Dying Embers (8 page)

“Emergency operator,” said a sweet but mechanical female voice.

“My name is Art Hardin. My vehicle was vandalized in the parking lot at my office, and now I am being followed.”

“Where are you?”

“At the front door of the Kentwood Police Department.”

“Are you alone?”

“My son's with me,” I said.

“How old is your son?”

“Nearly seventeen.”

“What kind of car was following you?”

“Kind of a small white car with a dark top. I'm not certain of the make or model.”

She asked, “How many people were in the vehicle?”

“Don't know.”

“Did you have some kind of altercation in traffic?”

“Nope,” I said.

“How do you know this car was following you?”

“It followed us through a half-dozen turns and made some of them with the headlights off.”

“Well, if the car isn't there now, perhaps you were mistaken,” she said.

“I'm a detective, ma'am. There's no mistake.”

“What department are you with?”

“I'm private.”

“Are you armed?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

“Do you have a permit?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What's your day job?”

“I'm a detective—all day and all night.”

“If there's no car there now, I can't send a police officer. Perhaps you could come to the office in the morning and make a report.”

“Sure,” I said. She hung up while I was saying. “Thank you.” I went back to the car, climbed in, and hooked up my seat belt.

“What did they say?” asked Ben.

“Told me to take two aspirin and phone them in the morning. Let's go home.”

“They didn't say that,” said Ben. He turned on the radio—head-banger music. I turned it off.

“No way I'm listening to that,” I said.

“I don't want to listen to them ‘doo-wop' oldies you always put on. What did they really say?”

“They wanted to know if the guy was here now. How about country?”

“You can listen to that while you're riding with Daniel. That's all he has on the buttons. I don't see why you're always so sarcastic about the police.”

“I'm a child of the sixties,” I said. “But you're right—that was a reasonable question.”

“I got just the thing,” said Ben. He took a compact disc out of the console and popped it in the player—somebody doing some very hot licks on “Take the A Train.”

“Duke Ellington?”

“Cherry Poppin' Daddies.”

“That's my father's music.”

“It's baaa-ack.”

On the way back to Forty-fourth, a small white car with a dark top came out of an apartment complex after us.

“Now what?” asked Ben.

“How much gas have we got?”

“Almost full. You want to head for the Mackinaw Bridge? Maybe our friend hasn't seen the Upper Peninsula lately.”

“I don't know,” I said. “This beast gets real thirsty on the expressway. If he's running a four or a six banger, we won't be able to shake him that way. Just head for the house. If he's still with us on Cannonsburg Road, turn left on Addison.”

“Plan B?”

“You know that long curve with the buttonhook on the end as you go by Grover's Orchard?”

Ben smiled and stopped for all the yellow lights. At Addison Road we still had company. Our friend had his bright lights on but wasn't making any attempt to close it up.

“You want me to do this?” I asked.

“Nope. I got it, Pop,” said Ben.

“We bend this Camaro and we're going to have to get out of town,” I said.

“I'll just tell Daniel it was your idea.”

“Thanks,” I said. “After you turn on Addison pull over and we'll do a Chinese fire drill.”

“I can do it.”

“Your mother will kill me.”

“Let's don't tell her,” said Ben.

“It's going to be hard to cover up when we're laid out in intensive care under a pile of tubing.”

“I got it!”

“You've done this before?”

“No,” he said.

“Then you ain't doing it now!”

“So, I did it before.”

“What do you mean you did it before? Are you nuts? Where do you get off driving like that—your brother's car—for God's sake!”

“Daniel's good at it, too. He showed me. Now I'm better than him.”

I sighed. “That's nice to know.”

“It's kind of the local challenge,” said Ben, as if he were revealing a secret. “You know, that's why Grover plants corn on the north side of the road.”

