Hot Stuff (2 page)

“Old enough to hold down a bus-boy job to help pay for all this. Evan has Asperger’s, a form of autism with obsessive compulsive behavior. He wasn’t formally diagnosed until he was nine, after he upgraded his collection from smurfs to garden gnomes. Over the years, we’ve learned some lawn décor Evan brought home belonged to that category you call a 10-99…er…some might call it this.” He finally managed to smile when I pulled a handful of candy hearts out of my pocket and singled out the one that said
Hot Stuff
.

“Billington knows about all this?”

“Certainly. Our neighbors are aware of this, too. When something goes missing, they usually show up here first to see if Evan has it planted in his
garden
. If they can identify it, we simply have a custody exchange, then mollify my brother with a trip to a local garden shop for some kind of a replacement.” I popped a candy heart into my mouth and offered him one after flicking a strand of cat fur off the
Kiss Me
heart.

Screwing up his face, he cleared his throat. “Valentine candy in July?”

“I won a six-month supply after writing new imprints for the company. The candy has a long shelf life,” I added.

He declined my offer.

“Bite Me.”

“Ma’am?”

“That was one of my slogans. The candy boss wanted something modern.
You Know
was another one. Kids today can’t get through a sentence without sprinkling it with ‘
you know
’
.
”

He studied me with a lopsided grin. “Why didn’t Billington tell me all this?”

“I don’t think he knows I write slogans and ads for a living.”

Shifting on his feet, he pulled on his ear. “I mean about your brother stealing yard ornaments.”

“Oh well, I suspect Evan’s fancy may be an inside joke at the precinct.”

He shook his head and sighed. “With a rookie at the butt of the joke, I imagine. Mind if I check out the tent?”

I held open the tent flap for him to pass…so I could assess the fit of his jeans from the rear.

Confusion flattered his dark good looks from the front. His backside was just as fine.
Hot Stuff
could have been embroidered on the back of his shirt.

Chapter Two

Sitting in his canvas sling chair, thumbing through a garden catalog, Evan didn’t even look up when we entered his sanctuary.

“Hey, Bro, I want you to meet…” I looked at Hot Stuff’s shirt pocket to get the name right…“Officer Dallas.”

Evan flashed him a quick look. “I didn’t do it.” He resumed concentration on the catalog.

“Hey, buddy, mind if we look around?” Dallas said, flashing his baby blues at me.

I gave him a weak smile and a shrug. Social graces were almost non-existent for anyone with Asperger’s, but I could never help feeling embarrassed by the rudeness others perceived. I clamped a hand on Evan’s shoulder. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Evan. The officer is Captain Billington’s friend. He’s just looking for a lost Dutch boy. Have you seen anything like that lately?”

“With a windmill,” Dallas interjected. “A lawn ornament with a windmill.”

Evan shrugged off my hand and noisily thumbed through his catalog, stopping abruptly to stab his finger on a page that was filled with statuary.

Standing on either side of his chair, we both bent over the catalog, bumping heads with a dull thump. Ignoring the pain, I palmed my forehead and snorted a laugh. The rookie’s head was cushioned by a shiny black forelock with a scent of lime gel—one of my favorite whiffs next to cinnamon and lavender. After another awkward moment, I muttered something inane about hard heads.

The cop gave me a blank stare before clearing his throat and scraping back his forelock.

Heat crept up my neck.

Evan, who rarely laughed at all, must have thought our head-bashing was funny. His belly wiggled the catalog propped on his lap—which, of course, made me giggle, and even the cop grinned wide enough to show off a white porcelain smile.

I thought of the toothpaste slogan I had worked on last winter.
White as a new snowfall
hadn’t flown with my boss, but I still preferred it to the white marble analogy. Hot Stuff had great teeth, Sapphire eyes, nice muscles, broad shoulders. Visually, he was topping my mental checklist of the ideal man.

