Earth to Emily (4 page)

After Jack took me to pick up my Mustang from impound, we had enough time left in the day to squeeze in one more productive task. We headed toward the office, and I drove behind Jack, caressing the leather by my thigh in a soothing way. My Mustang was closing in on nine years old, but she was still beautiful, and she’d suffered a violation at Burrows’s hands every bit as much as I had. At eight, though, she was still only half the age of Jack’s vehicle.

The Jeep still bore the ignominy of the previous night’s crunch into concrete. Jack had tucked the deployed airbag back into the dash and duct-taped it up. As he backed the Jeep into his parking space in the garage, I saw that the front bumper hung askew with a big fat crease where the chrome had flaked away in the center. The grille had also caved in partway and the left front quarter panel had buckled.

He ducked into the passenger side of the Mustang as I turned on the radio to a country station.

I tightened my lips so I wouldn’t smile. “I thought you said there was no damage to your Jeep last night?”

Jack didn’t look at me. “There wasn’t.”

“But the bumper is all messed up, Jack. However did
that
happen?”

“It was already like that.”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember it looking like that before.”

“I did it last week.”

“You didn’t mention a fender bender.” I let my smile out, and he realized I was onto him and grinned with a sheepish look on his face. “Hey, is your Jeep even street legal now without the airbags?”

He nodded. “But the whole system has to be replaced and reset. On both sides.”

“Yeah. Since one side tried to kill me, I think that’s a good idea.” A song I loved came on, and I turned it up. “As long as I’m rockin’ with you, girl, you know I’m Cool Whip—”

“Cool with,” Jack interrupted.

I turned the radio down. “What?”

“The song. ‘As long as I’m rockin’ with you, girl, you know I’m cool
with
.’ You said ‘Cool
Whip
.’”

My cheeks heated just a little. “That’s what I said.” I put my hand on my signal switch. “Which way?”

Jack had only told me we needed to run an errand, not where or for what reason.

“ABC Half-Price Resale.”

I turned my trusty steed north. ABC Half-Price Resale—which was as much a discount clearing house as a resale store—belonged to our client Alan Freeman. “Why for?”

“Continuance until mid-January.”

Alan’s trial had been set in two weeks, right after New Year’s.

“Since this morning?”

The Second Baptist Church flashed by on our left. In temporary letters, an announcement blazed across a white sign out front: LOW SELF-ESTEEM SUPPORT GROUP WILL MEET THURSDAY AT 7:00 PM. PLEASE USE THE BACK DOOR. It made me smile.

Jack said, “Got a call while you were, um, detained.”

I pumped my fist in the air. “Woo-hoo!”

A continuance wasn’t a surprise. In fact, the real surprise would have been if it hadn’t been continued. But we’d prepped only enough to stave off emergency, and we would have had some serious scrambling to do these next two weeks if the post-New Year’s schedule had stayed firm.

The case wasn’t a shoo-in, but we expected to win it. It was Freeman’s word against Wu’s. Wu claimed he’d caught Alan soliciting sex from an unidentified woman who had run off in the alley behind the resale store. Wu said when he approached Alan’s vehicle, Alan leapt from his car to make a run for it. Wu claimed he gave chase, and that when he caught him, Alan assaulted him with a beer bottle.

Alan’s version was completely different. He said he’d gotten out of the car at Wu’s request, there was no prostitute, and that Wu had tackled him, and both men fell to the ground. Wu had hit his head on a broken bottle when he landed.

And that was it, as far as evidence would go. No dash cam. No
real
witnesses. Wu had been a rookie in training, and Samson was riding with him, but Samson said he’d run after the supposed prostitute. Alan wasn’t charged for solicitation, and he didn’t have a history of priors. Wu had since left the force. It looked and smelled like something from the back end of a cow. The recent high-profile cases of police violence and false statements against black men didn’t hurt us at all.

I cruised down historic Route 66, now known as Amarillo Boulevard, heading east from downtown toward Alan’s shop. Alan worked two jobs: one laying tile for his own little one-man tile company—he did that nights and Sundays and holidays—the other running the resale shop his parents had left to him early that year. The shop was in the part of town you’d expect for resale: stubby strip malls, barred windows, homemade signage, and shallow parking lots. Cars with snazzy rims riding low to the ground. Small storage units. Fast food restaurants on every corner. Everyone talking on brand new mobile phones.

