Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split (16 page)

“Wisnewski,” Yvonne said. “But Pearl’s over at the nursing home right now. Probably won’t be back till supper.”

“Nursing home?”

“She had to put her husband over at Palm View on Monday,” Yvonne explained. “You better come back when she’s home.”

“Can’t,” Wade said quickly. “I got four more stops after this. Couldn’t you just give me the key?”

“I don’t know,” Yvonne said slowly. “Pearl might not like somebody goin’ in there with her not home.”

“Okay,” Wade said, giving an exaggerated shrug. “My work order says do it today cuz it might be a fire hazard. I’ll tell my boss to tell the new owners you wouldn’t let me in.”

“Now don’t go doin’ that,” Yvonne said, alarmed. She held up a key bearing a round paper tag. “Here it is right here.”

Wade took the key and picked up his toolbox. “Thanks, ma’am.”

“You see that?” Jackie asked indignantly. “They’re planning on putting Miss Pearl out first thing.”

“I heard,” Truman said grimly. “Quit nagging.”

“That too,” she agreed.

Tammi Stargell tailed Wade to the fountain of Youth. She didn’t hesitate to follow him inside, marching herself over to an empty chair in the window and sitting down.

She looked odd but not terribly out of place in a shapeless flowered muumuu, a pair of old house shoes, a loud striped babushka, and a pair of dark sunglasses. The receptionist stared for a moment, then went back to her magazine.

Tammi was satisfied that Wade hadn’t noticed her. She’d been tailing him all day, keeping her own souped-up Firebird well behind the big Lincoln Wade was driving. His grandma’s Lincoln, she guessed.

Now he was upstairs, going through somebody’s room. She wasn’t worried about him getting away with the disk, though. She patted the ugly straw purse she held in the crook of her arm. Her little persuader would help her convince Wade to give her the diskette.

She sat on an armchair near the door, waiting. Tammi was a patient person, if she had to be.

Finding Wade had taken patience, that’s all. She’d called the work number he’d put on his rental agreement for the Cutlass, but his supervisor informed her in a bored voice that Wade “no longer works here.”

“He’s been fired,” Tammi shrieked. “I knew it, I just knew it. Here I am, three months gone, and he up and gets fired and disappears. I knew it was too good to be true.”

“You’re pregnant?” The woman’s interest seemed to pick up a little.

“I sure am,” Tammi said. “And he was supposed to come over here today and bring me his paycheck. The doctor won’t see me unless I pay ahead of time, and I’m nearly out of groceries.”

“Have you tried his apartment?”

“He ain’t been there,” Tammi sobbed. “And I’ve called and I’ve left notes. Now what am I gonna do?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “You say he was supposed to bring you money?”

“Yesss,” Tammi said, sniffing loudly.

“Just a minute.”

“You didn’t get this from me,” the woman said. “He called Payroll two days ago and asked that his last check be sent to Bayfront Towers, care of Mrs. Wade Hardeson Sr. I think it must be his grandmother’s condo, because he wasn’t on speaking terms with his parents.”

Tammi jotted the address down quickly. “Oh, God bless you,” she cried. “I’ll never forget your kindness. Are you a friend of his?”

“Not anymore,” the woman said. “The guy’s a lowlife.”

Now, first thing this morning, Tammi had parked on the street outside the Bayfront Towers garage, confident that it wouldn’t be long before her quarry surfaced.

Sure enough, he’d walked outside around nine o’clock, glanced nervously up and down the street, and then he’d strolled across the street and down a block to one of the seedy old bars over on First Avenue.

After he left the bar, she’d followed him back to the Bayfront. This time, though, he walked into the garage entrance instead of the lobby door. Five minutes later he drove out in what must have been his grandmother’s car.

He’d been a busy boy since then. There was a stop at a uniform supply house on Central Avenue. When he came out, Wade was wearing a pair of blue zip-front overalls and a long-billed cap.

Then he’d headed for the tourist court. Tammi had assumed he’d end up there at one time or another. Butch and Curtis had been taking turns staking the place out at add hours, but so far they’d missed him.

This morning she’d parked her Firebird in an alley that ran behind the last row of tourist cabins, next to the Dumpster. From here she could see all the cabins.

Wade got out of his car and darted to the door of his cabin. He fitted the key into the lock, and she could see turn struggling to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

Tammi smiled to herself. She’d lived this scenario herself not so long ago. It was after the first of the month.

Now he was digging in his pockets, bringing out a wad of dollar bills. He was counting silently. As he walked to the manager’s cabin, his shoulders slumped. He’d have to pay the back rent before the manager would let him have his stuff.

When Wade came out of the manager’s office a few minutes later, he looked anxiously around the parking lot again, but Tammi wasn’t in the car anymore.

With Wade busy, Tammi had decided to take a peek in his cabin. She ran, crouched over, to the back of his cabin.

There were two windows along the back, both partially covered with faded curtains. The first window opened into what was surely a bathroom. All Tammi could see was small black and white tiles and what looked like a pile of dirty laundry.

Next she duck-walked along the back wall to the next window. The screen was gone. The curtain was parted at the center, and if she crouched at just the right height, she could see inside.

It was a bedroom, and it was a shambles. A mattress had been pulled from the box springs, and the bedclothes were wadded up and tossed aside. Drawers were pulled from a cheap pine dresser, and clothes and books seemed to cover every surface in the room.

She heard a key turning in a lock from the front of the unit and ducked back down.

There were footsteps inside, and then Wade was so close she could hear him breathing. She willed her own breathing to stop and inched her head up so it was at a level with the window.

