The Fraud

by H. Claire Taylor

  Notmie stood there, arms folded, nodding in approval as the bid reached fifty thousand and kept going. Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three…

  It was at fifty-five thousand that there was a dead halt.

  “Can I hear fifty-six? Fifty-six? No bid? Fifty-five, going once, going twice—”

  Notmie fell onto his knees in the middle of the field, throwing his arms up toward the heavens. “What?! No! It’s at least sixty thousand!” He turned to the auctioneer, grabbing the man’s shirt and tugging on it like a beggar. “We need at least sixty thousand!” he screeched, but it was no use.

  “—SOLD!”

  “AAAACH!” It wasn’t Notmie who screamed, but Brodie and Melono. Notmie looked up at them in the stands. They were the only people standing now, and they had their hands on their head, clutching their hair (Melono having more success at it than Brodie, obviously).

  “I–I don’t know what went wrong…” Notmie squeaked.

  The auctioneer moved on to the next item as Notmie trudged off the field to meet Brodie and Melono near the gate entrance.

  Melono gave him a comforting pat on the back when they met. “You did everything you could, Notmie. I guess sixty thousand is just an enormous amount for people around here.”

  Notmie batted her hand off his shoulder. “I could have pulled it off a month ago.”

  “What makes you think that?” Brodie asked.

  “Because I was still unearthly beautiful a month ago!”

  “Oh. Pshhh. Notmie, don’t be stupid,” Brodie said, turning away from them and walking toward the exchange table. “Come on, let’s get our money.”

  Notmie and Melono trailed after him without protest. After all, ninety-five thousand was better than nothing, even if it wasn’t one hundred thousand.

  When they reached the exchange table, the highest bidders of the shirts were already there, hugging the shirts tightly, rubbing them up against their cheeks. Apparently, they couldn’t wait until the end of the auction to have the items in their possession, so here they were.

  The lady from the check-in table had now relocated to the exchange table and was actively working to not only get the money from the bidders, but to get a greedy hand on the shirts for herself.

  “Um… Can we have our money now?” Brodie asked the woman.

  She eventually got the bidders to begin making out the checks.

  “Who do I make this to?” asked the new owner of Melono’s shirt.

  “Make all checks payable to Sinclair Pontier,” Brodie replied, standing on tiptoes and craning his neck to get a good view of the check over the man’s shoulder.

  “Sinclair Pontier? Is that really your name?” the owner of Notmie’s shirt asked, looking questioningly over at Brodie.

  “Ummm… no, it’s the name of a sick friend of mine who needs the money more than I do.”

  The man stopped writing the check and looked up at Brodie, puzzled. “Well that just don’t make no sense! He seemed fine just the other day.” The man finished the check and handed it to Brodie for Notmie’s shirt.

  Brodie folded the check and shoved it absent-mindedly in his pants pocket as he tried to register the full weight of what the man had just said.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Melono asked the owner of Notmie’s shirt.

  He hadn’t even noticed her standing there, but once she spoke, he found he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. The fact that she actually asked his name was one of the most flattering gestures he’d ever received.

  “Willie, ma’am, the name’s Willie, but you can call me Bill, if ya’d like.”

  “Why, thank you… Bill.” She paused as he emitted a goofy giggle at her use of his more intimate name. “Mind if we have a word with you out of this crowd a bit?”

  “No, ma’am! Not at all!”

  Melono led him away from the exchange booth and back behind a concession stand, and Notmie and Brodie followed closely behind. “Bill, do you mind telling me what you meant when you said Sinclair Pontier seemed fine the other day?”

  Bill smiled, but seemed to have trouble finding the words he wanted in front of such unearthly beauty.

  Brodie couldn’t wait any longer. “How do you know Sinclair?!”

  Melono pushed Brodie a few steps back and away from Bill. “Easy there. Don’t hurry him. Bill is simply trying to find the perfect words to describe what he’s trying to say, aren’t you, Bill?”

