“Hey, Daddy!” She walked into the hallway from the kitchen smiling, her cheek stained with chocolate from a cookie she had been eating. Her black curls were frizzed out on either side of her face and she was wearing a short green dress over black leggings. Her hands were busy knitting away on some strange tangled pink pattern.
She ran up and kissed him on the cheek, then gave him an accusatory look. “Did you do any swearing today?”
“No. I was good,” he promised.
Her eyes moved to the man behind him and her nose crinkled. She gestured at the man with her chin. “Who’s that guy? He knocked on the door earlier.”
Douglas turned to Tallow who was smiling at Aggie with the same wide grin he had given Douglas earlier. “Uncle Tallow, this is my daughter Agatha. Aggie, this is my Uncle Tallow.”
“You have an uncle, Daddy?” she said suspiciously, her eyes narrowed. “He looks too young to be your uncle.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Tallow said, taking a step towards her.
“Hey! He looks like he wants to hug me.” Agatha frowned and held out her needles menacingly. “You better not hug me.”
Tallow held up his hands, his smile disarming. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“What’s that on your hand?” Agatha asked.
Douglas noticed it for the first time. A large square tattoo covered the palm of Tallow’s left hand. It was filled with multicolored symbols. The one in the center looked somewhat like a lit candle.
“This is called a naming rune.” Tallow stuck out his hand so that she could see it better. The square patch of skin with the tattoo on it looked thicker than the skin on the rest of his palm. “It says my name in an ancient language.”
“Why do you need a tattoo like that?” Agatha asked, a shrewd look in her eye. “So you don’t forget your name?”
“See, Douglas? She’s mean.” Tallow chuckled. “If you must know, Aggie, I burned my hand badly many years ago and this tattoo covers the scar.”
“Agatha?” Douglas said. “Why aren’t you at Jenny’s? How long have you been here by yourself?”
Agatha shrugged. “About an hour. Jenny had to go to swim lessons and I wanted to make cookies.”
With Asher gone and school out, Douglas had arranged for someone to be with Agatha during the day. On odd days, she stayed at her friend Jenny’s house. On even days she stayed at the Rutnicks, the neighbors across the street. They were a nice old couple, though there wasn’t much for Agatha to do over there.
“Why didn’t you go with her to her lessons?” Douglas pressed. “You know you aren’t to be left alone.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” Agatha still had her eyes on Tallow, her eyes narrowed in distrust. “How come I don’t know your uncle?”
Douglas glanced at Tallow, not sure he liked how comfortable the smiling man looked in his home. “Well, he’s from my father’s side. We haven’t really kept in touch.”
“And I plan to remedy that,” added Tallow. “I am here to help find your brother.”
Her look of distrust softened a bit. “Oh.”
“Shall we sit down?” Douglas asked. “Why don’t you come into the living room and we can discuss it further?”
Tallow followed Douglas and Agatha into the living room and sat down on the couch. He looked all around the room as if absorbing every detail, the smile still plastered to his face. Douglas and Aggie sat down in the love seat opposite him. Douglas pulled the pad of paper and a pen back out from the jacket of his suitcoat.
“Now when did Asher first contact you?”
“About a year ago,” Tallow replied. “Hey, what’re you knitting there, Aggie?”
“A squid,” she remarked.
“A woolen cephalopod,” Tallow said with an impressed nod. “That’s a rare creature.”
She frowned. “It’s acrylic, not wool. I hate the way it squeaks on the needles, but I ran out of fingering weight wool yarn in pink and Daddy won’t take me to the yarn store.”
“It’s too expensive and you have plenty of other yarn to work with,” Douglas reminded her. “Now, let’s get back on track here. Tallow, you said Asher contacted you a year ago?”
“Yes,” said Tallow. “I believe it was shortly after your wife passed away.
Douglas swallowed and jotted down notes, wondering if Anne’s death had anything to do with Asher reaching out to a stranger like that. “What caused him to seek you out?”
