Paid in Full, page 7
“How’s that?”
He drained his bottle of beer and raised it above his head like he was trading on the stock floor. Once he caught Sammy’s eye, he gestured toward my mug, which I’d barely started. I shook my head and he raised one finger. When he returned his attention to me, he said, “Friends usually owe each other, don’t they?”
I wasn’t looking for a discussion on friendship and decided since there was no subtle way to bring up Kurt Wicklow, now was a good time to do it. “Saw you up in New Berne this morning.”
He gave me a weird look—kind of amused and surprised at the same time. “What gave me away?” He maneuvered so he could rest both arms on the table. Beneath the table, Peanuts groaned as he changed position.
“Well, there’s that inconspicuous pick-up with Missouri plates.”
“You had business in New Berne?” he asked. “You were pulling out of the road to Kurt Wicklow’s place.”
He rubbed his chin, grinning uneasily. “Damn. Maybe I should trade in the truck.” His chuckle sounded stiff.
I didn’t respond—just sat back and waited for Brewster to keep talking. I can handle long silences better than most.
Finally, he said, “All right. So what if I was up there. Wicklow wasn’t home.”
“What was your business with him?”
“Looking up an old college buddy. Me and Kurt were on the football team together at Douglas.”
I didn’t know any of these men back then, but I knew all of them now except Danny. Carver and Brewster I could see together, but Wicklow seemed a different ilk.
“Wicklow was part of the old gang—Carver, you, Danny and Wicklow?”
“Sure,” was all Brewster said, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t say what your business was.”
“Wicklow owes me money.”
Brewster frowned. “Long way for a debt collector to drive.”
“Not if he’s broke.”
He nodded, conceding the logic, but not necessarily buying it. “You go in?”
“He wasn’t home.” Then I asked, “Was he supposed to be?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. Just stopped in. His wife told me he was spending a few days up there.”
“Long way to go for a surprise visit.”
He smiled, getting into the game. “Not if you really like surprises.”
Before I could shoot one back at him, the raw sound of a chair scraping the floor made me look up. I could tell by the way Peanuts reacted—banging against my shin—that the noise had startled him as well.
“Quint, who’s your new friend here?” Jeff Barlowe had helped himself to a seat.
Jeff was a good friend, but sometimes his timing left a lot to be desired. I introduced Jeff and Brewster, glaring at Jeff the whole time. He was, of course, oblivious. He never sensed he was unwelcome although, in his line of business, that was frequently the case. I guess that helped make him the Abel County Chronicle’s best reporter.
Brewster greeted Jeff like he was someone he’d been waiting his whole life to meet. I figured he was just grateful for the interruption. I stayed for a few minutes as the conversation deteriorated into profundities concerning the weather and then veered off in the direction of television news.
I might have stuck it out and worked at getting rid of Jeff, but I could tell the moment was gone. I figured I’d catch Brewster later. Besides, Peanuts had started whining, which meant, even though he hadn’t consumed a couple beers, he still had to relieve himself.
Chapter 8
The next morning I woke feeling tired and uneasy. I don’t like sleeping with the air conditioner running. Not only did it make the walls close in on me, but I hated the way the noise drowned out the night sounds. But I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep at all without it.
My sleep was shallow at best and when, at 6:20 I felt a small body parading down my back, I gave up. McGee greeted me with a ratchety squeak. Peanuts sat at the door to my bedroom, glaring at both of us.
“It didn’t mean anything,” I told him as I crossed the hall to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.
I fed the livestock and put on a pot of coffee. Then I pulled on a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt. I needed a good run along the river to clear the threads out of my head.
Before I left, I called the office to see if I had a reason to go into work. There was a message from Gina Wicklow asking me to call her ASAP. I cringed, wishing again I hadn’t left that message. Her call had come in yesterday afternoon at a quarter to five. I figured she didn’t really want me to call her at six-thirty in the morning, so I whistled for Peanuts and we left the cat in search of a square foot of space to claim for his own.
As I crossed the green expanse of yard down to the river, I mentally flipped a coin. When I came to the path, I turned left and headed south toward the Charlemagne Street Bridge, past the park, willows and picnic tables. When I moved to Foxport, I’d been lucky to find a place on the river and even luckier to find a landlady who didn’t believe in charging what the market could bear for a one-bedroom apartment with a river view just because she could. Now, we simply deducted my rent from the Jaded Fox profits. If I didn’t think about it too hard, it was like living for free.
