A Hard Day’s Fright (8 page)

I didn’t. Rather than point it out, I said, “I’m leaving. I’ll just go down the hall and say good night to your mother and—”

“She’s not here. She left the instant that meeting of yours was over.”

For the second time in a week, an un-Ella-like action from a woman who was usually all about predictability. The odds were like, what, a million to one? Which is why I figured the kid didn’t know what she was talking about. “I’ll bet she’s in with Jim,” I said.

“No. She left.”

“She never leaves this early, not even on Friday.”

“She did today.”

“But that’s not possible.”

“Her purse is gone and her car is gone, and she’s gone, and she asked me to ask you to give me a ride home.”

I was intrigued. Which says something about the pathetic-ness of my existence.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“Nope.”

“Did she say when she’d be back?”

“Just that she’d see me later.”

“Did you see which way she turned when she drove out of the cemetery? That might at least tell us the direction she was headed.”

“Didn’t need to.” Ariel lifted her chin. “I know where she went.”

“You said—”

“I said she didn’t say where she was going. That doesn’t mean I don’t know.”

“Then where—”

Instead of telling me, Ariel grabbed on to my arm and dragged me down the hallway to her mother’s office. Once we were inside, she looked up and down the hallway to be sure we were alone, then shut the door.

“I have a feeling she wouldn’t want Jim to know about this,” Ariel said, and she pointed to Ella’s desk.

Now, here’s the thing about Ella’s desk: except for the girls’ latest school pictures, a flowery tea mug, and a blue and white china saucer where Ella sets her reading glasses when she’s not wearing them (and then can never find them), Ella’s desk is always clean. I don’t care how deep she is into a project, or what she’s working on or how many balls she’s juggling.

Ella’s desk is speckless.

Except that day.

There were papers strewn all over the place, books open and left out, and the yellow pages perched precariously on top of it all.

Like anybody could blame me for jumping to the obvious conclusion?

“Did you do this?” I asked Ariel.

“Not a chance. Mom would get majorly crazy if I did. It was like this when I walked in. I swear. I didn’t touch anything or move anything, I just sat in front of her computer and worked around the mess. I didn’t even pay attention to what all this crap was. At least until Mom hotfooted it out of here like her shoes were rocket-propelled. Then I started looking through it all.”

I’d already beat her to that. Carefully, I unstacked the stuff on Ella’s desk, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery—literally and figuratively.

“It’s an old Shaker yearbook,” I said, lifting the book that had been the bedrock of the pile. “It’s from 1967, the year Lucy would have graduated.” The book was open to a two-page spread that featured senior boys, and automatically I looked for names I recognized. “No Darren Andrews,” I said, and I didn’t bother to explain. Since Ariel knew the Lucy story inside and out, something told me she knew exactly who was with her mom and Lucy the night of the concert. “No Will Margolis or Bobby Gideon, either. In fact…” Since I’m so much taller than her, I had to tip the book so Ariel could see it. “It’s one of the last pages of seniors, and look, this guy’s picture is circled.”

The photo was of a kid named Chuck Zuggart. Last in the class, and something told me that wasn’t just because of his name.

Chuck had a flat, broad face and a neck as wide as football field. No big surprise there since the paragraph about him below his picture said he played tackle on the varsity team. Chuck had beady eyes, a shaved head, and a scar that cut his left eyebrow exactly in half.

Of course, why Ella had bothered to ring his photo with red ink was still a mystery.

I set the yearbook aside and dug through the rest of the debris, hoping it would provide an answer. There were a couple of MapQuest printouts of towns in some mostly rural county to our west and a page from some website called hogfriendly.com. Then there was the phonebook. It was open to a section titled “Bars and Restaurants,” and I looked it over and pointed.

“Here. She’s circled something again.”

Ariel had to stand on her tiptoes to see what I was talking about. She leaned in close and squinted. Maybe those clunky black glasses she used to wear were for more than just show.

“‘Hog Wild,’” she read from the circled ad. “‘Biker boys and their biker toys.’ Yeah.” She glanced up at me. “That’s what I saw.”

A funny, rat-a-tat rhythm started up in my chest, and when I set down the phonebook, my hands were shaking a little. “But that’s just crazy. You don’t think your mother actually went—”

“Kind of what I thought. Except it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Unless Mom’s got a dark side!” Ariel said this like it might actually be a good thing.

