Rock Chick 01 (7 page)

While Ally was doing the stop off at Rosie’s
place, my cell rang.

It was Dad.

“Hey Daddy-o,” I said.

“What’s this about you hookin’ up with
Lee?”

Shit.

Kitty Sue.

“We’re taking it slow.”

“Take it
real
slow,” Dad said. “That
boy’s a tomcat. Jesus, why couldn’t you choose Hank? Hank’s a good
guy, a solid cop, has a job where both of his feet are planted on
the
right
side of the law.”

Yikes.

Dad went on. “Don’t get me wrong, Lee’s his
own man, doesn’t take shit from anyone, gotta respect that but,
hell. My daughter?”

I was silent and Dad was on a roll. You
couldn’t really get much in when Dad was on a roll.

“Kitty Sue is beside herself. Your mother and
her had some sort of blood pact where they stuck their thumbs with
pins and put them together, silly girl crap, and they promised
their kids would get married, have babies and that way, they’d be
related.”

That
sounded familiar.

Dad’s voice changed from frustrated to
coaxing. “Hank’ll have a good pension.”

“Dad, I’d make Hank’s head explode, we’d
last, like, a day.”

“Shee-it.”

Dad knew this was true.

He didn’t say much more before he rang
off.

Guess Lee didn’t have the Dad Vote.

I shook off the call and mentally assigned
Lee the duty of letting his mother down easy. He’d gotten us into
this, he’d have to get us out.

I decided to call a couple of Rosie’s friends
that he’d put down in his file as emergency contacts to see if
Rosie was with them or if they’d seen him. I got no response from
one, the other was home, sleeping it off, unhappy to be disturbed
and had not heard from Rosie in a few days.

I called Duke again. Twice. No answer. No
answering machine either. Duke really needed to get into the
twenty-first century and I mentally added items onto my
Christmas-present-buying list.

Then the door opened to the Marianne Meyer
walked in.

Marianne Meyer lived next door to the
Nightingale’s in Washington Park all the while we were growing up.
She was between Lee and Ally and me in age and she was a good
friend. She had been fettered by a scoliosis brace in junior high
and orthodontics in high school. She married a jerk, got a divorce
and moved back in with her parents a year ago. Marianne was taking
her divorce hard and living with her parents at age thirty-one
harder. She was five foot five and used to be cute as a button, but
the divorce was taking its toll and she was drowning her sorrows in
Oreos. She was a nurse at Pres-St. Luke’s, took the evening shifts
so she’d have her days free and had made house-hunting a full-time
hobby.

She rushed up to me at the espresso counter,
her cheeks flushed.

“I heard you finally hooked up with Lee
Nightingale,” she said.

Shit, shit,
shit
.

Marianne was intimately acquainted with my
lifelong crush and had been recruited for some of my Lee Maneuvers
in the past. She probably thought I was in seventh heaven and
needed a friend to take me wedding-dress-shopping.

“We’re taking it slow,” I said.

“Have you… you know…
done it
yet?” Her
eyes were beginning to glaze over at the very thought of
doing
it
with the legendary Liam Nightingale.

“Nope.”

“What are you waiting for?” she nearly
shouted and if she’d reached across the counter and grabbed me by
my shirt and shook me, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

I took Marianne’s mind off Lee with a mocha,
heavy on the chocolate syrup and whipped cream.

After Marianne left, making me promise to
phone her the minute I
did it
with Lee and give her all the
details (not gonna happen), I called Hank.

I did this because I thought maybe Rosie
might do something stupid, like hock the diamonds and go to San
Salvador. According to him, he was owed fifty dollars for some of
the “primo” grass I never knew that he grew in his basement and the
guy gave him a gazillion dollars worth of diamonds.

That was seriously fishy and Rosie was
seriously stupid for taking the damn things.

Though, what did one do when presented with a
fortune of diamonds? Say no?

I didn’t actually blame Rosie for wanting to
cash in his windfall and skip town.

Personally, I wouldn’t have picked San
Salvador though.