The river was high this year. It had been a wet spring, and summer had followed suit. A thunderstorm would roll through, drop two or three inches of rain and move on, leaving the air as hot and humid as ever.
In less than a quarter mile I was drenched in sweat, but I focused on the sound my shoes made as they hit the path and tried to key into their rhythm. After I’d gone another quarter mile, Peanuts stopped to herd some ducks. I’d pick him up on the way back. He’s a sprinter, not a runner.
I wasn’t looking to do anything Herculean this morning. Maybe as far as the bridge and back—a total of two miles. But as I rounded the final bend before the bridge came into view, I noticed some commotion. About a hundred feet of public park, thick with flower beds, separated this section of the path from a small parking lot. A squad car, its lights flashing, was pulling into the lot.
When I looked toward the bridge, I saw a man standing about twenty feet ahead of me, hands on his hips, his back to me. He was dressed for running; I could see the “Bulls 33” on the back of his red and black jersey. On the ground in front of him lay a large, brown bundle. As I slowed my pace, I saw a cop making his way down from the lot to the riverbank.
The man standing by the bundle must have heard me, because he turned and watched me approach. At this point, I was about thirty feet closer than the cop. The man was young, not much more than twenty, with short brown hair and wore a sweat band. As he faced me, he shook his head.
“Thought it was a bag of clothes someone dumped.” He spoke as though he was continuing a conversation rather than starting one. “I mean, is that stupid or what? Jeez.” He looked down at the object on the ground which was now identifiable as a body.
“Shit, man.” He kept shaking his head. “I never seen …” He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face and rub his eyes.
I had a feeling I knew who he had pulled out of the Fox River. The body’s arms were raised over his head like he’d been shot while surrendering. The skin of his right arm was blackened and raw, like he’d been burned. In places, the flesh seemed to be peeling off. His head was turned away from me. He’d been wearing brown pants and a white T-shirt that was pushed up, revealing his pale skin and hairless chest. I walked around so I could see his face and stopped short. Holy shit. I was wrong.
I concentrated on his features—not the part of his forehead that was caved in or the way his eyes stared, but at the pale mustache and the sideburns.
“You know him?”
I shook my head, and at the same time I said, “Yeah, his name’s Brewster Plunkett.”
I didn’t hang around any longer than necessary. In less than five minutes, another squad car arrived and pretty soon we had a crowd. I gave my statement to one of the cops, Barry Hudgins, who I’d met a couple times but, like Brewster Plunkett, I didn’t really know. I couldn’t tell him much, only that Brewster and I had shared a few beers and that he was a friend of Ed Carver’s.
I heard the young guy, whose name was Alex, explain to the other cop how he thought at first that he’d come upon some discarded clothing. Once he got close enough to see that it was a body, he’d pulled Brewster out. “I guess at first I figured he might be alive. But, no.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “You think he hit his head when he fell in?”
The cop said something about an autopsy. I had the feeling that Brewster’s death had nothing to do with getting drunk and falling off the Charlemagne Street Bridge. A crowd of gapers had collected on the bridge, filling the narrow pedestrian walk. I left my number with Hudgins and headed back to my apartment, walking rather than running.
It was going on eight when I turned off the path and into the yard. Peanuts lay under a tree, tongue lolling out of his mouth in a pant. Instead of trotting up to me, he stood and waited for me to cross the yard.
I considered calling Ed, then thought better of it. He wouldn’t want to hear this news from me. So, I took a shower, shaved and then ate a bowl of corn flakes while I drank my coffee.
It was a little after nine when I returned Gina’s call.
“Thank you for calling back.” I could hear the strain in her voice. “I’m so sorry about the check. It bounced. And I’m even sorrier that I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you.”
What could I say? I wasn’t supposed to know about Kurt’s disappearance and I couldn’t tell her it was all right. It wasn’t. “What’s the problem?”
“Well,” her voice got tighter, “it seems my husband is missing.” She took a second to clear her throat and control the timbre of her voice. “Police in New Berne called me yesterday. That’s where Kurt was. He’s got a place up there, you know. They found some blood in one of the rooms. On the carpet. They’re running tests on it. There’s no sign of Kurt. His car’s there, but none of the neighbors have seen him recently and …” Her voice trailed off, then picked up again with a catch in it this time. “And now I find that the bank account I wrote the check on has been closed. I don’t know what to think.”
