Hard Boiled Christmas (Day Four)

Hard Boiled Christmas

A Jack Collier Mystery

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

 

Day Four: Lunch at the Mall

 

            You’re not actually allowed to call Somerset a mall really, because a mall is where the poor people shop. It’s called the Somerset Collection and they have people who will break your legs if you refer to it as a mall. It is a mall, in all technical and realistic ways, but a mall is some place where common people shop and this place is in TroyHowever, it’s where the people common to Troy go shopping, so I call it a mall even if the shoppers spend more on shoes than I make in a year. I always figure that it’s a safe place to meet people though, particularly if I want to do it quietly. No one would ever suspect me of actually going to a mall, nor most the people I need to meet secretly. Since no one would ever think of looking for us there, it’s the perfect place to meet.

 

            I was sitting at one of the tables on the third floor section which served as a food court, drinking cola from a paper cup and waiting for Noonan when I spotted my fellow traveler. When you are being followed by someone, it’s easy to tell because of the way many of them act. Look for the person who isn’t looking at anything particular and is defiantly not looking at you. This person will show up a few times during the day and will always be looking at something else.

 

            He was dressed in a brown corduroy suit that had come with a vest and a brown bow tie. He was looking at people as they passed by, the shops across the way from where we sat, his plate of food, but never at me. To test this I stared at him for a good long time, daring him to look up at me. Despite the fact that I was sitting and staring at him, he never even glanced in my direction. It hard to not even look at a person who is staring right at you, try it sometime and see if I’m not right. He looked familiar for some reason, and I wondered if I’d slapped him around before or something.

 

            I heard Noonan’s foot steps behind me and finally turned around after what might have been thirty seconds of me daring the man in the brown corduroy suit to make eye contact. I caught a motion of his head as I turned. He’d looked up at me before he was completely out of sight, bad move on his part. It was unfortunate that he would confirm my suspicions like that as it meant that he was not as adept at playing the game as I was. Either that or I really am a paranoid nut, just like the shrinks said.

 

            “There is a man in a brown suit looking at you.” Noonan said as he dropped a large manila envelope on the table between us, proving the shrinks wrong again.

 

            “Yes.” I said picking up the envelope. “I was just having a staring contest with the top of his head.”

 

            “Huh.” He said rolling his tongue around in his check. “Who’d be following you this early?”

 

            “No idea.” I said shaking my head, “You and the Fat Man are the only ones who know I’m on the job.”

 

            One of Noonan’s big hands landed flat across the envelope. His voice sounded concerned and a little strained. Noonan wasn’t a particularly tall man, but he was pretty big for his size. I didn’t know what his full reaction would be, but I didn’t like my chances if I had to fight him for the file.

 

            “Why does the Fat Man know?” He asked carefully.

 

            “He’s paying the bills on this one.” I said yanking the envelope out from under his fingers. “I’m working for myself, or more accurately Christmas, but he’s funding the expedition.”

 

            “Yeah.” He said as I undid the metal clasp that held the flap down. “But the Fat Man?”

 

            “He’s got the cash to pay my bills.” I shrugged and opened the envelope. “What do we know about this?”

 

            “These are just a few more details.” He said pointing at the pages of copied reports. “She was found in the parking lot, six hundred dollars in her wallet. We found a necklace that had been torn off caught on her coat, but it had probably just been snapped off during the attack. Nothing was taken, and we couldn’t find evidence of any rape or molestation. They just dragged her away from where ever they found her, went to town on her and left her in the parking lot.”

 

            “Find her purse?”

 

            “No.” He shook his head. “But I’m assuming she dropped it where ever she was grabbed.”

 

            “Anything in her system?”

 

            “Not anything that wouldn’t normally be there at this time of year.”

 

            “Ah.” I said after glancing at him for a second.

 

            “Yeah.” He nodded.

 

            “So besides being drunk as a lord and high as a kite, she wasn’t impaired in anyway?”

 

            “No.” He shook his head, and some little bell rang in my head.

 

            “What kind of lights did they try to strangle her with?” I asked, stalling until I could figure out what that bell ringing in the back of my head was.

