He deflated a little. “Oh.”
I shouldered my way past him up the steps, and rang the bell. No one answered, so I rang again. I could hear people walking around inside, but when they didn’t respond to the second ring, I knocked on the door. After a couple more minutes, a light flipped on over my head, and the door cracked open.
“Can I help you?” A sliver of a middle-aged woman’s face appeared between the door and the jamb, as she looked at me through the security chain. The last time a woman was this unhappy to see me had been my date for the senior prom.
The woman’s face was pinched, like she’d been a beautiful girl whose life hadn’t worked out as well as she’d hoped, and her eyes darted along the street past me looking for something. I couldn’t tell if she was more annoyed at me interrupting her evening, or worried about whatever might be out on the sidewalk at night. I’d seen that look before, on the face of my own mother, and it dredged up some memories that I didn’t particularly enjoy.
“Is Mr. Arthur home?” I asked, reaching into my coat pocket for my investigator’s license.
“No, he’s not,” she said, and moved to close the door in my face. I put a hand on the door and held it open. I couldn’t go through without an invitation, but I could make sure she didn’t close it completely, either.
I held my credentials where she could see them and said, “We’re investigating the disappearance of some children. Maybe you’ve heard about the situation?”
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard of that. Awful stuff. But I don’t see what that has to do with Joe. He’s never really hurt anybody.” She stopped, eyes round as she realized what she’d implied.
I began to doubt her certainty that Mr. Arthur was harmless. Maybe Greg had found something after all.
“We understand that, ma’am. We’re hoping that he could answer a few questions for us about the Career Day events that he attended at several of the schools prior to the disappearances. He may have seen something that could be useful in our investigation. Could we come in and wait for him?” She looked increasingly nervous, and I suddenly became aware of another heartbeat in the house.
“Um . . . no, I’m sorry. I’m alone here, you see, and it wouldn’t be proper. You understand? You’re welcome to come back later, when my husband is home. Maybe tomorrow afternoon?”
I could hear the heartbeat moving closer to the door but I had no way in without an invitation. A wife-beater or a stone-cold killer could be behind that door, and I still couldn’t do anything about it if I couldn’t figure out how to get inside. I’m not sure how long I would have stood there if Greg hadn’t pulled on my sleeve.
“Come on, James. We’ll come back and visit when Mr. Arthur is home. Thanks for your time, ma’am.” He led me down the steps by my elbow and steered me toward the car.
“Dude!” I whispered. “What the hell was that about? Something had her wound up—her pulse was up, her skin was flushed, and there was definitely somebody else in that house. I could hear a man’s pulse, racing. He was pretty excited, too.” I put my elbows on the roof of the car and looked over at where Greg stood by the driver’s door.
Usually he was the first one to leap into Super Hero mode. Now, he stood there quietly. I didn’t understand. “Why aren’t we doing everything we can to get her to let us in so we can help her?”
“Because I don’t think she would appreciate our help,” he said, with what I guess he meant to be a meaningful glance.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Let’s see—skin flushed, heart racing, doesn’t want us in the house, husband not home, someone else in the house with her. Even the man with a thousand strikeouts like you should be able to put those clues together.” He smirked at me as realization dawned, and we got in the car.
“I get it.” I closed the door. “She’s having an affair, and her boyfriend was there. But where does that leave us with the Tire King?”
“Headed to Lucky Strike.” Greg put the car in gear and headed towards the big outlet mall north of town.
“Why do you have a sudden urge to go bowling in the middle of an investigation?” Greg didn’t really baffle me that often, but this time he had me flummoxed. Admittedly, he often baffled me, but it was usually with his staggering ineptitude with women. I can’t understand how anyone can be immortal, live through all these years looking like he’s in his twenties, and still have no more game than the dorky kids we were when we were turned.
“While you were trying to get the Real Housewife of Charlotte to let us interrupt date night, I was peeking through the kitchen window checking out the calendar on the fridge. Tonight is Joe Arthur’s league night, so he’ll be bowling for at least another couple of hours. All we need to do is grab him when he heads for his car, interrogate him, maybe munch on him a little, and find out what he knows.”
