Popped Off (17 page)
Authors: Jeffrey Allen
45
“That was just weird,” I said.
“What? That they weren’t there?”
“No. That they liked you.”
We were flying down the 35, Victor weaving us in and out of cars that were doing normal speeds.
He smiled, and his teeth shone in the sunshine. “I’m a sexual magnet.”
“Stop. That’s just gross.”
“No, it’s true. My wife? She can’t get enough of me.”
“I’ve already had enough of you.”
“Your jealousy is ugly.”
“So is your face.”
He cackled as he zipped across three lanes and took the exit he wanted.
The area we were in couldn’t have been more different from the Park Cities area around SMU. Pillars and manicured lawns were replaced by low-slung ranch homes, misshapen garage doors, and networks of weeds. The cars on the streets were on their last legs, held together by duct tape and crossed fingers. We were maybe fifteen miles away, but we might as well have been in another universe.
“This must be some kind of service project,” Victor muttered.
“Probably like a Habitat for Humanity thing,” I said. “Where they build a house for someone who needs one.”
“Couldn’t they do it in a nicer looking place?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
“I don’t need you, Stilts. And I ain’t afraid, either.”
“If you say so.”
Victor followed the directions on his GPS through a maze of neighborhood streets, each row of houses growing a little less cared for each time we turned. I was having a hard time envisioning Amber and Suzie being thrilled to come into this area of town to do good. I knew most Greek organizations required a certain number of service hours each year, but I had to wonder if they hadn’t tried for something else and got stuck with something that didn’t please them.
The Miata slowed, and Victor guided us to the curb.
He raised an eyebrow. “This is it.”
A rectangular mass of brick and shingles was masquerading as a house. The glass in the two front windows was cracked, and the yard was a wide expanse of thick dirt and clumps of thistle. Two weathered and broken rocking chairs sat on the front stoop, which was barely big enough to hold both. The front door hung crooked on the hinges.
“Doesn’t look like they’ve done much to service it,” Victor noted wryly.
I could see movement behind the dusty, cracked windows. “Maybe they’ve just started.”
“Well, they’re gonna be here awhile, then.”
We got out and walked up the concrete path that bisected the yard. Except it wasn’t so much a path as a trail of busted hunks of concrete.
I pushed one of the broken rockers aside and knocked on the door.
Feet shuffled behind the door, and it swung open.
Amber held up a hand in greeting, another hand perched on her hip. “Hey!”
“Hi, Amber,” I said. I motioned to Victor. “This is my friend Victor.”
Her smile widened, and she put her hands on her knees. “Aren’t you just the cutest thing ever?”
“I pretty much am, yeah,” Victor said.
“Do you go by midget? Or little person?”
“I go by Victor,” he said, his smile fading.
“Of course you do!” Amber squealed. “Hello, Victor!”
I couldn’t tell whether he was happy to be the center of her attention or annoyed at her ignorance.
She stood up. “I didn’t know you were coming. Or bringing a friend.”
“Well, after we talked, I was feeling a bit impatient,” I said. “The money was getting heavy in my pockets. If you know what I mean.”
“Oh, do I,” she said, grinning.
“And Victor was at my house,” I continued. “I hire him to do landscaping. . . .”
“What the . . . ?” he said.
“Small bushes, not the tall trees, obviously. And he wondered where I was going, and I know he’s a big sports fan, so I thought he might be able to, you know, participate, as well.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” he muttered.
“We could hire you to do the landscaping at the house!” Amber exclaimed. She clapped her hands together. “That would be so totally fun!”
“I keep him on a tight schedule, but I’m sure you could work something out,” I said, enjoying myself.
“Def!”
“Can we come in?” I asked.
Her eyes shifted away from me. “Sure. We’re all out back.” She stepped aside to let us pass.
The interior of the house matched the exterior. Half of the carpeting was missing, and most of the furniture looked at least thirty years old. Holes in the plaster dotted the walls like a puzzle, and what little paint I saw was cracked and flaking. The room felt damp and cool, and a musty odor hung in the air.
Which I thought was a bit odd since they were supposedly cleaning it up.
“You guys just start working on this house?” I asked.
“Working on it?”
“For your service project?” I said. “That’s what the girls at your house told us you were doing.”
“Oh, right!” Amber said. “Service project. Totally. We’ve just started. So it’s obviously still pretty icky.”
“Icky’s one word for it,” Victor said.
I followed Victor through a torn-up kitchen missing all its appliances and to a back door with a dirty curtain covering the window. He reached up, opened it, and we stepped outside.
I surveyed the scene in front of me and felt stupid.
Victor turned to me and confirmed my stupidity. “You idiot.”
46
Suzie used the gun she was holding to motion us toward two weather-beaten deck chairs. “Sit.”
By my count, I saw six girls with guns. Most of them were wearing their sorority letters and supercute denim shorts. They were all holding small-caliber handguns, and they were pointed directly at us.
“I’ll come up with a plan,” Victor mimicked. “I’ll figure it out.” He sat down in the chair with a disgusted sigh.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting down next to him.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Suzie said, frowning.
Amber sat down in a chair across from us, crossed her legs, and smiled. “So what’s up, guys?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s up?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Seriously.”
“Amber, all your sorority sisters are pointing guns at me,” I said.
“Us,” Victor corrected. “Pointing guns at us.”