“The teller at the bank told me Kurt closed the account on Tuesday. In person.”
“He did? Well, I don’t understand.”
“Look,” I started, “why don’t you take some time to get yourself together. We can talk later.”
“Thank you,” she said, then continued as though I hadn’t given her an exit line. “It’s so strange. I don’t know where to start. I’m afraid to look at things, you know.” Then she really started to ramble. “I feel like I’ve been married to this stranger. You think you know someone. It doesn’t look like he left much. Just what was in our joint account and that wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars. Most strangers treat people better than that. I don’t understand.” Then she did break down. Through tears, she mumbled apologies and hung up.
I stood there for a minute, the receiver in my hand, feeling about as useless as a penny in Prague. On impulse, I hit the disconnect button and then redial. It rang five times before she answered, sounding pretty much the same.
“Listen,” I said, “do you need to talk about this? You want to stop by the office? We could talk.”
“That’s nice of you. It’s just—. Well, I don’t feel like going out, you know. I look like I feel.”
“That’s okay.”
“Um,” she hesitated.
“What?”
“Do you want to come here? I could make some lunch.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
She managed a small laugh. “Quint, I’m the trouble. Remember?” Then she said, “God knows, I haven’t been in the mood to eat. Maybe some company would help.”
“You sure?”
“Really. I need to talk about this. I’d appreciate it. Really.”
“What time?”
“Noon?”
“See you then.”
I told myself that I was just trying to be a friend to someone who needed one, but I knew better.
Chapter 9
I went into the office for about an hour. Mainly, I wanted to get out of the house. The walls were inching in on me.
Brewster’s image kept coming, unbidden, to mind. One second he’d be laughing and joking, waving his bottle of beer as he emphasized a point. The next he’d be the color of a fish’s belly with his head caved in. I wondered if Brewster had been as surprised by his death as I was.
Two more bills greeted me—compliments of the phone company and American Express. Fortunately, there was also a small check for some surveillance I’d done last month, which just about cancelled them out.
After a half-hour, Louise drifted in from the shop carrying a small shipping box. She often visited on slow days, and left the door open so she could hear the bell if a customer came in. She wore knickers and a vest over a gauzy blouse. I swear, she can pull it off.
“This is one of the carvings I ordered from that couple who were at the festival last month. Their work is quite lovely and doing rather well.” She pulled something out of the box. “Here, I think you ought to have this little fellow.” She set it on my desk, turning it so it faced me. The shape of the head, the beak and the suggestion of wings gave it definition. Yet, with only those features, it was unmistakably a penguin. I picked it up and found it was heavier than I’d imagined. “What is this?”
“It’s some soft mineral found in Africa.” She lifted packing straw out of the box. “There’s a card here somewhere.”
“Never mind.” It barely filled my hand and was a pale reddish brown with swirls of white. “Why do I need a penguin?”
“Don’t penguins always make a person feel better?”
Startled, I looked up at her, then grudgingly shook my head. It was useless to deny one of Louise’s observations. “What gave me away?”
“You’ve been moping about these days as though you’d lost your best friend.” She paused. “That is what this is about, isn’t it?”
“Not as much as you think.”
She seemed to be waiting for me to continue.
I shook my head.
“Well, then you’d better tell him.” She gestured toward the penguin. “Doesn’t do a soul a bit of good to hold everything in, you know.”
I raised the penguin in the palm of my hand. “All right. This bird will become the receptacle of my every thought, dream, fear, desire. Eventually, it will know so much about me that I’ll have to kill it.”
Scowling, she gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder. “I should’ve known better than to appeal to your sensitive, thoughtful side.”
“Really, Louise, I appreciate the effort. You’re a good friend.” I saw a segue and jumped on it.
“Which reminds me. I’ve learned a few things about this guy who was investing Albert’s money.”
“What?” From the degree of concern I read in her eyes, she was closer to Albert than I’d suspected. She lowered herself into a chair facing my desk, still clutching the box.
“What I’m hearing isn’t good. He’s missing. The only sign of him is a bloodstain. No one’s seen him.” I didn’t tell her that he’d cleaned out his own account. If Kurt Wicklow had no qualms about leaving his wife up the creek, I couldn’t imagine he’d have reservations about ripping off old men. “I should know more later. I’m going to talk with his wife.”
“Gina?”
“You know her?”
“She donated one of her paintings to the Foxport Women’s Club to use in a fund-raiser. Does quite a bit of that, I hear. Quite a gifted artist, as well. Pity.”
