American PI

by Jude Hardin

“You need a maid?” he said.

  “More like the kind of outfit that comes in after a tornado or a hurricane.”

  I explained what had happened. He gave me a number, and I called and arranged for the service to meet me at the camper at three-thirty for an estimate. The lady I talked to said that the price would depend on the amount of work involved, but to count on at least two hundred dollars. I hung up, disgusted with myself for ever engaging a psychopath like Shelby Spelling.

  “Where do you want to eat?” Laurie said.

  “I don’t think I can afford to eat anymore.”

  “Come on. I’ll buy you a cheeseburger.”

  “Sounds good. Let me just make one more call, and then we’ll go.”

  “Okay.”

  I punched in Bradley Harbaugh’s number, and he answered on the first ring. I told him the police had towed Everett’s car.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I talked to them a while ago, and they said it was scheduled to be picked up first thing tomorrow morning. They said that an officer had driven over there and tagged it, but that one of the tow trucks is in the shop and the other one is busy elsewhere.”

  “The car’s not here,” I said. “Maybe the cops got their truck fixed and came over here and picked it up after all.”

  “Maybe. I’m going to call them and find out. I’ll call you back and let you know.”

  “Okay.”

  I hung up, put the Jimmy in gear, and headed out.

  “All right,” Laurie said. “Now I’m really hungry.”

  She was looking through my old newspaper. She’d reached around to the backseat and grabbed it while I was on the phone.

  “I need to talk to someone over at Pace Island,” I said. “There’s a burger joint on the way.”

  “You’re still going to be able to get me home in time for work, right?”

  “Probably. What would happen if you didn’t make it in tonight?”

  “The bar manager would have to stay and close, and he’s already been there since eleven this morning. Plus, I really can’t afford to miss a shift.”

  “I’m meeting the cleaning person at three-thirty,” I said. “We’ll head on back to your place after that.”

  “Okay.”

  We rode in silence for a few minutes, Laurie with her nose in yesterday’s news and me with a million thoughts running through my head. It intrigued me that she didn’t know about my history as a world-class guitarist in a top recording act. I hadn’t asked Laurie her age, but my guess was mid-thirties. She would have been nineteen or so in the middle of my band’s heyday, definitely part of our demographic. And most people who were alive during that era, people who were old enough to read, anyway, remember the name Nicholas Colt from the plane crash, even if they never bought any of the records. It made me wonder if she was being honest with me about that. Then again, maybe I just wasn’t as famous as I thought I was.

  I reached over and pulled a CD out of the glove box, Dead Ringer, my band’s first album. A couple of the songs still got airplay on the classic rock stations, and I still got a small check once a year for my share of the songwriting royalties. I slid the CD into the player, thinking the music might jog Laurie’s memory. It bugged me, in a way, that she didn’t have a clue about that part of my history, if in fact she really didn’t, but it was also a bit refreshing that a woman of Laurie’s caliber actually liked me without knowing that I used to be a rock star.

  She didn’t pay any attention to the music. She seemed to be in her own little world, lost and alone somewhere on page A7.

  “You like these guys?” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “This band. Colt Forty-Five. I know you’ve heard of them.”

  “Actually, I don’t listen to a lot of southern rock. I was into punk when I was a kid, then alternative and grunge and all that. Not typical for a girl who grew up in this part of Florida, I guess, although these days I do listen to country sometimes. The old stuff, you know? Conway and Loretta, George and Tammy, Waylon and—”

  “So you’re telling me you’ve never heard of Colt Forty-Five?” I said.

  “I’ve heard of them. Just never paid much attention.”

  “Oh.”

  She glanced back down at the newspaper.

  “Isn’t it terrible about that girl down in Cocoa Beach?” she said.

  “What girl?”

  “Her name’s Stephanie Vowels. They found her dangling from a bridge the other day, about twenty miles from where she lived. Someone had slipped a noose around her neck and pushed her off.”

  That was where I’d heard the name, I thought. From skimming the newspaper yesterday. My heart started beating a little faster.

  “She’s one of Everett’s sisters,” I said.

  “Everett Harbaugh? The guy you’re looking for?”

  “Yeah. How do they know someone pushed her? How do they know she didn’t commit suicide?”

  “Her hands were tied behind her back,” Laurie said. “She couldn’t have done that herself. What makes you think she was Everett’s sister?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it. You remember that receipt you found in my shirt when you sewed the buttons back on? The writing on the back of it was a user name and a password. Everett’s user name and password. There’s a website where people who were conceived from a specimen in a sperm bank can try to connect with their siblings from the same donor. Some of them, like Everett, even try to connect with the donors themselves, although they’re hardly ever successful. Most sperm donors, even the ones who register there on the website, choose to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons. Anyway, Stephanie Vowels had written a note to Everett, but he disappeared before he ever got a chance to read it. They both had the same donor number, which means they had the same biological father. And they were both born in October, just days apart. Stephanie had sent the message to Everett on her birthday, actually.”

  “And that’s the day she died,” Laurie said.