Which made me think of something. “I have an idea.”

I glanced at Jack, and he raised the eyebrow on my side. He wasn’t the world’s most verbose human, so I took that as, “Please, Emily, do continue.”

“There’s some app that is supposed to find your lost iPhone. Maybe we can see who has my phone that way, since the police are insisting I lost it.”

“Doesn’t it have to be turned on for that to work?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“Whoever has it has long since copied all the data, removed the SIM card, and deactivated it.”

“But they’re cops!”

“Cops know every bad-guy trick in the book.”

“Bastards.”

“Some of them.”

I turned into the cramped parking lot for ABC Half-Price Resale, Joe’s Barber Shop, Broughton’s Shoe Repair, and Cisneros Automotive. Despite Jack’s pessimism, I was still planning to try the app. Maybe the cops had misplaced my phone. Or been sidetracked. Or were stupid. I pulled the Mustang into the one tiny parking space available, and we walked toward the storefront.

A man had just left Alan’s store, and I nearly ran into him on the sidewalk. He smiled down on me with a weathered face, then tipped his gray felt cowboy hat. “Emily Phelps. Merry Christmas to you.”

It only took a second and it all came back to me. Heavy equipment whirring near my head. A mouth filled with plaster of Paris. Giant needles. Saliva running down my chin. Numb cheeks. My childhood orthodontist, Dr. Parks.

I was able to smile, barely. “Hello, sir, and Merry Christmas to you.”

His face drooped. “Oh no.” He leaned closer. “Smile again.” I obeyed without thinking. He shook his head. “You haven’t been wearing your retainer, have you?”

Jack snorted, and I shot him a look.

“Um, well, I did sometimes, for a while”—by which I meant for two to three weeks and never again—“and then I moved, and I couldn’t find it.”

Dr. Parks opened his wool overcoat and reached into a shirt pocket. He handed me his card. “Make an appointment, please. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t. Headaches. Painful chewing. Mouth breathing. Alteration in the shape of your face. Speech problems.”

I gaped at him. “Are you serious?”

He nodded, gravely. “Come see me.”

“Thank you.” I felt dazed for a moment, then regained my manners. “Nice seeing you.”

He waved and walked into the parking lot.

I touched a fingertip to the gap between my two top front teeth.

Jack pulled the door open, and the bell jangled. “After you, Snaggletooth.”

I kept my eyes to the front, trying to pretend I hadn’t heard him. We walked into the scent of a Christmasy cinnamon-apple pie that had to be coming from a room deodorizer, as I knew there was no kitchen onsite. Alan saw us and waved. His shaved head wasn’t covered by his usual LSU Tigers cap. At six foot two, he towered over the woman peering into the glass-counter display of jewelry in front of him. He was one of those muscular guys you knew just from looking at him could outwrestle a grizzly bear. I’d first met him when he was tiling the office lobby—which doubled as
my
office—and he’d been kind and respectful of my space on a particularly bad day for me. I had warmed to him instantly, and I didn’t believe for a second he had tried to pick up a prostitute. Or assaulted a cop.

“Be with you in a few minutes,” he called.

I smiled at him. To Jack, I said, “You can do your Christmas shopping while we wait.”

My boss made a sound like
Great idea
or
Bah humbug
. It was hard to tell which. Actually, I knew Jack never left this place empty-handed, and I didn’t either.

Alan worked the shop alone, mostly, while his wife cared for their children, and he had an eye for display. The tile artist in him, I supposed. He’d used for-sale items to create a cozy Christmas scene: a tall, skinny wooden Santa attended by a legion of “elves”—garden gnomes in Santa hats—and surrounded by beribboned “gifts” like books and jewelry. I picked one up.
Owl Babies
. I thumbed the pages, but it was too young for Betsy. I returned it to its spot in the display. I surveyed the music section, looking for something small and piano related for my friend Katie. Most of the items here were too big to ship to her in the Virgin Islands, though, so I moved on. Electronics, then electrical equipment. I hefted a well-cleaned chainsaw. Not much call for it in country as thin on trees as the Texas Panhandle.

