Authors: Jeffrey Allen
Popped Off (7 page)
17
We walked out of the building and back out into the morning sunshine and heat. Carly asked if she could go play in one of the massive soccer goals while we talked, and I told her sure. I watched her sprint across the grass.
“Why the hell would he take the trophies?” I asked.
“I really have no idea, Deuce,” Belinda said, leaning against the building. “Not a clue.”
“They aren’t expensive, are they?”
“As many as we buy, they end up being less than a buck a trophy,” she said. “It’s a minimal cost.”
“So what could he possibly do with them?”
“No clue.”
“And how would he get them out of here?”
Belinda shrugged. “Guy that delivered them had a twenty-five-foot U-Haul. Big truck.”
I nodded. Someone would have noticed a truck like that pulling into Lake Park. Unless it had been the middle of the night.
“Maybe someone broke in,” I said.
She pointed at the door. The lock looked perfect.
“Maybe someone else has a key,” I said.
“I had to leave my driver’s license at the city rec office just to get the key to come over here and show you,” she said. “There is one spare key, and Huber has it.”
My head hurt. I couldn’t put any of it together. The pieces didn’t fit. The gambling and the money did, but a bunch of cheap trophies for kids?
That didn’t fit.
“Okay,” I said. “Can you get me the delivery guy’s info? And the contact info for the trophy company?”
“Sure,” she said. “But I’m telling you it’s him. Huber took ’em.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do, Deuce,” she said. “Something wasn’t right with him the last few weeks. He was acting goofy and nervous. And I’m telling you, no one else could get in here. Who would want them?”
No one I could think of. Most of the coaches complained about even having to pick them up. We avoided it at all costs, cajoling a parent to do it for us. And they were cheap. They’d break at the drop of a hat. So it wasn’t like they’d be worth anything on the black market.
No, I didn’t have a clue as to what Moises Huber would want with thirteen hundred cheap soccer trophies.
18
We said good-bye to Belinda, and she promised to e-mail me the trophy info I’d asked her for. I really wasn’t sure what good it would do me, because I agreed with Belinda. It might not make much sense that Huber took the trophies, but he was the overwhelming choice to have done so.
Carly and I spent the rest of the day at the pool. She’d been good the previous two days, while I’d been occupied with trying to figure out where Huber was, but she was starting to pull a bit more on me, and that meant she needed my attention. She wasn’t a high-maintenance kid, and I had learned over the years that if she was pulling on me, it meant that I’d been ignoring her.
So we did cannonballs and got McDonald’s for lunch and built a giant Lego farm and ate ice cream and made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Julianne came home to a messy house but laughed when she saw us both with aprons on, covered in melted cheese.
And that was one more reason I loved Julianne. She didn’t complain when things weren’t perfect when she came home. She seemed to sense when we needed a totally disorganized day, and was happy to catch the tail end of it.
It was a good day.
As was the rest of the week. We swam. We went to camp. We goofed off. Summers were when I most appreciated being a dad. Schedules went out the window, and I could just enjoy time with my daughter without anything getting in the way.
I poked around, looking for a bit more on Huber, but didn’t come up with anything. The Internet gave me nothing, and I couldn’t find any other leads. But I’d learned from Victor to be patient. Sometimes the case had to come to you.
Friday morning I dropped Carly at my parents’ house. Julianne and I weren’t leaving until that evening, but any chance they had to spend with Carly, they tried to drag out for as long as possible.
Carly sprinted out of the minivan and onto my parents’ front porch. My dad was in his swinging chair, and she launched herself onto his lap. He hugged her, whispered something into her ear, causing her eyes to widen.
“You offer her cash if she doesn’t tell me about all the stuff you buy her this weekend?” I asked, coming up the stairs.
“None of your beeswax,” he said, setting Carly down. “What goes on in my house stays in my house.”
“We’re on the porch.”
“Watch yourself. I can still take you out.”
