The Cooper Saga

Featuring Six Generations of the Cooper Family

Stories 361-370

by Bill Bernico

Nowhere to Turn

Change is a part of life, including the life at Cooper Investigations in Hollywood.  The family run business has changed hands half a dozen times since its inception right after World War II when the original Matt Cooper started it.  Down through the years, Matt turned it over to his son, Clay, who eventually turned it over to his son, Elliott.  Elliott and his wife, Gloria ran the business for many years until they stepped down and passed it on to their son, Matt (named for his great-grandfather).  The second Matt ran the business with his son, Nick until that Matt passed away on the leather sofa in the Cooper office.  At that time, the business passed down once more to Matt to his son, Nick.

And that brings us to the present, where we find Nick running the business with his adopted son, John and John’s fiancé, Abby Ross.  Nick has been talking about the day when he’d retire and hand the reins over to John and Abby and that day was getting closer all the time.  Finally, today, Nick discussed the actual retirement day with John and Abby and told him he’d work out the rest of this month before he stepped down.  He promised John that he’d be available on an as-needed basis to answer phones when both of the kids were out on cases of their own, but for the most part, he’d be staying home and enjoying his free time.

Later that day Nick had taken a call from a prospective client—a local bank.  They needed someone to search for any relatives of an elderly couple that had both passed away on the same day in an automobile accident.   They had left a mortgage with a small balance, but the bank didn’t want to foreclose because it was such a small amount, yet they couldn’t write off that sum, either.  That was when they decided to call a private investigator to find a relative who might want to take over the payments and save the house.

And that was the general gist of the call Nick had taken early that morning.  He had just finished writing up his notes when the office door opened and John and Abby came in together.  “Good morning, all,” Nick said as the two hung up their coats on the hooks.

“Good morning, Dad,” John said.

“Good morning, Nick,” Abby echoed.  “What’s new and exciting today?”

“Funny you should ask,” Nick replied.  “I just got off the phone with the bank and it looks like we have ourselves a new case, or at least the two of you do.”

“Both of us?” John asked.

“At least the both of you,” Nick said.  “This could turn out to be more involved than you would think.”  He explained what the bank needed of them, ending with, “And if this couple didn’t have any local relatives, you might find yourselves doing a nationwide search for someone to take over the mortgage.”

“We’re on it,” John said.  “I think we’ll start with the bank and see how much information they can give us to go on.  After that we can check the couple’s neighbors for any tidbits of information that can steer us in the right direction.”

Nick handed John his yellow legal sheet with the notes he’d taken during his call with the bank president.  “The president’s name is Fuller; Bret Fuller.  He’ll know what you’re there for.”

“Come on, John,” Abby said.  “The sooner we get started on this, the sooner we can finish and get paid.”

“We’ll have our phones on,” John told his dad before he and Abby left the office and rode the elevator to the lobby.  They exited though the parking lot door and decided to take John’s car.  John pulled out onto Cahuenga and turned east on Hollywood Boulevard.  The bank was just seven blocks from their office and they got there in just a few minutes.  John slipped a quarter into the parking meter in front of the bank and walked in behind Abby.  Abby walked up to the first teller she came to and asked for Bret Fuller.

“He’s expecting us,” Abby told the cashier, who directed them to Fuller’s office.  She and John knocked and let themselves in.  Mr. Fuller stood when they entered and invited them to take a seat across from his desk.

“Nick Cooper said he’d be sending someone right over,” Fuller said.  “Be sure to thank him for being so prompt when you see him.”

“We will,” John said.  “Would you like to explain in detail what it is you need from us so there’ll be no misunderstandings?  I understand you’d like us to find someone to assume the mortgage on…”  He checked his notes and continued with, “Edna and Jerry Peterson’s home loan.  Tell me, Mr. Fuller, did they list anyone one their application as he next of kin?”

Fuller shook his head.  “No they didn’t, as a matter of fact.  In the notes section of their application they both said that they were both an only child and that both sets of parents had already passed away.  They also didn’t list anyone under the section reserved for personal references.  Frankly, Mr. Cooper, we’re at a dead end.  We certainly don’t want to foreclose when they had so little time left on the loan before the mortgage would have been free and clear.  Yet, the amount owed is still substantial enough that we just can’t write it off.  Frankly, we have nowhere to turn and that’s why I initially called Nick.”

Abby wrote this information down in her notebook and asked to see the actual mortgage.  “Could you make us a copy of this that we can take along with us?” She asked Fuller, who generously complied.  Abby folded it and tucked it between the sheets of her note paper.  She and John thanked Mr. Fuller and rose from their chairs.

Fuller also handed John a set of house keys for the house in question, in case they wanted to look around inside.  “Maybe you’ll be able to find some answers among their papers.  It’s worth a try anyway.”

“I think we’ll start by asking around their neighbors and see where that leads us,” John said just before he and Abby left the office and returned to their car.  John slid behind the wheel and turned to Abby.  “Would you read off their address from that mortgage?”  Abby gave John the location and sat quietly as John headed south from the bank.  They pulled up in front of a medium-sized ranch house that looked like it had been well maintained until recently.  The house sat on a quarter acre lot near the corner of Bronson and Lexington.  It sported a cast iron fence all around the perimeter of the property, with a matching gate near the front door.  They could see entrances on the west and south sides of the house, each with two pillars holding up an overhang above the stoop.  Next to the south entrance stood an attached one-car garage, closed up tight.

John produced the keys Fuller had given him and walked up to the front door.  Before they could even get the key in the lock, the neighbor one door to the north called out to them, “You won’t find anyone there.  The old couple that lived there died not to long ago.”

“We know,” Abby called back to him.  “We’re from the bank and we’ve come to take a look at the house, but I suppose that part could wait a while if we could talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Sure,” the neighbor said.  “Come on over; we can talk while I trim the hedges.”

Abby and John stepped back off the front stoop and walked over to the neighbor’s house to find a middle-aged man holding a large pair of hedge shears.  John offered his hand.  “Hello, my name is John Cooper and my colleague’s name is Abby Ross, and you are?”

“Randolph, Fred Randolph.”  He took John’s hand and then shook Abby’s before getting back to his hedge trimming chore.  “What was it you’d like to know about the Petersons?”

“The Petersons?” John said, not having remembered seeing their name yet.

“The Petersons,” Fred repeated.  “Edna and Jerry.”

Abby took a quick look at the mortgage and found both of those names.  “How well did you know them?” she asked.

“About as well as a man could know his next door neighbor,” Fred said.  “And that would be not as well as you’d think.  The Petersons kept to themselves most of the time.  I only knew their name because I’d sometimes find their mail in my mailbox and would have to walk over and give it to them.  They did as much for me on occasion.”

John furrowed his brow.  “But you say you didn’t really know them all that well?  How long had you been neighbors?”

“Well, let’s see,” Fred said, trying to recall.  We moved in a little better than twenty years ago and the Petersons were already living next door.  We eventually found out that they had been living there for twenty years before we moved in, so that would make it more than forty years ago.  Now there was a couple who knew how to stay put in one place.  Not like people today who feel they have to keep moving every few years.”

John made a note of this new information and then looked up at Mr. Randolph.  “So you didn’t really socialize with the Petersons then?”

Fred shook his head.  “No, like I said earlier, they kept to themselves mostly.  In fact, I don’t ever remember seeing anyone pay them a visit.  Strange, now that I think of it.”

Abby held up her index finger and said, “What about some of the other neighbors?  Do you think they’d know any more about the Petersons?”

Fred shook his head.  “I’m afraid not; we knew them better than anyone else in this neighborhood and that’s not saying a lot.  They never mentioned anything about family, where they were originally from or anything about their past.  They were certainly one mysterious couple, I’ll say that much for them.”

John finished his note taking and thanked Fred before he and Abby turned and left him to his hedge trimming duties.  They both walked back over to the Peterson house and let themselves in through the front door, stepping over seven or eight rolled up newspapers.  The mail had been collected several days earlier by the mailman.  John locked the door behind them to keep the curious out. 

Just inside the front door they found themselves in the living room.  It was neat and clean and looked like the occupants expected to be returning any minute.  Such was not the case.  One wall had been painted hospital white and sported a five foot wide fireplace, flanked by bookshelves on either side.  There was an eight by twelve Oriental rug with fairly new furniture sitting on it.  An oval wicker coffee table held the rug down in the middle.

Down the hall they found a bedroom—just one—and noticed that it was also painted white.  It held a double bed with a metal headboard that resembled jail bars.  There was a small apple green bookshelf next to the bed and a framed needlepoint hanging over the bed that said Home Sweet Home stitched in multi-colored yarn.

Off the bedroom they found an obviously recently remodeled bathroom with grab bars and non-slip decals in the shower.  Then John remembered that this couple had been described as having been in their forties when they’d taken out the mortgage on this house.  That would have put them in their eighties at the time of their deaths.

After they had explored the rest of the house and garage, John and Abby started digging through a drawer filled with receipts and other legal papers.  They spent nearly an hour going through everything in that drawer and still coming no closer to an answer they could bring back to Mr. Fuller at the bank.  There were no documents older than forty years.  It was as if this couple didn’t exist until they moved into this house.  John had one more idea he wanted to explore and led Abby back out, locking the house behind him and driving down to City Hall.

Donna Sullivan was John’s contact at City Hall.  Nick had introduced his son to the records clerk many years ago and John had had occasion in the past to call on her for assistance when needed.  Donna smiled when she saw John coming toward her.  “Mr. Cooper, how long has it been?”

John smiled back and then introduced Abby to Donna.

“What brings you my way on a beautiful day like this?” Donna asked.

John pulled the copy of the Peterson’s mortgage from his pocket, unfolded it and turned it around for Donna to see.  “The bank hired Abby and me to find someone who might be willing to assume the mortgage on this house.  The owners both died last week in a car crash and the bank still holds a small mortgage on it.  Could you look them up and see if they had listed any relatives in the area?”

“Sure,” Donna said.  “Let’s take a look.”  She laid the mortgage next to her computer and brought up the property records for the greater Los Angeles area.  “Here we go; Peterson, Gerald and Edna.  It looks like they bought the house a little better than forty years ago.”

Abby spoke up now.  “Most people only take out a mortgage for twenty-five years or less.  Isn’t it a little unusual to find a forty year mortgage?”

“That’s how it normally works,” Donna agreed.  But over the years the Petersons kept using their house as collateral for several loans.  That copy is the first mortgage, but they’ve taken out three, no four other mortgages in the past forty years.  If they could have held out for another eighteen months, this last mortgage would have been paid in full.”

“What about other family?” John asked.  “Did they list anyone else or did they have any references?”

Donna scrolled further down the page but didn’t find any other names.  She shook her head.  “Sorry, there’s nothing else listed here.”

“Well, thanks anyway, Donna,” John said.  “Abby and I still have one more stop otherwise I’d love to stay and chat with you a while longer.  Maybe another time.”  He and Abby left the City Hall and drove back toward Hollywood.

“Do you have another idea?” Abby asked as they rode along the city streets.

John nodded.  “Yeah, I thought I’d stop in and pay Captain Murphy a visit.  Maybe he has a record of the Petersons.  It’s worth a shot anyway.”

Captain Timothy Murphy wasn’t in so John decided to turn to Lieutenant Steve Stone, whom he knew quite well and was always willing to help if he could.  Steve welcomed the couple into his office and invited them to sit.  “Are you two working on another case today?”

“As a matter of fact we are,” Abby replied.

“Let me ask you a favor, if I may,” John said.  “We’re trying to locate any relatives of a couple that just died recently and we’re having no luck.  I was wondering if you could see if they have any records in your database.”

Steve curled his fingers toward him.  “Let me have the name.”

“Peterson,” John said.  “Gerald and Edna.”  He gave Steve the address of the house they had visited earlier that morning.  They both waited patiently as Steve entered the information from his keyboard.

“Here we go,” Steve said.  “Gerald Peterson, apparently born eighty some years ago.  Wife, Edna approximately the same age.”  He typed in the address John had given him and said. “Now there’s a couple who knew how to stay put.”

“That’s the same thing Peterson’s neighbor said,” John explained.

“Looks like they’ve lived in that same house for more than forty years,” Steve said, reading from his computer screen.  “Neither of them has so much as a parking ticket.  Their records are squeaky clean; cleaner than any other record I’ve ever come across.”

“What about before they moved into that house?” Abby asked.  “Any records from that time period?”

Steve shook his head and turned back to the screen again.  Suddenly John saw something in Steve’s face that gave away a hint of recognition.  “What is it, Steve?” John asked.

Steve just closed the program and shut off his monitor.  “Nothing; that’s all there was on the Petersons.”

John and Abby exchanged a knowing look and then both of them stared at Steve but said nothing for a few moments.  Suddenly Steve felt very uncomfortable and turned to look out the window.  “Come on, Steve; if you know something please share it with us.  You wouldn’t be breaking any confidentiality; the Petersons are both dead.”

Steve thought about if for a moment and then said, “I guess there’s something in what you say.  Truth is, there’s no record of either of the Petersons before they moved into that house because they…”

Abby snapped her fingers and pointed at Steve.  “Because they were put there by the witness protection program.  Is that it?”

Steve nodded slowly.  I don’t have access to their records before they entered the program so it looks like you’re at a dead end.”

Abby replied, “This is for sure witness protection; the dead end of all dead ends.”  She turned to John and added, “That’s as far as we can take this case.  I think it’s time we went back to see Mr. Randolph at the bank and give him the news.  At least we got our one day minimum charge out of him.  Thanks anyway, Steve.”  She and John left Steve’s office and drove back toward the bank.

On their trip back to the bank, something suddenly occurred to John and he pulled his Toyota to the curb and killed the engine.  He turned to Abby and said, “I just had a wild idea.  Since we’ll be getting married pretty soon anyway and since we’ll be in the market for a house, and since it’s just seven blocks from our office, I was wondering if you’d…”

The smile on Abby’s face gave John the answer to his question.  “That’s brilliant,” she said.  “Why didn’t I think of that?  It would cut down on our drive time to and from work and we’d save just that much more on gas.  Mr. Randolph says there’s only eighteen more payments until the mortgage is satisfied.  Think about it; we could assume the mortgage and in less than two years, we’d have the house paid for.  That sounds like a pretty good way to start out married life.”  She leaned over and kissed John.  “Come on; lets go give Mr. Randolph the good news and then go tell your Dad about our plans.”

Not Our Family

“Nick,” Abby said after he had handed her an information sheet regarding the next case for Cooper Investigations.  “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, what is it?” Nick Cooper replied.

Abby took a deep breath, let it out and said, “I’ve noticed that for the last few cases that came our way that you’ve passed them off to either me or John or both of us.  Aren’t you going to be taking any more cases?”

Just then Nick’s son, John walked into the office and saw the standoff between his father and his fiancé.  “Did I miss something here?  What’s going on?” He asked.

Nick gestured toward the leather sofa that sat beneath the south window and said, “Have a seat; both of you.”

Abby and John exchanged a curious look but did as Nick asked.  “All right, Dad, what’s going on here?  Are you firing one of us?”

Nick waved him off.  “Oh, no; nothing like that.  I just wanted to clear up something that has apparently been on Abby’s mind and you might as well hear this, too.  The business being what it is and the economy being what it is, I’ve come to realize that one; there doesn’t seem to be enough business to go around for three people and two; I’ve been giving some serious thought more and more to retiring and enjoying the rest of my golden years.  I guess what I’m saying is that I’ll be turning the business over to the two of you by the end of this month at the latest.  I know I’ve mentioned this before but now it feels like it’s the right time for me to step down and let the two of you handle it.”

John looked up at the ceiling, not sure how to respond.  Abby scooted over closer to Nick and wrapped an arm around his neck.  “Are you sure this is what you want to do, Nick?  You’re really not that old, you know.”

Nick nodded.  “I’m sure; besides, it hasn’t been the same around here ever Shelley died in that barrage of gunfire that was meant for me.  I just have to get away from all of this.  There are just too many bad memories here for me.”

Abby looked closer at the information sheet she had gotten from Nick.  “And you want me to handle this one?”

“I think you can,” Nick replied.  “But just to be sure, why don’t you and John both handle it together?”

Abby handed the sheet to John, who looked it over and handed it back.  “Okay, Dad,” he said.  “What are you going to do while we’re out on it?”

“I thought I’d look up a few good resorts so I’ll be ready to get away next month.”  Nick reached over to his desk and plucked a pamphlet from it, handing it to John.  “This one looks promising.”

John glanced at the pamphlet and handed it to Abby.  “This is really happening,” he remarked.

“You knew it was coming sooner or later,” Nick said.

“I guess it’s sooner,” John replied.  He tapped Abby on the arm and said, “Well, we’d better get started if we expect to earn our pay around here.”  He slipped his jacket over his shoulder holster and zipped it up.  Before he left the office with Abby, he turned back to Nick and asked, “So next month do I get your desk?”

Nick didn’t answer, but just smiled widely and watched the two of them leave the office.  Abby told John that she’d like to drive this time and John had no problem with it.  He actually preferred to sit on the passenger side and go over the information sheet again on their way to the client’s house.  He glanced at the address again and just realized that it was in Beverly Hills.  “Ooh, looks like we’ll be dealing with old money.  Better put on our best front for these people.”

“That’s the only kind of front I have,” Abby replied and drove west to Highland and then south to Santa Monica Boulevard.  She stayed on that, continuing southwest to Oakhurst Avenue and turned into the residential neighborhood.  Several blocks further ahead John found the house number and pointed it out to Abby.  “That’s it,” he said.  “It’s not exactly the Beverly Hillbillies’ mansion, but it ain’t no shack, either.  That place has to be eight thousand square feet of pretention.  Look at it; two stories and a carport around the side that probably leads to a five car garage around the back, along with an Olympic size swimming pool and cabana.  Hell, maybe he even has a polo field back there.”

Abby parked at the curb and the two of them got out, straightening their clothes and smoothing down their hair before approaching the front door.  The doorbell sounded with that familiar Westminster chime sound.

A moment later the front door opened and a man in a thousand dollar suit stood there erect and with a seriously stern look on his face.  “Yes, may I help you?” He asked of his visitors.

“Are you Mr. Farnsworth,” John asked.

“Certainly not, my name is Charles; I am the Farnsworth’s butler.  Whom shall I say is calling?”

John straightened up and said, “My name is John Cooper and this is Abby Ross.  We’re from Cooper Investigations and Mr. Farnsworth is expecting us.”

“Wait here,” Charles ordered.  “I’ll announce you.”

The door closed again and John exchanged a knowing look with Abby.  “Well, la dee da.”

A moment later the door opened again, this time wider, and Charles invited the couple inside.  “Mr. Farnsworth is in the study; follow me.”  Charles led the pair to a large double oak door, opened half of it and announced them to the master of the house.  John and Abby stepped in and heard the solid oak door close behind them.

Peter Farnsworth invited them in and told them where to sit.  “I’ll make this quick,” He said.  “Mrs. Farnsworth and I would like you to investigate the man that our daughter is currently seeing.  We’re not at all sure that he’s the right type for our Penelope.  What we need from you is to do an extensive background check on the man and find out as much as you can about his background, his education, his current and past employment.  We want to know about his pastime, his hobbies, any strange quirks he may have and whether or not he is involved with any kind of narcotics.  Find out if he has a police record or has ever been incarcerated.  See if you can ascertain any information about his family and what they do for a living.  The more you can find out about him, the easier it will be for Penelope’s mother and me to make our decision as to whether or not this man will be welcomed around here.  Is that clear?”

John nodded.  “I think we have a pretty good picture.  Do you want to be apprised of anything we find as we find it, or would a full detailed report be sufficient at the end of our case?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Farnsworth said.  “A full report at the end will do nicely, thank you.”

Abby held up one index finger and asked, “Does Penelope know about any of this and what if she asks us what we’re doing around…what did you say her boyfriend’s name was?”

“The young man’s name is Baxter, Stanley Baxter and no, Penelope doesn’t know what her mother and I are doing and I prefer it remain as such.  If she approaches you, say nothing.”

John wrote the boyfriend’s full name down in his notepad, along with Farnsworth’s first name.  He closed the notepad and slipped it back into his shirt pocket.  He looked up at Farnsworth and said, “I know you spoke with my father, Nick but did he mention our daily rate?”

Farnsworth exhaled a deep sigh and said, “Yes, he mentioned that you get three hundred dollars a day and quite frankly, that doesn’t concern me at all.  What does concern me is that you get results and soon.  It wouldn’t do at all if our Penelope suddenly decided to run off with this Baxter person and get married.  No, that wouldn’t do at all.  He may fit in just fine with someone else’s family, but not our family.  How long do you think an assignment like this would take you to complete?”

John thought for a moment and then offered, “With as much detail as you want us to go into, a job like this could take three or four days to complete.  Does that work for you?”

Peter Farnsworth flipped a couple of pages on his desk calendar and then looked back at John.  Three days would be cutting it close.  I’d prefer that you finish by this Friday.  There’ll be a generous bonus in it for you if you do.”

“Not to worry,” John said.  “With the two of us working on this, we’ll get you want you need by Friday for sure.  Thank you for your business.  What we’ll need from you to get started is a two day retainer of six hundred dollar as well as a signed contract with the details spelled out.  And lastly, whatever information you can provide regarding Mr. Baxter will help shorten our research time.  If you have a recent photo of him, that would help us immensely.  But we can start with the minimum; his address and a description of the car he drives.”

“I anticipated as much,” Farnsworth said and produced a business size envelope from his desk and passed it across to John.  “Everything you need should be in there, except a photo.  I wasn’t able to get one from Penelope.  Now, if there’s nothing else, I have a pressing matter that I need to attend to.  Charles will show you out.”

Farnsworth must have pressed some unseen button just then because Charles suddenly appeared and swept an arm toward the front door and then stepped aside to let John and Abby pass.  He closed the door behind the two visitors without a word of goodbye and returned to his duties, whatever they might be.  Once they were back in the car, Abby looked at John and said, “If that guy’s ass was puckered any tighter, he’d turn inside out.”

