Mysterywriter's Final Spring

It was warm enough that afternoon to leave the shower without blow drying my hair. I sat by the tiny manmade lake watching a couple of kids casting their lures. I would have said fishing but I think you have to at least catch one fish to be fishing. Then again maybe not. When I was their ages I would try to catch fish a lot of days without any luck. I can't remembering it ever having bothered me. The only time I could ever remember being pissed with a fishing rod in my hands was the time I signed on to a charter boat. Went out for a half day and caught a really wicked chill and nothing else. Not only did that, so called, Captain keep my money, he had the balls to give me one of his cards when I left the boat. I looked at the card and wondered what went through people's minds. In thirty more years I still hadn't figured it out. What the young fishermen did do was make me decide to buy a rod and reel before the summer ended.

The black sports car with a Dodge symbol showed up just before dark. I had already heated, and eaten my can of stew when they showed. I marveled again at how thin Dee was. I was surprised that she returned, and even more so that she brought the kid along with her. Hell neither of them were kids unless you compared them to me.

Mike spoke even before they were seated on the picnic table. "None of my sources know anything about that video store. They do tell me that they won't be surprised by anything we turn up."

"Well, you were a hell of a lot of help." There must have been a smile in my voice if not on my face. I expected him to make some wise ass crack or to apologize but he did neither. He simply looked at his hundred dollar loafers. The loafers I noted with some satisfaction were covered in campground dust.

I gave the next move some thought before I continued. "So you told him everything now you can't shake him?" I was looking at Dee. She nodded miserably. "Well slim it is probably just as well. You might need a place to stay." I gave mike a wicked smile. "At least I know she will be safe with you." If he had been bigger, or even just a little less submissive, he might have, should have, and even could have knocked me on my fat ass. Instead he looked hurt. I really did feel bad till I remember how he had convinced her to toss me out of the investigation.

"Go home with the boy genius tonight. If you don't have anything sexy with you, buy something. Then go to the video shop tomorrow and get a job. Do not take no for an answer. Plead poverty if you have to, but get the job. Don't be at all curious about anything, they are probably confident that nobody has a clue about the phone line. By the way it may well turn out to be harmless. It could have some kind of simple explanation. Just keep an eye on the people around the place. Get an idea of the structure of the management."

"As for you boy blunder, try not to step on yourself for a while. In other words stay the hell out of our way for a while. If you play nice, later you can play Woodward and Burnstein."

"You do know that you are a prick?" he said.

"One of my better qualities," I replied smiling.

"And what are you going to be doing?" Mike really didn't want to give up control.

"I am going to find out what you couldn't." I had no intention of telling him about the drive home that I planned early the next morning. Fortunately most any place in the state can be reached in a day's drive. I didn't mind going home for the day. Sleeping in a real bed and eating real food would be a sacrifice but hell I was gonna get a yarn from it. I would have to make liars out of a hand full of doctors but then it wouldn't be the first time I had beaten those odds. Ultimately it would get me, but I might have time to finish one more poorly written novel.

"Well, if you are leaving first thing in the morning, I guess Dee needs to spend the night with me."

"Don't look so eager, I might begin to worry about her after all." Actually I didn't give a damn one way or the other.

I was up with the sun. I didn't bother to break camp since I would be back that evening. I did stop at the office to pay for another night just in case I didn't make it back that day. It was hard to tell with the van, and my ex. I wasn't surprised to find the park manager in the office at seven A.M. The office would be better than riding round the place in the pickup. Since the sun was up, people would be stirring making a 'drive around' both more difficult and useless.

My deal with the Ex was that she could sell everything after my demise and pocket the money. Legally she probably could already. We had a handshake agreement designed to protect her should the ending not be as clean as the Doctors had promised. The deal was I got to make the one last festival run and she got everything protected. She had agreed not to sell anything till I was gone. I wanted to keep my life right up till the end.

