by J. T. Lewis
The brightness outside was a stark contrast to the darkness of the bar we had just left, and I had to squint for a few moments before I could see. Offering my hand to Preacher when we reached the cars, he happily grabbed it with a firm grip.
“I’ll be in touch with you this afternoon, tomorrow at the latest. It was nice meeting you Preacher.”
“Likewise Gabriel…I hope we will be working together soon.”
As I drove out of the lot and back towards home, I reflected some more on the stranger in the Road Runner. I had found him determined, knowledgeable, and quirky.
He was a perfect fit!
Thinking back once more to the magically appearing pen, I determined that it must be true what they say.
The Good Book can supply your every need.
Chapter 12
September 15, 1999
My mind was back on the case as I pulled into the driveway at the house. Walking up to the front door, I heard giggling from inside.
Sounded like Nate was here.
Walking into the kitchen, I found Abby and her beau sitting next to each other at the table eating lunch…or more like feeding each other lunch.
Abby grinned when she saw me and came over to give me a hug.
“Morning Gabe! You ready for lunch?”
I hadn’t realized that it was so late, but my stomach gave me a sudden reminder as I nodded my head.
“Sounds great! What are we having?”
“Just bologna,” Abby said as she headed toward the counter, “But it’s from the deli, and it’s excellent! Fresh tomatoes too!”
My mouth was watering…I really was hungrier than I had thought.
Patting Nate on the shoulder as I sat down, I asked him how everything was going. He still worked as an investigator with Allen Vanguard, the county prosecutor…my old job. Actually, before I had quit suddenly last year, we had both been employed there at the same time for a short while. (1)
Although I had little firsthand knowledge of his skills as an investigator, from what I had heard he was pretty good at his job. We infrequently discussed cases that he was working on during his visits, but mostly he was Abby’s boyfriend in this house.
Most of the time, he made her extremely happy. That gave him an A+ rating in my book.
Abby set a beautiful sandwich in front of me then. Thanking her, I dug into the delicious combination, having to wipe tomato juice off my chin between bites.
“How was your meeting?” Abby asked as we finished up our meals. “Get us a new case?” she asked hopefully. She was as anxious for a “real” case as I was.
“I believe so,” I said guardedly. We didn’t openly discuss active cases with Nate, and he was ok with that. If prosecutor involvement was deemed necessary however, he was our go-to guy for that.
Since Allen Vanguard and I had known each other for years, I considered him a friend. But with the ending of our working relationship last year, our friendship was strained to say the least.
I had decked him in his office, laid him out unconscious over something he had said about Abby. Although he had eventually apologized for the error in his thinking, we were both hesitant to fully invest in each other again.
“Well, I’d better get out of here,” Nate said with a smile, “So you can discuss the case.”
Abby grinned at this, saying she would walk him out.
As he said goodbye and walked out with Abby, I focused my mind back on the case. Pulling out my notebook, I started going over the notes of the morning as Abby came back into the house.
“So, what are we looking at?” She exuded excitement as she sat next to me and looked down anxiously at my notes.
“Nothing much, multiple murders, multiple states, all killed overseas.”
“Cool!” Abby exclaimed.
“Two of the widows are friends of mine…they are the ones hiring us.”
“Dammit, I’m sorry Gabe…I didn’t mean…”
I smiled and shrugged at her exuberance, “Hey, there was no way you could know.”
“It’s just an exciting sounding case is all,” she continued in explanation, her face red.
I moved the notebook over toward her and started going over the facts as I knew them, including the fact that my old friends had figured this out themselves.
“Smart ladies,” Abby said with admiration. “It looks pretty certain to me that there really is something here, but I guess there is still room for coincidence.”
“The longer I think about it, the less coincidental it seems to me,” I started. “I thought maybe you could run their names through the national database at the sheriff’s office. These men are all executives though, I really don’t think you will find much there.”
“I bet I can find plenty on the internet though,” Abby said with excitement. “I’ll get started on it right away!”
Getting up from the table, she started for the next room where the computer hookup was.
“This is huge Gabe…we may need help with this one!”
A smile crossed my face, “About that…”
Chapter 13
September 15, 1999
Abby did not look happy.
Her excitement over the case had ebbed somewhat as I started describing my encounter that morning with Preacher. As I continued with his offer of help, her attitude as well as her posture had stiffened somewhat.
This was not going to be an easy sell.
“No!”
I sat there and let the echo of her determined statement bounce off of the walls.
“You haven’t heard everything yet,” I said steadily back, unused to confrontation with my daughter. She couldn’t help being steely in her ideals, it was an inherited trait. It’s called being hard headed, and my family had always had it in spades.
“No, I was wrong…we don’t need help.”
With that, she made her way determinedly to the computer and flipped up the switch. As the computer ground to life, I thought over Abby’s surprisingly closed minded attitude. Even considering her heritage, this was uncharacteristic of her.
