37

by David Achord

  “Would you like me to get a pot of coffee going?” I asked.

  She yawned and looked up. “Sure, if you want to. I have to pee.”

  She slid off of the stool and walked through the den to a hallway, scratching her behind as she disappeared through a door at the end of the hall.

  I found some dishwashing liquid under the sink and washed out the carafe before prepping the coffeemaker. I heard the muted sound of a toilet flushing running water. A moment later, Carla reappeared, planted herself back in the same stool, and rested her head on the counter. I needed her to talk to me and decided a little flirting might help.

  “How about I cook you some breakfast?” I asked with a warm grin.

  “Sure,” she said, never looking up. So much for my attempts at being a lady-killer.

  I opened the refrigerator and surprisingly, it was stocked. I think she fell back asleep, but that was okay. I had to wash a skillet and some plates, but I soon had a cheese omelet, toast, bacon, and a hot cup of coffee in front of her. The aromas roused her and she lifted her head.

  “Holy shit,” she muttered.

  “Get it while it’s hot,” I proclaimed. I fixed myself a cup and leaned against the counter, watching her eat.

  “Holy shit, this is good,” she said with more vigor.

  “I’m a halfway decent cook. Tell me about the fight and the rave party,” I urged as I set a paper towel in front of her. She picked it up and dabbed at some bacon juice running down her chin before answering.

  “It was okay. I mean, there was one kickass fight, but there were only like four matches, so that part was pretty lame. So, me and LaDonna met these two guys and they had brought a bottle of tequila and some other party favors.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Molly,” she said and made eye contact. “Have you ever done Molly?”

  “I have not,” I answered. She snickered.

  “Yeah, I figured as much. You’re too old for Molly. You ought to try it sometime. Sex is incredible when you’re rolling,” she said with a mischievous smile. It might have even been a little on the flirtatious side, but she had a mouth full of food.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said with a forced smile. “So, you and LaDonna hooked up with two men?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you recall their names?”

  She shrugged and shoveled in another mouthful of food before answering. “The guy I was with is named Benny…” she stopped in mid-sentence, searching her memory for Benny’s last name. She then gave up with a shrug.

  “Benny,” she repeated.

  “Benny Newton?” I prodded as I refreshed her cup of coffee.

  She shrugged again. I pulled out my phone and scrolled to a picture that Joseph had sent to me. It was a group picture of Joseph, Jason, and a couple of their friends. I showed it to her. She looked and pointed.

  “That one’s Benny, and that’s the guy LaDonna was with.” She then pointed at Jason. “He was there with them.”

  “So, what did you guys do?” I asked.

  “After the fights were over, they fired up the music and everybody partied. It lasted until about five, then we came back here.”

  “Who? All of the guys?”

  She shook her head. “Just Benny and the other guy.”

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “Charlie.”

  Carla wasn’t the one who said it. I looked up to see her roommate, LaDonna, walking down the hall. She was wearing gym shorts and a wrinkled green T-shirt. Her hair was blonde and she was overdue to get her roots touched up. She looked as rough as Carla, and at least forty pounds heavier. She was not a woman I would have ever wanted to wake up next to. She plopped down on the stool beside Carla and rubbed her face. At some point, she smelled the cooking aromas.

  “Coffee?” I asked her.

  “Sure,” she said. “Lots of sugar. Are you a cop?”

  “No. My name’s Thomas Ironcutter. I’m a private investigator who was hired to find Jason.”

  She looked over at Carla, who shrugged.

  “I thought he was a cop,” she said.

  LaDonna stared at her a long moment before focusing back on me.

  “Who is Jason?” she asked. I picked up my phone and pointed him out in the picture.

  “Oh, him. I remember him. He’s cute but he’s a fag,” she said and made a back and forth hand motion to her mouth for emphasis. I noticed she mentioned him in the present tense.

  “Did he do anything once he came back home with you guys?” I asked.