John broke out in a spontaneous laugh that made him cough.  “Farnsworth and Charles make perfect bookends, don’t you think?”  He looked at his notes again and said, “Come on; we’d better get started.  The promise of that generous bonus is incentive enough not to waste a minute.”  He directed Abby where to turn as they headed back toward Hollywood.  “Does this whole thing remind you of anything?”

“Like what?” Abby said as she kept driving.

“Like a famous story.”

“Famous story,” Abby echoed.  “Let me think.  Are you talking about Romeo and Juliet?”

“No,” John said.  “I was thinking more along the lines of Tony and Maria from West Side Story.  You know; Sharks and Jets, only without all that stupid song and dance crap.”

Abby laughed.  “I was just picturing what that movie would have been like without any singing or dancing.  But no; I know where you’re coming from.  Whoever heard of tough street gangs dancing their way toward a knife fight or singing about their injuries on their way home?”

“How do you solve a problem like Maria,” John sang and then made a sound like a machine gun.  “Problem solved.”

A moment later Abby added, “So where are we going now?”

“Hang on,” John said, pulling out his laptop and firing it up.  “Let me see if young master Baxter has any Internet entries.”  He entered Stanley Baxter into the search engine and came up with several hundred hits, most of which did not apply to the Stanley Baxter they were after.  He found a pertinent entry and opened the link.  He read to Abby from the page.  “Stanley Baxter, 23, from West Hollywood was involved in a single car accident last month in Oxnard when he fell asleep at the wheel and hit a palm tree.  The car Baxter was driving was a total loss but Mr. Baxter suffered only minor injuries and was released from the hospital that same day.”  It listed Stanley Baxter’s address.  John scrolled further down the page and continued with, “Here’s another mention of our Mr. Baxter.  It says that he was cited for jaywalking in downtown Hollywood and paid a modest fine.”

“Boy, this guy is a regular Clyde Barrow,” Abby said sarcastically.  “What else does it say about him?”

John scrolled down even further and read, “It also says that Stanley Baxter recently graduated from U.C.L.A. with a degree in geology.”  John snickered.  “And if it turns out he has rocks in his head, now we know why.”

“So what does all this tell you about Stanley Baxter?” Abby asked.

“So far, only that he’s a typical twenty-three year old kid with a normal life,” John replied.  “Who knows; maybe he went to U.C.L.A. on a scholarship and maybe he’s poor as a church mouse and maybe he sees the pot of gold at the end of the Farnsworth rainbow.  Of course, that’s just my initial impression of the lad.  How about if we pay a visit to the Baxter residence?”

“And just where would that be?” Abby wanted to know.

John checked the article again and said, “You’re going to love this one.  He lives near the corner of Willoughby on, of all places, Stanley Avenue.  I kid you not.  He rents a room in the nine hundred block of Stanley Avenue.  It’s a boarding house.  Kind of like Barney Fife and Mrs. Mendlebright.  I wonder if he cooks on a hot plate and uses a forty watt light bulb.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind; you’d have to be a die hard Andy Griffith fan to get that one,” John explained without really explaining.  “Turn right at the next corner.  Stanley Avenue is just a few blocks further up.”

Abby pulled to the curb in front of a large house with a sign in the front yard that advertised rooms for rent.  She and John got out and were headed up the front walk when a young woman came out of the front door and started walking toward them.  Abby stopped and turned to the woman.  “Excuse me, does Stanley Baxter live here?”

The young woman frowned.  “Why do you want to know?”

“We just need to talk to him for a minute,” Abby explained.  “Does he have a room here?”

The woman turned to look at John now.  “You still haven’t said what you’re doing here.”

John produced his I.D. and badge.  “My name is John Cooper and this is Abby Ross.  We’re just doing a simple background check on Mr. Baxter; that’s all.  So, is he here?”

The woman shook her head.  “No, he left about twenty minutes ago and won’t be back for at least an hour or two.  Maybe you could stop back later.”

“Thank you,” John said, checking his wristwatch and turning back toward the street with Abby following close behind him.  They got back into their car and drove back toward Hollywood.

The young woman had started walking up the street but turned around as soon as the car with the two private eyes turned the corner and was out of sight.  She hurried back to the boarding house, let herself in and dashed up the steps to the room at the top of the stairs.  Stanley Baxter was still lying in the bed with the covers pulled up to his chest.  “Stanley,” Penelope Farnsworth said in a hurried voice.  “There were just to private eyes downstairs asking about you.”

Stanley sat up in the bed.  “They were asking about me?  What did they want?”  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and slipped into his jeans before pulling a red shirt over his head.

“There was a man and a woman,” Penelope began.  “The man said they were doing some sort of background check on you.  What do you suppose that was all about?”

“Beats me,” Stanley said, but I’m not sticking around in case they decide to come back.”

“I told them you’d be out for an hour or two, so there’s no hurry.”  Penelope threw her arms around Stanley’s neck and hugged him tightly.  “You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

Stanley shook his head.  “I haven’t done anything wrong that I know of.  Come on; let’s get out of here and go catch a movie or something.”  He slipped into a pair of leather loafers, grabbed a jacket and walked with Penelope out of his room and back down the stairs.  The two of them turned left at the street and walked in the opposite direction that the private eyes’ car had gone.  They disappeared around the corner.

As Abby drove back toward Hollywood, John retrieved his phone and dialed the Twelfth Precinct.  He was connected to Lieutenant Steve Stone a moment later.  “Steve, it’s John Cooper.  Could you look something up for me if you have a minute?”

“Sure thing, John; what is it you need to know?” Steve said in a cheery tone.

“Could you just do a quick search in your database for someone named Stanley Baxter and tell me what you find?”

“Let me put you on hold for a minute,” Steve said and turned toward his laptop to access the crime database.  He reconnected with John a minute later and said, “Nothing to speak of; just a jaywalking ticket and a single car accident.  Other than that the man is clean as a whistle.”

“Yeah, that much I already found on the web,” John said.  “But thanks for looking.  I’ll talk to you later.”  John disconnected the call and turned to Abby.  “Baxter’s clean, just like we thought.  Any ideas about where to check next?”

“I’ve got one more idea,” Abby said and pulled the car to the curb.  “Let me have your laptop for a minute.”  John passed his laptop across to her and she signed onto the search engine, typing Peter Farnsworth net worth and waited.  A moment later several hits came up and she clicked the first one.  It revealed that Farnsworth had a current net worth of twenty-one million dollars, mostly from investments.  She turned to laptop screen toward John to show him what she had just learned about their client.  Next she entered Stanley Baxter net worth into the search engine and waited.  A moment later she glanced at the screen and had to whistle.  “Holy jumping Jesus,” she said, turning the screen back toward John.

“Is this correct?” John asked.  “Do you have the right Stanley Baxter?”

“Absolutely,” Abby replied.  “And Farnsworth was afraid that Baxter wouldn’t fit in with his family.  I think it’s the other way around.  Just look at that; eighty-nine million dollars from oil income and him with a degree in geology.  Looks like it paid off big time for the lad.  Now what do we do?”

John thought about it for a moment and then said, “Do you think Penelope knows about this and maybe that’s why she’s after him?”

“Interesting,” Abby said in response.  “Do you think we ought to tell Farnsworth what we’ve found?”

“Let’s hold off for now,” John said.  “Maybe there’s a flip side to all this that would change our perception of both sides.  I want to talk to Dad about this and see what he thinks.  Besides, Farnsworth gave us until Friday to report back to him.”

Nick it is,” Abby agreed and drove back to the Cahuenga Building.  When they walked in, they found Nick stretched out on the leather sofa beneath the south window and tiptoed up to him quietly.  John lightly brushed the tip of Nick’s nose with his finger and withdrew it quickly.  Nick waved away what he thought was a fly but didn’t open his eyes.  John repeated the gesture and this time when Nick tried to wave it away, he caught John’s finger and quickly opened his eyes.

“Testing the sofa cushions, Dad?” John said and laughed.

Nick cleared his throat and quickly sat upright.  “What are you two doing back here already?  I thought you were both working on the Farnsworth case.”

“That’s why we came back, Dad,” Nick explained.  “I have something I need to run by you and get your take on it.”  After a brief pause, he continued with, “Farnsworth sent us out to dig up whatever we could on his daughter’s boyfriend, some guy named Stanley Baxter.  He has no criminal record, he’s a college graduate, clean as a whistle, according to Lieutenant Stone and apparently he’s loaded.”

“Steve Stone is loaded?” Nick said, poking fun at his son.

“Not Steve; Stanley Baxter,” John clarified but then realized that Nick was kidding.

“So what’s the problem then?” Nick said.  “Sounds like you did what your client asked so why not go back and tell him what you found?  Oh wait, let me guess; that would only mean one day’s pay and you want to know how to stretch it out to two days at least.  Am I right?”

“Pretty much,” John agreed.  “I’m just not sure how our client is going to take the news.  He seemed pretty much set in his ways, hoping to uncover a gold digger in his daughter’s choice of men.”

Nick looked to John and then at Abby and back to John.  “Go on; tell your client what you found out and let the chips fall where they may.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” John replied and then turned back to Abby.  “You know what we have to do now; let’s go.”

Back at the Farnsworth house, Penelope and Stanley had just quietly let themselves in through the back door.  They soft-footed it toward her father’s den but stopped short just outside his door.  Penelope pointed to a door just to the left of the den and told Stanley to wait in there while she talked to her father alone.  “You should be able to hear our conversation through that floor vent,” she said, pointing toward the baseboard and then slowly backed out and over to the den door.  She let herself in and found her father sitting behind his desk with a short pile of papers and a fountain pen.  He looked up and smiled when she entered the room.

“Penelope,” he said, gesturing at the chair opposite his desk.  “Where have you been?”

“I went to talk to Stanley,” she explained and then her face dropped.  “I ran into two private eyes who were looking for him.  You sent them, didn’t you?”  She stared at her father but no answer was forthcoming so she went on.  “Father, are you checking up on my boyfriend behind my back?”

“Penelope, you have to understand.  Our family is a family of wealth and there are those out there who would target people like us to get their hands on it.  I was just looking out for your well being, dear.  I didn’t want this Baxter person to use you to get to our money.  This Stanley person may be better suited to someone else’s family, but not our family.”

“But Dad,” Penelope started to say.

Just then the den door opened again and Stanley stormed in, taking up a prominent place in front of Farnsworth’s desk.  “Look here, you pompous, self-righteous, condescending old windbag.  I’m not after your money or anything you have.  Did it ever occur to you that I might be after Penelope because I genuinely love her?”

Farnsworth turned to his daughter.  “Can I safely assume that this is your Stanley Baxter?”

“You assume correctly,” Baxter said.  “Penelope and I were just coming here today because we wanted to run an idea past you, but from what I’ve heard, you don’t think I’m worthy to date your daughter.  Well, let me tell you, we were coming mostly because we wanted your input on a prenuptial agreement before we got married.”

Farnsworth’s attitude immediately changed.  He exhaled deeply and said, “Well, that sounds reasonable.  You realize, of course that if you ever divorce my daughter that you wouldn’t get a cent from us.” 

Baxter threw his head back and howled with laughter.

“Did I say something funny, Mr. Baxter?” Farnsworth asked.

Now even Penelope was laughing.

Stanley spoke up now.  “The pre-nup wasn’t for her, it was for me.  And in the unlikely event that we someday would get a divorce, she wouldn’t get any of my money.”

Farnsworth turned to look at his daughter.  “Dad, she said.  “Stanley presently has a net worth of eighty-nine million dollars.”

Farnsworth’s mouth dropped open as he turned to look at Stanley Baxter, who, just a few minutes ago was deemed unworthy to join the family.

Stanley pointed his finger in Farnsworth’s face and said, “You, sir, may be suitable to run your own family, but not our family.”  He wrapped one arm around Penelope and the two of them abruptly left the room, while Farnsworth’s mouth remained wide open.

On their way out the front door, Stanley and Penelope ran into John and Abby heading up the walk.  They all stopped at the mid-point and exchanged a curious look.  John pointed at Penelope and said, “You; from the boarding house.  What are you doing here?  And you,” John said gesturing toward Baxter.  “I take it you must be Stanley Baxter.”

Penelope and Stanley both smiled and nodded but said nothing and continued on their way as John and Abby walked up to the door and rang the bell.

Oh, the things they had to tell Peter Farnsworth.

The Hollywood Assassin

Private eyes John Cooper and his partner, Abby Ross sat crouched behind a hedge row, keeping an eye on the subject of their latest case.  It was creeping up on midnight and there was a new moon out, causing the pitch blackness throughout the neighborhood.  The two had been under cover here since ten-thirty p.m. and had been taking notes on their quarry as they sat there, their legs beginning to cramp up on them.

Abby shifted her weight off her legs and moved them around in front of her, rubbing them as she did so.  “I think my legs are starting to fall asleep,” she told her partner and fiancé, John.  “How much longer do we have to sit here?”

Just then a light came on in the target house and Nick held an index finger to his lips.  “I think he’s getting ready to leave any minute now.”

At that very moment, both of the private eyes could hear a steady thumping sound in the distance and it was getting closer with each passing second.  Before long, the sound was almost directly overhead as a giant spotlight illuminated the immediate area.  It was coming from the police helicopter overhead as it shined its light on the fleeing car that sped by Cooper’s stakeout place.  A second later a black and white police car sped by this same spot, in hot pursuit of the fleeing car.

The door to the target house opened and a man stepped out into his front yard, craning his neck as he looked up at the helicopter with the spotlight.  When it passed, he glanced across the street and caught sight of Abby’s head sticking up above the row of hedges.  The man panicked and ran back into his house again.  A moment later his garage door opened and he hurried out of the garage and down the street in his black sedan.

“Oh, that’s just great,” John said to his partner.  “He made us and we just lost him, thanks to that damned helicopter and that spotlight.  And poking your head up just then didn’t help matters, either.  Come on; we’re done her for tonight.  We might as well go on home.”

They both enjoyed a good night’s sleep and in the morning when they came into the office, John’s father, Nick was at his desk.  The three of them exchanged their usual morning greetings before settling in behind their desks.  A moment later Nick laid his morning paper down and looked over at his son.  “Did either of you catch the news last night?”

John shook his head, as did Abby.  “We had a late night with the stakeout so we just went straight to bed when we got home.  Why do you ask?”

Nick held up his paper.  “It’s all right here in this morning’s paper.  There was another murder last night just outside of the Chinese Theater…again.  That makes three so far, and all within five hundred feet of the theater.  The press is calling this guy the Hollywood Assassin and the publicity isn’t doing the Chinese Theater any good.  They decided to close it down until the killer is caught or killed himself.”

“Don’t the police have any leads?” Abby said.

“This is a tough one,” Nick explained.  “They figured they could check the video recordings from the businesses in the immediate area, but strangely enough, every one of the cameras went out last night around the time of the killing.  They figured that this assassin had found a way to cut the power to that whole block before he pounced on his victim.”

“What time did the killing take place last night?” Abby asked.

Nick looked down at his paper again.  “It says here that the victim from last night was killed around midnight; about the same time you two were on your stakeout.  It’s a good thing your stakeout was several miles away from downtown Hollywood.  By the way, how’s that one going?”

“The guy made us last night and took off in his car,” John explained.  “So for all practical purposes, that case is done.  I just have to call and tell our client what happened.”

“Exactly what did happen?” Nick asked.  “You two are usually pretty good and keeping under cover.”

John heaved a sigh and said, “The cops spoiled it for us.”

Nick furrowed his brow.  “The cops?”

“Yeah,” John replied.  “A cop was chasing some fleeing suspect right past our hiding place and a police helicopter illuminated the entire area with its spotlight.  The subject heard the helicopter and walked out into his front yard to see what it was and that’s when he spotted us across the street.  He was gone less than a minute later.”

“Well, you can’t win ‘em all,” Nick said and went back top his newspaper.  He had just started another article about the rising cost of gas in California when his desk phone picked that moment to ring.  Nick grabbed it.  “Cooper Investigations, Nick speaking.  Oh, hi Steve.”  He covered the mouthpiece and looked at John.  It’s Lieutenant Stone.  He pulled his hand off the phone and said, “What’s up?  Really; I was just telling John and Abby about it.  I caught it on the early morning TV news report before I came into the office and I just read the newspaper account to the kids.  Do you have anything to go on yet?  Uh huh.  Well good luck with that.  How’s that?  No, I don’t see what help we could be.  You must have most of your men already working on it.  Well, okay if you think it’ll help.  We’ll be down to see you in a few minutes.  Thanks, Steve; goodbye.”

“What did Steve want?” John asked.

“Get this; he wants the three of us to chip in and see if we can’t help with the Hollywood Assassin case,” Nick said, mostly to John.  “He said he’s already got several of his detectives and patrolmen working on it, but they’re spread pretty thin and thought the three of us might help fill the gaps.”

“I didn’t hear you ask him how much they were going to pay us,” John remarked.

Nick raised his eyebrows and said, “It hadn’t occurred to me when I had him on the phone, but you can bet I’ll bring it up when we see him.  Come on; Steve’s waiting for us in his office.”  The three of them drove the four blocks in John’s Toyota sedan and parked around the back of the Twelfth Precinct in the parking lot.  They entered through the back door and found Lieutenant Stone’s office just down the hall on the right.

Before they knocked and let themselves into Stone’s office, they all straightened out their clothes and smoothed their hair down.  Steve was waiting behind his desk when they walked in and pulled up three chairs across from the cop.

Ever the polite host, Stone looked first at Abby and told how nice she was looking and then said pretty much the same thing to the two Coopers, but with less enthusiasm.  “Suppose we get right down to the business at hand.  The reason I called you all down here was because I know from experience how good you all are at surveillance.  And since all three murders have taken place in the immediate vicinity of the Chinese Theater, and since they all happened within a couple days of each other, it stands to reason that this guy is not done stalking and killing people in that area.  I want to make sure that there won’t be a fourth murder.”

“And just where to you envision the three of us surveying from?” Nick asked.

“Directly across the street from the Chinese Theater there’s a Mexican grill near the corner of Hollywood and Orange.  I’ve arranged for the owner to let one of you watch from there after he closes shop for the day.  Another one of you can be staked out in The Hollywoodland Experience store further down the street and the last one of you can watch the area from the old Masonic Temple building.  These days it the Jimmy Kimmel Theater and we’ve arranged for them to let you watch from behind one of the pillars.  My men will be stationed all around that particular block so we’ll have him surrounded on all sides if he decides to show up in the next couple of nights.”

“Sounds like a thoroughly saturated stakeout,” Nick said.  “What about our pay?  Did you get clearance for the three of us?”

Steve didn’t even try to haggle the price.  “The captain spoke with the neighborhood merchants and especially with the Chinese Theater people and they’ve all agreed to chip in with the expenses of capturing this killer.  All of their businesses are suffering and their cooperation is all in their best interests, so it’s three bills a day for each of you for as long as it takes.”

Nick didn’t bother bringing up the point that they’d be working at night, after hours, which would normally get them time and a half.  He was just grateful for the work.  That night they all took their places under cover and waited for the midnight hour.  A few stragglers wandered by the Chinese Theater and one or two even ventured into the courtyard to step into the footprints of their favorite actor but no one was accosted and the assassin never did put in an appearance.  By two a.m. the police and the private eyes all called it a day and went home for the evening.

They tried the same arrangement for the next two nights in a row with no results.  On the fourth night the watchers kept an eye on the area around the theater and at three minutes before midnight, a man hurried up behind a woman who was walking toward the theater and put his hands on the back of her neck.  She screamed and before anyone knew it, three detectives and three private eyes were on him, guns drawn.

The woman turned sharply and gave the authorities a stern look.  “What are you doing?” She demanded.

The six guns were still trained on the man when Detective Adam Kennedy spoke up.  “Are you all right, lady?”

She repeated, “What do you think you’re doing?  This is my husband, you idiots.”

The woman and her husband started to walk away when Kennedy stopped them and said, “Do you two have some kind of a death wish?  Haven’t you seen, heard or read about the Hollywood Assassin who’s already killed three people in this general vicinity?  You’re just lucky we were keeping an eye on this place.  Go on; get out of here and don’t come back this late in the evening unless you want to become victims number four and five.”

The man grabbed the woman’s hand and rushed her away from the Chinese Theater, around the next corner and into a car that was parked nearby.  Once in the car, the woman turned to man who had been playing the part of her husband and said, “That was a close one, Stu.  We’re going to have to find some other place to continue our work.  The cops are onto you here.  What do you say we target people around the Pantages Theater for the next two or three victims?”

Stu patted the woman on her cheek.  “I like the way you think, Sally.  We could rack up a dozen or more victims if we keep moving around to other Hollywood tourist traps.  If they get wise to us at the Pantages Theater, we could always move on to the Hollywood Wax Museum or the Hollywood and Vine intersection.  That’s always a magnet for those brain dead Hollywood wannabes.  Looks like we’re done for tonight; let’s go home and regroup.

Stu and Sally drove back to their apartment on Franklin Avenue and got a good night’s sleep.  They had their work cut out for them tomorrow night.

Exit Stage Left

Private eye Nick Cooper had been counting down the days until his official retirement from the family investigations business that his ancestors had started right after World War II.  Nick was the fifth generation to run this business from the same office for all those years and now his son, John would be taking over the business along with his soon to be wife, Abby Ross as the sixth generation.

Lately Nick had been passing cases off to John and Abby, but that morning when the call came in he decided to take care of it himself.  It seemed like a simple job; deliver a summons to a woman who had been involved in a car accident and needed to show up in court to answer for it.  He drove to the woman’s mansion in Bel Air, served the summons and returned to the office, all within an hour, making it the easiest fifty dollars he had ever earned.

