Chapter Twelve

A few minutes later, a man came into the gas station wearing a black trucker’s cap with a unicorn on the bill, hipster glasses, a fake moustache, and Rosa’s pink t-shirt. The speed at which he put together this disguise was far more impressive than the disguise itself.

He walked up to the other side of the counter and whispered, “Jack. It’s me! Jerry.”

“Yeah, I know. I have eyes and a brain.”

He pulled off the hat and glasses, made a tadaaa! face, then immediately put them back on like his life depended on it.

“I need to tell you something.”

“Okay. Good job so far.”

“No, not here.” He turned and eyed the display of lawn gnomes by the door. “Meet me in the walk-in cooler. Make sure you haven’t been followed.”

“I swear to the dark god, Jerry, if you’re about to tell me that there’s a dead body in the trunk of your car, I’m going to lose it.”

“Relax,” he said. “What I have to tell you is way more interesting than that.”

He went straight to the cooler. I grabbed my crutch and gave the store a quick pass to make sure there wasn’t anything requiring my immediate attention. I found a couple of displaced gnomes, but no fires, racoons, or customers lying in wait. I went back to my space behind the counter, grabbed the hoodie out of the Jerry box, and put up the “Be back in five minutes” sign. 

I zipped up my jacket, dug my hands into my pockets, and tried to focus on not shivering. Jerry didn’t seem to mind the cold. After I handed him his hoodie, he just tossed it over his neck like a scarf. “Here’s the thing,” he started. “I’m the one who paid for Van’s funeral.”

I stared at him, trying to think of the right question to ask. Looking back, I did notice that Vanessa’s funeral seemed a little fancy for a fellow underpaid gas station orphan. I’d just assumed she had some wealthy distant relatives footing the bill. Finally, I came up with, “Why?” The word turned into a cloud in front of my face.

Jerry gave a shrug. “Did you know the church wasn’t going to allow Van’s funeral because she wasn’t a member anymore? Did you know they weren’t even going to have a service? Just a state-run body disposal, Jack. Same as they do for criminals and dogs that bite mailmen. I wanted this town to know that she had people who cared about her. I also paid for the catering at the reception we didn’t get to go to. They had mini crab cakes and a cheese bar.”

“Okay, next question: What’s really going on?”

“Oh,” he continued. “So here’s something you don’t know about me…” He took a deep breath, stared at the ceiling, and confessed, “I’m kinda rich.”

“Good. Start paying rent for the storage room.”

“Make me!”

“Jerry, I don’t care if you’re secretly wealthy. I pieced as much together from Dr. Douchebag’s story. I know you had a past before you ended up in the Mathmetist program. I don’t really care about that. What I do want to know is why someone is looking for you, and how they know you’re here.”

“Ah, yes, that. Before I decided to take my sabbatical,” he explained, “I squirreled away a little extra funding into a secret savings account. I thought it was safe, but evidently they were watching the account after all. Now, I think they’re sending people to find me.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

He crossed his arms and pouted like a toddler. “My stupid parents.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of someone calling out from the front of the store. “Hellooo?”

Jerry leapt into a corner and whispered loudly, “I thought you said you weren’t followed!”

“I wasn’t,” I explained calmly. “I left the cooler door cracked so I could hear in case a customer—”

“Get rid of them!”

He pulled a cardboard box of bulk hotdog chili into the corner, crouched behind it, and threw the hoodie over himself like a personal blanket fort. I’d seen Jerry go through some dark times. I’d seen him cry for hours on end. I watched him detox and relapse more than once. I even got politely evicted from Vanessa’s funeral alongside him. I thought I’d seen the full spectrum of Jerry, but tonight was the first time I ever saw him scared.

I left him cowering in the corner.

I was annoyed to learn that the voice calling from the front of the store belonged to another cantstomer. There were two of them, in fact, waiting for me next to the counter. I recognized them instantly—Elizabeth and Morgan Perkins. Or, as the locals had taken to calling them, the “cookie twins.”

The cookie twins were locals. They made their reputation and earned their nicknames selling Goose Scout Cookies door-to-door and business-to-business without any parental supervision, shame, or respect for time of day. They typically stayed on the right side of the fine line between aggressive salesmanship and literal harassment, but they had been known to cross it from time to time.

Elizabeth, the plumper of the two, saw me and let out a growl of disappointment. They’d already hit me up enough times to know who I was, and to know that I had no problem with the word “no.” I also had no problem with the words “Get out of here unless you’re buying something.” Especially when those words were in that order and spoken with the tone of someone ready, willing, and able to call the authorities for backup. But that didn’t stop her from trying. 

