“Find it yourself,” I said.
Kendra put her hands between us.
“Boys. Stop. Billy, why is finding this phone, this particular phone, so important?”
“Because, well. It’s important.”
“We need to know why, Billy. It will help us help you find it.”
“Well, there are pictures on the phone. Pictures of Patty.”
I thought back to Patty. She was in high school when I dated her sister, making her about four years younger than Abbie or around thirty now. I remember I met her a few times. Maybe at Thanksgiving. Maybe it was Easter. I remember helping carve a big ham. I remember the big ham more than the little sister. It was a good ham.
“So your game has improved a bit,” I said. “You got Patty to strip and pose for you? Good going.”
“Jake!”
I ignored that one too.
“We’re engaged, Jake.”
“So who cares. If you find the phone save the pics. You’ll want the memory in her old age. Things are bound to go south someday.”
“Jake!”
“But I lost the phone at her parent’s house. What if Mr. or Mrs. Dunkirk find it? What if they see the pics?”
“It won’t be pleasant,” Kendra said. “But you’re marrying their daughter. Plus how hard can it be to find? Poke around the cushions of their living room couch. Poke around the house.”
Billy gave Kendra an incredulous look.
A few things about the Dunkirks: They aren’t Cincinnati old money, but they are Cincinnati big money. Abbie and Patty’s great-grandfather made a big splash in machine tools back in the twenties or thirties. World War II turned that splash into a tidal wave of cash that washed over them and won’t recede for several generations. Their grandfather sold the business to General Motors and then funneled the proceeds into a good chunk of American wealth. Their father’s one and only job in life was to manage that wealth.
Their house would easily serve a spoiled Benelux prince without embarrassment. That ham I helped carve was cooked by their live-in chef. Yep, these were folks who had live-in staff and used ‘summer’ as a verb. Poking around the house, as Kendra suggested, would require laying in provisions for a long stay.
Hearing all that you might be tempted to ask: was I an idiot for bailing on Abbie and whatever dowry I’d score all those years ago? Sure. But at the time I thought myself fairly well set. This was months before my father’s business was revealed to be a house of cards blown into insolvency by a mild recession. It was before I had to scrape around for money to feed myself. It was before hunger would have trumped horny.
“When’s the last time you remember having it?” Kendra asked. She slipped into the mom role a bit too easily. Nurturing, helpful.
“I was sitting with Abbie and Patty at their house.”
“They live together?” I asked.
“They live with their parents still.”
“Abbie’s not married?” I asked and regretted it. Why’d I ask that, I thought. I heard the gears in Kendra’s head click. Why’d he ask that, she asked herself.
“No, it’s just the two girls and Mr. and Mrs. Dunkirk. The girls mostly stick to the west wing while their parents are in the east… like when we were in college. So I want you to go and help me look. I don’t have any friends really. Just Patty and I don’t want her knowing I lost it. She’ll panic if her parents see those pics. They’ll recognize their duvet. I’ll lose her. I’ll never get another girl again.”
“Wait,” I said. “You got her bare-assed and posed in her parent’s bed?”
“Jake!”
“We talking tasteful boudoir photos or something more Larry Flynt-esque?”
“Jake!”
I looked Billy in the eye. Billy looked me in the eye. His dilating pupils and panicked express gave me the answer. He’d better find that phone. He started explaining.
“Well, her parents were somewhere in the Med for the winter and we were playing around and things got out of hand.”
I was glad to see Billy was having fun, but, sexy pictures or not, I wasn’t going to get involved.
“Sorry, Billy. You’re on your own.”
“But Mr. Carmichael said you’d help.”
“That’s where you learned where I was!” I said.
“He said it would be a matter of client service.”
“Let me guess: After you mentioned your family’s name and Abbie’s last name?”
“I went to your office. Since you weren’t there I told Mr. Carmichael my situation. Everyone says he solves problems like these. He said of course you’d help me, but if you said you wouldn’t help, I was to call him. Can I borrow your phone to call him?”
