No Brainer ( The Darcy Walker Series #2) (15 page)

We cleaned up the broken glass, shoved it in a tan plastic container and onto a cart bound for the industrial-sized dishwasher.

Focus, Walker
, I told myself. “I’m Darcy,” I said.

“Nice name.”

“Different, I suppose. Do you have a minute?”

He inspected his watch. “Walk with me, I’m on a break. What is it you’d like to know?”

Everything.

He pointed to the back entrance of the kitchen. Hank said a few goodbyes as a cook threw a bag of what I assumed were food scraps into his hand. “She’s with me,” he said to a frowning coworker.

No doubt we were breaking Department of Health Codes, but what the heck, I reveled in dodging all things healthy anyway. As we strolled outside, the heat beat down like you were revolving in a microwave. “Are you feeding a pet?” I asked, wiping the sweat from my brow.

He nodded. “My dog bunks over at a friend’s home while I work. I like to take him a treat on my break.”

After talk about essentially nothing, God help me, I couldn’t find an appropriate opener. “So have you had your dog long?”

“My son picked him out at Christmas.” He paused, looking down at his feet. “I lost my son six months ago.”

Insert a kidney punch to the back.

“What happened?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

“Cisco just vanished,” he explained, his eyes brimming with pain. “It was big news for a while, but I’m afraid people have forgotten him … but I won’t.”

My word, he was pulling a page out of the Darcy Walker playbook. I thought back to my own childhood. Wherever I happened to be, I looked for someone that was never going to come back. Heck, I
still
did. But it hurt worse when those around you forgot what your pain was about. That stunk, on like a billion different levels—a billion levels too painful to name.

It seemed like a millennium had gone by before I found my voice. “No one has any information?” I whispered.

A yellow finch desperately hung onto a magnolia bush as it whipped around in the wind. It reminded me of Hank: trying to hang onto something amidst an element he had no control over.

He stared blankly at his black sneakers. “A group of private investigators check in with his mother, and a detective calls to give me updates. But that’s all I’m going on right now. I just let Lola take care of it.”

I decided to play along. “Lola is Cisco’s mother?”

He nodded. “It never worked out between us, but we talk.” He gazed at the sky, clearing his throat. “I just hope whoever has him…”

He stopped mid-sentence, unable to continue. Then I remembered what Lincoln said. Retrace Cisco’s steps. What did he like? Who were his friends? Did he have any enemies?

“Tell me about him.” I waded carefully through the conversation, careful to put everything in the present tense.

Hank’s eyes lit up like the sky during the Fourth of July. “He always smiles, and he’s smart. But he’s not like other boys. He does like to play ball, but he likes bugs and stuff. I got him this ant farm, and he’d sit by that thing for hours and watch them work.”

“What else?”

“He likes frogs and geckos, so I bought him a book to help him identify the ones he caught. He went to the park to look for them.”

“What park was that?”

“It’s right by his house off Conroy Road. Some older kids there weren’t so nice to him because they thought he was weird.” No, “weird” was when your six-year-old sister was a freaking nudist. Liking frogs and geckos was refreshingly normal.

I stumbled around, finally asking what I’d been dying to. “Would any of them …
hurt him
?”

He adamantly shook his head. “No, they just laughed at him.”

Glancing down at my watch, I knew Dylan must think this was the longest bathroom break in history. Either that, or he’d buy it was bad Mexican.

Hank sensed I needed to go. “Hey, we didn’t talk about you working here. I’m sorry, let me introduce you around.”

I squeezed his forearm, adding a warm smile. “You know, I’ve already got something else in mind. Thanks for speaking with me.”

We both were livin’ on a prayer. Final assessment? Hank was hiding nothing and honestly struck me as a little milquetoast. He took people at their word, and as Kyd claimed, seemed simple. But what did I learn? He trusted Lola. Lola spoke with the private investigators regularly, but Lola, however, sent funky vibes to
Troy. If I had any hope of procuring more information, I needed to get closer to her.

