Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 04 - A Deadly Change of Power (14 page)

N
ot more than twenty minutes after hearing the news about the assassination, our phone rang.  It was Sam.

“Devonie, have you seen Ronnie?” he asked, sounding almost out of breath.

“Ronnie?  No.  Don’t tell me you’ve lost her,” I said, dreading his response.

“She’s missing.  Just disappeared.  No one saw anything.  I was hoping maybe she’d try to contact you,” he explained.

“No.  Have you checked with her brother?” I asked.

“Yeah.  Tried him first.  He’s madder than a cat with a sock on its head.”

“So you think she took off on her own?  Not taken by those guys who killed Boxer and his gang?” I asked.

“At this point, we don’t know.  We’re hoping she just saw the news and got scared.  Took off and found her own hiding place,” Sam said, trying to sound hopeful.

“Well, she has no home to go back to.  Lance is her only family.  Jake is back in Detroit.  I doubt she’d look him up.  Last time I saw them together, he wasn’t earning any points with her,” I said.

“Anyone else you can think of?” Sam asked.  “Anyone she may have mentioned that might hide her out?”

I searched my memory for anything she might have told me in passing.  “I can’t think of anyone she talked about eno
ugh that she’d trust her life with
.”

Sam made a half growl, half moan sound into the phone.  I pictured him eating aspirin like candy.  “Okay,” he groaned.  “If you hear anything, call me.  Don’t go playing Wonder Woman.  I think we’ve got a dragon by the tail here, and no swords.”

I told Craig about Sam’s call as we climbed into bed.  He eyed me closely as I told him about Ronnie’s disappearance.  I noticed his strange stare.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“What are you planning?” he replied.

“Me?  Nothing.  Why?”

He laughed.  “Yeah, right.  Nothing.  I don’t think you’re capable of doing nothing.”

“Am so,” I defended.

He just grinned at me.  He wouldn’t look away.  I felt like a bug in a glass jar.  He knows me so well.

“Okay.  So maybe I’ll just ask around tomorrow.  Maybe her friend Larry knows something.  Or maybe I’ll call Jack Pearle.  Couldn’t hurt,” I said.

Craig switched off the lamp on the nightstand.  “Just promise you’ll be careful.  Okay?”

“I’m always careful,” I said.  Then I thought about the events of my life over the past three years and wondered how I could make such a claim.

I called Larry’s shop and asked him if he’d heard from Ronnie in the last couple of days.  He hadn’t heard a word from her.

I called Jack Pearle, but could not get an answer.  I finally decided to take a drive to his shop.  When I arrived, the place didn’t look much different than the first time I’d been there.  The doors were all closed.  I knocked, but no one answered.  I stepped up to the window and cupped my hands over the glass to see inside.  The place was empty.  All the machines were gone.  The workbenches were bare.  I stepped back and double-checked that I had the right shop.  The number stenciled on the door was definitely the right one.  I gazed around the complex, confused.  I wandered across the driveway to an open door where I saw activity inside.

“Excuse me,” I said, catching the attention of a man busy applying some sort of fiberglass resin to the underside of a small boat. 

He stood straight and removed the mask from his face.  “Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Jack Pearle.  Have you seen him?”

The man glanced past me, toward the door that used to belong to Pearle Manufacturing.  “That’s his shop over there,” he said, nodding in the general direction of Jack’s shop.

“I know, but it seems to have been closed down,” I said.

“Huh?” he replied.

“It’s empty.  No machines.  No nothing,” I explained.

The man set down his tools and shook his head.  “Can’t be.  He was here, big as life, yesterday.”

“Well he’s not here now,” I reiterated.

The man put his mask down on a bench and marched across the driveway to Jack’s door and tried the knob.  When he realized it was locked, he knocked.  “Jack’s late coming in most days,” he said, waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen.  “Like he always says, Jack doesn’t tick for time.  Time ticks for Jack.”

I motioned toward the window.  “Take a look for yourself.  It’s empty.”

He peered through the window.  “Well I’ll be danged.  I swear it was business as usual yesterday.  He had to have moved everything out last night.”

All the way home, I racked my brain to come up with an answer to where Jack Pearle might have disappeared to, and why.

When I arrived home, I tossed a pile of mail on the table in the foyer, set my purse on the kitchen table and rummaged through a stack of business cards, looking for the one Jake Monroe gave me.  I dialed the direct line for his office.  As I listened to his voice-mail announcement, I carried the cordless phone through the house to the back door to let the puppy in.  I didn’t have the heart to lock him in his kennel, which didn’t seem big enough for a dog his size.  I decided he should have free run of the back yard.  He happily bounded in through the open French doors and licked my feet.  I giggled and patted him on the back. 

When Jake’s recording beeped in my ear, I left him an urgent message to call me as soon as he got in.  I didn’t tell any details of the emergency over the phone.  When three hours had passed and he had not returned my call, I decided to try calling him again.  I pressed the 0 button halfway through his voice-mail message so I could speak to the company switchboard operator.  After being transferred to a half-dozen different departments, I finally determined that Jake was not anywhere in the plant.  Though no one told me so, I got the impression that his absence was not planned.  He just didn’t show up for work today.

I sat down at the kitchen table, frustrated.  The familiar sound of toenails clicking on the tile floor distracted me.  The puppy trotted to me, carrying an envelope in his mouth.

“What’ve you found to pack around?” I said, pulling the paper out of his slobbery grip.  I wiped it dry.  It was our phone bill.  It must have fallen off the table in the entryway when I tossed the stack of mail on it.  The puppy just stared at me, wagging his tail.

“What?” I asked, curious about his eagerness.

