by Faricy, Mike
“I guess to set me up.”
“Okay, but why? I mean it seems like a lot of extra work. You know?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Whoever wanted to kill this Barkley guy, did.”
“Barkwell. Thompson Barkwell.”
“Whatever. But he’s dead, right? So why go to all the trouble of setting you up? See what I mean?”
“No.”
“Look, the guy is dead. If I was this Kiki person, her alibi would have been she was with you, all night. Not that you could remember, but that sounds pretty solid.”
I nodded, slowly.
“If it was someone else, a burglar or business partner or someone, they got away with it. Why call the cops? Seems to me it would be better if they didn’t say a thing, he might not have been missed for a day or two. That makes their chances of pulling the whole thing off even better.”
I nodded again, deep in thought.
“You gonna eat the rest of your caramel roll?” she asked.
“What? No, you go ahead.” I pushed my plate toward her.
“You should have gotten more of these, I’m really hungry and they’re kind of little.”
“Well, if I recall, you worked up quite an appetite.”
“That a complaint?” She asked then returned to licking her fingers. I was pretty sure this time she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Not a complaint, just an observation.”
“Let’s go observe some more in the bedroom,” she smiled. Then got off her stool and slinked out of the kitchen.
I was staring at the bedroom ceiling forty minutes later, deep in thought.
Heidi was curled up against me, with her head on my chest and sound asleep. Snoring.
Her “why call the cops?” question had been bouncing around the interior of my thick skull ever since she rolled over and went to sleep. She was right it just didn’t make any sense. Unless, it was all a ploy to get me.
But, if that was the case, why not just kill me after I’d been drugged? Or save the Roofies and kill me before? Nothing seemed to add up.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I was standing on my front porch, barefoot and feeling very laid back toward the end of the afternoon. I was giving a friendly goodbye wave to Heidi. There had been a light rain for most of the day. The rain made for the perfect sort of afternoon that an accused murderer like me could just lie around and have sex.
Heidi waved, blew me a kiss and slid into her car, some dark blue foreign thing that cost more than I wanted to know. As she drove away from the curb a sheriff’s car pulled into the parking place she’d just left. A uniformed officer climbed out, pulled his hat on as I watched from the porch.
He was dressed in a tan uniform shirt with epaulets, a gold badge on his chest and a beer belly hanging over his belt. He held an envelope in his hand and marched up my front sidewalk with a purpose.
“Mister Devlin Haskell?” he said, sizing me up.
“Yes.”
“This is for you,” he said and slapped the envelope into my outstretched hand.
“Gee, thanks.”
“You have been served, this is a restraining order, sir.”
“Wonderful,” I said.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” he smiled, seemed to be sincere in his remark, then turned, marched back to his car and drove off.
My phone rang as I walked in the house.
“Haskell Investigations.”
“Please tell me you’re home.”
“You called me on my home phone and I answered, where else would I be? Louie?”
“I thought this was your cell phone?”
“Okay it is, but I’m still at home.”
“Good boy. Keeping a low profile?”
“Yeah, I’ve been horizontal most of the day. Just had a visitor.”
“Who?”
“Sherriff. Served me a restraining order.”
“That Kiki woman?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry about it. Be a damn good idea to stay away from her anyway. Look, that’s just the prosecutor piling it on. We got bigger fish to fry.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, the good doctor Nguyen is going to stop by on her way home, probably the next thirty minutes or so.”
“She makes house calls?”
“Not usually. But, she has some good news, she can’t get a match based on her analysis of the impressions she took and the photo displaying the bite mark on your pal Kiki’s very nice ass.”
“Is that her technical description?”
Louie ignored my comment.
“Look, just get all the women out of there, the dirty dishes out of the sink, maybe clean yourself up so you look halfway decent. She wants to get another jaw impression or some damn thing from you. Be a gentleman, we are going to need her testimony.”
I loaded the dishwasher, took a four minute shower, vacuumed, stole some flowers from the neighbor’s garden and put them on the dining room table. Then I watched out the window.
She parked in front about two and a half hours later. She walked up the sidewalk carrying a large sort of satchel. I waited until she rang the door bell.
“Oh, Doctor Nguyen.”
“Hello Mister Haskell, did Louie tell you I was coming?”
“He did, and I cleaned especially for you, come on in.”
“Thanks.”
I held the door for her as she stepped inside and caught a hint of that perfume again.
“This should only take a moment.”
“Do you need anything, kitchen, a chair?”
“Actually, kitchen would be fine, you lead the way.”
I did, and settled on the far side of the kitchen counter.
“Can I get you anything, coffee, tea, water?” I would have offered her a glass of wine but sex machine Heidi had consumed every last drop.
“No thanks.”
She set the satchel on the counter, opened it up. Took out a plastic packet and peeled back the corner.
“Interesting,” I lied, trying to sound interested.
“This is an in-vivo porcine model. I’m going to use it…”
She seemed perfectly proportioned in every way. Elegant nails, gorgeous hair, beautiful face and figure. I should have changed the sheets on my bed, imagining her looking up at me while I...
