Green Tea (2 page)

I called Teagan back. “Hey, sorry to interrupt you at work, but next time you talk to Steph, could you please ask her if I’m supposed to be doing anything with Louis’s condo.”

“Oh, that was the other thing I was supposed to tell you, you’re supposed to stay the hell away from there.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Cara, you know you were supposed to stay away from there if I wasn’t with you, so when you called to make arrangements to have me come with you, I would have remembered that you aren’t supposed to go there. If you were too stupid to ask me to go with you, then I can’t help it. As any O’Flynn will attest, try as I might, I cannot keep you from doing really stupid things.”

“Don’t start. You just forgot. You. Miss Organization. You’re losing it Teagan.”

“I am, and we need to talk about that, but not right now.”

“Any time, day or night, you know that.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks Cara.”

One thing off my plate. Well, not cleanly off my plate, more like it sploshed over the side of the plate and is now a mess all over the table.

Sploshed is another one of those words. Plogged is plugged and clogged. Sploshed is sloshed and splashed. I have to wonder, if SMOG is smoke and fog, and SMAZE is smoke and haze, is snow and fog called SNOG? Will we get the chance to see some SNOG on our trip? I have a lot of research to do before we go to Alaska.

Add it to the list.

Also on the list, since I won’t really be able to get the picnic table that they’d rigged for physical therapy out of the locked room in Louis’s condo, I really owe the physical therapist a call. I told her I would see if I could get it for her and that I would keep her updated about my progress,
then
I didn’t call her again. Rude to say the least.

I went over to the desk to find her card. Sitting right there were Louis’s journals. Yet another sploshy mess on my table.

I called Teagan back. “Sorry. Quick question. Should I bring Louis’s journals over to Steph? If they stay here, someone might show up all of a sudden and take them. I’m still not sure if they’re fiction, evidence, or hopefully something completely benign. With finding those memory cards, they might be more important than we thought.”

“Good point. I’ll call her and ask.”

“Thanks.”

Two minutes later the phone rang. “Steph said that if you’re going to be anywhere near Old Town today she’d meet you and take custody of the journals. She also has some paperwork for you to sign.”

“Great. Then it’s official. A lawyer is representing me. I just don’t know why, or what, or how it’s all going to turn out. Crap. I’ll call her when I get to Old Town. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

“I’ll let her know.”

“Thanks. Could you text me her number? Kind of stupid for you to play intermediary all the time.”

“Sure, give me two seconds.”

I hung up. Teagan always says to give her two seconds when she’s running out of patience, so I knew not to call back, no matter what.

Back to searching for the name of the physical therapist
who
helped Louis try to get back to work, or at least that’s how the story went; I’m questioning everything now. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. So far, I haven’t come up with any answers and I’m not sure the questions are about the right stuff. Who knows what I’ve missed while I was
busy asking inane questions
, and thinking about words like inane.

Darn it, I was
this-close
to getting my confidence back. I refuse to lose that again. I’m going to stay confident. I’ve got what it takes to figure all this out, I just need to get off my rear-end and do it.

All I need is more pieces to the puzzle.

I found Gina’s number, gave her a call and got her voicemail. She must be physical therapy-ing someone. I left a message saying I’d be in the area we met last time, or in Old Town, as well as all the way on the other side of town today and if she’d like to meet I have information about the table.

I sounded a little desperate, even to my ear, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And clichés.

Once I got off the phone I felt kind of guilty. The only information I have about the table is that I have no information about the table.

The call was more than a little manipulative and manipulating people is a bad thing. I wouldn’t want someone to manipulate me.

I called Gina back and left a more coherent message saying that there was really no new information about the table because I’d been having trouble getting ahold of Louis’s next of kin. I told her that the table hadn’t been moved and she was still in the running as far as the table’s ultimate destination and that I’d still like to meet if she was willing.

I hung up and wondered, not for the first time, if I really am a blood relative of Teagan’s since she can leave the most eloquent messages and mine sound more like a confused crack head that has been drinking too much. Not that I’ve ever actually known a confused crack head, but I’ve seen a couple on TV and I’m pretty sure that confused and crack head go together like Irish and Catholic, but in a completely different way.

I’ve got it back. My way of thinking a little sideways. Who in their right mind would compare a Catholic and a crack head?

With my confidence returning, probably unreasonably, I jumped in the shower for one of my famous five-minute quickies. If you’re going to be heralded for a quickie, best it should be a shower, not, well, moving on; out of the shower I put on some jeans and a t-shirt, braided my hair.