“Munch? Did you, the closest thing to a vegan vampire I’ve ever met, just suggest that we actually feed from a suspect? Who are you and what did you do with Greg Knightwood?”
“I just thought that, you know, since you were off the wagon, bro, you might want another excuse to behave like an animal.”
Now that made more sense. Ticked me off, but made sense. He just wanted to make me feel like a monster again. Whatever. I am a monster. And monsters eat. It’s what we do.
“No, I think we can do without snacking on the suspects for tonight at least.” I leaned back in my seat and contemplated staking my partner while he pulled into the mall’s gargantuan parking lot. I couldn’t stake him, but I could needle him. “Besides, I’m still full from yesterday.”
“Well, if you’re sure . . .”
“I’m sure. Park the car.”
Lucky Strike is in Concord Mills, the gigantic mall north of town by the speedway. I’ve never gotten the hang of navigating that place. It’s over a mile to walk the entire inside of it, and the mere concept of trying to drive through the parking lot always gives me the heebie-jeebies. Greg pulled up in front of the bowling alley, and we headed in. It made sense that the Tire King would bowl there. It was the closest alley to his neighborhood, and it had a truly excellent beer selection.
“Assuming he’s here, do you really want to grab him as he exits?” I asked.
“Nah, I thought we’d flash our badges, ask a few questions about his whereabouts, hint around that his wife is having him investigated for infidelity, and all around ruin his night.”
“That sounds a little extreme, doesn’t it?” I asked. I liked it, but I wanted Greg to tell me that he’d seen what I saw in the wife’s eyes.
“Were you not paying attention back there? That woman had all the classic signs of abuse to go with her affair. If the Tire King’s never used her for a punching bag, I’ll eat your hat.”
Bingo. We were on the same page after all. I knew from the look in her eyes that the wife had been slapped around more than once. If we could get a little payback on Mr. Joe Arthur, upstanding businessman and school board member, I was down with that.
“Fine, but we don’t talk about his wife’s boy toy unless he’s really irritating.”
“Nah, if he’s really irritating we eat him. We ruin his marriage just for looking at me funny.”
“You’re wearing a utility belt. Everyone looks at you funny.”
“Point,” Greg agreed. “All right, we only ruin his marriage if we get something out of it.”
“Deal. I’ll lead.”
“Why do you always lead?”
“I’m taller.”
By now we had made it through the parking lot, down the mall and most of the way across the bowling alley, and I recognized Joe Arthur from his commercials. The Tire King was carrying a spare or two of his own, and I don’t mean the bowling kind. He was a sixty-something Italian guy with more hair coming out of his ears than he had left on his head. He was about five foot eight which gave me a serious height advantage. I’m a couple inches over six feet. Even Greg had a couple inches on the Rubber Royalty.
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He and his league buddies had the least flattering bowling shirts I’d ever seen. I’ve never met any guy over fifty (and over two-fifty) who can pull off horizontal stripes in turquoise, and these guys were no exception. I wondered if they realized they looked like turquoise Michelin Men.
We waited until Big Joe, as was embroidered on his bowling shirt, got up to bowl. Right in the middle of his backswing, I called out in my loudest voice, “Joe Arthur?” Since I was only about four feet from him, he jumped like a startled, overweight cat and threw a perfect gutter ball.
“Jesus Christ!” He stomped over to me and got as much in my face as he could from his height and bellowed, “What the holy crap do you think you’re doing? This is a league game! We’re in the running for the championship! What kind of crap was that?”
If the garlic myth had been anything more than urban legend, Joe’s breath would have put me down for the count. While my eyes watered, I flashed my badge. “Mr. Arthur, we have a few questions to ask you about some missing children.”
