Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (24 page)

“I heard you could help me,” he said finally,
almost pitifully.

“Ah,” I said. “Have a seat.”

He did, moseying on into my small office. As
he sat, I almost expected him to flip the client chair around and
straddle it backward, cowboy-like. Instead, he used the chair as it
was originally designed, although it was clearly not designed for
someone as tall as he. His bony knees reached up to his ears and
looked sharp enough to cut through his denim jeans. I sat behind
the desk in a leather brass studded chair that was entirely too
ornate for its surroundings. The leather made rude noises.

Ever the professional detective, I kept a
straight face and asked for his name.

“Jones,” he answered. “Jones T. Jones, to be
exact.”

“That’s a lot of Joneses.”

“Well, yes,” he said, blushing slightly.
“It’s not really my name, you see. It’s sort of like a stage name.
You know, a gimmick.”

“So you’re an actor?”

“No, I own a souvenir shop in Huntington
Beach. But I’ve acted as the spokesperson in my own commercials.”
Ah. It came to me then. I’d seen Jones before, late at night on the
local cable circuit. Usually right before I passed out in a drunken
stupor. Damn cheesy commercials, too, many in-volving what appeared
to be a rabid monkey. Sometimes Jones and the monkey danced. I was
embarrassed for Jones. “Maybe you’ve heard of it,” he continued.
“Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe.”

“Heard of it?” I said. “Hell, I spelled old
and shop with extra e’s and p’s up until the fifth grade. My
teacher, Mrs. Franks, thought I was Chaucer reborn.”

He laughed. “I wanted to change the name when
I bought the store a number of years ago, but there was a big
public uproar.” He cracked a smile, and I realized that he enjoyed
the big public uproar. “So I gave in to pressure and kept the damn
name. I regret it to this day.”

“Why?”

“No one can find us in the phone book...or
even on the internet. They call us and ask: Are we under Y or O? Is
it Ye or The?” He sighed and caught his breath, having worked
himself up. “I mean, what were the original owners thinking?”

“Maybe they were English.”

He shrugged. We were silent. Outside, in the
nearby alley, a delivery truck was backing up, beeping away. I was
one of the few people who appreciated the warning beeps.

“So what can I do for you, Mr. Jones?” I
asked.

“I’d like to hire you.”

“Zumbooruk!” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Exactly.”

Chapter Two

“You know about Sylvester the Mummy, then?”
asked Jones.

“Still dead?” I asked.

“As a doornail.”

Sylvester the Mummy was one of Huntington
Beach’s main attractions—ranking a distant third behind waves and
babes—and currently resided at the back of the Ye Olde Curiosity
Gift Shoppe in a cozy polyurethane case for all the world to see.
Sylvester had been found in the California deserts over a hundred
years ago near a ghost town called Rawhide. Since then, he’d been
passed from museum to museum, exhibit to exhibit, until finally
coming to rest at Ye Olde Gift Shoppe in Huntington Beach. Wouldn’t
his mother be proud? Although his identity is unknown, most
historians figure Sylvester had once been a cowboy. Which, I
figure, means he probably once owned a horse and a six shooter, ate
beans from the can over an open campfire and sang lonesome songs
about loose women. That is, of course, until someone put a bullet
in his gut and left him for dead in the middle of the Mojave
Desert. Experts figured the old boy had mummified within 24 hours
due to a rare combination of extreme desert heat and chemicals in
the sand. A true John Doe, he had been named after the very miner
who discovered him, which I always found a little creepy.

“What about him?” I asked.

“Two months ago, as a publicity stunt, I
hired a young historian fresh out of college to look into
Sylvester’s background. You know, generate some interest in my
little store. Of course, I didn’t really think the historian would
find anything on Sylvester. But that wasn’t the point.”

“The point being to generate interest in your
little store.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Ah, exploiting the dead.

“Go on,” I said.

Jones shifted, suddenly looking
uncomfortable, as if his tight jeans were giving him one hell of a
wedgie. “The historian—a kid really—provided me regular reports. He
did original research, digging through old records, even traveling
out to Rawhide once or twice to interview the town historian.”

He stopped talking. I waited. I sensed
something ominous. I call this my sixth sense. Catchy, huh?

Jones’ expression turned pained. The mother
of all wedgies? “Then the reports stopped, and I didn’t hear from
him for a while. Shortly thereafter, his mother reported him
missing. Soon after that, the sheriff’s department found him
dead.”

“Found where?”

“In the desert. Near Rawhide.” He took a deep
breath. “And just this morning I received word from the San
Bernardino Sheriff’s Department that his death was being officially
ruled an accident. They figure he got lost in the desert, ran out
of gas and died of thirst.”

I sat back in my chair and rested my chin on
my fingertips. Sweat had appeared on Jones’s forehead. His flashy
showmanship was out the window.

“I assume you disagree with their findings,”
I said.

He thought about it.

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Why?”

He reached up and unconsciously rolled the
brim of his Stetson, a nervous habit, which now explained why the
thing looked like a Del Taco Macho Burrito.

My stomach growled. Lord help me.

“It’s hard to say, Knighthorse. It’s just a
gut feeling I have. The kid...the kid was smart, you know. A recent
college graduate. I was impressed by him, and not just by his book
smarts. He seemed to have a sensible head on his shoulder; street
smarts, too.”

“Too sensible to get lost in the desert.”