When he stepped back into the office later that morning, Abby was on the phone with a prospective client.  John was just sitting at his desk apparently at a loss for something to do.  “How’d it go this morning, Dad?” John asked as Nick pulled up a chair across from John’s desk.

“Takes all kinds,” Nick replied.  “All I had to do was serve a simple summons to some snooty woman in Bel Air.”

“Doesn’t sound too hard,” John remarked.

“You would think,” Nick said.  “I handed the woman the summons and turned to leave when she bunched it up into a ball and threw it at me.  It bounced off the back of my neck and onto the front stoop.  I didn’t even bother giving her the satisfaction of turning around and just got back into my car.  She has been served and that’s all that mattered to me.”

“Some people’s kids,” John replied.

Just then Abby finished her phone call and smiled at Nick.  “How’d it go, Nicholas?”  She was in an obvious good mood, thus the ‘Nicholas’ remark.

Nick told her the same thing he’d just told John and left it at that.”

“How many days left?” Abby asked, knowing that Nick had been counting down every day and had shared that information wither and John.

Nick looked at his watch and replied, “Four days, six hours, twenty-two minutes and twelve seconds, but who’s counting?”

Abby stood now and walked over to where Nick sat.  “Are you getting excited?” she asked.

“Both excited and a little scared,” Nick said.  “Excited about what’s waiting for me out there in the big wide world and a little scared about what’s waiting for me out there in the big wide world.”

That got a laugh out of John.  “You, Dad, scared?  I can’t believe it.”  Don’t you have any idea about what you want to do first when you hang up your spurs?”

Nick wasn’t sure he wanted to share his idea but took a chance anyway and said, “I thought I might do a road trip and visit a few of the people from my past cases, just to see how they’re doing these days.  Could prove interesting to say the least.”

“Do you know where you’re going to start?” Abby asked.

“Well,” Nick began.  “I had one client who moved to Phoenix after I solved her case.  I thought I’d get in the car and pay her a visit.  You never know.”

“Then where?” John asked.

“I thought I’d take a short hop up to Las Vegas and spend a few days hanging around.”  Nick gave the next part of his answer a little thought before he offered, “Then I thought I’d detour up to Reno and visit an old friend I haven’t seen since forever.  I don’t even know if she’s still alive but I have to take care of this loose end or it’ll drive me crazy.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your retirement all mapped out, Dad,” John said.  “Wish I was going with you, but I’ll, or should I say we’ll have a business to run.  Just make sure you stay in touch from time to time so we’ll know how you’re doing.”

“Sure thing,” Nick said.

Between that day and Friday, only four calls came in for investigative services.  John handled one by himself, Abby handled one by herself, John and Abby teamed up for the third case and Nick took the last one without any assistance.  None of the four cases were what you might call exciting or memorable, with the exception of the case Nick chose to handle alone.

He took a case from a woman who claimed that her husband was being unfaithful and she wanted Nick to bring her evidence of said philandering.  What would have been an otherwise uneventful case turned out to be a bit more memorable because Nick had been hired by this woman twice before in the past for the same reasons.  Twice before Nick had delivered proof positive that her husband had been stepping out and twice before she ignored his advice and stayed with her husband.  This third time when he delivered the evidence she was after, Nick finally got his payment for his services and then told the woman that he wouldn’t be accepting any more cases from her, since she ignored his evidence and advice.  He wished her well and left her living room, returning to the office one last time.

When Nick got back to the office, he shared his findings with John and Abby and explained how he had told the woman that he wouldn’t take any more assignments from her.  “Remember this name,” Nick said, handing the contract and payment check to John.  “If she calls again after I’m no longer working here, just tell her that…”  He paused, choosing his words carefully before going on.  “Just tell her that I retired and that you two aren’t handing those kinds of cases.”  Nick considered his advice and amended it to, “Or you can just keep taking her money for your efforts and just chalk it all up to experience.”

John took the contract from his father and filed it in the filing cabinet.  “We’ll worry about her at that time if she ever comes back for more or our services.”  He looked up at the wall clock over the office door and noticed that it was eight minutes before closing time.  He turned back to Nick and said, “Hey, if you want to punch out early, go ahead.  We can close up.”

Nick shook his head and replied, “I can’t risk getting docked; I think I’ll hang around for another seven and a half minutes if it’s all the same to you.”

Abby walked up to Nick, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.  “It’s been a real honor working with you, Nick.  It just won’t be the same around here without you.  You take care now.”

Nick wiped his cheek with the back of his hand and started to tear up.  Now would be a good time to exit stage left, he thought and quickly shook John’s hand before heading for the door.  “I guess I’ll see you both at your wedding, whenever that is.”  With that parting remark, he left the office and slowly walked down the hall to the elevator.

John and Abby turned toward each other with blank looks on their faces.  Trying to lighten the moment, John said, “Well, look on the bright side.  My employee number just moved up one notch.  Now I’m number one and you’re number two.”

Abby frowned.  “I don’t like the sound of that.  Think of something else.”

“How about I’m employee A and you’re employee B?”

Abby backhanded John’s arm.  “Or we can just be equal partners and let it go at that.”

John smiled at his soon to be wife.  “Done; come on, let’s close it up and go enjoy our weekend.”

Nick spent his weekend packing and arranging his road trip.  He carefully picked through his audio book selection, trying to match the book’s playing time to the trip’s driving time.  From his online map program he knew that it would take him just under six hours to drive from Los Angeles to Phoenix so he set aside the unabridged version of Lawrence Block’s Hit and Run, a story of a hit man on the run from those who had set him up as a fall guy for a murder he didn’t commit.  The trip from Phoenix to Las Vegas represented another five hours, give or take, and he was able to match that leg of the journey wit Raymond Chandler’s Playback, Chandler’s last complete novel from the late fifties.  For the seven hour jog from Las Vegas to Reno, Nick chose Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, a gripping tale of circus life in 1931.  For the trip back home to Los Angeles, Nick decided on a collection of selected short stories by a prolific author named J.A. Konrath, who had just a weird enough writing style to keep him entertained.

He got a good night’s sleep and woke refreshed.  He ate a breakfast hearty enough to carry him through until he arrived in Phoenix, even though he had also packed several portable snacks and a six pack of Diet Pepsi plus a half gallon chocolate milk in his cooler.  Nick had stopped delivery of his mail and newspaper the day before.  He stepped out of the kitchen door and climbed behind the wheel of his Toyota sedan.  On his way out of town, he pulled into a gas station and filled it up.  He knew from past trips what to expect mileage wise from his car.  He’d only have to stop once along the way to refuel and now he was ready to start out on the trip of a lifetime.

After one stop for fuel and a bathroom break, Nick soon found himself on the outskirts of Phoenix.  The timing was almost perfect because the audio version of Hit and Run finished just a few minutes before he pulled into the motel parking lot.  He’d unpack, have some lunch and look up the first former client on his short list.  As he left the diner, Nick checked his list again and found Dean Connor’s name and address.  He punched the address into his GPS and within ten minutes found himself parked in front of the Connor residence.  He slid out from behind the wheel and walked up the sidewalk to the front door.

A woman answered the door and gave Nick a vacant look.  “Yes,” she said to the stranger standing before her.

“Good afternoon,” Nick said politely.  “Would Dean Connor be at home?”

The woman’s face fell.  “Dean passed away three weeks ago.”  She sighed deeply.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Nick replied.

“Did you know my husband?” she asked.

“Many years ago in Hollywood.  I was in the area and just thought I’d look him up and see how he was doing.”  Nick didn’t know what to say as a follow-up.

“How did you know him?” The woman asked.

“Excuse me, my name is Nick Cooper and I worked for your husband, has to be thirty-five years now.”

“I remember him mentioning your name many years ago when we first met,” she replied.  “And you’re right, it was thirty-nine years ago.  We would have been married forty years come September.  I’m sorry you made the trip for nothing, Mr. Cooper.”

Nick thanked the woman and excused himself, returning to his car.  So far this trip was not producing the results he had hoped for.  Dean Connor was the only person in Phoenix that Nick had had any connection to but he couldn’t leave town so soon after arriving and decided to see the sights for the rest of the day.  The only thing that came to mind was the Grand Canyon, but even that was more than four hours away.  And from there to Las Vegas was out of the way for him.  Still, once he realized that he was in no hurry, the choice was obvious.  He may never get this chance again.

Nick enjoyed dinner at one of the finer restaurants in Phoenix and then retired to the lounge to listen to a live jazz band.  He didn’t stay too long, since he wasn’t an actual drinker.  Chocolate milk didn’t count and the lounge frowned on people just sitting there without patronizing the bar.  He left the lounge and returned to his room at the motel where he could kick back in his underwear and watch TV for a few hours before bedtime.

He was up early the next morning and on the road to the Grand Canyon right after breakfast.  There was one thing he’d always wanted to do and that was take the helicopter ride over the canyon.  As far as he was concerned, that was the only way to take in the grandeur of this marvel of nature.  During the leg from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon, Nick decided to listen to his selected Konrath short story files.  The time passed quickly with the help of his MP3 audio files and noon that day he found himself at the Grand Canyon.  He parked in the lot and walked into the office to inquire about the helicopter rides.  Nick was given the helicopter schedule and learned that the next tour wouldn’t be leaving for another two and a half hours.  He decided to kill the time in the lobby.

He found a comfortable seat near the window and noticed a flat screen TV on one wall.  Several people were already watching a movie that Nick recognized.  It was a Sylvester Stallone action movie from nearly thirty years ago called Cliffhanger.  Having seen this particular movie before Nick knew that the movie was in its last ten minutes but decided to watch anyway.  Stallone had hooked the helicopter’s tow line to a mountain side ladder, causing John Lithgow to crash it against the side of the cliff.  Suddenly Nick didn’t feel like taking that helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon and just hurried out to his car.

He didn’t get in right away, but instead remembered another movie where Chevy Chase took his family to this very spot.  After a quick two second look at the Grand Canyon, Chase and family hurried away.  It was the least Nick could do as long as he was already here.  He followed Chase’s example only he spent twice as much time looking over the edge—four seconds.  He was down the road shortly after that, heading for Las Vegas.  He knew that Chevy Chase had made a sequel called Vegas Vacation but Nick had no desire to see Wayne Newton.

Nick loaded Chandler’s Playback into his player and listened all the way to Las Vegas.  He didn’t think it was one of Chandler’s better efforts, but he had so much time invested in listening to it that he decided to listen to the end.  Afterwards, he decided to delete the story from his collection.  In a word, it was boring.

The sun was setting as Nick pulled into Nevada and he’d had enough driving to last him for quite a while.  All he wanted to do now was find a room and relax.  Even before he left the restaurant the next morning, he knew he was in no mood for another seven hours on the road.  His butt was too sore for a trip of that length and he decided to leave his car at the railroad station and take the train to Reno instead.  The train was due to depart within the hour so Nick had to act fast.  He unloaded a change of clothes from his suitcase and put them in a grocery bag, along with his portable MP3 player and his headphones to take with him to Reno.

There was no need to pay for a sleeper bunk, since he’d be in Reno by mid-afternoon.  He opted instead for the scenic views the observation car offered.  He paid for his ticket and found a comfortable seat with ten minutes to spare.  Once the train started rolling, Nick breathed a sigh of relief and settled back into his seat.

The gunman stalked his victim and quietly crept up behind him.  The victim was unaware that he was being stalked since he was listening to his audio book on headphones.  He was taken completely by surprise the assassin pointed his gun in Nick’s face and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession.  Nick quickly opened his eyes and wiped the water dripping from his chin as the little kid in the red cowboy hat ran back up the aisle yelling ‘yee-haw’ and waving his six-shooter in the air.

“Why you little shit,” Nick grumbled under his breath.  He went back to listening to the story only this time with both eyes open.  He wouldn’t be ambushed again.  Somehow he just couldn’t concentrate on the audio book and put the headphones back into the grocery bag on top of his change of clothes.  He switched to watching the scenery instead, which was boring to say the least.  There was nothing to see but barren wastelands and desert.  At least he only had to endure this for a little less than seven hours, based on what he’d found out about driving time in his car.

A few minutes later the conductor came up the aisle asking for tickets.  Nick plucked his ticket from his shirt pocket and handed it to the man, who promptly punched it and handed it back to Nick.  Before he moved on, Nick looked up and asked him how long the trip would take.

The conductor pulled a pocket watch from his vest, opened it and said, “Looks like we’ll be arriving right on time in about seventeen hours and four minutes.”

“What?” Nick almost shouted.  “It’s a seven hour trip at best.”

“Maybe by car,” the conductor replied and moved on down the aisle.

“That’s just great,” Nick said in a loud voice and not really caring if anyone heard him.  He got up out of his seat and followed the conductor down the aisle.  “Excuse me, but what is the first stop on the way to Reno?”

“That would be Indian Springs,” the conductor offered.

“How far is that from where we are now?”

“Just about thirty-five miles.”

“Great,” Nick said.  “That’s where I want to get off.”

“It’s up to you, Mister,” the conductor said and moved on without another word.

Nick returned to his seat and produced his cell phone.  He decided to see if he could call his friend in Reno and make sure she was even still there before he committed to a trip of that length.  The information operator had no listing for Doreen Shacklock in Reno or any of the nearby cities.  Nick thanked her and disconnected the call just as the young cowboy returned with a couple of his brothers dressed as Indians and waving their rubber tomahawks.  They yelled and ran up and down the aisles with no parental supervision.  How ironic; Nick couldn’t wait to get off at Indian Springs.  And once he got there, he’d rent a car and drive right back to the train station in Las Vegas.  He’d get back into his car and head for Los Angeles.  With any luck at all he could be there in just a little over four hours, putting him back at home later that same night.  This road trip crap was for the birds.

Monday morning at the Cooper office found John and Abby working their first day as the new owners of Cooper Investigations.  “I wonder where Nick is right about now,” Abby asked.

John looked up at the wall clock and said, “Right now he’s probably floating on an inflatable mattress in some motel swimming pool with a drink in his hand wondering why he didn’t do this sooner.  What a lucky dog he is.”

“On the other hand,” Abby said.  “He could be wishing he was right back here in the thick of it all again.”

Nick spread his arms out around the empty room.  “In the thick of all this adventure, intrigue and fun?”

“Well, maybe not right now,” Abby agreed.  “But you know what I mean.  Being a private eye for as many decades as he was isn’t an easy habit to break.”

“Better get used to it,” John said.  “It’s me and you from now on and whatever fun Dad is having right now, he earned it.”

What Nick earned was a good night’s sleep and the right to sleep in this morning.  He rose shortly before noon, showered, shaved, got himself dressed and ate a decent noontime breakfast.  He debated with himself about whether or not he should let the kids know he came home early.  He didn’t want them to feel obligated to let him come back to his old job.  They had their own lives to live and their own business to run now.  He’d have to find something else to occupy his free time.  That being said, Nick decided to drive down to the park with a bag of peanuts and see if the local birds would accept handouts from him.

After just thirty minutes of playing waiter to a bunch of ungrateful pigeons, Nick had had enough and threw what was left of the bag of peanuts into the trash can.  He walked back to his car and decided to drive to a nearby department store.  He didn’t need anything in particular but that was the way he usually shopped; impulse buying.

Nick started in the men’s department, checking out the shirts and slacks before moving to the shoe department.  As he walked along the row of shoes, he noticed an overhead security camera that seemed to be following his every move so he left and walked over to the grocery section.  Another camera in that department picked him up and stayed with him as he walked.  There seemed to be no doubt about it; he was being tracked and didn’t know why.

Before he finally left the grocery department a man in a dark business suit approached him and stepped directly in front of him.  “You’re Nick Cooper, aren’t you?” the man asked.

Nick didn’t answer, but just looked all around him.

“Mr. Perry would like to see you in his office,” the man told Nick.

“And just who is this Mr. Perry?” Nick said in a voice that didn’t convey friendliness.

“He’s the store manager; now if you’ll just come with me, sir.”  He started for another part of the store and Nick, his curiosity burning followed.  Down a short hall at the end of the store, the man led Nick to a door wit the name Sebastian Perry, Manager stenciled on it.  He knocked twice and opened the door, letting Nick go in ahead of him.  “I found him, Mr. Perry,” the man said and left the office to just Nick and the manager, who was standing now.

“Mr. Cooper,” Perry said.  “Won’t you have a seat?  I’d like to talk to you if I may.”

Nick accepted Perry’s hand and shook it before he sat across from the manager’s desk.  “How did you know who I was?” Nick asked.

Perry chuckled.  “Are you kidding?  A renowned private eye like yourself.  I’ve been reading about some of your cases in the paper for many years and I’m glad I finally got to meet you.”

“That’s it?” Nick said.

“Well, that’s not everything, Mr. Cooper.  I need a good private eye to help me with a delicate matter and when I saw you on one of my security monitors, I just had to reach out to you.”

“A delicate matter?” Nick asked.  “What is it and what makes you think I can handle it for you?”

Perry paused for just a moment and then got right to the matter at hand.  “Mr. Cooper, lately some of my inventory has gone missing with no plausible explanation and I’m afraid that one of my own employees may be helping himself, or herself, to several items off the shelf.  I have no proof of my theory.”

But, Mr. Perry,” Nick began.  “I’m not…”  He trailed off, not sure he wanted to tell the manager that he had recently retired.  After all, he still hadn’t turned in his P.I. license and technically could handle a case for the man if he wanted to.

“You’re not what?” Perry asked.

Nick made the split second decision and said, “I’m not wearing my shoulder holster and I don’t have my I.D. on me.  This was my day off.  I could just stop back at my office and get them before I start on your case, if that’s all right with you.”

“Whatever you need to do,” Perry replied.  “We’ll be open until ten tonight and that still gives you plenty of time to work the case.  What do you charge for your services?”

“We get three hundred dollars a day,” Nick said.  “And I can be back here in forty-five minutes.  Exactly what is it you’d like me to do?”

“I’d like you to just roam the entire store and visit all the departments, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious and just report back to me.”

“I’ll be right back with a contract for you to sign and to collect our two day retainer.”  Nick got up, shook the man’s hand again and left the office.  This was going to be a bit awkward when he got back to the office.  He just hoped they’d both be out on a case when he got there.  He parked behind the Cahuenga Building and paused for a moment before he got out of his car.  “Well, here goes nothing,” he said to no one in particular and rode the elevator to the third floor.  As he was stepping out, John and Abby were stepping in and looked totally surprised to see him.”

“Dad, what are you doing here?” John asked.  “I thought you were still out on the open road enjoying your retirement.”

“It’s a long story,” Nick said.

Abby said, “You can fill us in later.  Right now we’re both off to start a new case.”

“Perfect,” Nick said.  “I just stopped in to get something out of the closet.  Let’s talk tonight at my house.  Let’s say around eight?”

John patted Nick’s shoulder and nodded.  “Eight it is.”

The elevator door closed and the two of them were gone.  Nick breathed a little easier now, relieved that he didn’t have to explain about his need for a contract and his shoulder holster.  If he worked this case right, they need not even know about it until he finishes with it.  Nick slipped into his shoulder rig, pulled a blank contract from his former desk and left the office again.  He made it back to the department store sooner than he had anticipated.  He got Sebastian Perry’s signature at the bottom as well as a six hundred dollar retainer.  He was out on the floor of the store several minutes later and began watching the people he encountered.

Nick casually strolled through the men’s department and witnessed nothing out of the ordinary.  He continued on through the children’s clothing and again nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  It was when he got to the women’s department that an unusual person caught his eye.  It was a large woman, perhaps three hundred fifty pounds or more.  The odd part about this was that she was supposedly shopping in the fashion section where none of the dresses there would have fit her without splitting all the seams.  Nick kept a close eye on her without being obvious about it.

The large woman pulled an occasional dress off the rack and looked it over before looking all around her to see if anyone was watching.  When she thought she could do it unnoticed, she pulled the dress off the hanger, folded it up several times and stuffed it up in between her legs, probably inside a pair of panties that could have doubled as a circus tent.  Nick turned away from her and made a quick note of the incident before moving on to get another look at the woman from a different vantage point.

Again, he noticed her pulling another dress from the rack, removing the hanger and stuffing it alongside the first dress.  Mr. Perry would find this most interesting, indeed.  With at least two garments stuffed between her legs, the woman walked away, looking normal as possible at that weight.  Nick followed her out of the clothing department and into the grocery department where she made a beeline for the expensive cuts of meat.  On her way into the grocery department she had pulled a grocery cart from the line of carts and was pushing it ahead of her.

She stopped at the top sirloin section and chose two pre-packaged cuts of meat, tossing one in her cart and shoving the other up her dress.  Nick made a note in his notepad and another mental note—never to accept a dinner invitation from this woman.  By the time this woman had finished stealing several expensive items, she walked around the corner of the aisle, pretended to be looking for something on the shelf and then just walked away, leaving the half-full cart standing where it was.

She started heading for the exit when Nick hurried up behind her.  He waited until she had actually stepped outside before he laid a hand on her shoulder.  “Hold up, there, lady,” He said.  “Not so fast.”  The woman tried to break free of Nick grasp but was having no luck.  Nick retained his hold on the woman with one hand and retrieved his cell phone with the other, punching in Mr. Perry’s office phone number.  He explained what he had discovered and where he could be found.  Mr. Perry appeared in less than a minute, flanked by both male and female security officers who led the woman back inside.

“Great job, Mr. Cooper,” Perry said after the female security officer had taken this woman into the restroom and retrieved the stolen articles.  “Thos dresses she took would obviously never fit her, but they could have been sold for quite a tidy sum.  Same with all that expensive meat, although I wouldn’t sell it to my worst enemy knowing where it had been.”  He checked his wristwatch and then at Nick.  “You just saved me something like four hundred fifty dollars so far.  Let’s see what else you can do for me.  Call me if you need any further assistance.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Perry.  So far I haven’t noticed any employees stealing,” Nick said and got back out on the floor.  After having patrolled the entire store once around, he started over in the men’s department.  After his third round and finding no more thieves, Nick wandered over to the south end of the store to a door that led to the loading dock.  He’d spent more than five hours so far patrolling the department store and decided to make this one last stop before calling it a day.  He stayed in the shadows, observing what was happening out there.  Trucks were loaded and unloaded and the entire operation ran smooth as clockwork.  There was nothing to report back here.