I was thinking not so much.

But there wasn’t time to waste on thinking.

I grabbed Ariel and, keeping my promise to Ella, drove her home and made sure Rachel and Sarah were there to keep an eye on her. Then the moment I was back in the car, I gave Reggie a call. Yeah, it was a day too early for our planned night out, but if there was one thing I’d learned in my years of being a detective to the dead, it was this: when it comes to places with names like Hog Wild, it never hurts to take along reinforcements.

T
alk about a mismatched pair! Reggie Brinks is a hulking thirtysomething bald guy with a rock-’em-sock-’em personality that matched both the pit bull tattooed smack in the middle of his forehead and a police record as long as my arm. Delmar Lui, on the other hand, is a slim Asian kid with spiky black hair. He was a first-year student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, a sensitive kid with a good eye and, back in the day, a tendency to express his creative side on the walls of buildings with a can of spray paint.

When they’d first met during my cemetery restoration project, they were both working off community service hours, and they couldn’t stand each other. But hey, maybe it’s the whole teamwork thing that worked its magic. Or maybe it’s just that my team and I, we went through a lot together that summer, including becoming flash-in-the-pan reality TV stars and solving a murder. Whatever the reason, Reggie and Delmar were now fast friends, and by the time I got to Reggie’s downtown apartment building, they were both waiting outside for me.

I explained what was going on as best I could, but let’s face it, in my world, even explanations come with a catch. For one, I couldn’t tell them I’d gotten embroiled in trying to find the body of a woman who’d died forty-five years earlier. For another…well, the only thing I knew for sure was that I had a really bad feeling that Ella had headed off on her own to do something stupid.

That was good enough for Reggie and Delmar.

I was grateful. For their understanding and for the backup.

It didn’t hurt that both the guys remembered Ella from the summer before. Reggie, especially. After all, she’d been the high bidder on him at a bachelor auction we’d sponsored to raise money for the renovation. Tough guy that he is, even Reggie admitted that Ella is funny and sweet. She’s about twenty years older than him, and he said (I hope Ella never finds out; she has the secret hots for Reggie and she’d be devastated!) that the thought of an “elderly” lady like her doing something she shouldn’t be doing and the people she shouldn’t be doing it with taking advantage of her, or worse, putting her in danger…well, that just pissed him off. Big-time.

Neither of the guys had ever been to Hog Wild. That was no big surprise. The bar was on the outskirts of a little town  called Wellington, about forty miles southwest of Cleveland.

The town itself was as charming as a picture book illustration, with cute little shops and Victorian houses heavy on the gingerbread. The outskirts? Not so much.

We pulled into a blacktopped parking lot in front of a cement block building with a lighted sign above the door that said hog wild, and I took a moment to look around. Away from the glare of the sign, the shadows that hugged the building were long and dark. The lot was filled with motorcycles of all shapes and sizes.

And one lone Honda Civic.

My hopes rose. So did my anxiety level. “She’s here,” I told the guys.

Delmar was sitting in the front passenger seat, and he put a hand on my arm. His black leather jacket was hand-painted with graffiti, and the silver studs in his lip, his eyebrow, and his nose reflected the glaring light and winked at me. “Maybe you should wait in the car.”

He was a smart kid; he should have known better. I shook off his hand. “My friend is in there,” I reminded him. “And I’m not going to let you two jokers go in and rescue her and get all the glory.”

“And who’s going to rescue you?”

This from Reggie, who leaned over the seat, studying me. I’d been in such a rush to figure out what Ella was up to and to get to her before she could do it, I hadn’t changed clothes after work. I was wearing a cute little black denim skirt and a beige-y V-neck cami trimmed in lace. Back at the cemetery, I’d given in to the pressures of business over fashion and topped the whole thing off with a lightweight black cardigan, but it was a warm evening and I’d taken that off when I got in the car and tossed it in the backseat. I reached for it. “I’ll just—”

“Don’t bother.” Reggie popped open the back door and swung out onto the blacktop. “It’s gonna take more than a little sweater to keep the guys in a place like this off you.”

This was not the encouraging rah-rah speech I needed.

I gulped and reconsidered taking Delmar’s advice and staying put. Except that the thought of Ella in the Hog Wild doing I-don’t-know-what made my stomach turn, and  really, there was only one way to take care of that problem.

