Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 32.

Black clouds rising from an unmuffled exhaust drew me to the window the next morning. Benny Fittle’s rusting Maverick was parked on the street with its door sagging open. Benny, freshly talcumed with the day’s new sugar, stood on my lawn, next to the Jeep, writing a ticket.

“No parking on the grass, Mr. Elstrom,” he said when I charged out.

“I can’t park on the street. According to you people, I live on a fire lane.”

“You could park across Thompson, like I told you.”

“That’s a half mile away.”

Parking tickets are a hundred dollars in Rivertown, unless they’re paid by something other than cash, in which case they cost more. I got in the Jeep. “I’m moving it, Benny. Put the book away.”

I twisted the key. Got nothing. The battery had died in the night.

Benny nudged his tongue out and resumed writing. “Got to write you, Mr. Elstrom. Thing’s got to get off the grass.”

I had an inspiration. “Thing’s not supposed to move right now, Benny. It’s in its other mode.”

He looked up, brow wrinkled, his brain taxed by thought. “Whaddaya mean, other mode?”

I got out of the Jeep. “When it is on the grass, this is no longer a vehicle. It is in its lawn ornament mode.”

By the confusion clouding his face, I worried that “mode” meant nothing to Benny except when ordering ice cream to top a slice of pie.

Benny Fittle, though, surprised me. “You mean like one of those wheelbarrow planters?”

I beamed at his brilliance. “Exactly. The Jeep, when on the lawn, becomes a wheeled device just like a wheelbarrow planter.”

“I don’t see no flowers.”

“They’ll be here today.”

“Mode or no mode, there’s no flowers. I got to write you, Mr. Elstrom.”

“The flowers are on their way, honest.”

He put the ticket pad back into his pocket. “Only until this afternoon,” he said and walked across the street to the dark cloud of his idling Maverick.

I didn’t kid myself into thinking he’d taken pity on me. Hunger had drawn him back to his car.

There are no auto parts stores in Rivertown, though parts get distributed from there every night. Rumor has it that another of the mayor’s nephews-a cousin to Elvis, the salad oil king-runs the town’s most profitable car theft and stripping operation out of an old factory building he bought at foreclosure a few years before. Those parts, though, are not available at retail; they get shipped out of town fast, in unmarked trucks.

I walked over to Jiffy Lube. They were out of batteries that would fit the Jeep, and wouldn’t have one for two days. They suggested an auto parts store four miles east, in Chicago. I went back to the turret and started calling gas stations that were close enough to walk to. None carried batteries.

In the middle of it all, George Koros phoned. “You’re going to Andrew’s place in Indiana? It’s our only lead.”

He was speaking too insistently, like a man on the verge of panic.

“I’m on my way there now.” I couldn’t tell Koros I’d already been to Fill’s trailer, and seen flies.

“Where are you, exactly?”

“Route 12. Just a few miles away, I guess.”

“I don’t hear a car engine.”

“I keep it well tuned.”

“Sweetie’s future could depend on that money, Elstrom.” He hung up.

By noon, I was resigned to that parts store four miles into Chicago. I called Leo’s cell phone. “I need a ride.”

“No problem, so long as you’re in Manhattan.”

“Manhattan, New York City?”

“Of course, New York City, you boor.”

I told him he was worthless as a friend. He told me I was a leech, too cheap to hire a cab. We hung up on each other simultaneously, each satisfied with the depth of the sentiments that had been exchanged.

I took the cab. Round-trip, including the wait time while I was inside the parts store buying the battery, cost me fifty bucks. Adding in the battery, I’d run up a hundred-and-forty-dollar morning.

Which then bloomed to a hundred and seventy dollars, throwing in the cost of the flats of flowers that I went to buy after I installed the battery. My cell phone rang just as I got back to the turret.

I figured it was Koros again. I figured wrong. It was Jenny.

“An odd little item just came in,” she said. “Based on an anonymous tip, police went to a trailer park outside of Michigan City, Indiana. They found a small house trailer on fire. Want to guess what they’re looking at inside?”

I told her about Koros hiring me to find Andrew Fill. “He thinks I’m there now.”

“Right now, knocking on that same door?”

“He set me up to get found near a burning corpse.”

“Why?”

“I can’t wait to hear his reason.”

I told her I was going to stay at the turret, where anybody at all could notice that I was nowhere near Indiana.

George Koros had become a very interesting man.

They came for me early that evening, Plinnit and the gray-haired, gray-eyed man.

“What the hell are you doing?” Plinnit asked, getting out of the car.

“Sprinkling my lawn ornament.” I stepped back from the Jeep, satisfied. I’d used scraps of wood to build racks for the hood, bumpers, and spare tire in back. They held flowers, tall, flashy flowers. They transformed the Jeep.

“You can’t drive it like that,” the lieutenant said.

“All I need to do is park it like that.” I pointed to the FIRE LANE sign. “It’s a matter of a hundred-dollar parking ticket or thirty bucks’ worth of plants. There are no other options in Rivertown.”

Plinnit nodded like that made sense and said, “Catch the news today?”

“I’ve been too busy gardening.”

“Want to take a drive?” Plinnit asked.

“Andrew Fill’s apartment again?” I asked, because I hoped that would sound reasonable.

“Why would you mention him?”

“It’s where you always take me.”

I coiled the hose, locked the timbered door, and got in their car.

We talked of flowers and fire lanes until the gray-haired, gray-eyed man drove us onto the Tollway, eastbound.

“This is the wrong way to Fill’s apartment,” I observed, sociably.

Plinnit turned around from the front seat. “Want to get out? We have no right to insist that you join us.”

“I’ll ride.”

“When’s the last time you saw Andrew Fill?”

“I’ve never met the man. George Koros told me Fill had a cottage in the Indiana dunes. He gave me the address and asked me to nose around, talk to his neighbors. He told me it was important that I get on it right away-today, in fact.”

“Because Fill might know something about Sweetie Fairbairn’s disappearance?”

“That’s what Koros thinks.”

“But you didn’t go to Indiana?”

“My battery died. I blew most of the day getting a new one and then, as you saw, gardening.”

“I don’t suppose you have proof of that?”

I fished in my wallet and handed forward the receipt from the auto parts store.

“Someone else could have bought you the battery,” he said, studying the receipt.

“That would have been delightful,” I said.

Plinnit nodded, handed it back.

We crossed into Indiana in silence.