Ting-A-Ling (9 page)

Louie shook his head and sipped. “Something’s up. I know you’re not a fan of Manning, but he doesn’t waste time, he’s good.”

“Well, he sure as hell wasted my time today, that’s for damn sure.”

“And you said you talked to Paris?”

“Well, yeah.”

Louie must have picked up on my tone and he shot me a look. “What the hell does that mean? What’d you do, Dev?”

“Nothing, really. He was just being a prick is all and we may have exchanged some words.”

“Anything else?” He looked at me like my dad used to do when he already knew about whatever stupid stunt I’d pulled.

“I may have sort of pushed him or something.”

“Define something?”

“Okay, he yelled at me, called me names. I sort of grabbed him and maybe splashed some water on him.”

“What?”

“It just sort of happened, the water was running in the kitchen sink, he was being a jerk and well…”

“Water?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ, is he okay? Did you try to drown him? Water board? What? I mean, was he breathing?”

“Oh yeah, nothing like that. He might have been, you know, burned, sort of, a little bit pink, maybe. But he was alive and mostly okay when I left.”

“Exactly how hot was it? Scalding?”

“I guess it could have been.”

“Are you kidding me, scalding? Where did you do this, his house? His office? A men’s room?”

“Casey’s.”

“Casey’s?”

“That joint that closed a couple of years back, you remember? Turns out jerk-off Paris owns the place, or at least the building. He was in there cooking up his Bar-B-Que sauces. See, apparently he’s started this business called LuSifer’s…”

“Wait a minute, Casey’s, you mean the place that just burned down the other night?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, Christ Dev. Casey’s burned down a couple of days ago. The whole thing, the fire, it’s under investigation.”

I suddenly remembered the images in Manning’s file. One of them had the tale end of a car sticking out from beneath a pile of rubble. Had I seen a Mercedes logo on the trunk of that car? I wasn’t sure, maybe I was making that up. After all, I’d been looking at the damn images upside down.

“Perfect timing once again, Dev. You’re there, assaulting the sleaziest con-man in town and the next thing you know the place gets burned to the ground.”

“How would Manning even know I’d been there?”

“Gee, let me think, maybe for starters Renee Paris told him.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Danielle still hadn’t answered
any of my phone calls. I placed two more last night while Louie and I sat at the bar and tried to figure out what in the hell was going on. We never did come up with anything. I sent her a text message before I went to bed and another one when I woke up this morning. I got nothing back in return for my trouble.

I was beginning to wonder if maybe Renee Paris had somehow gotten hold of her. Maybe he was desperate enough or just plain mad enough to break into that museum she lived in. Or, maybe he followed her to one of her
‘beautiful people’
soirees and chose a convenient place to grab her. I decided to drive over to her house to see if she was okay, check the place out and well, offer any other service she might be in need of.

Danielle’s red-brick Victorian barn sat on the corner lot of a street filled with similar Victorian barns. When the place had been built, over a century ago, it had been situated on a bluff that overlooked the rooftops of a tranquil working class neighborhood made up of German and Czech families. They worked in the breweries, green houses and bakeries. They built churches, raised families and in general added to the quality of life in our growing river town. Their tree lined streets beneath the bluff flowed lazily off in the distance toward the Mississippi river.

Forty years ago the state, in its wisdom, slashed through the tranquil neighborhood with a four lane freeway and thirty foot high concrete sound barriers. The din from the traffic of folks racing past twenty-four/seven provided a constant undercurrent of mechanical screech. Thirty years ago Dutch elm disease wiped out all the trees along the streets and denuded the entire neighborhood. The view of the river valley was cut in half ten years ago by a new hundred-foot concrete tower belching smoke from the power plant. Such is progress.

The heater was working in the Lincoln as I pulled in front of Danielle’s home. I phoned her from the comfort of my front seat.

“Hi, thanks for calling, but I’m unable to take your call right now. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you just as soon as possible. Bye, bye.”

“Danielle, Dev Haskell. Give me a call. I want to make sure you’re all right,” I said then hung up. God, I didn’t want to step outside my car. It was about eight degrees below zero and windy. The wind chill was something like minus twenty, but out I went anyway, just to be a good guy.

I damn near died of exposure on her front porch after ringing the doorbell a half dozen times and waiting for someone to answer the door. Then I walked around the entire house. The place looked secure, no open or broken windows, the back door and a side door were securely locked. There weren’t any footprints in the snow suggesting someone had been casing the place or had tried to break in. I attempted to look in the garage, but the windows had been blacked out and both the overhead and the side garage doors were locked.

I went back onto her front porch and rang the door bell again. Her mail dropped into a slot next to the front door. I peered into the front entry through the beveled glass panels on either side of the door, but I couldn’t spot anything that looked like a pile of mail. I don’t know, maybe she was at a yoga class or she had scurried back to Tuscany with girlfriends. I was just about frozen stiff so I hurried back into my car and fired it up. Thankfully, the heat came on a minute or two later.

I decided I would drive past Casey’s and look at the rubble. I was thinking about the news cast I caught for all of a few seconds the other night. The images of the firemen with the icicles hanging from their helmets must have been the fire at Casey’s.

I circled the block where the building used to stand. I drove around twice. There wasn’t much to see. We’d had an inch or two of snow each of the past few nights, not much, but enough to cover everything. Now the site was just a series of gently rolling little piles of rubble. The occasional beam stuck out a few feet into the air, but there was nothing that would really grab your attention.

One thing caught my eye. There wasn’t the rear end of a car to be found, anywhere. I guessed the police probably pulled the thing out and brought it to the crime lab to run more tests.

