Lemons 02 A Touch of Danger (12 page)

“Oh. Hi. How may I help you? And it is Miss.”

“My apologies, Miss Hiller. We’re here about the disappearance of your daughter.”

“I filed a police report but no one is helping me. And how did you find out? I can’t afford a private investigator.”

“I found out from a detective. We work together from time to time. I was wondering if we could help. It would be no charge to you.”

“Why would there be…Oh thank you!” Her smile broadened and she hugged each of us. I wasn’t expecting that. “Please, please, come in. I don’t know what to do.”

The house was a modestly furnished little place, it reminded me of a college kids house when he moves into his own place for the first time. I had a feeling Miss Hiller was recently divorced. I noticed the small tan line around her ring finger, which confirmed my theory.

“First off, Miss Hiller, where is your daughter’s father? You are recently divorced, correct?”

“Yes,” she said. “That is correct. He moved out and took everything with him. Down near Los Angeles somewhere. I don’t really care.”

“Los Angeles, huh? That’s interesting. Anything else you can tell me about him?”

“Well, he’s a piece of shit. He hasn’t even spoken to his daughter once since he left. I called him in a panic the other night, on his cell phone, asking if he’d heard from Sam. He said no, then told me he was too busy to deal with me right now. Then he hung up. Great guy, huh?”

“Kinda sounds like this one piece of shit guy I used to know.”

Yikes! Elise gave me a dirty ol” look!

“Anyway,” I continued, “when did your daughter disappear?”

“She left three days ago. She didn’t come home one night, so I called around to all her friends but they didn’t know anything and she wasn’t answering her cell phone. Then I went into her room again, and I saw her phone sitting next to her laptop. That’s when I really started to panic.”

“Does she have a boyfriend that you know of?” Elise asked.

“She has been seeing this boy for a few months. I’m not sure if it’s serious or not. I’ve had her friends call him, though and ask if she was with him. He said no. I don’t know what else to do. The police have a picture of her and I was about to go put up flyers and - ‘She broke off. She was beginning to cry. She lowered her head into her hands and became silent.

Elise reached across the sofa and put her hand on her shoulder. “Take your time,” she said.

Me, not knowing how to deal with other people’s emotions, says, “Miss Hiller, do you mind if we take a look at your daughter’s bedroom?”

“No. No, of course not,” Miss Hiller said, as she sniffled and raised her head back up to meet my eyes. “It’s this way.”

She got to her feet and started walking down the small hallway. Elise and I followed. Miss Hiller opened the door revealing a typical teenagers bedroom. Full-size bed with snowman sheets, even though she lived at the beach and it was summer, tons of pillows, a small desk in the corner where her laptop and cell phone sat, various posters on the wall, and clothes scattered everywhere. It was exactly as I imagined every single teenage girl’s room in America would look.

One poster caught my attention. I gave Elise a little nudge and nodded in the direction of a Hunky Vampires of the Hollywood Hills poster, featuring none other than Mr. Brad Jackson. She gave me a worried little look.

I entered the room fully now and took a look around at everything. I walked over to where her phone was sitting and picked it up. It wasn’t an iPhone so I had absolutely no idea how to use it. I handed it to Elise and told her to check old text messages and recent calls. She obliged.

I opened up Samantha’s laptop and powered it on. While I was waiting for it to boot up I looked around her desk some more for any clues, then looked down into her trashcan. On top, there was a clear cellophane wrapper, similar to one wrapped around a pack of cigarettes, but about eight inches long and three inches wide. I recognized what it was immediately. My wife and I had one in our trashcan recently.

“Ms. Hiller, what was Samantha’s boyfriend’s name? Do you recall?”

“Yes,” she said. “It was Jesse.”

“Was he in a band? The Rippers, perhaps?”

She gave me a puzzled look. Another one of my inappropriately timed jokes wasted.

“Elise,” I say, “scroll through her contacts list and find Jesse’s number for me.”

Elise found it and read it off to me as I dialed from my own phone.

“We’ve called him, Mr. Lemons,” Katherine says to me. “He says he doesn’t know where she is.”

“He knows. And don’t worry. Your daughter wasn’t kidnapped.” A kid answers and I press the phone against my shirt to finish talking to Ms. Hiller. “She’s pregnant.”

