Marja McGraw - Bogey Man 02 - Bogey's Ace in the Hole (4 page)

Elsie chuckled.  “I have a computer and I use it.  Someone sent me an email that had that saying.  And you know what?  I think it just might be true, and you ladies should know that better than me.  Now leave this old lady to her TV show.  I ain’t got nothin’ else I can tell you.”

After a little sputtering, Jasmine and the other Church Ladies followed me outside.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s check out Addie’s house and car.”

“I can’t believe Addie might have willingly climbed into that man’s camper,” May said.

“Me, either,” Lila said, “but since she’s not here, just maybe she did.”

Chapter Four

We walked over to Addie’s house and Jasmine unlocked the front door.  She was mumbling to herself, and I had a feeling that Elsie had gotten under her skin.

Turning to Lila and May, she said, “That little woman is right about me.  Sometimes I’m too full of myself, and she didn’t let me get away with it.  She was preaching to the choir, and this time the choir needed it.  Amen?”

“Amen,” Lila and May echoed.

“Am I really that overbearing?” Jasmine asked, sounding uncertain.

“Yes, Ja
z, sometimes you are,” May said.

“Amen,” Lila said softly.  She slapped her hand over her mouth
after the word popped out.

“It’s okay.  That stops right here and now,” Jasmine said.  “Better to be a good example and only speak up when it’s really necessary.  Preachy is out and
setting an example is in.”

Oh,
good grief
, I thought,
what are Chris and I getting into here?
  I picked up my skirt and climbed up the step to Addie’s house, all the while hoping that the Church Ladies weren’t going to preach to me.  I mentally rolled my eyes, knowing how ungracious I sounded, even to myself.  After all, they meant well.

Jasmine switched on a light inside the house and I looked around.  It was so neat it almost looked like a model home.

“You three know her and I don’t.  Would you take a look around and see if anything looks out of place?”

Without a word the women did a tour of the house and returned to my side.  “Everything looks like it always does,” Lila said.  “Not a blessed thing out of place.  I should be so neat.”

I saw Addie’s purse and bible sitting on the coffee table, so I knew she hadn’t been back.  “Okay, then let’s take a look at her car.”

We trooped outside to the garage and found it was unlocked.  I lifted the door and we turned on a light.

“That’s odd in itself,” Jasmine said.  “Addie always locks the garage door.  She’s very careful about that.  You know – thieves.”

I nodded and opened the passenger side door.  Her car was as neat as her house.  I opened the glove compartment and found a manual describing the attributes of
her 1996 Plymouth Breeze.  It looked like it had never been opened.

I thought there was nothing else in the car until I noticed a piece of paper sticking out from under the passenger seat.  Picking it up, I saw it was a receipt for coffee from the
place where I guessed the Church Ladies were supposed to meet for lunch.  Taking a closer look, I saw it had the current date on it.

“What made you ladies think Addie didn’t show up at the coffee shop today?” I asked.

“Because when we got there she wasn’t around, and she always shows up early,” Jasmine said.

“Always shows up early,” May said.

“Without fail,” Lila added.

“Well, she was there today,” I said, holding out the receipt.  “She must have left before you three arrived.”

“I guess we should have asked the waitress, Donna, if she’d seen her,” May said.

“We didn’t think,” Jasmine
explained.

“No, we didn’t,” Lila added.

“Okay, Chris and I will drive over there first thing in the morning and talk to the waitress.  You said her name is Donna?”  I felt like we should do something immediately, but there was nothing we could do until we knew more.

“Yes,” they said
, in unison.

“I’ll also call the police department and talk to a friend of ours.  Janet may be able to help us, although she works in the homicide division.”

“Homicide?”  Jasmine’s face looked stricken.

“I’m not saying there’s been a murder,” I said quickly.  “
My friend, Janet Riley, just happens to work in that division.  At least I have a connection.”

Relief telling on her face, Jasmine sighed.  “You scared me for a minute
, but I’m glad to hear you have a connection.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.  It’s just that Janet can look into any investigating that may have been done.”

“Like I told you earlier, the police didn’t do anything but look through her windows and tell us everything looked fine.  I don’t think they even walked over and talked to Elsie.”