Nick turned to leave when he could hear two men talking somewhere over in the next aisle.  He couldn’t see them from where he stood, but he could hear them loud and clear.  “Are you sure Perry’s not getting wise to us?” the first man said in a husky voice.

“That simp hasn’t got a clue,” the other man with the higher voice replied.  “We got away with as much as we have so far by being careful so let’s just make sure we keep it that way.  Is this next load ready to go?”

Husky Voice said, “They almost have the truck loaded.  Give it another five minutes and we can pull out.  Go on; make sure those guys don’t screw it up.  We’ve got a good thing going here.”

That was all Nick needed to hear.  He turned around and started to head back toward Perry’s office when he ran straight into the big man with the husky voice.  “Who are you and what are you doing on the loading dock?”

Nick had to think fast.  “The clerk told me that the bathrooms were back here.  I don’t see them.”  He put on his lost and innocent face.

Husky voice gave him a strange look and called to his partner, “Joey, get back here right now.”

“What is it, Frank,” Joey said in his higher voice.

“This guy claims he’s looking for the bathrooms,” Frank said, turning to Joey.

That was all the distraction Nick needed.  He took one step backwards and pulled the .38 revolver from under his arm all in one fluid motion.  “Both of you; get down on your knees and cross your ankles.”  When they didn’t immediately react, Nick pulled the hammer back and the sound of the cylinder rotating was all it took.  Both men got to their knees and did as they were told.  Nick fished the cell phone from his pocket and called Perry’s office.  He told the manager what was going on and within thirty seconds, four uniformed security guards showed up, their own weapons drawn.  One of them held Frank and Joey at bay while the other three rounded up the crew on the loading dock.

A minute later Sebastian Perry showed up and looked down at the first two prisoners kneeling on the floor.  He didn’t have to say a word; his dirty look at Frank said it all.  He turned back to Nick with a smile.  “Mr. Cooper, it looks like I made the right decision when I looked you up.”  He pulled Nick aside, away from everyone else and said, “How’d you like to work for me full time as head of my security department?”

That took Nick by surprise.  He holstered his .38 and zipped his coat up over it.  “I don’t know, Mr. Perry.  It seems like a decent offer and normally I’d probably jump at it.

Perry looked puzzled.  “But?”

“But I’d have to talk this over with my son,” Nick said.  “Can you give me a day to think about it?  I can call you tomorrow with my answer.”

Perry patted Nick’s shoulder and smiled.  “Sure thing; you give it some serious consideration and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mr. Perry,” Nick said and walked back into the store and over to the exit.  He got back into his car but didn’t immediately start the engine.  He sat there, unable to wipe the smile off his face.  He knew what his first choice would be, but in the event that John didn’t need him back at the investigations business, he’d still have this job to fall back on.  Either way, it sure beat wandering the countryside, getting shot in the face by some out of control little brat with a squirt gun.  He started his car and drove straight back to Cooper Investigations.  The office was already closed for the day and then he remembered telling John and Abby that he’d see them back at his house later that night.  He lingered in the office, taking in the sights and smells for a few moments before leaving again and driving straight home.

Eight o’clock couldn’t come fast enough for him.  He slipped out of his jacket and stored his shoulder holster in a drawer.  Nick ate a modest supper, and then looked at the contract from Sebastian Perry again, along with the six hundred dollars he had collected.  Nick knew what he wanted most of all but these things would be enough to drive his point home with John and Abby if it came to that.  He cleared away his dishes and retired to his living room with forty minutes to spare.  He was exhausted from all that patrolling of the large department store and just settled back in his easy chair, the contract and deposit on the table next to him.  He was asleep in no time at all.

Promptly at eight o’clock John and Abby appeared at the kitchen door.  John never bothered to knock when he came to see his father and just let himself and Abby in.  He was about to call out to Nick when he saw the back of his head sticking up over the top of Nick’s easy chair.  He looked at Abby with an index finger held up to his lips.  The two of them tiptoed up behind Nick and were about to nudge him when John spotted a familiar looking document and a stack of money on the table next to Nick’s chair.  He quietly lifted the document for a closer examination and showed it to Abby.

They both stepped back into the kitchen and in a whisper, John said, “Why that little stinker.  That’s why he stopped back at the office earlier today; to get a contract.  He took another case.  You know, I’ll bet Dad found out that he doesn’t like retirement and this is his way of trying to get back in with us.”

Abby had to smile now.  “You know, this could be somewhat awkward for him to ask us.  How about if we make it easier for him?”  She took the contract from John and stepped over to Nick’s chair again, laying it back where they’d found it.  She padded back into the kitchen and pulled John back toward the kitchen door.  “Come on; I have a better idea.”  They eased the kitchen door closed and got back into their car.  They were a couple blocks away when Abby pulled to the curb and handed her cell phone to John.  “Give your dad a call and tell him something came up and that we can’t meet with him tonight.  Then you can call him tomorrow and give him some tall tale about needing him back on the job.”

That made John smile widely.  “Abby Ross, you have a devious mind.  I like that about you.  Come on; I’ll make the call and then we can go home.  I’m sure Dad will sleep like a baby tonight and wake up with a real purpose for being alive.”

“You know what this means,” Abby said.

“What’s that?”

“It means that Nick will be employee number one again and I’ll go back to being number three.”  Abby winked at John.  “I guess you know what that makes you.”

Poor Taste in Men

That afternoon as John Cooper finished his lunch and headed back to his office, he decided to make one more stop along the way.  Instead of the usual hot pretzels, he thought he’d treat his fellow workers to some donuts and other selected pastries.  He knew that Abby, the newest detective at Cooper Investigations, preferred frosted long johns with a crème filling while John’s father, Nick, liked nut-covered crullers and donuts.  John preferred cake donuts with chocolate frosting.  He bought half a dozen assorted pieces and carried them out to his car in a white box.  He had just set them on the front seat on the passenger side and was about to slide behind the wheel when he was startled by a tap on his shoulder that made him jump.  He turned around to see a young woman standing there with a question on her face.

“Mr. Cooper?” the woman said.

John took a deep breath and let it out, giving his heart a chance to slow down before he responded.  “Yes, and who are you?”

“I’m sorry I startled you,” the woman said.  “My name is Joyce Holden.  I was on my way to see you at your office, but when I saw you coming out of the bakery, I decided to introduce myself.  Do you have just a minute to spare?”

John checked his watch.  “I suppose I could give you a lift to my office and we could discuss whatever it is that brought you to me.”  He moved his bakery box to the back seat and brushed off the seat cushion.  “Come on; get in.”

Joyce came around the other side of the car and slid into the seat.  John pulled away from the curb and drove the three blocks back to Hollywood and Cahuenga.  He and Joyce rode the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to the last door on the right.  Nick and Abby were sitting at their desk when John and his guest walked in.  “Dad, Abby, this is Joyce Holden.  I ran into her at the bakery.”  He handed the white box to Nick and then invited Joyce to sit across from him at his own desk.

While Nick and Abby inspected the contents of the bakery box, John pulled out his yellow legal pad and a pencil and asked Joyce to explain what she needed from him.

“Mr. Cooper,” she began.  “I just started a new job at an office here in Hollywood.  It’s the Kramer Insurance Company and I’ve only been at it for three weeks so far and…”  Her voice trailed off and she cleared her throat.  “Mr. Cooper, there’s a man in my office, not my boss but the guy I have to answer to.  He, uh…”

“Let me guess,” John said.  “He’s making unwanted advances toward you.”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” Joyce said.  “Maybe I should go back further with my story.  You see, Mr. Cooper, when I was five years old I witnessed my mother’s murder.”

That stopped Nick and Abby in the middle of their pastry selection and they both turned to look at Joyce, who seemed uncomfortable with the attention.  “Don’t mind them,” John said.  “We all work together sometimes and they may just end up helping me with whatever it is you need, so go on with your story.”

Joyce swallowed hard and continued.  “I could hear mother and some man arguing in the next room and I cracked the door open just enough to see in.  The man was telling mother something I didn’t understand.  I think maybe he was her boyfriend, although I didn’t know it at the time.  Anyway, the argument got louder and louder and before I knew what happened, he hit her with his fist and she fell down.  He tried to pull her back up to her feet, but she just lay there, not moving.  I backed away from the door and hid in my closet until I couldn’t hear any more sounds.  I waited a few more minutes and then came out to check on my mother.  She was dead, Mr. Cooper.”

“Where was your father during all of this?” John asked.

“Daddy died before I was even born,” she explained.  “Mother had several boyfriends when I was young but none of them lasted very long.  And this man was no different.  It was only the second time I’d seen him at our apartment.  Mother always did have a poor taste in men.  I think she was just too afraid to be alone.”

“Did you know who he was?  I mean, did you ever hear your mother call him by any name?” John asked.

Joyce shook her head as her breathing started coming in short gasps.

“What did you tell the police?” John asked.  “Could you identify this man to them?”

“Not very well,” Joyce replied.  “I only saw him twice and the second time only through a crack in the door frame.”

“And I take it they never found him.”

“Never,” she said.  “After a while they just kind of gave up on it.  After that day I had to go and live with my aunt and uncle in Pasadena.”

John furrowed his brow.  “I think you’re losing me, Miss Holden.  Is there some connection between this story and the man at your office?”  Then it occurred to him but he still needed to hear her say it.

“I can’t put my finger on it,” Joyce said.  “But there’s something awfully familiar about that man in my office.  My mother’s death was nearly twenty years ago, but still…”

“You think he could be the same man who hit your mother all those years ago?”

Nick and Abby were still biting into their pastries but were hanging on Joyce’s every word.

“I just don’t know, Mr. Cooper.  I don’t want to cause trouble for him if he’s not the same man I’m thinking of, but I simply have to know and I was hoping you could do some sort of background check on this Wayne Caulder for me.”

“Wayne Caulder,” John said, jotting the name down on his yellow legal pad.  “Do you have any other information on him, just in case there’s more than one man with that same name?  How old would you say Mr. Caulder is?”

Joyce tried to picture Wayne Caulder in her mind before answering.  “I’d have to say he’s probably in his late forties, early fifties.  I learned that he’s been with this company for no more than three years himself.  It’s anybody’s guess how he got to be my boss so soon.”

“How tall would you say he is?”

“About like him,” she said, gesturing toward Nick.

“So, about six feet.  What color are is eyes and hair?”

“His hair is dark brown and his eyes are also brown, I think.  They’re the kind of eyes that look right through you.  I tell you, he gives me the willies.”

“Any idea what he weighs?”

Again she cocked her head toward Nick.  “Just about like him.”

“So, about…”

Nick jumped in with “One eighty-five,” and bit down on his donut again while Abby took another bite of her long john.

John noted this on his pad as well and then looked up at Joyce.  “Now think back twenty years to that terrible day when you saw the man who hit your mother.  Did you see his eyes and do you remember their color?”

Joyce shook her head.  “He wasn’t looking my way either time so I didn’t get to see his eyes.”

“Very good,” John said.  “I think we have enough to get started.  Meanwhile, don’t do or say anything at work to let this man know you’re having him looked into.  After twenty years, he’d never recognize you.  He might remember your name, though.”

“Not likely,” Joyce replied.  “After Daddy died, mother took back her maiden name of Helen Brickner but I still had Daddy’s name and I don’t think mother ever shared that with any of her boyfriends.”

John got Joyce’s signature on one of their contracts and took her check for the six hundred dollar retainer he had requested.  She thanked him and started to leave when John stopped her.  “Did you need me to drop you off somewhere?”

“No thank you, Mr. Cooper.  I live in the neighborhood and the walk will do me good.  Besides, today is my day off so I don’t have to go back to the office until tomorrow.  Please let me know as soon as you find out anything.”

“Absolutely,” John assured her and waited until he heard the elevator door close before he turned to his co-workers.  “Now here’s a case that could prove interesting to say the least.  Do you two have anything else in the works, besides those donuts, or would you like to help with this one?”

“Can’t speak for Mr. Donut there,” Abby said, “but you can count me in.”

“Mr. Donut?” Nick said indignantly.  “Look who’s talking there; Miss long john with the crème filling.”  Right after he said that, Nick blushed when he saw Abby and John exchanging awkward glances at each other.  He let it drop and quickly said, “Where do you want me to start?”

“Why don’t you see if there’s any mention of a record for this guy in the L.A.P.D. database?  I’ll start with the Kramer Insurance Company background and Abby can check the web for any mention of Joyce’s mother’s murder.  Let’s keep each other in the loop with anything we find.”  John opened his laptop and searched for the Kramer Insurance Company and anyone named Wayne Caulder.  The Kramer Insurance Company had been founded thirty-four years earlier by someone named Kenneth Kramer, now deceased.  Another company had absorbed the company but had decided to keep the name, hoping to keep long time customers from seeking insurance elsewhere.  Further into his search John learned that the Kramer Company employed twenty-eight people in the Hollywood office.

Meanwhile Nick had left the office in order to pay a visit to Lieutenant Steve Stone of the Hollywood branch of the L.A.P.D.  He was glad to see Nick back on the job after his short retirement stint.  “Nicholas P. Cooper,” he said.  “What brings you out my way today?”

“Nicholas P.?  Where’d you get the P from?”

“Persistent,” Stone replied.  “You’re nothing if not persistent.”

Nick sighed.  “Anyway, I was hoping I could have a look at your criminal database for a minute.  We just took on a new case that requires a background check on a person of interest.  Would you mind?”

“Let me take a look,” Stone said, turning around in his chair toward his computer.  “What’s the name in question?”

“Caulder,” Nick said.  “Wayne Caulder; he’s probably in his late forties or early fifties.  Brown and brown, six feet, one eighty-five.”

Even before Nick had finished describing Caulder, Stone had a screen full of information to share.  “My, Mr. Caulder has been a busy boy.  I can’t see his juvenile record, but from age eighteen to twenty-seven, he spent seven of those years behind bars for a grocery list of offenses.  He apparently kept his nose clean for the next few years but was back in at age thirty-five for another six and a half years.  Looks like your Mr. Caulder is a two-time loser.  Once more and he goes away for a long, long time.”

Nick made a few notes on his notepad and looked back at Steve.  “Where did you say he was twenty years ago?”

Stone ran a finger down the screen and said, “Twenty years ago Wayne Caulder was in between stretches in San Quentin.  Why do you ask?”

“Just curious about his timeline,” Nick said.  “Trying to piece something together for a client.”

Steve spun back around in his chair to face Nick.  “I don’t suppose it’s anything you can share with me, is it?”  Nick shook his head.  “Didn’t think so, but thought I’d ask anyway.  If it comes to that, you will share it with me, won’t you?”

“If and when it comes to that, you can count on it, Steve.  Thanks for the info; talk to you later.”  Nick left the Twelfth Precinct and drove back to his own office.

John looked up when Nick returned.  “Any luck with Steve?”

Nick raised both eyebrows.  “Possibly; I had Steve check Caulder’s timeline and it fits.  He was around during the time Joyce said her mother was killed.  This guy has been in and out of the joint for thirteen years total and he’s a two-time loser.  He just needs to step out of line one more time and he’ll be back inside.  How’d you do?”

John shared the information he’d gotten online concerning the Kramer Insurance Company and its employees.  “Nothing out of the ordinary jumps out at me.  I’m still waiting to see what Abby comes up with.  She couldn’t find any mention of the murder online so she drove over to the library to look at their microfilm newspapers from that time.”

Abby took a seat at one of the microfilm machines and threaded the spool of film from the right time frame.  It took her several minutes of fast forwarding the spool of film before she found the story of Helen Brickner’s death.  It said that Ms. Brickner, twenty-seven, had been found unconscious on her living room floor and had been rushed to the hospital, where she died several hours later from head trauma.  Police investigated for two months before they ran into a dead end and filed the case in the cold case file.  Brickner’s daughter, Joyce had been placed with an unnamed aunt and uncle.  Abby rewound the spool, turned off the machine and headed back to her office with her findings.

“The police never did solve Joyce’s mother’s murder,” Abby said when she returned with her notes.  “Apparently the case is still open, but it had been filed away in the cold case file; too bad.”

“All the more reason for us to help out Joyce with her problem,” Nick said.  “I found out quite a bit about Wayne Caulder from Lieutenant Stone and he was definitely not the kind of boy you took home to mama.  There was nothing current about him in the files, but technically, he’s still a two-time loser.  Maybe that’s what kept him out of trouble for all these years.  Still, let’s keep on him and see what we can turn up.”

John spoke up now.  “I learned a little bit about the Kramer Insurance Company.  They have nearly thirty employees to date and Wayne Caulder has been with them for just three years.  How about if all three of us see what we can dig up about any jobs he might have had before he landed at the Kramer Company?  Suppose we all go over there and start interviewing employees, including Wayne Caulder.  Of course, we’ll have to go in under some made up premise so he won’t know what we’re after.”  He looked at his father and suggested, “Why don’t you talk to some of the other employees in his department, including Joyce and Caulder so it’ll appear to be all inclusive and won’t draw any attention to her.”

“What about me?” Abby asked.  “Where would you like me to start?”

John thought about it for a moment and said, “Why don’t you question the personnel manager and see if they’ll give you a list of their current employees.  In particular, see what they can tell you about Caulder.  You can always make something up about a possible upcoming promotion for him and that you’d like some background on the man.  In fact, let’s all use that same premise so we can keep the reason for our visit straight.  If anyone asks, we’re working for the Kramer Company owners and it is to be kept in the strictest of confidence.  Just make sure they know that they’re not to discuss any of what we talk about with any other employees.”

Nick held up an index finger and caught John’s eye.  “And what about you?  Do you have any other ideas?”

John nodded.  “Actually, I thought I’d check with the collateral help; you know; the janitors, cleaning ladies, maintenance crew.  You never know; Caulder may relate to them more so than the office staff.  It’s worth a shot anyway.  Come on; let’s get started and meet back here when we finish.”

The three of them left the parking lot behind their building in separate cars and found three empty spaces in the Kramer Company lot.  They split up at the parking lot door and each went their own way.  Abby and Nick rode the elevator together while John stayed on the ground floor and began looking up the manual laborers.  Nick got off on the third floor and Abby rode it all the way to the top floor, where the personnel offices were located.

It took John just a few minutes before he came across one of the janitors in the hallway.  “Excuse me,” John said, stepping up to the man in the tan uniform.  He had ‘Max’ stitched over his pocket.

“Yes?” Max replied.

John produced one of cards and said, “My colleagues and I are here today interviewing all the employees here at the Kramer Company.  I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.”

Max gave John a suspicious look but said, “What do you want to know?”

“The company who hired us asked us to check with everyone here to get an overall feel for the place,” John went on.  “Now you have to keep this strictly to yourself.  You can’t even discuss any of this with any of your fellow workers.”  John looked up and down the hall and then back at Max.  “My employer is negotiating to buy the Kramer Company and they want to know if they’re going to need to clean house and hire a whole new crew or if the present employees are loyal enough to keep this place going.  What can you tell me about some of the other employees?  I don’t mean anyone else in the maintenance crew; I was talking about the people on the third floor.  Do you have any interactions with any of them?”  John opened his notepad to a blank page and said, for instance, what can you tell me about Wayne Caulder?”

“Wayne Caulder,” Max repeated, trying to picture the man.  When John described Caulder to the janitor, Max got a sour look on his face.  “Oh that guy,” he said with obvious disdain.  “He’s a real piece of work, that one.”

John produced a pencil and pretended to write that down.  “What do you mean?”

“Not out here,” Max said.  “Come on; follow me.”  He led John down the hall to the men’s room and quickly looked under the stalls for any feet.  When he didn’t see any he said, “Caulder is a real bad ass.  He struts around here like he owns the place and let me tell you, the woman who work under him are always complaining about the way he treats them.”  Max lowered his voice to a whisper.  “And I got it from a good source that Wayne Caulder spent some time in prison.  If you ask me, it’s just a matter of time before he goes off on someone else.”

“Someone else?” John asked.  “Like who?”

“There’s this one woman on the third floor, Joyce something or other.  It’s nothing I can put my finger on, but the way he looks at her sometimes is enough to send shivers up my back.”

John actually did write this bit of information down and thanked Max for his candid views.  “I have to go and talk to some more of your fellow employees.  Remember, mum’s the word.”  John held his index finger up to his lips.

Max nodded and said, “Well, I have to stay here and clean up the sinks.  Good luck with your interviews.”

John left the men’s room and headed down the hall to the lunch room to see what the people there had to say about Wayne Caulder.

As Max began cleaning the first sink in the row, Wayne Caulder lowered his feet back to the bathroom floor and stood quietly peering at Max through the space in the door.

John conducted similar interviews with half a dozen more people on the ground floor until he thought he had enough background on Wayne Caulder.  He walked over to the elevator, pressed the up button and waited for the doors to open.  When they finally did, he saw Abby looking out at him.  John smiled and said, “How’d you do with the personnel manager?”

Abby held up a list of names that included all the employees on the third floor as well as the maintenance staff and the people who worked in the personnel office.  “Twenty-eight in all,” she said.  “How about you?”

John described his conversation with the janitor.  “He’s got Caulder’s number,” he said and told her what Max had told him about how Wayne Caulder looked at Joyce.”

“Makes you wonder if he’s starting to put it all together and if he sees something familiar in Joyce,” Abby speculated.

“I was thinking the same thing,” John said as the elevator doors opened again and Nick stepped out.  “Well, Dad, did you finish with your interviews?”

“Everyone except Wayne Caulder,” Nick replied.  “He wasn’t there.  Are we all done here; ‘cause I have to hit the can before we leave.  Did you see any bathrooms down here?”