  Melono’s question only increased the pressure Bill felt to say the right thing, and his words became further caught in this throat. He stood there with his mouth open, looking like he was on the verge of either vomiting or screaming. The others waited as he gathered himself, but it was taking a rather long time. Notmie was the next one to lose patience. He leapt at Bill, grabbing him firmly on the shoulder with his left hand as he used his right to slap Bill in the face with each word he spoke.

  “HOW—DO—YOU—KNOW—SINCLAIR—”

  Notmie didn’t get the chance to finish his question. Bill had passed out. Apparently being addressed by Melono was bad enough, but being slapped around by a man so gorgeous… well, it was too much for almost anyone to handle.

  “Great, Notmie. Good going.” Brodie knelt over Bill’s limp body. “Way to freak the hell out of someone who might have helped us.”

  “Oh, come on! You can’t tell me that you weren’t slapping the crap out of him in your mind. I just did what everyone wanted to do,” Notmie said.

  “Perhaps,” Brodie conceded, “but there’s usually a reason why no one does stuff like that.” He examined the body and took the pulse before looking up at Notmie and Melono. “Well, we know what we have to do.”

  Melono nodded, but didn’t appear to be looking forward to it.

  Notmie was clueless. “What? No, I don’t know what we have to do. What is it?”

  As usual, Notmie’s question was ignored as Melono assisted Brodie in throwing Bill over his shoulder. She snatched the check for her shirt out of the other man’s hand, placing it in Brodie’s pants pocket, before reaching in her own pocket and pulling out the keys to the car.

  “Wait, guys!” Notmie said, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming. “What are you doing? Are you kidnapping him? Won’t we get in trouble? Won’t people—”

  “Notmie, don’t be silly,” Melono insisted. “Of course we’re not kidnapping him. Now will you please tie your Fraud shirt around his eyes so that if he wakes up he won’t know where we’re taking him?”

  “But won’t someone call the police?” Notmie insisted.

  “Dude.” Brodie grunted under Bill’s weight. “Melono’s driving a police car. Don’t you think they might just assume we are police?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, now will you please shut up and carry Bill the rest of the way?” Brodie asked. “I think my back’s about to give out and I need to go ask some questions before we leave. You and Melono go wait in the car.”

  “Since when do you start giving me instructions?” Melono asked.

  “Since I started putting some pieces together.”

  Melono shrugged but accepted that answer, however enigmatic it may be. Brodie flung Bill over Notmie’s shoulder and headed back toward the stadium while Notmie and Melono made for the car.

  “Melono, will you please explain to me what’s going on?”

  “Do you not find it strange that not only has Sinclair Pontier been in this exact town but that he’s also been in contact with the man who bought your shirt?”

  “It’s not that weird, I mean, he’s basically been where we’ve been. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was following us.”

  “When you say he’s following us, doesn’t that imply that he goes to the same places after us?”

  “Well obviously, Melono. I thought you would have known that without asking.” Notmie shook his head disappointedly at Melono’s ignorance.

  Right as they reached the car, Melono filled in the blank for her cousin. “Notm
ie, he’s not going places after us, he’s going places before us.”

  Part 21

  Drunken Dribble

  Notmie flung Bill onto the hood of the car as the realization hit him that Melono was entirely right.

  “You’re entirely right. How do you think he managed that?”

  Melono frowned and furrowed her eyebrows. “I don’t know. It would probably take me some time to sit and think before I could come up with anything, and I haven’t gotten that time yet.”

  “When will you?”

  “Soon, I’m sure. Especially if Brodie’s got something up his sleeve, which he seems to. Now let’s get Bill’s fat ass off the hood before it dents.”

  It took no small amount of effort to accomplish this. Once they’d flopped Bill across the back seat and tucked his feet in enough so that they could shut the door, they both loaded into the front seats of the car and spent the next few minutes catching their breath.

  “So,” Notmie began, looking expectantly at Melono, “where are we going?”

  “No idea.”

  It was a full ten minutes before they saw Brodie leaving the stadium.

