by Mike Faricy
“Talk about how the day went?” I didn’t get it.
“You know what I mean, Dev?”
Actually, I didn’t, or maybe I really did. “So, do I know him?”
“What?”
“I’m guessing you’ve met someone and you find him a better fit than me. Right?”
“No.” But she said it in a tone that made me think I’d hit a nerve.
I climbed out of the hot tub, grabbed my towel and wrapped it around my waist. “Give me a minute to get changed and I’ll get out of here.”
She just nodded and I slowly made my way to the door, waiting for her to offer an alternative, maybe continue the ‘discussion’ in the bedroom. She didn’t make the offer.
I made my way into her bedroom, pulled on my shorts and t-shirt, slipped my sandals on and turned off the bedroom light. I peeked out the corner of her bedroom window and watched while she sent a text to someone. At a quarter to twelve on a Wednesday night I guessed she was letting whoever it was know the deed had been done.
I turned on the kitchen light as I went back out to the deck, alerting her to my approach. Her phone was nowhere to be seen when I stepped onto the deck. “Angie, I’m going to take off, I…”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you had to go,” she said then stood up and hurried toward the front door.
I attempted to catch up. “Yeah, I suppose I could hang around and talk about how the day went. But if I hurry, I can get down to The Spot before close. You sure you don’t want to come?” I said, then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “See you around.”
She held the front door open, then said “Goodbye, Dev, it’s been…interesting,” as I went out the door. I hadn’t taken three steps before the lock snapped shut behind me. I hopped in my car and hurried down to The Spot.
Chapter Two
Morton was in his bed next to my desk, busy working over a new rawhide toy. I’d been studying the girls in the third-floor apartment across the street from my office for the past thirty minutes. Something was up, they had two sleepover guests, possibly sisters. All four of them were in thongs and curlers, sipping champagne, eating coffee cake and applying makeup at just a little after ten in the morning. There must have been music playing, because one of the girls was shaking everything she had while another was singing into her champagne flute and making moves like she was playing Madison Square Garden. At this rate they’d be lucky if they were still on their feet by noon. I bet none of them were interested in talking about how their day went. I thought about going over there and offering encouragement.
I turned at the sound of someone knocking on the door frame, Morton was too involved with his rawhide to notice. She looked familiar, maybe, but I was blanking on a name. Maybe an even five-four, blonde, blue eyes, nice figure and silver earrings that dangled a stone. Diamonds, I guessed.
“Hi, Dev, long time no see.”
I recognized the space between her front teeth. Bonnie Lowry, from Climax, Minnesota, if I recalled correctly, and given the name, who could forget? I always thought that space between her teeth was cute. She was right on the money with the ‘long time no see’ remark. I’d met her at a wedding a good ten years ago. A guy I knew had married her sister, Chrissy and Bonnie had been a bridesmaid. She’d first caught my attention standing up on the altar in her bridesmaid’s dress, light blue if I remembered. Although the dress wasn’t what had attracted my attention.
The butterfly tattoo on her back certainly wasn’t the only tattoo among the bridesmaids. They all had ink. It’s just that Bonnie’s butterfly happened to be a well-endowed, anatomically correct, naked woman, with butterfly wings. It shouldn’t have been surprising, after all, this was a theme wedding, Jack Daniels being the theme. It was one of the few weddings I’d been to where there was a fight. The only wedding I could recall where the fight had been between two bridesmaids, Bonnie and another girl.
The following morning she couldn’t remember what they’d fought about. Actually, she couldn’t remember the fight, but then again, she couldn’t remember my name, either. I gave her my business card when I drove her home, hoping she’d call. She never did.
“Bonnie Lowry,” I said and watched as she strutted toward one of my client chairs.
“Yeah, baby, told you I’d call.”
“I just didn’t think it would take you ten years.”
“You could have called me, phone works both ways,” she said.
“I’d need your number to do that. Remember, that was one of the things you were going to call me about, your phone number.”
