The sun was above the houses across the street when I went out to walk the next morning. Chloe was stretching by the stairs, and greeted me with a smile. “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor hail will keep a tai chi devotee from his daily rounds.”
“Funny stuff, that is,” I grumped.
“A bit of a head today?”
“A bit of too much of yesterday and not enough of last night.”
“Poor baby; you need to sweat a bit.”
And with that we were off, and I was feeling much more alive when we returned to her front yard.
“Any word from Charley?” I asked as we cooled off and stretched.
“Nothing. Did you see Morris?”
“Several Morrises, actually.”
“There’s more than one?”
“A whole family, and, as far as I can see, not a misogynist in the bunch.”
That caused her to pause, “Why would Charley say.?”
I had no answer to that or anything else.
“Did your FBI friend have anything for you last night?” She asked.
“I was debriefed down in Phoenix, and he just asked if there was anything more for me to tell, and, when there wasn’t, it was just a social evening.”
“Do you have a plan for going forward?”
“Not really. Actually, I’m thinking about going home. I can keep tabs on Jensen and the Feds from there. You seem to be coping well enough right now. What do you think?”
“I think you should stay here another day or so, see if anything comes from your visit to Phoenix. Maybe we can come up with another idea. Can you stay another day or two?”
I shrugged. “If it makes you more comfortable to have us here, we’ll stay a while.”
“Thanks, Jim; you’re as good a friend as Charley always said you were.”
“I’d like to have a word with him right now.”
“Me, too.”
With that we went our separate ways. I found Jan in our room, considering her suitcase.
“What’s up?” I asked as I made my way towards the shower.
“You have any light-colored laundry? I didn’t pack enough. I’ll need to do some washing since we’ll probably be staying a few more days.”
I didn’t answer her as I went about my business, knowing she’d fill out her load with clothes from my laundry bag without my help. In the shower, I turned my concentration to what kind of next step I could take, and decided that I really needed to know more about that house in Las Vegas.
After breakfast, I tracked Chloe down in her studio where she was mixing paints on a board. After asking her for an address, she went to her office without a word, and came back with a slip of paper. “You going to Vegas today?”
“I thought I might, you know, run down there, and have a look.”
Jan was not happy when she learned of my idea. “You going to talk with Ray about this?”
“Nope, I wasn’t planning on it. I have an idea that he’ll know I’ve gone in any event. I think he’s put a trace on my name with the airlines.”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Maybe if you talked with him, you’d learn what you want to know without all the effort.”
I called Ray’s cell, and heard his mail message. Twenty minutes later he called back.
“Ray, where are you?”
“Out by San Juan Island,” he said.
“Where?”
“On my boat; Maggie and I are fishing.”
“You taking a day off?”
“I do that from time to time, Mr. Stanton. It’s healthy.”
I laid out what I had in mind, and before I could finish, he cut me off. “Nonsense. I have all the information you need on that property. Also, I can tell you that Mrs. Frank is not there or in San Jose, staying with her son, Aldo. She’s moved into an assisted living place in Summerlin.”
“Do you have anyone interviewing her or her son today?”
“No, why should we?”
I bit my lip, wondering if I could finesse this without telling him things that I hadn’t been forced to tell Archie in Phoenix. He caught on to my hesitation, “There’s something you haven’t shared with us, isn’t there?”
“Not really.” I was trying not to lie. “But there are things I’m surmising that are too fuzzy for sharing with responsible people.”
“Bullshit. Listen, you need to stay put today. I’ll meet you in the office tomorrow, and you can worry me with fuzzy theories all you want. I don’t want you nosing around Vegas or San Jose. Got me?”
“Yes, poppa.”
I knew he’d hung up already and only hoped he went to fight a fish. I found Jan and shared my conversation. “So what are you going to do?” She asked.
“I’m not going to do anything. Let’s find something to do with Chloe today, and I’ll go bug Ray tomorrow.”
Chloe jumped at the chance to show Seattle to us, and within minutes we were on the road with a day of Needle-seeing, coffee-tasting, fish-throwing adventure – probably a well-rehearsed itinerary for every resident of Seattle after just a few years.
