Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (3 page)

Enough of the back-in-my-day spiel. I had work to do.

It didn’t take long to find the articles I was looking for. The first one was only a three-inch paragraph of vague speculation. Police investigate deaths of Hawthorne family. That’s all they knew at the time. The next article had the full outline of the story, with more speculation to fill the gaps left by police. A follow up article in the Hawthorne Tribune bordered on tabloid exuberance. They detailed a narrative, introducing Eddie for the first time in any of the papers, how he discovered his mother and brother murdered, and his father killed by his own hand with the weapon he used to erase his family. They portrayed Eddie as a sad victim, paving the way for all the other news stories and local gossip to run a game of telephone, each telling more lurid than the last, dripping with pity for Eddie and bald contempt for his father.

What I didn’t find in the articles was any indication—even a sliver—of the dad’s possible innocence. Only a broken heart could deny the facts—Eddie’s dad had wiped out his family, sparing his teen son simply because he was in school at the time Dad snapped.

Did I really expect anything more? Wasn’t this really just a way to distract myself from that damn phone call?

I shut off the microfiche machine and returned the cartridges to the research desk.

Outside, my breath steamed in the cold air. I stood at the top of the cement steps leading to the library doors, trying to decide what to do with myself.

The stretch limo that pulled to the curb made the decision for me.

I sat in the back of the limo, alone. The Friday edition of the Tribune lay neatly on the leather seat next to me. A pair of bottled waters sat in a cup holder to one side. A mini fridge was built in under the cup holders. When the limo took a turn, I could hear a faint
clink
from inside the fridge. I kept my curiosity on a leash and didn’t open it. I wasn’t thirsty. I wanted to know why the driver of this limo had found me at the library and invited me for a ride. I had hesitated at first. Officer Rogers taught me in elementary school never to get into a car with a stranger. But something the driver had said made it so I couldn’t resist.

The ride is courtesy of an old friend.

I didn’t have many friends in Hawthorne left. And I couldn’t think of any who would send a limousine to pick me up.

So in I went, and now I sat staring at the back of the driver’s head through the glass partition wondering how much stranger a single day could get.

We arrived at a hotel in what qualified as part of downtown Hawthorne—basically a collection of now abandoned machine shops, hotels, and a strip club or two all gathered around the Hawthorne airport. Not a lot of flights came in and out of Hawthorne. Mostly private planes. If you wanted to book a flight for the family vacation, you’d have to leave out of Detroit Metro.

The driver pulled into the half-circle driveway at the hotel’s front door. He got out and opened the door for me. All I needed was the red carpet and I could play the pop star my parents had always hoped I’d become. Imagine their disappointment when they learned I’d gone into private investigation instead. I never got to see their faces when I told them what I was up to out in LA, but I did hear my dad’s choked gasp over the phone. At the time, I felt like I’d really stuck it to them. I’d had no idea it would be the last time I ever spoke with them.

The driver slipped the valet a bill and changed roles to escort. He guided me to the elevator and we rode up to the sixth floor. I tried a couple of times to ask who we were meeting with. His answer was always the same.

“Patience,” he’d say like a Kung Fu master admonishing his student.

In silence, we exited the elevator and followed the hall till my companion stopped in front of one of the room doors and waved a delicate hand at the knob. “Go right in.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” I said. “We should do this again sometime.”

One eyebrow lifted, but I didn’t get so much as a smirk out of him. Some people have no sense of humor.

I let myself in, glad I had my gun tucked in its shoulder holster under my coat. I didn’t go many places without it anymore. I’d learned my lesson three years ago after the cluster-fuck Autumn Rice had dragged me into.

The last person I expected to see sat at a small round table by the window. The gray sky behind her gave her face a dark cast. Her eyes looked sunken, a trait she hadn’t had last time I saw her. Her white hair had turned a dirty shade that matched the sky. The lines in her face were a picture worth more than a mere one-thousand words.

She looked like hell, and from the color of her skin, I knew it was the drinking that had done it to her.

“Sheila.”

“Hello, Ridley. You’re looking a little haggard.”

“You should talk.”

A smile touched her face and cut some of the edge off her deteriorated look. “I have a lot to atone for.”

“Don’t you think you’ve blown things a little out of proportion?”

She hiked one shoulder. The pearls around her neck clicked. “There’s more to me than what you’ve seen.”

“What I see is a drunk wallowing in self-pity because she got caught being a drunk.”

She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. When she opened her eyes again, they showed a small shine of clarity. “Sit down, Ridley. I have something important to tell you.”

“You disappear without a word, but now you puff back into Hawthorne with an important message? The days of you taking care of me are over. I have no interest in what you have to say.”

“Fair enough.” Her hand went to her pearls and worried them like rosary beads. “But you have to hear it.”

“Look at you. You’re a wreck. An insult to my parents’ memory. They trusted you with everything. You think they’d want to see you like this?”

Her face pinched, having the opposite effect of her smile. Now she looked ten years older than her sixty-some years. “None of that matters right now. I’ve made a terrible mistake—”

“You’ve made a few of them.”

“Fine. Get it all out. As long as it means you’ll shut up long enough to listen to me.”

I shook my head. “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

She touched one side of her face. “I hardly recognize myself.”

Underwhelmed with Shelia’s victimhood, I crossed my arms and stared her down. “Tell me so I can get on with my life.”

The room smelled like dried sweat. Not the kind of stink you’d expect from a hotel with valet parking. It made me wonder if it came from Shelia. How far had she let herself fall?