She held up a box of Husky-Mints and said, “Hi! Our Goose Scout troop is selling cookies to raise money for a summer trip to Six Flags.”

They were dressed in the official Goose Scouts uniform, and they both had blonde hair braided into dual pigtails, but that’s about where their similarities ended. Despite the fact that they were biological twins, they looked very little alike. Morgan had piercing blue eyes and a short black beard covering his face while Elizabeth had brown eyes under a pair of purple-rimmed glasses and no beard whatsoever. By my estimate, they were around fifty years old (or a whole century, if combined).

Morgan started his side of the sales pitch. “We have Slowmoes, Razzle Dazzles, Tangle-Toes, Red Bull Cakes, Little Piggies, and—for a limited time—Flan Balls!”

“No,” I said calmly.

Elizabeth lowered the box of cookies and snarled. “You never want to help us get to Six Flags!” Her voice jumped up an octave. “This is the meanest business in town!”

Morgan crossed his arms and nodded along with his sister, adding, “You shouldn’t go around making fun of people who aren’t doing anything but trying to make an honest living.”

“All I said was ‘no.’”

Elizabeth threw the box onto the ground and shouted, “Quit judging us, you prick! At least we’re doing honest work!”

“Yeah!” her brother added. “At least we aren’t out on the streets, selling drugs. Or our bodies! Huh?”

With a huff, Elizabeth put her hands on her hips, leaned forward, and said, “I bet you’d looove that, wouldn’t you, Jack? You want to see us prostitute ourselves out, don’t you? You’re just a big old skeezy pervert!”

“You guys need to leave. I’m not buying your cookies, and I’m about ninety-nine percent sure the Goose Scouts of America don’t want you selling them either.”

“Fine!” said Morgan. “We’ll go. I can tell when we’re not wanted. Come on, Sis. Let’s get outta here.”

“Wait,” she said. “We can still make this sale happen.”

“No way,” he responded. (I already knew this was part of the bit, but what could I do but let it run its course?) “He’s made up his mind. There’s nothing we can say to prove to him how delicious, healthy, or cost-effective our cookies really are.”

“There is one thing!” she said.

“No. Not that! He isn’t ready!” He looked at me and tried not to smile. “The world isn’t ready!”

“That’s right!” She braided her fingers and cracked all of her knuckles at once. “We need to show him… the Goose Scout Cheer!”

“I don’t want to watch your cookie dance.”

Morgan roared, “Come on! We spent a lot of time working on it! The least you can do is sit there and enjoy it. The cookie cheer is a culmination of years of research, practice, and experimental dance designed to soften the hardest of hearts. Plus, it’s only fifteen minutes long!”

I rolled my eyes. “Is there any rapping in it?”

The cookie twins looked at one another. They proceeded to cycle through a series of silent facial expressions, communicating in a secret language.

“The fact that neither of you has rushed to assure me the answer is ‘no’ leads me to believe that I will not enjoy the cookie cheer.”

“Fine!” yelled Elizabeth. “If that’s the way you want to be, I call a cookie curse upon you and your house!” She held one arm over her head, made a circular motion in the air, then brought her hand down like she was striking with an axe.

I instantly brought my free hand up, drew a giant mark of Zorro in front of me, and yelled, “Counter curse! Your cookie curse has bounced off of me and sticks to you!”

Her eyelids went so high they almost got lost in her hairline. She screamed at me, “How DARE you!? Take it back! Take it back right now or else I will double cookie curse you!”

She pointed at my face. I pointed at hers.

“Go ahead. I’ll just triple cookie curse you right back!”

“You wouldn’t!” she hissed.

“Try me!”

Morgan stepped between us and said, “Okay, okay, let’s everybody calm down. Elizabeth, we talked about this. Let’s not have another night end in a Mexican Cookie standoff. That’s not the Goose Scout way. Jack, we’re sorry we tried to cookie curse you.”

“Thank you, Morgan. I’m still not buying anything.”

Morgan picked up the smashed box and led his sister out the door. Elizabeth didn’t say another word. She didn’t have to. Her hate-filled eyes said plenty. As soon as they got onto their bikes and rode off, I went back to the cooler to let Jerry know that the coast was clear.

“Who was it?” he asked with a shake in his voice that I chalked up to the cold.

“A couple of scouts,” I responded in lieu of the complicated truth. “They were selling cookies.”

“Did you get us any?”

“No, Jerry.”

“Why not?”

“Because cookie fundraisers are a scam designed to exploit children and skirt labor laws.”

He accepted that answer without any further argument, loaded up on supplies (sugary snacks and a bottle of tequila), then left. I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night.

 

***

 

Some time later, the phone rang again. 

