Stunner (5 page)

~~~~~

A couple of hours later, I find myself south of downtown Scranton heading toward Moosic, where several of the hang-up calls originated. I spent time yesterday doing additional online research, and I now know that Moosic is an old coal-mining area that in the last decade has experienced a surge in commercial development. Although, this particular Moosic neighborhood where I’m driving looks a bit down on its luck.

Arriving at my first stop, Stan’s Diner, I park in the shade. I fasten the top on my car and open all the windows enough for Warrior to get plenty of air, but not wide enough for him to jump out.

Once inside the diner, I choose a booth in order to keep my dog in view. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, and I’m the only customer, the breakfast rush no doubt having cleared out earlier. A bottle-blonde waitress with two inches of dark regrowth at her roots comes over carrying a pot of coffee and a menu. “I’ll give you a minute to decide on your order,” she says, as she pours me a cup.

“Already know what I’ll have.” I smile and hand back the menu, enjoying the aroma of the coffee. Her name tag says
Mary
. “Can you make me a two egg-white omelet and wheat toast, no butter, please?” She nods. “And, Mary, skim milk for my coffee?”

“Will do,” she answers and heads behind the counter to place the order with the cook. Not exactly the chatty type.

I look around the place, which has a classic fifties interior. The red leatherette booths rest on a checkered black-and-white linoleum floor, while a vintage jukebox and old-fashioned enclosed phone booth stand over in the corner.

I go over and check out the jukebox and see that it’s all music from the fifties and sixties. I drop in some change and select 1950s and early ’60s heartthrob Ricky Nelson, and he sings “Poor Little Fool.”

I walk into the phone booth and pick up the receiver to hear a dial tone. OK, don’t laugh. The number on the phone matches the tiny numbers I wrote on the palm of my hand before I came in—from the list that Laura had given me. I now know someone called the farm from this phone on each of the last several mornings. I step out of the booth to full-on crooning from long-gone Ricky.

Waitress Mary watches me, and her gaze isn’t friendly. “Hey, we’re in a cell phone world,” I say and laugh nervously. “Can’t believe you actually have a phone booth here. Had to see for myself if it was real.” She smiles a little. Might she be warming up a bit?

Mary brings over my food. I gaze at my health-conscious choices, imagining my favorite diner breakfast instead. “Truth be told, I’d rather eat two fat blueberry pancakes with hot maple syrup, four pieces of crispy bacon, and a creamy hot chocolate.” I sigh and dig in. “Oh well. Mary, my heart doctor thanks you.” For the first time since I’ve come into the diner, the waitress cheers up with a hearty laugh, and her tired looks turn pretty with a sparkle in her eyes.

“Mary, I’m Ronnie,” I introduce myself. “Tell me, does
anybody
ever actually use that pay phone?” I pause as if my next question just occurs to me. “Like when was the last time somebody came in here and used that phone?”

“During my shift? Yesterday morning…” She looks at the ceiling and says, “Around nine.” Inwardly I perk up. That’s the time and date of one of the hang-ups on the list from Laura. Mary sits down at the table across from my booth. “I remember because he needed a lot of change, I guess for a long-distance call.”

“You’re kidding,” I say. “Who makes a long-distance call these days on a pay phone? That’s nuts.” I steeple my hands and discreetly rub one of my palms with the thumb of my other hand to erase the phone number I’d written on it.

“I’ll tell you who makes a call,” Mary answers. “Bobby Taylor, that loser.”

Bobby Taylor. I remember the
BT
scribbled on Juliana’s pad—could he be the right guy? “God, Mary, you don’t have an opinion about the man, do you?” I chuckle. “Why’s this Bobby Taylor a loser? Tell me all about it,” I say like a co-conspirator. “Did it start in high school?” I cringe inwardly, flashing back on some of my own not-so-proud moments of bad high school behavior…and then quickly take another bite of wheat toast.

“High school? That guy and his big brother been getting into trouble since the first grade,” she says. “And then their cousin Teresa moved here, and things got even worse.”

Teresa? Like the name on the scrap stuffed in the dead pigeon’s beak? I try to disguise my extreme excitement. Wahoo, I’m getting somewhere, the first time out. “Worse?” I say casually. “How so?”

“Oh, a lot of stealing, car chases,” Mary says. “It was in all the papers. Called them the Scranton Gang, a teenage Bonnie and Clyde… Must have been, let’s see, twenty-five years ago.”

I finish my omelet. “Sounds like somebody could’ve made a movie about Bobby Taylor, his big brother, and Teresa.”

“Yeah, what a show that would have been. Even heard something was going on between Bobby and Teresa. Like maybe he was after her.” Mary hands me the check. “Anyway, first time I seen Bobby in years when he showed up here about a week ago.”

“Where’s he been?” I laugh. “Prison?”

