Skunk Hunt (15 page)

"Then get off our couch and go print!" Mrs.
Dementis said. She was technologically savvy for a gal who grew up
with Model T's. I was surprised she knew what a laptop was, or that
there were such things as portable printers.

"Please..." the copwoman moaned, spreading
her arms. "As you can see..."

"You're incapacitated?" Jeremy said.

"No way!" Kendle pushed herself up in an
attempt to give her posture an appearance of angularity. "I'm a
crackerjack investigator. But between you and me and the fencepost
I'm...a little encumbered. My boss says, 'crack this cold case or
lose a hundred pounds and walk the beat'." She gave Jeremy a
curious look.

"Lose the weight," said Flint in a
respectable imitation of an ice pick. I knew he wasn't
that
cold-hearted, or else he would
have smacked us around when he caught us doodling on his
shed.

"I'm working on it," Kendle said. "Why do you
think I'm wearing these duds? I even registered at Gold's with my
own money. That's in addition to working out in the police
gym."

I found it hard to imagine her lactating
sweat with all the other humphers. She could barely lift her feet
over a doorsill worn to a nub.

"The only money in this house is my Social
Security and my check from the VA." Flint lifted his tough chin at
Mrs. Dementis. "And my mother's change jar."

"You rat!" said Mrs. Dementis. A hundred
years' worth of loose change was her Fort Knox.

"I'm not here for chump change." Kendle
cupped her hands, catching invisible manna from Heaven. "I want the
real deal."

"Can I use your little girl's tinkle room?"
Barbara asked in an aching tone.

This helicopter business was serious. She had
shipped a load only an hour ago, causing a mass evacuation and
putting a downward spiral in Starbuck's S&P rating. Jeremy gave
me an alarmed look, then clamped a hand around his neck. Barbara
didn't see his mime show, her back being to him.

"Hold your water a minute," Kendle said
nastily. I decided then and there she didn't deserve sympathy.
Which was just as well, seeing I didn't have any for her in the
first place.

"You all meet at the coffee shop," Kendle
went on. "You log onto some temporary website called
'www.treasure447.com', and then you all show up here. Give me a
break."

"Fuck my stick," said Flint abruptly.

Grounds for arrest, for sure, but Kendle
chose the low road. "I leave twigs to the kiddies."

Some people are just born to make enemies. Of
course, Flint had been no fount of sociability, but I wasn't in a
mood to see the other side. I waited eagerly for him to slam the
cop with a comeback worthy of a war-salted veteran.

He stared hard at Kendle as he marshaled a
host of possible insults. I cast unspoken suggestions his way, as
though I could telepathically plant a zinger or two. Admittedly, I
wasn't very inventive. All I could come up with were variations on
bulk and body odor, all of which Kendle had no doubt heard before.
But what came out of the old man's mouth was something neither of
us had intended. His face went momentarily slack, his deformed
forehead almost seemed to slip on a thought, his lips churned. And
he said:

"What were we discussing?"

Even Kendle could see the confusion wasn't
feigned. Shooting blanks at a blank target would be a waste of
time. She rolled a wad a phlegm deep in her throat and let it
settle back down in her stomach. She surveyed the room for a worthy
adversary and settled on Jeremy.

"The money...?"

"If you were eavesdropping on my computer,
you know as much as we do," my brother said.

"Don't make me bring in the K-9's," Kendle
growled.

"I'm not making you do anything," Jeremy said
amiably, easing back in the chair. Finding his view of Kendle was
blocked by Barbara, he gave her a tap. "Didn't you say you have to
go?"

"Yes," she hissed.

"I don't think Flint minds you taking a whiz
in his bathroom," Jeremy said.

"But it's not just—"

"Do you, Flint?" Jeremy cut her off.

Flint rocked his head forward.

"See, he doesn't mind," my brother said,
giving her a push to send her on her way.

"Well, if you really don't mind..." Barbara
gave Mrs. Dementis a wary glance, but received only a faint scowl
in return. The old woman was deflated by her son's bout of
confusion. Maybe she was reminded that this was not the same young
man she had seen off to Vietnam all those ages ago, full of verve
and confidence—a man I had certainly never known. It was hard to
imagine her having heartstrings to tug at, but that seemed the
case.

