“I agree we’ve most likely covered enough ground for today, Mister Laufen.” Manning said to Louie, but he continued to stare at me.
“Then I take it you are about to charge Mister Haskell? Or are we’re free to go?” Louie asked.
Charge me? I looked at Louie, wide-eyed.
“For the time being, you are free to go,” Manning said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The crime scene tape was still keeping me out of my place. I didn’t think I possessed the stamina to spend a second night at Heidi’s. I was sitting in my car wondering who I could possibly call and scam an overnight from when my cell phone rang.
“Haskell Investigations.”
“Hello Dev, it’s Carol,” she said, sounding sultry.
Well, surprise, surprise if it wasn’t little Miss Pepe le Pew.
“Hi Carol, nice to hear from you, wow, I’m little surprised.”
“Surprised?”
“Yeah, the last time we spoke, yesterday I think, you told me never to call you again. It’s really nice to hear your voice. How have you been?” I figured I’d better soft peddle it since I needed a place to stay. Carol and her implanted attributes would be just the thing the doctor ordered.
“Dev, you’re so sweet, things have been positively wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for introducing Nicholas to me.”
“Introducing Nicholas? Carol, I didn’t introduce you two, we were out on a date, you and me. I was attempting to ply you with Cosmopolitans if you’ll recall. Then that Nicholas guy showed up and took my stool and the next thing I know you’re speaking French.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. It’s just that he is so different, so interesting, so, so, romantic. He’s, oh I don’t know, so really different than you. I mean in a good way, I guess,” she added.
That didn’t really help me.
“And, he’s been such a little gentleman.”
I didn’t want to touch the ‘little’ line. I was hoping maybe Pepe le Pew was out of town and Carol was fishing for a little ungentlemanly behavior on my part.
“What can I do for you? Maybe we should get to…”
“Just a tiny favor I’d like to ask.”
I quickly ran the list of her particular perversions through my mind.
“How can I help?” I said, then checked my face in the rear view mirror.
“I left a couple of Leonard Cohen CD’s at your place. Any chance you could run them over, tonight? Nicholas will be here sometime after …”
I decided it wouldn’t be the best idea to tell her I’d tossed them both in the trash. You’d slit your wrists before you finished listening to one CD from that guy, let alone both of them, totally depressing.
“… to prepare a special night.”
“I’d love to get them to you Carol, but I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t,” she shot back, her charming attitude suddenly gone.
“Look, I’d like nothing better than to help with your love life, but I can’t get them tonight.”
“Out with some bar floozy?”
“I only wish. No, I…”
She hung up, so much for Carol and Pepe le Pew.
Against my better judgment I found myself on the front porch ringing Louie’s doorbell less than an hour later. It was a muggy, dreadfully still evening and the two front windows at Louie’s house were open with large fans roaring and clattering. The storm door stood open in a failed attempt to collect whatever breeze there wasn’t. I rang the front doorbell again, heard the thing chime from somewhere inside. Further back in the house I could hear a woman’s voice. She sounded like she was pleading. Whoever it was, she was in trouble.
“Hello,” I called, then heard a shriek. I pulled on the screen door, but it was hooked. I pulled hard, wrenched the thing open and tore a part of the door as I did, splitting the wood where the hook had been a moment before. I followed the woman’s shrieks down the hall. Louie was in his den, he sat snoring in his ratty recliner, close to a dozen beer bottles scattered around him on the floor. He had passed out in front of his flat screen. Two large women screamed as they tested the support system on a tandem bicycle that careened down a steep hill, based on their size the thing had to have had solid rubber tires.
I walked into the kitchen and helped myself to a cold bottle of Summit from his fridge. Then returned to Louie’s den, lifted the remote from the arm of his recliner, settled into an equally ratty couch and started flicking through channels and landed on a movie I’d only seen three or four times.
Louie woke me sometime after midnight.
“Want another beer?” he asked, holding a cold bottle out in my general direction.
“Thanks.”
“No woman stupid enough to put up with you tonight?” he asked, and then followed up by chugging almost a third of his beer.
I shook my head.
“Any idea who put that thing in your garage?”
“Someone who doesn’t know me very well. Just about everyone knew that little fridge was dead. And if they didn’t, once they opened it up they should have gotten the hint.”
“Hint?” he asked, then chugged another third.
“You kidding? I had boxes of nails and screws in there, what kind of idiot sees that sort of stuff in a refrigerator and tosses a finger in?”
“I don’t know, some guy in a hurry, worried about getting caught sneaking in or rushing out. Someone who doesn’t really care, someone who wants to set you up, see you get jacked around and nailed.”
“The guy sees the fridge, first of all he has to move a bunch of shit just to get to the thing. He opens it up, the light doesn’t go on, it’s not cold, there’s boxes of hardware in there, a couple of paint cans, seems like a pretty weak set up to me.”
“Maybe,” Louie drained his bottle and didn’t ask if I wanted another. He just walked back into the kitchen and reappeared thirty seconds later with two more beers, he handed one to me. I set it down on the floor.
“Plus, are you telling me the guy who was stalking Harlotte Davidson all this time around the country was some moron from Saint Paul?” I asked.
“That second part, being a moron, that seems pretty plausible.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure. But hell, I didn’t even know these English Roller Derby gals existed until Justine put me in touch with them.”
“Well there you go, obviously if the great Dev Haskell didn’t know anything about their fund raising tour across the United States, no one else did, either. It just couldn’t be news, right?”
I took his point, shrugged my shoulders.
Louie shook his head.
“It’s someone connected to the Hasting Hustler’s in some way. Some creep has the hots for that Harlotte chick or she gave some idiot the finger and now he’s following her around. What do they call it when all those creeps follow Jodie Foster around? It’s probably something like that.”
“What do they call it? Nuts, they’re all whack jobs. I’m still not sure that explains the finger?”
“The one in your garage?”
I nodded and took a sip.
“I honestly think it’s some sort of a diversion.”
“Gee really? You mean some douche bag didn’t just walk around and pick up a middle finger lying on the sidewalk? Then decided to hide the thing in my garage?”
“Yeah, I know it didn’t just occur, happen. The thing is obviously from the guy who’s really been doing this shit otherwise it makes absolutely no sense at all…”
“Makes no sense, you mean unlike everything else so far?” I said.
“I’m only half joking here when I say at no surprise you must have pissed someone off. You might want to think about who it could be.”
“That list is long,” I said, then drained my bottle of beer and grabbed the fresh one off the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I was finally allowed back into my house late the next day. Manning had been right, they did take the non-working refrigerator from the garage. They also took the working refrigerator from my kitchen, along with all my knives, my tool box, a table saw, a skill saw and strangely, a set of utensils for eating lobster that I’d gotten as a Christmas gift one year and never used, the things were still in the original box.