by A W Hartoin
“Since he does.”
“What does she look like?”
“What does it matter?”
“I like to know who I’m helping.”
“She’s old, lots of extra skin. You’d like her.”
“Pass. What’s her deal?”
“Her husband split. I want you to check and see if he’s got any warrants, that kinda thing.”
“Dinner,” he said.
“Why do you want to have dinner? You’ll just end up pissing me off.”
“That’s why I want to have dinner and I need some help.”
“Oh really?”
“Mom’s getting married again.”
“Jeez, how many times is that?” I asked.
“Five…no, six. Christ.”
“Pick me up at Dad’s around six.”
Chuck showed up at six on the dot and he wasn’t alone. He had an enormous frizzy fur ball sitting on his feet and a paper bag in his hands.
“I had to bring him,” he said.
“Oh yeah. Why’s that?”
“He ate some birds.”
Chuck unclipped the leash and his dog, Pickpocket, trotted in and started the required all-over sniff. Pickpocket was one of Vicky’s castoffs. Nobody imagined Chuck would keep a black standard poodle no matter who gave it to him, but he claimed the dog was a chick magnet.
“I didn’t know Pick could catch birds,” I said.
“He can’t unless they’re in a cage.”
“Oh shit.”
“Tell me about it. Mrs. Ferguson is having fits. He ate five of her prize pigeons. I was afraid she’d come over and shoot him while I was gone.”
“Don’t tell me that woman has a gun.”
“Several.”
“Scary.”
We left Pickpocket rooting around in Mom’s ficus and went to the kitchen. At least Chuck had thought to bring Chinese.
What did you find out about what’s his name?” I asked as I unpacked the bag.
He pulled out his notebook, started flipping through pages while simultaneously cramming Mongolian beef in his mouth.
“Here you go. Evan’s been a good boy. He had a speeding ticket two years ago, but nothing since. I did a national trace. No arrests, nothing.”
“Damn. Where was the ticket?”
“St. Sebastian. Gonna take a drive? I’ve got a contact out there.”
“Guess I have to.”
“I hear they have a good flea market. Want some company? We could make a weekend of it. Go to some cozy B and B. Get lost in each other’s eyes.”
“Stop. I’m getting queasy.”
“Could be the lemon chicken.”
“It’s not the chicken.”
Chuck snickered and got up for a beer. He looked good. I thanked God that he was sort of my cousin and obnoxious, so I’d never be tempted. Chuck had dated every friend I’d ever had. He’s just one of those guys. The appeal was hard to pin down. He didn’t have looks that would get him onscreen, but he had something that defied his receding hairline and oversized facial features. He did have incredible blue eyes that made you feel as though he really knew you and liked what he saw. His body sculpted by Michelangelo didn’t hurt either.
Pick came in and started begging for handouts. He looked like a dog that would eat prize pigeons, despite his pedigree. The dog was definitely pet quality, if you used the term loosely. Chuck had had dreams of the show ring, blue ribbons and stud fees. What he got was a fence-jumping, pigeon-eating, butt-licking, crotch-sniffing, leg-humping rocket scientist. Pick was easily the smartest dog I’d ever known, not that it did Chuck any good. He was just glad not to have been sued so far.
Chuck left two hours later after Pick stole the paper napkin off my lap and yarked it up in the living room. As well as being smart, Pickpocket was a thief with a passion for paper products. Fifteen minutes after Chuck left I found Pick, rummaging around the pantry, looking for more napkins no doubt. I pulled him out of the pantry and called Chuck on his cell phone. No answer. I called his house and, in desperation, I called his partner. Tony told me that Chuck was undercover. I heard him snorting with laughter as he hung up. What a sucker! I should have known he was up to something. He’d been too nice. He hadn’t touched me once. It was a record.
