Rock Chick 01 (12 page)

“Who?”

“Lee.”

I shoved her shoulder. “Smartass.”

Deciding to take a page out of Jane’s book,
we “canvassed the neighborhood” knocking on doors and asking people
if they knew or had seen Rosie.

No luck, most people were away at work, the
ones that were in barely knew him and no one had seen him. He
didn’t seem incredibly popular, nor did Ally and I for knocking on
their doors.

Somewhere between getting stun-gunned and our
current adventure, Ally had business cards made up with her and my
names and numbers on them.

When she gave the first one out, I nearly
choked.

“Where’d you get those?” I asked her as we
walked away from the house.

“I called Brody. He made them up last night.
Put them in my mailbox. Aren’t they righteous?”

Dear Lord.

Brody was a friend of ours, had been since
high school. He was a computer dweeb, worked at home programming PC
games, barely ever left the house and he made a shed load of money.
He also barely ever slept. He lived on energy drinks and cheese
puffs and shopped for groceries exclusively at
open-all-night-convenience stores.

We headed to the emergency contact of Rosie’s
we hadn’t yet gone after, the one whose beauty sleep I’d disturbed
the day before. Rosie had recorded his name in the employee file as
Kevin “The Kevster” James.

The Kevster answered the door wearing a pair
of filthy jeans, a black Hendrix tee so faded it was now gray over
a thermal, long-john shirt even though it was firmly eighty-six
degrees. He had scraggly hair of an indescribable color and it was
pretty clear we’d found out who was looking after Rosie’s pot
plants, with liberal sampling.

“Hey dudettes.” Was his greeting.

We introduced ourselves and he smiled. “Dig
it! I heard about you guys.” He turned to me. “Rosie talks about
you all the time, thinks you are
the shit
. Best job he’s
ever had, man, workin’ for a rock chick.”

I felt the first rush of warmth toward Rosie
I’d had in two days.

“Hey!” Kevin asked, “What happened to your
eye?”

“Got hit in the face by a bad guy,” I told
him.

“Hope you kneed him in the nuts,” The Kevster
said, leaning forward to look at my eye.

“I bit him.”

“That’s good too,” he replied though it was
clear a knee to the nuts would have been the preferred form of
retaliation, unfortunately by that time I was stun-gunned.

“We’re looking for Rosie,” I explained.

“Step in line, dudette. Everybody’s looking
for Rosie. Ehv-ree-bud-ee. Had dudes here all day yesterday asking
about him.”

“Who are these dudes? Do you know them?” Ally
asked.

“Most of ‘em, yeah. They want some product,
if-you-know-what-I-mean.”

We nodded. We knew what he meant.

“Anyone else?” I said.

“Sure, first up a couple of guys I’m pretty
certain were vice. You know, cool as shit but still smelled like
cop. Scared the bee-jee-zus out of me that they’d want to come in
but they weren’t interested in me. Then two sets of dudes who need
to switch pharmaceuticals or their muscles will explode, like The
Hulk. Ka-pow!” He clapped and then jiggled his hands in front of
his chest.

I looked at Ally then back to The Kevster.
The first ones were likely Lee’s men, the last ones were Wilcox’s
boys.

“Two sets?”

“Yeah, one set two guys came to the door, two
sat in the car. Second set was only two.”

I had a gut feeling so I described the
shooters who started this whole fiasco and he nodded.

“Yeah, man, that’s them. The set of four were
steady but the twosome were nervous-as-shit, looked like they
needed sleep. Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been to any of your parties.
Rosie says your parties
rock
. He says you have cashews and
everything. I’ve never been to a party with cashews.”

Ally handed him a card. “If you see him or
hear anything, let one of us know.”

“Wow! A Rock Chick Card. That’s the shit,
man. Does, like, Axl Rose have one of these?”

“Not yet,” Ally said.

“Cool.” The Kevster nodded. “You wanna come
in? I’m just about to slip in
The Big Lebowski
and light up
a spliff. Would be cool to watch The Dude with a couple of Rock
Chicks.”

I declined, though I wouldn’t mind watching
The Big Lebowski
. It was one of my favorite movies. So much
so, it was a friend test. If you didn’t like The Dude and
Lebowski
, then you could be a friend but would never be a
good friend. Ever.

