Cooler Than Blood (7 page)

CHAPTER 9

I
survived the Chatty Patty show and headed to the Laundromat at the end of her street. If Jenny had dashed out to meet someone, and that someone had abducted her in a car, he—or she—most likely would have pulled into the Laundromat parking lot. I decided to drop anchor, throw a line in, and see if I got any bites.

It was vacant, and a lone dryer hummed a dissonant tone. A corner-ceiling TV was turned off. A fan whipped at high speed and threatened to lift the roof off. I claimed a metal chair and took out the picture of Jenny that Susan had given me. Senior portrait. Confident. Hair the color of sea oats at sunset. The flawless, silky cream skin of the young. Hazel eyes that looked like she’d grown up fast. Kathleen had hazel eyes; on different days, even different times of the same day, they changed colors, as if to foil me so that I could not answer even the simplest of questions; what color are her eyes?

A guy in a Badgers T-shirt came in. I flashed him the picture, and he said he didn’t recognize the girl and asked if she was my girlfriend or daughter. A lady with flabby arms who wore a Caribbean bluish-green sleeveless top was next. She went to the dryer, and no matter how I smiled or what I said, she was petrified of me. I felt bad for spoiling that special moment that was reserved for when she folded her clean, warm clothes.

I endured for an hour and talked to three other people. I received an offer for drinks, one to share a toke, and unsolicited advice. “Put her on the board,” said the thin man, who put his wash in with one hand while he held his beer with the other. “You’d be surprised. Everyone who comes in here looks at that thing. Anyone saw her, they’ll let you know. We’re a…” He paused to drain the rest of his beer in one act. “…pretty tight group around here.” He tossed the bottle into a green tin trash can, and it rattled off the inside.

I got Jenny’s picture out of my shirt pocket and found a pen under a table. I removed from the board someone’s faded notice that they did yard work, trimmed trees, and painted. References upon request. “Request” was spelled with a “g.” I turned the soiled paper over and scribbled on the back, “If anyone has seen this girl, Jenny Spencer, please call me. She’s missing and in possible danger.”

I took a picture of the picture with my cell.

I tacked Jenny’s picture onto the bulletin board next to a picture of “Sidney,” a calico cat that was AWOL. “Call Avery. Fifty dollars to whoever finds her.” Smiley faces in each corner. Heavy-stock paper. Strips of cut paper with a phone number hung at the bottom of the notice. A lot of pets in Florida are named Sidney; it’s a variation of Disney.

I left Jenny hanging next to Sidney and walked out the door. I made a mental note that when I found her, I would get her picture off the board. I couldn’t take the chance that she would ever go in that Laundromat and see herself like that.

And if I failed? Someone like me would eventually come along, turn my paper over to compose their own notice, see that it was used on both sides, and float Jenny Spencer into the green tin trash can.

At the condo, I ignored the indolent elevator and took nine fights of steps two at a time. Morgan sat cross-legged on a chair on the screened balcony. He faced a wall of black. At night, on the Gulf, there is nothing.

“Don’t tell me that you and fire engine lady didn’t ignite,” I said as I dropped into a chair behind a round glass table. I gently pushed the table away to allow myself more room.

“Teresa had to leave for a couple days. Nothing she could do about it. I told her I’d be back. Teresa Vittjen. It’s good karma when a woman matches her name. How’s the Jenny hunt coming?”

“Fade into You,” floated out of Morgan’s portable speakers. It’s a song that should never see the day; it belongs to the night and the water. I thought of Kathleen’s theory that the experience one has reading a book may be enhanced by one’s environment while reading. Music certainly affects us that way.

“No quick scores,” I said. “I don’t want to know the statistics for lost people who are eventually found alive if not located within the first twenty-four or forty-eight hours. Every tick of the clock, and her chances diminish.”

“Every beat of the second hand, and she’s closer to freedom.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“What’s next?” A cup of tea sat on the glass table, and the faint aroma of whiskey laced the air. The whiskey wasn’t in the essentials box, so I assumed he’d hit the liquor store at Santini Plaza after Fish Head.

“I need more information on the Coleman clan, but I don’t want to leave Jenny.”

“What makes you think she’s here?”

“She’s here. At the twenty-four-hour Laundromat, next to Sidney, listening to the ospreys and parrots.”

“Monk parakeets,” Morgan said, “also known as Quaker parrots. They’re not indigenous to the United States but were brought here as pets more than fifty years ago and released into the wild.” He took a sip of his tea. “They’re common in Florida but are hardy little creatures. Supposedly even Chicago has colonies of them. Who’s Sidney?”