If Rosie successfully skipped, and Lee was
right in what he said last night, this meant that Rosie would be in
San Salvador and there was a good possibility that either Lee or I
or both of us would be target practice (I really shouldn’t have
mouthed off to those guys and I was in whole-hearted agreement with
Lee, I’m sure he’d been shot at tons of times and if he didn’t like
it, I’d
never
like it).

This would also mean I owed Lee big time for
putting his life in danger. Not to mention
my
life would be
in danger and I’d have a hard time talking myself out of having sex
with Lee (at least once) before I died.

Further, I’d never replace Rosie at the
espresso machine. He had a God-given talent, no joke. He was the
Picasso of Coffee.

The first thing Hank said, “I hear you’ve
finally hooked up with Lee.”

Shit.

Kitty Sue, the fastest dialing fingers in the
West.

Something had to be done.

“Not exactly,” I responded.

“Yeah, takin’ it slow.”

“Something like that.” Really slow.
Snail-with-a-hernia slow. “Listen, can I talk to you about
something?”

“Anything.”

“Can you step out of your cop shoes for five
minutes?”

Silence.

Hank wasn’t very fond of me asking that
question, which I did, over the years, a lot.

“Shit. You and Ally haven’t stolen candy from
Walgreen’s again, have you?”

“We didn’t steal it! We were just buying a
bunch and didn’t know what we could carry so we started putting it
in our pockets early to see how much we could pack in.”

“They have bags at Walgreen’s, you know.”

“Those plastic bags clog the landfills and
choke the environment.”

Or something.

“Jesus, a politically-correct Indy. God save
us.”

“Smartass,” I said on a smile.

“What did you wanna talk about?”

Big breath.

“How would I go about finding a missing
person?”

Hank became all business, I couldn’t see him
but I heard it, for sure.

“Who is it?”

“You don’t know him.” Well, Hank did know
Rosie but only to buy coffee from when he came to Fortnum’s.

“How long have they been missing?”

I tried to calculate it. “About ten
hours.”

“Sorry, Indy. Not missing yet.”

“What if they actually are?”

“Who is it?” he repeated.

“An employee of mine, he’s a steady guy.”
That was a lie, Rosie was anything but steady. But Rosie never
missed a chance to make coffee. He worked seven days a week and
never complained. “He didn’t show up for work today, his name is
Ambrose Coltrane.”

Best not use his alias, just in case Lee
called in a favor.

“The same Ambrose Coltrane that Lee’s lookin’
for?”

Say what?

“Lee only knows him as Rosie!”

Hesitation.

“Lee has ways.”

Grr.

Everybody was always saying this. Lee had
ways of getting into girls’ panties. Lee had ways of getting parts
for his car when he didn’t have a job. Lee had ways of finding
choice parking spots wherever he went. Lee had ways of getting out
of being grounded on average one hour after the grounding (when
Ally and I would usually have to do the whole week or month or
whatever our transgression had bought).

Hank didn’t read my frustration.

“Starting with his PI databases. He can tap
into a lot of things. Lee called in a couple hours ago. Asked me to
let him know if Coltrane surfaces. He doin’ this favor for
you?”

Pause for answer.

I kept my mouth shut.

“What’s goin’ on?” Hank was losing his
good-natured, business-like voice and was lapsing into his
stern-older-brother voice. “Why are you and Lee looking for the
same guy?”

Rule Number One in the India Savage Life
Code: When in doubt or possible trouble, lie.

“Don’t know. Listen, Hank, can you call
me
first if you hear anything about Rosie? And then forget
about it for about an hour or two or twenty before calling
Lee?”

“Not if you don’t tell me what this is
about.”

Like brother, like brother. Stubborn to the
last.

“Forget it. See you Saturday at Dad’s
barbeque.”

“You comin’ with Lee?’

“No, I’m not coming with Lee. I’m pretty sure
we’ll be broken up by then. Later.”

I hung up and opened the phone book on my
cell. I scrolled down to Lee, took a big breath and punched the
button that would call Lee, a button I’d never punched before in my
life.

He answered after one ring. “Yeah?”

“Lee? It’s Indy.”

A customer walked up and asked for a double
espresso and I gave him a one minute finger and Jane started
banging the portafilter against the sink to loosen the last pot of
grounds.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Fortnum’s.”