I glanced at my watch and saw that
our restaurant would still be open.  “Well, there’s nothing else we can do here tonight.”

I
asked Jasmine to drive me to
Bogey Nights
instead of home.

“What time should we meet you at the coffee shop?” Jasmine asked
, when I climbed out of the car back at the restaurant.

“What?  Meet us?  No, no, no.  I’ll contact you after we talk to Donna.  In the meantime, if you hear anything from Addie, call us right away.”  I reached into my purse and pulled out a business card, writing our home phone number on the back.

“Okay, but what time are you going to the coffee shop?” May asked.  “You know, so we know when to call to see what happened.”

“We’ll probably get up early and go in as soon as they open.  Time is of the essence when someone has disappeared.”  I could have slapped myself across the face as soon as the words came out of my mouth, but I rolled my eyes instead.  There was no doubt in my mind that the Church Ladies would be at the coffee shop waiting for us when it opened
– probably before we got there.  “Besides, I said
I’d
call
you
when we know anything.”

They smiled and waved at me
, looking so very innocent, while I turned to go into the restaurant.  I didn’t look back when I opened the door, but kept my head down and hoped Chris would understand why I couldn’t stop them from showing up in the morning.

It was nine-thirty and the crowd was thinning out.  Our cocktail lounge was basically just an extension of the restaurant, with music and dancing, and that crowd was winding down, too.
  I found Chris at the front desk, going over receipts.

He glanced up at me when I approached him.  “So?  What happened?  Did you find out anything?”

“A little.  The neighbor thinks she saw Addie in the camper when the guy she’d been arguing with pulled away.  She gave me a description of both the man and his truck, which might help.  And I found a receipt in her car that shows she was at the place where she was supposed to meet the ladies.”

“Today?”

“Yes, today.  She left before they arrived.  So in the morning we’re going to need to get up early and go talk to the waitress.  Maybe she’ll remember something.  There must be a reason Addie didn’t wait for her friends.”

Chris turned back to the receipts.  “All in all, business was pretty good tonight. 
Things were busier than usual early on, and now it’s slower than normal for a Friday night.  We’re not going to get rich, but we’ll be paying the bills on time.”

Knowing Chris so well, I knew he was digesting what I’d just told him. 
I smiled at my husband.  “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

“Thank you,” he said, sounding distracted and punching numbers into a calculator.  “I love you, too.”

“You know I’ll take care of the receipts tomorrow,” I said.  “You don’t need to do that tonight.”

“Things are quiet and I thought I could help you out.”

“You really are helpful.  I’m going to go out back and see the dogs.  I want to make sure they have water, and they could probably use some lovin’.”

I left Chris
at the front desk, and after stopping to speak to a few customers, walked back to my office where I hung up my sweater and opened the door to let the dogs in.  They were delighted to see me, and when two huge dogs are delighted, they can be trouble.

“Sit,” I half begged and half commanded.  I didn’t want them jumping up on my dress and ripping it in their enthusiasm.  They stopped short and sat with their tongues hanging out of the sides of their mouths, panting
heavily, almost looking like they’d been practicing to do it in unison.  I wondered if constant, heavy panting was a trait of the breed.  My friend, Janet, has a Chocolate Lab who does the same thing.

“Now keep your distance,” I said, heading for the door so I could go out and check their water.  I held up my hand and gave the
stay
command.  My dogs were normally well-behaved, but frequently forgot they weren’t puppies anymore.  And the strength of these two dogs is phenomenal, as far as I’m concerned.  I recalled that even at six months old, they were stronger than any dog I’d ever been around before.

Although it wasn’t empty,
I refilled the dogs’ water dish and set it outside.  They ran out and drank like they hadn’t had water in a month.  Guilt.  They were only dogs, but they understood what it takes to make me feel guilty.  I gave them each a doggie cookie, peanut butter flavored, and felt better.

Returning to my office, I found Chris sitting behind my desk.

“It just struck me that you said the neighbor thought Addie was in the back of the camper.  Did I understand correctly?”

“You did.”

“Did she get a license number?” Chris asked.

“No, but the truck should be relatively easy to recognize.  It’s a black Dodge
dually, not too old, but not new, and it has a white camper on it with a broken outside ladder.”