“Did Albert contact the SEC?”
“They recommended a lawyer who deals with this sort of thing. He’s meeting with him today. The gent at the SEC said there were ways to recover your money, although if the broker is missing, I suppose that makes it rather difficult.”
“Well, if he is missing, my guess is there will be a lot of people looking for him.”
A polite ding announced a customer entering the Jaded Fox. “You let me know what you hear,” Louise said. As she walked through the storeroom that separated my office from the shop, she tossed a final remark over her shoulder: “Enjoy your bird, now.”
Chapter 10
I pulled into Gina Wicklow’s driveway a few minutes after twelve. The sprawling, red brick ranch occupied a yard populated with trees, bushes and splashes of flowers. Not a weed in sight, I noted as I walked along the stone path toward the door. I’ve never cared much for overly manicured landscaping. Perfection makes me leery. As I rang the bell, I noticed a sizable spider web spanning the corner of the porch and part of the overhang. Its occupant—a small specimen with a round, fat body—no doubt anticipated its dinner, which appeared to be a luckless mosquito. One down, twelve billion to go.
Gina greeted me wearing a long, shapeless White Sox T-shirt over a pair of denim shorts, the edges of which were barely visible. Tan and slim, she moved with the slightly pigeon-toed grace of a dancer. Her smile was wide and warm, but behind a pair of purple-framed glasses, her eyes showed the strain.
As I stepped into the large, tiled foyer, I noticed that while it was cooler in the house, there wasn’t the abrupt temperature change you get with air conditioning. She shut the door behind me and straightened a small throw rug with the toes of her right foot, the nails of which were painted bright red.
I removed my sunglasses and slipped them into my shirt pocket.
“If it’s too warm for you, let me know,” she said. “I seldom use the air conditioning. First off, I don’t care for it. And then I’m afraid I take after my father. He was what you might call cheap today, but when I was a kid, he was frugal. I never left a room without turning off the lights. If he were alive today, he’d have no such thing as air conditioning. ‘A person’s supposed to sweat. It’s God’s air conditioning.’ Kurt’s the opposite. The temperature creeps toward eighty and it goes on.” She stopped short and shook her head. “I’m babbling again.”
He drained his bottle of beer and raised it above his head like he was trading on the stock floor. Once he caught Sammy’s eye, he gestured toward my mug, which I’d barely started. I shook my head and he raised one finger. When he returned his attention to me, he said, “Friends usually owe each other, don’t they?”
I wasn’t looking for a discussion on friendship and decided since there was no subtle way to bring up Kurt Wicklow, now was a good time to do it. “Saw you up in New Berne this morning.”
He gave me a weird look—kind of amused and surprised at the same time. “What gave me away?” He maneuvered so he could rest both arms on the table. Beneath the table, Peanuts groaned as he changed position.
“Well, there’s that inconspicuous pick-up with Missouri plates.”
“You had business in New Berne?” he asked. “You were pulling out of the road to Kurt Wicklow’s place.”
He rubbed his chin, grinning uneasily. “Damn. Maybe I should trade in the truck.” His chuckle sounded stiff.
I didn’t respond—just sat back and waited for Brewster to keep talking. I can handle long silences better than most.
Finally, he said, “All right. So what if I was up there. Wicklow wasn’t home.”
“What was your business with him?”
“Looking up an old college buddy. Me and Kurt were on the football team together at Douglas.”
I didn’t know any of these men back then, but I knew all of them now except Danny. Carver and Brewster I could see together, but Wicklow seemed a different ilk.
“Wicklow was part of the old gang—Carver, you, Danny and Wicklow?”
“Sure,” was all Brewster said, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t say what your business was.”
“Wicklow owes me money.”
Brewster frowned. “Long way for a debt collector to drive.”
“Not if he’s broke.”
He nodded, conceding the logic, but not necessarily buying it. “You go in?”
“He wasn’t home.” Then I asked, “Was he supposed to be?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. Just stopped in. His wife told me he was spending a few days up there.”
“Long way to go for a surprise visit.”
He smiled, getting into the game. “Not if you really like surprises.”
Before I could shoot one back at him, the raw sound of a chair scraping the floor made me look up. I could tell by the way Peanuts reacted—banging against my shin—that the noise had startled him as well.
“Quint, who’s your new friend here?” Jeff Barlowe had helped himself to a seat.
