October 8 (Saturday mid-afternoon)
Beth was the ad hoc hostess since it was her own suggestion to get all three heads together. The third head, of course, was Jeff’s and he’d phoned earlier to see if Beth was home. She’d told him to come on over; Connie was already there.
Jeff arrived, breathing heavily from his long walk in the mid-afternoon sun. It was probably a mile and a half—along the paved walk on the south edge of Highland Drive and then south a few blocks into Beth’s Old Highlands neighborhood. Jeff seemed to enjoy walking, which is probably why he was able to stay in such excellent condition.
“Connie, you’ve met Jeff before, haven’t you?” Beth pointed as though it was needed.
“Oh, sure. Several times at the library. And, maybe at one of the summer music festivals.”
“Possibly so. Tanya loves her music. I’d rather read.” His smile showed even, white teeth.
“I brought your self defense book.” Jeff pulled it from his backpack and then took a swig from a small water bottle. When he pulled off his windbreaker, sweat glistened against the dark skin of his bare forearms.
“What else do you have in that bag?” Connie pointed. “Any snacks?”
Jeff smiled. “Nothing but an energy bar... and a penlight if it’s dark before I get back home.”
“How far are you walking these days?” Beth flipped through the book absent-mindedly.
“Normally, this is about my outside range—three miles round-trip—but today, my mom-in-law is visiting and it’s usually to my advantage to be out of the house as much as possible.” He shrugged.
“You look a lot like that movie star...”
“Denzel.” Beth interrupted Connie.
“Yeah, only shorter. I know.” Exasperated groan from Jeff.
Connie tapped his forearm with her painted nails. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“Sorry. I just get tired of the height comment. I’m five-seven and that’s it. Not every black guy is NBA tall.”
Jeff seemed rather testy, Beth thought. The mother-in-law must have gotten on his nerves. “Well, let’s have a seat.” She gestured. “After Connie and I spoke the other day, I thought all three of our brains should get together and see if we can get to the bottom of things.”
“This robbery and stalking is not normal stuff.” Connie’s sculpted nails flicked something invisible from her skirt. “And I figure Beth is too close to it to see what it’s all about.”
“I doubt I’d be much help.” Jeff took another sip of water. “Unless you need some research or something.”
Beth sighed heavily. “I don’t know what we need. Right now we don’t even have a starting place.”
“Except what Shane told you about the guy that broke into his place.”
“Hold on. Your ex-boyfriend also had a break-in?” Jeff hadn’t heard.
Beth explained everything, including the possibility that Ricks might be in Verdeville already.
Jeff asked for a description, which Beth provided. He jotted down a few notes on a small tablet from his backpack.
“Have either of you seen anybody like that?” Beth pointed to Jeff’s notes.
“Not in the library.”
“Not at the dealership.” Connie tapped Beth’s elbow. “You said Shane wondered if this Ricks guy was the stalker. Have you thought any more about that?”
Beth shuddered. “I never saw his face but I heard a voice this last time... only it was through my closed window with the engine running. Tell you the truth, I don’t remember what Ricks sounded like. But I know I’d recognize his smell: stale drugs and rotten dumpster garbage.”
“Lovely combination.” Connie wrinkled her nose.
Beth rose from the couch. “Anything to drink? I mean besides your water.”
“I could take a little sweet tea, if you have it.” Connie licked her lips.
“It happens I do.” The consummate hostess. “Jeff?”
“Sure.” He screwed the lid on the water bottle and jammed it back inside his pack.
“Is this your beau?” Connie must have spotted the framed photo which Beth had only recently placed on the end table. “Shane?”
Beth set three glasses of iced tea on coasters on the coffee table. “Still the ex-beau... and I doubt that will change.” She reached over and picked up the plain wooden frame. “That was taken at Mile Square Park about a year before I left, in Fountain Valley.”
Jeff craned his neck. “He’s no kid. Looks close to forty.”
“Uh, nearly ten years older than me... thirty-eight, actually.” Shane Holder was over six-one and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. Incredibly strong, but not the body-builder show muscle—quite agile, but he didn’t move particularly fast. “He’d already been in the army and out. He was going to school on the G.I. Bill when we met at Cal State Long Beach.”
“What part of the army?” Jeff leaned forward. “Any combat?”
“Shane was with one of the airborne divisions in the first Gulf War... when they liberated Kuwait and chewed up Saddam’s Republican Guard.” Beth put the photo beside her on the couch. “He saw plenty of action.”
Connie picked it up. “Speaking of movie stars—” though no one was at that moment, “—your biker looks a lot like that guy in the Sackett movies. What’s his name?”
“The old guy was Ben something.” Beth wasn’t much with names.
“Not Ben Johnson. Younger.”
Jeff studied the photo. “Oh, you mean Sam Elliott. He was great in a bouncer flick, too. Also played a first sergeant in a Vietnam war movie.”
“Sam Elliott. Yum.” Connie returned the frame to the end table and took a sip of her tea. “How did y’all meet? On campus, I guess...”