“Right. Us,” I said. “We came here to place some bets with you, and now I have no idea what’s going on.”
She looked at Victor. “And you’re sticking with this story, too, cutie-pie?”
“It’s all we got,” Victor said.
“Oh my gawd, yeah, it is,” she said, giggling. “And it’s totally not much.”
Her confidence and command were unnerving. I was beginning to realize that I had severely underestimated the girls of Alpha Gamma Tau, despite warning myself to not underestimate them.
Amber lifted her chin at one of the girls aiming at us. “Go get him.”
The girl nodded, lowered the gun, and skipped around the corner of the house.
“Get who?” I asked.
Amber’s phone dinged, and she pulled it out of her pocket. She smiled and looked at Victor. “Megan wants to know if you’ll go to our fall formal with her.”
“You’re gonna ask me this with guns in my face?” he said.
“She’s totally into you. Majorly.”
He turned to me. “You suck. Majorly. I’m rethinking our partnership. Immediately.”
“Partnership?” Amber asked, leaning forward. “Oh my gawd! Do you two, like,
like
each other?”
like
each other?”
“Jesus Christ, no!” Victor said, inching away from me.
The girls with the guns giggled.
“Oh, good,” Amber said. “Megan would be crushed. Anyway, let me know, ’kay?”
Victor rolled his eyes.
“Amber, what’s going on?” I asked. “Why are we here?”
“Totally good question,” she said, winking at me. “You should totally answer it.”
She was calm, cool, and collected. There was no anxiety, no worry, no fear. She knew she had us, and she was comfortable being in that position.
I was not.
Before I could respond, I heard footsteps coming from where she’d sent her gun-wielding sorority sister. Part of me expected to see Moises Huber, now thinking this was where they’d kept him. I wasn’t sure what the other half of me expected to see.
Half of me was right, and half of me was shocked.
In front of the armed sorority sister were both Moises Huber and his cousin, Elliott. I sorta knew how one got there, but I had no clue how the other had fallen into this predicament.
Moe looked a little tired, but other than that, he seemed fine. He held up a hand in greeting. “Hey, Deuce.”
“Moe.”
Elliott was staring at his feet.
“Guys, just have a seat right there, ’kay?” Amber said sweetly, waving her hand at the stairs that came up to the patio. “Lizzie, keep ’em covered. Just in case they wanna get silly or something.”
The cousins did as they were told, and Lizzie kept her gun trained on them.
Amber turned her attention back to us. “So still sticking to your story?”
I looked at Victor.
“You’re on your own, Stilts,” he said, shaking his head. “I warned you.”
I stayed quiet for a moment. This investigating thing had started out as a bit of a lark, a way to occupy some time and help some people. Make a little money, too. I had fallen into it, but I had stayed in it by choice. But I hadn’t really considered it dangerous.
I was sitting in an abandoned house now, though, and people were armed. It wasn’t comfortable, and I felt grossly underprepared and ill equipped. This wasn’t what I’d envisioned, and to say I wasn’t scared would be a big, fat lie. I didn’t care if it was sorority girls aiming guns at me.
Guns were guns, and I didn’t like being on the wrong end of them.
So I decided not to screw around.
“We came here to help Moe,” I said. “That’s the reason I contacted you in the first place.”
Amber nodded excitedly, like there was going to be an exciting ending to the story.
“We were hired to find him,” I said.
“You,” Victor said. “You were hired.”
“So you’re, like, private eyes or something?” Amber asked, looking at each of us.
“Yep,” I said.
“I’ve never met a private eye before,” she said, smiling.
Her happy-go-lucky demeanor was unnerving.
“So that’s why we’re here,” I said. “We were hired to find him and the money he stole.”
She frowned. “Stole?”
“Yeah. To cover what I’m assuming he owed you.”
She thought for a moment. “Well, he does owe us. But he’s being totally difficult about it, ya know?”
“Actually, I don’t,” I said. “You wanna fill me in?”
She tilted her head and grinned, like I was some sort of puppy dog behind a glass window. “Well, we’ll see about that. So the money you wanted to bet? It’s not his?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Bummer,” she said, making a face. “That would’ve made this so much easier.” She tapped her chin with her finger. “Do you have any idea where our other things are?”
“Things?”
“The little blue pills,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“Ah. No. I have no idea where they are. I don’t know what he did with the trophies.”
Amber’s face screwed up with confusion. “Trophies?”
“The soccer trophies that he was using to move them,” I said. “He took the trophies from the same soccer association he stole the money from.”
Amber stared at me for a moment, and the smile and goodwill melted away from her expression and body. “Soccer association?”
I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I nodded.
She stood, descended the stairs, and faced the Huber cousins. Suzie came up next to her, and her normally surly demeanor had hardened even more.
“You stole from a soccer association?” Amber asked, her face a mixture of disgust and anger.
Neither Huber said anything.
She looked up at me. “Kids?”
“Yeah, it’s a youth soccer group,” I said.
“Oh my God!” she said. “That is unbelievable. How could you?”
The other sorority sisters whispered in agreement.
“You stole money
and
trophies from a bunch of kids?” Amber asked.
and
trophies from a bunch of kids?” Amber asked.
Neither Moises nor Elliott moved. She looked at me. I nodded.
Amber reached out and took the gun from Lizzie and pointed it right at Moe’s forehead. “I’m gonna kill you.”
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