Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery (20 page)

I drove well below the speed limit to annoy him, hoping he’d get frustrated or take the hint that I didn’t appreciate a police escort, but he stuck to my rear bumper like a trailer hitch until I turned into my driveway—where the motion-sensitive security lights were on. Someone or something had just been there.

I stopped short, and only O’Malley’s quick reflexes kept me from getting rear-ended. Now I was glad they’d followed me home. I parked at the base of my driveway as far to the right as I could to let the patrol car pass. O’Malley hopped out and came over to my side of the Jeep.

“Stay put, roll the window up, and lock the doors. We’ll take a look.” This was the side of O’Malley I rarely saw during our bantering matches at the diner. It said something that a few words from him made me feel safe, and even more that I hadn’t realized I
didn’t
feel safe before he’d said them.

At the top of the driveway O’Malley went left and the other cop went right, their elongated searchlights scouring the shrubs and dense foundation plantings. Then the two men disappeared behind my house. After a few minutes the timed security lights went off and my driveway was plunged into darkness. No light pollution in the sticks. I couldn’t see their flashlights anymore. I turned the car back on so my headlights would illuminate the driveway. Fifteen long minutes later, both men returned, once again setting off the security lights.

“All the doors and windows look secure. Nothing seems amiss. Coulda been deer. How long do the lights stay on after they’ve been activated?”

I hadn’t a clue. The security lights had been put in by the previous owners, who’d also installed an alarm system. In three years, I’d only set the alarm twice and the security lights had gone on twice that I knew of, both times accidentally tripped by me as I was leaving. O’Malley and his young partner entered before me, and searched the garage and all the rooms. Once they left, I double-checked the windows and doors and unearthed the alarm system’s manual from under the sink to remind myself how to turn the damn thing on.

I was in that warm drowsy state when the switch is just about to flip that takes you from half awake to half asleep when the telephone rang. It was 3:18. No one called at this hour with good news.

“Yeah?” Silence on the other end. I raised myself on one elbow. I thought I heard breathing. I was about to berate the prank caller when someone took a deep breath and blurted out, “You mean it? You really didn’t call the cops?” It was Warren. He’d played my abbreviated voice mail message.

“I didn’t. Well, I did. But not for you. I was mugged while I was waiting for you.” I sat up then, fully awake and thinking how ridiculous the whole thing sounded.

“Oh lord. I am so sorry.” Jeff Warren sounded like he meant it. Like his mother, he was a stream-of-conscious talker, rattling off a series of transgressions that started with his stabbing his little brother George with a pencil on the first day of school and ending with his accidentally breaking his ex-brother-in-law Leroy’s thumb when they were fooling
around in the cab of Leroy’s truck two weeks ago. On one hand, it was astonishing and almost admirable that the man could remember and relive the anguish of every affront he’d ever committed; on the other, it was like speed-dating the worst loser on the planet. Once I assured him that he needn’t add my name to the extended list of people he’d unintentionally wronged or maimed, he told me what had happened. It was as I’d suspected.

He’d dropped off his amorous pal and then come back to meet me. When he saw the cops he figured it was a setup and put the pedal to the metal. He was calling from a weigh station, where he sat chain-smoking—by the sound of it—and waiting for a text message from his buddy letting him know that his “date” was over and he wanted to be picked up.

Warren had flip-flopped for the last two hours on whether or not to call me, whether or not he believed the voice mail message I’d left for him. I just wished that he had flopped about two hours earlier.

“I think I still have about an hour,” he said, trying to suggest another meeting.

“I’ve already had a pretty exciting night. Can we do this on the phone?”

Warren didn’t say anything for a while, but even in my semiconscious state I could tell he had something to spit out and he did. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

“Okay, let’s try this one last time,” I said, getting dressed in the same clothes I’d flung around the room earlier. “Thirty minutes. There’s an all-night deli at a strip mall near the Merritt, just off Wave Hill Road.” Even at that hour, I thought there’d be traffic. Hell, by that time, they’d be serving breakfast

“I’ll be there.”