“Yeah,
babe, easy to recognize if we ever see it among the million cars and trucks driving around Los Angeles.”

“Good point.  But if she really was in the back of that camper, then we need to move fast.  The guy
who was driving may have already discovered her hiding back there.”

“I can’t imagine why she would have hidden in the camper like that, and I wish I knew what they were arguing about.  None of this makes any sense, so far.
  Did you ask the neighbor if she heard anything they were saying?” Chris asked.

I thu
mped my hand against my forehead.  “I didn’t ask her.  I didn’t think of it with the Church Ladies on my heels and Elsie needling Jasmine.”

Chris looked at me, waiting for an explanation, but I didn’t offer one.
  I honestly knew he wouldn’t understand any part of it except not wanting to be preached to by the Church Ladies.

“I don’t like having to wait until morning, but it sounds like that waitress might know something, and she’s about the only lead we have right now.  We should talk to Janet, too, but if the neighbor isn’t sure about seeing Addie, I don’t think the police will pay much attention to us.”  Chris sounded concerned.

“I feel like we’ve walked into a theater in the middle of a movie,” I said.

“It’s hard to imagine some goon putting heat on a little old lady,” Chris said.

“It’s even harder to imagine that same little old lady voluntarily climb
ing into the camper in order to follow the goon.”

“
If
it was voluntary, and
if
that’s what she’s doing.  What lame-brained idea could she have had in her noggin?”

Chris and I closed the restaurant around eleven o’clock and drove home, talking about various scenarios while the dogs slept in the back seat.

Constance, who was thankfully a night person, asked how business was and then left to drive home.  I had no more than shut the door when the telephone rang. 

It was late, and I had that feeling you get when you know it’s not going to be good news.

Chapter Five

The phone rang a second time, jarring my nerves a little.

Glancing at Chris, I said, “Maybe you’d better answer
it.”

He was near the kitchen and headed for the phone.  Sherlock had a habit of racing Chris to the kitchen phone, and as usual, he stopped too suddenly and slid into the wall, hitting
it with a loud
thunk
.  Watson watched with interest from the doorway, but she never joined in the races.  I couldn’t understand why Sherlock didn’t learn.  Maybe he’d hit his head one too many times.

“It’s your nickel,” Chris said.  “What’s up?”

I watched as his face became more serious.  “Okay, slow down and tell me again.”  He said
uh huh
a few times before responding to the caller.

“Didn’t she give you a location?  Some kind of clue about where she might be?”

Chris listened again as the caller replied.

“Okay, we’ll let you know if we find out anything.  I think you should call the police again.”

He paused and listened.  “I mean tonight, not after we look into it.”

Realizing he was talking to one of the Church Ladies, I guessed they’d had a call from Addie.  Unfortunately, it didn’t sound like she’d given them much information.

“Who was that?”I asked.

“Jasmine.  Addie called them.”  He didn’t look happy.

“And?”

“She didn’t tell them much.  She said she was at the diner when she heard two thugs talking about committing a crime.  She left to go home and call the coppers.  It seems they realized that she was listening, and one of the two men tailed her to her house.  They argued, and when he saw a neighbor eyeballing him out the window, he decided to cheese it.  But he told her he’d be back and that she was in big trouble. 

“
Addie said she ran out at the last minute and pulled open the door to his camper, thinking if she couldn’t tail him in her car, she could hitch a ride with him and see where he was going.”

“What was that little old lady
thinking
?” I asked.  “Does she believe this is some kind of adventure, or does she think she can save someone or something?”

“Ya got me,
toots. It seems this guy wasn’t driving home.  It looks like he was taking a trip somewhere.  He stopped at a greasy spoon to eat and she slipped out of the camper to call her friends.  Before she could tell Jasmine anything else, she saw him paying his bill and said she had to get back inside the camper.  She hung up before Jasmine could ask her where she was or tell her to go on the lam.”

I could tell by the slang that the Bogey Man was on the case, with no reservations.  He didn’t like what he was hearing, and he wanted to find Addie.  It helped that she hadn’t been discovered yet.

“Did she give any clue at all?”

“Only one.  He’d stopped to
chow down at a Barney’s Diner, but that doesn’t help because it’s a chain, and who knows which one they were at?”