White marble. As in statues. The page in Evan’s catalog had a couple of white plaster angels. There were frogs and toadstools, owls and knolls, even a happy dwarf holding an open red umbrella. But there in the middle was a boy in a blue cap and jacket, wearing yellow wooden shoes, connected to a windmill at his side.

The rookie pulled a digital print out of his shirt pocket to match it to the catalog picture. Though there were few clues in the photo—a rough lawn and a stone fence in the background—I knew immediately where the missing Dutch boy came from. The house was only a couple miles away, near a train crossing and a historic stone barn at the edge of the county.

He snapped a finger against the picture. “The owner must be quite attached to his Dutch boy. He’s offered a reward for its return.”

“A reward for that?” I gaped at the photo.

“Yes, ma’am. A hundred dollars! Down home, I know street urchins who’d gladly dress the part and decorate a lawn all summer for that kind of cash.”

“Wow!” The image of little dark-skinned boys standing all day in the Texas heat brought a lump to my throat. I sighed as I pointed to the price listed in the catalog. “Up here, the owner could buy two new statues for that amount.”

“He said it was his late wife’s favorite. Sentimental, even with the damaged shoe.”

Again, I glanced at the photo. Sure enough, one of the wooden shoes had a squared toe.

Hot Stuff wrote down something in his notebook and looked around the tent.

Evan had his cleaning supplies neatly arranged on steel shelving, folded rags along with cans of yellow spray paint, weed killer, and trimmers. Against one wall, a rope hammock hung on a tubular frame beside a large chest cooler that stored Evan’s pop and bananas. Ten years of garden catalogs filled a clear plastic crate with a cover, doubling as a table beside the sling chair, handy for his sunglasses and snacks.

Evan loved his summer sanctuary like a bird loves its nest. In fact, he resembled a bird, long limbed and gangly with our father’s beak of a nose and the soft hazel eyes we shared from our mother’s side. Only my red hair set us apart from the resemblance of siblings. His hair had once been whitish blonde that eventually darkened into the soft color of a wood thrush.

We both had freckles in odd places, knees and elbows and, of course, our shoulders and noses when exposed to the summer sun. People with green or hazel eyes, I was told, were more sensitive to sunlight. For this reason, I was careful to wear a brimmed hat outdoors while Evan preferred sunglasses. Even indoors, Evan wore sunglasses. I figured it was his attempt to be invisible—out of the spotlight, when they just made him more notorious. But Gran and I had learned to side-step too many corrections, laughing off most of Evan’s behaviors.

The rookie continued to scribble something in his notebook.

I found myself inching to his side, straining to see what he could possibly be recording.

When he saw me craning my neck, he abruptly closed the notebook and stuffed it into his Dallas pocket, along with the pencil stub.

“Satisfied with what you found?” I gave up my pursed smile.

“Depends.” He peered down at me.

“Depends on what?”

“I’d like to check out the garage and the inside of the house, now that the yard is clear.”

“Don’t you need a warrant for that?” I bristled with a quick shrug and stuck out my chin.

“Only if I’m not invited inside.” He winked.

Blue light special.
“A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse.”

He tipped his head sideways, sending me a narrow look. “What is that ’sposed to mean?”

I smiled brightly. “Do you like Snickerdoodles?”

“Snicker…who?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Is that some kind of amusing sketch known only to slogan writers?”

I laughed. “Follow me.” When I saw him hesitate, I winked back, enjoying our little flirt.
“Is Dallas your real name or the ‘down home’ you transferred from?”

“You know, you are not easy to follow…ma’am?”

“Oh, cut the ma’am stuff. I get from your drawl…and your boots…that you are not Midwest, but you’re trying way too hard to pump out the
authority
here. You’ll find Menomonee Falls is practically crime free—compared to Milwaukee—or even Dallas, I imagine.” I smiled demurely this time.

He studied me a moment before his mouth twisted into another half-grin. “Both.”

“Both?”