“A cat.”

He let that go.

I went to the kitchen, poured a few shots of Maker’s Mark into a tumbler, and dropped in two cubes. I usually add a little Coke, but we didn’t have any. A pity. I returned to the patio, and we sat in silence. When Garrett and I are together, we fill the air with words. Morgan and I can—and often do—fill it with silence.

I’d never seen Jenny, never heard her voice, never touched her hand. I only knew her aunt, Susan, from a brief encounter at her bar and a dinner we shared afterward. Those brief moments held contempt for any dictum that stated time is a critical ingredient to friendship. Out of seven billion people, I—the only one who really knows what the hell is going on—had been the one to put Jenny on the bulletin board. In many ways, I wish I hadn’t. I’d made her my responsibility. No matter the outcome, I’d be the one who took her down from that board. I would not let that be a tragic moment. It’s not that I wanted to win; I have a strong aversion to failure.

I went inside and called Susan. After a brief conversation, I secured an airline ticket on my iPad. I went to tell Morgan, but he’d gone to bed. I sat on the porch until my thoughts dried up—an event that coincided with the last drop of bourbon in my tumbler. I left a note on the kitchen counter.

CHAPTER 10

T
he thump of the 737’s tires jolted me from a dream in which Larry Hagman was frantically pacing and protesting, “Who shot me? Who shot me?” What was his problem? Even my alarm clock—
especially
my alarm clock—Tinker Bell, knows that Bing Crosby’s daughter shot Peter Pan’s little boy.

After listening to Susan describe Jenny’s dysfunctional family, I doubted Jenny would ever again ford the Ohio River. But I wanted to learn more about the Colemans. Despite McGlashan’s assertion, they were physically too close to Jenny not to have
some
connection.

I also had a score to settle.

Even though I had preferred customer checkout for a rental car, I still had to wait as a lady in front of me wearing a cropped jean jacket lobbied for a convertible. They were out. She finally surrendered when the equally frustrated employee started answering her whining pleas in Spanish. She huffed away dragging a clacking suitcase with a busted wheel. The luggage tag read, “I come with baggage.” I snatched my keys to my rental, which was billed as full-size. My legs practically stuck through the front grille. An hour later, as the four-lane road sculptured down to two, I entered Wayne National Forest in Southeast Ohio. As I wound my way through the hills, every corner brought another picture. I also saw more highway patrol cars in a ten-mile stretch than I’d seen in Florida over the past year.

At the edge of Greenwood, a river snaked alongside the road, and a man with a pickup truck had pulled off by the bank and set up shop for the day. Hand-carved wooden bears and birds on stumps littered the ground around his pickup. I stopped. We chatted. I moved on. A half-mile closer to town a tall sign that read T
HE
S
ANDWICH
S
HOP
towered over barren pavement, weeds, and trash. Small towns don’t regenerate. I passed a community swimming pool, forked left across from a gas station with a produce stand on its lot, and stopped at a red light that hadn’t had a real job in years. Only one vehicle came from either side, and it went straight through. Snoopy hung from the rearview mirror, and the driver, in the middle of the intersection, spat a wad out his open window. Two more turns, and what passed as the town was well behind me.

A man was outside when my car crunched up the gravel driveway.

“What do you want?” he demanded before I shut my door.

He wore a sleeveless Browns T-shirt that, like the Browns, had peaked long ago. He was hunched over a Dodge Charger that was parked off to the side of a detached three-car garage. All three garage doors were open, and a dusty, blue, plastic canvas covered the top of a wooden boat. The trailer tongue was in the dirt. Whoever had backed it in was lazy. A gutter, with enough foliage in it that it needed a weed whacker, hung a foot below the roofline. No downspout. To my right was a house built into the side of a hill. The ground was a mixture of dirt and matted grass that rarely received the sun’s direct rays. I was at the low end of the AM dial.

He backed off from the Charger as I approached.

I asked, “Boone?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m looking for Jenny Spencer.”

“Who the hell are you?”

Some people do patience. They do it well and use it as an effective tool to meet their objectives. They insist you get more bees with honey. Maybe so, but my circuit board isn’t wired that way.

I marched straight into him and declared, “You walked in on her.” He dropped his right arm to his side, his fist tightened around a wrench.

“You got no—”

While he focused on my arms and upper body, my right foot went through his stomach as the tail of his words came through his lips. He doubled over on his knee, and I was behind him. I placed my right arm around his neck, brought my left hand up, and put him in a rear naked chokehold. My mouth was inches from his left ear. He smelled. Tobacco. Sweat. Skin that hadn’t been showered in a month of Sundays.