Chloe was driving her convertible with the top down, and seemed to be fully involved in an effort at being cheerful and happy. Jan and I wordlessly decided to play along with her.
We had just witnessed the Seattle Fish Market and picked up a bag of prawns for that night. We were back at the car when I saw a look I took as recognition and fear flash across Chloe’s face. I looked behind me, and found two young men had approached us. One of them was in the process of swinging a tire iron at me.
I allowed myself to go slack as I fell backward onto the hood of the car, and the iron whistled past me. It had been aimed at my head with serious force, and as it missed contact it had pulled the assailant over onto a stiff left leg that I could just reach with a forceful kick from my near prone position on the hood of the car.
The sound of the connection between my foot and his knee was a loud pop followed by a scream of agony as he crumpled to the sidewalk.
His partner was pulling a weapon from the back of his jeans as Chloe, in a graceful snap of her leg, took him off his feet even as I kipped off the hood of the car and landed a straight right hand to the guy’s neck. He was wobbly but still trying to pull his weapon from his belt when Jan stuck the Colt Mustang XSP from her purse in his face. “Don’t even move,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
The guy put his hands up. I pushed him over to the car and spread-eagled him against it. I took his weapon, an automatic, from his belt, then took his wallet.
“Jim?” Jan said.
The initial assailant trying to rise, “You need to settle down, pardner,” I said. “Nobody wants to hurt you more. You armed?”
He shook his head. “Then just roll over on your tummy and wait for the police to arrive, okay?”
He rolled onto his stomach, and stretched his arms out on the pavement. “That’s a good boy,” I said.
Jan had backed off, her weapon along her leg. I could see her hand trembling.
I pulled my phone and punched 911 into it. The conversation was brief. I reported an attempted assault, gave our location and agreed to stay on the line until officers responded. We didn’t wait for three minutes and a black and white pulled up.
I saw that Jan’s weapon was back in her purse. I had been reading the particulars from our assailants’ wallets. They were both Caucasians with home addresses in the Phoenix area.
“What’s going on here?” The senior officer asked.
I gave him the facts; two guys, one armed with a tire iron, the other with a Beretta 380 automatic, had attacked us. I had eluded an assault by tire iron, and my friend Chloe had used her tai chi training to disable the man with the gun.
I saw no need to introduce Jan or her Colt to the situation, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t proud of her resolve in the face of danger – it wasn’t the first time that resolve had paid dividends for me, but I didn’t think she, or her weapon, needed top billing in this situation.
The officers took all our information, and promised to be in contact if anything else came up. They took the two into custody. Both of the men were complaining about pain, and Tire Iron had a noticeable limp as he was marched to the squad car.
“Wow!” Chloe said softly as we watched them pull away. “Just like you said it would be. I needed it and it was there. Best kick I’ve ever tried, you know? Ker-snap!”
I had my arm around Jan, and could feel her shivering as the adrenaline was wearing off. “I think we’ve had enough tourism for today; you want me to drive home?”
“That’s sweet of you, Jim, but I know this drive and these drivers. I’ll deliver us home safely.”
So I escorted Jan into the back seat and crawled in with her, holding her close to me. Chloe put the top up, and silently negotiated the trip back to her house.
Jan opted for some quiet time in our room. Chloe had a glass of red wine before her when I came upstairs. She was still beaming.
“You did well,” I said. “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m really stoked. You know, I’ve been wondering for years if, when the time came, I would react appropriately. Didn’t you ever wonder?”
“You reacted appropriately, but just as I warned you.”
“Yeah, I know. You kicked that guy, and he was no longer an issue. I kicked a guy as hard as I can, and he was still reaching for his automatic. Jan pretty much saved the day with that gun of hers.”
“It’s a useful weapon. There are no weight classes in firearms, either; but her three-eighty can carry its own water.”
“Do you wonder who those guys are and why they came at us?”
“Nope,” I said with a shake of my head; “I don’t know exactly who they are, but I have a fair hunch as to why they paid us a call.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
I gave her an evil wink, “I’m gonna talk about it with Ray Jensen tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can do about it after that.”
“But what do you think it means?”
“I’ll think about it. Maybe it means that someone has taken offense to my interest in Charley.”