We strapped on our seatbelts, and Kay took off from her parking place behind the building. Jack planted his sturdy feet between the bucket seats and leaned into the turn as she sped around the corner onto Main Street. “Tell me everything you know about Bob. Maybe it will help us figure out what’s going on.”
“I've told you everything already. It's not like I haven’t talked to you every day.” I picked up one of the cookies I had laid on the dashboard and took a bite.
She glanced at me. “I bet there’s some detail you haven’t told me. Just talk. Free associate.”
“Okay. Um, he’s tall and thin and wears plain clothing except for the All Stars.” This came out thickly through the nuts and chocolate chips.
“What about his character?” She looked over her left shoulder before she changed lanes, then held out a hand. “Give me some of that. You’re a whole sandwich ahead.” She grabbed the cookie, chomped out a big bite, and handed it back to me.
“Yes, but I had no breakfast.”
“Bob. Tell me about Bob.”
“He’s kind,” was the next thing I thought of. “He talks to everyone at the dog park, even the people who are boring. He never gets impatient if someone says something dumb. And he’s really good to his dog.”
Kay made the turn onto Hofenstadter Boulevard and sped up to cruise past an SUV. “Ah, the most important thing about a man: how does he treat his dog. Well, you’re probably right at that.”
I looked over at the dog in question, who had retreated to the back seat and sat looking out the window on the driver’s side. We stopped for a red light at the intersection with North Street and Kay reached for the cookie again. The movement caught Jack’s attention, and he licked his lips at the sight of the cookie. It was down to a single bite, which she ate.
“All gone, Jack.” The dog looked at me when I said his name, and I added in the tone one uses on funny dogs with big floppy ears, “He’s just an old hungry dog, isn’t he? A big old sweet hungry boy?”
Evidently ‘hungry’ was another word that Jack was familiar with, for he cocked his head and looked at me hopefully. I went back to my normal voice and told him, “Later, big Jack.” I turned back to Kay, pushing up my glasses to rub my eyes as I thought. “Bob’s also patient. He thought it was cool when I told Emily Ann to go to you at the store that first day, so we’ve been teaching both dogs to go back and forth between us at the park. He said he’s never trained a dog before but he’s really good at it. Or maybe Jack’s just extra smart.”
I picked up another cookie from the dashboard as the light turned green. Kay accelerated smoothly, her right hand confident on the gear shift as she moved it through its positions until she was in fifth. I took another bite as I reached for the bottle of water. I twisted off the top and was taking a swig when I realized she had flipped on the turn signal and was slowing down.
“Where are you going? This isn’t the way to Bob’s house.”
“I know. I just realized we could turn here and go by that bar first. Maybe Trixie will be there and we can find out what’s going on and save Bob.”
“You don’t want to just call again?” Bars hold even less attraction for me than telephones.
“They’ll have the message machine on,” she said firmly, “and this will only take a few minutes. What were we talking about?”
“Bob training Jack to go to me.”
“Well, you’d never trained a dog before Emily Ann either,” she pointed out as we passed the next intersection.
“That’s true. You should have seen Emily Ann at the park yesterday. She was playing with the other dogs and I told her to go to Bob, and she tore off to find him. He hid behind some trees when she wasn’t looking and she had to search for him. She was so excited when she found him that she jumped straight up in the air.”
Kay grinned as she turned onto Prairie. “That must have been a sight. Hey, maybe we could turn Jack and Emily Ann loose and tell them to go to Bob. They could do a Lassie and find him.”
“Good plan. I wish I'd thought of that last night. I could have taken Jack back to the Food Right and followed him as he unerringly sought out his master. Too bad I didn’t think of it in time.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why you didn’t,” she said. A pickup changed lanes in front of us and she touched the brakes to keep from hitting it. After exhaling loudly, she went on, “It seems like you’ve seen Bob every day since you met.”
