They followed him to a corner market and pulled over on the street as the professor got out of his car and jogged to a pay phone and made a call. Whatever his conversation, it was said with a great deal of animation, his hands punctuating what looked like an angry exchange. After a few minutes of that, he slammed the receiver down, got back into his car, and drove to a bar.
They waited outside for two hours—Joe walked down the block to get a couple of slices of pizza—until the professor emerged again, this time in the company of a man. The two of them walked around to the tiny little parking lot, and stopped at the passenger side of an old Buick.
“He’s making a buy,” Joe said. “Weed would be my guess.”
Joe’s hunch proved right, as the two men remained in the parking lot, eventually walking around to the back of the other man’s car, where they shared a joint. When they’d finished, they talked a little more, and the man returned to the bar. The professor got in his car.
This time, they followed him down Blackstone Avenue, to Laurel, and then Slater, the street on which Rachel lived, at which point, Flynn’s heart began to sink.
“He’s going for the painting, you know,” Joe said, his voice a little softer than normal, knowing full well how important it was to Flynn that she not be involved.
“We don’t know that,” Flynn insisted.
Joe said nothing, just pulled up behind another parked car a couple of houses down from Rachel’s. From their vantage point, they saw the professor get out of his car and go inside. Joe looked at Flynn. “Free access to her house?”
Flynn was not going to sit back and feel Joe’s pity. “I think I’ll just have a quick look about,” he said, and got out of the car before Joe could stop him.
Hands in his coat pockets, he pulled his collar up around his face and walked down the sidewalk to Rachel’s house. Once he was in front, he paused, squatted down, and pretended to tie his shoe as he glanced at the house.
He noticed straightaway that Rachel’s car was not in the drive. So what, then, was the professor doing? With a glance back at Joe, Flynn stood, walked calmly into the drive, could almost hear Joe screaming at him to come back before he blew his cover. To hell with his cover—things had progressed far beyond a mere professional interest.
He walked the length of the drive, eyeing the long bank of windows. There were lights on, but no sign of the professor. It was, therefore, a bit of a shock when the professor suddenly emerged from the garage, and looked at Flynn strangely as he quickly shut the garage door behind him
“Ah—hello,” Flynn said.
“Oh. It’s you,” the professor said, and stood, hands on hips, squinting at Flynn. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy—he looked quite stoned. “Did we meet?” he asked. “I don’t remember.”
“Ah, no. Charlie Windsor’s the name.”
“Windsor . . . that sounds familiar,” the idiot said, and Flynn certainly hoped that it might, given the arse’s esteemed status as a college history professor. But the professor shrugged, turned back to the house before thinking it through. “She’s not here, dude,” he said.
“Isn’t she?”
“No.” He paused, looked at the house as if he was trying to remember what he was doing here himself, and put a hand to his nape, then looked at Flynn again. “Okay, so you want me to tell her you came by?”
“Will you see her?”
“Ah . . . I don’t know. I thought she was with you. Maybe she’s at school. Look, I’ll leave her a note, but I really need to get going.”
“That would be lovely, thanks,” Flynn said. Yet he stood firmly rooted, waiting to see what the professor did next.
The professor looked at him, terribly confused. “Right, right, so I’ll let her know.”
“Brilliant, thank you.”
Eyeing Flynn, the professor very tentatively went back inside the house. Flynn smiled, turned on his heel, and calmly walked back to Joe’s car.
“Are you nuts?” Joe shouted before he could even get in the car. “You want to blow cover or what?”
“My cover is quite intact. I actually spoke with our man.”
“Ah, fuck,” Joe said, slamming is fist into the side panel of the door.
“It’s quite all right, Detective Keating. He remembers me from the bar and thinks I came to call on Rachel. She’s not at home, he’s no idea where she might be, and promised to leave a note that I dropped by.”
“You are so kidding,” Joe said with a laugh. “The guy cannot be that stupid.”
“Apparently, he can and he is,” Flynn said, and slid down, watching the house.
The professor left a short time later, empty-handed, and drove to his apartment.
Joe and Flynn watched him stagger inside as if he carried some invisible weight on his shoulders.
“I’ll put a couple of uniforms on him tonight,” Joe said. “But I need to get some sleep.” He looked at Flynn. “And you need to get in that house.”
“Right,” Flynn agreed, but did not offer that given the events of yesterday, that might be easier said than done.
Chapter Thirty-One