Hustling back inside, I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and stood in the nearest corner, dialing in her digits I’d memorized. My stomach dropped all the way to my feet when I got a “Beep, this number is no longer in service.”

My word, I’d caused the woman to disconnect her phone.

Shoving that guilt far down into my conscience, I dodged a cook sliding a plate of fries under the heat lamps and spun around a server balancing three plates on her arms. Heavy-footing it to our table, I noticed that Kyd, Mary, and Big J had departed.

Dylan, however, moved like a hamster on a wheel. He checked his wristwatch, running a hand through his hair, giving a description of me to a more-than-accommodating teenaged girl. His hand went up to his neck mimicking a 5’9” posture, motioning that I had blonde hair just like hers. When our eyes met, an exhale of relief washed over him, quickly followed by his trademark what-in-the-heck-were-you-doing look because I don’t trust you.

“Hey, are you okay?” he murmured when I made it to the table. “You practically fell off the grid.”

“I kind of ran into some soup,” I shrugged.

His eyes darkened as they scanned over the goopy brown stain, and for some reason, I got all warm inside. Fever warm. You’re-in-trouble warm. Dylan pulled me forward by the lapels of my shirt, and the rest of the room melted away. “Lucky soup,” he grinned.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Albert Einstein

10. FREAK SHOW

W
ELL INTO THE WEE HOURS
of Monday morning, I was crashed on the white leather couch I’d made a makeshift bed at midnight. Across from me, Lincoln haplessly recited the skills of criminals—career criminals—specifically Turkey Cardoza. He’d finished polishing his gun, Jackal, and I’m not sure he was totally awake. He talked too freely, and if he harbored the secrets to National Security, it was probably best they took him off the nightshift. No word yet on what went down in his midnight meeting, but he’d been uncharacteristically loose-lipped. I remained hopeful I could piece something together in between the incessant rambling, and the quote, “I need more bullets.”

He’d called Willow twice with no answer, and it was my guess he didn’t want to sleep because he knew he’d wake up and relive the same pain all over again. I knew from firsthand experience sometimes that term “a good night’s sleep” didn’t erase what was wrong in your world. All it did was bring the problem into the next day.

He mumbled, “Turkey’s not dumb, Darcy. He’s set up some legitimate businesses, which a lot of the time makes it hard to pin the bad onto you. The weird thing is that no one has taken him out because of his conflicting loyalties. I’d take him out on his mouth alone. That tells me he has something substantial on all three families.”

No objection from me there. It always amazed me how the ponkeys in that people-you-love-to-hate camp could slide by without a scratch. Especially someone as triple-dipping as Turkey in his business dealings.

“You’ll get him,” I encouraged.

Lincoln gazed down the barrel of his gun. “Willow’s boyfriend?” he grumbled.
Oh boy
, I laughed to myself. On one hand, he was talking about a career criminal. On the other, he was referring to his daughter’s significant other.

Funny thing was, he seemed a little trigger-happy on both accounts.

“No,” I clarified. “Turkey.”

He took one last swipe at the barrel then shoved it back inside its leather holster, snapping it up nice and tight. “Yeah,” he muttered. “The man has some sort of plan, but I can’t wrap my head around it, yet.”

You know, I decided to spit it out. I curled under my blanket and sipped on coffee, trying to act disinterested and merely conversational. “So the midnight meeting didn’t go well? He didn’t talk?” I remembered Lincoln saying,
Then on with the original plan
. Well, what did that plan entail? To live to a ripe, ole age or get acquainted with a casket?

He gave me one of those looks that meant he was on to me, overly tired, or rehashing details he’d rather keep buried. He exhaled, rubbed his eyes with his palms, and shook his head. “We shouldn’t have trusted that guy,” he muttered. “I can’t protect him if he doesn’t give me information.”
Aaah
, I said to myself. This man was an informant who chickened out at the last minute. “Sometimes,” he continued, “people don’t take an out when you offer it to them. You can’t help someone if they won’t let you.”

