Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery (18 page)

I decided to call Lucy or Babe to share my news, even though it wasn’t really good news, simply one piece of the puzzle leading to a different, bigger puzzle. Just as I was about to dial, the phone rang. I assumed it was Grant, who’d forgotten to tell me something.

“Grant?” I said.

There was silence, but not a robodialer’s silence: someone was there. I could hear breathing.

“No.”

I looked at the phone to see if I recognized the caller’s number. I didn’t, but it was a familiar area code. One I’d recently dialed. Michigan.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me. My name’s Jeff Warren.”

I froze. Of course. How long would it have taken Mama Warren to call her boy and congratulate him on his new girlfriend and imminent nuptials? She probably called the minute we hung up to ask him where we were registered and what colors we were featuring.

“I think we should talk, don’t you?” he said.

I wasn’t so sure.

Warren said he was calling from Massachusetts. He was headed south with another driver and they’d just made a pit stop at a service station about three and a half hours away from Springfield.

“I want to explain,” he said, “about Monica.”

“Go ahead, explain.”

“I can’t talk now. I’m still on probation with the trucking company and the fella I’m with today is being a real hard case. He’s been busting my chops about being on the phone so much.”

Right. I bet he’d spent a lot of time on the phone with Mom. “What about tomorrow morning?” I said.

“We have to be in Virginia by then.”

They had an official two-hour rest stop planned not far from Springfield. The other driver had a girlfriend nearby. The plan was for Warren to catch some z’s in the truck while his colleague had a conjugal visit. Instead, he offered to come to my place, but there was no way I was giving him my address. I suggested a more public venue, the diner. I’d feel safe there and he knew where it was.

With any luck someone would also be at the police substation across the road, and the Dunkin’ Donuts in that same strip of stores was open late. And even if they were both closed, the Springfield police department sign might be enough of a deterrent if Warren had anything on his mind besides talking.

“The owner of the diner has an office at the back,” I said. “We can meet there if the place is closed.” We agreed to meet in three and a half hours.

If I hadn’t lost track of the time when I was online and then on the phone with Grant I’d have realized that three and a half hours from then was 1
A.M.
I wasn’t stupid enough to meet a total stranger in a parking lot at that hour. I hit star sixty-nine on my phone but was unable to connect. Either Warren was in a dead zone or the other driver was still hassling him about the calls and had made him turn off his cell. I drove to Babe’s.

Three or four small parties were crammed into booths, laughing and finishing up with dinner. One guy sat at the counter nursing a soft drink and staring into space.

“Look what the cat drug in,” Babe said. I knew she’d said
drug
to be funny, but
drug
had assumed a whole new meaning in the last two weeks, and I didn’t laugh. She pursed her lips. “One of
those
days?”

“Guess who I just got a call from,” I said, climbing on a stool a safe
distance from the others. Babe brought over two coffees, one for me and one for her.

“Let’s see, Sir Paul McCartney—he wants you to redesign the gardens for his new castle?”

“Funny. No, Jeff Warren.”

“I give up. Who’s Jeff Warren?” she asked.

One bleary-eyed day and I had lost touch with all the humans I knew. I brought Babe up to speed on my online research and marathon phone call with Mama Warren.

“Dang it, girl, you do have a
knack
for this stuff,” she said. We clinked mugs. “So some guy gets a new job driving a truck and everything changes for two towns and one family. This is like that butterfly-wings-on-the-other-side-of-the-planet thing, isn’t it? You’re not seriously going to meet him, are you?”

I shook my head and handed her a note I’d written for Warren. If he had time to meet me tonight, he’d have time to answer some questions, and I didn’t want to forget anything. I asked Babe to tack it to her back door when she closed up.

“Can I read it?”

“Sure.”

Surprise, bewilderment, and finally concern registered on Babe’s face as she read the note with my questions. “Caroline Sturgis
knows
these people? Whodathunkit? Two weeks ago I would have bet the most dangerous thing she’d ever done was try the new aesthetician at the day spa.” She let out a long low whistle.