I couldn’t leave Pick or throw him in the yard as much as I wanted to. He’d be frozen stiff by morning and I couldn’t leave him with Mom’s cats (they’d freak out), so I took him home. My cat, Skanky, was asleep on the sofa. When I walked in he turned himself into an arch, unhinged his jaw, and gave a huge yawn. Then he saw Pick and Pick saw him. Skanky took off like he’d been shot out of a bottle. Pick gave a halfhearted chase. I guess he was exhausted from his bird hunt. Skanky holed up in a closet and Pick took over the living room. I went to bed pretending that this wasn’t my life.
I woke up early the next morning grateful that my status as a dog owner wasn’t permanent after Pick nearly dislocated my arm when he saw a squirrel on our walk. The worst thing Skanky had ever done was poop on my bath mat. That in mind, I scooped his pan before I left for St. Sebastian. I got my neighbor, Mrs. Jackson, to take out Pick at noon and hoped for the best. It was an hour drive to St. Sebastian, made shorter since all the commuters were coming into St. Louis and I was going out.
I went straight to the tiny police station and looked up the contact that Chuck had given me. Rupert Haas was a big guy with rosy cheeks and a ready smile.
“So you’re Mercy. You know you’re just what the doctor ordered. Boring as all get out around here today. Wanna donut?” Rupert said.
“Don’t mind if I do. Thanks for helping me out.”
“No problemo.” He handed me a donut from his sack and kicked his heels up on his battered desk.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about Evan Sorbeck?”
“Nope, can’t say that I do. He’s only had that one ticket. He paid it and we don’t even have an address. I asked Jon Haas, no relation, about him, but he didn’t ring a bell.”
“Jon Haas?”
“Gave him the ticket.”
“Do you have a phone book?”
“Already checked. No Sorbecks listed. Sorry. What’d this dude do anyway? Chuck didn’t mention it.”
“Skipped out on his wife and left her with thirty-three thousand dollars of credit card debt.” Claire had called me with the bad news late the night before. What she thought about this development, I couldn’t have guessed.
“Bastard.”
“You know it. Guess I’ll head to the courthouse. Point me in the right direction?”
“I’ll do better and help sift through the records. As you can see, we ain’t exactly in the middle of a crime wave here.”
We spent three hours at the computer, looking through birth certificates. I treated Haas to lunch and we both swooned over a couple of cheese steak sandwiches. Then it was back to the courthouse and marriage certificates. We should have started there because Evan Sorbeck got married in 2000 to a local girl, Christina Strattman. Somehow I doubted that she’d found her tragic end in France. Haas got beeped and had to leave me to my own devices. Somebody was stealing bikes at the high school.
I left the courthouse and checked out both addresses. One no longer existed and nobody at the other had heard of Strattman or Sorbeck. Square one and it was nearing five o’clock. I went back to the station. I found Haas back at his desk with a kid sobbing into a box of Kleenex.
“I didn’t mean to do it! It’s not my fault!” he wailed.
“Yeah, well, I’m still calling your mother,” Haas said with his chin propped in his hand.
“Having fun?” I asked.
“More than you, looks like.”
“Could be. Can I use your phone book?”
Haas gave me a phone book that was mercifully thin and I looked up Strattman. There had to be at least thirty, no Christinas.
I started dialing. After five calls, I got Christina’s cousin Beth, who apparently didn’t like her beca
use she readily gave me her address. I wouldn’t have given me an address, but maybe I sounded more innocent than I thought. Christina Booker lived in a little town called Columbia. She had a small ranch with a porch that ran the length of the front. The front yard had a lot of dirt, but it looked well-kept. Someone had troubled to paint over the peeling paint on the wood trim, leaving a bark-like texture that might come into vogue someday. Christina wasn’t home, but her neighbor to the right was.
Mrs. Meyer let me in and fed me coffee and cookies. Both were delicious. Mrs. Meyer told me that Christina had lived in the house since before Mrs. Meyer had moved in three years ago. She was recently remarried and her first husband had died in a car accident. Mrs. Meyer had never met him. I thanked her and went to the county courthouse in the next town over. Lo and behold, Evan Sorbeck had a death certificate on file. He died, supposedly, in 2002 and the cause of death was accidental. I wasn’t ready for that. I was ready for Sorbeck to be a con man, a grifter, and for Christina Strattman to be one of his victims. I wasn’t ready for him to be dead.
