Moving violation, p.9
Moving Violation, page 9
When asked, Alex ruefully admitted that he had never skated before, but he said he was looking forward to it because he liked trying new things.
This was part lie (I mean, if you’ve reached adulthood and avoided ice-skating, there is a reason) and part apology for earlier. My estimation of him immediately soared into the stratosphere and remained pretty high, though it was obvious that he was about as at home on the ice as a baby horse and would probably never get much better.
We stayed only an hour, and then having collected enough bruises for an entire football team in the play-offs, we went for coffee at the diner.
Feeling unusually at home with Alex and disinclined to pretend to be anyone other than who I am, when Alex ordered cherry pie and ice cream, I was a pig and ordered lemon meringue pie. With my hot chocolate piled with whipped cream, an unwise combo especially with an Advil chaser, I ended up with indigestion to go with the delayed guilt that hit me later that night. Mom’s lectures about the evils of cholesterol hadn’t fallen on completely deaf ears, but sugar and fat just went so well with my icy, wet pants and new bruises that I couldn’t resist.
We didn’t hold hands or anything, but we did talk. I learned that Alex Lincoln was a web designer who did not ice-skate, but did play tennis and golf and liked hiking and swimming. In spite of my high school nickname, I’m not the world’s most competent computer person. I have a computer, an old dinosaur that the high school didn’t want anymore, and I use it for writing and sometimes playing poker—though I don’t play often because I am certain the computer cheats. So I didn’t know what all his job entailed, but it seemed fortuitous that he was able to live wherever he wanted while he was doing it. Right then, that was in Hope Falls while he stayed with his aunt, Mary Elizabeth, who needed a knee replacement and couldn’t be on her own after she had the surgery.
My good opinion of him grew and grew with every minute that passed. This was a kind man. If you knew Mary Elizabeth you would understand my admiration for his playing nursemaid. A lesser person would have blanched and run.
Alex was wearing one of those watches that tracks ten time zones, phases of the moon, checks pulse and blood pressure and miles walked and probably all other body functions that could be expressed numerically. I’m not a tech kind of person, but I wanted one. The buttons were so cool.
Eventually the diner emptied and it got to be time to say goodnight. A part of me wanted to spin the evening out forever, but I had work the next day and I had a lot more investigating to do.
“Would I sound presumptuous and shallow if I mentioned that you look great?” he asked me.
I thought about it, which I later realized was disconcerting for Alex given our rough first meeting. The thing is, guys don’t abandon cars in the middle of the road to follow me on foot when I stroll by, especially when I was somewhat bedraggled from having fallen on the slushy ice and sweating all over my hair. His praise sounded a bit specious.
But one man had actually forgotten his grocery cart the previous week while following me through the store trying to get my phone number, and I did get asked out from time to time by tourists. So I decided that Alex was probably sincere and there was nothing impolite in what he said, and decided to accept the compliment without self-deprecation.
“You think about everything, don’t you?” he asked with a small smile.
“Pretty much,” I admitted. “And when I don’t, I regret it.”
This got a nod of understanding.
Alex showed the right degree of disappointment when we reached my car, and I happily agreed to dinner on Saturday. I gave him my number before he shut me into my car, and he agreed to call once he had made reservations. Probably at the Morningside Inn. It was the only really nice date restaurant in town, but I would leave this for him to find out on his own. I didn’t want to seem to bossy and know-it-all.
A part of me felt guilty for making plans for another date when my friend was missing, but opportunity was a fickle beast and I didn’t feel like tempting fate with this one. Alex seemed perfect, and he was fresh meat in our small pond of eligible bachelors. The piranhas would be on him in a heartbeat if I didn’t steer him into safe waters right away. I would just have to somehow manage work, a mystery and a social life.
Chapter 8
I was met by yet another glorious day as I stepped outside the next morning to begin my rounds. The birds were singing in the trees and a gentle breeze was blowing, which may have been the source of my good spirits. But more likely it was having had a successful date the night before. Searching back through my memories I couldn’t recall the last time that I’d had a pleasant interaction with a prospective beau. Now that I’d had one I wanted more. But first I would have to keep the streets safe for my parking constituency while finding out what had happened to my best friend.
Fortunately my paying job hadn’t been affected by any added burden from Jeffrey going missing. The chief had decided to shut down Jeffrey’s route rather than having me try to cover both routes. This surprised me. With the way things had been going between the chief and me, I was surprised that I hadn’t been assigned to cleaning the toilets in the public restrooms down by the Falls.
A certain amount of a police officer’s time is spent on butt work. I don’t mean working out to DVDs of Buns of Steel either. I’m talking about surveillance. Fortunately, I can do my job and surveil. No one notices a meter maid unless she’s giving them a ticket.
I was halfway down Grant Street when I spotted what appeared to be a snake crawling across the road to mount a car parked at the curb. When I got closer I found that it was a hose from a gas pump hanging out of the gas tank of the vehicle. The other end was ragged. Oddly enough, this was not the first time that I’d come across such an oddity. It didn’t help me sustain my spirits that the car the hose hung from was a high-end, luxury model, piece of Euro-trash. My small hairs always bristle at having to deal with the owners of such vehicles. They aren’t food throwers, but they tend to be arrogant and verbally abusive.
