Hard Eight (4 page)

The reception area of Dickie’s office was tastefully done up in industrial chic. Blacks and grays and the occasional purple upholstered chair. If the Jetsons had hired Tim Burton to decorate, it would have turned out like this. Dickie’s secretary was seated behind a large mahogany desk. Caroline Sawyer. I recognized her from my last visit. She looked up when Lula and I entered. Her eyes widened in alarm, and she reached for the phone.

“If you come any closer I’m calling the police,” she said.

“I want to talk to Dickie.”

“He isn’t here.”

“I bet she’s fibbing,” Lula said. “I got a knack for knowing when people are fibbing.” Lula shook her finger at Sawyer. “The Lord don’t like when people fib.”

“Honest to God, he isn’t here.”

“Now you’re blaspheming,” Lula said. “You’re in big trouble now.”

The door to Dickie’s inner office opened, and Dickie stuck his head out. “Oh shit,” he said, spotting Lula and me. He pulled his head back and slammed his door shut.

“I need to talk to you,” I yelled.

“No. Go away. Caroline, call the police.”

Lula leaned on Caroline’s desk. “You call the police and I’ll break one of your fingernails. You’ll need a new manicure.”

Caroline looked down at her nails. “I just got them done yesterday.”

“They did a good job,” Lula said. “Where’d you go?”

“Kim’s Nails on Second Street.”

“They’re the best. I go there, too,” Lula said. “I got mine detailed this time. See, I got little-bitty stars painted on them.”

Caroline looked over at Lula’s nails. “Awesome,” she said.

I scooted around Sawyer and knocked on Dickie’s door. “Open up. I promise I won’t try to choke you. I need to talk to you about Annie Soder. She’s missing.”

The door opened a crack. “What do you mean . . . missing?”

“Evelyn apparently took off with her, and Les Sebring is enforcing the child custody bond.”

The door opened all the way. “I was afraid this would happen.”

“I’m trying to help find Annie. I was hoping you could give me some background information.”

“I don’t know how helpful I can be. I was Soder’s attorney. Evelyn was represented by Albert Kloughn. There was so much acrimony during the divorce process, and so many threats were made on both sides, that the judge imposed the bonds.”

“Soder had to post a bond, too?”

“Yes, although Soder’s was relatively meaningless. Soder owns a local business and isn’t likely to flee. Evelyn, on the other hand, had nothing holding her here.”

“What do you think of Soder?”

“He was a decent client. Paid his bill on time. Got a little hot under the collar in court. There’s no love lost between him and Evelyn.”

“Do you think he’s a good father?”

Dickie did a palms-up. “Don’t know.”

“What about Evelyn?”

“She never looked like she was totally with the program. A real space cadet. Probably in the kid’s best interest to get found. Evelyn might misplace her and not realize it for days.”

“Anything else?” I asked him.

“No, but it doesn’t seem right that you haven’t gone for my throat,” Dickie said.

“Disappointed?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I bought pepper spray.”

It would have been funny if it had been casual banter, but I suspected Dickie was serious. “Maybe next time.”

“You know where to find me.”

Lula and I sashayed out of the office, down the hall, and into the elevator.

“That wasn’t as much fun as last time,” Lula said. “You didn’t even threaten him. You didn’t chase him around the desk, or anything.”

“I don’t think I hate him as much as I used to.”

“Bummer.”

We crossed the street and stared at my car. It had a parking ticket on the window.

“See this,” Lula said. “It’s your moons. You made a bad money decision when you picked this busted meter.”

I stuffed the ticket into my bag and wrenched the door open.

“You better watch out,” Lula said. “The man trouble’s gonna come next.”

I called Connie and asked for an address for Albert Kloughn. In minutes I had Kloughn’s business address and Soder’s home address. Both were in Hamilton Township.

We drove past Soder’s home first. He lived in a complex
of garden apartments. The buildings were two-story brick, decked out to be colonial style with white window shutters and white columns at the front doors. Soder’s apartment was on the ground floor.

“Guess he hasn’t got the little girl in his cellar,” Lula said. “Since he hasn’t got a cellar.”

We sat and watched the apartment for a few minutes, but nothing happened, so we moved on to Kloughn.