“… just sign this here, indicating you agree and submitted to this of your own free will,” she interrupted my daydream.
“Yes.”
“What do you mean yes? Were you paying attention? I need you to sign this, right there,” she pointed to a form and the pen she’d slid across the counter to me while my mind was elsewhere.
“Yeah, yeah, I knew that,” I said picking up the pen and quickly signing.
“Good, now I need you to bite down on this. Apply some pressure,” She held out a sort of spongy little disk and inserted it into my mouth, then looked at her watch apparently counting seconds.
Being a trained investigator I noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
“Okay, and release,” she said, then took the disk and placed it in a small plastic case.
“What is that stuff,” I asked, smacking my lips, a taste not unlike envelope glue.
“Porcine.” She said closing her satchel.
“Porcine?”
“Pig skin. The model we made from your impression doesn’t compare with the photographic evidence presented. This is just to confirm that it doesn’t compare.”
“So that’s good.” I said.
“As far as it goes. There’s a lot of debate about the accuracy of the science, always has been, but right now I think we can get the images displaying the bite mark thrown out. If you’re really lucky it will call the remaining photos into question. Okay, thanks, sorry to interrupt your evening,” she said, then gathered up her satchel and walked toward the front door.
“What, no sucker?” I said following.
“Sorry, fresh out. Guess you’l
l have to take a rain check.”
“I’ll do that.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” she smiled, then brushed past me and out the door.
I tried to read, tried to watch TV, tried to read again. Since I was tired after last night and this afternoon’s grope and grab with Heidi I went to bed early.
Chapter Thirty-Three
At six-thirty the following morning I’d already made coffee and was sitting out on my front porch finishing my first cup as traffic slowly began to build. Even at this hour it was warm to the point of suggesting beastly for later in the day. I had a nine o’clock appointment at the office of my home arrest officer, a Miss Muriel Puehl of Sentinel Monitoring. Meanwhile, Heidi’s question continued to nag away, why me?
The offices of Sentinel Monitoring were located about three miles up 35W, off Larpenteur Avenue and just inside the St. Paul city limits. One of those nondescript, one story brick strip buildings, housing a dozen different offices where you could park right in front were it not for all the reserved parking signs. I thought I should be on my best behavior so I pulled the DeVille into the far side of the lot then entered the office. I was ten minutes early for my appointment, and sure I was making a good first impression.
The receptionist was named Marcie, if her plastic name tag could be trusted. She was rather large, and unfortunately rather unattractive.
“Hey good morning, how are you?” I said.
Marcie replied with a slight nod and cold, close set eyes. They sized me up over her hooked nose. I tried not to focus on the erupted mole growing alongside her left nostril.
“I have a nine o’clock appointment with Muriel Puehl.” I pronounced it ‘Pew-L’
“Pull,” Marcie said.
“What?”
“Pull, Muriel’s name is pronounced ‘pull’.”
I read each letter out loud from my appointment card. “And that’s pronounced ‘pull’?”
Marcie gave another slight nod, not only unattractive, she was humorless as well.
“I have an appointment in about ten minutes. Devlin Haskell,” I said.
“Have a seat.”
I did and then sat for the next twenty five minutes. Eventually an attractive woman with eyes that looked puffy from crying exited from an office behind the receptionist desk.
“Asshole,” she hissed under her breath as she walked out of the office. I couldn’t figure out if she meant me or Muriel Puehl.
A few minutes later Marcie called, “Mister Haskell,” as if she was searching the office for me. I was sitting six feet away from her, the only person in the tiny waiting area.
“Here.”
“You may see Miss Puehl,” she inclined her head toward the door.
If Marcie was rather large, Muriel Puehl was massive. A neckless blonde with a number of chins hunched over a desk, fleshy arms easily the size of my thighs jiggled when she moved. She never looked up from the file she was reading, just pointed with a pen and grunted, “sit.”
I did, then sat listening to her labored breathing. The plastic chair seemed uncomfortably warm. No doubt due to the sobbing woman who’d exited the office minutes earlier.
Muriel’s perfume was almost eye watering and reminded me of the air freshener in the bathroom of my grandmother’s home when I was a kid. I tried to breathe through my mouth as she read on and on.
Eventually she raised her head to the point where her chins formed one large chin which sort of forked at her chest and turned into cleavage. She stared at me for an uncomfortable length of time. The dark bags under each eye looked like carry-on luggage.
“You’re a private investigator.”
“Yes,” I nodded, hoping to look bright and somewhat agreeable.
She sucked her front teeth.
“Interesting, your kind have caused a lot of people a lot of pain.”
“Not intentionally,” I smiled. I couldn’t tell if she was studying me or just trying to come up with the next consecutive thought.
Finally she said, “Sign these top two sheets, initial the third in the places I’ve highlighted. They explain the fees to you?”
“Yes, twelve dollars a day, right?”