  Acid rose from the pit my stomach to the top of my throat. I took a sip of cold coffee to swallow it back. I steered into the burger place and pulled around to the drive-thru. There were two cars ahead of us.

  “I know I promised you lunch,” I said. “But we’re going to have to get it to go.”

  Laurie shrugged. She hadn’t put two and two together, but I had. I needed to get to a computer as soon as possible.

  I skipped talking to the friend at Pace Island and drove straight back to Laurie’s apartment. We ate our burgers on the way. It was a little after three when we got there. I called the cleaning service and told them that I wouldn’t be able to meet them after all, but to go on in and look at the place and then call me with an estimate.

  Laurie walked over to the sliding glass door that led to her balcony and pulled the blinds back.

  “Why were you in such a hurry to get to the computer?” she said.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.”

  If Shelby Spelling hadn’t destroyed my laptop, I could have gotten the information I needed while we were out. I’d burned almost an hour on the road since Laurie told me about Stephanie Vowels being murdered. It was an hour I would never be able to get back, and an hour Everett Harbaugh would never be able to get back.

  If my theory was correct, it was an hour that might mean the difference between life and death.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I logged onto the Sibling Boards using Everett’s user name and password. I read the message from Stephanie Vowels again. She and Everett had been born the same month and the same year and only days apart. Seven days, actually. One week. Stephanie’s twentieth birthday was last Saturday, and Everett’s was this coming Saturday.

  To me, it seemed like quite a coincidence that Stephanie had been murdered on her twentieth birthday and that Everett had been kidnapped four days prior to his. Too much of a coincidence to ignore.

  Joe Crawford knows me better than anyone on the planet, and he’s right when he says that I
jump to conclusions sometimes. I know that about myself, and I hoped that my vivid imagination was all this little hunch amounted to.

  I went through the list of matches on Everett’s page. There were fifteen girls and fourteen boys, not counting Stephanie Vowels. They were all listed in alphabetical order. I clicked on the first one, a girl named Felicia Alcott, and saw from her date of birth that she wouldn’t turn twenty for two and a half more years. Next in line was a boy named Tyler Chadwell, who wouldn’t turn twenty for a little over six months. I continued down the list until I got to Philip D. Davenport, who had turned twenty last year on the day before Christmas.

  I opened a search engine and typed in Philip D. Davenport Dallas Texas Obituary.

  And there it was, in black and white, right there on the website for one of the Dallas newspapers.

  Philip Davenport died near his home in Irving early Tuesday morning, December 24, apparently the victim of a robbery.

  There was some information on the memorial service and a request that donations be sent to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, Philip’s favorite charity, in lieu of flowers. At the bottom of the paragraph, there was a link to the related story in the Metro section. I clicked on that and skimmed through the article.

  Philip had been out with some friends, celebrating his birthday at a pizza place. He’d left the restaurant alone, and he’d been stabbed to death outside a convenience store on his way home. The crime was under investigation, but there weren’t any leads so far.

  I didn’t need to search any further.

  Stephanie Vowels had been killed on her twentieth birthday.

  Philip Davenport had been killed on his twentieth birthday.

  If I didn’t do something to stop it, Everett Harbaugh was going to be killed on his twentieth birthday, which was less than two days away.

  I called Everett’s father.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was just about to call you. Nobody from the sheriff’s department towed Everett’s car. It must have been stolen.”

  “Incredible,” I said. “Listen, I need to talk to the police detective who’s investigating Everett’s disappearance. Do you have a number where I can get in touch with him or her?”

  He gave me the number.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “I’ll call you back and explain in a few minutes. I need to get in touch with that detective right away.”

  “I understand that, but—”

  I hung up on him. I hated to be rude, but it was in the best interest of his son. I was almost positive now about who had abducted Everett, but there was no way for me to find him myself. The police needed to handle it.

  I punched in the number for Detective Barry Fleming with the Violent Crimes Unit. It rang about twenty times before he finally picked up.

  “This is Fleming,” he said.

  “My name’s Nicholas Colt. Bradley Harbaugh hired me to find his son.”

  “Who?”

  “Bradley Harbaugh. His son Everett disappeared late Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Hold on,” Fleming said. “Let me see if I can find the report.”

  “Okay.”

  Fleming didn’t press a button to put me on hold, as I’d expected him to do. He dropped his phone on something hard, probably his desk, and the impact cracked sharply against my left eardrum. I switched to my right ear and heard what sounded like a metal file drawer opening, followed by the sound of papers being shuffled.

  “Here it is,” Fleming said. “Tuesday evening, lot twenty three on Lake Barkley, new BMW, UF student, Phi Epsilon Alpha Kappa fraternity. It’s all here. What can I do for you?”

  “He was kidnapped,” I said. “And I know who did it. He’s going to die Saturday if you don’t—”

  “Whoa, partner. How do you know he was kidnapped?”

  “He was at my place when it happened. I’d been drinking. He walked outside to get a pen out of his car, and I nodded off for a few minutes. When I woke up, the BMW was still there, but Everett was gone.”

  “And?”

  “He left the keys in the ignition. He left his cell phone, wallet, everything. He wouldn’t have done that. Nobody would have. He was taken against his will.”