“Off-campus, actually. I’d been out fairly late with some girlfriends and headed back to my dorm alone, when two guys jumped out from behind a van. Scared me to death.”
“I bet they were black...”
“You’re way too sensitive, Jeff. No, as a matter of fact, they weren’t.” Beth continued. “Shane was just riding by on his motorcycle and saw what was happening. He whipped that bike around like it weighed thirty pounds. Before I could blink, Shane was up on the sidewalk right beside me. I could feel the heat from his dual exhaust pipes on my leg.”
“What happened?” Jeff scooted his chair closer.
“Well, the two punks were startled, of course, but I guess they figured they still had the numerical advantage. Plus one had a gun and the other had a piece of iron.” Beth held her hands about eighteen inches apart.
“So they still intended to go through with—uh, whatever?” Connie gasped.
As Beth nodded, tears formed but didn’t fall. “One creep told Shane to buzz off... that they’d picked me out for themselves. But he just sat there, straddling his Harley... the motor rumbling.”
Connie’s eyes grew large. “And?”
“Then he slammed down the kickstand, but kept the engine idling and—without taking his eyes off the creeps—he reached back and slipped the carabiner clip off his chain.”
“Mountain climber clips?” Jeff made an approximate shape with his fingers.
“Yeah, Shane always kept his chain around the sissy bar and secured it with a carabiner, so he could get to it faster than taking time to undo a padlock.”
“Sissy bar?” Connie.
“The thing I’d lean back against when I rode behind him. Any more questions about Shane’s bike?” Beth’s exasperation was theatrical. “When those guys saw his logging chain, their eyes got pretty big.” About the same size as Jeff’s and Connie’s eyes. “Then Shane made a little speech.”
“Speech?” Jeff looked mildly disappointed.
“Let’s see... he said, ‘If you two wake up at all, it’ll be Intensive Care. And you’ll wish you were never here. But it’s a lot more likely, you won’t ever wake up... and the buzzards will eat your guts for breakfast’.”
Jeff smiled. “He actually said that?”
Beth nodded. “Sent chills up my spine. No telling what it did to those punks.”
“That’s pretty good dialog.”
Connie tapped Beth’s knee. “So what happened?”
“The creeps looked at each other real quick... and then back at me. Guess they’d never been challenged before.”
“Probably gang-bangers.” Jeff nodded slightly.
Beth shrugged. “Then one of them pointed to Shane’s motorcycle and said, ‘You ain’t so much’... or something like that.”
Jeff finally sampled his tea and smacked his lips softly. “I wouldn’t guess a couple of armed punks would be too worried about one biker with a chain.”
“Well, in those days, Shane still looked pretty rough around the edges. And he had other weapons on his bike.”
“For heaven’s sake, what happened?” Connie was never one for suspense.
“Then Shane said, ‘Don’t be here by the time I count to ten.’ One of the creeps tried to laugh it off but the other one got visibly nervous. So Shane hung the chain over one shoulder, put one hand back on his handlebars, and he started counting. Real calm and slow. When he got to seven, he suddenly revved the throttle. Those guys nearly jumped out of their stolen shoes. Probably wet their britches.”
“They took off.” Jeff looked relieved.
“Shane saved you from...”
Beth nodded. “I was shaking like a tall weed in high wind. After the punks disappeared, Shane turned off his Harley, dropped the chain, and hugged me. Tight. It was like we’d always known each other.”
“That’s so romantic.”
Jeff put his glass down. “Did he say anything?”
“I asked him what he would’ve done if they’d stayed for the count of ten. Shane just grinned and said hardly anybody had gotten past seven yet and most trouble disappeared by number four.”
“Ooh.” Connie’s hands were in front of her face. “Did he ask you out?”
“Nobody asked anybody. We just started hanging out together. I guess he figured he was destined to protect me or something. After a couple of months of dating over that summer, he moved in. I’d gotten my own apartment by then—senior year.”
When re-told like that, the episode didn’t sound as aggressive or combative as Beth had later characterized it. In fact, it sounded nearly like a fairy tale, and Connie appeared suitably entranced. In fact, she fanned her face as though the room was suddenly too warm.
“Well, listen, y’all.” Beth cleared her throat. “We didn’t get together to talk about my ex-boyfriend.”
“Right.” Jeff scooted back in his chair again. “We’re looking for motive for two different people: the robber and the stalker.”
“Both targeting Beth and only a few days apart.” Connie frowned.
“And don’t forget the break-in at Shane’s.” Beth finally sampled her tea. Slightly too sweet. “That robber couldn’t have wanted my day planner from 2002. I wasn’t more than twenty years old.”
Jeff held up his hand, as if to silence the room, though no one was speaking. “If this was a Hitchcock film and your day planner was obviously not the target, then the burglar was after something pretty much like it.”
“Do you have anything else like it?” Connie pointed to the book case. “I mean besides those other three, also from college years.”
“Hmm... another book a lot like it. Well, maybe...”
Both of Beth’s friends waited expectantly.