“I thought I told you to stay at the
condo.”

As if I ever did what I was told.

“I have a business and I’m down two
employees. I had to come to work.”

“Less than twenty-four hours ago, people were
shootin’ at you.”

Hmm, he sounded pissed off.

“Jane can’t handle the store in the morning
all alone, she’ll go meltdown.”

Why was I explaining myself to him?

“Listen, you have to stop Kitty Sue, she’s
telling everyone we’re together.”

“We are together.”

“We’re not together.”

“Who has she told?”

“Dad, Marianne Meyer, Hank, God knows who
else. This is getting out of hand. It has to stop.”

“Mom didn’t tell Hank, I told Hank.”

“Why would you tell Hank?” This was said in a
near shout and the customer took a step back.

Lee was silent for a second, thinking
thoughts I could not fathom, then he changed the subject. “When do
you close?”

“Six.”

“Don’t leave the store. I’ll come by tonight
at six to pick you up.”

“Lee…”

“See you at six.”

Then he hung up.

Rat bastard.

* * * * *

Ally came back to get me with news of no
Rosie at Rosie’s house.

I asked if there was any Lee at Rosie’s house
and that was a negatory too.

We took off to go see Rosie’s friend,
emergency contact numero uno. He had a house in the Highlands area.
Great old houses and bungalows, though Rosie’s friend didn’t live
in one that had been renovated. For that matter, he didn’t live in
a block that had a single house that had been renovated. Or in a
block that had a single house with more than a dozen blades of
genuine grass growing in their yards or decent curtains in their
windows. It was semi-wasteland.

We knocked to no answer.

We sat in my car and called the house number
on my cell phone, no answer.

We scanned the neighborhood and Ally pointed
to the end of the block.

We got out of the car and walked to the
corner Stop & Stab which had surprisingly not been crushed by
the overabundance of Denver’s convenience stores. A guy of Arab
descent stood behind the counter.

We walked up to him and he smiled.

“You want gum?” he asked.

“No, we’re…” I started to say.

“Cigarettes? They’re bad for you but I have
to sell them or I’ll go bust. Everyone in this neighborhood smokes
cigarettes.”

I shook my head and then wondered briefly why
Lee smelled like tobacco, I hadn’t seen him smoke since he
enlisted.

I noticed Ally staring at me like,
“
Hello?
” and I shook out of my Lee Reverie.

“You know Rosie Coltrane?”

“You’re not buying goods?” the counter man
asked, looking both disappointed and defeated.

I couldn’t help myself, he immediately made
me sad.

“Yes, mints,” I grabbed a pack of mints and
put it on the counter.

He stared at the mints.

I stared at the mints.

Ally stared at the mints.

The mints seemed lonely and the purchase of
the mints was not going to do anything to help feed this man’s
family.

I put another pack of mints on the counter,
followed it with two candy bars and then walked over to the fridge
and grabbed two bottles of water and two diet pops.

On the way back to the counter, I grabbed a
box of cream-filled, prepackaged cupcakes. I hadn’t had a cupcake
in ages.

He happily started ringing up my purchases.
“Who are you looking for again?”

“Rosie Coltrane. He works for me and didn’t
come into work today and I’m worried,” I lied.

I was a good liar, I’d been doing it since
Lee, Ally and I were caught behind the garage trying to smoke
leaves when Ally and I were eight and Lee was eleven. I came up
with the imaginative excuse that we were thinking about roasting
marshmallows but didn’t know how. Malcolm bought it, kids,
marshmallows, my cute, angelic smile. It all seemed benign and
plausible.

After we got off with just a lecture about
fire safety and the danger of matches, Lee tousled my hair.

Happy memories.

“I do not know a man named Rosie. What kind
of man has a name like Rosie?”

“Rosey Grier?” Ally tried.

“I don’t know a Rosey Grier either,” the
counter man said.

“Football player? Helped catch Sirhan
Sirhan?” Ally prompted.

“I don’t follow American football. I know no
Sirhan Sirhan. Is he a football player too?”

“No, he assassinated Bobby Kennedy,” Ally
explained.

“Oh my gracious! I certainly don’t know of
him!” the counter man exclaimed, horrified.