Ms. Hiller’s face looked shocked. I quickly returned the phone to my ear. “Is this Jesse?” I asked.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is a friend of your girlfriend’s mother. We are actually going to need you to drop her off within the next hour or we will be calling the police and having you arrested for kidnapping and statutory rape. You are over eighteen correct?”

“What the…”

“We know about Samantha’s pregnancy so there is no reason to hide from us anymore. Do yourself a favor and bring her home right now. She doesn’t have to run from her mother. So avoid some trouble and have her at her mother’s house within the hour before me and my cop friends come bust down your fucking door. No bullshittin’. Got it?”

There was a long silence before he finally responded. “We’ll be right there.”

I ended the call and looked towards Ms. Hiller, still with the same shocked look on your face.

“Your daughter will be home within an hour. You guys have a lot of stuff to talk about.”

Ms. Hiller broke out in tears and lunged at me to give me a hug. Nothin” awkward about that. We said it was time for us to go now and she continued thanking us the whole way back to our car.

My phone started vibrating. It was Enzite.

“Hey, perfect timing. Got anything for me?”

“Yeah. Hi. Ran a trace on the plates. It’s registered to a Daniel Mayweather. Some screenwriting hack out near Hollywood. His address is listed at 6739 Sunrise Ave.”

“A dude?”

21.

Finding out the rolling vagina was registered to a man just added more stress to my entire situation. It was not the car belonging to the woman killed on the beach, which dead-ends that lead. Instead, it is registered to some dude out in Hollywood who I have never even heard of. Things were getting more and more complicated as time went by. Shouldn’t shit be getting easier?

Elise and I drove to a little cafe where we could get a bite to eat and collect our thoughts. Once there, we ordered from the menu then took out the iPad to do a quick Internet Movie Database search on Daniel Mayweather. If he really were a screenwriter, even for the shittiest of films, IMDB would have him listed.

Sure enough, we got a hit. No picture, though. Turns out, he has written two really shitty movies that I have never heard of. Actually, I’m just assuming they are pieces of shit since I’ve never heard of them. If they were any good, I would have…well you get the idea.

I did a cast and crew search of both of these movies and was happy to see that one of them featured none other than the former Mrs. Brad Jackson…

“Well now this is interesting,” I say. “Check out this particular member of the cast.” I flipped the iPad over so it was now facing Elise and pointed to the name Annette Jackson. Elise looked puzzled.

“What do you think this means?” she asked.

“Actually…I have no idea.”

“Okay, so let’s run down the facts here.”

“Sounds good.”

“First,” Elise says as she holds up her index finger, counting out our fact list, “Annette Jackson gets murdered and we believe it was pinned on that wrong person, which leads to our main suspect being the husband.”

“Correct.”

“Second,” as she adds another finger in the air, “you witness another woman being killed by whom we believe to be the same person that did the previous murder.”

“Keep going.”

Third finger in the air, “We find a car, not belonging to Brad Jackson, hidden in his garage. We assume it is the murder victim’s car since it’s the gayest possible thing any man could drive except for maybe Mr. Garrison’s Gyropod.”

“A South Park reference? Really, Elise?”

“Hey, I’m trying here.”

“Fine. Not bad. Keep going.”

“The car turns out to be registered to a man, from Hollywood, with at least a passing acquaintance to the first murder victim.” She apparently had given up on the whole finger-counting thing as she was now taking a child-like, double-fisted sip of her Pepsi.

“Yeah, so we’re pretty much back where we started.”

“Maybe not. Remember that guy that Emma Ricks told us about?”

“Sure. You think that’s our guy?”

“I sure hope so. Maybe he and Brad struck up a friendship on the set of Annette’s movie. Or maybe they’ve been friends long before that. Who knows? It’s worth tracking him down though. And if it is the same guy, it’ll be killing two birds with one stone.”

“I never really understood that saying. Why would anyone want to kill a bird? And why would anyone kill birds with rocks and then be happy about killing two with the same throw?”

She let out an audible sigh. “I don’t know, man, it’s just a saying.”

“Well, I think we should do away with that saying and find a new one.”