In the household items, I came upon an exquisite toy horse, a black stallion with a silky tail and mane, posed mid-prance. I’d had one very similar to it when I was a girl, and it reminded me somewhat of Thunder. If I were buying a present for Betsy to go in her new pink backpack, this would be the one. I knew I shouldn’t let myself think about her, but I couldn’t help it. The price tag read seventy-five dollars. It seemed steep, but the item was probably vintage, and it was in pristine condition. I could always give it to her later, when the Hodges didn’t have her anymore. When I adopted her. A lump formed in my throat. If that ever happened, after today. I tucked the horse under my arm. I was buying it, darn it.

“Son of a bitch.” Jack’s voice wasn’t exactly a shout, but it carried enough that Alan and his customer looked away from their discussion toward him.

I looked at him. “What’s up?”

“Goddammit.”

It wasn’t like him to use the Lord’s name in vain. He cussed, but rarely in a profane or vulgar way. I hurried over to him. He didn’t look like he’d thrown a shoe.

“Jack?”

“Take a look at this.”

He was standing in front of a sawhorse on which was mounted a gorgeous men’s Western saddle. The leather gleamed and the black suede seat begged to be stroked. The same black material adorned the silver corner plates, which were accented with inset turquoise. I’d never ridden on anything so beautiful, in all my years of rodeos and pageants.

I set the toy horse down on a shelf, then ran my finger over the seat. “Wow. What is that gorgeous material?”

“Ostrich. And it’s mine.”

“You’re buying it?”

“No. I already did, in a manner of speaking. Fifteen years ago.”

I scrutinized my boss. He didn’t look crazy, unless you counted crazy mad. His lips were pressed and his pupils dilated. I knew if he had a pen in his hand he would whack a desk with it right now, something he did whenever he was royally pissed. The bell jingled and Alan’s customer left carrying a small bag.

He walked over to us. “Hey, guys. Jack, is something wrong?”

Jack stuck out his hand and Alan shook it. “This saddle. Tell me about it.”

Alan rubbed his chin between thumb and forefinger. “I got it in last week. I’m told it’s by Harris, a fancy saddlemaker out of Carolina.”

“It is.”

Alan’s eyebrows rose. “You know your saddles.”

“You could say that.”

“So anyway, again, from what I’m told, the seat is made of ostrich hide and the accents are sterling silver and turquoise. New, a saddle like this goes for about thirteen thousand on their website.”

“That’s only a little more than my wife paid for it.”

In the months I‘d known Jack, he had never once mentioned that he had previously been married, that he had a wife and two children until a car bomb meant for him took their lives in Alamogordo, New Mexico. I only knew about them from other people. Hearing him mention his wife now froze the blood in my veins. This was big.

Alan squinted at Jack. “What?”

“When she had it made for me, as a wedding present.”

“You’re telling me this used to be yours? What are the odds?” He grinned.

“No, I’m telling you it’s still mine. It was stolen two weeks ago.”

I’ve always found it difficult to tell when the blood drains from a black person’s face. It’s not like they go pale. I lose all color; literally, I look like bleached flour. Alan looked ill now.

“Seriously?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so. But don’t take my word for it.” Jack pointed at the saddle. “Underneath the left stirrup, way up high, you’ll find my initials, JPH, and a date. June 7, 1996. Then hers: LTH.”

LTH. Lena Talbert Holden. I knew this because I had resorted to Google to fill in the blanks about Jack’s past.

Alan lifted the stirrup, turning it for us to see as well. JPH 6-7-96 LTH. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me about the person who brought it in.”

Alan’s eyes closed. “Oh man.” He walked to the shop door and turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED.

I whispered to Jack, “I didn’t know there’d been a robbery at the ranch.”

“Greg and Farrah interrupted us.”

My brain whirled trying to understand what he meant. Jack was often unclear to the point of obtuse. I hadn’t been able to decide if it was his greatest skill or greatest curse. Greg and Farrah had come up to the Jeep when I crashed it into the concrete, but they hadn’t interrupted anything. Then I realized he meant that the issue with Greg and Farrah had interrupted our conversation at dinner the night before, when he’d told me we needed to talk. Probably. That, or he was speaking in tongues.

Alan’s voice and shoulders sagged. “We need to talk.” He trudged back from the front door to us, instantly twenty years older. “Follow me.”