“Oh, yeah, I s'pose. I guess I took a little detour. I got married to a guy for a while, divorced the deadbeat. Got three kids, now.”
“Really. Congratulations.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty good on most days.”
“So what brings you around?”
She glanced at the binoculars I’d set on the desk, then looked over my shoulder and out the window. “I see you’re still investigating.”
“I’m into bird watching.”
“Sure you are. Mind if I sit down?”
“Oh, please, please. You want some coffee?”
“Yeah, I guess I’d take a mug, black. I mean, if you’re having some.”
The coffee pot was on top of the file cabinet. Fortunately, my officemate, Louie had left his mug next to the pot. Maybe a half-inch of yesterday’s coffee sat in the mug. I stepped into the closet, poured the coffee into the sink and refilled Louie’s mug.
The entire process couldn’t have taken more than twenty seconds. By the time I set the mug in front of her, Bonnie was looking across the street through the binoculars. “I see you’re watching large-breasted chickadees,” she said, then shook her head and set the binoculars down. She gave me a look as if to say, ‘It figures’, then took a sip of coffee. She sort of grimaced and pushed the mug as far away from her as possible.
“So what can I do for you?”
“I’m not sure, and maybe there’s nothing you can do. But I have to try something. I’ve got a small business.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, started out on the kitchen table a couple of years back, actually one of the many reasons for my divorce. I should back up. I took a bunch of night classes on computers and the internet and then I started going freelance, you know building a website for one business, helping someone else market products, helping another company build a customer base. Anyway, I’m into online action.”
“Online action? You putting selfies out there?” I joked.
Suddenly a serious look spread across her face. “I only did that once. Well, okay, maybe a couple of times, but I’ll be the first to admit it wasn’t my brightest idea. I think there were some beverages involved. How did you see them?”
“Actually, I was just joking, Bonnie.”
“Oh, yeah, I ahhh, I knew that. Anyway, here’s the deal. The people I work with, my clients, are all competing in one way or another with Amazon. So, I’ve been working to give them, my clients, a higher profile and then, theoretically, more business. It takes a lot of time, and at the end of the day I only have a finite amount of time. Whether it’s eight hours or sixteen hours a day, at some point I’m limited. See what I’m saying?”
“Sort of, I’m not sure how I would fit in. The last thing you want is me on your computer or marketing your customer’s products. I’d drive everyone out of business.”
“Actually that doesn’t really surprise me. For the past year I’ve been working nights and weekends developing a software product that would make it easy for my customers to do what I’m doing for them now.”
“But wait a minute, wouldn’t that put you out of business?”
“It would put me out of the business I’m currently in. But I could increase my client base by thousands, millions actually, if I can get people to buy this new software package.”
“Sounds great, I wouldn’t really have a use for it, but I wish you all success and…”
“Le
t me finish. I’ve got a partner, Ignatius Arnold. I want you to watch him.”
“Watch him? Are you afraid he’s going to rip you off or…?”
“No, no, nothing like that. He’s special. A very special person. What I’m trying to say is he doesn’t quite relate to the real world. He’s brilliant, a computer genius, as a matter of fact. But he has a lot of issues. He’s very vulnerable, and I think at least one of my competitors is trying to take advantage of him.”
“Is he some kind of nerd?”
“That would be putting it mildly.”
Chapter Three
I followed Bonnie over to her home so I could meet this Ignatius guy.
Before we left she told me, “You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? You meet Iggy just once and it’ll be like getting the whole book. He’s been living in my lower level for the past six months.”
Bonnie lived in Woodbury, a suburb due east of St. Paul. It was an uneventful, twelve-minute drive on I-94 from my office to her place. I pulled into the driveway behind her. Her home was a split level that wasn’t more than fifteen years old. It had an attached double garage and a soccer net in the front yard with three boys about nine or ten kicking a black and white ball around. What was left of the flowers in the front of the house looked like they’d fallen victim to more than one soccer match, except for about a half-dozen daisies at the far end of the front garden that had somehow managed to survive. Morton popped his head up in the back seat, checked out the kids playing with the soccer ball and gave a little whine.
