Ada Unraveled (19 page)

More stage-shouting from me. “It might be
Eddie. I better go save the poor soul. Part of my responsibility
now that I’m working for the Stowall family as a private
investigator.”

I reached into my oversized shoulder bag and
pulled out my new pistol pick lock opener--
made with the
locksmith in mind, it picks pin-and-disc tumbler locks with
ease.
At least according to the accompanying brochure that came
with this gift which my romantic guy Matt, had given to me for
Valentine’s Day just this past year.

I decided not to tell them I was a virgin at
this lock picking thing. That I’ve only practiced a few times on my
own doors at home. I looked up and into the appraising and maybe
disapproving eyes of Gerry.
Maybe she hadn’t smiled
. Maybe
she wasn’t really prepared to break and enter any more than
Hannah.

I hesitated. Big mistake.

Hannah’s cell phone began chirping like a
wild bird. Strange, but interesting. She rummaged at the bottom of
her purse and withdrew the phone as if she’d found a prize Buckeye
chicken.

“Hello? Oh, hi mom…” She stood listening for
a few seconds, looking from me to Gerry. Then she turned sideways,
a definite signal she was thinking of running. She moved a few
steps away. I could hear a crackling, disapproving voice coming
from the phone even from this greater distance. “No, really mom.
We’re okay. We were just…” Hannah crept further away from us, and
turned her back. I looked at Gerry.

She said, “You know, the woman staring out
her second story window next door is probably about to call the
cops anyway, Rachel. After all our attempts to get someone’s
attention inside, it may be a hard sell that we were on a rescue
mission. Maybe we better give this up and try again tomorrow.”

I did not look over my shoulder to see who
was watching us. But it was difficult.

Bummer. Would I never get to use my new lock
pick pistol? I stuffed it back into my bag, and sighed,
noisily.

Hannah returned to us and said, “Sorry guys.
My mom isn’t feeling well. Guess I should go see her.” But she
didn’t move. She looked toward the cemetery, then back at us.
Stayed, but…
for how long?

“Well, you’re right, Gerry. Guess we won’t B
& E tonight. But I think I’ll do a little more snooping before
I leave.”

“Hey, I can hang in a while longer. My mom
isn’t psychic, she’s blocked, remember?” Gerry tapped her head. I
guessed she was talking about the brain cancer surgery.

“My mother isn’t psychic either,” Hannah
mumbled. “Just overbearing.”

I said, “I want to get a look at that
shed.”

Gingerly picking my way toward the target, I
stepped carefully through the junkyard garden. The light from the
kitchen receded, so I pulled out a flashlight.

Suddenly my right leg disappeared deep into
a mud filled hole.

Stunned, I plopped down on my butt.
Remembering some Girl Scout lesson on how to survive quicksand, I
began to lie flat, making myself bigger. I was thinking,
quicksand, make yourself bigger. Halfway down, I caught myself
with one hand. Better still was extricate yourself now!

An overwhelming stench exuded from the
hole
. Good God!
That awful death smell again.

“Hey, could you guys help me pull my leg
out.”

They were laughing. They obviously hadn’t
caught a whiff of this yet.

Hannah and Gerry stepped closer and I
grabbed their hands and pulled. The muck released its grip and I
finally got my left leg under me. But I’d lost my shoe and
sock.

And now it was officially and totally
dark.

Gerry said, “Lord, what a stink! Is that a
septic line?”

“There’s something dead in that hole. I’m
almost positive I felt bones.”

“Bones? Like, human?” Hannah said.

“I don’t know, but I have to call this in,
ladies.”

Gerry inhaled sharply with the sudden
realization that she and her billionaire husband might end up on
the front pages of the San Diego Tribune in the morning, instead of
the society section. I watched the blood drain from her face.

I quickly added, “And the two of you need to
get out of here. I’m the responsible authority onsite. You’re just
temps. But if the question is asked, Gerry, I’ll have to answer
honestly. Especially since we have a witness to our actions.” The
lady in the second story window. “So, how about your brother?”