John cocked his head in the direction he’d come from.  “Down that hall, third door on the left.  Hang on, I’ll go with you.  I could stand to tap a kidney myself.”  He turned to Abby.  “You wanna wait right here for a minute?”  He and Nick walked over to the men’s room and were about to reach for the door handle when the door flew open and a man rushed by, nearly knocking them down as he passed.

“What the hell was that all about?” Nick said and pulled the door open.  He was only a few steps into the bathroom when he stopped and stared at the man in the tan uniform lying on the tiled floor.

John came in right behind Nick and saw Max on his back, looking like he’d gone ten rounds with Rocky Balboa.  John knelt at his side and felt his neck for a pulse.  It was weak but it was there.  “Call an ambulance,” John said.  I’m going to try to catch up with that guy who ran out of here.”

“You be careful,” Nick said.  “Don’t take any chances with him.”

John hurried out of the men’s room and ran down the hall where he’d last caught a fleeting glimpse of the assailant.  The halls were empty and John stood still, listening for anything.  At the end of the hall he heard a door closing and hurried down that way.  It was the door to the stairway and John pulled it open, his .38 in one hand.  He looked up the steps but couldn’t see anyone, but he heard hurried footsteps going up.  He hurried up the steps, trying to catch up to the sounds.  He had made it to the second floor landing when he heard another door closing one floor above him.

John paused at the third floor landing and then eased the door open, peering out briefly before pulling it all the way open.  The third floor hall was empty so John cautiously walked up the hall, noting the lettering on each door.  He stopped when he came to the door marked ‘claims’ and let himself in.  Almost everyone turned to see who was coming in; that is, everyone except one guy sitting with his back to the door.  Even from behind, John could see that the man was breathing heavily.  He hid his .38 behind one leg and stepped over to the man, tapping him on the shoulder.

The man turned in his seat, took another deep breath and just looked up at John.  John noticed the knuckles on the man’s hands were bruised and scraped.  John produced the gun from behind his leg and told the man to stand up.

“And just who are you to give me orders?” the man said and then saw John’s .38 pointing at him.  He stood and said, “Who are you and what are you doing here.”

“Come on, Wayne,” a woman two desks away said.  “He’s got you; give it up.”

John turned to that woman and asked, “So this is Wayne Caulder, I take it.  Has he been here the whole time or did he just come in?”

“He just ran in here a few seconds before you showed up,” the woman said.  “Look at him; he’s sweatin’ like a pig.”

“Let’s go,” John said, gesturing with his gun at the door.  On his way out of the office, Joyce caught John’s eye and nodded softly.  Wayne Caulder went out of the office ahead of John and quickly slammed the door on John’s gun hand, causing him to drop it.  That was all the head start Caulder needed and he ran full out back toward the stairway door.  John picked up his gun and hurried to the stairway.  By the time he got the door open, Caulder was already one floor below him.  “Hold it right there,” John yelled, pointing his gun at Caulder.

Wayne Caulder momentarily lost his concentration and tripped at the top of the second floor landing, tumbling head over heels down one flight of stairs.  He landed in a twisted heap at the bottom.

John took the steps three at a time and caught up to Caulder in just a few seconds.  Caulder was breathing heavily and was bruised from head to toe.  His breathing was quick and shallow and he was bleeding from a gash on his forehead but he’d live.  John looked down at him and said, “Now you know what the janitor is feeling, you scumbag.”  John fished the cell phone from his pocket and called Nick.  “I got him.  When the ambulance attendants get here, tell them they have another customer on the second floor landing in the south stairwell.”

Later that afternoon after Max and Wayne had been taken to the hospital, Nick, John and Abby all met back at their office to compare notes.  They’d been talking for just a few minutes when the phone on Nick’s desk rang.  It was Lieutenant Stone.

“Nick,” Stone began.  “I glad I caught you in.  I think I have some good news for you.”

“Great,” Nick said.  “We could use a little good news right about now.  What do you have for me?”

“Well, we rolled Wayne Caulder’s prints at the hospital and wouldn’t you know it; one of them matched our cold case from twenty years ago.  Back then it was just a single partial print, but there’s enough of a match to reopen the case.  It’s not enough for a definite match but enough for us to take this to the next step.  We took a sample of Caulder’s DNA and put a rush on it.  We still have a box full of evidence from twenty years ago on that cold case I was looking into after you left.  If there’s a match, I’ll know later today.  I just figured you’d want to know.”

“Thanks, Steve,” Nick said and hung up.  He turned to John and told him what Steve had said.  “They couldn’t have been very far advanced in the field of DNA back when Joyce’s mother was killed, but luckily they kept every scrap of evidence from the murder scene.  If there’s a match, they’ll find it.”

It wasn’t until a few minutes before John would close the office for the day when the call came.  It was Steve Stone again with good news.  “We got him, a hundred percent; no doubt about it.  Wayne Caulder is going back to prison as soon as the doctors release him from the hospital.”

“That’s great news, Steve,” Nick said.  “I’m sure our client will be glad to hear it.  Now she can stop looking over her shoulder and get on with the rest of her life.  I can’t wait to tell her.  Thanks again, Steve.”  He conveyed the good news to John, who promptly called Joyce Holden with the news.

Now Helen Brickner could at last rest in peace.

The Perfect Alibi

The initial call came in just before six p.m. on a Friday night.  Sergeant Mike Becker and his partner, Officer Dale Ballard were assigned the call.  Their patrol car was just three blocks away and made it to the house in the fifty-eight hundred block of LaMirada just a minute after the call came on their car radio.  The complaint came from the neighbors that the couple next door was fighting again and it was getting really loud.  They were afraid that the husband was killing his wife.

Sergeant Becker hurried out of his patrol car with his partner following close behind.  Becker banged on the front door with the edge of his clenched fist.  He got no response; just the sounds of a fight continuing.  He banged again, harder this time and the two voices inside got suddenly quiet.

The door opened and a large man wearing what was appropriately called a wife beater tee shirt looked out at the two cops.  “Yeah, what do you two want?”

“Are you Charles Foster?” the sergeant asked.

“What of it,” Foster said.

“We got a complaint about loud noises coming from this address,” Becker explained.  “The caller said they heard what sounded like a fight, so if you’ll just let us in to take a quick look and make sure no one is hurt we’ll be on our way.”

“You’ll be on your way without coming in,” Foster yelled back and was about to close his door again.

Becker pulled his night stick from his belt and stuck it in the door, preventing it from closing all the way.  The door opened again and Foster’s face took on a menacing scowl.  “I told you two cops to beat it.”

Becker pushed the door all the way open and quickly stepped between Foster and his wife while Office Ballard hurried over to where the wife stood with one hand covering her left eye.  “Did he do this to you, ma’am?” the cop asked.

“You keep your mouth shut, you hear?” Foster said, glaring at his wife.

Becker grabbed Foster by the arm, spinning him around and pulling out his cuffs in one fluid motion.  Charles Foster was cuffed before he could say another word to his wife.  Becker led him out onto the porch, away from his wife, while Officer Ballard sat the wife down to talk to her.  After ten minutes apart, Becker brought Foster back inside without the cuffs.  He immediately stepped over to his wife, Mildred, tears running down his face and a sugar sweet voice begging for her forgiveness.

Becker and Ballard headed for the door but turned back to Foster one more time warning him that if they had to come back again, that they’d be taking him to jail.

“You won’t have any more trouble from me,” Foster assured the two cops before they left.

Back in their patrol car, Sergeant Becker turned to his partner and said, “Sometimes all it takes is to separate them, let them both cool down and then just talk some sense into the two of them.  I don’t think we’ll have any further problem with that guy.”  They called in their location and told the dispatcher that they were back on patrol and available.

They had only been back on patrol for twelve minutes when the dispatcher alerted them to another domestic disturbance call at the same address that they’d just been to thirty minutes earlier.  “Copy that, dispatch,” Becker said.  “Show us at that address; ETA two minutes.”  He returned the mic to the clip and sped back to the house they knew better than they wanted to.  Back on the same porch again, Becker pounded harder on the door than he had during his first visit here.

“Now what do you two nosy cops want?” Charles Foster barked at them.

Becker had lost his patients with this brute and just pushed the door open and walked in.  This time he didn’t bother with any psychology and just cuffed Charles Foster for the second time that night and led him straight out to the back seat of his cruiser.  He returned to the living room to find Officer Ballard taking a close look at Mildred Forster’s face.  Now both eyes were bruised; the left one almost swelled shut.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Foster,” Officer Ballard assured her.  This time he’s going to jail.  He can’t hurt you now.  You just sit there and I’ll call an ambulance to take care of your face.”

Once the EMTs had finished bandaging Mildred Foster’s cuts and bruises, they left after Mrs. Foster argued that she didn’t need to go to the hospital.  Sergeant Becker noted the time in his notebook.  It was six forty-five p.m. when he had arrested Charles Foster.  He’d drive him to the station, fingerprint and book him for assault and toss his sorry ass in a cell to await prosecution.  It was sometime after eight-thirty that same night before Becker and Ballard’s paperwork was completed and they were able to return to their patrol, which still had another five and a half hours to go.

The next few hours were relatively quiet by comparison.  At least they didn’t have to contend with the quarreling Fosters any more that night.  The two cops called in to the station that they’d be taking their supper break and drove to the Gold Cup restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard.  It was pretty quiet there this time of night.  They each ordered a cup of coffee and a sandwich, hoping they could eat their meal in peace.

Sergeant Becker glanced out the picture window and up at the building across the street.  He gestured with his coffee cup and said, “Up there, third floor in the front.  That’s the office of Nick and John Cooper.  They’re private eyes and just sitting here made me think of them.  They often come here for lunch.  Maybe the next time we’re on the day shift, I’ll take you up there and introduce you.  They’ve helped us out on more than one occasion.”

“I’d like that,” Ballard replied and then saw the waitress coming their way with two sandwiches on a tray.  Officer Ballard had taken just one bite from his sandwich and was washing it down with his coffee when the radio on his shoulder squawked.  “One Adam Four, see the man at fifty-eight forty seven LaMirada.  Handle code three.”

“Copy that, dispatch; ETA four minutes.”  Becker looked at his partner and said, “Here we go again.”

“Not so fast there, Sarge,” Officer Ballard replied.  “If you remember, we arrested Charles Foster earlier tonight.  There’s no way he got out already.  Better step on it.”

One Adam Four made it to the address on LaMirada in three minutes and found lights on all over the neighborhood with neighbors all congregating on the sidewalk in front of the Foster residence.  The two cops hurried out of their car and up to the front porch of an address they knew all too well.  The front door was open a crack as Becker and Ballard approached, their guns drawn.  They each took up a position on either side of the front door and called out to Mrs. Foster but got no reaction.  Sergeant Becker eased the front door open with the barrel of his .38 and peered inside.  Lying on the living room floor he could see Mildred Foster lying in a pool of blood.

“Call for backup and an ambulance,” Becker told his partner as he entered the residence.  “And get the crime lab down here, too.”  Mrs. Foster was the only person in the house and with two fresh bullet holes in her chest; she was way beyond any more complaining.  After checking for a pulse, Becker stepped aside, careful not to contaminate the crime scene.  He went back out onto the front porch to confer with his partner.

“They’re on the way, Sarge,” Ballard said.

Becker got on his shoulder mic and called down to the station to verify that Charles Foster was still in custody.  “He’s fast asleep,” the jailer told Becker.  “I just checked on him two minutes ago.”

“Thanks, Roger,” Becker said and looked at his partner.  “Foster’s still locked up.  What kind of a coincidence would it have to be for Mrs. Foster to end up dead tonight of all nights?”

“Maybe the killer caught the commotion earlier tonight and decided to look in on Mrs. Foster,” Ballard suggested.  When his sergeant didn’t respond, he added, “Yeah, it sounded a bit far fetched even as I was saying it, but what else could account for this mess?”

“We’ll let the crime lab sort this one out,” Becker said.  “We have the weekend off and Monday we’ll be back on our patrol on the first shift and a couple of detectives will take over this case.”

The detectives worked on the Foster murder case all weekend and when Monday morning rolled around, Sergeant Becker and Officer Ballard were back on patrol during the welcomed daylight hours.  They started their shift at six a.m. and by the time their lunch break came at ten a.m. both cops found themselves back at the Gold Cup Coffee Shop on Hollywood Boulevard.  They finished their light lunch with fifteen minutes to spare.

Ballard gestured with his coffee cup at his partner and said, “You still planning on introducing me to the Coopers across the street, Sarge?”

Becker checked his watch and said, “No time like the present; let’s go.”  They left the patrol car parked in front of the coffee shop and walked the half block east to the corner of Cahuenga.  They got off on the third floor and walked to the end of the hall to the last door on the right and let themselves in.

Nick looked up at the sound of the office door opening and smiled. When he recognized an old friend.  “Mike,” Nick said cheerfully.  “What a pleasant surprise.  Who’s that you have with you?”

“Nick Cooper, this is my new partner, Dale Ballard.  Officer Ballard just joined the department two weeks ago.”

Now Nick was on his feet, as were his son, John and John’s fiancé and partner, Abby Ross.  They all came over to shake the officer’s hand and give him a warm welcome.  Nick grabbed Ballard’s hand and pumped it.  “Is Mike showing you the ropes?”

Ballard blushed ever so slightly and nodded.  “This job is a lot more exciting than I could have imagined.  Just last Friday we…”

Becker held up one hand to silence the rookie.  “Officer Ballard, I’m sure these folks have enough on their plates without hearing about our experiences.”

“Not at all,” John jumped in.  “We’re all good listeners, so go on; tell us what happened.”

Ballard looked at Becker, who softly nodded.  “We were called to a residence On LaMirada where a woman was murdered.”

Becker joined in.  “We’d been there twice earlier that night and hauled the husband in for domestic abuse and the third call we took to that same address ended up being a murder.  That poor woman, who had been used as her husband’s personal punching bag, ended up dead; shot twice in the chest.”

“Looks like the husband is off the hook,” Abby suggested.

Becker nodded.  “Lucky for him we threw his sorry ass in jail or he might have been the second victim that night.”  He checked his watch again and said, “Well, we have to get back on the job; lunch time is over.  I’ll talk to you later, Nick.”

Nick shook both cops’ hands again.  “Nice to have met you, Dale.”

“You, too, Mr. Cooper.  Maybe I’ll see you all again.”  He and Becker took their leave and walked back to their black and white patrol car.  They were back on the streets of Hollywood in another minute.  As they turned the corner at Cahuenga, Ballard remarked, “They seem like nice people, Sarge.  What’s the story with the woman?”

“They originally hired her as a secretary and she eventually worked her way up to the third investigator.  She and John, the younger partner actually own the business.  They’re getting married later this year.  And Nick, well, he actually retired last month but found out he didn’t like it and came back on an as-needed basis.”

After a weekend in jail, Charles Foster got bail and was released in time to attend his wife’s funeral.  His demeanor seemed to have changed for the better and he no longer exhibited his explosive, abusive side to anyone.  The detectives assigned to his wife’s murder were getting nowhere and were totally frustrated by their lack of any solid leads.  Charles Foster returned to his house, after the crime scene people had finished processing it and cleaning up the bloody mess.  He left the house just once on the following Wednesday.

Foster drove to the heart of downtown Los Angeles, parked on the street and walked into one of the area pool halls.  One table was vacant and he stepped over to it, racking the balls and breaking them, sinking one solid and one stripe.  Another man stepped up to Foster and asked if he’d like to play a friendly game of pool.  Foster agreed and let the other man break.  They took turns sinking ball after ball.  Foster looked around the room and determined that he and his new pool partner were out of earshot of any of the other patrons.

“Well, Joey, did you have any problems?” Foster asked.

Joey also looked around before he whispered back, “Not a one.  I knocked on your door and your old lady let me in.  Can you imagine that?  Just ‘cause I was wearing a suit and had shaved that day, she lets me in, thinking I must be with the cops.”

“And where do you suppose she got such an idea?” Foster asked.

Joey reached into his hip pocket and produced his wallet.  He opened it and showed Foster the cheap badge he’d bought at the dime store earlier that week.  “I flashed it so quick; she didn’t get much of a chance to take a close look at it.  She believed I was a real cop.”

“Good job,” Foster said and turned his back toward the bar; shielding the act of retrieving the five hundred dollars he had promised to Joey for killing his wife after he’d been thrown in jail.

Joey examined the bundle and furrowed his brow.  “We agreed on a grand,” he complained.

“I have the other five hundred stashed away.  You’ll have to come with me to get it.  I couldn’t take a chance earlier, but the coast is clear now.”

“All right,” Joey said.  “I need that money.”

“And you’ll get it within the hour,” Foster promised.  “That was the perfect alibi.”

“Where’d you ever come up with it?”  Joey said, almost choked with admiration for his fellow criminal.

“Believe it or not,” Foster began, “I saw it on some TV show about a month ago and spent that last few weeks working out the details so it would never lead back to me.”

Joey tucked the first five hundred dollars into his pants pocket, sunk the last two balls, laid his cue on the table and said, “Can we get the rest of the money now?”

“Sure,” Foster said, laying his cue next to Joey’s.  “My car is out at the curb.”  He walked with Joey out of the pool hall and down the block to his car.  The two men drove away, back toward another part of this same neighborhood.  Foster stopped in front of an empty building and got out.  When he saw the concerned look on Joey’s face, Foster said, “When you think of it, this is the perfect hiding place for money that I wouldn’t want taken from me by some thugs.  Come on; I’ll show you where it is and then drop you wherever you want to go.”

The two men walked around the side of the building and let themselves in through a broken window in the alley.  Foster led Joey down a dark hall and into what used to be a bathroom.  He pointed to the far sink on the east wall and said, “It’s in a plastic bag taped under that sink.  Pretty clever, eh?”

Joey didn’t answer but just hurried to the sink and got down on his knees to look under it.  When he looked up again he saw Charles Foster screwing a silencer onto the end of his .32 caliber handgun and his face fell apart.  He held up both palms toward Foster and begged.  “No, Chuck, don’t.”  He reached into his pocket and threw the first five hundred dollars toward Foster.  “Here’, take it, I don’t want it.”

“But I do,” Foster said and put two carefully grouped shots into Joey’s forehead.  He unscrewed the silencer, dropped it back into his pocket and stuck the revolver into his waistband.  He left the abandoned building the same way he’d come in.  As he stuck one leg out through the opening, two bright beams hit him in the eyes and he couldn’t see who was on the other side of the lights.

  “Freeze right there, Foster,” an authoritative voice said.  “Keep those hands where I can see them.”  It was the voice of one of the detectives assigned to the Mildred Foster murder case.  His name was Adam Kennedy.  Kennedy helped Foster the rest of the way out of the broken window while his partner, Detective Tom Drake held Foster at bay.  When Foster was all the way out and standing in the alley, Kennedy ran his hands up and down Foster’s body and felt the hard mass in his waistband.  He retrieved the .32 caliber revolver and then found the silencer in another of Foster’s pockets.

“Not too bright, are you? Detective Drake taunted.  “You know, about a month ago I was watching and old black and white movie on TV and what do you suppose the crook did in that one?  I’ll tell you; he staged a fight with his wife and blackened one eye, certain that the cops would haul him off to jail.  Only before he did that, he made a deal with a second guy to kill his wife, giving him the perfect alibi.  That old movie rattled around in my head for a few weeks.  It was so clever, I couldn’t shake it.  So when Detective Kennedy and I got assigned to this case, I thought about that old movie and had to wonder if you might have pulled that same trick with your wife.  Looks like you did, because we’ve had you under surveillance since they bailed you out of jail.  I’d say this was one time that being a couch potato paid off for me.  Wouldn’t you agree?  Come on; let’s go.”

Backup arrived at the scene and they had no trouble finding Joey’s body in the bathroom.  Charles Foster would never again have to concern himself with a nagging wife ever again; not with a life sentence awaiting him.  This time around, he might assume the role of some other big prisoner’s wife and he’d find out first hand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the sort of grief he had dished out to his wife.

Time would tell.

Who the Hell Are You

“Got any plans for tonight, Dad?” John Cooper asked as he was locking up their private investigations office for the night.

Nick Cooper walked with his son toward the elevator.  “Oh, I don’t know; maybe I’ll bring home a pizza and settle in with a good movie.  I haven’t planned that far ahead yet.  What about you and Abby?”

Abby was John’s fiancé and partner at the investigations firm.  “We’re going to see a movie tonight.  It’s one of those who done it flicks where you know from the outset who done it.  The rest of the movies is about the detective proving who done it.”

“Sounds like an episode of Columbo,” Nick replied.  “What’s this one called?”

“Columbo,” John said.  “Actually it’s based on that old TV show from fifty years ago.  I didn’t get to see too many of those episodes even when they reran it, so this should prove interesting.”

“Who did they get to play Columbo?” Nick asked.

“You know, it hadn’t even occurred to me to find out.  I’m sure whoever they got will do a good job with the role.  I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”  He and Nick parted ways in the Cahuenga Building parking lot and drove is two different directions.  John and Abby lived twelve blocks away in John’s house while Nick still lived in the house he had shared with his late wife, Shelley, in Glendale.

On his way back home, Nick thought about what he’d told his son regarding a pizza and a movie on TV and decided at the last minute to deviate from his original plan.  Instead he stopped at one of the neighborhood pool halls and engaged himself in a friendly game of billiards with whomever wanted to take him on for a dollar.  He had played three games by himself before the first person approached him and asked if Nick wanted to play him.  Nick agreed and played the next three games with his new found partner.  It was after Nick had taken three dollars from the man that his pool buddy decided he’d had enough and called it a night.

