A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book One)

  Chapter Thirteen

  DOREEN SENDACK LIVED in West County, home of big hair and strip malls. It was a little bit of Jersey in the Midwest. I plugged Doreen’s address into Dad’s GPS and it began talking to me in an Australian accent. Dad does love Australian women, preferably in bikinis. It’s a good thing Mom doesn’t have a jealous streak.

  We made record time and for once I didn’t get lost. Doreen lived in an apartment complex built in the seventies. It had avocado green panels under the windows and a brick façade with a hint of orange. The building was in good condition, but it said low rent all the same. Aaron followed me up to apartment 3F and waited, smacking his gum while I knocked. No answer. I could’ve called and saved myself the trip, but some of Dad’s lessons worked their way into my subconscious. I made choices without knowing I did it. Dad said to do X, so I just did it. Never let them know you’re coming, and face to face is better were two of his favorites. I wasn’t sure whether they applied to both suspects and witnesses. Dad never spoke of such differences. Everybody was in the gray area. There was no black and white.

  I knocked again and turned to Aaron. “Guess she’s not home. We’ll try her work.”

  Aaron didn’t reply, but followed me down the stairs. What would he do if I took off running? Don’t think I didn’t consider it.

  Back in the car, I plugged in my iPod, but before I could touch play, Aaron started talking. I should’ve expected it. He’d been so quiet on the ride over. Once he got going Aaron covered a dozen subjects including his all-time favorite, “What’s in hot dogs?” He refused to believe that they were all meat and that I didn’t care. The ride to Conrad’s Crab Shack took a half hour physically and a year mentally. He told me about a secret recipe that he and Rodney were working on for Kronos’s own handmade dogs. He’d just gotten my interest piqued when we arrived, and I was about to hear the secret ingredient. It was a sick kind of interest like stopping to get a good look at an accident or having your buddy pull back his Band-Aid so you could see his pus.

  We parked and got out. I had to know. What was it? Dog food? Tuna fish? I looked over the hood at that weird little dude. “So what is it?”

  “Huh?” said Aaron.

  “The secret ingredient. For the dogs?”

  “Oh, yeah. Rodney won’t tell me.”

  “For crying out loud. Are you trying to drive me insane? You just spent ten minutes telling me about this great recipe.”

  “Maybe he’ll tell you.”

  Since Rodney was weirder than Aaron -- I mean, who would choose Aaron to go into business with -- the answer could be anything from one small cockroach to jalapenos, so it was better left alone. I threw my hands in the air and walked toward the restaurant. At least, I hoped it was the right place. The parking lot was half empty and the only sign was a large unlit neon sign on a utility pole saying, “Eat.” No name, no hours, just “Eat” and an arrow pointing roughly to a building.

  “You think this is it?” I asked Aaron.

  “Yeah. I heard about this place.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “They got great crab.” He rubbed his hands together and grinned.

  “If you say so.”

  A sign saying “eat” didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The place did remind me that I needed a tetanus booster.

  Aaron led the way and opened the door for me. There were more customers than the parking lot portrayed. Mostly working-class guys clustered in huddles and a few suits thrown in for good measure. Sawdust and peanut shells covered the floor and the overwhelming smell of crab, never one of my favorites, emanated from the kitchen each time a waitress went through the swinging doors.

  We walked past the sign that told us to seat ourselves and found a table underneath a five foot dartboard. I checked out the waitstaff. They wore plastic name tags with punched-out plastic letters and stained, white butcher’s aprons. I didn’t know what Doreen looked like and all the waitresses looked like they’d be smart enough to marry Bart Sendack. Aaron picked up a menu and started making pleased murmuring sounds. I picked up one, too. I had to see what the fuss was all about. Crab. All crab. Not a single thing on the menu, besides drinks, that did not include crab.

  “What are you having?” asked Aaron.

  “Nothing. I hate crab,” I said.

  “Then why are we here?”

  “Doreen Sendack works here, remember?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’m ordering.” Aaron buried his face back in the menu, and I flagged down a waitress. Carla.

  “Hi, is Doreen working today?”

  “Yeah. What’ll you have?” Carla asked.

  “You have iced tea?”