  Notmie watched him approached the car. “Maybe we’ll finally get some answers.”

  Brodie knocked on the passenger’s side window, motioning for Notmie to roll it down. As soon as the window was cracked enough to hear what was being said, Brodie spoke the only word that could have made Notmie pound the dashboard in frustration like he did. “Shotgun.”

  “Man!”

  Even after Notmie was seated in the back with Bill’s unconscious body, he didn’t stop challenging the call.

  “You can’t call shotgun when the person’s already there!”

  “Yes you can, Notmie! The only way you could have countered that is if you had called challenge and been the first to touch the door handle, but you didn’t do that, now did you?”

  “I didn’t know that was the rule!”

  “Stop complaining. I even gave you a chance to call challenge because I didn’t say, ‘Shotgun, no challenge.’ You lost fair and square.”

  Notmie stomped his foot and hollered through the metal grates, “You’re just making up new rules! There’s no such thing as ‘Shotgun, no challenge!’”

  Melono grimaced sympathetically. “Actually, Notmie, there is. Brodie’s not just making it up.”

  “You stay out of this, Melono! This shotgun feud goes way back with Brodie and me and it’s not over! You hear that, Brodie? It’s not over!”

  “Jeez, Notmie, is it really that big of a deal?” Brodie turned to look at Notmie, whose face was now turning red.

  Just as Notmie was opening his mouth to reply, Melono decided to put a stop to it all.

  “Shut up! Both of you!” she said, raising her voice and flailing her arms in spastic frustration. “Brodie, why don’t you tell us where the heck we’re supposed to be going and what you were doing while we were waiting for you here.”

  “Fine. Just so long as Notmie doesn’t jump down my throat again.”

  “Eww… don’t worry, no one wants to jump down your throat,” Notmie said bitterly, unsure what he even meant by it, but hoping that his bitter tone did the trick just the same.

  “It was a figure of speech, genius.” Brodie closed his eyes for a second to control himself and to get his thoughts back where they needed to be. “I just went asking around a bit to see where Bill works and lives.”

  “Why does that matter?” Melono asked.

  “Well, it doesn’t seem like it would matter at all, but as it turns out, the answer to those two questions are one and the same.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, he lives where he works. He owns a tavern where he rents out rooms to visitors. He lives right above the tavern. Apparently, it’s a small two-story building in downtown Lynchton named The Squeaky Spoke.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember us passing that a dozen times trying to find City Hall Stadium,” Melono said. “So is that where we’re going?”

  Brodie nodded, looking pleased. “Sure is. I figure if we get Bill in an environment he’s more comfortable with, he might actually tell us something about his connection with Sinclair.”

  “Wow, Brodie, that’s pretty good.” Melono was thoroughly impressed.

  “Yeah,” Brodie grinned, truly satisfied with himself, “it is pretty good.”

  * * *

  Notmie couldn’t stop sneezing while he and Melono hid behind the dusty old drapes. They had found The Squeaky Spoke easily enough, but the problem was figuring out how to avoid another panic attack on the part of Bill. It was decided that the best solution would be to hide Notmie and Melono entirely from view to prevent anything from distracting Bill while Brodie asked some questions.

  Originally, Brodie had proposed that the other two wait in the car until he was finished, but Melono insisted that she hear everything firsthand just so that there was no filtering of facts. Even though Notmie was fine with waiting in the car (he would be able to sit shotgun in Brodie’s absence) Melono said they all needed to be present, and since she was the one with detective work under her belt, she was the one in charge of running the operation.

  Upon entering the tavern’s doors, they were met with what appeared to be a burial ground for trees; everything was made of wood. No one had told the builders about cement and steel framing, apparently.

  Neither Brodie nor Melono thought that the tavern itself would be a particularly great place for questioning, since someone could walk in on them at any time, so they searched the building and found a nice room off of the main one that they could use. They sat Bill in a large cowhide comfy chair facing a soft couch where Brodie could sit. He didn’t sit right away; instead he went to find a rag and some cold water to help wake up the unconscious man. He returned, carrying a rag that dripped with brown water and looked like it’d been used on toilets for a handful of decades.