“Named after the city I was born in. Dallas was my mama’s idea.” He straightened his shoulders and tipped his head, rubbing his jaw. “Johnson was my daddy’s handle. Lots of Johnsons bred in Texas,
you know,
some even famous.”

I laughed again. “You’ll love Gran’s famous Snickerdoodles.”

Chapter Three

I learned long ago that cookies and charm go a long way to divert attention. Two cups of hazelnut coffee and a plate of warm, cinnamon sugar cookies were all Dallas needed to forget to search the house or add anything more than my cell phone number to his notebook. The unexpected bonus was an invitation to a benefit at our annual Falls Fest—after we ascertained some commonality. We both loved music, were single, and still on the good side of thirty. Hot Stuff was looking better all the time.

Proceeds to the Friday evening musical performance benefitted the Menomonee Falls Youth Hockey fund. Stewart Copeland, the drummer of the old British group, The Police
,
was playing with his new quartet. Dallas told me The Police were once as popular as The Beatles, before disbanding when their lead singer went solo. Though I wasn’t familiar with the group, I was impressed enough to accept the invitation.
Hello!
I think I would have accepted if Pee Wee Herman was the soloist.

Our conversation shifted to music genres and our personal favorites, and his new animation drew me to his eyelashes. Long and dark, fringing blue eyes deep and blue as a satin prom dress. Gran joined us, and Dallas shifted his “ma’am” address to her. I could tell she loved the respect. Enough to invite him to join us for lunch.

He looked at his watch. “Aw, sorry, ma’am, I’m still on duty,” he said with a hand on his heart.

I walked him to the door and watched him drive off after setting the pickup time for Friday night’s concert.

“Well done.” My grandmother’s voice called from behind. “Though we probably won’t see Captain Billington anymore,” she said with a touch of regret.

If Gran had her own
ideal man list,
she may have placed widower Billington at the top.

“I don’t know. Maybe rookies just get the simpler assignments until they prove themselves. He was probably right about this being some kind of initiation. You know, start the newbies with something easy, though
easy
never flatlines in the village.”

“This may not be that easy. Look what I found in Evan’s closet.”

When I pivoted to face a little blue Dutch boy attached to a windmill, I gasped. “Oh God!”

Chapter Four

To his credit, Evan was remorseful when Gran and I confronted him at lunch. He told us the statue was sitting near the curb, and he figured it was a garbage pickup, seeing it had a damaged wooden shoe.

Gran even believed his story.

“On the curb or near the mailbox?” I asked, keeping my tone less skeptical.

Because Evan hedged, I was sure he lied or twisted the truth. The Dutch boy could have been surrounded by a mailbox planting of daylilies or hostas. Half the village still had curbside mailboxes, many surrounded by some kind of perennial plant at the base. Because I suspected where it came from, I decided to take Dutch Boy home after midnight.

At 2 a.m., I hauled him out to my little green beetle in a black plastic garbage bag. Streets were vacant, houses dark at that hour. I drove slowly, and when I came within a block of my destination, I cut my headlights and depended on a few scattered streetlights to find the silver mailbox I had scouted in daylight that afternoon.

T. Koster
was the name on the box. I noticed a dusting of powder when I pulled Dutch boy out of the garbage bag. I also noticed the loose cork that had been wedged in the toe of the broken shoe. When I poked it out, I could see the hollow shoe contained a couple of small plastic bags leaking white powder.
Cripes!
I tasted the powder on my finger, just to rule it out as flour or powdered sugar. Ironically, it tasted like baking soda, somewhat salty on my tongue.

The Koster house didn’t resemble any of the Milwaukee drug haunts sometimes featured in
The Journal
or on the evening news. Trimmed hedges stood on both sides of the old farmhouse, and two large peony bushes flanked the front entrance. When an upstairs window in the house suddenly lit up, I froze until I fumbled the Dutch boy back into the bag and threw it in my trunk before speeding away without buckling my seat belt.