I thought back. “That was two weeks ago yesterday. A couple of days after that I took him to the dog park for the first time, and since then we have seen each other at least once a day, except for Sunday. He had something else to do that day, he didn’t say what. We’ve been to the dog park, and we went out to dinner Thursday before last. And we had breakfast with you at the Bluebird last Friday morning before we opened the store.”
“He’s getting to be a regular. Cleta likes him. What else?”
“We rented videos a couple of times and watched them at my house with the dogs. He went garaging with me last Saturday. He bought one of those hand-cranked juicers from the fifties because he said he had grown up with one just like it.”
“Good, now you can have your orange juice freshly squeezed when you spend the night at his house.”
“Kay, leave it,” I commanded as though she were an errant puppy with a stolen sock in her mouth. She grinned at me, unrepentant.
“So in all this time you’ve spent together, he’s never tried to kiss you?”
“It is possible to know a man for two weeks without kissing,” I informed her.
“But you’ve been dating. People often kiss someone they date.”
“Well, we haven’t. I—I didn’t want to kiss him if he was going to turn out to be a reporter. And he hasn’t made any moves on me, so maybe he really is a reporter and is being professional. Or he just doesn’t want to kiss me.”
“Ambrose says he’s not gay, so it can't be that. Has he told you any more about his past? Or talked about anything he’s written?”
“No. He hasn’t.”
We were almost out of town now. At the crossroads ahead a blinking red light glowed on and off. When we stopped, I saw that the place we were looking for was in a strip center on the left. The bar was the corner establishment, and its neighbors were a beauty parlor with a glittery handwritten sign in the window advertising Sprakle Nails. I gritted my teeth; misspelled signs make me itch. Next came an empty store front, then a double-wide shop where one could trade in used paperbacks for other used paperbacks. The business on the far end had no sign but appeared to be a lawnmower repair shop, currently not open. Maybe they were busy getting their nails sprakled. Kay turned into the parking lot and pulled up next to a dirty gray pickup that was the only vehicle in front of The Last Resort.
“Come on,” she said.
“Can't I wait here for you?” Perhaps I could duck into the beauty parlor and give them a quick spelling lesson.
“No,” she said firmly. “Look what happened the last time you waited in the car. Get your butt out of that seat.”
I've never had any desire to frequent bars. Beyond the occasional glass of wine, I don’t drink. I detest the smell of beer, and cigarette smoke makes me feel instantly emphysemic. But when Kay speaks in that tone I obey. I followed her through the front door, which was painted a dispirited dark red, into a dim and quiet cave. The jukebox in the corner was silent. A television mounted over the bar had the sound turned down to a mosquito-like buzz.
Two people watched the set. On our side of the counter a young man, probably in his late twenties, sat with his elbows on either side of an empty beer mug. His t-shirt was sleeveless and revealed a colorful dragon tattoo snaking down the length of his right arm. An elderly woman leaned on the other side of the bar, her arms folded across the bib-style apron she wore over a white t-shirt and much-washed jeans. They both looked around with mildly curious expressions when we walked in.
“Hi,” Kay said. “I wonder if you could help us with something.”
We made our way around a couple of tables. I noticed that the TV was tuned to a soap opera; two young and beautiful women in evening gowns were having a serious argument.
“You got car trouble?” the gray haired woman asked.
“No, no, nothing like that,” Kay said, smiling. “We’re trying to find someone, and we found a matchbook at his house from this place. And it had a name and phone number written inside, but the phone seems to be busy all the time.”
They both stared at her. Their unsmiling expressions were so identical that I wondered if they were related.
Kay soldiered on. “Since we were driving by here, we thought we’d stop and see if you know anything about this person. The name written on the matchbook cover was Trixie. Does that ring any bells?”
The woman blinked through a too-long pause. At last she said, “Nope.” Her lips closed in a thin line.
Kay tried another smile. “Are you sure?”
“It was written with purple ink,” I added helpfully.
“Nope.” This time she also shook her head. “Never heard of her.” She turned away and focused on the television again, where a Chihuahua in a tutu now danced with an animated scrub brush.