Reggie insisted on going first, and maybe that was a good thing, because just as we walked in, the country song wailing from the jukebox ended and a hush fell over the place. I guess most of the patrons were regulars because I heard a young guy in a corner booth growl the word “strangers,” and one by one, heads swiveled and patrons looked our way.

Well, they looked Reggie’s way.

Until they saw me.

Hog Wild was the size of a double garage, with a bar along one wall, booths along the other, and tables crammed everywhere in between except for the small empty square of floor that was used for dancing. Friday night, and the place was packed with men and women in jeans, black leather, bandanas, and what I suspected were more tattoos and piercings per square foot than in any other establishment in Wellington.

Every single one of the guys watched me walk over to the only empty table, and OK, I might have been a little stand-offish, but hey, none of them was exactly my type. And I was preoccupied, remember. All that black leather. All those piercings. All those tattoos.

And no Ella.

Just to be sure, I took another look around. A guy with no teeth raised his beer bottle in my direction. A guy with a Mohawk winked. A couple others gave me looks that made shivers crawl up my spine. And I do not mean the good kind.

The bartender was a sixty-some-year-old guy as big as a house with a shaved head and a ring in his nose. He crossed his arms over a chest the size of a small European monarchy, and he and Reggie exchanged nods.

“Beers,” Reggie said.

“I’d really rather have—” One look from Reggie stopped me before “apple martini” could cross my lips. “Beer will be just fine,” I said, and took the nearest seat.

Our beers came in cans and were a brand I had never heard of. Reggie and Delmar sipped theirs, and while they did, I took the opportunity to take a second look around Hog Wild. Another song started up on the jukebox, and keeping an eye on us, the crowd went back to drinking and smoking. (By the way, the smoking part is illegal in restaurants and bars in Ohio, but I think it’s safe to say I was not the good citizen who was going to point this out.)

“She’s not here.” I looked from Reggie to Delmar, and honestly, I don’t know what I expected them to do. Nothing, maybe. Maybe just commiserate with the worry that was eating me from the inside out. “Something’s wrong. Ella’s car is here, but she isn’t. We’ve got to talk to the people. We’ve got to—”

Reggie took a long gulp of beer. “We will,” he said, swiping the back of one hand across his mouth. “But this isn’t the kind of place you just waltz into and start asking questions. We’ve got to show that we’re part of the crowd first, that we’re just here for a good time.”

I understood the wisdom of this approach, I just didn’t like it. The blood thrumming in my ears, I forced myself to sip my beer, the better to fit in.

Which was, of course, next to impossible. It’s a safe bet that I was the only woman there who knew anything about good grooming, color coordination, and the very bad fashion faux pas of squeezing a body full of lumps, bumps, and bulges into tight black leather. Honestly, could I help the look that must have crossed my face when a six-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound woman in silver-studded leather pants, a leather jacket, and a tiny leather bustier squeezed behind me on her way to the bar?

She jostled my chair, and my stomach slammed into the table.

I bit my tongue. Accidents happen, especially in crowded bars. I forced myself to ignore Leather Lady and keep my mind on my mission. “Can we talk to the bartender now?” I asked Reggie.

“Cool your jets.” He finished his beer and signaled toward the bar for another round. “The way you’re acting, you’d think we never investigated a murder before.”

I was in mid-sip, and I looked at Reggie over the lip of my beer can. “Who said anything about murder?”

Delmar made a face. “Nobody needed to. Why else would you and that nice Ms. Silverman be in a place like this? And why do you think we wanted to come along? Heck, hangin’ with you and solvin’ those murders last summer, that’s just about the coolest thing we’ve done in as long as we can remember.”

“You don’t think we came for the atmosphere, do you?” Reggie threw an arm over the back of the empty chair next to him, and as cool as ice, he looked around.

When he blanched, I sat up like a shot. “What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothin’.” The beers arrived, and keeping one eye on the bar, Reggie handed the server a ten, waited for change, and popped the top on his beer. “Just a guy over there.” He slid a look toward the far end of the bar. “Somebody I used to know.”

I looked that way, too. It wasn’t hard to pick out the guy Reggie knew. He was glaring at our table, and I swear I could just about feel the wall of anger that washed our way.

“Somebody who liked you, right?” Wishful thinking at its best. I actually might have fooled myself into believing it if Reggie didn’t scoot his chair over, discreetly positioning it so that his back was toward the bar. “Please tell me it’s not somebody who’s gunning for you.”

