Chapter 17
Hayley and Sergio entered the small locksmith shop and the bell above the door chimed. A wiry kid, with stringy brown hair down to his shoulders and thick black reading glasses, sat behind the counter, flipping through a comic book. He didn’t even bother to look up. He kept his nose buried in the latest issue of Aquaman. The kid wore a sleeveless black t-shirt with a retro picture of the Justice League of America members. It was obviously a superhero lineup from the late 1970s. Hayley knew most of the characters because her son, Dustin, was a DC Comics fanatic.
Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman. The six-inch guy, Atom. The stretchy one. Not Plastic Man. No, he wore dark glasses. This one was . . . Elongated Man. And the blonde in the fishnet stockings? The one who could take out bad guys with her sonic cry. Oh, yes. Black Canary. Hayley was quite proud of herself for identifying everyone on the t-shirt.
Sergio was at the counter, hovering over the kid, and clearing his throat before the eighteen or nineteen-year-old even bothered to tear himself away from his comic to see who had come into the shop.
“Can I help you?” he said in a flat voice.
He couldn’t possibly have been less interested in helping anyone.
“We are looking for the owner,” Sergio said. “Mr. Kettner.”
“He’s not here,” the kid mumbled before returning to Aquaman’s exciting underwater adventures.
Sergio snatched the comic out of the kid’s hand, finally getting his attention. “Well, I would really like to talk to him.”
Sergio slapped the comic facedown on the counter, but he kept an index finger on it to keep the kid from taking it back.
The kid eyed Sergio, annoyed, apparently unconcerned he was ticking off the town’s chief of police. “He went Christmas shopping up in Bangor, so he put me in charge.”
The kid stood up. He was well over six feet and towered over Sergio.
It suddenly dawned on Hayley that this was Sammy Kettner’s son, Connor.
The last time she saw him he was around eight years old.
Now he looked like the center for the Boston Celtics.
“Yeah, I’m filling in until he gets back,” Connor said, casually reaching for his comic book.
Sergio kept his finger pressed down on it.
Connor tugged on it a couple of times before giving up.
He scowled at Sergio.
“Maybe you can answer a couple of questions for me,” Sergio said, pulling the receipt out of his jacket pocket. “Do you recognize this receipt?”
Connor eyeballed it for a second and turned to glare at Sergio. “Yeah, it’s one of our receipts.”
“Take a look at the date and time. Were you here working that day?”
“Yeah. Probably. But it was a Friday, so I don’t usually get here until—close to three-thirty.”
“Well, the time stamp on the receipt is four-ten P.M. So, do you remember seeing Mr. Rawlings come into the shop that day?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
Sergio lifted his finger from the comic book and Connor seized the opportunity to grab it back. He put it under the counter, out of Sergio’s reach.
Something on his computer screen caught Connor’s attention. His eyes widened with concern and he plopped back down in the chair and began furiously typing on the keyboard. “Hold on a minute.”
Sergio glanced back at Hayley and shrugged. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” Connor wailed, slapping the side of the computer monitor in frustration.
The business phone on the counter rang and Connor scooped up the receiver. “Quick Time Locksmith. This is Connor speaking. Nathan! I didn’t get it, bro! I’ve been bidding on it for two weeks and it got down to the wire and some lame dude from Oregon beat me by a couple of bucks! This is so wrong, dude! When are we going to find The Joker number six on eBay ever again? I’m never going to complete my series collection!”
The Joker.
Batman’s archnemesis.
Number six.
Remarkably, Hayley knew exactly what Connor was talking about.
DC Comics published a comic-book series featuring the villainous Joker in 1975. There were only nine issues. Very rare. The only reason she knew about it was because Dustin spent the entire year when he was ten tracking it down for his own collection. He located the complete series in a comic-book shop down in Melbourne, Florida, and begged his grandmother Sylvia, who lived in nearby Vero Beach, to drive to the store and buy it for him as an early birthday present. And then, less than a year later, as he was helping his uncle Randy clean out an old storage space, which Randy had kept since college, Dustin found another lot of the complete Joker series. Randy was an avid comic-book fan, too, when he was Dustin’s age. Now the kid had two sets: one to be preserved in plastic wrappers and the other one to be left in his room and read from time to time.