“I wasn’t quite sure at first and to tell you the truth I’m still not certain what started it,” Tallow replied. “I received an email out of the blue one day asking if I was the same Errand that was the brother of Bernie Jones. I said yes, and he introduced himself as my great nephew. I was quite surprised.”
Douglas cocked his head. “And how did he find your email?”
Tallow leaned back and crossed his narrow legs. “I suppose that he found my website. You see, I run my detective agency online and my site lists all my services. It was the contact email on the site that he used.”
Douglas paused his writing for a moment. “I don’t get it. What did he ask you about? Did he want to know more about my side of the family?”
“It came up eventually, but Asher didn’t start off asking questions like that. He told me he wanted to become a detective,” Tallow replied, interlacing his fingers and placing them over his knee. “It’s all he talked about. He wanted to know techniques, rules and regulations, everything.”
“Dang it!” said Agatha. She looked up from her knitting and noticed that Tallow and Douglas were looking at her. “Sorry. Dropped a stitch.”
“But why did he come to you, a relative he didn’t even know? Why not just ask me?” Douglas wondered.
“I asked him the same question,” Tallow agreed. “He said that you wouldn’t tell him the things he wanted to know. He also thought you would be upset that he only wanted to be a private detective.”
“Yeah, Daddy wouldn’t like that,” Agatha said, then noticed her father’s glare and looked back at her knitting.
“No offense, Tallow. I don’t really like P.I.s,” Douglas explained.
Tallow smiled. “None taken. I don’t like many of them myself. By and large it can be a rather sordid profession. Especially if you don’t have a reputation for the right kinds of jobs.”
“So . . .” Douglas tapped his pen on the notepad digesting what Tallow had said. He had known that Asher was interested in mysteries. He read mystery novels obsessively and watched those horrible forensics shows on TV. But becoming a P.I.? “How often did he email you?”
“We spoke regularly, nearly every day over the last year,” Tallow said. Douglas’ eyebrows rose and Tallow raised a pre-emptive hand. “It sounds like quite a lot, I understand. I talked to him several times about telling you we were conversing, but he wanted to keep our messages quiet. He talked mainly about little mysteries he was pursuing. Asking my opinions on things.”
The thought of a year of daily emails made Douglas’ blood run cold. Looking for investigative advice was one thing, but to have an online relationship that personal with someone who was a relative stranger? His detective instincts told him that this made Tallow a suspect in Asher’s disappearance.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t bring himself to distrust his uncle. He couldn’t explain it, but there was something about the man . . . Perhaps it was Tallow’s easygoing personality that was so disarming.
Douglas made himself focus on the facts. “Did you ever speak on the phone? Instant message?”
“No. He didn’t even text. Said he wasn’t allowed a cell phone,” Tallow said. “It was all just emails.”
Douglas frowned. It had occurred to him more than once that if he had allowed Asher a cell phone, things might have ended up different. “But we searched his computer. Our tech guys combed that thing over looking for any clue to his disappearance.”
“Kids these days are smart,” Tallow said. He leaned back in the chair, putting his hands behind hi
s head “Especially when they know their parents are watching. Did you monitor his computer usage?”
“Every once in a while,” Douglas admitted. “Asher was a good kid for the most part. But seeing what I see every day on the job makes me paranoid.”
Tallow nodded. “Asher was smarter than most kids, Douglas. He knew how to hide things. He used a proxy and all his emails to me came from a remote site that offered email service. The address he used was [email protected]. All he had to do was delete his browser history. There are free programs out there that you can download to erase your history from even the most proficient computer search.”
Douglas jotted down notes furiously. He wished that he was more surprised by this information, but it explained a lot. “Did he talk to you about anything that can help us know where he went?”
“Perhaps,” said Tallow. “I kept all of his emails to me. They are on my laptop in my car. But the most telling email may be the last one he sent.”
“When was this?”
“May sixteenth,” Tallow replied.
