Stay At Home Dead (16 page)

Authors: Jeffrey Allen

BOOK: Stay At Home Dead

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The image of Billy’s mouth all over Shayna creeped me out the entire drive to Carly’s school.

It wasn’t that I thought either of them was above having an affair. In fact, they both seemed exactly the type. While I thought Odell’s remarks about sleeping with her were a bit odd and I would never see why anyone would be attracted to Odell, never for a moment did I think he was lying.

And Billy was just the sort of guy to overlook a marriage license when pursuing a woman.

I just hadn’t figured that they would be doing it together.

So to speak.

As I unbelted Carly and helped her jump out of the van, I tried to expunge the image from my head.

Carly skipped all the way to the front door of her classroom. I hoped she would feel the same way about school when she was sixteen, but knew that was wishful thinking.

Sally Meadows sidled up to me as I signed Carly in. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you ready for tonight?”

I set the pen down on the clipboard. “As ready as I’m getting, I guess.”

“Those women are frothing, waiting to get at you. Just keep your wits about you and you’ll be f ine.” She swept her eyes over the classroom to make sure no one was in a headlock. “I’ve been putting the good word out for you. You’ll have some support in the room.”

“Thanks, Sally. I appreciate it.”

“Just try not to get knocked out tonight.” She made a beeline for a little boy who was about to snack on some finger paint.

I stepped out of the room and nearly knocked over Detective Willie Bell.

He puffed out his chest. “Mr. Winters.”

“Detective.”

“Wanted to ask you about the other night.”

“I answered questions for one of your guys at the hospital.”

He nodded. “Yes, sir. Just wanted to get my own take.”

I moved over to the window. Carly was jabbering in another little girl’s ear. “Okay.”

“See anything?”

“No. Got hit from behind.”

“Hear anything?”

“Yes. My wife on the cell phone, telling me to look out.”

“So she saw something?”

Carly and the girl she was talking to dissolved into laughter. “Not really. It was dark.”

He stood next to me at the window, his posture ramrod straight and his eyes solely on me. He was like a dorky robot.

“Wanna know what I think?” he asked.

“Not particularly.”

“I think you’re making it up.”

I let his words burn slowly through my head. It shouldn’t have surprised me or made me angry. But it did both.

I turned to him. “You what?”

“I think you made it up,” he said, smiling like he knew something I didn’t.

“You’re insane,” I said.

“Staged the whole thing,” he said. “You were even smart enough to have your wife call so there’d be a record of the conversation.”

“And then what? I took a bat to my own head?”

“Maybe you didn’t even get hit,” he suggested, shoving out his bottom lip. “Not hard to fake a concussion.”

I turned and pointed to the lump on the back of my head. “What do you think that is? A tumor?”

I whipped back around. I knew the lump was clearly visible. For a moment, his resolve wavered.

Not for long, though. “Maybe your wife hit you. If she made the call, she was already in on it.”

Carly and the other girl were now chasing each other, their hands covered in paint. Sally was attempting to corral them.

“And tell me exactly why I would allow my wife to take a swing at me,” I said. “Because I’m missing that part.”

“You didn’t wanna go to your big meeting last night,” Bell said. “You knew that you were going to lose your position, and you thought you’d postpone the proceedings, maybe make people feel a little sorry for you.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You can run, Winters, but you can’t hide.”

“That makes no sense,” I said. “If you’re gonna speak in clichés, at least use ones that fit the bull your spewing.”

Pink splotches blossomed across his forehead. “You know what I mean.”

The door to the classroom swung open, and Carly and the other girl charged out, screaming with glee, their painted hands up in the air. Sally spilled out into the hallway behind them. “Girls!”

“Daddy!” Carly said, making a beeline right for me, her palms up.

Her pal followed right on her footsteps.

I stepped to the side and caught Carly around the waist before she could plant her hands on me. The other little girl had no one to stop her, and she planted her hands on the first thing she ran into.

Detective Willie Bell’s pants.

Two bright purple handprints right on his groin.

Their screaming died off immediately, the way it does when kids know something has gone awry and punishment may follow. Sally covered her mouth, her expression a mix of consternation and amusement. Detective Bell looked down at the fresh coat of paint on his pants, the pink splotches growing on his face by the second.

I smiled at Carly’s friend. “And who are you?”

She tucked her chin down to her chest, a shy grin on her face. “Charlotte.”

“Her name is Charlotte, Daddy,” Carly reiterated, in case I missed it the first time around.

“Charlotte, I think you and I are gonna be friends,” I told her.

She giggled.

“Girls, let’s go back in our room and clean up,” Sally said, taking each of them by the wrist. She looked at Bell. “I’m very sorry.” She herded the little artists back inside her classroom.

Bell’s face was turning into a tomato as he looked from his pants to me and back to his pants.

“You know what I think?” I asked him.

“What?” he said between clenched teeth.

“Purple on you,” I said, pretending to think about it. “Purple on you is just nuts.”

Victor Anthony Doolittle was pacing between his MG and my minivan when I stepped out into the parking lot.

He looked up as I approached, his forehead wrinkled in thought beneath the fedora. “What took you so long?”

“I was in there maybe fifteen minutes.”

“Normally takes you seven.”

I hated that he knew my life better than I did. “I didn’t know we had an appointment this morning.”

“We didn’t.” He rubbed his chin. “But something’s come up, and I knew you’d be here.”

Several cars drove past us, out of the lot. “Okay. What’s up?”

