Mr. Softee (17 page)

“Aaron, I didn’t know there was a body in my car.”

“Okay, I believe you. Let me come and get you. We’ll go over everything and get this figured out.”

“You know it doe
sn’t look good for me right now. I have to get some answers first.”

“Dev, we want to hear your side, hear what you say happened
. But hiding from us doesn’t do a thing for you, except make you look more guilty. So let me come and get you. Hey, we can even stop for coffee and I’ll buy, what do you say?”

“Sounds tempting
, pal, but I have to get this figured out. It’s just not making any sense, you know?”

“Yeah, I do know, Dev,
and we’re all here to help. Please, will you let me come and get you? We’ll get this mess figured out. What do you say?”

“
Just what I said before. Nope, I gotta get a handle on this and at the end of the day there’s only one guy who has all the answers.”

“Who’s that, Dev?”

“You kidding, you know, Mister Softee.”

“Mister Softee?”
he shouted, sounding incredulous.

“You got it he’s the one guy who
knows what the hell is going on.”

There was a long pause,
I could hear Aaron take a deep breath and then exhale.

“L
ook, Aaron, he’s behind the fire-bombing of the Giant Scoop office. He’s behind whoever tried to ram Jennifer McCauley off the High Bridge. He’s tied into Bernie Sneen getting run over by that freight train. He’s running shit out of his trucks. You know and I know it all comes back to Mister Softee.” It sounded so obvious as I said it out loud.

“Is that why we found him stuffed
in your trunk?”

“What?”

“Mister Softee, we found him in the trunk of your car, Dev.”

“Are you sure?”

“Bald guy, carried a metal cane, left leg in a walking cast? He was beaten up pretty badly. Coroner says he was in there for a while before he died. ‘Course this heat,” he added absently.

“Are y
ou telling me it was Mister Softee’s body in the trunk of my car?” I still had trouble believing it.

“Yeah, his wife reported him missing the day before
. Look, I know you had some sort of dispute with him over money.”

“He said he wouldn’t pay my invoice.”

“And you went over there, right, to his house? Broke in, threatened him, assaulted him, right?”

“Those ch
arges don’t tell the real story. They’re bullshit, I…”

“Dev, I’ve seen the
interview tape with Manning. Your face is bruised. You admit you were at the guy’s house. I’ve read the report from the arresting officers, they state you were confused. Thought maybe you’d been drinking or taking drugs.”

“Come on
, Aaron, I wasn’t drinking.”

“Yeah, thank g
od you submitted to the Breathalyzer. But, your state of …”

“Aaron,
you ever know me to take drugs? Cut the bullshit,” I yelled.

“Look, this isn’t
bullshit, pal. You are in trouble, big trouble. The guy filed charges against you, then turns up dead in the trunk of your car with the shit kicked out of him and a plastic bag wrapped around his head. Hopefully, you can understand our concern and the desire to discuss a few things with you. Now, will you please let me help, Dev? Let me come and get…”

“I’ll be in touch,” I said and hung up.

Chapter
Forty-One

Dog hadn’t moved. He
was still facedown in bed snoring when I returned. Not a pretty sight. I sat in the recliner and thought for a long time, but didn’t come up with anything new. Dog eventually rolled out of bed in the early afternoon, grunted a greeting, and set about cooking two pounds of bacon in the electric fry pan that served as his stove. I was hoping he might think about a shirt to wear with his boxer shorts while he cooked, but the thought hadn’t seemed to cross his mind.

“Jesus Christ, no offense
, man, but you look even worse than last night when you were moaning your ass off around here,” he said.

I was leaning against the plywood counter.

He set a greased soaked paper plate piled high with bacon strips between us, delicately picked up a piece of bacon with his fingertips.

“Fuck, that’s
hot, man,” he said, then stuffed the thing in his mouth, sucked in air in an effort to cool it down as he turned his head from side to side.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Look,” he gasped through a mouthful of bacon. “I told you last night we just go get your buddy Softee. You’ll have your answers pretty damn quick, I promise.” He swallowed and quickly crammed two more pieces into his mouth.

“Shit
’s good, man, better grab some fore it’s all gone.”

I reached for a piece, held it upright
, and took a bite, chewed.

“We can’t talk to Softee.”

“Why the hell not?”

“
’Cause it turns out it was his body in the trunk of my car.”

“No shit
? Thought you told me you didn’t…”

“I didn’t
. I have no idea how in the hell he got in there.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Talked to a cop pal. He says they figure Softee was stuffed in there alive, at least for a while, before he died. Someone wrapped a plastic bag around his head.”

Dog was reading my mind.

“So it looks like you beat the shit out of the guy, stuffed him in your trunk, and he wakes up dead, right?”

I nodded.

“You been set up, man. By someone who is pretty damn good. He have a wife, even with a name like Softee?” Dog chuckled at his joke, then stuffed more bacon in his mouth.

“Yeah,
well no, I mean I thought she was his wife. Turns out she’s just the girlfriend, but I don’t have any…”

“
She’ll do. Knock off the negative-vibe shit, Dev. She’s the one. Odds are she did it. You should know this stuff, you’re supposed to be the big private eye, aren’t you? Seems pretty obvious to me.”

“Look…”

“Look, nothing. Let me give you the scenario, here. She’s pretty hot, right? The old man has all the dough. She sits around all day in the sun or just goes shopping, probably has a boyfriend on the side. The old man is a pain in her ass so she has the boyfriend take the guy out. Sound about right?”

“No, not really
.”