“I know you, Boone.” I eased up on the pressure; I didn’t want him to pass out. “Where is she?” He struggled to get oxygen into his lungs. “I’m waiting.”

“My son…be home soon.”

“He’s not yours—he’s Angie’s. God won’t let a man like you reproduce. It’s not in the best interest of humanity. Do you know where Jenny is?” I let up on the pressure.

“No,” he managed to grunt out. “She took off a week ago to Florida to live with Angie’s sister. She never even told us. We haven’t heard from her since. Cops called, said she ran south, did a number on some guy, and now she’s missing again.”

I squeezed.

“That’s all I know.”

“Where’s Angie?”

“At work.”

“While you dick around with a worthless set of wheels. You a man?”

“What?”

“Are you a man, Boone?”

“The hell you—”

“Say, no, Boone. Say, ‘I am not a man.’” I pressed my mouth up against his right ear. “I’m going to leave your little soldier in the front seat of that Charger. That’s what you get for parading it in front of her while she was in the shower. You want that?”

“I don’t know what—”

“Boone, Boone, Boone.” I shot whispers like miniature cannon shots in his ear. “You’ve got less than thirty seconds of manhood left unless you tell me the truth. Billy Ray Coleman.”

“What about him?”

I squeezed. For all I knew, he was telling the truth. But I needed the exercise. I moved my mouth to his left ear. “I’m over here now, Boone. Tell me what you know.”

“He came out of the oven too early. He’s not right.”

I squeezed harder. “You told the cops you didn’t know him.”

“Let me go, and I…” He kicked out his legs.

I slammed him onto the concrete dirt and fell on top of him, still gripping him in the chokehold. His face flopped so his right cheek was up. McGlashan had told me Boone and Angie had denied knowing the Colemans. My mouth was over his eye. “Tell me about him.”

“Just heard of him—that’s all.”

“You’re lying.”

“Never met him.”

I paused, and Boone picked up on my hesitation. “Let me up,” he said. “I told you everything I know.”

“Fine. Let’s converse.” I released my hold and stood. He rose and teetered away from me. When he did, my left foot sank into his stomach and punched his breath out of him. It was a light kick. I needed him to maintain cognitive conversational abilities. He reacquainted himself with the ground and shot me a look.

“What the hell?” he gasped.

“I changed my mind. I’d rather kick you senseless than hear your lies.” I took a step so that I was directly over him. I squatted on my knees. “I’m your last friend in the world, Boone. Talk to me, and I’ll let you go back to your asswipe life. But don’t make me earn it piecemeal.”

He got to his knees but rose no further. He glanced up at me as if seeing me for the first time. A ray of sun managed to split the trees and sear his eyes. He squinted and tilted his head to the side. I didn’t know if he was holding back, but his admission of some knowledge of Billy Ray, coupled with his apparent denial of such knowledge to the local sheriff, reeked of dishonesty.

I asked, “She ever know him?”

“Who?”

“I won’t ask again, Boone. I can
not
emphasize that enough.”

He blew his breath out, brought his hand up, and rubbed his neck. I stood and took a step back. He cut a glance at his Dodge Charger then at me. Priority time. “Not Billy Ray,” he said. He hesitated then started back up. “She spent a day with his brother Zach, but she never knew nothing ‘bout Zach’s family. Orry brought a friend on the old boat one day last summer, and that guy brought along Zach. I don’t think they even saw much of each other again. Orry don’t even know him. Don’t run with him, really. But Zach told Orry—they was talking, you know—that he had one and a half brothers. Older brother, Randall, and Billy Ray, who was never right. That’s the one she did in on the beach.”

“Jenny ever see any of the other Colemans?”

“No. Not that I know.”

“She ever mention Zach?”

“I told you—”

“Tell me again.”

“No. Far as I know, she never saw him or talked to him again. But she would know him from that day on the boat. They chatted, got along real fine. He was a good-lookin’ kid. I’m gonna stand. You gonna kick me again?”

“Let’s find out.”

He eyed me and rose slowly, taking a step back as he did. I was getting closer to finding Jenny. Paranoids don’t tolerate coincidences. There had to be some connections between Jenny’s disappearance and the remaining Colemans. “You told the sheriff you didn’t know any Colemans.”

Boone nodded like we were good friends. “I was protecting my family.”