I went back to Christina’s, parked in front and waited. At six-thirty, a brand-new dually truck pulled up and a couple got out.
I walked over and tried to look respectable. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m a private detective. Could I ask you a couple of questions?” Lying comes easy when you’re Tommy Watts’s daughter, but I felt bad. They’d probably never dealt with someone of my ilk before.
“Sure, I guess. Would you like to come in?” she said. The husband followed us silently and disappeared when we entered the front door. I hoped he wasn’t sharpening his buck knife. Thank goodness Haas knew where I was.
“I’m really sorry to do this, but can I ask you about your first husband, Evan Sorbeck?”
“Evan?” Christina walked around the room and seemed at a loss what to do. It gave me an opportunity to check out the surroundings. The room was messy, but clean. A bunch of wedding photos were framed and hung on the wall behind the TV. Her house looked comfortable and at home with itself not unlike my apartment.
Christina was on the heavy side, but she looked like she’d recently lost a lot of weight. Skin hung around her face like a curtain. Beneath the folds I could see a young woman looking out at me. She had rosy cheeks and happy eyes. Even the mention of her dead husband didn’t dull the sparkle.
“Why do you want to know about Evan?” she said.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have a friend who recently married a man named Evan Sorbeck. The information he used to marry her, his social security number, birth date, matches your late husband’s.”
“What are you saying? Evan’s dead.”
“I don’t doubt it. I think this man is using your husband’s identity.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“To perpetrate crimes and not have them traced back to him.”
“Oh, God.”
“Could I see a picture of your husband?”
She pulled out a photo album from a drawer in her dining room hutch and handed it to me.
“We were only married two years. He’s in practically every picture.”
I opened the album and sure enough he was. The real Evan Sorbeck had been an athletic, blond man with a wide smile. He was surrounded by people in nearly every photo. Christina was in a lot of the photos, a slim Christina with no extra skin and a ready smile herself.
I showed Christina the picture of Claire’s Evan. “Have you ever seen this man?”
“No. Is that him? He doesn’t look anything like Evan.”
“I doubt he has his character either.” Her face pulled down into what could have been an ugly cry, but she pulled out of it just in time.
“Thanks. Evan was a great guy. Everybody loved him. When he died...” Her sparkle faded for a moment.
“I’m sorry to bring this up for you. Thanks for helping me. If you can think of anything that might help me, please call.”
Christina took my card. I never expected to hear from her, but I did. She called the next morning to tell me that a woman had come looking for Evan about a year after his death. She had been shocked to hear he was dead and had argued the point with her. Christina couldn’t recall the woman’s name, but remembered seeing her working in a bank in St. Sebastian. I spent the rest of my Sunday cleaning, grocery shopping and playing referee to Skanky and Pick. I didn’t want to drive back to St. Seb, but I had no choice. Claire did a stellar job on the transcription and I owed her.
By the time I’d gotten ready to go, I’d about talked myself out of the trip. What did I really owe Claire? I’d spent hours in pursuit of Evan and plenty of mileage. Sure she’d done the transcription, but, hey, I’d done more than the cops. If she made another complaint, they’d follow my lead and, hopefully, find Evan. That was pretty good, wasn’t it? Not bad for an amateur, if I did say so myself.
I kicked off my shoes and turned on the TV. I needed to call my coordinator. I was a PRN nurse, which meant I filled in when hospitals or offices were short. It was a good deal. I worked three or four times a week depending on my financial needs. I called and she wanted me to work Peds the next day. I was always getting called for Peds. I’d been told that I was good with kids and I guess word got around. I didn’t think I was good. Kids were forever screaming and puking around me. I’d have taken a pass, but I needed the money. Since I’d been chasing Evan, three workdays had gone by. I needed Christmas money.