“May I ask what your concerns are Abby?”
She sat on the chair and stared at the monitor as little blips appeared on the screen. Finally, she turned in her chair, resting her hand on the back as she looked me squarely in the eye.
“For one, he sounds dangerous…and it sounds like it would be dangerous to be around him if anyone discovered who he was. Secondly, we work together very well Gabe; I just don’t think we need to add a third wheel to screw it up. Besides, I spoke too soon a moment ago…we don’t need help.”
She turned back to the computer and logged in. I mulled over what she had said, and then I mulled over what she hadn’t said. A picture of the situation was clearing up in my head, and I smiled as I made my way over to her chair.
Taking her hand, I gently pulled on it in an effort for her to follow me.
“What?” she asked in confusion as I led her through the kitchen and out the back door to the yard. Moving over to the swing, I indicated for her to sit, and then sat down next to her. She was uncertain what I was up to, but played along quietly as she waited.
Putting my arm loosely around her shoulder, I kicked off with my foot, putting the swing into action. We sat there silently for a few minutes as I felt the tension slowly drain from Abby’s shoulders.
“Pretty back here, isn’t it,” I said, somewhat in awe.
“Yes, it is,” Abby said, seeming to look around for the first time. “Betty did this, didn’t she?”
“Yep,” I said with a bit of pride in my voice. “It was one of her favorite things to do. She designed it and made it what it is. I think it’s perfect, and since she’s gone, I’ll never change it. But she would have found other things to do with it if she were alive.
We sat in silence for a few more minutes, enjoying the garden before us.
“Abby?”
“Yeah?”
“Could it be that you are worried about
messing with our working affiliation by adding someone else to it…or our personal one?”
She was silent as I continued to push the swing with my foot.
It had occurred to me that the underlying thought of her rejection of Preacher might actually be the hesitation of adding someone else to our relationship.
“Maybe,” she finally conceded, “why screw a good thing up?”
“First off my dear daughter, nothing will ever come between us…I won’t let it! But our relationship is like this garden…as long as we are alive, it will change. The garden is a memorial to Betty now, but if she were alive it would still be constantly changing, most of the time for the better.”
I stopped the swing and scooted to the front of the seat, looking Abby in the eye.
“Change is scary…you scared the hell out of me when you showed up, but I’ve never regretted one moment of our time together.”
With that said I leaned back into the seat and started gently pushing the swing again.
“The reality is that with this case spread out like it is, I think we could use the help. And the guy’s story appeals to me. He’s been cast off like an old sock, with no consideration for any usefulness that might remain.”
“Plus,” I added as an afterthought, “He said he’d work for free.”
“Free?” Abby asked with a gleam in her eye as she stood up, offering her hand to help me up.
“Why didn’t you say so?”
I couldn’t help but smile as I stood up from the swing and started walking back to the house. Even though she had latched on to the cheap help aspect of our conversation, I believed that I had gotten through to her on another level as well.
It wasn’t always easy having a child, especially working with one. But I now believed that the rewards were well worth it.
“I’d like to meet this Preacher fellow, why don’t you see if he can come over for supper?”
I nodded with a smile and got out my notebook to look up his number. It was indeed turning into an interesting day!
Chapter 14
September 15, 1999
“I haven’t come up with much yet,” Abby declared as she entered the kitchen behind me. I had been sitting at the kitchen table, going over my notes and trying to brainstorm how to approach this case. I had been secretly hoping that Abby would come up with at least a thread of a clue to follow from the web. Apparently that was not to be the case.
“Nothing?” I asked as she sat down at the table carrying a small stack of papers.
“Oh, I found a few things,” she said as she handed the stack to me. “Background mostly, all of the men have information about them out there at least. While they are far from famous, they seem to be well known in their own circles…like your friend’s husband.
She reached over and pulled one of the paper clipped sections out of the pile. A color picture of Tom Lassiter appeared before me at the top of a page.
“This article is about him receiving some boring award from a petroleum engineering group. This is pretty typical of the men I looked up, well known in their field, and the company they work for…if they didn’t own it.”
I read through the article and turned to the second page where there was a picture of Tom receiving his reward…with May beaming towards the camera at his side.
“She’s pretty,” Abby said from over my shoulder. “That’s your old friend that hired us?”
“One of them,” I stated flatly as I finished reading the article. “The other is Raven Forester.”
“Ahhh…married to Calvin Forester!”
She dug through the pile and came up with a larger clipped together section.
“I have a lot of information on them!”
Paging through this stack, there were article after article of Calvin’s business accolades. Turning the next page, I was confronted with an image of Calvin with Raven hanging on his arm.
“They are big on the social circuit too, as you can see,” Abby piped in then. Leaning over my shoulder to look closer at the picture, “She’s stunning!”