“Right.”
Carly slithered by me and disappeared into the house.
“Gonna go spend your wife’s money at the casino, huh?” my dad asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Shut up.”
“Watch yourself.”
I leaned against the weathered railing. “We’re just going up for the night.”
“So nice of her to carry your big butt around like that.”
My father never passed up the opportunity to needle me about staying at home. And I never passed up the opportunity to let it stick me.
“Whatever,” I said, lacking a better response. “You know anything about New Spirit?”
“The church?”
“Yeah.”
“You looking for Jesus?”
“No.”
“Maybe the Lord is calling to you?”
“Dad.”
He chuckled. Nothing gave him more pleasure than giving me a hard time.
“I don’t know much about it,” he said. “Know a few people who attend. They seem to like it just fine. Think your mother got invited once or twice. We declined.”
My parents were longtime members of the local Methodist church. Asking them to attend anywhere else was like asking them to move to Kenya. Wasn’t gonna happen.
“You ever met the pastor?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Haywood, right?”
“Haygood.”
“Same difference,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve ever said hello to him. Seen him around, of course. Can’t say I’ve ever heard anything bad about the man.” He studied me. “Why?”
“Just a thing I’m working on.”
“Ah. You playing Inspector Clouseau?”
“Ha.”
He chuckled again. Small things like bad jokes made his day.
“Just looking for a guy that works there,” I said.
“That the soccer fella?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
He shrugged. “Aw, ya know. Word gets around.”
I shook my head. He and his buddies were like a group of old women. Nothing went on in Rose Petal without them getting wind of it.
“Heard he took a bundle from Carly’s soccer thing.”
“Looks like he did, yeah.”
“Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if no one played soccer.” He wrinkled his nose. “Stupid game.”
I was beginning to think soccer was the most hated sport in America. Or at least in Rose Petal. “Your granddaughter would be devastated.”
His mouth twisted. “Well, yeah. There’s that. But still. There’s no scoring. And their socks are too high.”
“Good reasons to abolish a sport, Dad.”
He leaned back in his chair. “This Huber fella . . . That’s the guy, right?”
I nodded.
“He got kicked out of his regular game.”
“Regular game?”
My dad nodded. “Poker. And not some sissy game like you play in, where they play old maid, or whatever the hell it is you clowns play.”
“We don’t play old maid.”
“Slapjack, whatever. It ain’t poker.”
My father’s poker-playing sensibilities were offended because we played a whole variety of games based on poker, but they weren’t necessarily traditional forms. We invited him one time, and he was horrified.
“So he got kicked out?” I asked, trying to get him back on track.
“Yep, that’s what I heard.”
“Who played in the game?”
My dad shrugged. “Not exactly sure. Think your neighbor down the way. Guy with the truck.”
“Joel?”
“Yeah, think so, but I can’t remember.”
“Why’d he get kicked out?”
“They got tired of taking his IOUs.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“They were playing for that kinda money?”
“Told ya it wasn’t the old lady game you play in.”
A couple of crows buzzed the porch.
“Yeah, but they played for that kind of money? That required IOUs?”
“Guess so.”
The birds buzzed by again. I knew our game was small. We all tossed twenty bucks in and played on that. No one won a ton, but no one lost a bunch, either. It sounded not only like Huber was playing in a game that had high stakes, but also like he was overmatched in it. And if they’d kicked him out, he still owed them money.
Everything kept coming back to gambling and money.
My dad stood and steadied the swinging chair behind him.
“You probably won’t like the casino,” he said, heading for the house.
“Why’s that?”
“They don’t have Go Fish.”
He cackled all the way into the house.
19
I went home and spent the rest of the day tying up loose ends around the house. Dishes, laundry, bills, vacuuming. Which meant we could come back from Oklahoma to a clean house and not worry about having to do anything. Those were the little things you learned when you stayed at home, but never appreciated prior to that. And those were the things I tried never to say out loud, for fear of losing my man card.