“There was some old diary that Shane showed me once. He’d got it from those dumpster divers a couple months after we moved into Shane’s place... uh, early 2006, I guess. Of course, it wouldn’t make sense for anybody to want that old diary either.”
“Was it in this bookcase with your day planners?” Connie took another small sip.
Beth shook her head sideways.
“So, where is it?” Jeff looked around the room.
“Not sure. It was in a small beat-up suitcase—antique overnighter—with a bunch of pictures and clippings. Junk, truthfully. One of those scavengers traded it to Shane for some weed.”
Connie looked puzzled.
“They were usually stoned on meth before they even left on their all night trash runs. Sometimes they’d come back completely filthy or even bloody... stinking to high heaven. And stop at our place!” Beth reconsidered. “Well, it was the house Shane had just bought from his cousin Stan. Anyhow, if they had something they thought Shane might want, they’d rush over and drag it in—or drag him out—to have a look.”
Jeff had started to write something, but stopped. “Fascinating ritual. But why?”
“For a quick score,” Beth replied. “A few joints before they went back to their hovel and crashed.”
“Sounds... can’t think of the word... horrendous.” Connie wrinkled her nose.
“Yeah. I hated every time they showed up. And that one guy—Ricks—was always so creepy around me.”
Connie tapped her friend’s knee again. “Why did Shane want that awful dumpster trash?”
“He was mainly interested in the photos.” Beth shrugged. “People in costumes standing around on a set... or a stage.”
“Stage... like on Broadway?” Jeff pointed northeast as though they could see New York City from the cottage. “Or like a movie studio?”
Connie looked puzzled.
“Movie stage, I guess. And, from the exaggerated way they were posed, probably before the talkies.” Beth paused. “Shane’s a silent movie buff.” She recalled watching him view old films on TV. “I don’t care for them myself, but he enjoyed some.”
“You may not realize, but about eighty per cent of all the American silent movies ever made have been completely lost.” Jeff nodded. “One of my interests, too.”
Connie exhaled noisily, obviously bored. “What else was in this mystery case?”
Beth shrugged and held out empty hands. “But now I’m reminded of that overnighter again, I’m certain I still have it.” It was the only thing of Shane’s that she’d kept. “Just don’t recall where it is.”
“Why on earth did you keep his musty little suitcase?” Connie swirled the ice cubes in her glass.
“It was actually by accident. I was packing and loading in such a hurry... trying to get it all done before Shane got home that day.”
“If you don’t know where it is, how do you know you have it here at all?” Connie placed her glass on the table.
Must not be sweet enough for her. “I remember seeing it when I unloaded the trailer.”
“You unloaded all your stuff by yourself?”
“With help from Jeff and Tanya.” Beth smiled. “That’s how we met. They were walking by and saw me slumped against the trailer about to cry.”
“Well, if I’d realized you were about to cry, I would’ve kept walking.” Jeff chuckled. “Tanya spotted you and said we needed to help.”
Connie pointed to Jeff. “I thought you lived over near South Quarry Pike.” South of town, it was actually just Highway 266.
“Just visiting somebody we knew here in Old Highlands. But we had to leave their house for a bit, while the other couple argued about something.”
“Domestic bliss all over the place.” Connie rolled her eyes.
Beth turned to Jeff. “Well, do you remember handling a little cheap old suitcase?”
“Not really.” Jeff groaned. “All your stuff was unfamiliar to me, so none of it stuck out. Besides, maybe Tanya carried in that piece.”
Connie’s forehead wrinkled. “Wait a minute. You said you accidently brought that little suitcase all the way from California?”
Beth nodded slowly.
“What if it wasn’t a mistake? Maybe this was your subconscious effort to keep a line open to Shane, knowing he’d want it back... and would, at some point, contact you to ask for it.” Connie looked pretty satisfied with herself. “Ever considered that possibility?”
“No. I leave that to my psychoanalytical friends.”
Jeff gave Connie a discreet glance. He evidently agreed.
Connie left that topic. “Okay. You moved here around Thanksgiving of 2008. And you’re certain you have that particular piece of luggage, since you claim you saw it on move-in day. But you have no idea where it is now?”
Beth looked around her small cottage interior: “Not a clue. Haven’t seen it since then.”
Connie placed both hands on her knees as though she was about to rise. “Why don’t we look for it now?”
“Listen, it’s time for me to get home.” Jeff checked his watch. “My mom-in-law should be gone by now, and Tanya will be wanting some input on the fast-food places.”
“Your wife doesn’t cook?” Connie couldn’t help smiling.
“Not if she can help it. We both work. I can’t cook either. So we go for cheap and quick... but try to limit the junk.” Jeff rose and turned toward the front door.
“Junk! That’s it.” Beth nearly leaped from the couch. “I remember now! The storage shed out back, with all the junk in it. That’s why I haven’t seen it. I never go out there.”
Jeff turned and groaned. “Should I call Tanya and tell her I’ll be a minute?”
“If that case is where I think it is, this might take a lot of minutes.”
Connie’s hand formed the rough shape of a phone. “Ask your wife to bring over a big pizza. My treat.”