Gone at Zero Hundred 00:00 (8 page)

When the clock struck twelve, the partiers started to file
out and staggered to their respective vehicles. I figured they shut down early
to stay off the radar of law enforcement. Even though a good number of them
were underage, it was clear they did some heavy partying inside. The guys that
went in alone came out with a pretty girl on their arm. I guess they also
‘hooked up’ inside.

A few minutes later, bouncers, waiters, and the girl who sat
at the reception desk, left the building. Then, David Klein walked out the back
door, and locked up for the night. He hopped into the Porsche, so I followed
him up to Sutter Canyon - a windy road that led up into the hills above Sutter
Beach. It was pretty clear he had too much to drink. He was swerving in and out
of the lanes. I was worried he was going to have a head on collision, but he
finally pulled into the driveway of a two-story home. On the mailbox, it said
David and Summer Klein. Once he staggered inside, I headed home.

All I knew about him so far was; he liked to party, and was
heavily involved in a private, invitation-only club that threw exclusive social
gatherings where having money was a major requirement.

WHEN MY mom started renovations on the living quarters of the
firehouse, it had a huge kitchen, bunkrooms and showers. The construction crew
knocked down the walls to expand the kitchen, and wood-plank floors were put
in. A bearskin rug was placed under the sectional leather sofa and flat-screen
TV. The shower room was turned into a full-size bathroom, and the bunk room was
split into two separate bedrooms.

The fire pole remained.

I was restless, and feeling anxious about the possibility of
meeting Jake Logan, the man I thought might be my father. I was also filled
with doubt. If he was my dad, what if he didn’t want to meet me? A cashier’s
check came every month, like clockwork. But no name or address, other than the
bank employee who signed it. I could tell from my mom’s evasive answers through
the years that the letters she received were from the man whose genes I came
from. Why the secrecy? Was it because he didn’t want to be involved in my life?
Have I wasted all these years, yearning for a guy who wanted nothing to do with
me? I didn’t want to accept that. But, would I have to?

Curiosity overcame me. I opened my laptop, and did a Google
search of the name Jake Logan, just to see what would pop up. The name was a
popular one. A slew of links came up. Jake Logan, the main character in
The
Fringe
. Jake Logan, the pen name for an author of
Slocum
. There was
the CEO of a financial corporation, and several
Facebook
and
Linked
In
pages. None of them could be him. I checked. Then, I found a link that
showed the name, but nothing to identify it. I clicked on the link. All of a
sudden, my laptop went crazy. Little squiggly lines ran down the computer
screen. What the heck. I hit control-alt-delete to restart the machine, but
nothing happened. I pressed the on and off button until the screen went blank,
waited a few seconds and powered it up, again. Whew! Everything booted up fine.
I shut it off again. The last thing I needed was to mess with it and come
across a virus. I didn’t have the money for a new laptop. I set it down on the
coffee table.

I knew if I went to bed sleep wouldn’t come, so I put on some
sweats and plopped down on the sofa to watch a little TV. I flipped through the
channels, avoiding the news. My mom’s murder was no longer the ‘story of the
month’, but now I had an aversion to negative news reporting altogether. At
that hour, all I could find was a rerun of
Covert Affairs
. It was the
episode where she had to save her sister, and realized she had feelings for
Auggie
.
I’ve seen it already, but I could sit through it again.

I started to dose off three-quarters into the show, when I
woke up at the sound of the house phone ringing. For a minute, I thought I
might be dreaming. The clock said it was three-thirty in the morning. And
nobody ever called on the firehouse phone, except for my mom’s clients.

I reached for the phone on the end table, but knocked it off
the table by mistake. “Crap!” I scrambled to the floor, and finally got a
handle on it. “Hello,” I yelled into the receiver.

I heard a frightened voice on the other end. “Anna McSwain?”

Oh my. I was suddenly filled with emotion. Tears welled up in
my eyes. It was somebody looking for my mom, somebody who didn’t know she
passed away. How could they not know, it was all over the news? “I’m her
daughter, Sydney,” I said in a shaky voice. “I’m afraid my mother is …
unavailable.” I didn’t feel comfortable telling the person the truth. I had no
idea who she was.

“Oh no,” the girl cried, “I don’t know when I’ll get another
chance to call.” She spoke with a slight accent.

“Who are you?” I said.

“My name is Tamara Marquez,” she stammered. “Anna was going
to help me.”

Tamara Marquez? That was the name listed on the file folder I
found. “Maybe I can help you. I’m working on some of her cases.”

She was quiet for a moment, as if she was debating what to
do. “Did your mom get my package?” She finally asked me after a few seconds.

“Package? What package?”

“We need help,” she continued, “and we’re running out of
time.”

“Okay. I’ll do what I can.” I had no idea what she was
talking about, but I could tell by the catch in her voice, that she was scared,
and what did she mean by, we?

“Do you know where Danny’s Coffee Shop is?”

“Yes.” It’s not too far from The Devil’s Door, the place I
just staked out.

“Can you meet me there?”

“Um, I guess so,” I said. “But, why don’t you just come here,
to the office?”

“No, no, no…I need you to meet me in the alley, behind the
coffee shop where no one can see. I’ll be there tonight at midnight. Can you be
there?”

“At midnight…?”  This was crazy. I started to pace
around the room. She wasn’t making sense.

“Please, I don’t know who I can trust, and we are running out
of time. Will you please be there?”

“Yeah sure, I’ll be there.”

“Oh God, they’re coming. I have to go.” Then the line went
dead, and all I heard was the dial tone.

 Now that I was wide awake, I was in a state of
confusion. I wanted to talk to her some more, but she was no longer there. I
punched in star-six-nine to return the call. It said unknown number.