She nodded and walked quickly away toward
her car. Hannah helped me clean up for a few minutes then she left,
too. I pulled out my phone and called Matt.

When deputy-detective Tom Beardsley arrived
his face said it all. He was furious. He had two other deputies
with him, Tony Malvelli and Rick Rotman. They did all the talking.
But I was relieved that no one asked me if I was with anyone
else.

Then I spent the next twenty minutes
explaining what I’d seen and where I’d walked, and finally why I’d
been here at all. I told them that I’d been hired by Victoria
Stowall to explore her daughter-in-law’s death and was hoping to
interview either Eddie or Luke Stowall.

That stopped them in their tracks. I
couldn’t tell what they were reacting too—Victoria Stowall’s name
or that I was investigating Ada Stowall’s death—but after a couple
of seconds they told me I could go. As I was climbing back in my
car, a final county vehicle arrived--an authoritative looking guy
that I recognized as the CC Sheriff himself, Warren Pike. I waited,
in case he would also want to ask me questions. But after a few
words to Malvelli, I was waved on. My man’s influence was even
impressing me.

Greatly relieved, I climbed back in my car
and drove home. Only much later would we learn that the second
story witness wouldn’t live to tell what she had been seen.

Matt and I shared another shower. Always a
good thing. At least I wasn’t bawling this time--I was angrier at
myself. Worse, I babbled uncontrollably through the whole thing and
relearned the timeless lesson that a babbling woman doesn’t get
laid.

Especially after I slipped into the water
talk the fact that I’d asked Hannah Lilly and Geraldine Patrone to
apprentice under me.

Matt wasn’t too pleased.

He reminded me we already had two
apprentices on the payroll.

I told him they’d be working at minimum
wage, which I was certain would appease him.

He reminded me that they would mean more
paperwork.

I reminded him that we already had a serious
paperwork backlog and I wasn’t getting to all the research he
wanted me to do either—and I was sure at least one of them would be
good at paperwork.

Thinking Gerry here; she was very organized
according to Hannah, who told me this at the bee. Said she’d been
in Gerry’s bedroom and her walk-in closets were all arranged by
color and type; blue shirts together on the top pole, over blue
slacks on the bottom pole, etc.

He reminded me that I wasn’t being paid.

Of course, this was my own fault. I’d wanted
a social relationship with the bee women, not a working
relationship. So I’d told Matt to hold off cashing Gerry’s check.
Maybe it was time to take it to the bank. Especially after Gerry
didn’t blink when I mentioned her check. More importantly, she
didn’t try to take the reins during our visit to Ada’s either

I tried appeasing him with the thought that
this was just a temporary situation that would end soon.

He reminded me that our budget was stretched
as it was.

So then I told him to go ahead and cash the
check, and our water-fight was over.

We finally calmed down, dried off, and
filled out the necessary paperwork for Hannah and Gerry to
sign—with a small twist. They weren’t apprentices. Neither had
begun the coursework necessary to qualify them as such. So Matt
figured we could hire them on as contract researchers.

Imagine that. Why didn’t I think..?

Of course, I had. And somewhere in the water
fight I’d slipped in the idea, and he adopted it as his own.

Female management.

As Matt had pointed out during our wet
discussion, Lyons Investigations and Research, Inc. already had two
apprentices. This is not unusual. California law requires would-be
private investigators to undergo three years of OJT–on the job
training--before becoming licensed. Apprentices can get their OJT
at any licensed agency or for that matter, at several different
agencies if they wished. And for all intents and purposes a
licensed agency can have an unlimited number of apprentices.

One of our current apprentices is a young
man named Marvin Luis Lewis, who prefers to use his middle name. A
computer whiz-kid in his late twenties, he currently works for our
Preventive Investigations Division. In fact he’s pretty much in
charge of it. That division covers requests we get from employers
wanting background and security clearances on potential employees,
among other things. Luis began his apprenticeship in Chula Vista,
but Spanish is the second (rapidly becoming the first) language in
Chula Vista and the talented young man can’t speak Spanish. So he
transferred up near us where we mostly still speak English.

Somewhere in his high school years Luis
turned his odd moniker into the catchy logon ID of Louie_Louie.