I settled in for the day, made a note to call Claire, and started streaming Devil in a Blue Dress. Love that Denzel Washington. Midway through, my mother called.
“Hello.”
“Oh Mercy, I’m so glad you’re home, honey,” she said in her sweetest I-want-something tone.
“Hi Mom.”
“How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Well, we are having a spectacular time. It’s warm and beautiful. We’ve been having the best seafood. Your father almost has a tan.”
“Really?” My father was a redhead with the typical fair skin that went with it.
“Almost. How’s the weather there?”
“Fine.”
“You’re not very talkative.”
“Uh huh.”
“Are you busy, dear?”
Here it came. Busy means: if you’re not having surgery, we want you to do something. “Sort of.”
“Is that Denzel I hear?”
Crap. I should’ve turned the volume down, but then she would’ve sensed the movie. Mom had the seventh sense, the what’s-my-daughter-really-doing sense. It worked through telephone lines and closed doors. Occasionally, I didn’t even have to speak.
“Fine. I’m not busy.”
“Working tonight?”
Audible groan.
“Mercy. It would not kill you to help out.”
“Let’s not test the theory.”
“It’s for the family.”
“What family?”
“Ours, of course. Don’t be difficult.”
“Me difficult?”
Mom sighed and sipped on something. Probably a pink, fruity drink with a paper umbrella. I looked out the window at the cloudy sky threatening me with more sleet. I was not in a mood to be helpful.
“You know we don’t ask much.”
“Right. Not at all.”
“If you’re going to be like that, I’ll have your father contract someone.”
“Can’t Uncle Morty or one of Dad’s actual detectives do it?”
“Ned and Cecilia are out of town. Denny’s busy. Mort’s on vacation.”
Uncle Morty was my honorary uncle and my father’s best friend. He was an all-around computer nerd and hacker. He likes neither of those monikers. Morty on vacation meant he turned off all his phones and refused to communicate with anyone or go anywhere for three days. He was my last chance.
“What is it?” I tried to sound as displeased as possible without whacking the phone on the counter.
“We followed Stevie from the Keys to Miami, but he hopped a plane before we could get to him. He’s on his way home.”
“Here? He’s coming here?”
“I know it’s unbelievable, even for Stevie, but he’s on flight 210 United. It arrives at noon.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Well, you know Stevie.”
Yes, I knew Stevie. Mom was his father’s legal secretary and I’d known him all his life. He was a normal kid, if by normal you mean stupid. All in all, he was likable and problem free for a while. Mom quit working for Crown Legal when Dad retired from the police force and opened his agency. She still filled in when his new secretary was ill or on vacation. Big Steve sent Dad a lot of business over the years and was the first pick when his son started to get in trouble. When Stevie was fifteen, he contracted a raging case of gonorrhea. Dad was hired to track down all the girls Stevie had sex with and inform them that they’d been exposed. It wasn’t exactly a thrilling way to get paid, but Dad felt he was obligated to Big Steve.
Next Stevie robbed the neighbors. Only Stevie would steal from people then try to sell them back their own DVD players. Dad tracked down the stolen articles and returned them. After that, drugs came into the picture and there were a couple of disappearances. Stevie stole a few cars and generally made a nuisance of himself. Between Dad and Big Steve, his record was kept clean. Still, it was hard to picture Stevie as a criminal. He seemed confused when people were upset with him. Mostly, I thought he was out for a good time and things got out of hand. The way things do when you don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
“So you want me to nab Stevie at the airport.”
“If you don’t mind.”
Mind. Please. Of course I minded. I could’ve stayed curled up under a quilt with Denzel for the rest of the day, but no.
“How am I supposed to get him? It’s not like he doesn’t know me.”
“You’ll think of something. Just don’t hurt him.”
“Define hurt.”
“Don’t shoot him.”
“Like I’d really shoot him, Mother.”
“Well, I know he irritates you.”
“A lot of people irritate me, but I haven’t shot anyone yet.”