“Fine, you work on a new saying and I’ll work on this case.”

“Ouch, it was just an idea. Calm down.”

“Stay on track, Archie. If this guy’s car is here then it stands to reason that he is here, too. Somewhere.”

“Well, we were in Brad’s house. He certainly wasn’t there at the same time, and we saw Brad leave alone.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, let me ask you this. Are you positive it was Brad who murdered the girl on the beach?”

“Elise, I know what I saw.”

“I know, I know. And I believe you. I’m just wondering if maybe it could have been someone else.”

“I’m almost positive it was Brad. And the guy on the beach had dark hair. If the screenwriter and the man from Emma Ricks’ story are one and the same, that guy has blond hair.”

“Okay. Good point then. So what now?”

I looked up as our waitress brought us our food. I was starving. “Right now,” I say, “we eat. Then we’ll get back to business.”

***

We finished lunch and made our way to a bench overlooking the ocean.

“Hey, ya know what I just remembered?” I ask.

“Nope. What?”

“I’m pretty sure I had those movers scheduled to come to the office today.”

Elise snorted then said “Oops.”

“Yeah, oops. Those guys are going to be pissed.”

“Well call and cancel.”

“I don’t even have the number, Snorts. Oh well.”

“Yeah. Oh well. Now back to the case, please.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry. Where were we?”

“I asked you if you were one-hundred-percent positive that it was Brad Jackson down on the beach.”

“Right. Yeah. I’m pretty sure it was him. Now I’m thinking that he had an accomplice, obviously.”

“New-Bug?”

“Yeah. New-Bug. I was really hoping for that goddamn thing to belong to the victim. That would have made this case a whole lot easier to figure out.”

“I know, but at least we can follow up on this guy.

“Well, he is a hack screenwriter in Hollywood which means he’s probably waiting tables somewhere at a shitty diner in the city. Are you down for another trip to the City of Angels?”

“Why would we drive to Hollywood if the guy’s car is here?”

“Just call it a hunch. I am willing to bet that car is gone now, and even if it isn’t, we still need to find out all we can about this guy. He shouldn’t be hard to track, and besides, Enzite even gave us his address. We need to do some snooping around. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark here.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. Hey. Ya think they call L.A. the City of Angels because of all the Mexican guys there named Angel?”

“This is the worst vacation ever.”

“I agree, Miss Elise. I agree. Let’s go.”

“I need to stop and get gas…on the expense account!”

“Fine. I need to get a Rockstar…on the expense account. Let’s go, Babydoll.”

“Oh-la-la.”

22.

On the road back to LA once again. Elise was right; this is the all-time worst vacation ever. I missed my house and I missed my nephews. Elise had called to check in on them right when we hit the road. All was well with the kiddos and Wrecker. We owed Jamie BIG TIME!

As soon as we hit the freeway, my phone started vibrating. I dug it out of my pocket and checked the ID. It was Anderson. I tossed the phone to Elise and told her to answer it.

“Hi Detective,” she answered.

“They do?! For what?”

“Ay yi yi. How did you even find this out?”

“Oh, you have your ways, huh? Ugh, that is ridiculous. We didn’t do crap.

I butted in. “What happened?”

Elise ignored me and continued her conversation with Anderson. Speakerphone would have been a little more polite at this moment, but whatever. There is no winning when a woman is involved. Ha.

“Alright, Detective. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll tell Archie.”

“Tell Archie what?!” I interrupted. Again.

“We’re actually on our way to Hollywood again. We need to have a word with the owner of that car that was parked in Brad Jackson’s garage.”

Oh my god, if this woman doesn’t quite ignoring me I’m going to go insane!

“No,” Elise continues, “but Archie has a hunch that it is not there anymore. And even if it is there, he wants to get a background on him. We think he’s involved in all of this and maybe he’ll be the weaker link.”

I was paying more attention to the one-sided conversation than I was to driving. I drifted over the line and quickly swerved back into my lane. Elise shot me a dirty look then began talking again. They concluded their conversation and Elise handed me my phone back.

“Well,” she said. “You, my good man, have an official complaint of stalking filed against you with the Pismo Beach Police Department by one Mister Brad Jackson.”