by Cindy Brown
Shit. I knew what it was. I ran to the garage and put my ear against it. Yes—shit! A car engine. Rumbling in the garage. The closed-up-tight garage.
I fumbled in my bag for my cell, yanked it out and dropped it on the concrete drive. I scrambled for it, saw the dark screen and turned it on. Or didn’t. I’d forgotten to charge it.
I pulled at the garage door—no way to open it. The rumble continued. I scanned the cul-de-sac, saw a light on at a nearby house, and sprinted over. I pounded on the door. “Emergency! Call 911! Something’s happened to Bernice!”
The door flew open. A woman stood open-mouthed amongst a pile of suitcases. “I’m Bernice.”
I looked at her house number: 3738. Marge had transposed the numbers. “Then who…” I pointed at the garage, filling up with deadly fumes even as we spoke. “There’s a car idling.”
“Oh, God,” said Bernice. “It’s Charlie Small.”
CHAPTER 4
A black car with “Sheriff” written on the side made a leisurely turn into the cul-de-sac. Too leisurely.
The patrol car drove slowly past me and Bernice outside Charlie’s garage, then parked on the street behind us. A tall man with a silver head of hair and a mustache to match unfolded himself from within. I ran to him. “The car’s idling in the garage. We’ve been pounding and pounding, but there’s no response.”
The man reached inside his car, pulled out his hat—a cowboy-ish, state trooper type—and settled it on his head.
“I don’t think anyone’s in the house,” I said, breathing hard. “I rang and knocked, so Charlie must be in the car. In the garage.”
The guy didn’t move.
“In the garage that’s filling up with deadly gas?” I said. Okay, shouted.
The man took a pair of mirrored sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. It was just past five thirty. Still dark.
“Hank.” Bernice had come up behind me. Her greeting sounded carefully neutral.
Hank nodded at her, streetlights glinting off his sunglasses.
I had to stop myself from grabbing Bernice’s shoulders. “Isn’t he going to do something?”
She shook her head. “He’s just posse.”
A fire truck screamed onto the street and pulled into Charlie’s driveway, a couple more vehicles right behind.
“Thank God!” I ran over to the first truck. “The car,” I said to the first guy who jumped down. “It’s in the garage. Running.”
“When did you notice it?”
The rest of the firefighters put on what looked like scuba gear.
“I got here about five thirty.” It was only a few minutes since Bernice called 911, but it seemed like an eternity.
The fireman nodded at one of the already-equipped men, who sprinted to the front door, pulled a key out of a pocket, and unlocked a small silver box mounted on the wall next to the door.
“It’s a key box,” said Bernice, who was behind me again. “A lot of us have them so the fire department can get in if we need them.”
A wailing siren as another truck rounded the corner. “I called ‘Hazardous,’” said the fireman next to me, who was burly with close-cropped hair.
The guy who’d been inside ran out, took off his mask, and shouted, “No one inside, but the door to the garage is unlocked.”
Several of the Hazardous guys, wearing masks and air tanks, ran into the house.
“What now?” I asked.
The fireman put a hand on my back and steered me gently into the street. “The Hazardous team will get into the garage, shut off the car, and open the garage door so the gas will dissipate. We need to stand back.”
“But what about Charlie?”
“We’ll do what we can.” He pushed me farther into the street as the garage door rumbled open. Bernice stood with me, watching it go up. Hank stood near the fire truck, arms crossed. A few neighbors straggled into the street, awakened by the commotion.
A flurry of activity surrounded the car in the garage, then one firefighter turned to us. He shook his head. The burly fireman’s shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry,” he said to me and Bernice and the small knot of neighbors.
“Oh, Charlie,” Bernice said, a catch in her voice. “At least he’s where he wants to be now.” She must have seen a question on my face. “With Helen, his wife.” Her eyes, which had been misty with unshed tears, seemed to focus in on me, and something clicked into place behind them. “Damn,” she said. “I’m going to miss my flight.”
CHAPTER 5
I squeezed my Bug into a parking spot on a downtown Phoenix street, jumped out, ran past the jail, into the office building, up the stairs, and into my uncle’s office. Twenty minutes past nine. Twenty minutes late.
Uncle Bob didn’t look up from his computer monitor. “I’m going to call Guinness World Records,” he said. “See if they have a category for ‘latest person in the world,’ or maybe ‘the only person in the world who can get up at four in the morning and still be late for work.’”
Then he looked up from the computer and saw my face. “Oh shit,” he said, standing up. “Did you burn down something else?”
I walked over and buried my head in his chest. He hugged me awkwardly, then sat me down in the one comfy chair and brought me a cup of coffee. I told him the whole story.
“Olive, hon,” he said. “People do what they want to do. You couldn’t have stopped it. Besides, it sounds like this guy had a nice life, and now he was done with it. He didn’t hurt anyone, and from what I hear, it’s not a bad way to go.” My uncle looked at me seriously. “And if you’re going to be in this line of work,” he swept an arm to include the office in all its PI glory, “you gotta get used to the not-so-nice side of life.”
I nodded.