“Man, this blows!” Connor whined, slamming the phone down.
Sergio was seriously losing patience.
Hayley walked over to the counter and gently stepped in front of Sergio. “Connor, I don’t know if you know me, but I’m Hayley Powell.”
“Dustin Powell’s mom. Yeah, I know. I run into him at the comic book store in Ellsworth sometimes,” Connor said, near tears. He crossed his arms on the counter and rested his head.
“So I’m sure you know Dustin is a big comic-book collector too, and it just so happens he has not one but two number six issues from The Joker 1975 series.”
Connor looked up, eyes suddenly full of hope. “Two? How did he get two?”
“It doesn’t really matter. What matters is, I’m sure Dustin would be happy to give you one of them so you can complete your collection.”
“Really? For free?”
“Yes. Consider it my Christmas present to you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Powell! That would be so sweet! Man, Nathan’s never going to believe this!” Connor said, grabbing the phone receiver again and punching in his buddy’s number.
Hayley plucked the phone out of Connor’s grasp and hung it up. “You can call Nathan with the good news later. First I need to teach you a little life lesson, okay? Here it comes. Nothing in life ever really comes for free.”
“Bah, humbug, Scrooge. How much do I have to come up with?” Connor sighed.
“Oh, I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about information.”
Connor stared at Hayley for a brief moment and then glanced at Sergio. He then slowly picked up the receipt again and stared at it.
“I really don’t remember this Rawlings guy coming in here. My dad must have handled the order, but let me think. Four-ten. That’s usually around the time I take my smoke break,” Connor said before catching himself and turning to Sergio. “Just don’t tell my dad I smoke. Cigarettes, I mean. Not weed, which I know is illegal.”
Based on Connor’s half-open eyelids and slow, hazy demeanor, Hayley was not inclined to believe him.
“Where do you take your smoke break?” Sergio asked, trying hard not to lunge across the counter and slap the kid silly.
“In the alley between our shop and Sherman’s Bookstore,” Connor said. “Hey, this Rawlings dude is a chef, right?”
“Yes,” Sergio said. “Why? Do you remember something?”
“I think I remember seeing a green van parked in front of our shop with the guy’s name written on the side. ‘Garth Rawlings Catering’ or something like that.”
The pothead’s memory was finally coming into focus . . . at last.
“So Garth used his own key to have the copy made and paid cash, according to the receipt,” Hayley said to Sergio, her mind racing. “But if he was so paranoid about a break-in, why did he have a second key made? Who was it for?”
“Maybe for the chick who was with him,” Connor said, pulling his Aquaman comic book out from underneath the counter and flipping it open to the page where he left off reading.
“He was with somebody?” Sergio asked, leaning forward.
“Uh-huh,” Connor said, gazing at the artwork in the comic. “This underwater stuff is a freakin’ trip.”
Sergio snatched the comic out of Connor’s hand and waved it in front of him.
“Focus, Connor. Work with me! You saw him go into your dad’s shop with a woman?”
“No. I didn’t see him at all. I must have gone for a pack of cigarettes when he pulled up. But I remember the green van and the woman who was sitting on the passenger side while it was parked there. She was hot. A total babe.”
“Can you describe her?” Sergio asked.
“Yeah, she was a few years older than me. She was wearing a bright green coat. Kind of matched the color of the van.”
“What else?”
“She had red hair. I’m talking bright red. I smiled at her and she smiled back, which totally got me excited, because you know what they say about girls with red hair.”
“What do they say?” Sergio asked.
“Freaky in bed.”
Hayley suddenly had an image of the young woman.
She knew who it was.
“Did she show her dimples when she smiled?”
“Oh, yeah. She had the cutest dimples. And a nice rack too. Just thinking about her now makes me want to—”
Sergio stuffed the Aquaman comic in Connor’s mouth. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Early twenties.
Bright red hair.
Dimples.
Green parka.
It had to be the same woman Hayley saw at the warehouse when she first hired Garth for the Island Times Christmas party.
Connie Sparks.
And she was lying about why she was there that day.
She wasn’t a potential client for Garth.
She was his mistress.