Douglas underlined the date. “The day before he went missing.”
“He said he was working on a case,” Tallow said. “He asked if he could call me and talk about it on the phone. I was quite surprised.”
Douglas’ heart beat faster. This was the first time in a great while that he felt he was getting closer to discovering the reason for Asher’s disappearance. “So what did you say?”
Tallow scratched his head and gave him an embarrassed look. “I was busy with work and put off responding for a few days. Quite honestly, I did not know whether talking on the phone was a good idea,” he admitted with a sigh. “Finally, I sent him my phone number. He didn’t send a reply and after a while without contact I began to worry. It was a couple weeks after that before I found out he had gone missing.”
“Why didn’t you call us?” Agatha asked. It was the first time since they had sat down that she had stopped knitting.
“I . . . it’s hard to explain.” Tallow sighed again. “I didn’t feel comfortable just calling you out of the blue. So many awkward questions and it seemed so . . . impersonal. So I just packed up my things and came out here.”
Something about that explanation didn’t sit right with Douglas, but he held onto that thought for later. “Okay, so Asher said he had a case.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t even know my son wanted to be a detective.”
“I knew!” Agatha said. “It’s all he talked about.”
“Not to me,” Douglas said. “Tallow, do you have any idea what he was working on?”
“I never got the details, but perhaps he kept them in his detective journal. It was one of the first things I told him to do when we started talking. A good journal gives a detective a way to go back and learn from his mistakes. Also, sometimes your first impressions on a case are the most correct ones. It’s easy to forget those early thoughts later on once you’re mired in the details.” Tallow said. He cocked his head at Douglas’ bewildered look. “You did find it, didn’t you?”
“I . . . didn’t know he had one,” Douglas said, the frown on his face deepening.
“I did!” said Agatha. “He got mad at me for drawing in it once.”
“Great! So it’s likely still here.” Tallow smiled and stood up, rubbing his hands together. “If we find the book, we may just find a new starting place for our investigation. How about we start by searching his room?”
Chapter 4: Asher’s Room
Asher’s room was on the second floor and was the second largest bedroom in the house. He had a full size bed, a computer desk, a large closet, and long dresser with twelve drawers. But that wasn’t what drew Tallow’s gaze.
Where some teenagers would have posters of rock bands or fancy cars adorning their walls, Asher had framed posters of detective shows. There was one for the newest BBC production of Sherlock Holmes, along with a pointy-mustached Poirot and a poster of Peter Falk’s disheveled detective, Columbo.
Tallow made a beeline straight for Asher’s favorite, a vintage poster for Humphrey Bogart’s, ‘The Big Sleep’. The private detective reached out to touch the frame and turned back to look at Douglas with a smile. “Now that’s a good one. Remember watching this, Douglas? On cable with me and your dad when you were a kid?”
Douglas nodded. Watching old detective movies was one of the few fond memories he had of his father. His Uncle Errand, only ten years older than Douglas, had sometimes come over to watch with them. “I introduced Asher to that one when he was about Agatha’s age.”
“Mommy got him the Blu-Ray for his birthday one year,” Agatha remarked. She was standing in the doorway, her knitting forgotten in her hands. A pensive look was on her round face.
Tallow moved to the other side of the room. Half of the wall beside Asher’s bed was covered by a tall bookcase filled with paperbacks. Tallow ran his fingers over the wrinkled spines of the books, a chuckle escaping his lips. “I knew that Asher was an avid reader, but this is great. Mostly mysteries. Ooh, and classics too! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edmund Crispin, Agatha Christie. I must say the boy has taste!”
“Most of those were his mother’s,” Douglas said, a weary smile forming on his lips. “She loved mysteries in whatever form. Movies, novels, you name it.”
“Is that the reason for your children’s names?” asked Tallow. He pointed at Aggie. “There’s ‘Agatha’ here. Then Asher ‘Watson’ Jones. Names right out of this collection.”