Jeff was a good friend, but sometimes his timing left a lot to be desired. I introduced Jeff and Brewster, glaring at Jeff the whole time. He was, of course, oblivious. He never sensed he was unwelcome although, in his line of business, that was frequently the case. I guess that helped make him the Abel County Chronicle’s best reporter.
Brewster greeted Jeff like he was someone he’d been waiting his whole life to meet. I figured he was just grateful for the interruption. I stayed for a few minutes as the conversation deteriorated into profundities concerning the weather and then veered off in the direction of television news.
I might have stuck it out and worked at getting rid of Jeff, but I could tell the moment was gone. I figured I’d catch Brewster later. Besides, Peanuts had started whining, which meant, even though he hadn’t consumed a couple beers, he still had to relieve himself.
Chapter 8
The next morning I woke feeling tired and uneasy. I don’t like sleeping with the air conditioner running. Not only did it make the walls close in on me, but I hated the way the noise drowned out the night sounds. But I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep at all without it.
My sleep was shallow at best and when, at 6:20 I felt a small body parading down my back, I gave up. McGee greeted me with a ratchety squeak. Peanuts sat at the door to my bedroom, glaring at both of us.
“It didn’t mean anything,” I told him as I crossed the hall to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.
I fed the livestock and put on a pot of coffee. Then I pulled on a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt. I needed a good run along the river to clear the threads out of my head.
Before I left, I called the office to see if I had a reason to go into work. There was a message from Gina Wicklow asking me to call her ASAP. I cringed, wishing again I hadn’t left that message. Her call had come in yesterday afternoon at a quarter to five. I figured she didn’t really want me to call her at six-thirty in the morning, so I whistled for Peanuts and we left the cat in search of a square foot of space to claim for his own.
As I crossed the green expanse of yard down to the river, I mentally flipped a coin. When I came to the path, I turned left and headed south toward the Charlemagne Street Bridge, past the park, willows and picnic tables. When I moved to Foxport, I’d been lucky to find a place on the river and even luckier to find a landlady who didn’t believe in charging what the market could bear for a one-bedroom apartment with a river view just because she could. Now, we simply deducted my rent from the Jaded Fox profits. If I didn’t think about it too hard, it was like living for free.
The river was high this year. It had been a wet spring, and summer had followed suit. A thunderstorm would roll through, drop two or three inches of rain and move on, leaving the air as hot and humid as ever.
In less than a quarter mile I was drenched in sweat, but I focused on the sound my shoes made as they hit the path and tried to key into their rhythm. After I’d gone another quarter mile, Peanuts stopped to herd some ducks. I’d pick him up on the way back. He’s a sprinter, not a runner.
I wasn’t looking to do anything Herculean this morning. Maybe as far as the bridge and back—a total of two miles. But as I rounded the final bend before the bridge came into view, I noticed some commotion. About a hundred feet of public park, thick with flower beds, separated this section of the path from a small parking lot. A squad car, its lights flashing, was pulling into the lot.
When I looked toward the bridge, I saw a man standing about twenty feet ahead of me, hands on his hips, his back to me. He was dressed for running; I could see the “Bulls 33” on the back of his red and black jersey. On the ground in front of him lay a large, brown bundle. As I slowed my pace, I saw a cop making his way down from the lot to the riverbank.
The man standing by the bundle must have heard me, because he turned and watched me approach. At this point, I was about thirty feet closer than the cop. The man was young, not much more than twenty, with short brown hair and wore a sweat band. As he faced me, he shook his head.
“Thought it was a bag of clothes someone dumped.” He spoke as though he was continuing a conversation rather than starting one. “I mean, is that stupid or what? Jeez.” He looked down at the object on the ground which was now identifiable as a body.
“Shit, man.” He kept shaking his head. “I never seen …” He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face and rub his eyes.
I had a feeling I knew who he had pulled out of the Fox River. The body’s arms were raised over his head like he’d been shot while surrendering. The skin of his right arm was blackened and raw, like he’d been burned. In places, the flesh seemed to be peeling off. His head was turned away from me. He’d been wearing brown pants and a white T-shirt that was pushed up, revealing his pale skin and hairless chest. I walked around so I could see his face and stopped short. Holy shit. I was wrong.
I concentrated on his features—not the part of his forehead that was caved in or the way his eyes stared, but at the pale mustache and the sideburns.
“You know him?”
I shook my head, and at the same time I said, “Yeah, his name’s Brewster Plunkett.”
