At that moment her grip slipped, the release of the phone was such a surprise to Steins that he lost his grip, causing the phone to sail over his shoulder. It landed on the asphalt where it shattered on impact.
Steins smiled. “Thank you, ma’am.” He turned and extracted a baggie from his coat pocket and began to pick up the pieces of the phone.
As Claire walked back to the ambulance she could hear the shrill voice of Candace Dagmar threatening to sue the police department.
Chapter Twenty One
“So what’s up for you today?” Claire said, stretching out on the couch watching the sun come up.
Rye lay on his back on the floor, hands behind his head. “I promised Phil I’d make an appearance at his bachelor party and I’ve got an appointment to meet Olden in the afternoon.
“You’ve known Phil maybe thirty years?
“Something like that,” Rye said.
Claire nodded her head then leaned on one elbow and looked down at Rye. “Watch yourself, the rumor is someone’s bringing a lap dancer to the party. The only lap I want you dancing with is mine.”
“Not to worry, I’ll probably leave early.” He flopped over onto his stomach. “What about you?”
“I’ve got some belt tests around noon and sensei wants me to help him plan a winter tournament. I was going to wander over to the hospital morgue, see if I could find someone who knows this mystery doctor. But I think I’ll wait until you’ve met with Olden.”
“Got a couple cellophane belts to give out?” Rye said.
“They’d kick your butt.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve got this personal body guard,” Rye said.
They shared a quick breakfast and a protein drink, cleaned up the dinner dishes from the night before and spiffed up the living quarters before going their separate ways.
Rye took a deep breath before knocking. A smiling Phil Panther answered the door.
“Hey guys, help has arrived. Anybody passes out don’t bother calling 9-1-1.”
Phil’s house was a modest two bedroom, bath-and-a-half, Craftsman. The living room, decorated for the party, was wallpapered with pin ups and helium filled balloons with crude sayings. One was even shaped like a pair of breasts.
There were many who thought that at age fifty, Phil Panther would never get married and that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to curtail his bachelor ways.
During an evening run with Rye, he’d confessed that he was tired of the dating scene and was ready to settle down, whatever it took. This bachelor party was to be his last hurrah.
Rye took a center seat on the sofa directly in front of a munchies-laden coffee table and a widescreen TV.
“Perfect timing, Rye,” Bobby Panther said, as he stood in front of the TV, wearing a wide, mischievous grin. “The entertainment is about to start.”
Bobby was Phil’s younger brother by two years. He taught math and coached wrestling at Southern Oregon University, and was the mastermind of the party. As he started the video tape and stepped away from the TV, a groan went up from the room even though every eye was glued to the scene unfolding on the screen.
A voluptuous blonde wiggled out of her clothes and climbed into a waiting tub of bubbles. She slid under the white foam, closed her eyes and moved her hand beneath the water. As she moaned and sighed, the water lapped over the edge of the tub onto the floor. The camera followed the water onto the bathroom floor where the scene segued to the water in a swimming pool and the sound of another female moaning.
“Hey my pool didn’t come with a sound track,” someone in the back of the room hollered.
The camera panned to a knothole in a wooden fence; an eye peering through it. The scene changed to reveal what the peering eye was seeing—two nude bodies on a manicured lawn by the pool. The camera zooms in to a tight shot of the couple’s union, then pans up to the woman’s face…
Rye suddenly leaned over the edge of the sofa, forgetting about the Doritos chip he was raising to his mouth. “Stop the tape!” he yelled.
“C’mon, Rye, don’t be a prude,” Bobby said.
“No, really, stop the tape. I know that woman.”
“We’re glad for you, buddy. You can take the tape home if you’d like. That is, if Claire doesn’t mind.”
The room erupted in laughter.
Nobody tried to stop him as Rye stepped around the coffee table and walked up to the TV. “Someone show me how to pop the tape out.”
“Shit, OK, but sit down. I’ll do it.”
“No kidding,” Rye said. “That woman came up to me at the scene of an accident yesterday and asked for help. I just want to see where it was made, that’s all.” Bobby handed him the tape.
“Hey man, you could have at least waited until the end,” Bobby said. “But since you didn’t, you have to promise to stick around and watch the other one.”
“Sorry,” he said, heading back to his place on the couch, tape in hand.
Phil came over and sat next to Rye who was trying to read the tiny print on the tape’s label.
“You’re really serious about this aren’t you?” he said, taking the tape from Rye. “Looks like the name of the company is Lewd and Lascivious.”
“It was the pleading look in her eye, there was nothing wrong with her, I mean she wasn’t injured. Her husband or whomever the guy was she was with, was the first on the scene of an accident and had set out flares. I got the impression that she didn’t want to go with him. I just don’t know, and now here she is in a porn flick. Maybe this guy is forcing her to perform. I feel like I should do something.”
Phil put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Bounce this off Claire, see what she has to say. Oh, and don’t worry about the guys. I heard a rumor little brother is bringing in a lap dancer.” Turning to get up, Phil looked at Rye and said, “I don’t mind you taking the tape, just get it back to Foxy Lady Video by noon tomorrow.”
Claire was reclining on the couch reading when Rye walked in. She spotted the tape in his hand. “What, you won the booby prize?” she said.
“Very funny. I’ve got something for you to look at.”
Rye walked across the room to the VCR where he inserted the tape. “Remember my mentioning that woman who asked for help at the I-5 accident? Well, take a look at this,” Rye said, facing Claire, totally unaware that his tape had been playing.
The TV screen was filled with a woman’s head bobbing up and down. “Oh shit, sorry.”
He bent down and pressed rewind, which made her head bob even faster, only backwards. Rye stopped it at a scene where the couple on screen were all over each other. He let the tape run until it came to the close up of the woman’s face. Pressing still, the tape paused.
“There,” he said. That’s her, the woman from the accident. She said her name was Crystal.”
When he turned to Claire her expression was etched in stone. “You forgot something when you did maintenance yesterday,” she said.
Rye was taken aback, here he was confronted by a mystery and Claire didn’t seem to care.
Standing she lifted out the jump kit from behind the couch and placed it on the coffee table between them. “Open it.”
“But the tape and the woman,” Rye said.
“Relax, open it.”
Coming around and dropping into a squat in front of the coffee table Rye lifted the twin latches that held the lid shut, pulled it back and found himself staring at a video tape. “What the hell is this?” Rye said.
“I don’t know how it got into your jump kit but it’s got your tape beat hands down, it also has your girlfriend on it,” she said.
Rye traded tapes and pressed start then walked around the coffee table and sat beside Claire.
It was immediately apparent by the overhead angle and the fish eye lens that this was a surveillance tape. It was looking down on three different sets; it took in everything from people standing off the set to the far side of the scene and the backdrop. In the first set, on the far left of the screen, a naked woman was talking with a man holding a clipboard—he seemed to be giving her directions. The middle set was more bed than floor, but was empty. The far right of the screen, the third set, was alive with action. The distortion of the camera lens made it impossible to discern what was happening, but after several minutes, three men stepped away and the woman’s face was center screen for about thirty seconds.