“Okay,” I said, shifting my brain into gear, “how many Barney’s Diners are there?  And where are they?  I know they’re not just in Los Angeles County, but I don’t know what kind of territory they cover.”

“I know one way to find out,” Chris said, heading for the spare bedroom, which we used as a home office.  “I’ll do an Internet search.”

While Chris headed for the computer, I climbed up the stairs to take a look at my son.  He just loved it when Chris and I became involved in a mystery, but I thought I might try to keep this
one from him.  I remembered that during the last school year, thanks to Chris and me, he got into some trouble at school for telling stories about dead bodies and talking the kids into playing a dead body/private investigator game.

Actually, he didn’t come up with the game or convince anyone to play it.  It was his best friend, Danny. 
Nobody died in their game.  The kids concentrated on investigating a crime instead of dying, but the teacher still had a snit over the whole thing.  It could have been ugly, but we had a friend who’s a P.I. go in and talk to the class and the staff.  Things eventually died down.

I watched Mikey sleeping for a moment before going back downstairs to see if Chris had turned anything up. 
His curly dark blond hair was sticking out in all directions, and he was smiling, maybe having a good dream.  The one little dimple by the right side of his mouth brought a smile to my face.  I quietly left his room.

Hopefully, if
Addie had called once, she’d call again.  We had to find her before the driver of the truck did.  After talking to Elsie, I’d mostly convinced myself that she’d been mistaken about seeing Addie in the truck.  I hadn’t
wanted
her to be in the camper.  Now I knew better.

When I came downstairs, Chris was just hanging up the phone.  I hadn’t heard it ring, so naturally I asked him who he’d been talking to.

“I called Janet.  She’s on duty tonight.  I told her what’s been going on, and she said that basically her hands are tied.  We have no evidence of a pending crime, and it appears that Addie went with that guy willingly.  No crimes committed.”

Janet is a friend of ours who’s also a homicide detective.  We’d become friends when Chris and I
were involved in a murder, which had consisted of a dead body being buried in the basement at
Bogey Nights
.

“I know she’s right,
” I said, “but this is really frustrating.  We know something’s going on, but we don’t know what and we don’t know…  Well, we don’t really know anything except that an elderly woman overheard a conversation about a possible crime, and that she’s hiding out in some stranger’s camper.”

“If that dizzy broad
– sorry, elderly woman – is caught in the back of that camper, she could end up the victim instead of the witness.  She must have bats in the belfry.”

“What did you find out about Barney’s Diner?” I asked, ignoring his dizzy broad comment.

“They’re limited to Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, two very large areas.  That dame could be
anywhere
.  The gunsel could be discovering her even as we speak.  She’s definitely in a jam right now.”

“I sure hope he’s not planning to sleep in th
e camper tonight.”  I hadn’t met Addie yet, but I couldn’t help comparing her to the other Church Ladies.  She was, after all, one of them.

“I have to admit
that right now I feel as helpless as any man can feel.”

“I know,
Chris.”  I glanced at the clock.  “It’s getting late.  Let’s get some sleep so we’ll be rested when we go see Donna.”

“Who?”

“The waitress at the diner.  She may have seen or heard something.”

~*~

Chris and I arose early the next morning.  I called Constance to see if Mikey could stay with her and she said if we brought him over she’d give him breakfast and keep him for the morning.  She started to laugh when she realized we were on the trail of another bad guy.

“And how are you going to keep this from your seven-year-old son?  You know, the one who’s every bit as curious as you are.  The one who knows when you and Chris are keeping something from him.  The one
– ”

“Okay, Constance, I get your point.  I’m going to tell him we have some restaurant business to take care of and
that’s why he’s spending the morning at your house.  So I’m counting on you to back me up on that lie.  Oh, Lord, I sure hate to lie.  I need to set a good example for my son.  Maybe I’ll just tell him that Chris and I are going to meet someone at a diner and hope he relates that to the restaurant on his own.”

“Good luck with that one,” Constance said.  “Your son can smell trouble
even before you know it’s coming.  Last night he was asking me when I thought you might have another case.”

I rolled my eyes and remembered my mother telling me that someday they’d get stuck that way.  Lowering my eyes, I glanced at the clock.  “Gotta go, Constance.  We want to be at the diner as soon as it opens.  I have a feeling the Church Ladies are going to be there bright and early, and I don’t want them interfering with our conversation with the waitress.”