“As far as you know, but that don’t
mean shit. No, look at the girlfriend. Now, we just gotta find a way to nail her. Or, blackmail the bitch. Get one of those revenue streams going that rich folks are always talking about.” He stuffed two more pieces of bacon into his mouth. “It’s so obvious, man, think about it,” he said spitting bacon bits across the kitchen.

Chapter Forty-Two

I was still thinking
about it later that night. I was stretched out across the seat of Dog’s truck, parked about thirty feet from the cabin when Noleen arrived a little before nine. She pulled up in a rust-flecked Geo Metro, with dents in every quarter panel and a cracked windshield. It had probably been red, originally, but over the ensuing fifteen plus years it had aged to a flat, dark pink. The brakes wheezed and ground the car to a halt.

She stepped out
, scratched, exhaled a cloud of smoke then flicked her cigarette against the side of the cabin. She had long hair, too black, colored so that even a guy like me, lying in the front seat at twilight, could spot it from thirty feet as a bad dye job. If she noticed me lying in the truck she didn’t pay any attention.

She wore blue jean cut
offs, unfortunately a couple of sizes too small. A light blue T-shirt rested just a little too high and exposed her midsection. Pale flesh on her substantial belly and love handles jiggled over the waist band. She carried a large brown purse on her right shoulder and a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels in her left hand. She’d been drinking, which seemed to me like a good idea, given what she was headed for. She didn’t knock, just opened the torn screen door and walked in.

They laughed, yelled,
screamed, and moaned until sometime after three in the morning. I would wake up periodically, start the truck, let the air conditioner cool things down then drift off to a sweaty, fitful sleep. At least until the heat from the night or noise from the loving couple awoke me again.

I was still asleep
about eleven thirty the following morning when Dog suddenly opened the passenger door in the truck, then caught me before I tumbled out backwards.

“Hey,
time for me to give Noleen a lift home. I squared it with her so you can use her car for a couple of days,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot, and he stood there barefoot, no shirt, waiting for me to get out of the truck.

“You okay
to drive?” I asked climbing out. He ignored my question, stumbled around to the driver’s side, and hopped in.

Noleen stood at the back of the truck, holding onto the tailgate
. She gave me the semblance of a wave, but I don’t think she really saw anything further than six inches beyond her nose. She had her T-shirt on, minus a bra. Her cutoffs were inside out. She fell down on her first attempt to climb into the cab.

I rushed over to help her up.

“No, no, don’t, get away, I’m okay,” she mumbled, then waved me off before she crawled in and closed the door behind her.

Dog gave me a nod and
then spun away churning up dirt and gravel as he drove off.

It was hard to believe the
inside of the place could be messier than normal, but it was. The wobbly kitchen table lay at a sharp angle, the two chrome legs at one end had broken off. Noleen’s Jack Daniels bottle was empty, on its side and pushed up against a wall. Beer cans were littered across the floor. An empty plastic vodka bottle sat on the floor next to the recliner. A half-finished bottle of peppermint schnapps lay on its side in a sticky puddle in the middle of the plywood kitchen counter. A thong the size of a water balloon slingshot hung from a closet doorknob. I was afraid to touch anything.

I rescued Noleen’s car keys from the pool of peppermint schnapps
and rinsed them off in the sink. Five minutes later the Geo rumbled and groaned to life and I drove off. If I couldn’t get the answers from Mr. Softee, I figured I would get them from Lola. Much as I hated to admit it, Dog was probably right. Odds were she did it.

Chapter Forty-Three

The police cars were
gone from the front of Mr. Softee’s house, but the two attack dogs lounged on the front steps pretending to sleep, probably hoping to lure some innocent through the front gate as a midday snack. Under the circumstances I didn’t think ringing the doorbell would be the best idea. I pulled around the corner, ground the brakes to a stop then settled in to keep an eye on the alley and Mr. Softee’s garage.

While waiting for
the next four hours I searched Noleen’s car. Along with bags from a number of fast-food joints and two condom wrappers, I found a little airline bottle of vodka. On the floor of the passenger side was a sales receipt for $49.95, dated yesterday, from a shop called the Love Doctor. On the floor of the back seat there was a tube of prescription cream with directions to “apply four times daily to the infected area until rash no longer exists.” I’d have to let Dog know.

A little after six the garage door opened
, and Lola drove out in the black Mercedes CL600. She turned out of the alley and drove right past me. Fortunately she was distracted by her cell-phone conversation and didn’t notice me. I cranked the Geo to life and followed her at a distance.

She drove f
or about ten minutes over to a building with ‘Mister Softee’ written in pink-and-blue script letters across the front, next to that hung the giant Mister Softee ice-cream logo. She stopped partially across the sidewalk, in front of a garage door until it opened automatically and she drove in.

I drove past, made a U-
turn two blocks down, then pulled to the curb and waited. I didn’t wait long. Lola drove out of the garage and back down the street. She didn’t back out, which suggested the garage was fairly large. Coming out of the garage almost immediately behind her was a large, black vehicle. A Hummer, an H3x to be exact. Not a cheap mode of transport. Despite the headrests, I could see three large heads silhouetted as they followed her down the street.

She drove to a bank and parked in t
he lot, the Hummer pulled alongside, and a guy climbed out. He had a large, round, shaved head with a black mustache. I could just make out his earrings and the splotch of blue tattoo on the back of his hands. I recognized him as the bald jackass who had held the shotgun on me. The same guy working the betting station in the ice-cream truck the night I got sucker-punched. He was still dressed in black. Cowboy boots, trousers, T-shirt, all black over a muscled body.