“These sound like some nasty characters,” she said, refolding the note and slipping it into her back pocket. “How do we know our truck driver friend isn’t one of them? Or that he isn’t working for this man Donnelley?”

I didn’t know. That’s why my plan was to leave the note on her back door. I’d return at around 12:30 and hide in the shopping strip across
the street to see what happened when Jeff Warren arrived and realized I wasn’t coming. My note said something had come up, but wouldn’t he please help us out by answering some questions. Babe didn’t like the plan.

“Why do you have to come at all? Why not just leave the note and see what happens?”

I’d thought of that. But if Jeff really sat down to write the answers like the good boy his mother thought he was, I’d run across the street and tell him I’d just been detained. If he got pissed off and left, then he knew more than he’d suggested and had another reason to want to meet me.

“Can’t you just call O’Malley?” Babe said, still trying to talk me out of it.

“And tell him what? I’m meeting a man, does he want to make it a threesome? Jeff Warren knows something. By accident or design, he’s the reason this whole thing started. I’ll be careful. Besides,” I said, coming around the counter to refill my coffee mug, “he’s a hardworking guy—even his two gold-digging ex-wives admit that. And his mother says he’s a good boy. Aren’t you always after me to find some nice guy?”

Babe was not amused.

“What did you find out about this Donnelley character and the woman who was arrested with them?” she asked.

After Warren’s call, I did an online search for Kate Gustafson and the charming Mr. Donnelley. It didn’t take long. Kate had been paroled after serving two years of her sentence. She died in a fire at a bar not long after that. Eddie’s digital trail seemed to end a year and a half ago, right after his release from prison. Disappeared like a puff of smoke.

But how does someone intentionally disappear? No doubt, like everything else, things were easier if you had money. Caroline had done it, but that was years ago before everything we did left an online trail like the
silvery tracings of a slug. Now it was harder. We might just as well have microchips placed in our necks like some suburban pets.

I never knew how they reckoned amounts from years ago versus current dollars, I just knew whatever the number was then, it would be worth more now. In 1986, I was a fine judge of Cabbage Patch dolls and Strawberry Shortcake merchandise, but I didn’t know what any of it cost.

“Pete and I bought the diner around then, for a helluva lot less,” Babe said. “If someone invested that money wisely for him, Donnelley could have been sitting on quite a pile when he got out. With that much money he could have bought a new identity and gone anywhere in the world.”

Except something told me Donnelley hadn’t left the money with a trusted financial adviser who’d invested it soundly on his behalf. More likely he’d hidden it or given it to a compatriot who didn’t spend twenty years in jail. Was it possible Caroline knew where the money was, or had it, and she was still lying to Grant, to all of us?

If Caroline’s parents and grandmother didn’t die leaving her well provided for, where had she gotten the money she was living on when she met Grant? My head was swimming with different scenarios. I had to find out what really happened and Jeff Warren could fill in some of the blanks.

“I don’t like this,” Babe said, handing over her spare key. She made me promise to call her after Warren and I met, just in case.

“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” I said.

“You’re already doing something stupid.”

Babe was wrong. People met strangers all the time, didn’t they? On airplanes, blind dates, hookups in bars. I dropped that train of thought when I realized I was making her case for not meeting him instead of my own for keeping the appointment.

I drove home and prepared to meet Jeff Warren, even though it was hours before the appointed time. I must have changed clothes half a dozen times. It wasn’t about making a fashion statement. Unconsciously, I was practicing defensive dressing. Sneakers would be good if I had to run, but cowboy boots would be better if I had to deliver a good, swift kick. Nothing in my closet would stop a bullet, but why make it easy for someone to grab, stab, or throttle me? I opted for boots, jeans, and my leather jacket over a thick but loose hoodie.

It reminded me of October 11, 2001, the first time I flew after 9/11. I dressed for the flight as if I was preparing for an undercover SWAT mission: heavy denim layers, steel-toed work boots, and a hardcover copy of
The Corrections,
which I figured I could use as a weapon if necessary.
I’d seen a man killed with a pair of eyeglasses in a movie once, but I was wearing contacts and I didn’t think they’d do much good. I knew I was being ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop. I’d let Babe give me the heebie-jeebies.