He took us behind the
U
-shaped display counter of guns, jewelry, and coins and on through a heavy closed door in the center of the back wall. Alan flipped on light switches as we walked down a short hall. There were three doors at the end of it. One stood open, to a bathroom on the left. Another closed door on the same side had a plaque that read OFFICE. The last one, on the right, was closed as well. Alan opened the door on the right, again switching on a light. We entered a room filled with cardboard boxes, office supplies, and merchandise.

Alan stopped but didn’t turn around. “I keep most everything sellable out front, but if things aren’t moving, or if a customer puts something on layaway, I put ’em here. Also, stuff I haven’t gotten around to pricing and preparing for display is back here, and a few other things. Things that don’t feel right, sometimes.”

He crouched down and reached for a box under a table and dragged it out. He opened the flaps. Inside was a cigar box.

He lifted it out and flipped the lid, handing it to Jack. “Does any of this look familiar?”

Jack sucked in a breath. He lifted a currycomb from the box, sterling silver with inset turquoise and something engraved on it. I peered over his shoulder. Jarhead. The date. All American Futurity. Second Place. I put my hand on Jack’s shoulder. He sifted his hands through the box and his eyes glazed and drifted far, far away.

I turned to Alan. “Jarhead, the name that’s engraved there, is Jack’s horse. A very famous racehorse. These are keepsakes, or really more like treasures.”

Alan sank into a crouch, his head in his hands. “Shit. It’s bad.”

“What? What is it?”

He stood back up and began to pace. “When Mama and Daddy died, it messed me up. A gas leak. Who has gas leaks anymore? At least they didn’t know what was happening to them; they didn’t suffer.” He wiped his eyes. “I didn’t want this place. I was real happy doing tile. Man, it’s like therapy to me. I get in a zone, and when I’m done it’s the most satisfying thing in the world.”

“You’re very good at it.”

He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Thank you. There’s so much more to this place than I’d realized. The first week I was here, an eighteen-wheeler pulls up out back. The guy unloads boxes and wheels them in on hand trucks like he owns the place. ‘Where do you want your merchandise?’ he asks me. ‘What’s going on?’ I say. ‘You Edward Freeman?’ ‘Hell no, that’s my daddy and he’s dead.’ ‘Well, I was told to drop this off for him and let you know that payment will be collected in the usual manner.’ I’m like, ‘What is this shit?’ And all he tells me is, ‘Special merchandise. Hot sellers, if you know what I mean.’”

Alan stopped and mopped his brow, and I squeezed his arm. It looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Jack had put the box down and was listening, arms crossed.

“I tell him to get that stolen shit out of my store. He does, but not before he warns me that this isn’t going to go well for me or him. He practically begs me to take it. Says he’ll pay for it, only don’t make him put it back on the truck. It was some good shit, too. Jewelry, high class. Phones. Laptops. The kinda stuff that sells, I’ve learned, and sells for top dollar.” He took a deep breath. “They sent an enforcer to see me three weeks later.”

“Oh no,” I breathed.

“The guy says I owe him some money, that my father had paid him once a month, that it is the price of doing business. Man, I didn’t know what to do. By then I’d dug into the books, and our income had been down in the last few weeks. Now I understand why, even though I didn’t then. Daddy was getting hot inventory at a reduced price, and that’s how he was making enough money to share it with the likes of this guy. He was burying the payments back in Cost of Goods Sold for the merchandise. But I hadn’t figured any of that out then. So I told him to get stuffed.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing then. But he comes back the next month. Asks if I’d gotten any smarter. I hadn’t. He beat the shit out of me right then and there and said next time it’s gonna be my family.” Alan and his wife had three daughters, five, eight, and twelve.

“Jesus,” I said. “That’s scary.”

He nodded. “Yeah, and I still didn’t get any smarter the next month. I figured he was bluffing. Somebody burned a cross in my yard the next night. My girls still cry when they talk about it.”

“I’m so sorry.” And I was. Alan was breaking the law. He was hurting other people by his involvement in this scheme. But I wasn’t sure what I would have done in his place.

“I’d been mad at my pops until then, but suddenly I felt sad for him. Sick, even. A month later the guy came back. I paid him. A truck showed up the next week and dropped off merchandise, and they’ve been coming like clockwork ever since. The trucks, and the collections.”

Finally, Jack chimed in. “How’s that going for you so far?”

“Not so good.”

“Are you ready to take it to the cops?”