“In advance, payable weekly or monthly, your choice. Here, initial this,” she slid another form across the desk at me. “Once you decide which option to take, weekly or monthly you can’t change, don’t have the staff for the paper work. We take credit cards. If you write a check back date it to cover yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I slid the forms back to her.
“Plus the set up and install fee, eighty-seven-fifty.” She glanced down at the forms I’d just slid back across the desk to her. “So, okay, you’re doing the monthly payment. I need a month in advance, three-hundred-sixty, plus the eighty-seven-fifty. I’ll save you the trouble, Mister Hastings,” she said punching keys on a calculator.
“Haskell.”
“Four-hundred-forty-seven-dollars-and-fifty-cents. By the way, trust me, this is not the place to bounce a check. That check gets returned NSF and you’re back in the Ramsey County Jail. Questions?”
“No, they made things pretty clear when I was released. You’ll be checking me a couple times a day. No alcohol. I have…”
“Or drugs.”
“Not a problem.”
She stared coldly.
“I have to push the button on the phone within five rings, punch in my code. I stay in the house. I review my schedule with you a week in advance. I have to phone forty-eight hours in advance to alter the approved schedule. I can travel to and from work. I have thirty minutes to get to my office and thirty minutes to return home.”
“See that you do,” she said slowly, annunciating each word.
“About my weekly schedule, I’d like…”
“See Marcie out front.”
“She does the schedule?”
“No, she sets up your appointment to meet with me, then I approve your schedule.”
“Would it be possible to do that now? You see…”
Muriel held up a meaty paw and stopped me in mid sentence.
“Please, let’s follow procedure. You can set up an appointment with Marcie when I’ve finished.”
From there she droned on for another fifteen minutes. Occasionally she picked up a pen in her chubby right hand and checked off another item on a laundry list, then read the next point in an expressionless monotone. Eventually, she finished up with the loving reminder, “Failure to comply with any of the aforementioned requirements may result in your arrest and re-incarceration. Do you have any questions, Mister Haskens?”
She may as well have asked did I want fries with that? I shook myself awake.
“Haskell. No, no questions.”
“Please initial in the box provided next to each check mark, indicating you fully understand the requirements as I’ve explained them to you. Then sign at the bottom, indicating you agree with the initials you’ve placed in each box.”
As she said this she slid that meaty paw across the desk again, pushing a long narrow form toward me. There were a number of creases in her fat wrist like she had string or something tightly tied around it.
I initialed and signed.
“Very good, Mister Hastings, please report to Marcie,” Muriel didn’t bother to raise her massive chins and look at me.
“Thank you,” I said, and exited.
It was more of the same from the lovely Marcie out at the front desk, except she was less charming. At no surprise, neither woman wore a wedding ring. Either they didn’t come in the required size or they hadn’t found a guy stupid enough. Marcie set up my appointment to see Muriel, tomorrow, when she would theoretically approve my schedule. Good thing I didn’t have anything else to do in my life.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Back home that evening I felt like a caged animal. As I sat on my front porch sipping ice water a crowd of five women walked past, chatting and not listening to one another on their way to the next saloon.
&nb
sp; “Want to come in and see my ankle bracelet?” I said, a little too loudly.
That seemed to put a spring in their step and they went quickly on their way. Eventually I got bored with watching people enjoying themselves, became frustrated with nothing on TV and so I went to bed. I tossed and turned fitfully through the night and was sipping coffee out on my front porch at six the following morning.
I had a nine-thirty appointment with the charming Muriel Puehl to hopefully approve my work schedule. I arrived ten minutes early, again.
“Yes,” Marcie said at the receptionist desk. I recognized her blank look. She was oblivious to the fact I’d been in twenty-four hours earlier and had scheduled today’s appointment on the way out the door.
“Devlin Haskell. I have a nine-thirty appointment with Muriel.”
“I’ll see if Ms Puehl can see you.”
I noticed the crossword puzzle in front of her, I was going to say something smart, thought better of it and took my choice of uncomfortable seats and waited.
“Mister Haskell?” Marcie called out twenty minutes later searching for me in the small reception area once again I was the only other person there.
“Yes.”
“Ms Puehl will see you now,” Marcie said, the same blank look on her face a quick glance suggested she’d gotten no further on the crossword puzzle.
Muriel was reading some papers at her desk when I entered, pink chins rolled down her chest. The air was almost syrupy with perfume. She didn’t look up, simply pointed a sausage like finger at the uncomfortable chair in front of her desk and kept reading.
I sat, watched her, counted four separate and distinct chins and waited.
“You’ve brought this week’s schedule?” she said eventually looking up.
“Yeah, actually I brought two weeks I figured we might as well…”
“We approve one week at a time, I’ve neither the patience nor inclination for changes.”
“Okay.” I swallowed down the wise guy comment about her living with five cats, eating cake frosting out of the can every night and placed my schedule on her desk.
“I see,” she said then took a few minutes to read the single page schedule a dozen times.