"I'll only be a minute," said Barbara,
scooting out of the room.

I gave Jeremy a questioning look. He answered
with a smug grin. When I realized what it meant, I grinned
back.

"What are you two smirking about?" Kendle
demanded.

"I was just thinking about a joke," said
Jeremy.

"And you?" Kendle said, turning to me.

"The same joke," I said.

"Brotherly telepathy, huh?" Kendle battled
with her pouch and pulled out a notepad. "Why don't you shoot some
of those thoughts my way? Think about where the money is."

"You want something to drink?" said Flint
courteously.

"Are your mood enhancers kicking in or
something?" said Kendle, shooting him a wary glance.

"He's just being polite," said Mrs. Dementis
in a startling voice that begged forgiveness.

"How did you find out what I was doing on my
laptop?" Jeremy asked. "Van Eck phreaking?"

"You were using the coffee shop Wi-Fi. We had
a couple of techs sitting a few tables down from you with a
PowerBook. That place has a wide-open node. Any website you
visited, we saw."

"But you didn't see what was on my screen,"
said Jeremy smugly.

"Just the graphics..."

I had no idea what they were talking about,
but Jeremy seemed pleased. I recalled the two boyfriends sitting
near us and fingered them as the techs. There was a time when I
would have said the perverts had been sent to hunt the perverted. I
wondered why Kendle was showing her hand this way. It dawned on me
that she was sure the case was cracked, that she was going to find
fistfuls of cash in our pockets. Well, you know what they say about
assumptions.

"If you're not here for the money, then
what
are
you here for?" Kendle
said.

"Just looking up the old neighborhood,"
Jeremy shrugged. He twisted in his chair to face me. "Who's next on
the list? Or is the old crowd totally gone?"

I gave him a blank stare. He had caught me
flatfooted.

Mrs. Dementis gave a cough. She shot a 'what
the hell?' glance up the hallway. Relief was on the way.

"Don't worry about me absconding with the
loot," Kendle said casually, much more assured of her footing.
"I'll tag the money...Jesus!"

Barbara returned, her head hanging like one
of the eternally damned. "I'm back," she said. I guess she thought
we were all blind.

"You mind closing the door to the john?" Mrs.
Dementis said.

"What's wrong, Mother?" Flint asked.

"Don't you
smell
...?"

"I don't smell a thing," Flint said.

"I
did
close the door," said my sister in abject
embarrassment.

"Jesus," said Kendle, gasping.
"
Jesus
!" She pointed her
notebook at Jeremy. "You
knew
—"

Mrs. Dementis staggered to her son. "Get me
out of here! She lit off a stink bomb!"

Old Flint wasn't used to being
astonished. His face cracked under the strain. "Mother, are you
sure? You want to go
out
?
Out
side
?"

"A stink bomb..." Kendle speculated,
struggling to her feet.

Asafoetida my ass. We were being subjected to
the hoary remnants of Attila the Hun, extinct dinosaurs, ancient
Babylonian sewage, the Great Dismal Swamp and every other bit of
nastiness, recycled through the ages that had concentrated in
Barbara's fetid bowels. My own sister! The cesspit of history! I
almost felt honored to know her.

Flint was already guiding his mother through
the front door. We were hard on their heels, with Kendle bringing
up the rear. It would have been the perfect opportunity for her to
hold back and search the premises, if she hadn't valued her
olfactory receptors so much. Self-preservation nearly always drops
the ball.

Outside on the sidewalk, the reclusive Mrs.
Dementis blinked in the afternoon sun. Young people on skateboards
and bicycles floated by. They looked like demi-gods, until you
began itemizing their waste. Between the smashed moonshine bottles
and ragged porch furniture of the previous residents and the
discarded Evian bottles and upscale porch trash of the current
denizens there wasn't a lot to choose. Even the sense of
superiority was similar. The haughty students you could understand.
The whole universe was heaped up before them, waiting to be
devoured. But the booney-trash of previous days had also cocked
their snoot at the world. Drunk, deranged, poor and generally
worthless, conceit was the only option to suicide.