My optimal response to the situation would have been to find the owner and have them return the gas nozzle to the station from which it had been torn and offer to make reparations. However, the best I could do, given my time constraints and limited authority, was to kick the hose out of the street and leave a note on the windshield for the driver. For a second I considered leaving a ticket as well, but I wasn’t sure for what I could cite the person. Unfortunately, stupidity wasn’t illegal. Nor was sloppiness, and this driver was clearly having a bad morning. This I deduced from a pair of muddy black heels on the passenger seat (leather soles, so they were expensive), a floor full of used tissues covered in eye makeup, and a canvas sack thrown on the car mat behind the driver’s seat. It had some letters stenciled on it:
HO
SAV
Finding the fuel line dribbling on the street reminded me of all the annoying situations I was likely to encounter during tourist season. As I drove away I could feel my spirits deflate. By the time I had completed my second circuit I was completely ignoring the birds and sunshine, and chomping on my lip instead.
I was about to turn off Grant Street when I heard a terrible racket coming from behind me. The noise continued as the car I had just dealt with sped on by with my note tucked safely beneath the windshield wiper and the hose dragging down the middle of the street. This was too much. I decided to pursue the culprit.
Switching on my emergency light—my cruiser wasn’t equipped with a siren and the light is really more of a flicker—I stomped on the gas pedal—the electricity pedal actually—and girded my loins for a hot pursuit. Unfortunately, my vehicle has a maximum speed of six miles per hour. This is good for Blue but laughable when you consider I was in a thirty-five mph zone. So the suspect drew away in her high end, Euro-trash muscle car as I dawdled behind, trying to maintain eye contact with the runaway vehicle.
I was several blocks behind the car when I saw it swing across a double yellow line to the red-painted curb on the wrong side of the street and screech to a halt with one tire on the sidewalk. A few seconds later a well-dressed woman stepped from the driver’s side and walked across the street to enter one of the shops. As I drew near I saw that the establishment she had entered was Angelo’s, a rather pricey Italian restaurant that I’d only been to for birthdays and other special occasions. It’s where the wealthy ladies lunched.
Parking my pursuit vehicle at the curb, I grabbed my ticket pad and stomped across the street to the large pane of glass fronting the restaurant, determined to deal out written mayhem. Her bumper was actually infringing on the space in front of her as well, so I had cause, but that’s when I saw the chief rise from a table inside the restaurant to greet the woman. That’s also when I recognized the woman from pictures in the paper. It was Mrs. Sellers, and I realized that I had just missed an opportunity to interview her.
After greeting the woman, the chief turned to take his seat and found himself face-to-face with me standing outside on the sidewalk. He must have known that Angelo’s was nowhere near my beat. As Mrs. Sellers took her seat, I smiled and waved to the chief, then spun around to return to my vehicle across the street. By the time I’d made it there the chief had taken his seat, but I could see that he was still cocking half an eye in my direction. A glimpse at the clock built into the dashboard of my chase vehicle told me that it was time to make my way to the Falls to perform my penance.
Now, what was the chief doing having lunch with the bereft widow so soon after her husband’s death? I wondered. Most likely he was conducting an interview, just as I was hoping to do, and choosing to do it in the most genial of environments out of respect for the widow’s grief and in an effort to stay on her good side. A wasted effort, I thought, since from what I heard it didn’t seem she had that much of a good side. Then I stopped and chastised myself. How could I know what she was feeling and how it might make her act? I had never lost a husband.
Lecturing myself about the need for Christian charity, I opened my notebook and made note of the encounter and her license plate number just in case it later played into my own investigations regarding the Jeffrey Little case. It probably wouldn’t, but just as you can’t build bricks without straw, you can’t build a case without facts.
I arrived at the main Falls parking lot in plenty of time to find that Gordon had also been assigned to this detail. Why? Did the chief think that we were like feuding children and that if he put us together enough that we would learn to get along? If so, he was mistaken. There was about as much chance of Gordon and me getting along as there was of a snake and a mongoose going to tea.
Gordon was there with a bad attitude and the Officer Bill head, which now included a large bandage wrapped around the chin and ears and tied in a bow on the top of the molded hair. Some paint—not quite the same hue—had been daubed on his nose. I asked Gordon what was going on and he explained that the bandage was holding the broken ears on while the glue dried. To me it made Officer Bill look like a chronic toothache sufferer or possibly like Jacob Marley’s ghost, but this wasn’t my show.
Gordon helped me to lift the head into place and stuff my own inside. He wasn’t particularly gentle as he cinched the straps. Sound was muffled, but I heard a terrible caterwauling the moment it began. Holding the head on my shoulders, I looked down to find Blue peering up at me with a concerned look on her face and howling at the top of her lungs. I pulled at the Velcro and lifted the head to show her that it was me and that everything was alright but it did no good. The second the head was back on the howling began anew. In the end I had to take the head off and guide Blue to a distant shade tree where I tied her up before I could return and resume my noontime duties. Anger at the chief began to smolder down inside and I knew it was only a matter of time before I blew up.