Alan closed his eyes and licked his lips. The silence in the room was shattered by a loud noise from right behind the back wall, the distinctive almost-train-like sound of the horn of a big rig.

“I’m too damn scared of ’em to cross ’em. Plus, I’m on trial for beating up a cop. You think the police are gonna believe my black ass if I take this story to them? No. No way. And at the end of the day, I can’t let anything happen to my wife and girls.” Alan shuddered, then opened his eyes. “That’s probably a delivery outside. I gotta go see.”

Jack nodded but said, “If it’s them, don’t let them know we’re onto you guys.”

Alan snorted. “No way in hell.” He reached up with both hands and rubbed his cheeks, hard. “I can’t take a chance you’ll be seen, but you can listen from the hallway if you want.”

Jack nodded and motioned to the doorway at me with his head. We went inside, one of us on either side of the door.

“We should get his license plate number,” I whispered.

Jack shook his head no.

“I could walk out the front door and around the back.”

“In an alley in a bad part of town. No one has a good reason to be back there, certainly no former Miss Rodeo Texas.”

I growled.
First runner-up.
“You’re letting this go? Chances like this are about as rare as . . . as . . . as . . . as wings on a cat.” As soon as I said it, my cheeks heated. Whatever I’d meant to say, that wasn’t it. Well, surely Jack would get the point.

His left eyebrow shot sky-high.

I lifted my chin to match it. “In my experience, anyway.”

He grinned and put a finger over his mouth. “Shhhh.”

The horn honked again. I heard a roll-up door ascending, and then Alan’s voice. “You’re early.”

“So sue me.”

“I have customers. If I’m not expecting you, I haven’t cleared my schedule. Chill, man. You’re drawing attention back here blasting your horn.”

“Fuck you.”

“Where’s Chuck?”

“How the hell should I know? Are you going to help me unload or not?”

Alan didn’t answer, but moments later we heard the two men grunt and something heavy land with a thump. A squeaking that sounded like wheels turning came closer, then more grunting, louder, and another thump. More squeaking. Clanking. A resounding clang followed by lesser similar noises.

“I won’t be here next week. Christmas.”

Alan answered, “Good.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck you, too.”

The rolling door descended noisily and a scraping sound and click followed. The thud of rubberized footsteps approached.

Alan came around the corner. “He’s gone.”

Jack nodded. “That’s a pickle you’ve got yourself in.”

“Man, you have no idea.”

“You gonna let this continue?”

My eyes swung to Alan. He said, “I don’t know what else to do. My family . . .”

“We could offer this information in return for the DA dropping the assault and resistance charges.”

Alan backed up, his foot hitting the wall behind him. “No way, man. No damn way. I’d rather do time than mess with these people.”

Jack held his hand in the air. “Okay. I don’t want to see you end up in worse trouble later.”

Using my least nosey and most winning voice, I asked, “You don’t happen to have that driver’s name or license plate number, do you?”

Jack took a giant step over to me and stepped on my foot.

“Ow,” I said.

Alan shook his head. “What? No.” He walked quickly into the storage room again and came out with the cigar box. “Take these, and your saddle. Please. I’m sorry as hell about ’em. And if you can send me a list of what else you have missing, I can see whether it ended up here.”

“Thank you.” Jack took the box. “Oh, before all of this, we had come by to tell you that your trial is continued until mid-January.”

Alan’s shoulders slumped farther. “I don’t know which is worse. The trial sooner, or worrying about it longer and having it later.”

Jack smiled, but it didn’t reach his dimple, or his eyes. “I’ll send you that list.” He stuck out his hand and Alan shook it. “We’ll talk to you the first week in January for sure, if not earlier.”

“Jack, um—” I wanted to buy the toy horse for Betsy, but as soon as I started to speak I thought better of it. Now wasn’t the time.

Jack cocked his head as he waited for me to continue.

“Never mind. Merry Christmas, Alan.”

Jack went and got his saddle. I followed him back out into the store and to the front door. The door was locked by a keyed deadbolt. Alan had come with us, and he pulled keys on a metal hoop from his jeans pocket and let us out.

“Merry Christmas to you both.” Alan locked the door behind us.

I glanced back and saw that he’d left the sign as CLOSED. I pulled my own key ring out and walked to my Mustang.

As I clicked to unlock its doors, Jack looked at me and shook his head. “He’s not telling us something. Something big.”