Wade stood in the middle of the room, not moving. He looked shell-shocked. Finally he opened a small door to a closet. But no clothes remained on hangers. Everything had been thrown on the floor. He reached up to the closet shelf, his hand searching for something, but his hand came back empty.

It wasn’t there. He was looking for the diskette, she was sure, but it wasn’t in this room, probably not in the cabin at all. Somebody, she told herself, had been in there. Had they beaten them both to the diskette?

“Goddamn.” She peeked back in the window again. Wade was standing up now, his face twisted with anger. Then he was striding out of the room. She heard him closing the front door, so she took off herself, toward the Firebird.

By the time Truman got down to the laundry room Saturday, only one washing machine was available. He cursed but threw in a load of white clothes, some bleach, and detergent. Then he pushed the shopping cart into a corner, took his bleach and detergent, and went back upstairs. It was hot in that basement, too hot to hang round and wait for the spin cycle, that’s for sure.

He was irritable, no doubt about it. And he knew exactly why.

His schedule was off. Since he’d moved into the Fountain of Youth, he’d invented a little schedule for himself. Meals at a certain time, walks at a certain time, laundry on Friday nights, dinner with Cheryl and Chip on Sundays, lunch at First Methodist Church on Wednesday.

“Getting to be an old fart. Set in your ways,” he grumbled, getting off the elevator on his floor. “Talking to yourself too. Bad sign.”

He’d gotten slack about exercising too. Slack, that’s what he was.

Truman turned on the clock-radio on his bedside table. WSUN had a Big Band format on Saturday afternoons, this afternoon they were doing girl singers. When Rosemary Clooney started singing “Come On-a My House,” he laid himself down on the worn blue carpet, tucked his toes under the edge of the bed, crossed his hands over his chest, and started doing sit-ups. Three sets of twenty-five repetitions. That was his goal.

By the time Truman was done, he’d heard Doris Day, Helen O’Connell, Margaret Whiting, and the Andrew Sisters. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat and he was gasping so hard he couldn’t even whistle along with “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me.”

When he could breathe again, he toweled off and put on a clean sport shirt.

Now, he thought, with some satisfaction. Now it might be time to do some research.

He looked at his phone. The cost of long distance was astronomical. Once again he missed the days at the bureau when he could dial anywhere in the world at the drop of hat and get any information he wanted, on AP’s dime, of course. One time he and Gibby had called the American consulate in Beijing to settle a bar bet.

Oh well, he thought. He wasn’t above a little subterfuge. For the appropriate cause, of course.

Yvonne Sweatt hovered over Truman’s shoulder. He was seated at the reception desk, a look of bemused boredom on his face.

“Now, I’ll be right back in forty-five minutes,” Yvonne repeated for the third time.

“Everything will be fine. I’ll be fine,” he repeated “Answer the phone, tell anybody who asks that we don’t have rate cards because of the new management, take messages.” He tapped the pink message pad in front of him. “I’m all set here. Now go on before I change my mind.”

Her already pink face flushed again, she repeated another set of useless instructions and then was gone.

Truman smiled and allowed himself to relax a little. The joint was dead. Everybody was either out doing their Saturday errands or taking a siesta. It was the time of day Yvonne usually took her break, sneaking away for a quart of ice cream or a bucket of the Colonel’s extra-crispy.

He’d sat across from her, pretending to read the newspaper he’d already read at breakfast. Once he looked over at her, caught her glancing for the dozenth time at the big clock on the wall behind her.

“Slow day, huh?” He was all sympathy, all interest.

She sighed loudly. “I’m about to jump out of my skin, I’m so bored.”

“Why don’t you take a break?” he said innocently. “I could watch the phone, you know. Sort of cover for you.”

“No, I couldn’t. Absolutely not.”

He shrugged, went back to staring at meaningless stock listings.

“You have to take messages, deal with walk-ins, handle emergencies. If the fire alarm goes off, well, it’s complicated.”

“Has it ever gone off?”

“There’s always a first time,” she said primly. “I’m the only one here who knows the procedure.”

“I understand.”

She sighed theatrically. “Still. There are a couple of things I really need to take care of. And you do know all the residents.”

“That’s true,” he agreed.

Ten minutes later she was gone and Truman was dialing information in Scottsdale for the number for the newspaper.

He couldn’t remember the name, some suburban daily.

“It’s the
Scottsdale Post
,” the operator informed him.

The next hurdle was getting past the
Scottsdale Post’s
operator.

“Morgue, please,” he said politely.

“Morgue?”

“Your reference department,” he said.

“You mean News Data Services?”

“Whatever.”

“I’m sorry, but News Data Services is only for the use of the Post staff.”

“I’m a reporter for the
St. Petersburg Times
” he lied. “Don’t you people still believe in professional courtesy?”

It was a time-honored newspaper practice, any working reporter could walk in or call in to any out-of-town newspaper and be given whatever help he needed, phone numbers, access to the paper’s morgue, a spare typewriter and phone.

The operator in Scottsdale had to check with her supervisor before she’d connect him. He only hoped they weren’t on another line, calling the
St. Pete Times
to check his credentials. He glanced around the lobby to make sure he wasn’t being observed.

Long-distance phone calls weren’t in his budget for this month. But the Fountain of Youth could afford it. And besides, he was performing a service watching the front desk.

“Sir? I’ll connect you to News Data Services now. Miss Peters will be helping you.”

Miss Peters sounded bored. It was a Saturday, after all. Downtime for most newspapers, with only a skeleton staff on board.

He told her what he wanted. “Newby,” he said loudly. “Jewell G. Newby. Two ls in Jewell, Newby ending in y. And it’s the Church of Cosmic Unity.”

“Oh yes,” she said dryly. “Everybody here knows how to spell the Reverend Newby’s name. What is it you want, specifically?”