  Carla nodded and scribbled on her pad. She looked back at me.

  “That’s it for me.”

  I kicked Aaron, and he looked up from behind the menu. Carla looked surprised and said, “You?”

  “Super crab platter, double hush puppies, onion rings, and a vanilla shake.”

  “That it?” asked Carla.

  Aaron said yes. Carla looked back and forth between us a couple of times with furrowed brows.

  “He’s rich,” I said.

  Carla made a face that said, “Oh I get it,” and left.

  “I’m not rich,” said Aaron.

  “And it wouldn’t make any difference if you were.”

  Aaron gave me a puzzled look and went back to the menu. A couple minutes later Carla came back with my iced tea and Aaron’s shake.

  “What do you want with Dorie?” she asked.

  “It’s business. I’m an associate of Gavin Flouder’s. Could I speak with her?” I asked.

  Carla shrugged and went to check on a couple of tables. I inspected my tea. No crab, although the glass had a slight odor to it. It might’ve been my imagination. I really hated crab.

  Aaron sucked down half his shake in one breath. “So what do you think, chicken or tofu? I don’t know about those chicken dogs. They don’t say what part of the chicken. They might use the whole thing. I think I got a toenail once.”

  I gagged and tried not to imagine biting into a hot dog and finding a giant toenail in it. Fail.

  “You want to see it?” asked Aaron suddenly looking super happy.

  “You kept the toenail? Why?”

  “It’s kind of cool.”

  “OMG. You are so weird.”

  “So you want to see it?”

  “No!”

  Carla waved at me from the kitchen door, and I left Aaron to ponder chicken toenails alone. She pointed to a woman bending over a skillet, sniffing the contents. Carla picked up a large platter and left. I watched Doreen pour half a can of beer into the skillet. She moved her hips side to side with the rhythm of the bluegrass music playing on a portable CD player above the stove. She moved quickly from skillet to pot to oven to grill and back to skillet again. There were several others in the kitchen, but Doreen was in charge. She yelled orders every few seconds and shuttled plates back and forth from the stove to the prep area.

  I walked up behind her. “Excuse me, Doreen Sendack?”

  Doreen turned around and gave me the old once-over. She yelled for someone named Ken, told him she was taking a break and gave him a set of rigid instructions that a rocket scientist would’ve had a tough time following. Ken looked terrified, and I didn’t blame him.

  Doreen motioned for me to follow her and we went out the exit door to a stoop in the alley. Doreen lit a cigarette and leaned against the rusty metal railing. She looked me over again, her mouth clamped around the cigarette.

  “Who’re you?” she said.

  I released a tense breath. Anonymity, my favorite thing.

  “I’m Mercy Watts. Sorry to bother you at work, but I need to ask you some questions about your case.”

  “You really work for Flouder?” She raised the brows that she’d painted on with a careless hand. The left wasn’t quite even with the right. The rest of her appearance ran in the same vein. She’d colored her hair a medium blon
d one too many times and it had a greenish tint. I knew that Doreen was thirty-one from her file, but it was hard to get a handle on that number from her face. I would’ve put her in her early forties at least. The orange-tinged base and heavily lined eyes didn’t help.

  “Yeah. Who’d you think I was?” I said.

  “I thought maybe you were one of Bart’s girlfriends. They show up every once in a while.” She paused and took a long drag. “To get a look at the competition, you know.” Her mouth twisted into a smile around the cigarette. She didn’t think she was anybody’s competition anymore.

  “I’ve never met your ex.”

  Doreen relaxed and flicked the ash off her cigarette.

  “Flouder getting closer to finding that shithead yet?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. Mr. Flouder died last Sunday.”

  “No shit? I wondered why he didn’t call me. He was pretty good about checking in. Nice guy. What happened?”

  “He was murdered.”

  “Holy crap. You don’t think Bart did it, do you?”

  “Not at this point. What do you think?”

  “No way. Bart is a serious asshole, but he’d never kill anybody.”

  “He’s been arrested a lot, including assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “That was his stepmom. She’s a real bitch.”

  Well, that makes all the difference.

  “When was the last time you talked to Gavin?”

  “Huh?”

  “Mr. Flouder.”

  “Who are you exactly?”