I didn’t hang around any longer than necessary. In less than five minutes, another squad car arrived and pretty soon we had a crowd. I gave my statement to one of the cops, Barry Hudgins, who I’d met a couple times but, like Brewster Plunkett, I didn’t really know. I couldn’t tell him much, only that Brewster and I had shared a few beers and that he was a friend of Ed Carver’s.
I heard the young guy, whose name was Alex, explain to the other cop how he thought at first that he’d come upon some discarded clothing. Once he got close enough to see that it was a body, he’d pulled Brewster out. “I guess at first I figured he might be alive. But, no.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “You think he hit his head when he fell in?”
The cop said something about an autopsy. I had the feeling that Brewster’s death had nothing to do with getting drunk and falling off the Charlemagne Street Bridge. A crowd of gapers had collected on the bridge, filling the narrow pedestrian walk. I left my number with Hudgins and headed back to my apartment, walking rather than running.
It was going on eight when I turned off the path and into the yard. Peanuts lay under a tree, tongue lolling out of his mouth in a pant. Instead of trotting up to me, he stood and waited for me to cross the yard.
I considered calling Ed, then thought better of it. He wouldn’t want to hear this news from me. So, I took a shower, shaved and then ate a bowl of corn flakes while I drank my coffee.
It was a little after nine when I returned Gina’s call.
“Thank you for calling back.” I could hear the strain in her voice. “I’m so sorry about the check. It bounced. And I’m even sorrier that I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you.”
What could I say? I wasn’t supposed to know about Kurt’s disappearance and I couldn’t tell her it was all right. It wasn’t. “What’s the problem?”
“Well,” her voice got tighter, “it seems my husband is missing.” She took a second to clear her throat and control the timbre of her voice. “Police in New Berne called me yesterday. That’s where Kurt was. He’s got a place up there, you know. They found some blood in one of the rooms. On the carpet. They’re running tests on it. There’s no sign of Kurt. His car’s there, but none of the neighbors have seen him recently and …” Her voice trailed off, then picked up again with a catch in it this time. “And now I find that the bank account I wrote the check on has been closed. I don’t know what to think.”
“The teller at the bank told me Kurt closed the account on Tuesday. In person.”
“He did? Well, I don’t understand.”
“Look,” I started, “why don’t you take some time to get yourself together. We can talk later.”
“Thank you,” she said, then continued as though I hadn’t given her an exit line. “It’s so strange. I don’t know where to start. I’m afraid to look at things, you know.” Then she really started to ramble. “I feel like I’ve been married to this stranger. You think you know someone. It doesn’t look like he left much. Just what was in our joint account and that wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars. Most strangers treat people better than that. I don’t understand.” Then she did break down. Through tears, she mumbled apologies and hung up.
I stood there for a minute, the receiver in my hand, feeling about as useless as a penny in Prague. On impulse, I hit the disconnect button and then redial. It rang five times before she answered, sounding pretty much the same.
“Listen,” I said, “do you need to talk about this? You want to stop by the office? We could talk.”
“That’s nice of you. It’s just—. Well, I don’t feel like going out, you know. I look like I feel.”
“That’s okay.”
“Um,” she hesitated.
“What?”
“Do you want to come here? I could make some lunch.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble.”
She managed a small laugh. “Quint, I’m the trouble. Remember?” Then she said, “God knows, I haven’t been in the mood to eat. Maybe some company would help.”
“You sure?”
“Really. I need to talk about this. I’d appreciate it. Really.”
“What time?”
“Noon?”
“See you then.”
I told myself that I was just trying to be a friend to someone who needed one, but I knew better.
Chapter 9
I went into the office for about an hour. Mainly, I wanted to get out of the house. The walls were inching in on me.
Brewster’s image kept coming, unbidden, to mind. One second he’d be laughing and joking, waving his bottle of beer as he emphasized a point. The next he’d be the color of a fish’s belly with his head caved in. I wondered if Brewster had been as surprised by his death as I was.
Two more bills greeted me—compliments of the phone company and American Express. Fortunately, there was also a small check for some surveillance I’d done last month, which just about cancelled them out.
After a half-hour, Louise drifted in from the shop carrying a small shipping box. She often visited on slow days, and left the door open so she could hear the bell if a customer came in. She wore knickers and a vest over a gauzy blouse. I swear, she can pull it off.