I was really starting to hate that thing. Nobody ever just called to say “Hello” or tell me how great of a job I was doing. It was always bad news, or a threat, or more work, or maybe even all of the above. If it were up to me, the store wouldn’t even have a telephone.

I let the damn thing ring a few times, lest whoever was on the other end get the idea that I actually wanted to talk to them. But I knew I had to answer eventually. 

“Hello?”

The man on the other end of the line sounded tired, which made sense considering the hour. “Hi. Is this the gas station?”

“This is a gas station.” 

“Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to check before I drove all the way out there and wasted a trip. Do you have any pickle-flavored jerky in stock?”

I couldn’t believe it. A real customer asking a real customer question?

“Sorry, we don’t carry pickle jerky.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“But the guy I talked to earlier said you would have some soon!”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I was in there just a few days ago and talked to the clerk. He was very confident that you would have it in stock by now! What was his name? Tall fella, dark blonde hair, blue eyes. Very talkative.”

“Oh,” I said without thinking. “You mean Jerry?”

His voice changed. He no longer sounded tired. Or friendly. In fact, he no longer sounded anything. His was a perfectly forgettable generic voice. “Oh, so Jerry does work there after all? Thank you, Jack. That’s all I needed to know.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Wait—”

But he didn’t wait. He’d already hung up. I stared at the receiver, wondering to myself, what have I done?

 

***

 

The next time the phone rang, I was prepared. Wait, no, that’s not true. But I was less unprepared. This time, I had a plan. This time, I would avoid the whole thing. Nobody could threaten me. Nobody could trip me up. All I had to do was nothing. I wouldn’t answer, no matter how many times it rang.

And rang. And rang. And rang. Oh, that’s right. We don’t have an answering machine. This thing will keep on ringing until the caller gives up or someone cuts the phone lines.

I grabbed my crutch, collected the garbage around the store, and took the bags out to the dumpster. By the time I got back inside, the ringing had stopped. My plan had worked perfectly, with absolutely no noticeable consequences.

Fifteen minutes later, I saw the flashing police lights outside the building.

O’Brien came through the door with her weapon drawn. When she saw me sitting behind the counter with a book in my hands, she took a deep, angry breath and said, “Jack.”

I carefully put the book away.

“Hey Amy. What’s up?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Why?”

She didn’t seem convinced. She joined me behind the counter (I guess she was checking to make sure there weren’t any bad guys or monsters holding me hostage). Only after she was sure the coast was clear did she holster the weapon and say, “I tried calling earlier.”

“Oh! That was you?”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been getting a lot of weird phone calls.”

“Weird phone calls? So it’s happening here, too?”

“What’s happening here, too?”

“Forget it.”

“Consider it forgotten.”

“You need to answer your phone, Jack! I left a crime scene to come here and check on you. Clyde’s itching for a reason to rid himself of me.”

“I’m sorry.” 

She took another deep breath and sat down in the chair next to me.

“It’s okay.”

That was not what I was expecting to hear. She clearly wasn’t mad anymore. What kind of horrible thing is taking up so much space in her mind that there isn’t any room for anger?

“Why were you trying to call me in the middle of a crime scene? I think I conclusively proved I’m not much help.”

“There was an accident, down by Dead Man’s Curve. Two bodies. Unidentified. Looks like it might just be a regular car accident, but things don’t really add up.”

“That’s unfortunate. But I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“They didn’t have any identification on them. No wallet or purse. No tags on their clothes. Car wasn’t much help either. No registration. No license plate. Not even a VIN number. Crazy as it sounds, we don’t even know the make or model. Big impossible mystery. Yadda yadda. You know how things go around here.”

“Sure.”

“But they did have one thing on them. Just one thing.” She took an old-fashioned flip phone out of her pocket and set it on the counter. “Looks like it’s a pay-as-you-go deal. We could send it to the lab. Might get lucky and trace it back to the original buyer.”

The phone was not in an evidence bag, and O’Brien didn’t seem to care about preserving the integrity of her only clue. She was giving me an expectant stare, but I was still at least a couple steps behind her. I waved at the phone and said, “Okay?”

“Unless, for some reason, I need to make sure it doesn’t find its way to the lab.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Nobody else has seen the phone but me. I checked the call history, Jack. There are only two numbers that this phone has had incoming or outgoing calls with for the last two years.”

“Okay. Still not sure where you’re going with this.”

“One is the gas station. The other is your cell phone.”

All at once it hit me.

“Oh,” I said.

“Well? Want to point me in the right direction?”

“I know who the bodies are.”

“You going to keep me waiting for dramatic effect?”

“Sorry.” My mind was swimming. There was suddenly a lump in my throat. This was bad news. Very bad news. “I think you found the owners of the gas station.”