Nick was tired of it himself and left the billiard parlor.  As he was driving home, he looked up and saw the Hollywood sign in the distance up on the mountain side and decided then and there to pay a visit to the very spot where he had released Shelley’s ashes directly below the sign.  It took him half an hour to drive up as far as he could, park his car and walk the rest of the way to the base of the sixty foot iconic sign.  He spent just fifteen minutes meditating and talking to his late wife, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him.  Still, he left feeling refreshed and happier than when he’d first arrived.  Now maybe it was time to pick up that pizza and scour the TV channels for something worthwhile to watch.

It was nearly seven-thirty by the time Nick pulled into his driveway and carried the plastic-wrapped pizza through the kitchen door.  He set the pizza on the counter, slipped out of his jacket and shoulder holster and retrieved the half gallon container of chocolate milk from the refrigerator.  He turned on the oven and set the timer before carrying his glass of chocolate milk toward the living room.  He had taken just three steps when he stopped, set his glass on the counter and pulled the .38 from his shoulder holster on the coat hook.  He light-footed it into the living room and got a closer look at the back of some stranger’s head as it reclined in Nick’s favorite chair.

Nick led the way with his gun and called out, “All right; who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?  How did you get in here?”  He got no answer and repeated his question.  Still no reply.  Nick cautiously stepped around the chair to see who it was and was shocked to find a total stranger with one bullet hole placed squarely between his eyes.  He would never answer any more questions ever again.  He set his .38 on the coffee table and was about to reach for the phone when the front door opened and two uniformed police officers entered; their own weapons trained on Nick.

“Freeze right there,” one of the cops said right after he spotted the revolver on the coffee table.  His partner snatched it up and stuffed it into his waistband.

“I was just about to call you,” Nick tried to explain.

“I said freeze,” the cop repeated and then turned to his partner.  “Keep him covered Al, while I frisk him.”

Officer Albert Boswell kept his revolver trained on Nick while his senior partner, Sergeant Vern Grayson ran his hands up and down Nick’s body.  Finding no other weapons, he relaxed a bit and told Nick to stay put.  “Who’s you pal there,” he asked Nick.

Nick shook his head.  “Never saw him before.  I just got home and was about to settle down with a pizza when I saw the back of this guy’s head sticking up above my chair.  Speaking of pizza, do you mind if I turn off the oven?”

Sergeant Grayson gestured toward his partner, who stepped into the kitchen and turned off the oven.  Nick called out to the cop in the kitchen, “While you’re there, would you mind putting that wrapped pizza in the refrigerator, please?”  Officer Boswell did the favor for their suspect and returned to the living room.

Grayson grabbed the shoulder mic attached to his uniform and called for backup and the coroner, along with the crime lab boys.  When he finished, he turned back toward Nick and read him his rights.  Nick waived the rights and started to tell the cop his side of this fiasco.  “And that’s all there is.  I don’t know this guy or even how he got in here, but one thing is for sure; this ain’t no suicide.”

The sergeant looked at Nick and asked if he’d mind if they searched his house.  Nick told them to go ahead but that it was a waste of time.  Officer Boswell started in the kitchen while Grayson kept an eye on Nick.  “Nothing in the kitchen,” Boswell said.

“Watch him while I search the bedroom,” Grayson told his partner.  Eight minutes later the sergeant emerged from Nick’s bedroom with a .32 caliber revolver dangling from his pencil by the trigger guard.  He raided the end of the barrel to his nose and sniffed.  “It’s been fired recently, Al.”  He turned to Nick and said, “Yours?”

Nick nodded.  “That’s my backup piece.”

“Your backup piece?” Grayson said suspiciously.  “What are you a cop or some kind of hit man?”

“Neither,” Nick replied.  “I’m a private investigator.  I can show you my card if you’ll let me reach into my wallet pocket.”

“Never mind; I’ll get it,” Grayson replied and plucked the wallet out of Nick’s hip pocket.  He opened it to Nick’s badge and I.D.  “Cooper,” he said.  “Nicolas; is that you?”

“Duh,” Nick blurted out before he had time to chose a better response.

“Don’t get smart with me; just answer the question.”

“Sorry,” Nick said.  “Bad habit of mine I picked up from dealing with my smart-ass son every day at work.  Yes, that’s me and I have an office on the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga.  I’m good friends with Captain Tim Murphy and Lieutenant Steve Stone over at the Twelfth Precinct.  You can check it out.”

“Don’t worry, we will,” Grayson said, handing Nick back his wallet.  “Have a seat.”  The sergeant patted the victim down and found no identification on the body.  Before he could say anything further, two vehicles pulled to a stop in front of Nick’s house.  Two more uniformed officers emerged from the first car and the coroner, Dr. Adam Kline got out of the other one.  They all walked into Nick’s house and walked directly over to Sergeant Grayson.

Dr. Kline looked at the corpse in the overstuffed chair and then noticed Nick sitting on the sofa.  “Nick,” he said with a puzzled look.  “What are you doing here?”

“Hey Doc,” Nick replied.  “I live here and wouldn’t you know the first time to come over there has to be a stiff occupying the chair that I was going to offer you.”

Sergeant Grayson turned to the coroner.  “You two know each other?”

“Quite well,” Dr. Kline replied.  “I’ve known the Cooper family for many years.  Don’t tell me that Nick here is a suspect.”

“I won’t know for sure until I have this gun run through ballistics.”  Grayson held up the .32 caliber revolver.  Until then, Mr. Cooper will have to come with me back to the station.”

A moment later two more men walked through Nick’s front door.  “What have we got here?” One of the men asked Grayson.

Sergeant Grayson held out the dangling .32 revolver and waited for the tech to open an evidence bag.  The tech wrote the date and time on the bag’s label and slipped it into his pocket.  Meanwhile, Dr. Kline took a closer look at the victim and announced, “Looks to be a .32 caliber hole but I can tell you for sure once I get this guy on my table.

The chaos continued in Nick’s house for another forty-five minutes until Sergeant Grayson and Officer Boswell finally escorted Nick back to their patrol car and escorted him downtown to be booked and printed.  The .32 revolver had been sent up to the crime lab and tested for a match.  The result was not something Nick expected.  Jack McMasters returned from the crime lab just fifteen minutes after Nick had been booked and fingerprinted.  He nodded at the sergeant.  “It’s a perfect match all right.  This is the murder weapon.”

“No way,” Nick complained.  “Whoever brought that guy into my house has to be the same guy who found my backup piece and used it on the victim.”  When Grayson and McMasters didn’t respond, Nick said to the cop, “Can I at least have my one phone call?”

“Over here,” the sergeant told Nick and turned the desk phone around to face Nick.

Nick dialed John’s home phone and listened while it rang, eight, nine, ten times.  He hung up and said, “That’s right; John and Abby went to the movies tonight.  Can I try someone else?”

Grayson gestured with his chin.  “Go ahead.”

Nick reached for his wallet and fished out a business card from his lawyer.  The office would surely be closed by now, but Henry Bolton’s cell phone was also on the card and Nick wasted no time getting connected.

“Hello,” the voice said.

“Henry, it’s Nick Cooper.  Sorry to bother you after business hours but I’m in trouble and I need your help.  The cops are holding me at the Twelfth Precinct.  Can you come right down?”

“Who is this,” the voice on the other end said.

“It’s Nick Cooper, who is this?”

“Idiot,” was all the voice on the other end said before the call was disconnected.

Nick gave the sergeant a sheepish look but didn’t have to say anything, but just gave Nick a sly grin.  He just gestured with his chin.  “Go ahead, try again.”

Nick got his attorney this time and explained his predicament.  This time Attorney Henry Bolton assured Nick that’d be right there and not to say anything further until he arrived.  Nick promised that he wouldn’t, thanked the lawyer and disconnected the call.  He let out a long sigh, looked at the cop and said, “Now we wait until my lawyer gets here.”

“Meanwhile, you’d better come with me,” Grayson said and led Nick to a holding cell.  There were already two other prisoners in the holding cell when Nick was led in.  The jailer walked back to his desk and Nick surveyed the cell, looking for a place to sit and keep to himself.  The prisoner sitting on a metal bench watching television looked to be six feet four at least and weighed in at two hundred fifty pounds, bushy black beard and all.  He reminded Nick of Bluto from those old Popeye cartoons.  The other prisoner probably weighed no more than a hundred twenty soaking wet and might have had trouble getting onto some of the rides at Disneyland, except for maybe the tea cups or the flying Dumbo rides.

Nick took a seat at the bullpen table and tried to feign interest in what the little guy was watching on TV.  He had no sooner sat down than the little guy turned and stared at him with as mean a face as he could muster.  Nick found it hard to take this little squirt serious.

“Who the hell are you?” the squirt asked.

“The name’s Nick Coop…”

“Beat it, Nick,” the squirt said.  “Go find somewhere else to sit before I…”  Across the room Nick could see Bluto crossing both hands in front of him, trying to warn Nick off.  Nick looked back at the squirt and just stood, leaving him to his TV show and going over to sit with Bluto, who slid over on the bench to make room for Nick.

Bluto offered his hand and said, “Darrel Watson.  What are you in for?”

Nick accepted Darrel’s hand and pumped it twice.  “Nick Cooper and they brought me in for suspicion of murder.”

Darrel withdrew his hand and stood now, showing Nick a palm.  “I don’t want any trouble.”  He backed away from Nick with a worried look on his face.

Nick had to smile.  “No, you don’t understand; I didn’t kill anyone.  They just found some dead guy in my house who was shot with my gun, but I swear I didn’t do it, honest.”

Darrel sighed but still wouldn’t sit down again next to Nick.  Nick gestured toward the squirt.  “What’s he in for?”

Darrel kept his voice down but replied, “That’s Bruce Stiller; he really did kill someone—his entire family, more specifically.”

“That little…”?

“Shhh,” Darrel warned.  “Don’t let him hear you; he’s crazy.”

Stiller turned quickly and stared at Darrel.  He stood and stepped over to where Darrel stood shaking.  “What did you say?”

Darrel had to think fast.  “I said, he’s lazy,” pointing at Nick.

“Just watch it, you hear me?”

Darrel nodded quickly.  “Sure thing, Bruce.”

Bruce returned to his TV show and Darrel quickly sat down next to Nick, who couldn’t digest this recent turn of events.  “I don’t get it,” Nick said.  “You could squash him like a bug and you’re afraid of him; why?”

“I told you, he killed his entire family,” Darrel said in a low whisper.  “Well, he did it by breaking all of their necks with his bare hands.  He might look like a squirt, but he’s deadlier than a black widow spider, so I’d keep my distance if I were you.”

“I will,” Nick said.  “Thanks for the advice.  You never did say what you were in here for?”

Darrel looked embarrassed but finally said, “Public urination.  Can you believe it?  I had to go so bad that I just found a brick building and let ‘er fly.  Wouldn’t you know it, a cop happened to see me and hauled me in and here I am.  I won’t be able to get out until the judge come in tomorrow morning.  I’ll probably just have to pay a fine, but it’s bad enough I have to spend the night with that little maniac.  What about you?”

“My lawyer’s on his way down,” Nick explained.  “I should be out of here in an hour or less.  Good luck with the judge tomorrow.”

“Cooper,” the jailer called out through the bars.  “Your lawyer’s here; let’s go.”

Nick looked at Darrel.  “See you around.”  He hurried out of the cell and over to where his lawyer stood with a writ to get him out.  The two of them left the police station and parted ways after Attorney Bolton dropped Nick off at his house.

“Stop by my office tomorrow,” Bolton told Nick.  “We’ll get this all worked out, I promise.”

“Thanks Henry,” Nick said and let himself back into his house.  He hung up his jacket, locked the kitchen door and settled down on his sofa.  He didn’t want to sit in the overstuffed chair where the corpse had last sat.  He reached over and picked up the phone off his end table and called John.

“Yeah, who is it?” John said in a sleep voice.  “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Sorry, John; it’s Dad.  I really need to talk to you right now.”

John’s demeanor changed instantly.  “Dad, what is it; you sound nervous.”

“I just got released from jail,” Nick said.  “I was…”

“Jail?” John blurted out.  “What were you doing in jail?  What were you charged with?”

“Suspicion of murder,” Nick said.

“Murder?” John was almost yelling now.

“Who are you talking to, John?” Abby said from her side of the bed.

“It’s Dad,” John said, lowering voice.  “Go back to sleep.”

Abby just sighed, grumbled and pulled the covers up, turning away from John.

“Dad, did you want me to come over there?”

“Not tonight; it can wait until tomorrow when I see you in the office.”

“You gonna be all right tonight?”

“Sure,” Nick assured his son.  “Sorry I woke you up.  Tell Abby I’m sorry, too.”  He hung up and just sat there, wondering if he’d be able to get to sleep after a night like he’d had.  He needn’t have worried.  He was fast asleep two minutes after his head hit the pillow and woke up relatively refreshed.  He took a shower and ate a light breakfast before driving back to the Cooper office.

Abby and John were already there, waiting for Nick to fill them in with the details.  “Dad,” John said as soon as Nick walked in.  “What was that all about last night?”

Nick held up one hand and said, “Can you at least let me hang up my jacket?”  Nick hung his jacket on the hook and invited John and Abby to sit on the leather sofa beneath the south window.  For the next fifteen minutes he described everything he had gone through the night before, ending with his two cellmates.

“Who was the dead guy?” Abby asked.

“He didn’t have any identification on him last night,” Nick said.  “I’m sure by now they rolled his prints and at least have a name for him.  What I want to know is why was he killed in my house and why did someone want him dead in the first place?”

“And the cops are sure it was your backup piece that killed the guy?” John asked.

“Ballistics don’t lie,” Nick said.  “My best guess is that someone found an easy way into my house, sat the victim down in my chair and let him have one in the forehead with my gun; but why?”  It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Dad,” John began.  “The first thing we need to do is find out the guy’s identity.  Maybe the name will spark something in your memory and you might see some sort of connection.  Why don’t you give Lieutenant Stone a call and see if they I.D.’d him yet.”

“I’ll give him a few minutes yet,” Nick said.  “Let him get settled in first.  Besides, I haven’t read the morning paper yet.  I need time to unwind myself.”  Nick got up off the sofa and picked up the paper on his desk, settling into his own chair.  John and Abby returned to their own desks and resumed what they’d been doing when Nick had walked in.

Nick folded the front page back and snapped it into place, folding it over in the middle.  He’d been reading for just a minute or less when he sat up straight and said, “What the hell?”

John looked up sharply.  “What is it Dad?”

“Listen to this,” Nick said, and began reading the article that had caught his attention.  “Police this morning discovered the body of Darrel Watson, 33, from Hollywood in his jail cell when they brought two prisoners their breakfast.  Watson had had his neck broken.  The other prisoner, Bruce Stiller, 21, also from Hollywood was immediately removed from the cell and restrained in another part of the station.  Stiller was mumbling something about his cellmate’s smart mouth when the jailer found them the next morning.”

John shrugged and spread his hands.  “I never heard of either of them.  Why are you bringing this to our attention?”

Nick laid the paper down and said, “Those were the two guys I was telling you about when I was in that same cell earlier.  I’m just glad my lawyer didn’t tell me he’d get me out the next morning or I’d be laying there next to Bluto.”

“Who?” Abby said, thoroughly confused by now.

“I mean Darrel,” Nick clarified.  “You’d never know it to look at that little squirt, but he was in for killing his whole family.  He broke all their necks.  I guess it’s true what they say about not judging a book by its cover.  Anyway, that’s all there is to tell for now.  I think maybe I’ll give Lieutenant Stone that call now.”  Nick was on the phone with Steve Stone for just a couple of minutes when he thanked him and hung up again.

“What did he say?” John asked.  “Were they able to put a name to your victim?”

Nick frowned.  “He’s not my victim and yes, they know who he is.  It’s some guy named Cory Yates.  Name mean anything to either of you?”

“Never heard of him,” John said.

“Me, either,” Abby chimed in.

“Cory, Cory,” John said, trying to remember where he’d heard that name before.  He held up one index finger and said, “This may not mean anything and the last name is different, but do you remember that client you had about two years ago; a man named Cory Williams?”  When Nick showed no signs of recognition, John clarified his statement with, “Cory Williams was the guy who hired us to find some missing cousin of his that turned out not to be a cousin at all.”

Nick snapped his fingers and pointed at John.  “I remember now.  That Cory was looking for some guy who owed him money and gave us that phony story so we’d find the guy for him.  But what does that have to do with Cory Yates?”

“It may just be a hunch,” John admitted, “But I’d like you to call Steve back and see if the victim from your house has a middle name on his record.  It’s worth a shot, if for no other reason than to prove or disprove something I’ve been thinking.”

“All right,” Nick agreed and dialed Lieutenant Stone’s number again.

“Stone.”

“Steve, it’s Nick again.  Would you do me one more favor and tell me if Cory Yates has a middle name in his record?”

“Hang on,” Stone said and put Nick on hold.  He came back on a few seconds later and said, “William; is that all you needed?”

“Yes, thanks, Steve.  I’ll get back to you if this hunch plays out.”

Nick nodded at his son and said, “Good catch there, John.  Cory Yates middle name is William; now what?”

John stepped over to the filing cabinet, pulled out the file for Cory Williams and opened it to the contract.  Two years ago Cory Williams had paid Cooper Investigations six hundred dollars to find a man named Benjamin Hirschel, who owed Williams more than eighteen thousand dollars but had skipped out on him.  Nick and John had worked together on that case and managed to find Hirschel in two days.  Williams got his money and Hirschel got a fat lip and two black eyes once Williams got a hold of him.

Nick leaned over and looked into the file.  He found the original contract and pulled it out by one corner, laying it out on his desk.  He looked at Abby and said, “Would you give me a new file from the cabinet, but use a tissue when you take it out so there won’t be any fingerprints on it?”

Abby did as she was asked and Nick plucked a tissue of his own from the box and picked up the Williams contract, laying it in the new folder and picking the folder up with the same tissue.  He thanked Abby and asked her to keep an eye on things while he and John took the Williams contract to the crime lab.  On their way to the crime lab on the second floor of the Twelfth Precinct, Nick and John stopped by Lieutenant Stone’s office and told them what they suspected.

“Hang on; I’m coming with you,” Stone said, first stopping to pick up the fingerprint card they’d made from the victim’s prints.  He gave the card and the contract to Phil Ryerson in the crime lab and asked him to compare the prints.  They matched perfectly.  “Connect the dots for me, Nick.  What does this all mean?”

“It means that you’re probably looking for a man named Benjamin Herschel,” Nick explained.  “Your stiff, Cory Yates, who was calling himself Cory Williams when he hired us, was after Herschel to collect the eighteen thousand dollars Herschel owed him.  John and I managed to find Herschel in just a couple of days and turned that information over to Williams, who caught up to Herschel and exacted his pound of flesh once he collected his money.  Something tells me that Hershel was either connected or held a two year grudge against Williams and us for finding him when he thought he was in the clear.”

“Makes sense,” Stone said.  “Herschel catches up with Yates, or Williams if you prefer, somehow gets him over to your house and kills him with your .32 revolver, getting revenge on both of you at the same time.  I’ll give the guy P for persistence anyway.  I’ll get out an all points on Herschel and see what he has to say about all this.  Thanks Nick.”

“Don’t thank me,” Nick corrected.  “It was John who put this all together.  Would you let us know how this thing turns out?”

“You’ll be the first to know and thanks again,” Stone said.

Nick and John hurried back to their office to share the news with Abby.  They had to wait another three days before Stone had any good news for them.  Stone’s men found Benjamin Herschel holed up in a fleabag hotel downtown.  Herschel wasn’t going to be taken easily and decided he’d rather go out in a blaze of glory than cuffed to patrol car screen.  It may not have been a glorious exit, but it certainly was one with a blaze; a blaze of gunfire from six police weapons.  The taxpayers had been spared the cost of an expensive trial as well as the expense of housing and feeding Benjamin Herschel for the next seventy-five years at San Quentin.

Sometimes things just work out the way they’re supposed to.

Pack Your Trunk

Abby Ross smiled and turned to her fiancé, John Cooper.  “I’ve been looking forward to this vacation for two months now.  I can’t believe we’re really going this time.”

“Nothing’s going to stop us now,” John replied.  “It was a shame last time when we got that case that lasted longer than we thought.  Luckily the resort didn’t charge us for the missed reservation.  They let us carry over our deposit to this trip.”

“And thanks to Nick, the office will be covered while we’re gone,” Abby said.  “We’ll have to remember to bring him a nice gift when we return.  What do you suppose he’d like?”

“Beats me, but we have the whole week to think about it.”  John continued packing his suitcase, making sure he remembered to bring his swim fins and mask.

“Don’t forget to pack your trunks,” Abby reminded him.  “If I remember correctly that’s a warm lake for swimming.  I went there with my parents years ago and it was wonderful.”

“Speaking of trunks,” John replied.  “I thought you were going to pack your trunk this time.  Remember; all the stuff you were planning to bring last time we planned one of these outings wouldn’t fit in three suitcases.  Why is it women always have to bring so many changes of clothes whenever they go somewhere?”

Abby didn’t answer that question but instead snapped her fingers and pointed at John.  “Thanks for reminding me.  My trunk is still at my parents’ house.  I’ll have to go and get it right now or we’ll never get away on time.  It’ll only take me half an hour to get there and bring it back.  “I only have one suitcase so far,” Abby protested.  I’ll took it out to my car earlier.  I already had the hatch opened with my remote.  You just keep packing; I won’t be gone long.”  She kissed John on his cheek and slipped into her jacket, making sure she had her car keys in the pocket.  She left through the kitchen door and slid behind the wheel of her Toyota SUV.  She checked the rear view mirror before backing out of the driveway and noticed that the hatch was closed but she hadn’t remember closing it.  She shook it off and headed toward her parents’ house.

She had only driven a dozen blocks or so before she noticed the swirling red light in her rear view mirror.  She slowed down and pulled over enough to let the vehicle pass, but they stayed right behind her instead.  Abby pulled to the curb and killed her engine, rolling her window down while she waited for the cop to approach.