Delmar cringed. “Bad choice of words.”

That thrumming in my ears picked up tempo. Keeping time with it, I drummed my fingers against the sticky table and took another look around hoping for some sign of Ella.

No luck.

“I don’t like this,” I said. “I’m going to walk around and check things out. Maybe—” I was already getting up when Leather Lady came back the other way, slammed into me, and knocked me back into my seat.

Like anybody could blame me for getting a little defensive?

I looked up at the mountain of flesh and leather, years of proper manners not forgotten, even in the face of so much ugly. “Excuse me?”

She was already past me, and she turned and stepped back to look me over. “Are you talking to me, bitch?”

Reggie put a hand on my left arm.

Delmar grabbed my right hand.

I twinkled like a beauty queen. “I’m sure you were trying to be careful where you were going, I just thought I’d point out that if you went around the other way…” I pointed one perfectly manicured finger (after the trash pickup incident, I’d gone for a well-deserved touch-up) toward the empty square of dance floor. “Well, there’s more room over there.”

“And you think I need more room, why?”

Oh, my! When faced with a question that blunt, how can a girl possibly lie?

I got to my feet. Sure, Leather Lady had a hundred pounds and more on me, but in my black-and-white cheetah print and patent leather sandals with their four-inch heels, I had the height advantage. I intended to use it for all it was worth—and I would have, too, if a flash of color on the other side of the bar hadn’t caught my eye. I’d recognize that spiky red hair anywhere.

I didn’t excuse myself. But then, I was over the whole polite thing. Too relieved and grateful to see Ella in one piece to question where she’d gotten a black leather jacket and how on earth she thought a woman her age could be seen in public in peg-leg jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of Ozzy Osbourne on it, I hurried over and intercepted her while she was standing outside the ladies’ room, tentatively glancing around and looking more than a little lost. By the time I grabbed her hand and brought her back to the table, Leather Lady was gone.

“Oh, my.” Ella glanced at me, at Delmar, at Reggie. Her cheeks got red, but then, it was warm in there. “What are you all doing here?”

“That’s what Pepper wants to ask you.” Delmar correctly figured that I wasn’t going to drink the second beer Reggie ordered for me. He pushed the can in front of Ella. “We was worried.”

“About me?” Ella tried for a sparkling smile, but when it comes to that sort of thing, she’s just not in my league. She looked more flustered than feisty. “How did you know—”

“It doesn’t matter. What does matter is what you’re doing here. Ella…” She was playing with the can of beer, turning it in her hands and flicking the pop top, and I touched a hand to her arm to get her attention. “What are you up to?”

Ella shrugged. Her cheeks got a little redder. “I didn’t think I’d have to explain myself. I mean, I never imagined I’d run into anyone I knew here. Now that it comes down to it…” Her gaze moved to the table and stayed there. “It’s a little embarrassing.”

I gulped. “You’re not into leather. Or tattoos. Ella, you don’t have some secret life as a biker babe, do you?”

She managed a laugh, and I let go the breath I was holding. With one finger, she made a figure eight on the table. “Actually, I was investigating.”

This was just about as big a surprise as learning she might be a biker babe.

When I realized it was hanging open, I snapped my mouth shut. “Investigating because…”

“Well, it’s all your fault, Pepper.” Ella plumped back in her chair. “For a couple reasons. First of all, I’ve watched you all these years, and I’ve seen you find out information and help people and solve crimes. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I figured, how hard could it be? Until I got here.” When she looked around, the color in her cheeks drained. “I thought I was dressing the part.” She looked down at her middle-aged-lady-imagines-biker-life outfit and shrugged. “I never thought I’d have to interact with people…well, you know…with people like this.” She caught herself and realized she might have offended. “Not that I have anything against anyone who might possibly have a criminal background,” she added for Delmar and Reggie’s benefit. “They’re just not—”

“Not in your class, Ms. Silverman,” Delmar said.

“Not people you should be hanging with,” Reggie added.

Ella nodded. “You make it look so easy,” she told me. “But I got here and…” She fanned her face with one hand. “I got a little overwhelmed. I’m ashamed to admit that I was hiding in the ladies’ room. I think I might have stayed in there all night if two girls hadn’t come in and started comparing the tattoos they had on their—”