When I got back to the office I went online and watched the archive footage of the news reports, then went through the articles in both the St. Paul and Minneapolis papers. I didn’t read anything I didn’t already know. The building was a total loss. There was no mention of Renee Paris anywhere in the articles or the newscast.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I searched online to
try and get a handle on where Renee Paris may have landed. The only thing I could find was outdated information directing me to the vacant, soon-to-be foreclosed structure over by the Witches Hat tower.

A sleaze ball like Paris, there had to be a million places he could hide. The only thing I was pretty sure of was, wherever he ended up, it would be high class. I fooled around online for another few hours and came up with absolutely nothing. I didn’t want to be a pest, or a bigger pest than I’d already been, so I didn’t phone Danielle. If she hadn’t responded to the half dozen phone messages or any of my text messages I figured one more wasn’t going to do the trick. I phoned Heidi instead.

“Hi, Dev, and no, I’m busy tonight.”

“What?”

“You heard me, I’m busy. I’m out with the girls.”

“The girls? Or some new, self-absorbed flake who’ll drive you nuts before the night is over. Who was the last guy? That Waldo character.”

“Oh, jealous? His name was Destin, by the way, and yeah, he did kind of look like Waldo, didn’t he?”

“He always wore that red and white stripped shirt that even said,
‘Where’s Waldo?’
. I don’t know, you tell me.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. The answer is still no. Really I’m going out with the girls. We’re all meeting at Bunnies.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Why? Don’t tell me
you’ve
been there? It’s kind of classy. I didn’t think it was the sort of place you would…”

“No, I haven’t been there. As a matter of fact someone called me from the ladies room there.”

“No thanks, I don’t need to hear another one of your perverted stories, Dev, so just stop right there.”

“That’s it, she just called me. Said my name was written on the door of the stall in the Ladies room. One of those
‘For a good time call’
sort of deals.”

“Oh, you’re kidding, that is sort of funny. Why did you do that? Write your name in the Ladies room.”

“I didn’t write my name in the Ladies room, some other idiot did.”

“Hmm-mmm, we’ll have to check it out. Anyway, some other time, darling.”

I’d fallen asleep on my couch watching a rerun of a Netflix movie I hated the first time I watched it when my phone rang.

“Hello, Haskell In…”

“Oh, good, you’re still up.” It was Heidi. Guessing from the ‘Woo-hoo-hoo’ noise in the background she was still out with her girlfriends.

“Umm, yeah, just going over some files here.”

“Sure you were. Hey, are you okay to give me a lift? I just think I probably shouldn’t drive. I mean, as long as you haven’t been drinking. If that’s okay?”

Not really, but it beat sleeping on the couch in front of this stupid movie. And of course the added potential of a Heidi benefit. “Yeah, where are you? You still down at Bunnies?”

“Yep,” she said then I heard what sounded like her taking a very large sip of something I figured wouldn’t be lemonade.

“You just stay there, I’m on the way. I’ll come in and get you.”

“Thanks, bye, bye, bye,” she said and returned to the festivities.

I walked into Bunnies about a half-hour later. The place was just about empty, after all, most normal people were either working tomorrow or looking for work and they’d all gone home by now.

“Sorry, sir, we’ve already had last call,” the bartender said. He carried two stacks of pint beer glasses, one in each hand. Each stack looked to be about thirty glasses high and rose above his shoulders. He kept moving toward a corner of the bar and added the glasses to the dozens already arranged on the counter.

“Not a problem, just here to pick someone up,” I said, then pointed at the group of five women seated at the only occupied table in the place.

“Oh, thanks, man.” He sounded like he really meant it and continued stacking glasses.

Their table was littered with a number of different colored paper bags with bits of fancy tissue hanging out of them. The bags probably contained little gifts they could all complain about when they got home. I noticed what looked like a number of empty Prosecco bottles scattered amongst the bags and thought,
‘Oh-oh.’

“Hi, Heidi,” I said. I had to repeat myself over the high pitched laughing. “Heidi, your limo awaits.”

Heidi turned, looked up at me bleary eyed and slowly focused. “Hi, Dev, perfect timing it’s your turn to buy.”

Everyone giggled and reached for their glasses.

“Yeah, not that I didn’t already try, but unfortunately they’ve had last call and I can’t. I really wish I could, honest. Nothing I’d like to do more than buy a round.”

“You sure?”

“Very.”

“Well, come on girls, our ride is here. We’ll just go somewhere else.” She giggled then drained close to half a glass. They all followed suit and slowly got to their feet, pulling on coats and hats. Apparently, I was going to be everyone’s designated driver.

“Where are you parked?” Heidi asked.

“Outside,” I said, which seemed to satisfy her.

“Thank you, thanks, bye, bye,” they all chorused to the bartender as they filed past on the way out the door.

“Thanks ladies,” he said. Then looked at me, nodded and seemed to wish a silent
‘good luck’
.

Paper bags and tissue rustled as they made their way into the winter night. Once outside the fifteen below temp slapped us in the face. Everyone scurried across the parking lot toward my car, giggling.

One of the girls said, “Oh my God you guys, look at his car, you’re kidding. What’s with these doors? And what’s gone on in this back seat?”

“They’re called suicide doors. They’re coming back in style. Hop in, ladies, before we all die of exposure.”

This was followed by loud, collective laughter.

It was forty minutes later when we dropped the last one off, Karen. She said the same thing all the others had as they exited. “Bye, thanks for the ride, Dev. Call me tomorrow, Heidi, we’ll talk.” Meaning, I guessed, a lot more than simple, casual conversation. I drove off once she made it in her front door.