A moment later two uniformed cops emerged from the black and white patrol car, each approaching Abby’s car from either side.  The cop who walked up to her front window looked down at the woman and said, “Good evening, ma’am.  License and registration, please.”

As Abby fished through her purse for her license, she asked why she was being stopped.  “I don’t think I was speeding, Officer.”  She handed the cop her license and then checked the glove box for her registration.  She found that and handed it out the window and waited as the cop looked over the two documents and handed them back.

“The reason I stopped you,” the cop began, “was that your right rear taillight is out and the lens is busted.  Did someone bump into your car recently?”

“Busted?” Abby said, surprised.  “It was all right this morning when I drove to work.  Can I get out and take a look at it?”  The cop nodded and walked her to the rear of her car.  Abby looked at the right rear light and found that it was indeed broken and that the bulb was out.  “Now who in the hell did that?”

The cop turned to Abby and said, “Would you open the tailgate, please.  Maybe the bulb is still good but just loose.  And there’s enough of the red plastic still on there for you to at least make it back home again, but you’ll have to get it replaced within three days.”

“Hang on,” Abby said and returned to the front to pull her keys out of the ignition.  She stepped back to where the cops both waited and turned her key in the lock.  She lifted the tailgate slightly and jumped back when the body rolled out onto the street.  It was a man with a bullet hole over his heart and his face sported a pasty white complexion with bluish lips.

The cop quickly pulled the handcuffs off his belt and slapped one on Abby’s right write before spin her around to attach the other half to left wrist.  “You’ll have to come with us,” the first cop said and then turned to his partner.  “Call in for an ambulance and the coroner.”

“Right, Sarge,” the officer said.

Abby was transported downtown to the Twelfth Precinct and booked in at the desk.  They rolled her fingerprints and made out the paperwork with her information.  “Do I get my call now?” she asked.

Without answering, the cop turned the desk phone toward Abby and said, “Just dial nine to get an outside line.”

“John,” Abby said when he picked up right away.

“Abby, what’s taking you so long?  We have to be on the road by seven if we want to get there on time.  What happened; couldn’t you find your trunk?”

“John, don’t talk; just listen.  “I’m at the Twelfth Precinct.  I’ve been arrested.”

“I told you that someday that lead foot of yours was gonna get you in trouble.  Maybe next time you’ll…”

“John,” Abby said in a much louder tone this time.  “I was arrested because one of my taillights was out and when the cop opened my tailgate, some dead guy rolled out at our feet.”

“What?” John said, not sure he heard her correctly.  “Sit tight; I’m going to call Dad and have him get a hold of our lawyer.  I can tell him to bring him along to the cop shop.  I’ll be right there.  Don’t say a word until the lawyer gets there, understand?”

“Okay, but hurry, will you?  I don’t like it here.”  She turned to look at the cop who had brought her in.  “No offense.”

“None taken,” the cop replied and led Abby to one of the empty cells.

She sat there by herself for nearly thirty minutes before John showed up by himself.  “Dad’s on his way with our lawyer,” John said through the bars.  “How did a dead man end up in your trunk?”

“I don’t know,” Abby said, her voice quivering.  “I was just as surprised as the cops when he rolled out at my feet.  Someone apparently shot this guy somewhere else and dumped him in the back of my car.  There was almost no blood in the car.”

A moment later John’s father Nick Cooper showed up with Attorney Henry Bolton at his side.  The two men stepped up to the cell and looked in at Abby.  Nick looked at Abby and said, “This is Henry Bolton, my lawyer.  You can tell him anything.  He’s going to get you bailed out of here, but it won’t be until court convenes tomorrow morning.”

“You mean I have to spend the night here?” Abby said, obviously shaken.

“It’s just for one night,” Bolton said.  “Now tell me everything that happened and don’t leave anything out.”

Abby started her story with getting into her car to visit her parents and retrieve her trunk and ending with being booked and fingerprinted and led to this cell.

John spoke up now.  “Your taillights were both working fine when I followed you home last night.”

“That’s the same thing I told that cop earlier,” Abby replied.  “Someone must have run into the back of my car between then and now.”

Nick pointed a finger at Abby.  “Or someone stuffed that dead guy in the back of your car and purposely broke the red lens while your can was still parked in your driveway.  If that’s the case, there’ll still be traces of red plastic in the driveway, even if whoever did this picked up the bigger pieces.”  He looked at John.  “Henry and I are going to stay here with Abby long enough to get all the information we need.  Why don’t you hurry back to your house and see if you can find any small bits of red plastic before they blow away or get picked up by someone else?”

“I’m on it, Dad,” John said and then looked at Abby.  “Hang in there; Mr. Bolton will do the very best he can for you and I’ll see you in court in the morning.”  He hurried out the door and drove straight home again, parking on the street.  He ran into the house and found his big five-cell flashlight and scoured the area where Abby’s car had been parked.  He didn’t see anything initially but then got down on his hands and knees and shined the beam across the surface of the driveway.  A tiny flash of red caught his eye and he crawled closer to that spot.  That’s when he saw what looked like red sand.  There were probably a dozen or more small pieces of red plastic lying about.  John hurried back into the house for some plastic wrap and duct tape.  He spread the plastic wrap over the area and taped it down.  He’d show this to the cops when they came back after his call to the station.

The same two cops reappeared in front of John’s driveway and met him at the area he had taped off earlier.  “Okay,” the sergeant said, “what have you got to show us?”  Right behind the police car another vehicle from the crime lab showed up and joined the others in John’s driveway.

“Right here,” John said, pointing to the sheet of plastic taped to the surface of his driveway.  “There’s all kinds of fragments of red plastic under that sheet.  Doesn’t that prove that someone purposely smashed Abby’s taillight lens?  And the fact that there was so little blood in the back of her car proves that he wasn’t killed there, but just dumped there afterwards.”

The two crime lab techs each pulled out a wide two inch roll of clear packing tape, pulled up the plastic wrap and pressed the packing tape to that same area, capturing whatever pieces of red plastic were there.  They pulled the tape up and fastened it to a piece of white cardboard.  They labeled it with today’s date, the time and the location and took it with them back to the lab.

“Now do you believe her?” John asked the sergeant.  “She didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“You’re probably right,” the sergeant’s partner agreed, “but we’ll know for sure once the crime lab compares those shards with the rest of Miss Ross’s taillight lens.  Don’t give up hope, Mr. Cooper.”

John walked back into his house and tried Nick on his cell phone.  He got a connection after two rings.  “Dad, the police and the crime lab just left here with more tiny pieces of Abby’s taillight.  Tell her to hang in there; she’ll most likely be in the clear after the lab results come back.”

“Well I got another piece of this puzzle,” Nick said.  “The victim’s prints came back to an Anthony Gallo from Los Angeles.  He has a record as long as your arm and his associates wouldn’t be allowed in any society clubs, that’s for sure.”

“That victim was Tony Gallo?” John asked.  “What do you want to bet his associates had something to do with his ending up in Abby’s trunk?  And as far as I know, Abby has no known ties to organized crime.  Organized crime fighting, yes, but she’s as clean as they come.  I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad.”

Morning came early at the Cooper residence and John was up with the sunrise.  He showered, dressed and headed out of the house minutes later.  He was in too much of a hurry to bother with breakfast.  He’d pick up something along the way.  He swallowed the last morsel of his breakfast sandwich and washed it down with some chocolate milk.  Before he started his car again, he remembered his and Abby’s reservations at the resort and called up there to explain why they hadn’t shown up last night.  When he got finished with the lengthy explanation the clerk assured him that he could use his deposit for another time slot in the future.  John thanked him and drove on toward the courthouse.

Attorney Bolton brought Abby before the judge and was able to arrange for bail while the police sorted out the details of the murder.  John walked her out of the courthouse and drove her home again.  He told her of the red plastic fragments he had discovered near where her car had been parked.  “It sounds like you’ll be in the clear after the crime lab matches those fragments to your taillight lens.  The police told me in no uncertain terms that we were not to get involved in any investigation and to leave that all to them.  I think we’d better listen to them.

Suddenly Abby remembered about their resort reservations.  John assured her that they could still go another week.  “Besides, you’re not supposed to leave town until this whole mess is sorted out.  Just relax; Dad can use the help in the office.”

“Where is Nick?” Abby asked.

“He’s at work right about now,” John replied.

“Let’s go there,” Abby said.  “I’d like to talk to him.”

When they walked into the Cooper Investigations office, Nick was on the phone and held up one index finger while he finished his conversation.  “That’s great news, Steve,” Nick said.  “Abby will be glad to hear it.  Thanks for the call.”

“Abby will be glad to hear what?” Abby said.

“Have a seat,” Nick said to Abby and John.  “That was Lieutenant Stone.  The crime lab matched the plastic shards John found to your taillight lens.  No surprise there, but get this.  The coroner removed the bullet from the victim’s heart and ballistics was able to match it up to a gun from an early crime.  Turns out the guy who killed Tony Gallo and stuck him in Abby’s truck was a man named Tony Gallo, junior; the victim’s son.”

“Have they caught him?” John asked.

“Not yet,” Nick replied.  “But they’re closing in on him as we speak.”

Abby said, “How did they know it was his own son who shot him?”

“The crime lab went over your trunk with a fine tooth comb and found just two drops of sweat next to the body.”  Nick had to smile now.  “They did a rush DNA job and it came pretty close to Tony Gallo’s sample, but not a hundred per cent so they started working out from there and zeroed in on the son and got a perfect match.  I wonder what dear old Dad did to set the kid off?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Abby said.  “I’m off the hook and that’s all that counts as far as I’m concerned.”

John wrapped one arm around her and pulled her close.  He sighed heavily and caught Nick’s gaze.  “Looks like Abby and I will be here this week after all, but next week, we’ll be heading up to the resort for our week’s vacation.  If we don’t do it then, we’ll lose our deposit for sure.”

“Go for it,” Nick said.  “You’ve both earned it.”

Abby sat upright again and said, “And that’ll give me enough time to find myself a new car.  I’m not driving that thing anymore.”

“We can go this afternoon, right after work,” John promised her.

Nick rolled his eyes.  “Go on; get out of here.  I can handle it until you get done car shopping.  Are you going to get another SUV?”

John furrowed his brow.  “Why do you ask?”

Nick had to smile.  “Because if you settle for a regular car with a trunk, the next dead body won’t roll out of it so easy, like it did with Abby’s present SUV.  Besides, next week when you’re getting ready to leave for the resort and you go to pack your trunk, it won’t all fit.  Stick with another SUV or maybe even a van.”

“You just keep thinking, Butch; that’s what you’re good at,” Abby remarked.

John and Nick both laughed.  They got it right away, both of them being movie trivia buffs.  John took Abby by the hand and headed for the door.  “Let’s go, Etta.”

“Oh, Sundance.”

Act Your Age

It had been a long, troubling week for private eye Abby Ross.  She had been arrested for suspicion of murder when a dead man had been found in the back of her car during a routine traffic stop.  She and her fiancé, John Cooper had to forego their vacation at the resort because she was in jail during the time the two of them were supposed to check in.  Luckily, they were able to carry their deposit over to the following week and today was the day they were leaving for the resort.

This time they made sure all their bags had been packed the night before and were waiting at the kitchen door.  The following morning, not wanting to make the same mistake twice, Abby walked all around her new SUV, making sure there were no broken taillight lenses.  That was why she had been stopped by the police the last time and when they opened her hatch, a dead man rolled out onto the street at her feet.  Now everything was ready with no issues.  Abby opened the rear hatch just to verify that another killer had not stashed another body back there.  She and John climbed in and started toward the onramp to the interstate highway.

Abby merged with the northbound traffic, set her cruise control at five miles over the speed limit and only then could she relax.

“So, what do you think of this latest Senate race?” John asked.

“Huh?”

“It should be a close one, according to the polls.”

Abby frowned.  “If you’re just trying to make conversation, you couldn’t have picked a more boring subject.  Personally, I thought I’d heard the height of boring and shallow subjects when I looked at the guide on TV last night and saw a show called Keeping Up With The Kardashians.  Just when you think it couldn’t get much shallower, they manage to drain a little more out of the pool.  Who needs to keep up with that gaggle of chuckleheads anyway?  I thought we were past all that after the cancelled Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.  But no, those popcorn for brains TV schedulers continued on that same vane wither mother, Mama June, From Not To Hot.  Bullshit, they should have called it From Not To No Way-No How. ”

“I know what you mean,” John agreed.  “What is it with all these TV shows that have Wars in their titles?  Storage Wars, Parking Wars, Cupcake Wars, Bartender Wars, Wedding Wars.  And there are a couple dozen others besides these.  What is with viewers’ fascination with anything Wars?  Between that and all those program titles with a plural words that ends with a Z.  You got boyz, toyz, carz, barz and anything else they can use to bastardize the English language.  It’s enough to make me give up television.”

Abby had to laugh at how easily John could get irritated by today’s idiotic society.  “I know exactly what you mean.  The TV show titles that make me cringe are the past tense words that they end with apostrophe-d.  For example, Wrench’d, Crack’d and it’s creeping into our food as well.  You have food like those crackers called Snapp’d.  I read somewhere that there’s a procedure to make guitars play easier and that is called Plek’d.  What happened to just using ‘ed’ at the end.  Has this shallow society gotten so lazy that they need to shorten those words even more?  At least there’s no Snapp’d, Crackle’d and Pop’d coming out of the Rice Krispies people.”

“You know what?” John interrupted.  “I think we’d better find a more positive subject before we ruin our vacation; agreed?”

“Good idea,” Abby agreed.  “What did you want to talk about?”

“Hey, here’s any interesting topic; you just passed our exit.”  John tried unsuccessfully not to laugh.

“That’s just great; I miss’d the turnoff.  And that was spelled M-I-S-S apostrophe D.”  Abby drove another three miles to the next exit and doubled back to the exit she should have gotten onto.  “Well, Mr. Navigator, how much further do I have to go on this road?”

John checked the information on the GPS screen and said, “Straight ahead for another thirty-eight miles and then turn left.  I’ll let you know ahead of time before we get that far.”  He sat back in his seat and tried to keep the conversation going to make time pass quicker.  “How about this?  I’ll give you two topics and you can pick the one you want to discuss.”

“Let ‘er rip,” Abby said.  “This ought to be good.”

“Okay,” John sent on.  “One—spontaneous human combustion, or two—the body farm.”

“What’s three?” Abby said.  “Come on; there has to be another choice that is not so disgusting.  The thought of someone being found in their chair with nothing left but a pair of slippers and two ankles is enough to make me upchuck my lunch.  And double-ditto on the body farm conversation.  Pick another one; anything.”

“So, what do you think of this latest Senate race?” John asked.

“You know, that body farm idea makes a lot of sense,” Abby had to admit but then concluded with, “How about if I just turn on some music?”

“Go ahead,” John said.  “As long as it’s not Dylan or rap.  Hell, I’d even rather listen to static coming over the airwaves.”

Abby picked a soothing easy listening station that carried them through all the way to the resort.  It turned out to be one of those older rustic-looking places that seemed to welcome visitors in.  She pulled up to the building marked Office and the two of them went inside to register.  John gave the clerk his credit card and got one of those old fashioned keys instead of a magnetic key card.  He turned to Abby and held up the key.  “Room six at the top of the stairs.  You go ahead and bring your suitcase up.  I’ll try to find a bellhop with a forklift to bring up your trunk.”  He winked once and walked with her out to her car.  He handed Abby the one other suitcase she had packed, along with John’s smaller suitcase and told her he’d meet her in the room.

John returned to the check-in counter and asked if there was anyone that could help him get a trunk up to his room.  The clerk pressed a buzzer from somewhere under the counter and a large man appeared a moment later.  The clerk gestured toward John and said to the man, “Andy, would you help Mr. Cooper with his luggage?  He’s in room six.”

“Right away, Mr. Clower,” Andy said and walked with John out to the car.  John opened the hatch, grabbed one handle and pulled the trunk closer to the edge.  Andy grabbed the other handle and told John to stand back while he hoisted the trunk onto his shoulder and followed John up the stairs to room six.  He set it down just inside the door and then waited while John plucked a five dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to Andy.

“Thank you, Andy,” John said with a genuine smile.

Andy looked at the bill and said, “And thank you, Mr. Cooper.”  He pocketed the bill and left the way he’d come.

Just then Abby came out of the bathroom and looked down at her trunk.  “Thank you, John.  Did you have any trouble getting it up here?”

“Piece of cake,” John said, letting out a deep breath and making a muscle with his right biceps.

Just then Andy poked his head in the door briefly and said, “Mr. Cooper, if you have any other luggage you need help with, just let me know.”  He closed the door and was gone.

“Piece of cake, eh?” Abby said.

After they had gotten their luggage unpacked and the clothes put away, John and Abby decided to take a walk around the town.  Beside the resort there was a single pump gas station with a small grocery store housed within.  Next door to that stood the only restaurant in town.  It was small but looked reasonably clean.  Across the street, next to two quaint houses stood what looked like an old time opera house from days gone by.  Plastered on the front façade were two four foot posters advertising that night’s play called Act Your Age and starring two actors that John nor Abby had never heard of; possibly local talent.

John read some of the dialog off the face of the poster.  There was a man talking to a woman saying, “You stand lookout and I’ll empty the safe.”  The woman who was facing the man on the poster replied, “You know what to do if he gives you any trouble; kill him.”

“Sounds like kind of a violent play,” Abby remarked.  “You sure you want to see this one?”

John looked around the small gathering of buildings and replied, “Do you see anything else to do in this town?  Besides, we’ll be here for a week.  We can’t spend the whole time watching TV in our room.”

Abby looked again at the poster and noted that there would be two shows daily at six p.m. and again at nine p.m.  “How about the six o’clock show?”

“Perfect,” John said.  “We could get some dinner around five and head right over here afterwards.”  He and Abby kept walking but in no time at all they had reached the outer limits of the town and started back to their resort.  “I wonder if they rent boats up here.  That lake over there looks pretty calm and we could see all the building along the shore.”

“Maybe later,” Abby said.  “I’m pretty much wiped out from the drive.  I just want to lie down for a little while.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” John agreed and walked Abby back to the resort and up the stairs to room six.  Abby slipped out of her shoes and stretched out on the bed while John stepped over to the mini fridge near the sink and got himself something to drink.  He sat on the far side of the bed, across from Abby and sipped his drink.  As he drank, he thought he heard something coming from the room next to theirs.  He set his drink down and stepped over to the wall that separated their room from the next one.

“What are you doing?” Abby asked.

“Shhh,” John said and looked down near his feet.  There he saw a heating vent that was half open.  The voices came through louder down there so he dropped to his knees and listened.  He could make out two distinct voices; a man and a woman.  The man was saying, “You stand lookout and I’ll empty the safe.”  Then the woman replied, “You know what to do if he gives you any trouble; kill him.”

John stood up and looked at Abby with a smile.  “I think we got the room next to the two actors in that play across the street.  Sounds like they’re rehearsing their lines for tonight.”  He returned to the bed and stretched out next to Abby and before either of them knew it, they had dozed off.  When John opened his eyes again it was after four in the afternoon.  He nudged Abby and told her they’d better get ready for dinner.  The two of them washed their faces, changed into their good clothes and left their room.  At the bottom of the stairs, John stopped momentarily to tie one of his shoes that had come loose.  Abby waited for him at the counter and looked up when she heard a door opening on the second floor.  It was the room next to theirs and a couple was just descending the stairway to the lobby.  The other couple didn’t stop and walked straight out the front door and were gone before John had stood erect again.  They were gone before John and Abby made it out the front door.

As they walked into the restaurant, Abby saw the couple from the room next to theirs and elbowed John.  “That’s the couple in room seven,” she remarked.

“Must be,” John replied.  “And we’re eating just three tables away from them; how about that.”

“That’s them all right,” Abby said.  “I saw them come out of that room while you were trying to tie your shoe.

“The actors?” John asked.  “Funny, they don’t look like I pictured stage actors to look.  He’s big enough to carry Andy and your trunk at the same time and she looks like she could arm wrestle Popeye into submission.  Maybe they make up for it with brilliant deliveries of their lines.  I guess we’ll see for ourselves soon enough.”

Someday when they graduate to movies or television, we can say we sat this close to them.”  Abby stared perhaps a bit too long and John had to remind her of other people’s privacy.

They finished their dinner with just one more brief look at the people from room seven and then left the restaurant.  It was still twenty minutes before the curtain would rise on act one of Act Your Age so they walked into the theater and got two seats somewhere near the middle and eight rows back from the stage.  They settled into their seats and waited for the lights to go down.  Fifteen minutes later the seats were only half filled as the house lights went down and the curtains opened to a setting that looked like a bedroom set.  There were two actors in their places, ready to deliver the lines they had so carefully rehearsed.

The actors were several minutes into act one when the male actor turned to his female counterpart and said, “You stand lookout and I’ll empty the safe.”  Then the woman replied, “You know what to do if he gives you any trouble; kill him.”

John nudged Abby and whispered, “That’s the same thing I heard them saying through the heating vent but those aren’t the same two people from the restaurant.”

“No, they’re not,” Abby agreed.  “Maybe those other two are the understudies and they just wanted to be prepared just in case.”

They were prepared, all right.  The two larger people from room seven let themselves into the gas station office, both with guns held waist high and both looking menacing.  The man looked at his partner and said, “You stand lookout and I’ll empty the safe.”

Then the woman replied, “You know what to do if he gives you any trouble; kill him.”

The man walked the gas station attendant into the back room at gunpoint and told him that he had thirty second to open the safe.  It took him nearly a minute since his hands were shaking so badly he had to start over twice.  He finally got it open on the third try.  The robber pushed him aside and squatted down at the open safe door, emptying it of its contents.  He opened his shirt and stuffed the money into it, holding it shut as he left to join his partner at the gas station door.  They were almost out the door when the alarm on the outside of the building sounded loud and shrill.  The woman turned and fired twice, hitting the gas station attendant squarely in the chest.  He went down and stayed down as the two robbers fled.