Anyway, Luis works out of his home a lot,
like we do. Almost done with his apprenticeship, he says he won’t
be moving on because he doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of
owning his own business at this time. Plus we pay him pretty well.
Plus he’s fallen in love with a local gal.
The real
clincher.

Speaking of logon IDs, our second apprentice
uses a couple of clever handles on the net too, Wild_Willie and
Towns_End.

William Townsend is a fortyish former
professional wrestler who currently weighs in at two hundred and
fifty pounds. William began his training under the famed Deacon
Harks of LA and only came to us recently. He has a deep dark secret
somewhere in his past. I love deep dark secrets. But we haven’t
gotten to know him well enough yet to find out what it is.

Willie usually takes care of our risky house
calls, and should have done Deadbeat Dad’s subpoena delivery this
morning instead of me, but he had a dentist appointment.

By the way, the Preventive Investigations
Division label is at the insistence of our web page designer, who
also insisted we keep our hot button links on our main page to a
maximum of three. He felt it would look better and reduce
confusion.

The trouble is our work doesn’t divide
easily into three major categories. The other two “divisions” we
ended up listing on our web site are the Personal Inquiries
Division and the Surveillance and Unsolved Crimes Division. Our net
presence is really pretty impressive overall, but it gives the
false impression we’re a giant investigative agency working out of
some beautiful office building somewhere. Not a good thing.

Most of our clients like it just fine that
we work out of our home on a private road in a nice Southern
California one-to-five acre neighborhood. It’s our web manager who
has delusions of grandeur, not us.

Matt still hates our web page. He thinks the
three headers should have been four, namely Background Checks,
Personal Investigations, Surveillance Services and Asset Searches.
He’s probably right. Those activities constitute most of our work.
But the net-guy won the argument by telling us how much more the
fourth hot button would cost.

After settling the issue of Hannah and
Gerry, we climbed into bed to watch the evening news. I dozed off
wondering what Hannah and Gerry’s internet logon IDs were, but was
woken a short while later when channel eight began reporting on a
missing woman from Coyote Run, Cleveland County.

Coyote Run was the next town over from
Iguana, which was the town where Ada Stowall died. And where her
home was. And where my leg sunk three feet into some hideous
stench.

After that I couldn’t turn off my mind for
wondering if my leg had sunk into the remains of the missing
woman.

I wandered the house seeking distraction.
Wisdom offered furry company. I watered the house plants that I’d
neglected for several days and planned our trip to Camp Lejeune to
see our son Harry, before he took off for Asian wars. Drank some
hot chamomile tea. Did a little yoga.

I tried every trick, but the truth was I
couldn’t stop thinking about Ada’s house. Hollywood couldn’t have
created a more perfect horror house, graveyard and all.

The phone rang and I hurried to pick it up
before it woke Matt. I was at the other end of the house from him
but found myself whispering anyway.

Gerry’s soft voice asked, “Did I wake
you?”

And well she should ask. It was almost
midnight. I figured she was calling to tell me she didn’t want to
take the job after all. But that wasn’t it.

I said, “Glad to hear from you. I’ve been
wondering all evening what’s going on at Ada’s house. Thought I’d
never get to sleep. So has Tom called you?”

“I’ve been trying to reach him to find out
what they uncovered in that awful hole but he’s swamped. They’ve
got another missing woman up there. I wasn’t even able to connect
with him. And of course, the sergeant I reached wasn’t discussing
police business with me.”

I remembered that Gerry lived nearer the
coast, like me. Just farther south and higher up in income bracket.
Way higher.

And then I cringed for the fifth time,
thinking about the conversation she might yet have with her brother
Tom, with his awareness that she’d been with me at Ada’s house.
Maybe all the activity would let that trouble go by.

“So you haven’t spoken to your brother
since…?”

“Yes, actually. We’ve spoken. He called to
read me the riot act. He called to tell me I must not trespass, I
must not spy, I must not cavort with PI’s. There were another seven
I must nots
but I won’t bore you. It’s
the I musts
that I’m…angry about.”