I needed help, but my mind couldn’t formulate the perfect phrasing. The good-girl part needed to confess I’d investigated the Cisco Medina case on my own. The bad-girl part said,
Who gives a donkey’s butt?
My conscience was currently playing hooky, so the bad-girl got a free pass.

I blinked three times, wondering if I’d walked in the middle of a dream or real life nightmare. Herbie Knoblecker lay on his front yard flat on his back, like a corpse. Fear crawled up my body like a tiny spider making a web. My God, he’d had a heart attack, someone had shot him, or it’s conceivable he’d choked on his breakfast.

I cupped my shaking hands around my mouth. “Herbie!” I yelled.

No response from his end.

Instinct took over, and I ran down the ribbon driveway, my bare feet wincing as soon as they struck the hot pavement of Serendipity Drive. Fueled by pure adrenaline, in no time flat, I knelt over him checking for wounds. Wearing a white, nylon jogging suit, no blood trail lay evident anywhere. The only thing evident was the perspiration beaded underneath his nose. That left his heart … I think. I’d performed CPR on Resusci Annie before. Could I remember how to do it? What if I did it wrong? Did a bad technique even matter?

“Herbie,” I said loudly, jostling his shoulders. My throat dried up when that got me nowhere. “Herbie!” I shook again.

Nothing. I reluctantly unloaded a hard slap, and when I didn’t even get a groan, I traced two fingers down his ribcage—readying for chest compressions—when Herbie suddenly snorted awake. He slowly propped himself up, one elbow at a time. “Mornin’, Darcy,” he muttered, meeting my gaze. “I fell asleep in my yoga.”

I shook my head, questioning if I’d heard him right. “You wh-what?” I asked. Sure enough, he repeated it again.

“I’m communing with Mother Nature,” he muttered. “I need her help with my fungus.”

His fungus
, I exhaled, patting my pounding heart. I collapsed by his side in complete and utter amazement. The man merely fell asleep on his lawn. Sleeping on the lawn was normal, right? Let me answer my own question … that would be: No. Problem was, my thinking had been skewed toward the bizarre for so long that I always jumped to the worst conclusion. I had no clue how to live another type of life. I saw things; I reacted. I didn’t see them; I manufactured a story. I wished them to be there; they were. All I knew was bizarre crap had happened to me since birth. Finding Herbie asleep on his lawn epitomized a prime example of the “weird but true.” Trouble was, the sane would never believe it.

Herbie rolled to his side—a marvel in itself—and farted.

“Ya have a witch Nanny, right?”

Sweet God in Heaven. I pulled my red tank up over my nose, wishing I’d stayed in bed. This was beyond ridiculous, and now I needed a sedative. “Yeah,” I muttered.

“Do you think she can help me with this?”

Before I could blink, Herbie hefted his rotund body up on his knees wherein he simultaneously dropped his drawers. I closed my eyes on impact. I’d never seen male body parts, and Herbert Knoblecker’s were not the male body parts I’d have chosen as the introduction. I’d always imagined some stud muffin that’d rival a thoroughbred would do the honors, not an overweight midget with gas problems.

Cracking one eye open, relief washed over me when his doublewide butt stared in my face and not his front package. “See this?” he muttered, craning for his backside.

“Unfortunately,” I croaked.

“What
is
that?”

The “that” in question was a scaly, red patch of skin about three inches wide that started at his waist and went south. Thank God, my view stopped at “The Great Divide.”

I took a step back. “Maybe it’s athlete’s foot.”

“On my hiney?”

“That stuff can migrate,” I lied.

“Like birds?”

“Like birds.”

“How in the world did I get a bird fungus on my hiney?”

“Anything’s possible with all the preservatives in food.”

Herbie took a few moments to process the lie I’d just fed him. He scrunched up his nose, rolled the words around in repeat, and finally snorted, “Ain’t that the truth.”