“Good luck with that, too.  I know those ladies and nothing can stop them.”  Constance laughed, but I detected just a hint of fear in her voice.  She attends the same church that the Church Ladies and I go to.

We hung up and I let the dogs in.  I’d already fed them and they were ready for quality time with their person
, except this person didn’t have time to play.

“Go get Mikey,” I said to Watson.  She looked up at me with her soulful eyes and left the kitchen to go wake him up.  She has many tricks for making him get up, and when I heard him giggling I knew she ha
d stuck her head under the covers and licked his toes.

“Good morning, Duchess,” Chris said.  “I passed Watson on the stairs.  You must have sent her to wake Mikey up.”

“I sure did.  She does it so sweetly that he doesn’t get cranky.  If I’d sent Sherlock, he’d have jumped up on Mikey’s bed and pushed him onto the floor.” 

Mikey walked in the kitchen a few minutes later, looking for his breakfast.

“You’re going to eat at Constance’s house this morning.  Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yes,
ma’am, I did.  How come I’m going to Constance’s house?  And how come I had to get up so early?  It’s Saturday, Mom.”  He turned to Chris, who didn’t know my cover story.

“Your dad and I have to run some errands this morning so Constance said you could eat with her and
spend some time together.”

Mikey turned toward me, slowly, and gave me a suspicious look.  “Okay, what’s up, Mom?  You’re giving me the brush, aren’t you?”

I laughed.  “You’ve been hanging out with Chris, uh, your dad too much.  You’re beginning to sound like him.”

Chris is actually Mikey’s step-father.  We’d lost
my son’s real father to cancer when Mikey was very young.  It warmed my heart that my son had decided he wanted to call Chris dad.

“Am I getting the bum’s rush or not?” Mikey asked.

“No, Ace, your mother and I really have some business to take care of this morning.  We need to keep an appointment to meet with a waitress, and the place where she works opens at six o’clock.  We need to talk to her before she starts working.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that?  What could be more normal than Chris and I talking to a waitress?  After all, we own a restaurant
, and it was what we really were going to do.  Okay, so he left out a few details, but at least it was an omission type lie instead of a flat out lie.  Yeah, Chris could spin a yarn with the best of ‘em.

We dropped Mikey off and drove to the diner, after checking the gates at home to make sure the dogs
couldn’t get out.

As we pulled up I looked around for Jasmine’s car.  I didn’t see it, so I figured we were off to a good start.

Chris and I asked who Donna was and we asked for a table in her section, which turned out to be a window table.  Donna was young, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, and she looked tired.  I remembered the same feeling from my own waitressing days.  It wasn’t an easy job, especially during the morning rush.  Fortunately, it was early enough that there wasn’t a huge crowd.  Her dark blonde hair was cut short, probably so she didn’t have to bother with it.  She was a husky young woman, although not overweight, and she had a very small tattoo of a cartoon character on her left wrist.

She saw me looking at the tattoo.  “It’s not real.  My son put it on there with one of those things you get wet and stick on your skin.  It’ll wash right off.”

“Ah,” I said.  “I’m sorry if it seemed like I was staring.  I really wasn’t.”

“Not a problem.  Can I take your order?”

We ordered our breakfast and asked her if she could talk to us for a minute.

“Sure. 
Let me go turn in your order first though.”

Returning, she asked, “Now, what do you need?”

“Yesterday a woman named Addie was here.  I understand she and her friends are regulars.  She’s an older woman, and – ”

“Oh, sure, Addie.  I know who you mean.  What about her?”

“Was she acting oddly while she was here?” Chris asked.  “Did anything out of the ordinary happen?  She’s disappeared and her friends are worried about her.”

“Do I know you?” she asked.  “You look awfully familiar.”

“I have one of those faces, that’s all.”

“Okay.  Anyway, yes, something happened, but I don’t know exactly what.  Addie was sitting at a table, waiting for her friends, when she got a funny look on her face.  I stopped and asked her if she was okay.  She told me to shush, that she was trying to listen to the two men sitting behind her.  She’s always so polite
that I was kinda surprised.