If I really thought it was dangerous, why would I be going? And Jeff Warren would hardly call his sweet old gray-haired mother before he planned to rape and kill someone. Would he? Unless this was one of those twisted Ma Barker or honeymoon killers–type scenarios…

I needed to ratchet down. I made a pot of green tea and sat in my kitchen all bundled up, tapping my toes, watching the clock, and sweating it out until 11:45, when I convinced myself it wasn’t too early to leave.

The shopping strip across from the diner was almost dark; one streetlight a football field away was the only public lighting. I turned into the lot on the far right side of the strip, adjacent to a nearby gas station, where I hoped my Jeep would look like any of the other vehicles in for repairs and overflowing from the station’s own small triangular lot. It was also as far away from our meeting place as I could park and still be within walking distance.

The temperature had dropped considerably and the wind was kicking up. That made me feel a little less foolish for all the layers—although they were so loose, the cold air blew up my cuffs and down my collar and sent a chill right down my vertebrae to the base of my spine. I could see my breath. I zipped up, flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt, and buried my hands deep in my pockets. Should have worn gloves.

Even walking fast, I took almost ten minutes to get from my end of the lot; down a few short steps; past the shuttered nail salon, karate school, and liquor store; past the police substation and dimly lit Dunkin’ Donuts all the way to the other end, where I’d planned to crouch down and give myself an unobstructed view of Babe’s and the door to her office.

I scoped out my surroundings. Two cars in the lot probably belonged
to the Dunkin’ Donuts employees. Across the street, the Paradise was closed, nothing visible except the pale blue light from the Snapple fridge. Next to the diner was an ATM, the last vestige of a bank branch that had shuttered its doors five years earlier, and a gas station that had also gone belly-up and was awaiting demolition to make room for a piano showroom, which had to be a front for some other more questionable activity, since why would anyone build a piano showroom on a quiet stretch of road like this? And it
was
quiet.

During the day, inside the Paradise Diner, the air was warm with the mingled fragrances of cinnamon, bacon, and comfort foods; and this was an idyllic spot with ducks and geese fluttering over the lake or waddling onto the shore. From my new vantage point it was as cold and lifeless as a postcard.

On my side of the road, the police substation had one light on. It no longer fooled any of the locals, but it was a gentle reminder of the long arm of the law, especially for anyone coming off the highway and not knowing any better. Inside the donut shop the employees were cleaning up, getting ready to close.

Shoot. If I’d arrived earlier I could have bought a coffee to stay warm. I checked my watch—plenty of time before Warren arrived. I was still more than an hour early. I jogged back to the shop and banged on the door with the heel of my hand. The two Indian kids inside looked at me, then each other, warily. Was this a setup? Were my confederates lying in wait, looking for my signal that they should rush the doors, duct-tape the employees, and empty the cash register? Or was I simply a chowhound desperate for caffeine and her next fatty, sugary fix?

One of the kids leaned his mop against the counter, wiped his hands on his apron, and came over to check me out. I pushed my hood down to look a little less gangsta and a little more suburban lady. He squinted, said something to his colleague, and unlocked the door, opening it just a crack.

“Great one, skim milk, no sugar,” he said, nodding.

Those words would probably be chiseled on my tombstone. Between the cold and my covert mission, I smiled a smile I didn’t really feel. That was me, harmless caffeine addict with a six-word bio.

“Got any coffee left? I’m supposed to meet someone here and I’m going to freeze my keister off if I don’t get something warm inside me. Even the dregs.” I tried to sound like an upbeat gal with an appointment, not a woman on a stakeout. “I don’t care, I’ll take anything.” I did want the coffee, but in the back of my mind I thought it wouldn’t hurt to let someone else know my whereabouts.
That’s right, Officer, we saw her at around midnight…
.

The kid in charge told me they’d already closed out the register and made their bank drop across the road at the ATM—either to reiterate that they were closed or to announce that there was no cash on the premises, just in case one of their innocent-looking customers who ordered the same thing every time she came in also knocked over convenience stores in her spare time.