“Yes. Precisely. That’s exactly why I’m
here.”

“That,” I said, “and you feel guilty as hell
for sending out a kid to his death.”

He looked away, inhaled deeply. “Jesus,
Knighthorse. Put that way, and you make it seem like I killed
him.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to look into his death. Make sure
it was an accident.”

“And if it wasn’t an accident?”

“I want you to find the killer.”

“Finding the killer is extra.”

“Price is no object.”

“Zumbooruk!”

“Why do you keep saying that? What does it
mean?”

“It’s a camel-mounted canon used in the
Middle East.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.”

Chapter Three

I met Detective Sherbet at a sandwich shop on
Amerige St. in downtown Fullerton. Sherbet was a big man with a big
cop mustache. He wore an old blue suit and a bright yellow tie. He
ordered coffee and a donut. I ordered a Diet Pepsi, but thought the
donut idea was a pretty good one. So I had the waitress bring me
three of whatever she had left, because when it comes to donuts,
any flavor will do.

“What if she brings you a pink donut?” asked
Detective Sherbet.

“Pink is good,” I said.

“I hate pink.”

“In general?”

He thought about that, then nodded. “Yeah.”
He paused, looked away. “My boy likes pink.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“How old is your boy?”

“Eight.”

“Maybe he will grow out of it.”

“Let’s hope.”

The waitress brought me three cake donuts.
Chocolate, glazed, and pink.

Uh oh.

“Are you okay with me eating this?” I asked,
pointing to Sherbet’s arch-nemesis, the pink-frosted donut.

He nodded, shrugging. The man had serious
issues. I ate the pink donut quickly, nonetheless. As I did,
Sherbet watched me curiously, as if I was a monkey in a zoo
exhibiting strange behavior. Funny, when I was done, I didn’t feel
gay.

“Any good?” he asked.

“Quite,” I said. “And no gay side effects. At
least not yet.”

“Maybe I’ll have one.”

And he did. One pink donut. After the
waitress set it before him, he picked it up warily with his thumb
and forefinger, careful of the pink frosting. He studied it from a
few angles, and then bit into it.

“Your son would be proud,” I said.

“I love the kid.”

“But you think he might be gay.”

“Let’s change the subject,” he said.

“Thankfully,” I said. Actually, Detective
Sherbet wasn’t so much homophobic as homo-terrified, as in
terrified his kid might grow up to be gay. Someone needed some
counseling here, and it wasn’t the kid.

“So that crackpot hired you,” said Sherbet.
There was pink frosting in the corner of his mouth. Lord, he looked
gay.

“Crackpot being Jones T. Jones.”

“A shyster if I’ve ever met one. Anything to
make a buck. Hell, I even had my suspicions that he offed the
historian just to generate more press for that damn store of his.
Have you been there?”

I nodded.

He said, “Place gives me the fucking
creeps.”

“So he’s clean?”

“Sure he’s clean. Everyone’s clean. Kid ran
out of gas, wandered around the desert until he died of heat and
thirst.”

“Hell of a way to go.”

Sherbet shrugged, and as he did so his
mustache twitched simultaneously. Perhaps the motor neurons in his
shoulders were connected to his upper lip.

“I hear Willie was a smart kid,” I said.

“Smart enough to get a Masters in history
from UCI.”

“Probably smart enough to call for help on
his cell phone.”

“Sure,” said Sherbet, “except he didn’t have
one on him.”

“Who found his body?”

“San Bernardino Sheriff. They found the body
and called me out, as I was working the original missing person
case. We compared notes, asked around, decided this thing was
nothing but an accident. We both closed our cases.”

“Have you talked to anyone at Rawhide?” I
asked.

“Sure, went out there with the San Bernardino
Sheriff. We asked around, talked to the museum curator and his
assistant, the last two to see Willie alive.”

“What did they say?”

Sherbet shrugged again. His shoulders were
probably hairy. Sherbet was a very manly man, which was probably
why he couldn’t comprehend his kid turning out gay.

“Like I said, they were the last two to see
Willie alive, at least that we know of. The museum curator and his
assistant—forget their names now—showed him the site where that
fucking mummy was originally found. Afterward, when everyone left
the site, Willie was in his own truck right behind the curator and
assistant. They look again, and Willie’s gone. They assumed he
headed home a different direction. Both their stories corroborate.
Granted, this is an oddball way for a bright kid to die, but unless
something rears its ugly head here, we have no reason to suspect
any funny business.”

I drank some Diet Pepsi. I’m not even really
convinced that I like Diet Pepsi. I took another sip; nope, still
not convinced.

“Jones seems to think there was foul play,” I
said. “And gave me a hefty retainer fee to prove it.”

“Jones wants business. Twenty bucks says he
turns this thing into an even bigger circus. He’s the ring leader,
and you’re the....” He paused, thinking.

“World’s Strongest Man?” I offered.

“Sure, whatever. Look, I think he’s using
you, Knighthorse. Especially you, since you have some name
recognition.”

“Did you want my autograph for your kid?” I
asked.

“You kidding? Kid doesn’t know a fullback
from a backpack.” Sherbet shook his head some more, sipped his
coffee. “All this over a fucking mummy.”

“Hard to believe.”

About the Author:

J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who
now writes full-time in the Pacific Northwest. He lives in a small
house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more
energy than Robin Williams. Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.