High Five (5 page)

I was contemplating Rex's soup can with new appreciation when the phone rang.

"I got it," Grandma said. "I got a name for you. I was at the beauty parlor this morning getting a set, and Harriet Schnable was there for a perm, and she said she heard at bingo that Fred's been paying calls on Winnie Black. Harriet isn't one of those to make something of nothing."

"Do you know Winnie Black?"

"Only through the seniors' club. She goes on the bus trip to Atlantic City sometimes. Her and her husband, Axel. I guess that's how Fred meets most of his honeys these days . . . at the seniors' meetings. A lot of those women are real hot to trot, if you know what I mean. I even got Winnie's address," Grandma said. "I called Ida Lukach. She's the club's membership chairman. She knows everything."

I took down the address and thanked Grandma.

"Personally, I'm hoping it was aliens," Grandma said. "But then I don't know what they'd want with an old fart like Fred."

I settled my new hat on my brown bear cookie jar and traded my jeans for a beige suit and heels. I didn't know Winnie Black, and I thought it wouldn't hurt to look professional. Sometimes people responded better to a suit than to jeans. I grabbed my shoulder bag, locked the apartment, and joined Mrs. Bestler in the elevator.

"Did he find you?" Mrs. Bestler wanted to know.

"Did who find me?"

"There was a man looking for you. Very polite. I let him off on your floor about ten minutes ago."

"He never knocked on my door. I would have heard him. I was in the kitchen almost the whole time."

"Isn't that odd." The elevator door opened to the lobby, and Mrs. Bestler smiled. "First floor. Ladies' handbags. Fine jewelry."

"What did the man look like?" I asked Mrs. Bestler.

"Oh, dear, he was big. Very big. And dark-skinned. African-American."

Not the man Mabel just called about. That guy was short and Caucasian.

"Did he have long hair? Maybe pulled back into a ponytail?"

"No. He almost didn't have any hair at all."

I did a fast check of the lobby. No big guy lurking in the corners. I exited the building and looked around the lot. Nobody there either. My visitor had disappeared. Too bad, I thought. I'd love an excuse not to visit Winnie Black. I'd talk to a census taker, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, a religious zealot. All preferable to Winnie Black. It was bad enough knowing cheapskate Uncle Fred had a girlfriend. I really didn't want to
see
her. I didn't want to confront Winnie Black and have to imagine her in the sack with duck-footed Fred.

WINNIE LIVED IN a little bungalow on Low Street. White clapboard with blue shutters and a red door. Very patriotic. I parked, marched up to her front door, and rang the bell. I hadn't any idea what I was going to say to this woman. Probably something like, Excuse me, are you going around the block with my uncle Fred?

I was about to ring a second time when the door opened and Winnie Black peered out at me.

She had a pleasant, round face and a pleasant, round body, and she didn't look like the sort to boff someone's uncle.

I introduced myself and gave her my card. "I'm looking for Fred Shutz," I said. "He's been missing since Friday, and I was hoping you might be able to give me some information."

The pleasant expression froze on her face. "I'd heard he was missing, but I don't know what I can tell you."

"When did you see him last?"

"The day he disappeared. He stopped by for some coffee and cake. He did that sometimes. It was right after lunch. And he stayed for about an hour. Axel, my husband, was out getting the tires rotated on the Chrysler."

Axel was getting his tires rotated. Unh! Mental head slap. "Did Fred seem sick or worried? Did he give any indication that he might be going off somewhere?"

"He was . . . distracted. He said he had something big going on."

"Did he say any more about it?"

"No. But I got the feeling it had to do with the garbage company. He was having a problem with his account. Something about the computer deleting his name from the customer list. And Fred said he had the goods on them, and he was going to make out in spades. Those were his exact words—'make out in spades.' I guess he never got to the garbage company."

"How do you know he never got to the garbage company?" I asked Winnie.

Winnie seemed surprised at the question. "Everyone knows."

No secrets in the Burg.

"One other thing," I said. "I found some photographs on Fred's desk. Did Fred ever mention any photographs to you?"

"No. Not that I can think of. Were these family photographs?"

"They were pictures of a garbage bag. And in some of the pictures you could see the bag's contents."

"No. I would have remembered something like that."

I looked over her shoulder into the interior of her neat little house. No husband in sight. "Is Axel around?"

"He's at the park with the dog."

I got back in the Buick and drove two blocks to the park. It was a patch of well-tended grass, two blocks long and a block wide. There were benches and flower beds and large trees, and there was a small kids' play area at one end.

It wasn't hard to spot Axel Black. He was sitting on a bench, lost in thought, with his dog at his side. The dog was a small mutt type, sitting there, eyes glazed, looking a lot like Axel. The difference was that Axel had glasses and the dog had hair.

I parked the car and approached the two. Neither moved, even when I was standing directly in front of them.

"Axel Black?" I asked.

He looked up at me. "Yes?"

I introduced myself and gave him my card. "I'm looking for Fred Shutz," I said. "And I've been talking to some of the seniors who might have known Fred."

"Bet they've been giving you an earful," Axel said. "Old Fred was a real character. Cheapest man who ever walked the earth. Argued over every nickel. Never contributed to anything. And he thought he was a Romeo, too. Always cozying up to some woman."

"Doesn't sound like you thought much of him."

"Had no use for the man," Axel said. "Don't wish him any harm, but don't like him much either. The truth is, he was shifty."

"You have any idea what happened to him?"

"Think he might have paid too much attention to the wrong woman."

I couldn't help thinking maybe he was talking about Winnie as being the wrong woman. And maybe he ran Fred over with his Chrysler, picked him up, shoved him in the trunk, and dumped him into the river.