She doesn’t find the suggestion funny. “Probably. That’s what I heard.” Mary turns her head and coughs into the inside of her elbow—a deep, gravelly, smoker’s cough. “Anyway, he’s been having breakfast here every morning since. Funny, he didn’t come in today. Maybe he took off again.”

I settle up, leaving a quite generous tip. “What ever happened to Teresa Taylor and Bobby’s big brother?”

“Joe Taylor? Who knows. The papers stopped printing the stories, and people lost interest,” Mary says. “And her name was Gonzalez, by the way, not Taylor.”

I get up from the table. “Mary, this has been the most entertaining breakfast I’ve had in a long time.” I head for the door. “Great talking to you.”

“Likewise, Ronnie.” She glances at the tip and smiles.

Outside, I walk toward my car, and before I’m there, my dog pops up from his morning snooze in the back seat. I let him out on the sidewalk with his traveling water bowl, and he takes a big drink. “See, Warrior? How hard can this detective thing be?” As I empty the left over water in the gutter, Warrior takes a quick pee on the curb, looking at me as if I’m a fool.

Next stop—the Moosic Motel, the source of the second phone number on my list of mystery hang-ups at Meadow Farm. From my research, I know it’s a fifty-five-dollar-a-night establishment about ten minutes from the airport. This part of town is dicey, or “sketchy,” as my kids now say. Feeling a little ridiculous, I find myself automatically clicking the locks of my car.

When I reach the address, I park in front and sit a moment to take in the ambience. Maybe if they charged sixty dollars a night, management could sweep up the trash scattered around the building; give the place a new coat of paint to cover a disgusting faded turquoise color; and hang some shutters on the big, bare picture window framing a clerk on the phone at the front desk.

“Definitely not the Plaza,” I mutter to Warrior, who’s moving to the back seat of the car for his second nap of the morning. “This shouldn’t take long. Be right back.”

Armed with the information I gleaned during breakfast at Stan’s Diner, I walk inside confidently and go straight to the front desk. “Good morning.” I smile at the clerk, an unshaven skinny guy in his mid-twenties.

“Morning,” he grunts, and then continues into the phone, “Have to go. Bye.” He hangs up. “Uh, saw the dog in your car. We don’t allow no dogs here.”

“No, no. Don’t worry about my dog,” I say. “I’m not checking in. I’m looking for someone.”

“Yeah?” A look of suspicion crosses his face. “Who?”

“Is a guy named Bobby Taylor still a guest here?” I ask.

“Never heard of him,” the desk clerk answers a bit too fast.

I give this guy my sweetest smile. “Are you sure? I mean, you haven’t even checked the register.” I nod at the ledger on the desk. This place is such a dump, they don’t use a computer to check in their guests.

“Lady, I don’t need to check. We got a lotta empty rooms.” He puts his hands together and cracks several knuckles. “I know everybody who’s staying here.”

“Come on. Give me a break. Was he here maybe yesterday?” I smile again. I’d like to get my hands on that register. “I’m trying to organize a reunion for my daughter and some of her former classmates.” I’m a little concerned by how easily these fabrications—OK, white lies—come tripping off my tongue. “She and Bobby were in school together—”

“Like I said, I don’t know any Bobby Taylor. Yesterday, today, or tomorrow.” He grabs the register off his desk, stuffs it in a file drawer, and slams the drawer shut. “You sure are nosy, Lady. And a phony, too. I don’t buy that reunion story.”

Clearly, I’ve blown it. This guy’s not cooperating, and I’m not getting my hands on that ledger. Guess my private eye skills need some work.

“How about two other classmates of my daughter’s? Do you know a Teresa or a Frankie?” I ask.

“Never heard of them, either.” He glances out the window at my car. I turn around to see my dog sitting up and looking through the window in our direction.

“Don’t mind Warrior. He’s a pussycat.” I rummage in my bag and pull out a photograph of Juliana Wentworth. It’s a blow-up from one of the pictures I took at the party two nights ago.

“Ever see her?” I put the photo on the desk.

He stares at me with suspicion and then looks down and studies the picture for a moment. “Nah, never seen her.”

This time I believe him. Why, I don’t know.

“What’s her name?” he asks. I stare back at him and don’t answer. “Sure is nice looking,” he says and pushes the picture back toward me. “She supposed to know this guy, Bobby Taylor?”

“Maybe. Don’t really know.” I take the photo and stick with my story, while heading out the door. “Trying to find her for the reunion, too. Thanks for your help.”

I let Warrior out for a quick water break, and he nuzzles me for a kiss and a neck scratch. I glance into the motel’s picture window and see the skinny clerk on the phone. He looks at me and then quickly puts his head down as he speaks into the receiver.

“You think he’s talking to Bobby Taylor?” I ask Warrior. “Let’s go. This place gives me the creeps.” We drive off.

“Well, that was a big fat zero.” I click on the GPS. “Didn’t get
anything
there, and that guy didn’t buy my story at all.” I wonder if I’ll have the patience to roll with the dead ends that are probably normal for any detective on the hunt.