I got up and walked away from the table toward Neon’s bocce ball court. I pressed the number one on my keyboard—Mr. Carmichael’s speed dial.
“You want me to go look for a lost phone?” I asked after he said, hello in his sing-song mid-Atlantic accent.
“Providing a valuable service to a soon-to-be member of the Dunkirk clan would a smart business decision. We are investment advisors and the Dunkirks do have extensive investments that need advising.”
“What you’re not aware of is that I once dated the Dunkirk’s eldest daughter. I’ve met her parents. Her parents met me. The relationship's demise was somewhat one-sided. It was somewhat my-sided.”
“So you’re familiar with the family,” he said positively.
“Yeah. And her family is familiar with me being not-so-gentlemanly to their oldest and still single daughter.”
“It’s been some time,” he said. “Water under the bridge.”
“More like sewage under the bridge.”
“You’ll make it work.”
“I won’t do it.”
“No?”
Though said with the upward lilt at the end making it a question, that single syllable ‘No’ hung in the air like an executioner’s axe ready to be swung forward. There was no threat implied, but I felt one. I’d come to enjoy the income Mr. Carmichael was over-paying me. It would be a set back—financially and emotionally—to lose it.
“I will,” I said.
“Yes.”
There was a pause then he said, “I believe Billy will be taking you there tonight.”
“Wonderful,” I said and hung up the phone.
“Okay, Billy,” I yelled across the courtyard. “You got me. Let’s go.”
Billy grinned and stood up.
“You’re driving me,” I said.
“He’s driving us,” Kendra said.
“Here’s my key,” I told Kendra. “Grab yourself a Meat Topper at Cincy by the Slice, take it to my place, eat half. I’ll be back in a couple of hours to finish the other half.”
“You think you’re going to see a single, never-been-married, mid-thirties, heiress old girlfriend without me? No.”
There was that single syllable ‘No’ again. This time it wasn’t so much an axe hanging over my head, but a stiletto pointed right between my ribs where there’s easy access to my heart.
“No?” I asked.
“No.”
“The lady said no,” said Billy. “Let’s go.” The two of them walked out together, Billy taking Kendra’s arm. I followed.
Billy opened the front passenger door of a three year old S500 for Kendra. She thanked him as she sat.
I crawled into the back seat behind Billy. He drove.
Once we got out of downtown Billy decided it was time to do some catching up.
“So, Jake, what have you been doing with yourself? Last I heard your dad had blown his brains out. Suicide, that’s rough.”
I’d told Kendra that my father had died while I was in college, but not that he’d picked the time and method of shuffling off his mortal coil. Without looking she reached back and took my knee. A loving squeeze. That was nice.
“Yeah, it would have been nice to get a phone call, visit, condolences from someone. Anyone. No one did.”
“Yeah,” h
e said. Just yeah. Nothing else. That yeah hung in the air until we got near the Dunkirk manse.
Finally, I brought things around to the business at hand.
“Where are we to begin looking for this phone, Billy?”
“I’m fairly certain it’s either in the conservatory, the sitting room or the library.”
“I assumed you tried to call it with another phone.”
“I have no other phone. Plus, I keep it on silent. Who is going to call me? I have no friends.”
“All right,” I said. “We can’t search for the phone with any of the Dunkirk’s hanging about. Kendra, you’ll be our rodeo clown.”
“Rodeo clown?”
“Rodeo clown.”
“I don’t follow?”
“The clown at the rodeo distracts the bull while the cowboys get out of the arena. You’re going to distract Abbie or Patty or Mr. or Mrs. Dunkirk while Billy and I look for the phone.”
“Rodeo clown?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t appreciate the term.”
“I don’t appreciate you tagging along after I told you not to, but you did, so now you’re the rodeo clown.”