“I’ve been living in Miami since I left here,” she said. “I have a friend who lives there. She put me up until I found a condo to rent.”

“Did you bring photos of your vacation?”

Her wince almost made me feel guilty. But I didn’t have much love for a supposed friend who bails on you during one of the most jacked-up times in your life.

“There’s a bar I started to frequent,” she said, voice thick now. She was getting to the part she didn’t want to say. Which meant I probably didn’t want to hear it. “I met a man. We did a lot of drinking together. Became lovers.”

I scrunched up my face. “Not really into senior citizen erotica. Thanks, though.”

Her lips turned into a straight line and stretched some of the wrinkles around her mouth smooth. “Must you?”

“You know me. I have a rep to maintain as a smart-mouth PI.”

Her eyes watered. She dabbed at them with a knuckle before the tears could escape. “You’re angry with me.”

“Now who’s the detective?”

She slapped the table. The cheap wood made a hollow
tock
sound to accompany the snap of her hand against the surface. “Let me talk.”

I jerked back. I’d never seen Sheila so pissed. Served her right. But maybe I was the one blowing things out of proportion. Maybe I was taking my frustration about so many things out on her because she was an easy target. Which meant maybe I should lay off a little.

“Okay,” I said. “Truce.”

“I was never at war with you.”

“All right, Shelia. I get it. Say what you have to say.”

“The man I met. His name is Hersch Olin. At least, that’s the name he gave me.”

A twitch in my gut. I wasn’t going to like this. Not a bit.

“He took me for a lot of money. I don’t want to get into details. But he conned me good.”

The word
conned
worked like the cord that pulls open a set of blinds. “You’re the one who told him about my daughter.”

Her gaze fell to the floor, and with it the last threads of any dignity she still clung to. “He’s already found you then?”

The toxic mix of emotion roiling in me made it hard for me to decide exactly how I felt at that moment. “Called me this morning.”

She lifted her hanging head, making it look like the weight of the world was balanced on the back of her neck. “You didn’t…give him anything?”

“I know a con when I see one. He had me rattled good, though. You really know how to pick ‘em.”

“When I met him, he was the most charming man I’d ever had the pleasure to talk with.”

“Funny how being drunk makes even the sleaziest guys look good.”

She screwed her lips together and tried to burn a hole in my forehead with her concentrated gaze. Then she stood. “I had a feeling he might use the personal things I shared with him for his personal gain. I just wanted to warn you.”

“Now you fly back to Miami and get on with your bender.”

“I have been in your life since you were born. But you don’t know me, Ridley. Not everything.”

Seemed like there was a lot of people I knew who I didn’t know. Of course, Eddie Arndt wasn’t someone who helped raise me when my parents were too busy with their music. He got a pass. Sheila? Not so much. “Near as I can tell, I don’t want to know you.”

“Maybe so. Maybe that’s for the best.”

I snorted. I was dizzy with frustration, outright anger, and a nagging sense of loss. I had told Sheila I didn’t recognize her anymore. The same could have been said of my whole life. “Whatever. We’re done then?”

Her face softened. Her eyes shined. She nodded.

As I left, I thought I heard her say something. I didn’t stop. The limo driver followed at my heels until I turned on him. “Get the fuck away from me. I’ll call a cab.”

Which meant I had to wait an hour in the lobby, stewing and steaming. Not many cabs in Hawthorne. When the rusted and dinged Ford with the sticker on the side—
Mr. Snappy’s Cabs
—pulled up, it was all I could do to keep from running out the door.

The cabby, skin the color of dark chocolate and smooth as Shea butter, double checked with me on the address I gave when I called in. My home address.

“No,” I said. “Give me a second.” I pulled out my iPhone and fumbled with the touch screen. I’d only had the thing a few months and it still felt like an alien relic in my hands. I managed to pull up the white pages, searched for Arndt. Eddie was listed, along with his address.

I gave the cabby that address and flopped back in the seat. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in a mostly empty mansion that fed me memories I’d rather not chew on. Going back to my office and shooting hoops with perfectly good printer paper into the recycle bin didn’t thrill me either. Not even porn could keep my mind occupied.

I needed a case.

So why not take one that had fallen in my lap? Even if it wasn’t much of a case at all.

Chapter 4

Eddie lived in an apartment complex in South Hawthorne. South Hawthorne was the proverbial “other side of the tracks.” You could almost draw a straight line through the center of Hawthorne on a map. On the north side, you have a bunch of wealthy yuppies—not all as wealthy as my parents (or me now, I guess) but a few even more loaded. On the south side, poor and working class folks that supplied the service sector with bodies to cater to those in the north. Along the border, you have Hawthorne high school, where the two classes meet and mingle during the most formative parts of their lives. Going to school every day felt like fraternizing with the enemy. And no matter how nice you were to the other side, you were always
someone’s
enemy.

When he answered my knock, the look on Eddie’s face triggered my fight-or-flight instincts because he looked ready to deck me. I even took a defensive step back, clearing the way if I had to throw up a block.

Instead, Eddie hit me with a glare that only felt like a punch. “What do you want?”

“To make amends.”

“More pity. You can keep it.” He started to close his door.

I braced it open with my foot. “I want to take your case, Eddie.”

I could see the smoke as he thought about it, mouth set to the side like when he entered the
High Note
the night before.

“I’m good,” I said. “If there’s anything to be found, I’ll find it.”

“You still don’t believe me.”

“I’m kind of like a defense attorney. I don’t have to believe you to do my job.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s up to me to dig for information, not make assumptions.”

He shook his head. “I mean, why do you want to help me all of a sudden?”