“Time to get to work, then.”
He handed me several manila folders that had been sitting on his battered government-issue metal desk. The desk was enormous, so there wasn’t room for another one in the office. When we both worked in the office at the same time I used a laptop on a wooden TV tray near the window overlooking the jail across the street.
I got up out of the chair and walked over to my “desk” underneath the noisy swamp cooler wedged into the window frame. The cooler’s damp air against my skin made me shiver, and I thought again about Charlie, all alone in his car…
“Who dressed you this morning?” said Uncle Bob.
The tracksuit Marge had loaned me was baby blue velour with “Marvelous Marge” in rhinestones on the back.
“No wait, let me guess,” he said. “Marge?”
I loved my uncle and the way he was trying to make things seem normal. So much so that I shook off my mood, picked up a rubber band off my desk, and shot it at him. It landed at his feet.
“Lame.” Uncle Bob shook his head.
“Did you know that rubber bands keep longer when refrigerated?” I shot another one that hit the top of his shoe.
“Did you know that 41 percent of home fires start in the kitchen?” Uncle Bob loved trivia. He said he collected obscure facts so that he could use them as conversation starters, help him with his PI work. I think he was just naturally curious.
“Really?” I said, raising my voice over the swamp cooler’s rattling. “You would think it’d be more. The kitchen seems like the most logical place for them to start.”
“Yeah.” He frowned. “I’d have you check into that, except that you need to get right to work because you’re late. We’ve got three reports to get out today.”
I sighed before I could stop myself, and before I could hide it from my uncle. This job drove me crazy. Not bad crazy, more like a-dog-with-a-treat-balanced-on-her-nose crazy. Like I could see the cool stuff but couldn’t get to it until someone said, “Now, girl!”
“I told you PI work wasn’t that exciting,” my uncle said.
“That’s because you do all the exciting stuff.”
“Yep. Today I’m going to interview an accountant, do an internet search, and talk to a lawyer. Don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
“I could do some of that for you. Or maybe follow someone, or take photos or something.”
“So you’re staying until five tonight? Working this weekend, maybe?” Uncle Bob leaned back in his chair.
“Actually I need to leave early. I’ve got a meeting about this house sitting gig.” I hadn’t had a chance to go over my duties with Bernice (who caught a later flight), so Marge was going to give me the lowdown. “I start tonight, so I won’t be sleeping on your couch.” I hoped this information would distract Uncle Bob and keep him from realizing I only answered half his question.
“And this weekend?”
Guess my info wasn’t distracting enough. “I have tech rehearsals.”
“Ah.”
He didn’t have to say more. Uncle Bob knew my heart belonged to the theater. He also believed this kept me from being serious about detective work. He was wrong there. I really wanted to be a detective. And an actor. Why should one preclude the other? “Just keep in mind, I would make a great detective. It’s in the genes, you know.”
A rubber band landed squarely in my lap. “Get to work, missy.”
So I typed. For all my griping, I didn’t really mind. Though I wasn’t a big fan of writing reports, I was a big fan of my uncle. Bob was a great mix of laid-back and dedicated, like those Deadheads who used to follow the band everywhere. His daily uniform consisted of cargo shorts, a three-day beard and a Hawaiian shirt or t-shirt that said something like “Bigfoot doesn’t believe in you, either.” His friendliness and familiar way of talking to strangers belied a shrewd mind and a memory like a tape recorder. And below our easy banter was a devotion to me that nearly got him killed last fall. He was not only family, but what I thought family should be like. He even stood up for me to my parents, who were not what I thought family should be like.
Around one, there was a rap on the open office door.
“Hey, Hank.” Uncle Bob smiled as he got up from his chair. “Glad you’re here. I’m starving.”
A man with a full head of silver hair, a silver mustache, and silver mirrored sunglasses stood stiffly in the doorway—the same way he stood at Charlie’s death scene.
Bob ushered his friend into the office. “Hank, meet my niece Olive.” Hank took off his sunglasses, revealing gray eyes that somehow reminded me of a wolf. I found the whole silver matchy-matchy effect kind of creepy. Cut it out, I told myself. It’s not like he bought his mustache to match his eyes.
“We’ve met,” I said. “Hank was the first guy who showed up at Charlie’s.” The guy who couldn’t have cared less, I didn’t say.
“I was on posse duty this morning,” he said to Uncle Bob.
“Yeah, Bernice said something about a posse,” I said. At the time, all I could think of were shootouts and vigilante justice. Hank looked like he could hold his own in either case.
“You’ve heard of volunteer fire departments?” said my uncle. “The posse is a sort of volunteer police department. Sunnydale’s unincorporated, so the county enforces the law out there. They depend on the posse to keep an eye on things.”
“I thought you were police,” I said. Hank had certainly looked the part, with the official uniform and car and all.
“No. Anytime anything serious happens, we have to wait for the ‘real’ cops.” Hank’s lip curled, in sarcasm or bitterness, I couldn’t tell.
With a sideways glance at me, Uncle Bob changed the subject. “You guys woulda met yesterday if Olive hadn’t burned down her apartment.” So this was the client who left early. With everything going on, I’d forgotten to ask my uncle what happened during the meeting.