Now I’ve dated enough women to know that last sentence was doing to cost me—either in jewelry or in a full night of listening to how it made her feel followed by three days of sexless purgatory before I was again allowed the glory of her bed. But the evening I had planned for tonight had crashed and burned so I got snippy. Maybe the ‘my dad killed himself’ thing would assuage her temper. It wouldn’t be the first time I used it as a get-out-of-jail free card.
Billy pulled his German boat onto the driveway. A half mile later we finally saw the house. Clipped, trimmed, and manicured exactly as I remembered. Billy parked under the west portico. The three of us got out in unison. Kendra looked back at me. The rodeo clown stuff has passed. She was seeing me for the first time as the son of a suicide, someone with a streak of tragedy slashed across his soul. I didn’t like being seen like that. That’s why I hadn’t told her.
Luckily it was cut short by a squeal. Then the call of ‘Billllly!’
I turned to look at the door and a pair of legs ran out it. The legs climbed down the steps and sprinted deer-like across the drive to Billy. When the legs got to Billy one joyously wrapped itself around my long-lost friend while the other stood rod straight holstered in a Jimmy Choo wedge. They were thick legs. Not fat, but muscled and athletic. Tanned and long. They were legs you’d offer to shave at no charge then shave them again just to make sure you did a good job.
The one leg uncoiled itself from Billy for a moment to notice Kendra and me. The beauty fairy might have skipped over Abbie, but Patty had caught a face full of that pixie dust. I wondered how good that ham was so long ago that I didn’t remember her.
“Is that Jake?”
She grabbed me and gave me a one arm hug still clinging to Billy with the other.
“And my friend Kendra,” I introduced.
Patty glanced at her, gave her an up and down look then uttered a brief, shallow ‘Hi’ to Kendra, then was back to fawning over Billy.
“Come on in,” Patty said. “Dallas has already made up a punch.”
“Dallas still works here?” I asked.
“Where else,” she said skipping ahead, pulling Billy by the hand.
I remembered Dallas’ punches. They were an excellent concoction of ingredients I was too young to truly appreciate. I was wondering if Dallas would remember me. He didn’t like me back then. I’d like to say his dislike stemmed from a misunderstanding, but what happened was perfectly understood by each of us.
Early in Abbie and my courtship, I liberated a bottle of Fonseca Tawny Port from Mr. Dunkirk’s stores and slipped it into my overcoat so that it was all stowed away to smuggle out later that evening. Several hours and several drinks passed that night and I’d forgotten about the pilfered port when we sent Dallas to retrieve our coats. As he put mine on me, the bottle slipped out of my coat and fell harmlessly to the carpet. I looked at the bottle, Dallas looked at me, then I to him. He picked up the bottle, examined it, put it on a bureau and never brought up the subject. But he seemed to have stuck to the firm belief that I was a thief. For the rest of our courtship, he gave me the impression that he would promptly count the silverware after I’d dined with the Dunkirk’s.
“So, Jake,” Patty said as we walked into the sitting room. “Billy tells me you need his help. Isn’t Billy wonderful? To help an old, down-on-his-luck friend.”
“He said I was down on my luck and that I needed his help?” I asked. I felt Kendra slid her hand along my arm then take my hand. She gave it a squeeze that was more coercion than affection.
“Yep. It’s personal if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, a secret… I’ll pry it from you by the end of the night. Men always tell me everything.”
I didn’t doubt that statement.
She ushered us into the sitting room where Billy fell into a settee and Patty fell into his lap. Kendra and I took individual chairs opposite them.
We watched them coo and cuddle. Cooing and cuddling was what I had planned on doing with Kendra when this night began. Watching others do the same was off-putting.
Finally, I put my hand over my mouth and muttered to Kendra, “Rodeo clown.”
She glared at me.
I batted my eyes at her.
She amped up her to glare to white hot.
I made a face that was meant to indicate pleading by knitting my brows together and pouting my lower lip.
“Don’t make that face,” she said. “You look stupid.”
“What’s that?” Billy asked.
“Patty,” Kendra said. “Would you show me around your home? I’ve never been in anything like it.”