 

            “String lights.” He said with a shrug. “You know, the kind that are on all the trees this time of year. White lights, I think, just normal ordinary lights.”

 

            “Okay.” I said coming across a picture, and that delayed my wondering about the little warning bell that had gone off a moment ago.

 

            I won’t describe the eight by ten color glossy photographs, which did indeed have circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. They had been taken in a hospital room, after the doctors had said that she was stable enough for that. They were of the form of an adult woman, one with perhaps more pounds that might have been thought of as healthy. She hadn’t been like that when I’d known her. She’d ballooned quite badly in the last few years and had doubled her weight. If it was her, I’d need to see ID or fingerprints to prove it. The face was badly smashed, and then it had been cut up with some kind of knife. The final word on it was that while I knew it was her, it could have been anyone.

 

            I put the photographs face down and read the report quickly. Noonan had been right, they didn’t really tell me anything else besides the exact location she’d been found and other such details that, while they might have seemed important to whoever wrote them, they were useless to me. I looked at the top of the report and noted that actually they weren’t important to the person writing. Tom had written the reports, so the detail was just for the benefit of his bosses who would want everything he had.

 

            I put the packet of papers and eight by ten color glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one saying what each one was back in the envelope. I then pushed it back towards Noonan and leaned back in the chair. He slid the envelope the rest of the way towards him and sat with his hand on it. His eyes flicked over my shoulder, which I assumed meant the man in the brown suit was still there.

           

            “So, where do you think you’ll start?” He asked.

 

            “You’ve talked to Church?” I asked,

 

            “Yeah.” He nodded. “Last night, after we found her.”

 

            “And the Fat Man?”

 

            “Today.”

 

            “So in order for me to cover anything I’ve got to go in a different direction.” I said tapping the table just to let it know who was boss. “Someplace where you’re not going to look right away. Someplace where no one would think to start.”

 

            “Where would that be?” He asked.

 

            “The beginning of course.” I said smiling at the thought. “You’re starting at the end and trying to work back to who did it. I think I’ll start at the beginning and follow the trail to where ever it leads.”

 

            “Won’t that take a while?” He asked.

 

            “Not the way I do it.” I said shaking my head and pointing to my nose. “This nose always finds the quickest route.”

 

            “Are you trying to be some Victorian throwback or something?” He asked while making a face.

 

            “You don’t like my ‘the nose knows’ shtick?”

 

            “No.” He said plainly.

 

            “Well fine.” I said with mild dejection.

 

            I wonder what might have happened if Noonan’s phone had rung a few minutes later. I might have stumbled around a lot longer than I had, without the crucial clue which came up because of it. Of course like everything in that case, I missed it for the longest time, but it did eventually tip me off. The point of course was that Noonan’s phone rang just at the moment when I was going to announce how busy I was and that I had to get going. His cell phone made a noise though, and I was horrified that I recognized the Crazy Frog song coming from his pocket. He held up his hand and opened the flip phone to press it to his ear.

 

            “Noonan.” He said professionally. “Yeah? Where? Say again. No, it’s fine. I’m going to bring Collier with me, he’s lending some consultation. No, lending, he won’t cost us anything. Yeah. Yeah, he knew her. That’s why I’m talking to him. We’ll be there in a little while.”

 

            He closed the phone jotted down a few things in his ubiquitous notebook, rubbed his chin and looked up at me. He then looked behind me and tilted his head a little, he then made a sweep of the mall food court.

 

            “My minder gone?” I asked.

 

            “Yeah.” He said and sounded slightly confused. “He was there when I answered the phone.”

 

            “Not to worry.” I said. “What am I being dragged along to?”

 

            “They found her car.” He told me. “In Pontiac of all places, in some liquor store parking lot.”

 

            “Did they?” I asked.

 

            “Yeah.” He nodded again. “You want to ride with me?”

 

            “No.” I shook my head and scratched an itch on the side of my cheek, “I’m willing to bet the man in the brown corduroy suit knows where we’re going, let’s let him know that we know too.”

 

This is part four of twenty-five, come back tomorrow for part five and every day this month until we're done to see what happens next. If you get lost, one of the tags here should help you. The HBC tag will take you to the story while the Jack Tag will take you to Part One of every story we post here.