I knew all about Grover, Grover's chopped ‘fifty Mercury, and how, thirty years ago, he'd rolled it through his dad's peach trees that, in those days, had been planted on the north side of the road. The local joke was that Grover's dad asked him if he was hurt. When he said, “No,” his dad said, “Good—that way I can hurt you myself.”

Grover recovered, his dad retired, and Grover regularly showed up at the township board meetings to bitch about getting the road closed, or straightened, so that the local “hooligans” would “quit running down his corn.”

Belding stages a Fourth of July parade every year. Sandwiched between the antique tractors and the high school marching band, the local car buffs show off their chariots. Grover—and his now candy-apple red chopped ‘fifty Merc with “Thunder Road” scrawled across the trunk in gold leaf—never misses the parade. I always check to see if he's dragging any cornstalks.

Ben turned off the music and slowed into the turn. I tightened my seat belt.

“Tired of that CD?” I asked.

“No,” said Ben, “I need to hear the engine wind, I don't want to take my eyes off the road to look at the tach.”

Our friend had added bright yellow fog lights when he turned north onto Addison behind us. Ben power-shifted through the quarter mile measured by wide white stripes that had been painted across the blacktop by the local teenagers.

A yellow warning sign marked the approaching curve with a fifteen mile
per-hour speed limit. Ben mashed the binders and dropped the shifter back to third before he got into the turn. The shoulder belt pressed into my chest, and I planted my hand on the dash. Our friend came on hard.

The curve began gently enough and put you off your guard. Ben accelerated into it, staying low but keeping his wheels off of the gravel shoulder. About halfway through, the curve took a steeper bank. Ben got off the gas and pulled the shifter down to second—allowing the engine to slow the car without showing any brake lights and bucking us both forward. The big rat motor roared up to about four grand. Our friend was already in the middle of the blacktop and charging hard.

The last third of the curve had a sharply banked diminishing radius. The rear tires of the Camaro lost traction and started to slide up the banked asphalt. Ben cranked the steering wheel into the skid and allowed the car to drift up the banked pavement. When the nose of the car got pointed into the straightaway at the end of the curve, he nailed the gas. The positraction rear caught and generated a couple of G's that pushed us back into the seats. Ben banged third gear without losing five hundred RPM, and we bolted onto the straight ribbon of blacktop beyond the curve. I pulled the vanity mirror down again. Our friend's headlights flashed around twice as he took a flat spin into the cornfield.

“Front wheel drive,” I said. “Must not have been the Jag. Let's go home.”

Ben was silent.

“Every time you drive like that,” I said, “you risk your life and the life of anyone you might meet in the oncoming lane. Things happen. Small things can make a big difference in your life. A spill on the pavement or a critter crosssing the road could put you in a wheelchair or make you responsible for a tragedy.”

• • •

We live on a lake, a dream that Wendy and I discussed on our honeymoon, but one that had not been possible to realize in the suburban Detroit area. In the late seventies, high-tech defense industries moved to Western Michigan and so did my job with the Defense Intelligence Service.

Pete Ladin and I had been “sheep-dipped”—discharged from the military to work as civilians on the economy, where more latitude was available to make discreet inquiries and run surveillance operations—sorting the wheat from the chaff—before disturbing the rest of the federal alphabet.

The Berlin Wall fell directly onto the DIS, crushing the counterintelligence program into a slide show and a one hour lecture, and squirting guys like Pete and me onto the economy for real. We retired, but kept the PI business. A couple of snotty bureaucrats bitched, but—not wanting to discuss the matter publicly—went away. Wendy and I stayed on to enjoy our dream house, but Marg lost Pete to a stroke.

We crunched up the gravel drive, and motion sensor lights on the garage and corners of the house came on. Rusty, my Frisbee-getter chocolate Lab, was out on his chain and greeted us with a motor tail. Wendy walked up to the window to look out, holding the telephone up to her ear. We have one of those long telephone cords—you never know who might be listening to a cordless phone.

I gave Rusty a brisk two-handed rub on the head and unhooked him. I pulled the chain up to the porch and opened the screen door. Rusty thundered up the stairs to the great room.