“Mom, there’s nothing good to eat,” the shortest of the three boys said as Bonnie got out of her car. He was blonde and looked a lot like her, including that space between his two front teeth.
“Then you’ll just have to wait for dinner, J.D.,” Bonnie said and headed for the front door, I had to hurry to catch up. “This is my friend Mr. Haskell, he’s going to be helping Iggy and me.”
“Hi,” J.D. said, then focused on lining up his next kick, ignoring me completely. He gave the ball a good boot and it sailed over the net and out into the street.
“Come on in and ignore the mess,” she said, walking into the house. I followed.
The entryway was maybe eight by ten feet and covered with black and white tile, I think. There were a half-dozen Barbie dolls, an odd assortment of shoes, two nerf guns, a bucket full of legos, a blue windbreaker, what looked like a broken bicycle lock and a toy truck scattered around the entry. A short staircase led up to the main floor and a carpeted staircase led down to a closed door on the lower level.
Bonnie headed up the stairs to the main floor and I dutifully followed.
“I’ll give him a call and let him know we’re coming. You want anything? A coffee? A beer? I think there’s a couple of Cokes left in the fridge. Go ahead and just help yourself, I’m running to the bathroom.”
“I’m fine, don’t hurry on my account.”
The living room was large with a peaked ceiling. The room morphed into a kitchen in one corner separated by a counter of beige granite. Cereal dishes and milk glasses were stacked in the sink. A half-filled coffee mug from Las Vegas with lipstick along the edge sat on the end of the kitchen counter.
On the far side of the counter was a dining room table with eight chairs around it and a sticker book featuring whatever the latest Disney movie was. The characters looked familiar, but I was way too out of touch to even guess at the names. At the far end of the dining room table was a sliding door that led out to a fairly large deck. The living room area featured a glass-topped coffee table in front of a chocolate brown ‘L’ shaped couch. A large flatscreen TV sat on top of a cabinet opposite the couch. A kid’s blanket was balled up on the coffee table with three toy trucks parked beneath.
I examined the dozen or so framed photos on the wall. Bonnie with the three kids, two boys and a girl. The boy I’d seen playing soccer in the front yard looked to be the oldest. Based on the photos, I guessed the kids might be two years apart. I was examining a picture of Bonnie and the kids at a beach somewhere, clearly not Minnesota. Given the age of her oldest, I think she’d called him J.D., the photo might have been taken two years ago. After three kids, she still cut a stunning figure in a bikini, although it looked like she’d added a half dozen more tattoos over the years.
“Ignore that photo, I look fat,” she said, stepping out of the bathroom.
“You look great, I’m guessing this was a couple of years ago?”
“Yeah, Nags Head, really gorgeous. It was shortly after the divorce and we all needed to get away. It turned out to be just what the doctor ordered, sun, surf and acting stupid. On the drive home, when we weren’t singing Bingo or Old MacDonald Had a Farm, I came up with the idea of a simple link, just one click, to handle everyone’s marketing needs. We got back here and the rest is history. Let me give Iggy a call, he always likes a heads up before I knock on the door. Otherwise he probably won’t answer.”
I returned to studying the photos. Bonnie pushed a speed dial button and started speaking a moment later.
“Yeah, Iggy. Hi, it’s Bonnie. No, not a problem. I was thinking pasta, with chicken tonight, interested? No, I know. Okay, hot dogs it is. No, probably not until 5:30. Listen, I’ve got my friend, Dev Haskell here. Yeah. No, I don’t think so. No, I understand, we’ll see you in fifteen minutes. Sure, thanks.”
I turned from the photos on the wall. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, he’s just in the middle of something and he needs some time to get ready.”
“Get ready?”