The whole trick to flashing a fake badge is to control the flash. You have to open and close the wallet before anyone can get a good look at the contents. I’d actually practiced in front of a mirror when we first opened up shop as detectives. It’s embarrassing to admit, but less embarrassing than how I learned to draw from a shoulder holster. Practice paid off, like now. His teammates were nudging each other as if to say, “Look at that. Joe’s gone and got himself in trouble.” They were focused on Joe, not questioning my ID.
“Mr. Arthur, is there somewhere we could talk?”
“I don’t know anything about any missing kids. And I don’t feel like talking to you. If you want to talk to me, talk to my lawyer first. And he’ll tell you I don’t know anything about any missing kids and don’t feel like talking to you. Right, Mason?” He pointed over to a scrawny, balding man drinking beer from a plastic cup at a table near their lane. The man, who I assumed was Arthur’s lawyer given Arthur’s smirk, nodded like his head was spring-loaded and started over to us.
“Now that you’ve heard from my lawyer, get out of my face and let me finish my game.” He turned back to the ball return machine, but I grabbed his wrist and turned him back to face me.
“I asked nicely first, Mr. Arthur. If I have to ask again, it won’t be nicely.” I spoke very slowly and kept my voice low. I didn’t need his buddies seeing me threaten him and wondering what kind of cop would do that. That wouldn’t end well for anyone, especially if anyone on the team got suspicious and grew a pair all of a sudden. Arthur looked into my eyes, and I put just enough mojo in them to show him I was not screwing around.
“Now,” I told him, “bowl this ball and then come meet us at that table.” I gestured to where Greg had settled in at a round plastic table with a pitcher of cheap beer and four plastic cups. “Bring your lawyer if you need to.” I let go of his wrist and went over to the table with Greg.
Mason beat his client over to our table and began issuing a list of demands in a nasal, demanding tone that probably had Greg rethinking his stance against drinking from annoying humans. That was my criteria. Since I find pretty much everyone annoying, I drink from whoever I want to. Greg doesn’t realize that my list of annoying people is about six billion names longer than his.
At the moment, Mason was top of the list. If I couldn’t eat him, then he had to go. I leaned forward looked straight into his eyes and said, “Go to the men’s room. Sit in a stall. Fall asleep for two hours. Then go do that thing you’ve always wanted to do but have been afraid would be too embarrassing.”
Mason got up with a decidedly glassy look in his eyes and headed for the crapper.
I leaned back in my chair. “Well, that’s one nuisance taken care of.”
“You’re evil. What do you think he’ll do?” Greg asked.
“I don’t even want to think about it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved anything from playing naked in the pond at Freedom Park to scaling the outside of the Bank of America building.”
Joe Arthur, the Tire King himself, joined us at our table after picking up the spare. “Where’s Mason?” he asked.
“He went to the can. Something about an upset stomach,” I replied. Greg snorted a little beer out of his nose, and I kicked him under the table.
“Fine. You’ve got me alone. What’s this about?” Arthur asked, obviously a man used to being in charge.
I decided to put an end to that as quickly as possible. I reached into the briefcase Greg had brought in from the car and brought out a stack of photographs. Smiling faces began to litter the table in front of us, some of the pictures curling a little as they soaked up spilled beer on the table. I didn’t care. I wanted to watch Arthur’s face as he realized who these children were. Ten pictures—school pictures, family vacation shots, all pictures of happy kids, beaming into the camera.
“Do you know who these kids are, Mr. Arthur?” I leaned forward, forcing his attention away from the photos and to my eyes. He looked up and I could see that he was shaken. There was something going on with this guy, and I needed to know what it was. He didn’t smell like malice, more like mischief, but he was involved in something somehow.
“These are the kids that have gone missing. But I don’t know anything about—”
I cut him off before he could go any further. “I know that, Mr. Arthur. You’re not a suspect in these disappearances. But you were at seven of these children’s schools in the days shortly before they went missing. You were there for Career Day, right?”
“Not all of them. Some of those Career Day things I sent Jake instead.”
“Jake?” Greg sat forward. We hadn’t heard anything about a Jake before now. “Who’s Jake?”