  “I guess it’s possible,” Fleming said. “An officer went out there this morning and tagged the car to be towed. It was locked, but she noted in her report that there was a cell phone on the center console. She saw it through the window. We’ll verify everything else tomorrow at the impound lot when the truck brings the car in. Do you have the keys?”

  “Yeah, but the car’s not there anymore,” I said. “Someone stole it.”

  “Someone stole the car?”

  “Yeah, but that’s irrelevant right now. I’m telling you, Everett was kidnapped, and he’s going to be murdered if he isn’t found before Saturday.”

  “From everything you’ve told me, and everything I have here on my desk, it sounds as though the young man could have been abducted, but there’s still no real evidence to that effect. Certainly not enough to take to the FBI. What makes you think his life is in danger?”

  “Everett is the child of a sperm donor,” I said. “The donor has already killed at least two of Everett’s siblings, both on their twentieth birthday. Everett turns twenty day after tomorrow, and he’s missing.”

  “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that a sperm donor killed two people. How do you know this?”

  I told him about the research I’d done on the Sibling Boards, about Stephanie Vowels and Philip Davenport.

  “Everett has thirty siblings,” I said, practically shouting now. “Thirty that I know of, anyway. Thirty who signed up on the Boards. Sixteen girls and fourteen boys. Apparently the donor who fathered all those children is using the information from the website to track them down and kill them. On their twentieth birthdays. If only one murder had occurred, we might be able to call it a coincidence. But two? Come on, detective. How much clearer can it be?”

  “To my knowledge, there’s still no evidence that Everett Harbaugh was abducted,” Fleming said. “Maybe he took off with a friend or a girl or something. Kids his age do that kind of stuff.”

  “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”

  “Absolutely. And while all that does sound suspicious, there’s still no hard evidence that a crime has been committed. Everett Harbaugh is missing. A report has been filed, and we’ve combed the area where he was last known to have been, and we’re keeping an eye out. But it’s not against the law to be missing, Mr. Colt. In most of these cases, the missing person has chosen to be missing, and he or she has the right to be left alone. I’m talking about adults, of course. As a police agency, we like to keep our intrusion into people’s personal lives to a minimum. Surely you can understand that.”

  “I understand that you’re an idiot,” I said.

  “Ah. So I’m an idiot now. Okay.”

  “Listen, Detective Fleming, I know the name of the sperm bank Everett’s mother went to, and I know the donor number. You need to get a court order for Klein Fertility in Orange Park to turn over the name and contact information for donor one-seven-three, and you need to do it now. Immediately. Everett Harbaugh’s life depends on it.”

  “And what exactly am I supposed to tell the judge? That we’re going to totally invade this sperm donor’s privacy because some two-bit private eye has a hunch that his missing client might be in danger? Give me a break, Colt. It’s just not going to happen.”

  “How can you be so stupid?” I said.

  “This conversation is over, but I want you to give us a call if you come up with any real evidence that Everett Harbaugh is in jeopardy.”

  “What do you mean by real evidence? His dead body?”

  I heard a click, and Detective Barry Fleming of the Violent Crimes Unit was gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Laurie was sitting on the couch, gently running her fingers through Edgar’s thick fur. I walked o
ver to the sliding glass door and gazed out at the wooded area behind the apartment complex.

  “I gather that didn’t go well,” Laurie said.

  “Did you hear what I was telling him?” I shouted. “Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  “Hey, don’t cop an attitude with me. I’m on your side, remember?”

  I turned and faced her. Edgar meowed sharply and jumped off the sofa. He walked to the kitchen, sniffed his food dish, took a drink of water, and padded off toward the bedroom.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just so frustrating having to deal with idiots. To me, it’s obvious what has happened. Everett’s sperm donor father kidnapped him, and he’s going to kill him Saturday when he turns twenty. It’s not rocket science.”

  “No, it’s not rocket science, but you have to admit it’s pretty bizarre. To say the least. And I guess it’s possible that the two deaths were a coincidence.”

  “Is that what you think?” I said.

  “I’m just saying that it’s possible. Maybe you should research the rest of the siblings and see if any more of them were murdered.”

  “Or maybe I should take matters into my own hands. There’s just not a lot of time to waste, Laurie. I don’t know Sperm Dad’s motive yet, but his MO seems pretty clear: he’s systematically eliminating all the offspring that resulted from his association with Klein Fertility back in the eighties.”

  “What did the detective say?”

  “He said there’s no hard evidence that a crime has been committed. He seems afraid to do anything, afraid that he’s going to infringe on Everett’s right to be missing and Sperm Dad’s right to be anonymous. I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous. It’s almost like I’m living in a Kafka novel or something.”

  “A what?”

  “A Kafka novel. Franz Kafka. One of Everett’s fraternity brothers was sitting on the porch at the PEAK house reading one of his books for a class, a novel called The Trial. It explores the absurdity of government bureaucracies, among other things.”

  “You actually read stuff like that?” Laurie said.

  I walked over to the couch and sat down beside her.