I suddenly remembered what I'd been doing when I'd discovered the stranger going through my car. “Hey, I did find something at Bob’s house.” I reached into my pants pocket, which was empty. “It’s in my other jeans. Hang on.”
My discarded clothes lay in a damp heap on the bathroom floor. I fished the matchbook out of the pocket where I'd shoved it. It was quite wet.
“Uh oh,” I said aloud.
“What?” Kay demanded. I turned to find she had followed me.
“I found this on Bob’s kitchen table. A name and number are written inside, and now it’s wet.” I held up the matchbook.
She grabbed it and flipped it open. “Too dark here. Come on.” She hurried back to stand by the living room windows. “Still readable, I think,” she said, tilting it toward the light. “Luvie? Frieda?”
“Trixie,” I said, taking the matchbook back. “Do you think that could be the woman in red?”
“If it is, it would certainly put a different spin on things. Let’s call the number. Can you read it?”
“I think so,” I said, and gave her the digits. She went to the phone on the kitchen counter.
“Tell me the number again,” she commanded. She dialed, listened briefly, and made a face as she hung up.
“Busy. Damn. Hey, where’s the matchbook from?”
I handed it to her. She studied it, and shook her head.
“I don’t know this place,” she admitted.
“Isn’t the address out by the highway?”
“Yeah, near the town limits. Maybe their customers are commuters coming home from High Cross. You work all day in the city, drive most of the way back sober, and stop in for a drink when you’re nearly home.”
“Call them up and see if they know this Trixie,” I said.
She picked up the phone again and dialed. She frowned as she listened, then hung up. “Message machine,” she said. “Apparently they open at eleven a.m. and happy hour is from five to six.”
“Couldn’t you leave a message?”
“Yeah, but what am I going to say? Is Trixie there and did she kidnap Bob? Let me try her number again.” She redialed, but the line was still busy. “Pooh. I wish she’d written an address instead of a phone number.”
“Let’s see if we can find the address. Fire up your computer.”
Her expression brightened, and she led the way downstairs to her office. The computer was on, though the monitor had powered down. When she touched the mouse, the machine crackled and came back to life. Soon she had logged onto the Internet and typed in the phone number on a site that did reverse look ups. We both groaned at the message that there were no matches for that number.
“Yes there is,” Kay groaned, “and we’ve got the real matches to prove it. Shoot.”
“Now what?” I asked.
“Time to call the police?” She saw me shake my head. “Louisa, Bob has disappeared and you were followed by a man with a gun.” I looked at her. “Well, maybe with a gun.”
“I thought of something else…” My voice faltered. She gave me a quizzical look. “Well, it occurred to me that, um, maybe Bob wouldn’t want us to call the police.”
“You’re the one who was so sure he isn’t blackmailing anyone,” she reminded me.
“Well, he’s not,” I maintained. I was operating purely on instinct and instinct is hard to defend. But Kay gave a slow, thoughtful nod.
“You know,” she drawled, a crafty gleam beginning to shine in her eye, “if we could find out what’s going on by ourselves, it would really piss off Ed.”
“Do we want to piss off Ed?”
“He called you lady, didn’t he? Of course we want to piss him off. Come on, it's time to ride.” She hit keys to log off the computer.
“What?”
“Let’s go get your car back. At least we can do that much. After that we’ll figure out something else. We’ll go check your phone for messages. Maybe we should do that first. No, let’s get your car. Hell, maybe Bob will be back by then. I still expect him to walk in any minute.”
We climbed the stairs to her apartment. “I do too. Even though I saw him drive off in that Mercedes, it still feels so unlikely.”
“Let me try Trixie one more time,” she said, and went to the phone.
“What about the dogs?” I asked, as she began to dial.
She paused to look at them. Emily Ann was a perfect circle on the sofa. “Bring Jack along. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Bob will be home and we can give him his dog back. I'll call his place again before we leave too.” She finished dialing Trixie’s number, and put the receiver to her ear.
I told Emily Ann to be a good girl and that we’d be back soon.
“Still busy,” Kay growled. “Let’s call Bob’s house. What’s the number?”
I can rarely remember phone numbers, but I was able to rattle off Bob’s without hesitation. As she dialed, I clipped Emily Ann’s leash onto Jack’s collar, since his was still in my car. He started spinning, stopping to wag when I fished a handful of chocolate chip cookies out of the Mickey Mouse cookie jar next to the flour canister. “Sorry, these are people cookies,” I told him. I wrapped them in a paper towel and turned to Kay.
“No answer, just the machine,” she said. “Let’s go.” She whirled around, yanked open the refrigerator door, and took out a bottle of water.
“What about the store?”
“I put the sign on the door saying I'd be back in an hour. No one will know what time I put it up. Rainy Tuesdays in October aren’t our hottest times anyway. And what’s the point of working for myself if I can't close when I want to?”
Chapter Fourteen
We strapped on our seatbelts, and Kay took off from her parking place behind the building. Jack planted his sturdy feet between the bucket seats and leaned into the turn as she sped around the corner onto Main Street. “Tell me everything you know about Bob. Maybe it will help us figure out what’s going on.”
“I've told you everything already. It's not like I haven’t talked to you every day.” I picked up one of the cookies I had laid on the dashboard and took a bite.
She glanced at me. “I bet there’s some detail you haven’t told me. Just talk. Free associate.”
“Okay. Um, he’s tall and thin and wears plain clothing except for the All Stars.” This came out thickly through the nuts and chocolate chips.
“What about his character?” She looked over her left shoulder before she changed lanes, then held out a hand. “Give me some of that. You’re a whole sandwich ahead.” She grabbed the cookie, chomped out a big bite, and handed it back to me.
“Yes, but I had no breakfast.”
“Bob. Tell me about Bob.”
“He’s kind,” was the next thing I thought of. “He talks to everyone at the dog park, even the people who are boring. He never gets impatient if someone says something dumb. And he’s really good to his dog.”
Kay made the turn onto Hofenstadter Boulevard and sped up to cruise past an SUV. “Ah, the most important thing about a man: how does he treat his dog. Well, you’re probably right at that.”
I looked over at the dog in question, who had retreated to the back seat and sat looking out the window on the driver’s side. We stopped for a red light at the intersection with North Street and Kay reached for the cookie again. The movement caught Jack’s attention, and he licked his lips at the sight of the cookie. It was down to a single bite, which she ate.
“All gone, Jack.” The dog looked at me when I said his name, and I added in the tone one uses on funny dogs with big floppy ears, “He’s just an old hungry dog, isn’t he? A big old sweet hungry boy?”
Evidently ‘hungry’ was another word that Jack was familiar with, for he cocked his head and looked at me hopefully. I went back to my normal voice and told him, “Later, big Jack.” I turned back to Kay, pushing up my glasses to rub my eyes as I thought. “Bob’s also patient. He thought it was cool when I told Emily Ann to go to you at the store that first day, so we’ve been teaching both dogs to go back and forth between us at the park. He said he’s never trained a dog before but he’s really good at it. Or maybe Jack’s just extra smart.”