I need to call Jovana, the lovely woman who started out simply sharing studio space with AJ and has quickly become a part of the family. It’s handy that she just happens to own a bar and a ballroom and is doing a barter thing with Morgan so that the wedding is only expensive, not exorbitant.

Anyway, I needed to let Jovana know that I would be at Adeline’s today. Adeline is Jovana’s neighbor and friend, and because she is living alone, and everyone thinks that maybe she is showing signs of some level of dementia, I’ve been hired to be her companion and report back if I see anything her daughter needs to know. I slowed down only long enough to have a quick cup of tea, and make another for my travel mug.

For some reason, known only to God, when I was about to leave I walked over and looked out the window into my parking lot.

God, or the universe, or karma, or whatever deity floats your boat, is good.

Sitting right there beside my neighbor’s Mustang was a familiar little Mini Cooper. Officer Jerkface, once a shining example of all things good in the community, being a very handsome cop, is now high on my list of yucky people, and there is just no good reason for him to be sitting right there in my parking lot.

Again.

I called my neighbor with the big blue balls, bowling balls, or so his welcome mat says. He was kind enough to give me his number when he came over for faux stew. That was the night we discussed that he’s an ex-special forces spy kind of guy, a good bowling buddy with the police chief, and since Officer Jerkface was parked right next to his car, I knew he was home.

“Hey, this is Cara.”

“Hi.”

“I think I might have a problem.”

“Tell me.”

“You know that cop that has been following me around and almost ran over me at my parent’s house?”

“Yeah, I remember the little…”

“He’s parked right next to your car.”

He growled at me, “Stay in the house.”

“I don’t want you to kill him or anything.”

“I’m not gonna kill him. Stay in your house. Stay away from the window. When I knock on the door, you look out the hole, and you open it only if I hold up five fingers.”

“You know what, this was probably a bad idea. Never mind.”

“Cara, there’s no unringing a bell, ‘specially an alarm bell. This guy is dangerous. Stay in the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

Okay, I stayed in the house, and I stayed away from the living room window. Instead I ran into my room, catapulted myself from the door onto my bed, damn near shot myself out the window in the process, hit my elbow on my nightstand and bashed that nerve that makes you say things that your mother would smack you for; but I held it together while I peeked out the window.

I admit, my eyes were watering a little from the whole elbow thing, so it added to the drama of the situation, but it was pretty dramatic all by itself.

Soon, I saw my neighbor walk over toward Jerkface’s car. He looked like he was on his way out to play baseball, with jeans, a loose baseball jersey,
a
bag that could hold equipment, and a baseball bat in his hand.

He got to his car and dropped the bag on the ground like he was going to stick it all in his trunk; then just happened to notice Jerkface in the car next to his.

Since they had a previous run-in outside my apartment door, it would seem natural for my neighbor to say hi.

I was hoping he was just saying hi.

He said something I couldn’t hear and Jerkface got out of the car, obviously pissed beyond words.

I’m guessing my neighbor’s opening line was something less benign than. ‘Hi, good to see you again.’

They exchanged a few words and a few non-verbal communications. From my vantage point, with life’s mute button on, they looked like the coach and the umpire after a really bad call. They did everything but bump chests.

It seemed a little extreme.

They argued.

They say when you’re going through a trauma everything moves in slow motion. They weren’t moving in slow motion, it was just taking forever for them to finish their argument. I was already feeling guilty because I’m the one that got my neighbor involved in all of this to begin with, and while your brain can put a trauma in slow motion, the daughter of any self-respecting Irish Catholic mother has pretty much instant guilt reactions.

They’ve done studies. The guilt comes on so fast it can’t be timed.

All of that was rushing into my wee little brain when Jerkface pulled a gun.

Holy Mother of God!

When these things happen, I become very ethnic. I can’t help it. I’m pretty sure that Holy Mother of God was blurted out loud, possibly with an Irish brogue, but no one heard me.

What had I gotten my neighbor into?

Before I could even pull my eyes away, all hell broke loose.

Jerkface was screaming and waving the gun all around.

My neighbor didn’t back down at all.

I was about to open the window and scream, or call 911, or faint, when cops came from everywhere.

My neighbor smiled and stepped back.

I was still watching the whole thing like a silent movie without the benefit of piano accompaniment, but it was pretty obvious what was going on.

Jerkface looked stunned and just stood there.

The cops told Jerkface to put down his weapon.

He identified himself as a cop.

The other cops didn’t look overly impressed.

Jerkface put his weapon down on the hood of his car and backed away from it.

Some young cop that looked a little too nervous to be involved in the whole thing bolted toward Jerkface. I thought he was going to grab the gun, but instead, he coldcocked him.