This time I resolved to stay in my car until I saw Warren and got a reality check. Was he as safe and as aw-shucks innocent as he and
Mama Warren wanted me to think or not? I thought so, but I still wasn’t sure.

There was no time for a hot caffeine jolt, so I grabbed a diet Red Bull from the fridge, hoping the buzz would clear my head. I pulled on my jacket in the entranceway and stepped down to the door that led to the garage. Just as I turned the doorknob—
“Burglary! Burglary! Step away from the house!”
An earsplitting shriek ripped through my brain. It was me, screaming. I dropped my keys and my bag. The two horrendous sounds—the siren and the taped warning—continued alternating until I scrambled back up the stairs to turn off the alarm. All I could think of were World War II documentaries and ambulances during the London Blitz.

I finally found the alarm code, entered it, and the hideous noises stopped, although the vibrations seemed to hang in the air for a few seconds like the aftereffects of a fireworks display. Then the phone rang. Cripes, what was it now?

“Alarm Central. We have a report of the alarm going off at your residence.” It was nice to know someone was paying attention, since I hadn’t noticed one light go on in any neighboring houses.

“It was me.” I leafed through the instruction manual, looking for some language or jargon to put the caller’s mind at rest. “I’m the
homeowner
. It was an accident.”

“We understand. We just need your password.”

My password? I had so many passwords they were recorded on multicolored notes stuck all over my office. My bulletin board and the side of my computer were feathered with them, but none was the password for an alarm system someone else had installed at least three years ago.

“Uh, I don’t think I have a password. It was the previous owner’s system. But I can assure you, I’m fine.”

“We understand, ma’am,” Cheerful Clerk said, “but we still need your password. After all, you could be the burglar. You could be holding
the homeowner hostage.” This speech was delivered in a singsong manner and with all the sensitivity and concern of someone reading it off a plastic card hanging in his cubicle while he text-messaged his girlfriend.
The homeowner could be hog-tied on the kitchen floor….

“Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll look for the password.”

I searched through the manual again. Nothing scribbled on the back, no dog-eared corners in the booklet to give me a hint what the damn password was.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to tell you,” I said. “I didn’t install the system and I’ve never even been sent a bill for the service.” That got his attention.

I heard keyboard clicking. “Let’s see…the system was installed four years ago and that fee included five years of monitoring at no additional charge. That period ends in seven months.”

“So what does that mean? Can I change the password?”

“Yes, ma’am. You can go on our Web site, but you’d have to sign in with your original password. Otherwise we need you to do it in writing and send it to us along with a copy of your deed.”

My deed?
I looked at the clock. I didn’t want Warren to drive off again and I could still be on time if I got off the phone in the next thirty seconds. “Great, you know where I live. Send me the form. I’ll make a copy of my deed. Gotta go, thanks.” I hung up and dashed out the door to my car.

Not long after I turned onto Lakeview Road, I saw red flashing lights in my rearview mirror. I slowed down, not wanting to attract any more attention, and I was relieved when the patrol car made a left a few blocks behind me.

I pulled into the strip mall and parked about a hundred or so feet from the deli’s entrance. It was still open, but it was not the teeming hot spot I’d read about in the
Bulletin
.

I was still visible from the road—that couldn’t be helped—but at
least I was out of the direct light of the streetlamp. I killed my lights but left the engine running to stay warm and to make a quick departure if necessary.

I’ve tried to re-create what happened next, but it’s something of a blur, a weird permutation of what had happened earlier. Just as Warren pulled in, he must have seen what I’d seen in my rearview mirror not long before—the red flashing lights of a Springfield police car. This time Warren tore ass out of the lot, knocking over a bank of free newspaper stands on his way to the highway. Something told me his truck driving partner would be hitching a ride to Virginia in the morning.

Seconds later the police car screeched into the lot, stopping at an angle, just shy of the overturned newsstand. Two cops jumped out and started running toward my Jeep. I turned the lights on to show them I was all right.

O’Malley stopped running first and walked the rest of the way. He did not look amused, but I was.