“No, thanks, gotta find Rosie.”

“That’s cool, come back whenever. Later.”

We sat in the car and stared at The Kevster’s
house. Matt was on his cell, in his SUV, parked directly behind
us.

“The second set are the shooters and it
doesn’t appear they’re working together with Terry’s goons.”

“So you have a four-way competition with
Lee,” Ally said.

“Yeah, except I know what’ll happen to Rosie
if Lee or I find him, I don’t know what’ll happen if those guys
find him.”

Ally kept staring at the house. “You sure we
should be doing this?”

I answered truthfully, “Hell no.”

“We still gonna do this?”

“Doesn’t have to be a we,” I told her.

She turned to me. “Girl, the cards have both
of our names on ‘em. Let’s motor.”

Best friends like Ally don’t grow on trees,
let me tell you. She liked
The Big Lebowski
as much as I
did, that’s all I’m saying.

We went back to Tim’s, with Lee’s man Matt
following us. We parked two houses down and noticed crazy Grizzly
sitting on his porch, the goggles still on top his head. Grizzly’s
house was directly across the street from Tim’s and Grizzly looked
like he spent a lot of time on the porch.

“We should talk to him, he looks like he
keeps an eye on the neighborhood,” Ally said.

She was right, I knew she was right. I still
didn’t want to talk to him.

My cell phone went and I looked at the
display. It said, “Lee Calling”.

Shit.

I flipped it open.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Looking for Rosie,” I answered.

“Jesus, Indy.”

“He’s
my
friend and he’s
my
employee and
you
haven’t been shot at and kidnapped.”

“Leave it to me.” He sounded kind of
bossy.

“Not at the current price, no.” I sounded
kind of huffy.

“All right, then this is no cost.”

I felt a wave of relief sweep through me,
followed closely by a wave of despair.

I pushed down the despair.

“Good, so I don’t have to sleep with
you?”

Ally’s eyebrows went up.

“No, you’re gonna sleep with me, just not as
payment for finding Rosie.”

“Lee –”

“Go back to Fortnum’s. I’ll be at your house
at seven to take you to dinner.”

I harrumphed.

Then I asked, mainly out of curiosity because
there was
no way
I was going to dinner with Lee, that might
mean inebriation, or kissing, or something else that would take my
mind off my plan and that couldn’t happen, “Where’re we going?”

“Barolo Grill.”

For a second, I forgot about my vow to avoid
all things Lee.

“Oh. My. God! How did you know? I love it
there!”

“Honey, you demand your family birthday
dinners are there every year. It’s not hard to figure out you love
it.”

Then he disconnected.

Something about his calling me “honey” and
processing my desired birthday destination made my stomach flip
over in a happy way.

“What’s this about not sleeping with Lee?”
Ally asked.

I stared at Grizzly then looked in my
rearview mirror. Matt was taking a call and shaking his head.

“You know how I’m saying Lee and I are taking
it slow?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m taking it slow, Lee wants things
to go a little faster.”

“I see.” Ally was grinning.

“What’s with the grin?” I demanded.

“Girl, you are so
not
gonna go
slow.”

Great.

We got out of the car and walked up to
Grizzly’s house. Ally forged ahead without a care in the world. I
drug my heels and looked back at Matt. He’d gotten out of his SUV,
pulled a handgun out of the back waistband of his jeans and tucked
it in full view at the hipbone in the front. He leaned against his
SUV and crossed his arms.

“They come back, sportin’ a bodyguard,”
Grizzly said by way of greeting, not looking at us but looking at
Matt. “So now, I suppose you want me to think you’re serious.
Especially now with you and a shiner. Jeez. You knee him in the
nuts?”

“How do you know it was a him?” I asked.

“Girls don’t go for the cheekbones.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know that.

“Did you?” Grizzly persisted.

“What?”

“Knee him in the nuts?”

“I bit him.”

“Bit him!” He threw his head back and
laughed. “Next time, go for the gonads.”

“Good advice,” I said.

He looked at Matt. “Let me guess, trainee
PIs.”

“No,” I said.

Grizzly swung his big head to me. “Bounty
hunters?”

“Nope.”

“Not cops,” he said with derision.

“Un-unh.”