  LaDonna quickly shook her head. “He didn’t come home with us. Only Charlie and Benny.”

  “What happened to him?”

  LaDonna held up two open hands and shrugged. “Beats me.” She looked over at Carla, who looked like she was about to fall asleep again. It took her a moment to realize we were both waiting on her to say something.

  “Look, uh, Thomas. We were all pretty wasted that night and it was so long ago. All I know is Jason didn’t come home with us.”

  “The three of them rode down here together and Jason drove. So, how did Charlie and Benny get back home?”

  “I took them,” LaDonna said. “We slept until around six that evening. Charlie offered to fill up my gas tank if I took them home, so I did. I asked them what happened to their ride, but all they said was the fag left without them.”

  “Do you have an issue with gay people?” I asked her.

  She shook her head and picked up a pack of cigarettes lying on the counter. “I don’t care one way or another, but Charlie was pissed at Jason for turning into a fag.”

  “How so?”

  “He kept saying things about him all night,” she said. “You know, fag stuff.”

  She looked around for a lighter. I pulled out mine and lit it. She thanked me by taking a deep drag and then blowing it in the direction of my face. A real classy girl, this one.

  “You know, the cops already asked us about this stuff,” she said in seeming irritation.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m simply following up in case you two might have remembered something. Have either of you seen or spoken with Charlie or Benny since?”

  LaDonna shook her head, but Carla spoke up.

  “Benny and I have texted a few times, but that’s it. Have they ever found that dude?” she asked. “Jason, I mean?”

  I stared pointedly. “Yeah, he was murdered.”

  Chapter 11

  The two women feigned shock at the news, but I don’t think they were too terribly concerned. Carla asked me if I wanted to hang out with them, but I declined. I gave a polite smile when I did, but honestly, these two girls were far too rough for my taste. I believe skanky was the correct descriptor and I didn’t do skanky.

  I tried calling Detective Brannigan, but it went to voicemail. Reviewing the file, I realized I had not spoken to Telisha’s parents. Finding the address, I plugged it into Google and headed that way.

  The Thompkins house was one of those cheaply built houses from the sixties and had never been well maintained. Hell, it still had asbestos siding on the exterior. When I knocked, I could hear a chorus of barking emanating from within. A deflated-looking forty-something woman shaped like a pear with stubby legs answered the door.

  “Hello, my name is Thomas Ironcutter. I’m a private investigator. Are you Telisha’s mother?”

  “I’m Danita Thompkins. What do you want?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about Telisha and the circumstances of her disappearance, if you don’t mind.”

  “Has she been found?”

  “No, ma’am, she hasn’t,” I said.

  “Then why are you here?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  “I was hoping to speak to you in the hopes of gaining some insight about Telisha.”

  She stared at my feet a moment before opening the door and turning her back to me. I interpreted it as an invitation and followed her inside. She led me to the den, a moderately furnished room that had
the distinctive odor of stinky dogs. That’s probably because she had three little mongrels running around and barking incessantly. If I closed my eyes, I would’ve sworn I was in an ill-maintained kennel. I wondered how Telisha felt about it when her friends visited. Ms. Thompkins motioned me over to a sofa that looked straight out of the eighties and covered with dog hair.

  “I need to stand a little while and stretch my back, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” she replied and sat in a chair covered with a hair-infested afghan. Two of the dogs immediately jumped in her lap while the third dog warily sniffed my ankles.

  “I’ve spoken to Detective Brannigan about the disappearance of your daughter. He said she’s an only child, is that correct?”

  “She had an older, half-brother, but he’s living out on the west coast somewhere with his cousin. Those two never got along anyway.” She seemed to suddenly remember a picture sitting on top of a dusty upright piano and pointed at it. “That’s her on her first birthday.”

  It was a family photo, I guess. Baby Telisha was dressed in some kind of silly birthday outfit. She was being held by her mother, who was several pounds lighter and had a lighter shade of brown hair. The old man had stringy brown hair as well. He looked drunk. Standing beside him was a young acne-faced teenage boy with a surly expression.