“You just can’t stand the thought of me meeting another man, can you?”

“You mean to tell me after all that, you never even met the guy?”

Babe Chinnery snatched back the menu as if she were going to withhold food because I’d failed to accomplish my mission. “I’m disappointed in you.”

“Hey, I have an absolute rule about how many times per night I’m going to arrange to meet a strange man in a deserted parking lot.” I said it a little too loud and got a few puzzled looks from the other diners at Babe’s.

I was disappointed, too. I’d given up an entire night’s sleep and had gotten only two useful words from Jeff Warren on the phone—Eddie Donnelley. How useful they were remained to be seen. Was Donnelley behind all Caroline’s troubles—old
and
new? That was the suggestion Warren had made, and it was what had gotten me out of bed a second time when common sense should have dictated that I stay put. Some people were like ticks—they just couldn’t let go of things—and I was turning into one of them.

Babe didn’t bother listening for my order. She brought me a tall glass of orange juice, coffee, buttered toast, and three scrambled eggs, well done, a meal that would have been anathema to me two years earlier, before I knew that a little bread and butter wouldn’t kill me. Her only acknowledgment of my formerly restricted lifestyle was that she didn’t heap a mountain of Pete’s parsleyed potatoes alongside the toast. A side dish fondly referred to as the 3Pete, Pete’s parsleyed potatoes were so good, they were all some diners had for breakfast, but I needed protein—and that wasn’t one of the
P
s in the secret recipe.

Babe set the plate down in front of me and cast a quick eye around the diner. She decided she had a few minutes before the only other customer in the diner asked for the check, so she settled in on her side of the counter to wheedle the rest of the story out of me as I ate.

“This Donnelley creep must really hold a grudge. I myself don’t believe in holding grudges,” she said. “Stresses you out. Bad for the digestion, the skin. I knew a girl in the Collins Band whose hair fell out because she was stressed over not being named lead tambourine. Although she may have pulled it out herself. We were never really sure. Either way, it was stress related.”

I could feel another rock and roll flashback coming on.

“And if you do get some satisfaction,” she said, stretching her arms over her head, “that period of elation is fleeting. More likely you’ll regret it. I remember being ticked off at a roadie once. The guy promised to get me backstage to see Jerry Garcia after a concert. He got me backstage all right, but everyone was already gone. No Mr. Garcia, only Mr. Johnson.”

Babe’s revenge had been swift. She let the roadie keep drinking while she spilled her own wine in a bucket of sand meant to be used as an ashtray. When the guy was good and plastered, she led him out onto the empty stage, telling him she wanted their first time to be something special. Instead, he was so falling-down drunk she was able to tie
him to a set of drums, where he passed out with his pants down around his ankles.

“The whole crew knew about it in the morning. It’s amazing what some guys will let you do when they think they’re going to get some. Coupla years later, he got religion and wound up traveling all the way to Decatur, Georgia, just to apologize to me.”

It warmed my heart that Babe was no longer inclined to seek revenge, but not everyone was as highly evolved. Something told me Eddie Donnelley wasn’t one of the enlightened. If he was in town, I didn’t think it was to give Caroline a big old bear hug and to have that cathartic “closure” conversation.

I hadn’t called Warren back. What for? The way the previous evening had gone we would have only missed each other again. And he’d have had to have the innocence of Charlie Brown to show up a third time for a rendezvous with a woman who claimed to have never called the cops and yet always seemed to have a police escort.

Instead, after a final round of verbal sparring with O’Malley I’d gone home and crawled into bed thinking how close I’d come to getting answers—if only the police hadn’t shown up again.

“The police,” I said, thinking out loud and shaking my head.

“Excuse me?” Babe was horrified. She was still reliving the revenge memory. “Jerry Garcia was a member of the Dead, the Grateful Dead? Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers were the Police.”

“Give me some credit, I know that. I’m not one of your little acolytes. I’ve owned
vinyl
. I was just thinking how happy I was to see the police the first time last night, then how unhappy.”