All in all, my afternoon at the Falls went much better than my morning at the school had gone. I only made one child cry who seemed to be concerned that Officer Bill’s ear was missing. Fortunately Gordon found it.
There had been some concern expressed in the local newspaper about the decline in the honeybee population in our area, but I solved the mystery of the missing bees that day. The pollinators were not dead, just vacationing near the picnic tables and trashcans around the Falls’ Snax Shax. Gordon sure looked funny when they chased him and he had to throw away his chocolate-dipped banana. I got away with making a lot of silly and disrespectful gestures behind Gordon’s back while he lectured, and that made the older kids laugh. That was bad, showing even veiled disrespect for another policeman, but I did it anyway. Gordon was a disgrace to the uniform and the entire exercise had been turned into a parody by his fear of flying insects.
In what felt like no time the humiliation was over and I was allowed to return to my vehicle and my rounds. The only problem was that I was more interested in my investigation than I was in handing out parking tickets. Let the locals run amuck for a day, I thought, everyone deserved the occasional holiday.
After a quick circuit I went off the reservation again so that I could revisit Jeffrey’s home and neighborhood. Once there I did a quick canvas of the few neighbors out and about in the day, but found out nothing other than that Jeffrey was a good neighbor who caused no trouble. Although the lady next door (who had entirely too many garden gnomes) expressed the desire that he spend more time maintaining the dirt plot that served as a yard out front. I could see her point; it was currently covered in knee-high weeds, which were going to seed. I made a note to pass this message on to Jeffrey and moved along.
Having addressed his neighborhood for clues and finding none, I next focused on Jeffrey’s trailer. The door was still unlocked and this bothered me greatly.
“Hello,” I called, but my voice was tentative and got swallowed up like a rock tossed in a murky pond. Jeffrey's place had never felt scary to me before, but it sure as hell did now. The only thing that would have made it scarier was if someone actually answered.
Stepping inside I flipped the lights on so I could see what I was investigating. Without Jeffrey there, I evaluated it coldly. The flooring was old, a yellowed linoleum that was probably already dated when it was installed post-WWII. Beyond that, the place still looked like it had been rifled, Jeffrey’s possessions strewn every which way. Apparently Gordon and company hadn’t cleaned up before leaving. All the better for me, I thought as I proceeded to poke amongst the debris.
Jeffrey had a calendar, a giveaway from the bank, but nothing was written on it. In fact it was still turned to the previous month. There was no notepad by the phone, no conveniently placed travel brochure or note saying that he had to rush off to donate a kidney to an uncle in Mongolia who lived in a village where there were no phones. Besides, I didn’t think Jeffrey had a passport.
There were nothing but patent remedies in the medicine chest and the normal, if unopened, cleaning products under the sink. After quite some time spent sorting through the rubbish, like a broken fishing rod and a tube of sunscreen that someone had stepped on and squirted all over the floor, I found that I was both physically and psychologically spent. I was also thirsty. Perhaps that was what prompted me to look in the refrigerator. The inside made me gasp, which I immediately regretted when I drew breath to replace the lost air. Phew! The contents of the fridge were scary and I decided that no matter how thirsty, I didn’t want to fraternize with anything that might be growing in there. I’d have thrown it all out, but that could be interfering with a crime scene. A potential crime scene, I amended, though what a missing person and mold had in common, I did not know.
Jeffrey had a baby picture in a magnetic screen stuck to his freezer door. The baby was cute in the formless way that infants are. As I studied the picture, a thought occurred. I had heard of people keeping things hidden in their freezers and pulled open the door to check. Sure enough, something had been there—something about the shape of an ice cube tray. The freezer was in desperate need of defrosting, so the place where the tray had been was clearly defined. There was also a small smudge of what looked like blood left on the ice.
Following the logical trail, I went to the sink and sure enough there was a tray sitting there, but it was the old-fashioned metal kind and the deadly ice cube divider was missing. No one made just a brick of ice. The tray had held something, I deduced. But what? Money? Credit cards? The apocryphal passport? A gun? No, surely not a gun. One didn’t hide firearms in the freezer.
But Jeffrey did have a gun. At least a rifle. Because once in a blue moon he would take off with friends to go hunting. The rifle was missing.
So, there it was. One more fact to add to a growing tree of evidence that could eventually point to not only to Jeffrey’s whereabouts but perhaps to Rupert Sellers’ murderer. If only the facts would align themselves into some kind of pattern! Right now these odds and ends could just as well be proving how many angels danced on the head of a pin.
Taking a seat on a clear spot on the sofa, I pulled out a pen and paper and updated my Jeffrey case file. That’s when I had yet another thought. This one had me doing a mental head slap.
Searching near the phone, it didn’t take long to find what I was after. Tacked to a corkboard panel next to the phone was a slip of paper with a name and a number written on it. Jeffrey had never been especially close to his daughter, Gillian, but I was hoping that they were close enough that Jeffrey might have let slip his plans for the week during a recent conversation. Surely if he had been planning to go away or just really worried about something, he would have confided in her.