  “That’s us, in happier times,” she said. I looked again. Telisha seemed to be the only one smiling. Of course, she may have simply had gone boom-boom in her diaper.

  “May I ask where Telisha’s father is?”

  She gave a slight shrug of a rounded shoulder. “I came home from work one day and his stuff was gone. No note, no nothing. Just gone. Telisha was ten when that happened.”

  I nodded somberly. “My mother did the same when I was ten. She took my little sister with her when she left.”

  She stared at me through bloodshot eyes. “My little Telisha changed then. She was a happy little girl up until then, but she changed. She grew into an angry teenager. Did you change too?”

  I found myself biting my lip. “Yeah, I guess I did in some ways. Sometimes, when I thought about it, I blamed myself for her leaving. I convinced myself it was all my fault and it tore me up inside.”

  “Guilt,” she said.

  “Yeah, guilt.”

  “Did you ever see your mother again?”

  “No, she died of cancer a while back. I saw my little sister not too long ago, but it wasn’t a happy family reunion, you know?”

  She nodded like in fact she did know.

  “Has Telisha seen her father since he left?”

  She shook her head and stroked one of the dogs. “She tried and tried to find him. One time, she even wrote to one of those daytime talk shows, asking them to reunite the two of them, but they couldn’t find him either. He’s probably living under a bridge somewhere.”

  “Do you know who she was supposed to meet that night, Ms. Thompkins? Where she might have disappeared to?”

  She could not, or would not answer. Instead, she kept stroking those stinky dogs.

  “Ms. Thompkins, is there anyone you think I could talk to who may have information? Anyone at all?”

  She slowly looked up at me and spoke in a pained rasp. “She’s never coming back.”

  Chapter 12

  I left Ms. Thompkins and her malodorous dogs and walked back to my car, hoping the outdoor air would dissipate any lingering smell. As I sat in my car, a sense of deep sadness washed over me. Based on my own recent experiences, I had a sense of the depths of her sorrow. She’d lost a husband, stepson, and now her only real blood kin. All she had left were those dogs.

  Telisha’s name went on my mental list, right next to Jason’s. If there was any way I could do this, I was going to find her and solve Jason’s murder.

  My brain was running a hundred miles an hour, intensely trying to think up ideas for this case, but it was only going in circles. The only thing I could think of at the moment was to follow up with Jason’s two friends, Benny and Charlie. I did not have to bother with the case file; I already had their address committed to memory. I found my way back to I-24 and headed back to Nashville. Anna called as I crossed into Rutherford County.

  “Ms. Braxton wants me to research baptism records,” she said. “And she only knows the name of an old church where her great grandparents went, but it’s been gone for years. I don’t think we’ll be able to do any good with this one.”

  “Perhaps, but sometimes baptismal records are passed along to another church, or the county archives might have them.”

  “Really? How do we find them?” she asked.

  I gave a tired laugh. “What’s this we shit, Kemosabe?”

  “Kemosabe is right. We’re partners and you’ve done this stuff before, I haven’t,” she lamented.

  “Okay, sure. But you’re going to need to tell her we’ll have to delay her case for a week or two. The email logs for the Reavis case are due to arrive tomorrow or the next day. Ronald has everything set up and ready for us. That job is time sensitive and we need to jump right on it.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up. I have a great idea.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?” I asked.

  “The case involves reading the emails, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s our role in the case for now. There are going to be a lot of emails to wade through, which means we’re going to spend a lot of hours sitting in front of computers, reading and analyzing.”

  “Well, I think we should hire Marti to help out,” she declared. “I’ve already talked it over with her and she said she’d do it. She could use the extra money.”

  I felt myself frowning. “Anna, this is a sensitive job. If we had a case where we needed a honey trap, sure, she’d be perfect, but this job requires reading comprehension skills.”