“This is one of the carvings I ordered from that couple who were at the festival last month. Their work is quite lovely and doing rather well.” She pulled something out of the box. “Here, I think you ought to have this little fellow.” She set it on my desk, turning it so it faced me. The shape of the head, the beak and the suggestion of wings gave it definition. Yet, with only those features, it was unmistakably a penguin. I picked it up and found it was heavier than I’d imagined. “What is this?”
“It’s some soft mineral found in Africa.” She lifted packing straw out of the box. “There’s a card here somewhere.”
“Never mind.” It barely filled my hand and was a pale reddish brown with swirls of white. “Why do I need a penguin?”
“Don’t penguins always make a person feel better?”
Startled, I looked up at her, then grudgingly shook my head. It was useless to deny one of Louise’s observations. “What gave me away?”
“You’ve been moping about these days as though you’d lost your best friend.” She paused. “That is what this is about, isn’t it?”
“Not as much as you think.”
She seemed to be waiting for me to continue.
I shook my head.
“Well, then you’d better tell him.” She gestured toward the penguin. “Doesn’t do a soul a bit of good to hold everything in, you know.”
I raised the penguin in the palm of my hand. “All right. This bird will become the receptacle of my every thought, dream, fear, desire. Eventually, it will know so much about me that I’ll have to kill it.”
Scowling, she gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder. “I should’ve known better than to appeal to your sensitive, thoughtful side.”
“Really, Louise, I appreciate the effort. You’re a good friend.” I saw a segue and jumped on it.
“Which reminds me. I’ve learned a few things about this guy who was investing Albert’s money.”
“What?” From the degree of concern I read in her eyes, she was closer to Albert than I’d suspected. She lowered herself into a chair facing my desk, still clutching the box.
“What I’m hearing isn’t good. He’s missing. The only sign of him is a bloodstain. No one’s seen him.” I didn’t tell her that he’d cleaned out his own account. If Kurt Wicklow had no qualms about leaving his wife up the creek, I couldn’t imagine he’d have reservations about ripping off old men. “I should know more later. I’m going to talk with his wife.”
“Gina?”
“You know her?”
“She donated one of her paintings to the Foxport Women’s Club to use in a fund-raiser. Does quite a bit of that, I hear. Quite a gifted artist, as well. Pity.”
“Did Albert contact the SEC?”
“They recommended a lawyer who deals with this sort of thing. He’s meeting with him today. The gent at the SEC said there were ways to recover your money, although if the broker is missing, I suppose that makes it rather difficult.”
“Well, if he is missing, my guess is there will be a lot of people looking for him.”
A polite ding announced a customer entering the Jaded Fox. “You let me know what you hear,” Louise said. As she walked through the storeroom that separated my office from the shop, she tossed a final remark over her shoulder: “Enjoy your bird, now.”
Chapter 10
I pulled into Gina Wicklow’s driveway a few minutes after twelve. The sprawling, red brick ranch occupied a yard populated with trees, bushes and splashes of flowers. Not a weed in sight, I noted as I walked along the stone path toward the door. I’ve never cared much for overly manicured landscaping. Perfection makes me leery. As I rang the bell, I noticed a sizable spider web spanning the corner of the porch and part of the overhang. Its occupant—a small specimen with a round, fat body—no doubt anticipated its dinner, which appeared to be a luckless mosquito. One down, twelve billion to go.
Gina greeted me wearing a long, shapeless White Sox T-shirt over a pair of denim shorts, the edges of which were barely visible. Tan and slim, she moved with the slightly pigeon-toed grace of a dancer. Her smile was wide and warm, but behind a pair of purple-framed glasses, her eyes showed the strain.
As I stepped into the large, tiled foyer, I noticed that while it was cooler in the house, there wasn’t the abrupt temperature change you get with air conditioning. She shut the door behind me and straightened a small throw rug with the toes of her right foot, the nails of which were painted bright red.
I removed my sunglasses and slipped them into my shirt pocket.
“If it’s too warm for you, let me know,” she said. “I seldom use the air conditioning. First off, I don’t care for it. And then I’m afraid I take after my father. He was what you might call cheap today, but when I was a kid, he was frugal. I never left a room without turning off the lights. If he were alive today, he’d have no such thing as air conditioning. ‘A person’s supposed to sweat. It’s God’s air conditioning.’ Kurt’s the opposite. The temperature creeps toward eighty and it goes on.” She stopped short and shook her head. “I’m babbling again.”
