“Leave Matt alone, he’s just doin’ his job,” Lee said.
I was a little shocked at the call, I just wanted to fluster Matt a bit.
How did he…?
Fucking, f**king Lee.
“What’s his job?” I asked, my blood pressure ratcheting up a notch.
“Making sure you don’t get kidnapped or shot at.”
“Or do anything stupid?”
“That too.”
“How did you know I was screwing with him?”
“Trade secret.”
“Tell me or I’m moving to Venezuela, losing myself in the jungle and shacking up with a local.”
Silence, then a sigh.
“Fortnum’s is wired and there are cameras. We did it last night.”
“What? Why?”
“Remember the conversation we had in the kitchen yesterday?”
I remembered every encounter I’d had with Lee since I was five. I most vividly remembered those that occurred in the last twenty-four hours, and not just because they were the most recent.
“Yeah.”
“You’re on Terry Wilcox’s radar. That’s not good. I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“By bugging my store?”
“That and anything else I can think of.”
I stood staring at Matt who was beginning to look amused.
“Do you remember the part of the conversation this morning where you said you’d be at Fortnum’s whenever you were done?” Silence but I didn’t wait for a response. “Well, don’t bother.”
* * * * *
Ally and I walked up to Rosie’s house.
Matt followed us there and was now sitting in his SUV watching us, but we were ignoring him.
Jane had returned, no sign of Duke or Dolores, but she’d taken the opportunity to, what she called, “canvass the neighborhood” (as Duke lived in log cabin surrounded by four acres of evergreen trees, I wondered what neighborhood she was talking about). Nevertheless, she scored some points by learning that the dirt lane to Duke’s cabin had been a hive of activity in the last day or so, including a sighting yesterday morning that could have been Rosie. No sign of Duke’s return before or after Rosie.
This meant that Rosie was looking for Duke too, or had been yesterday morning. Whether he found him or not was anyone’s guess.
We stood on Rosie’s porch and knocked. Rosie lived alone, in a bungalow that needed serious renovation. I used to wonder how he could afford the bungalow, I didn’t exactly pay him a fortune. It was on the out, out, outskirts of Platte Park but close enough to the park and to Pearl Street to be a prime piece of real estate.
Now I knew how he could afford it.
No answer on the knock so we looked in the windows. I’d been to Rosie’s dozens of times and it didn’t look any different than normal.
“Be a shame to lose those primo pot plants. Do you think someone’s taking care of those plants?” I asked.
Ally gave a shrug and then turned brightly to me. “I bet I know who’d know!”
“Who?”
“Lee.”
I shoved her shoulder. “Smartass.”
Deciding to take a page out of Jane’s book, we “canvassed the neighborhood” knocking on doors and asking people if they knew or had seen Rosie.
No luck, most people were away at work, the ones that were in barely knew him and no one had seen him. He didn’t seem incredibly popular, nor did Ally and I for knocking on their doors.
Somewhere between getting stun-gunned and our current adventure, Ally had business cards made up with her and my names and numbers on them.
When she gave the first one out, I nearly choked.
“Where’d you get those?” I asked her as we walked away from the house.
“I called Brody. He made them up last night. Put them in my mailbox. Aren’t they righteous?”
Dear Lord.
Brody was a friend of ours, had been since high school. He was a computer dweeb, worked at home programming PC games, barely ever left the house and he made a shed load of money. He also barely ever slept. He lived on energy drinks and cheese puffs and shopped for groceries exclusively at open-all-night-convenience stores.
We headed to the emergency contact of Rosie’s we hadn’t yet gone after, the one whose beauty sleep I’d disturbed the day before. Rosie had recorded his name in the employee file as Kevin “The Kevster” James.
The Kevster answered the door wearing a pair of filthy jeans, a black Hendrix tee so faded it was now gray over a thermal, long-john shirt even though it was firmly eighty-six degrees. He had scraggly hair of an indescribable color and it was pretty clear we’d found out who was looking after Rosie’s pot plants, with liberal sampling.
“Hey dudettes.” Was his greeting.
We introduced ourselves and he smiled. “Dig it! I heard about you guys.” He turned to me. “Rosie talks about you all the time, thinks you are the shit. Best job he’s ever had, man, workin’ for a rock chick.”
I felt the first rush of warmth toward Rosie I’d had in two days.
“Hey!” Kevin asked, “What happened to your eye?”
“Got hit in the face by a bad guy,” I told him.
“Hope you kneed him in the nuts,” The Kevster said, leaning forward to look at my eye.
“I bit him.”
“That’s good too,” he replied though it was clear a knee to the nuts would have been the preferred form of retaliation, unfortunately by that time I was stun-gunned.
“We’re looking for Rosie,” I explained.
“Step in line, dudette. Everybody’s looking for Rosie. Ehv-ree-bud-ee. Had dudes here all day yesterday asking about him.”
“Who are these dudes? Do you know them?” Ally asked.
“Most of ‘em, yeah. They want some product, if-you-know-what-I-mean.”
We nodded. We knew what he meant.
“Anyone else?” I said.
“Sure, first up a couple of guys I’m pretty certain were vice. You know, cool as shit but still smelled like cop. Scared the bee-jee-zus out of me that they’d want to come in but they weren’t interested in me. Then two sets of dudes who need to switch pharmaceuticals or their muscles will explode, like The Hulk. Ka-pow!” He clapped and then jiggled his hands in front of his chest.
I looked at Ally then back to The Kevster. The first ones were likely Lee’s men, the last ones were Wilcox’s boys.
“Two sets?”
“Yeah, one set two guys came to the door, two sat in the car. Second set was only two.”