~~~~~

It takes less than ten minutes to drive five miles to PNC Field where spectators can watch the Railriders play minor league baseball. I already know this is the New York Yankees’ triple-A farm team because my younger daughter, Jessica, who is a diehard Derek Jeter fan, told me so.

I park, read the third phone number on my list and look around at the empty stadium. At this time of day, few cars and even fewer people are in the parking lot next to the complex. Somewhere around here must be a pay phone.

I open the passenger door, take Warrior by his leash, and he jumps out for a little exercise. Looking around, I figure mystery-boy Bobby Taylor is a Yankees fan. Otherwise why did he call Meadow Farm from this stadium the first night Frank and Juliana arrived home? Probably a game that night that he wanted to catch.

Still, none of all this makes any sense. I mean, why doesn’t the guy have his own cell phone? It’s like he’s still in the 1980s, using all these pay phones. Weird. Or he’s broke and can’t afford one, which is possible if he just got out of prison.

Warrior and I walk around the outside of the stadium. I finally locate a pay phone near a closed-up concession stand in the concourse behind the seats and check the number. Bingo. It matches another one of the hang-ups on my list. I guess Bobby Taylor could have come from the stands to buy a beer and then decided it was the perfect time to call Juliana. Why? I wonder.

As my dog and I return to the parking lot, I find two guys strutting around my car. Their beat-up green SUV sits sideways, almost touching the hood of my car and blocking me from driving forward. Big deal. I have plenty of room to back up.

Usually I’m the world’s biggest scaredy-cat, but with my German shepherd at my side, I feel less hesitant than I usually would around two thuggish teenaged boys. Warrior and I walk until we get within fifty feet of the car. I signal Warrior to sit, and he is on alert. The two guys notice us, but they do nothing. I pull out my phone, zoom in and snap off a few pictures of their car right up against the front of mine.

My dog and I walk around the vehicle and take a few pictures of the SUV’s Pennsylvania license plate. Then I shift my cell phone to the two guys and my car. They mock-pose.

“Hey, sugar,” one of them purrs, stroking my Mustang. “This here’s a hot car for a hot lady…” He pouts in a way that I’m sure he thinks makes him a sexy guy. He looks me up and down with hooded eyes.

They’re idiots, one leaning against my car and the other now sitting on its hood. They’re no more than seventeen or eighteen, and dirty in ragged tee-shirts and jeans. But strong. And one thing I’m not is completely stupid. With two against one, this is not the ideal moment to, say, try out my Aikido techniques.

Instead, my four-legged protector growls. “Easy, Warrior,” I say in a firm voice. “Settle.” I note his hackles are up from his neck to his tail, so my lovable doggy is a ferocious sight.

The grimy boys also take note of the German shepherd’s low growl and the raised hair on his backbone, and the faux-sexy expression has disappeared from the first kid’s face. The second kid stutters, “N-n-nice puppy dog. P-p-please keep him on the leash.” They glance at each other nervously.

“I rarely see my dog act this way,” I say with self-assurance. “But, oooh, I can tell that he doesn’t like the two of you.” They watch the dog and me, mostly the dog, not sure what to do next.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, so that Warrior doesn’t attack,” I say in a calm voice. “Understand?”

They quickly nod their heads yes.

“Once I tell you what to do, move slowly and not toward me,” I instruct. “We don’t want Warrior to think you’re threatening me, now do we?” They quickly shake their heads no in agreement.