“Jake’s the manager of my Pineville store. I sent him to the schools on the south side of town, ’cause they’re closer to him. But what’s this got to do with me? I don’t know anything about any of this stuff.”
But he did—I could see it in his eyes, and more importantly, I could smell the little sweat that comes with fear. After a while you figure out what different kinds of fear smell like. For example, innocent oh-crap-I’m-about-to-get-eaten-by-a-vampire fear smells completely different than guilty as sin yeah-I-really-raised-a-super-demon-and-I’m-lying-out-my-butt-about-it fear. Joe’s fear was somewhere between I-cheated-on-my-taxes fear I’ve-got-corpses-buried-under-my-tomato-plants fear and I turned the fear smell inside out, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on the cause. I was so busy playing “Name That Fear” that I didn’t sense a disturbance in the force until I heard Greg whisper.
“Oh, crap.”
Chapter Sixteen
Okay, fine, you got me. I didn’t sense a disturbance in the force. But I did notice a silence fall over the bowling alley and smell a wave of fear rippling out from the main entrance. I looked over at the front door and saw the female detective from the night before talking to the shoe rental guy. He pointed to where we were sitting with the Tire King, and she started our way.
“Looks like we might have to come back to this conversation later, Mr. Arthur,” I said, getting to my feet and looking for another exit.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Arthur asked, getting up himself and blocking my escape route. “You can’t come in here and make all these accusations then go running out on me. You sit your skinny ass right back down here and tell me what you think I have to do with those missing kids!”
I leaned down to the Tire King’s face, which had gone an interesting splotchy purple color. I looked in his eyes and said, “Sleep.”
He passed out cold and fell face-first onto the table, crushing his plastic cup full of Miller with his forehead. I turned him to the side to make sure he wouldn’t drown in cheap beer and tried to formulate a plan.
“What are we gonna do?” Greg asked.
“I was really hoping you’d have a plan.” My mind worked as fast as it could, which really isn’t that fast, all things considered.
&n
bsp; “I never have a plan. At least, not one you like.”
He had a point there. Greg’s plans usually involved some expensive piece of equipment that only existed in comic books, or so many plot twists that by the time he finished explaining the plan, I’d already punched somebody.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything. But obviously tonight ain’t it.” I stood up as the detective got to our table. The look on her face dispelled any lingering hope that she hadn’t noticed me looking out Tommy’s hospital-room window. She was tall, and she’d pulled her curly hair back in a severe ponytail. Her blazer was pulled back to reveal an impressive rack, but my attention was drawn to her Smith & Wesson .40 pistol in a shoulder rig. I’ll admit it, I have a bit of a thing for women who pack heavier ammo than me.
She snapped her fingers in front of my face and brought me straight out of my happy place and back to the beer-soaked bowling alley. “This would be an excellent time for you to explain to me who you are and why you keep showing up around my investigation.”
The look on her face said she was a woman who brooked no BS, but I never let that stop me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding out my hand and dropping into the hick accent I grew up with. “I think you must have me mistaken for somebody else. I’m Jimmy Black, assistant manager at the Monroe location of Joe’s World of Tires. Can I help you with . . . something?” I put a little sleazy twist in there and ogled her chest, trying to make myself look like a slimy tire salesman.
Ogling her chest was not hard to do. More like a job perk.
“Really?” She said, and raised one eyebrow as if she knew something I didn’t. “There is no Monroe location of Joe’s World of Tires, and you’re no more a tire salesman than I am a private investigator. Why don’t you cut the crap, Mr. Black and tell me what you and your little friend here are doing screwing up my investigation before I haul you both downtown and book you on obstruction of justice charges.”
I knew going legit and getting PI licenses would come back to bite me in the ass. And the irony of that concept is not lost on me. Having failed so miserably with Plan A, I skipped the as-yet-undeveloped Plan B and went straight for the mojo. I looked her in the eyes, which was surprisingly easy since she was almost my height, and said, “These are not the droids you’re looking for. Move along.”
Modern Magic Page 29
