I waved at Rosie to join me. She looked so cool on that bike, and I thought back to what Judy Lowenstein had said about girl power. If she wanted a strong female character to write about, she should meet Rosie.
Escaping Chicago, running from a thieving husband and his cronies, she’d had to make a new life for herself. And it wasn’t until her ex was behind bars, sentenced to twenty years for armed robbery, that she felt completely safe. I found Rosie a truly inspirational woman. Maybe the millennials who read Judy’s books would too.
“Wow,” she said when she reached me. “Whoever hid the boss’s car did a damn good job. It’s a wonder E.T. ever found it.”
“I thought that while I examine the inside of the car, you can start going door to door in the neighborhood, ask if anyone saw something.”
She looked down at herself, slapping dirt off her black leather jacket. “Do you think people will wanna talk to someone who looks like me? I mean, I don’t exactly look like a Girl Scout or an Avon lady, do I?”
She was right. “Well, you don’t look threatening. But I see what you mean. Maybe you could go back—”
“Oh, no. I need to be out here . . . doin’ something.”
“Yeah, I know. Okay, let’s start with the car. Do you think you can open it up?”
She unzipped her jacket and took out a small leather pouch. “Hold out your hands,” she told me.
Using my hands like a table, she laid the slender satchel on my palms and then rolled it out. There were six silver tools, each in their own pocket. She bent down, studied the lock, and then reached out for two picks.
She worked for less than a minute before I heard the lock pop. With a broad smile on her face, she took the pouch from me and replaced the tools to their proper place. Then she stuffed the kit into her jacket. “There ya go.”
I handed her a pair of gloves. “I’ve gone over the outside of the car, but you have a look while I’m inside. Nothing is too small to ignore.”
“Gotcha.”
The first thing I noticed was that there was no odor—good or bad. Nathan kept his car clean, so there were no receipts, mail, or trash of any kind. But wouldn’t there be a clipboard or work orders somewhere? Typically, a customer signs a form when work’s completed on a project. From cable installers to plumbers, every service person I’d ever dealt with needed my signature to prove they’d been there and done their job. Most came with paper—real paper and a pen. And all of them left a receipt. The same had to be true of the way Nathan did business.
I checked the mileage and made a mental note of it. Maybe, if Nathan used his car for business, he’d record the number of miles he traveled each day in order to reimburse himself for the gas used.
I inspected the headrest—it was clean. Gripping the steering wheel, I leaned across to open the passenger’s door. My glove stuck to the wheel in spots. Something tacky had either been applied or run across it. When I looked closer at the glove and steering wheel, I could see no visible trace of blood. Sniffing the area, I did detect an underlying odor of polyurethane. It was an odor I was familiar with from not only years of painting but working on home improvement projects. Then I walked around and sat in the passenger’s seat.
The upholstery was spotless on that side as well. Nothing suspicious in the glove compartment. I looked up at the ceiling of the car for spatter marks. There were none. “Thank God,” I whispered. Satisfied there was nothing important to see up front, I went into the backseat.
The police would do a more thorough job and be indignant that I’d done my own search. But the clock was ticking down each second Nathan had been missing. It was only a waste of valuable time worrying if I was stepping on official toes.
I ran my hands across the back seat and then along the crevice between the seat and the back. My fingers hit something. Something hard. I pulled at whatever it was and came up with a cell phone. Opening the back door, I shouted to Rosie to come see what I’d found.
“That’s his phone, all right. I’d recognize that purple case anywhere. We gave it to the boss on his last birthday. Just for laughs, ya know? We were all surprised when he used the thing. Turn it on.”
I pressed the on button and then swiped my finger across the screen. The battery had only a 5 percent charge left. I was ready to tap on the message icon when the screen went black. “We’ll have to take it back to the office. Nothing we can do out here.”
Rosie shook her head slowly. “Somebody musta grabbed the boss. That’s the only way he’d ever leave his cell behind.”
“Maybe he intentionally stuck it in the seat when he knew he was in trouble. With any luck, there’s something on it that will help us find him.”
I carefully took out another glove and wrapped it around the phone. A knot was tightening in my stomach. “We still have to check out one more thing.”
“What’s that?” Rosie asked.
“Open the trunk. Let’s see what’s in there.” I’d found a few bodies in cars throughout my years on the force. But I’d never known any of those poor souls personally. And as Rosie worked on the lock, I wondered if I’d be able to handle seeing Nathan’s body in that trunk.
“Done.”
My legs shook as she lifted the trunk lid.
A few spots of oil on the light carpet, but nothing else. We both exhaled a loud sigh of relief.
“I never knew the boss was such a clean freak,” Rosie said. We both laughed uneasily.
“There was something tacky, like glue, on the steering wheel.”
“Huh.” She thought a minute. “Maybe he gunked up his hands doin’ a job. Sometimes things can get messy, especially in them older homes.”
“I suppose,” I told her. “I’ll ask E.T. about it later. But now, you call the guys and tell them I’m taking the phone to Polly.” I looked at my watch. “I want all of you to stay out here until it gets dark. Divide the work any way you want, but one of you should start canvassing the neighborhood while the other two keep looking in the park. And don’t let anyone touch this car.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks, Rosie.” I started to walk to my jeep and then stopped. “Oh, and tell the guys to take pictures of anyone or anything suspicious. Get names and addresses. Be as thorough as they can. I’ll come back for them around five.”
“Will do,” she said.
I still had my latex gloves on as I steered back to the office. Before handing the phone over to Polly, I insisted she put on a pair as well. While she unwrapped the cell, I asked if Nathan recorded his vehicles’ miles every day, before and after work.
“We all did that,” Polly said. “If the van was being used and we had to pick up some equipment or go to the post office, we got reimbursed at the end of the week.”
I told her the mileage number on the car’s odometer. “Can you look up the number Nathan noted at the beginning of the day on Friday, calculate the distance between each call he made on Friday, and tell me if the numbers match up?”
“It’ll take me a while. But yes, I can do that.”
“How long?” I asked anxiously.
“No more than twenty minutes.” She started bringing up reports and addresses. I felt helpless, but all I could do was sit and watch.
After twelve minutes, Polly turned to me. “If the boss drove directly to his first call, and the next and the next, there are almost ten miles unaccounted for. But that could have been a lunch break or a stop to get gas, miscellaneous things like that.”
“And how far do you think it is between his last call and the park where his car was found?” I asked.
Polly bit her bottom lip. “Less than five miles.”
“Seven miles means whatever happened to Nathan happened in that general vicinity.”
“What now?” she asked.
“I’m going to visit Chief Bostwick and then check out those three jobs while you see what you can do with that phone.”
“Wish me luck,” she said as an afterthought.