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Authors: David Daniel

BOOK: Goofy Foot
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“We'll see.”
She set the Discman on the workbench and pulled on a bike helmet. When she'd rolled out into the driveway and toward the empty street, Jensen watched her a moment, then turned to me. “What do you think about this whole thing, Rasmussen?”
“Twenty-five cents a cup sounds pretty good.”
He frowned. “My stepdaughter's being gone. What's your take on it?”
Attorneys were always more comfortable asking questions than answering them. I didn't rush to respond. I hauled out my dog-eared notebook. “She isn't where you think she should be, and you haven't heard from her in a couple days. I can understand your worry.”
“Did Paula mention Michelle's little vanishing act this past winter?”
She hadn't, but then there were a lot of things no one was mentioning.
“Just an overnight to Lowell,” he said. “She snuck out to a concert, and she and some others ended up getting picked up by the police afterward. No charges were filed, except against the ringleader, because he was older. For loitering.”
“When was this?”
“February. Paula was down with the flu, so I retrieved Michelle. I told her if she's going to run away, it makes more sense to go south. Or do it in warm weather.”
“You think that's what happened now?”
“I hope she learned her lesson. I grounded her hard for that little stunt.” He frowned. “Paula told you about her ex?”
“Ben Nickerson.”
“I haven't liked him from day one. Or I haven't warmed up to him, put it that way. Maybe it's just the scientist thing. His head is always in the clouds.”
“Yet he's a successful businessman.”
“Did my wife tell you that?”
“I got that idea.”
“Well, I'm not sure how successful he really is. He approached me about borrowing some money for his business—presented it as an investment opportunity.”
“When?”
“Six months ago or so. He said he was planning to expand his on-line business. When I pressed him for specifics, he didn't offer much. I told him I was going to pass. That's the last I heard.”
“You didn't check it out?”
“For what? Do you know how busy I am?” He grimaced. “We did pay for Michelle's airfare out there this time, and the rental on the house down there in Standish, but he's going to reimburse that. Look, does he figure in this?”
“You brought him up. What's your sense?”
“I couldn't say. I don't think he's a criminal. Leave it at that.”
I had the feeling that Jensen wasn't going to be as generous with information or his time as even his wife had been. I followed him out to the driveway, where the Audi was parked.
“Nice ride,” I said.
He bent and stuck his head in the window and inhaled. “Smell that.”
I put my head inside and sniffed, too. It smelled a lot more expensive than Officer Ferry's Crown Vic; forget any comparison to my heap. “The Moroccan leather?” I said. “Or the burled oak?”
“Mango Breeze. Spilled this morning.” He walked me toward my Ford. “My firm works with private investigators on occasion, Rasmussen.” I thought he was going to run some names by me, but he didn't. “I'd have gone with one of them—they're a known quantity—only I don't like them being privy to my personal business. I checked on you. Your outfit's pretty small.”
“Just me,” I admitted. “But I think the selection of magazines in my waiting room can hold its own against Pinkerton's.”
“I want to be sure you're not going to take my wife for a ride.”
“There might be some ops around who'll make like cabbies and take the long way, to keep the meter running. I don't personally know any. I don't even know that many cabbies who do it.”
“Your faith in the honesty of your fellow man is touching.”
“I don't spend a lot of time gilding it. We've all got to swim in the same waters.”
“Okay. Paula seems to have formed a favorable impression of you very quickly. Of course, she hasn't really got any basis of comparison. But she tends to be right about people pretty often, I'll give her that. So what's your sense?”
“Standish isn't a big town, and folks seem to know each other. I spoke with someone this afternoon who saw Nickerson the day he arrived. It's reasonable to assume others have seen them. If he and your stepdaughter are there, they shouldn't be hard to locate. If not, I ought to be able to get a line on where they've gone. Usually these are connect-the-dots cases. I've got Michelle's photograph—actually, Mrs. Jensen said you might have a more recent family shot at your office.”
He frowned. “I'll check.”
“I'll go back first thing tomorrow. If I'm getting somewhere, I'd probably stay overnight in a motel. And I recommend that you file a report with the police down there.”
He shot me an interrogating glance. “I don't think that it's indicated yet.”
“It can't hurt.”
“It might.” Reading my surprised expression, he went on, “My firm is wrapping up a sensitive litigation this week. I can't go into it except to say that any publicity, for me or the firm, could cause a setback. A missing persons report is bound to become news, especially in a small town. And then the Boston papers get it? No. It isn't the kind of notice one wants. It could make a parent seem … careless.”
It wouldn't have been my take, but it wasn't for me to tell him what he should do.
“Understand, I'm not against filing a report,” he went on in more measured fashion, “but I'm not convinced that it's needed yet. I still believe that my stepdaughter and Nickerson just haven't been in touch.”
“Do you think it's possible that Michelle did a fade on her own?”
His smooth brow beetled. “I'm not ready to rule out anything. My stepdaughter has a pretty strong will. She's at a stage where she feels a need to assert her independence.”
He made it sound like a character flaw. “I'd like to look into Nickerson's background a little.”
“That's okay with me. All of this is. I just don't want to see my name in the papers.”
I nodded. “If it does get there, it won't be through me.”
“Okay, Rasmussen, your price is competitive. Let's give it two more days, shall we? I expect results. I'll approve the motel idea if you think it makes sense.” He fished a little leather card case from his pocket and took out a card. He borrowed my pen and circled something on it and handed the card to me. The words were in raised black letters on the crisp ecru foolscap: his name, along with “Randolph, Blinkman & Bearse, Attorneys at Law,” and assorted phone and fax numbers, and e-mail and Web addresses. One number was circled. “If you need to reach me, you can call me at that confidential number.”
His handshake was as dry as a salt cod. When I'd backed my car out, he walked over to check for oil drips. I guess I was clean; as I wheeled away, he was squatting, pinching a dandelion that had invaded the lawn; then he rose and went through his garage to his dinner.
 
