so I never bothered to learn it.”
Mike went over, scribbled it down on one of his own business cards, and then rejoined us. We parted ways, and she came out into the hallway to see us out.
“Sad,” I said when we were out of earshot. “She’s a real hoot but probably doesn’t get many visitors.”
Mike nodded. “I figured you’d like her,” he said, smiling.
I nudged him in the arm. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Does this mean I have to drive your lazy butts over there?” Carlos asked.
I sighed. “I was wondering when you’d start whining,” I said as we reached his car. “You were overdue.”
“I’m hungry, man!” he protested.
I sighed again. “All right, I’ll treat. We can stop on the way.”
“We?” Mike asked.
“You want to bail out, too?” I asked, exasperated.
He shrugged. “I’ve got to get to the gym,” he said.
Carlos snorted. I sensed a clash of male egos in the offing.
“Where’s your so-called gym?” Carlos asked.
Here we go. Apart from ogling naked ladies, Carlos loved nothing more than talking
about muscles and weight lifting. Mike was very athletic but more in the style of a basketball player or swimmer, where Carlos had more of a powerlifter’s spark plug of a body.
Mike didn’t rise to take the bait. “You’re right, Raven. It’s in the wrong direction. I’ll tag along with you. Even though it’s leg day.”
“Leg day?” I asked.
“You never miss leg day,” Carlos chimed in. And then, to my wonderment, Carlos stuck out his fist and gave a fist bump to Mike. That was two in the same evening. I realized then and there that I would never understand men. Here I thought they would be rivals for my affections, and now they were ganging up on me.
“Do I need to ask why?” I mused, climbing into the back seat of Carlos’s car.
Mike and Carlos exchanged a look. “Leg day is what separates serious people from posers,” Carlos explained with grave seriousness. “A lot of guys just want to work the mirror muscles, so they conveniently skip leg day whenever they can.”
I shot him a perplexed look. “Mirror muscles?”
“Mirror muscles are the muscles you can see in the mirror,” Mike explained. “You know, biceps, abs, chest.”
Carlos was nodding. “But it’s the other ones, like the muscles in your back and legs, that are where all your strength comes from.”
I shook my head with mock sincerity. “And all these years I never thought to check out a guy’s hamstring muscles.”
Carlos patted my arm. “And glutes! Don’t overlook the glutes!”
“Good tip,” I said. And then I looked out the window and tried desperately to think of a way to change the subject.
Luckily, the two of them had apparently exhausted their supply of conversation on the subject of men’s butt muscles, so we headed across town in peace, stopping at a Five Guys for some cheeseburgers. Mike treated unexpectedly.
“See, Carlos?” I asked, nudging him. “What a gentleman Mike is,” I gushed, grabbing his arm.
Carlos rolled his eyes. “Hey, this is work for me. I shouldn’t have to pay to work.”
“No, you’ve made that very clear all along, Carlos,” I said chidingly.
We hopped back into the car and made our way over to the apartment of Mrs. Vandenhoovel’s nephew, one Steven A. Fisher, also known as Aaron. He lived in an upscale four-story apartment complex tucked away behind a small city park.
Fisher was number 408, which meant either climbing the outside stairway or finding an elevator. By the time Mike and Carlos were bounding up the steps, it had become too late to protest, so I began huffing and puffing my way up the stairs behind them, careful not to examine their glute muscles from behind.
Neither Mike nor Carlos seemed to be out of breath, although they might have been disguising their breathing for my benefit or for some macho kind of competitive reason. I had no such compunctions, sucking so much wind that the nearest barometer probably detected a low-pressure system passing through. Once I had got my heart rate down to a manageable four thousand beats per minute, I knocked.
The three of us spent about ten seconds staring off into space, none of us expecting an answer given that Fisher had probably flown the coop. I gave the door another hard rap with the metal knocker. Nothing.
“Well, that was fun,” Mike said.
“Quitter,” I muttered. I looked around to see if anyone was watching us, but the coast was clear.
On a whim I bent down to look underneath the welcome mat on the off chance he’d hidden a spare key underneath. It was amazing how common that was. Actually, not much different than the number of people who use 111111 or 123456 as their passwords.
But alas, nothing was there. I dropped the mat back down and replaced it in exactly the position it had been in.
“What was that?” Carlos asked.
“Just checking,” I said, a touch defensively. “You never know. We’re entitled to get lucky sometimes.”
“No, I meant that sound.”
“Huh?” I asked.
Mike chimed in as he crouched down. “When you dropped the mat back in place, it made a metallic sound. A little ding.”
He flipped the mat over and held it up to the light next to the door. The three of us stared at it for a few seconds.
“Here,” Carlos said. He reached his finger into a little slit in the bottom of the mat where a tiny glint of silvery metal was peeking out. He gave it a few wiggles back and forth, and then the key popped out, right into his hand. He looked immensely proud of himself.