“What were you doing in Sunnydale?” Hank asked me. Guess Uncle Bob’s subject-changing hadn’t worked.
“I’m going to be house sitting out there.”
“Far away from work.”
I really wanted to say “What’s it to you?” but instead politely replied, “But it’s close to Desert Magic Dinner Theater. I’m doing a show there.”
“Thought you were learning to be a detective.”
“I am.” This guy was really pushing my buttons. “Acting and private investigation are complementary career paths.”
Hank gave what passed for a laugh, put on his mirrored sunglasses, and turned to Uncle Bob. “Let me know how that works out.”
CHAPTER 6
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked my uncle when he got back from his lunch with Creepy Silver Hank. “You’re friends with that guy? Seriously?”
“Hank and I go back a long way. He just moved here from Spokane.”
“But—”
Uncle Bob held up a hand. “Listen. Hank was recently asked,” he made finger quotes, “to retire after being on the force for almost twenty-five years. He’s not himself right now. Give him a break, okay?”
“Whatever,” I mumbled as I scooped up my bag and headed for the door. “You working on the house this weekend?”
“Yeah. In fact, Hank’s coming over. Going to bring his skill saw.”
I kissed him goodbye on his stubbly cheek. “Be careful,” I said. I meant it.
I was on my way to Sunnydale when my phone buzzed. I picked up and put it on speakerphone, so I could keep my eye on traffic and see if the car ahead of me ever decided to go more than ten miles an hour.
“Hey, Ivy,” said a male voice.
“Hi,” I said, turning into the Sunnydale entrance. Distracted by driving, I hadn’t paid enough attention to the voice to figure out who was calling, so I waited, hoping for a bit more info.
“Beautiful day, huh?”
“Gorgeous.” It was. Ducklings paddled in the water hazard as I drove past a golf course. But who was I talking to? Everyone loves Arizona in the spring. I glanced down at my phone to see if I recognized the number.
Shit! I slammed on my brakes at the same time I heard the beep of the golf cart. Two men glared at me, their cart about a yard from my front bumper.
“Sorry,” I yelled.
One of the men glowered so hard that the skin on his bald head wrinkled with the effort. “Next time, pay attention.” He pointed at a yellow warning sign, like you see for pedestrians or even ducklings. This one had a graphic of a golf cart on it. I realized my car was stopped in a yellow striped lane, a golf cart crosswalk, as it were.
“Is this a bad time?” asked the voice on the phone, which was growing more familiar by the second.
“No, it’s fine.” Then to the golfers, “Sorry again. Have a nice day!”
I put the VW in gear, but slowed my pace.
“I know you have rehearsal every night—”
Jeremy. It was Jeremy!
“But what about days?” he asked, as I passed another golf cart, this one toodling down the road beside me. “I thought maybe we could get out of town, take a picnic or something.”
“That’d be great,” I gushed without thinking. Then my brain kicked in. It felt more like a kick to the stomach. “But…”
“But?”
Tech rehearsals would last all weekend. And I did mean all weekend. Us non-union actors were scheduled to be at the theater both days from nine a.m. until ten p.m. while the directors (including the music director and technical director) set and reset light and sound cues, made sure scenery moved in and out when it was supposed to, and basically made the magic of theater look seamless.
“But this weekend is a problem.”
I expected Jeremy to hang up, but instead heard a smile in his voice when he said, “I should have said I have to work this weekend too. Didn’t you say you sometimes had weekdays off? Any chance you could get away on Monday?”
We made plans for Jeremy to pick me up at Bernice’s, and I hung up just as I turned into her cul-de-sac. Into Charlie Small’s cul-de-sac. A cloud skittered across my sunny mood. Charlie’s house looked sad and empty, as if it mourned the people who had lived and died there. I wondered about them, and about Charlie in particular. What had made him so desperately sad? I parked in Bernice’s drive, rang the doorbell, and tried to shake off my funereal mood.
Marge opened the door. “Hey, that outfit looks better on you than it does on me,” she said, looking me up and down. “I’d give it to you if it wasn’t customized.”
She ushered me into the house, enveloping me in a cloud of positive energy and Chanel No. 5. My mood lifted. Being around Marge just did that to me.
I followed her clicking heels down the hall. “Wow, Marge.”
“Yeah, nice place, huh?”
I wasn’t talking about the house. It was the first time I’d seen Marge in anything but a tracksuit. She may have been sixty-something (or seventy-something if the rumors were true), but she was dressed to the nines in a body-skimming red number and, I suspected, some heavy artillery undergarments that made her generous proportions look Rubenesque. Her skirt swished over red patent leather heels, and her mouth was painted crimson. Marge was a curvy gal, but she worked out and it showed: trim waist, defined arms, muscled legs. She also suntanned. The entire effect was of a great-looking mannequin made of leather.
That said, I was still in awe of Marge. She’d made it on Broadway, still filled the house for any show she chose to do, and turned acting into a good living. She was my role model (minus the tan).