 
I got back to Lowell, where the average car is nine years old and probably costs just as much to insure as this year's model in Apple Valley—though nine years didn't sound bad in a city where many of the landmarks go back two hundred. It was the best light of day, ambering across the Merrimack River, burnishing the granite and the brick of the old mills. They were the big-boned remains of what life had been long ago when their ilk stretched for a full mile on the rolling river and along its miles of branching canals, all of the mills going three shifts, a noisy, dusty warp and woof processing thousands of bales of cotton and wool a day, producing over two million yards of cloth a week, textiles that helped clothe a nation. A museum, Chief Delcastro had called it, and it was that, and a state and national park; but more than those things it was a city with a stubborn pride in work, holding its own in a tough world. Cloth had been something you could lay your hands on at the end of the day. Not like now. Now it was all bits and bytes and information at warp speed.
I was in the information business, too. From my office I called the Lowell police headquarters and asked for Sergeant Ed St. Onge. We'd been together in the Major Crimes Bureau when I was a cop and had kept a connection since. They tracked him down. Before I could utter a word, he said, “Is this about your vacuum cleaner?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was referring to. “I'm in awe of your prescience.”
“When your name turns up on any police notepad, it gets attention.”
A few years back, Lowell had gone an entire year without a single homicide: some kind of record, which had the U.S. Attorney General in town, pumping hands and talking tough. But it was where all records end up—in a book, collecting dust. There'd been a hatful
of murders in town in the past month, with arrests running a few sizes behind, and the
Sun
editorialized about Dodge City. I mentioned this.
“It isn't me watching,” St. Onge said. “Droney's the one who keeps tabs on you.”
Droney, Captain Francis X., aka the Ogre, had been the foot behind the bum's rush when I left the cops. “How is he these days?”
“Tread light around him. No lie. He's still got a few teeth. Sharp ones.”
I acknowledged it. And since Ed had raised the topic of the corroded shotgun standing in my coat closet, I asked him if there were any cold cases in the city where a sawed-off had been used in the commission of a crime but was never found. To his knowledge there were none.
“The case could be very old,” I said. “The shotgun is.”
“Want to tell me more?”
You could take the Fifth with St. Onge, but it would show poor judgment to lie. I gave him the story. “You're lucky you didn't end up shot by the patrol officer and become a martyr to misapplied deadly force.”
“Then the city could give me the funeral it's been planning for years.”
He let it lie. “Parker Brothers, huh? Don't they make Monopoly?”
I said I thought it was a different outfit. He said he'd check and let me know. “If it's clean, you can bring it in here and we'll dispose of it.”
“You still drop them in Boston Harbor?”
“Something like that.”
“No, thanks, I'll dismantle it all by myself.”
“Be careful you don't get your nose caught in the pliers. And now that you've got your vacuum cleaner back, maybe you ought to use it. Last time I was up in that flea bin, the dust bunnies looked like tumbleweeds.”
“Before you go—the reason I called—there was a case of a runaway kid, an overnighter, apparently, picked up with a group of
other juveniles here last February. One may have been charged as an adult.”
“For?”
“Loitering.”
“Ha, that's almost refreshing.”
I gave him Michelle Nickerson's name.
“Let me get this right. You want me to open official files for unofficial business.”
“Please,” I said.
In the pause, I could hear his ire ticking, like a car that's been run hard on a bad road. But he knew that favors didn't run only one way. He sighed and said he'd get back to me. The phone rang almost as soon as I hung up. It was Paula Jensen.
“I talked it over with Ross,” she said. “Instead of you staying in a motel, we'd like to offer you the beach house.”
“Where your ex is supposed to be?” I asked.
“We've already paid for the week, and there's lots of room. Then you'd know right away if they returned.”
“When they came stumbling home to find Goldilocks.”
“I'm sorry. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job. If you'd prefer a motel—”
“Mrs. Jensen—”
“Paula, please. I'm probably keeping you from other cases.”
“Paula, I could tell you I've got a staff of associates going twenty-four seven to handle the caseload here at my corporate towers. The truth is the agency is me, a telephone, and that Ford out there. As for caseload, that's hyperbole. I've got two or three ongoing insurance investigations, none of them more pressing than Christmas shopping right now. I'm available. You've paid me. I'm going to try to locate your daughter. And the truth is, it would be convenient to stay at the beach house if it's not a bother.”
“It's not at all.”
“I'll go down first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you for being honest with me and for not guilt-tripping me.”

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