The two hour drive home put me there at ten am. Since she had already gone to work, I entered the attached garage. Once inside, I marveled at all the junk I had collected over the years. Being a cop with a particular way of looking at the rules meant that I collected all kinds of junk.

That one fact accounted for about twenty percent of the crap. My love for computers accounted for at least half. The other thirty percent was most likely in tools bought for some long forgotten project. Once completed they were stored never to again see the light of day.

Finding my black bag, which was in fact green, was no trouble at all. I removed it from the storage rack filled with electronic gadgets. I picked up a handful of batteries from the open cases stacked in another part of the office. Thank God for Ebay.

I almost left without the final touch. My mind was so addled I had begun making lists. That morning I actually thought to look at it. In response to the line which read signs, I moved to a closed cabinet at the rear of the two car garage. I sorted through the rack of magnetic mats until I found the two reading Bucky's Communications 'Telephone installation and repair.' Yes I planned to put a bug in the video store's telephone system.

"Hi hon," I said into the phone.

"Hello Deke, I didn't expect to hear from you till Friday."

"I know sweetie but I had to come home for some things."

"Stay right were you are, I will be there in fifteen minutes."

"No, don't get off work for me, I have to run anyway. I will be gone by the time you get here."

"Oh, are you that tired of me." Her voice had pain in it.

"You know better than that," I replied.

"Yes, I guess I do. So what did you get more pills?" Her voice was hopeless.

"No, I needed a tape recorder." The conversation drifted off to silence. Telephone silence is silence to a factor of ten. One second seems like a minute. "Look Sweets, I have to run for now. I'll call you on Friday night."

"You are still a bastard for not letting us help."

"I know hon, but I always was." I could see the smile on the other end of the phone.

"You still got the card?"

"Yes dear," I smiled that time. She had gone to an office supply store and had a plastic ID card made. It came with a chain to wear around my neck. 'If found dead return to', that was the thing she had been referring to. I found it amusing so I wore it around my neck. "Now I have to run."

Even though I had just spoke to her, I left the Ex a note before driving to my favorite burger stand. In a country filled with burger joints how could one have a favorite you might ask. Simple, I am old. In my youth there had been a burger chain which dipped its burgers in a chili sauce before they went onto the bun. That sauce along with the roto gas grill made them unique. When the chain went under, one of the franchise owners refused to go with it. His mom duplicated the sauce and he continued to make the burgers. Over the years he added variations but he also kept the dipped burger. All that to say I sat at a rough wooden picnic table in a dining room with a raw concrete floor. In the room with painted concrete block walls I devoured four of the small burgers.

After my lunch of mostly buns I was on the highway again. It was well after lunch when I arrived at the strip mall in Charlotte. The blacked out windows of the van made it perfect for my purpose. I parked outside the video store. I was just plain lucky to find the manage gone. The girl behind the counter was not beautiful but she was young. Obviously she had a certain appeal to a comedy old man like me.

"hi," I said it as I weighed my story against her youth. The trick in a con is to go low key. The big grand story gets your ass caught every time. I had the lineman tool bag around my waste and a clipboard in my hand. "Name is Jed hon, I need to check a your phones."

"We aren't having any trouble with the phones."

"I know and we want to keep it that way." Most of those places work on a need to know basis. She didn't need to know what was going on with the dump number. She probably didn't know it existed, at least that was my guess.

"I think the phone box is in the utility closet in the back." The reason she was suddenly cooperative was that a couple of customers wanted to get to the counter which I blocked. I had a feeling I might get a reaction that way.

"Thanks hon." With that I turned my attention to finding the utility closet. I guessed correctly that it would be near the bathrooms. There was a small mounting block on the wall inside the closet. The block was covered by a plastic case to protect the terminals. One set of lugs had three wires attached to it. I rightly figured they were the store phone and the extensions for it. One of the pairs had only a single set of wires. I made a guess based on very little info but I expected that it was the right one.