  “We don’t do infidelity cases, you said so yourself,” she said.

  “You are so right. That means we don’t need her.”

  “Yes, we do. You said yourself it’s a big job, right?”

  “I did,” I conceded. “But…”

  “But nothing,” she retorted. “I’ve already told her it would be temporary and I happen to know she’s plenty smart. The ditzy blonde routine is just an act. She always pulled in a shitload of tips at the club acting like that. She’s actually pretty smart and she has a great work ethic.”

  “I don’t know, Anna. Like I said, this job is very sensitive…”

  “Discretion is paramount,” Anna said, interrupting me yet again. “I’ve already explained all of that to her and warned her she would have to sign an NDA. She’s agreed to all of it.”

  I thought about it some more. The truth was, I wasn’t looking forward to the Reavis case. Sure, the money was going to be good, but the last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of a computer all day reading emails. Besides, if we hired Marti, it would free me up to work on Jason’s case.

  “Yeah, let me have a talk with her, but I think it may be doable.”

  Anna squealed in delight and I heard her talking to someone. “She’s sitting right there, isn’t she?”

  “Yep,” Anna answered and I heard Marti in the background saying hi to me.

  “Alright, when I get home, I’ll work up the paperwork. We’ll hire her as an independent contractor, which means she only gets paid. No benefits.”

  “I’m already one step ahead of you,” she said cheerily. “The paperwork is done and awaiting your signature.”

  “Okay. We’ll talk more when I get home.”

  I disconnected, but did not even have a chance to put my phone down when it immediately rang again.

  “Hello, Thomas. Reuben Chandler here.”

  Reuben Chandler, G-Man. FBI. The last time I saw him was at Simone’s funeral visitation.

  “Hello, Reuben. This is a surprise,” I said.

  “Yes. How are you?”

  “I’m doing well, and you?”

  “I’ve been covered up at work,
but I guess that means job security, right? Listen, I don’t mean to be brusque, but I have a reason for calling.”

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I was hoping to meet with you and explain it in person. Would this afternoon be convenient?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I’ll be back in town anytime soon. Tomorrow morning would be better. What’s this about?”

  “Ah, I’d rather discuss it in person. Tomorrow morning will work. How about I swing by around nine?” he asked.

  “Sure. I’ll see you then,” I said.

  Each of us offered a few additional cordialities before ending the call. I glanced at the call duration as I pondered Reuben’s reason behind him phoning me. There could have been multiple reasons; perhaps new information had arisen about the late Special Agent Enrique Hernandez. Or, it might have something to do with my loose association with the Baroques. They were an outlaw motorcycle club and prone to get involved in shady activities. The list could go on, but for some reason, I had a sneaking suspicion he wanted to meet in regards to the murder of Jason LeClaire Belew. One thing was for sure, it definitely was not going to be a social call.

  I felt the need for a cigar. After all, I had not imbibed all day and found myself chewing my lip a couple of times. I had a travel humidor I religiously carried with me and it was stocked with an eclectic assortment. I parked on the shoulder of the interstate before reaching into the backseat for the humidor. Opening it, I picked a Nat Sherman Metropolitan. I happened to glance over to the right as I lit up. I was in Rutherford County now, which was in between Davidson and Coffee County. This part of the county was still rather rural, and there was an open field in the distance with an old rustic pole barn sitting in the middle. It was sagging precariously to one side and the main doors looked like they had fallen off of their hinges, but that’s not what had my attention.

  “No way in hell,” I mumbled.

  I fumbled for my kit and came out with a pair of binoculars. Confirming what I thought it was, I rushed down the interstate, took the next exit, and backtracked until I found what I thought was the driveway leading to the farm where the barn was located. The driveway was a muddle of gravel, leading several feet off of the road to a galvanized cattle gate which was closed and blocking access to the farm. I parked, got out, and checked it. There was no lock, but I knew farmers took a dim view of some stranger opening a gate and riding in uninvited.