“So that’s good.” I said.
“As far as it goes. There’s a lot of debate about the accuracy of the science, always has been, but right now I think we can get the images displaying the bite mark thrown out. If you’re really lucky it will call the remaining photos into question. Okay, thanks, sorry to interrupt your evening,” she said, then gathered up her satchel and walked toward the front door.
“What, no sucker?” I said following.
“Sorry, fresh out. Guess you’ll have to take a rain check.”
“I’ll do that.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” she smiled, then brushed past me and out the door.
I tried to read, tried to watch TV, tried to read again. Since I was tired after last night and this afternoon’s grope and grab with Heidi I went to bed early.
Chapter Thirty-Three
At six-thirty the following morning I’d already made coffee and was sitting out on my front porch finishing my first cup as traffic slowly began to build. Even at this hour it was warm to the point of suggesting beastly for later in the day. I had a nine o’clock appointment at the office of my home arrest officer, a Miss Muriel Puehl of Sentinel Monitoring. Meanwhile, Heidi’s question continued to nag away, why me?
The offices of Sentinel Monitoring were located about three miles up 35W, off Larpenteur Avenue and just inside the St. Paul city limits. One of those nondescript, one story brick strip buildings, housing a dozen different offices where you could park right in front were it not for all the reserved parking signs. I thought I should be on my best behavior so I pulled the DeVille into the far side of the lot then entered the office. I was ten minutes early for my appointment, and sure I was making a good first impression.
The receptionist was named Marcie, if her plastic name tag could be trusted. She was rather large, and unfortunately rather unattractive.
“Hey good morning, how are you?” I said.
Marcie replied with a slight nod and cold, close set eyes. They sized me up over her hooked nose. I tried not to focus on the erupted mole growing alongside her left nostril.
“I have a nine o’clock appointment with Muriel Puehl.” I pronounced it ‘Pew-L’
“Pull,” Marcie said.
“What?”
“Pull, Muriel’s name is pronounced ‘pull’.”
I read each letter out loud from my appointment card. “And that’s pronounced ‘pull’?”
Marcie gave another slight nod, not only unattractive, she was humorless as well.
“I have an appointment in about ten minutes. Devlin Haskell,” I said.
“Have a seat.”
I did and then sat for the next twenty five minutes. Eventually an attractive woman with eyes that looked puffy from crying exited from an office behind the receptionist desk.
“Asshole,” she hissed under her breath as she walked out of the office. I couldn’t figure out if she meant me or Muriel Puehl.
A few minutes later Marcie called, “Mister Haskell,” as if she was searching the office for me. I was sitting six feet away from her, the only person in the tiny waiting area.
“Here.”
“You may see Miss Puehl,” she inclined her head toward the door.
If Marcie was rather large, Muriel Puehl was massive. A neckless blonde with a number of chins hunched over a desk, fleshy arms easily the size of my thighs jiggled when she moved. She never looked up from the file she was reading, just pointed with a pen and grunted, “sit.”
I did, then sat listening to her labored breathing. The plastic chair seemed uncomfortably warm. No doubt due to the sobbing woman who’d exited the office minutes earlier.
Muriel’s perfume was almost eye watering and reminded me of the air freshener in the bathroom of my grandmother’s home when I was a kid. I tried to breathe through my mouth as she read on and on.
Eventually she raised her head to the point where her chins formed one large chin which sort of forked at her chest and turned into cleavage. She stared at me for an uncomfortable length of time. The dark bags under each eye looked like carry-on luggage.
“You’re a private investigator.”
“Yes,” I nodded, hoping to look bright and somewhat agreeable.
She sucked her front teeth.
“Interesting, your kind have caused a lot of people a lot of pain.”
“Not intentionally,” I smiled. I couldn’t tell if she was studying me or just trying to come up with the next consecutive thought.
Finally she said, “Sign these top two sheets, initial the third in the places I’ve highlighted. They explain the fees to you?”
“Yes, twelve dollars a day, right?”
“In advance, payable weekly or monthly, your choice. Here, initial this,” she slid another form across the desk at me. “Once you decide which option to take, weekly or monthly you can’t change, don’t have the staff for the paper work. We take credit cards. If you write a check back date it to cover yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I slid the forms back to her.
“Plus the set up and install fee, eighty-seven-fifty.” She glanced down at the forms I’d just slid back across the desk to her. “So, okay, you’re doing the monthly payment. I need a month in advance, three-hundred-sixty, plus the eighty-seven-fifty. I’ll save you the trouble, Mister Hastings,” she said punching keys on a calculator.
“Haskell.”
“Four-hundred-forty-seven-dollars-and-fifty-cents. By the way, trust me, this is not the place to bounce a check. That check gets returned NSF and you’re back in the Ramsey County Jail. Questions?”
“No, they made things pretty clear when I was released. You’ll be checking me a couple times a day. No alcohol. I have…”
“Or drugs.”
“Not a problem.”
She stared coldly.
“I have to push the button on the phone within five rings, punch in my code. I stay in the house. I review my schedule with you a week in advance. I have to phone forty-eight hours in advance to alter the approved schedule. I can travel to and from work. I have thirty minutes to get to my office and thirty minutes to return home.”
“See that you do,” she said slowly, annunciating each word.
“About my weekly schedule, I’d like…”
“See Marcie out front.”
“She does the schedule?”
“No, she sets up your appointment to meet with me, then I approve your schedule.”
“Would it be possible to do that now? You see…”
Muriel held up a meaty paw and stopped me in mid sentence.
“Please, let’s follow procedure. You can set up an appointment with Marcie when I’ve finished.”
From there she droned on for another fifteen minutes. Occasionally she picked up a pen in her chubby right hand and checked off another item on a laundry list, then read the next point in an expressionless monotone. Eventually, she finished up with the loving reminder, “Failure to comply with any of the aforementioned requirements may result in your arrest and re-incarceration. Do you have any questions, Mister Haskens?”
She may as well have asked did I want fries with that? I shook myself awake.
“Haskell. No, no questions.”
“Please initial in the box provided next to each check mark, indicating you fully understand the requirements as I’ve explained them to you. Then sign at the bottom, indicating you agree with the initials you’ve placed in each box.”
As she said this she slid that meaty paw across the desk again, pushing a long narrow form toward me. There were a number of creases in her fat wrist like she had string or something tightly tied around it.
I initialed and signed.
“Very good, Mister Hastings, please report to Marcie,” Muriel didn’t bother to raise her massive chins and look at me.
“Thank you,” I said, and exited.
It was more of the same from the lovely Marcie out at the front desk, except she was less charming. At no surprise, neither woman wore a wedding ring. Either they didn’t come in the required size or they hadn’t found a guy stupid enough. Marcie set up my appointment to see Muriel, tomorrow, when she would theoretically approve my schedule. Good thing I didn’t have anything else to do in my life.