"So this is what it all looks like," said
Mrs. Dementis.

"Yes, Mother," said Flint. "This is what it
looks like."

"I'm not giving up on you," said Kendle as
she stormed to her van.

"I appreciate that," Jeremy said with a broad
smile. "I hate being ignored."

CHAPTER 11

For Questions or Comments

Travel West past Short Pump

Stop at First Cross

That was what was at the bottom of Flint's
bottle of Jack Daniels, so neatly printed and integrated with the
design that it seemed fresh from the Tennessee bottling plant.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to forge that label, which put
it beyond the realm of Skunk or Skunk's acquaintances, none of whom
had been sticklers for detail—the Brinks job being the sole
exception. I've never turned a scholarly eye on a bottle of hard
liquor, but I doubted there was any need for questions or comments.
JB Black is God's Chosen, period.

When Barbara suggested we should pile into
her pimply Sentra, Jeremy drew a face of profound disparagement.
That he considered her a mental lightweight should not have
mattered, since we encounter perfectly brainless drivers on the
road every day. But it was a good idea—not through any
commonsensical notion of consolidating resources, but simply to
keep our eyes on one another. After the congestion of the Short
Pump Town Center, Route 250 squiggled out into the countryside,
offering plenty of scope for one of us to lose the others.

But Jeremy drove a Cayman Coupe, an
outrageously pricy two-seater that I could only gape at in
amazement, but which left my ancient Impala as the only
alternative. I wasn't very keen on the idea of clearing a space
through the dirty laundry, Wendy's cups, festering napkins and
spontaneous terrariums for a third passenger.

"This was Papa's car," said Barbara lowly,
staring at the Impala.

'Papa' now? What next? 'Sir Skunk'?

"So?" I asked. "No one else wanted it."

"Got that right," Jeremy nodded. "You use
lead additive?" This was either idle curiosity or a sly dig at the
method of Skunk's demise. My younger brother being as clever as a
bent nail, I concluded it had to be former.

"Skunk would've beat the tar out of us if we
used his car," Barbara continued in the spooked vein.

"He's not coming back from the grave to spank
you," I reasoned.

"Yeah, we'll you're not so hot in the
'proving' department, are you?" she shot back.

What was it I hadn't proved? That Skunk
wasn't Lazarus?

Jeremy threw up his hands. "Okay, Sweet
Tooth's car."

Barbara danced a little jig of glee at the
prospect of chaperoning her brothers—as if, for once, she would
have us in her power.

"I drive," Jeremy added, holding his hand out
for the keys.

Barbara skewed her eyes up at him, as though
he'd asked her to commit an unnatural act. "Why should you?"

"Because I don't trust your driving."

"We haven't seen each other for years."
Barbara paused. A chagrined glance in my direction confirmed the
sensitivity of the topic. If ever there had been an occasion for a
reunion, Skunk's departure from this morass of tears would have
been it. But my brother's and sister's all-too-predictable absence
scored points on the scale of indifference, leaving me to deal with
the crummy remains. Barbara gave a small shrug—I could see clearly
the whoosh of spilled milk under the bridge. "What do you know
about my driving," she continued. "Which happens to be fine and
dandy, thanks for asking."

We had parked in front of my
house—
my
house—after leaving
Flint and his mother swooning on the sidewalk.

"No offense, Sweet Tooth," said Jeremy, "but
what if your helicopters start acting out while we're on the road?
You wouldn't be able to concentrate."

"I'm OK for now," she answered, with a
walloping gape that said no human could hold more than the two
loads she had eliminated that morning. She jumped into her Sentra
and switched on the engine. Lowering the window, she said, "Me or
nothing."

"Or we each go our own way," Jeremy scowled,
put out by the thought. With a snort of contempt he strode to the
passenger side. I got in the back.

The quickest way to Short Pump was by I-64.
Through some misconceived Wonderland concept of beginning at the
beginning, Barbara chose Route 250.

"That's where we have to go, anyway," she
reasoned with a brain the size and consistency of a knuckle.
"That's how Skunk always told us fairytales: 'In the
beginning.'"