I didn’t trust myself to respond to that. “If I find out you’ve lied or are holding back, I’ll return. Do you understand that, Boone?”

“I got friends, and—”

“You’ll be on your back under your car one quiet morning listening to the birds chirp. You’ll feel my hand on your ankle. Now is there anything else I should know?”

He cleared his throat and dropped his eyes. A squirrel with a nut the size of its head scurried behind him and rustled last fall’s leaves that still lay on the ground.

I asked, “Yes?”

“I think…” He coughed. “I think they, the Coleman brothers, are into chemistry, big time, if you know what I mean. That’s just what I heard.”

“Keep talking.”

“That’s it, man. Really. You pick stuff up, listening in the bars around town. What happened to her? Sheriff said she killed Billy Ray in self-defense, and then the Florida law called and said she just plain vanished. You think them other Colemans went after her?”

I gave him my card. “I’m touched. You suspect anything, you give me a call.”

“Why do you care?”

“You don’t get questions. For your sake, I hope I find her fast. Otherwise, I will bury you in that shower stall in the name of common justice. I believe I get a tax deduction if I waste you.”

He opened his mouth as if to speak then shut it.

I left Boone motionless by his Charger and stuffed myself into the rental car. I made one stop in town and decided that Greenwood was a fine place for what I was doing—leaving.

McGlashan had texted me the Colemans’ home address in response to my text to him the previous night. He had also said the Hocking County Sheriff’s office had paid the Colemans a visit yesterday, but no one was home. I wanted to take a look for myself. I’d just brought up directions on my phone when Kathleen called.

“Why aren’t you in the seat next to me?” I answered and took a bite out of an apple. I had bought it from a man in a plaid shirt at the produce stand. It was a challenge eating the apple, placing her on speaker, and navigating back to the map app. At least I wasn’t texting.

“Look hard—I’m there beside you,” she said. “Where are we?”

“Ohio.”

“Ohio?”

“Iroquois word. It’s south of Canada.”

“Not much isn’t. You take a wrong turn going over the bridge?”

I took another bite of the Royal Gala. “I need to look for some people who were the last to see Jenny and make certain she didn’t double back.”

“Is it possible she’s there—in Iroquois country?”

“Unlikely. I’m only giving it a day.”

“And then?”

“Good-bye, Columbus.”

“Think positive.”

“Hello, Kathleen?”

“I like that better.”

I lowered my window and tossed the core into the ditch. The roar of the road invaded the car and was sucked out just as quickly when I raised the glass.

“How’s Maugham?”

“Sleepy, but good.”

“That’s my recollection as well.”

“You’ve read it?”

“‘The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.’ Book’s worth it for that alone.”

An SUV blowing smoke and doing ten was suddenly in front of me. My right turn onto the Colemans’ driveway was a short distance ahead. I decided to settle behind the SUV instead of punching the pedal to pass on a two-lane road in a car that had less horsepower than Fred Flintstone’s. “Tell me about you,” I said.

“Sophia and I are painting my library.”

“And Sophia?”

“She hasn’t displayed any inclination to hunt you down with a butcher’s knife, if that’s what you’re asking. I think she’s relieved to be out of the marriage.”

Sophia Escobar and Kathleen had become close friends two minutes after they’d met. That was about a week before I—FBI Special Agent Natalie Binelli did the official act—put Sophia’s husband, Raydel, behind bars. He was in possession of the Cold War letter and was leveraging it as blackmail to reduce his IRS bill. He also was an unwilling participant in human trafficking. The “unwilling” part knocked a few years off his sentence.

I inquired, “Do you have any clothes on right now?”

“I thought we were discussing Sophia.”

“Does
she
have any clothes on right now?”

“Dream on.”

“Just curious.”

“Are you interested in my life,” she asked, “or just my body?”

“You think a man is capable of making that distinction? But if it makes you feel better, tell me about your life.”

“Well, since you’re so genuinely interested, we decided not to do an accent wall. I think that phase will pass and—”

“Kathleen?” I was at the Colemans’ drive, and there was a problem.

“I was—”

“I got company. Time to punch the clock.”

“You know, don’t you, that
my
interest in
you
is purely physical?”

“I like where this is going, so keep that thought.” I disconnected and pulled off to the side of the driveway. The Colemans’ house was set back about a hundred yards.

I don’t know how many sheriff’s and police cars Hocking County, Ohio, fielded, but I’d bet Kathleen’s first edition of
The Razor’s Edge
that every one was parked on the Colemans’ property. And if I was wrong?

Not my book.