“Any other questions?” Carlos asked, holding up the key in triumph.
“Shh!” I hissed, grabbing the key out of his hand. I looked around to make sure we were still in the clear. “When you’re breaking into someone’s apartment,” I whispered, “you have to act like you belong. Holding a spare key up in the air gives exactly the wrong impression to anyone who might be looking.”
He looked wounded for a minute, but then he peered around, examining the outdoor corridor and the parking lot below us. “There’s nobody here, Sherlock. Don’t be so paranoid.”
I shook my head and took the key from him, trying to be discrete about it. It fit into the lock, and then I turned it and pushed in on the door.
The room was pitch-black and vacant apart from a kitchen table and chairs off to our right. I hunted around on the wall for the light switch and then flipped on the lights using my knuckle so that I didn’t leave any prints.
It was a standard-issue bachelor pad, complete with beer posters on the wall and the obligatory blonde bimbo in a suggestive pose gazing out across the room from a faded poster next to the giant television.
Mike coughed suggestively and then elbowed me. He was looking at the kitchen table, which was empty apart from a glass. There was a half inch of brown liquid in the bottom of the glass. Mike went over and picked up the glass.
“Still cold,” he whispered.
I put my finger up to my mouth in a shhh gesture. Instinctively, Carlos moved in front of me and began moving slowly into the apartment. In front of us lay a medium-sized living room with a red love seat and a glass coffee table, both situated across from a massive TV. To our right a hallway led to a pair of rooms, which I surmised were a bathroom and bedroom.
Mike and Carlos turned right and headed down the hall. I was happy to have them take the lead, so I followed along behind them. The first door on the left opened into a small bathroom, which was empty. At the end of the hall, which was mostly dark, lay the other door. Mike and Carlos moved slowly towards it, and then Carlos peeked his head inside, scanning the room.
He backed off and shook his head, and then Mike went into the room.
“What is it?” I asked.
Carlos sighed. “Window’s open. Wide open.”
I ran to the room and looked inside. It was a nice-sized bedroom with another TV perched on a dresser. But Carlos was right. The most important feature of the room was the wide-open window next to the bed.
Carlos poked his head through the window. “Fire escape,” he said. And then he wormed his way through the window and jumped out.
“Carlos!” I hissed. This wasn’t part of the plan. I looked down and saw him standing about ten feet below us on a black metal fire escape platform. He was looking down at the parking lot, scanning for any activity. There was none.
He looked up at me and shrugged. And that’s when we heard the noise, that now familiar sound of a German six-cylinder engine. It revved up and then powered away, and within seconds, it was out of earshot. We weren’t able to see a damned thing, though.
“That BMW wasn’t in the parking lot, right?” I asked Mike.
“Which BMW?” he asked.
I pursed my lips. “The red one. The one that belongs to Mrs. Vandenhoovel.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t looking for it, to be honest.”
“Neither was I,” I admitted. It was certainly possible that it had been right there in front of us, especially since it had been dark out. We had all been so preoccupied with the ap
artment that none of us had bothered to notice the cars parked outside. But I was no expert on engine sounds, and I wasn’t really all that sure that what I’d just heard was a BMW engine.
I heard the clank of steps on metal and then saw Carlos’s face appear in the window. He smiled. “Little help?” he asked.
Mike came over to the window, and the two of us hoisted Carlos inside.
“You didn’t see anything, did you?” I asked.
“No, but I heard a car driving off. And it was in a hurry to get out of here,” he said.
Mike turned on the lights in the room. “What now?” he asked.
Carlos smiled. He walked through the door and headed off into the kitchen. We followed.
He opened the refrigerator door and found a cold beer inside. “Who else wants one?”
“Me,” I said.
“Me, too,” Mike added.
We both looked at Mike in shock.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I muttered. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Mike have a drink, but it was an event worthy of note, like seeing a comet or finding a clean pair of underwear in a man’s dresser.
We sat down at the table and stared at our beer bottles. “I’m guessing he’s not coming back anytime soon,” I speculated.
“I wouldn’t if I were him,” Carlos said.
After a minute or two, I got antsy and started poking around the apartment. The bedroom indicated that only one person lived there, and the bathroom told the same tale, with a single toothbrush lying naked on the vanity. From the mess in both rooms, the prevalence of large TVs, and the beers in the fridge, I pegged the apartment’s occupant as a man.
When I returned to the kitchen, I found Carlos slouching in his chair, with Mike on his knees rummaging through the kitchen trash can.
“Gross,” I whispered, mostly to myself. But Mike heard me.
“This is where the good stuff is, Raven,” he said, not bothering to look away from his dirty work.
Carlos and I exchanged a look, both of us happy to not be digging through someone else’s trash.
“Here it is!” Mike announced.
Even Money Page 15