That didn't explain the photographs, but maybe the photographs had nothing to do with Fred's disappearance.

"Well," I said, "if you think of anything, let me know."

"You bet," Axel said.

Fred's sons, Ronald and Walter, were next on my list. Ronald was the line foreman at the pork roll factory. Walter and his wife, Jean, owned a convenience store on Howard Street. I thought it wouldn't hurt to talk to Walter and Ronald. Mostly because when my mother asked me what I was doing to find Uncle Fred I needed to have something to say.

Walter and Jean had named their store the One-Stop. It was across the street from a twenty-four-hour supermarket and would have been driven out of business long ago were it not for the fact that in one stop customers could purchase a loaf of bread, play the numbers, and put down twenty dollars on some nag racing at Freehold.

Walter was behind the register reading the paper when I walked into the store. It was early afternoon, and the store was empty. Walter put the paper down and got to his feet. "Did you find him?"

"No. Sorry."

He took a deep breath. "Jesus. I thought you were coming to tell me he was dead."

"Do you think he's dead?"

"I don't know what I think. In the beginning I figured he just wandered off. Had another stroke or something. But now I can't figure it. None of it makes sense."

"Do you know anything about Fred having problems with his garbage company?"

"Dad had problems with everyone," Walter said.

I said good-bye to Walter, fired up the Buick, and drove across town to the pork roll factory. I parked in a visitor slot, went inside, and asked the woman at the front desk to pass a note through to Ronald.

Ronald came out a few minutes later. "I guess this is about Dad," he said. "Nice of you to help us look for him. I can't believe he hasn't turned up by now."

"Do you have any theories?"

"None I'd want to say out loud."

"The women in his life?"

Ronald shook his head. "He was a pip. Cheap as they come and could never keep his pecker in his pants. I don't know if he can still fire up the old engine, but he's still running around. Christ, he's seventy-two years old."

"Do you know anything about a disagreement with the garbage company?"

"No, but he's had a year-long feud with his insurance company."

I LEFT THE pork roll factory's parking lot and headed across town. It was almost five and government workers were clogging the roads. That was one of the many good things about Trenton. If you needed to practice Italian hand signals, there was no shortage of deserving bureaucrats.

I made a fast stop back at my apartment for some last-minute beautifying. I added an extra layer of mascara, fluffed my hair, and headed out.

Morelli was at the bar when I got to Pino's. He had his back to me, and he was lost in thought, elbows on the bar, head bent over his beer. He wore jeans and running shoes and a green plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned over a Gold's Gym T-shirt. A woman at the opposite end of the bar was watching him in the behind-the-bar mirror. Women did that now. They watched and wondered. When he was younger and his features were softer, women did more than watch. When he was younger, mothers statewide warned their daughters about Joe Morelli. And when he was younger, daughters statewide didn't give a darn what their mothers told them. Morelli's features were more angular these days. His eyes were less inviting to strangers. Women included. So women watched and wondered what it would be like to be with Morelli.

I knew, of course, what it was like to be with Morelli. Morelli was magic.

I took the stool next to him and waved a "beer, please" signal to the bartender.

Morelli gave me an appraising look, his eyes dilated black in the dim bar light. "Business suit and heels," he said. "That means you've either been to a wake, a job interview, or you tried to trick some nice old lady out of information she shouldn't be giving you."

"Door number three."

"Let me guess . . . this has to do with your uncle Fred."

"Bingo,"

"Having any luck?"

"Hard to say. Did you know Fred fooled around? He had a girlfriend."

Morelli grinned. "Fred Shutz? Hell, that's encouraging."

I rolled my eyes.

He took our beer glasses off the bar and motioned to the area set aside for tables. "If I was Mabel I'd be happy Fred was going elsewhere," he said. "I don't think Fred looks like a lot of fun."

"Especially since he collects pictures of dismembered bodies."

"I gave the pictures to Arnie. He didn't look happy. I think he was hoping Fred would turn up hitching a ride down Klockner Boulevard."

"Is Arnie going to do anything on this?"

"He'll probably go back and talk to Mabel some more. Run the photos through the system to see what comes up."

"Did you already run them through?"

"Yeah. And I didn't get anything."

There was nothing fancy about Pino's. At certain times of the day the bar was filled with cops unwinding after their shift. And at other times of the day the tables set aside for diners were filled with hungry Burg families. In between those times, Pino's was home to a few regular drunks, and the kitchen was taken over by cockroaches as big as barn cats. I ate at Pino's in spite of the roach rumor because Anthony Pino made the best pizza in Trenton. Maybe in all of Jersey.

Morelli gave his order and tipped back in his chair. "How friendly are you feeling toward me?"

"What'd you have in mind?"

"A date."

"I thought
this
was a date."

"No. This is dinner, so I can ask you about the date."

I sipped at my beer. "Must be some date."

"It's a wedding."

I sat up straighter in my chair. "It isn't
my
wedding, is it?"

"Not unless there's something going on in your life that I don't know about."

I blew out a sigh of relief. "Wow. For a minute there I was worried."

Morelli looked annoyed. "You mean if I asked you to marry me, that's the reaction I'd get?"

"Well, yeah."

"I thought you wanted to get married. I thought that was why we stopped sleeping together . . . because you didn't want sex without marriage."

I leaned forward on the table and cocked a single eyebrow at him. "Do you want to get married?"

"No, I don't want to get married. We've been all through this."

"Then my reaction doesn't matter, does it?"

"Jesus," Morelli said. "I need another beer."