Chapter 2

 

Beau knew the café where Rupert Penrick would be waiting. Charlotte’s Place was one of those hole-in-the-wall eateries no tourist would probably ever discover, but the parking lot was usually packed and the tables filled. As far as Beau knew, no one named Charlotte had ever actually been associated with it. The owner was a porky man in his sixties who occupied the back corner table a good part of the time, keeping his piggy little eyes on the help and, apparently, consuming at least one daily plateful of the huevos rancheros for which they were locally famous.

Most of the time, Bubba Boudreaux hunched over a super-size coffee mug cradled in his hands while he smiled hugely at the town’s influential politicians and businessmen and ignored the rest. Beau apparently ranked—today, anyway—because Bubba personally hustled toward him the minute he walked in the door.

“Sheriff, thank goodness you’re here.” It came out as yaw he-ah. “We seem to have a little misunderstandin’ on our hands.”

“Hello, Bubba.” Beau glanced beyond the proprietor’s shoulder.

Rupert was waving from one of the booths along the west wall and Beau walked toward him.

Sam’s friend stood, drawing himself to his full height, which easily topped Bubba’s by a good ten inches. The café owner did his best to outclass the writer, but with his tubby body and hunched shoulders he couldn’t quite pull it off. He aimed another smarmy smile toward Beau.

“There is no misunderstanding,” Rupert said. “It’s a matter of claim to some found-property. A kid was sitting at this booth when I arrived. I was in the midst of my scrambled eggs, over in that booth—” He pointed to a spot two tables away. “—when the kid left. I noticed he’d left a bag of some sort, so I told R.G. to try to catch him.”

Roy Greene, R.G. to everyone in the café, stood behind the cash register trying to look busy and stay uninvolved. Beau signaled him over.

Rupert continued. “Unfortunately, the youngster had simply vanished. R.G. brought the bag back and I suggested we look inside to see if we could identify the owner.”

From the seat behind him, Rupert lifted a black duffle bag by the handles and placed it on the table, gesturing to Beau that he should take a look. Beau pulled the long zipper and spread open the edges of the bag, revealing several dozen neatly banded packets of cash.

“Unless that bag belongs to Benjamin Franklin, I don’t see anyone else’s name in there,” Rupert said with a smug look toward Bubba.

“Sheriff, that’s a lost-and-found item and it was found in my rest’rant. By all rights, it now belongs to me.” Bubba had edged his way to Beau’s left side where he could easily get his hands on the bag.

“Not so fast, Bubba. This is going to require a few more questions than for a lost pair of sunglasses. I’ll be placing it for safekeeping in the county’s evidence locker. This money is missing from somewhere and there will be a full investigation before it leaves my custody. Got that?”

Bubba backed away two steps, his eyes still on the bag. “Well, of course, Sheriff. Ah wouldn’t have it any other way. Long as you make note it was found abandoned on my property.”

“So noted,” Beau said. He tilted his head toward Bubba’s table at the back. “You probably don’t want your eggs getting cold now, do you? I need to talk to the other employees and see what everyone else knows.”

Even Bubba couldn’t ignore the dismissal. He slunk away, pausing at the coffee machine to top off his big mug.

“R.G., how you doing?” Beau asked, setting the bag in the far corner of the booth bench, sliding in beside it, and gesturing for the slim, dark-haired waiter to sit across from him. Roy fiddled with the wrapper from a straw, pressing it flat, curling it around his index finger and rolling it out again.

Rupert, apparently satisfied Bubba wasn’t immediately getting his hands on the money, resumed his seat at the neighboring booth although his plate had been cleared. He picked up his half-empty tea mug.

“So, R.G., tell me about this kid who was sitting here,” Beau said, pulling his small notebook and a pen from his shirt pocket. “Did you recognize him? Take his order? Serve his meal?”

“No, sir, Sheriff. That was Sandy.”

Beau smiled across the table. “Roy, no need to be formal with me. I coached your kid in Little League—wasn’t it about three or four years ago? Just call me Beau, okay?”

He watched the other man relax a little, flicking the paper straw-wrapper aside.

“Sandy’s run to the store now to pick up fresh tortillas for the lunch crowd. Claudine’s the other waitress today, but she had the tables over on Bubba’s side of the room.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to Sandy later. Can you tell me anything about the customer—give me a description? Was it really a kid?”

“Well, not a child but yeah, a young guy. Early teens, I’d guess. Dressed all in black with one of them long coats … I don’t know what they’re called. Had shaggy-looking hair sticking out from under a black knit cap. I was working the register and refilling the coffee machine during the time he was here. Didn’t really get a close look.”

“You didn’t speak to him and he didn’t speak to you?”

R.G. shook his head.

“You didn’t notice whether he was the one who carried the bag in?”

“Huh-uh. Guess I assumed he did ’cause we would have surely noticed the bag when the previous customer left. I mean, I’m pretty sure we would’ve. I suppose it could have been on the floor though, up against the wall.”

Beau could tell R.G., for all his wanting to be helpful, really didn’t have anything to add. He thanked the man and told him to feel free to call if he thought of anything else. Claudine came over next, a friendly Hispanic woman in her thirties who had waited on Beau and Sam here many times. As R.G. predicted, she’d been busy and hadn’t even noticed the lone, black-clad customer or the bag until Bubba rushed from his table to see what was going on and aroused everyone’s curiosity.

“Sorry, Beau,” Claudine said, “but you know how it is when we get busy in here. Until fifteen minutes ago, I hadn’t slowed down since seven o’clock this morning.”

The cook, Maria, was even less help. She’d arrived at five-thirty, prepped for breakfast and had barely taken a breath since the front door was unlocked. She seemed glad for the chance to sit down for a couple of minutes, wiping sweat from her forehead with one of the paper napkins from the dispenser on the table.