  “I’m the daughter of his best friend. My dad’s a detective, but he’s out of town. He wants me to figure out what Gavin, Mr. Flouder, did in Lincoln, Nebraska right before he was murdered.”

  “Sorry. I had to ask. Are the cops going to be coming around on this?”

  “I have no idea, but I wouldn’t count it out. Do you know why he went to Lincoln?”

  “Sure. I told him to.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “My cousin Dave calls and tells me that Bart the shithead asked him for money. What a fucking idiot. Dave don’t have a dime. He pays his support.”

  “And Bart said he was in Lincoln?”

  “Yeah. Staying with some chick, of course.”

  “You remember her name?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Tina Shipley. Didn’t get no address though.”

  “Did Dave give you any other information?”

  “No. Just that Bart was in Lincoln with that chick.”

  “He didn’t call you from Lincoln? You never heard whether he found Bart or not?” I pulled out my notebook and wrote down Tina Shipley.

  “Nope, not a word. What’s gonna happen with my case? I need that child support. You think your dad might take it on?”

  “I’ll mention it to him and see what he says.”

  Doreen dropped her cigarette and ground it to dust with her toe. “I’m getting so sick and tired of this shit. Why can’t Bart be a man and pay up?” She looked at me like she expected a reasonable explanation. I guessed that the best explanation was that a man that would assault his stepmother with a deadly weapon wasn’t much of a man to begin with and she ought to have known that. But since she had kids with him, I imagined she didn’t.

  I leaned on the rickety railing and crossed my arms. “I have got to ask. From the look of your file, Bart doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. How do expect him to pay thirty thousand dollars of back child support? It doesn’t look like he’s had a real job in years.”

  “His family owns Ace Bailey Trucking. All I got to do is find him, have him thrown in jail, and they’ll pay up.” She smiled. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “Thanks for your help. I’ll let you know what happens,” I said.

  She reached for the door handle, but stopped and looked at me. “You know, I can’t understand it. You’d think he’d want to help out. He loves his boys. I can say a lot against him, but he loves his boys and he knows I ain’t got a pot to piss in.”

  “I doubt he gave a thought.”

  Sadness filled her eyes, sadness for her boys, not herself. She looked like she was doing alright. The boys might be another matter.

  I followed Doreen inside and watched Aaron take an hour to polish off his crab feast. He was still moaning in ecstasy when we got in the car. I told him to calm down, but it did no good. Aaron was nothing, if not passionate about food. Crab stink radiated off him, and I had to crack the window to keep from gagging.

  “That car’s following us,” said Aaron.

  “Which one?”

  “Gray one.”

  Not a big help. Every other car on the road was gray, including Dad’s.

  “You want to give me more specifics?” I asked.

  “Two cars back. Left lane,” said Aaron.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  Aaron shrugged and licked a bit of crab off his lip.

  I had to look in the rearview twenty times before I believed him. I don’t know how Aaron knew, but he was right. The gray Escort stayed with us at a discreet distance.

  I pulled the 300 up in the front of Kronos. “Well, it’s been...something. See you later.”

  Aaron looked at the restaurant and settled in. “Where to next?”

  “The airport. Surely I can be trusted to pick up my parents on my own. I am a big girl.”

  Aaron considered my request and put in another wad of gum. The smell of grape and crab combined, and I made an involuntary horking sound.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Aaron asked.

  “Can’t you smell that?”

  He tilted his head in the air and sniffed like a hound. “Smells okay to me.”

  “Forget it. Now go on.” I pushed his shoulder towards the door.

  “Okay, okay. Call me later.”

  “I will call you later.” I waved at Rodney in the doorway and hit the gas before Aaron could change his mind.

  Call him later. Why would I call him later? I’d never called him in my entire life. Still, he did notice the Escort when I didn’t. Maybe I owed him something for that, because it was still behind me, three cars back.

  I drove three miles before I realized that crab stink wasn’t going away. Aaron had left a lovely sweat stain on Dad’s leather seat back. I rolled down the windows despite the heat and wished I had some VapoRub to stuff up my nose. That crab had staying power. Aaron owed me. Uncle Morty owed me. Everybody owed me. God I hate Crab.