“Yes, their names were her idea. We both love mystery, but I’m more practical, preferring real police work, whereas she was more . . . theatrical.” Douglas paused, a brief look of pain on his face. “Look, I honestly don’t know why we are in here. A forensics team combed the room thoroughly. Anything to be found has been found.”
“Then you should have found his detective journal,” Tallow reminded him, studying the room, one hand stroking his chin. “It has to be in here somewhere.”
“You think he had it with him when he disappeared?” asked Aggie, who was knitting away again.
“Do you ever put those things down?” Tallow asked, then shook his head before she could respond. “Never mind. Silly question.”
“She’s right, Tallow,” Douglas said. “If Asher was keeping a detective journal he must have had it on him because it is definitely not in this room.”
“You seem overly confident in this forensics team of yours, Douglas,” Tallow said. “Asher would have hidden it well. He was trying to keep it secret from his father, a trained police officer, wasn’t he?”
“Of course I am confident in our team,” Douglas said. “Do you have any idea how many juvenile-related cases we have in Atlanta? Our team members are experts at finding hidden items in children’s rooms.”
“Well I, Douglas, am an expert in finding things that forensic teams leave behind.” Tallow arched one eyebrow and raised his arms. “Observe my skills in action.”
Tallow closed his eyes and extended both arms, palms out. He waved his hands about slowly before focusing in on one area of the room as if honing in on some sort of energy that only he could sense. He took a few steps forward and slapped one hand down on Asher’s dresser.
Tallow gave them both a triumphant smile. “See?”
Douglas rolled his eyes at the man’s theatrics. “Skills, right. Are you going to tell me they didn’t check his dresser?”
Tallow just chuckled. He removed the top dresser drawer and sat it on the bed. Then he peered into the darkness where the drawer had been. He reached an arm in and though Douglas hadn’t seen a flashlight in the man’s hand, there was a momentary flash of light.
Tallow grunted in response to what he had seen and rooted around for a moment. He looked back at Douglas. “Asher must have been pretty good in wood shop.”
“He was mad when they discontinued the class last year,” Douglas said. “What did you find?”
Tallow pulled out the second drawer and placed it on top
of the other one, then pointed inside. “Check it out. He put a false panel in the back, leaving just enough space for the drawers to shut. He cut little wooden inserts into the back of the dresser to hold it into place. Very stealthy. I almost didn’t see it in there.”
“No way.” Douglas reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys, clicking on the little flashlight on his keychain.
He crouched in front of the dresser and peered inside. Now that he knew what to look for, he could make out what Tallow was referring to. The panel was tilted forward at a slight angle starting near the floor so that there was just about an inch wide gap at the top.
“Maybe if your forensics team had been more focused they would have seen it?” Tallow suggested with just a hint of sarcasm.
Douglas was too excited to even feign offense. He reached over the top of the panel and pulled out a thick 8x11 notebook, the kind that was required for many of Asher’s classes. On the front cover, the words Asher’s Diary were crossed out with black marker and replaced with the words Detective Journal in large lettering.
This was the first new piece of evidence in weeks. He clutched the book to his chest as though a piece of Asher was contained between the pages. “How did you know that was in there?”
“Magic. Also-.” Tallow pointed both thumbs towards his chest. “Expert, remember?”
Agatha snorted and said, “I knew it was in there.”
Tallow winked at her. “So, Douglas. What was the boy up to?”
“Just a minute.” Douglas opened the journal and poured over it, his eyes wide with intensity. A few moments later, Douglas paused and flipped back to the beginning. He opened to the first page and held it out so that Tallow could see. “Several pages are missing. There is a whole section at the beginning that has been torn out.”
“May I see?” Tallow leaned closer and examined it. “It looks like that this was once Asher’s regular diary. The first intact page is August 15th. I would need to check to make sure, but I believe that is around the day that I first told him to keep a detective journal. This means that the dates that are missing are . . .”
Tallow Jones: Wizard Detective (The Tallow Novels Book 1) Page 4