I sent Victor an e-mail telling him about the missing trophies and about the poker issues. I’d held off on telling him because I wanted to see if I could come up with a link myself. It felt like I was always leaning on him to put things together, and it bugged me. I worked them through my head while getting the house squared away, but nothing clicked. It was frustrating. I felt like I’d learned a bunch of new things about Huber, but was nowhere closer to figuring out exactly what was going on with him. The only thing I felt sure about was that he definitely had some money issues. And it sure looked like he had some sort of gambling problem. I could see how that might lead to him stealing money, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he might run off with a bunch of crappy trophies.
Julianne came home early, and I pushed the thoughts of Moises Huber out of my head so we could enjoy the two-hour drive north to the Oklahoma border.
Except the traffic out of Dallas on a Friday afternoon was murder, and we ended up doing about fifteen miles per hour for the first hour.
“Have we ever gone to a casino together?” Julianne pondered from the passenger seat as we inched forward in the stop-and-go traffic.
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ve been to Vegas without me.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t invite me,” she accused.
“I believe you said, ‘Vegas is filled with hookers and cigarettes. Why would anyone go there?’”
“Still. I didn’t receive an invitation.”
“It was for a bachelor party,” I reminded her.
She smirked. “I’m not debating the reason for the trip. I’m simply pointing out I wasn’t invited.”
“Well, I know it’s weighed on you forever, so that’s why I thought I should make up for it this weekend.”
“So Comanche River is just like Caesars Palace?”
“Very similar.”
“It will sate my desire to go to Las Vegas?”
“Yes. It’s exactly like Las Vegas.” I paused. “Only in Oklahoma.”
“That doesn’t sound . . . right.”
I laughed. “My only goal is to make you happy and give you what you think you’re missing.”
She laughed and squeezed my hand.
We drove in silence for a while, the radio playing quietly. It was one of the things I enjoyed most about my wife. She didn’t have to make chatter just to hear herself talk. We could sit there and be content with the quiet.
“What do you want to name the baby?” she asked as the traffic started to open up.
“The baby? You’re pregnant now?”
“I’m going to be.”
“Of course you are. How about we conceive first, then plan the name?”
“Negative, Ghost Rider,” she said. “I’m going to be pregnant very soon, so we should start discussing these things.”
“Why? You’ve stated in the past that you have ninety-five percent of the naming rights, due to your ability to carry the child. That leaves me with only an irrelevant five percent.”
“True,” she admitted. “But I like to make you feel included.”
“Fine. Chuck and Sally.”
“You aren’t taking this seriously.” She squeezed my hand tighter. “I’ll cut your irrelevant rights to three percent for that if you’re not careful.”
“Hurt me.”
“Names, please, Mr. Driver.”
I glanced out the window as we passed the University of North Texas athletic complex. “If it’s a boy, Kellen.”
“What is a Kellen?”
“It’s a name.”
“Name of what?”
“A boy.”
“And whom else?”
I rolled my eyes. “Jeez, Jules. I dunno. You asked me for a name. I gave you one.”
“You know, it’s harder for me to conceive if I’m stressed out.”
She was switching tracks faster than a race-car driver.
“Uh. Okay.”
“And right now you’re not doing much to keep my stress levels down when I’m trying to talk to you about the baby.”
“Maybe we should stop for beer.”
“Alcohol is actually a conception inhibitor. So no.”
“Wait.” I glanced in her direction. “You won’t be drinking tonight?”
“No.”
“What if I wanted to have drunk sex with you?”
She leaned over in the seat and placed her hand on my thigh. “I don’t need to be drunk to be fantastic in bed.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
Her fingers dug into my thigh. “Do you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You shouldn’t drink, either,” she said. “It lowers your sperm count.”
“I like it when you talk dirty.”
Her hand slid higher on my thigh, and my spine straightened.
“Just wait till we get there,” she purred.
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