He took the fedora off and scratched the top of his head. “Well, I’m not exactly sure.”

I leaned against the van and let him work it out.

“See, things have kind of crossed paths,” he f i-nally said. “I did not anticipate that, and it’s rare that I don’t anticipate things.”

“Do you anticipate me driving away if you don’t start making sense?” I asked.

“I anticipate you staying right there and listening to me.”

“Then quit talking like someone who just learned a bunch of new words.”

He held his hands out, indicating that I needed to settle down. “Easy, Stilts.”

I kept my mouth closed.

“I did some looking on our guy,” he explained. “Stenner?”

“Right.”

“Found him.”

“Great.”

His nose twitched. I resisted the urge to make a rabbit joke.

“But some of what I found on Stenner ...” His voice trailed off.

“Victor, you’ve got five seconds to spit it out or I’m outta here,” I said, exasperated. “I’ve got things to do.”

“Like what? Laundry?”

As a matter of fact.

“Stenner,” he said. “He’s a college kid. Twenty years old.”

“All right.”

“He teaches martial arts part-time,” Victor said. “Lives over in Duncan. Just a kid.”

I nodded, not that any of that made sense. We didn’t know for certain that he was the guy that hit me. But why was some part-time karate guy flying out of the Rettler-Mott parking lot after I’d eaten the pavement?

“Okay,” Victor said, holding up a short index finger. “I’ve made a decision.”

“About what?”

“I’m gonna tell you something,” he said. “But I need your word that it stays between us.”

“You have it.”

He held out his hand. “Shake on it. That way I’ll know you mean it.”

I shook his warm, clammy, action figure–like hand. “You have my word.”

He glanced around, as if someone might be eavesdropping. I couldn’t imagine anyone who’d want in on a conversation between a disgraced Room Dad and a dwarf private investigator.

“The guy who hired me,” he said, convinced we were alone. “To do the background check on you? Guy named Jimmy Landry.”

“The Tough Tykes guy?” I said.

“One and the same.”

All along, I had just assumed it was Billy Caldwell that hired him. Hearing Landry’s name really surprised me.

“Why?” I asked.

Victor shrugged. “Don’t know. I don’t ask why when I take a job. If it’s something I do, then I just do it. Less I know, the better.”

I expected a weird, shady vibe from Landry when I went to Tough Tykes, but ended up walking away impressed. Not just with the facility, but with him. He was nothing like I expected. So why was he interested enough in me to hire someone to check me out?

Which led to another question.

I looked at Victor. “Why are you telling me this? I thought it was against your code or something.”

“It is against my code,” he said. “Ethically, I’m doing the wrong thing by telling you this. Could ruin my reputation, if it gets out that I haven’t protected a client’s privacy.”

“So why tell me?”

The corners of his mouth twitched, and he again scanned the lot before letting his eyes settle on me again. “Because this Zeke Stenner? He works for Landry.”

“That’s where he teaches martial arts,” Victor said. “At Tough Tykes.”

I watched the parade of minivans and SUVs continue out of the school parking lot.

“The kid also has a record.”

“A record?”

“Nothing big,” Victor said, waving his hand in the air. “But he was charged with a misdemeanor last year. Some sort of fight and assault.”

“So it could’ve been him that hit me,” I said.

“All of it sorta fits together,” Victor said, nodding his head. “Him being here, you getting whacked, then him leaving.”

It did sorta fit together.

“But when I was checking on him this morning and saw where he worked, it just didn’t feel right,” Victor said, sucking in his cheeks. “You know this Landry guy?”

“Barely,” I said and explained my interaction with him.

Victor rubbed his chin. “He hired me before he spoke to you, then. What did you talk about?”

“Not much. He asked if I might be interested in a job. I didn’t say no.”

Victor shrugged. “Places like that do checks all the time on their employees. Working around kids, they gotta make sure you ain’t all touchy-feely.”

“But he hasn’t hired me yet. For anything. And why would he hire you before he’d even spoken to me?”

Victor hunched his small shoulders again, telling me that was his best guess.

I tried to back up. “Wait. Let’s go back to Stenner. Even if Landry hired you for the background check on me, why would one of his employees assault me?”

“I’m not saying he did,” Victor said, holding up an index finger. “I’m just saying there’s a connection and I thought it was weird. And I don’t like weird.”

Twenty-four hours ago I would’ve found a joke in that statement. But now it was starting to feel like Victor and I were on the same side.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“We?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “You got a pet rock in your pants? There is no we.”

“Come on,” I said.

“I’m serious,” he said, shaking his head. “I told you this as a courtesy. I am not in your employ at the moment.”

“The hell you aren’t,” I said. “We agreed on that last night.”

“No, you agreed to hire me to find out about Stenner,” he pointed out. “Which I’ve done. That was the deal. You want more than that, it’s gonna cost you. Business is business.”

I thought about that. The right thing to do would’ve been to call Julianne and let her know about Stenner and to discuss all of this in a reasonable, adult fashion.

But it wasn’t like she was used to me doing the right thing.

“Fine,” I said. “I wanna hire you. Again.”

He fidgeted with the fedora. “Okay.”

“On one condition.”

He sighed. “And what’s that?”

“We work together.”

“Together? What are you talking about?”

“I want in,” I said. “I wanna do a little investigating, too.”

He held up his hands. “No way. I work solo.”

“Cash up front,” I said.

His hands wavered. “Up front?”

I nodded. Everything the last few days had been happening to me. I’d been reactive, and I was tired of it. It was time to start being proactive.