Kendra meant the last comment as a compliment, but Patty took it as a sign of low-breeding. She gave Kendra the old up and down look again and said, “I’d have guessed you hadn’t. Sure. Come along.”
The two women rose. Patty sashayed out the door using every word of body language to indicate she wasn’t interested in showing Kendra around, while Kendra attempted to show the earnestness of a rodeo clown.
After they left, I closed the French doors and pulled closed the curtains that hung on them.
I turned to Billy who still bathed in the aura of his betrothed.
“Let’s get looking,” I said.
Billy snapped out of his enthrallment and we went to searching the place FBI clandestine style. Once the chairs and sofa were frisked I got down on my hands and knees crawling around looking for a quarter inch thick phone. Billy went about peering into vases and other above-the-floor nooks and crannies.
“What if it slipped into the sofa?” Billy asked.
“We searched it!”
“I mean, what if it went through a tear in the fabric or between a fold and into the depths of the springy innards of the sofa or chairs?”
“Good idea. We’ll give each a shake and listen for something phone like rattling around.”
I went to the end of the sofa while Billy grabbed the other end. It was heavy—the Dunkirks don’t buy cheap—but we managed to get it up and as we raised it I heard the door open.
“My god, what are you doing with my settee,” Mr. Dunkirk boomed.
He was smaller than I remember—an intense man of about five foot eight with perfectly parted hair combed precisely over his pointy pate. Some kind of fancy shoe polish was used to keep it black, but he allowed his tight trimmed moustache to bloom grey.
Billy was fast with a reply. “It seemed to have shifted from the wall,” he said.
Mr. D ignored B. and went straight for me.
“Dallas told me you were in my house again, Mr. Gibb. I’ve not seen you since you broke my Abbie’s heart. A horrible thing you did there. A horrible thing. Over voicemail. My daughter! Thrown over like she was… a regular person!”
I started to slide an excuse into the conversation. He steamrolled r
ight on over it.
“I mean, really, what kind of man does such a thing? And to such a sensitive girl as Abbie. Such a beautiful girl!”
He was pacing back and forth across the sitting room, bashing about on a verbal rampage. I decided not to say anything and to let him finish. Once I decided that, he finished.
“My god, men. PUT DOWN MY SETTEE!”
Billy and I eased the sofa back into its place.
“What have you got to say for yourself?” he asked me.
“Sir, I was young man then. A less mature man. If I was to break up with her now, I surely....”
“Break up with her now? You mean to say, you’d break up with her again? After living with the folly of your mistake for all these thirteen years! Incredible! Incredible!”
He then turned on Billy.
“And you, my supposed future son-in-law, I forgave your past friendship with this… this man. Then you have the audacity to bring him back into my home. My home!”
He then dramatically pulled a pistol out of his jacket. It was an antique. Something Burr may have fired to Swiss cheese Hamilton.
“Gibb, I want you out of my house,” he said flailing the end of the pistol through the air. “Soon! Or else I’ll use this! Billy, I leave it to you to get him out of my house!”
With that, the little fella holding the big gun stormed out of the sitting room leaving the doors flapping in his wake.
We quickly lifted the sofa up and gave it a shake. We heard nothing. Each chair was equally silent.
“It isn’t here,” Billy said.
“I gotta get out of here,” I said. My figuring was that an ancient bullet had no problem damaging my modern hide.
Fine. Yes. When Kendra gets back. But we might as well check the library.
I couldn’t leave Kendra. A girl just wouldn’t forgive a guy who not only called her a rodeo clown, but then subsequently left her in a strange home with strange people one of whom carried a blunderbuss as an accessory.
We tip-toed across the hallway from the sitting room into the library. Nothing had changed there in thirteen years. One bored night back when I was dating Abbie, I took it upon myself to pencil in profanities on random pages in classic tomes. The books looked unmoved so I wondered if anyone had appreciated my juvenilia. Probably not.
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