Chapter Thirty-Four
Back home that evening I felt like a caged animal. As I sat on my front porch sipping ice water a crowd of five women walked past, chatting and not listening to one another on their way to the next saloon.
“Want to come in and see my ankle bracelet?” I said, a little too loudly.
That seemed to put a spring in their step and they went quickly on their way. Eventually I got bored with watching people enjoying themselves, became frustrated with nothing on TV and so I went to bed. I tossed and turned fitfully through the night and was sipping coffee out on my front porch at six the following morning.
I had a nine-thirty appointment with the charming Muriel Puehl to hopefully approve my work schedule. I arrived ten minutes early, again.
“Yes,” Marcie said at the receptionist desk. I recognized her blank look. She was oblivious to the fact I’d been in twenty-four hours earlier and had scheduled today’s appointment on the way out the door.
“Devlin Haskell. I have a nine-thirty appointment with Muriel.”
“I’ll see if Ms Puehl can see you.”
I noticed the crossword puzzle in front of her, I was going to say something smart, thought better of it and took my choice of uncomfortable seats and waited.
“Mister Haskell?” Marcie called out twenty minutes later searching for me in the small reception area once again I was the only other person there.
“Yes.”
“Ms Puehl will see you now,” Marcie said, the same blank look on her face a quick glance suggested she’d gotten no further on the crossword puzzle.
Muriel was reading some papers at her desk when I entered, pink chins rolled down her chest. The air was almost syrupy with perfume. She didn’t look up, simply pointed a sausage like finger at the uncomfortable chair in front of her desk and kept reading.
I sat, watched her, counted four separate and distinct chins and waited.
“You’ve brought this week’s schedule?” she said eventually looking up.
“Yeah, actually I brought two weeks I figured we might as well…”
“We approve one week at a time, I’ve neither the patience nor inclination for changes.”
“Okay.” I swallowed down the wise guy comment about her living with five cats, eating cake frosting out of the can every night and placed my schedule on her desk.
“I see,” she said then took a few minutes to read the single page schedule a dozen times.
“You’ll be allowed thirty minutes to commute to and from your office. Other than that you will be in your office or your place of residence. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, you can see Marcie about your next appointment.”
“Would it be possible to email my schedules to you, might save us both some…”
“No. Please make your appointment with Marcie on your way out, good day.”
There were a number of things I wanted to ask; Why couldn’t I email a schedule? Why was she so fat? Had she ever been laid? If so did the poor guy survive? Instead I settled for, “Thank you.”
I made my appointment with Marcie. It dawned on me they were probably scamming the county, paid a specified amount for every client appointment. Therefore, everything required an appointment. I decided to shut up and just get out of there as fast as possible. Marcie was only too happy to oblige so she could return to staring blankly at her crossword puzzle.
I fled Sentinel Monitoring and drove to my office. I looked longingly across the street at The Spot bar for a moment and then climbed the stairs. There was over a week’s worth of mail shoved under the door. A dozen circulars from grocery stores, two past due notices and a post card from Las Vegas written so illegibly I couldn’t determine who had sent it. I dumped most of the pile into the waste basket, taped the post card to the wall, then went to make coffee and discovered I was out.
I hit speed dial on my cell and walked out the door.
“The Spot.”
“Jimmy, Dev, can you get me two coffees, to go?”
“To go? And where you been the last few days? Christ we’re down about fifteen percent.”
“Long story, can I come over and get the coffee?”
“Yeah, how long you gonna be?”
“I’m crossing the street now,” I said, hung up and pushed open the front door. Jimmy still had the phone in his hand.
“You weren’t kidding.”
“I’m a busy guy. You got something I can carry those in, besides the dirty coffee mug you usually serve me?”
“I’ve never served you a coffee in here in your life.”
“You got a point.”
“Here, take this,” he said sliding the pot across the bar. “It’s way past time to make a fresh pot anyway.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“On your tab, I’m guessing.”
“Is there another way?”
“Amazingly some of our customers pay cash.”
“On the tab.”
“Everything going okay?”
“I’m about to start on that now.”
“And you think that coffee is gonna help?”
Fifteen minutes later I was thinking Jimmy had a point. I grimaced as I felt the acid burn a hole in my stomach. I swirled the coffee a little to see if there was any glaze left on the inside of the ceramic mug, then pushed the thing aside. The coffee had to have been from yesterday, early in the day.
I drummed my finger on the desk and thought about that lunatic Kiki, Misses Thompson Barkwell and her idiot brother Farrell Early. I wrote their names on a sheet of paper. Then wrote KRAZ off to the side. I wrote Thompson Barkwell below that, then drew a question mark in the middle. A half hour later all I’d done was retrace the question mark a few thousand times.
Had I been set up or was I once again just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Chapter Thirty-Five
I didn’t accomplish much more then that for the rest of the day, other than I looked longingly out the window at The Spot as the occasional miscreant walked in or stumbled out. The sun shimmered off the asphalt street and the sidewalk looked hot enough to fry an egg on. A little after four I hit on an idea and called Sunnie Einer, my resource for all things computer.
“Hello,” she answered on the second ring.
“Hi Sunnie, it’s Dev, long time no talk.”
There was a long pause, too long.
“Hello, Sunnie?”
“Yes, Dev.”
“How are things?”
Another too long pause.
“Sunnie?”
“Look Dev, you know and I know you couldn’t care less how things are. So get to the point.”
“You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m also busy, what do you need?”
“Well, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind looking something up for me, on the computer? It’s the…”
“Do you still have that lap top you borrowed from me, for the weekend, I believe it was about six months ago?”
I did as a matter of fact, it was on top of my file cabinet, I’d set the coffee pot on top of the thing earlier.
“Yes, I’ve got it right here, meant to bring it back. I guess I’ve been working overtime and it sort of got away from…”
“Is it on?”
“Well actually, not exactly, see it…”
“Not exactly? Is it on or not?”
“It’s not, I think it might be broken.”
“Broken? Did you drop it?”
“No it just stopped working all of a sudden. Honest. I was typing away on the thing and all of a sudden it shut down.”
“Did you have it plugged in?”
“Plugged in?”
“Oh God. So you never recharged the battery?”
“How do you do that?”
“You can’t be this… Oh God, look, bring it over here, I’ll give you a basic tutorial. The same one I give to eight year olds, although that might be a little too advanced. You can pick up dinner by the way, and some wine, I’m in the mood for Italian, and make it a nice wine.”