Albert Kloughn had a two-room office, next to a Laundromat, in a strip mall. There was a desk for a secretary but no secretary was in residence. Instead, Kloughn was at the desk, typing at the computer. He was my height and looked like he was approaching puberty. He had sandy-colored hair, a face like a cherub, and the body of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

He looked up and smiled tentatively when we entered. Probably thought we were scrounging quarters to do our laundry. I could feel my feet vibrating from the drums tumbling next door, and there was a distant rumble from the large commercial washers.

“Albert Kloughn?” I asked.

He was wearing a white shirt, red-and-green striped tie, and khakis. He stood and self-consciously smoothed out his tie. “I’m Albert Kloughn,” he said.

“Well, this is a big disappointment,” Lula said. “Where’s the red nose that goes
beep beep?
And where’re your big clown feet?”

“I’m not that kind of clown. Yeesh. Everybody says that. Ever since kindergarten I’ve been hearing that. It’s spelled ‘K-l-o-u-g-h-n.’ Kloughn!”

“Could be worse,” Lula said. “You could be Albert Fuch.”

I gave Kloughn my card. “I’m Stephanie Plum and this is my associate, Lula. I understand you represented Evelyn Soder in her divorce case.”

“Wow,” he said, “are you really a bounty hunter?”

“Bond enforcement,” I told him.

“Yeah, that’s a bounty hunter, right?”

“About Evelyn Soder . . . “

“Sure. What do you want to know? Is she in trouble?”

“Evelyn and Annie are missing. And it looks like Evelyn took Annie away so she wouldn’t have to visit her father. She left a couple notes.”

“She must have had a good reason to leave,” Kloughn said. “She really didn’t want to jeopardize her grandmother’s house. She just didn’t have any choice. She had no place to turn for the bond money.”

“Any ideas where Evelyn and Annie might have gone?”

Kloughn shook his head. “No. Evelyn didn’t talk much. From what I could tell, her entire family lived in the Burg. I don’t want to be mean or anything, but she didn’t impress me as being real bright. I’m not even sure she could drive. She always had someone bring her to the office.”

“Where’s your secretary?” Lula asked him.

“I don’t have a secretary right now. I used to have someone who came in part-time, but she said the lint blowing around from the dryers bothered her sinuses. Probably I should put an ad in the paper, but I’m not real organized. I only opened this office a couple months ago. Evelyn was one of my first clients. That’s why I remember her.”

Probably Evelyn was his
only
client.

“Did she pay her bill?”

“She’s paying it off monthly.”

“If she mails in a check, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know where it was postmarked.”

“I was just gonna suggest that,” Lula said. “I thought of that, too.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Kloughn said. “I was thinking the same thing.”

A woman rapped on Kloughn’s open door and stuck her head in. “The dryer at the far end don’t work. It took all my quarters, and now it’s just doing nothing. And on top of that, I can’t get the door open.”

“Hey,” Lula said, “do we look like we care? This man’s an attorney-at-law. He don’t give a rat’s ass about your quarters.”

“This happens all the time,” Kloughn said. He pulled a form from his top desk drawer. “Here,” he said to the woman. “Fill this out and the management will refund your money.”

“They gonna comp your rent for that?” Lula asked Kloughn.

“No. They’ll probably evict me.” He looked around the room. “This is my third office in six months. I had an accidental wastebasket fire in my first office that sort of spread throughout the building. And the office after that got condemned when there was a toilet incident above it and the roof caved in.”

“Public restroom?” Lula asked.

“Yes. But I swear it wasn’t me. I’m almost positive.”

Lula looked at her watch. “It’s my lunchtime.”

“Hey, how about if I go to lunch with you guys,” Kloughn said. “I have some ideas on this case. We could talk about it over lunch.”

Lula cut her eyes to him. “Haven’t got anybody to eat lunch with, hunh?”

“Sure, I’ve got lots of people to eat lunch with. Everybody wants to eat lunch with me. I didn’t make any plans for today, though.”

“You’re an accident waiting to happen,” Lula said. “We eat lunch with you we’ll probably get food poisoning.”

“If you were really sick I could get you some money,” he said. “And if you died it would be
big
money.”

“We’re only getting fast food,” I said.

His eyes lit up. “I
love
fast food. It’s always the same. You can count on it. No surprises.”

“And it’s cheap,” Lula said.

“Exactly!”