In the old days one would have had to put a tone on the wires, then go outside to find it on the pole in order to attach a bug. That was long before all the micro chips. All I had to do was to hook up the tiny little transmitter to the lugs. I also had to hope no one was broadcasting a church service or the like nearby. The transmitter was so small and light that it could ba attached to the block by a piece of picture frame adhesive. With my portable drill, I made a tine hole in the plastic cover for the antenna wire. A couple of drops of clear adhesive held it to the box on the very bottom where it was completely unnoticeable. I replaced the cover careful. Instead of the standard bolts I ran in bolts with a special heads. I was positive that the manger had nothing around to remove them.

I waved to the clerk as I walked from the store. Yes I was caught on camera while in the main part of the store, but I looked the part. If she followed me into the parking lot, a very unlikely event, she would see the old beat up van. It had the sign of a communications repair group that did not exist. When I left, I drove to the rear of the strip mall to test the transmitter. I heard nothing through the transmitter, which was as it should be. I had no way to know if it was going to work or not. Not until I heard the tape after a reasonable amount of monitoring. I looked around the alley for a spot to hide the receiver/recorder box. I had fitted everything into an old empty fuse box. It was both waterproof and would blend into the surroundings. I found the master panel area on the corner of the building. It was a minor job to drill a couple of holes in the blocks then drive in an anchor for the bolts that held the box. When I was finished, I was proud of my handy work. It was secure and looked as thought it had been there forever.

Since the tape recorder was voice activated with an hour tape, I forgot about it while I burned CDs for the next show. I didn't hear from Dee and was just as glad. The neighbor in the spot two sites down was a fairly attractive woman around forty. Her husband was in Charlotte working on a new Wal-Mart store. She and I spent some time talking about books and such. I loaned her a portable walk man to play a couple of mine. She was all over herself with admiration.

On Wednesday morning the old saw about writing a book proved to be true. She came to my space while I was running discs in my tent. She seemed to be trying to tell me something so I showed her something instead. It was a very nice little adventure. She hated to leave but we both had things to do that afternoon.

I switched from making tapes to packaging them on Thursday. I also found time in the afternoon to swing by for the tape recorder. With the Bucky's communication sign on the van no one questioned my being behind the building. The tape had a very small amount used but I traded it anyway. I played the used one as I drove back to the campground.

I was a little surprised to find that the number was a kind of clearing house for all kinds of sexual kink. The calls seemed to generate from the Internet. Some were for phone sex, others for an escort service, and one request I wasn't quite sure what to make of. I didn't see how a woman with a child could do phone sex at odd hours so I pretty much ruled that out. Escort in the Charlotte area I couldn't figure. The amount of driving and the number of jobs just couldn't pay enough to pay her expenses. She didn't make enough at her small town job to be buying any of the services offered by the mysterious voice on the phone. I knew it would all come together just not at that moment.

None of it made any sense at all, however I did have another piece of the puzzle. I suspected that my first thought had been right it was some kind of kink that brought her to Charlotte. What it was and how it figured into the rape, I had no idea. The money thing still bothered me. The executive car service for a three hour drive was way more than an escort/hooker would make in a single night. There had to be more to it, I thought. I didn't come to any kind of conclusions instead I decided to burn CDs and wait for more tape.

The weekend came and along with it a new festival in a South Carolina beach town. It was touted to be the best of the spring shows. Saturday did prove to be a madhouse. I was picked over badly by Sunday morning. I saw the show through with a much reduced inventory. "Damn," I said to myself as I loaded the van, "This crap is proving to be work."

I treated myself to dinner that night at a small family style restaurant on the secondary highway. That road was chosen in deference to my failing eyesight. My mind was still on the festival as I drove along after dinner. I never even saw the highway patrol car until the lights flashed in my rear view. I had forgotten how those blue light illuminate the inside of a car. Everything seemed to have turned a strobing blue. I was surprised that it didn't set off a seizure.

I pulled to the side of the road at the first spot that looked safe. I had to worry about the van being able to get back on the road. I stopped, then sat waiting quietly. I wasn't indignant even though I knew I hadn't been speeding. Hell, the van probably wouldn't do the speed limit unless dropped from an airplane. Even then it would have to be fully loaded and without a parachute.