  “It’s not really cold, but it was the quickest thing I could find,” Brodie said in his defense as Melono stared at the rag in disgust.

  “Did you get that water directly out of the toilet, or did you just mop it off the floor?” she asked.

  “It’s not water; it’s beer.”

  Melono hesitated momentarily before accepting his answer with a shrug and joining Notmie in hiding behind the drapes to wait as Brodie tried to wake Bill. But Bill didn’t want to wake.

  “Is this really necessary?” Notmie asked for the tenth time. “I don’t think he’s vacuumed these curtains in… well, ever. It’s just unclean, I tell you, unclean.”

  Melono clasped her hand over his mouth. “Shh! I think Bill’s finally coming to.”

  Bill awoke looking frazzled and discombobulated.

  “Wha— where— who in the devil’s blazin’ hell are you?” he demanded, shaking a fist at Brodie.

  “You passed out at the auction. I took you back here.”

  Bill scratched his head and gave Brodie an appraising look. “Have we met?”

  “Only briefly at the auction. Remember when you were writing the check for the shirt and—”

  “The shirt!” Bill looked around wildly. “Where’s the shirt? I must have it!”

  Brodie pulled it out from behind his chair and handed it to Bill.

  Bill snatched the shirt out of Brodie’s hands and began rubbing it gently across his cheek, caressing his face.

  “What on earth is he doing?” Notmie whispered.

  Bill seemed to slip from his reverie when he noticed Brodie gazing oddly at him.

  “What?”

  “I… um.” Brodie was intrigued by Bill’s attachment to the shirt, but he wasn’t about to say that. He had to get the information he needed or else he was in for a long car ride with Melono. “How do you know Sinclair Pontier?”

  He had planned to be a bit more covert in his approach, but it just came out.

  Bill looked at him suspiciously for a second before dismissing whatever thoughts he had. He sort of liked this stran
ger.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Brodie.”

  “Don’t suppose you’re French too, are ya?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Black?”

  Brodie froze. He wasn’t sure what prompted this question. Did they know?

  “Of course not! Why would you say such a thing? That’s… that’s just ridiculous!” He somehow managed to make the fear-induced pause sound like one of resentment rather than panic.

  “Fair enough. I just wanted to know who I was dealing with.” Bill eyed Brodie appraisingly and seemed to like what he was seeing.

  “I answered your question, Bill, now will you answer mine?”

  “…and that was?”

  “How do you know Sinclair Pontier?” Brodie looked Bill straight in the eyes.

  Bill sat tensely for a few seconds before his posture relaxed and he gave a hardy chuckle. “Of course, Brodie. It ain’t no thing, really. He just stayed in my inn for a while and we sorta made acquaintance.”

  “Did he say anything particularly interesting while he was staying with you?”

  “Whaddaya mean, ‘interesting’? We just talked. He told me stories that his mother told him when he was younger and I grew rather fond of him… not like that, ya know. I might not be married, but it’s not ’cause I don’t like me the women.”

  Brodie decided he shouldn’t push the subject too much just yet to avoid arousing Bill’s suspicion, so he took a break from the matter for the time being. “I think I’ll be in town a while, do you mind renting me a room for a couple days?”

  “What is he doing?” Melono whispered, hardly more than mouthing it. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Well, today’s the twenty-ninth, and we don’t need to be in Paris until the first, so that leaves us a full day with nowhere to go,” Notmie whispered back.

  Bill smiled. “Sure, I can rent ya a room.”

  “What are your rates?”

  “Thirty a night. Meals not included.”

  “Sounds good.” Brodie offered his hand to Bill and they shook.

  “I guess I’ll be here a while then,” Brodie said, kicking his feet up on the dusty coffee table in front of him. “Why don’t you tell me a story? I haven’t been home in almost a month, I could use some nice leisure time.”