Rupert, meanwhile, paid his check and left, giving Beau a little talk to you later nod. Through the front windows, Beau saw him get into his Land Rover but he didn’t leave the parking lot.

Beau was about to carry the bag out to his cruiser and lock it inside, thinking he would use the opportunity to get Rupert’s impressions of the morning’s events, but the other waitress, Sandy Bartles, walked in just then. He wanted to speak with her before the lunch crowd began to distract her.

Sandy was another parent whose son had been on that same Little League team so they started the conversation on that basis, Beau telling her how much he’d enjoyed the coaching experience back in the days when he was still a deputy and, for the most part, worked regular hours. Now married and holding office he’d had to give up some of his simpler pastimes.

“Yeah, I’d say the kid in black was probably no more than fourteen, fifteen,” she said when he got around to asking. “Voice hadn’t changed yet. Real soft-spoken, wouldn’t hardly make eye contact. We were slammed, so I didn’t exactly reach out either, you know. Took the order—I think it was the burrito—delivered plates to all my tables, refilled coffees. You know. Rupert came in about then and we got talking a little. He’s used me as a character in one of his books, you know.” She preened a little.

Beau said he didn’t know that. He asked about the black bag, whether Sandy had actually seen the kid carry it in.

“I really couldn’t swear to it,” she said. “I couldn’t say he didn’t, either, you know. There seemed something familiar … but with the hat and the black coat … I just don’t know.”

Beau made notes, although there wasn’t much in the way of facts to write down. A glance outside told him Rupert was still waiting in his vehicle, which was odd. Beau’s impression of the writer was he felt his time was valuable. People waited for him, not the other way around. He thanked Sandy for her help, once again left his card in case she wanted to add anything. He picked up the black bag and purposely ignored Bubba as he walked out. The man had already said his piece and it didn’t seem anything useful to Beau.

He locked the bag in the back of his department SUV and walked over to Rupert’s Land Rover.

“Quite a puzzle,” he said, sliding into the passenger seat. “Good thing you called it in or old Bubba would have made himself a few thousand dollars richer, it seems.”

“Sam always tells me how observant I am, always looking for interesting characters to stick into a storyline. This time it paid off.”

“So you noticed the kid in black right away?”

Rupert opened a small compartment on the console of his vehicle, took out a packet of gum and offered Beau a stick before taking one for himself. Beau declined but Rupert unwrapped his and used the extra time to put together his thoughts.

“He was there when I arrived, so no, I didn’t see him carry the bag in—if he’s the one who left it there. And that’s if he was a he. All I saw was a thin, waif-like being. Could have been male or female. The black coat was huge on the kid, almost dragged the boot tops, certainly didn’t reveal anything about figure or build.”

Beau jotted notes and let the writer keep talking.

Rupert discarded the gum wrapper into his ashtray. “His hair was blond and had that dry, straw-like texture which could mean it had been bleached too frequently or over-processed with heat and products.”

“Everyone else said the kid was wearing a knit cap.”

“That’s right. But these shaggy ends of blond stuck out around the edges. The contrast was, I guess, what caught my eye. Black clothes, black cap, stark white-blond hair. Something artistic about it.”

“What about facial features?”

“I got the briefest of glimpses, only when he got up to leave, I’m afraid. He was sitting with his back to me for the most part. Didn’t make eye contact when he stood up to go. No facial hair—I can tell you that for sure. Kind of a delicate jawline. I have an impression of dark eyes, but as I said he really didn’t look directly at me.”

“Did he get up and leave quickly? I mean, would that explain why he forgot the bag?”

Rupert’s eyes squinted momentarily as he tried to recall. “Yes, somewhat quickly. He didn’t go up to the register to pay—I did notice that—just headed directly for the door. There was a wadded up five-dollar bill on the table and maybe a couple of ones … money he left for Sandy to pick up.”

“And once he went out the door, did you see which direction he went? Did he get into a car? Pause to look around? Any sign he’d remembered the bag and debated coming back for it?”

At each question, Rupert simply shook his head. “Not that I noticed. Once out the front door, I assume he headed east—there are no windows on that end of the building.”

“Okay, thanks, man. That’s been a help,” Beau said, opening the door beside him. “You know the drill … if you think of anything else to add, just let me or Sam know.”

He walked toward his cruiser and watched Rupert start his own vehicle and drive away. From the front window of the café, Bubba Boudreaux stared out. When the man realized Beau had seen him, he stepped back into the shadows.

Beau rechecked the locked doors on his SUV and walked over to the east end of the restaurant building. Rupert was right—there were no windows here, just a solid wall that had once been painted with some kind of mural. It might have been a scene of the Taos Pueblo and nearby mountains, but it was faded now to an unrecognizable blur.

Footprints were non-existent on the gravel driveway and parking area, but Beau looked anyway. Along the building’s foundation wild daisies grew in the summer months, although their stalks had gone crispy brown now. Wind had deposited scraps of trash and two faded-out plastic Walmart shopping bags among the plant debris. Bubba could certainly spend a little less time schmoozing at his corner table and a bit more time maintaining the property. Beau supposed it didn’t matter; Charlotte’s Place had all the business it could handle anyway.

He scanned the area but saw no sign of the waif-creature Rupert and the others had described. With a rustic furniture shop on one side, a beauty salon on the other, and a gas station at the corner there were plenty of places between and behind the freestanding buildings for an agile young person to quickly vanish. Odds were, even if the kid had hung around in hopes of going back for the duffle bag, once the sheriff’s cruiser showed up he’d hightailed it and put as much distance as possible between them.

So, what was the story here? Beau pondered the question as he drove back to his office. First thing would be to figure out where all that cash had come from.