Goofy Foot (31 page)

Authors: David Daniel

BOOK: Goofy Foot

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“Did you see it yet?”

Fred Meecham stood in my office doorway, waving the mail, including the day's edition of the
Sun
. “Page nine,” he said.

I'd expected page one. “Local PI Is Hero” or some such. News had come through that a body found on a Cape Cod beach had proved to be Ted Rand's. But I looked at where Meecham was pointing, and there was my paid ad, “Alex Rasmussen Investigations,” right under an ad that read “Say Good-Bye to Unwanted Hair Forever.”

“Well?” he said, grinning expectantly.

“Some people
want
hair. Couldn't it be put up for adoption or something?”

“And with the press you've gotten for closing that missing kid case?” he went on, jived on his own excitement. “You got the answers you needed. Your capital will definitely rise.” He laid the paper on my desk, along with the junk mail, and split, leaving me to my joy.

I didn't have to tell him that every answer raised new questions. Okay, Ted Rand had become lower man on the food chain and had gone to his separate doom, but how was Iva Rand? And TJ? Would
they be all right? I didn't know. I did know that Nickerson's company had been sold to pay off his debts, and that Rand's had gone into receivership, its large assets frozen. I guess I was rich in comparison. I knew that Point Pines was on indefinite hold, the legal and real estate wrangling likely to take years to sort out as the lawyers pulled sad, serious faces and shouldered the burden. I knew that at the state house, bugs would be scurrying, as they always will when someone rolls over a rotten log and lets the blaze of daylight in, and some of them would be looking for work come November, but others, the quickest, would squirm to cover and live and breed for another time.

What would happen to Michelle Nickerson and to Fran Albright and to Officer Ferry? I didn't know that either. I did know that there are monsters in the world. I knew that all of us are sometimes fated to go around the wheel for another turn or two, hoping to get something right that so far we'd only gotten wrong. I was on that line, ahead of quite a few others. But that was metaphysics, not anything you could take to the bank. I was tired. I'd been beaten, chased, shot at, damn near drowned. I'd come within a whisker of losing my life, my license, and my self-respect. I was sore. I needed a rest. I went through the mail: the same stuff that turns up in your mailbox and that gets the same response. There was a flyer from a writing/correspondence school that wanted me to tell children's stories for lucrative markets. Would anyone be interested in the tale of a sixteen-year-old child whom a bunch of grown-ups had very nearly lost. I balled up that idea and tossed it away fast. The letter I was waiting for, the one granting me immunity from financial worries and future woe wasn't there. There was a postcard from Vancouver.

“Dear Alex,”
Paula had written,
“Canada is friendly and beautiful. We may drive down the coast to San Francisco. Ross has extended his vacation. Can you believe it? Kids are great. Happy August. Fondly, Paula, Ross, Michelle and Katie.”
A PS in another handwriting, which I recognized as Ross Jensen's, read
“Dawn rising slowly over Marble Head. Thanks.”

Seemed everyone was going someplace, I thought as I locked up the office at lunchtime. Maybe that's what I needed to do: take
a vacation. Yeah, maybe that's just what I'd do. I went by Tony's Pizza, but the sign on the door read “See You in September,” so I went down the block to a sandwich counter. I sat on a stool in the window and watched the traffic passing and people walking by. I gazed at the sunlight on old brick, which was like beauty itself. But underneath the surface, I knew, there were people in bad trouble who didn't always know where to turn. I'd hold off on the vacation for now. Maybe when the leaves flew or when the frost came â¦

For Rand, all had become spoiled, because he'd been the spoiler. No amount of money could ever change that. Sure, there was ample cause to grow weary of the stupid violence, the frauds and the tricksters and the bent men, the lost women, the sad, tired streets, and the bitter aftertaste of human travail, but still and all, it was a pretty good old world, no denying, where sometimes dreams came true. I had another cup of coffee, and when I figured I'd given enough time for folks to read the newspaper and see my ad, I went back. The lobby of my building was musty and welcoming.

Other Books in the Alex Rasmussen Series

The Heaven Stone

The Skelly Man

Other Books by David Daniel

Ark

The Tuesday Man

Murder at the Baseball Hall of Fame
(with Chris Carpenter)

White Rabbit

GOOFY FOOT. Copyright Â© 2003 by David Daniel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Thomas Dunne Books.
An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

www.minotaurbooks.com

eISBN 9781466822054

First eBook Edition : May 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Daniel, David.

Goofy foot : an Alex Rasmussen mystery / David Daniel.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-32349-2

1. Rasmussen, Alex (Fictitious character)âFiction. 2. Private investigatorsâMassachusettsâLowellâFiction. 3. Lowell

(Mass.)âFiction. I. Title.

PS3554.A5383G66 2004