He let out a bark.  I looked at the envelope, then back at the dog.  I opened the bill.  One of Ronnie’s calls to Jake Monroe’s home was listed among our calls for the month.

I gaped at the huge puppy at my feet and recalled those silly episodes of Lassie where the brilliant collie communicated complicated messages to her dim-witted humans.  I took the puppy’s head in my hands and kissed him on the top of his nose.  “You’re a genius!” I said, dialing Jake’s number.

He picked up on the second ring.  “Ronnie?” he blurted into the phone, sounding as though he were expecting her call.

I hesitated a moment, surprised by his greeting.  “No.  Devonie,” I finally said.

“Oh.  I saw your number and thought maybe Ronnie was at your house,” Jake replied.

“Why would she be here?  She’s supposed to be in hiding.”

Jake was silent.

“You know she’s missing?” I pressed.

After a long pause, he finally spoke up.  “She called me last night, after the news of the shooting in front of the courthouse.  She was scared.  She said she wanted to run away.”

I felt a dull headache starting at the base of my skull.  I squeezed my eyes closed and rubbed the back of my head.  “What did you tell her?” I asked.

“I told her to stay put.  She was safe where she was.  She didn’t buy it.  If the authorities couldn’t protect those low-life murderers, how could they protect her?” he said.  Then, after a moment of thought, he added, “She’s probably right.”

“Did she say anything about where she was going?”

“No.  Just that she’d call me when she felt it was safe.  I think she was at a payphone.  She’s paranoid about using phones now.  Calls are so easy to trace.”

“What else?  Did she say anything about what she was thinking?”

“Just that she thought she might reconsider an offer someone made her months ago.”

“Offer?  You think she’s talking about Jack Pearle’s offer?  A partnership?” I speculated.

“Maybe.  She wouldn’t elaborate.”

“Because he’s disappeared too,” I added.

“What?”

“He’s gone.  Poof.  All his equipment moved out of his shop in the middle of the night.  No one at the complex knows anything about it,” I explained.

“This is crazy.  I’m booking a flight out there tonight,” Jake insisted.

“And do what?  Go where?  We don’t know where either of them are,” I said.

“What about those guys who found her before?  You know, Caper and Lawless?”

“I tried to call them.  They’re on location in South America.  Won’t be back in the country until next month.”

“I have to do something.  I can’t just sit here.”

“There’s not much you can do, Jake,” I said, fully aware that there actually was one thing he
could
do, but was not willing to.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that even if Jake did take Ronnie’s engine to the decision makers at World Motors, he’d probably never get them to agree to tool-up for it. 

“Maybe there is something I can do,” Jake said, as if he’d just come up with an idea.

“What?” I asked.

“I can’t say.  It’s probably crazy, but it’s a shot.  I gotta go.  I’ll keep in touch,” he said, then the line went dead.

“Jake?” I repeated into the phone.  Too late.  He was gone.

Weeks passed.  No word from Jake or Ronnie.  I tried everything I could think of to locate Jack Pearle.  I got his home address from one of the other tenants in the industrial complex where his shop used to be.  He hadn’t been home since the night he loaded up all his machines.

I kissed Craig and sent him off to work early on a Monday morning.  Albert had an appointment to get his puppy shots at the veterinarian’s office at nine.  Finally, the puppy had a name
—
Albert, as in Einstein.  I told Craig the story of how he brought me the telephone bill and we both agreed he deserved a name that reflected his obvious intelligence.  I think we might be like those parents who are sure their babies are far ahead of all the other infants their age.

Albert sat up in the back seat of the Explorer and gazed intently out the window at the passing sights.  I smiled at him in the rear-view mirror.  “Maybe next time, I’ll let you drive,” I said.  He gave me a look that made me wonder if he actually understood what I told him.

I slowed to a stop at a signal and waited for the light to turn green.  A workman was busy putting the finishing touches on a new billboard across the intersection.  I read it, and my heart picked up an extra beat.  “Fed up with the high cost of energy?  Don’t get mad
—
get independent.”

I scribbled the telephone number from the billboard on a piece of scrap paper I dug out of my purse.  Cars behind me honked because the light had turned green.  I finished writing, tossed the pen and paper on the seat next to me, and pressed my foot on the accelerator. 

I hurried
home and rushed to the phone,
punched in the number and waited.  I was greeted with a recording that requested I leave my name and telephone number, and someone would call me back.  I breathlessly blurted my information into the phone, then hung up.  I frantically searched for Jake Monroe’s card and called his office.  Instead of hearing his voice, or even his recorded voice-mail message, I was put right through to the switchboard operator.

“Can I please speak to Jake Monroe?” I requested.

“I’m sorry.  Mr. Monroe is no longer with World Motors,” she said.

“What?  When did this happen?” I asked, baffled.

“I can’t say any more than that.  I’m sorry.  Is there someone else who can help you?” she offered.

Stunned, I shook my head.  “No, thanks.”

I tried Jake’s home phone, but there was no answer there, either.

I sat at the table and tried to think of what to do next.  I didn’t want to wait for someone to return my call.  That could take days for all I knew.  I pulled the phone directory from a drawer and found the section for outdoor advertising.  I called all the billboard companies in the area and finally found the firm that owned the one I’d seen on my way home from the vet’s office.  After some convincing, the girl surrendered the address of the client who belonged to the billboard.  They were, after all, an advertising agency.  She had no special instructions to withhold the information to potential clients.  I thanked her and hung up the phone.

I gathered up my purse, let Albert out into the back yard, and rushed to the front door.  I yanked it open and nearly jumped out of my skin when the face of the man standing on the porch startled me.

“Jake!  What are you doing here?”