“Feds?” This was said with incredulity.

“I own a bookstore.”

Grizzly didn’t answer. Grizzly was staring at
me as if a second head decided to sprout out of my neck at that
moment.

“I’m a bartender and back up barista,” Ally
put in.

Grizzly still didn’t answer. I noticed he had
a cat in his lap and was stroking it. Two more cats sat on the
cement railings of his porch and another one was curled up on his
welcome mat, a welcome mat that had kitty-cat footprints printed on
it.

“You like cats?” I asked.

“Who doesn’t like cats?” Grizzly
returned.

“I like cats,” I assured him, and it was no
lie, but I would have said it anyway because he also had a shotgun
sitting across his lap.

“Me too,” Ally said.

Grizzly looked at Matt then back to us.
“Who’s the guy?”

“Just ignore him, we are,” I told him.

Grizzly shrugged, it was all the same to him,
then said, “Good thing you did for Mr. Kumar, he has it rough. Told
me you were the biggest score he had all day with your
cupcakes.”

I looked down the street to the corner store.
Mr. Kumar was standing outside it, waving at us.

We waved back.

“We gotta take care of the little guy, you
know? Franchises are takin’ over the fuckin’ world. In ten years
this great nation is gonna be wall-to-wall franchise and every mom
and pop shop is gonna be out of business. The franchise was the
beginnin’ of the fuckin’ end for America. That and being able to
turn on red. It’s red, man, don’t turn on red. Fuckin’ Nixon.”

I wasn’t sure what Nixon had to do with
franchises and traffic lights but I wasn’t going to disagree with a
guy who had a shotgun on his lap and weird goggles on his head.

“We’re looking for a friend of Tim Shubert’s,
Tim lives across the road.”

“I know Tim. I know who you’re lookin’ for
too. Mr. Kumar told me. Tim’s had lots of visitors the last couple
of days. Seen him before,” he nodded at Matt then looked to us,
“seen you before too.”

“His friend’s name is Rosie, little wiry guy,
dirty blond hair?”

“The Coffee Man? Yeah, Tim brings back
coffees for me. That guy is a genius.”

“Well, Rosie is
my
coffee man, he
works at my bookstore.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“That’s a great bookstore, used to be you
could read all day and not be disturbed. The old lady was cool. It
still like that?”

“That old lady was my Gram. She left me the
store when she died, I just added coffee,” I replied.

“You thinkin’ of franchisin’?”

“No way.” I threw up my hands for emphasis,
just in case he had any doubts to my sincerity.

He nodded. “Then you’re the little guy too.
I’d come to support you, ‘cause I read a lot, but I don’t leave
this block. Need to keep my eye on things.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

This guy was nuts, but I liked him
anyway.

Ally gave him our card and he put his hand in
his shirt pocket and gave Ally one in return.

All it said was, “Tex, Cat Sitter” and had
his number.

“You have a cat and go on vacation, you know
who to call. Though, I warn you, I do both dry and wet food. I’m
not into doin’ just wet or just dry, they need a treat but they
need to keep their teeth clean. It’s important.”

We nodded our agreement and then jogged down
to see Mr. Kumar.

“Me and Tex have been looking for your Rosie,
but we haven’t found him,” he assured us when we got to the
door.

“Thanks Mr. Kumar,” I said.

“No Tim either. Now I’m worried and I think
Tex is getting worried too. Lots of people coming to knock on Tim’s
door. He’s never been this popular.”

“Rosie had a following, he makes good coffee
and people miss him,” I told him.

“I can see this,” Mr. Kumar said.

I bought milk, corn chips, two diet pops and
all the ingredients for the macaroni salad and brownies I needed to
make for Dad’s barbeque. This cost me twice as much as it would if
I’d just gone to King Soopers but Tex was right, we had to watch
out for the little guy, especially me as I, too, was a little
guy.

Mr. Kumar’s eyes filled up with tears as I
brought all my stuff the counter.

“You are an angel from heaven,” he
breathed.

B and E Darlin’

Ally and I went to my house and unloaded the
groceries then back to Fortnum’s where we sent Jane home and worked
the last couple of hours before shutting down at six.

Ally took her car and I walked the two blocks
home, Matt following me at a crawl.