The house is one of those bi-levels that was popular back in the decade of shag carpets and leisure suits. As you come in the door it's a choice—eight steps down to the “walk-out” lower level or eight steps up to the all-in-one kitchen, living room, and dining room, with bedrooms down the hall.

Before I could get up the steps Rusty stood at the head of the stairs with a battered green Frisbee in his mouth. He dropped the toy so that it tumbled down the stairs, then studied me with expectant eyes, his tongue lolling in and out as he danced from paw to paw.

“Dark outside,” I said. His tongue stalled and his tail drooped. I picked up the Frisbee and gave it back to him. He took it and skulked off to climb into the ratty recliner that was “his” chair, and cast sullen eyes on me.

“We are getting stonewalled,” Wendy said into the telephone. “There's no way we're going to send the Dixon Agency a retainer to go and find their own employee.”

She sat parked on a tall stool with her back resting against the island counter that divided the kitchen from the dining room. She gestured with her free hand as if whoever she was talking to stood right in front of her.

Wendy, not quite a year younger than me, had never spread into the sturdy body style of middle age. Her summertime attire was a daily pilgrim's progress. For the cool of the morning she was in sweats or slacks and long sleeves with her light brown hair on her shoulders. By noon she wore shorts and a tank top with her hair tied on top of her head. This
evening was a flannel-shirt-worn-open-over-a-tank-top-and-shorts-with-her-hair-down kind of night.

“Not a chance,” she said into the telephone. “We need to find him ourselves.”

“Come on, Rusty,” said Ben from the foyer behind me. He pushed the screen door open and held it. Rusty erupted from the chair and rattled china with the two bounds it took him to get to the head of the stairs. I had climbed to the top of the steps and had to get out of the way or ride eighty pounds of canine enthusiasm down the stairwell.

I walked out in front of Wendy, spread my arms and did a slow twirl for her to inspect my Western get up. Wendy put her hand over the telephone, arched her eyebrows and said in a horse whisper, “So where's the milk and bread?” Outside I could hear Ben console Rusty about “Dem mean old guys,” and the gallop of Rusty's paws on the gravel. I don't know what was on my face but I could see the steam rise in Wendy's.

“No,” she said, “Art just walked in. Was he wearing that silly outfit when he talked to you? You do.... I have no idea.... You'll have to ask him.” She handed me the telephone, snatched Danny's keys off the counter and stalked down the steps.

With my hand over the telephone I said, “You're going to miss the end of your show.”

Wendy slammed the door as she left.

“Howdy, pard,” I said, racking the telephone between my ear and shoulder while shrugging out of my jacket.

“You found Anne!” said Scott Lambert. “Wendy told me.”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“How is she?”

“She's well and surprised that you asked about her.”

“Where is she?”

“That wasn't the deal,” I said, and hung my jacket in the hall closet.

“This is important to me,” said Scott.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and listened to a few long moments of silence.

“How do I know you really found her?”

“She said to tell you, ‘Tacos, no onions.'”

He said, “Oh God! She told you about that?”

“Just what I said. What did you do, order your dinner without onions and have to wait at the counter?”

“Sure!” he said.

“She has your number. She may call. The rest is up to you.”

“I'll give you ten thousand shares. I have to know where she is. She can't be far if you've found her already.”

“Good grief, Scott, I just gave her your number today!” I took the pistol off my hip and set it on top of the refrigerator. “Give her a chance.”

“I have to know how to contact Anne.”

“Where are you now?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“How long are you going to be there?”

“A couple of days,” he said.

“So wait until you get back and see if she's called. You can't meet with her now, and it's way past the hour for a polite opening chat on the telephone.”

“It's just, you don't understand! It would be very helpful if I could talk to her now, while I'm in Washington.”

“Her own family hasn't been able to reach her on the telephone.” I put my spare magazines next to the pistol.