She was gone
.

Frustrated, I sat down on the edge of the sofa. What could I
do at three-thirty in the morning? Who was coming that would make her rush off
the phone?

I went in search of my backpack and the laptop; then sat back
down on the sofa. I looked through the notes in the file, and searched my mom’s
private files on the computer. The file said she was a live-in housekeeper for
Howard Grant, a wealthy attorney who dabbled in politics. He has a
twenty-five-year-old son, Aaron, who still lived at the home, which was on
Vanderbilt Drive, a wealthy neighborhood in Sutter Beach. A maid and butler
also lived at the home, but they were not related to Tamara. The file indicated
that Tamara came to live with the Grants when she was young, but had issues
later on, and eventually moved somewhere else. The file didn’t say what those
issues were. And there was no current home address listed for Tamara. On a
yellow post-it note my mom scribbled two things: The Humidor and The Blue Sky,
but the note didn’t say what they were. There wasn’t anything in the file to
give me a clue why she hired my mom, or why she would be so afraid that she needed
to meet in a back alley at midnight.

THE FOLLOWING morning, I drove
over to Sutter Beach Park to meet up with Cody. He wasn’t there when I arrived,
so I started to stretch and work out my joints before he laid into me. Three mornings
a week we met to do some kickboxing. He has been training in the sport for a
couple years, only because he needed somebody to choreograph scenes in his
films, and he didn’t want to pay someone else to do it. I started about six
months ago. After my mom died, I asked him to crank up the training. I needed
something to help me deal with the anger. Cody took the challenge a little too
seriously. He loved making me sweat. But, it was free, so how could I complain?

“Hey, good lookin’,” Cody said
when he snuck up on me while I was down on all fours doing a yoga stretch. He
referred to all the gals as good lookin’. Not cute, pretty, or even hot, like
every other eighteen-year-old guy said, just, good lookin’. He probably had a
copyright on the words.

“Hey, yourself,” I said.

“You ready to get your butt
kicked?” he teased, while he started to stretch his hamstrings.

I pulled myself up to a standing
position. “Hopefully, I’ll get a few kicks in this time.” I smiled and waved to
the young kids that started to gather around to watch, most of them little
girls who were in love with Cody.

I could call him good lookin’ as
well, but the words just didn’t seem to fit. Sure, he was hot - picture Chris
Evans at eighteen with a bronzed tan. But, Cody didn’t become our class
Homecoming and Prom King because of his looks. As I said before, he was a
wisenheimer and flirt. But he was also a fun-loving prankster who always seemed
to finagle his way out of trouble on the few times he was caught. He probably
rigged the ballots in both contests.

His reputation for getting out
of tight situations became legendary our junior year of high school. He became
the talk of the school when he conned the principal out of suspending him for
his unusual current affairs report in history class: an exploding mannequin
wearing a t-shirt of Bin Laden. The thing went KABOOM right next to the
chalkboard in front of the entire class. We all dove under our desks for cover.
His camera was set up on a tripod in the back of the classroom so he could film
the whole thing. He said he wanted a realistic explosion scene for his demo
reel. I kid you not.

He smiled, and winked at the
little girls, getting them hyped up with giddiness. “With brazen talk like that
Syd, sounds like you’re more than ready for a work-out.”

He started me off with some
shadow boxing, which was basically using the air to practice the moves. The
training forced me to focus on my mental and physical abilities, and helped
with stamina. After about twenty minutes, he pulled out the pads. The entire
time, he barked out orders like a drill sergeant forcing me to push harder.

“Move, girl!” he yelled.

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

“I am!!!”

“Well, not hard enough.”

I growled at him. The little
girls giggled.

After a few more minutes, he
thought I was ready for some sparring.

I got into an offensive stance.
“Now it’s time for paybacks,” I said, and I stuck my tongue out at him.

“If you think you can,” he said
and followed it with one of his cocky grins.

We both moved on our feet,
swaying back and forth trying to get a rhythm. To our little fans, we probably
looked like two boxers getting ready to square off in a ring. Looks could be
deceiving. I still felt awkward with my moves. I did a kick with my right leg,
aiming chest-high. He easily moved out of the way, and followed with a kick at
my side.

He hit his target.

“Ouch!” I yelled.

“Score one for muah,” he
taunted.

I danced around on the balls of
my feet, the way he trained me. I faked a kick with my left; then immediately raised
my right leg up and connected with his shoulder. It was a clumsy move, but I
still made contact that made him falter.

I yelled, “Oh yeah, oh yeah…” I
danced around, bragging and chanting.

I spoke too soon.

He jumped up in fluid motion,
and before I realized what was happening, he faked a kick to the temple. Then,
he did a leap in the air so fast I didn’t see it coming. His right foot came
around and knocked my legs out from underneath me. I fell flat on my butt.

Our little fan club was cracking
up.

He stood over me, with a
devilish grin on his face. “What was that you were saying about paybacks, Syd?”

I stuck my tongue out at him.

AFTER WE put in a good hour, we straddled a bench on the
little league field while I filled him in on the details of the new case and
the call from Tamara Grant. The kids had ventured back to the playground.

“The new client is a model?”

“Yep.”

“Is she cute?”

“Dude, she’s a model.”

“A model whose step-brother is stealing from her,” he said.

“That’s what she says.”

“So you tailed him, and he wound up at an invitation-only
club called The Devil’s Door that provides a social gathering to date?”

“Don’t forget
exclusive dating
,” I joked.

“Where you saw even more cute chicks,” he said, and his eyes
got bigger just thinking of the eye candy.

“
You
would think so.”

He smiled. “What do you think they mean by exclusive?”