I had to admit, I agreed with my daughter on the assessment of both of our clients. May had always been beautiful, inside and out. And stunning had also always described Raven’s looks, though not necessarily her inner being.
I again marveled at the change in the women I had witnessed today. Raven for her part had changed the most in my estimation. She seemed truly moved with concern for May’s loss, as well as her own. May hadn’t changed that much, she had always been a caring and concerned individual.
The biggest change was their sudden friendship, sudden at least to me. I would have never fathomed such a pair ever working together harmoniously, much less acting like sisters to one another.
I was shaking my head as I scanned the page when Abby asked, “What’s the matter?”
Shaken from my thoughts, I answered, “nothing,” before looking back down to my reading. “They are just different than I remember them is all.”
“I thought I might go ahead and run down to the sheriff’s department and see what I can find there,” Abby said as she gathered some notes together. “I’ll probably be back in a couple of hours.”
My ears picked up the rumbling of a car outside the house, but the implications of the sound escaped me as I watched Abby quickly gather up some items before running toward the door.
Looking back down at the picture of Raven, I was surprised to find that my pulse rate had risen slightly when I again took in her image. She was certainly still a very smart looking woman, and apparently those same reasons that had made me fall in love with her so long ago could still be triggered by her beauty.
“Bye!” I heard Abby exclaim as she reached the door.
A sudden realization hit me then as I looked up from the picture. Abby was turning the knob as I yelled out, “Abby wait!”
Turning back towards me with a puzzled look as she opened the door, I heard her quick intake of breath when something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.
“Holy Crap!”
Chapter 15
September 15, 1999
“I have another…project for you Hector.”
About damn time, Hector thought to himself before answering.
“Good! Where to?”
“Indonesia this time…it may be a test of your language skills.”
A hodgepodge of a country, Hector knew there were over 700 languages and dialects spoken there.
“I’ll get by,” Hector said while keeping the excitement hidden from his voice. “I assume a packet with the details will arrive tomorrow?”
“I’ve changed that part around a little bit this time. I have a secure website that I will be using from now on. I will pass that information on to you by courier tomorrow. Memorize the IP address and your password, and then destroy the copy of the note you receive. You will need to keep this information in your head only…never write it down! Should anyone ever get wind of what I am doing, it would make it harder for them to track me.”
“Ok,” Hector replied evenly, while seething inside. He hated the internet! Although he had an internet connection, he very seldom used it…except for porn of course.
“Look for the package tomorrow,” Bill said before hanging up, “You have a week.”
The line went dead and Hector hung up the receiver.
“Indonesia huh?” he thought out loud as he went to his safe and dialed in the combination. Taking out a stack of passports, he shuffled through them as he worked through the pros and cons of each identity. Finally stopping when a name revealed itself in his hand, he lifted it to his face with a smile.
“I’ve missed you!” he said out loud as he opened the booklet, reliving the travels they had shared as he inhaled the scent of the paper.
“Guess what old friend? We’re going on a trip!”
Putting the rest of his collection back in the safe and spinning the dial to lock it, he moved to the desk to start his preparations.
<
br /> “To Indonesia!”
Chapter 16
September 15, 1999
The man filled the doorway.
Abby took a step back as she looked up at the person in front of her. Caught off guard, her mind seemed to shift into overdrive, trying to assess her situation.
“Hello little lady…I’m Preacher. And you are Abby I assume?”
I looked at the clock on the wall and realized that it was already 6:00.
“Right on time Preacher,” I called from the table, “although we are running a little behind.”
“Oh crap,” Abby finally found her voice, “I forgot all about it!”
“Not to worry,” Preacher said as he held out his hand in greeting.
Abby grabbed his hand and shook it. “I’m terribly sorry…this case…the day got away from us.”
“Must be a pretty interesting case then,” Preacher said with a smile as he stepped into the kitchen, closing the door behind him.
By then I was up and offering my hand to him. “Come on in and have a seat Preacher, we’ll whip something up in a few minutes.”
The man in the pale blue blazer ambled over to the table and sat down. “Don’t go to any trouble on my account. I’m easy to please.”
I went over with Abby to the fridge to look around for something to eat. I knew that she had intended to fix a roast, but it was way too late to start that.
“How about the leftover chicken and the potato salad?” I asked Abby. She seemed unsure, so I asked Preacher if that was ok.
“Sounds wonderful to me… anything’s better than a microwave dinner!”
Abby pulled out the food and set it on the table while I busied myself making a fresh pot of coffee.
“Let’s eat…I’m starved!” Abby exclaimed as she reached for a piece of chicken.
“Would you mind,” Preacher questioned quietly, “If I were to say grace?”
I had gotten out of the habit since Betty had passed, but nodded as I bowed my head. While he said his short prayer, I wondered to myself what Abby’s religious beliefs were. To my mind, one’s faith was a very personal thing, and I had never thought to ask her about her beliefs.