The play ended two hours after John and Abby had sat down.  The house lights came up again and the eighty or ninety audience members filed out of the theater in an orderly fashion.  When John and Abby got outside again, they noticed two county sheriff’s cruisers and an ambulance outside of the gas station across the street.  The two attendants in white were wheeling a gurney back to their van and loading a sheet covered body into it.

John and Abby walked over to where two deputies were standing, jotting notes on a pad.  The deputies turned when they noticed these two people approaching.  One deputy held both hands up to keep curious onlookers away from the scene.  “Stand back, please,” the cop said.  “There’s been some trouble here.”

“What happened?” Abby asked while stepping backwards away from the cop.

“Someone robbed the gas station and killed the attendant,” the cop said.  “Now please, stay back and let us do our jobs.”

“Any idea who did this?” John asked, much to the annoyance to the deputy.  John held his own hands toward the cop and turned to walk away.  “Sorry, didn’t mean to bother you.”  He took Abby’s hand and walked her away from the chaos and back to their resort.  They walked up the stairs and slipped the key into their lock.  Once inside their room, John tossed the key on the counter and found another soda in the fridge.  “You want anything?” He asked.

“Not right now,” Abby said and slipped out of her shoes.  She sat on the edge of the bed and looked to be deep in thought.

“You got something on your mind?” John asked, sipping from his soda and joining her on the bed.

“Nothing in particular,” Abby said.  “Just a nagging feeling that’s creeping up my back; you know.  I can’t put a finger on it.”

Just then John heard two familiar voices coming from the heating vent on the far wall and crawled on his hands and knees over to it.  He leaned over with his ear closer to the grate and listened.  It was the same two voices he’d hear earlier that afternoon supposedly rehearsing their lines for the upcoming play.

This time the lines were different.  The man was saying, “Why’d you have to shoot him?  We had plenty of time to get away clean.  Now we’ll have the cops all over the place.”

“That little weasel set off the alarm and it didn’t look like you were going to do anything about it,” the female voice replied.

The male voice again.  “All this trouble and for what?  A hundred and seventy lousy bucks.  When those cops finish up and go back where they came from, we’re getting out of here and I mean fast.”

John quickly stood up again and looked at Abby, whose eyes had gotten wide.  “I heard,” she said in a whisper.  “We have to do something quick before those two take off.”

“I’m going back downstairs,” John said.  “I have to tip those cops off about this.”  He set his soda can down and headed for his door.  As he stepped out into the hall, he bumped into a big man who looked like he could carry Abby’s trunk under one arm.  “Excuse me,” John said, letting the man go ahead of him down the stairs.  The woman with the large arms must have stayed behind in the room.  John descended the stairs and followed the big man outside where he turned right and walked toward a row of parked cars in the lot.

John turned left and walked back to where he’d last seen the two deputies talking and taking notes.  One of them was still outside.  The other must have gone into the gas station.  John walked up to the cop outside and said, “Excuse me.”

“You again,” the deputy said.  “I thought I told you to stay away from this scene.  If I have to tell you again…”

“Hang on,” John said, producing his P.I. badge and I.D. card.  “I think my fiancé and I may have seen the two who did this?”

That got the cop’s attention.  He pulled John by the arm inside the station and over to where his partner was taking more notes on the situation.  “Dave, this gentleman says he might know who did this.”

Sergeant Dave Graham stopped writing and turned to look at John.  “Is that right, sir?”

“I can’t be a hundred per cent sure, but close to it,” John said and explained about hearing the two people in the next room earlier that day and again after the play had ended.  “The guy said something about only getting a hundred seventy dollars for all their trouble.  He also said something to his female accomplice about why she had to shoot the guy.”

This got the sergeant’s attention.  He looked at his partner and then at John and said, “Trooper Jones here will take your statement a little later, but right now I need to know what these two people look like.”

John described both of the people to the cop and told him that the man in question was last seen walking toward the parking lot.  “He’s probably bringing their car around to the front of the resort to pick up that woman.”

Sergeant Graham told John to stay put right here while he and his partner went back to the resort to check things out.  John did as he was told but watched out the gas station window as the cops got closer to the resort.  A car with its engine running was parked in front of the resort but it was empty.  Coming down the stairs from room seven were two large people, each carrying a small leather bag with a handle.  Sergeant Graham and his partner each drew their weapons.  Graham was fast but his partner lagged behind just one second; enough time for the woman to shoot him just once before Graham emptied four of his bullets into the woman.  The large man gave up without a struggle when he saw his partner lying on the stairs, head first in a lot of her own blood.  He began to cry.

“Act your age, you big baby,” Graham said as he kept his weapon trained on the large man and took another gun from him.  He grabbed the mic on his shoulder and called for backup to meet him at his location.  When backup arrived, they took the large man into custody while Sergeant Graham knelt by his partner’s side.  “How are you doing, Chuck,” Graham asked.

“Just got the wind knocked out of me is all,” Trooper Charles Adams replied.  “I expect I’ll have one hell of a bruise on my chest but there’s one thing for sure; I’ll never go anywhere ever again without this flack jacket.  It saved my life.”

“You just lay still until the ambulance gets here,” Graham insisted.  “I have to go back to the gas station and bring that witness back here again.  I’ll need statements from him and his wife, or whatever she is to him.”  Graham brought John back to room six and sat the two of them down to get both of their statements.  He thanked them for their assistance and told them that they might have to testify at the big man’s trial.

“Did you ever get their names?” Abby asked.

Sergeant Graham looked at his notes and said, “The big guy was a two time loser named Wally Decker and the woman was some prostitute with a long record.  Her name is, or was Sally Blaine.  Her days of turning tricks are over.”  He thanked them both once more and left the room.

John looked at Abby and said, “Now we have something interesting to tell anyone who asks about our vacation.  Oh man, wait until Dad hears about this.”

Abby smiled and looked into John’s eyes.  “You want something even more interesting to tell those same people?”

“More interesting that what just happened?  Like what?”

“Like we eloped while we were up here.” Abby said and waited for John’s reaction.  She didn’t have to wait long.

John’s smile nearly covered all of his lower face and Abby got her answer.  “On the way into town I noticed a little building that said ‘Justice of the Peace’ on a shingle hanging off the front porch.  How does that grab you?”

“Sounds quaint and like something we’ll remember fore the rest of our lives,” Abby said, tears welling up in her eyes.

At Last

Abby smiled and looked into John’s eyes.  “You want something even more interesting to tell those same people?”

“More interesting that what just happened?” John replied.  “Like what?”

“Like we eloped while we were up here.” Abby said and waited for John’s reaction.  She didn’t have to wait long.

John’s smile nearly covered all of his lower face and Abby got her answer.  “On the way into town I noticed a little building that said ‘Justice of the Peace’ on a shingle hanging off the front porch.  How does that grab you?”

“Sounds quaint and like something we’ll remember fore the rest of our lives,” Abby said, tears welling up in her eyes.

The two of them found it hard to keep a straight face and suddenly got the giggles.  And just as suddenly they both got somber with the realization that they hadn’t thought far enough ahead to have gotten a blood test or the license.  “Oh oh,” John said.  “I think we have a slight problem.”  He voiced what they were both thinking and said, “We still have six more days left of our vacation.  How about if tomorrow morning we drive to the nearest town where they have a marriage license office and a place to get our blood tests.  We can get married and still enjoy the rest of our week up here.  We can tell Dad and whoever else needs to know when we get home.”

Abby sighed but agreed it was the only way.  They both slept well that night and the following morning Abby said, “We might as well get started right away.  We can just leave everything right here.  We’ll be back later today anyway.”

The two of them slipped into their jackets and locked their room.  The next nearest town of any size was just thirty-five miles to the south and they made it there in just three quarters of an hour.  They stopped at a service station and asked where the Clerk of Courts could be found.  John wrote the address down and entered it into his GPS.  They found the office they needed, applied for the marriage license and asked where they could get their blood tests done.  They got the tests and brought the results back to the courthouse and picked up their license.

“Are you getting married here in town?” the clerk asked John.

“If there’s someone available,” John replied.  “Where do we go for that?”

The clerk smiled at the happy couple and said, “Right outside, just stay on this street and go south for three blocks.  You’ll see a sign hanging off the front porch of a white house.  It’ll say Justice of the Peace.  Just go right in and give him your license.  He’ll take care of you.”

“I don’t suppose it’s two dollars anymore, like in all those old movies,” Abby remarked.

The clerk shook his head.  “I’m afraid not.  It’s probably more like twenty dollars these days.  Good luck, to both of you.”

They thanked him and left the courthouse with their license.  John found the white house with the sign right were the clerk said it would be.  It said, Henry Hathaway, Justice of the Peace.  John and Abby nervously walked up the walk and rang the bell.  An older gentleman with a semi-circle of white hair let them in and told them where to stand.  A moment later a woman, presumably his wife, joined them as the witness.

Hathaway pulled his book off the shelf and started right in with the official speech that he must have recited a thousand times before because he barely looked at the book.  When he got past the part where each party agreed to the terms and said, ‘I do’, Hathaway asked John if he had the ring.

John’s smile fell off his face when he realized that neither of them had remembered to buy a ring for the other.  He sighed heavily and then patted his pockets, even though he knew he wouldn’t find any ring.

Hathaway must have experienced this same dilemma many time before because he automatically reached behind him and picked up two cigar bands from that same shelf that had held his book.  He gave one to each of them with a wry smile and said, “They’ll do until you get the real ones.”

John sheepishly slipped his cigar band onto Abby’s finger and she did the same for him.  Without waiting for Hathaway to say, ‘you may now kiss the bride’, John leaned in and kissed his new wife.  The kiss must have lasted longer than Hathaway was used to so he cleared his throat and said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.  Normally this is where I would say that you can kiss the bride, but that won’t be necessary.”

John paid the Justice of the Peace, thanked him and led Abby by the hand out of the house and back to their car.  They were giddy all the way back to the resort.  When they walked back into the resort, John took one look up the flight of stairs to the second floor and said, “I think I’ll wait until we get upstairs before I carry you across the threshold.”  At the top of the stairs, he picked Abby up in his arms and stepped closer to their door.  He had to put her back down again and pat his pockets for the room key.  Once he got the door unlocked and cracked open and inch, he picked her up again and carried her into the room, setting her down on the floor.

Abby threw her arms around John’s neck and kissed him long and hard before saying, “At last, Mr. Cooper.”

“At last, indeed, Mrs. Cooper,” John replied.

Abby smiled and said, “So what do you want to do first?”  When she saw John’s lecherous grin, she amended it to, “So what do you want to do second?”

The two of them didn’t leave their room for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.  By two o’clock both of their stomachs began grumbling and they finally got up and got dressed.  “Same restaurant?” John suggested.

“Why not,” Abby agreed and followed John out of the room and down to the lobby.  As they walked down the street toward the restaurant, they passed the opera house again and stopped to look at the posters on the wall.  “Wouldn’t that be something if they re-wrote the play to include those two yahoos that they arrested yesterday?  That could bring in a bigger crowd.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” John said and just kept walking.  Just before they got to the restaurant, John’s cell phone rang and vibrated in his pants pocket.  He fished it out and started to say, “Cooper investigation,” out of habit, but corrected himself and just said, “Hello.”

“John, it’s Dad.  How are you two doing up there?”

John looked at Abby and silently mouthed, Dad and then got back on the phone.  “We’re doing great.  It’s so relaxing up here.  But I don’t suppose you called just to see how we’re doing.  What’s up?”

“I know you still have three more days of vacation left, but I just got a call from a big company who could use all three of us on their case.  The good part is it pays more than our regular rate.  The bad part is they would like us to start this Friday morning.  You probably hadn’t even planned on leaving there until Friday, but if you could cut the vacation short by just one day, it could be well worth your trouble.  I don’t expect an answer right away.  Why don’t you and Abby talk it over and call me back later today so I can let that company president know whether or not he can count on us.”

“We were just going to lunch,” John told Nick.  “We can discuss it then and I can call you back within the hour.  Thanks for the call, Dad.”  John disconnected the call and walked with his new wife into the restaurant.  Once they were seated at their table, John said, “As you know, that was Dad.  He wanted to know if we could cut our vacation short by one day and join him on a big corporate case by Friday morning.  I told him we’d talk it over and I’d get back to him.  What do you think?”

Before Abby could reply, the waitress came and took their orders.  Once she had left, Abby said, “I was already wondering how much there was for us to do up here and I wouldn’t mind getting back on the job a little earlier.  Sure, why not?  What do you think?”

“That still gives us two and a half more days up here,” John said.  “If you can think of a half day’s worth of activity for us, I know what I’d like to do for the other two days.”

Abby looked sideways at John without moving her head.  “I’ll just bet you do, Perv Griffin.”

That one got John laughing.  They spent the next forty minutes enjoying their lunch and headed back to the resort.  On the way there, John pulled out his cell phone and punched in the speed dial number for Cooper Investigations.  Nick answered on the first ring.  “Well?” Was all he said and just waited for John to give him the good news.

“Count us in,” John said.  “We’ll drive back on Thursday night and see you in the office first thing Friday.”

“That’s just great,” Nick said.  “Enjoy your next couple of days.  See you Friday.”

“Dad sounded happier than I’ve ever heard him,” John told Abby.  “And to tell you the truth, I’ll be just as glad to get back on the job with a case I can really sink my teeth into.  Speaking of something I can sink my teeth into…”

“Again?” Abby said.

“I was talking about an ice cream cone,” John explained.  “What were you thinking of, Mrs. Griffin?”  That got Abby laughing and the two of them laughed all the way to the ice cream parlor.

The next two and a half days seemed to drag by slowly and by the time Thursday night rolled around, the two of them were eager to hit the road and get back home again.  As Abby drove, John sat next to her and said, “Now we’ll have to start making plans to get all of our stuff moved into that house we took over from the bank.  You remember; the one where the previous owners were in the witness protection program.”

“How could I forget,” Abby said.  “There was such a small mortgage on it that we could have it paid off free and clear in two years or less.  And when you think of it, once we sell your house, we could pay off the mortgage and still have a little left of the equity in your present house.  How’s that for smart money managing?  No mortgage at all.”

“Well, Mrs. Cooper, it looks like we’re off to a good start.”

The next seventy-five miles flew by and even before the sun went down, Abby had pulled the car into John’s driveway.  She sighed.  “Made it.”

John got the suitcases unpacked and then went out to his garage to get a hand truck to move Abby’s trunk back into the house.  They gave themselves twenty minutes to unwind before John started digging around in the refrigerator for something to eat.  After another relaxing couple of hours in front of the TV, John and Abby went to bed, each of them looking forward to returning to work.

After showering and enjoying a leisurely breakfast, John and Abby each drove their own car to the Cahuenga Building parking lot.  They weren’t sure if the case Nick had gotten for them would require the three of them splitting up so they made sure each of them had their own car.  The two of them walked in through the back door and rode the elevator to the third floor.  They were a few minutes early and Nick hadn’t yet come in.  John stepped over to the south window and looked down at the pedestrian traffic on Hollywood Boulevard.

When he looked toward the corner, he saw his Dad at the pretzel stand, walking away with a small cardboard tray with three drinks on it as well as three hot pretzels.  “Get ready,” John told Abby.  “Dad’s bringing up some pretzels for us.”

Abby grabbed the plaque on her desk that had said, Abby Ross on it.  She had placed a piece of masking tape over Ross and had written Cooper over it.  She laid it face down on her desk just as the office door opened and Nick stepped in with the cardboard tray.

Nick set the tray down on his desk and turned first to Abby, giving her a welcoming hug before turning to John and offering his hand.  “Welcome back, both of you, and thanks for accommodating me and letting me take this big case for the three of us.”

“Glad to do it, Dad,” John said.

Nick passed out the pretzels and soda and said, “I want to hear all about your week at the resort, but first let me tell you about an unusual case I took on Wednesday.”

“But Dad,” John started to say with his index finger raised.

“Hang on,” Nick said.  “This won’t take long.”

John sighed and said, “Go ahead.”

“Anyway, I took a case from a wife who suspected her husband of cheating with someone from work because he says he has to work late many nights.

“You call this an unusual case?” John said.  “Sounds like the typical…”

“Hang on there, Chucky,” Nick said.  “I tailed the guy for two days and it turned out that those were the times that he wasn’t cheating.  It was every other time after work that he was—with his mother-in-law.”

John had just taken a sip of his soda and when Nick laid out the punch line, John coughed and soda came out through his nose, making him cough even more.  Nick slapped him on his back and the soda ran out onto the floor.  Abby got into a laughing fit and had to cover her mouth with her hand.

Even Nick had to laugh at John’s reaction.  “I told you it was an unusual case.”

Abby ran to the bathroom and pulled off several squares of paper towel, giving some to John to wipe his mouth and using the rest to wipe up the spilled soda.

Once John got himself under control and wiped off, Nick said, “All right, now you can tell me about your week, but I’ll bet it’ll be hard to top my story.”

“Hang on there, Chucky, Sr.,” John said and proceeded to tell his father about the two robbers in the room next to theirs.  And when John got to the part where the man had shot and killed the gas station attendant, Nick’s face straightened out.

“Say, that is a better story than mine,” Nick had to admit, but…”

“Not so fast,” Abby interrupted.  She turned to her desk and set her name plaque upright so Nick could read it.

Nick took a quick look at the plaque and then did a double-take when he saw the masking tape with Cooper written on it.  He looked at Abby and then at John, waving his index finger back and forth between them.  “You two; really?”

“Really,” John and Abby both said almost simultaneously, holding their ring fingers out for Nick’s approval.  “We bought a cigar company?” John joked and then told his father about the ceremony at the Justice of the Peace’s house.  “We’ll get the real rings sometime next week.”

“That’s fantastic,” Nick said, pulling Abby close and hugging her tightly.  “Welcome to the family, Mrs. Barrel Maker.”

Abby didn’t get it right off the bat, but John was chuckling to himself.  He looked at Abby and said, “The official name for someone who makes barrels is a Cooper; might as well get used to it.”

“And what do you suppose they call that place where the monks up in the mountains make barrels?” Abby quizzed the two men.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” John said.  “What?”

“Abby Cooper, of course.”

“Oh yeah,” Nick said.  “She’s going to fit right in with this family.”  There was a moment of silence before he said, “So, tell us about this big case to got for the three of us.  What’s all involved?”

“Have a seat,” Nick said before he began his explanation.  “The Kellogg Company, no connection to the Battle Creek cereal moguls, wants us to look into allegations of employees who are leaving the company sometime soon and may be violating the non-compete agreement they all signed.  The call I got was from the president, Roger Kellogg and he’s afraid that when these employees leave, that they may try to take some of Kellogg’s current clients and he wants us to look into it for him.”

“Where is this Kellogg Company?” John asked.  “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of them.  What do they do there?”

“It’s that seven story building on the other side of the street and eight blocks east of here,” Nick explained.  “I must have driven past it a thousand times without giving it a second thought.  I found out that they manufacture cell phones and cell phone components to sell to some of the major chain stores in the state.  Mr. Kellogg asked me to look into it quickly and discretely before the employee who is committing the act gets wind of the investigation and goes underground with their endeavor.  Time is of the essence.  Their trade secrets and proprietary information are at risk so we can’t waste any time on this one.”

“I’m surprised he agreed to wait until today to take action,” Abby remarked.  “I’d have thought he’d want immediate action.  What’s up with that?”

“The employees Kellogg suspects were out of town until today,” Nick replied.  “He thinks they may have been out trying to set up their own customer base and he wants us to make sure they don’t take his present clients with them.  We’d all better get right over there as soon as we can.  Make sure you have everything you need for surveillance; you’re going to need it.”

John walked over to the closet and pulled a cardboard box off the shelf, setting it on his desk.  He withdrew two drones, each with a controller, a parabolic ear with headphones and a thirty-five millimeter camera with a long telephoto lens.  He handed one of the drones to Nick and then returned the box to the closet shelf.  Abby opened her desk drawer and withdrew her holstered .38 caliber revolver and dropped it into her purse.  Nick pulled his sidearm out from under his arm, broke open the cylinder and made sure it was fully loaded.

“Come on;” Nick said.  “Let’s get moving; we’ve got a job to do.”  He and the others left the office and rode the elevator to the lobby, exiting out into the parking lot.  The three of them each got into their individual cars and exited onto Cahuenga Boulevard, turning east on Hollywood Boulevard.  Nick was in the lead car with John taking up the second position.  Abby followed the two, leaving very little space between them as they drove.  They had only drive five blocks and still had three more blocks to go when the first explosion rocked the neighborhood.  Shards of glass from the top floor of the seven story building rained down onto the street, along with chunks of cement and hundreds of bricks.  It looked like a Middle East war zone.  The traffic that was directly in front of the Kellogg Company got the worst of it with smashed windshields, flattened tires and dozens of dead pedestrians littering the sidewalks.

Nick stood on his brakes and stopped in the middle of the street.  John also stopped and got out, running back to Abby’s car just as she stepped out, too.  They two of them joined Nick in the street just as the second explosion blew out most of the fourth, fifth and sixth floors.  “Are you two all right?” Nick asked.

John and Abby agreed that they were fine, having stopped several blocks before the Kellogg Building.  Abby’s body shook as she spoke.  “Imagine, if we both hadn’t had such long stories to tell back at the office, that could have been us in that building.  What do we do now?”

Nick stood closer to his son and daughter-in-law.  “Let’s go; we’d better clear the streets for the emergency vehicles that’ll be showing up any time now.  We can meet back at out office.”  And with that Nick got back into his car and drove around the block until he was heading west again.

On his way back, Nick turned on his radio to an oldies station and suddenly heard the cool voice of Etta James with her cooler that cool rendition of At Last.  Nick had to smile to himself when he realized the significance of that song today of all days.  Nick and Abby had gotten married…at last.