“I think you’ll understand once you meet him.”
I nodded and turned back to the photos on the wall. “So this is J.D., what’s that stand for?”
“Jack Daniels. Actually, it was after that wedding of my sister, Chrissy.”
“Your sister?”
“Yeah. I married one of the groomsmen, Wayne. I don’t know if you met him that day. I’d been seeing him and, well, we were married about seven months later.”
I could have mentioned that she’d spent the night of her sister’s wedding with me, but why? “Okay, so Jack Daniels, then you had your daughter,” I said pointing at the little girl in the beach photo.
“Yeah, my sweetie, Stella. And before you ask, yes she was named after Stella Atrois, the beer. And the baby there, he’s the youngest, Bud.”
“After Budweiser?” I joked.
“Exactly,” she said, not kidding. “The two youngest are at daycare right now, I pick them up around four. You sure you don’t want a coffee or something? I’m going to make a fresh pot, we’ve got a few minutes before we go downstairs.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll have some coffee. So, I can’t be the first person to ask about the kid’s names.”
She set the timer on the oven then pulled the coffee pot out and poured the remnants of the pot into the sink. She filled the pot with water and poured it into the coffee maker. She opened a cabinet and pulled out a coffee filter, placed it in the coffee maker, then pushed a button on a grinder that whirled and ground coffee beans.
Finally she said, “Well, JD was sort of a natural, because of the theme at my sister’s wedding…”
Once again I remembered we, she and I, had enjoyed a one-night stand the night of her sister’s wedding, but I didn’t mention it.
“…Stella seemed like a natural, and she likes it because she’s the only Stella in her class. Once we had the first two named, Buddy seemed like a natural. He’s a laid back little guy, exactly the sort of kid you’d probably call Buddy, anyway. So, we just stayed with the theme and named him Budweiser.”
Chapter Four
We chatted for a few minutes drinking coffee until the timer on the oven went off with a ding. “Okay,” she said, took a sip, then set her mug on the counter. “Let’s go introduce you to Iggy.” I followed her down the steps toward the front door, then down the carpeted set of steps to the lower level where she knocked on the closed door.
A
moment later a muffled voice from the other side asked, “Who’s there?”
Bonnie looked back at me, rolled her eyes and said, “It’s me, Iggy, and Mr. Haskell, the security specialist.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
A lock snapped and then the door opened. The room was fairly dark, illuminated by a number of computer screens giving off a sort of blueish aura to the areas around them. I counted at least ten screens, all with bits of data and lines of code running across them.
“How’s it going?” Bonnie asked, walking into the darkened room.
“Making progress,” a voice said from somewhere in the dark, then closed the door behind me.
“Iggy, this is my friend Dev Haskell. We go back a long way. He’s the private investigator I told you about.”
“Could I see some identification?” a squeaky voice asked.
I waited half a moment for the laugh signifying a joke, it didn’t happen. “Yeah, sure, will a driver’s license do? I’ve got my VA card, a five-dollar gift card to Target, a…”
“Just the driver’s license, please.”
I handed him my license. He clicked on a small flashlight, examined the license, flashed the light in my face and studied me for a moment, then handed the license back to me. “Thank you.”
I attempted to regain my vision as he walked toward a bank of computer screens. I could just make out a tall, thin figure who could have been the poster child for the nerd club. He wore glasses in black frames, the kind of frames kids in grade school wore, with very thick lenses. He had an exceptionally high forehead with hair of medium length sticking out at various angles. The hair was anything but trendy, rather more like an eternal bed-head. He wore a Star Wars t-shirt, Luke Skywalker with a light saber, with the words ‘The Force Awakens’ below the image, and a pair of suspenders. I guessed the silver sheet he had wrapped around his shoulders was most likely Mylar. The cap he wore appeared to be tinfoil. I extended my hand, wondering if he’d shake it. He did, although I noted he wore latex gloves and was in desperate need of a shower.