"Could I see your driver's license and registration please?" Like most highway patrolmen I had met he was large. That particular one was also black. I handed him the license without speaking. I was planning to make his life miserable but not overtly. "Do you know you have a tail light out?"

Okay I was tempted to answer no but hum a few bars and I will jump in. Instead I replied, "I had no idea. I will get it fixed first thing tomorrow morning." He nodded.

"Mind if I have a look inside?"

I wanted to say, Do you think a burned out tail light is enough probably cause for a search? I didn't only because I remembered the cigars with the pot spike. "Not a problem for me officer."

He ordered me from the car, but he was respectful doing it. I stood by the van while he opened the cargo door. He asked about each plastic trunk, to which I answered as best I could. Somewhere along the line he lost interest in the search, but to save face he finished it anyway.

"So you're a writer?" he asked. I nodded. "I got a thousand stories to tell." I nodded again since I had heard the remark from every cop I ever met.

"You really should try writing them down then. You never know you might be the next big crime novelist."

"Probably not, I hate rejection," he smiled at me somehow knowing that I understood. "Okay sorry about the search, but we get a lot of drugs along these back roads."

"Not to mention it is about time for the drunks to weave their way home," I suggested with a grin.

"That too," he said grinning back at me.

"You got a CD player in that monster?" I was nodding to the Crown Vic.

"Yeah but it is mine, the state sure as hell didn't pay for it.'

I reached into the case with the remnants of my inventory. "Here you go. Try this you might get a kick out of it." I had handed him one of the very few remaining copies of Lust and Murder in Small town X.

"Can't have no porn in the car," he replied as he read the title.

"It's clean that is just a come on for the rubes." He smiled he got back in his car.

As I passed by the front of the van, I gave it a couple of rocks up and down. I didn't want that fuel pump to fail with a cop sitting behind me. Once I had the van restarted I was off."

I made it to the campground late but as with all the others I just found an empty space, moved my load to the top of the van, then stretched out in the back to sleep. The next morning I went out to breakfast. I found an auto parts store after the scrambled eggs, there I bought a bulb, actually I bought two. I might as well have just used their trash can for the second one since odds were a hundred percent that I would never find it again.

I swung by the video store to change out the tapes. It was early in the morning so it was closed. I changed out the tapes without any anyone being the wiser. It was hard but I waited until I was back at the campground before I played the tape. Since they were in major operations over the weekend the conversations were interesting. I heard references to sex for sale a couple of times but that didn't interest me, since I had already decided that prostitution wouldn't pay enough. Then I heard it.

"Yes Sir we can provide that service. The charge will be Seven hundred and fifty dollars." I went back and rewound the tape till I heard the entire conversation.

The sexy female voice said, "This is Jen from nightlite, I am returning Mr Wilson's call."

"This is Tom Wilson."

"Could I just verify your password please?" The sexy Jen asked.

"Pencil," Wilson replied. "Is this a secure line?" Wilson it seemed was no dummy. Well actually he was because the sexy Jen assured him that it was secure and he believed her.

"Now what can we do for you tonight?"

"Don't you have a record of my particular kink." He asked it as though he were referring to a standing pizza order.

"Of course we do, So it is a woman for public sex. Where would you like to meet her?" Wilson obviously named a club somewhere. "She will be in the usual red blouse and black skirt." Jen informed him. The price will be seven hundred and fifty dollars billed to your American Express."

"Of course it is the way we always do it. And young lady she, better not be just a hooker for that kind of money."

"Have we ever sent you a working prostitute?"

"No your women are fresh, I will give you that much. I just hate that I can't order by name some of them are better than others."

"Well Mr Wilson, we have found it better if no bonds develop between our ladies and the customers. Most of them wouldn't work otherwise. It is a double security concern of ours."

"Of course, I wouldn't really have it any other way. Just send her around nine, she will be finished by midnight."