He put a small
out to lunch
sign in his office window and locked the door behind himself. He climbed into the backseat of the CR-V and leaned forward.

“What are you, part golden retriever?” Lula asked. “You’re breathing on me. Sit back in your seat. Put your seat belt on. And if you start drooling, you’re outta here.”

“Boy, this is fun,” he said. “What are we going to eat? Fried chicken? Fish sandwich? Cheeseburger?”

Ten minutes later, we pulled out of the McDonald’s drive-thru, loaded with burgers and shakes and fries.

“Okay, here’s what I think,” Kloughn said. “I think Evelyn isn’t far away. She’s nice but she’s a mouse, right? I mean, where’s she gonna go? How do we know she’s not at her grandma’s?”

“Her grandmother is the one who hired me! She’s going to lose her house.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot.”

Lula looked at him in the rearview mirror. “What’d you do, go to one of them offshore law schools?”

“Very funny.” He did another tie-smoothing thing. “It was a correspondence course.”

“Is that legal?”

“Sure, you take tests and everything.”

I pulled into the Laundromat parking lot and stopped. “Here we are, back from lunch,” I said.

“Already? But it’s too short. I didn’t even finish my fries,” he said. “And after that I have a pie to eat.”

“Sorry. We have work to do.”

“Yeah? What kind of work? Are you going out after someone dangerous? I bet I could help.”

“Don’t you have lawyer things to do?”

“It’s my lunch hour.”

“You wouldn’t want to tag along,” I said. “We’re not doing anything interesting. I was going back to Evelyn’s house and maybe talk to some of her neighbors.”

“I’m good at talking to people,” he said. “That was one of my best courses . . . talking to people.”

“Don’t seem right to kick him out before he eats his pie,” Lula said. She looked over the seatback at him. “You gonna eat that whole thing?”

“Alright, he can stay,” I said. “But no talking to people. He has to stay in the car.”

“Like I’m the wheel guy, right?” he said. “In case you have to make a fast getaway.”

“
No
. There will be no fast getaways. And you’re not the wheel guy. You don’t drive.
I
drive.”

“Sure. I know that,” he said.

I rolled out of the lot, found Hamilton Avenue, and
took it to the Burg, left-turning at St. Francis Hospital. I wound my way through the maze of streets and came to an idle in front of Evelyn’s house. The neighborhood was quiet at midday. No kids on bikes. No porch sitters. No traffic to speak of.

I wanted to talk to Evelyn’s neighbors, but I didn’t want to do it with Lula and Kloughn tagging along. Lula scared the hell out of people. And Kloughn made us look like religious missionaries. I parked the car at the curb, Lula and I got out, and I pocketed the key. “Let’s just take a look around,” I said to Lula.

She cut her eyes to Kloughn, sitting in the backseat. “You think we should crack a window for him? Isn’t there a law about that sort of thing?”

“I think the law applies to dogs.”

“Seems like he fits in there, somehow,” Lula said. “Actually, he’s kind of cute, in a white bread kind of way.”

I didn’t want to go back to the car and open the door. I was afraid Kloughn would bound out. “He’ll be okay,” I said. “We won’t be that long.”

We walked to the porch, and I rang the bell. No answer. Still couldn’t see in the front window.

Lula put her ear to the door. “I don’t hear anything going on in there,” she said.

We walked around the house and looked in the kitchen window. The same two cereal bowls and glasses were on the counter next to the sink.

“We need to look around inside,” Lula said. “I bet the house is lousy with clues.”

“No one has a key.”

Lula tried the window. “Locked.” She gave the door
the once-over. “Of course, we’re bounty hunters and if we think there’s some bad guy in there we have the right to bust the door apart.”

I’ve been known to bend the law a little from time to time, but this was a multiple fracture. “I don’t want to ruin Evelyn’s door,” I said.

I saw Lula eye the window.

“And I don’t want to break her window. We’re not acting as bond enforcement here, and we have no ground for forced entry.”

“Yeah, but if the window broke by accident it would be neighborly of us to investigate it. Like, maybe we could fix it from the inside.” Lula swung her big black leather shoulder bag in an arc and smashed the window. “Oops,” she said.

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the door. I took a deep breath and told myself to stay calm. Sure, I’d like to yell at Lula and maybe choke her, but what would that accomplish? “You’re going to pay to have that window fixed,” I told her.