“Oh. Well, okay. Here, let me give you my card. Just in case this Trixie should show up here again.” She opened her purse, fished out one of her business cards, and laid it on the bar. Neither of them made a move to take it. The woman kept watching the screen and the man just looked at us. Finally Kay said, “Okay. Well, thanks. Guess we’ll go now.”
We turned and headed for the door. Just before we reached it the young man spoke.
“Weren’t you at the Food Right last night?”
I halted and turned back. “Yes. I was looking for my friend who’s disappeared.”
He nodded. “I heard you ask the clerk if she’d seen him.”
I realized why the tattoo looked familiar. “You were buying lettuce.”
He nodded. “Hope you find the guy soon.”
“Uh, thanks.”
He turned back to the TV, and Kay and I escaped. Jack was in the passenger seat. I pointed to the back and he hopped over. Neither of us spoke until we were back in the car. Kay turned the key, and as the engine fired up she looked over at me and started laughing.
“Good lord, Louisa, was that weird or what?” She looked over her shoulder and backed out of the parking space.
“Any event that includes a Chihuahua in a tutu is weird.”
“You saw that guy at the grocery store?”
“Yeah. I recognized the tattoo but I couldn’t think where I'd seen it.”
“Did he act suspicious at the store? Could he be involved in Bob’s disappearance, do you think?” She pulled onto the street, heading back towards Bob’s house.
“I only saw him for a few seconds in the produce aisle. Unless he’d been picking out that lettuce for at least half an hour, I don’t see how he could even have been in the store when Bob was there.”
“It just seems like a huge coincidence,” she insisted.
I nodded. “I know, but on the other hand the Food Right is the only big grocery store on this end of town.”
“True. Did you believe them, about not knowing who Trixie is?”
“I have no idea.” I thought about it. “The place is small enough that you’d think they would know their clientele, but Trixie may not be a regular. For all we know she was only in the place once. Or maybe she’s never been there. Maybe Bob stopped in and picked up the matches and met Trixie somewhere else.”
“Has Bob ever suggested taking you to a bar?”
I shook my head. “No. And I've only seen him drink a glass of wine with dinner. I don’t think he’s the bar type.”
“Trixie might not even be her name. I mean, who’s named Trixie?”
“We just don’t have any information to go on, other than the name, false or not, and phone number,” I complained.
She nodded. “True.” She drove in silence for a block, then sighed. “I suppose it would have been too easy to find Trixie at the bar and have her tell us what’s going on.”
“I know, but it would have been nice.”
“Hey, get my phone out of my purse and call her number again.”
I fished around in her bag and found the tiny instrument. It flipped open easily enough, but required some surreptitious poking at its buttons to get a dial tone. I was embarrassed to let her see how little I had used one of these devices. I finally punched in the number that by now I had memorized.
“Still busy,” I reported.
She scowled. “Dammit, how can anyone talk that long? She must be the original motormouth.”
We passed the parking lot where last night I'd watched a woman in red take Bob to a gray Mercedes and drive away.
“This is where it all started,” I commented, and Kay glanced over at the store.
“Right. Hey, that’s the store with the weird music. Maybe they were just fleeing from that.”
Remembering what I'd heard when I went inside to look for Bob last night, I said, “That’s the most plausible thing we’ve come up with yet.”
She reached over and patted my leg. “Look, maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll be home by now, and we can find out what’s going on,” she said.
“Are you sure it's okay just to drive up to his house? What if that guy is still ransacking my car?”
“Louisa, he was through with the ransacking when he headed for the house. And why would he hang around after you got away? It’ll be fine. We’ll just go see if Bob’s come back, and pick up your car and—”
Since passing the Food Right we’d been following the route I'd taken earlier that morning. As we neared the turnoff to Bob’s house I saw something by the other side of the road. “Oh my god!” I grabbed Kay’s arm. “Don’t stop, keep going. Do not turn into Bob’s driveway!”
The car rocked as she pulled out of my grasp. Kay looked around wildly but kept driving. “What? What?”
“The Mercedes! The gray Mercedes! It’s parked off the road back there!”